Demutualisation of Insurance Companies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Demutualisation of Insurance Companies - Essay Example It is advantageous to the members as shares can be traded in the equity or stock markets while the membership rights in the mutual companies can not be traded. Thus demutualisation increases the possibility for the involved parties to make profits and at the same time benefit the economy as a whole. Demutualisation was originally used to signify this specific conversion process of the insurance companies. However this term is being used more broadly to describe the process of conversion of any member-owned organisation to become shareholder owned. Conversion of London Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange are some of the classic examples in the direction of demutualisation of companies other than insurance companies. The demutualisation of insurance companies is undertaken pursuant a plan of conversion approved by the policyholders and the state legislators Demutualization Claims Clearing House). In the case of mutual life policyholders a time of conversion they may receive stock, cash and/or policy credits in lieu of their ownership rights in the old mutual insurance company. In some cases the compensation is limited only to the subscription rights to acquire shares in the newly formed company. In some other cases the membership rights are transferred to a Mutual Holding Company (MHC) which owns a newly formed subsidiary stock insurance company. In the context of th... These changes include: (1) The traditional life insurance products of life coverage and risk transfers were not favourably looked into by the consumers over the period of time. The consumers showed considerable preference in the wealth management/annuity business which showed good potential for new growth opportunities. (2) The large scale deregulation of the financial services industry with the passing of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in the year 1999 eliminated the barriers between the commercial banking, insurance business and the investment banking which paved the way for combining all the business in one entity (3) The modifications brought about in the Internal Revenue Codes abolished the tax advantages which were hitherto available to a mutual insurer and (4) There were a number of foreign insurance companies that showed interest in the insurance market of the United States which changed the structure of the insurance companies Similar circumstances prevailed in the European economies augmented the need for conversion of the insurance companies to stock companies from their original form of mutual companies with the membership of policyholders. Mutual Companies and Stock Companies In a mutual life insurance company the company is owned by the policyholders that make them both insureds and insurers. The policyholders are vested with the right to vote to elect the members of the Board of Directors and also to receive the policy dividends. In the event of insolvency and dissolution, they are also entitled to receive the sale proceeds of the assets of the company. The policyholders as members of the mutual company can have their insurance at the lowest possible cost. They do not have to share the profits of the company

Victorian society and life style Essay Example for Free

Victorian society and life style Essay This essay uses A Conan Doyle interpretation of three cases in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, to demonstrate how language, setting, characterisation and the role of the women reflects different aspects of Victorian society and life style.  A Conan Doyle uses typical language that is relevant for the Victorian period. In each of the cases, we expect to find a wide range of techniques used to emphasise and create an image of Victorian society and lifestyle in the readers mind. A Conan Doyle applies figurative language, repetition, grotesque and satirical caricatures and long complex sentences with detailed description. These techniques that A Conan Doyle uses helps the reader to understand the setting and characterisation more distinctly and clearly.  A Conan Doyle uses figurative language to make the reader create an image in their heads of the character or setting. Figurative language is a range of metaphors and similes that are being compared to a person or thing. Here is an example that A Conan Doyle has used in the speckled band (description of Dr. Roylott), high thin fleshless nose gave him some what resemblance to a fierce old bird of prey. In this quote the author is comparing Dr. Roylotts facial features to a fierce old bird of prey, this a metaphor used to help visualise the characters appearance. A Conan Doyle uses grotesque and satirical caricature in some cases. He uses this technique to describe the villain. In the description of Dr. Roylott in the speckled band, A Conan Doyle makes the readers imagine how nasty Dr. Roylott looks by putting in, bile shot eyes. This makes the villain more imaginative and easier for the readers to picture as unpleasant and mean.  A Conan Doyle uses long complex sentences to make a character or setting bold and clear, so the readers can easily relate and become more involved in the adventures. In long complex sentences A Conan Doyle uses Victorian words. These words are not often used today, so readers can really understand the distinct differences between today and back then the Victorians used very old English, however by using these words the reader is given a bolder, clearer and much more of a characteristic image. A Conan Doyle uses very long complex sentences to describe the king of bohemia in the scandal in bohemia, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by his whole appearance. This gives the readers a clearer and detailed description of the event. In the quote it says he came with an uncultural but rich appearance focusing on detail. The sentence is considered complex as it uses more than one clause and unusual and uncommon words and metaphors where not familiar the words and terms i.e. opulence. In Victorian history women were be considered weaker than men. The readers can see this through some of A Conan Doyles cases. The man with the twisted lip women were really clumsy and weak. The readers can see this from the way Mrs. St Clair always kept fainting at the sight of blood, Mrs. St Clair had fainted at the sight of blood., however there were some woman that were really sly and cunning, like Irene Adler from scandal in bohemia, when she tricked Sherlock Holmes and eloped with her fianc, how best plans of Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a womans wit. In Victorian times women were really weaker than men. The second stain describes a clumsy woman, where a man blackmails a woman for a letter that could start war with another country. The weakness shows as she gives in to the man, in return for my secret not to be let out, he told me to get the blue envelope in the box. So I did A Conan Doyles thee adventure of Sherlock Holmes, gives readers an image of how Victorian London appeared. Readers are given the impression that Victorian London was a very dull, dirty and contaminated place. In most cases Victorian London was very nasty, dirty and a scary place, especially the way it is described in the man with the twisted lip. The setting in the man with the twisted lip is realistic, as at the same time jack the ripper was known, upper swandom lane is vile alley. This quote gives the reader an impression that Victorian London was very unclean and dirty. Steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave. This quote gives the reader a frightening and dull suspense like of the setting and atmosphere. Dr. Watson is at the top of the flight of stairs and he is looking down them, when he looks down them he sees that the stairs lead to total darkness. The reader imagines a never-ending staircase or something gruesome waits at the bottom. In the adventures of Sherlock Holmes readers are able to understand Victorian lifestyle. This can be identified through the character Sherlock Holmes. In each case Sherlock Holmes is considered to be the hero as he is described as a, professional investigator. Dr Watson describes positive factors regarding Holmes, he admires, the rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a logical basis, with which he unravelled the problems, which were submitted to him. This quote shows how Sherlock Holmes was dedicated to his work. Another example of the values of the period is seen through the character Dr.Watson. In the story the man with the twisted lip we see Dr.Watson helping a woman in distress, because her husband is missing, so he investigates by himself, I could manage it better if I were alone. This was considered very heroic at the time. As he is protecting the innocent woman. The character of Dr Roylott from the speckled band shows the readers the values, which were despised of at the time. In the speckled band Dr Roylott is described as a furious and violent person, Holmes the Scotland yard jack-in-office and, we heard the hoarse roar of the doctors voice, and saw the fury with which he shook his clenched fists at him. From these quotes the readers can tell that Victorian people despised this sort of attitude, because he turns violent and furious easily. By reading Sherlock Holmes the readers find many lifestyles, it just depends on which character is described. If it is a poor person then there lifestyle is at the opium den where it is a, low room, with thick and heavy brown opium smoke, and back in the Victorian times there were a lot of poor people, so the opium dens wouldve been packed, forecastle of an emigrant ship. If it is a heroic person like Sherlock Holmes or Dr Watson than their lifestyle is rich and cosy lifestyle for example a house with a maid, big cosy armchair, in front of a big chimney fire in a, cheery sitting room, with a nice friendly atmosphere. But if it is a villainous and hated person like Dr Roylott then their lifestyle will be dark, very gloomy and unpleasant, for example an old wrecked house that nobody has cared for, the few acres of bramble covered land.

Essay on Millays poem, I, being born a woman and distressed and Yellow Wallpaper :: Yellow Wallpaper essays

Millay's poem, I, being born a woman and distressed and Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper Two Works Cited In the early nineteenth century, the issue of whether women should be granted certain privileges, such as voting, arose in America. Two female writers during this time are Edna St. Vincent Millay and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Both women were living in a period of history where women's writings created an impact on literature. Most women were supposed to stay at home and take care of the children and many women were not highly educated; therefore, there were few women writers. Therefore, these writers caught people's attention and made them think about women's issues. Millay's poem, "I, being born a woman and distressed" and Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" share more than their time in history. Both pieces of literature have the common theme of closeness and distance. Women during this time were pushed out by society. They could not have a part in the rest of societal roles and became distant. The women wanted to be close with the rest of society, in ord er to feel equal, and spoke out for their needs. The poem, "I, being born a woman and distressed" was written in 1923 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This was only three years after the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women's voting rights, was adopted. Millay was best known for her lyrical poetry. In this poem she speaks of her feelings toward her lover and how they make her feel. She characterizes herself for her audience as ". . .being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind. . ." By using the words "woman" and "my kind" the reader gets the feeling as if she needed to express her gender. This time in history may have influenced Millay to explain this. Today men and women are more equal, whereas in the 1920s they were discriminated against. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, another twentieth century American writer, lived during this period of radical reform for women. She was a very independent woman of their time who supported herself until she married at the age of twenty-four. After she had her first child, she became clinically depressed and this experience inspired "The Yellow Wallpaper" ,written in 1913. This story describes a woman who is forced to remain in bed without thinking or writing. Essay on Millay's poem, I, being born a woman and distressed and Yellow Wallpaper :: Yellow Wallpaper essays Millay's poem, I, being born a woman and distressed and Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper Two Works Cited In the early nineteenth century, the issue of whether women should be granted certain privileges, such as voting, arose in America. Two female writers during this time are Edna St. Vincent Millay and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Both women were living in a period of history where women's writings created an impact on literature. Most women were supposed to stay at home and take care of the children and many women were not highly educated; therefore, there were few women writers. Therefore, these writers caught people's attention and made them think about women's issues. Millay's poem, "I, being born a woman and distressed" and Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" share more than their time in history. Both pieces of literature have the common theme of closeness and distance. Women during this time were pushed out by society. They could not have a part in the rest of societal roles and became distant. The women wanted to be close with the rest of society, in ord er to feel equal, and spoke out for their needs. The poem, "I, being born a woman and distressed" was written in 1923 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This was only three years after the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women's voting rights, was adopted. Millay was best known for her lyrical poetry. In this poem she speaks of her feelings toward her lover and how they make her feel. She characterizes herself for her audience as ". . .being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind. . ." By using the words "woman" and "my kind" the reader gets the feeling as if she needed to express her gender. This time in history may have influenced Millay to explain this. Today men and women are more equal, whereas in the 1920s they were discriminated against. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, another twentieth century American writer, lived during this period of radical reform for women. She was a very independent woman of their time who supported herself until she married at the age of twenty-four. After she had her first child, she became clinically depressed and this experience inspired "The Yellow Wallpaper" ,written in 1913. This story describes a woman who is forced to remain in bed without thinking or writing.

Bag of Bones CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Devore was mad, all right, mad as a hatter, and he couldn't have caught me at a worse, weaker, more terrified moment. And I think that everything from that moment on was almost pre-ordained. From there to the terrible storm they still talk about in this part of the world, it all came down like a rockslide. I felt fine the rest of Friday afternoon my talk with Bonnie left a lot of questions unanswered, but it had been a tonic just the same. I made a vegetable stir-fry (atonement for my latest plunge into the Fry-O-Lator at the Village Cafe) and ate it while I watched the evening news. On the other side of the lake the sun was sliding down toward the mountains and flooding the living room with gold. When Tom Brokaw closed up shop, I decided to take a walk north along The Street I'd go as far as I could and still be assured of getting home by dark, and as I went I'd think about the things Bill Dean and Bonnie Amudson had told me. I'd think about them the way I sometimes walked and thought about plot-snags in whatever I was working on. I walked down the railroad-tie steps, still feeling perfectly fine (confused, but fine), started off along The Street, then paused to look at the Green Lady. Even with the evening sun shining fully upon her, it was hard to see her for what she actually was just a birch tree with a half-dead pine standing behind it, one branch of the latter making a pointing arm. It was as if the Green Lady were saying go north, young man, go north. Well, I wasn't exactly young, but I could go north, all right. For awhile, at least. Yet I stood a moment longer, uneasily studying the face I could see in the bushes, not liking the way the little shake of breeze seemed to make what was nearly a mouth sneer and grin. I think perhaps I started to feel a little bad then, was too preoccupied to notice it. I set off north, wondering what, exactly, Jo might have written . . . for by then I was starting to believe she might have written something, after all. Why else had I found my old typewriter in her studio? I would go through the place, I decided. I would go through it carefully and . . . help im drown The voice came from the woods, the water, from myself. A wave of lightheadedness passed through my thoughts, lifting and scattering them like leaves in a breeze. I stopped. All at once I had never felt so bad, so blighted, in my life. My chest was tight. My stomach folded in on itself like a cold flower. My eyes filled with chilly water that was nothing like tears, and I knew what was coming. No, I tried to say, but the word wouldn't come out. My mouth filled with the cold taste of lakewater instead, all those dark minerals, and suddenly the trees were shimmering before my eyes as if I were looking up at them through clear liquid, and the pressure on my chest had become dreadfully localized and taken the shapes of hands. They were holding me down. ‘Won't it stop doing that?' someone asked almost cried. There was no one on The Street but me, yet I heard that voice clearly. ‘Won't it ever stop doing that?' What came next was no outer voice but alien thoughts in my own head. They beat against the walls of my skull like moths trapped inside a light-fixture . . . or inside a Japanese lantern. help I'm drown help I'm drown blue-cap man say git me blue-cap man say dassn't let me ramble help I'm drown lost my berries they on the path he holdin me he face shimmer n look bad lemme up lemme up 0 sweet Jesus lemme up oxen free allee allee oxen free? PLEASE OXEN FREE you go on and stop now ALLEE OXEN FREE she scream my name she scream it so LOUD I bent forward in an utter panic, opened my mouth, and from my gaping, straining mouth there poured a cold flood of . . . Nothing at all. The horror of it passed and yet it didn't pass. I still felt terribly sick to my stomach, as if I had eaten something to which my body had taken a violent offense, some kind of ant-powder or maybe a killer mushroom, the kind Jo's fungi guides pictured inside red borders. I staggered forward half a dozen steps, gagging dryly from a throat which still believed it was wet. There was another birch where the bank dropped to the lake, arching its white belly gracefully over the water as if to see its reflection by evening's flattering light. I grabbed it like a drunk grabbing a lamp-post. The pressure in my chest began to ease, but it left an ache as real as rain. I hung against the tree, heart fluttering, and suddenly I became aware that something stank an evil, polluted smell worse than a clogged septic pool which has simmered all summer under the blazing sun. With it was a sense of some hideous presence giving off that odor, something which should have been dead and wasn't. Oh stop, allee allee oxen free, I'll do anything only stop, I tried to say, and still nothing came out. Then it was gone. I could smell nothing but the lake and the woods . . . but I could see something: a boy in the lake, a little drowned dark boy lying on his back. His cheeks were puffed out. His mouth hung slackly open. His eyes were as white as the eyes of a statue. My mouth filled with the unmerciful iron of the lake again. Help me, lemme up, help I'm drown. I leaned out, screaming inside my head, screaming down at the dead face, and I realized I was looking up at myself, looking up through the rose-shimmer of sunset water at a white man in blue jeans and a yellow polo shirt holding onto a trembling, birch and trying to scream, his liquid face in motion, his eyes momentarily blotted out by the passage of a small perch coursing after a tasty bug, I was both the dark boy and the white man, drowned in the water and drowning in the air, is this right, is this what's happening, tap once for yes twice for no. I retched nothing but a single runner of spit, and, impossibly, a fish jumped at it. They'll jump at almost anything at sunset; something in the dying light must make them crazy. The fish hit the water again about seven feet from the bank, spanking out a circular silver ripple, and it was gone the taste in my mouth, the horrible smell, the shimmering drowned face of the Negro child a Negro, that was how he would have thought of himself whose name had almost surely been Tidwell. I looked to my right and saw a gray forehead of rock poking out of the mulch. I thought, There, right there, and as if in confirmation, that horrible putrescent smell puffed at me again, seemingly from the ground. I closed my eyes, still hanging onto the birch for dear life, feeling weak and sick and ill, and that was when Max Devore, that madman, spoke from behind me. ‘Say there, whoremaster, where's your whore?' I turned and there he was, with Rogette Whitmore by his side. It was the only time I ever met him, but once was enough. Believe me, once was more than enough. His wheelchair hardly looked like a wheelchair at all. What it looked like was a motorcycle sidecar crossed with a lunar lander. Half a dozen chrome wheels ran along both sides. Bigger wheels four of them, I think ran in a row across the back. None looked to be exactly on the same level, and I realized each was tied into its own suspension-bed. Devore would have a smooth ride over ground a lot rougher than The Street. Above the back wheels was an enclosed engine compartment. Hiding Devore's legs was a fiberglass nacelle, black with red pinstriping, that would not have looked out of place on a racing car. Implanted in the center of it was a gadget that looked like my DSS satellite dish . . . some sort of computerized avoidance system, I guessed. Maybe even an autopilot. The armrests were wide and covered with controls. Holstered on the left side of this machine was a green oxygen tank four feet long. A hose went to a clear plastic accordion tube; the accordion tube led to a mask whi ch rested in Devore's lap. It made me think of the old guy's Stenomask. Coming on the heels of what had just happened, I might have considered this Tom Clancyish vehicle a hallucination, except for the bumper-sticker on the nacelle, below the dish. I BLEED DODGER BLUE, it said. This evening the woman I had seen outside The Sunset Bar at Warrington's was wearing a white blouse with long sleeves and black pants so tapered they made her legs look like sheathed swords. Her narrow face and hollow cheeks made her resemble Edvard Munch's screamer more than ever. Her white hair hung around her face in a lank cowl. Her lips were painted so brightly red she seemed to be bleeding from the mouth. She was old and she was ugly, but she was a prize compared to Mattie's father-in-law. Scrawny, blue-lipped, the skin around his eyes and the corners of his mouth a dark exploded purple, he looked like something an archeologist might find in the burial room of a pyramid, surrounded by his stuffed wives and pets, bedizened with his favorite jewels. A few wisps of white hair still clung to his scaly skull; more tufts sprang from enormous ears which seemed to have melted like wax sculptures left out in the sun. He was wearing white cotton pants and a billowy blue shirt. Add a little black beret and he would have looked like a French artist from the nineteenth century at the end of a very long life. Across his lap was a cane of some black wood. Snugged over the end was a bright red bicycle grip. The fingers grasping it looked powerful, but they were going as black as the cane itself. His circulation was failing, and I couldn't imagine what his feet and his lower legs must look like. ‘Whore run off and left you, has she?' I tried to say something. A croak came out of my mouth, nothing more. I was still holding the birch. I let go of it and tried to straighten up, but my legs were still weak and I had to grab it again. He nudged a silver toggle switch and the chair came ten feet closer, halving the distance between us. The sound it made was a silky whisper; watching it was like watching an evil magic carpet. Its many wheels rose and fell independent of one another and flashed in the declining sun, which had begun to take on a reddish cast. And as he came closer, I felt the sense of the man. His body was rotting out from under him, but the force around him was undeniable and daunting, like an electrical storm. The woman paced beside him, regarding me with silent amusement. Her eyes were pinkish. I assumed then that they were gray and had picked up a bit of the coming sunset, but I think now she was an albino. ‘I always liked a whore,' he said. He drew the word out, making it horrrrrrr. ‘Didn't I, Rogette?' ‘Yes, sir,' she said. ‘In their place.' ‘Sometimes their place was on my face!' he cried with a kind of insane perkiness, as if she had contradicted him. ‘Where is she, young man? Whose face is she sitting on right now? I wonder. That smart lawyer you found? Oh, I know all about him, right down to the Unsatisfactory Conduct he got in the third grade. I make it my business to know things. It's the secret of my success.' With an enormous effort, I straightened up. ‘What are you doing here?' ‘Having a constitutional, same as you. And no law against it, is there? The Street belongs to anyone who wants to use it. You haven't been here long, young whoremaster, but surely you've been here long enough to know that. It's our version of the town common, where good pups and vile dogs may walk side-by-side.' Once more using the hand not bunched around the red bicycle grip, he picked up the oxygen mask, sucked deeply, then dropped it back in his lap. He grinned an unspeakable grin of complicity that revealed gums the color of iodine. ‘She good? That little horrrrrr of yours? She must be good to have kept my son prisoner in that nasty little trailer where she lives. And then along comes you even before the worms had finished with my boy's eyes. Does her cunt suck?' ‘Shut up.' Rogette Whitmore threw back her head and laughed. The sound was like the scream of a rabbit caught in an owl's talons, and my flesh crawled. I had an idea she was as crazy as he was. Thank God they were old. ‘You struck a nerve there, Max,' she said. ‘What do you want?' I took a breath . . . and caught a taste of that putrescence again. I gagged. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it. Devore straightened in his chair and breathed deeply, as if to mock me. In that moment he looked like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, striding along the beach and telling the world how much he loved the smell of napalm in the morning. His grin widened. ‘Lovely place, just here, isn't it? A cozy spot to stop and think, wouldn't you say?' He looked around. ‘This is where it happened, all right. Ayuh.' ‘Where the boy drowned.' I thought Whitmore's smile looked momentarily uneasy at that. Devore didn't. He clutched for his translucent oxygen mask with an old man's overwide grip, fingers that grope rather than reach. I could see little bubbles of mucus clinging to the inside. He sucked deep again, put it down again. ‘Thirty or more folks have drowned in this lake, and that's just the ones they know about,' he said. ‘What's one boy, more or less?' ‘I don't get it. Were there two Tidwell boys who died here? The one that got blood-poisoning and the one ‘ ‘Do you care about your soul, Mr. Noonan? Your immortal soul? God's butterfly caught in a cocoon of flesh that will soon stink like mine?' I said nothing. The strangeness of what had happened before he arrived was passing. What replaced it was his incredible personal magnetism. I have never in my life felt so much raw force. There was nothing supernatural about it, either, and raw is exactly the right word. I might have run. Under other circumstances, I'm sure I would have. It certainly wasn't bravery that kept me where I was; my legs still felt rubbery, and I was afraid I might fall down. ‘I'm going to give you one chance to save your soul,' Devore said. He raised a bony finger to illustrate the concept of one. ‘Go away, my fine whoremaster. Right now, in the clothes you stand up in. Don't bother to pack a bag, don't even stop to make sure you turned off the stoveburners. Go. Leave the whore and leave the whorelet.' ‘Leave them to you.' ‘Ayuh, to me. I'll do the things that need to be done. Souls are for liberal arts majors, Noonan. I was an engineer.' ‘Go fuck yourself.' Rogette Whitmore made that screaming-rabbit sound again. The old man sat in his chair, head lowered, grinning sallowly up at me and looking like something raised from the dead. ‘Are you sure you want to be the one, Noonan? It doesn't matter to her, you know you or me, it's all the same to her.' ‘I don't know what you're talking about.' I drew another deep breath, and this time the air tasted all right. I took a step away from the birch, and my legs were all right, too. ‘And I don't care. You're never getting Kyra. Never in what remains of your scaly life. I'll never see that happen.' ‘Pal, you'll see plenty,' Devore said, grinning and showing me his iodine gums. ‘Before July's done, you'll likely have seen so much you'll wish you'd ripped the living eyes out of your head in June.' ‘I'm going home. Let me pass.' ‘Go home then, how could I stop you?' he asked. ‘The Street belongs to everyone.' He groped the oxygen mask out of his lap again and took another healthy pull. He dropped it into his lap and settled his left hand on the arm of his Buck Rogers wheelchair. I stepped toward him, and almost before I knew what was happening, he ran the wheelchair at me. He could have hit me and hurt me quite badly broken one or both of my legs, I don't doubt but he stopped just short. I leaped back, but only because he allowed me to. I was aware that Whitmore was laughing again. ‘What's the matter, Noonan?' ‘Get out of my way. I'm warning you.' ‘Whore made you jumpy, has she?' I started to my left, meaning to go by him on that side, but in a flash he had turned the chair, shot it forward, and cut me off. ‘Get out of the TR, Noonan. I'm giving you good ad ‘ I broke to the right, this time on the lake side, and would have slipped by him quite neatly except for the fist, very small and hard, that hammered the left side of my face. The white-haired bitch was wearing a ring, and the stone cut me behind the ear. I felt the sting and the warm flow of blood. I pivoted, stuck out both hands, and pushed her. She fell to the needle-carpeted path with a squawk of surprised outrage. At the next instant something clouted me on the back of the head. A momentary orange glow lit up my sight. I staggered backward in what felt like slow motion, waving my arms, and Devore came into view again. He was slued around in his wheelchair, scaly head thrust forward, the cane he'd hit me with still upraised. If he had been ten years younger, I believe he would have fractured my skull instead of just creating that momentary orange light. I ran into my old friend the birch tree. I raised my hand to my ear and looked unbelievingly at the blood on the tips of my fingers. My head ached from the blow he had fetched me. Whitmore was struggling to her feet, brushing pine needles from her slacks and looking at me with a furious smile. Her cheeks had filled in with a thin pink flush. Her too-red lips were pulled back to show small teeth. In the light of the setting sun her eyes looked as if they were burning. ‘Get out of my way,' I said, but my voice sounded small and weak. ‘No,' Devore said, and laid the black barrel of his cane on the nacelle that curved over the front of his chair. Now I could see the little boy who had been determined to have the sled no matter how badly he cut his hands getting it. I could see him very clearly. ‘No, you whore-fucking sissy. I won't.' He shoved the silver toggle switch again and the wheelchair rushed silently at me. If I had stayed where I was, he would have run me through with his cane as surely as any evil duke was ever run through in an Alexandre Dumas story. He probably would have crushed the fragile bones in his right hand and torn his right arm clean out of its socket in the collision, but this man had never cared about such things; he left cost-counting to the little people. If I had hesitated out of shock or incredulity, he would have killed me, I'm sure of it. Instead, I rolled to my left. My sneakers slid on the needle-slippery embankment for a moment. Then they lost contact with the earth and I was falling. I hit the water awkwardly and much too close to the bank. My left foot struck a submerged root and twisted. The pain was huge, something that felt like a thunderclap sounds. I opened my mouth to scream and the lake poured in that cold metallic dark taste, this time for real. I coughed it out and sneezed it out and floundered away from where I had landed, thinking The boy, the dead boy's down here, what if he reaches up and grabs me? I turned over on my back, still flailing and coughing, very aware of my jeans clinging clammily to my legs and crotch, thinking absurdly about my wallet I didn't care about the credit cards or driver's license, but I had two good snapshots of Jo in there, and they would be ruined. Devore had almost run himself over the embankment, I saw, and for a moment I thought he still might go. The front of his chair jutted over the place where I had fallen (I could see the short tracks of my sneakers just to the left of the bitch's partially exposed roots), and although the forward wheels were still grounded, the crumbly earth was running out from beneath them in dry little avalanches that rolled down the slope and pit-a-patted into the water, creating interlocking ripple patterns. Whitmore was clinging to the back of the chair, yanking on it, but it was much too heavy for her; if Devore was to be saved, he would have to save himself. Standing waist-deep in the lake with my clothes floating around me, I rooted for him to go over. The purplish claw of his left hand recaptured the silver toggle switch after several attempts. One finger hooked it backward, and the chair reversed away from the embankment with a final shower of stones and dirt. Whitmore leaped prankishly to one side to keep her feet from being run over. Devore fiddled some more with his controls, turned the chair to face me where I stood in the water, some seven feet out from the overhanging birch, and then nudged the chair forward until he was on the edge of The Street but safely away from the drop off. Whitmore had turned away from us entirely; she was bent over with her butt poking in my direction. If I thought about her at all, and I can't remember that I did, I suppose I thought she was getting her breath back. Devore appeared to be in the best shape of the three of us, not even needing a hit from the oxygen mask sitting in his lap. The late light was full in his face, making him look like a half-rotted jack-o'-lantern which has been soaked with gas and set on fire. ‘Enjoying your swim?' he asked, and laughed. I looked around, hoping to see a strolling couple or perhaps a fisherman looking for a place where he could wet his line one more time before dark . . . and yet at the same time I hoped I'd see no one. I was angry, hurt, and scared. Most of all I was embarrassed. I had been dunked in the lake by a man of eighty-five . . . a man who showed every sign of hanging around and making sport of me. I began wading to my right south, back toward my house. The water was about waist-deep, cool and almost refreshing now that I was used to it. My sneakers squelched over rocks and submerged tree-branches. The ankle I'd twisted still hurt, but it was supporting me. Whether it would continue to once I got out of the lake was another question. Devore twiddled his controls some more. The chair pivoted and came rolling slowly along The Street, keeping pace with me easily. ‘I didn't introduce you properly to Rogette, did I?' he said. ‘She was quite an athlete in college, you know. Softball and field hockey were her specialties, and she's held onto at least some of her skills. Rogette, demonstrate your skills for this young man.' Whitmore passed the slowly moving wheelchair on the left. For a moment she was blocked out by it. When I could see her again, I could also see what she was holding. She hadn't been bent over to get her breath. Smiling, she strode to the edge of the embankment with her left arm curled against her midriff, cradling the rocks she had picked up from the edge of the path. She selected a chunk roughly the size of a golfball, drew her hand back to her ear, and threw it at me. Hard. It whizzed by my left temple and splashed into the water behind me. ‘Hey!' I shouted, more startled than afraid. Even after everything that had preceded it, I couldn't believe this was happening. ‘What's wrong with you, Rogette?' Devore asked chidingly. ‘You never used to throw like a girl. Get him!' The second rock passed two inches over my head. The third was a potential tooth-smasher. I batted it away with an angry, fearful shout, not noticing until later that it had bruised my palm. At the moment I was only aware of her hateful, smiling face the face of a woman who has plunked down two dollars in a carny shooting-pitch and means to win the big stuffed teddybear even if she has to blast away all night. And she threw fast. The rocks hailed down around me, some splashing into the ruddy water to my left or right, creating little geysers. I began to backpedal, afraid to turn and swim for it, afraid that she would throw a really big one the minute I did. Still, I had to get out of her range. Devore, meanwhile, was laughing a wheezy old man's laugh, his wretched face crunched in on itself like the face of a malicious apple-doll. One of her rocks struck me a hard, painful blow on the collarbone and bounced high into the air. I cried out, and she did, too: ‘Hai!,' like a karate fighter who's gotten in a good kick. So much for orderly retreat. I turned, swam for deeper water, and the bitch brained me. The first two rocks she threw after I began to swim seemed to be range-finders. There was a pause when I had time to think I'm doing it, I'm getting beyond her area of . . . and then something hit the back of my head. I felt it and heard it the same way it went CLONK!, like something you'd read in a Batman comic. The surface of the lake went from bright orange to bright red to dark scarlet. Faintly I could hear Devore yelling approval and Whitmore squealing her strange laugh. I took in another mouthful of iron-tasting water and was so dazed I had to remind myself to spit it out, not swallow it. My feet now felt too heavy for swimming, and my goddam sneakers weighed a ton. I put them down to stand up and couldn't find the bottom I had gotten beyond my depth. I looked in toward the shore. It was spectacular, blazing in the sunset like stage-scenery lit with bright orange and red gels. I was probably twenty feet out from the shore now. Devore and Whitmore were at the edge of The Street, watching. They looked like Dad and Mom in a Grant Wood painting. Devore was using the mask again, but I could see him grinning inside it. Whitmore was grinning, too. More water sloshed in my mouth. I spit most of it out, but some went down, making me cough and half-retch. I started to sink below the surface and fought my way back up, not swimming but only splashing wildly, expending nine times the energy I needed to stay afloat. Panic made its first appearance, nibbling through my dazed bewilderment with sharp little rat teeth. I realized I could hear a high, sweet buzzing. How many blows had my poor old head taken? One from Whitmore's fist . . . one from Devore's cane . . . one rock . . . or had it been two? Christ, I couldn't remember. Get hold of yourself, for God's sake you're not going to let him beat you this way, are you? Drown you like that little boy was drowned? No, not if I could help it. I trod water and ran my left hand down the back of my head. Not too far above the nape I encountered a goose-egg that was still rising. When I pressed on it the pain made me feel like throwing up and fainting at the same time. Tears rose in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. There were only traces of blood on the tips of my fingers when I looked at them, but it was hard to tell about cuts when you were in the water. ‘You look like a woodchuck caught out in the rain, Noonan!' Now his voice seemed to roll to where I was, as if across a great distance. ‘Fuck you!' I called. ‘I'll see you in jail for this!' He looked at Whitmore. She looked back with an identical expression, and they both laughed. If someone had put an Uzi in my hands at that moment, I would have killed them both with no hesitation and then asked for a second clip so I could machine-gun the bodies. With no Uzi to hand, I began to dogpaddle south, toward my house. They paced me along The Street, he rolling in his whisper-quiet wheelchair, she walking beside him as solemn as a nun and pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking rock. I hadn't swum enough to be tired, but I was. It was mostly shock, I suppose. Finally I tried to draw a breath at the wrong time, swallowed more water, and panicked completely. I began to swim in toward the shore, wanting to get to where I could stand up. Rogette Whitmore began to fire rocks at me immediately, first using the ones she' had lined up between her left arm and her midriff, then those she'd stockpiled in Devore's lap. She was warmed up, she wasn't throwing like a girl anymore, and her aim was deadly. Stones splashed all around me. I batted another away a big one that likely would have cut open my forehead if it had hit but her follow-up struck my bicep and tore a long scratch there. Enough. I rolled over and swam back out beyond her range, gasping for breath, trying to keep my head up in spite of the growing ache in the back of my neck. When I was clear, I trod water and looked in at them. Whitmore had come all the way to the edge of the embankment, wanting to get every foot of distance she could. Hell, every damned inch. Devore was parked behind her in his wheelchair. They were both still grinning, and now their faces were as red as the faces of imps in hell. Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Another twenty minutes and it would be getting dark. Could I keep my head above water for another twenty minutes? I thought so, if I didn't panic again, but not much longer. I thought of drowning in the dark, looking up and seeing Venus just before I went under for the last time, and the panic-rat slashed me with its teeth again. The panic-rat was worse than Rogette and her rocks, much worse. Maybe not worse than Devore. I looked both ways along the lakefront, checking The Street wherever it wove out of the trees for a dozen feet or a dozen yards. I didn't care about being embarrassed anymore, but I saw no one. Dear God, where was everybody? Gone to the Mountain View in Fryeburg for pizza, or the Village Cafe for milkshakes? ‘What do you want?' I called in to Devore. ‘Do you want me to tell you I'll butt out of your business? Okay, I'll butt out!' He laughed. Well, I hadn't expected it to work. Even if I'd been sincere about it, he wouldn't have believed me. ‘We just want to see how long you can swim,' Whitmore said, and threw another rock -a long, lazy toss that fell about five feet short of where I was. They mean to kill me, I thought. They really do. Yes. And what was more, they might well get away with it. A crazy idea, both plausible and implausible at the same time, rose in my mind. I could see Rogette Whitmore tacking a notice to the cOMMUNITY DOIN'S board outside the Lakeview General Store. TO THE MARTIANS OF TR-90, GREETINGS! Mr, MAXWELL DEVORE, everyone's favorite Martian, will give each resident of the TR ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS if no one will use The Street on FRIDAY EVENING, THE 17th OF JULY, between the hours of SEVEN and NINE P.M. Keep our ‘SUMMER FRIENDS' away, too! And remember: GOOD MARTIANS are like GOOD MONKEYS: they SEE no evil, HEAR no evil, and SPEAK no evil! I couldn't really believe it, not even in my current situation . . . and yet I almost could. At the very least I had to grant him the luck of the devil. Tired. My sneakers heavier than ever. I tried to push one of them off and succeeded only in taking in another mouthful of lakewater. They stood watching me, Devore occasionally picking the mask up from his lap and having a revivifying suck. I couldn't wait until dark. The sun exits in a hurry here in western Maine as it does, I guess, in mountain country everywhere but the twilights are long and lingering. By the time it got dark enough in the west to move without being seen, the moon would have risen in the east. I found myself imagining my obituary in the New York Times, the headline reading POPULAR ROMANTIC SUSPENSE NOVELIST DROWNS IN MAINE. Debra Weinstock would provide them with the author photo from the forthcoming Helen's Promise. Harold Oblowski would say all the right things, and he'd also remember to put a modest (but not tiny) death notice in Publishers Weekly. He would go half-and-half with Putnam on it, and I sank, swallowed more water, and spat it out. I began pummelling the lake again and forced myself to stop. From the shore, I could hear Rogette Whitmore's tinkling laughter. You bitch, I thought, you scrawny bi Mike, Jo said. Her voice was in my head, but it wasn't the one I make when I'm imagining her side of a mental dialogue or when I just miss her and need to whistle her up for awhile. As if to underline this, something splashed to my right, splashed hard. When I looked in that direction I saw no fish, not even a ripple. What I saw instead was our swimming float, anchored about a hundred yards away in the sunset-colored water. ‘I can't swim that far, baby,' I croaked. ‘Did you say something, Noonan?' Devore called from the shore. He cupped a mocking hand to one of his huge waxlump ears. ‘Couldn't quite make it out! You sound all out of breath!' More tinkling laughter from Whitmore. He was Johnny Carson; she was Ed Mcmahon. You can make it. I'll help you. The float, I realized, might be my only chance there wasn't another one on this part of the shore, and it was at least ten yards beyond Whitmore's longest rockshot so far. I began to dogpaddle in that direction, my arms now as leaden as my feet. Each time I felt my head on the verge of going under I paused, treading water, telling myself to take it easy, I was in pretty good shape and doing okay, telling myself that if I didn't panic I'd be all right. The old bitch and the even older bastard resumed pacing me, but they saw where I was headed and the laughter stopped. So did the taunts. For a long time the swimming float seemed to draw no closer. I told myself that was just because the light was fading, the color of the water draining from red to purple to a near-black that was the color of Devore's gums, but I was able to muster less and less conviction for this idea as my breath shortened and my arms grew heavier. When I was still thirty yards away a cramp struck my left leg. I rolled sideways like a swamped sailboat, trying to reach the bunched muscle. More water poured down my throat. I tried to cough it out, then retched and went under with my stomach still trying to heave and my fingers still looking for the knotted place above the knee. I'm really drowning, I thought, strangely calm now that it was happening. This is how it happens, this is it. Then I felt a hand seize me by the nape of the neck. The pain of having my hair yanked brought me back to reality in a flash it was better than an epinephrine injection. I felt another hand clamp around my left leg; there was a brief but terrific sense of heat. The cramp let go and I broke the surface swimming really swimming this time, not just dog-paddling, and in what seemed like seconds I was clinging to the ladder on the side of the float, breathing in great, snatching gasps, waiting to see if I was going to be all right or if my heart was going to detonate in my chest like a hand grenade. At last my lungs started to overcome my oxygen debt, and everything began to calm down. I gave it another minute, then climbed out of the water and into what was now the ashes of twilight. I stood facing west for a little while, bent over with my hands on my knees, dripping on the boards. Then I turned around, meaning this time to flip them not just a single bird but that fabled double eagle . There was no one to flip it to. The Street was empty. Devore and Rogette Whitmore were gone. Maybe they were gone. I'd do well to remember there was a lot of Street I couldn't see. I sat cross-legged on the float until the moon rose, waiting and watching for any movement. Half an hour, I think. Maybe forty-five minutes. I checked my watch, but got no help there; it had shipped some water and stopped at 7:30 P.M. To the other satisfactions Devore owed me I could now add the price of one Timex Indiglo that's $29.95, asshole, cough it up. At last I climbed back down the ladder, slipped into the water, and stroked for shore as quietly as I could. I was rested, my head had stopped aching (although the knot above the nape of my neck still throbbed steadily), and I no longer felt off-balance and incredulous. In some ways, that had been the worst of it trying to cope not just with the apparition of the drowned boy, the flying rocks, and the lake, but with the pervasive sense that none of this could be happening, that rich old software moguls did not try to drown novelists who strayed into their line of sight. Had tonight's adventure been a case of simple straying into Devore's view, though? A coincidental meeting, no more than that? Wasn't it likely he'd been having me watched ever since the Fourth of July . . . maybe from the other side of the lake, by people with high-powered optical equipment? Paranoid bullshit, I would have said . . . at least I would have said it before the two of them almost sank me in Dark Score Lake like a kid's paper boat in a mudpuddle. I decided I didn't care who might be watching from the other side of the lake. I didn't care if the two of them were still lurking on one of the tree-shielded parts of The Street, either. I swam until I could feel strands of waterweed tickling my ankles and see the crescent of my beach. Then I stood up, wincing at the air, which now felt cold on my skin. I limped to shore, one hand raised to fend off a hail of rocks, but no rocks came. I stood for a moment on The Street, my jeans and polo shirt dripping, looking first one way, then the other. It seemed I had this little part of the world to myself. Last, I looked back at the water, where weak moonlight beat a track from the thumbnail of beach out to the swimming float. ‘Thanks, Jo,' I said, then started up the railroad ties to the house. I got about halfway, then had to stop and sit down. I had never been so utterly tired in my whole life.

Research design and methodology Essay

Despite the fact that the complete genome of the organism was already sequenced, the specific genes coding for the needed enzymes to form pores in the host cell were still unidentified. With this lack of information, this study is formulated and designed. Culturing of B. bacteriovorus HD100 on prey dependent and prey independent set-ups: Predatory (HD) cultures of B. bacteriovorus HD100 will be grown on E. coli in Ca2_-HEPES buffer at 30Â °C, with shaking at 200 rpm (8). Escherichia coli ML35 and E. coli W7-M5 (10) will be used as the prey throughout the experiments. Escherichia coli ML35 will be cultured in nutrient broth (Difco Laboratories), and E. coli W7-M5, a lysine and DAP auxotroph, will be cultured in nutrient broth supplemented with 0. 2 mM lysine and 0. 1 mM DAP at 37Â °C with shaking at 200 rpm. Prey-independent HI strains will be plated on rich peptone-yeast extract (PY) medium (8). Synchronous cultures: Synchronous cultures will be used for performing various experiments as described below. Briefly, fresh bdellovibrios will be added to prey cells in HM buffer (3 mM N-2-hydroxyethylpiperazine-N’-2-ethanesulfonic acid (HEPES)-1 mM CaCl. LQ. One mM of MgCl2 will be adjusted to pH 7. 6 using NaOH (10). The organisms will be grown until a final concentration of 1010 bdellovibrios per ml and 5 x 109 E. coli per ml is reached. For proper aeration, volumes will be kept to ? 20% of the flask’s volume and incubated at 30Â °C with shaking at 400 rpm. Synchronous cultures will be examined at intervals for attachment and penetration with a Nikon model L-Ke microscope (Nippon Kogaku Inc. ) equipped with phase-contrast optics and a Nikon model AF camera. Time course Microarray analysis. Time course Microarray analysis will be performed to identify the genes to be expressed during the entry phase, specifically during pore formation on the host cell membrane of B. bacterovorus H100. Microarray slides of B. bacteriovorus H100 will be ordered from Advanced Throughput, Inc Services. Total cellular RNA will be extracted from B. bacteriovorus H100 cells at entry phase using the RNeasy mid kit (Qiagen). The RNA of the organism will also be extracted during the other stages of infection. This will serve as a reference for comparison of the genes expressed and not expressed at the desired stage. Complementary DNA synthesis, fragmentation, labeling, hybridization, staining and washing will be performed according to the Affymetrix B. bacteriovorus H100 GeneChip array expression analysis protocol (Affymetrix). Briefly, cDNA will be synthesized from RNA using Superscript II (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. RNA will be removed by alkaline treatment and subsequent neutralization. Complementary DNA will be purified with QIAquick PCR purification columns (Qiagen). Purified cDNA will be fragmented by DNase I (Amersham) at 37Â °C for 10 min followed by end labeling with biotinddUTP, using an Enzo BioArray terminal labeling kit (Affymetrix), at 37Â °C for 60 min. Hybridization will be performed in an Affymetrix GeneChip hybridization Oven 640. Washing and staining will be performed using an Affymetrix Fluidics Station 400. Arrays will be scanned with an Agilent GeneArray Scanner G2500A. GeneChip scans will be initially analyzed using the Affymetrix Microarray Suite 5. 1 software, from which PivotData tables will be exported. Raw data from the PivotData Tables will be analyzed in GeneSpring software version 6 (Silicon Genetics), using the parameters suggested by Silicon Genetics for analysis of Affymetrix Microarrays. Real-time PCR: Real-time PCR using the Applied Biosystems 7500 Real-time PCR system will be performed to confirm microarray results. RNA will be extracted from B. bacteriovorus H100 at initial phases of predatory life cycle up to entry phase as described above. RNA will be reverse transcribed into cDNA and simultaneously labelled using the iScript One-step RT-PCR kit with SYBR Green (Biorad). RT-PCR reactions will also be performed to amplify cDNA of housekeeping genes (identified from micro array studies) for normalization of fluorescence values. Identifying the specific hydrolytic enzymes of B. bacteriovorus which are involved in pore formation on host cell membrane. Many experiments showed that B. bacteriovorus H100 releases hydrolytic enzymes during predatory life cycle. According to Thomashow and Ritterberg, glycanases and lipopolysaccharideases are required for pore formation in the prey’s peptidoglycan and LPS layers respectively. The glycanase and/or peptidase could be responsible for weakening the peptidoglycan layer of the prey and thereby responsible for permitting conversion of the substrate cell to a spherical shape (10). Tudor et al. proposed another model for penetration. According to them peptidase is responsible for pore formation but not glycanase (11). Specific enzymes involved in pore formation are not known. The genes identified from the time course micro array technique will be mutated as described previously using suicide vector pSSK10. Resulting mutants will be complemented by using vector pMMB206 (8). Mutants will be analysed for the specific enzymes (using 2D-gel electrophoresis) and their actions on host cell i. e, as a glycanase, LPSase or peptidase will be observed by radio labelling experiments (10). Wild-type B. bacteriovorus H100 and complemented strains will be used as controls. Radio labeling experiments: Escherichia. coli W7-M5, auxotroph for lysine and DAP and cannot metabolize glucosamine, will be radiolabelled as described previously (9,10). Peptide portion of E.coli W7-M5 peptidoglycan will be labelled with [3H] DAP and the lipopolysaccharides and glycan portions of the peptidoglycan will be labeled with [3H]glucosamine. Various mutants and wild-type strains will be tested for predation using this radiolabelled strain. Solubilisation of glucosamine and DAP from labelled prey peptidoglycan will be measured as described previously (11). Briefly, samples taken at intervals will be precipitated with an equal volume of cold 10% trichloroacetic acid for 30 min followed by centrifugation. Resulting supernatants will be assayed for soluble radioactivity in a scintillation counter (Rackbeta II). Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis: The hydrolytic enzymes released by B. bacteriovorus H100 during its predatory life cycle will be analyzed by performing two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Sample preparation for 2D-gel electrophoresis: Escherichia coli ML35 cells will be challenged with B. bacteriovorus H100 wild-type as well as the mutant strain. Culture fluid will be drawn from synchronous cultures during attachment and entry phases of B. bacteriovorus H100. Culture fluid will be centrifuged to discard any cell debris. Proteins in the supernatant will be precipitated using cold acetone. The precipitated proteins will be separated by centrifugation. The precipitated pellet will be air dried and will be dissolved in rehydration solution (8M urea, 2% CHAPS {3-[3-cholamidopropyl)-dimethylammonio]-1-propanesulfonate}, 18 mM DTT, 0. 5% IPG buffer pH range 4-7; Amersham Biosciences), plus a trace of bromophenol blue. Sample protein concentrations will be determined using the BCA protein assay (Pierce). Resulting protein pellet will be subjected to 2D-gel electrophoresis.

Lord of the Flies Analized essays

Lord of the Flies Analized essays When away from civilization, mans facade of civilized behavior falls away. This thought is express greatly in William Golding, Lord of the Flies. Goldings uses characters and events to prove this belief. He uses the protagonist, Ralph, as the example of how no matter how you try the instinctual savagery of humans will surface. The antagonist, Jack, is the example of the change. His metamorphosis from a civilized, optimistic British boy to a bloodthirsty savage leader is one that Golding tracks conscientiously. Then a proof of the true savagery of human instinct, he illustrates the doings of Jacks tribe. Using William Golding, by Samuel Hynes, and The Novel as a Moral Allegory by P.H. Newby, the change of the boys trapped on a deserted island will be clear. Ralphs attempt at a civilization and his failure is proof that humans will be savages if not restricted. Ralph and the reader have a connection that is important to understand. (Ralph) provides the most consistent point of view, because he most nearly speaks for us (the reader) (Hynes, pg. 173) Because Ralph is the readers thoughts in the story, Golding elucidates that no amount of logical thinking can stop this metamorphosis. Ralph tries very hard to bring democratic idea to the island. He takes as a totem the conch; making it a symbol of rational orderly discussion. (Hynes, pg. 173) The conch symbolizes rules, like one cannot speak at an assembly without holding the conch. These rules are proof of Ralphs attempt. Ralphs attempt becomes more difficult as Jack begins to shun the conch and the rules it represents. (Ralph and Jack) they are antithetical, but intimately linked tighter-man-the-destroyer confronting man-the-preserver. (Hynes, pg. 173) This is where the change begins, Ralph, as a character remains logical. But other forces stray the other boys, hunting, the ...

The eNotes Blog Some Pig, Some Book Charlottes Web Turns60

Some Pig, Some Book Charlottes Web Turns60 How E.B. White loved spiders before the rest of the world fell in love with his. Some childrens books are truly timeless. When you think of their titles, the very smell of their pages seems to seep from your memory, and you find yourself once again feeling those same emotions you felt on the first reading, or indeed  any reading thereafter. Charlottes Web is one of those books. E.B. Whites classic tale has played a pivotal role in many a childs upbringing. In fact, in a Publishers Weekly poll it was ranked as the most popular childrens book ever published. Today marks its sixtieth year in print. The tale is so familiar to so many of us that I hardly feel the need to raise a spoiler alert. All the same, dont read on if you dont yet know the ending The body of the novel may concern a pig, a girl, and a series of barnyard animals to fill the backdrop, but at its heart is a remarkable spider, Charlotte A. Cavatica. Though a spider to many may seem like an unlikely creature to feel empathy for, the author obviously saw differently. Charlottes Web had its beginnings in the Maine farm White ran with his wife Katherine Angell. One October day, White noticed a spiders web in the corner of his barn. He watched as, over a manner of weeks, the spider in it spread her net wider and wider, eventually laying a tiny egg sac at its center. The spider was never to be seen again. When the time came for White to leave Maine for New York (and the farm for his steady job at The New Yorker), he put the sac in an empty candy box, punched some holes in it, and absent-mindedly put the box atop his bedroom bureau in New York. Some weeks later, that precious egg sac began to breathe life. The author watched as tiny eight-legged spiders crawled out of the candy box, through the air holes hed made for them. White was delighted at this affirmation of life and left the hundreds of barn spiderlings alone for the next week or so - to spin webs from his hair brush to his nail scissors to his mirror - until, finally, the cleaning lady complained. Thus also hatched Whites idea for Charlottes Web. Interestingly, his fascination with and emotional attachment to spiders went back further than those first stirrings of the novel in 1949. White once wrote of the arachnids that once you begin watching spiders, you havent time for much else. Even one of his love poems to his new bride concerned a spider. This one he wrote in 1929 is titled Natural History: The spider, dropping down from twig, Unwinds a thread of his devising; A thin, premeditated rig To use in rising. And all the journey down through space, In cool descent, and loyal-hearted, He builds a ladder to the place From which he started. Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spiders web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning. So White was no novice in making a spider appear beautiful and regal rather than something to be feared. In Charlottes Web, he instilled all of the attributes in Charlotte that made us fall in love with her; she was kind, honest, a truly loyal friend, and of course a great writer, too. It wasnt long before she spun a web around childrens hearts everywhere. And when we cried at Charlottes death, White was right there with us. So great was the authors love for his character that in 1970, when it came time for him to record the audio book, he had a difficult time reading the passage wherein his beloved spider passed. In the end, it took 17 takes for White to get through the following paragraph without his voice cracking or beginning to cry. The fairgrounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody of the hundreds of people that had visited the fair knew that a gray spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died. It wasnt the first time a reader cried over Charlotte, nor will it be the last. Wilbur may have been some pig, but Charlotte was certainly some spider, and Whites story is one very special book.  If those who remember her now have anything to do with it, Charlottes story will be celebrated in another sixty years as one of the most beloved childrens novels of our, or indeed of any time. To hear White read the passage above, head to NPRs Morning Edition story, which includes an interview with Michael Sims, author of the biography  The Story of Charlottes Web. You can also listen to E.B. White read an excerpt of Charlottes Web via an NPR recording at this link. Charlottes Web on : Charlottes Web Study Guide Lesson Plan and QA

Using Photographs and Illustrations to Support Reading Comprehension

Using Photographs and Illustrations to Support Reading Comprehension Whether they are the cave drawings in the south of France, the cartoons of Hogarth or Satellite pictures, illustrations and photos are powerful ways for students with disabilities, especially difficulty with text, to find and retain information from textbooks and non-fiction. That, after all, is what reading comprehension  is about: understanding and retaining information, and having the ability to retell that information, not performance on multiple choice tests.   Often students with reading difficulties are so stuck I find, when working with struggling readers, that they get so stuck on the code - decoding unfamiliar multi-syllabic words, that they dont get as far as the meaning. More often than not, they actually miss the meaning. Focusing students on text features, such as the illustrations and the captions help students focus on the meaning and authors intent before they actually have to read any text.   Illustrations will help students Understand what the author believes is important in the text.Visualize the context of the non-fiction text (especially history or geography) or content of the chapter/article.  For students who struggle with text, the visual representation of content will help them see the important content.  Learn text specific vocabulary.  An illustration of an insect in a biology text or a plant in a botany text will be accompanied by captions or labels.  Be sure that students note that information in the text.   Using Pictures and Illustrations in Conjunction with Other Text Features An essential part of SQ3R  (Scan, Question, Read, Review, Reread) a long term strategy for developmental reading is to Scan the text.  Scanning basically includes looking over the text and identifying important information. Titles and Subtitles are the first stop on a text walk.  Titles will also help introduce the important topic spedific vocabulary.  Expect a chapter about the Civil War to have specific vocabulary in the subtitles. Be sure to have a list of focus words for flash cards before you start your text walk: Give (or have available) 3 by 5 cards available for students to write down the text specific vocabulary as your do the text walk together.   Captions and Labels accompany most pictures, and should be read as you do the text walk.  Be sure students record all of the important vocabulary, even if they can read them.  Depending on your students sophistication, a picture or a written definition should go on the back.  The purpose should be for your students to be able to define the vocabulary using their own words. The Reading Strategy - The Text Walk The first time you teach the strategy, you will want to walk the child through the whole process.  Later it will be better if you can fade some of your support and have students take more responsibility for the text walk.  This would be a great activity to do in partners across abilities, especially if you have students who benefit from the structure but have stronger reading skills. After reviewing the titles and pictures, have students make predictions:  What will you read about?  What do you want to know more about as you read?  Did you see a picture that surprised you?   Then scan together for vocabulary they should have on their flashcards.  Make a list on the board or using a document on the digital projector in your classroom.

Elements of Design (Intro to film) Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Elements of Design (Intro to film) - Assignment Example The mise-en-scà ¨ne has elements that portray the illusion of innocence and safety of middle-class homes in the midst of a violent world. The director of Scream is Wes Craven, who is in charge of interpreting the script and providing the general look of the film, while also directing the actors and the scene while shooting. The director decides how the script will look like visually because every scene contributes to the total look of the film (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2011, p.7.1). For instance, in the clip on Casey’s killing, Craven decides the direction of the chase and kill scene and what is included in the mise-en-scene. For the chase, the medium shot includes both Ghostface and Casey, which shows the stabbing and Casey’s terrified reaction. The shot includes the woods and the house at the back, which increases the scariness of the scene because of the darkness and lack of people around to save Casey. The lawn and existence of houses in the vicinity further show that the setting should be a relatively safe place, but it is obviously not. Casey cries as she looks at her gushing wound at her chest. Crave n chooses to no longer show the succeeding stabs to create a more terrorizing impact of the audience imagining how Casey is killed. Craven creates a horrifying scene where he directs the action, actors, and scene to produce the chilling effect of being killed in one’s home. The production designer, Bruce Alan Miller, works closely with the director in managing the set and prop direction (Proferes, 2008, p.40). In the clip, the production designer chooses the setting of the house in the woods to maximize the brutal killing of Casey (Irving & Rea, 2010, p.123). As Casey tries to call her parent’s attention, the latter enters their house appreciating their flowers. The flowers in the front yard are part of the production set that increases the irony of the situation. The parents notice the flowers more than their dying daughter. The flowers also signify

An analysis of 3 turning points in history from 8000 B.C.E up to 1500 Essay

An analysis of 3 turning points in history from 8000 B.C.E up to 1500 - Essay Example From an academic point of view, analyzing the history of societies, cultures, disputes, inventions and technological advances allow us to understand the methods through which primitive nations overcame their limitations and attempt extract useful information from the patterns of change that have been there in the previous millenniums. In comparison to the world that we live in today, these patterns of change were much less disruptive and slow paced before the last few centuries. Change, when it came, was gradual and took several generations to be implemented with visible effects. The life of one generation would be nearly identical to those of their fore fathers and the lifestyle continuing on the same patterns; utilizing the same resources. Consequently, even with the restricted sources of information scholars have about the people that existed in the time before the AD years it is possible to identify and categorize those points when the human population went through a drastic tran sformation. In a positive sense, these events could symbolize a discovery, a way of travel, communication or livelihood- anything which made life easier for the groups and allowed them to increase their populations. The opposite would be any happenings which damaged their ability to survive or removed the effects any previous developments. It is easy to understand why the positive disruptions are the ones highlighted and researched more extensively. The introductory period in the studies of world history is known as the â€Å"foundations†. this period ranges from 8000 BC to 600 BC and is so named because of it was the beginning era for the all future trends and discoveries which have shaped human civilizations to eventually transform it into the modern world we recognize. This was the time of emergence of major Early "River Valley" Civilizations (about 3500 B.C.E. - about 1200 B.C.E.) and Classical Civilizations (about 1000 B.C.E. - 600 C.E.) which were the first formally des igned societies1. Though there is still some argument between academics about the exact dates of this era, the marker events have been recognized by all and it is accepted that many of these may not have occurred at a specified date but would have happened during a certain period with discoveries being made simultaneously in different regions and different populations. The major transforming events could not remain restricted to any one group or area; they had to be and spread and adopted on a global scale in order to have a true long lasting impact on the human species and their life style. In some cases sharing of knowledge between different groups enhanced the cumulative knowledge base as a greater number of minds could then work on producing new solutions to the existing problems and improving the ones that existed. As such we will be discussing the three major turning points of the period ranging from 8000 BC to 1500 BC from the view point that these were continuous processes a nd the contributions and scale of impact from these differed for different geographical areas. 1. The Agriculture Revolution: Man cannot live without food; as any other species it lives where food can be gained easily and follows where its prey goes. However, humans had many advantages over their animal companions including bipedalism, highly defined motor skills, and most importantly greater mental capacity that allowed them to use

Employment Relations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Employment Relations - Essay Example The activities of the firm concerns with the products while the union concerns with the aspect of a service. These two goals may coincide and clash in various circumstances. To begin with, the labor unions are beneficial in protecting minority groups (Shelley & Cleveley 2007, p. 69). Minority groups offer a wide area of looking at the same. For instance, disabled individuals who take part in the labor force may experience a bias out of their scenario. If they do attain an adequate voice of addressing their concerns, large companies would assume that their companies are progressing. Apart from direct exploitation, minority groups would suffer from unintentional inadequate attention from the management. Firms may entail processes and regulations that compromise on minority workers’ situations. Trade unions are hawk eyed entities that assess companies in terms of very single operation. In certain instances, companies may have work operations that assign hectic and low paying assi gnments to certain workers. Such scenarios are handed down from previous systems and they may continue to occur under the unconsciousness of the management. An example would relate to bias against certain races in terms of job assignments. The trade unions would discover about such minority groups and investigate their plights. It is crucial to highlight that certain minority groups arise out of hypothetical situations. It might be visible after some period that minority groups develop out of departments that they work in the same. In addition, trade unions help in minimizing disputes that may arise out of workers and the employers. In this sense, the trade unions eliminate trivialities that may arise out of employees and their management. In notable instances, the management of firms may make assumptions about employees. This might relate to the view of employees as a group that operates on peer pressure. In this sense, the peer pressure would lead to unreasonable demands that push the firms out of their balance. This suggests that trade unions are intermediary rather than constraining forces to firms. It is crucial to highlight that disputes place employees out of firms. In turn, it constrains employees from growth in their careers. In addition, employers are likely to misperceive the actions of employees. Spotted employees may earn unconstructive reputation with their firms. This suggests that the affected employees are likely to receive limiting comments from their employers. In the end, it would be difficult for the employee to earn the trust of other firms. In addition, trade unions avail safe working environments for employees. The work environment might be a limited but an unsafe environment for the health of employees. The work environment should be a platform whereby both the employees and their firms respectively achieve their objectives of wages and products. In the achievement of the two divergent objectives, the work environment may digress and i njure employees. Harm is a diverse term that comprises both physical and psychological aspects. In physical harm, firms may entail work environments that injure the health of workers. For instance, there are manufacturing companies that involve in the production of harmful chemicals and products. In such a scenario, it is vital to provide protective mechanisms for workers. Alternatively, the firm would employ machinery that excludes employees from the core manufacturing processes that entail emission of toxic substances

Are zero tolerance rules the best way to keep schools safe Research Paper

Are zero tolerance rules the best way to keep schools safe - Research Paper Example Thus, the zero tolerance rules. According to Ted Watchel, zero tolerance â€Å"have become commonplace in American schools in recent decades’ (par. 3). Although many people agree to the zero tolerance rule policy in schools, this does not ensure a totally safe learning environment. This policy uses a lot of money, might be too strict on the students, and might not be too affective. Further, it is unfair to some students, and some rights might be violated by this rule. A report by Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah states that Chicago Public Schools spent $51.4 million on school-based security guards in 2010, an amount which was fifteen times higher than that of the budget spent on college and career coaches (par. 2). But students say they did not feel any safer in their schools despite these disciplinary policies. Zero tolerance policies are ineffective and have even been harmful to students and school environments (Watchel, par. 2) because it is too strict, that even minor offenses such as not being in uniform or bringing cell phones in class, result to removal from school, instead of giving them second chances and the counsel and advice they need in order to realize their mistakes if they have committed any. According to Kristen Graham, a report stated that students in the Philadelphia District are â€Å"too often punished harshly for minor infractions, and suspensions, expulsions, and transfers to disciplinary school are overused† (par. 2). This is clearly against putting the students’ welfare first in terms of their behavioral development or improvement and putting their future at risk. Some students might not want to continue their studies after they are kicked out of school either because of shame or disappointment. This will also make the students feel that the school does not exude the image that they once have, which is an academic and learning institution where they have the freedom to enjoy their learning years. Watchel stated that the polic y is ineffective and I totally agree with him. Watchel further stated that, â€Å"The American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force issued a report in 2008 concluding that severe punishment at schools neither reduces violence nor promotes learning. The report asserts that zero tolerance can actually increase bad behavior, lead to higher dropout rates, and increase referrals to the juvenile justice system for infractions once handled in the schools†(par. 5). This clearly proves the infectivity of the policy. Sean McCollum stated that â€Å"zero tolerance policy is getting twisted in many school districts and schools are not checking to see that the policies are even working† (par. 4). The first goal of an academic institution is to promote learning. This includes learning academically and behaviorally, which means that aside from their academic development, they are also taught the value of discipline and the sense of responsibility. This can only be done in a way that the students will have to realize, without being severely punished, their mistakes and then learn from them. By punishing them harshly for even the smallest infractions, we are further pushing them away from accepting their mistakes and thus give them reasons to feel angry and resentful. This will get in the way of their academic and learning development. In its eager campaign for a safer learning environment, the policy has become unfair in its treatment of infractions. Offenses, whether major or minor are met with almost the same punishments:

Analysis of Medical Errors Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Analysis of Medical Errors - Research Paper Example   The issue is heavily laden with the emotional and fiscal burden as patients must be aware of their treatment progress and any mistakes that have been made while hospitals and doctors have a very real need to protect themselves from lawsuits and protect their credibility. At the same time, it is difficult for many doctors to have to face the fact that in the course of attempting to improve health, they may have inadvertently made it worse and then to try to communicate this failing to the patients who have trusted them. While it seems the greatest opinion among medical workers is that patients should be informed whenever mistakes have been made, the reality is that the medical profession has a large tendency to hide mistakes when possible so as to avoid unpleasantness.  Ã‚   In â€Å"Disclosing Medical Errors to Patients, †1 the authors point out the prevalence of avoidable error or ‘adverse events’ within the medical profession as being relatively high – 37 percent of the discovered cases in a Canadian study preventable. In response to this, â€Å"leaders in the patient-safety movement have called for the system defects that underlie most errors to be corrected, as well as improvement in the recognition and reporting of errors and the disclosure of harmful errors to patients and their families.†2 Benefits of full disclosure are outlined, such as patients having greater knowledge about their own treatment  and thus able to make more informed decisions and patients’ ability to participate in problem-solving techniques to prevent future errors from occurring again.  Ã‚  However, the article also points out the difficulty doctors have had in providing full disclosure.  Ã‚  

GRID (Clustered) SAN computing standards Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

GRID (Clustered) SAN computing standards - Essay Example 2. A storage system which consists of network elements such as storage devices, computer systems, servers, control software (such as server administration and site server) that will communicate over the network. Storage networks are distinguished from other forms of network storage devices simply by their low-level access method they use and is very similar to such network devices as ATA, disk drives and SCSI hardware. Inside a storage network, the server will issue a request for specific blocks of data and this device on the storage network will then send requests across the network. In the clustered GRID infrastructure would be a series of SAN devices that would then integrate as part of the larger network in order to share the storage capabilities inside the GRID. As such, each device would then be added to the larger network that can be used by other networked devices such as a computer workstation. An example of this computing infrastructure, courtesy of Force10, shows how this cluster/GRID computing network is positioned to utilized these storage devices GRID computing is the transformation of a computer infrastructure into an integrated Virtual Organisation that allows for dynamic collaboration and the ability to share resources from anywhere in the world. This sharing provides users with an unprecedented amount of computing power, especially for those in the field of scientific investigation and collaboration in which the needs of the computer power cannot necessarily be handled by one such computer. Through integration inside the GRID of such supercomputers will enable users to access power without the need to purchase larger systems. GRID computing is based on three concepts as outlined by Reddy (2004) "as: Virtualization: severing the hard-coded association of resources to systems Resource Allocation and Management: dynamically allocating resources on demand, and managing them and finally, Provisioning: configuring resources whenever and wherever needed." (Reddy, 2004) Kalzar Amin, Gregor von Laszewski and Armin R. Mikler Kalzar, et al describe the term Grid computing as commonly referred "to a distributed infrastructure that promotes large scale resource sharing in a dynamic institutional "virtual organisation" (VO). A computational Grid forms a closed network of a large number of pooled resources providing standardized, reliable, specialized and pervasive access to high-end computational resources." Typically, in order to establish a computational Grid, several institutions pool their resources such as computational cycles, specialized software, database servers, network bandwidth, and people. As a result of this "pooling" global policies will be set for the virtual organisation which will in an essence identify each of the participating entities' roles and responsibilities, much like in a LAN server networking scenario. Each of the site institution administrators, who are generally trained as network administrators will then enforce these policies at the domain level. The GRID administrators will then provide each of the GRID users their appropriate credentials and through these credentials will the users access

Analysis of Medical Errors Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Analysis of Medical Errors - Research Paper Example   The issue is heavily laden with the emotional and fiscal burden as patients must be aware of their treatment progress and any mistakes that have been made while hospitals and doctors have a very real need to protect themselves from lawsuits and protect their credibility. At the same time, it is difficult for many doctors to have to face the fact that in the course of attempting to improve health, they may have inadvertently made it worse and then to try to communicate this failing to the patients who have trusted them. While it seems the greatest opinion among medical workers is that patients should be informed whenever mistakes have been made, the reality is that the medical profession has a large tendency to hide mistakes when possible so as to avoid unpleasantness.  Ã‚   In â€Å"Disclosing Medical Errors to Patients, †1 the authors point out the prevalence of avoidable error or ‘adverse events’ within the medical profession as being relatively high – 37 percent of the discovered cases in a Canadian study preventable. In response to this, â€Å"leaders in the patient-safety movement have called for the system defects that underlie most errors to be corrected, as well as improvement in the recognition and reporting of errors and the disclosure of harmful errors to patients and their families.†2 Benefits of full disclosure are outlined, such as patients having greater knowledge about their own treatment  and thus able to make more informed decisions and patients’ ability to participate in problem-solving techniques to prevent future errors from occurring again.  Ã‚  However, the article also points out the difficulty doctors have had in providing full disclosure.  Ã‚  

To What Extent Did The X Factor Alter The Distribution of Popular Coursework

To What Extent Did The X Factor Alter The Distribution of Popular Music - Coursework Example Over the last decade, reality shows have been the most popular programs on television. This phenomenon is not restricted to the United States or the UK, but is a universal phenomenon. There seems to be a correlation between the emergence of reality TV as a force, and the universal uptake of the internet (Butje, 2005). The X-Factor provides an interesting case study relating to the impact of reality TV on the lifestyle of people across the world. The show started in the UK and then spread to other countries. There are various franchises of the show in different countries across the world. The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of the X-Factor on the distribution of popular music. The best records relating to the show come from the UK since this is where the show has been running for the longest time. The other significant market for the show is the United States. This paper will focus on the impact of the show on distribution of music in the UK. ... In both shows, the participants undergo a series of auditions before reaching the screening stages where the finalists come up for intensive training and competition during the show. The basic idea behind the naming of the program and its whole gist is the discovery of the â€Å"X factor† that makes a musician tick. The show aims at discovering this intangible and indescribable factor in the contestants. b. Production Stages The show progresses through five stages. In the first stage, the producers carry out the primary auditions and gives contestants who will meet senior producers a â€Å"golden ticket†. The senior producers further identify contestants who proceed to the second stage. At the second stage, the judges audition the participants and classify them into three – the good ones who proceed to the next stage, the bad ones who are poor at singing, and the bizarre ones. This last category refers to those who stand out in some way that is neither good nor b ad. The successful contestants go through further processing at the â€Å"boot camp† and then at the judges houses where the judges get an opportunity to mentor them. Those who pass these two stages successfully proceed to the final stage that forms the main part of the TV show. It is at the end of this final stage that the show picks its winner. c. Key Players The most influential person in the X-Factor show is Simon Cowell. Cowell was part of the team that produced Pop Idol in America. He left the Pop Idol production team in order to start the X-Factor in the UK. Cowell is currently part of the inaugural team of judges in X-Factor USA. The other key personalities in X-Factor are the judges. Each season has a set of judges to take the show through. This makes them very influential

Adapting the Law to the Online Environment Essay Example for Free

Adapting the Law to the Online Environment Essay Formulating unique conception of the Web in â€Å"Weaving the Web† Berners-Lee emphasized that the intention was to create a system with â€Å"one fundamental property: it had to be completely decentralized.† In the vision of Berners-Lee: â€Å"That would be the only way a new person   somewhere could start to use it [the Web] without asking for access from anyone else†[1]. In the initial years of the Web’s functioning, Berner-Lee’s ideal of a highly decentralized universal system has been shared by tens of millions of people around the world who have appreciated and marveled at an invention that makes it unexpectedly easy for anyone with a computer to connect with anyone else with a computer, anywhere in the world, and to store and send information almost at will. But the Internet and the Web have also moved to the center of attention for governments, business leaders, lawyers and judges, police forces and military establishments, and anyone else dependent on the rule of law and authority structures in modern society. This is a result of the ability and tendency of Internet users to simply skirt or leap over many of the rules and institutions designed to maintain order in the pre- Internet world. Previously designed rules and legal structures enacted for slower-paced, relatively public tangible transactions in a world rimmed everywhere with borders (local, provincial, national) suddenly were challenged as never before when the Internet made it physically conceivable to carry out transactions of almost any kind in a manner simultaneously immediate, anonymous, inexpensive, and seemingly borderless. However, the process of certain democratization, overcriminalization and simply lazier-affair went beyond predictable limits – internet identity theft, credit card fraud, controversies with gambling and online porn reveal significant need to adapt the law to online environment, to analyze the specifics of cyber crimes and to create effective regulatory norms. Traditional Crime and Cyber Crime: Defining Boundaries From the primary perspective, the Internet imitates and, in most cases, runs parallel to what is often happening in normal life, therefore, it is no wonder that the law had to take account of this new parallel of real life. Hence the frequent appeals for â€Å"cyberlaw† or â€Å"cyberspace law.† Simultaneously, the imitation of life by the Internet does not completely transcend existing forms of activities in their entirety. Thus while electronic forms of information are the hallmark of the Internet and tend to undermine tangible media, or even render them obsolete, prior forms of information may coexist alongside them, albeit uneasily and suffering permanent corrosion. In so far as it is not possible to divine the extent to which the Net will generate parallel or independent forms of activity, the development of the appropriate law cannot be predictable. One has to determine in each specific sphere of activity how far the parallels go and how big or small the change over the normal may have been before working out the legal response. Consequently, the lack of time or resources cannot be the main reasons for the non-development of Internet law, as Edwards and Waelde suggest[2], although they recognize, somewhat indirectly that the Internet is still developing and so must the Internet law. Edwards and Waelde view â€Å"Internet Law† as being a result of (the usual) adaptation process that the law undergoes to catch up with new technological phenomena. They regard Internet Law as a necessity, contrary to the â€Å"core pragmatic† perception of those they refer to as looking upon the Internet as law-free.[3] And although the regulation of Internet content, transactions and activities seems to be logical and self-evident, the problems start appearing from the very definition of cyber crime. Black’s Law Dictionary defines a â€Å"crime† as a â€Å"social harm that the law makes punishable; the breach of a legal duty treated as the subject-matter of a criminal proceeding.†[4] Anglo-American crim ­inal law has for centuries possessed a set of definitions of â€Å"crimes† that encompass the varied categories of social harms humans can inflict on one another, for instance homicide, rape, robbery, arson, vandalism, fraud, child abuse, etc. According to Susan Brenner, crimi ­nal law does not typically differentiate offenses based upon the instrumentalities that are used in their com ­mission; we generally do not, for example, divide homi ­cide into â€Å"murder by gun,† â€Å"murder by poison,† â€Å"mur ­der by strangulation† and so on.[5] As Brenner points out, criminal law does treat the use of certain instrumentalities as â€Å"aggravat ­ing factors,† the use of which can result in an enhanced sentence upon conviction; this is how criminal law gen ­erally deals with using a firearm or other dangerous in ­strumentality in the commission of a crime.[6] This approach could, perhaps, have been taken with regard to cyber crime; we could simply define hacking as a type of trespass, analogous to real-world trespass. The â€Å"crime† of real-world trespass is gaining access to a physical space a building or a parcel of land without authorization. We could have pursued hacking in an analogous fashion, perhaps prosecuting it as tres ­pass and then characterizing the use of computer tech ­nology as an aggravating factor.[7] However, that is not the approach the law has taken and is tak ­ing to the use of computer technology to inflict social harms. What is emerging is a division between tradi ­tional crimes (trespass, burglary, theft, stalking, etc.) and cyber crimes. The latter encompass the use of com ­puter technology to commit either (a) social harms that have already been identified and outlawed generically (trespass, burglary, theft, stalking, etc.) or (b) new types of social harm that do not fall into traditional â€Å"crime† categories. It is necessary to adopt cyber crime-specific laws for the first category of conduct because, as Brennan’s hacking-trespass example illustrates, computer tech ­nology can be used to commit social harms in ways that do not fit comfortably into our existing offense categories. Another Brennan’s example of a denial of service attack[8] simply eludes conventional crimi ­nal law: it is not theft; it is not extortion; it is not black ­mail; it is not vandalism or trespassing or any other â€Å"crime† that has so far been defined. We must, therefore, define new â€Å"cyber crimes† to encompass denial of service attacks and other â€Å"new† varieties of criminal activity. In conceptualizing the varieties of cyber crime, it is helpful to divide them into three categories offered by Marc Goodman: crimes in which the computer is the target of the criminal ac ­tivity, crimes in which the computer is a tool used to commit the crime, and crimes in which the use of the computer is an incidental aspect of the commission of the crime.[9] When a computer is the target of criminal activity, the perpetrator attacks an innocent user’s computer or computer system either by gaining unlawful access to it or by bombarding it from outside. Cybercrimes that fall into this category include simple hacking (gaining access to a computer system or part of a computer system without autho ­rization) and aggravated hacking (gaining access to a computer system or part of a computer system without authorization for the purpose of committing a crime such as copying or altering information in the system). The target cybercrimes also include denial of service attacks and the dissemination of viruses, worms and other types of malware. The cyber crimes in this cate ­gory tend to be â€Å"new† crimes and therefore generally require new legislation. A computer or computer system can also be the in ­strument that is used to commit what is essentially a traditional crime. Cybercrimes in which a computer is the tool used to carry out criminal activity include online fraud, theft, embezzlement, stalking and harass ­ment, forgery, obstruction of justice and the creation or dissemination of child pornography. These are conven ­tional crimes, but it may be difficult to prosecute online versions of these crimes using existing substantive law; a jurisdiction’s theft statute may not, for example, en ­compass a â€Å"theft† of intangible property when the theft consists of copying the property, instead of appropri ­ating it entirely. In State v. Schwartz, Oregon State of Appeal held that â€Å"†¦by copying the passwords, defendant stripped them of their value.†[10] Jurisdictions may therefore find it necessary to amend their existing substantive criminal law to ensure that it can be used against these cy ber crime variants of tradi ­tional crimes. The last category consists of cyber crimes in which the use of a computer or computer system is incidental to the commission of the crime. This category includes, for example, instances in which a murderer uses a com ­puter to plan a murder or lure the victim to the murder scene; it can also include a blackmailer’s using a com ­puter to write extortion letters to his victim or a drug dealer’s using a computer to monitor his sales, inventory and profits. Here, the computer is merely a source of evidence and new substantive criminal legislation is generally not needed. The cases in this category can, however, require new law to resolve procedural issues such as the processes used in gathering evidence of cyber crimes. The basic federal cyber crime provision is 18 U.S. Code  § 1030; among other things, it criminalizes hacking, cracking, computer fraud and the dissemination of viruses, worms and other types of malware. The statute accomplishes this by directing its prohi ­bitions at conduct that targets a â€Å"protected computer† and then defining â€Å"protected computer† as a computer encompassed by federal jurisdiction.[11] Section 1030 defined a â€Å"protected computer† as either (a) a computer used exclusively by a financial institution or the federal government or used nonexclusively by a financial institution or the federal govern ­ment if the conduct constituting the crime affects its use by the financial institution or federal government; or (b) a computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication.[12] The notion of basing the statute’s prohibitions on conduct directed at a â€Å"protected computer† was introduced when  § 1030 was a mended in 1996; until then, it criminalized con ­duct that was directed at â€Å"federal interest computers,† i.e., computers used by the federal government or lo ­cated in more than one state.[13] The 1996 amendment broadened  § 1030’s reach; it now encompasses conduct directed at any computer con ­nected to the Internet. In 2001, the Patriot Act amended  § 1030 to make it clear that the statute can be used to prosecute criminal conduct which occurred outside the United States, a position the Department of Justice had long taken, for instance in case United States v. Ivanov. The Patriot Act expanded the definition of a protected computer to include com ­puters used in interstate or foreign commerce that are located outside the United States if they are â€Å"used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States.†[14] Problematic Aspects: Copyright, Child Pornography, Identity Fraud in Internet In order to address the problems in regulation of online environment more effectively, this paper aims to focus on several most problematic aspects of the issue – copyright violations, child pornography and identity theft or credit card fraud. Defined by Culberg, copyright is â€Å"a legal device giving the author (or holder of the copy ­right) the exclusive right to control the reproduction of his or her intellectual creation† for a specific period of time.[15] Copyright law in the United States derives from the U.S. Constitution and is therefore exclusively federal; states do not have the authority to legislate in this area.[16] Defenses to a charge of criminal copyright infringe ­ment are, first, that the offense cannot be prosecuted be ­cause the five year statute of limitations has run.[17] Other defenses are the â€Å"first sale† doctrine and an argument that the defendant did not act â€Å"will ­fully.† The first sale doctrine lets one who purchased a copyrighted work freely distribute the copy she bought.[18] Under the doctrine, however, the purchaser can only distribute the copy she bought; she cannot copy the purchased item and distribute the copies.[19] Since most computer software is distributed through licensing agreements, the first sale doctrine typically does not apply when someone is charged with software piracy.[20] With regard to the claim that a defendant did not act â€Å"willfully,† there is some ambiguity as what is required to show â€Å"willfulness.† Courts disagree as to whether it requires an â€Å"intent to copy or intent to infringe.†[21] The newest weapon in the federal arsenal of copy ­right statutes is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which added two sections to title 17 of the U.S. Code. Section 1201 makes it unlawful to circumvent measures used to protect copyrighted works, while  § 1202 makes it unlawful to tamper with copyright management in ­formation. Another new section, 17 U.S. Code  § 1204, creates criminal penalties for violating either sections 1201 or 1202 of the DMCA. The first criminal prosecu ­tion under the DMCA was filed in 2001 against Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian citizen, and his employer, Elcom ­soft, Ltd.[22] They were charged with violating 17 U.S. Code  § 1201(b) (l) (A), by trafficking in technology designed to circumvent the rights of a copyright owner, and with violating 17 U.S. Code  § 1201(b) (l) (C), by trafficking in technol ­ogy marketed for use in circumventing technology that protects the rights of a copyright owner. Another area that is a high priority in federal com ­puter crime prosecutions is child pornography. To un ­derstand the current state of the law outlawing child pornography, it is necessary to understand the First Amendment, which states, in part, that Congress is to make â€Å"no law abridging the freedom of speech.† The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted this part of the First Amendment as prohibiting the criminalization of any but a very few limited categories of speech: â€Å"[T]he First Amendment bars the government from dictating what we see or read or speak or hear. The freedom of speech has its limits; it does not embrace certain cat ­egories of speech, including defamation, incitement, obscenity, and pornography produced with real chil ­dren.†[23] From the critical as well statistical perspective, child pornography appears a relatively recent addi ­tion to the list. However, the rise of com ­puter technology raised concerns about â€Å"virtual† child pornography, i.e., pornography created using morphed or other artificial images of children, and in 1996 Congress adopted the Child Pornography Prevention Act, codified as 18 U.S. Code  § 2251. This Act extended the prohibitions on manufacturing, possess ­ing and distributing child pornography to encompass pornography that featured not only â€Å"real† children but what â€Å"appeared† to be a real child.[24] In 2001, a coalition of free speech advocates challenged these provisions of the federal child pornography statutes; they argued that because no â€Å"real† children are harmed in the creation of â€Å"virtual† child pornography, it does not fall under a category of speech that cannot constitutionally be criminalized.[25] When the case was before the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice argued that virtual child pornography can be criminalized because (a) pedophiles use it to seduce children into sexual acts and (b) it stimulates pedophiles into molesting chil ­dren.[26] The Supreme Court rejected these arguments and held that the prohibition of virtual child pornogra ­phy violated the First Amendment, so the statutory provisions at issue were unconstitutional and unenforce ­able.