Digital Video Production Reflective Commentary on Trailer Produced Essay

Digital Video Production Reflective Commentary on Trailer Produced - Essay Example This scene signifies the beginning of a relationship representing all things positive and tender and affectionate, which is disrupted by this explosion, which represents the disturbances that life represents - some of which the relationship may survive, but more importantly, sets the tone for the wife to be prepared for her new husband to leave her in an instant to deal with these disturbances. The film line revolves around Vargas, the 'hero' and his weakness in balancing his personal and professional responsibilities. On a broader level, this opening scene is a microcosm for the theme of the rest of the film: the ever raging and seemingly endless battle between good and evil, within the characters themselves as well as between them. (Tom Dirk, Film site review) The title Orson Welles appears in the 9th second who introduces t... d us and he appears almost larger than life until he reaches his full height and balance within the camera which indicates that he is only human, after-all. This scene represents the progression of his character through the movie: he begins as a seemingly powerful man that will stop at nothing to achieve his goal (of catching the 'bad guys') and cannot be stopped by any force known to man. As his character progresses through the film, we see a leveling out that suggests that even all-powerful men ultimately have to live within the boundaries of life - and if you choose not to, justice will eventually prevail to maintain the balance between good and evil. The next title is consistent with the first (black with the credit appearing in a white outline for an elegant and classic feel) and appears in the 11th second: 'Touch of Evil' that heralds in the next scene is actually the crux of the film as it begins to unfold. The sound overlaid on the credit, for but a second, is meant to represent mystery. In seconds 12 to 16, Quinlan sports a self-satisfied and smug look and the sound begins: "Vargas himself has a theory that the murder was committed outside our jurisdiction" and the camera cuts to Vargas who looks confident and also somewhat suspicious of this 'theory'. The scene then cuts to the increasing tension and friction between Vargas and Quinlan: the tone is being set for a battle between these two and the battle between good and evil that ensues. The body language of the group of men who proposed Vargas' 'theory' seems to be in support of Quinlan and blinded by the reality of his methods of investigation. Vargas is in alien territor y and the representative of justice will have to fight his battle single-handedly, as justice always needs to win against all odds. In

Why are there many homeless people in big cities likeLA Essay

Why are there many homeless people in big cities likeLA - Essay Example Therefore, as a conscious citizen, I am concerned with the issue of the increase of homeless people in big cities, and I believe the improvement of the situation will result in the improvement of life of the entire society as well as the country’s economy. Among the main causes of high rates of homelessness in big cities are the following ones: lack of affordable housing, poverty, and unemployment. For many people who experience the problem of homelessness, the affordable housing crisis is what leaves them without shelter because of high housing costs. In addition to this, in big cities, such as Los Angeles, affordable housing is replaced by upscale and high-cost apartments, in which people with low incomes cannot afford to live. Poverty contributes to high rates of homelessness in LA as well because poor people have no money to pay for housing that takes a great proportion of income. Finally, unemployment, closely connected to poverty, is one of the reasons rates of homelessness increase due to the fact that lack of jobs and falling incomes lead to people’s inability to pay for housing. The root cause of unemployment is related to such macro issue that governs the life of the society as growth of population. This level is the first and the root one in answering why there are not enough working places in cities today and why the problem exists. The underlying cause points out what people lack. In this case, the underlying cause of unemployment in today’s society is that growth of population results in growth of working force. Finally, the immediate cause relates directly to people’s lives. More specifically, immediate cause is the fact that there is no need in the increase of working places because of technification of labor, which means that many tasks may be performed by less number of people than it used to be or it takes less time to perform particular tasks. The best and ideal solution to the problem of

Book Review Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Book Review - Term Paper Example Unfortunately most of the organizations fail in this remake effort. Some fail miserably but most of the organization lie somewhere in between. According to Peter Senge in his 1999 book â€Å"Dance of Change† â€Å"This failure to sustain significant change recurs again and again despite substantial resources committed to the change effort (many are bankrolled by the top management), talented and committed people driving the change and high stakes. The companies that fail to sustain significant change end up facing crises. Despite this high failure rate the need for change is undeniable for sustained growth. In fact the sooner is the better otherwise options gets dried up and it requires heroic efforts to successfully bring change. The powerful macroeconomic forces that necessitate change are technological, international economic and open market forces. These forces simultaneously create opportunities and challenges for the organizations. The phenomena that some companies succ essfully manage dramatic changes, while others fail, intrigued Kotter. It led him to study more than hundred organizations involved in the change effort. He believes that the defining factors between success and failure of these change initiatives in business are some critical differences. This extensive study resulted in the development of a framework. He devised an eight phase process necessary for successful change. The most general lesson he derived from the case of successful companies is that each company has to undergo eight phases or steps in the change process without skipping any step. It requires a great deal of time and care because any critical mistake at any phase can be very costly to the company. Kotter’s view about change is quite dissimilar to the views of the vast majority on change management. Kotter emphasizes on leadership rather than management hence the name leading change rather than change management. He negates the common perception that change is a ll about management. He believes that successful transformation is 70-90 percent leadership and only 10-30 percent is management. Kotter not only recognizes the complexity of organizational change but also has proposed its solution with leadership, which is neither simple nor easy, instead of a logical process to manage change as prescribed in most of the books. Kotter’s book is also different from other books on account of its reliance on personal experience based on his exposure to companies for many years instead of drawing on other sources to bolster his arguments and conclusions. Kotter has attributed this undue emphasis on management to the mushroom growth of organizations by entrepreneurs in the twentieth century. Hundreds of mangers were required for the management of these organizations. A single leader with lots of managers could fulfill the requirements of a relatively slow pace of change in business. But the ever accelerating pace of change in the fast moving worl d of the twenty first century, decisions need to be made quickly and cannot take the ponderous and slow route of the management style. Dynamic adaptive enterprises of today’s world demand leadership. Kotter in his book has firstly identified the reasons of change programs failures and urged the importance of leadership and secondly has developed the change

Microcontroller Embedded Memory Technology Information Technology Essay

Microcontroller Embedded Memory Technology Information Technology Essay A  microcontroller  is a small computer on a single  integrated circuit  containing a processor core, memory, and programmable  input/output  peripherals. Program memory in the form of  NOR flash  or  OTP ROM  is also often included on chip, as well as a typically small amount of  RAM. Microcontrollers are designed for embedded applications, in contrast to the  microprocessors  used inpersonal computers  or other general purpose applications. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/153056995_5ef8b01016_o.jpg/230px-153056995_5ef8b01016_o.jpg Microcontrollers are used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as automobile engine control systems, implantable medical devices, remote controls, office machines, appliances, power tools, and toys. By reducing the size and cost compared to a design that uses a separate microprocessor, memory, and input/output devices, microcontrollers make it economical to digitally control even more devices and processes. Mixed signal microcontrollers are common, integrating analog components needed to control non-digital electronic systems. Some microcontrollers may use four-bit words and operate at  clock rate  frequencies as low as 4  kHz, for low power consumption (milliwatts or microwatts). They will generally have the ability to retain functionality while waiting for an event such as a button press or other interrupt; power consumption while sleeping (CPU clock and most peripherals off) may be just nanowatts, making many of them well suited for long lasting battery applications. Other microcontrollers may serve performance-critical roles, where they may need to act more like a  digital signal processor(DSP), with higher clock speeds and power consumption. Embedded design A microcontroller can be considered a self-contained system with a processor, memory and peripherals and can be used as an  embedded system.[1]  The majority of microcontrollers in use today are embedded in other machinery, such as automobiles, telephones, appliances, and peripherals for computer systems. These are called  embedded systems. While some embedded systems are very sophisticated, many have minimal requirements for memory and program length, with no operating system, and low software complexity. Typical input and output devices include switches,  relays,  solenoids,  LEDs, small or custom  LCD  displays, radio frequency devices, and sensors for data such as temperature, humidity, light level etc. Embedded systems usually have no keyboard, screen, disks, printers, or other recognizable I/O devices of a  personal computer, and may lack human interaction devices of any kind. Interrupts Microcontrollers must provide  real time  (predictable, though not necessarily fast) response to events in the embedded system they are controlling. When certain events occur, an  interruptsystem can signal the processor to suspend processing the current instruction sequence and to begin an  interrupt service routine  (ISR, or interrupt handler). The ISR will perform any processing required based on the source of the interrupt before returning to the original instruction sequence. Possible interrupt sources are device dependent, and often include events such as an internal timer overflow, completing an analog to digital conversion, a logic level change on an input such as from a button being pressed, and data received on a communication link. Where power consumption is important as in battery operated devices, interrupts may also wake a microcontroller from a low power sleep state where the processor is halted until required to do something by a peripheral event. Programs Microcontroller programs must fit in the available on-chip program memory, since it would be costly to provide a system with external, expandable, memory. Compilers and assemblers are used to convert high-level language and assembler language codes into a compact  machine code  for storage in the microcontrollers memory. Depending on the device, the program memory may be permanent, read-only memory that can only be programmed at the factory, or program memory may be field-alterable flash or erasable read-only memory. Other microcontroller features Microcontrollers usually contain from several to dozens of general purpose input/output pins (GPIO). GPIO pins are software configurable to either an input or an output state. When GPIO pins are configured to an input state, they are often used to read sensors or external signals. Configured to the output state, GPIO pins can drive external devices such as LEDs or motors. Many embedded systems need to read sensors that produce analog signals. This is the purpose of the  analog-to-digital converter  (ADC). Since processors are built to interpret and process digital data, i.e. 1s and 0s, they are not able to do anything with the analog signals that may be sent to it by a device. So the analog to digital converter is used to convert the incoming data into a form that the processor can recognize. A less common feature on some microcontrollers is a  digital-to-analog converter  (DAC) that allows the processor to output analog signals or voltage levels. In addition to the converters, many embedded microprocessors include a variety of timers as well. One of the most common types of timers is the  Programmable Interval Timer  (PIT). A PIT may either count down from some value to zero, or up to the capacity of the count register, overflowing to zero. Once it reaches zero, it sends an interrupt to the processor indicating that it has finished counting. This is useful for devices such as thermostats, which periodically test the temperature around them to see if they need to turn the air conditioner on, the heater on, etc. Time Processing Unit  (TPU) is a sophisticated timer. In addition to counting down, the TPU can detect input events, generate output events, and perform other useful operations. A dedicated  Pulse Width Modulation  (PWM) block makes it possible for the CPU to control  power converters,  resistive  loads,  motors, etc., without using lots of CPU resources in tight timerloops. Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter  (UART) block makes it possible to receive and transmit data over a serial line with very little load on the CPU. Dedicated on-chip hardware also often includes capabilities to communicate with other devices (chips) in digital formats such as  I2C  and  Serial Peripheral Interface  (SPI). Higher integration In contrast to general-purpose CPUs, micro-controllers may not implement an external address or data bus as they integrate RAM and non-volatile memory on the same chip as the CPU. Using fewer pins, the chip can be placed in a much smaller, cheaper package. Integrating the memory and other peripherals on a single chip and testing them as a unit increases the cost of that chip, but often results in decreased net cost of the embedded system as a whole. Even if the cost of a CPU that has integrated peripherals is slightly more than the cost of a CPU and external peripherals, having fewer chips typically allows a smaller and cheaper circuit board, and reduces the labor required to assemble and test the circuit board. A micro-controller is a single  integrated circuit, commonly with the following features: central processing unit   ranging from small and simple 4-bit  processors to complex 32- or 64-bit processors discrete input and output bits, allowing control or detection of the logic state of an individual package pin serial  input/output  such as  serial ports  (UARTs) other  serial communications  interfaces  like  I ²C,  Serial Peripheral Interface  and  Controller Area Network  for system interconnect peripherals  such as  timers, event counters,  PWM generators, and  watchdog volatile memory (RAM) for data storage ROM,  EPROM,  EEPROM  or  Flash memory  for  program  and operating parameter storage clock generator   often an oscillator for a quartz timing crystal, resonator or  RC circuit many include analog-to-digital converters in-circuit programming and debugging support This integration drastically reduces the number of chips and the amount of wiring and  circuit board  space that would be needed to produce equivalent systems using separate chips. Furthermore, and on low pin count devices in particular, each pin may interface to several internal peripherals, with the pin function selected by software. This allows a part to be used in a wider variety of applications than if pins had dedicated functions. Micro-controllers have proved to be highly popular in  embedded systems  since their introduction in the 1970s. Some microcontrollers use a  Harvard architecture: separate memory buses for instructions and data, allowing accesses to take place concurrently. Where a Harvard architecture is used, instruction words for the processor may be a different bit size than the length of internal memory and registers; for example: 12-bit instructions used with 8-bit data registers. The decision of which peripheral to integrate is often difficult. The microcontroller vendors often trade operating frequencies and system design flexibility against time-to-market requirements from their customers and overall lower system cost. Manufacturers have to balance the need to minimize the chip size against additional functionality. Microcontroller architectures vary widely. Some designs include general-purpose microprocessor cores, with one or more ROM, RAM, or I/O functions integrated onto the package. Other designs are purpose built for control applications. A micro-controller instruction set usually has many instructions intended for bit-wise operations to make control programs more compact.[2]For example, a general purpose processor might require several instructions to test a bit in a register and branch if the bit is set, where a micro-controller could have a single instruction to provide that commonly-required function. Microcontrollers typically do not have a  math coprocessor, so  floating point  arithmetic is performed by software. Volumes About 55% of all  CPUs  sold in the world are  8-bit  microcontrollers and microprocessors. According to Semico, over four billion 8-bit microcontrollers were sold in 2006.[3] A typical home in a developed country is likely to have only four general-purpose microprocessors but around three dozen microcontrollers. A typical mid-range automobile has as many as 30 or more microcontrollers. They can also be found in many electrical devices such as washing machines, microwave ovens, and telephones. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/PIC18F8720.jpg/220px-PIC18F8720.jpg A  PIC  18F8720  microcontroller  in an 80-pin  TQFP  package. Manufacturers have often produced special versions of their microcontrollers in order to help the hardware and  software development  of the target system. Originally these included  EPROM  versions that have a window on the top of the device through which program memory can be erased byultraviolet  light, ready for reprogramming after a programming (burn) and test cycle. Since 1998, EPROM versions are rare and have been replaced by  EEPROM  and  flash, which are easier to use (can be erased electronically) and cheaper to manufacture. Other versions may be available where the  ROM  is accessed as an external device rather than as internal memory, however these are becoming increasingly rare due to the widespread availability of cheap microcontroller programmers. The use of field-programmable devices on a microcontroller may allow field update of the  firmware  or permit late factory revisions to products that have been assembled but not yet shipped. Programmable memory also reduces the lead time required for deployment of a new product. Where hundreds of thousands of identical devices are required, using parts programmed at the time of manufacture can be an economical option. These mask programmed parts have the program laid down in the same way as the logic of the chip, at the same time. Programming environments Microcontrollers were originally programmed only in  assembly language, but various  high-level programming languages  are now also in common use to target microcontrollers. These languages are either designed specially for the purpose, or versions of general purpose languages such as the  C programming language.  Compilers  for general purpose languages will typically have some restrictions as well as enhancements to better support the unique characteristics of microcontrollers. Some microcontrollers have environments to aid developing certain types of applications. Microcontroller vendors often make tools freely available to make it easier to adopt their hardware. Many microcontrollers are so quirky that they effectively require their own non-standard dialects of C, such as  SDCC for the 8051, which prevent using standard tools (such as code libraries or static analysis tools) even for code unrelated to hardware features. Interpreters are often used to hide such low level quirks. Interpreter  firmware is also available for some microcontrollers. For example,  BASIC  on the early microcontrollers  Intel  8052[4]; BASIC and  FORTH  on the  Zilog Z8[5]  as well as some modern devices. Typically these interpreters support  interactive programming. Simulators  are available for some microcontrollers, such as in Microchips  MPLAB  environment. These allow a developer to analyze what the behavior of the microcontroller and their program should be if they were using the actual part. A simulator will show the internal processor state and also that of the outputs, as well as allowing input signals to be generated. While on the one hand most simulators will be limited from being unable to simulate much other hardware in a system, they can exercise conditions that may otherwise be hard to reproduce at will in the physical implementation, and can be the quickest way to debug and analyze problems. Recent microcontrollers are often integrated with on-chip  debug  circuitry that when accessed by an  in-circuit emulator  via  JTAG, allow debugging of the firmware with a  debugger. Types of microcontrollers : Freescale 68HC11  (8-bit) Intel 8051 ARM  processors (from many vendors) using  ARM7  or Cortex-M3 cores are generally microcontrollers STMicroelectronics  STM8  (8-bit),  ST10  (16-bit) and  STM32  (32-bit) Atmel  AVR  (8-bit),  AVR32  (32-bit), and  AT91SAM  (32-bit) Freescale  ColdFire  (32-bit) and  S08  (8-bit) Hitachi H8,  Hitachi SuperH  (32-bit) Hyperstone  E1/E2 (32-bit, First full integration of  RISC  and  DSP  on one processor core [1996]  [1]) MIPS  (32-bit PIC32) NEC V850  (32-bit) PIC  (8-bit PIC16, PIC18, 16-bit dsPIC33 / PIC24) PowerPC  ISE PSoC (Programmable System-on-Chip) Rabbit 2000  (8-bit) Texas Instruments Microcontrollers  MSP430  (16-bit), C2000 (32-bit), and Stellaris (32-bit) Toshiba TLCS-870  (8-bit/16-bit) Zilog eZ8  (16-bit),  eZ80  (8-bit) and many others, some of which are used in very narrow range of applications or are more like applications processors than microcontrollers. The microcontroller market is extremely fragmented, with numerous vendors, technologies, and markets. Note that many vendors sell (or have sold) multiple architectures. Interrupt latency In contrast to general-purpose computers, microcontrollers used in embedded systems often seek to optimize  interrupt latency  over instruction throughput. Issues include both reducing the latency, and making it be more predictable (to support real-time control). When an electronic device causes an interrupt, the intermediate results (registers) have to be saved before the software responsible for handling the interrupt can run. They must also be restored after that software is finished. If there are more registers, this saving and restoring process takes more time, increasing the latency. Ways to reduce such context/restore latency include having relatively few registers in their central processing units (undesirable because it slows down most non-interrupt processing substantially), or at least having the hardware not save them all (this fails if the software then needs to compensate by saving the rest manually). Another technique involves spending silicon gates on shadow registers: one or more duplicate registers used only by the interrupt software, perhaps supporting a dedicated stack. Other factors affecting interrupt latency include: Cycles needed to complete current CPU activities. To minimize those costs, microcontrollers tend to have short pipelines (often three instructions or less), small write buffers, and ensure that longer instructions are continuable or restartable.  RISC  design principles ensure that most instructions take the same number of cycles, helping avoid the need for most such continuation/restart logic. The length of any  critical section  that needs to be interrupted. Entry to a critical section restricts concurrent data structure access. When a data structure must be accessed by an interrupt handler, the critical section must block that interrupt. Accordingly, interrupt latency is increased by however long that interrupt is blocked. When there are hard external constraints on system latency, developers often need tools to measure interrupt latencies and track down which critical sections cause slowdowns. One common technique just blocks all interrupts for the duration of the critical section. This is easy to implement, but sometimes critical sections get uncomfortably long. A more complex technique just blocks the interrupts that may trigger access to that data structure. This often based on interrupt priorities, which tend to not correspond well to the relevant system data structures. Accordingly, this technique is used mostly in very constrained environments. Processors may have hardware support for some critical sections. Examples include supporting atomic access to bits or bytes within a word, or other atomic access primitives like theLDREX/STREX  exclusive access primitives introduced in the  ARMv6  architecture. Interrupt nesting. Some microcontrollers allow higher priority interrupts to interrupt lower priority ones. This allows software to manage latency by giving time-critical interrupts higher priority (and thus lower and more predictable latency) than less-critical ones. Trigger rate. When interrupts occur back-to-back, microcontrollers may avoid an extra context save/restore cycle by a form of  tail call  optimization. Lower end microcontrollers tend to support fewer interrupt latency controls than higher end ones. History The first single-chip microprocessor was the 4-bit  Intel 4004  released in 1971. With the  Intel 8008  and more capable microprocessors available over the next several years. These however all required external chip(s) to implement a working system, raising total system cost, and making it impossible to economically computerize appliances. The first computer system on a chip optimized for control applications was the  Intel 8048  released in 1975,[citation   with both  RAM  and  ROM  on the same chip. This chip would find its way into over one billion PC keyboards, and other numerous applications. At this time Intels President, Luke J. Valenter, stated that the (Microcontroller) was one of the most successful in the companies history, and expanded the divisions budget over 25%. Most microcontrollers at this time had two variants. One had an erasable  EPROM  program memory, which was significantly more expensive than the  PROM  variant which was only programmable once. In 1993, the introduction of  EEPROM  memory allowed microcontrollers (beginning with the Microchip  PIC16x84)  [2][citation needed]) to be electrically erased quickly without an expensive package as required for  EPROM, allowing both rapid prototyping, and  In System Programming. The same year, Atmel introduced the first microcontroller using  Flash memory.[6] Other companies rapidly followed suit, with both memory types. Cost has plummeted over time, with the cheapest 8-bit microcontrollers being available for under $0.25 in quantity (thousands) in 2009,[citation needed]  and some 32-bit microcontrollers around $1 for similar quantities. Nowadays microcontrollers are low cost and readily available for hobbyists, with large online communities around certain processors. In the future,  MRAM  could potentially be used in microcontrollers as it has infinite endurance and its incremental semiconductor wafer process cost is relatively low. Microcontroller embedded memory technology Since the emergence of microcontrollers, many different memory technologies have been used. Almost all microcontrollers have at least two different kinds of memory, a non-volatile memory for storing firmware and a read-write memory for temporary data. Data From the earliest microcontrollers to today, six-transistor SRAM is almost always used as the read/write working memory, with a few more transistors per bit used in the  register file.  MRAMcould potentially replace it as it is 4-10 times denser which would make it more cost effective. In addition to the SRAM, some microcontrollers also have internal EEPROM for data storage; and even ones that do not have any (or not enough) are often connected to external serial EEPROM chip (such as the  BASIC Stamp) or external serial flash memory chip. A few recent microcontrollers beginning in 2003 have self-programmable flash memory[6]. Firmware The earliest microcontrollers used hard-wired or mask ROM to store firmware. Later microcontrollers (such as the early versions of the  Freescale 68HC11  and early  PIC microcontrollers) had quartz windows that allowed ultraviolet light in to erase the  EPROM. The Microchip  PIC16C84, introduced in 1993,[7]  was the first microcontroller to use  EEPROM  to store firmware. Also in 1993, Atmel introduced the first microcontroller using  NOR Flash memory  to store firmware.[6] PSoC  microcontrollers, introduced in 2002, store firmware in  SONOS  flash memory. MRAM  could potentially be used to store firmware.

Cicero and Stoicism :: History Philosophy Philosophical Cicero

Cicero, was truly a man of the state. His writings also show us he was equally a man of philosophical temperament and affluence. Yet at times these two forces within Cicero clash and contradict with the early stoic teachings. Cicero gradually adopted the stoic lifestyle but not altogether entirely, and this is somewhat due to the fact of what it was like to be a roman of the time. The morals of everyday Rome conflicted with some of the stoic ideals that were set by early stoicism. Thus, Cicero changed the face of stoicism by romanizing it; redefining stoicism into the middle phase. Of Cicero it can be said he possessed a bias towards roman life and doctrine. For Cicero every answer lay within Rome itself, from the ideal governing body to the place of divination. Cicero does not offer any alternate answers to roman society, which robs him of being truly a unique and bold political philosopher. This is not to say however some of his doctrines are untrue, just that he is somewhat blinded by his roman beliefs and assumptions. The assumptions of Cicero can be noticed when one inspects his view of the ideal governing body, which he expresses through Scipio (in the commonwealth). Although Cicero presents very convincing arguments for a Composite government, clearly his view is possibly only due towards his belief in the roman structure of government.1 Cicero was limited to roman borders of experience, and this point was best illustrated by his disagreement with Aristotle's writings on the decay of states. Cicero was unable to think on the level of Aristotle's logic. He quite simply used roman history as a mapping of the paths of the decay of states. In contrast, Aristotle understood the underlying forces and influences that transpired when a state degraded. Cicero quite frankly could not understand the forces which Aristotle so eloquently denoted. For Cicero, history offered the only possible paths of outcomes; the forces and behaviors played little part on the resulting state.2 A further point of philosophical belief which Cicero contradicted the stoic lifestyle, is religion. Roman tradition conflicted greatly with stoic doctrine, and the two philosophies could never truly harmonize with one another. This point brought the distinction between the Greek learned world of intellect, and the traditional religious roman patronage. This observation literally draws a line between the two worlds, that of knowledge and reason opposing that of tradition and sentiment.

Let’s Go to the Beach Essay

It was summer, last year; in July 15th the hotter day of the season made me took to my young son, my niece, and my mom to the beach. It was noon, when I noticed that my mom to come from Mexico who was visiting me for some months was getting bore at home. Because she loves to be in Mexico, when she visited me I have to do fun thinks to extend her stay with me. Thinking what should I do to make her happy I had a great idea come to me and I told them â€Å"let’s go to the beach†. Without hesitation my mom said â€Å"yes†. I asked my ten years old son and my fourteen years old niece if they could help me to hold her because my mom’s troubles to walk alone. With a very blue sky, hot and yellow sun and the kid’s support with my mom I thought that it would be a perfect day to take my mom to the beach. My mom and I would not expect that going to the beach at a beautiful day, in a blink we will be terrified and involved others to spoil their beautiful day too. Planning to have a perfect day at Seascape Beach Resort, I learn that by my mistake inadvertence the brighter day, would become in a nightmare turning our day in a darkness day. After to invite my family to the beach, quickly I had to package some staff that we need to spend all day at the beach. I gave to my niece some appropriately cloths to go to the beach, my son wore his sandals, short and a light t shirt. Faster, I dressed a short and sandals too but my mom who though that she won’t get wet to the beach, she did not want to change her beautiful light green pants and her write blouse that she was wearing. After we changed our clothes, I got four towels, my sunglasses, and a cap. As my purpose was to stay six hours at the beach, I made some sandwiches, water bottlers I cut a sweet watermelon, a cantaloupe, and bananas. Having it, I tough it is all that we need to get fun at the beach. Exited to be at the beach, my mom and the kids were into my car happily where my mom was in the font, my niece and my son on the back sets. Taking the 101 north highway, I drove to the road of the Seascape Beach Resort. While I was driving, we were listening Spanish music to made my mom felt much more relax. Even though the day was hot we were happy because I turned the air condition in and there was not traffic and we laughed, joked each other, and we talked about the beautiful day that we would expected to have. After twenty minutes driving, we arrived to the parking lot As I worked at Seascape Beach Resort for seven years, I knew where I should park my car safety for a long time and how to get to the beach while we can enjoy the scene of the path. Getting out towels and food, I was trying to leave my cell phone in my car, when my mom saw it she told me â€Å"bring it I’ll take care of it, I won’t be wet in the beach. † Easily, she convinced me and she put my cell in her pans’ packet. Because the hotter day, anxiously my niece and my son wanted to get wet and play with the sand, so they walk faster. Feeling my niece and my son the smell of the beach, they could not wait to touch the cold water. Recently my mom got a total knee replay surgery; she was unable to walk faster as my niece and my son. Taking the path of the beach, they let my mom and me behind. Frequently, I used to take my son at this beach, so they knew the path very well that tis why I allowed them to walk quickly. Whishing this beautiful day for my mom were unforgettable we walked slowly holding my mom’s hand, enjoying the view through the beach’s path. Feeling the freshener of the green threes, getting relax with a beautiful fountains, looking at the flower gardens, and when we were close to the beach we enjoy the smell of the beach. After a few minutes with an enjoyable rode of the beach, we finally were at the beach. Before this day I took my mom to the same beach to watch the waves sitting on the beach’s bench and got refresh because her weakness of her knee. I wanted my mom has a perfect day, pampering her, I said yes for that entire she wanted without though that a nightmare will happen to us. Feeling my mom attracted to the waves and the beach’s freshness and the smell of the breeze she asked me if she could get wet her feet. â€Å"Why not†, I said her. Caring my mom shoes in my left hand and my right hand holding her, slowly, we started to walk. Felling the burner sand in our feet, we continued to walk into the wet sand. With a very beautiful blue sky, and fresh waves, my mom feet happy and relax. After, we met with my son and my niece, who were playing with the sand and getting wet with the waves; I told them â€Å"my mom wants her feet get wet, we will be walking right there to the beach†. With Disregard they said â€Å"yes† because they were very busy with the waves. A few minutes ago, still walking under the wet sand, my mom wanted her feet touch the cooler water. Feeling the coolness of the breeze, touching our face and smelling the fragrance of the beach, my mom feet got wet. Two minutes later, walking still slowly under the sand a very small wave was coming to us. Happily, my mom and I, we were waiting the wave. Suddenly, I saw a very big wave coming to us. Immediately, I told my mom: let’s go back quickly– a big wave is coming towards us†. Even though I want to walk faster, my mom was unable to do because my mom’s knee weakness. Then, the big wave reached us soon. Holding my mom’s hand she, felt down lay at the water. Because my back injured I was incapable to stand up her. Terrify, for a few seconds, and unable to help my mom, I saw some people far of us. Frighten, and desperate because my mom was in danger to be driven for more big waves that were coming to us, I was holding tightly my mom’s hand; with my other hand I made some signal wishing the American’s family help. Fortunately, they saw my hand’s signal, so they guest that we need help. Two minutes later, they were coming one by one to help us. First it was just a lady who was trying to stand up by pulling my mom, while I tried to push her, but we could not stand up her. Soon, they were four more people who arrived to get her up. Thankfully to the kindly family help, by my negligence to allow my niece and my son to separate of my mom instead of held them to be close to my mom while she waked I spoiled the beautiful day to this family also. My mom, totally wet and dirty her light green pants and white blouse when her shoes were driven by the waves too, finally, we got my mom up. Immediately, the kindly family called to Seascape beach life guard to be sure that my mom was not injured. Because she was shaking for the tragedy and the cold water friendly, they sat her down in one of their chair that they had, trying to calm down, cleaning and drying, her with their big new towels that they had. Pampering my mom and waiting for the safe guard they frequently, need me, to asked her if she was fine because my mom cannot speak any English word. After twenty minutes of my mom’s tragedy I remembered that my son and my niece also were there. Still trembling I told the family members that there were two kids with us. Then, my son and my niece were called by one lady of this family witch let they know about my mom tragedy. Generously, around half an hour, my mom was pampering by this family while we were still waiting for the life guard, such us surrounding her, warming, hugging, and trying to make her safe outside the water. A few minutes later, the life guard came to us, when in detail, the family explained to the guy all about my mom’s accident and telling the guy about my mom’s recently knee surgery. Immediately, her blood pressure, her knee surgery, and everything of my mom were examined by the safe guard. Patiently, they helped her to ride the big truck when she was transported the outside of the beach. They also arranged with the bell men to give us a shuttle to my car because my mom’s shoes were missing, even though the bell boy was known to me because we were co-workers. Helplessness, how as humans bad things can happened and we cannot help ourselves, so we just ask others for help. Luckily, the generosity of this family save my mom to be browned at the beach, this nightmare taught me that they are some places when should I not take my mom by myself. Even though I have been giving the best care at my home for a long time, with my mom’s back, hip, and knee problems and her seven and eight years old and my back problem it was my big mistake to took her to the beach alone. With our short stance and bad experience at the beach, we back inside my car quite grateful with the American family who save my mom life.

Encouraging more Respect for the Dutch Culture Essay

Introduction For my personal project I have decided to write a book (appendix 1) about the Dutch culture and habits. I was inspired to do this project, because a lot of people think that everyone in Holland smoked marihuana at least once a day, walks on clogs all the time and has a garden full of tulips. When I first joined ISS I noticed that everyone assumed that I loved cheese and they still do. This inspired me to do write this book, because I want people to know more about Holland and gain more respect for the country. This is important to me, because I want everyone to not always stereotype the Netherlands. My Area of Interaction for this project will be Community and Service. I chose this Area of Interaction, because I am writing a book for the community to read. I want to inspire the community to see Holland through a different view. I want people to have more respect for the Dutch  culture and its habits after reading my book. By doing this I not only help the school community, but also the Dutch community by encouraging more respect for their culture. Since I am doing this for free it is a service. I think that giving out a book for free is going to make the book more successful. More people would want to read it and so more people will be encouraged to have more respect for Holland. That is why my AOI is Community and Service. My goal of writing this book is that people will start to have more respect for the Dutch culture. I do not want everyone to just assume that I wear clogs at home, eat cheese everyday and especially that I smoke marihuana. I also want to get more non-fiction writing experience and skill by writing this book. This will help me for writing essays and other informative writing tasks. I will measure my goal by seeing if the attitude of people improves after reading my book. What I mean to say by this is that: if they lessened the stereotypical comments, than I believe that their respect has increased. I have designed an 11-point plan for my Personal Project. Make a survey and ask the questions to people in Holland to get their opinion. Buy and read books about the Dutch culture, so I can use these in my project. Find websites on the Internet about clogs, Dutch cheese, drug consumption in the Netherlands etc. I will keep researching. Ask the questions of the survey to people in ISS. Plan out my book. I will plan out what I want chapters to be about and in what order I will put them. Write an introduction for the book. Writing an introduction is important, because it introduces the reader to the book and shows what the reader can expect. I will start on writing the book and finish at least 1/3 of it before the progress fair, so I can present this on the progress fair. I will finish my book around January. This will not be the completed version. I will ask some people to read the rough draft. I will use the feedback I get to improve and finish the book. When finished I will make a table of contents and a cover page. Then I put everything together in a folder and hand it in on the due date. Description of the process Research and Planning First, I had to plan out the whole entire process. As shown in the introduction I had an eleven-point plan to finish my personal project. That was just a rough draft of all the things I was going to do, but now I will describe the whole process in detail. I started my project a little bit before the summer break. I started researching on how to write a non-fiction book. This was very critical to my project, because I have never written a book before and it was very likely to take longer if I did not use these websites. (Stephanie Chandeler, 2009) (Bobbi Linkemer, 2010) After this I thought of the survey questions I was going to ask people about Holland. The week after I planned this, my family and me went to the Netherlands and I planned to do the survey there. I asked the survey questions to as many family members and friends as I could, until we went home. I had about 25 persons interviewed and I was convinced that this was going to help me during the project. I put all the answers of the survey into an Excel document. (appendix 2) After the all this research I realized that I did not have a plan. I quickly made a 11-point plan to write my book. I was very stupid of me to write the plan so late. I will discuss this further in the conclusion. Two weeks after school started I asked the survey questions to the whole entire tenth grade class. Some of these surveys were very useful and actually helped me writing my book. But many of them were not taken seriously and I thought this was very disappointing, because I expected a little better of my classmates. Writing the first half and rewriting first half After all of this research I started writing the book. Three weeks after the school started I wrote my introduction to the book (word from the Author). This was very important to the book, because in this introduction I had to introduce the whole entire book and as I said before I have difficulties starting a writing task. But once I get into writing, then I can keep on writing for maybe 15 minutes straight. After that I wrote chapter one of my book. It was not very hard on deciding what my first chapter should be on, because almost every non-fiction book starts out with a basic overview of the topic that will be discussed. So my first chapter was about the geographical facts about Holland, like its area, population, religion  percentage and other basic facts about The Netherlands. The second chapter was about the provinces of Holland. I believed that this was important to explain, because every province is different and I wanted to show that not everything in Holland is the same a s some people think. It is like the states in the U.S., people in Georgia are completely different from people in Texas. Then I started on the third chapter, which was about the water in Holland. I talked about the lakes, rivers, seas and polders in Holland. The fourth chapter was the last chapter I wrote before the progress fair. It was about the history of Holland. I discussed important wars and events that effected Holland on what it is today. Three days later I presented what I had written so far at the progress fair. Not a lot of people were interested in my project and only about 5 kids stopped to look and ask questions about my project. A week later the biggest problem happened throughout the whole project. I lost all my progress so far on what I have written. For some reason my laptop deleted nearly everything that I had written so far. The only thing that wasn’t gone was my introduction. This was a very big problem and I should have had a back up. The next school week and one and a half week of the break I spend rewriting my whole entire first half of the book. This wasted a lot of my time I could have actually spent starting my second half of the book. I believe that the second version of my book was slightly different than the first version, but only small improvements were made. It could even be that I may have left some things out and have added some things, so my first version could have been better or worse. Writing the second half of the book The second half of the book was a little more difficult. I had covered all of the basic things, like geography and history. Now I needed all the things that people were stereotyping and making fun of, because my goal was to encourage more respect for the Dutch community by writing the actual truth instead of writing. I first decided to make a chapter on significant and famous Dutch people before talking about stereotypes. In the appendix chapter 5 of my book is shown and as you can see I talk about famous Dutch people in the past (like Vincent Van Gogh), and famous Dutch people in the present (like Johan Cruijff). I thought that this was also important to put into my book, because some people did not know any famous Dutch people and I  thought it was a good idea to also include this in my book. I finally started writing about some typical Dutch things. My sixth chapter was about Dutch holidays and traditions. I included holidays in them like the Dutch carnaval and Sinterklaas, because those are two very popular and well-known holidays all over Holland. This chapter is also included in the appendix. My seventh chapter was about Dutch eating habits and I talked about food like Dutch cheese and its stereotypes and liquorice. I hoped that I made a lot of things clear about Dutch people and cheese in this chapter. The eighth chapter of my book was about tolerance in the Netherlands. Here I hope I made a lot of things clear about the red light district, drug legalization in Holland and legalized prostitution in Holland. My final chapter was about typical Dutch things like windmills and tulips. I explained that not everyone grows tulips in their garden and not everyone in Holland lives in a windmill! After I finished all of my chapters I let my mother and father read it through for some feedback. Using the feedback I got, I improved my book. Afterwards I wrote my afterword and bibliography. In the afterword I thanked all the people that helped me write the book and summarize the conclusion of the book. At last I put the book together and made a table of contents. So, finally after 6 months of hard work, problems and bad time management I finished my book and handed it in. I hope everyone who will read the book will gain more respect for the people of The Netherlands and will think twice before concluding anything about Holland and its culture. Analysis Useful resources and the AOI linked to it My project was a project that was based on and dependent on a lot of research. So the research changed my personal project a lot. As I told in the process description, I did some research on how to write a book and I also did a survey with a lot of people. This survey affected my personal project a lot, because this showed me what people of different ages were thinking about Holland internationally. I used this survey in a lot of chapters in my book, so I could see what people were thinking about Holland. As I mentioned before my project was dependent on research. I used a lot of websites and most other websites were useful in the same way. I found websites about cheese, traditions, polders and many other things. There were  only two parts of my research that were more important than all the information sources. These were the survey and the websites on how to write a book. These helped me reach my goal better. The survey helped, because this showed me what a lot of people were thinking and so I could decide what I should write several of my chapters about. The websites on how to write book helped, because it is always very difficult for me to start an essay or any other writing task. These websites helped me start out and guided me throughout the whole writing process. Another very useful website that helped me finish my longest chapter, chapter 2, was a website called tripadvisor.com (Tripadvisor, 2000) I used a lot of sources I used and it would be a miracle if I remembered all of them word by word. Some of which I remember do relate to the AOI. The source that links the most to the AOI is my survey results. Asking people from two different communities questions about their personal opinions created this survey. One was the Dutch community who all gave similar answers and mostly answers that make sense to me. The other was an international community who also gave similar answers, but made less sense. Some people did not take this survey seriously and some people gave stupid answers. One example is that some people just wrote weed next to every answer. These were the survey that did not help me at all and I just threw them away. By seeing this I could conclude that not a lot of foreigners knew about the Dutch people and their culture. Changes in the plan I changed a lot of things in the plan. At the very beginning I said that I would create the survey first. What I actually did first was research on how to write a book. This was an important change in the plan, because if I didn’t than probably my book would have been less organized, I probably forgot the table of contents and my introduction would take maybe three days. Another change I made in one of the points in the plan was that I did not interview people from the I was planning in doing so, but than I decided not to. I am a very shy person when it comes to asking a stranger a bunch of questions. I was afraid that they might be startled and most of them just say no, because they don’t have time. I was also afraid that people think I am some crazy kid asking them some stupid questions about their own country. Another change in the plan was that I switched point 4 and 5 around. Now, I  first planned out the book and then I surveyed the tenth grade. I did this, because I saw that some people were still getting used to their homework pattern in tenth grade and would probably forget one â€Å"unimportant† survey and that would leave me with maybe 15 completed surveys in my hands. So I first planned out the book and later when most people were less stressed I asked the survey questions. The biggest change is probably that I would have had the book finished in January. I had to change this, because of the problem that occurred I explained about in the description process. Almost all of my work got deleted. Due to this I could not work on my second half of the project in the Christmas break. I finished up my rough draft in the February break and had two days to use feedback from my mother and father to improve my book. This change also had effect on nearly all of my last points, because of the little time that was left after the deletion of my project. Techniques used in the project and time management I did not use a lot of different techniques in my project. Since my project is writing a book not as many techniques are used as in making a movie or sporting. The technique I used most was research and write. For a non-fiction book this is obvious, because the information in the book does require a lot of research. There are also other techniques I used, like the interview. The interview was, as I explained before, critical to my project. This interview was very effective to my project, because it is always good to not only have second hand sources. To have a first hand source can come in really handy, because one cannot always believe what is on the Internet. My time management could have been better. First of all it would have been better if I had finished everything up until my book introduction in the summer break, because than I could have entirely focused on writing my book for the rest of the year. The other big thing that interfered with my time schedule was the deletion of my project. As I explained before I had to rewrite all over again during the Christmas break. And the last thing that is again completely my fault, is that I let the final chapter of my book all come down to one holiday. I worked everyday on the project in the holiday and was really stressed throughout the whole ‘holiday’. I should have spread it out over the last three weeks, but I admit I was too lazy and thought that I wasted half of my Christmas break on my project that I won’t do a lot  in the weeks to come. This is a thought that I will not ever think again after what happened. Has my understanding of my AOI grown during the project? My understanding of the AOI has definitely improved over the course of the year. My understanding about why one should respect another culture has grown a lot. I have realized more than ever that I have to respect other cultures more and stop making stereotypical jokes in order to gain respect from other people for my culture. I also understand more how my book could contribute and has contributed to a community. By reading my book some people have gained respect for Holland and its culture as I mentioned before. Now maybe 10 people read the book and maybe 5 of these have gained respect for the Dutch culture. This benefitted the small Dutch community in our school. But let us say that half of Germany reads my book. I think that around 40%/50% of these people would actually understand and respect the Dutch culture more. If such a thing happened than it could have contributed to the whole Dutch community. Understanding and quality of the product I understand many more things now about writing a book. The main thing that I have learned is to have a back up for every chapter you make. I have learned this the hard way. Another major thing that I understand now is that writing a book is not as easy as I expected it to be. It requires a lot of research, creativity and especially time. If you do not plan you time well then writing a book can take a really long time. I wrote a book double-spaced, size 14 and 6800 words in 46 pages in about 6 months. A writer that does single-spaced, size 12 and around 500 pages would maybe take 30 years over one book if he/she wrote in my tempo. And if I wrote in their tempo than I would be done with the project in maybe a month or so. So my understanding is that writing a book is mostly about planning and a lot of dedication to one’s work. I am quite proud on what I produced. I never thought myself capable of writing a book. Compared to the work of a professional writer my book is very short. I compared my work to a book called â€Å"The Dutch, I presume?†(Martijn de Rooj, April 2009) and another book called â€Å"Holland† (Herman Van Amsterdam, 2009) and saw that mine was way shorter. These man also has more experience when it comes to writing a book. they designed it really clever and also had other professionals working with them; like  professional photographers and artists. The Difficulty of the project Overall I would not consider my project as a difficult project. I also don’t think it is easy. Writing a book is not as easy as people think it is, because it requires a lot of planning and a bit of creativity. But it is also not extremely difficult, because if you planned everything than you just let your mind and hands do the work and just keep on writing until you cannot write anymore. I think writing a non-fiction book is more for people who are looking for a challenge. Conclusion Have I met my Goal? I believe that I have met my goal to a certain extent. The first part of my goal was to encourage more respect for the Dutch culture. This point is not very clear yet, because only one foreigner has read the book until now. But I believe that the book will have some impact on the respect people have for Holland. I told some of my classmates some facts about the Netherlands and they stopped making fun of the things I told them are not even close to the truth. My other goal was to get more informative writing skills. I believe that I really have achieved this goal, because I find it easier to write more on one-world essays or history essays now, because I wrote this book. This project also helped me a lot with researching skills. Before I only used to look on the Internet, but now I will start using other sources like books and first hand sources to research. By doing this I can get more information about a subject and this will, hopefully, get me better grades. Things that I would do differently if I could start over There are a lot of things I would do differently next time. The first one is to have a back up for everything I write. This was the biggest problem I had throughout the whole project. Due to this I wasted a whole break rewriting all the things I did not back up. If I do this differently if I could start over than I would probably have way more time to do the rest of my book. This brings me to the other thing I would do differently if I could start over: time management. I should have planned my time better throughout the 6 months I had. Because I did not plan my time well in the ending I had to  finish the second half of my project in one and a half week. Another thing that I could improve is that I should let more than just 2 people give me feedback on my book. Both of the people that gave me feedback were Dutch and I should have let someone with a different nationality look at it. This would have been an advantage, because than I would have gotten another cultures point of view. The benefit of another culture’s point of view is that all the things that think could be appropriate in Holland could be inappropriate in other cultures. Because I might have put one or two jokes in my book that could be seen as inappropriate, but I left them in there due to that the two people giving feedback were ok with it. Personal lesson I learned from doing this project I have learned a lot by doing this project. The main thing is that I learned to organize better. I was always terrible at organizing my work, so I got in time trouble a lot of time. By doing this project along with all the essays and tests we got I had to learn organizing the hard way. Another thing I learned and I kept mentioning throughout the whole report is that I HAVE to make a back up for all the important work I have done. If I do not do this something like what happened in December might happen and completely ruin days of works. I also learned that if I really put myself into something I could write about a lot of information quickly. Another important thing that I realized while writing my book was that if I want people to respect my culture and stop stereotyping, I also have to do the same thing. I realized this while talking to a couple of my friends about respect for one’s country. I realized that in order for me to achieve my goal of people respecting my culture, I had to do the same thing. I have learned a lot by doing this project and I hope that other people have learned a lot too by reading my book. Bibliography Chandler, Stephanie. â€Å"How to Write Your Non-Fiction Book in 60 Days: 8 Steps Get Your Book Out of Your Head and on to Paper.† Scribd. 2009. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. . Linkemer,