Affirmative Action Essay -- American Government, Minorities

â€Å"It is not about assuring equality of opportunity but artificially that is, judicially enforcing equality of outcome† (Williams 69). John F. Kennedy first introduced the term affirmative action during the era of the Cold War and the civil rights movement. The term is defined as integration of different race, sex, and country of origin into universities and employment (Ana 30). The beginning of affirmative action started with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by the Johnson Administration. The Civil Rights Act allowed African Americans to attend desegregated schools and become eligible to vote. The 1971 Philadelphia Plan was implemented by the Nixon administration, which called for quota systems to ensure that a certain number of underrepresented races are met to achieve what is called â€Å"diversity.† By the late 1970s, it was extended to college admissions where controversy surrounding the use of affirmative action was in question by whites and the Supreme Court. Alth ough many college admissions officials feel that affirmative action is the only way to promote diversity, these policies should not be used as a deciding factor in college admissions because they are a form of reverse discrimination, hurtful to students, and unconstitutional in law. Affirmative action was introduced as a way to promote diversity and ensure fairness. College admissions officials feel as if the only way to achieve diversity in their campuses is to discriminate overrepresented ethnic groups such as Caucasians and Asians for minorities of African American and Native American background. An example of the use of reverse discrimination was the University of Michigan-Ann Harbor admissions policy. On December 14, 2000, The New York Times did an article on the proce... ...sures fairness to all because students who graduate in the top ten are researched to have higher grades and graduation rates. The ten percent law has improved economic and geographical diversity because it draws the top students out of every part of Texas. The Austin Campus now has 853 high schools, previously 616, represented in the university. The Hispanic population has increased by 29% while the African American population has increased by 32% (Texas 8). The program also allows equal opportunity for all races because in order to have the benefit of attending the best schools in Texas, graduating in the top ten is a necessity. George W. Bush even stated that race-neutral policies are more successful than the policies of affirmative action. Affirmative action is an issue that needs to be educated to people because it affects everyone at some point in their life.

Research has been done to determine Essay

A lot of research has been done to determine whether short-term memory works better in the morning or afternoon. In a study, 16-18-year-olds (sixth form students of Battersea park school) were administered to take part in a word test to assess their short-term memory. Results of this were analyzed. Null Hypothesis: learning in the morning is more effective Alternative hypothesis: learning in the afternoon is more effective. Introduction To learn new things, to store experiences and to adapt to new circumstances – these characteristics of the brain enable us the daily survival . This special flexibility of the brain is reached through constant making and breaking contact between nerve cells. Whenever we learn something, the connections between nerve cells, (synapses) change. At this point, the Axon of a nerve cell and the Dendrite of the neighbouring cell meet. The centre for brain research of the medical University of Vienna is currently involved in two researches that contribute to the clarification of the processes in memory. They had tested the article (of researchers at the Harvard Medical School), which is called a key experiment. It was found that a Micro RNA and the accompanying messenger RNA exist at the contact point of synapses. What are Micro- and messenger RNA? It is a different form of the Ribonucleic acid. As a messenger RNA (mRNA), one is already more familiar with for a long time: It functions as a messenger, transports a message of the DNA – often, but not always from a gene – out of the cell nucleus into the cytoplasm. There the message is translated often, but not always into a protein. One knows micro RNAs for the least in time: They consist only of 21 bases respectively, and they are not translated into proteins. They rather check an mRNA in that they cause or prevent that the mRNA is translated into a protein. So they are regulators. For example just at a synapse, as long as there a micro RNA on a certain mRNA, it is not translated into a protein. If the micro RNA falls away, the protein emerges – and the synapse changes its form and also the signal forwarding. In other words we can say that the nerve cell learned something. In the journal of Cell Biology (172, p. 221) – Kiebler describes a second factor that is necessary, with a synapse function: Staufen 2: That is a protein that is responsible for the carrying of mRNA along the cell skeleton to the synapse. It brings RNAs to where they are needed. Neurons which are missing the protein Staufen2 have less synapses, and the signal transmission between them is disturbed. â€Å"An important notice on that, is that Staufen 2 for the education of functioning Synapses is crucial†, says Kiebler ( researcher). If what we have learned is forgotten, long-term connections become out of contact of the connection points. German Neurobiologist worked on the correlation between the outgrowing of the connections of cells, the so-called â€Å"thorns† and the building of functioning synapses. In order to be able to follow the outgrowing of thorns, the cells in the near surrounding area of the stimuli were observed using a high resolution two-Photon-microscope. An electron microscope was used in order to review whether the variations in the nerve cells actually led to the origin of new synapses. Within few minutes after the current impulse, the encouraged nerve cells opened the gate to a new discovery. These thin thorns do not grow spontaneously (as they thought), but rather grow towards possible contact partners. Within the first eight hours no piece of information can be exchanged between the newly emerged cell contacts. Not until the following hours it is decides whether a connection remains exist or disappears. For sure, those contacts, that are still available after 24 hours, have fully functioning synapses which can transfer information and have a good chance to exist after several days. Then the reconstruction in the brain is locked evidently. Which parts of the brain remember which type of memory?

American football and good sportsmanship Essay

â€Å"One who plays a sport fairly and loses gracefully† is how The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines sportsmanship. What is a sportsman? The definition seems to have undergone a big change over the years. If children follow the example set by today’s athletes, the definition would equal a sore loser. High school sports should be a fun way to physically express yourself as an athlete, but at the same time learn some of life’s lessons, like sportsmanship, discipline, and respect. In today’s society, winning comes before everything, but if winning requires neglect of good sportsmanship, then nothing is gained in the long run. Sportsmanship matters not only in sports, but also in the rest of our everyday lives. In any competition, whether a job interview, a school science fair, or even a friendly game of cards with some friends, sportsmanship teaches you to win humbly and lose gracefully. Sportsmanship also helps us to understand each other better, because when we get along, we can listen to the other person’s perspective, and see where they are coming from, and avoid a bad, possibly violent situation. Almost everyday on the news violence is reported at a sporting event, evidence of bad sportsmanship. Without sportsmanship there would be no sports, because no one would want to compete with a person who when they lost, would throw a fit, cry, and whine. Young athletes usually learn sportsmanship from an older person, like a parent, sibling, or, probably the most influential role model, a professional athlete on television. Unfortunately many role models now days are planting the idea of gamesmanship, instead of sportsmanship into the heads of young athletes. Gamesmanship is commonly known as the art of winning games, pushing the rules to the limit, and using whatever means, to gain the advantage over your opponent. Coaches are constantly demonstrating how to be a badsportsman. They walk up and down the sidelines screaming at referees, players, and if provoked, the fans. Professional football players should enjoy the game, but dancing in the end zone after every touchdown is not the ideal way for a role model to present themselves. How can children be expected to learn good sportsmanship if their role models are telling them to â€Å"win at all costs† or â€Å"just do what ever it takes (to win)? † Athletes and sports- crazed parents should remember that whatever the situation, it is just a game, because without good sportsmanship in activities, the lessons learned lose their value. Michigan State University’s report, â€Å"Sportsmanship: Building Character or ‘Characters’? † on the Youth Sportsman Institute webpage, explains the basic idea of how the role of children’s participation in sports affects their sportsmanship. The report gives examples of how good sportsmen, and bad sportsmen are viewed by society. The Youth Sports Institute says, â€Å"participation is viewed as a double-edged sword that may have either negative or positive effects on the child†(â€Å"Sportsmanship†,1) and that â€Å"the critical factor in determining whether the youth sports experience has a positive or negative effect on children is the quality of adult leadership†(â€Å"Sportsmanship, 3). The story â€Å"Friday Night Lights†, written by H. G. Bissinger, gives examples of bad sportsmanship, like the Youth Sportsman Institute suggests. â€Å"Friday Night Lights† is a story about a football-obsessed town in Odessa, Texas. The whole story expresses winning or losing the game as a life or death situation. In Odessa, bad sportsmanship isn’t just a problem for the athletes; it is a town-wide disease. The coaches talk bad behind their player’s backs, while the fans litter the head coaches yard with for-sale signs, blaming him for losing the big game. The first instance of bad sportsmanship in the story is where Bissinger describes what was said to Boobie Miles during the previous week’s football game. One of the Cooper Cougar’s players said, â€Å"Com’on, you tough motherfucker, com’on lets see how tough you are! † and â€Å"you ain’t nothin’ but a goddamn pussy! † In the Youth Sportsman Code, these comments would definitely fall under â€Å"the making sarcastic remarks about opponents† and â€Å"the swearing at opponents† sections in the unsportsmanlike category. Bad sportsmanship occurs again in â€Å"Friday Night Lights† when the quarterback throws a bad pass as the last seconds tick off of the game clock. One of his teammates curses him, when the right thing to do would be to say something like, â€Å"good effort, better luck next time†. â€Å"If the team is in a championship game and a star player violates a team sportsmanship rule which requires removal from the game, the rule must be enforced. † (â€Å"Sportsmanship†,3) The Youth Sports Institute says to reinforce sportsmanship behaviors and penalize unsportsmanlike behaviors (â€Å"Sportsmanship†,3). The coaches should have disciplined Boobie when he was angry and threw his shoulder pads against the wall, instead of ignoring him. Another example of bad sportsmanship displayed by the Odessa coaching staff is when they talked bad about Boobie behind his back â€Å"most of the other members of the Permian football staff privately called him lazy, and stupid, and shiftless, and selfish, and casually called him just another â€Å"dumb nigger† if he couldn’t carry that football under his arm. † Coaches should always be positive towards their athletes, regardless of their personal opinion. â€Å"He sat on the bench, his eyes staring strait ahead, burning with a mixture of misery and anger as it became clear that the coaches had no intention of playing him tonight, that they were willing to test his knee out in the meaningless runaways, but not in the games that counted. † Boobie hurt his knee earlier in the season, and was not as fast as he was the year before, so the coaches benched him during the games that counted. The sportsmanlike approach to this is letting all athletes play regardless of their skill, or past experience. Ideally, society wants everyone to be a good sportsman, but realistically, in the heat of battle, with your adrenaline pumping, you will do what ever it takes to win. Until role models realize that they are role models, and start doing what is right, bad sportsmanship will continue to exist. When you do not have good sportsmanship, you will not have fun when you compete in sporting events. Athletes and fans need to remember life is not all about sports. If you give it your all, and lose, you should not get mad at yourself; it is not the end of the world! Go back out there and try harder and maybe you will win next time.

Witches essays

Witches essays This book is about a young boy who is on an adventure to discover the truth about Witches! This young energetic boy is called...well actually he doesnt have a name, he is just known in the book as Boy, and he is kind of the narrator in this book. Anyway the person responsible for beginning his fascination about witches was his very own grandmother. His grandmother was Norwegian, and apparently all the Norwegians knew about these so called Witches! The Boy lived in England with his parents, while his grandmother lived in Norway and usually twice a year his family would come down to Norway to visit his grandmother. Unfortunately, just soon after his seventh birthday, they were heading up to Norway and their car skidded off the road and came tumbling down into a rocky ravine, both his mum and dad died in this tragic accident and strangely the boy only got away with a minor cut in his forehead! After that it was arranged that he had to live with his grandmother in Norway. The grandmother trying to help the boy forget his tragic lost decided to tell him stories. She told him all kind of stories, but out of all the topics, Witches was the most he was really interested about! She had told him about 5 children who had an encounter with a witch and never lived to tell the tale. In one of these stories this one really fascinated me...there was a family called Christiansen, the lived up on Holmenkollen and they had a really old oil painting in the living room which they were very proud of. The painting showed some ducks in the yard outside a farmhouse, there were no humans painted. It was a rather large painting and really pretty. Anyway one day their daughter came home eating an apple, she said that a nice lady had given it to her. The next morning they couldnt find their daughter anywhere, it was like she had vanished into thin air, but in the end they found her, they found her in the painting! ...

Military Ranks, Units and Weapons

Military Ranks, Units and Weapons Military Ranks, Units and Weapons Military Ranks, Units and Weapons By Mark Nichol Even the best and most popular authors get facts wrong sometimes (often because they leave research to others and don’t vet it, or are careless in their own investigations), but that’s no excuse for shoddy writing that contradicts what a large segment of the readership knows to be true. One area that’s a minefield, so to speak, for writers is the military. It’s easy to find detailed information about military ranks, units, and weaponry, not to mention history, but here’s some basic training: Military Rank Various nations follow differing conventions of nomenclature for military ranks, which specify an individual’s place in the military hierarchy. Charts that compare various military ranks among and within countries abound in print and online, but the major distinction is between commissioned officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted personnel. The first category is for personnel, often college graduates, who command units of various sizes depending on seniority. Noncoms are experienced enlisted personnel who supervise smaller groups of lower-ranking personnel. The term captain is a common point of confusion. A captain (the word is from the Latin for â€Å"head†) originally led a company of soldiers of indeterminate size. In modern armies, marine units, and air forces, captains are relatively low-ranking officers probably in their late 20s or early 30s. Naval captains, however, for reasons I won’t detail here, are much higher in equivalent seniority and usually much older. Furthermore, the commanding officer of most vessels is, by tradition, called the captain, though they may not hold that specific rank. In books, films, and television programs, the creators often stretch the bounds of probability as far as rank is concerned. In the original Star Trek TV series, for example, Captain Kirk was very young to be commanding a starship, though the 2009 big-screen reboot gives a plausible explanation for his precocious promotion. (Well, as plausible as anything is concerned when the subject is Star Trek.) By contrast, Brad Pitt’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s World War II action flick Inglourious Basterds [sic] is a mere army lieutenant. People who hold that beginner’s rank are likely to be in their early to mid-20s, but Pitt is old enough to be a lieutenant’s father. Military-style ranks are used in American police and fire departments. In large cities, a captain is a fairly high rank (while lieutenants are fairly common, especially among detectives), but in smaller departments, the chief may hold the rank of captain, and there may be only one lieutenant, or up to several. Similarly, a captain or a lieutenant heads up a fire company, which may consist of only a few firefighters, but a small-town fire department with a single station may be headed by a captain. Military Units You’ve seen it before: a book or movie synopsis that goes something like â€Å"A tough sergeant leads a platoon of commandos behind enemy lines . . . .† The military has a very specific organizational structure, and a platoon, which consists of several dozen soldiers, is never led by a sergeant, who in combat would be responsible for no more than a dozen or so men. As it turns out, the story’s commando unit consists of eight guys. There’s no military unit ordinarily consisting of eight soldiers, but an ad hoc assemblage could informally be called a squad. But if it’s on a special mission, even a mere eight-man unit would likely be led not by a sergeant but by a fairly junior officer, like Tom Hanks’s Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan (who is assisted by a sergeant, who would take charge if his commanding officer were killed or incapacitated). Military Weapons Plenty of derision has been aimed over the years at war and cop movies and westerns, and at genre fiction, in which the hero’s magic gun never runs out of bullets, but it still happens. (I was annoyed too, while watching an already annoying fantasy film, when a character ambled through a crowded market square with an uncovered double-bladed battle-ax strapped to his back. All he had to do was inadvertently back into somebody to perform an instant nose-ectomy.) Follow the Drill Details like these may seem trivial to civilians, but they’re distracting to millions of service members and veterans, and many others, who know a sergeant major from a major general, a division from a detachment, and a Luger from a Ruger. The same problem afflicts people with firsthand or secondhand knowledge of any other system or profession or industry or avocation. So, if you’re going to write about the military, or about any other topic, do your research, and write it right. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:"Gratitude" or "Gratefulness"?20 Clipped Forms and Their Place (If Any) in Formal Writing

Advancing Practice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Advancing Practice - Essay Example In a study it has been revealed that the percent of smoking among adults has considerably decreases in the late seventies and eighties but was leveled in the nineties. Though in late nineties the percentage of smokers had dropped a bit it was estimated that the situation wouldn’t improve further. If the effects of smoking can be quantified, then we will be talking of one of the most expensive pastimes in our time. It is approximated that in United Kingdom alone, the government spends close to a million Euros in intervention measures aimed at smoking cessation. This cost does not reflect the amount spent by other interest groups such as Non governmental organizations, research firms and private charity organizations. Speaking qualitatively, smoking causes more deaths all over the world than HIV/Aids. Of all smokers, a considerable percentage is drawn from adolescents but past smoking cessation programs have not targeted this age group but concentrated in other groups such as adults. This has contributed to a significant drop in the number of adult population smokers but of significance to this essay is the fact that, the prevalence of smoking amongst the adolescents has remained high or plummeted altogether. Substances which adolescents often abuse are referred to as psychoactive substances meaning that when taken, they have the capability to change an individual’s consciousness, mood or thinking process. They suppress a part of the brain whose usual function is normally to regulate the functions of the mood, thoughts and motivations. Cigarette smoking is one of the leading causes of deaths in the world. But sadly enough, those are deaths which are very preventable if smoking cessation is fully appreciated by the governments and other stake holders like education sector, religious organizations and charities. Studies indicate that in the United States of America alone, cigarette smoking cause up to around

Discuss about the movie Super Size me, and how its related to Pop Essay

Discuss about the movie Super Size me, and how its related to Pop CultureMcdonaldization - Essay Example 'Super Size Me' undoubtedly deals with the question of where company onus bleeds into personal responsibility, but the film concentrates on the more grisly results of a McDonald's-only diet and on a culture of a fast food country. Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's, three times a day for thirty days, and imitated the exercise sample of an average American by only walking a few thousand steps a day. Although, especially in the United States, the omnipresent hamburger chain has been around for a long time, it was sociologist George Ritzer who in 1996 coined the phrase 'McDonaldization' in his book "The McDonaldization of Society". It refers not only to food but to a number of different areas. This "sweeping through seemingly impervious institutions " (Ritzer 1996) has had its impact upon diverse institutions. It is part of a massive bureaucratization of everyday life which leads to a progressive standardization (Ritzer1993). The hamburger is not only consumed physically as a material substance, but is consumed culturally as an image and an icon of a particular way of life (Featherstone). The awful revelation made by "Super Size Me" of the increase in obesity in America and, more impor