Gothic literature Essay

In response to the question â€Å"is gothic literature purely escapist? † considering Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Walpole’s novel The Castle of Ontranto, which is recognized as pretty much establishing the genre, the answer is yes. Castle of Ontranto Brief Plot summary The plot of Castle begins full tilt as Conrad, son of Manfred of house Otranto, is crushed by a giant helmet on his wedding day, also his birthday. Because of the marriage’s political connections, Manfred decides to divorce his wife, Hippolita, and marry Conrad’s betrothed, Isabella. Amid speculations about an â€Å"ancient prophecy† claiming â€Å"That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it,† Manfred’s second union is disrupted by a series of supernatural events involving many oversized limbs, ghosts, mysterious blood, and a true prince (Wikipedia). Castle of Ontranto represents the quintessential Gothic story. It created the genre. Key examples of this can be seen as follows: 1 Note: that Gothic literature is escapist through the use of contrasting specific elements to create conflict and draw the attention of the reader. (the main themes most common in these two novels are: horror vs romance, good vs evil, and the element of mystery basically the known vs the unknown. ) The Castle of Ontranto opens with the line â€Å"Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter: the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda (chp1). † This is a very fantastic scenario from the main character being a Prince to the daughter being a beautiful eighteen year old virgin in an era when many women in prestigious families were married off by the age of 14. The author goes on to point out how the son Conrad three years younger than Matilda is ugly sickly frail and pale. The act of immediately contrasting Conrad’s ugly sickliness with Matilda’s beauty and pure virginity, significantly defines the gothic genre, which is literally defined as â€Å"an important genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. † -Another important contrast other than horror and romance is good and evil. This can be seen in Walpole’s novel through the differences in the characters. The Castle of Otranto† revolves around a curse that has been placed upon the family of Manfred, ruler of the principality of Otranto. The curse is slightly ill defined, but apparently threatens the end of Manfred’s rule and destruction of his family. Manfred is a greedy man who plots and schemes to outwit this curse. He is clearly the villain of the novel and contrasts strongly with the three leading women, Hippolita his wife, Matilda his daughter and Isabella the intended wife of his son. These women represent the forces of good throughout the novel. NOTE: Heroines in gothic books as well as in contemporary horror is a common theme a major example of this being emphasized in Northanger abbey can be seen when Austen says, â€Å"Chapter 1 – But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventfuly lives. † (page 9) NOTE: examples of Romance as a theme in Northanger Abbey â€Å"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love. † Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey â€Å"In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes. â€Å" Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1818

Irony in Macbeth Essay

Dramatic Irony is the result of information being shared with the audience but withheld from one or more of the characters. Example: In Act 1 Scene 4, line 50 , the witches hail Macbeth, â€Å"thane of Cawdor! † Dramatic irony: At this point, Macbeth is unaware that the king has conferred this honor upon him because of his valor in battle, so he attributes his fortune to the witches’ prophecy. However, the audience knows Duncan made the pronouncement in Act 1, Scene 3. Purpose: This dramatic irony is to show Macbeth’s belief that the witches speak the truth and are responsible for his success. This belief can, and does, influence his future actions. Example: In Act 1, Scene 6, line 1, Duncan says, â€Å"This castle hath a pleasant seat† Dramatic irony: When Duncan reaches the castle, he feels secure and welcome at the home of his loyal kinsmen. However, the audience is aware that he may be murdered that very night. It is also ironic that he calls the castle â€Å"a pleasant seat†, when it’s the place where he is eventually killed. Purpose: This irony is to contribute to suspense. Since the audience knows more than the character, the audience is positioned to wait for the character to gain awareness. Irony in Macbeth In Shakespeare’s Macbeth there was a lot of irony, and Shakespeare intended the irony of the play to build and maintain suspense, while creating a vague sense of fear. For example, the irony in the play started out early, with the witches’ prophecies to Macbeth and Banquo. The prophecies to Macbeth were all ironic paradoxes. In Act I, Scene iii, the witches told Macbeth, â€Å"All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter. † This prophecy was ironic because even though it was true, it did not turn out how Macbeth expected it to. Macbeth probably thought that being the king would be great. He would be rich, everyone would respect him, he’d have all the power in Scotland, and he thought that that would make him happy. Of course, since the witches’ prophecies were cleverly designed to manipulate his weak mind, Macbeth murdered Duncan to satisfy his ambition. In Act III, Scene ii, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth were discussing their feelings about being king and queen of Scotland after the murder. Said Lady Macbeth, â€Å"Nought’s had, all’s spent. Where our desire is got without content: ’Tis safer to be that which e destroy than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy. † In Act III, Scene i Macbeth said of the witches and the murder, â€Å"For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered; put rancours in the vessel of my peace only for them; and mine eternal jewel given to the common enemy of man. † In those sentences, we can see the irony in the witches’ prophecies. The implied meaning of the witches’ prophecies was that Macbeth would be king. Macbeth took this to mean that he would be a happy king, and so dreams of him on the throne appeared. He thought that becoming king would be easy, he just had to get Duncan out of the way. Everything turned out as Macbeth had imagined, except that he was not happy as the king. The guilt from Duncan’s murder, not to mention that of Banquo’s, made being the king a horrible experience for Macbeth, all because of the witches. This irony would make the audience mistrust the witches in the back of their minds, and therefore also put a vague fear over the whole play, because of the realisation of the witches’ relentless sinister determination to disrupt peace and order in Scotland. Another excellent example of irony in the play starts in Act II, Scene ii, shortly after the murder of Duncan. Macbeth had just committed the malicious act to satisfy his unchecked ambition, and he was quite shocked. In his words, â€Å"Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? † The emotional effects of the murder hadn’t quite gotten through to Lady Macbeth yet, and so she nonchalantly replied, â€Å"A little water clears us of this deed. † Eventually though, Lady Macbeth’s conscience affected her mind adversely, giving her a deep emotional disturbance. In Act V, Scene i, Lady Macbeth had a fear of the dark and she had started sleep walking and talking to herself. As she was wandering the castle one night, she was obsessed with trying to wash the blood that she still felt and smelt from her hands, a huge change from Act II, Scene ii. She said, â€Å"Out, damned stop! out I say! † and continued with, â€Å"What, will these hands ne’er be clean? † This is definitely very ironic, since early in the play Lady Macbeth dismissed Macbeth’s concerns with little thought, and one would expect her not to ever think of them again. As we can see in the play though, what was once a trifle to Lady Macbeth soon became a major issue when the realisation of what she had done in Duncan’s murder finally set in. As far as the audience is concerned, they would probably be shocked after the murder of Duncan, and find Lady Macbeth’s responses to Macbeth’s hysteria discomforting, thinking that Lady Macbeth must be a very evil person indeed. Later on though, when Lady Macbeth broke down mentally, the audience would feel a bit more of a vague sense of fear when they were reminded by Lady Macbeth of how terrible Duncan’s murder really was. She was very composed at first, but soon she realised that she had done something horrendous and because of that realisation she died soon afterward. Another prime example of the play’s irony can be found in Act I, Scene vii, shortly before Duncan’s murder. The irony in this scene is called dramatic irony, meaning that the audience is aware of what is about to happen but the actors are not. For example, before this scene the audience has heard Macbeth’s soliloquies about murdering the king, and has been exposed to the mood-setting opening scenes. By now the audience would probably be on the edge of their seats, waiting for Macbeth to slip a dagger out of his pocket and run towards Duncan. To the part of the audience that would be expecting this, the next scene would be much different than they would have imagined. Act I, Scene vii is set outside of Macbeth’s castle, in broad daylight (unlike most of the scenes in the play). When Duncan arrives, he comments, â€Å"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses. Banquo is quick to agree, and he comments on the nice birds in the sky. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, has taken to graciously welcoming the guests. The scene ends with Duncan taking Lady Macbeth’s hand, and allowing her to lead him into the castle of death to his murderer. This scene is a prime example of irony because its real meaning is much different that it appears. Looking at the scene alone, one would conclude that Duncan and the Macbeths are good friends, and this is just another pleasant visit. In its context though, this scene is the beginning of Macbeth’s murder spree, and so the sunlight, birds, and nice weather make the scene all the more ironic. Apart from giving the audience a sense of brooding violence and veiled threats, this scene would also built a lot of suspense. When people saw Duncan walk into the palace, many would (rightly) suspect that he was walking obliviously to his doom. In short, this scene’s dramatic irony was a key factor in moulding the play’s suspense. Another excellent example of irony occurs in Act IV, Scene ii shortly before the Macduffs are murdered. In the scene Lady Macduff was angry at her husband for fleeing to England, leaving her defenceless. Her son is talking to her, telling her how he’ll live without his father. He says that he’ll live like birds do, meaning living with what they get. The implied meaning in the beginning of this scene is that Lady Macbeth’s son will do just what he said he would, he’ll live with what he’ll get, and keep on living. His words are a paradox though, since the literal meaning of his words is much different than the implied meaning. Once he finishes his speech, some of Macbeth’s hit men run in and stab him. The literal meaning of what he said, that he’d live â€Å"with what [he’d] get† is so much different than his implied meaning because he definitely got what he got, but he definitely didn’t keep on living. The irony of this would reinforce what Macbeth was saying at the time, that life is pointless, and would help to add to the malicious atmosphere of the play by making the audience feel as if what they did in life didn’t really matter. In conclusion, Macbeth is full of irony. The irony in Macbeth is there to add to the suspense and the malicious mood of the play. Without the irony in Macbeth, the play would have been much different. For example, if Duncan’s visit to the castle took place at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, with the Macbeths being hostile to him and the witches egging Macbeth on, the play would have lacked a good deal of suspense, and the audience might begin to get bored of the play, since it would not change much and it would be easy to predict what would happen. If the witches hadn’t made their paradoxical prophecies to Macbeth, the play would be missing a lot of irony and the audience wouldn’t get much fear from watching the play, since they would just reason that Macbeth was insane to begin with. In short, the play, Macbethwouldn’t have been such an interesting, suspenseful, or terrifying play without irony. Clearly, Shakespeare intended the irony of the play to build and maintain suspense, while creating a vague sense of fear.

Management of Organizational Behavior Case Study

Management of Organizational Behavior - Case Study Example The effectiveness of leadership and management of human organization can be measured on an individual or group influence process. Both concepts are full-time responsibilities that must be practiced every time wisely due to the complexities of people and a difficult situation by a man of mission and vision for is organization and country. Emotional ways of reacting to the problem are human nature, this access the situational leadership which is fundamentally determined by leader-follower interaction in the pursuance of goal accomplishment, readiness assessment, leadership intervention, appraisal of the results of this intervention and effective follow-up. (p 8). In comparing, Woodrow Wilson by H.W. Brands 2003 and Hersey, et al 2001. Hersey advocate in detail the leadership qualities and roles while, Brand look at leadership basically in relation to then U.S.President "Wilson." Despite tremendous, the effort of his administration Brands did not recognize these. The effect on Wilson ad ministration is sometimes due to the death of his first wife as, by the opinion of Brand, his life was just too full to be given real justice. His work and wealth of experience make him be a distinguished leader in the history of U.S President. Also, the hardship and judicious utilization of opportunity available to him made him be a role model among his successors. Nevertheless, Brands never soars "Woodrow Wilson" to have down a great work, this eludes me. There are three skills and competency of leadership, which is required in the administrating an organization or country. The Wilson administration possesses these qualities, they are diagnosing, adapting and communication.   In analysis this point one after the other, Woodrow Wilson always diagnose the requirement of his environment before embarking on any operation which may either have the positive or negative effect on his people, such decision includes, the establishment of the central bank, and the Federal Reserve in Unite d State. Wilson also used is presidency to effect and administer the national income tax. He used his wealth of knowledge to ensure that United State fosters together and have a formidable growth of centralized Federal power. According to Brands, Wilson being a diplomatic, diagnosed united state and found out that they need to involve in World War 1. These he does by funding Britain and France, in the procurement of their needs at the War front such as ammunition to fight the battle. Then, he finds out that Solder where needed at the battlefield, he provides the combat. This Great War would not have lasted so long if not of his involvement. As a result of this, it causes a lot of damages to the fabric of European civilization and colonial influence. The result of this war made the world to have heard of Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini, veterans both of front line combat.

Did humans migrate to the new world from europe in early prehistoric Essay - 1

Did humans migrate to the new world from europe in early prehistoric times - Essay Example However, Curry cited that the discovery of the prehistoric and hypothetically pre-Clovis, mastodon fossils in Washington spur debate concerning the actual manner of human migration from Europe to America. Specifically, existing debates focus on the theories of Bradley and Stanford and Straus. In studying the fossils found both in Alaska and Siberia, Bradley and Stanford assert the existence of pre-Clovis culture in America (465). Further, with their radiocarbon fossil dating technologies, Bradley and Stanford unearthed evidences that link the fossils in pre-Clovis North America with the fossils of the Solutrean culture residing in Spain and France 17,000-21,000 years in the past (466). The fossils, particularly the hunting technologies, show significant similarities, regardless of the fact that the Clovis technology appears more advanced and a few radiocarbon years older than its Solutrean counterparts. Relatively, the Clovis culture may be considered predecessors of the Solutrean culture, considering the similarities of their hunting tools. With those findings, Bradley and Stanford went on to propose that Solutrean may have traveled from Europe to America through ice bridges near the Arctic, although remaining close to the coast to ensure sustainable, marine food source s. The proposition relies heavily on the existence of steppe tundra vegetations during the Last Glacial Maximum wherein ice formed as land bridges connecting the continents. Although Bradley and Stanford succeeded in nulling the theory supporting the Clovis culture as the first American inhabitants, Straus argues that the theory still lack evidences supporting the existence of Solutrean culture in North America before the Clovis culture. Specifically, in studying the drawings and artistic works in Cosquer Cave, Straus found out that the Solutrean culture was purged approximately 18,000 radiocarbon years ago (223). Further, Strauss asserts that the similarities in the

Documentary in Depth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Documentary in Depth - Essay Example This discussion borrows ideas from documentary theorists like Stella Bruzzi, Jonathan Kahana, Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight to name a few. The need to document ‘real’ events existed almost at the same time when motion picture as a medium of communication became an integral and quintessential part of human life. In its early stages, the primary intention and the subsequent benefit of recording a live action or event was the freedom it gave to have control over time, by either slowing it down, stopping it completely, or reversing it making the captured footage a substitute or an equivalent to a written document or text. This can be seen as early as 1900s when events like a prize fight or a surgery were captured on camera and stored as a valuable resource that could be used for future reference. The term ‘documentary’ has had a multitude of definitions and interpretations from various theorists at different points of time. According to Kahana ‘documentary h as been understood as a form of democratic and social pedagogy’ (2008, p.1) and he agrees with Paul Rotha’s theory that since movie making technology along with social contradictions tend to hide the truth in various circumstances, documentaries could be used to convey a deeper or hidden meaning (Kahana, 2008, p.1). Bruzzi agrees with Peter Weiss’ argument in his book â€Å"The Materials and the Models† that ‘the purpose of documentary form is to extract from the material universal truths, to supply a historical context and to draw attention to other possible consequences of the events encompassed by the play’ (2000, p.9). In other words, through his/her film a documentary film maker represents the social and political structure that exists around them, also giving an insight in to how it has evolved to its present form and what the future might hold. This can be considered a binary process, one in which the film maker derives his/her materia l from the socio political circumstances and delivers it back to society in its contextualised form. The film maker thus serves as a medium for the raw material to arrive at truths and conclusions, motives or inherent causes. In simpler terms, the film maker becomes the voice which speaks on behalf of the ‘raw material’ (i.e. the social, political and historical context). The primary drawback however, of this analysis is that it becomes futile if the film maker and the viewer have misinterpreted the original meaning of the event which means that the actual truth of the recorded event has not transpired to the mind of the film maker and in turn the viewer (Bruzzi, 2000, p.9). People have been generally led to believe that the camera captures only the truth. The reason why people trust documentaries is the simple fact that they claim to present the truth as it is with no element of drama or fiction. Hence it is something which anyone can relate to in terms of their own li ves and existence. Documentaries are supposed to depict the socio historical world in its purest and unpolished form. This would suggest that the images captured in a

Oscar Schindler Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Oscar Schindler - Essay Example But this is exactly where the problem lies. The events have been resurrected for the present - as well as for the future - generations. There are issues here like Jew hatred, and now freedom of speech, when holocaust is being discussed even from a historical point of view. These have provided fires to Oscar Schindler's story. This paper gives a brief description of the event and then make a stand that Oscar Schindler is indeed a hero. On April 28, 1908 in Zwittau, Czechoslovakia, Oscar Schindler, a man destined to be great, was born. His life and accomplishments during the war became the subject of a best selling book by Thomas Keneally. Then Steven Spielberg made it into a powerful film, winning many Academy Awards and other honors from the movie industry (Klein n.d.). But how did a member of the Nazi party, war profiteer of slave labor, womanizer, alcoholic and compulsive gambler end up being honored Through "Schindler's List," the true story of a German businessman and Nazi sympathizer is revealed (Scileppi 2003). Poldek Pfefferberg, a black market trader was said to have initiated this incredible story, him who had business links with Schindler and who gave him goods which the latter used as gifts to impress Nazi officers. The whole thing worked, and Schindler became friends with some of the highest ranking officers in the German army (Ibid). SchindlerSchindler was then doing business in 1938 in Poland and found the Nazis' rise to power as his chance to make money. He had started a cookware and utensil company, and to be able to get a series of Nazi military contracts, he applied his natural skills in socializing, flattering and bribing his way (New Internationalist 1994). Itzhak Stern became accountant and financier to assist him in his factory but the more important role was to liaison for Jew workers that Nazi troops herded into Crakow's ghetto by (Scileppi 2003). Kracow's Jews soon filed into Schindler's factory to work. Unknown to the workers, Schindler helped his Jewish employees by falsifying the factory records. For example, their ages were adjusted so that old people were recorded as being younger; juveniles were listed as adults. Professionals were registered as metalworkers, mechanics, and draughtsmen, considered essential to war production. The workers were protected from the extermination commissions that looked into Schindler's records from time to time (Steinhouse 1994) His workers did not know that at the same time, Schindler spent his evenings entertaining many of the local SS and Wehrmacht officers, cultivating friendships and strengthening his position wherever possible. .With an easy charm, Schindler became popular in Nazi social circles in Cracow {Steinhouse 1994). In 1942, when Krakow's Jews are assigned to Plaszow, a Forced Labor Camp run by Commandant Amon Goeth, the survival of the Jews were put in jeopardy. Schindler placed efforts in pleasing Goeth and was able to arrange the continued use of Polish Jews in his plant. (New internationalist 1994). Events that followed made Schindler realize that only he and his factory were what came between his workers and the Nazi death camps. From there he completely gave up generating wealth, and began using his remaining finances as bribes to procure more Jewish workers and maintain the factory's current staff. By the time the allies defeated Germany, his fortune was used up, but by

The glass menagerie Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The glass menagerie - Essay Example Tom the narrator regards his mother with compassion; which he was unable to express when he lived under the roof. This variation in the play is the slow deviation from the truthfulness of reality. In the play the narrator presents Amanda not as the villain but as a lonely woman caught up in a helpless situation, as a woman whose good intentions are not appreciated by anybody. As the narrator Tom is also an emissary from the outside world. He sees and narrates the ills of the society in conflict. The narrator views the plight of the family against the larger background of the ills of the society at his time. The ills of the microcosmic family are viewed by the narrator as the outcome of the ills of the microcosmic society. Tom the narrator has come to see that the Wingfeild family is not the only family lost in illusion. The whole American society is viewed by the narrator as taking refugee from such unpleasant realities as the depression, the on-coming war, the pettiness of the life of the individual etc. Tom the character essentially concerned with himself. He sees the outside world as a quest for freedom with an atmosphere of limitless possibilities. As Bigsby says â€Å" he has fallen in love with long distance †¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Bigsby 38) But Tom the narrator is wiser. He can see the sufferings of the Wingfeld family as being part of vaster social malady. Tennessee Williams in the Glass Menagerie has ordered his vision in a clear schematic design. In the opening moments of the play Tom the poet figure, speak to the audience of of the conventions –â€Å"Being a memory play it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic â€Å". When he refers to the gentle man caller he says â€Å"He is the most realistic character in the play being an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from. But since I have poet’s weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a symbol†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The glass menagerie is a s ynthetic image â€Å"an illusion projected by an imaginary camera eye, turned inward upon the self and backyard upon the memory†. Williams collates several images of past from the fragments of shattered consciousness and in short the play represents a recapitulation of the poetic journey of Tom. Tom’s final speech in the play summarizes his grasp of universal truth ‘ I did not go the moon, I went much further – for time is the longest distance two places †¦for now a days the world is lit by lightening†¦Ã¢â‚¬  There is very little action in the play and there is no pattern of casual development in Tom’s vision. Thus the glass Menagerie is a memory play both in approach and content. Tom himself says that the drama lack realism but more symbolic in nature. The narrator’s memory is so clear that he can overt events with more flexibility. The role of Tom is double as the recollection of a narrator and also as the character who acts with in the limits of recollections. Thus he is able to depict the tension between objectively presented dramatic truth and the truth presented through memory. Tom successfully do this by sometimes addressing the audience and sometimes presenting himself as an actor with the necessary emotions . This double role sometimes confuses the audience. Since the play is autobiographical we can notice the similarity between the playwright and his memories about his own youth. Who was Tom or what was his opinions about his poetry or his readings, are unknown to the audience. But Tom’

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS Essay

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS - Essay Example In the contemporary business world, it is almost impossible to ignore the importance of information systems in strategic management. Organisations today require information systems to remain relevant in the business world since they provide strategic opportunities (Daniels 1998, p. 167). Different departments in organisations are now relying on information systems to enhance efficiency and improve business effectiveness. The managerial tasks in the business world today have become complex and this means that the information systems that are used also have to change to meet the demands of an organisation. As such, it has become a necessity for organisations to engage in strategic management of IS (Daniels 1998, p. 170). This paper provides a critical analysis of the role that porter’s strategic advantage competitive theory play in the development of strategic management of IS. In addition, this paper also looks at the significance of studying and reviewing porter’s competitive advantage since it can be used as a model for strategic management of IS. To this end, three important research questions and problems have been identified with regard to the study of strategic management of IS. On the other hand, a literature review related to the topic at hand is important in providing empirical evidence on the key issues that the topic discusses. The key findings identified in this paper are derived from researches in an attempt to understand their implication in the strategic management of IS. Other than the key findings, this paper also looks at the limitations associated with this study, and presents recommendation for further research on the same topic. The conclusion in this paper draws attention to a summary of the key points mentioned and described in this study. This topic brings attention of readers to the importance of information systems in an organisational set up, and how it has evolved over the years. Information

Animal Behavior Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Animal Behavior - Essay Example mental attack.† The tentative conclusion and the statement that the authors’ ideas are likely to change with time, does not actually make the suggestion convincing. The authors, however, present a wide spectrum of thoughts on the issue and describe several experiments that relate to the concept. The manner in which the arguments are presented need to be considered and their objectivity assessed, to make the overall argument worth consideration. The authors seem to have made several sweeping assumptions in order to narrow down the scope of the discussion. Thus they have been able to offer the reader a wide spectrum of ideas to ponder upon. An example would be the statement that most neuroscientists do not attempt to study consciousness either because it is a philosophical problem or because such study is premature. Discarding the philosophical aspects of the issue, the article goes on to argue that such study is not premature. No valid reasons are given for discarding the philosophical aspects, even as there is no dispute about the need to study the issue scientifically in the present time. I don’t think the issue can be approached purely from a scientific perspective without considering the philosophical aspects. The article dwells on several features and forms of consciousness and introduces the concept of â€Å"neuronal correlates of consciousness† or NCC. The force of the argument is substantially reduced by asserting that the assumptions are â€Å"tentative† and that â€Å"personal decisions† were taken to set aside several topics without further discussion. Further it goes on to state that a precise definition of consciousness was premature and that it was â€Å"not profitable† to make certain arguments. Such statements in a scientific, or at the very least an objective discussion, dilute its validity. However, visual consciousness, its uses, nature, characteristics and biological explanations etc, discussed in the works by others in the field are used,

At the Brookly Museum, art helps show why black lives matter Essay

At the Brookly Museum, art helps show why black lives matter - Essay Example Resnikoff explains how some of the portraits of modern day black people provoke traditional images of medieval saints by placing them in medieval religious contexts. To support, the article refers to specific exhibits, such as the "Arms of Nicolas Ruterius, Bishop of Arras† and the â€Å"Mugshot Study†. He considers Wiley’s artwork as being similar to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, which resists de-humanisation of black people and calls for racial justice. The article also refers to the differences in public view that the exhibition will provoke more public discussions of racial injustice and that it is too difficult to alter the deep-seated attitudes with one exhibition. The content of the article is relevant to the topic, which is how Wiley’s works of art on display at the museum provoke discussions among the public about the value of black lives. The choice of examples helps show how Wiley’s portraitures reinterpret traditional paintings and break the widespread images of black people. The article also refers to Wiley himself, for example, to show how the artist draws parallels between mugshots and the paintings of the 18th century. The article gives a broad review of the artwork on display by presenting the views of the author, the differing opinions of the public, and discussions of the features of specific works of art on display. References to public opinion balance the argument and evoke interest in the reader about the topic. Resnikoff, Ned. (March 2, 2015). At the Brooklyn Museum, art helps show why black lives matter. Aljazeera America. Retrieved from

Debut albums Essay Example for Free

Debut albums Essay High School. Those two words can either bring fear or happiness to anyone. Besides college, the most life altering period in one’s lifetime is the four years we must go through to finally reach that milestone of getting a diploma. High school is that time to find yourself. It’s that time where you’re expected to conduct yourself like an adult, but you still get treated like a kid, a time of confusion. Because I cannot speak for everybody’s opinions about high school, I will just share mine. I’ve realized that there is no other place in this world where you will find such a large array of people other than a public high school. You have your jocks, your honors students, your geeks, your goths, your skaters, your princesses (a. k. a. cheerleaders), your drama kids, and then you have those kids that don’t really fit into any other category but â€Å"you know, those kids. † Logically, you would think that there is absolutely no way all of those different types of people could get along, but for some unknown reason we do. School is like a whole other separate community, a business community. The C. E. O. and head honchos are the main office, the teachers are the workers, and we students are merely the entrepreneurs. With that said, I have figured out a reason on why we all get along. Every entrepreneur does what they do for all the same reasons, just like all of us students attend school for the same thing. Of course some of us attend more voluntarily than others but nevertheless, we all show up every morning for the same reason. We show up to learn, to prepare ourselves for the real world and what is to come. Most of us show up to better our chances of succeeding in education after high school. Another thing I’ve learned about high school is that for a place that is supposed to be all good and fun and educational, there sure are a lot of things that aren’t. The food isn’t good, the stressful work isn’t fun, and some classes might be educational but I sure don’t understand why the heck I have to take them, like Introduction to Animal Sciences for example. How is that helping me be prepared for the real world? However, because of these problems in the system of just about every high school, I’ve learned possibly the most valuable lessons of all: Life isn’t fair, you don’t always get what you want, and you can’t change people. The point of me telling you all of this isn’t to say what a great learning experience I’ve had or how I know that my way of life has been shaped by my experiences in school, but rather to point out that you can’t always focus on the differences, or the negatives in life, but instead to realize what you have in common, or what is good.

Plagiarism in Higher Education Essay Example for Free

Plagiarism in Higher Education Essay Al Ain Women’s College, Higher Colleges of Technology, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the modern information society on attitudes and approaches to the prevention of plagiarism and to examine a less punitive, more educative model. Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken is a literature review of plagiarism in contemporary society followed by a case study of the education department of a tertiary-level college in the United Arab Emirates. Findings – The authors advocate a move towards a less punitive, more educative approach which takes into account all the relevant contextual factors. A call is made for a truly institutional response to a shared concern, with comprehensive and appropriate policies and guidelines which focus on prevention, the development of student skills, and the proactive involvement of all relevant stakeholders. Practical implications – This approach could inform the policies and practices of institutions who wish to systematically deal with plagiarism in other contemporary contexts. Originality/value – This paper could be of value to policy makers and administrators in tertiary institutions, particularly in English as a second language contexts, who recognise the limitations of traditional approaches to plagiarism and wish to establish more effective practices. Keywords Copyright law, Information society, Dishonesty, United Arab Emirates Paper type Literature review Plagiarism in political discourse Politicians, more than anyone else, need to portray an image of integrity, honesty, and independent thought. Their election, their livelihood, and the fate of their constituents would seem to depend on it. Yet politicians commonly use speechwriters who have the speci? c task of conveying their thoughts, personality, and personal sincerity (see for example, Philp, 2009). It may be argued that although politicians do not necessarily write the words themselves, they endorse the words they use. But what if the words themselves are not original? In one instance, the presidential candidate Barack Obama was confronted by the fact that some of his speeches had taken material from Deval Patrick, the Massachusetts Governor. Obama admitted he should have acknowledged his source: Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues Vol. 3 No. 3, 2010 pp. 166-177 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1753-7983 DOI 10. 1108/17537981011070082 I was on the stump. [Deval] had suggested that we use these lines and I thought they were good lines [. . . ] I’m sure I should have – didn’t this time [. . . ] I really don’t think this is too big of a deal (Obama cited in Whitesides, 2008). Published by kind permission of HCT Press. Plagiarism has been de? ned as â€Å"the unacknowledged use of someone else’s work [. . . ] and passing it off as if it were one’s own† (Park, 2004, p.292) and it is interesting to speculate whether such an excuse would be accepted from a student by an educational institution’s plagiarism committee. Accusations of plagiarism in politics have been made before, of course, though the outcomes were often different, suggesting that a shift may be taking place in attitudes towards plagiarism in politics. In 1987, another presidential hopeful was forced to abandon his ambitions for high of? ce largely because he had plagiarised a speech by the British politician Neil Kinnock and because of â€Å"a serious plagiarism incident† in his law school years (Sabato, 1998). Ironically, the candidate was none other than Joe Biden, the man chosen by Obama to be his Vice President. In politics today, it seems as though plagiarism no longer signals the end of a career. In contrast, students who are caught cheating or plagiarising can be subject to sanctions and consequences that are severely life impacting, which in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) can include permanent exclusion from all tertiary education (see for example, Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), 2008). One question of fundamental concern that we must ask ourselves as tertiary-level educators is why college students, who have much less at stake, considerably less experience and knowledge and who do not use English as their ? rst language, should be held to higher standards of responsibility in communication than those in the highest political of? ces? Yet, if we make allowances for students who are still learning to orientate themselves in academic discourse, what standards should be applied? Plagiarism in a complex information society The concept of plagiarism is a relatively new cultural phenomenon. Greek philosophers regularly appropriated material from earlier works without compunction, and originality was considered less important than imitating, often orally, the great works of their predecessors (Lackie and D’Angelo-Long, 2004, p. 37). All the way through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the study of rhetoric rather than written language was often the norm, with students required to give public speeches to assembled faculty. Only the subsequent move towards written assignments brought with it new perceptions of student plagiarism (Simmons, 1999, p. 41). Around the same time, in the earlier part of the twentieth century, the formalization of citation styles from organizations such as the American Psychological Association marked a desire to standardise academic writing and provide a model for ethically quoting the work of others (Simmons, 1999, p. 42). With the rise of the information society and electronic media, another cultural shift seems to be underway. There have been recent suggestions that plagiarism is becoming more prevalent, and much of the blame has been placed on â€Å"nearly universal access to the Internet† (Scanlon and Neumann, 2002, p. 374). Park (2004, p. 293) refers to the ease of â€Å"copying [. . . ] in a digital world of computers, word processing, electronic sources and the Internet. † However, the explosion of electronic sources of information has not just made copying easier, it has also made it much more central to our students’ cultural and social experiences. Students going into tertiary education have grown up with the internet and are at home with downloading â€Å"free† ? lms, sharing music and modifying and emailing all kinds of material taken from the web. They have developed highly skilled ways of conducting non-academic research using  services such as search engines, social networking sites, podcasts, RSS feeds, discussion boards, etc. with Dealing with plagiarism 167 EBS 3,3 168 hyperlinks allowing them to jump from site to site as though the internet were a single-uni? ed source, and with copying and pasting a mainstay of interaction. They take it for granted that a pop star such as will. i. am can pick up and rework virtually the entire content of a political speech, and turn it into the award winning song and music video Yes we can, apparently without Obama’s knowledge or consent ((The) ABC News, 2008). They are not surprised when this video is then embedded in countless webpages, with the lyrics of the song posted on music sites without any attribution of the original source (see for example, LyricsReg, n. d). This intertextuality is a perfect example of the â€Å"postmodern, self-cannibalizing popular culture† (Bowman, 2004, p. 8) that our students now engage with on a daily basis. Students may well bring to the classroom very different ideas from their teachers about what constitutes fair use. Indeed, one study of 2,600 tertiary-level students in the UAE found that just over 40 percent considered cutting and pasting from the internet as either trivial cheating or not cheating at all. The attitudes of UAE students are similar to those of other students around the world (Croucher, 2009). Some theorists have gone a step further and argue that as the new media become more interactive and collaborative, it calls into question the whole idea of a â€Å"creative, original, individual who, as an autonomous scholar, presents his/her work to the public in his/her own name† (Scollon, 1995, p.1). The multiple contributors to Wikipedia pages is a clear example of how a collaborative process undermines our sense of authorship. In addition, the notion of what constitutes â€Å"fair use† is changing quickly. This is exempli? ed by the open source movement where material can be downloaded, modi? ed, and shared with minimal and strictly controlled author’s rights (See for example, Open Source Initiative, n. d). As Blum (2009) notes, the â€Å"rules about intellectual property are in ? ux. † Where does this leave educators? Has plagiarism become an irrelevant concept, too outdated in its de? nition to be of use in the production of educated professionals ready to take their place in our post-modern society? Do we have to accept Johnson’s (2007) argument that in the digital age, writing an original essay outside of class for assessment purposes is no longer viable in its current form because of the ease of copying from the internet? Do we have to agree with him when he says such tasks are no longer even relevant because they fail to re? ect the modern workplace? As Johnson argues: My transfer from education to the world of business has reminded me just how important it is to be able to synthesize content from multiple sources, put structure around it and edit it into a coherent, single-voiced whole. Students who are able to create convincing amalgamations have gained a valuable business skill. Unfortunately, most schools fail to recognize that any skills have been used at all, and an entire paper can be discarded because of a few lines repeated from another source without quotation marks. Plagiarism in education Plagiarism in education seems to operate under a very different set of rules from the pragmatic ? elds of politics or business and can create emotional responses that deploy highly charged metaphors such as The Plagiarism Plague (Bowman, 2004) or â€Å"Winning hearts and minds in war on plagiarism† (Jaschik, 2008). In education, plagiarism is â€Å"seen as a transgression against our common intellectual values, carrying justi? ably bad consequences for those guilty of the practice† (Isserman, 2003). Why is it generally accepted that politicians can use ghostwriters, but that students cannot, even if the stakes for the students are much lower? The critical issue for education is that plagiarism â€Å"circumvents the learning process† (Spencer, 2004, p. 16). The process of analysing and synthesizing ideas, and reformulating them in writing, is seen as central to learning. Only by ensuring that students struggle to assimilate material and develop their own voice do students go beyond surface information and develop higher order thinking skills. As Isserman (2003) notes: [.. . ] ownership over the words you use [. . . ] is really at the heart of the learning process. You can read a dozen books about the cold war, but if you can’t explain what you have learned to someone else in your own words, no real learning has taken place [. . . ] and you will have made no progress whatsoever toward realizing the central goal of a liberal-arts education: the ability to think for yourself. Dealing with plagiarism 169 This struggle for intellectual development is not easy, which is precisely the reason that makes plagiarism attractive for some students. In most cases teachers are not concerned about literary theft, but that their students are missing out on opportunities for learning because they are failing to engage with the material in a meaningful way. Plagiarism is therefore â€Å"denying them the opportunity to learn lessons, improve their study skills, and improve their knowledge and understanding† (Lancaster University, 2009, p. 3). If plagiarism is especially serious in education because it is an obstacle to learning, then we should deal with instances of plagiarism primarily from an educational perspective rather than the punitive one. Students need to learn the importance of academic integrity and understand that it is not just a hoop to be jumped through, but is integral to intellectual and personal growth. Clearly this learning process cannot be instantaneous, and allowances should be made as students develop. However, this does not mean that severe penalties should be removed from the process entirely as there will always be students who refuse or are unable to meet appropriate standards. Factors in? uencing the incidence of plagiarism Individual, pedagogical, and institutional factors can all in? uence the incidence of plagiarism. Students themselves can be impacted by a wide range of factors including their educational conditioning, cultural background, motivation, language skill, peer pressure, gender, issues with time management, ability, and even the subject being studied (Roig, 1997). If the tertiary experience is vastly different to students’ previous educational experience, the motivation for plagiarism again increases. In the UAE, it is likely, for example, that the students’ primary and secondary schooling was characterised by rote learning and the quest for a single correct answer, non-transparent and poorly conceived assessment practices, and vast social inequities within the student base, and between students and their often socially and economically disadvantaged teachers. Norms, expectations, and demands learned in this context can be dif? cult to dislodge in subsequent institutions which place a premium on the exploration of problems and solutions, independent and critical thinking skills, and academic integrity. If plagiarism is not de? ned or academic processes made explicit, then such students will ? nd it impossible to reach the standards that are suddenly and (to them) inexplicably imposed on them. Pedagogical approaches may also contribute to the prevalence of plagiarism. Current methodologies place much more emphasis on collaboration and group work, with a greater weight given to out-of-class projects and portfolios at the expense of formal exams. The result is that the line between collaboration and cheating during assessed tasks is blurred, and if this is not explicitly dealt with by assessors, it will inevitably EBS 3,3 170 result in misunderstandings as to what is acceptable. Also, students are more likely to justify cheating if the coursework or assignments they were given were too hard, poorly scaffolded, or based on unreasonable expectations of their abilities (Naidoo, 2008), and plagiarism will be made easier if the assignments are not constructed carefully so that stock answers cannot be copied from the internet (Wood, 2004). However, the institutional context plays perhaps the most critical role. For example, unclear and uncommunicated institutional policies with vague de?  nitions of plagiarism can affect the incidence of plagiarism, as can the application of those policies (McCabe et al. , 2002). Some aspects of an organization may unwittingly encourage plagiarism. For example, in contrast to schools, tertiary education institutions in the UAE do not typically award top grades to large numbers of students, and there is evidence to suggest that students justify using ghostwriters in such an environment because they believe they deserve better grades (Croucher, 2009). An often overlooked but crucial aspect of deterring and detecting plagiarism is the application of institutional policies by teachers. One survey of 800 American academics at 16 institutions found that 40 percent never reported incidents of plagiarism while a further 54 percent did so only seldomly, even though the evidence suggested they must have received plagiarised work (McCabe, 1993 cited in Schneider, 1999). There are many reasons why teachers may be reluctant to report plagiarism. Teachers may feel the potential penalties for students are too high (Auer and Krupar, 2001). They may also be wary of making false accusations which potentially undermine their own professional status. Some teachers object to taking on the role of detective or enforcer as it undermines the mentor-student relationship (Schneider, 1999; Park, 2004) while others may not have the time to make an extra effort to uncover plagiarism and follow it up (Park, 2004). It may also be that some teachers, especially teachers of content subjects where the focus is less on form and more on ideas, may not have suf? ciently developed skills to detect plagiarism. Hyland (2001) found that even teachers who detect plagiarism may use indirect feedback when dealing with plagiarism (for example, comments in the margins such as â€Å"Are these your own words?†) which can lead to miscommunication with the student about what is acceptable. With so many factors at play, the responsibilities of teachers must be clearly codi? ed if any institutional initiative is to have any success. Plagiarism and ESOL/EFL English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts may be more prone to infringements of academic integrity because students lack the English skills to understand the coursework and so may feel that plagiarism offers the only solution (Hyland, 2001; Liu, 2005). Moreover, the cultural conditioning of English as a second language (ESL) and EFL students has been cited as another contributing factor. Moder (1995 cited in Lackie and D’Angelo-Long, 2004, p. 38) suggests that some societies, including those in the Middle East, â€Å"value memorization and imitation as the mark of an educated person† which may mean that plagiarism is viewed as being less signi? cant. Liu (2005, p. 239) disagrees with the notion of cultural conditioning, however, claiming that â€Å"it is  based on incorrect information and is presented often via unwarranted jumps in reasoning and con? ation of separate issues. † More pertinently, perhaps, she goes on to argue that: [. . . ] even if we concede that such cultural conditioning indeed exists to some extent, we still cannot say for sure that it is the main reason that ESOL students plagiarize. There are many other factors that may motivate ESOL students from many L1 backgrounds to plagiarize, including a lack of adequate pro? ciency, lack of task speci?c writing skills, and of course, the urge to cheat (p. 239). Dealing with plagiarism ESOL students, then, whether or not cultural conditioning is accepted as an underlying factor in plagiarism, may still have greater motivation than their ? rst language counterparts to take and use the ideas and words of others in their own assignments. Ironically, plagiarism by ESOL students is also far more likely to be detected because of more prominent differences in language level and tone between copied and original work. Degrees of plagiarism Intuitively, plagiarism varies in its severity in a way that cheating (e. g. using crib sheets or having someone else take a test for you) does not. It can consist of minor lapses, for example, when original material is poorly paraphrased but the source is acknowledged, through deliberately copying parts of a text without citing the source, to submitting work from an online paper mill (Roig, 1997). Critical factors in determining the severity of the plagiarism include the intention behind the plagiarism (was it deliberate or accidental? ), the amount of material that has been plagiarised, the inclusion of the source in the list of references, the degree to which the plagiarised material differs from the source (an indication at an attempt to paraphrase), the time the student has spent in tertiary education, and whether it is the ? rst, second, or subsequent occurrence. Given the wide variation in the seriousness of plagiarism and the developmental process students must undergo to assimilate the norms of academic writing, it is clear that the appearance of plagiarised material is not always a deliberate attempt to cheat. For example, students are often poor at paraphrasing and may not be fully aware that this could be construed as plagiarism. Roig (1999) gave English-speaking undergraduate students a two-sentence paragraph to paraphrase and found that between 41 and 68 percent of the responses contained strings of at least ? ve words or more copied from the original. These results clearly back up the claim that plagiarism may indicate a de? cit in appropriate skills and not intentional academic dishonesty. Towards an institutional response to plagiarism In many educational institutions, plagiarism is seen largely as a teacher/student problem. If plagiarism is detected, then the teacher makes a decision as to whether to escalate the case for possible punitive action. The plagiarism is seen either as morally wrong or as a â€Å"crime† – the breaking of a rule that has inevitable consequences (Blum, 2009). Unfortunately, dealing with plagiarism in this way can result in decisions which are reactive, emotive, and which are made informally on an ad hoc basis, thus inviting inequity and inconsistency. When the focus is directed towards punishment, there may be little maturation in terms of academic integrity for the student concerned, or for those who watch their classmate’s fate from the sidelines. Academic endeavour must take place within an institutional culture that routinely recognises and reinforces the value of academic integrity so that all stakeholders are obliged to proactively follow and uphold best practice in order to reduce the impact of the contributing factors discussed above. This requires the establishment of an institutional response to plagiarism that is comprehensive, appropriate, fair, developmental, transparent, and educative. 171 EBS 3,3 Park (2004, p. 294) describes such an institutional framework for dealing with plagiarism that was developed by a working party at Lancaster University in consultation with staff and with reference to experience and the literature: The working party sought to move the plagiarism discourse beyond just detection and punishment and to situate and embed it in a cohesive framework that tackles the root causes as well as the symptoms of plagiarism as a family of behaviours. 172 The key elements underpinning this framework were consistency and transparency. These were ensured by the explicit codi? cation of stakeholder responsibilities, procedures, and penalties. In order for such a framework to be implemented effectively, Park (2004, p. 296) noted that â€Å"all stakeholders within the institution must understand and appreciate why the framework is necessary and how it protects their own interests. † A case study Park (2004, pp. 295-9) nominated a number of central pillars that lend validity and effectiveness to any such institutional framework. These included transparency, ownership by stakeholders, student engagement, academic integrity, framing the initiative to ensure compatibility with the culture of the institution, focus on prevention and deterrence, and the supportive and developmental nature of the framework. These pillars provide excellent reference points for the approach taken in one department in a college in the UAE and allow us to examine the viability and ef? cacy of such a framework for the local context. The Education Department at Abu Dhabi Women’s College (ADWC) has addressed its concerns with academic honesty in a concerted, collaborative, and multi-faceted fashion. As teacher educators, the faculty in this department are intent on producing future academics. Much like politicians, words, information, and the generation of ideas are the very foundation of our professional lives, so we regard it as essential that the â€Å"rules† of using these appropriately are disseminated, understood, and followed at all times by all of our students. To this end, we have established and adhere to a set of policies and practices at all levels that support and facilitate academic honesty. Institutional/departmental level The HCT, of which ADWC is only one of 16, institutionally mandates the prevention and sanctioning of plagiarism and related offences. Consequences of infringements of these rules are outlined in of?cial policies, Student Handbooks (see for example, HCT, 2008), contracts signed by students at the commencement of their studies, and reinforced by administrative staff and faculty at every student meeting and examination session held throughout the student’s academic career at HCT. From these guidelines, the Education Division throughout the colleges has documented standards and procedures that address academic honesty in its assessment handbooks – one that is distributed to all education students and the other, more comprehensive and speci?c, that is used by all education faculty. This shared written documentation enables best practice in assessment to be disseminated and followed, provides the underlying philosophy and approach for the division as a whole, and addresses academic honesty both directly and indirectly to better support student writing and make plagiarism a less viable or attractive option. The assessment handbooks re? ect the developmental curricular approach of the division as a whole, and so specify the type, nature, and expectations for assessments at each level to scaffold the students’ ability to produce increasingly sophisticated and original work. Ensuring that requirements are reasonable and documented minimises the students’ need to seek help through illegitimate means. These handbooks are the basis of communication within the ADWC Education Department on all matters regarding assessment and have served to ensure a common approach and understanding. Insights gained by instructors in their daily interactions with students and their submissions inevitably reveal general dif?culties facing students, which are then examined in regular formal and informal meetings to brainstorm and implement further strategies that may be useful. The ongoing concern at faculty level with issues of academic honesty is mirrored in the systematic recycling of warnings, information, and explicit instructions to students. As a department, the theft or misappropriation of ideas and words has been, and continues to be, addressed as professionally offensive and inappropriate. Initiatives suggested by Education Department faculty as well as colleagues in other departments and colleges are pursued vigorously. One recent example has been the provision of workshops by library staff on research skills and academic procedures. The plagiarism detection software, Turnitin, was originally adopted by the department as both a defence against plagiarism and a tool to help students protect themselves against accidental plagiarism. This proved to be very effective, but unfortunately access to this subsequently became unavailable. Now, suspicious text samples are input into search engines and all assignments are run through SafeAssign, a plagiarism checker in Blackboard (the online course management system). These have proved to be acceptable alternatives. As Braumoeller and Gaines (2001) found in their study, â€Å"the deterrent effects of actually checking for plagiarism are quite impressive (p. 836). † The departmental approach has included a series of mandatory workshops and masterclasses on academic writing and plagiarism for all students in slightly altered learning contexts designed to motivate, encourage participation, and focus attention. It should be noted that the relatively small size of the department (one chair, six faculty, and fewer than 80 students) makes shared understandings, uniform dissemination of information, and infraction detection much easier and more likely than in a bigger department where students are not familiar to every teacher. Course level Academic writing skills are an important component of all education courses. Referencing skills are taught explicitly in a speci? c course during the students’ ? rst semester, and then constantly reinforced and recycled throughout the programme. The education programmes at the HCT are based on re?  ective practice. This means that assignments are contextualised and require the application rather than the regurgitation of theory, so copying from previously submitted work or in any way buying or commissioning a paper cannot be so easily accomplished as theory has to ? t the student’s individual circumstances. In addition, the student’s right to submit and receive feedback on a ? rst draft of every paper (Assessment Handbook, 2009, p. 7) allows plagiarism, deliberate, or accidental; to be detected and remediated at an earlier stage before punishment becomes the only option. The feedback and scaffolding policy (pp.53-5), which outlines the form and scope of feedback to be given, draws instructor attention to both macro and micro features of the submission, so any attempt to use words or ideas from an external source should be revealed at least a week before ? nal submission. Dealing with plagiarism 173 EBS 3,3 All students submitting assignments in the Education Division are required to sign a declaration on their cover page that the work is entirely their own and all sources have been acknowledged (Assessment Handbook, 2009, p. 47). This provides a ? nal reminder that academic honesty is expected and will be monitored. Faculty responsibilities and input All faculty in the Education Department, regardless of their course allocation, consider themselves teachers of English. This is not only because we each have ESL teaching quali? cations and experience (obviously an advantage), but also because we recognise the importance of language as the vehicle for idea generation and transmission. Language is inseparable from the content area in which those ideas are conceived and manipulated. This can be a very different orientation to that of colleagues in other departments whose subject area specialisation takes precedence. Our more holistic approach means that we explicitly teach both content and the language elements with which to express that content to students who may be struggling with the unfamiliarity of both. It also means that we take our role as defenders of academic integrity very seriously and vigilantly monitor and check student output. As professional ESL teacher educators, we strive to be models of effective language use as well as successful proponents of academic scholarship, so ongoing instruction in both is a routine aspect of teaching and learning in the department. This increased student awareness of appropriate academic writing processes reduces their motivation to misappropriate text written by others. The cultural and social aspects of plagiarism are also given attention by faculty. In a society that places less value on individuality than it does on cooperation and social cohesion, it is important for students to understand that they have not only the right, but the responsibility, to turn down requests for assistance from peers. Faculty not only explain this, but also explain to students how to respond assertively with friends or relatives asking for inappropriate help. Without this, no amount of education or punishment can ever be successful. Student involvement Education students are required to be active participants in their own learning. Because all assessment processes are documented and transparent, they have the ability to question and ask for clari? cation on any aspect that they do not understand. All expectations or consequences are addressed in multiple ways, so ignorance is no defence for malpractice. Submissions of ? rst drafts are perhaps the most critical aspect for students. Although these are universally permitted and scheduled, they are never awarded a mark and are not always actually demanded, so it is up to the student to take advantage of their right to pre-submission feedback. An appropriate framework? The Education Department at ADWC values academic honesty very highly and has organized its procedures and practices accordingly. The very infrequent occurrence of plagiarism is testimony to the effectiveness of: . proactive strategizing; . clear documentation; . reasonable and appropriate expectations; 174 . . . . . awareness raising; sustained faculty vigilance and involvement; support for the development of student skills and cognitive growth; decreased student opportunity and motivation to cheat; and the pervasive sense of professional identity and responsibility that characterise departmental efforts on this issue at all levels. Dealing with plagiarism 175 The work done in this department is thus an arguably successful attempt to â€Å"devise a student plagiarism framework that best suits [our] own culture and circumstances†.

Media Essays News Citizen Journalist

Media Essays News Citizen Journalist News Citizen Journalist Introduction We live in an era of information overload: it requires no groundbreaking analysis to establish this. Society is bombarded from every angle with news: Newspapers; television; streaming news services on the Internet and independent blogs written by ‘citizen’ journalist. This worldwide change has occurred over the course of a minute timescale. Since the dawn of journalism until very recently, there were always a finite number of news sources. In the 80’s there were ten UK dailies, and three channels which contained news bulletins. By 1998, at the dawn of online news coverage, articles were a day old and suffered the disadvantage of not being specifically written as an online medium. Sites were updated once a day, and breaking news would sometimes be covered by a small news ticker at the most. If we are to use September 11th as a comparative vantage point, set close to the present and catastrophic at a worldwide level, the scale of the change within the news becomes visible. The 7/11 bombings in America were viewed in Britain on five terrestrial television channels, three dedicated news channels (BBC News 24, Sky News and ITV News), and news services such as Reuters, CNBC and Bloomberg provided continuous information updates. This does not even attempt to cover the countless other news sources around the world whose focus was to cover this tragic event around the clock. The Internet was saturated with theories, creditable news stories and speculation. The Guardian and The New York Times at the time provided online coverage, and since then nearly every news channel has developed online news services. For the first time everyone was capable of getting their opinion out there: The Internet allowed people to post their views, share their sadness and grow theories of conspiracy as could never have been done before. On the 7th July bombings in London BBC 1 and ITV1 had coverage completely uninterrupted until 7pm. Material included large amounts of footage sent in by the public, including videos and pictures taken on camera phones. News now travels at light speed. The gaps between major news stories, which steal the public’s attention, are hardly long enough to allow absorption of the story, let alone understanding any greater sense of context within which it may lie. The Internet itself is growing at a massive and uncontrollable rate. According to Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, the search engine would need another three hundred years to successfully index the five million terabytes of data it is approximated the internet now holds. Google has been indexing information for the last seven years, and has managed to index somewhere in the region of one hundred and seventy million terabytes. Statement of subject Because it has never been easier for individuals to broadcast their opinion, the divide between what is and isn’t considered to be ‘journalism’ is being narrowed. The power to be published has been extended to anyone who may wish to take it: Words no longer need to be passed through an editorial filter; instead the public can broadcast their opinions through blogs, feedback and their own webpages. There are countless online forums and e-zines where the public can submit their own work, and as such there are no official standards because we are no longer tied to words entwined in the ethos of a large corporation. For the individual, when it comes to getting their word out, things have never been better, and the same applies to music, filmmaking and photography. To be published no longer certifies a vocational integrity. In my dissertation I am going to assess the increasingly important role of citizen journalist, and the effect of new media on independent reporting. In an article in the Guardian on the 12th November 2007, David Leigh points out that our principles are being degraded through the lack of discrimination we exert over sources. â€Å"Some voices are more creditable than others†¦a named source is better than an anonymous pamphleteer†. Essentially I want to assess whether the reporter is a dying species, overrun by ‘citizen journalist’, and in what areas a sense of vocationally based journalistic integrity will prevail and withstand the peripeteia taking place in the media. Reporting staffs are being cut globally, with more and more reporters going freelance. Investigative journalism is on the decline, and citizens are contributing to more stories than ever before. Leigh quotes a BBC Radio 4 interview where John Simpson, the BBC’s veteran international news correspondent was asked if all news corporations were cutting back. He confirmed that in his opinion reporters were under real threat, and were not needed anymore, â€Å"We just want people’s opinions about what’s happened, not the facts†. In the article Leigh quotes Max Hastings, the ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, who states that â€Å"all sorts of areas of the world are now thought to be too boring to keep a correspondent there. The commentariat has taken over.† Explanation of research Restrictions of study The topic I am researching is very broad, and varies very much form place to place. The role of citizen journalist is still developing and maturing. The public are only now fully realising the effects of independent reporting. There is also a psychological dimension that is constantly changing: People are only now beginning to trust articles that do not come from the larger news corporations. Research questions and hypothesis I need to inspect public broadcasting standards, and see what mechanisms are in place to stop the news of larger corporations turning completely into infotainment. I need to find out how much larger news corporations rely on spin departments and press offices for their information, and how much investigation is carried out independently. At the moment people rely on news corporations for objective news, and tend to read the work of citizen journalist for a second opinion. My hypothesis is that all of this will eventually invert, and the only form of sincere and detailed reporting will actually be that of citizen journalist. Definition of key terms In order to understand this essay, the definition of the term ‘citizen journalist’ must be clarified. There has been much debate over this topic, and much confusion has ensued. The Internet is the most effective medium through which the public can dynamically post comments, leave opinions after news stories and feel a direct level of interactivity with their news. While it would seem that this would lead to ‘vandalism’, sites such as Wikipedia have demonstrated that there are systems effective at minimising this sort of input, and I will examine this in greater detail later. But the ability to simply broadcast opinion isn’t, nor has it ever been ‘journalism’. Audiences have always been harnessed into the process of news making, whether the input may be in the form of letters to the editor or a clip of video phone footage. Despite the fact that during the 7/7 London bombings contributed video footage was used, public contributions have always been vital to journalists. It is easy to forget that when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, Abraham Zapruder, a member of the public who got the best shot of the assassination, shot the video footage seen across the globe. It was his film that was used by analysts to try and determine from where the president was assassinated. But recently the public have been recruited into the news making process at a much greater level. People are intrigued by people, and want to witness the experiences of others, to humanize their news stories. Editors and producers embed stories and experience from members of the public into news stories to give them a more personal dimension. This is the citizen as an addition to a news story. At a greater level of interaction, citizens can help report in a ‘participatory’ manner, whereby they contribute to a story in the field of their expertise. Their knowledge or guidance is framed within the journalist’s context. The ability to publish a soft draft of a story on the Internet has made it easier for journalists to gain help from the public to aid a story. Citizen Journalists are too often mistaken for eyewitnesses armoured with new technology. In wake of the 7/7 bombings, people are quick to label the footage and pictures submitted by members of the public as the work of ‘citizen journalist’. But I believe ‘citizen journalism’ entails the bypassing of the commercial news system completely. This is the only way for reporting to not contain the agenda of a large corporation. It can be argued that reporting can never be truly devoid of a personal agenda, but a corporation will inevitably be entwined in a political agenda. Citizen Journalist is a term used to describe the actions of amateurs taking it upon themselves to report on subjects in an accurate, and independent manner. It is not to be confused with ‘participatory journalism’, where the public are used as sources. Another relevant term is â€Å"Infotainment†, which is essentially a slang term used to describe information given the slant of entertainment. A summary of what is to follow I am going to assess the liberation technological advance has made for ‘citizen journalist’, including beneficial and detrimental effects on news production as a whole. I want to see whether there is room for both professional and citizen journalists and whether traditional reporters are a dying species. Using case studies I am going to analyse where stories written by citizen journalist may not have been possible in a larger, corporate journalistic context, and similarly, where reporting would not be possible without the resources available to a larger news corporation. As well as this I am going to analyse the trends of corporate news, and asses whether the very roles of citizen journalist and news by larger corporations will invert: with serious stories being written by the citizen journalist while corporate news is almost entirely reduced to infotainment. Literature review This topic is relevant because it affects all of the information we receive. The forces of supply and demand work heavily on the corporate news system, and as such are debasing the level of our news. Citizen journalist on the other hand, is relatively free from such forces, and more able to write for niche audiences. There is a new freedom to write passionately about non-mainstream topics, with the possibility of a worldwide audience. When newspapers first came into circulation, in 15th century German and Flemish states, they lacked the same institutionalized nature that they do today. It was the dawn of the industrial revolution and the creation of large cities, the cheapening costs involved in mass printing and the growth of literacy rates provided the market for newspapers in the nineteenth century. Then advertisers realized the true potential for marketing to an ever growing population of newspaper readers, and the costs of newspapers went down even further. The corporate model first took over the Hollywood film industry in 1914, and then the movie distribution system. By 1920 radio had become corporate, and by 1950’s television had followed suit. All forms of media were organized in â€Å"accordance with corporate industrial logic†. Government controlled media started to arise in many parts of less developed countries. In Africa and Asia, where power had been handed over to those whom the departing colonial powers were most comfortable with dealing with. These people were ‘clones’ of the ruling elite who had once colonised them. Hence the newly emerging media were staffed by the most Westernised natives. The New World Information Order (NWIO) was created to justify ‘development journalism’. The ethos of the organization encouraged state control of the media in order to ‘educate’ and develop the respective local populations, and in within this line of thinking the education system in developing countries was also shifted into the state run sphere. As Louw points out, Communist control of the media was justified through the same line of argument. â€Å"In Afro-Asia ‘education’ and ‘development’ were managerial tools by which ruling elites (forcibly?) Westernised their populations, thereby increasing the numbers of their own Western ‘tribe’†. (p.43) One of the most relevant aspects of the Internet, is the creation of an accessible worldwide community that endangers such political mechanisms of control. While once people’s perceptions of life itself were very much narrowed by the culture in which they lived, now people from all over the world have an interface with which they can communicate. The internet has evolved: third world countries, with their antiquated and even non existent phone lines missed out on the first generation of the internet. But as technology developed, fibre optic lines and broadband replaced the traditional ways of plugging in, and third-world countries, with no existing infrastructure to replace and facilitated with cheap labour costs, have quickly connected themselves in. The mobile phone revolution was similar: Five years ago in India if you wanted to make an International call you had to call an operator and book it in. You would then wait by the phone for an hour or two, and at some point the operator would call you back and connect you. Now every Indian with a roof over their head also has a mobile. This is an unbelievable phenomenon in a country which frequently still has power cuts, is home to immense poverty and still has a massively unreliable wired phone network. Despite this the prevalence of a mass mobile phone culture took place there even before America had abandoned their two-way. Having come from an Indian background, and with all of my family currently residing there including my fifteen-year-old sister, I have visited the country at least once a year for the last twenty years. I am persistently surprised by the massive changes that occur there from one year to the next, but these are factors relating to matters of economy and fiscal development. The most prominent changes have occurred, in my opinion, since the Internet and the mass availability of American cable channels. The standardization of social values simply through watching American cable television is enormous, and the impact on the younger generation is massive when in contrast to their parents. An issue, which is widely ignored in more developed western countries, is the dominance of their media throughout the world, and the lack of correspondence between them and local cultures. The birth of citizen journalist has empowered countless people in less developed countries. But spatial boundaries have been eroded by technology, distance has been tamed and while news once took months or even years to travel, today it travels in the blink of an eye. Because of this the relevance of political borders, and the concept of culture and country has become more peripheral. The importance of the citizen as a reporter, the value of hyper-local news and the democratic nature of the internet as tool for expression is quickly becoming invaluable. In part due to these matters authoritarian states such as China, Cuba and Iran have been forced into moving away from their isolation, both ideologically and culturally, and individuals are privy to the writing of journalists not within the borders of their own, controlled domains. Monroe Price asked the question â€Å"Can a nation state survive in a world in which the boundaries of culture, faith and imagination do not (1995: 236). Nation states have survived and, McNair argues in ‘Cultural Chaos’, they will continue to do so. He argues that they will bring into conflict nation states with conflicting ideologies. A brief account of the issues relevant to the topic The creation of a press department in any company or political organization is a key factor. Journalists rely more and more n the information fed to them by the very people they are trying to write about.*EXPAND â€Å"What is clear is that there will always be some individuals or groups trying to control meaning. Underpinning this is a competition over resources (material, cultural and status). Our life chances are set by the social parameters facilitating or hindering our access to such resources† (p25 The Media and Cultural Production – Eric Louw, 2001) Technological advances have resulted in a massive, global, spatial dissolution, and are becoming more and more relevant to our lives. This enablement of social realization through geographical space is a concept being dissolved through the advancement of technology. Technology affects the way we write, the footage we can capture to accompany our stories, and our ability to access the news itself. It is the advancement of technology which has enable the creation of a citizen journalist in the first place. The world is getting smaller, and the amelioration of communicative potential is bringing human beings closer together. Since the 1980’s, and more specifically with the onslaught of ‘live’ news coverage that CNN brought to the Gulf War in 1991, a new sense of immediacy has been brought to the news. There is a new sense of participation, and interactivity that has been brought to broadcasting and the news in general, with broadcasts becoming more dynamic. We can be transported from the isolation of our domestic environments to the parochialism of the news environment we are watching. Through news exposure, which includes the horror of human catastrophe, society is becoming more and more disengaged with the context of what it witnesses. People don’t have enough time between major world events to become fully acquainted with the context of any particular situation. Broadcasters would rather keep viewers engaged with sensational footage, than risk loosing audiences with a contextual background which could be deemed more ‘boring’. As a result people feel that there are too many events to care about any at all, and more importantly there is a widespread concern that we are essentially powerless to do anything about it. Our press has the freedom to fully articulate the injustices of today, but tomorrow there will be new injustices. When the format of the news we are subject to is too consistent and perpetual to never expect not to be shocked by a front page or a top story on a daily basis, we have no choice other than to be emotionally indifferent. McNair describes us as having ‘become fatigued by the proximity of human suffering’ (pg 7, Cultural Chaos). The News corporations, governed by the same principles of supply and demand as any other capitalist institutions, have advertency converted our round the clock news coverage into a form of entertainment†¦of ‘infotainment’. One of the primary book I am going to look at is â€Å"We the Media: Grassroots journalism, by the people, for the people†, by Dan Gillmore. â€Å"We the Media† inspects the blogging phenomenon, and more specifically analyses the relationship between the readers and creators of news. Gillmor acknowledges that blogging is still in an early stage of development, and that in many respects professional journalists are not only behind the developments occurring in news production, but struggling to keep up. He goes on to argue that institutionalized journalism needs a new model of conduct in order to be in a position to â€Å"fight the good fights†. I have also been looking at Cultural Chaos: Journalism, news and power in a globalised world by Brian McNair. He draws on examples from the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the London Underground bombings to examine the relationship between journalism and power in the digital age. McNair explores the geographic and cultural breakdown-taking place as provoked by the digital age. He examines the impact of the digital age on journalism the effects it has in creating a global culture. There is a fear among news media professionals that the rise of ‘citizen journalist’ will eclipse the role of the professional journalist. The biggest, and most universal fear is a public reliance on the information provided by citizen journalist will lack the accuracy and â€Å"objectivity† of the larger corporation. Citizen journalists on the other hand feel that the professional media lack the passion or the flexibility to report as accurately or incisively as them. One of the advantages of citizen journalism is that the massive number of amateur writers overshadows the comparatively small number of professional journalists. When people can choose what to write about, it is guaranteed that they will do so with passion. Their articles will be researched; it can be argued, with greater dedication. Citizen journalist are ruled by no sense of hierarchy; as a group citizen journalist can use a skill set appropriate to a project. However, a journalist is merely meant to be a vehicle through which to convey a message. Will this influx of citizen journalism actually diminish objectivity? At least with the mainstream media the public can have an understanding of the context of the paper in which thy read their article. When a different writer, writes every article with no editor to moderate output, can we ever have an understanding of the standpoint of the writer, with no prior knowledge of him or her. On top of this, we can’t even count on a set of defining, professional journalistic principles, nor will amateur writer sever have access to the resources of a professional department. Case Study On Sunday, April 6th there was an article in the New York Times Observer about an undercover vegan, who set out to expose the horrific conditions of a South California slaughterhouse. â€Å"To fit in he bought sandwiches made from soy riblets and ate them in a dusty car parking lot with the other workers†. Despite his vegan beliefs, this citizen journalist spent long days escorting cows to the kill. Armed with a buttonhole camera, he â€Å"made sure he was successful in recording images of workers flipping sick dairy cows with forklifts, prodding them with electrical charges and dragging them by their legs with chains so that they could be processed into ground meat†. The investigation resulted in the United States authorities taking action at a national level. The film the citizen made was picked up by the mainstream media, and was effective because it was edited in a sensationistically limited manner. Citizen journalism is useful because it allows smaller groups of people to be heard, and the more empowered we become by technological advances, the easier it becomes for us to challenge the images we are exposed to by the mainstream media.

We Must Raise the Minimum Wage Essay -- Increase Minimum Wage Essays

Minimum wage is the lowest wage an employer can pay their employees. There is a Federal minimum wage and in some cases a State Minimum wage. The current Federal minimum wage is $7.25. An employee who makes $7.25 an hour and works 40 hours a week, will earn about $14,000 per year. The Federal government deemed that the poverty line is anyone who makes less than $17,000 a year (â€Å"Federal Minimum†). Therefore anyone that makes minimum wage lives below the poverty line. As president Obama said in his state of address, "In the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty† (â€Å"Federal Minimum†). This essay will examine the problem of low minimum wage and explore ways to resolve this issue. There are two types of minimum wage in the United States. The first type of minimum wage is a Federal minimum wage. Federal minimum wage is established by the Federal government and is the lowest set amount of money an employer can pay its employee (â€Å"Federal minimum†). On the other hand, an individual State may set its own minimum wage. The States under the Tenth Amendment have the right to accept the federal minimum wage, or states may set their own minimum wage. Roughly 20 or more states have set their own Minimum wage laws. Some states set their own minimum wage because some states have higher cost of living. An example of cost of living is the price of gasoline. Gasoline in the state of Hawaii cost just about four dollars per gallon, where as the state of Oklahoma cost roughly three dollars a gallon ("Update: Minimum Wage"). Economists point to inflation as the main cause for low minimum wage. Inflation is described as â€Å"a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of mone... ...e Minimum Wage Is Stuck at $7.25; It Should Be $21.16 — or Higher." Inequality.org. Inequality, Facts On File 24 July 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. Berfield, Susan. "Fast-Food Wages Come With a $7 Billion Side of Public Assistance." BloombergBusiness. N.p., 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. "Federal Minimum Wage." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 13 May 2013. Web. 15 Oct. 2013 Henderson, David R. "Raising the Minimum Wage Will Not Reduce Poverty." Poverty. Ed. Viqi Wagner. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "The Negative Effects of the Minimum Wage." National Center for Policy Analysis, Brief Analysis. Vol. 550. 2006. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 6 Nov. 2013. "Update: Minimum Wage." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 15 July 2009. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.

My Bigger :: essays research papers

My Bigger   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In Richard Wrights â€Å"Native Son† he magnificently describes how he came about of configuring Bigger. He used four specific people to create Bigger. Wright chose people that stood up for themselves almost to a fault. All of the people did have bad ends, but were nevertheless influential in Wright’s, life good or bad. Wright drew from his personal experiences with these people to manufacture Bigger reactions. There were many social circumstances that held Bigger back from succeeding, like poverty, the depression and even his own stubbornness. Bigger was just reacting to his surrounding like Wright’s people did, a good example of this is when Bigger kills the rat and keeps hitting it. That relates with when Bigger No. 5 drew the knife on the streetcar driver asking him to move to the colored car, and he said â€Å"Make me.† My people I’m going to talk about didn’t have to deal with such hardships, but did deal with more n ational and social challenges.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My Bigger No.1 had a great influence and impact on my life for 17 years and still going. He was born in the first year of the baby boom era. His childhood was good and privileged but it was when he got out of high school when things changed. He did go to college for a half year and flunked out. The country was in a transition period from the mid 60’s to the late 70’s and Bigger No.1 was right in the middle of it and old enough to be affected by it all. And at this time if a man from 18 to 25 wasn’t in college he had to get into the reserves or go to Vietnam where he might die. Bigger No.1 had missed the registration date for the reserves. He didn’t believe in the war and had no intensions of going to it. He was afraid like many men were then, especially if they didn’t like the cause. His father had been in WWII and had nearly died (when he and another man were walking side by side in the jungle they somehow switched places and tw o step later the other man was killed by a sniper). Bigger No. 1’s father was in the Army and he did get into the reserves, one month late. Bigger No.1 had to spend 4 years in the reserve. Now this wasn’t the hard part, it was what was in the middle.

Comparing and Contrasting Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets Essay

Comparing and Contrasting Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets The low-carbohydrate diet and the low-fat diet take two different approaches to achieve the same goal of weight loss. The fundamental difference between the two diets is found in the comparison of their nutritional recommendations. Nutritional recommendations are the foundation of both diets, although their views on the role carbohydrates, proteins, and fats should play differs greatly. Dieters are told that following these nutritional recommendations will promote weight loss. The amount of weight loss achieved with either diet fluctuates over time and in the end, the results for the two diets are similar. Low-carbohydrate diets recommend eating foods high in fat and protein while limiting carbohydrates in order to promote weight loss. Foods high in fat and protein are the main source of calories during the first phase of weight loss on the Atkins diet. It is recommended that fat make up about 60% of calories ingested and protein make up 35% of calories ingested. The Atkins diet does not restrict calorie intake and they recommend that you eat until you are full. Researchers believe that overeating is avoided due to the lasting satiety dieters receive from eating large amounts of protein. The Atkins diet allows 5% of calories to be from carbohydrates, ideally only from non-starchy vegetables. The logic behind the restriction of carbohydrates is that without them present in the blood, the body is more likely to utilize stored fat for energy. Unlike many other diets, restrictions are not placed on the kind of fat and protein to be consumed; dieters are able to choose for themselves whether to stick with lean meats and unsaturated fats or to choose fatty... ...le to shed pounds more quickly than those dieters eating lots of carbohydrates on the low-fat diet. Low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets require adherence to very different nutritional recommendations while ultimately achieving similar weight loss results. Low-carbohydrate diets, such as Atkins, encourage dieters to eat things high in protein and fat, whereas the low-fat diet requires dieters to eat mostly carbohydrates while limiting protein and fat intake. Researchers have found that both of these diets help to promote weight loss short term using strict nutritional recommendations, but that neither of them seem to be able to help dieters maintain their lower weight long term. Sources: Astrup, Arne, Thomas Meinert Larsen, Angela Harper. â€Å"Atkins and other Low-Carbohydrate Diets: Hoax or an Effective Tool for Weight Loss?† TheLancet.com 4 Sept.2004