Essay on Victims Rights - 1010 Words

Millions of Americans are victims of crime every year. Victims of crimes have rights which entitle them to special benefits and help as a result of a crime. Crime is defined as any behavior that is punishable by a fine, a prison or jail sentence or in some cases both. There are two types of crime. The first type is a felony; the standard definition of a felony is any crime that is punishable by more than one year in prison or by death. The most common felonies are murder, robbery, treason, rape and kidnapping. The second type of crime is known as a misdemeanor. A misdemeanor is usually a less serious crime and is generally punishable by a fine and/ or incarceration in a county jail for up to one year. The most common misdemeanor crimes†¦show more content†¦Most cities and counties in Colorado as well as across the United States have a Victims Advocate Program. These offices are staffed with trained people who care about the victim and their rights during their involvement in the criminal justice system. Their goal is to help lessen the impact of being a victim of crime or a witness to a crime, and provide information about how the court system works and the current status of their case. Remember, it is the very important for the victim to keep law enforcement that is working the case informed of any changes; keeping the lines of communication clear, open and up to date. In the state of Colorado the constitution and the laws of this state guarantee rights to victims and witnesses of a crime. There are specific rights given to victims of certain crimes; these rights are guaranteed as well to the victims spouse, partner, parent, child, sibling or grandparent, should the victim be deceased or incapacitated. Among these rights and the most important are the victims’ rights pertaining to information. A victim or victim’s family has the right to have information about the critical stages of the criminal justice process and to know what is happening with their case. Victims of violent crimes have additional rights as well, many of these rights relate to being informed about aspectsShow MoreRelatedAccused Versus Victim’s Rights1927 Words   |  8 PagesAccused Versus Victim’s Rights The United States of America relies on due process of law to ensure equal protection of life, liberty and property to all citizens. Police officers work tirelessly to accommodate regulations adopted to ensure only criminals are convicted. These restrictions have been part of the United States since the Bill of Rights was generated in 1791, but in the 1960s, as â€Å"Law and Order,† the view that crime must be dealt with harshly to deter citizens from breaking the law, theRead More Victims Rights: Why Do Laws Protect the Criminal More than the Victim?2546 Words   |  11 PagesThe criminal laws of the United States are more intent on protecting the rights of criminals than penalizing them. Today’s inmates live better off than most American citizens who are often working two jobs just to meet paying their taxes. A criminal can literally get away with murder because of a technicality, police can barely interrogate suspects without the suspects’ lawyers stating so me legal issues that prevent further investigations. It almost seems that the very people who do not respectRead MoreCapital Punishment1137 Words   |  5 Pagesthe society. An individual who found guilty of a crime will have to face corresponding punishments. Among all penalties, capital punishment is considered to be the most severe and cruelest one which takes away criminal’s most valuable right in the world, that is, right to live. It is a heated debate for centuries whether capital punishment should be completely abolished world widely. The world seems to have mixed opinion regarding this issue. According to Amnesty International (2010), currently, 97Read MoreThe Rights Of The United States2205 Words   |  9 Pages Introduction. The ICESCR was signed in 1966 and came into force in 1976. It provides for a bunch of economic social and cultural rights amongst which is the right to health. The rights in the Covenant were for a long being considered as ‘vague’ and therefore unjusticiable. This was as a result of the fact that state party obligations under article 2(1) of the Covenant were not of immediate effect. They were instead subject to progressive realization subject to the availability of resources. Read MoreSexual Harassment in the Workplace in India801 Words   |  3 Pagesfactor that renders women’s involvement in works unsafe and affects right to work with dignity. It is unwelcome verbal, visual or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is severe or pervasive and affects working conditions or creates a hostile work environment. Generally sexual harassment is a sexually oriented conduct that may endanger the victim’s job, negatively affect the victim’s job performa nce or undermine the victim’s personal dignity. It may manifest itself physically or psychologicallyRead More Forgiveness Essay1329 Words   |  6 Pageskind of sacralization, a purification which would have freed his religious conscience, all too tardily aroused, from the terror of eternal punishment (182)†. Cynthia Ozick argues that â€Å"forgiveness is pitiless. It forgets the victim. It negates the rights of the victim to his own life. It blurs our suffering and death† (207). This animosity toward forgiveness eclipses the critiques of apologies due to forgiveness coming from the victim. This animosity stems from the perceived power structure of forgivenessRead More death penalty Essay1215 Words   |  5 Pagesviolation of human rights? Mohammad Towhidul Islam Though the modern world is very sympathetic to the concept of human rights issues, death penalty as a form of capital punishment has still been in practice in the world. During 2001, at least 3048 people were executed in 31 countries as well as at least 5265 people were sentenced to death in 68 countries. It is very interesting to see that some advanced countries, which are pioneer to the protection and promotion of human rights and also veryRead MoreSexual Harassment At The Civil Rights Act1746 Words   |  7 PagesWith such practices agencies protect not only the victims rights but also evidence that is later used in cases. This stratifies Miranda Rights actives that have â€Å"grave concern for the effect†¦ that the individual may not be compelled to incriminate himself† (Linkins, 2007). This practice also satisfies the State, who has interest in protecting clear evidence of proper due process procedures and statements given. In instances where states aim to protect victims under different circumstances, forRead MoreA comparison Study of Russia and Estonia1171 Words   |  5 PagesHuman rights are a fundamental aspect of the lives of individuals. The atrocities committed throughout history have prompt the formation of a variety of organizations that have encourage the advancement and respect for the human rights of all individuals around the world. Despite a growing human rights movement and awareness among individuals, many countries still continue to violate the human rights of their citizens. There could be many reasons for this trend, but there are certain factors thatRead MoreThe Issue Of Capital Punishment Essay1411 Words   |  6 Pagesand violent crimes. There are mixed reactions on capital punishment depending on one’s faith. In my view, I am not in favor of capital punishment as I strongly believe that death penalty is unacceptable and an inhumane practice for it denies one’s ri ght to live. Death penalty does not deter crime, it is an act of punishment, it costs more than life imprisonment, and worst of all, risks executions of innocent people. In countries where the death penalty remains, those victims die at the hands of that

The Merchants of Cool Essay - 720 Words

In Rushkoff’s film, The Merchants of Cool, he rhetorically questions if â€Å"teenagers even have a culture to call distinctly their own.† In the late 1990’s when the documentary was made, the implication was that they do not. However, with the internet’s advancements and the accessibility of communication with massive amounts of people, teenagers today can form authentic cultures that are not contaminated by the corporate media. When the documentary was produced, media exposure was limited to private and expensive mediums such as television, movies and radio. These outlets were plagued with marketing agendas designed to sell products under the guise of authentic music and entertainment. Formerly non-existent cultural archetypes such as the†¦show more content†¦The media chooses to portray and sell sex, violence, drama and role models because it appeals to teenagers’ biological and evolutionary instincts. The excessive amounts of sex hormon es being produced in teenagers boosts libido causing displays of eroticism to be very alluring. Scenes of action or violence release adrenaline and endorphins for emotional stimulation and teen idols like NSYNC and Edward Cullen portray the ideal mate for many girls. The music presented is mostly homogenous and simple to promote familiarity and emotional response. Had these businesses tried to sell celibacy, indifference and pariahs, their profits would have declined. In The Merchants of Cool, Rushkoff goes to a teenage party to survey rising trends and notices a strange phenomenon. The girls dancing in front of his camera seemed to be selling the same exaggerated sex appeal that corporations were selling to the teenagers. He labeled this sensation a sort of â€Å"giant feedback loop† which implied that, since corporations try to mirror teenage behavior and then pervert that into a more explicit version to sell back, which in turn causes teenagers to emulate the corporationâ €™s behavior, teenagers are incapable of having a genuine culture to call their own, much like the youngShow MoreRelatedThe Merchants Of Cool By Goodman1348 Words   |  6 PagesThe Merchants of Cool The Merchants of Cool (Goodman) is a documentary film that investigates the purchasing and offering of cool as a kind of goods. The shoppers of cool are young people in America. They represent the huge sector in modern marketing; they actually create the marketing dynamics, being profitable consumers. So what is it that makes some companies’ being successful over the other? What are the patterns that find a response among the modern teems? Through this documentary, the hiddenRead MoreThe Merchants Of Cool : Film Review1417 Words   |  6 PagesName: Instructor: Course: Date: The Merchants of Cool The Merchants of Cool is a documentary film that investigates the purchasing and offering of cool as a kind of goods. The shoppers of cool are young people in America. They represent the huge sector in modern marketing; they actually create the marketing dynamics, being a profitable consumers. There are many patterns that switch on the request to purchase particular items made by particular brands. So what is it that makes some companies’ beingRead MoreThe Merchant Of Cool By Barak Goodman And Rachel Dretzin808 Words   |  4 Pagesâ€Å"The merchant of cool† is 2001’s special documentary of PBS frontline on culture and mass media, which was produced by â€Å"Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin†. This documentary explores the heavily dependence of youth on the mass media. This documentary is about the selling and buying of cool. In America mostly consumers of cool are teenagers. In a certain year, hundred billion dollars of their own money spend by the teen agers. While teens influence their parents and fifty billion dollars were additionalRead MoreThe Media s Influence On American Culture By The Dominate Ideology Of White Middle Class Males875 Words   |  4 Pagesimbedded in our everyday life. I will use two online media stories; the PBS online video, Merchants of Cool, and Yahoo Style as the basis of this essay. The PBS video, Merchants of Cool is about the merchant and media outlets that target the teenage population with their estimated $150 billion annual spending power. The video looks at how these merchants, through both pop-culture and teen surveys (i.e. cool hunting), give the impressionable teenage market what they want and what today’s top fiveRead MoreEssay about King Zethius Meeting1053 Words   |  5 Pagessoon to come. For many months, the king and his advisers have met in one, of many cool, damp secret chambers beneath the Citadel of Splendor to discuss the growing problems with lawless merchants outside Kelmoor Keep. For far too long the wily merchants from Verktus and Westgate have plundered the small independent cities, towns, and farm villages scattered about the lush moorlands of their goods. Some merchants would force the farmers to sell their goods at very low prices through extortion orRead MoreBad Statistics and Deception in the Media988 Words   |  4 Pagesto, as much as, refreshes, comforts, fights, the feel of, looks like, tastes like, and strengthened (Deceptive Advertising: Crossing the Line, 2013). The Teen Market Frontline, a program on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired The Merchants of Cool, an examination of the efforts of corporate America to exploit the teenage market. At the time of the broadcast there were 32 million teenagers in the United States spending 100 billion dollars annually on their own while their parents spentRead MoreIndian Ocean and Silk Road Trade857 Words   |  4 Pagesthrough trade. The Indian Ocean and Silk Road as trade networks were different in terms of the spread of Religion. Along the Indian Ocean trade network, Islam was spread. This happened through Indian merchants who brought Brahmin priests, Arab merchants who brought Muslim scholars and Christian merchants who brought priests. Along with the Islamic religion came the 5 pillars which included the (1) Shahada: testimony and declaration of faith, (2) Salah: prayer five times a day, (3) Zakat: charity toRead MoreDeath in, Death out in Each Puff1712 Words   |  7 Pagesand Disorders). I’m sure if there were to be more advertising about the health risks and the history about cigarettes, people would have a better understanding about what can happen in the long run as a smoker. Like Larry White, the author from Merchants of Death, many Americans are unaware that smoking cigarettes has killed more Americans than those who have died in the wars against our British and Vietnamese enemies. At least 350, 000 Americans were killed by cigarettes in 1986 alone (293,000)Read MoreMcDonalds: The coffee spill Essay848 Words   |  4 Pageslarger as well as give a verbal warning. Maybe they should make the entire wrapper or cup a warning. I cannot however agree to lower the temperature. I feel that if a customer wishes to have a cooler beverage, ask the server to pour a little cool water in it to cool it off. As far as food is concerned, consumers should have the common sense to wait. 6. What is your assessment of the â€Å"Stella Awards?† Is this making light of a serious problem? I think that the Stella awards are funny. They show us whatRead MoreThe Role of Media in Youth Culture in Contemporary Society1309 Words   |  6 PagesA $150 billion dream is how the demographic of teens is described in PBS’ â€Å"Merchants of Cool†. The role that society has given to the media to dictate youth culture has become one of the most lucrative conquests corporations are battling over today. Much like empires throughout history, media empires today have found their ‘Africa’. This paper is an examination of this silent, bloodless conquest through two different sociological lenses. First we will consider the effect of media in youth’s culture

Miller vs. California Free Essays

Miller vs. California is a landmark case held in 1973 that led to a legal definition of obscene and a confirmation that the 1st amendment does not include pornographic materials. In this case Marvin Miller had appealed in the Supreme Court against a ruling that had seen him being guilty of a misdemeanor. We will write a custom essay sample on Miller vs. California or any similar topic only for you Order Now He had carried out an activity of mass mailing advertisements for adult books. This particular case had seen him send these materials to a hotel; the hotel manager and his mother opened these. They sued Marvin miller claiming that they had not solicited for them. A California court had found him guilty for knowingly and intentionally having distributed pornographic materials. The case was forwarded to the Supreme Court where the former ruling was affirmed. Miller’s arguments were revolving around the perceived protection of the freedom of speech by the first amendment. His act was protected by the constitution. There was also contention on the legal definition of the word obscenity. The judge’s decision was based on an argument that obscenities and pornographic materials were not protected by the first amendment. The state, the court argued, had the powers, and the right to regulate the flow of those materials. What is obscene, they stated was to be determined by the application of â€Å"contemporary community standards† as opposed to â€Å"national standards† (www.acluprocon.org) The court in making this ruling had a gigantic task trying to define pornography and obscenities. In the end, the court was in agreement after, long reviews, of the legal definition of obscenity which hence it said would be: †¦limited to works which taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, an which taken as a whole, do not have serious literacy, artistic, political or scientific value. (www.law.kmkc.edu). If an average person finds these materials appealing to sex in a morally corrupt manner and if it lacks in any political artistic or social usefulness then it shall be considered offensive and the publicist be liable to a misdemeanor. The miller’s arguments on the protection of his publication by the first amendment were quashed on those grounds. This ruling drew much opposition as well as support. It was as controversial as the subject itself. It was playing around a thin balance of morality and the fundamental freedom of speech. One of the fallacies available in this court ruling emanates from the belief that the state and the court are supposed to uphold the freedom of speech as one of the key constitutional rights. How then does this same court rule against a principle it real posits to protect. The ruling that the first amendment does not extend to protect pornography is not understandable. It seems the court holds pornographic materials as being special and not a form of expression. The decision on what was to be considered obscene and what is to be regarded as socially acceptable was made in a very subjective manner. This was worsened by the claim that it was to be made by an average person in consideration of â€Å"contemporary community standards†. This means that there will be differing criterion to gauge the obsceneness of materials and contents. Different federal states hence can arrive at different verdicts regarding the issue of pornography. The question would be posed about why double standards were to be applied in the different states. The agreement also on community standards is also bound to be confusing. There is no specific criterion on how the people in a state would come to an agreement as to what community standards are to be considered proper. The definition of obscenity passed in the ruling excludes serous political and literary materials or any material that can be considered important to the society. Ambiguity thrives in the term serious. It is not also clear who is supposed to decide what is to be termed as serious or not serious. Serious materials would mean different things especially in the diversities that exist in the United States (www.csulb.edu). The ruling had it that the state had authority to censor any materials considered obscene. It is to act as a moral guardian. Questions rages on the harm caused by these publications that would see the state go to an extent of suppressing freedom of speech. The consequences of allowing pornography are not clear as other materials such as films with violent scenes are allowed free circulation and yet people do not get violent. It is understandable however where the court was coming from unsolicited obscene mails is not excusable but gagging their publication and public’s voluntary access to them is not understandable. Work Cited Miller Vs. California. Aclu Procon.org case No. 250. September 2007 Miller Vs. California. Supreme Court of the United States. Decided on June 21, 1973. 12 September 2007 http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/miller.html Julie C Van Camp. Freedom of Expression at the National Endowment for the Arts. 4th July 2005.   12 September 2007 How to cite Miller vs. California, Essay examples

The Realm of Big Data

Question: Write a business report based on the following: Select a new (developed/implemented from 2012/onwards) E-Business Technology/Application. Discuss the key advantageous features of the technology/application when compared with the alternatives available. As well as the key advantages, identify and discuss key limitations of the technology as well as the risks associated with its implementation. Answer: Executive Summary The volume, variety and velocity (Lohr, 2012) of big data have evolved very recently with IT companies embracing the advantages provided by the means of big data. Big data has taken a leap ahead in the few years to help the companies find some interesting ways to analyze the data. It has also conquered the realm e business and all the planning that is involved with the procedure to apply the concept of bug data analytics and data mining with retail sites and online e business. Various experts say that the market for analysis is going to enter into a revolutionary and completely new era where the technology have grown up to become capable of data driven business (McAfee, 2012) in a dynamic world and real time. The developments in big data are moving towards cost effective prospects to improve the methodologies and finally come up to refined decision making in the critical areas of development such as employment, health care, crime, security, economic productivity, resource management, e business, online social media sites (Mayer-Schnberger, 2013) etc. Big data is therefore, a bridge between the technological advancements and enormous explosion of data with business aspect of economic development and prosperity. Introduction Big data technologies, tools and strategies are used in the process to scoop out huge amount of data that is generated by online business websites, social networking sites, online retail stores etc. In the recent times, it has also been realized that big data has the inherent potential to accelerate the development in terms of economy and act as an engine of economic development. The recent years saw a tremendous development in the field of technology of big data which, in amalgamation with business intelligence and data analytics are fueling the application development of mobile technology (Boyd, 2012). Big data has realized its transformational potential for socioeconomic development with the help of innovation, opportunities and challenges. Recent Developments in Big Data (2013 and 2014 highlights) Big Data can help in collecting and analyzing information from simple and cheap cell phones to give an insight into the behavior, movement and patterns of people (LaValle, 2013) travelling leading to a study about the health issues or diseases spreading. The innovative new development can aid data mining techniques to adopt new measures to scoop out analysis for patterns by the means of simple text messages via cell phones. Such collected information and use of big data technology with mobile technology can be harnessed to build tools and systems for officials or health practitioners. To mine the phone records can help in giving patterns of study as per the requirements. Presently with almost six billion mobile phones used in the world, they generate an enormous amount of data that might include location tracking or information (Laurila, 2012) over some sort of commercial activity or some saved bookmarked links to social networking site. Big data along with techniques of data mining are used to analyze the patterns of mobile phone usage to predict the degree of health issues and also to predict the magnitude of the outbreak of diseases. Big data which is so far untapped to a greater extent can be used to engineer a better world to live in. In the terms of finance and resource management big data usage is making the commercial opportunity for the banks highlighted and enabled. Data is real terms is an asset and usually emerge from undeveloped or developing regions having lack of other technologically advanced resources and tools for survey or research. In the past two years, almost 90% of the total data was generated which was a product of contribution from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Amazon or LinkedIn (Davenport, 2013). Various businesses are utilizing the essential techniques of big data to understand the reviews of the customers and to formulate their policies and strategies based over positive or negative feedbacks. In the contemporary times, tools such as Hadoop have made storage of enormous amounts of data in cheaper ways as compared with other tools such as Exadata from Oracle, Netezza from IBM (Marz, 2013) etc. Retail stores have started to use the concepts and practicalities of big data to analyze customers activities via cards and coupons. Had there been a mainstream adoption for the analytics of big data, the manufacturing and retail sector alone would have accounted for approximately billions in their annual GDP. This is because of the fact that big data have now become commercially and enterprise ready to be u sed by the companies in a much cheaper way to store data and to later process data so that plethora of business may leverage the big data analytics. In the recent of the developments, the analytics tools for big data are opening up its realm to common people who lack specialized skills for handling or using it. The companies are democratizing big data with iterations and version updates to make it easy to use and easy to understand in the terms of user interface and visualizations. Real time analysis of big data is an innovation in the framework (Murdoch, 2013) to extend their services in various fields. For a past few years, companies are increasingly becoming interested to loom into business prospects across the borders and helping to drive the overall world economy. The economic development in these markets and developing potential markets are leading to an increase in amount and quality of data. This is a circle of development where the economic development is driving and paving path for increase in data and use of big data which is further fostering more economic development. Technology have mad the ways where people are more focused towards producing data and making it available for analysis so as to make the lies better and easier. In the year 2014, the trumpet and drumbeats of big continued to pound the world with major developments and some of the DBMS vendors expanding the offerings of the products. There was in literal terms, a tsunami of big data in the marketplace of database and database management (Marx, 2013). There have been advancements in the fields of business intelligence, NoSQL, analytics and tools for big data. Future Prospects in E Business For the upcoming years, there are predictions being made by various companies are organizations pertaining to big data. The predictions for 2015 for the big data includes pushing of big data analytics into the realm of enterprises with some more use cases and getting deeper into the domain of real time use cases for a better analysis and for incorporation of contemporary practices. There are prospects for big data deployments into the real time. Data agility is becoming one of the key drivers for the development of big data technologies and analytics to build around legacy databases (Zaslavsky, 2013) and data warehouses to include flexibility into the development process. The initial objects in big data focused over being storage for the target data sources but instead of focusing over the organization or management of data, the focus should shift to measuring agility of the data. 2014 was an year of data hub or data lake which was an object based repository to store raw data in the native format either in a structured format or in some form of raw unstructured (Michael, 2013). These data lakes are predicted to evolve in the year 2015 with an inherent capability to bring about multiple of computing and execution engines for processing of data in place. The data lakes in real time are projected to evolve from being batch to real time processing and integrating some of the file based engines to large scale development platforms. The big trend of big data in the year 2015 would be continuous access and the processing of some of the real time events to gain success in tapping of unlimited potential. Year 2015, will also see an era of self service to embrace big data to allow business users for empowering development and analytics to conduct research for data explosions. Hadoop tool is into a maturity lifecycle with various white papers published in the context for making it steer into an innovation phase (Wu, 2014). There have been tremendous competition in the fie ld of big data softwares and tools transforming the trends from batch analytics processor to a fully featured data platform for integration and applications services. The data stack for the Hadoop software will see enterprise architects coming onto the main stage for a sophisticated requirement sheet for applications of big data (Smolan, 2013). There will be high availability and business continuity by usage of big data and the recent tools developed which are cost effective and are coming with easy to use interfaces for users. Developments in big data: A source for competitive advantage The management of data in the terms of business so as to collect, filter and analyze data would become simpler as the size of data is growing and tools for data handing and mining (Crampton, 2013) are becoming obsolete to match up the enormous volumes of data. The speed, capacity and the scalability (Dumbill, 2013) factor that is attached with the cloud storage is benefiting the business to make them able and competent to manage massive data sets and information without significant cost investment and secondly to reorganize platforms for big data hosting to abstract the deployment of complex big data technology. Big data tools are incorporating features of data visualization tools to be able to make the end users actually visualize the data in the real time. As the big data analytics tools begin to expand and get mature in the industry, companies are realizing its competitive advantage in the era of data driven world. Big data is being used in plethora of fields for analysis and rese arch. As we can all observe, that data is no longer simply numeric and numbers stored in database, the capabilities to analyze data will evolve with the introduction, use and implementation of big data (Madden, 2012). The services provided by the business organizations can be can be enriched and filtered by the use of big data technologies and analytics tools to mine and scoop out patterns of data and coming onto useful results pertaining customers. With the real time information, there can be better sales insights (Cambria, 2013) which may lead to additional methodologies for revenue generation as it can map the sales on a per second basis. Challenges for real time big data analytics There are plethora of challenges that are occurring in the development and innovation phase of big data analytics and proving to be key barriers in general and widespread adoption of the tools and techniques fostering the use of big data in day to day routine data mining and pattern analytics techniques. The technology requires the use of some of the special computing powers (Gantz, 2012) which is not much mapped up with the real time analysis. The tools have to be made specialized and advanced in each and every term to process data in real time (Chen, 2012) and provide the results and analysis reports in the real time. For every organization, it is practically impossible to change the culture of the company so as to make it fit it the real life scenario and make room for the analysis and results that are brought every second. The organizations adopting big data must be transformed into information centric organizations (Kaisler, 2013) focusing over real time data input and analysis output. The big risk for the big data is the chance of real failure and risk leading to structural shifts (Fan, 2013) in the markets. There have been ambiguity in the markets and the customers using the data analytics. Security of the information and the privacy (Tene, 2013) of the customers are the other important and key risks that are associated with the disadvantages. The cost of the tools required to implement and execute big data into the real life requires is far too high for medium or small scaled industries, organizations or businesses to be able to implement big data into their routines. Conclusion Big data is not much new to the industry but its presence, buzz and craze is new to IT industry with its impact spreading like forest fire and big data along with its cost effective tool Hadoop becoming the buzzword for the industry. There have been many advancements made, but the use of big data in mobile applications to be able to get insights into health factors and disease spreading is a contemporary approach and development done. There are many business advantages that big data offers but also have some of the disadvantages that are occurring as huge challenges. Real time collaboration of big data shall be a tremendous success in the near future of e business and marketing (Liu, 2013). References 1. Lohr, S. (2012). The age of big data.New York Times,11. 2. McAfee, A., Brynjolfsson, E., Davenport, T. H., Patil, D. J., Barton, D. (2012). Big Data.The management revolution. Harvard Bus Rev,90(10), 61-67. 3. Mayer-Schnberger, V., Cukier, K. (2013).Big data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 4. Boyd, D., Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon.Information, Communication Society,15(5), 662-679. 5. LaValle, S., Lesser, E., Shockley, R., Hopkins, M. S., Kruschwitz, N. (2013). Big data, analytics and the path from insights to value.MIT Sloan Management Review,21. 6. Laurila, J. K., Gatica-Perez, D., Aad, I., Bornet, O., Do, T. M. T., Dousse, O., ... Miettinen, M. (2012). The mobile data challenge: Big data for mobile computing research. InPervasive Computing(No. EPFL-CONF-192489). 7. Davenport, T. H., Barth, P., Bean, R. (2013). How big datais different.MIT Sloan Management Review,54(1). 8. Marz, N., Warren, J. (2013).Big Data: Principles and best practices of scalable realtime data systems. O'Reilly Media. 9. Murdoch, T. B., Detsky, A. S. (2013). The inevitable application of big data to health care.JAMA,309(13), 1351-1352. 10. Marx, V. (2013). Biology: The big challenges of big data.Nature,498(7453), 255-260. 11. Zaslavsky, A., Perera, C., Georgakopoulos, D. (2013). Sensing as a service and big data.arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.0159. 12. Michael, K., Miller, K. W. (2013). Big data: New opportunities and new challenges [guest editors' introduction].Computer,46(6), 22-24. 13. Wu, X., Zhu, X., Wu, G. Q., Ding, W. (2014). Data mining with big data.Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on,26(1), 97-107. 14. Smolan, R. (2013). The human face of big data. 15. Crampton, J. W., Graham, M., Poorthuis, A., Shelton, T., Stephens, M., Wilson, M. W., Zook, M. (2013). Beyond the geotag: situating big dataand leveraging the potential of the geoweb.Cartography and Geographic Information Science,40(2), 130-139. 16. Dumbill, E. (2013). Making sense of big data.Big Data,1(1), 1-2. 17. Madden, S. (2012). From databases to big data.IEEE Internet Computing,16(3), 0004-6. 18. Cambria, E., Rajagopal, D., Olsher, D., Das, D. (2013). Big social data analysis.Big Data Computing, 401-414. 19. Gantz, J., Reinsel, D. (2012). The digital universe in 2020: Big data, bigger digital shadows, and biggest growth in the far east.IDC iView: IDC Analyze the Future. 20. Chen, Y., Alspaugh, S., Katz, R. (2012). Interactive analytical processing in big data systems: A cross-industry study of mapreduce workloads.Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment,5(12), 1802-1813. 21. Kaisler, S., Armour, F., Espinosa, J. A., Money, W. (2013, January). Big data: Issues and challenges moving forward. InSystem Sciences (HICSS), 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on(pp. 995-1004). IEEE. 22. Fan, W., Bifet, A. (2013). Mining big data: current status, and forecast to the future.ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter,14(2), 1-5. 23. Tene, O., Polonetsky, J. (2013). Big data for all: Privacy and user control in the age of analytics. 24. Liu, Z., Jiang, B., Heer, J. (2013, June). imMens: Realà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ time Visual Querying of Big Data. InComputer Graphics Forum(Vol. 32, No. 3pt4, pp. 421-430). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

In Her Mothers Image Essays - Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights

In Her Mother's Image At the beginning of Wuthering Heights Lockwoode makes a mistake in assuming that young Catherine II was Heathcliffe's wife. It is easy to see how he, a stranger unfamiliar with the Earnshaw-Linton family history could have made such a mistake. But, had Lockwoode known about the life of the woman Heathcliffe had always wanted to marry, Catherine I, and then have been able to compare it to life of her daughter, Catherine II, he would never have been able to make that mistake, for the lives of the mother and daughter were as different as night and day. To start, Heathcliffe, the current master of the house in which Lockwoode was staying, loved Catherine I more than anything in the world. They spent hours, even days at a time together, and almost always cherished each other's company. Their relationship, however, was not one of social equals. Through a series of events, Heathcliffe had become Catherine's servant, and it was for this reason that Catherine refused to marry the man she loved, feeling that it would ?degrade' her to do so. It is, among other things, because of this that Heathcliffe hates Catherine II with all his heart. To him, she is a symbol of the woman he could never have because of his lowly status. Through no fault of her own, she becomes the object of his hatred and is treated much worse than her mother ever was; Heathcliffe even makes her his servant. Her relationship with Heathcliffe is at the opposite end of the spectrum when comparing it to that of her mother. Heathcliffe loved Catherine I, but hates Catherine II. Heathcliffe was Catherine I's servant, but Catherine II has become Heathcliffe's servant. As far as married life goes, neither Catherine I nor Catherine II married who they truly loved, but nevertheless, Catherine I still managed to get along with her husband, Edgar Linton, and in exchange for the task of marrying this man whom she did not love, she received a boost in her social standing, and she secured for herself a life of comfort and finacial stability. Catherine II, on the other hand, is forced (by Heathcliffe) to marry Linton Heathcliffe, a man for whom she has no love

Rollercoaster essays

Rollercoaster essays The purpose of the hill at the beginning of the ride is to build up a reservoir of energy. Potential energy or the energy of height as it is known because since the ground has zero potential energy then anything above the ground has a greater than zero potential energy, and the potential energy increases with increasing height. As the ball gets higher in the air there is a greater distance through which the gravity can pull the ball down. The potential energy you build going up the hill can be released as kinetic energy which is the energy of motion and the effect of this is that it puts the ball in motion. Roller coaster loops are much like a teardrop in shape, which is geometrically referred to as a clothoid loop. A clothoid is where the radius is constantly changing, not like a circle where the radius is constant. The radius at the bottom of the clothoid loop is much larger than the radius at the top. When a roller coaster is travelling through a clothoid loop they experience acceleration from a change in speed as well as a change in direction. In a circle the rider moves to the right, upside down and then to the left. There is always change in direction which is one characteristic that causes an object to accelerate. From energy transformations an increase in height (and therefore a increase in potential energy) results in an increase in kinetic energy and the converse is also true. The effect of this is that the rider experiences the greater speeds at the bottom and the lowest speeds at the top, a change in velocity is also a characteristic of acceleration. This concept of acceleration as a rider moves through the loop is described as a result of centripetal force. The acceleration of the rider has two components. The one that is directed towards the centre of the circle (centripetal force) and is the cause of the direction change, which affects the ball to move in a circle. The other is directed t ...

Crown Cork & Seal in 1989 Business strategy Case Study

Crown Cork & Seal in 1989 Business strategy - Case Study Example The economic analysis deals with the opportunity costs of resources being used along with attempting to measure the social and private costs as well as benefits in monetary terms of a project to the economy. The Crown Cork and Seal attempted to locate its business towards the areas that were closer to the customers. For the purpose of forecasting of the transportation costs of the company, the distance of about 150 to 300 miles was considered to be economical between the location of customers and the placement of plant. In addition to this, the company managed to decrease its transportation cost that was roughly estimated to be 7.5%. In addition to this, the company changed its ingredient of making cans from the use of steel to aluminium. This resulted in decreasing the weight of the cans along with reduction in the shipment cost of these cans relative to the cans produced before by the company. Furthermore, due to the shipment of steel cans in the international markets, the company suffered uneconomical circumstances due to the increase in shipment costs. For this reason, the company attempted to make joint ventures in terms of affiliation with US can manufacturers, foreign subsidiaries as well as local foreign firms in order to cater the foreign markets (Bradley S., 2005). Political: Political environment can be referred to as an immediate impact of the political parties possessing authority, representing the popular perceptions given by the citizens of the area (Export Help). It has been seen that the developments of legislations were unfavorable for metal can industry in USA (Bradley S., 2005). Social Cultural Environment: In this case, the chief executive officer attempted to bring together two companies possessing distinctive cultural and social backgrounds irrespective of the fact that the past mergers were undoubtedly unsuccessful. This impossible challenge was accepted by Avery in order to capture the markets of Canada and to expand its operations furt her. Moreover, there were numerous

Andean and mesoamerican societies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Andean and mesoamerican societies - Essay Example In this discussion, the war methods of the two societies are explored. Both Andeans and Mesoamericans did not have complicated weapons for war fighting. They both used traditional war tools for hunting purposes, however, the approach in fighting their enemies varied. Mesoamericans had organized war fare than the Andeans. Andeans had poor weapons against their enemies and they majorly relied on the old war tactic methods. They used tools such as, flint- tipped spears, and cotton quilted tunics, bows and arrows to fight their enemies.1 In addition, they had no technologically advanced weapons, and this made them suffer defeat in many war stages. 2 Their poor war methods and choice of traditional weapons made Spanish triumph over them during the war. This led to the capture of their emperor by the enemies because of their technological vulnerability and cultural gap. Mesoamerican’s war was occasionally based on raids. Their wars fare rose as a result of the destruction and seizing of fixed assets. They had different methods of fighting. These methods were based on experience and skills, which they had learnt over the years. During wars, they retreated strategically to their familiar territories. Notably, they had to siege cities during the wars to counter their enemy. They also used alliances method. The alliances made the weaker enemies defeat the most powerful enemies, who were likely to beat them in the war. This method worked greatly in their favour. Another method of fighting the enemy was the destruction warfare methods. This method majorly included burning. The jungle terrain of their land also made it more complicated for their enemies to reach them. 3The warfare used was also through control of trade routes, which made them defend their cities with defensive structures like gateways, earthworks, and palisades. At some point, they could use hunting tools for war purposes. Moreover,

The Effects of a Adopting a Mandatory Employment Arbitration System in Essay

The Effects of a Adopting a Mandatory Employment Arbitration System in The Middle East and The UK - Essay Example The applications of these historical and legal foundations of arbitration are explored in the final section as they pertain to the origins of arbitration systems in the Middle East and in the United Kingdom. In order to gain an understanding and appreciation for the dynamics and significance of arbitration as a central component of the effective execution of trade agreements, it is necessary to trace its early development. A review of the historical records demonstrates that mechanisms of arbitration have been utilised as a non-military means of dispute resolution that has always functioned as the cornerstone of peaceful exchange of commodities between individuals, groups and nations throughout human history1. This assessment of the historic roots of arbitration illustrates that the foundations of negotiation and the principles of alternative dispute resolution are to be found universally among human cultures and have provided an essential foundation for the development of modern mechanisms of arbitration that have become an essential component of international trade agreements that define the global economy. The concept of arbitration developed historically in the context of resolving cross-border commercial disputes2. As such, the evolution of arbitration and dispute resolution practices over many centuries speak to a trend that merely seeks to accommodate this i3nitial concept of arbitration on both domestic and international levels3. This part of the paper examines the early historical development of arbitration based on an examination of available historical records and presents it as the background against which the specifics of modern arbitration practices and policies in the UK and the Middle East have developed. It is important to explain the dynamics of alternative dispute resolution so as to place arbitration in its proper historical context4. It is only then that the social

The Debate About The Fall Of Rome History Essay

The Debate About The Fall Of Rome History Essay The debate about the fall of Rome and the way it happened is a centuries-old one and its vitality has been undiminished over the years. The traditional theory has the Roman Empire being violently overturned by barbarian Germanic tribes who started invading en masse during the last years of the fourth century. That wasnt the first time that the Empire had to deal with pressure on its borders, but this time it eventually collapsed because it had already declined as a civilization due to internal problems. The first scholar to support this line of thought was Gibbon in the late eighteenth century. His great, multi-volume, work goes by the title The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which speaks for itself as for its writers thoughts (?). He argued that the most important cause which brought about the end of the Roman Empire was the expansion and gradual predominance of Christianity. First, the new religion and the structures that came with it (such as the church and the monasteries) interfered with the distribution of wealth inside the Empire, by accumulating it in institutions that were inaccessible by the state.  [1]  Second, its pacifist ideology reduced the armys will to fight and its theology corrupted the classical ideals through the spread of superstition.  [2]   Another scholar arguing along the same lines was Rostovtzeff. He states the Late Empire was in retrogradation?, a sad and decadent remnant of its former self, partly because of the increase in absolutism during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine and the emperors who succeeded them. Together with Gibbon, his arguments form the core of the traditional theory, which puts stress especially on the issue of decline as the main reason which made the disintegration of the empire, as a political entity, eventually inevitable.  [3]  Due to the work of these two scholars, the Fall of Rome has ended up being seen as something like the platonic idea of decline.  [4]   Along with the traditional theory, we should consider the work of a more recent scholar. Following the same methodological path as Rostovtzeff, Jones credited the barbarians with the destabilization and collapse of the Roman Empire. Their invasions, he argues, should be seen as a destructive agent which placed strain on the Roman administration.  [5]  At the same time, in a well-known passage, he speaks of a large part of the population that was consuming without producing anything, such as senators, soldiers and the clergy. These idle mouths, as he calls them, partly a result of barbarian pressure again, at least as far as the army was concerned, was the main reason for the economic waning of the Late Empire.  [6]   Jones contribution was twofold. To begin with, he proposed a new chronological period, extending further than 476, the date traditionally considered as signaling the moment of death of the Roman Empire. His ending date was 602, the year of the emperor Maurices death as he strongly believed that the Roman Empire continued its existence, albeit geographically diminished, in the East, at least until the advent of the Slavic tribes in the Balkans at the end of the sixth century.  [7]  This way, he managed to provide a connection between late- and post-Roman societies, hinting that there might have been a causal relation between the two.  [8]  Secondly, he breathed new life in a period that was all but put aside by his contemporaries as of not much particular interest and after him scholars gradually started to perceive the Late Roman Empire in its own right.  [9]   This was countered by traditionalists in 2005 with the publication of a book under the title The fall of Rome and the end of civilization. In this book, the author Bryan Ward-Perkins is arguing fervently that the fall of Rome was a violent experience for the people involved, which involved much bloodshed and catastrophe.  [10]  It was centered more on radical change than gradual transformation and was characterized by decline and resulted in a decline in civilized values which actually that a number of Roman cultural achievements were lost.  [11]   Although this view has its merits and should not be discredited without consideration, it needs to be examined carefully because it conceals the danger of oversimplification. First, it can be argued that the author has gone too far with his emphasis on violence and catastrophe. Violence, no matter how hard on a society, is not by principle an agent of radical change which rules out any chance of transformation. Human history is full of violence and it would be surprising if the fourth and fifth centuries did not involve any at all. Despite Ward-Perkins vivid depictions, much of what was considered Roman did not disappear with the Empire. Roman qualities, such as a literate culture, can be shown to have survived as late as the seventh century, proving that the devastating barbaric invasions did not actually have such a devastating effect after all.  [12]   Stemming from that, we should examine if there was a specific moment in time when Rome actually fell. If we cannot point out such an instance, then we should regard it as a more gradual process. Italy, for example, shows that society was able to maintain its order in the face of much devastation.  [13]  And if, as Ward-Perkins himself admits, there was no single moment, not even a single century of collapse  [14]  , then we should discard catastrophist theories as inadequate and try more. We should also keep in mind that the author comes from an archaeological milieu  [15]  and, as a result, most of his proof comes from the study of material evidence.  [16]  Archaeologists of the period tend to be advocates of the notion of decline more often than historians, mainly because such a decline is much more evident in the material remains of the Late Roman era.  [17]  In addition to that we have to be careful with the origin the evidence. In the case of Ward-Perkins, he doesnt hesitate to support his theory on data from Britain,  [18]  but Brittania (i.e. the part of Britain which was conquered by the Romans) had never been the archetypal Roman province. So Britain is far from being the typical example of what happened after the Romans had left the island, particularly given the fact that we can find other provinces of the Roman Empire, which shared a completely different fate, such as Egypt and Syria.  [19]  When talking strictly about the west, one has to be extremely cautious when trying to combine both the archaeological data with historical sources that might give the impression of continuity. One way approaches, such as the one only just discussed, will not do. Late Antiquity With good reason one might ask what the need of such a dramatic reassertion of the traditional view on the fall of the Roman Empire. The word traditional itself implies the existence of an opposite, neoteric theory. In 1971, Peter Brown published a book which defied all the assumptions of the traditionalist school.  [20]  His book The world of Late Antiquity: from Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad argues about continuity, transformation, cultural and religious renewal. The enthusiasm that the book was met with in academic circles, especially in the United States, resulted in the banishment of terms as catastrophe, change, crisis and decline.  [21]  Brown was influenced by the views of an earlier scholar, Henri-Irà ©nà ©e Marrou, who argued that late antique art had not deteriorated and that it should be looked at in its own terms. Brown was influenced by the work of Henri Pirenne. In his works the Belgian scholar supported that there was continuity to be found in terms of long-distance trade in the Mediterranean which was not affected by the barbarian invasions but collapsed with the great Arabic conquests of the seventh century.  [22]  Brown placed a new stress on the period resulted in a recent rethinking of Pirennes views through the prism of the newly proposed notion of continuity.  [23]   Finally, Brown could also be considered an influence because, as we saw earlier, he was the first to propose a causal connection between the Late Roman Empire and the post-Roman era. Thus, given the entailed predominance of continuity which was easily detected in themes such as art and religious belief, a new historical period has been founded with its own characteristics, that of Late Antiquity,  [24]  in which some of the basics of classical civilization still survived  [25]  . Its boundaries stress from the third to the eighth century, but they are still unfixed, with every writer proposing different dates, according to the issues they deal with. Brown relied heavily on the methods of historical psychology and psychoanalysis. This methodological innovation is a general trend among scholars of Late Antiquity, particularly those in the United States. They have more or less identified themselves with the kind of history that falls outside the scope of socio-economic history. For example, the history of Christianity has proven very fertile for studying Late Antiquity, especially the effects it has had on different aspects of human life, such as death, sexuality and the family.  [26]  Thus, this school of thought has made astonishing contributions in such fields as gender and culture history, the history of mentalities and of popular belief. Such methods, however, often tend to function with no respect to periodization and as such they lead to fragmentation.  [27]   Indeed, the work of these scholars shows more emphasis towards individuals and their perspectives than to the society they live in.  [28]  As a consequence, post-modernist theories concerning source analysis have relied heavily on the works of scholars after Brown, while, in the meantime, the old philological approach has been largely abandoned. Ancient texts are dealt with not so much for their narrative value, but as agents the mentality of their authors.  [29]  Of course, works exclusively focused on different authors have a lot to offer to the ongoing discussion of the period, but dogged commitment to them might create a handicap for our understanding of the period as a whole.  [30]   Furthermore, partly as a response to the traditional view of catastrophe, scholars of Late Antiquity have been particularly keen on seeing continuity and transformation. But this attitude can be harmful in two ways. First, the notion of continuity seems to have an overshadowing effect on the particularity of issues in a certain period. If everything is proven to carry on from the past not changed in the least, then historical periods will automatically lose their individual tone, by which it is defined.  [31]  Simultaneously, by relying to heavily historical sources (as they provide ampler evidence for continuity) we may be overturned by the findings of archaeological research (in the way Ward-Perkins was). Second, emphasis on continuity and transformation is the expulsion of their opposites from contemporary history books. Terms such as crisis and decline seem to have been anathematized in modern research and this has started to raise objections, even by scholars who are not polemicists of continuity itself.  [32]  Powerful words like these falling into disuse can only be detrimental for historiography. These terms are usually avoided because of their moral implications, and it is somehow assumed that if there is decline someone needs to be charged with it.  [33]  But we always have to bear in mind that history is a science and historians should concentrate purely on the facts of their research. Nevertheless, Late Antiquitys impact shouldnt be confined within strict scientific limits. Continuity along with transformation, apart from being objects of historiographical debate, is also too powerful of terms to be overlooked by contemporary politicians. From 1993 to 1998 a large research project, funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF), brought together scholars from across Europe. Its title was Transformation of the Roman World and its aim was to provide a widely accepted interpretation of the fall of Rome, along the lines of a smooth passage to what was to become todays Europe.  [34]  Two thousand years after Augustus history is being repeated: the European Union is commissioning its poets to create its own foundation myth. Late Antiquity is a new period that has had to carve its way bravely into powerful, deep-rooted views of modern historiography, much like the barbarians who had to carve their kingdoms fighting against the mighty Roman Empire. But unlike the former, somewhere along the way it had to make sacrifices which rendered it less effective as a means of interpretation and more limited in its scope. Also, it came to associate itself with allies with political agendas, who might have promoted it, but in the long term damaged somewhat its credibility in terms of objectivity. After all that, it is not surprising that Avril Cameron, a great advocate of the Brown school, herself admits Late Antiquity is in danger of having become an exotic territory, just before suggesting that it should be tested also in the fields of economic and administrative history.  [35]   Pekepersonal thekerkerethoughts-synthesis/LA+med west Thus far, weve witnessed in brief a powerful debate: Ward-Perkins book came as a vivid reaction to a whole school of thought formed around Browns work, which itself was another dramatic response to an older tradition. But extremism is inherent in violent reactions, because only through opposition one side can define itself and stand out in relation to its adversaries. Naturally, the existence of opposition itself should not lead us to believe that one side is absolutely right, while the other is absolutely wrong (and in most cases they are not). Rather, it should direct us towards an evaluation of the new conclusions that emerged from the conflict and setting the problem on a new base. However, it should be noted that both books have something in common: they are heavily focused on different geographical areas, where their conclusions seem to be more frequently affirmed. This way, Brown was able to find plenty of continuity in the eastern part of the Empire, while Ward-Perkins discovered a great deal of catastrophe in its former western provinces. As Jones had underlined long before those two, historians often tend to forget that only a part of the Roman Empire actually fell to the barbarians.  [36]  So, nothing would be amiss if things were so well defined, but they are not. And although it seems that Late Antiquity is better suited for early Byzantine history, there are also those medieval scholars who deem it rewarding to try their hand at the concepts that this new approach brought with it. Late Antiquity and early medieval history One of these was jean claude van dam (the muscles from brussels) mouahahhahahaha Late Antiquity and the barbarians The exclusion of notions of violence and catastrophe from the debates concerning the fourth and fifth centuries, which Late Antiquity scholars promoted, created a historiographical vacuum and a way had to be found for depicting the relations between the Roman Empire and the new arrivals. If violence could not be used to describe them, then the sources had to be searched for a different sort of evidence. The subsequent reexamination of the sources gave birth to the notion of accommodation. The first scholar to do that was Walter Goffart. In a well-known book,  [37]  published in 1980, he described in detail the way that the barbarians were settled on Roman lands. According to Goffart a fairly straightforward arrangement between the late Roman administration and the barbarian tribes can be derived from the sources. The critical feature of this arrangement was that the Empire relinquished its rights on the taxation of the region in which a group of barbarians were settled and instead those taxes would be collected by the barbarians. However, according to this theory, there was no expropriation of land, no partition of it to smaller units to be apportioned and no need for extra money from the tax payers.  [38]  The only one who had something to lose in the process would be the central administration and this definitely helps explain the fact that there is no sign of any noteworthy resistance from the local population in the regions where the barbarians were settle d in this way.  [39]   The aforementioned theory was further elaborated by Durliat. After analyzing the sources rigorously, he managed to take Goffarts theory one step further. He argued that land tax in the Late Roman Empire amounted to no more than 20% of the harvest and it was collected and administered by the curiales. They split it in three and kept one third for their citys expenses. The other two thirds were then sent to Rome to be used for the needs of the army and the central administration. With the advent of the barbarians, this system was very conveniently transformed to accommodate them: the curiales no longer sent anything to Rome but instead conferred the appropriate amount to the barbarian group that happened settle in their citys administrative region. Furthermore, he argued that this modus operandi continued unaffected after the fall of the western Roman Empire, in the different successor-states, until the collapse of the Carolingian Empire.  [40]   This theoretical synthesis was attractive to scholars, not only due to its clarifying simplicity and astonishing applicability, but also because it served to explain the lack of any negative sentiment in the sources. The importance of it becomes clearer, if we take under consideration that actually there were complaints on the part of the sources, wherever the barbarians had not settled peacefully but by force.  [41]  As we saw earlier, the curiales were unconcerned if two thirds of the land tax changed recipients, as long as they were still obtaining their part undiminished. One can easily imagine the effect that this argument had on the debate on continuity, especially since it was centered on Western Europe. Of course, this theory didnt fail to raise some eyebrows. Liebeschà ¼tz criticized Durliats arguments on a twofold basis. First, he doubts that late Roman cities actually collected for themselves any part of the imperial taxes and second, he argues quite convincingly that such an agreement would eventually provide little actual security to the settling barbarians, as security is usually better ensured through direct property of the land, than through any fiscal rights. Whats more, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that it was exactly this security that the barbarians were looking for and of course, their position of power during the last centuries of the Roman Empire made sure that they were not likely to settle for anything less.  [42]   Moreover, Durliats theory was commented on further in an article in 1998.  [43]  There, Wickham analysis Durliats arguments and dismisses them one by one. Initially, he disagrees that the strict fiscal meaning which the latter ascribes to terms such as possessors and fundus is actually the one intended by the legislators of the fourth and the fifth century and in so doing he undermines the theory from the beginning. But he goes on to challenge other aspects such as the idea that Church constituted a part of the state administration in the post-Roman kingdoms (and thus church property consisted only of fiscal lands) and the view that servus is the term used to suggest a free landowner. By providing hard evidence following the chronological order (Late Empire, Romano-Germanic Kingdoms, Carolingian Empire), Wickham manages to discredit convincingly the arguments about fiscal continuity throughout this period. But, it should be noted that in the end of his article, where he discusses briefly the issue of continuity, he states that while he is not averse to it himself, it should not be considered tantamount to complete absence of change.  [44]   However, the predominance of continuity does not sit well with terms like barbarian invasions and Germanic immigration. So, historians had to find ways to circumvent this problem; they started by looking at the ethnic identities of the Germanic peoples, because it could be argued for example that there was no clear-cut sense of common identity between barbarian groups, such as the Goths, or some common characteristics that defined Germanic then it would be possible to downplay the importance of the aforementioned terms. This way, Late Antiquity affected another heated debate (and in the meantime was affected by it); that of European national identities. The contribution of Walter Goffart has been essential at this point. Apart from fiscal continuity, in his Barbarians and Romans, he was also arguing about against the existence of definite ethnic identities among the barbarians. Another centuries-old historiographic tradition before him interpreted the movements of the Germanic tribes according to contemporary political ideas.  [45]  For example, before the Second World War, Kossina had argued that there was a separate, identifiable culture to be associated with every Germanic tribe we come across in the sources and in 1961 Wenskus had maintained that there was a core of tradition carried by the elite of each barbarian group, according to which the whole mass of the tribe was defined.  [46]  But, according to Goffart migrations have served as the factual underpinnings of early Germanic unity.  [47]  Thus, if he could prove that no such unity actually existed, the migration and invasion theories would lose all sense. Indeed, he argues for a short history of these peoples oblivion was a result of translocation. The common past of these peoples at any point stressed as back as the time before their last migration.  [48]  He refuses to use sources of the sixth century such as Jordanes because, in his opinion, they only reflect the ideas of their own times and cannot be trusted for their evidence of the distant past.  [49]  Finally, after taking under consideration also the deductions of archaeological research, he thinks that, if one wanted to look at the discontinuity provoked by the advent of the barbarians, he should definitely put the emphasis on Rome and its security. It was the appeal that the Empire had on the barbarians and not their own expansionist agendas that brought about the fall, in an imaginative experiment that got a little out of hand.  [50]   It is therefore clear that Late Antiquity has given historiography of ethnic identities new areas of research to explore. This process gets even more complicated with the interference of modern international politics and historians of the Early Middle Ages recently find themselves and their research at the center of contemporary political debates  [51]  . One can discern a pseudo-history in the making, which serves political and nationalistic purposes in the sense that it tries to define distinct nations that were created centuries ago once and for all. Another assumption is that by right these nations should form separate political entities, according to their defined ethnicity and territory.  [52]   To sum up, the search for continuity of the Late Antique scholars might not have been successful in the field of fiscal policies and accommodation but it ascertained the fact that we cannot presume long histories and ethnic identities of the Germanic peoples. This certainly confirmed transformation instead of catastrophe and crisis for some aspects of the fourth and fifth centuries but it surely proved that there was much discontinuity and heterogeneity concerning the notion of identity.  [53]  And since the Early Middle Ages are of such a great importance in the international political stage, scholars of the period should benefit from the results of research in this field in order to prevent their academic field from becoming a plaything in the hands of international politics. (à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Projecting their own experiences on another period of time (as historians often do)

The Photographers Eye Essay -- Photography

In Szarkowski’s essay ‘The Photographer’s Eye’, he discusses how photography has taught us to see from the unexpected vantage point, as well as how ‘photography’s ability to challenge and reject our schematized notions of reality is still fresh’ (Szarkowski. 1966. Page 11). When thinking about vantage point myself, two very different ideas of this characteristic of photography came to mind, which I will discuss and compare in this essay. Firstly, perhaps the more obvious, was the concept of where a photograph is taken from, for example looking at a subject or scene from a position that allows the photographer a favourable view. A very literal approach. Therefore I decided to think more about how Szarkowski said photography teaches us to see from the unexpected vantage point, and on a visit to the V&A Museum I found Fred Zinnemann’s photograph ‘Empire State Building from the Subway’ (1950) which I think begins to address this idea; the photograph certainly shows an unexpected position for the artist to have photographed the subject from. With the title of the image being ‘Empire State Building’, this surely suggests that Zinnemann intended this to be the main subject and focus point for the viewer, making the position that the artist chose to photograph from very interesting. The empire state building itself is actually set in the background of the image, allowing the viewer to take in the maybe unconventional framing of it, notably the blacked out railings of the subway that are so prominent. Whether Zinnemann intended this or not, I think the vantage point in this image allows for the viewer to re late to the scene more, as it is from a perspective that they could see everyday, when at the same time I feel it also directs the v... ...Brooklyn Family going for a Sunday Outing. [photograph] (Tate Modern Collection) Zinnemann, F., 1950. Empire State Building from the Subway [image online]. Available at: http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Empire-State-Building-from-the-Subway--c/AD8E090F77375033 [Accessed January 2012]. Calle, S., 1981. The Hotel, Room 47 [image online]. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=26559&searchid=10437&tabview=image [Accessed January 2012]. Arbus, D., 1970. Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx [image online]. Available at: http://masters-of-photography.com/A/arbus/arbus_jewish_giant_full.html [Accessed January 2012]. Arbus, D., 1966. A Young Brooklyn Family going for a Sunday Outing [image online]. Available at: http://www.studio-international.co.uk/studio-images/arbus/82364761_b.asp [Accessed January 2012].

Capitalism versus Socialism Essay

Budget deficit is just one of the many factors that negatively affect the provision of most of the government projects in the society. Without the sufficient amount of government funds, building of infrastructures and other public goods would be delayed or underprovided. As we can remember, there are some goods and services that can only be provided efficiently if the government is the one who supply it instead of the private firms to protect the rights and welfare of the consumer group. If there exist under provision of these public goods, the societal welfare would negatively be affected. In this regard, there is a question on whether what should prevail in our economy, capitalism or socialism? One may say that this debate between capitalism and socialism is already a cliche, but we cannot set aside the arguments and points of each side which could give us guide us in understanding what is happening in the real world. Let me discuss first capitalism. Capitalism promotes the concentration of the government in the provision of security in the society and not to intervene in the business world. Some capitalists say that, with the intervention of the government, person who wants to establish a business enterprise is being deprived due to the policies that are being implemented by the government. For instance, legal monopoly that was given by the government to some companies hinders other people from starting their own water/electric company. This failure of other people to start their own utility business, as capitalists believe, is a violation to their freedom. Socialism, on the other hand, is extremely the opposite of the capitalists thinking. Here, government intervention is very much welcome and the society is recognizing the ability of the government to efficiently handle companies and to equally distribute whatever the goods or service that they produce to their citizens. One good example to this is the provision of government of medical services and education. Since not all individuals can afford the costs of schooling provided by private firms, what the government does is they establish public schools charging at a minimum amount. As for the medical services, the government establishes public hospitals and clinics that would provide its citizens cheaper medical services and medicines for less capable people. With this, the basic right of human, to have education and access to medical services, is being fulfilled by the government. The reason why government provides efficient goods and services is due to the fact that they are providing the said goods and services at a reasonable price unlike private firms, especially monopolists, that charges above what is socially acceptable price. Now, based from the points of these two ideologies, therefore, it depends on the situation if whether a certain government intervention is good to the society. If the government interferes in the market in order to protect the welfare of its citizens, then, there is no room for capitalists to say that they are being deprived by the government to put their own business. In addition to that, establishing another utility business, like electric company, would be very costly due to the high fixed costs that they must face. This is the reason why it would be efficient if only one would continue ‘monopolize’ the production of electricity in the country. In this regard, if there would be an under provision of public goods like education, electricity, medical services and security due to budget deficit of the government; societal welfare would surely be greatly devastated. More people would be deprived with their basic human rights and might suffer to private firm’s abusing power. Only during instances wherein the private firms abuses their power and charge high to their customer by providing inelastic goods the government initiate actions to regulate the situation. Good Economics versus Good Politics One could say that an act promotes good economics if it aims for the maximization of the satisfaction of the society or market (Sharma, 2007). On the other hand, one could say that an act promotes good politics if it is backed up by a good policy for the welfare of the majority. Most of the analysts say that good economics leads to good politics and vice versa. Others believe that it’s the other way around. The point of the latter is that, making policies that promotes the no personal interest would lead to good economics since promoting the interest of the majority is tantamount to saying that they are maximizing the satisfaction of the society or they are after for the optimal level of societal welfare (Gittins, 2004). In order for each of the said ideals to exists, it must ensure the survival of one another. It seems hard for the politicians to set aside their personal political interest for the public interest but it should be done in order to attain what is really best for the economy and for the country. One way to promote the public interest is to lessen the burdens being imposed to the public like- tax (Gruen, 2007). Minimizing the tax rate would require a long battle and endless debate but the thing is, if all of the politicians would set aside their personal interest everything is possible for the government and they could act efficiently for the betterment of the economy. In this regard, there is no point arguing what is the best for the society- good economics or good politics, since one is needed for the existence of the other. Invisible Hand Principle Advocated by Adam Smith, invisible hand supports capitalist’s view. According to Adam Smith, the government must not intervene in the market and focus only on providing security and justice system to the society. They also believe that government lessens the societal welfare with their imposition of taxes. Taxes just add up to the operational costs of the businesses that in turn being passed to the consumers. In short, the burden of the taxes that are being imposed by the government goes to the end consumers. Adam Smith believes that market systems has its own mechanism to ‘heal’ itself and move back again towards the equilibrium condition even without the intervention of the government. By satisfying the ‘selfish’ motives of producers and consumers, they are unconsciously helping each other. Therefore, increasing the taxes rate collection of the government to cover the budget deficit would be an unwise idea since it would only add up to the burden of the consumers or the public. Government intervention must have the right timing and, as much as possible, impose less burden to the consumers. As what have been cited a while ago, government intervention depends on the situation and the condition between the private firms and the consumer group. Government intervention would only be sufficient if it uplifts the welfare of the consumer group with less negative effects on the private firms. But as for the increasing tax rate scenario, it seems that, although unintentionally, the government negatively affects the welfare of the consumer group while leaving the private firms unharmed since they only pass the taxes to the consumers. In this case, it would be better if the government let the ‘invisible hand’ or the free market system to put back into order the economy. Production Possibilities Curve There are some instances wherein private firms are being restricted in passing the added costs of government intervention to their consumers. Like for instance, the imposition of tariff on importers, tariff is another income generating activities of the government aside from taxation. With the extra expenses of the importers on every unit of goods that they are importing to the country, they can now only afford to buy less of the said imported goods depending on their allotted budget. In this scenario, the business would be producing below its production possibilities curve or PPF. This means that with the existence of higher tariffs on imported goods needed by local industries, the companies could only buy fewer imported raw materials and, therefore, producing fewer number of finished products than with the optimal level of production. This situation is treated to be inefficient, but since tariff is a form of income generation of the government, the only thing that the government could do is to find the efficient level of tariff rate wherein businesses could still produce closely to their PPF. With this, the value of the efficiency that is lost from the private firms would be justified and would return to them in a form of infrastructures in a form of roads and bridges which could alleviate the efficiency of their operation. In reality, it is pretty hard to produce within the PPF due to the existence of various intervening variables and tariff is one of them. The least thing that businesses could do is to produce closer to their PPF or their optimal level of production based on their capacity and capability. Opportunity Costs With the possibility of under provision of important government services, the government cannot afford to make it happen due to the high opportunity costs involved in the case. The government might forego the value of the welfare of its citizens in exchange of the improvement of the welfare of the corporations. If the welfare of the corporations and consumer group is to be calculated, the welfare of the consumer group is surely larger than with the welfare of the corporations in the market; and in the first place, it is the duty of the government to protect and prioritize the safety and welfare of the majority- citizens of their country. Just imagine the number of students that might stop schooling with the cutting of the budget for education; the number of sick and less capable citizens that only relies on the help of the government for cheaper medical services and/or medicines from public hospitals and clinics. To make the situation worst, the government prioritizes the welfare of Iraqis than with its own citizen. It was aired in the news that the government raised the amount of budget for the ‘peace keeping role’ of the government to Iraqi people. It is not bad to help other people, but ‘think first about the welfare of your own people before the others’ since that is the right thing to do. The point here is that, the reason why the government suffers to budget deficit is due to their wrong priorities. The government must not set aside the welfare of its citizen since it would bail them higher opportunity costs.

Words in Context Key SAT Reading and Writing Strategies

Words in Context Key SAT Reading and Writing Strategies SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips There are no more sentence completion questions on the SAT, so your vocabulary knowledge will be tested with questions that fall under the umbrella of the Words in Context subscore. In this article, I'll give you the inside scoop on what these questions are, what forms they might take in both the Reading and Writing sections, and which strategies work best for solving them accurately. What Are SAT Words in Context Questions? Words in Context is a subscore category on the new SAT that includes questions in both the Reading and Writing sections of the test.Your Words in Context subscore is calculated by adding up the points you earn from answering all the questions in this category.There are 18 of these questions per test (ten in the Reading section and eight in the Writing section), so your raw score will range from one to 18. This raw score is converted to a subscore out of 15. The SAT has seven subscores spanning the different sections of the test that are all converted to scaled scores out of 15. These scores can help identify each student's specific strengths and weaknesses.Here’s a raw score to subscore conversion chart to show what I mean: Since there are no more Sentence Completion questions on the new SAT, all vocabulary questions on the new SAT fall into the Words in Context subscore category.Words in Context questions focus on understanding the different meanings of common words and choosing words that are most appropriate for the given circumstances. They won't test your knowledge of advanced vocabulary that you would rarely (if ever) use in daily life like the old SAT did. On the Reading section, these types of questions will ask you to: Use context clues to decide which meaning of a word or phrase is being used in a specific instance (vocabulary in context) Decide how the author’s word choice affects meaning, style, and tone in the passage (purpose of words in context) On the Writing section, they will ask you to: Alter word choice to convey the appropriate style or tone (improving word choice) Improve syntax of the passage (combining sentences) Improve word choice to make the sentence more precise (fill in the blank) Words in Context questions are important to master because they make up nearly 20 percent the Reading and Writing sections.To give you an idea of exactly what to expect, I’ll provide examples of two Reading questions and three Writing questions that represent all the different types of Words in Context questions you might see on the test. What Do Words in Context SAT Questions Look Like? This section includes examples ofthe various types of words in context questions that you'll come across in both the Reading and Writing sections. Reading Section Example #1: Vocabulary in Context These are the most common types of Words in Context questions on the Reading section.If you’ve ever taken the ACT, you may notice that these are very similar to the vocabulary questions on ACT Reading.They will ask you to choose the best synonym for a given word in the passage based on its context. Here’s an example: In this sentence, we can see that â€Å"credit† means something like â€Å"trust† because the demographers are the ones giving us data to suggest that the public transportation is on the upswing.If we trust them, the trend is real. Now that it's clear what we are looking for, it's time to go through the choices. Choice A is incorrect because â€Å"endow† means to equip or furnish someone with something, which isn’t a good replacement for the form of â€Å"credit† being used here. Choice B is also incorrect because â€Å"attribute† would mean â€Å"cite,† which makes a little bit of sense, but still doesn’t match up with what the original sentence is saying. Choice C seems to fit pretty well. If we â€Å"believe† the demographers, the growing popularity of public transportation is a reality. Choice D is wrong because â€Å"honor" isn't a synonym for â€Å"trust,† and taking the demographers at their word is not the same as actively â€Å"honoring† them. Final Answer: C Example #2: Analyzing Word Choice Rhetorically You’ll also see questions that ask why certain words are used.Here’s an example along with the section of the passage it references: Rather than choosing the correct definition of a word, you must determine why the author uses certain words and how they affect the reader’s perception of the passage. The three words mentioned in the question all indicate hopeful uncertainty, so that's something we should look for in the description of the tone. Also, upon rereading the paragraph, it's clear that this is a very dry, scientific reporting of facts. This clinical quality combined with the words listed seems to indicate that they're used as a means of stating aspects of the authors' hypothesis while clarifying that their beliefs are not yet scientifically confirmed. Ok, time to look at the choices. Based on the unemotional writing style of the paragraph, Choice A doesn’t fit. There is no descriptive language to suggest either an optimistic (or pessimistic) tone. It simply states the central tenets of the authors' hypothesis along with several supporting facts. Choice B can also be eliminated because there is nothing to indicate a "dubious" or doubtful tone. Again, the authors are stating their hypothesis in scientific terms without giving us any clear insight into their deeper feelings about it. Choice C is the most promising so far. It reflects the measured, scientific tone of the paragraph. The authors believe in their hypothesis to a certain extent, but they can’t state their beliefs as facts because they haven’t conducted any experiments to test them. Finally, Choice D is definitely out. The elaboration in the second part of the sentence is overly specific, and once again, the passage doesn’t have strong enough language to establish a critical tone. Final Answer: C We need to keep the bees healthy so we can put their sweet puke in our tea. Writing Section Example #3: Choose the Best Word These questions are similar to vocabulary in context Reading questions, but they ask you to think in a slightly different way. You have to choose the word that fits best in the passage rather than just determining what the word in the passage means.Here’s an example: Let's look at what the sentence is trying to say. The officials recently ordered six original paintings of cats from an artist. If the museum privately hired someone to paint the cats, it wouldn't be necessary for any sort of public announcement or "decree" to be issued. Based on this understanding of the sentence, choice A, "NO CHANGE", doesn’t quite work. We're looking for a word that means the same as "ordered" in the sense of "the officials ordered Chinese food" but in a more formal, artistic context. Choice B is a very promising answer. If you're familiar at all with the art world, you'll know that people and institutions often "commission" works from artists. This is just a fancier way of describing the process of submitting an order for a specific painting that you would like an artist to create. Makes sense considering what we know so far, so we'll keep it in the mix. Choice C, â€Å"forced,† indicates that there was resistance to the creation of the paintings, and there’s no evidence for that.This answer can be crossed out. Choice D, â€Å"licensed,† implies that the paintings already existed and the museum went through a legal process to make them official. This doesn't jive with our understanding of the sentence at all; any licensing, if applicable, would be done after the paintings were completed. Final Answer: B Example #4: Improving Word Choice In some Writing questions that fall under the Words in Context category, you have to choose the word that makes the most sense given the tone of the passage.Here’s an example: What type of word are we looking for? Let's examine the context. Well, the food was described as being of "terrible quality" earlier in the passage, so we want a synonym for unpalatable or gross. The passage is also a formal historical account, so we're looking for a word that matches with the serious tone. Choice A can be ruled out because â€Å"sinister† isn’t an appropriate word choice based on what the sentence is describing.â€Å"Sinister† means ominous or foreboding.It would be weird to describe train food as â€Å"sinister† because this word is reserved for things that are subtly unsettling, not outwardly gross. Choice B, â€Å"surly,† is an adjective that describes a person’s behavior. It can’t be applied to an inanimate object like food, so this choice should be eliminated as well. Choice C, â€Å"abysmal,† seems like a promising choice.Abysmal is a direct synonym for terrible, and it'sformal enough to fit with the tone of the passage. Keep this one. Choice D is incorrect for different reasons than the other answers we eliminated. While "icky" makes sense as a synonym for unpalatable or gross, it doesn't set the right tone. It's way too informal to work with the rest of the passage. Final Answer: C Example #5: Combining Sentences This is another type of question that the SAT puts in the words in context category, though it is a bit different from the other types that I've gone through. In these questions, you just have to decide the best way to combine two sentences that are separate in the original passage. It's still categorized as a Words in Context question because you're asked to modify the phrasing of the sentences so they fit together seamlessly in the context of the paragraph. It requires you to understand how to use language effectively.Here’s an example: First, let's make sure we understand the content of the original two sentences. The passage has already established that artificial lights lower worker productivity. The purpose of these two sentences is to add another reason to dislike artificial lights: their excessive cost. We're looking for a combination of the two sentences that preserves this purpose and maintains its grammatical integrity. Choice A looks pretty good. It avoids misplaced modifiers and maintains focus on the costliness of the lights. We can keep this one. Choice B is incorrect because it indicates that the cost of artificial light sources lowers worker productivity. This is an inaccurate statement because we know from the rest of the passage that the quality of the light source used in the office impacts productivity, not its cost. Choice C is wrong because it is worded awkwardly and doesn’t emphasize the central point of the two sentences. It gives equal attention to the two negative attributes of artificial light sources when cost is the main focus of this paragraph. Choice D is wrong because, like choice C, it misses the point of the original sentences.It emphasizes a supporting detail about the lights' energy use while only briefly touching on the subject of their costliness. Natural lighting makes for a cheerier and less expensive office. Fluorescent lights will steal your soul if you work under them for long enough. Want to learn more about the SAT but tired of reading blog articles? Then you'll love our free, SAT prep livestreams. Designed and led by PrepScholar SAT experts, these live video events are a great resource for students and parents looking to learn more about the SAT and SAT prep. Click on the button below to register for one of our livestreams today! 4 Tips for Words in Context SAT Questions Tip #1: Read the Whole Paragraph These questions are about words (and sentence structure) IN CONTEXT, which means you shouldn’t focus solely on the sentence in which the word appears.This is especially true for questions that ask you to choose the word that fits the tone of the entire paragraph or passage.Always read the surrounding paragraph so that you don’t get an inaccurate impression of the meaning of the word or the author’s intentions. Tip #2: Predict the Answer One strategy I would recommend for vocabulary in context questions is to formulate your own idea of what the word means in context before looking at the answer choices.Sometimes looking at the choices can make things more confusing.If you already have an idea in your head of what the answer should be, your thought process is less likely to be disrupted. Tip #3: Plug It In A good method for testing out answer choices on Words in Context questions is plugging each of your options back into the sentence.This tip applies to vocabulary in context questions and improving word choice questions.It’s much easier to see the flaws in answer choices if you read the sentence over again using the proposed replacement word.If you plug in the word and it doesn’t feel right, you should reconsider your choice. Tip #4: Reading, Not Flashcards Finally, as you're preparing for the SAT, the best thing you can do to improve your performance on these types of questions is to practice your overall reading comprehension. The more you read, the easier it will be for you to discern the various meanings of words based on their contexts. You're far more likely to have seen the word used that way before if you've been reading a lot. See this article for some greatways to develop better reading comprehension in conjunction with studying for words in context questions. The more you challenge your brain with advanced reading materials, the simpler the passages and vocabulary words on the SAT will seem to you. Conclusion Words in Context is a subscore category on the SAT that encompasses all questions related to vocabulary knowledge and appropriate word choice. On the Reading section, these questions will ask you to use context clues to choose the correct synonym for a word or to identify the purposes of certain words.On the Writing section, Words in Context questions ask you to improve word choice and combine sentences smoothly. The strategies I would recommend for solving these types of questions include: Reading the whole paragraph containing the word(s) in the question Predicting the answer before reading the choices Plugging in the answer choices to test them out Practicing reading comprehension, not vocab memorization Unlike the old sentence completion SAT questions, words in context questions don’t require knowledge of advanced vocabulary.If you take a thoughtful, analytical approach to these questions, you should be able to answer them correctly without spending hours studying flashcards. What's Next? Struggling with SAT Reading? Here are six strategies that will help you increase your scores to a more competitive level. You can also check out these five tips to excel on the Writing section if you're more concerned about that part of the test. If you're looking for some review books to help you out with your studying, check out our reviews of the best books for each section of the SAT. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep program. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by 160 points or more. Our program is entirely online, and it customizes what you study to your strengths and weaknesses. If you liked this Reading lesson, you'll love our program.Along with more detailed lessons, you'll get thousands ofpractice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Check out our 5-day free trial: