School Lunches Essay Example for Free

School Lunches Essay School lunches today are not as hearty and delicious as they were back in the day. When I was a child my lunches were prepared at school by the cafeteria workers. Today, the cafeteria workers heat up the already prepared food. Todays food is prepared by means of nuking it in the microwave, or heated up in the oven. This could maybe be the cause of obesity with the unhealthy choices at lunchtime in the dining halls. When I was a child the mashed potatoes and turkey dinner were on of the best foods. I remembered all of my friends and I being so excited when turkey dinner day was approaching. The mashed potatoes were real with potatoes mashed not that power that you put milk in. The turkey was a real turkey, not fake or processed. That is not the case today. Just the about the weekend before Thanksgiving, I saw that turkey dinner was on the menu for school lunch. I thought yummy! I went down to the Miller Dining Hall for the turkey Dinner. I went to the front desk and the lady scanned my card. When this person started to tell me about the dreadful turkey dinner. She said, â€Å"This is not the Turkey Dinner that we had as kids. I just laughed at her thoughts and went in to try for myself. The turkey was a processed chunk of whitish colored meat. This meat was floating in brownish colored gravy. This gravy tasted like it was mostly water with maybe brown food coloring added in. Potatoes are not what this white fluffy stuff tasted like. The food tasted horrible, and the portions were limited. I can remember when I was a young boy in school; I never was hungry at any point throughout the day. The portions were healthy portions. You were given healthy portions of all the food that was offered for lunch. There was more variety in our choices. We had a choice of two vegetables and two of something else. I can remember when chicken nuggets were served we received six nuggets. The nuggets were along the size of the nuggets served at McDonalds. Today, the portions are more of micro baby sized portions. The portions are extremely small and college students are not satisfied throughout the day. Students today are allowed four mini nuggets with a choice of corn or carrots or soup. That is all good for students that eat salads. Not all students are salad eaters, and those kids are the ones that suffer throughout the day. Not only the non-salad eaters but students that are picky with there eating habits. Good reasons about school lunches is that who is vegan has their own little food bar with goodies that mare made just for them. You can make special orders about what food you can and cannot eat. If your allergic or you can’t have gluten in your meals. When you usually judge food on the smell and looks of the meal. But Miller Dining Hall that doesn’t work;(7) you just have to hope to God that it turns out good. Most of the food is fattening also. So let’s say you’re on a diet or a body builder, it’s really hard to maintain your fat in take at the dining hall because or the deep fried food already pre-made (6) food. I am fully aware that the schools are tying to cut down on obesity. The school is trying to cut the portions to not promote obesity. If I don’t have much for lunch or some days I say that lunch is nasty and I refuses to eat, I still have food at my dorm waiting. I would imagine that there are a few kids that have nothing waiting for them. These are the kids that I want to help. School lunches today will never be as good as they were. I think that the school could work a little harder to purchase food that tastes better, fixing homemade food, instead of preparing express food for the students. I feel that school lunch of the past would make a better alternative to the school lunch of today.

The Involvement Of Government In Community Sports Tourism Essay

The Involvement Of Government In Community Sports Tourism Essay Introduction: In this modern society, the development of sports has become one of the most significance aim for nations, especially for developing the professional sports and promoting participation of the mass sport. Governments establish the policies for promoting the development of sports in communities is good for the people health benefits and economic development. Therefore, the intervention of government into the community sports plays a critical role for the success of community sports. Background: Until late 1950s or early 1960s, numbers of countries have the purpose of government intervention in sport is to specific problems such as poor standards of health in urban areas (Houlihan, 1997). Nowadays, the purposes of the government intervention in sports have broadened, which is not just for providing people physical or psychological need, but also for the business purpose. Governments establish the public sport facilities in communities and urban in order to give more opportunities to participate in sports and develop the atmosphere of sports, in addition, the image of communities or urban will be improved apparently like small city Wimbledon as famous as tennis holding , and the international winter competitions in Innsbruck. In terms of economy, it can provide a lot of profits for nation, such as big events Olympic Games and World Cup, in addition to them, community sports can be a potential way to stimulate the development of economy as well, particular in the sport subcult ure, attract more people who come from foreign countries. Arguments for the reasons of government involvement: Having a famous community sport events, which enhance other industries development and such as tourism, hospitality, etc. In addition, the volunteer works play a critical role in the community sports competition, because they can help the operation of organization sports successfully. The development of elite sports can be connected to the community sports because it can cultivate ergastic talents from the community sport , which is good for the development of elite sports. Although communities sports have a promising prospect through the ways of government involvement, the negative aspects should not be ignored such as market fail, negative externalities and Tragedy of the Commons. In the social problems, the rates of crime might be increased. Hence, all of the negative aspects in the development of community sports that the governments have to overcome it. Benefits effects: Social benefits from community sports: People can get benefits from Participating in the community sports, which are the physical activity improving and health care reduction. In Australia, according to the data shows that people doing sports in communities can get health costs reduce $1.49 billion per year; and productivity gains by making the workforce healthier through increased physical activity could be as much as 1% of GDP (or $12 billion) per year. (Frontier Economics report, 2010). It can be seen that doing sports in communities that it is not only can get physical health, but also increasing the GDP. On the other hand, people can socialize with others during the competitions of community sports, in the meanwhile, the voluntary works can be enhanced by the opportunities of sports competition in the communities, which can develop the elite sports significantly. In Australia, government inputs the volunteers as value as almost $4 billion (Frontier Economics report, 2010). This is a worthwhile intervention by the Aus tralian government, because they can enhance the development of the elite sports and also reduce government spending. Therefore, governments play an important role to encourage people to engage in community sports, and increase the volunteer works. Positive externalities With the involvement of governments in community sport events, community sports have been strengthen, the holding of sport events can get benefits for host community, because the community sport is not just for the purposes of recreation and physical health, it has become common tool for local and regional economic development (Brien, 2007). There are several industries could be enhanced such as sport tourism industry, restaurants, hotels, nightspots and transportation facilities (Peter Tarlow, 2010). Sport tourism is most important industry, in Australia sport tourism might represent about 5% of the overall tourism market, equating to tourism expenditure of about $3 billion per annum (Commonwealth of Australia, 2000). government control the community sports development as the sport subculture is very important, because people to participate in the community sports is more likely to know the subculture of sports, and it is more attractive for foreigners. In Australia, sport occupies a central place within culture and identity, based on a long history of achievement across a wide range of sports (Commonwealth of Australia, 2000). Moreover, establish more infrastructures in community will enhance the development of tourism, because it is very important to retain tourists. In Australia, the Prime Minister, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP announced that 220 million funding for the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program (RLCIP) would be made available to build and modernize community facilities, including town halls, libraries, community centres, sports grounds and environmental infrastructure (Australian government, 2010). . Government involves in the community sport events and infrastructures have more changelings for the governments, because it decides other industries whether it develops rapidly or not. Sport policy in the community sports The development of community sports is not only for improving the regional the levels of regional and nation, also there is more meaningful that the relationship between countries can be improved due to the exchange between culture and sports. For example, in the early 1970s, in order to have a good thawing between East and West, USA sent a table-tennis to China, which is the first step to traditional diplomatic relations (Houlihan, 1991). Table-tennis can be a national identity of China, USA used the way of exchange between sport and culture in order to have sport culture exchange and promote the friendship between these two countries. Therefore, government strength the national identity started from the community sports, because they have basic level, and in order to have advancement for the development of nation identity. In Australian, the most representative sports are rugby, cricket and surfing, etc. government has support these sports increasingly in the communities. In Austra lian community sport policy also focus on children participation, which develops the grass roots sport, and encouraging all students to get healthy and physically active, which means it helps students combat obesity and preventable diseases later in life through the Australian Sport Commissions Active After-school Communities (Australia Sport Commission, 2010). Negative effects Negative externalities Government involve in community sports level has achieved a lot of positive outcomes. However, the negative outcomes in the community sport that governments have to overcome its. Having a good community sport will attract a large numbers of people to participate in, but it leads to environmental pollution raised. The governments have to solve this problem, because it can lose interesting among the spectators and participants. In addition, the hooligans and vandalism in community sport facilities are serious problems which result in public property loss, according to the Coffs Harbor City Council report that they started to strengthen measures to reduce vandalism in community sport facilities, and almost spent to the city more than $100,000 each year (Coffs Harbour City Council report, 2004). Hence, governments play an important role to reduce the vandalisms and hooligans. Naturally, increasing numbers of participants will attend because of the safety guarantee. With the development of community sports, increasing numbers of people participate in community sport because there are a lot of public sport facilities and services exist. As a result, the fitness industry will be threatened potentially, because fitness industry is beyond the budget for people who can get low incomes especially for the students, so have a good community sport facilities will give them more opportunities to do sports, even though the fitness industry has more professional guidance and facilities. Therefore, the government intervention in fitness industry is necessarily, and cultivates more talents for encouraging the development of fitness industry. In Canada, Fitness increased concern among physical educators and health lifestyle and the government supported $5million per annum to cultivate these kinds of talent (Houlihan, 1997). Tragedy of the Commons With the development of society, the use of land has become competitive because more and more companies and factories tend to use larger space to develop themselves, and also the land-ownership play an essential role for industry of real estate. It can be seen that increasing numbers of buildings have built for the business companies or government sectors. Therefore, establish more sport venues and sport infrastructures in public are not very easy, because the land area is limited. If establish in the country areas, it will lead to restrict the development of agriculture. Therefore, the development of community sports will be limited, because there is no much more space to do sports for people. Especially in China, the populations were increased rapidly during the last years, so the people who live in the city, the sport facilities in public is not enough due to the increasing of populations, naturally, the sport fields is not enough as well. Hence, the governments have to interventi on in space of community sport areas, which means give rights to broaden the space in sport areas, and more chances for people engaging in sports. Conclusion: Anyway, the governments involved in community sports for couple of reasons which include social benefits, positive and negative externalities, community sport promotion and Tragedy of the Commons for the community sports. So no matter what reasons are, that the governments intervene to the community sports for three main purposes which are people physical healthy, the development of nation economy and the elite sports. Specifically, the governments involvement is for encouraging and assisting the development of community sports. First of all, People doing community sport is not only reducing the health costs, but also having more opportunities to socialize. Secondly, to develop the volunteer works and community level sports are very important for the elite sports, because community sports is being a basic level, and there are many people who are cultivatable and promising for the elite sports. Volunteer works can be a construction of underpin for the elite sport levels. In terms of children health, governments encourage them to participate in community sports in order to reduce the diseases and obesity for them. In addition, Sport policy is good for promoting the nationals relationship such as sport and culture exchange between USA and China. Moreover, enhancing the development other industries take advantage of the opportunities of holding of the community sport events, like tourism and hospitalit y, etc. However, there are a lot of negative aspects in the community sports such as hooligans and vandalisms, environment pollution and Tragedy of the Commons, all of the negative aspects that governments have to cope with it as quickly as possible.

Hawthorne To Faulkner: The Evolution Of The Short Story Essay examples

Hawthorne to Faulkner: The Evolution of the Short Story Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner’s short stories â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† and â€Å"A Rose for Emily† use a moral to endorse particular ideals or values. Through their characters examination and evaluation of one another, the author’s lesson is brought forth. The authors’ style of preaching morals is reminiscent of the fables of Aesop and the religious parables of the Old and New Testament. The reader is faced with a life lesson after reading Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown:† you cannot judge other people. A similar moral is presented in Faulkner’s â€Å"A Rose for Emily.† The use of morals combined with elements of Romantic era writing show the stories of Hawthorne and Faulkner to be descendants both of fables and of Romance literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† tells the story of a young man who decides to league himself with the devil. Goodman Brown is a citizen of a typical town with its share of good people and not-so good people. Goodman Brown believed that he knew the inhabitants of the town fairly well. He knew Goody Cloyse, for example, to be â€Å"a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual advisor, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin† (598). He knew Deacon Gookin was a strict man of the Church and was always â€Å"bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council† (599). However, in his travels through the woods with the old man, Goodman Brown notices Goody Cloyse progressing down the path. â€Å"‘A marvel, truly that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall,’ he [Goodman Brown] said† (598). Just as he begins to have doubts about the woman’s pureness of heart, he comes across Deacon Gookin in the woods as well. As they are supposedly fine, upstanding citizens of the village, Goodman Brown has to wonder why they are traveling through the woods on the same path that he is taking with the devil. Afterwards, he is astonished to see not only these two upstanding citizens at Satan’s ceremony, but almost everyone else in the town as well. It is through his assumption that his fellow townspeople were good that Goodman Brown learns the story’s most important lesson: namely that you should not judge people at face value; anyone can put on airs, and his encountering of the devil’s ceremony emphasize... ...b ¾that he was not a marrying man† (461). Later in the story, Faulkner makes reference to Emily’s possible necrophilia, although no direct statement is ever made. Homosexuality and necrophilia would in no way be topics to be discussed in Hawthorne’s time. As a modern writer, Faulkner had a considerable amount of freedom in what he wrote, and this freedom is reflected in his work. The short story began as fables and parables that evolved into more complex psychological studies of virtues, ideals, and values. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† emphasizes these morals as he examines the inner workings of his main character’s thoughts as he encounters the devil and the townspeople. Faulkner also uses these techniques in his modern style of writing, however he tailors them to fit the more controversial issue of his generation while still maintaining a hold on the past generation he is examining. Over time, values and ideals stay the same, but the manner in which the technique is used evolves with current affairs and modern vocabulary. Works Cited Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Encouraging Diverse Enrollment in Womens Studies Courses :: Essays Papers

Encouraging Diverse Enrollment in Women's Studies Courses What stands in the way of a more diversity in Women’s Studies classes such as Feminism 101? The posing of this question is in and of itself a step to increasing diversity, for in the answers we find, we may also expose solutions to these roadblocks. I will therefore, be discussing causes of the current white, female, young, middle-class, and non-disabled majority in Women’s Studies’ class rosters. Once I've established what is causing a majority to be present, I will then attempt to answer those problems with possible solutions, or at least steps in the right direction. Cross-racial hostility keeps minority races from interacting effectively with each other. Racism in general separates the white feminist community from everyone else. Internalized sexism tells us that we are just women, prone to bickering and infighting, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Heterosexism and lesbian bating (accusing a woman of being a lesbian if she is independent and freethinking) keep potential women’s studies students far away from our classrooms. Everyone is held back by the labels which separate us. Now I don't agree that these are the only oppressive forces dividing the feminist population and keeping new people from joining, but I would postulate that these conflicts function the same in Women's Studies as they do in the feminist movement in general. These are the central expressions of oppression that make cohesive, equal, cooperation seem beyond our grasp. bell hooks, a black feminist writer, wrote in her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, "Women in lower-class and poor groups, particularly those who are non-white, would not have defined women’s liberation as women gaining social equality with men, since they are continually reminded in their everyday lives that all women do not share a common social status." (19). This passage contains they key that answers the question of why people of color are not represented equally in our women’s studies classes with white people. Because Women's Studies (and Feminism) had been cast as the arena of white women, who had the time and money to start the movement, women of color are less likely to think the classes are relevant to them. And they are overwhelmingly female. How then, armed with our understanding of this problem, can we get a more racially diverse student body interested in what Women's Studies has to offer?

Empathy: Emotion and People Essay

All of us have had compaction for one thing or another in our lives. Our sympathetic feelings toward something is empathy. It is a basic requirement for all human beings. It is natural for us to have an empathetic response towards things. Empathy is a very powerful tool towards our emotional distress. It is hard for us to resist the power of empathetic feelings. When we feel empathy we feel other peoples emotional distresses. We try to feel sympathetic towards the situation or the person. When empathy comes into play we try to solve the problem and take the other persons perspective on the problem. An empathetic person feels what the other person is feeling and why. One can be empathetic towards fictional situations and characters. Empathy is an emotion that we strive to satisfy even if it means risking our lives or being very uncomforadable. Empathy is an emotion shown in people as young as twelve months. Our empathy builds as we grow older. An important aspect of empathy is to be able to consider the viewpoint of another person. This is also known as perspective taking. This is why people risk their lives to save someones life or just save someone from harm. Usually people who risk their lives to save people are very empathetic of people. People who posses a low level of empathy towards people tend to not take as much risks for the sake of solving a problem. But some people find it quite necessary to satisfy their empathetic emotions. This breed of people obviously take more risks . When you imagine how another person perceives an event and how he or she feels as a result, this is called taking an â€Å"imagine other† perspective. When we see on the news that an innocent bystander was harmed, we take an â€Å"imagine other† perspective. This makes us feel empathy for the person, even though we may have never heard or seen of the person before until the news reported it. â€Å"Imagine self† is when one imagines themselves personally being in the situation. Both â€Å"imagine other† and â€Å"imagine self† perspectives go hand in hand. When one feels for a persons problems and tries to imagine how he or she feels, one tends to also imagine themselves in the same situation. These perspectives bring out the empathy that we possess. Those who take the â€Å"imagine other† perspective experience relatively pure empathy that motivates altruistic behavior. The â€Å"imagine self† perspective also produces empathy but it is accompanied by feelings of distress that arouse egoistic  motives that can actually interfere with people being unselfish about their thoughts. Another perspective of empathy is fantasy. This is when our empathy is for something that is not real. This is a very occurring situation to most people. People act emotionally to the joys and sorrows of an imaginary person or thing. When people watch a sad movie, people sometimes cry and feel for the person, even though the situation is not real. When we read a sad or depressing book or hear about a sad fair tale, we take the imagine other and imagine self perspectives to a fantasy situation just as we would a real life situation. The only difference being is you can’t physically put yourself into position to help the fantasy situation, as with the real life situations, one can physically help the situation. We might think that children have the tendency to have empathetic thoughts about fantasy situations more than adults. This is not true. Adults experience the same kind of empathetic feelings towards fantasy situations. When I went to see the movie TITANIC two summers ago, I observed that the whole audience was crying. Women, children and even men were crying. Even though the movie was a fantasy people still felt for the characters. Humans differ greatly in their ability to experience empathy. Some people are highly empathetic and feel distress whenever they encounter someone else is distressed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s real or fictional. People who are highly empathetic more motivated to avoid social disapproval or feelings of guilt. Some people are not very empathetic at all. These people are unaffected by anyone’s emotional state but their own.. People with low levels of empathy will avoid helping people because the costs are high and they can escape responsibilities easily. Genes account for about a third of the differences in people in affective empathy. Presumably, learning counts for the remaining differences in empathy. Our experiences in our life help us learn either affective empathy or non-affective empathy. The kind of experiences that are involved in our ability to have affective empathy is by a mother’s warmth and by clear and forceful messages from parents telling how others are affected by hurtful behavior. When parents discuss emotions with their children, the better their ability to empathize becomes. When  parentsw are abusive or use anger to control their kids, their ability to empathize with the world drops tremendously. Women tend to empathize with the world more than men. This could either be because of genetics or because women have different socialization experiences than men. We tend to be more empathetic to people who are most like ourselves. This happens because we can relate to people who are much like ourselves. When disasters occur similarity to self comes into play. If one has been involved in a similar disaster, one is more likely to be empathetic towards the situation.. Need for approval is an important aspect of helping behavior. People who want to be praised for their good deeds generally empathize with the world quite well. Empathy is higher in people who help with emergency situations. People who are very altruistic descibe themselves as being very responsible, socialized, conforming tolerant , self controlled, and wanting to make a good impression. Obviously people who help others in emergency situations are believe that it is just the right thing to do. People that have empathy for others see themselves as socially responsible for people in emergencies. To look the other way is not being responsible. One can’t say that someone with low levels of empathy would not help somebody in a particular emergency situation. It is just more likely people that have little empathy will look for someone else to help before they do. It also depends on the severity of the situation at hand. It is easy to see how the media reacts to how people react during emergency situations in today’s society. When bystanders fail to act, the media focuses on the lack of concern among uncaring people. When a bystander does to the emergency the media emphasises on how an ordinar person can suddenly become a hero to the public. This gives people with empathy all the more reason to act and give people with little empathy a good reason to at least try and do something for the sake of not being looked down on by the media. Empathy is a very powerful emotion that many of us possess. It is a very natural emotion that even infants have. Empathy comes in many forms. Taking an â€Å"imagine other† perspective and the â€Å"imagine self perspective is something we do everyday in one form or another. Empathy comes in many forms. We empathize for the smallest things. Some of us are not very  empathetic at all. This is seen as a bad thing by today’s society and media. But people with low empathy doesn’t necessarily mean they are cruel people. The capacity for empathy plays a crucial role in differentiating those who behave in prosocial behavior and those who do not. It is safe to say that people who are concerned with their own personal welfare and not others are unempathetic people to our society. We must remember that empathy is present in all of us. It just depends on the person and their life experiences whether they will show empathy for situations.

Hang It Up Essay

Should students bring electronic devices to school? Some people agree with that, and some others are not; opinions are widely divided. In the article â€Å"Hang It Up,† by Jesse Scaccia, students who have electronic devices in class can affect their performance. Scaccia gives us a couple of examples. First, children have cellphones are distracted. Also, the reason children want to take cellphones to school is that cells make them look cool. Lastly, some parents say that they need to keep in touch with their children for an emergency. I strongly agree with the author when he states that cell phone use distracts students’ attention. First, I believe that cell phone use in class is distractions because it may cause children fail the class and not having a bright future. Most people do not have self-control, especially children. As the author mentions, â€Å"students fail is because of distractions in the classroom.† Children take cells will be distracted in classroom; by the end of semester, they will get low grade or fail the class because they do not have enough knowledge. After several of failures, students will put themselves become bad students, so a bad student may not go to college; it directly affects their future. However, if students do not have electronic devices distract them, they will learn more in class, and it will affect them in a positive future. Also, the bad habits will formed when children use cell phone since they are young. Children have electronic devices may develop bad habit which is disrespectful to others. For example, my friend and I ate at a restaurant last week. There was a couple sitting next to us, the boy was sitting there and playing with his cellphone, and had no conversation with his girlfriend, even his girlfriend complained to him. So, his bad habit probably formed when he was young. Otherwise, if he could put his cellphone away and talk to his girlfriend, that could be a nice dinner for them. As you can see, children take electronic devices to class is not only affect their grade in school; but also affects their habits in the future, and have a good habits is your first step towards success.

Aftershocks Are Not Afterthoughts

Aftershocks, those who live through major earthquakes often say, are worse than the main shock in their own way. At least the main shock took them by surprise and was over fairly soon, in less than a minute usually. But with aftershocks, people are stressed already, dealing with disrupted lives and cities. They expect aftershocks at any minute, day or night. When a building is damaged by the main shock, aftershocks can take it down—maybe when youre inside cleaning it up. No wonder Susan Hough, the government seismologist who gets in the news whenever temblors do, calls aftershocks ghosts of earthquakes past. The Duration of Aftershocks I can show you some aftershocks right now: just look at the map of recent earthquakes for the San Simeon area of California. In any given week, there are aftershocks there from the 2003 San Simeon earthquake. And east of Barstow  you can still see a trickle of aftershocks from the October 1999 Hector Mine earthquake. Indeed, some scientists argue that aftershocks may last for centuries in places, like continental interiors, where plate motions that build up stresses in the crust are very slow. This makes intuitive sense, but careful studies using long historical catalogs will need to be done. The Trouble with Aftershocks Two things about aftershocks make them troublesome. First, they arent restricted to the spot where the main shock occurred, but can strike tens of kilometers away—and, say, if a magnitude 7 quake was centered out beyond the suburbs but one of its magnitude 5 aftershocks happened right underneath City Hall, the littler one might be the worse of the two. This was the case with the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake of September 2010 and its large aftershock five months later. Second, aftershocks dont necessarily get smaller as time passes. They get fewer, but sizable ones can happen long after most of the little ones have ended. In Southern California, this phenomenon aroused so much concern after the Northridge quake of 17 January 1994 that Hough wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times on the subject three full years later. Scientific Uses of Aftershocks Aftershocks are scientifically interesting because they are good ways to map the underground fault zone that ruptured in the main shock. (Heres how they look for the cases of Northridge.) In the case of the 28 September 2004 Parkfield quake, you can see that the first hour of aftershocks alone outlines the ruptured zone quite well. Aftershocks are also interesting because theyre fairly well behaved—meaning that they have a detectable pattern, unlike all other quakes. The definition that scientists use for an aftershock is any seismic event occurring within one rupture-zone length of a main shock and within the time it takes for seismicity to fall off to what it was before the main shock. This body of quakes fits three mathematical rules, more or less. The first is the Gutenberg-Richter relation, which says that as you go down one magnitude unit in size, aftershocks increase in number by about ten times. The second is called Baths law, which says that the largest aftershock is, on average, 1.2 magnitude units smaller than the main shock. And finally, Omoris law states that aftershock frequency decreases by roughly the reciprocal of time after the main shock. These numbers differ a bit in different active regions depending on their geology, but theyre close enough for government work as the saying goes. So seismologists can advise the authorities immediately after a large earthquake that a certain area can expect X probabilities of aftershocks of Y sizes for Z period of time. The U.S. Geological Surveys STEP project produces a daily map of California with the current risk of strong aftershocks for the next 24 hours. Thats as good a forecast as we can make, and probably the best possible given that earthquakes are inherently unpredictable. Aftershocks in the Quiet Zones Still to be determined is how much Omoris law varies beyond active tectonic settings. Large earthquakes are rare away from plate boundary zones, but a 2000 paper in Seismological Research Letters by John Ebel showed that aftershocks of these intra-plate earthquakes could last for several centuries. One of those was the 1663 Charlevoix, Quebec, earthquake; another was the 1356 earthquake in Basel, Switzerland. In the American Midwest, those would be prehistoric events. In 2009 Seth Stein and Mian Liu argued in Nature that these quiet settings seem to slow everything down, with stress increasing slowly and aftershock sequences lasting longer. They also noted that where the historical record is short, such as in the United States, it may be a mistake to judge the degree of earthquake hazard from events that are actually aftershocks rather than background seismicity. This knowledge may not help you cope with your nerves if you live in an aftershock zone. But it does give you some guidelines as to how bad things will be. And more concretely, it can help engineers judge how probable it is that your new building will be hit by significant aftershocks over the next few years and plan accordingly. PS: Susan Hough and her colleague Lucy Jones wrote an article on this subject for Eos, the house journal for the American Geophysical Union, in November 1997. The U.S. Geological Survey scientists closed by saying that we would like to propose that the phrase just an aftershock be hereafter banned from the English language. Tell your neighbors.

Compare and contrast Toni Cade Bambaras The Lesson and ZZ Packers Brownies Free Essay Example, 1000 words

â€Å"That this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, dont it? † (Bambara). This question by Sugar, friend of Sylvia sums up the lesson the children learnt that day. Sylvia also recognizes the fact but she hesitates to express it. On the other hand Laura in the story â€Å"Brownies† puts across her feelings frankly. She lived in an area where she never felt the presence of whites in her world, â€Å"When you lived in the south suburbs of Atlanta, it was easy to forget about whites. Whites were like those baby pigeons: real and existing, but rarely seen or thought about†. (Packer). She is disturbed by the threatening of white girls by her friends when she comes to know that they are mentally handicapped. It is at this moment she realizes how much the blacks have suffered at the hands of whites, she apprehends the reason behind her friends’ actions for they have been so abused that they don’t want to miss a chance to affront the whites. We will write a custom essay sample on Compare and contrast Toni Cade Bambara's The Lesson and ZZ Packer's Brownies or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Another event that shaped her belief is when her father has asked the Mennonite family to paint his porch. Laurel’s father later told her that he did this as it was the only chance for him to make the whites work for the blacks. The role of an adult, her father was significant in influencing Laurel’s thoughts about racism. In the same the way the role of Miss Moore was decisive in making Sylvia realize the pathetic state of her life, â€Å"Where we are is who we are, Miss Moore always pointin out†. (Bambara). Miss Moore made her aware of the gap that existed between lives of the whites and the blacks. Differences The first and foremost difference between the two protagonists is their willingness to accept the realities of their world. Sylvia feels the difference between her life and life of the whites in terms of wealth but she never reveals it, â€Å"And somethin weird is goin on, I can feel it in my chest†. (Bambara). She keeps to herself what she is thinking after returning from the toy shop whereas Laurel divulges her insight, when in the end she tells that there is â€Å"something mean in the world†. (Packer). Laurel becomes conscious of the fact that the blacks have been maltreated by the whites to such an extent that the blacks are suspicious of all the whites. She understands the true meaning of racism and how one race is mistreating another race just because the color of their skin is dark. Sylvia also wonders how these whites are able to live lavishly when they are struggling to meet their basic needs, â€Å"Who are these people that spend that much for performing c lowns and $1000 for toy sailboats