Tuesday, November 26, 2019

HISTORY OF BASKETBALL Essays - Rules Of Basketball, Free Essays

HISTORY OF BASKETBALL Essays - Rules Of Basketball, Free Essays HISTORY OF BASKETBALL Dr. James Naismith is known world-wide as the inventor of Basketball. He was born in 1861 in Ramsay township, near Almonte, Ontario, Canada. The concept of basketball was born from his school days in the area where he played a simple child's game called duck-on-a-rock outside of his schoolhouse. The game had a purpose to knock a "duck" off the top of a large rock by throwing another rock at it. Naismith then went on to attend McGill University in Montreal, Quebec,Canada. After serving as McGill's Athletic Director, he moved on to the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA in 1891 where there the sport known as basketball was born. In Springfield, Naismith was then faced with the problem of finding a sport which was right for playing inside during the Massachusetts winter. Naismith wanted to create a game of skill for the students instead of one that uses only strength. He needed a game that could be played indoors in a small space. The first game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets used as baskets. At that time went a person made a basket the basket was called "goal" so in the following rules the word "goal" means the basket that was made. Naismith devised a set of thirteen rules of Basketball: 1. The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands. 2. The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands, but never with the fist. 3. A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to be made for a man running at good speed. 4. The ball must be held in or between the hands. The arms or body must not be used for holding it. 5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, striking or tripping in any way of an opponent. The first infringement of this rule by any person shall count as a foul; the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made or, if there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game. No substitution shall be allowed. 6. A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violations of Rules 3 and 4 and such as described in Rule 5. 7. If either side make three consecutive fouls it shall count as a goal for the opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the meantime making a foul). 8. Goal shall be made when the ball is thrown or batted from the ground into the basket and stays there, providing those defending the goal do not touch or disturb the goal. If the ball rests on the edge and the opponents move the basket, it shall count as a goal. 9. When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be thrown into the field and played by the first person touching it. In case of dispute the umpire shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower-in is allowed five seconds. If he holds it longer, it shall go to the opponent. If any side persists in delaying the game, the umpire shall call a foul on them. 10. The umpire shall be judge of the men and shall note the fouls and notify the referee when three consecutive fouls have been made. He shall have the power to disqualify men according to Rule 5. 11. The referee shall be the judge of the ball and decide when it is in play in bounds, to which side it belongs, and shall keep the time. He shall decide when a goal has been made and keep account of the goals with any other duties that are usually performed by a referee. 12. The time shall be two 15-minute halves with five minutes' rest between. 13. The side making the most goals in that time shall be declared the winners. In addition to the creation of the sport, Naismith graduated as a medical doctor, and so interested in sports physiology and what we would call today sports science and as Presbyterian minister, with an interest in philosophy and clean living. Naismith watched his sport, introduced in many nations by the YMCA movement

Saturday, November 23, 2019

How to Redirect Your Mail in Canada at the Post Office

How to Redirect Your Mail in Canada at the Post Office If you are moving, be sure to arrange for your mail to be redirected so you dont miss anything important. These instructions are for having your postal address changed at the post office. You can also use the Change of Address Online Service to have your mail redirected via computer. Should You Redirect Your Mail? In order to continue to receive your mail at a new address, you will need to use Canada Posts in-person or online service to forward your mail. You can use Canada Posts redirect services for both permanent and temporary moves. When making a permanent move, you can choose whether to forward your mail for four months or one year. When making a temporary move, you can choose to  forward for three months with the option to continue on a month-to-month basis thereafter. The following steps apply to both residential and business relocations. Follow These 6 Steps to Redirect Your Mail At least two weeks before your move, go to any ​postal outlet in Canada and complete a Redirection of Mail Service form.  Pay the appropriate fee.  The cost of mail forwarding will vary, depending on whether your new address is within the same province, within Canada or in another country. There also are different rates for residential and business moves.The Redirection of Mail Service form will be sent to the postal supervisor for your old address.Ask for change of address cards.Complete the change of address cards and send them to all your regular correspondents, including your bank, credit card companies  and other companies with which you regularly do business.If you still want your mail redirected after the initial period, go to a postal outlet and renew the service before the redirect period has ended. Pay the current fee. Additional Considerations Note that mail can be redirected to any other address in Canada, in the United States  and to many international addresses. For security reasons, youll need to show two pieces of identification, preferably photo ID.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

What is a Mockingbird What makes Tom Robinson, Mrs. Dubose, and Boo Essay

What is a Mockingbird What makes Tom Robinson, Mrs. Dubose, and Boo Radley Mockingbirds - Essay Example e’s story, Atticus proves the black man is innocent of all charges while implicating that any damage done was actually caused by the girl’s abusive father, but the defendant, Tom Robinson, is found guilty anyway by the all-white jury. In the meantime, the children have made friends with their eccentric neighbor, Boo Radley. Boo has spent the majority of his life imprisoned by his parents in the house next door. Scout’s brother, Jem, has also spent several afternoons reading to a mean old lady of the neighborhood, Mrs. Dubose, on his father’s orders. In the context of the book, the mockingbird is used to symbolize something innocent and without a true voice of its own. In the real world, the mockingbird is quietly helpful as it feeds on the grubs and other harmful insects that often damage needed crops but has no true song of its own. Instead, the mockingbird sings a compilation of songs that it hears in its environment. â€Å"The literature contains countless stories of notable imitations. One New York City bird reproduced perfectly the beep-beep-beep of a backhoe in reverse, while another threw a high school football game into confusion by mimicking the referee’s whistle. Yet another ‘joined the National Symphony Orchestra during an outdoor concert in Washington D.C.’† (Tveten 292). This reveals it to be a bird capable of appreciating its environment as well as a bird without a true voice of its own. It is known only by its appearance and the way in which it is defined by others. Its borrowed voice, appreciation and participation in its environment and its changeable nature make this a bird that deserves recognition and respect. This concept is found in the book when Atticus tells Scout and Jem, â€Å"I’d rather you shoot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird† (Lee 69). As the following discussion will

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Sykes Enterprises Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Sykes Enterprises - Case Study Example His primary focus has been financial return and he has used finances as the basis for expansion, retraction and other strategies. However, it is necessary for the top management to reconsider some of the strategies from a financial point-of-view so that it can streamline its current operations. It may not be necessary that a call center should require closure if it is not doing well. There can be consolidation of operations as well as optimization of activities that would result in cost-reduction. Initiative by the top management will be the only reason why call center managers would want to look at their operations and search for cost-minimization strategies. The change should come from the top management to the bottom and this would be the driving factor amongst call center managers for cost reduction. Convergys is the largest market holder in the call center and order processing business. Sykes Enterprises scale of operations is only a fraction of the two market leaders in this business. However, this cannot be attributed to any exceptional strategy on the part of Sykes' competitors. Sykes' aggressive strategy has been in terms of the number of call centers and its cost competitiveness. Sykes Enterprises did not see order processing and bill processing as a major industry and thus its corporate clients were always looking for Sykes when they needed a cost-effective solution. Reliability is one of the key features that is missing from the brand positioning of Sykes in the industry. Thus, Sykes needs to re-consider its position in the industry and work towards improving it from just another low-cost solution to a reliable and smart solutions company - that would work at lower costs not just because of low quality but because it has found the key to strategically reducing costs of its operations. Review of Mission and Objectives Sykes' existing mission and objectives are not very much suited to its operational strategy. Instead of focusing on the low-cost attractions to the corporate world, Sykes should focus on a moderate strategy on using its services and quality of operations as the focal point of attracting corporate customers. It should revise its mission and objectives to incorporate these ideas in its mission and objectives. Further, it should make sure that its strategies reflect this mission. 4.0 Strategic Alternatives and Recommended Strategy Strategic Alternatives It is obvious that Sykes can take more than one action to improve its revenues and build a profitable business. The closure of its operations in India have resulted in consolidation of its costs in the United States. The competitors of Sykes have resorted to opening up call centers in South East Asian nations such as the Philippines to counter the high turnover costs and possible wage rises in Indian cities due to growing economies. It is important for Sykes to focus on its costs and revenues. Sykes needs to increase its revenues and reduce its costs. Sykes can focus on increasing the number of services that it offers from its existing call centers so that the costs of the services do not rise, however, there will be a rise in the revenues for the services. Another recommended

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Microsoft Environment Analysis Essay Example for Free

Microsoft Environment Analysis Essay 1. The five vulnerabilities that exist for this LAN based workgroup are 2755801, 2501696, 2588513 2639658, 2659883. 2. Yes, the vulnerability that involves privilege elevation is 2639658 (Vulnerability in TrueType Font Parsing), but it is not a high priority. 3. 2719662 Solution: Workarounds refer to a setting or configuration change that does not correct the underlying issue but would help block known attack vectors before a security update is available. Apply the Microsoft Fix it solution that blocks the attack vector for this vulnerability. Disable Sidebar in Group Policy. Disable the Sidebar in the system registry. 2737111 Solution: Workarounds refer to a setting or configuration change that does not correct the underlying issue but would help block known attack vectors before a security update is available. Disable WebReady document view for Exchange. 2755801 Solution: Workaround refers to a setting or configuration change that would help block known attack vectors before you apply the update. Prevent Adobe Flash Player from running. Prevent Adobe Flash Player from running on Internet Explorer 10 through Group Policy on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Prevent Adobe Flash Player from running in Office 2010 on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Prevent ActiveX controls from running in Office 2007 and Office 2010. Set Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to High to block ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones. Configure Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting or to disable Active Scripting in the Internet and Local intranet security zone.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

The people’s opinion is directly pointing at well-known person Arthur :: Free Essay Writer

The people’s opinion is directly pointing at well-known person Arthur Radley, who is known as Boo Radley. Is it safe to have a â€Å"malevolent phantom† in Maycomb town? Many people’s opinions prove that having â€Å"Boo Radley† in our town is dangerous. Pragnesh Patel Staff reporter. According to Maycomb town’s citizens’ opinions it has been concluded that everybody should be aware of the other people living in their own town who can be â€Å"dangerous† for all. Its been heard that Boo is responsible for small-big crimes in town. Till now we haven’t noticed any major problem, but there are some possibilities about it. The people’s opinion is directly pointing at well-known person Arthur Radley, who is known as â€Å"Boo Radley†. From last 30 years no one has ever saw Arthur Radley in day, but there are some charges against him of creating disturbance at night. â€Å"Boo is a peeping Tom who sneaks out of his house and spies in people’s windows†, says Miss Stephanie Crawford. She also says that once she wake up in the middle of night and saw him staring at her through his window. Not so long ago when our town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events every person in town doubted on Radley’s for this events. Not only senior and adult people are known about Boo’s work, but even children are known and as well are afraid of this malevolent phantom. The children from school are afraid to eat nuts of Boo Radley’s house because they think that it might be poisonous. The other events that make Radley Boo dangerous are kind of familiar to us. About 30 years ago Boo locked Maycomb's beadle in an outhouse and drove an old car through the town square with his â€Å"gang†.

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Comparison Between Two Poems Essay

The two poems, Plug In, Turn On, Look Out and Portrait of a Machine both talks about machines and they are related to our everyday lives. There are quite a few differences and similarities in the two poems, Plug In, Turn On, Look Out and Portrait of a Machine. To start off with, the poem Plug In, Turn On, Look Out is warning everyone about how the machines would take over the world and teaching all of us what we should do usually to prevent them taking over and hurting us. The poem picks out all those horrible facts of machines, but on the other hand, the poem Portrait of a Machine is praising how beautiful and fantastic machines are. Both poems has one voice in the poem, only one person is talking and their intended audience are both the world in general, although, the poem, Plug In, Turn On, Look Out also speaks directly to you whilst you are reading the poem. Both poems have two stanzas, enjambment was used in both and the vocabulary in both poems were carefully chosen, each word stringed together into a phrase would add more detail to the image constructed in our minds. There are also quite a few differences, Plug In, Turn On, Look Out is a free verse, when Portrait of a Machine is a sonnet. In the poem, Plug In, Turn On, Look Out, all three tenses are used, to give the feeling that the machines has already started taking over the world, but it has not ended yet. On the other hand, Portrait of a Machine only uses the present tense throughout the whole poem. For the poem, Plug In, Turn On, Look Out, a lot of techniques were used but for the poem, Portrait of a Machine, not many techniques were used. In Plug In, Turn On, Look Out, personification was used, for example. machines are on the march. It emphasises that the machines are coming to get you, by using the word march. Metaphors were effectively used, for example, it came at me, snarling through its thirty-four rotary teeth and flicking its flexy tail. Those both quotes are used to build up atmosphere and add to the image created in the readers mind. It also exaggerates the terrifying side of machines. Alliteration was used, for example, I turned the telly on tonight and it turned itself off  again and flicking its flexy tail. The repetition of t starting words in I turned the telly on tonight and it turned itself off again makes us think of the ticking sounds when switching on and off the telly, coming from the remote and telly. The repetition of f in flicking its flexy tail is to make us think of flipping noises of tails. The poem was quite imperative as well, having the phrases, Keep your electric lawnmower securely tethered and Cut down supplies of food to your refrigerator. It is ordering you to do it immediately in order for you to stay safe. But for the other poem, Portrait of a Machine, there are only a few techniques used. Sibilant was used; the s sound was exaggerated in hiss. There was also a standard sonnet rhyming scheme to it, abbabba cdcdcd. If you put all the rhyming words from abbabba, it would create the sounds of huge machines at work with rods plunging down. The poet in Plug In, Turn On, Look Out seems to be quite scared about machines taking over the world. But the poet in Portrait of a Machine seems sarcastic and seems to be making fun of the people who uses machines in their daily life. Both poems are written to warn the world that we are replying too much on machines and technology that it is taking over our lives and we are losing ourselves. These two poems have different ways of warning us, Plug In, Turn On, Look Out has a very explicit warning to us, telling us to be careful what they will do, but on the other hand, Portrait of a Machine has a very implicit warning to us, telling us how beautiful machines are, in the eyes of people who are living in the modern society, then reminding us about not to lose ourselves. I had totally different emotions and reactions to the two poems. After reading Plug In, Turn On, Look Out, I was amused and I thought it was very interesting because it seemed to entertain me more than warn me, due to the fact that I know machines will not literally take over the world, on the other hand, Portrait of a Machine made me think, it was very deep that I read it over a few times, before I got the real meaning and purpose of the poem. The effectiveness of Plug In, Turn On, Look Out was not that effective but, for Portrait of a Machine, it had a strong effect and it was so heavy, that I will respond and think about the poem after reading the poem. Bibliography, http://www.oldmonovians.com/text2/allpassverse1962.htm

Saturday, November 9, 2019

The Loons

Journal of the Short Story in English 48   (Spring 2007) Varia †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Jennifer MurrayNegotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã ¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Electronic reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English [Online], 48  |  Spring 2007, Online since 01 juin 2009, Connection on 01 avril 2013. URL  : http:// jsse. revues. org/index858. html Publisher: Presses universitaires d'Angers http://jsse. revues. org http://www. revues. org Document available online on: http://jsse. revues. org/index858. html Document automatically generated on 01 avril 2013.The page numbering does not match that of the print edition.  © All rights reserved Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 2 Jennifer Murray Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† : p. 71-80 1 2 3 4 5 â€Å"The Loons† belongs to Margaret Laurence’s story-sequence A Bird in the House which is built around the character Vanessa MacLeod and her growing-up years in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba. Following on from the collection’s title story which has the death of Vanessa’s father as its central event, â€Å"The Loons† is set in a time prior to the father’s death and is the first of three stories which deal with Vanessa’s progressive opening up to the world around her and her increasing awareness of the suffering, poverty and forms of oppression outside of her family circle (Stovel 92). More specifically, â€Å"The Loons† gives us Vanessa’s perception of a young girl called Piquette Tonnerre who is of Metis descent and who accumulates the social disadvantages of poverty, illness, ethnic discrimination and being female.The story has been taken to task for the questionable values attached to its u se of Piquette as the stereotype of the doomed minority figure, most notably by Tracy Ware who asks: â€Å"To what extent [does this short story] confirm a debased master narrative that regards Natives as victims of a triumphant white civilization? † (71). At the same time, Ware recognizes the â€Å"enduring sense of [the] aesthetic merit† (71) of this story which so clearly has its place within the canon of Canadian literature.Evaluating the text against its depiction of the Metis can only lead to the negative conclusions that Ware arrives at, namely, that Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† falls ideologically short of the expectations of today’s politically-conscious reader. What this reading of â€Å"The Loons† does not take into account is that the â€Å"aesthetic merit† of the story is situated elsewhere—not in the portrait or role of Piquette as such, but in the story’s treatment of loss and in the central role of the fat her in the symbolics of this particular knot of meaning.In the context of the full story-sequence, loss and the father would seem more naturally associated in â€Å"A Bird in the House,† where the death of the father is the central event. In â€Å"The Loons,† the death of the father is recalled and reactivated as an informing event related to other moments in Vanessa’s life and to her relationship to others, Piquette bearing the weight of this role as ‘other’. On one level—that of Vanessa’s childhood perception of Piquette2—the story is about incomprehension, misconstruction, defensiveness and the impossibility of communication between the two girls.But the entire history of this failed relationship is revisited through the narrating voice of the adult Vanessa; in the telling of the story, she reshapes past events through the experience of loss provoked by her father’s death and invests them with symbolic value. Like the dreamer and the dream, Vanessa’s story is more about Vanessa than about those around her; it is her attempt to fit her own sense of loss into a world which is, more than she knows, beyond her.The father’s role in giving Vanessa access to symbolic values is central to the story; indeed, the first ‘event’ in the story is the father’s announcement of his concern (as a doctor) for the health of the young Piquette, who is in his care. After having prepared the ground briefly, he asks his wife: â€Å"Beth, I was thinking—what about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer? A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance† (110).This act of social generosity, which is to involve his whole family, introduces the reader to the father’s values; it also inaugurates the continuing association in the text between the father and Piquette. The father is a reference point for Piquette; she invokes him to justify her re fusal to accompany Vanessa on a short walk: â€Å"Your dad said I ain’t supposed to do no more walking than I got to† (113), and in later years, Piquette tells Vanessa, â€Å"Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me† (116). This positive assessment of the father is Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 3 6 the only shared ground between the girls. In response to the comment above, Vanessa â€Å"nodded speechlessly [†¦ ] certain that [Piquette] was speaking the truth† (116). In the name of her love for her father, Vanessa will make several attempts at approaching Piquette: these attempts are regularly met with rejection, leading to a moment of hurt for Vanessa: ‘Want to come and play? ’ Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn. ‘I ain’t a kid,’ she said. Wounded, I stamped a ngrily away [†¦]. 112) 7 8 This pattern recurs twice on the following page, with Piquette’s â€Å"scorn† taking on other forms —â€Å"Her voice was distant† (113); â€Å"her large dark unsmiling eyes† (113)—and her refusals becoming more verbally aggressive: â€Å"You nuts or somethin’? † (113); â€Å"Who gives a good goddamn? † (114). The impossibility of sharing between the girls is seen both from the perspective of the child Vanessa, who is mystified, â€Å"wondering what I could have said wrong† (113), and from the more experienced perspective offered by the narrated construction of events.This double vision allows the reader to see the misperceptions and involuntary insensitivity on which Vanessa’s attempts at communication are based. Where Vanessa fantasizes Piquette into â€Å"a real Indian† (112) and projects onto her the knowledge of the ‘secrets’ of nature, Piquette lives her identity as a Metis through the social rejection which characterizes Manawaka’s view of her family:   Ã¢â‚¬ËœI bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh? ’ I began respectfully. †¦] ‘I don’t know what in hell you’re talkin’ about,’ she replied. [†¦] If you mean where my old man, and me, and all them live, you better shut up, by Jesus, you hear? ’ (113) 9 While the child cannot understand the defensiveness of Piquette, as readers, our knowledge of Piquette’s social conditions, outlined in the opening paragraphs of the story, leads us to a position of empathy with the offended girl. Similar effects are produced by Vanessa’s enthusiasm about her summer cottage, —â€Å"‘I love it,’ I said. We come here every summer,’† (113)—expressed in the face of Piquette’s poverty, which habitually excludes her from the world of lakeside summer homes. Just as much as Piquette’s social disadvantages, Vanessa’s self-absorbed immersion in the comforts of middle-class Manawaka is the source of the girls’ mutual wariness. As the narrator of the story, the older version of Vanessa puts forward expressions of regret at the failure of the relationship between herself as a child, and Piquette.This regret, however, is not distinct from childhood, but a part of it, recounted in the past tense: â€Å"Piquette and I remained ill at ease with one another. I felt I had somehow failed my father, but I did not know what was the matter, nor why she would not or could not respond† (115). The linguistic markers â€Å"somehow† and â€Å"did not know† suggest that the emotional experience of failure remained confusing for the child, but the ability to formulate this metadiscourse indicates that things have become clearer to the adult Vanessa.This acquired comprehension allows the narrator to develop the expression of failure once again, two pages further on, including, this time, more details about the possible expectations of the father: Yet I felt no real warmth towards her—I only felt that I ought to, because of that distant summer and because my father had hoped she would be company for me, or perhaps that I would be for her, but it had not happened that way. (117) 10 Through the voice of the more experienced Vanessa, the regret of the past is understood to have been intimately related to a sense of having failed not herself, nor Piquette, but her father.The focus is on the father’s symbolic role in attributing potential value to the possibility of their friendship. Along with the father’s generosity towards Piquette, a series of other values related to the father are offered in the short story. The father’s name, MacLeod, is also the name which designates the family cottage (111), which itself is associated with nature and authenticity: it Journal of the Short St ory in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 4 11 s the father who comes and sits by the lake with Vanessa to listen to the loons (114); the lake, the nighttime, the loons, all come to signify intuitive communication (â€Å"we waited, without speaking†), mystery and transcendence (â€Å"They rose like phantom birds†), a reproach to human civilization (â€Å"Plaintive, and yet with a quality of chilling mockery, those voices belonged to a world separated by aeons from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home†) (114). The idea that the loons belong to a separate world is reinforced by the father’s comment that the loons had been there â€Å"before any person ever set foot here† (114).The loons are both a form of access to the continuum of natural time as opposed to civilized time, and a reminder that man cannot bridge that gap; there is therefore a form of retrospective loss attached to the image of the loons: the imagined loss of what came before and is now inaccessible. However, the birds also prefigure future loss—the enduring presence of the loons is endangered, as Vanessa tells Piquette: My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away. 114) 12 We can also see the metonymic association between this loss and the approaching end of the permanence of Vanessa’s world; her father, associated with the loons in Vanessa’s childhood, is soon to disappear: â€Å"Neither of us suspected that this would be the last time we would ever sit here together on the shore, listening† (115). The symbolic charge of the loss of the loons is therefore great for Vanessa, but meaningless to young Piquette, who, on learning of the precarious situation of the birds, says: â€Å"Who gives a good god damn? (114). For Piquette, they are literally, â€Å"a bunch of squawkin’ birds† (115). Meaning is to do with symbolic construction and â€Å"The Loons†, for all of its focus on Piquette, is about Vanessa’s construction of personal meaning. Coral Ann Howells notes that Vanessa’s choosing to write about Piquette is a way of â€Å"silently displacing her own feelings into [Piquette’s] story† (41). This process is clearest in the paragraph which announces the father’s death: That winter my father died of pneumonia, after less than a week’s illness.For some time I saw nothing around me, being completely immersed in my own pain and my mother’s. When I looked outward once more, I scarcely noticed that Piquette Tonnerre was no longer at school. (115) 13 14 The words which tell of the loss of the father are almost immediately followed by words which tell of the disappearance of Piquette. This is given in the form of a neg ation: â€Å"I scarcely noticed†¦,† but what the young Vanessa had â€Å"scarcely noticed,† the narrating Vanessa gives weight to by placing it in verbal proximity to the death of the father, obliquely associating the two events.Through indirection, therefore, Vanessa speaks of her own loss. But the process is not entirely parasitic; in the telling, she also constructs Piquette. Piquette is, in some ways, a difficult character for today’s reader to take on board: like Pique, the daughter of Morag Gunn in the final Manawaka story, â€Å"The Diviners†, she â€Å"suffers from the weight of too much thematic relevance† (Howells 51) since, as I noted earlier, she accumulates an extraordinary number of handicaps, all of which are seen to be indirectly related to her Metis origins.In spite of the older Vanessa’s gentle mocking of her earlier self in her desire to ‘naturalize’ Piquette into a folkloric Indian, the story does imply that part of Piquette’s tragedy is that, like the loons, she belongs to a more ‘authentic’ heritage which has been/is being destroyed. 3 The romanticism which the narrating voice mocks is nonetheless supported by the story’s symbolism, as is the attempt to fix Piquette into a sterile, stereotyped role of ‘representativity,’ something that Piquette’s direct discourse has violently rejected.Yet, we do have access to a more tenacious Piquette; in her silences, rejections, and refusals, she is a character who is fighting for her own survival in a world clearly divided along class lines and this tenacity is seen principally in her rejection of Vanessa’s self-satisfaction. Vanessa’s sense of superiority over Piquette is implicit in the narrator’s comments about the Metis girl’s invisibility to her younger self; at that time, Piquette was but â€Å"a vaguely embarrassing presence† who â€Å"moved somewhere w ithin my scope of vision† (109). Moreover, Piquette can drop out of sight for years without notice: â€Å"I do not remember seeing her at allJournal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 5 until four years later† (115). It would seem to be the total separateness of their social worlds that creates and sustains what might be experienced as a ‘lack of affinity’. Whereas these social differences remain unformulated to the child Vanessa, they are close to the surface for Piquette whose discourse refuses to endorse the smugness of the well-off Vanessa: ‘Do you like this place,’ I asked [†¦] Piquette shrugged. It’s okay. Good as anywhere. ’ ‘I love it,’ I said, ‘We come here every summer. ’ ‘So what? ’ (113) 15 Other details suggest a Piquette who has dreams of her own, but who cannot allow herself t o expose them to others: â€Å"When she saw me approaching, her hand squashed flat the sand castle she had been building, and she looked at me sullenly, without speaking† (113). For Piquette, the child Vanessa is a potential enemy, someone to guard oneself against. Dreams cannot be shared, and cannot even be envisaged within the society of which Vanessa is a part.Indeed, even in her later teenage years, Piquette holds no hope of improvement for herself within the confines of small-town Manawaka: â€Å"Boy, you couldn’t catch me stayin’ here. I don’ give a shit about this place. It stinks† (116). Piquette knows that Manawaka holds nothing for her in the sense that no one there believes in her chances for a better future. When she becomes engaged to be married, she remarks that, â€Å"All the bitches an’ biddies in this town will sure be surprised† (117).The implication that the town gossips have nothing good to say about Piquette is un derscored by Vanessa’s own reactions. On seeing Piquette several years after the summer at the cottage, Vanessa is â€Å"repelled† and â€Å"embarrassed† by her, and although she is â€Å"ashamed† at her own attitude, she gives way to an emphatic outpouring of animosity towards the teenage girl:   Ã‚  Ã‚  I could not help despising the self-pity in her voice. I wished she would go away. I did not want to see her. I did not know what to say to her.It seemed that we had nothing to say to one another. (117) 16 The force of this expression suggests a negative identification with Piquette on Vanessa’s part. It is as if Piquette represents the photo negative of Vanessa’s life; the result of poverty, illness, and lack of education made flesh and standing there as a threat to the integrity of Vanessa’s identity as a middle-class, reasonably well-educated girl with a future. There is no indication in the story that Vanessa ever overcomes thi s violent rejection of Piquette during the Metis girl’s lifetime.This moment of intense emotional confrontation is followed by what may be seen as the story’s signature moment: For the merest instant, then, I saw her. I really did see her, for the first and only time in all the years we had both lived in the same town. Her defiant face, momentarily, became unguarded and unmasked, and in her eyes there was a terrifying hope. (117) 17 These last two words encapsulate the relative positions of the two girls.Where Piquette ‘reveals’ her most guarded treasure—hope, arguably the most positive emotion which exists, Vanessa reproduces the condemning judgement of the town; with the word â€Å"terrifying,† she declares this hope to be without any ground. It is therefore coherent with Vanessa’s view of Piquette’s life that the Metis woman should be left as a single mother, follow in the drunken path of her father, and finally die in a hous e fire along with her two children. Vanessa’s reaction to this news is, â€Å"I did not say anything. As so often with Piquette, there did not seem to be anything to say† (119).It is not that there is ‘nothing to say’ about Piquette, but rather, that what there is to say would involve a questioning of community values which would also have to be a form of self-questioning. The narrative does not take the direction of a critique of human and social relationships; it deals with the vague sense of guilt expressed by the narrator—â€Å"I wished I could put from my memory the look that I had seen once in Piquette’s eyes† (119)—by sublimating Piquette into the symbol (along with the loons) of something lost.The ground is prepared through the falling action of the story which lists the avalanche of losses which Vanessa experiences after having heard about Piquette’s death: â€Å"The MacLeod cottage had been sold after my father ’s Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 6 death†; â€Å"The small pier which my father had built was gone†; â€Å"Diamond Lake had been renamed Lake Wapakata†; and finally, â€Å"I realized that the loons were no longer there† (119).These different elements reinstall the triad of the father, the loons and nature as the paradigm of loss and the narrator then brings Piquette into this sphere of symbolism: I remember how Piquette had scorned to come along when my father and I sat there and listened to the lake birds. It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognised way, Piquette might have been the only one, after all, who had heard the crying of the loons. (120) 18 19 â€Å"Piquette,† â€Å"father,† â€Å"lake,† â€Å"birds,† â€Å"loons†: all of these words are given a place in the final parag raph.The narrator too, is present amongst these elements, and her place as the one who reconstructs meaning is affirmed: â€Å"I remember how [†¦]. † But it is affirmed, finally, as a process of questioning: in the phrase, â€Å"It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognised way,† (where it is uncertain as to whether it is the narrator’s unconscious or Piquette’s which is being invoked), the narrator seems to romanticize Piquette’s Metis status into the ‘natural’ world and confer on her the positive charge of nostalgia related to loss. In this statement of restricted awareness, it would seem that the narrator is trying to resolve the problem of her own position in relation to Piquette; the irreconcilable distinction between how she felt towards Piquette and how she felt she should have felt, if only for her father’s sake. The solution to this is to transform Piquette from the living girl—judged by society, including Vanessa and her mother—as â€Å"sullen and gauche and badly dressed,† â€Å"a real slattern,† â€Å"a mess† (118), into a symbol: a young girl, representative of an oppressed minority, with a tragic destiny, doomed to die. In this form, the loss of Piquette can be associated with both the death of the father and the disappearance of the loons; the desire to bring Piquette into this association suggests an unresolved sense of guilt—towards the girl character, on the level of the diegesis, but also towards the Metis people, whose â€Å"long silence† (108) is echoed in the â€Å"quiet all around me† experienced by Vanessa (119) as she becomes aware of the disappearance of the loons.Silenced by death, Piquette’s ‘otherness’ can be neutralized and romanticized into nostalgia. The contradictions which structure â€Å"The Loons† give the story its force. In spite of the control of the adult n arrator in the choice and ordering of memory, there is no attempt to beautify the emotions of her childhood self. The limited, often egocentric aspects of her childhood perspective are rendered, so that the reader’s sympathy goes out towards the other girl, Piquette. This construction of perspective may be een as a form of generosity, whereby, in spite of Vanessa’s statement that â€Å"there was nothing to say,† the narrator’s rendering of the past has allowed the reader to achieve an awareness of Piquette’s specificity as a character: she has moved from the general sense of absence which characterizes her in Vanessa’s memory, to a form of visibility in which the reader may see her as the victim of multiple vectors of oppression; in this context, her ‘defiance’ and ‘sullenness’ become the marks of a fighting spirit, and her ‘hope,’ the sign of her humanity.Through these effects constructed by the narrat ing voice, the earlier generosity of the father is ultimately echoed and loss takes on its complex human dimension. Bibliography Howells, Coral Ann. Private and Fictional Words : Canadian Women Novelists of the 1970s and 1980s. London: Methuen, 1987. Laurence, Margaret. A Bird in the House (1970). Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Stovel, Bruce. â€Å"Coherence in A Bird in the House,† in New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence : Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism.Ed. Greta McCormick Coger. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. Vauthier, Simone. â€Å"‘A Momentary Stay Against Confusion’ : A Reading of Margaret Laurence’s ‘To Set Our House in Order. ’† The Journal of the Short Story in English vol. 3 (1984): 87-108. Ware, Tracy. â€Å"Race and Conflict in Garner’s ‘One-Two-Three Little Indians’ and Laurence’s ‘The Loons. ’† Studies in Canadian Literature vol. 23:2 (199 8) : 71-84. Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 7 Notes   I am grateful to my colleagues in Besancon who participated in a discussion on â€Å"The Loons. † 2   See Vauthier (96-99) for a detailed analysis of Vanessa’s function as narrator (based on the short story â€Å"To Set Our House in Order,† but equally valid here). 3    Indeed, Tracy Ware argues that the association of Piquette with nature, on the basis of her Metis origins, â€Å"den[ies] Piquette her full humanity, [and it also] makes a tragic outcome inevitable. We will never be able to imagine a future for people whom we regard as separate[d] from us ‘by aeons’† (80).   Margery Fee’s comment, quoted in Ware, that â€Å"Native people [†¦] are so rarely depicted as individuals, because they must bear the burden of the Other—of representing all that the modern person has lost† (Ware 82), seems relevant to the construction of Piquette as a character who comes to bear the symbolic weight of the very idea of loss. 5   Ware declares that this symbol is â€Å"a misrecognition because it ignores the historical struggles of both Natives and Metis† (79). References Electronic referenceJennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English [Online], 48  |  Spring 2007, Online since 01 juin 2009, Connection on 01 avril 2013. URL  : http://jsse. revues. org/index858. html Bibliographical reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English, 48  |  2007, 71-80. Jennifer Murray Jennifer Murray is an associate professor at the University of Franche-Comte.Her research is focused primarily on Canadian literatur e and on American writers from the South. Ms. Murray’s publications include articles on Margaret Atwood, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor and Tennessee Williams. She is currently working on the short stories of Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro. Copyright  © All rights reserved Abstract Je me propose ici d’etudier l’impact symbolique de la disparition du pere dans â€Å"  The Loons  Ã¢â‚¬ , une nouvelle de Margaret Laurence.Au niveau de l’intrigue, l’histoire est celle d’une amitie impossible entre la narratrice, Vanessa, fille de medecin, et une jeune metisse, Piquette, soignee par le pere de Vanessa. Les differences de niveau social, d’education et d’origine ethnique creent une incomprehension fondamentale entre les deux filles et vouent a l’echec les tentatives de Vanessa de sympathiser avec Piquette. Cet insucces attriste Vanessa  ; elle pense avoir decu son pere qui esperait que le sort de sa jeu ne patiente serait adouci par le contact avec sa famille.Devant son incapacite a transformer la realite et le remords qu’elle en eprouve, la narratrice transforme son souvenir de Piquette, l’exclue, en symbole. Ce symbole se developpe autour d’un noyau d’elements semantiques associes a l’authenticite, la nature, et la nostalgie du passe  ; des concepts valorises par le pere, et qui, pour la narratrice sont lies au sentiment de perte occasionne par sa mort Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Free Essays on Review And Evaluate Evidence For A Biological Basis To Personality.

Personality is often described as simply one’s distinctive personal character. However, personality is a much more complex area in which biologists and psychologists have pondered over for many years. It can be defined as the relatively unchanging and distinctive patterns of one’s thoughts, behaviors and feelings, which in turn produce a person’s own style of interacting with the physical and social environment. There are two main factors that affect one’s personality, environmental and biological factors (commonly referred to as the nature versus nurture approach to personality). Lets then focus on the latter, and attempt to find out to what extent personality is biologically based. In order to this, certain evidence such as the field of behavioral genetics, studies of frontal lobe brain damage, and Eysenck’s well accredited theory are required to be reviewed and evaluated. The first point that needs to be addressed is the field of behaviour genetics. Behavioral geneticists study the inheritance of behavioral characteristics by combining the fields of psychology and genetics. Their studies show us that psychological traits and characteristics can be transmitted from parent to offspring. These characteristics include such things like aggressiveness, anxiousness and the ability to reason. A research study called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, involving 30 pairs of identical twins, began at the University of Minnesota in 1981. It was believed, based on the fact that these twins had the exact same genetic makeup, they would in fact have similar personalities, despite being raised in different environments. This was evident in the vast majority of the identical twins, but perhaps no more than Jack Yufe and Oskar Stohr. This pair had been raised in dramatically different environments, yet still displayed remarkable similarities. Jack was raised as a Jew by his ... Free Essays on Review And Evaluate Evidence For A Biological Basis To Personality. Free Essays on Review And Evaluate Evidence For A Biological Basis To Personality. Personality is often described as simply one’s distinctive personal character. However, personality is a much more complex area in which biologists and psychologists have pondered over for many years. It can be defined as the relatively unchanging and distinctive patterns of one’s thoughts, behaviors and feelings, which in turn produce a person’s own style of interacting with the physical and social environment. There are two main factors that affect one’s personality, environmental and biological factors (commonly referred to as the nature versus nurture approach to personality). Lets then focus on the latter, and attempt to find out to what extent personality is biologically based. In order to this, certain evidence such as the field of behavioral genetics, studies of frontal lobe brain damage, and Eysenck’s well accredited theory are required to be reviewed and evaluated. The first point that needs to be addressed is the field of behaviour genetics. Behavioral geneticists study the inheritance of behavioral characteristics by combining the fields of psychology and genetics. Their studies show us that psychological traits and characteristics can be transmitted from parent to offspring. These characteristics include such things like aggressiveness, anxiousness and the ability to reason. A research study called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, involving 30 pairs of identical twins, began at the University of Minnesota in 1981. It was believed, based on the fact that these twins had the exact same genetic makeup, they would in fact have similar personalities, despite being raised in different environments. This was evident in the vast majority of the identical twins, but perhaps no more than Jack Yufe and Oskar Stohr. This pair had been raised in dramatically different environments, yet still displayed remarkable similarities. Jack was raised as a Jew by his ...

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

How to be a Welcome Guest Poster

How to be a Welcome Guest Poster Posting on guest sites is a great way to increase your profile, develop your personal brand – and subtly plug a product or service. Heres how to increase your chances of getting your posts accepted Writing guest posts is a great way to promote your work and build your personal writers brand. Ive done a lot of this recently, to promote my book, Kitten on a Fatberg. Ive spent quite a lot of time sending off ideas, reading submissions guidelines, and liaising with editors. Here are some of the things Ive learned along the way Have something to say   Start Look for topics that are editorial in nature but aligned with your product. My book is a comic novel written with two co-authors, for example, so Ive pitched various ideas to do with writing humour, crowdfunding a novel, collaborating on a book and so on. Research your markets   Its important to make sure theres a good fit between what you want to say and where you might be able to post it. A sci-fi forum may publish lots of guest posters, for example, but if youre a chick-lit author youre probably unlikely to become one of them. You may have a great piece about a popular topic such as productivity or writers block to offer, but if the site has already covered this area extensively, youll probably be unlucky there too. Turn topics into ideas   When presenting ideas, try to entice your editor with a real attention-grabbing headline and a standfirst – that catchy intro para that magazines and newspapers use to lure people into reading the full article. Then, even if you are addressing a popular topic, you can show you have a unique angle on the topic, and you may be in luck. So rather than offering the dull and generic-sounding Top productivity tips, try 7 ways to slay your inner procrastinator, followed Keep it personal Dont blast out the same email to a big list of blogs and websites. Send out a few at a time, personalizing each one, with a brief intro about who you are (which you might also want to tweak each time). Focus on why your ideas might be of interest to readers, get recipients names right, and always Follow the guidelines The biggest bugbear of writing blogs is, quite understandably, submissions from people who havent followed their guidelines. These are always supplied clearly and in lots of detail, so it will seem quite discourteous to an editor if you ignore their requests about formatting, imagery, subject matter, word count, use of links, etc. Some popular blogs will simply reject your ideas or submission out of hand if the guidelines havent been followed. Do as youre told! Editors will almost always want to make a few tweaks to your words. They may want some additional copy from you or ask for words to be cut. They will very often tweak the intro and opening section to make it sit better with their style and approach. Remember editors know their markets and their titles inside out, and if they want some tweaks, it means they want to publish you very soon. So, this is no time to be precious about your writing – go with their editorial decisions and turn any requested amends round asap. Final thought: Keep the promo stuff to a minimum   Theres a quid pro quo in guest posting – you give the editor some content of value, and theyll let you plug your book. But dont overdo the promotional element – if your piece is crammed full of references to your book, it will just come across as one big advert, and it wont be accepted. Writing something thats useful or entertaining for people is the best advertisement for your work, after all.

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Energy needs Annotated Bibliography Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

Energy needs - Annotated Bibliography Example The combination of all three energy sources, water, wind and solar power are much advantageous and achievable because it keeps the capacity of fulfilling the full energy needs of the world. The authors categorize the combination better than other energy sources based on their negative impact on environment in terms of global warming and all kinds of pollution. The authors support their choice with analysis of costs involved, impact of the energy sources and research work done on related issues. The costs involved in using natural sources are much less as compared to other means. The authors have done enough research work on the topic and are from educational backgrounds. The authors are in favor of natural energy resources. Overall, the article is quite useful in terms of informing about the advantageousness of natural resources over energy from biomass and nuclear power. This article can be used as a supportive piece for my research that is about energy needs as natural resources ar e a major mean of fulfilling energy needs if they are utilized