Free Essays on Short Term Choices, Long Term Repercussions

Most people can pinpoint one or two times in their lives when the choices they made had long term repercussions. Such is the case for Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s book, Atonement. In the book, the concept of maturity is treated masterfully by the shift of a character’s perceptions, belief systems and social realities. Bryony Tallis is the younger sister whose literary skills are often belittled by her older sister Celia. As the book opens, she creates a play for her cousins and herself to perform. The family’s dynamics are at once set as the reader finds the mother remote and as distant as the father, who seems to spend most of his nights in London, rather then at home. As the evening’s events unwind, the small details and insignificant happenings of the day are spoken about, but the undercurrent of tension is building. Later, one of the cousins is assaulted on the grounds of the house and Briony, still stinging from an insult earlier, tells the authoriti es that it was Robbie, their childhood friend and Cecilia’s boyfriend. Briony witnesses her sister strip down to her undergarments and dive into a family fountain with Robbie looking on. Not comprehending what was going on between the two, she goes down to the fountain after the two have left. It is at this point that she begins to glimpse a bit of her future, and cleverly, McEwen foretells the tale. Briony had her first, weak intimation that for her now, it can no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passed between the people that she knew. Though she does not understand what has happened, her imagination fills in what she supposes to be the gaps. It is this assumption that leads to the terrible culmination of events which destroys them all. Briony decides she has witnessed a scene that is sinister; that Robbie has somehow forced her sister to get naked. In this first section of the book, the reader is treated to the s ... Free Essays on Short Term Choices, Long Term Repercussions Free Essays on Short Term Choices, Long Term Repercussions Most people can pinpoint one or two times in their lives when the choices they made had long term repercussions. Such is the case for Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s book, Atonement. In the book, the concept of maturity is treated masterfully by the shift of a character’s perceptions, belief systems and social realities. Bryony Tallis is the younger sister whose literary skills are often belittled by her older sister Celia. As the book opens, she creates a play for her cousins and herself to perform. The family’s dynamics are at once set as the reader finds the mother remote and as distant as the father, who seems to spend most of his nights in London, rather then at home. As the evening’s events unwind, the small details and insignificant happenings of the day are spoken about, but the undercurrent of tension is building. Later, one of the cousins is assaulted on the grounds of the house and Briony, still stinging from an insult earlier, tells the authoriti es that it was Robbie, their childhood friend and Cecilia’s boyfriend. Briony witnesses her sister strip down to her undergarments and dive into a family fountain with Robbie looking on. Not comprehending what was going on between the two, she goes down to the fountain after the two have left. It is at this point that she begins to glimpse a bit of her future, and cleverly, McEwen foretells the tale. Briony had her first, weak intimation that for her now, it can no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passed between the people that she knew. Though she does not understand what has happened, her imagination fills in what she supposes to be the gaps. It is this assumption that leads to the terrible culmination of events which destroys them all. Briony decides she has witnessed a scene that is sinister; that Robbie has somehow forced her sister to get naked. In this first section of the book, the reader is treated to the s ...

How to Setup and Use SSH on a Raspberry PI

How to Setup and Use SSH on a Raspberry PI SSH is a secure method of logging onto a remote computer. If your Pi is networked, then this can be a handy way of operating it from another computer or just copying files to or from it. First, you have to install the SSH service. This is done by this command: sudo apt-get install ssh After a couple of minutes, this will be complete. You can start the daemon (Unix name for a service) with this command from the terminal: sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start This init.d is used to start other daemons. For example, if you have Apache, MySQL, Samba etc. You can also stop the service with stop or restart it with restart. Have It Start at Bootup To set it up so the ssh server starts every time the Pi boots up, run this command once: sudo update-rc.d ssh defaults You can check that it worked by forcing your Pi to reboot with the reboot command: sudo reboot Then after rebooting try to connect to it using Putty or WinSCP (details below). Powering Down and Rebooting Its possible to corrupt your SD card with power offs before it halts. The result: reinstall everything. Only power down once you have fully shut down your Pi. Given its low power usage and little heat given off, you could probably leave it running 24x7. If you want to shut it down, use the shutdown command: sudo shutdown -h now Change -h to -r and it does the same as sudo reboot. Putty and WinSCP If youre accessing your Pi from the command line of a Windows/Linux or Mac PC then use Putty or the commercial (but free for private use) Tunnelier. Both are great for general browsing around your Pis folders and copying files to or from a Windows PC. Download them from these URLs: Putty Download PageWinSCP Download PageTunnelier: Powerful free to use Windows SFTP etc. Your Pi needs to be connected to your network before you use Putty or WinSCP and you need to know its IP address. On my network, my Pi is on 192.168.1.69. You can find yours by typing in /sbin/ifconfig and on the 2nd line of the output, youll see inet addr: followed by your IP address. For Putty, its easiest to download putty.exe or the zip file of all the exes and put them in a folder. When you run putty it pops up a configuration Window. Enter your IP address in the input field where it says Host Name (or IP address) and enter pi or any name there. Now click the save button then the open button at the bottom. Youll have to login into your pi but now you can use it as if you were actually there. This can be quite useful, as its far easier to cut and paste long text strings in via a putty terminal. Try running this command: ps ax That shows a list of processes running on your pi. These include ssh (the two sshd) and Samba (nmbd and smbd) and many others. PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND858 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd866 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/nmbd -D887 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/smbd -D1092 ? Ss 0:00 sshd: pi [priv] WinSCP We find it most useful to set it up in two screen mode rather than in explorer mode but its easily changed in the Preferences. Also in preferences under Integration/Applications change the path to the putty.exe so you can easily jump into putty. When you connect to the pi, it starts at your home directory which is /home/pi. Click on the two .. to view the folder above and do it once more to get to the root. You can see all of the 20 Linux folders. After youve used a terminal for a while youll see a hidden file .bash_history (not that well hidden!). This is a text file of your command history with all the commands youve used before so copy it, edit out the stuff you dont want and keep the useful commands somewhere safe.

The Mexican narcotrafficking problem Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Mexican narcotrafficking problem - Case Study Example The cartel has grown so big that Sinaloa’s infamous leader Joaquin â€Å"El Chapo† Guzman has assumed a mythical proportion as an outlaw indicating that government’s approach to tackle the cartel and drug issue is not suitable. To make any strategy and state intervention initiative effective, the state needs to understand first how NTO’s became so large and wealthy and to understand their strategies how they develop their markets and fight their competitors. Knee jerk approach such as former president Enrique Calderon’s military solution is not suitable to solve the issue. In understanding the business models of NTO, they also need to identify its weaknesses and vulnerabilities. One of which was already identify which it cannot operate without the huge income from trafficking which was needed to fund arms procurement and increased personnel numbers. Having this understanding of how NTOs and cartels work and their business model, the state can appropriately formulate their own strategy that is effective and durable. This understanding will also allow them to act preemptively in the future making it more suitable to tackle Mexico’s drug, cartel and violence problem. Suitable counter-NTO strategies should be acceptable to all stakeholders and it is imperative that the state has the appropriate capabilities. The desired approach must be suitable to the problem with the direct effect of curbing if not stopping NTOs. Present reality indicates that the previous approach in solving the NTO problem is not suitable. Mexican President Enrique Peà ±a Nieto has only limited years in tenure to deliver visible results in tackling the NTO and violence problem in Mexico if he is to be reelected. His adviser already knows that military solution alone will not solve the problem. The paper also mentioned the law enforcement

Teams and Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Teams and Leadership - Essay Example Ideally, a leader is capable of creating a vision for the organization and has the ability to inspire the people around him. However, these important traits are usually not present in leaders at a very high level. Most leaders in practice in most practice are working at a demanding operational level that requires a specific set of knowledge and skills—and therefore the virtuous traits are often ruled out. It will be very helpful of to consider leadership in management. It will serve in the best interest of the organization (Trent 2004). Forming the right team is crucial in attaining success in the performance of tasks because research shows that the composition of a team and the complexity of the tasks are directly related to performance. This was of particular concern the study of Higgs, Plewnia, and Ploch (2005). The authors used the Belbin Team Role model to operationalize team diversity and used questionnaires to assess task complexity and performance. The results of the study demonstrated that there is a clear relationship between team compositions (which is related to diversity), complexity of task and team performance. Complex tasks are positively related to a diversified team. However, it is negatively related for straightforward tasks. This implies that it will be beneficial to consider the complexity of the task when forming a cohesive team. The mix of the individuals is important because the talents of a diversified group are more likely to cover wider tasks. The degree of complexity will give clues on w hat will comprise the mix of individuals to be included in the team in terms of diversity of personal traits. These insights will provide a helpful framework in establishing high performance teams. There is also correlation between team constraint and team performance. Constraint is defined as the quantitative measure that pertains to the pattern of connections between contacts in

The Nature of the Bureaucracy Essay Example for Free

The Nature of the Bureaucracy Essay Many Americans today have a negative perception of the federal bureaucracy. They consider it a huge, immovable object that hinders progress and intrudes on their lives. Most Americans believe the federal bureaucracy has grown in the last few decades to an enormous size. This is a misperception. Since the 1960s, the size of the federal bureaucracy has been very stable. By contrast, however, state and local bureaucracies have grown steadily since World War II, reflecting the increasing extent to which federal programs are administered by the states. Most Americans also feel that the federal bureaucracy is very wasteful. Whistle-blowers and reports of abuses fuel this perception of waste, which does sometimes occur. The late Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin was famous for his Golden Fleece awards given to departments and individuals for wasteful spending he found in the bureaucracy. Senator Proxmires focus on spending abuses helped end many wasteful and unwise practices. Writing in the first decades of the twentieth century, the German sociologist Max Weber theorized on governments, institutions, and bureaucracies. Weber believed that bureaucracies function to implement the policies of elected government in a rational, efficient, non-partisan manner. He felt that workers in bureaucracies develop specific expertise and technical knowledge that could not be acquired in the relatively short tenure of elected or appointed policy makers. He also felt that they possess critical knowledge about the history and practice of their agency within the larger framework of government and society and that they provide continuity from one administration to the next, which is essential for an orderly transfer of power under rule of law. Leadership may change, but the engine of government does not falter on account of having a new driver in a government that possesses a strong bureaucracy. Weber identified the structure of a bureaucracy as a hierarchical pyramid with levels of rank and power and a single director at the top. He said bureaucratic jobs tend to require specialized knowledge, such as accounting, statistics, economics, or health care. Obtaining a position within a bureaucracy is ideally based on merit for performing the job rather than on other factors, such as being a friend or relative of someone with pull or being owed a political or financial favor. Modern theorists feel that while Weber made some good observations about bureaucracies, he did not sufficiently address the manner in which bureaucracies function in government. Bureaucracies tend to resist change because change uses resources and introduces unknown elements into the system. For this reason, a bureaucracy is often at odds with elected officials and their appointees, who by contrast often get elected or appointed on a promise to implement change. To minimize the effects of leaders who come and go, a bureaucracy will tend to seek power of its own and uses its power, for the most part, to maintain the status quo. When asked to change, bureaucracies often respond with a request for more people and resources rather than with a plan to restructure or become more efficient. In this way, bureaucracies can become large, cumbersome, and complex if they are not required to account for their own practices. Bureaucracies tend to be monopolistic because it makes little sense to have more than one government agency performing the same function. Complaints about bureaucratic monopolies are generally the same as for corporate monopolies—without competition or some strict means of regulation, a monopoly becomes inefficient at best and tyrannical at worst. Government bureaucratic monopolies can have competition from private sources. The U.S. Post Office, Amtrak, and NASA are all government monopolies. Until recent decades, the U.S. Post Office was by law the only carrier of mail and parcels. Private companies that felt they could deliver packages at a profit lobbied for a change in the law to allow pr ivate carriers. Now there are several parcel delivery companies that are very successful and profitable.

Media Role in the Presidential Election Essay -- Politics Government

Analyzing elections The Medias rules of an election change the face of the election itself. They are, if you may, the gatekeepers of information, in a time where the information we get will form the issues of the election. If the news tells us tomorrow that the stock market dropped 410 points today but did not tell us that the U.S. embassy in Iraq was bombed then what do you think we will care about the most. Each channel of media has its own biased. Fox news is leaning toward the right and CNN is leaning toward the left. Its near impossible today to hear a news story or coverage without any spin. Old papa bear (Bill O'reily) says that his show is the no spin zone but is it really, even after he pretty much cussed out Barack and the king (Larry King) does the same to McCain. The media has so much power in society that they could pretty much could decide who will be the next president. Not only do they directly influence the opinion of voters but they also can decide on who to give the resources to or basically who they think is more likely to win. The media can be hostile to the candidate like they were to Howard Dean in 2004 or they can boost them like they did to Reagan. Obama has seemed to play this media like Babe Ruth plays Baseball, and McCain, well, he played them like Shaq plays soccer. Obama hit the hearts of many Americans as well as the media by tapping into their hearts and pulling out that desire to change. McCain preached this too but not till later in his campaign and he stayed in his parties guidelines when he did it. Obama went out of his parties guidelines in some ways and the media saw him as a nonpartisan contender (when he really was not). He gave many inspirational speeches in which the pu... ... of people did not see that McCain played the sex card but rather they were just happy to see a Woman in the white house. We do not really know who our candidates are and what they stand because the media is fixated on polls, controversy and spin instead of the issues. There were more stories about what Palin did today with her kids than what she wanted to do with foreign policy. One might say that media might have rigged this election for Obama because they always displayed his inspirational speeches while emphasizing on McCains bad side. However if you really look into it, the media actually never even talked about McCain and the Keating 5 scandal which could have ruined him. I don't really think the media rigged the election although they did influence many people. The media needs to stop focusing on controversy and entertainment and talk about the issues.

Analysis Of Sonnets 64 And 73 Essay

William Shakespeare is one of the greatest playwrights of all time. It is also important, however, to remember and to study his sonnets. The sonnets are separated into two groups, 1-126 and 127-54. All of them are love poems of some sort, whether addressed to a young man or the infamous â€Å"Dark Lady.† It is important to compare and analyze the sonnets, and to see the similarities between them. The purpose of this essay is to compare sonnets 64 and 73, and show that although it is easy to come to the conclusion that they are sorrowful in tone and negative in orientation, they are truly positive and life affirming. These two have been chosen because they are similar in this and other respects. Before discussing the similarities, however, it is necessary to briefly describe what each sonnet is about. Sonnet 64 is a cry against the inevitable arrival of all that wears down even the most firm powers that exist in the world. The speaker stresses that even the most sturdy monuments are bound to the ravages of time: â€Å"When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced/ The rich, proud cost of outworn buried age,/ When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d/ and brass eternal slave to mortal rage;† and so on. It is clear that the speaker finds time an enemy, capable of eroding any efforts to persevere. Time is also the enemy to the desire to be with a loved one forever. In this sonnet, the speaker finds himself at the mercy of his opponent, without any means of facing Time with any success. He almost abandons the love that he feels because he knows that it will eventually fall victim to time. There is no difference between the love that is felt by the speaker and the other durable things in the world, such as the â€Å"kingdom of the shore†, and the â€Å"firm soil.† But even these things will erode over time. The only option the speaker has is to mourn what he will one day lose. The seventy-third sonnet is also about the response of the speaker to the fact that Time detracts from the endurance of man and his response to the things that make him feel loved. Shakespeare starts with a discussion of the process by which the things that surround man first start to erode and fall as a result of the passing of time. The speaker is equating himself to  autumn and the twilight of day. He finds himself lying on the ashes of his youth, and a victim to the passage of time. He cannot sustain the love that he feels, and is consumed by both time and love, as they once sustained him. The speaker is arguing that the fate of man is to be consumed by the very things that are his life-blood: love and time. â€Å"In me thou seest the glowing of such fire/ That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,/ As the deathbed whereupon it must expire/ Consumed with that which it was nourished by. The similarities between these two poems are evident. Basically, they are both about the speaker’s sense of helplessness and loss in the face of the passage of time. The theme of loss, and the recurrent theme of impotence when faced with passing time and its effects, is evident in both poems. However, these are not necessarily sad or defeatist poems. The speaker does not submit to the passage of time by saying that he will not be able to feel or love or even live anymore. He is not depressed to the point of being unable to do anything. Rather, the speaker feels that man must continue to love, and to live, despite the fact that life will end, and love will eventually subside as time takes over the human spirit. Although â€Å"Time will come and take my love away,† the speaker is not saying that man must simply not love at all. He is saying that man must eventually give in to the effects of time, but that in the time that does exist for man, it is possible to love, and to sustain oneself with that love. These poems, which sound sad or even lacking in spirit, are actually affirmative of the desire toward love and life: â€Å"This thou perceivest, which makes my love more strong,/ to love that well, which thou must leave ere long.† Both of these sonnets can be interpreted as encouraging the reader to grasp the fact that love can be sweeter and more enduring if the individual realizes that time will eventually take that love away. It is even possible to claim that, because all love will end, man should state his love early, and live that love to the fullest extent possible. In this sense, each of these poems can be understood to be positive, and life affirming. At first reading, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the poems are  sorrowful in tone and negative. However, after closer analysis, it is obvious that the speaker is ultimately celebrating life, and urging the embrace of all aspects of it, whether they result in suffering or pleasure. The tone is sorrowful when the speaker comes face to face with the inevitable, but the fact remains that the inevitable outcome, which is loss, and the passage of time, is part of what makes the intensity of love, and the quality of life, so memorable and so pleasurable.