Parents vs. the Media Essay Example for Free

Parents vs. the Media Essay Due to childrens fascinations with violence, recent massacres at schools have been linked to media influence. Often troubled children use the news to gain attention. Many of the children committing these crimes are children that are being teased in school. Most of the children involved in school shootings have never had a past criminal record. Psychologists believe that these troubled children are using the media merely because no one else will listen to their problems. The reoccurrence of copycat crimes is on the rise, and it seems at times we overestimate how much violence is really occurring. The constant struggle between the media and those who feel it is saturated with violence continues on. However, it is difficult to determine whether there is a strong correlation between the two. Parents are uniting around the country to form groups against violence in the media. They believe that the violence in entertainment and the media is to blame for the copycat syndrome. Psychologists believe that children are vulnerable to feelings of psychological injury. Therefore, when children are being tormented they feel a sense of rage and worthlessness. This feeling causes them to look upon society as an enemy. For instance, The Trenchcoat Mafia was a group of teenagers that formed a violent gang, and turned against killed their classmates after seeing the movie Basketball Diaries. They felt isolated from the rest of the school, and believed the only way to gain popularity was through displaying acts of violence. This type of behavior has drastically increased and is seen all over the media. Parents blame the media for over-exposure of school violence. The parents see the media lacking in follow-up stories. These stories should show how it affected the lives of the killers, the victims and their families. Furthermore, the follow-up stories can present a better understanding of the consequences. Rather, the news seems to be showing their viewers almost how to carry out such crimes. On the other hand, the media is simply providing the public with current events. The media reports both positive and negative events. The news provides coverage on the issues that are most appealing to the public. For example, the first school shooting at Columbine began a major controversy. The public became extremely concerned, and safety in schools became a hot topic. The media simply reports on these events, they are not to be held responsible for violent occurrences. Their responsibility is to give coverage on events that affect our society as a whole. Parents should not view the media negatively, but see it as a source of information. Such information can give parents reasons for teaching their children morals. Children that come from broken homes may have been exposed to violence, and use this as a solution to their problems. Parents of these children should provide special psychiatric help to prevent them from becoming violent. If teachers are aware a students extreme misconduct, they should inform the childs parents as well as the schools counselors. Therefore, the school can solve the problem before it gets out of hand. Different approaches have been used to prevent these shootings from reoccurring. The most obvious solution has been increasing the security in schools, such as metal detectors and surveillance cameras. Some schools are simply educating their students about respecting each other, and have seen an improvement in the conduct of the students. When these issues improve, a healthier school will prevail.

River Pattern Classification System

River Pattern Classification System Abstract A new empirical river pattern classification system is established based on the generalization of the famous Darcy-Weisbach equation. A parameter ψ for representing river shape is derived and defined as the river pattern discriminant criteria. After transformation, the discriminant thresholds are expressed as dimensionless form relating the resistance factor to the relative roughness factor of the channel, which reflect the channel slope, sediment size, bank strength and channel geometry integrated. Adopting the most promising discriminant mode that combines both regime theory and linear stability theory, a threshold function is used to separate single-thread channels (including straight and meandering) from multi-thread channels, and another one is employed to distinguish stable and unstable multi-thread channels (i.e., anabranching and braided) in this paper. A novel bank strength impact factor (ÃŽ ¼) is proposed herein and turns out to be rather representative. Some channel pat terns are redefined using this method and proved to be reasonable enough. Analysis of various data sets reveals that riparian vegetation condition is a sensitive part of this classification system, in particular for single-thread channels, but not braided channels, because overlarge width-depth ratio(W/d) would have strongly weaken this impact. Moreover, we support that transient anabranching or braiding pattern could also occur in single-thread typical zone following external disturbance, but would eventually go back dynamic equilibrium state. Despite some construction mechanism shortcomings, our discriminant method is supported by the selected existing data sets and could effectively distinguish three distinct types of channels by just a few hydrodynamic parameters. Keywords: river pattern; Darcy-Weisbach equation; river shape; bank strength 1 Introduction River pattern reveals the physical geometry and dynamic behavioral process of a river system (Schumm, 1985; Nanson and Knighton, 1996). It is well understood that an alluvial channel could adjust itself to the ever-changing water flow and sediment conditions. Thus river patterns could exhibit a series of continuous variations, described as straight, meandering and braided patterns in tradition (Leopold and Wolman, 1957). It is pretty necessary to distinguish several distinct types of channels for better understanding the consistent changing progresses of river channels in different environment conditions. Numerous classification schemes using discriminant functions have been proposed, based on a set of typical properties, such as discharge, channel slope, width-depth ratio, sediment grain size, etc. Noteworthy is that the still least well-known multi-thread river pattern, anabranching pattern, has been attracting considerable attention (e.g., Schumm, 1981, 1985; Nanson and Knighton, 1996; Wende and Nanson, 1998; Tooth and Nanson, 1999; Burge, 2006; Eaton et al., 2010; Kleinhans and van den Berg, 2011). It makes great contribution to the diversity of river systems (Wende and Nanson, 1998). Then based on tradition, following the popular discriminant mode and developing a novel river pattern discriminant method comprise the focus of this paper, and lead to the capture of different channel patterns, including single-thread, anabranching and braided. Many early empirical attempts used Leopold and Wolman (1957)’s method as base model, to improve understanding quantitative process of rive pattern transformation. Most of them focused on the critical discharge to construct discriminant function, later also included critical channel slope and bed grain size (Henderson, 1963; Millar, 2000). For a given bankfull discharge, braided usually corresponds to increased slope, while which in turn usually result in stronger sand transport rate, increased bank erosion and coarser bed surface sediment (Eaton et al., 2010). Due to powerful impediment that almost all channel properties have been varying desultorystrickly or methodically with flow progression downstream, some newly threshold schemes successively appear on related research hotspot topics, of which critical specific stream power(Nanson and Croke, 1992; Van den Berg, 1995; Lewin and Brewer, 2001; Petit et al., 2005) is outstanding. It can be viewed as a potential status with max imum flow energy and minimum sinuosity condition (Van den Berg, 1995). The classification between braided and meandering channels with high sinuosity in unconfined alluvial floodplains is well acceptable. But the argument about it also exists all the while. Lewin and Brewer (2001) argued that the analysis of potential bankfull stream power and grain size by Van den Berg (1995) is virtually ineffective; the classification of river pattern should not be limited to obtain an all-sided discriminant method, but the thresholds integrated with patterning process domain. Petit et al. (2005) conducted experiments on different sized rivers and concluded that critical specific stream power is the smallest for the largest river, while turns to the higher value in intermediate rivers, then becomes the highest in head water streams. The reasons are down to the bedform’s larger resistance that consumes energy for bedload transport. Recently, Kleinhans (2010) emphasized that channel pattern is directly bound up with the presence of bars. Then, Kleinhans and van den Berg (2011) combined the empirical stream power-based discrimination method and a physics-based bar pattern prediction method to undertake bold exploration about the underlying reasons of different river channel patterns. It was found that the range of specific potential stream power is rather narrow in gravel-bed meandering channel due to nonlinearity of sediment transport; anabranching channel is irrelevant to stream power but subject to additional factors such as bank strength, lateral confinement, avulsion, and vertical morphodynamics change; river pattern can actually be defined by bar pattern, channel division number, and bifurcation condition. The features common in empirical methods are that more is based on statistical correlation derivation, less to clearly expound inherent processes for discriminating river pattern. These models may really be questioned about application to broader scope, due to original data restrictions. Considering the shortcomings, many researchers have been contributing to develop physically based theories, and explore the relationship variables controlling river evolution process and pattern. Leading theories are regime theory and linear stability models. Rational regime model is developed for predicting reach-averaged channel pattern response to the controlled environment variables in equilibrium, such as width-depth ratio, relative roughness and channel slope (Eaton et al., 2004). This concept employs optimization theory to achieve relative stability of the fluvial system by assessing the resistance and energy expenditure, meanwhile adjusting channel geometry to given flow conditions (Valentine et al., 2001; Huang et al., 2004). It has been proved much more successful than statistical empirical equations in predicting the variation of width and slope along downstream area and helping understanding the influence of bank stability on channel geometry (Chew and Ashmore, 2001; Millar and Eaton, 2011). While, linear stability models are used for discriminating river pattern which based on physically morphodynamic equations. This theory explains that meandering is formed along with bend instability from planimetric perturbation (van Dijk et al., 2012). As perturbation propagates downstream, pattern transition towards braided occurs associated with multiple bars. In addition, this theoretical method could predict the threshold that bifurcation occurs by width-depth ratio (W/d) (Parsons et al., 2007; Crosato and Mosselman, 2009). A significant disadvantage in this theory is that we cannot establish a typical relationship about channel geometries, such as slope with discharge and sediment size, only if the channel dimensions have been obtained (Eaton et al., 2010). However, when combining regime theory with linear stability models, means that morphodynamic condition and fluvial system stability are together considered to describe pattern transition progress, has recently been given particular attention, represented by Eaton (Eaton and Church, 2004; Eaton, 2006; Eaton et al., 2004, 2010). In this paper, we attempt to develop a physical based classification system combining regime theory and linear stability theory, just like Eaton et al. (2010). A threshold could be used to distinguish single-thread and stable multi-thread channels, and another one could be used to distinguish stable and unstable multi-thread channels, from a stability perspective. However, when rereading the original work by Eaton et al. (2010), some limitations of subjectivity becomes clear that a threshold value of W/d =50 originally recommended for discriminating braided channels was employed to derive bifurcation criteria, and the number of channel divisions exceeding four was subjectively assumed as the beginning of system instability. We hold that this treatment should be regarded warily due to lack of absolute objective stability or instability criterion in fact. We turn in another new way. The famous Darcy-Weisbach equation (Weisbach, 1848; Darcy, 1857) is generalized from artificial rectangular channel case to natural alluvial channel cases and expressed as functions of assumed river shape parameter, resistance factor and relative roughness factor. A relevant scatter diagram reveals that several typical channel patterns correspond to differentiable distribution mode. Based on strictly fitting, river shape parameter is determined and defined as river pattern discrimination criterion. After transformation, we develop a new dimensionless style threshold for distinguishing different river patterns. Then the classification system based on two dimensionless threshold equations is established. However, it is also, by necessary, practically restricted to certain subjectivity, especially the judgment of system instability. Considering the data fitting dependency, this method may be better treated as an empirical method.

Changes in Roles and Responsibilities of Nurses in the Moder

Changes in Roles and Responsibilities of Nurses in the Moder Nursing staff have seen their roles and responsibilities change considerably within the modernisation of the NHS, but is this a good thing? There are some big changes in the nursing field in the last 50 years such as, uniform, salaries, job demand, the roles of nurses, the different roles for men and women nurses, the technology used, Litigation and Documentation, Holistic Care and patient load. Nurses are becoming more popular and demanding in all sorts of different working environments such as, working in nursing homes, hospitals, home help, travel nurse, school nurse and more. Years ago, nurses were seen just as little more than helpers or assistants for doctors. Today in 2010, nurses are health care professionals in their own right. They are bright, capable, and often have a clearer picture of the overall situation than the doctors they work alongside with. Nursing has not only changed on the face of it but the background work of a nurse has changed to, for example the education given to nurses, the scope of policies and practice, the structures of nurses and the principles of the care of the patient. People are lead to believe that the modernisation of the NHS will be beneficial to the care of the patient, but is this really the case? Due to the increasingly shortage of nurses, they have learned to be more independent which is an outstanding way to increase skills and keep up to date with the new trends in health care. As well as nursing changing, health care in general has changed too. Within the modernisation of the NHS and nursing the care of the patients is still the everlasting goal. This means that there is more work for the nurses, which then has a knock on affect leading to less satisfaction of patient care. Although the NHS and government are doing their best to modernize nursing with the patients interests are heart, it seems like there is less time for care due to time, but more time for paperwork. The Department of Health has laid down certain policy initiatives, targets and structural and organizational changes that can improve the quality of care received by patients through the NHS. These changes are emphasized along with the need for multi-agency and multi-organizational collaborative working acros s disciplinary boundaries. The four key interfaces for which collaboration and coordination measures are being suggested are health and social care; general medical and community health services; primary and secondary care; and interface with carers (DoH, 1996). The education of nurses now days are a lot more intense and harder than it was 10 years ago. Over the last 10 years, there has been a gradual shift for the education and training of nurses. Currently all nurses have to be trained to a degree university level before they can practice as a fully qualified nurse. Opportunities for nurses have increased by large, with one training opportunity being through the internet although this method of training has to be approved by the NHS. On the other hand, years ago nurses only had to have a diploma or LPNS. Now days all nurses have to attend and complete continuing education courses to keep up to date with the new trends and information used in the current day. In addition to the higher and more advanced education, which nurses now have to have, there comes an increases scope of practice. In the current worlds, nurses are doing more and going places that in the past they would not be allowed to have done. The scope of practice is an expression used for various professions that define the procedures, actions, and processes that are allowed to be used and practiced. In the health care profession, there are many different jobs with very different defined scope of practice laws and regulations. These include nursing, social workers, speech and language pathology,  audiologists,  training, radiography,  nuclear medicine, dentists, surgeons, paramedics, physicians and many more. In the interest of the patients, it is a good thing that nurses are allowed to do more and more as there are more doctors than nurses, so the patients may be seen quicker, but on the other hand, it is not a good thing as nurses are doing more and maybe caring for th e patient need and wished less. Nowadays in hospitals, the wards are not gender mixed although the nurses are gender mixed between wards. The stereotypical roles of a nurse have change a lot since the 1990s. There are more male nurses but still not enough. However although there are still not enough male nurses, the female domination of nurses is slowly decreasing and now more men are entering the caring profession. For patients the more male nurses is a good thing because some patients i.e. men prefer to be treated by a man. For example, a man may like to be washed by a man and not a woman for dignity reasons. In addition, for years, the majority of nursing was thought of as a female profession but every year more and more males are joining the nursing profession. Nowadays being a male nurse does not have a stigma attached to it and is now seen as a very good career. The demand of nurses now in 2010 is by large massive. The NHS is always asking for more nurses. When the baby boom started there was a very large need for nurses but as the baby boom is decreasing now there is time and money for improvement of standards of living and disease control, our citizens are living longer. As the general population increases, so too does the demand for nurses. Now more than ever nurses are overworked but with the increasingly shortage of nurses they have to work harder and longer hours, which again is not benefiting the patients. Because of the nursing demand and staff shortage, staffs are taking more sick days due to excessive stress and lack of sleep and self-time. This is because nursing is very demanding on a person not just mentally but physically too. This is seriously compromising the NHS. In 2010 compared to 1980, there is a lot more technology for nurses to use and to be trained to use. Nurses today have to keep up to date with a lot more technology than a nurse 50 years would have had to. Technology can be seen as a good gadget and as a bad gadget, because not only do nurses have to provide basic and skilled care, they also have to learn how to work with many types of equipment that are specific to their area of expertise. The more popular piece of technology used every day by a nurse is a computer. Nurses use them every day as a way to document the care given to a patient. Although new technology is a good advantage for health care, it has its negatives, for example training the staff to use it costs a lot of money, but on the other hand, it can save lifes. Other important technology that is used every day that benefits a patient is, air mattresses as they help to prevent DVTs and assistance with IV insertion which has made things a lot simpler. All of the new high tech equipment being simplified is for user- friendliness, which means that the new methods are speeding things up. Lastly, infection control plays a big part in the NHS every day, so new technology is being developed all the time, although the basic hand washing procedures remain very much the same. There are many different approaches to nursing care, one being the holistic care. This type of care has become more and more popular. The commutations between the Health and Allied Health services improving, a total Patient Care Model has come about. Resulting in decreased in-patient times and better health outcomes. The holistic care has been seen more popular within the complementary therapies and concepts. The patient load that a nursed has is massive. In America, there was a debate about the amount of patients under care of nurses. In 1999, the debate was won and there was a cap of the amount of patients allowed under care of one nurse. The results have been very effective from happier staff and better care for patients. There should be a cap in the UK. The changes of nursing over the last 10 years have been welcomed with open arms, but there are still teething problems and views that need to be heard. Optimal patient care is in a constant battle with budget and we can expect to see new policy reforms, new technology, and new demands created in the decade to come. It remains the responsibility of not only the nurses, but also the patients of the future, to voice their opinions in order to guide the Industry in the right direction. Nurses are now expected to come with a bigger patents load but more paper work as well. The importance of the paper work has increases over the last 10 years. This is due to the society that we now live in as it has been raised to need someone to blame for everything. As a nurse or doctor there are many emotional people around you every day as people are dying all the time. Therefore, sometimes people sue the nurses and doctors as they are upset and think the person died due to the NHSs fault. Following this, nurses and doctors keep finding themselves in court. Even if they have not done anything, all allegations have to be investigated. This is the reason for paperwork there is to write up. Paperwork is the only solid setting stone and proof/ backup of a nurses care. A nurse is required to document every blood pressure reading, every medication, every incident, and every day. They have to  account  for every action, and put it all in writing. The problem with documentation is th at it takes time. More time for documentation means less time for patients. Plain and simple. The polices that nurses have to follow are very similar across the whole world. In Australia, the no-lift policy was introduced in the late 1990s. To date the policy is still used and the nurses are trained using this policy. No-Lift means using Lifting Machines to mobilise patients, using slide sheets to manoeuvre them around the bed and promoting back care in general. Although this concept is yet to be adopted in the UK, the benefits are becoming obvious and discussions have begun on the implementation of a similar policy in the UK. There are many different types of nurses that work in the community and in the hospitals. These can range from, Adult nurses, mental health nurses, Childrens nurses, Learning disability nurses, District nurses, Neonatal nursing, Health visitors, Practice nurses, Prison nurses, School nurses and Healthcare assistants. There are also many different levels to being a nurse. A health care assistant is under a nurse, and then you have staff nurses, then sisters and ward sisters and then nurse manager/ matron. All in all these all make up our NHS and work as a team to provide the best possible care for the patient. There is a large scale of pay, which starts at around  £13,000 to  £67,000. The above table shows how the NHS works. The last 40 years nurses uniform has changed but not that much. In the 1960s nurses still wore dresses and stocking .In the 1970†²s more changes came to the way nurses dressed. Dresses were a little shorter and the white caps were beginning to lose importance in some hospitals across the country. In the 1980†²s there was an end of the nursing caps altogether. Nurses also began wearing disposable aprons at this point rather than cloth aprons and medical facilities became much less militant in regards to restrictions on jewellery and cosmetics. During the 1990†²s and today, nursing dresses have been replaced with much more user-friendly scrub suits. Scrub suits can be found in a wide variety of colours and styles. Some hospitals have specific scrub suit colours for different types of hospital staff and others allow nurses and other staff to choose colours and styles that appeal to them. Todays nursing uniforms are designed more for function than form but are also conside red much more comfortable than those worn throughout history are. There are many different theories towards nursing. The three main ones are needs based theories. The main point being that the focus of nursing is the assessment and care of the patients / clients needs, which they are unable to meet for themselves. The second theory is interactions theories. The main point of this being the focus of nursing is the relationship between the nurse and the patient / client. Lastly, the other theory is the goal-based theories. The main point again being that the focus of nursing is the outcome and emphasis is placed on facilitating the ability of the patient / client to adapt to changes in their health and regain stability and harmony. Today in the NHS nursing takes on a role of the biomedical model. The biomedical model has been around since the mid- nineteenth century as the most common model used to diagnose diseases. The biomedical model states that All illness and symptoms arise from underlying abnormality in the body, all diseases give rise to symptoms and that health is absence of disease. The model overlooks the fact that the diagnosis is a result of commutation between doctor and patient. Biomedical model has no doubt led to huge medical advances although the patient has little responsibility for presence /cause of illness. In conclusion, the changes in roles and responsibilities of nurses in the modernisation of the NHS can beneficial towards the patients but can also be damaging towards the patients. This is due to lack of staff and increased working hours, more paperwork, and more tasks that a nurse has to do and there are generally more patients now than 10 years ago. Therefore, a nurse has less time caring for the patients needs. On the other hand, the modernisation is seen as a good thing because there is more technology nowadays to make the nurses life easier, which also get a more persist result. Within the context of policies and procedures there are no many more rules than year ago, which does make a nurses life maybe easier but maybe harder. With all of these changes to nurses and the NHS in general, is the modernization is good thing, does it have the patients interests are heart or is it about saving money?

Constructivism :: essays research papers fc

Students need to be able to learn how to become effective problem solvers. They should be able to identify problems, evaluate those problems and then decipher a way to transfer their learning to those problems in a way that will bring about a solution. If a student is able to perform in a problem solving situation a meaningful learning should then occur because he has constructed an interpretation of how things work using preexisting structured. This is the theory behind Constructivism. By creating a personal interpretation of external ideas and experiances, constructivism allows students the ability to understand how ideas can relate to each other and preexisting knowledge. A teacher must then recognize the importance of the cognative and social approaches for learning and teaching so that she may aid the students' development in constructivist learning. Both approaches are valuable because one will emphasize the role of cognative processes and the other will emphasize culture and social interaction in the role of meaningful learning. One, however, may wonder how to go about enforcing these approaches. One method is through scaffolding, providing a student with sufficient information to be able to complete a task on his own or, to present a gradual decrease in the amount of help availible allowing the student the capacity to work independantly. Situated learning will present the student with a set of learning tasks placed in realistic contexts. This will include the abilities to use knowledge in a functioning learning approach and acquiring inert knowledge based on the learning of isolated facts in limited conditions. Lastly, students should, through the use of multiple perspectives, be able to view problems and ideas. These ideas presented will then be able to shed light on the nature of problem solving. There are three most common types of problems, the first being well-structured problems. Well-structured problems are ones clearly stated with known solution procedures and evaluation standards; an example being a mathamatical process. Another type of problem are those that are ill-structured; they are stated vaguely, have unclear solution procedures, and vague standards of evalalution. The third type, issue problems, are ill-structured problems that will arrouse srtong feelings in the students. The first step in helping students become adaquate problems solvers is assuring they realize that a problem does exist. Once a problem is identifiedm students should be expected to understand the nature of the problem. The next logical step would then be for those students to compile all relevant information to their problem allowing them to formulate and carry out a solution. Lastly, the students would then be required to evaluate their solutions working out the

TV Violence and the Future of Our Children :: essays research papers

TV Violence and the Future of Our Children In recent years, the news has seemed to mimic violence that appears in television and in movies. Several incidents support the majority of people's assumption that TV violence effects a child's behavior in many ways. A child's judgment is hurt badly by viewing TV violence, which can have some serious long-term effects. First of all, when children see characters on TV or in movies triumph by using physical force, they begin to see violence as an acceptable way of resolving conflicts. As a result, children use physical or verbal abuse toward others on the playground or at school. Some parents often worry that their children will not fit in with their friends if they do not watch popular children's television programs. The same 20-year research tell us that children who watch more violent television are actually rated more poorly by their peers. Also, according to Dr. Jeanne Beckman, children who spend more time watching violent TV programming are rated more poorly by their teachers, their peers, have few problem-solving skills, and are more likely to get into trouble with the law as teenagers and young adults. Take for instance the young boy who opened fire at his school in Pearl, Mississippi. The movie the Basketball Diaries had the most effect on this boy. Children who view too much media violence may have more difficulty getting along with others. If children do not see acts of kindness between other children and adults, they are less likely to be kind, or resolve their conflicts peacefully. This makes other children less eager to play with them. Along with verbal abuse, violent TV programs do not teach good language skills. Young children tend to repeat things they hear as they begin to develop their own vocabularies. Violent movies and TV programs show children a very limited way to talk about their problems -- and to solve them. Children are visual learners and television is more visual, more salient, more intense than simply reading a story to your child. Secondly, children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Viewing violence encourages children to see other people as enemies rather than as individuals with thoughts and feelings like themselves. Children who cannot put themselves in others' shoes may become less desirable playmates. One perfect example that supports this idea is the Columbine High School tragedy in which two young men opened fire, detonated bombs, and killed several school mates and teachers.

Three day road summary

The story opens in 1919 after the war and we are first introduces to an old woman named Nicks, a native American living in Canadian we learn she is a medicine woman and healer. She's one of the last of her clan to live in the bush, having fought off going to the reserves and governments wanting to take the Indian out of the Indian at the time. She hears that her nephew whoso been sent off to the war has returned and paddles a long way to get to the train station.She sees Just how much the war has left him damaged: he's lost a leg and Is addicted to morphine, which was the pain medicine was used at the time. She understands that he's actually close to death and as she paddles him home, she realizes that In order to help him all she has to offer are the stones of her life. While she does this, Xavier who can't even talk and almost deaf Internally reflects on the past number of years, on his experience In the war with his childhood friend Elijah.This gives way to two different stories, two different narrators Nicks and Xavier. The novel Is structured Like one of those Russian Matrons dolls, the ones where you open up the doll to find other, smaller dolls inside. Nicks tells Xavier stories of her life, Elijah is obsessively compelled to tell Xavier war stories and poor Xavier is too damaged to speak of his own stories and so relives them in his morphine-addled head. One of the many ironies is that the skills of the two friends used for hunting in the bush become incredibly valuable on the battle field.The army quickly realizes their skill as trackers and as marksmen and so they are made into snipers quite quickly once they reach the front. Although their killing-abilities are remarkably respected and quite well regarded by the rest of the regiment, they still face racism within the army as a consequence of who they are. The characters feel very much like they eave to prove themselves as they face prejudice. Elijah discovers a lust for killing and is encouraged by s ome French soldiers to retrieve the scalps of his victims to prove he's killed as many as he claims.He treats the war as a game wanting to be the one to hold the most kills, while Xavier tries to come to terms with his devastating war-experiences. Elijah In his madness becomes a virtual killing machine, a winding In native terms. The welding Is a two sided thing: legend goes that If a person eats another human being In times of great starvation then he will grow to great heights and have an Insatiable appetite. The notion has a psychological aspect too: moral boundaries are hard to set when In the trenches and some Like Elijah get carried away by It all to a point of no return.Three day road summary By floral Indian at the time. She hears that her nephew who's been sent off to the war has the war has left him damaged: he's lost a leg and is addicted to morphine, which was death and as she paddles him home, she realizes that in order to help him all she has to offer are the stories o f her life. While she does this, Xavier who can't even talk and almost deaf internally reflects on the past number of years, on his experience in he war with his childhood friend Elijah.

Reflection Zamboanga Seige

Zamboanga Seige and Me As I was scanning my Facebook newsfeed, a post form my sister struck me and in that post she was asking if it is true that the members of the MNLF group were able to enter our city. I can still remember the feeling I felt that dawn, the feeling that I don't know where to put myself because my mom, dad, siblings, niece, nephew and relatives are staying at Tugbungan – an adjacent barangay to Barangay Mariki using speedboat. Aside from that I am trembling because of the fear inside and out of my system.That was Just the start of the 20 days and counting sleepless nights I and my family experience. On the succeeding days, it was more horrifying and heart- stopping. As I hear the gunshots and explosions my heart Jumps and stops to beat for a second. l, as a Zamboangena living in this city for 21 years, am not used to hear and experience such things. From that on, my past 20 days was never normal. I am always alert and am living my life now in fear that one da y I might wake up losing someone close to my heart or the barangay where I am staying might also be ttacked.My normal routine like doing my thesis, going to school and having quality time with friends and family was cut off. With the attack of the MNLF everything for me was shut down – from the progress of my thesis to the point our business was force to be close due to the shutting down of the Zamboanga Port. Everything for me was a mess but despite the frustration, I extended help by disseminating verified information through Facebook. As a mass communicator, I should make out something despite the crisis we are facing.Since I cannot submit myself to evacuation centers to personally help due to security purpose, what I did was spread helpful information in Facebook and through text messaging. My Facebook feed became a home for information and I set aside the narcissist inside me which I believe that an Atenean should do in times like this. Although I am sad that still some of us are insensitive of what's happening around especially in the city. There are still a number of Ateneans that post non-sense stuff and their selfie despite the alarming nd heart breaking event we are facing.Now as all of this continues which is I don't know any more who to believe and who is telling the truth, my life or should I say all of our lives is somehow destroyed especially to the most affected. All I can do now is hope and pray that this crisis will be over and may Allah bless and guide the decisions of our leaders and lastly guard their decisions that it will always be for the greater good. Reflection Zamboanga Seige By Sheena Rose-Andas