sonnys blues :: essays research papers

At its best, James Baldwin's fiction is lyrical, intense, poetic, outrageous, improvisatory, brutal, and transcendent. The first time I read his short story, "Sonny's Blues," I was sitting in one of those massive chain bookstores, drinking coffee and trying to block out the pabulum coming from the Muzak. Imagine my surprise when I suddenly found myself choking back tears. The last three pages of "Sonny's Blues" are as good as it gets: Sonny breaks into a blistering piano solo, finally finding a voice for his repressed pain. Baldwin follows suit — capturing the rhythms, the longing, the give and take of the best jazz — in some of the most stunning prose I've encountered. Unfortunately, Another Country is not Baldwin at his best. In fact, it's possibly the most frustrating novel I've ever read. Here, Baldwin is so determined to explode the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality — and judging by the variety of sexual relationships on display here, he must have plotted those intersections on graph paper before sitting down to write — that he makes a fatal mistake: instead of being particularly insightful or even shocking, Another Country is preachy, sentimental, and, worst of all, boring. Rufus Scott is a young black man who makes his living playing drums in Harlem jazz clubs. When we first meet Rufus, he is wandering the streets, suffering from guilt over his treatment of Leona, a woman we later meet through flashbacks. Leona's and Rufus's relationship is based on a shared self-loathing: he feels unworthy of the love of a white woman; she has known only brutal relationships, having come to New York after escaping from an abusive marriage in the South. Rufus's brutality eventually sends her to an asylum, an event that plagues Rufus, leading him to jump from the George Washington bridge at the end of chapter one. The remainder of the novel charts the effects of Rufus's suicide on the lives of those closest to him. The most interesting relationship is between Ida, Rufus's younger sister, and Vivaldo, his best friend. Both are struggling artists: she a singer, he a novelist. In Baldwin's hands, they become a platform for long discourses on the legacies of racism. Before meeting Ida, Vivaldo has known black women only as sexual objects — the cheap whores he frequented in Harlem. Ida has likewise known white men only as victimizers — the men who leered at her and who broke her brother's spirit.

Design Activities and Environments Essay

1. Review the definitions of architectural and detailed design and the brief descriptions of high-level design activities at the beginning of the chapter. Which activities are clearly architectural? Which are clearly detailed? Which can be architectural or detailed? Designing the support services architecture and deployment environment and designing the software architecture are clearly architectural. Designing use case realizations and designing the database are clearly detailed. Designing the system and user interfaces and designing the system security and controls can be architectural or detailed. 2. Discuss the evolution of client-server computing from file server to multilayer applications to Web-based applications. What has been the driving force causing this evolution? Where do you think network computing will be in the next five years? Ten years? Cheaper computers, and networks, ubiquitous networking, and the desire of companies to increase the accessibility of their systems to increase the customer base/satisfaction, gain efficiencies from greater inter- and intraorganization coordination, and greater flexibility to reorganize people, processes, and systems. 3. Assume that the deployment environment for a high-volume payment processing system consists of the following: †¢ DB2 DBMS running under the OS/390 operating system on an IBM S/390 mainframe †¢ WebSphere application server running under the Z/OS operating system on an IBM zSeries 900 mainframe †¢ CORBA-compliant component-based application software written in Java that will be executed by other internal and external systems What are the key architectural design decisions that must be made for the system? When should the decisions be made and who should make them? Outline the subsequent design tasks that should occur after the key architectural design decisions are made. To what extent can the subsequent steps be performed in parallel? Some key architectural decisions to explore include: the key components and subsystems, where each component will execute and how will all of the pieces interoperate (which requires nailing down how the network, CORBA, and database infrastructure will be configured)? Many of the decisions depend on whether the supporting infrastructure is already in place. If it is, then many of the architectural decisions can be delayed until much code has been written and tested. If not, then the required infrastructure and tools will have to be acquired and configured. Developers will have to be trained, and architectural design will need to occur early to ensure that the developers don’t make any â€Å"mistakes† due to lack of fit with the development or deployment environment. Note that an OO development approach is assumed given the nature of the infrastructure and tools 4. Develop a network diagram that supports the architectural design decisions in your answer to number 2. Answers will vary. Some important points that should be included are: File servers just sent the data across the network. They tended to use lots of bandwidth, because the entire file was sent. Also, since the applications that processed the data were on all the different workstations, deployment and maintenance of these applications was expensive. Application servers moved the applications from the workstations (clients) to the server. This made it easier to maintain a consistent set of applications and to upgrade the applications. This movement was influenced by the appearance of â€Å"thin clients† that had very little storage, but good processing capability. However, due to the drastic reduction in storage costs, thin clients have not caught on. Multi-tier networks are where multiple servers and clients work together to provide the complete functionality of a system. Some processing will be on the clients. Servers such as database servers and application servers provide additional capability. The driving force behind much of this is the rapid growth and capability of the Internet and languages such as JAVA with protocols such as J2EE. Microsoft’s .NET also provides capabilities to have distributed systems. Answers for the future will vary.

One Night Stands and Regret Essay

Sex is considered a taboo up until we become college students. We have people whom want to remain chaste until marriage, we have people whom want to have experimental encounters with as many people as they can in college, and then there are people whom would only consider having sexual relations with their significant other. College parties are wild and it is guaranteed that at least 5 couples will end up hooking up at the end of the night. Most hook ups becomes one-night stands. If we were to ask those individuals if they regret their past encounters many would say yes because drugs or alcohol were involved. Drugs and and alcohol play an important role in sex. It is more likely for an intoxicated person to engage in sexual encounters than a sober person. In the magazine Psychology Today, there is an article called â€Å"If I Could do it All Over Again† that talks about the half-life of sex. In this article we are informed with statistics of men and women whom admit as to why they regret their past encounters. The article also explains scenarios of cases where sexual encounters break relationships and marriages. The biggest questioned raised by Matt Huston in his article is â€Å"When it comes to sexual misadventures, why do we feel so wrong about that which, in the heat of the moment, felt so right?† (Huston 39). Huston suggests that people feel thrill when having encounters rather than casual sex. What is there to regret of sex? Women who lose their virginity in a sexual encounter regret it because they feel like they lost their pureness to the wrong man. Women also regret having sexual encounters because they feel like they moved too fast to jump into sex. Men have other type of regrets. There are men who regret no jumping into bed and having sex with a random person. There are men who regret not being more sexually active in their youth. On a survey done to men and women, 55% of men regret not having sexual encounters. 48% of men regret not being sexually active at a young age. 43% of women regret moving too fast and jumping into sex. 41% of women regret  losing their virginity to the wrong person. Both men and women regret things differently. Women regret most of their past sexual encounters while men regret not having more sexual encounters. A very interesting study done in the Journal of Sex research, finds that regardless of sex, both genders that engage in sex with relative strangers may actually be more anxious and depressed. Another impactful statistic is that more than 70% of â€Å"college students who’d had a one-night stand had also experienced sexual regret† (39). This magazine article is very informative. It really doesn’t persuade people not to have sexual encounters; it just informs us about the people who regret sexual encounters. The magazine’s job is to inform us of a topic that really isn’t talked about on a daily basis. One can say that this magazine is sending out a subliminal message, which is to think before we engage in sexual encounters. The magazine believes that this generation has changed the idea of sex and has created a new a separate type of sex called sexual encounters. It also shows how many of these people show regret for past encounters. While shopping at Target I looked around and saw the books and magazines sections. I decided to buy a National Geographic magazine. The cover had an interesting hook; it basically said that Aliens weren’t far from earth. I bought the magazine and read the article, however, it didn’t finish the article when I decided to return the magazine to the store. The article was very boring, the language wasn’t clear to understand, and the text became boring the further I read. I went back to Target and looked around for another magazine and I decided to look at Psychology Today. My initial article to write my essay was on â€Å"Daydreams† and how those fantasies affect our futures. As I flipped through the magazine I came across the topic of sex. I read the title and I felt a relation to that topic. We’re college students and we know people whom participate in sexual encounters. Sexual encounters are something that is incredibly popular in college and especially at parties and clubs. It is interesting to know how both men and women feel after sexual encounters. Before I read this article I had no opinion on sexual encounters. I have a few friends whom participate in this type of acts. I always tell them to use protection and avoid stupid mistakes. I don’t judge people, everyone makes mistakes and many of us keep making mistakes. After I read this article it hit me. I used to believe that when someone engages in sexual encounters they aren’t sensitive and don’t have emotional feelings. But this magazine proved me wrong. Men and women do feel regret; their regret differs but they still feel regret based on a sexual encounter. I don’t regret reading this article because it really caught my attention. I scanned the article and emailed it to some of my friends. I was really amazed with the research that explained that most of the people who participate in sexual encounters are anxious and depressed. It is rude to ask personal questions to people but I’d be very interested in knowing if they are anxious or depressed. If I ever feel the necessity of participating in a sexual encounter I will think back to this article and analyze the moment. Drugs and alcohol are not our friends and intoxication can make us do things we wouldn’t do when sober. I would also think of the statistics of people whom regret the sexual encounters. This article has made me realize that there is a negative effect on sexual encounters, there is more to than just sex. Sex involves feelings. I think that every college student should read this article. Many people could prevent feeling regretful if they read an interesting article like this one. Works Cited Huston, Matt. â€Å"If I Could Do It All Over Again.† Psychology Today 1 Mar. 2014: 37-39. Print.

s Message Through Candide.

of other great minds and modern day thought. From the start of the book to the end of the book there is an underlying thought in the reader’s mind that Voltaire isn’t a large fan of the church. He depicts religious men, such as monks and priests, as hypocrites that don’t even live up to the religion that they claim to believe in and practice. However, there is more. Voltaire portrays the church as one of the most corrupt, dishonest, violence-ridden places on the entire planet. He believed that God created the earth, sure, but the people and their brutality towards one another is the major factor in what keeps this world from being anything close to perfect. This is exactly where Voltaire clashes with the other philosophers of this time. Alexander Pope, for example, believed that every human being is part of a greater, rational, grand design of god. Simply, Voltaire thought that this belief stripped man of his free will. Anti-war sentiment is high in the book Candide, which originates largely from his experiences in the Seven Years War. Not only is he against war,... 's Message Through Candide. Free Essays on Voltaire\'s Message Through Candide. Voltaire’s Message through Candide In the book Candide by Voltaire, there are many themes that shine through the pages of humor through morbid translation. The main theme of Candide revolves around the pessimistic view that Voltaire had of this earth as a whole. Whereas a philosopher such as Leibniz believed that this Earth was the best possible world with perfect order and reason, Voltaire believed otherwise. He believed that the world was not the best of all possible ones and that accident and chance play a major role. Aside from this there are many other themes in the book, such as: religious discontent, anti-war sentiment, and his belief that the world is far from a utopia. Comparatively speaking many philosophers of the same time differ largely in their view of the world, and in the following paragraphs the message of Candide will be compared to the words of other great minds and modern day thought. From the start of the book to the end of the book there is an underlying thought in the reader’s mind that Voltaire isn’t a large fan of the church. He depicts religious men, such as monks and priests, as hypocrites that don’t even live up to the religion that they claim to believe in and practice. However, there is more. Voltaire portrays the church as one of the most corrupt, dishonest, violence-ridden places on the entire planet. He believed that God created the earth, sure, but the people and their brutality towards one another is the major factor in what keeps this world from being anything close to perfect. This is exactly where Voltaire clashes with the other philosophers of this time. Alexander Pope, for example, believed that every human being is part of a greater, rational, grand design of god. Simply, Voltaire thought that this belief stripped man of his free will. Anti-war sentiment is high in the book Candide, which originates largely from his experiences in the Seven Years War. Not only is he against war,...

Difference Between Form1.Hide and Unload Me in VB 6

Difference Between Form1.Hide and Unload Me in VB 6 Hide and Unload are techniques in Visual  Basic 6- VB.NET does things differently. In VB6, you can see the difference clearly by creating a form with a CommandButton component and a test statement in the Click event. Note that these two statements are mutually exclusive, so only one can be tested at a time. Visual Basic 6 Unload Statement The Unload statement removes the form from memory. In most simple VB6 projects, Form1 is the startup object so the program stops running too. To prove this, code the first program with Unload. Private Sub Command1_Click()  Ã‚  Ã‚  Unload MeEnd Sub When the button is clicked in this project, the program stops. Visual Basic 6Hide Statement To demonstrate  Hide, run this code in VB6 so the Hide method of Form1 is executed. Private Sub Command1_Click()  Ã‚  Ã‚  Form1.HideEnd Sub Notice that Form1 disappears from the screen, but the square End icon on the Debug toolbar shows  the project is still active. If youre in doubt, the Windows Task Manager that is displayed with CtrlAltDel shows the project is still in Run mode. Communicating With a Hidden Form The Hide method only removes the form from the screen. Nothing else changes. For example, another process can still communicate with objects on the form after the Hide method is called. Heres a program that demonstrates that. Add another form to the VB6 project and then add a Timer component  and this code to Form1: Private Sub Command1_Click()  Ã‚  Ã‚  Form1.Hide  Ã‚  Ã‚  Form2.ShowEnd Sub Private Sub Timer1_Timer()  Ã‚  Ã‚  Form2.Hide  Ã‚  Ã‚  Form1.ShowEnd Sub In Form2, add a Command button control and this code: Private Sub Command1_Click()  Ã‚  Ã‚  Form1.Timer1.Interval 10000 10 seconds  Ã‚  Ã‚  Form1.Timer1.Enabled TrueEnd Sub When you run the project, clicking the button on Form1 makes Form1 disappear and Form2 appear. However, clicking the button on Form2 uses the Timer component on Form1 to wait 10 seconds before making Form2 disappear and Form1 appear again even though Form1 isnt visible. Since the project is still running, Form1 keeps appearing every 10 seconds- a technique you might use to drive a coworker batty one day.

Free sample - Anti-alcoholism Programms. translation missing

Anti-alcoholism Programms. Anti-alcoholism Programms1 (same as 3). I completely agree with this point of view. Alcoholism is a complete degradation of human as a person. It hurts to see how close person plunges into this abyss. Sometimes you lose heart and do not know how to help. I think that the12-step programs can help many. It is very important to understand that the treatment of alcoholism, which has a devastating impact on absolutely all aspects of life, can be effective only in the long run. 12-steps program aimed at the full change of life of such people – physical, spiritual and social spheres of his existence. I believe that every man is able to help himself, to make absolutely conscious and suffered choice. 2. I hope to God that 12-step programs are able to hill alcohol dependant people. But it is obviously for me that the behavior of relatives and friends should be appropriate. Many just feel sorry for the loved ones suffering from alcohol dependence, not realizing that failing to provide them with proper assistance make the situation even more complex and infinite. I think it is of great need to be strong in such situation, even stronger than alcohol abused ones. Only strong desire to save person, to make his life and life of all close people worth human being can rescue whole family, of course with the help of qualified professionals. Alcoholic has to be sure that he makes right decision; he has to see and feel his problem as a disease that makes hurt to everyone who loves him. So, I am deeply convinced that 12-step program can help to find the way to freedom and healing. 4. I completely agree that drinking alcohol makes people behave inadequately. This question is still opened and even professionals can not answer the question â€Å"Why?† We are all individuals and not everybody knows what our consciousness hides. Many think that alcohol helps to reveal our true personality but also many drink because of desire to hide it or escape from reality. To my mind the 12-step program’s treating includes such aspects as analysis of the past and making certain findings (own way to cure), and that helps to understand clearly the deep need of deliverance from alcohol abuse. Communicating with people who face the same problem also helps in realization of healing from alcohol dependence.

Family Communication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Family Communication - Essay Example When considering verbal messages, which helps family members to understand each other in a better light, it helps to build better relationships within the family. Current research carried out utilizes first person narratives and other family functions to analyze patterns of interactions carried out within the family.It also examines the communication processes of different family members in relation to its ethnic patterns, structure, and their progressive experiences which in turn affect and is affected by the society at large. Understanding the patterns of verbal messages within the family is a great asset to its members and this is partly achieved by understanding communication within the family because it is the communication that shapes and is shaped by family relationships. For example, a couple who attends marriage education classes would be in a better position to communicate with each other on a much better level both verbally and non–verbally. Therefore by changing th eir communication habits after marriage, it would have a major positive effect on their relationship, not only with each other but towards other members in thefamily. Another example of this would be of siblings growing close to each other when they lose both parents. They learn to communicate with each other verbally by sharing all their joys and sufferings even after they marry and move away from each other.Non-abusive parents use more verbal â€Å"time-outs, privilege denials, and explanation of consequences to discipline their children.