Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Computer in Life Essay Example for Free

Computer in Life Essay What do you think of when you hear the word ‘computer’? Do you think of technology? Or maybe one of the ways to get on Facebook which I am sure many of you are thinking right now or you might even imagine a boring office full of screens and keys with people typing frantically in front of. All of those visions are correct, but first let’s take a look at the history of several inventions that led the creation of computers which has dramatically changed the world of technology. The first machine that was invented, which worked like a computer, was a gear-powered German device dubbed the Calculating Clock created by Wilhelm Schickard in 1623. It operated by pulling or pushing rods set inside a glass case. 20 years later, in 1640s, a similar device known as a Pascaline was invented and became famous dramatically.. In 1944, the Harvard Mark-1 computer was completed. That computer was approximately similar to a modern computer, but it was a large calculator driven by a camshaft with no stored programs. This massive computer filled a large room and was a joint effort between Harvard University and IBM. Personally, I believe that one of the most important inventions in my life has always been a computer. I was raised in this technological world where computers are a necessity. Computers dramatically transform my life in terms of education. They acknowledge me with the events that happen around the world, which I think are extremely important to learn. They give me an efficient, convenient and cozy way of work and study. Computers do not just provide me with education or learning experiences, but they are also one of the means of entertainment and globalization. They provide me with leisure time watching movies online or listening to music. According to me, it is one of the most relaxing ways to release the stress from studying and working day and night. Also in terms of globalization, with the aid of computers, I can visualize and make conversations with my long distance family and friends. They assist me in keeping relations with my family and friends, even though I am extremely far from them. I, as a student, strongly believe that computers are extremely important in terms of education as I mentioned before. Before computers were invented, I (you were born after computers were invented) as well as everyone else relied on books to provide them with educational knowledge. Now that computers are available, I never search through hundreds of pages of books. I can just surf the Internet in the blink of an eye to research for learning information. If I need to type anything or write an essay, I have easy access to my Microsoft word or Notepad in which I can also save the information and open it whenever I desire to and if I make any errors typing, it provides me with the correct word or information. Isn’t that amazing? It’s like a human sitting in the back of the computer screen reading my essay and correcting it of any mistakes I may make. Furthermore, the computers also assist me when it comes to math, such as math problems like logarithms, sine, cosine, and tangent can be awfully difficult to calculate and may take students a long time to do so manually. Luckily, with the help of computers, students may turn a five-minute problem into a one-minute problem. Computers have also made a major impact in the business field. They have gained importance as they have increased the productivity and efficiency of workload. Large amounts of data in the personal lives as well as in business and industrial sectors are stored on computers. Overall, as I provided you with all the benefits of computers, according to me, computers are one of the necessities in today’s technological world. In today’s world, it is almost impossible to think that one can survive without computers. They have become a gadget of almost daily use for people of every age. With the computer industry growing rapidly, the computer technology has also brought about a revolution of laptops and palmtops replacing the desktop, which are still popular in many of the industries. With the reduction in size, it has become quite easy to carry the computers and use them to the fullest. Computers are extremely helpful in terms of education, entertainment, globalization, etc. People might think that there might be negative aspects to the inventions of computers, but as far as I am concerned, I do not believe that the statement is true. The computers have had numerous positive effects and they will continue to do so in the future as well.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Steroid Use By Athletes Should be Banned :: Argumentative Persuasive Steroids Essays

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It is amazing what athletes will do to achieve higher levels of performance and to sometimes get the extra edge on the competition. Most of the time people do not realize the long-term effects that result from the decisions they make early in life. This resembles the use of steroids in a person’s life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Steroids became an option to athletes in the Olympics and other major sporting events during the 1950’s. But this use of steroids among athletes only became widely apparent when Canadian sprint runner Ben Johnson tested positive for steroid use after winning the gold medal for the one hundred-meter dash during the 1988 Olympics (Francis, 45). Now a skinny fifteen-year-old can just walk down to the local gym and find people who either sell or know how to get in contact with those who sell the drug that will make him envious of his friends. Steroids are an attractive drug. While steroids seem harmless to the unaware user, they can have a risky effect. Most of the time whether the users are new or experienced, they do not know the dangerous consequences steroids can have on their bodies and their minds. Though steroids cause a relatively insignificant number of deaths in our society, the banning of steroids is justified because steroids have a lot of side effe cts not known to the uninformed user.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Even though steroids are known as a somewhat dangerous substance, they are legal to have and to consume. There has not been a study that proves such possible side effects are linked to medical problems of steroid users (Rogak, 89). There are those who have pointed out several cases where someone has died and an autopsy has shown that the person was using steroids, but they claim this does not mean that it is a deadly drug as some medical professionals have stated (97). Some advocates of steroids believe that because steroids are legal, and because it is the decision of the user to take the drug, steroids are not causing a problem in society. Alcohol and cigarettes are consumed by millions of people, causing a lot of deteriorating effects on their bodies, but there has never been a ban on these items because of the dangers that they can cause. Why should steroids be different? Some people say that the wide spread use of steroids among athletes is forcing the young athletes to use steroids, even though it is against their standards.

Monday, January 13, 2020

Fiction and Post-modernism

Post-Modernism is similar to Modernism because in many respects the two movements are similar. Post-Modernism simply means that a new generation concluded, as its elders had done, that there are no certainties and that life has no meaning beyond what we can impose upon it. It is in technique that Post-Modernism distinguishes itself from Modernism and it started in Europe and Latin American in 1945 and in North America in 1960. In Post-Modernism, there was a notion that it was absurd that literature could see life steadily and see it whole. Instead, fragments, individual perceptions, incoherence and even drug-induced hallucinations seemed more real and in touch with the times than any claim of stability or unity. The stories I will be looking further in to, to see how they represent Post-Modernism, are: â€Å"The Babysitter,† by Robert Coover, â€Å"The Balloon,† by Donald Barthelme, and â€Å"Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot,† by Robert Olen Butler, Jr. â€Å"The Babysitter† is a fragmented story about a babysitter taking care of two children while their parents attend a cocktail party. The story has many elements of sexuality in it and the same storyline included different endings, such as the babysitting being raped by her boyfriend and his friend, the children’s father seducing the babysitter, and even the possibility of the young child drowning in the bathtub. The babysitter is watching television shows and switches back between a drama and a mystery, and this mirrors the fragmented situation that is given to the reader. This story represents Post-Modernism because Post-Modernism does not look for a unified sense of self in the individual; like the world the individual is a random collection or collage of miscellaneous pieces of the external culture. In this story, the reader can be very confused as to what is truly happening. Did she actually get raped by her boyfriend and his friend? Or did she get seduced by the children’s father? At the end of the story, we don’t know what happened and it is hinted that there was a murder, but there is no way to confirm this. This story has over 100 paragraphs, and they do not connect with each other. Going back to try to piece them together to make different plots is impossible because some paragraphs don’t even indicate which plot they are a part of. Along the same lines, this work of fiction embraces all aspects of the present culture and puts them in a fantastic combination as a way of conveying the fragmentation of contemporary life. Events in life aren’t always neat and in order; we can live scattered lives and this story represents how we see things in our everyday life. There is no chronological narrative, but instead scattered fragmentations that do not always make sense, just like how a person’s true life is. Lastly, this story represents Post-Modernism because it is metafiction; the â€Å"point† of the story is about the process of making fiction. I felt this story had a mixture of different fiction stories in it, and as a reader we are not sure which one is the truth, or if any of them even happened for that matter. A device of metafiction is the story addressing specific conventions with the story itself, and â€Å"The Babysitter† accomplished this by using the conventions of paragraph and plot, and portraying them in an unconventional way. There were many elements of Post-Modernism used in â€Å"The Balloon† as well. This story is about a seemingly purposeless balloon that suddenly appeared in NYC. It seems the narrator inflated the balloon one night while people were sleeping and covers almost the entire southern half of Manhattan. Everybody is mesmerized by this balloon and are so fascinated as to where it came from and what it means. By the end of the story, it is unsure as to whether there really was a balloon there or whether it was just part of the imagination of the narrator. In Post-Modern thought, any sense of a unifying idea or philosophy or even the notion of scientific progress is rejected. In this story, there was no logical reasoning as to what the balloon represented. It appeared there and people were amazed by it, but there was no real explanation as to how it appeared and what the purpose of it was for. Imagination seemed to be used more than logic and reason. Also, a characteristic of Post-Modernism is that art cannot provide any explanation or unity for experience; it cannot explain or unify experience. To me, the balloon was an artistic representation. People were trying to figure out what it was meant for, but it seemed to provide no purpose for them. The only person it might’ve provided purpose for was the narrator, but I find it odd how he would inflate this big balloon and put it in a place where half of NYC can see, only to use it for his own purpose. Just like with â€Å"The Babysitter,† the point of the story is more about the process of metafiction rather than telling a story. I feel the narrator was using the balloon as a symbol in his own story. The balloon represented a time of unhappiness for him because his love was away; and when she came back the balloon was removed and reserved for another time of unhappiness. Lastly, there are elements of Post-Modernism in â€Å"Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot. † This story is about a parrot that supposedly used to be a man, but had died and was now a parrot. The parrot was bought by his widow, and now he could look around and see how her life is now and to reflect on his previous life and the way he is now. Post-Modernism does not look for a unified sense of self in the individual; like the world the individual is a random collection or collage of miscellaneous pieces of the external culture. This story really did not have much unity and it wasn’t certain whether the parrot was supposed be like a reincarnation of the man, or just a symbol of what he had become. Most people in life don’t believe that a man could die and then become a parrot, and when the parrot is exploring the world around him, it is a random collection. All of the miscellaneous things he sees around him now, he sees in a different light. Similarly, art itself is a collage, a collection of fragments that create no unity. It isn’t certain whether the parrot was only alive after the man had died, or if the man’s soul was transformed in the parrot. The pieces of the story do not always fit together so the reader can be confused as to what truly happened and at the end the fate of the bird is unknown. Also, a characteristic of Post-Modernism is that satire, parody, jokes, and black humor often dominate the tone of a work of fiction. This story had some funny elements in it. There is a scene where the man, in the form of the parrot, is mocking the man that his widow is with. He struggled to say words, and is able to call the man a â€Å"cracker† and also makes a comment when the man is nude and says â€Å"peanut,† and this goes without saying that he is mocking the man’s manhood size. He figured there is no way he can get his widow back, so he resorts to name calling in order to make the man who is loving his wife feel less superior. Post-Modernism was very similar to Modernism, but there is no unified sense of self in the individual. In most of these stories, the individual, like the world, is a random collection or collage of miscellaneous pieces of the external culture. I enjoyed reading these stories because they make you think a lot about what the point of the story is, if there even is one; or the author could be using the metafiction for the story. Either way, these short stories challenge the reader to figure out why the author portrayed the characters and plot the way they are, and what we as readers can take away from the story.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

A Delocalized Electron Defined in Chemistry

A delocalized electron is an electron in an  atom, ion or molecule not associated with any single atom or a single covalent bond. In a ring structure, delocalized electrons are indicated by drawing a circle rather than single and double bonds. This means the electrons are equally likely to be anywhere along the chemical bond.Delocalized electrons contribute to the conductivity of the atom, ion, or molecule. Materials with many delocalized electrons tend to be highly conductive. Delocalized Electron Examples In a benzene molecule, for example, the electrical forces on the electrons are uniform across the molecule. The delocalization produces what is called a resonance structure. Delocalized electrons are also commonly seen in solid metals, where they form a sea of electrons that are free to move throughout the material. This is why metals are typically excellent electrical conductors. In the crystal structure of a diamond, the four outer electrons of each carbon atom participate in covalent bonding (are localized). Contrast this with bonding in graphite, another form of pure carbon. In graphite, only three of the four outer electrons are covalently bonded to other carbon atoms. Each carbon atom has a delocalized electron that participates in chemical bonding  but is free to move throughout the plane of the molecule. While the electrons are delocalized, graphite is a planar shape, so the molecule conducts electricity along the plane, but not perpendicular to it.