Critical Thinking Model Example

1. I believe a college education is the most important goal a young person should pursue. 2. From my point of view the concept of a ‘college’ is an accredited institution that offers a liberal arts program in addition to specific subject areas. Its importance should be in the top 3 areas of a young person’s life. 3. An example would be the small college I attended where I was introduced to a broad liberal education. 4. I have always held this view.My parents influenced me and then I was able to ‘test’ this view out when I chose my college and the degrees I earned. I always knew you could major in a lot of areas without the need to be that specific. 5. I am assuming that most people have the opportunity to experience college and can afford it. They have both the resources and the will to succeed in college. 6. A liberal education introduces the student to a vast body of knowledge, encourages them to become a free thinker and provides a foundation from which they can build upon and refer back to.Studies suggest that top employers value good communication skills, problem solving skills and the ability to think independently. A liberal education provides this skill. 7. Another POV is that people excel in lots of different areas and can pursue a trade college or skill and begin making money right after high school. 8. Even though many people do not have the ability or resources to go to college and begin working, I conclude if resources and talents allow, a liberal education is an invaluable pursuit in a young person’s life. . The consequences of believing in a liberal education are that colleges need to continue to receive the proper funding to keep liberal arts programs running and alive. They also need to make sure that enough aid is awarded to those students that cannot afford to attend. And finally, family and work need to take a backseat in order to fulfill the requirements of college life.

College and First Year Students Essay

â€Å"One of the few rights America does not proclaim is the right to fail†. William Zinsser speaks shades truth when addressing the college student and the pressures imposed upon them. In our modern day and age, college students are mounted with problems: finance, respect, insecurity, and competition, are just a few. Modifications must be made in regards to relieving the high levels of stress students tend to inquire, opportunities to explore a variation of career types, and a general understanding from both teachers and students that the majority of freshmen have no clue what they want to do. It is for these reasons that I strongly lobby students not to decide on a major entering their first year of college. However, not everyone would agree. It is ideal for students to compromise to a course and take the necessary steps in the completion and mastery of a particular profession. Because admission nowadays is exceedingly selective, it is important to know what you want in the beginning to keep you on track. â€Å"You don’t want to pay for college twice†, says Will McGuiness, editor of the Huffington Post. For students investing both their time and money into these institutions of higher learning, it seems practical to just get a degree that will pay the mortgage. According to the Georgetown University Center on Education, in 2012 college graduates faced an unemployment rate of 8.3, well above the national average of 7.7. Although these bold facts are intimidating enough to have every freshman running for the hills, they fail to add the human components of learning and growth that most instrumental in excelling through college. Now that we have considered the factors that edge students in rushing into a major, let’s explore the reasons to stay abstinent. Giving a first year student the option of not having to make a career choice is a stress relief in and of itself. Unfortunately for college students, stress is nothing new; in fact, 37 percent of all college freshmen are above the average levels of stress and anxiety (Tamar Lewin, 1). These numbers should not be taken lightly, especially when shown that people under constant levels of stress live 10 years shorter than those who are not (â€Å"PSY Science†, 148). The pressures of achievement, acceptance, and competition are all intertwined with ones performance at a progressive level. Because tension in a stressful environment naturally creates a bigger learning curve, it is important to give these pupils breathing room with a year free of any grave decisions. Not only will this benefit the student’s health, but will show in test scores, communication, and most importantly learning. By eliminating the perceived need to commit to a major students are unsure of, will lead to a reduction of stress. Another reason for a first year hold out is the opportunity to explore. A year of exploration through a variety of different courses is vital to a student’s growth. At 18, it is safe to say that we have not been properly exposed to the world and even our own abilities. So to make us pick a career that we might dedicate the rest of our professional lives to seems absurd. Students exploring a wide range of subjects learn new things and develop interests they may never have known they had. Whereas choosing a specific major right from the start binds them to a narrow path. Occupations students once thought they were destined for fade into the horizon as their true passions are discovered. Additionally, a student knowledgeable in polarizing fields is a well-rounded one more effective in the workforce. As William Zinsser points out, â€Å"I would employ graduates who have this range and curiosity rather than those who narrowly pursue safe subjects† (â€Å"College Pressures†, 2). Which leads me to my last reason, if not the most important, the overlooked fact that we just don’t know. First year college students simply do not know what they want to be for the next 50 years of their life. The exception would be the hand full of students that have known their career path since the age of 5, leaving the rest of us in the dark with envy. The human brain does not fully develop until the age of 25, so deciding a career wouldn’t necessarily be a thoroughly calculated decision. Incidentally, most college students change their major an average of 3 or 4 times (â€Å"Off to college†, 18). Every semester councilors confront these timid, unfamiliar faces that stumble into their office and ask them for their major, while handing them a long list of credits needed for whatever choice they made. The blank stares the councilors receive from the students should be a clear enough indicator that these kids are as clueless as a dim light bulb and need help. Teachers and faculties need to emphasize the notion that it is okay not to know, that they have the right to fail. This leads me back to my hammering question at hand, what is the point of compromising to a major in freshman year? Through much comparison, calculation, and critical thinking, I have concluded it only logical not to decide on a major being the new kid on the block. While it is time and money saving to make a commitment sooner than later, it is not practical in the long run. Stress is not necessary, can affect academic performance and even pose a long term health risk. An exploratory student is progressive one that reflects the importance of a year to sample different career opportunities. Finally, awareness that most freshmen students do not know what educational path to take leads to a better understanding support group in teachers and faculty. Students are the driving force of our future, and must be encouraged, not disillusioned. A year of free trial and error without the loom of hefty decisions can be the difference between a learning environment and a hostile one. One of my favorite quotes, from the United Negro Fund, that I believe should be displayed in every school is, â€Å"A mind is a terrible thing to waste†.

Digital Fortress Chapter 76-80

Chapter 76 Outside the Seville airport terminal, a taxi sat idle, the meter running. The passenger in the wire-rim glasses gazed through the plate-glass windows of the well-lit terminal. He knew he'd arrived in time. He could see a blond girl. She was helping David Becker to a chair. Becker was apparently in pain. He does not yet know pain, the passenger thought. The girl pulled a small object from her pocket and held it out. Becker held it up and studied it in the light. Then he slipped it on his finger. He pulled a stack of bills from his pocket and paid the girl. They talked a few minutes longer, and then the girl hugged him. She waved, shouldered her duffel, and headed off across the concourse. At last, the man in the taxi thought. At last. Chapter 77 Strathmore stepped out of his office onto the landing with his gun leveled. Susan trailed close behind, wondering if Hale was still in Node 3. The light from Strathmore's monitor behind them threw eerie shadows of their bodies out across the grated platform. Susan inched closer to the commander. As they moved away from the door, the light faded, and they were plunged into darkness. The only light on the Crypto floor came from the stars above and the faint haze from behind the shattered Node 3 window. Strathmore inched forward, looking for the place where the narrow staircase began. Switching the Berretta to his left hand, he groped for the banister with his right. He figured he was probably just as bad a shot with his left, and he needed his right for support. Falling down this particular set of stairs could cripple someone for life, and Strathmore's dreams for his retirement did not involve a wheelchair. Susan, blinded by the blackness of the Crypto dome, descended with a hand on Strathmore's shoulder. Even at the distance of two feet, she could not see the commander's outline. As she stepped onto each metal tread, she shuffled her toes forward looking for the edge. Susan began having second thoughts about risking a visit to Node 3 to get Hale's pass-key. The commander insisted Hale wouldn't have the guts to touch them, but Susan wasn't so sure. Hale was desperate. He had two options: Escape Crypto or go to jail. A voice kept telling Susan they should wait for David's call and use his pass-key, but she knew there was no guarantee he would even find it. She wondered what was taking David so long. Susan swallowed her apprehension and kept going. Strathmore descended silently. There was no need to alert Hale they were coming. As they neared the bottom, Strathmore slowed, feeling for the final step. When he found it, the heel of his loafer clicked on hard black tile. Susan felt his shoulder tense. They'd entered the danger zone. Hale could be anywhere. In the distance, now hidden behind TRANSLTR, was their destination-Node 3. Susan prayed Hale was still there, lying on the floor, whimpering in pain like the dog he was. Strathmore let go of the railing and switched the gun back to his right hand. Without a word, he moved out into the darkness. Susan held tight to his shoulder. If she lost him, the only way she'd find him again was to speak. Hale might hear them. As they moved away from the safety of the stairs, Susan recalled late-night games of tag as a kid-she'd left home base, she was in the open. She was vulnerable. TRANSLTR was the only island in the vast black sea. Every few steps Strathmore stopped, gun poised, and listened. The only sound was the faint hum from below. Susan wanted to pull him back, back to safety, back to home base. There seemed to be faces in the dark all around her. Halfway to TRANSLTR, the silence of Crypto was broken. Somewhere in the darkness, seemingly right on top of them, a high-pitched beeping pierced the night. Strathmore spun, and Susan lost him. Fearful, Susan shot her arm out, groping for him. But the commander was gone. The space where his shoulder had been was now just empty air. She staggered forward into the emptiness. The beeping noise continued. It was nearby. Susan wheeled in the darkness. There was a rustle of clothing, and suddenly the beeping stopped. Susan froze. An instant later, as if from one of her worst childhood nightmares, a vision appeared. A face materialized directly in front of her. It was ghostly and green. It was the face of a demon, sharp shadows jutting upward across deformed features. She jumped back. She turned to run, but it grabbed her arm. â€Å"Don't move!† it commanded. For an instant, she thought she saw Hale in those two burning eyes. But the voice was not Hale's. And the touch was too soft. It was Strathmore. He was lit from beneath by a glowing object that he'd just pulled from his pocket. Her body sagged with relief. She felt herself start breathing again. The object in Strathmore's hand had some sort of electronic LED that was giving off a greenish glow. â€Å"Damn,† Strathmore cursed under his breath. â€Å"My new pager.† He stared in disgust at the SkyPager in his palm. He'd forgotten to engage the silent-ring feature. Ironically, he'd gone to a local electronics store to buy the device. He'd paid cash to keep it anonymous; nobody knew better than Strathmore how closely the NSA watched their own-and the digital messages sent and received from this pager were something Strathmore definitely needed to keep private. Susan looked around uneasily. If Hale hadn't known they were coming, he knew now. Strathmore pressed a few buttons and read the incoming message. He groaned quietly. It was more bad news from Spain-not from David Becker, but from the other party Strathmore had sent to Seville. Three thousand miles away, a mobile surveillance van sped along the darkened Seville streets. It had been commissioned by the NSA under â€Å"Umbra† secrecy from a military base in Rota. The two men inside were tense. It was not the first time they'd received emergency orders from Fort Meade, but the orders didn't usually come from so high up. The agent at the wheel called over his shoulder. â€Å"Any sign of our man?† The eyes of his partner never left the feed from the wide-angle video monitor on the roof. â€Å"No. Keep driving.† Chapter 78 Underneath the twisting mass of cables, Jabba was sweating. He was still on his back with a penlight clenched in his teeth. He'd gotten used to working late on weekends; the less hectic NSA hours were often the only times he could perform hardware maintenance. As he maneuvered the red-hot soldering iron through the maze of wires above him, he moved with exceptional care; singeing any of the dangling sheathes would be disaster. Just another few inches, he thought. The job was taking far longer than he'd imagined. Just as he brought the tip of the iron against the final thread of raw solder, his cellular phone rang sharply. Jabba startled, his arm twitched, and a large glob of sizzling, liquefied lead fell on his arm. â€Å"Shit!† He dropped the iron and practically swallowed his penlight. â€Å"Shit! Shit! Shit!† He scrubbed furiously at the drop of cooling solder. It rolled off, leaving an impressive welt. The chip he was trying to solder in place fell out and hit him in the head. â€Å"Goddamn it!† Jabba's phone summoned him again. He ignored it. â€Å"Midge,† he cursed under his breath. Damn you! Crypto's fine! The phone rang on. Jabba went back to work reseating the new chip. A minute later the chip was in place, but his phone was still ringing. For Christ's sake, Midge! Give it up! The phone rang another fifteen seconds and finally stopped. Jabba breathed a sigh of relief. Sixty seconds later the intercom overhead crackled. â€Å"Would the chief Sys-Sec please contact the main switchboard for a message.† Jabba rolled his eyes in disbelief. She just doesn't give up, does she? He ignored the page. Chapter 79 Strathmore replaced his Skypager in his pocket and peered through the darkness toward Node 3. He reached for Susan's hand. â€Å"Come on.† But their fingers never touched. There was a long guttural cry from out of the darkness. A thundering figure loomed-a Mack truck bearing down with no headlights. An instant later, there was a collision and Strathmore was skidding across the floor. It was Hale. The pager had given them away. Susan heard the Berretta fall. For a moment she was planted in place, unsure where to run, what to do. Her instincts told her to escape, but she didn't have the elevator code. Her heart told her to help Strathmore, but how? As she spun in desperation, she expected to hear the sounds of a life-and-death struggle on the floor, but there was nothing. Everything was suddenly silent-as if Hale had hit the commander and then disappeared back into the night. Susan waited, straining her eyes into the darkness, hoping Strathmore wasn't hurt. After what seemed like an eternity, she whispered, â€Å"Commander?† Even as she said it, she realized her mistake. An instant later Hale's odor welled up behind her. She turned too late. Without warning, she was twisting, gasping for air. She found herself crushed in a familiar headlock, her face against Hale's chest. â€Å"My balls are killing me.† Hale panted in her ear. Susan's knees buckled. The stars in the dome began to spin above her. Chapter 80 Hale clamped down on Susan's neck and yelled into the darkness. â€Å"Commander, I've got your sweetheart. I want out!† His demands were met with silence. Hale's grip tightened. â€Å"I'll break her neck!† A gun cocked directly behind them. Strathmore's voice was calm and even. â€Å"Let her go.† Susan winced in pain. â€Å"Commander!† Hale spun Susan's body toward the sound. â€Å"You shoot and you'll hit your precious Susan. You ready to take that chance?† Strathmore's voice moved closer. â€Å"Let her go.† â€Å"No way. You'll kill me.† â€Å"I'm not going to kill anyone.† â€Å"Oh, yeah? Tell that to Chartrukian!† Strathmore moved closer. â€Å"Chartrukian's dead.† â€Å"No shit. You killed him. I saw it!† â€Å"Give it up, Greg,† Strathmore said calmly. Hale clutched at Susan and whispered in her ear, â€Å"Strathmore pushed Chartrukian-I swear it!† â€Å"She's not going to fall for your divide-and-conquer technique,† Strathmore said, moving closer. â€Å"Let her go.† Hale hissed into the darkness, â€Å"Chartrukian was just a kid, for Christ's sake! Why'd you do it? To protect your little secret?† Strathmore stayed cool. â€Å"And what little secret is that?† â€Å"You know damn-fucking-well what secret that is! Digital Fortress!† â€Å"My, my,† Strathmore muttered condescendingly, his voice like an iceberg. â€Å"So you do know about Digital Fortress. I was starting to think you'd deny that too.† â€Å"Fuck you.† â€Å"A witty defense.† â€Å"You're a fool,† Hale spat. â€Å"For your information, TRANSLTR is overheating.† â€Å"Really?† Strathmore chuckled. â€Å"Let me guess-I should open the doors and call in the Sys-Secs?† â€Å"Exactly,† Hale fired back. â€Å"You'd be an idiot not to.† This time Strathmore laughed out loud. â€Å"That's your big play? TRANSLTR's overheating, so open the doors and let us out?† â€Å"It's true, dammit! I've been down to the sublevels! The aux power isn't pulling enough freon!† â€Å"Thanks for the tip,† Strathmore said. â€Å"But TRANSLTR's got automatic shutdown; if it's overheating, Digital Fortress will quit all by itself.† Hale sneered. â€Å"You're insane. What the fuck do I care if TRANSLTR blows? The damn machine should be outlawed anyway.† Strathmore sighed. â€Å"Child psychology only works on children, Greg. Let her go.† â€Å"So you can shoot me?† â€Å"I won't shoot you. I just want the pass-key.† â€Å"What pass-key?† Strathmore sighed again. â€Å"The one Tankado sent you.† â€Å"I have no idea what you're talking about.† â€Å"Liar!† Susan managed. â€Å"I saw Tankado's mail in your account!† Hale went rigid. He spun Susan around. â€Å"You went in my account?† â€Å"And you aborted my tracer,† she snapped. Hale felt his blood pressure skyrocket. He thought he'd covered his tracks; he had no idea Susan knew what he'd done. It was no wonder she wasn't buying a word he said. Hale felt the walls start to close in. He knew he could never talk his way out of that one-not in time. He whispered to her in desperation, â€Å"Susan†¦ Strathmore killed Chartrukian!† â€Å"Let her go,† the commander said evenly. â€Å"She doesn't believe you.† â€Å"Why should she?† Hale fired back. â€Å"You lying bastard! You've got her brainwashed! You only tell her what suits your needs! Does she know what you really plan to do with Digital Fortress?† â€Å"And what's that?† Strathmore taunted. Hale knew what he was about to say would either be his ticket to freedom or his death warrant. He took a deep breath and went for broke. â€Å"You plan to write a back door in Digital Fortress.† The words met with a bewildered silence from the darkness. Hale knew he had hit a bull's-eye. Apparently Strathmore's unflappable cool was being put to the test. â€Å"Who told you that?† he demanded, his voice rough around the edges. â€Å"I read it,† Hale said smugly, trying to capitalize on the change of momentum. â€Å"In one of your brainstorms.† â€Å"Impossible. I never print my brainstorms.† â€Å"I know. I read it directly off your account.† Strathmore seemed doubtful. â€Å"You got into my office?† â€Å"No. I snooped you from Node 3.† Hale forced a self-assured chuckle. He knew he'd need all the negotiating skills he'd learned in the marines to get out of Crypto alive. Strathmore edged closer, the Berretta leveled in the darkness. â€Å"How do you know about my back door?† â€Å"I told you, I snooped your account.† â€Å"Impossible.† Hale forced a cocky sneer. â€Å"One of the problems of hiring the best, Commander-sometimes they're better than you.† â€Å"Young man,† Strathmore seethed, â€Å"I don't know where you get your information, but you're in way over your head. You will let Ms. Fletcher go right now or I'll call in Security and have you thrown in jail for life.† â€Å"You won't do it,† Hale stated matter-of-factly. â€Å"Calling Security ruins your plans. I'll tell them everything.† Hale paused. â€Å"But let me out clean, and I'll never say a word about Digital Fortress.† â€Å"No deal,† Strathmore fired back. â€Å"I want the pass-key.† â€Å"I don't have any fucking pass-key!† â€Å"Enough lies!† Strathmore bellowed. â€Å"Where is it?† Hale clamped down on Susan's neck. â€Å"Let me out, or she dies!† Trevor Strathmore had done enough high-stakes bargaining in his life to know that Hale was in a very dangerous state of mind. The young cryptographer had painted himself into a corner, and a cornered opponent was always the most dangerous kind-desperate and unpredictable. Strathmore knew his next move was a critical one. Susan's life depended on it-and so did the future of Digital Fortress. Strathmore knew the first thing he had to do was release the tension of the situation. After a long moment, he sighed reluctantly. â€Å"Okay, Greg. You win. What do you want me to do?† Silence. Hale seemed momentarily unsure how to handle the commander's cooperative tone. He let up a bit on Susan's neck. â€Å"W-well†¦Ã¢â‚¬  he stammered, his voice wavering suddenly. â€Å"First thing you do is give me your gun. You're both coming with me.† â€Å"Hostages?† Strathmore laughed coldly. â€Å"Greg, you'll have to do better than that. There are about a dozen armed guards between here and the parking lot.† â€Å"I'm not a fool,† Hale snapped. â€Å"I'm taking your elevator. Susan comes with me! You stay!† â€Å"I hate to tell you this,† Strathmore replied, â€Å"but there's no power to the elevator.† â€Å"Bullshit!† Hale snapped. â€Å"The lift runs on power from the main building! I've seen the schematics!† â€Å"We tried it already,† Susan choked, trying to help. â€Å"It's dead.† â€Å"You're both so full of shit, it's incredible.† Hale tightened his grip. â€Å"If the elevator's dead, I'll abort TRANSLTR and restore power.† â€Å"The elevator takes a password,† Susan managed feistily. â€Å"Big deal.† Hale laughed. â€Å"I'm sure the commander will share. Won't you, Commander?† â€Å"No chance,† Strathmore hissed. Hale boiled over. â€Å"Now you listen to me, old man-here's the deal! You let Susan and me out through your elevator, we drive a few hours, and then I let her go.† Strathmore felt the stakes rising. He'd gotten Susan into this, and he needed to get her out. His voice stayed steady as a rock. â€Å"What about my plans for Digital Fortress?† Hale laughed. â€Å"You can write your back door-I won't say a word.† Then his voice turned ominous. â€Å"But the day I think you're tracking me, I go to the press with the whole story. I tell them Digital Fortress is tainted, and I sink this whole fucking organization!† Strathmore considered Hale's offer. It was clean and simple. Susan lived, and Digital Fortress got its back door. As long as Strathmore didn't chase Hale, the back door stayed a secret. Strathmore knew Hale couldn't keep his mouth shut for long. But still†¦ the knowledge of Digital Fortress was Hale's only insurance-maybe he'd be smart. Whatever happened, Strathmore knew Hale could be removed later if necessary. â€Å"Make up your mind, old man!† Hale taunted. â€Å"Are we leaving or not?† Hale's arms tightened around Susan like a vice. Strathmore knew that if he picked up the phone right now and called Security, Susan would live. He'd bet his life on it. He could see the scenario clearly. The call would take Hale completely by surprise. He would panic, and in the end, faced with a small army, Hale would be unable to act. After a brief standoff, he would give in. But if I call Security, Strathmore thought, my plan is ruined. Hale clamped down again. Susan cried out in pain. â€Å"What's it gonna be?† Hale yelled. â€Å"Do I kill her?† Strathmore considered his options. If he let Hale take Susan out of Crypto, there were no guarantees. Hale might drive for a while, park in the woods. He'd have a gun†¦. Strathmore's stomach turned. There was no telling what would happen before Hale set Susan free†¦ if he set her free. I've got to call Security, Strathmore decided. What else can I do? He pictured Hale in court, spilling his guts about Digital Fortress. My plan will be ruined. There must be some other way. â€Å"Decide!† Hale yelled, dragging Susan toward the staircase. Strathmore wasn't listening. If saving Susan meant his plans were ruined, then so be it-nothing was worth losing her. Susan Fletcher was a price Trevor Strathmore refused to pay. Hale had Susan's arm twisted behind her back and her neck bent to one side. â€Å"This is your last chance, old man! Give me the gun!† Strathmore's mind continued to race, searching for another option. There are always other options! Finally he spoke-quietly, almost sadly. â€Å"No, Greg, I'm sorry. I just can't let you go.† Hale choked in apparent shock. â€Å"What!† â€Å"I'm calling Security.† Susan gasped. â€Å"Commander! No!† Hale tightened his grip. â€Å"You call Security, and she dies!† Strathmore pulled the cellular off his belt and flicked it on. â€Å"Greg, you're bluffing.† â€Å"You'll never do it!† Hale yelled. â€Å"I'll talk! I'll ruin your plan! You're only hours away from your dream! Controlling all the data in the world! No more TRANSLTR. No more limits-just free information. It's a chance of a lifetime! You won't let it slip by!† Strathmore voice was like steel. â€Å"Watch me.† â€Å"But-but what about Susan?† Hale stammered. â€Å"You make that call, and she dies!† Strathmore held firm. â€Å"That's a chance I'm ready to take.† â€Å"Bullshit! You've got a bigger hard-on for her than you do for Digital Fortress! I know you! You won't risk it!† Susan began to make an angry rebuttal, but Strathmore beat her to it. â€Å"Young man! You don't know me! I take risks for a living. If you're looking to play hardball, let's play!† He started punching keys on his phone. â€Å"You misjudged me, son! Nobody threatens the lives of my employees and walks out!† He raised the phone and barked into the receiver, â€Å"Switchboard! Get me Security!† Hale began to torque Susan's neck. â€Å"I-I'll kill her. I swear it!† â€Å"You'll do no such thing!† Strathmore proclaimed. â€Å"Killing Susan will just make things wor-† He broke off and rammed the phone against his mouth. â€Å"Security! This is Commander Trevor Strathmore. We've got a hostage situation in Crypto! Get some men in here! Yes, now, goddamn it! We also have a generator failure. I want power routed from all available external sources. I want all systems on-line in five minutes! Greg Hale killed one of my junior Sys-Secs. He's holding my senior cryptographer hostage. You're cleared to use tear gas on all of us if necessary! If Mr. Hale doesn't cooperate, have snipers shoot him dead. I'll take full responsibility. Do it now!† Hale stood motionless-apparently limp in disbelief. His grip on Susan eased. Strathmore snapped his phone shut and shoved it back onto his belt. â€Å"Your move, Greg.†

Value Added Tax in European countries Research Paper

Value Added Tax in European countries - Research Paper Example It was evident that if there was ever going to be an efficient single market in Europe, a neutral and transparent turnover tax system was required which ensured tax neutrality and allowed the exact amount of tax to be rebated at the point of export. This created tax is known as Value Added Tax (VAT). Drawing reference to Economy Watch (2011), it described Value Added Tax (VAT) as being a special type of indirect tax in which a sum of money is levied at a particular stage in the sale of a product or service. Initiated for the first time April 10, 1954 in France by Maurice Laure; the joint director of tax authority, the VAT is designed to eliminate any problems which may be caused by double taxations. The VAT is intended to be charged whenever there is some added value to raw materials. The taxpayers on the other hand, will get credit for the amount of tax paid off at the stages of procurement. For further clarification, the European Commission Taxation and Customs Union declares a tax able person as any individual, partnership, company or whatever which supplies the taxable goods and services in the course of business. However, if the annual turnover of this person is less than a certain limit (the threshold), which differs according to the member State, the person does not have to charge VAT on their sales. The VAT due on any sale is a percentage of the sale price but from this the taxable person is entitled to deduct all the tax already paid at the preceding stage. As such, double taxation is avoided and tax is paid only on the value added at each stage of production and distribution. In this way, as the final price of the product is equal to the sum of the values added at each preceding stage, the final VAT paid is made up of the sum of the VAT paid at each stage. The value added tax system deals with these problems quite efficiently. As VAT is imposed on value addition - at every single stage - there is no incidence of cascading. In this way, the final consum ers bear the burden of paying value added tax. This system involves absolute transparency at every stage of taxation, thereby making the tax system quite comprehensible and simple (Economywatch.com) For the purpose of exports between community and non-member countries, no VAT is charged on the transaction and the VAT is already charged on the transaction and the VAT already paid on the inputs of the goods for export is deducted – this is an exemption with the right to deduct the input VAT, also called ‘zero-rating’. That means there is no residual VAT contained in the export price. However, as far as imports are concerned, VAT must be paid at the moment the goods are imported so they are immediately placed on the same footing as equivalent goods produced in the community. Taxable people registered for VAT will be able deduct this VAT on their next VAT return. The system has proven to be effective in avoiding problems caused by double taxation of goods and service s and also problems with the conventional sales tax. Compared to the VAT, the Sales tax does not provide for input tax credit, which means that the consumer may pay tax on an input that has already been previously taxed. This scenario should be better able to explain the VAT system in Europe. This scenario will take a rate of 10% 1. The Manufacturer pays $1.10 for raw materials.

Critically assess the importance of performance appraisal as an Essay

Critically assess the importance of performance appraisal as an integrative function of human resource management - Essay Example One of such tools is the performance appraisal system which elaborates on the evaluation of the individual employee performances and likewise suggests the determination of the reward system. However, being linked with employee performances in a direct way, the tool can be identified to impose various limitations and complexity issues for the modern day management. Based on this notion, it has often been argued that performance appraisal performs a vital function to determine the sustainability of an organisation by a large extent (Rees & Porter, 2004). Emphasising on this particular aspect, the discussion hereby deals with the role of performance appraisal system to support the success of an organisation by gaining sustainability in terms of enhanced employee loyalty and consistent augmentation in their productivity. The sole intention of the essay is thus to critically discuss about the importance of performance appraisal system taking into account the case example of Rother Homes, a major player in the market of UK housing association. Importance of Performance Appraisal as an Interpretive Function of HRM Performance appraisal can be identified as one of the most important tools considered in the modern day applications of HRM to evaluate the performance of the employees effectively in an organisation (The University of Texas- Pan America, 2008). It is in this context that an appropriately executed performance appraisal tends to make the organisation familiar with the employee’s performances and their capacity to work. The feedback obtained from the performance appraisal is often useful for the organisation to accurately decide upon the employees’ reward in terms of promotion or demotion. Hence, a properly executed performance appraisal program helps the organisation to identify the shortfalls of the employees and effectually work on the indentified issues. Moreover, it helps to conduct management development program efficiently and prepare qual ity workforce for the future operations (Dargham, n.d.). Although formulating standards is regarded as quite difficult in the application of HRM, it is also necessary to establish standards for measuring and evaluating the overall employee performances accurately and effectively. In order to ensure that the performance appraisal is effective in an organisation, it must include the features in terms of validity and reliability being free from biases and relevance (Khan, n.d.). Illustrating the Importance of Performance Appraisal in Rother Homes Separating the Financial Bonus from Performances In the case of Rother Homes, it has been witnessed that the management attempts to relate financial incentives with the performance appraisal system in order to motivate the employees to contribute their best in the organisational process. However, in executing the process, the organisation tends to lack analysing its impact on the employees which in turn indicates a major lacuna of the entire p erformance appra

Segment 10 and 11 Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Segment 10 and 11 - Term Paper Example On October 1802, Spain's King Charles IV signed a decree that transferred the Louisiana territory to France and the Spanish representative in New Orleans, following instructions Spanish court, canceled Americans' access to the port's warehouses. These moves angered the United States. Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison worked to attain a feasible resolution through diplomacy, but other factions called for war, so that the U.S. could seize Mississippi and New Orleans. In January 1803, Jefferson recommended that James Monroe accompany Livingston in Paris as minister extraordinary. This would be called the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Jefferson wrote to Kentucky's governor, James Garrard, to notify him of Monroe's appointment. Monroe was to offer $10 million for the purchase of New Orleans and all, or part of, the Florida territories. If negotiations failed, Monroe was ordered to try buying New Orleans, or, at the very least, ensure American access to the Mississippi and the p ort. When Monroe got to Paris on April 12, 1803, Livingston informed him of different circumstances. Napoleon agreed with the recommendation of France's minister of finance, Francois de Barbe-Marbois, that it would be more strategic for France to sell Mississippi to the U.S., to avoid for it being seized by Britain, in the event of a future war. Soon, the U.S. purchased Louisiana from France for $0.03 per acre, or $15 million. This added around 252 million more acres to the American territory. The War of 1812 concerned the military conflict between the United States and Great Britain from 1812 to 1815. One of the main issues was Impressment, where the British could take away British sailors in American ships. Napoleon's statement in 1810 that revoked his decrees and British refusals to rescind their orders increased the pressures for the U.S. to go to war. On June 18, 1812, President James Madison approved a declaration of war that Congress passed at his request, although not withou t significant opposition. The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, but it did not resolve the fundamental issues that stimulated the war. The Treaty states that â€Å"all territory, places and possessions whatsoever, taken by either party from the other during the war† would be reinstated, as they were before the war. No one gained anything and Impressment was not duly addressed. Synopsis of Monroe Doctrine President James Monroe delivered a speech on December 2, 1823 that included the Monroe Doctrine. In his message to Congress, Monroe provided a set of principles of the Monroe Doctrine: 1) The Western Hemisphere can no longer be colonized; 2) The political system of the Americas differs from Europe; 3) The United States will consider all intrusions in Western hemispheric affairs as a danger to its security; and 4) The United States will cease from participating in European wars and would not agitate European colonies in the Western Hemisphere. What was Monroe trying to ac hieve with his Monroe Doctrine? Monroe wanted to deal with potential threats to the U.S., specifically that which comes from the interests of European powers in colonizing territories in the New World and to ensure that diplomacy is used first before engaging in any war against other nations. SEGMENT 11 Summary The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, during the 18th century. In the U.S., the industrial revolution started in the nineteenth century. During this time, the

The needs of future generations are being met by current policies of Essay - 3

The needs of future generations are being met by current policies of sustainable development. To what extent do you agree with this statement - Essay Example Sustainable development, therefore, is the utilization of resources (especially natural resources) in way that ensures that these resources will not be depleted while serving today’s generation and thus deny the future generations the opportunity to benefit from these resources. A simple example can be the utilization of timber for various uses such as furniture, fuel, paper production among many others; although the current generation should be able to use these resources to provide these essential products for the current generation, they must be considerate of the fact that the forest from which the timber is being harvested is not an infinite resource and can easily be depleted. In such a case, those who exploit these resources must have a strategy to protect the forest by for instance coming up with alternatives for providing the products that would otherwise be harvested from timber, or by renewing the forest by planting new trees (Jackson, 2011). It is not all sustainab le development plans that translate into positive results. Due to how important sustainable development is, it is necessary to identify whether the current sustainable development strategies are going to translate into positive outcomes for future generations. Sustainable development is important because it takes care of the future. Current human generations have a responsibility to the future generation to preserve the available resources so that the future generation can also survive in the planet. Without sustainable development, the current generation would benefit, but at the expense of tomorrow’s generation. Sustainable development is also necessary for the current generation. This is because some of the current resources, if not used well would be depleted even within the lifetime of the current generation. In this regard, although sustainable development has a focus on preserving resources for the future generation, it is at the same time a way to save

Why do you think some aviation hazards go unreported How might you Essay

Why do you think some aviation hazards go unreported How might you change attitudes of people who do not report such problems - Essay Example dents tend to go unreported is because they are considered either to be minor or there is lack of knowledge as to the effect that such minor incidents may have in the long term. The most important step that needs to be undertaken and is being undertaken is the fact that awareness of such hazards and their knowledge is given to the crew so that they are able to interpret the potential hazard and its outcome. Furthermore pressurizing the crew to report such incidents and any untoward incident which might be a potential hazard should be done. The training on such aviation hazards should be made mandatory. The occurrences of such hazards and the threats they pose have been taken into account by many aviation authorities and there have been measures undertaken so that such hazards do not go unreported which include developing simple reporting system. However, until and unless strict implementation is adhered to the customary practices of such hazards going unreported would continue. The measures that need to be adopted are prolonged but are of

Marketing Plan of Divine Chocolate Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Marketing Plan of Divine Chocolate - Essay Example The researcher states that with Fair Trade, Divine Chocolate ensures that farmers always receive a better deal for their contributions and that money invested for social good eventually supported entrepreneurs, farmers, and co-operatives to access more capital for business.This Fair Trade will create a positive zeal among customers impacting their buying behavior and driving Divine’s profitability. Divine will go for strategic marketing mix with the focus on integrated marketing communication, competitive pricing, social media marketing, penetration pricing, segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy. The company expects that all these marketing strategies will help the company achieve higher marketing synergy reflected in performance and profitability, leading to 60 percent changes in the total turnover and relative gross profit at the end of the first year. In the UK, the chocolate confectionery market has been witnessing steady growth of 5% and the trend is expected t o continue till 2016. The UK chocolate market has reached nearly  £4,000 billion in 2011, which was a 21 percent increase over a five year period. Based on Mintel’s findings, it is reported that UK chocolate market is expected to reach to  £5,059 billion in the worst case or  £5,531 billion in a best case. The market trend is outlined above. With a view to grab the better slice of this emerging marketing opportunities, Divine Chocolate has strategized on its way of marketing chocolates by focusing on Fair Trade and ethical business. Founded in 1993 with the birth of Kuapa Kokoo which was a pioneering cooperative organization initiated by cocoa farmers in Ghana, Divine promised its customers to bring a delicious Fairtrade chocolate alternative. The marketing plan of Divine involves strict compliance with UK’s food and drug administration guidelines and EU’s Cocoa and Chocolate Products Regulations of 1993. The operations will have complied with other regula tions, or amendments to previous regulations related to food safety, chocolate or confectionary contents, ethical requirements etc that are prevailing in the UK.

Marine energy Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Marine energy - Assignment Example 3. Creates disturbance for commercial and private vessels: The power plants, which gather the energy from the wave, are supposed to be put in place in the coastline. These power plants over some relative disturbance to the sea moving vessels such as cruise ships, cargo ships, beach goers and recreational vehicles (Charlier & Finkl, 11). 4. Wavelength: Wave energy highly depends on the wavelength that is the wave speed, water density and wavelength of the wave. They usually require a constant flow in order produce a significant quantity of energy. Some areas do not experience reliable wave behavior, and it tends to be unpredictable to forecast the right amount of energy expected (Charlier & Finkl, 9). 5. Visual and Noise pollution: Generators of wave energy tends to be unpleasant to the life of the coastal region. They tend to appear like great machines operating in the middle of the sea thus destroying the beauty of the ocean (Charlier & Finkl,

Phuket Beach Resort Essay Example for Free

Phuket Beach Resort Essay Case Report : Phuket Beach Hotel Executive Summary Phuket Beach Hotel has space located on second floor of the main building which was underutilized. Planet Karaoke pub was expanding in Thailand and looking for a venue in patong beach area for setting up another outlet. Planet Karaoke Pub found unused space of the hotel most suitable for their new venture. Beach Karaoke pub project does not considered salary as excess man power is available but if we considered cost of staff salary, Beach Karaoke pub becomes less attractive. There are many factors that cannot be quantified but they need to be addressed for the evaluation of the projects including Security issues. Additional security guards can be hired to maintain law and order but the costs of extra security is not provided for analysis. Recommendation Wanida should suggest an investment recommendation in favor of the Planet Karaoke Club (PKC) project. Reference : On-line segments Text Book – Financial management (Theory Practices) Phuket Beach Hotel report

Early Childhood Special Education Roots Essay Example for Free

Early Childhood Special Education Roots Essay Early childhood special education that is practiced today has a varied and sometimes hard won history. Its roots are entangled in cultural, economic, and idealistic influences; each facet tinged by the colored lens of the times and adding a little glint to modern day practices. The conglomeration of historical theories and practices, political actions and enacted laws has paved the way to modern early childhood special education practices and programming. Just like a child learns and builds on his knowledge and understanding of his environment, so too does the practice of early childhood special education. In its infancy ECSE was not labeled as such, and in fact was simply teaching. Throughout history, many educators have had differing perspectives and opinions on how best to educate children. Many of those ideas and practices have popularly endured, and some have become very small portions of our current systems, or faded into obscurity altogether. One of the earliest models on early childhood education was the Montessori model. The Montessori methods and tools are prevalent in classrooms today, from individualized and sensory programming to didactic learning materials. Other early educators realized that even very young children benefit from instruction. Jean Piaget identified stages of development from birth to adolescence that still assist educators in identifying appropriate modes of teaching. Others like Robert Owen, John Locke and Lev Semenovich Vygotsky theorized that a child’s environment had a profound influence on his/her development and education, giving a foundation for current early intervention strategies in impoverished, urban areas. Vygotsky also gifted to forward generations the theories of the Zone of Proximal Development, scaffolding and ideas about special needs students working in least restrictive environments. All the way from these LRE’s, are the ideas of institutions. The residential school model however is still useful in some ways today. Samuel Gridley Howe and Dorothea Dix implemented supportive, residential schools for children with disabilities, but when the First World War had its grips on the country, the schools deteriorated into holding cells that pervaded until throughout the depression era. Politics and societal situations have always been instigators of change for education. Post World War II, many war veterans returned home with disabilities changing the attitudes and urgency in servicing individuals with special needs, spurring a profusion of financial and program support. Moving into the mid-20th Century, civil rights opened a consciousness about not only race, but also a socioeconomic dichotomy. Project Head Start was federally funded compensatory program, with a focus on aiding the impoverished; it would later evolve into a more comprehensive program for seeking and aiding special needs children and families. Many other programs and studies aimed at supporting young children with disabilities and their families began to appear, including Early Head Start, the Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Perry Preschool Project, among others. These programs and research studies aimed at aiding and reinforcing the importance of early intervention for at risk children. Supporting and preemptively averting the struggles brought on by environmental disadvantages made the transition to special education support logical. With the social climate changing and an awareness of human rights, legislation regarding special needs populations was ripe. Perhaps the greatest catalyst to change was the enactment of PL 94-142 the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975. The foundations of this public law and the following amendments are the backbone of all special education as we know it today. This law has 6 main areas of concern. First, the right to a free and appropriate public education is bestowed. Throughout the coming decades, interpretation of FAPE comes up in many court cases, each ruling setting precedence for the future. Second, children with disabilities are given the right to learn in the least restrictive environment (LRE) a practice from centuries prior, but with legal backing, changed the model of public schools in this country. An Individualized Education Plan was written into the body of the IDEA, giving specific protocol for supporting the learning of each individual student. This item is the true workhorse of special education classrooms, bringing the student’s goals, objectives and educational plan, the educators, parents and the other support staff together in one document. The fourth premise of the IDEA is the guarantee to guardians of procedural due process, retaining the guardian’s rights regarding notices, evaluations, placements and other educational plans. Unbiased and multiple assessment criteria is the 5th area addressed in the IDEA. Lastly, part of the legislation includes the parents of special needs students, by affording them access to related services that would benefit the student. Related services was and is an area for interpretation, and again, many court cases have been tried and decided creating standards for what qualifies as a related service. Aside from these six main points, the IDEA has outlined much more. IDEA has given us a universal structure for classifying disabilities, and in a 1991 amendment, ruled that an umbrella classification for preschool aged children was acceptable and malleable state to state. This meant that children would not have to be prematurely labeled or stigmatized, when proper assessment was yet to be exacted. This law gave rise to the term â€Å"developmentally delayed†. A preschooler and his/her family could receive services under the classification of developmentally delayed. IDEA has also given individual states the leeway to define and exact methods of determining what developmentally delayed means. While culturally and regionally more specific, this leaves a large range of differences in qualifications across the country. Since its inception, individuals with special needs have reaped many benefits from the laws and boundaries set by the IDEA, but it wasn’t until October 1986 that very young special needs children and their families could be guaranteed services. While grants and incentives for states to serve the preschool population were available, participation in those programs were completely voluntary. The Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments, or PL 99-457, passed in October 1986, mandated that all special needs preschoolers between the ages of three and five be provided with a FAPE . This law was enacted with the purpose of enabling early intervention and a cost effective preventative strategy to serving special populations. Part C of this law also makes services for infants, birth to age two voluntary. Adding preschoolers to the population of compulsory service made the use of IFSP or Individualized Family Service Plans prevalent. These plans are similar to IEP’s except that they comprehensively include the family and give leeway to assigning the role of the service provider, enabling professionals who are most capable of assisting each family to act. Unlike and IEP, the IFSP must be reviewed at least every 6 months, ensuring relevancy with a quickly growing and changing child. Related services including counseling and classes are now extended to family members. By sharing the process and improvement with the preschoolers’ guardians, we are able to see much greater progress with cooperative engagement. Along with the IFSP, PL 99-457 saw the requirement of an Individualized Transition Plan, aiding young adults in making the change into adulthood. Fast forward to 1997, and PL 105-17 made some important amendments to the IDEA. Related services are expanded, developmentally delayed category can be applied up until age nine, parameters and process around discipline is set. Functional Behavior Assessments or Behavior Intervention Plans must be enacted when providing discipline to special education children. Also, assessments for qualifying for special education are expanded, and Child Find reaches into private schools to deliver services to more children. Along with these changes also came a change in funding based on census data versus enrollment data. The percentages served translated to a fixed amount of funding, averting a glut of over qualifying students. Lack of English Language proficiency is excluded as an area of qualification for services. This is important with the rising populations of English language learners. With the number of children from non-english speaking families on the rise, achievement gaps were widening. The No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 was drawn to support impoverished, special needs and English language learners. This act is directly responsible for the Amendments to IDEA that came in 2004. One of the most important changes made was that of aligning the standards of highly qualified special education teachers to the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. Inclusion of ECE teachers is yet to be enacted, however. The field and study of Early Childhood Special Education is a deeply diverse and ever evolving practice. Past experience has dictated that social climates, politics, events and laws all contribute to the programming of ECSE. The gains have been great, with dramatic increases in the numbers of children and families found and served, but as a nation, we certainly have some more distance to travel. With current legislation and social issues ranging from secure schools to better serving working families, subsidized healthcare, immigration policies or revamping teacher evaluations, the future of Early Childhood Education is unwritten and open to influence.

Information Filtering System Based on Clustering Approach

Information Filtering System Based on Clustering Approach A PRIVATE NEIGHBOURHOOD BASED INFORMATION FILTERING SYSTEM BASED ON CLUSTERING APPROACH ABSTRACT The quantity of web information has been increased day by day due to fast development of internet. Now-a-days people make their decision based on the available information from the internet. But the problem is how the people successfully choose or filter the useful information from the enormous amount of information. This problem is referred as information overload. Recommendation System is a supportive tool to resolve the information overload problem. It is part of information filtering system used to recommend the user based on their own interest, neighborhood similarity and past history. Collaborative Filtering is one of the popular techniques widely used recommendation system. Every recommendation system should ensure privacy for both user’s neighbour and their data. To overcome the scalability and model reconstruction problem, a power graph based private neighborhood recommendation system is proposed to ensure the user’s privacy. First, the compressed network is constructed and then the feature set is extracted from the compressed network using transformed data. The data is transformed using hybrid transformation fuses principal component analysis and rotation transformation to protect users privacy with accurate recommendations. Finally the item to be recommended is predicted which achieve better performance than the existing technique. MovieLens Dataset is used to evaluate this method. INTRODUCTION Recommendation System is one of the information filtering system which provides valuable information to the users by filtering the information according to user’s interest. Traditional approaches of recommendation systems are collaborative filtering, content based filtering and hybrid Approach. Content Based Filtering (CBF) approach predicts the recommendation based on the rating given by the user for the similar items in past history. Collaborative Filtering (CF) recommends the user based on rating of that item by similar users. Hybrid approach combines both the approaches. All the approaches have their own advantage and disadvantage. CF mainly classified as memory based CF and model based CF. Memory based CF first calculate the similarities between the requested user and all other user to find the neighbors then calculate the prediction based on identified neighbors rating pattern. Model based method first built a model based on the preference of the user. Main aim of the recommender system is to minimize the prediction error. The main issues in CF recommender system are scalability, sparsity and privacy. Scalability: Large number of users and items in the network led to the increase in the computational complexity of the system. In E-commerce, scalability plays a important issue because it contain huge number of users. Sparsity: All the users dont show their interest to rate all the items they interact private, which will lead to data sparseness in the system. This will not give exact recommendation to the seekers. Cold Start: Lack of information for new items and users in recommendation system will leads to unpredictable items in the system. Privacy: Users may provide false information inorder to protect their personal information. This leads to inaccurate recommendation. The proposed work mainly focuses on two fundamental issues in CF namely scalability and privacy. The first challenge is how to improve the scalability of CF, because these systems should search the entire user for finding the neighbors. The second problem is how to protect the individual users privacy while prediction. Both an issues lead to poor performance of the system. So the important challenge is to handle both a situation properly for better performance. LITERATURE SURVEY Recommendation system helps the people to get exact information based on neighbors’ pattern. Remarkable growth in e-commerce site makes the online vendors to develop their sales and profits. They use this technique which suggests product to users’ by their neighbors’ preference about the item. Scalability issue in RS mainly due to enormous growth in users tends to decline in accuracy of prediction on recommendation. Clustering approach reduces scalability problem by grouping the similar users. Recommender System may demand the users’ to expose their ratings to recommendation server to give a proper recommendation. But exposing the rating may allow the recommenders to learn the private information about users. Revealing rating may also direct to do violent behavior by several competitive companies’. CLUSTERING IN RECOMMENDER SYSTEM Several different clustering methods are adapted to reduce the scalability problem in RS. A new cluster based matrix tri-factorization is proposed to cluster the user and item simultaneously to get a better recommendation in model based CF. But when the new user enter the system it is necessary to rebuilt the whole model again for other user [].In [0] a cluster based binary tree is built by splitting the dataset and the recommendation is predicted based on the average rating of cluster. Later [] a combined k-means bisecting clustering is performed to overcome the scalability problem while preprocessing and pseudo prediction is adapted. But performance is not much better. Community based clustering model based CF is proposed [] to predict the recommendation but it underperform on outliers. Multilevel clustering is adapted to extract the subgraph which is clustered and propagated to reduce scalability which improved the performance than existing approach. But it will be more complicate d when the aspect of the network increases. Therefore it is necessary to group the data in all the aspects to reduce the scalability. PRIVACY PRESERVING RECOMMENDER SYSTEM In CF, neighbors are identified by collecting the information for the entire user. Thus the server maintain user preference, purchase, usage data etc which may contain identifiable information may violate the privacy. There are several techniques to protect the user’s sensitive information []. Initial method to ensure the privacy protection in CF was proposed by canny (2002a, 2002b), mainly focus on aggregation. In this method sensitive data are aggregated with some common distribution. In cryptographic approach, Individual user data can be protected using homomorphic encryption to avoid exposing of individual data but it requires high computational cost [5]. In perturbation approach, users mask their data before storing it in a central server. The central server collects the disguised data instead of original data to provide predictions with decent accuracy [18]. In [2] a randomized response techniques (RRT) is proposed to preserve users’ privacy by generating naive Ba yesian classifier (NBC) based private recommendations. Another technique, data obfuscation was used to implement privacy preserving collaborative filtering algorithm [16]. In this technique, sensitive data are obfuscated through additive or multiplicative noise in order to protect individual privacy before allowing for analysis. The actual data can be revealed in this technique by applying reverse engineering process [7]. Sensitive information is either concealed or eliminated for the purpose of analyzing the data to extract the knowledge in anonymization technique. The major fault of this technique is some distinctive data may lead to the re-identification of data [1]. In proposed work, a scalable privacy preserving recommendation system is proposed. First the user to user network is constructed from the user preference then compressed network is formed based on the power graph approach. Then feature set extracted from the compressed network based on transformed rating to ensure the privacy during prediction. Finally the linear prediction model is adopted instead of similarity prediction to improve the accuracy besides reduces the complexity. OBJECTIVE To protect the individual’s neighbour information while prediction based on clustering approach this reduces complexity of model reconstruction. To protect the individual data using data transformation technique. PROBLEM FORMULATION A cluster based approach is proposed to protect the individual neighborhood privacy and hybrid data transformation technique is proposed to protect the individual data with accurate recommendation using feature extraction based linear regression prediction. MODULES Data Transformation Experiment is performed using MovieLens Public (MLP) dataset which is the standard dataset to show the better performance of the proposed method. MovieLens dataset is collected by the GroupLens Research Project at the University of Minnesota. This data set consists of three different files of three different sizes 10M, 1M and 10K which mainly contain ratings of different movies provided by the users. To evaluate the proposed method 1M size dataset is used which contains 6040 users, 1 million ratings and 3900 items. The rating values are on five star scales, with five stars being the best and one star being the least. Data collected consist of four attributes separated with double colon as the delimiter [userid :: itemid ::rating :: Timestamp]. To evaluate the proposed work userid, itemid, rating is extracted from the dataset and then extracted data is converted into user x item matrix with dimension (6040 x 3952).Unrated items are filled with value zero to overcome computation comple xity. Data Transformation A hybrid data transformation technique which fuses Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Rotation Transformation (RT) is proposed to transform the data in order to protect the user’s data. The input to the PCA technique is the rating matrix. This technique first finds the principal components and then rotates these components which cannot be reverted easily. Rotation transformation will be efficient by identifying the appropriate range of angle such that to satisfy the least privacy requirement. Optimum privacy threshold is determined from range of angle which leads to good privacy protection effect. To determine the range of angles, sequence rotation should be performed on vectors with successive angles. For each pair of attributes, pairwise optimum privacy threshold is assigned by multiplying the privacy threshold and the privacy angle which should be maximum. To determine the privacy angle, calculate the variance of each attribute. For each pair of attribute, minimum varia nce will be considered as privacy angle. After determining pairwise optimum privacy threshold, select the range of angles to transform the pair of attribute. While choosing the range of angle make sure that it satisfying the following constraint which is mentioned in Eqn(1) Var(Pi-Pi) ≠¥PoptEqn(1) An angle is randomly chosen from the interval to rotate each and every pair of principal component. After rotating the principal component, it is multiplied with normalized data in order to obtain the transformed data. The Transformed value of the original data for the data is shown in Table 2. Private Neighborhood Network Construction Original network is compressed using power graph analysis. Power graph analysis is a representation of complex network which represent the graph into power graph without loss of information. Graph can be clustered to construct a power graph using modular decomposition method in which modules represents the nodes with same neighbour. Power graph cluster both, the nodes and edges to obtain the most compressed network. Power graph analysis is widely used several biological networks such as protein-protein interactionnetworks, domain-peptide binding motifs,Gene regulatory network and Homology/Paralogy networks. Matrix R can be used to represent the social relationship between the users. If any two users rate the same item then there will be a relationship between them. Thus the user-user network is represented as where U is the set of users represented as nodes and is the set of relationship denoted as edges, and then a power graph is a graph defined on the power set of nodes which are connected by power edges. The concepts of power graphs are as follow: if there is a power edge between two power nodes, then nodes in one power nodes are connected to all the nodes in the second power node. In same way if all the nodes are connected to each other which is represented as power node with self loop. Based on power graph analysis this module involves two steps, power node identification and power edge search. Power nodes are recognized using hierarchical clustering based on jaccard index. The greedy search is performed to identify the power edge. Feature Set Extraction After construction of private network, feature set of each user is extracted by categorizing the users into cold start user, powerful user, and malicious user. Cold start is a user who rate exactly twenty items. Powerful user is user who rate more than thirty five items and malicious user who rate less than twenty five items but the difference between any ratings of a particular item and the standard deviation of that item is greater than one. For the constructed compressed network following features are extracted for each category of the users to predict the rating of unrated item. Feature set of particular user includes features of directly connected power node and Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) in the other power nodes. Each category is measured according to number of particular category of user present in the power node and their joint probability of that particular category. Bayes theorem is used to calculate the most probable rating each category of user. The following Table shows t he feature set measured for each user. Table 5.2 Feature Set of User X Linear Regression prediction From the above extracted features a linear predictive model is constructed which is user for predicting particular item. Then top predicted items are given as recommendation to user. The model takes the following form as in Equation. (5.6) (5.6) where ÃŽ ± represents the slope of the dependent variables, X represent the feature vectors and represents the error vector which is assumed to be zero. In linear regression, the value to be predicted is commonly computed from the best fitting line which reduces error in prediction. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS: The proposed method is preserves both the individual neighbors privacy and data privacy. It also reduces the scalability issues and give accurate recommendation when compared to the previous work (privacy preserving information filtering system). MAE obtained is compared with the proposed method in previous Chapter TRPC as in Table 5.7. Figure shows that MAE is reduced to 0.62 because of coupling of clustering approach with data transformation to handle large volume of data. CONCLUSION The power graph analysis helps to overcome the scalability problem by compressing the original network and results better recommendation to users. The existing methods apply power graph analysis to various domains for analyzing complex networks in a simpler way. And at the same time it also preserves the communities’ information. Therefore, in proposed work this type of clustering approach is used to preserve the neighbours information which also results better prediction. The efficiency of the proposed methodology is evaluated with the experimental results using MovieLens dataset. It performs better compared data transformation and clustering approach. This type of cluster based collaborative filtering recommendation helps to reduce the edges in the original network without loss of any information.

Matthew B. Brady Essay -- essays research papers

Mathew B. Brady: Civil War Photographer   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Mathew B. Brady: Civil War Photographer was written by Elizabeth Van Steenwyk. Elizabeth Van Steenwyk has written many good books for young people including: Saddlebag Salesmen, The California Missions, Frederic Remington, The California Gold Rush: West with the Forty-Niners, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Woman of Courage. Elizabeth now lives in San Marino, California with her husband.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Mathew B. Brady was born somewhere between 1823 and 1824. His early life is somewhat a mystery. He was born in Warren County in New York and his parents might have been Irish immigrants. His middle name was even a mystery, when asked what the â€Å"B† stood for he said that he inserted it because it seemed â€Å"more distinguished.† When he turned 16 he met William Page, a man wanting to become an artist. The both of them worked together, and Page’s artistic abilities were most likely Brady’s starting interest in becoming a photographer. In 1839 or 1840 Brady and Page moved to New York City. Meanwhile, a French inventor named Louis-Jacques-Mandà ¨ Daguerre was inventing something that would change Brady’s life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1839 Daguerre invented his camera. Samuel F. B. Morse went over to France to check out Daguerre’s camera. He wrote back to a magazine saying that it was perhaps the greatest invention in this age. When Samuel Morse returned to New York City and started a school for lea...

Invisible Race and Gender in Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison Essay

In Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the unnamed narrator shows us through the use motifs and symbols how racism and sexism negatively affect the social class and individual identity of the oppressed people. Throughout the novel, the African American narrator tells us the story of his journey to find success in life which is sabotaged by the white-dominated society in which he lives in. Along his journey, we are also shown how the patriarchy oppresses all of the women in the novel through the narrator’s encounters with them. One of the major motifs in Invisible Man is blindness. The first time we’re shown blindness in the novel is at the battle royal. The blindfolds that all of the contestants wear symbolize how the black society is blind to the way white society is still belittling them, despite the abolishment of slavery. When he arrives at the battle, the narrator says â€Å"I was told that since I was to be there anyway I might as well take part in the battle royal to be fought by some of my schoolmates as part of the entertainment† (Ellison 17). Although, the white men asked him to come to the battle royal in order to deliver his graduation speech, they force him to participate in the battle royal, where the white men make young black men fight each other as a form of entertainment for them. When the black men put their blindfolds on to fight in this battle, they are blind, both figuratively and literally. They can't see the people they are fighting against, just as they can't see how the white men are exploiting them for their own pleasure. Shelly Jarenski claims â€Å"the Battle Royal establishes the relationship between white power, male power, and (hetero)sexual power, the â€Å"self-grounding presumptions† of dominant subjectivity† ... ... Jerilyn, and Ellen Silber. Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of a Gender. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003. Print. Butler, Robert. "Ralph Ellison: A Biography." African American Review 42.3/4 (2008): 759. Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. 27 Nov. 2015. Jarenski, Shelly. "Invisibility Embraced: The Abject As A Site Of Agency In Ellison's "Invisible Man.." Melus 35.4 (2010): 85-109. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2015. Johns, Gillian. "Jim Trueblood And His Critic-Readers: Ralph Ellison's Rhetoric Of Dramatic Irony And Tall Humor In The Mid-Century American Literary Public Sphere." Texas Studies In Literature & Language 49.3 (2007): 230. Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. 27 Nov. 2015. Dickstein, Morris. "Ralph Ellison, Race, And American Culture." Raritan 18.4 (1999): 30. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.

Devial And Daniel Webster :: essays research papers

The play "The Devil and Daniel Webster" was boiring as watching grass grow. The audience struggled to find a comfortable position to stay awake. This disappointing production was stale and went nowhere. Unfortuneltly the audience was unable to develop any emotional relationship with the main characters. THe play predictablitly created an atmosphere of distisfaction. Stephen Vincent Benet obviously was having a bad day when writing this script. Benet uses his three main characters as symbols of mans struggle with good and evil. Evil was represented by the all mighty Scratch. Usually the devil is the undestructable force that can't be stopped. Benet did a poorjob portraying that we all struggle with the Scratch's inside of us. THis is a missed opportunity to develp his characters with traits we could all relate to. The most honest part of the play was the jury. The twelve men represented Jabez's weaknesses. They understood is internal need for money and power. The conversatioin between then three main characters helped the audience understand their relationshipfor one another and their daily values. For example, Mary portrayed the little girl next door nrole in the play. Mary was apathetic and devoted to her husband. At all cost her marriage vowes were very strong and meant a lot to her. Even her commitment to her husband was strong but she still apeared pathetic. Websters powerful commitment to strong morals leaves him exposed and out in the open. You can't take this story to seriously. For example, what neighboor is going to help someone who made a pakted with the devil. Theres a lot of unfinished story lines. The disappointing writing of Benet left the story unresolved.

Free College Essay

I personally don’t believe that college should be free. Making it free would only serve to limit the value of the education while filling colleges with students that have no business/need there. College would become nothing more than a 4 year extension of high school if it were free. As things are now, society needs about 25% of the population to have a college degree for the jobs that require one and about 30% of the population has a degree. As a result, you hear from a lot of people that believe that they wasted time getting the degree because it’s not serving them as an employment enhancer. Further, nothing is truly free. Were college free to all students, someone would still have to pay those bills. Public education is already the single largest expense of non-federal governments and a huge part of the federal expense. Increasing the scope of free public education would also significantly increase the costs involved – those costs must be borne by someone. So, you either pay for it now as tuition or you pay for it for the rest of your life in the form of taxes but either way, you’ll pay for it. And then there’s the very valid point that all people aren’t really â€Å"above average† in intellect and therefor all people aren’t capable of attending and graduating from college. Our society would like to pretend that everyone is equal in motivation and intelligence but we know that’s not really true. Don’t we? What would be the result in terms of quality if we made college completely free to anyone? Add to that problem – costs keep some people from attending. This is only bad in-as-much as it limits those individuals personally. But it’s just that barrier that makes it possible for others to attend – college seats are not an unlimited resource of which we have plenty. There are only so many colleges with so many seats and more people would like to have those seats than can. If we removed the cost barrier then the competition for seats would be even greater and we’d still not have solved the problem of universal higher education. We’d need to have as many colleges as we have high schools to truly solve that problem. Then we’d need as many professors to teach in them in. Just a few of the arguments against your position that you might want to prepare to counter in your essay. There are many people that believe the compulsory secondary school education movement (‘create 100% HS graduates†) was a mistake too. While being well educated is very good at the individual level – society still needs people to do jobs that those who keep gaining more education simply don’t want to do.

India Under Nehru View

India has always been considered as a mysterious world with wide variety of interesting traditional values that was created all along the history line of India, from the big and complex things like philosophy schools of India to the daily’s things like the lamp in Diwali festival. So what has made India the way it is now with the blooming yet mysterious beauty from the richness in its culture? Well, here is a saying from the former Minister of India – Sir JAWAHARLAL NEHRU – to show the idea of Indian personality or India in general: She was like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously. All of these had existed in our conscious or subconscious selves, though we may not have been aware of them. And they have gone to build up the complex mysterious personality of India. † The meaning of this saying is that Nehru want ed to imply the idea of a complex yet so unified India in which everything from culture, living style to artistic structures was created in an unending process of both preservation and evolution at the same time.The way the Indian created their flourished culture has deeply showed the Indian personality who always try to maintain the traditional beauty in the evolution progress. They had built up the whole Indian culture based on the traditional values from thousands years ago without once trying to get rid of the old fundamental values of their grand and grand fathers, yet they known how to achieved the new things and balanced them between the old and the new so that now we can trace back the trail of the thousands years old civilizations through everything in Indian people’s daily life.After thousands years, India culture has now become richer in range wise and structure wise. We can see the richness in cultural values and the Indian has done a good job in advancing the Ind ia culture to be so flourished and full of colors from the very traditional base of their ancestors culture. The most common thing that people tend to think about India personality or India in general is that the life of Indian people is very rich in religious activities and it had played a big role in their life, also in their mind we can clearly see the strong affects of traditional value like Vedas or Upanishad.If we look inside those old literatures closely, we can find innumerable of evidences that can prove the uniquely richness in traditional values and also it can show the two paralleled processes of preserving and advancing, which is the personality of India that Nehru had stated. Here is some piece of my mind about Indian literature along the history to prove the statement of Sir. Jawaharlal Nehru. In every branch or various sections of literature from fiction, drama, biography, poetry, drama, novels, short stories and literary criticism, Indian literature has a tremendous variety to offer.Nearly every major Indian language has a rich tradition of literature. The earliest works of Indian literature were orally transmitted. Sanskrit literature begins with the Vedas collections of sacred hymns dating to the period 1500–1200 BCE. Those earliest works like the Vedas or Upanishads were composed to be sung or recited and were transmitted for many generations before being written down. Since almost all of the earliest works of ancient India literature were all orally transmitted so we can’t find the exactly time of those brilliant works in the timeline of India history.The earliest records of a text may be later by several centuries than the date of its composition. After this time from around 200 BC to around 11 AD, Sanskrit literature went through a secular phase. A major development during the secular period was the introduction of drama, with the early dramas set in historical epic tales. During the first through fifth centuries, South Ind ia's literature was primarily secular and written in Tamil, not Sanskrit, with the main topics being war and love.Following this period was a time of change for southern literature, with the tradition changing to bhakti (devotional) literature that in subsequent centuries eventually spread northward. All in all, the giant India literature was big in size and contents, and the number of literature works of India is like stars in the sky along the timeline of India history. This has shown how big and complex of the Indian literature. There was such a wide variety in types and styles of composing, from poems to verses, oral literature to written works but we can still see the unity in them with the main theme and color being India traditional mind and soul.Since the religious and Vedic culture had such tremendous impact on Indian culture and I must say those traditional elements were deeply engraved in every Indian people’s mind, so it’s no surprising to know that the maj or topic of Indian literature is about religious deities and philosophy. And much more later the ancient period of oral literature, the tradition of picking the idea from stories or myths in Vedas or the great Mahabharata to compose bhakti poems and literatures was very noticeable.This tradition was slowed down since the domination of British in India, which had bring major changes in the styles and topics of literature. It seemed like with the invasion of British culture or the Western in general, India’s literature had faced big challenge to preserve the traditional colors in their works yet somehow the India factor was still strongly presented. So we can conclude that along the timeline of India’s history, never once the traditional culture had failed to exist in every literature work, with time went by India literature was advanced bit by bit, yet it still maintained the main flow of tradition culture.It was indeed diversity in unity. The history of Indian literatu re dated back to 1500AD or more since the existence of the first ever literature work of India, which name was Rig Veda – the first and most important part of the famous Vedas. Rig Veda was composed in Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. The Sanskrit word veda â€Å"knowledge, wisdom† is derived from the root vid- â€Å"to know†, that’s why the scholars called the Vedas the sacred books of knowledge.The Vedas can be considered an encyclopedia of ancient India and it gave many tips about how the life of ancient people would be like. With it giant length, it’s such an amazing thing to know that the Vedas were actually orally transmitted through centuries. And along with the Vedas, other ancient literatures were also preserved by oral way. This is why the literary tradition in India is primarily oral literature in vernacular languages. It was in the 6th century that an extensive written literature appeared.Through such a long period of time, the oral literature of ancient India has been successfully passed down to the next generations by using rhythmic recitation and thus the whole giant walls of text that we know nowadays are almost exactly the same to the one from approximately one thousands and five hundreds years before Christ. This has show how strong and effective of the preservation progress of Indian, they didn’t just let all the literatures to be in vain because of having no writing system to store it, ancient Indian had found a way by using oral literature to preserve the world’s longest literature work that is totally unbelievable!The Vedas were the all time topic for other writers to compose their own works that related to it like Puranas and Itihasas which explained myths in the Vedas to the mass Indian. From the original Vedas to the vast number of many branches that were expanded through years to explain or improve all the know ledge of Vedas. We can clearly see the broadening of the Vedas and its branches by many writers. They did not just make a whole new literature works out of nowhere but they based their works on the root of Vedas and its knowledge then added their own creativeness.The main themes of Indian literature were mostly about religious stories or myths with Brahmanism deities (and later Hinduism). Many epics dealt with Vedas stories and they always contained the spirit of Vedas’ principles. Noticeable evidences that we can find in India literature about this characteristic are Mahabharata, Ramayana from the early Sanskrit literatures and many Bhakti poems in the medieval period. Mahabharata and Ramayana are the longest literatures size wise in the world, those epics were the all time favorite of every Indian people.Mahabharata itself was an improved version of the originally 8,800 verses literature named Jaya which was composed by Krsna Dvaipayana Vyasa, later this version was enlarge d to 24,000 verses namely Bharata by Vaisampayana and then it became the giant version Mahabharata version which was written by Ugrasravas with up to 100,000 verses. This enlargement of the Mahabharata epic has shown that Indian literature had undergone many improvements through years and those advances had somehow made Indian literature become rich in content and complex in structure.Not only the expand of old literatures since the Vedic age, the tradition of Bhakti is also very noticeable in term of the common theme about deities. Bhakti (or a personal devotion to a god) usually was composed in poems to show their respectful attitude to a god. Many of the Bhakti poems told stories or just shown Indian’s praising to their gods from Vedas or epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana. That’s why Indian literature was so big in size and varied in style. On another note, we can find many translated versions of the epics or myths in a wide variety of languages all over India.For an example, Jagannath Das wrote an Oriya version of the Bhagavata and Tuncattu Eruttacchan, the so-called father of Malayalam literature, wrote recensions of traditional literature. Much traditional Indian literature is derived in theme and form not only from Sanskrit literature but from the Buddhist and Jain texts written in the Pali language and the other Prakrits (medieval dialects of Sanskrit). This has shown how effective of the persevering process in India since many literature works were not only available in its original language but also in many more languages.This process had somehow helped spread the traditional values to all other areas in India and maybe other places out side of India too. So, all we can conclude here is that in term of preserving and advancing of the traditional values, Indian has maintained their own colorful literature and culture through many obstacles in history. I must say Indian was worth being called the ocean of knowledge and mysterious myths! After being through many centuries of improving and preserving, Indian literature has grown giant with such a wide variety of themes and styles, yet it still possessed the unity in variety.And to top of it all, through analyzing Indian literature to prove my point of view of Sir Nehru’s saying, I’ve realized that India has such a unique charm that no other country can possess, that is the ability of keeping the thousands years old traditional culture’s values and indigenous spirit in every aspect of Indian’s daily life without any cracks even though many new things were accepted in the culture during the history’s timeline. No wonder, Indian literature and Indian culture in general had such an attracting charm to everyone who ever had a chance to know about it.

Class Prophecy 2012 Essay

Having stayed for five years in France for my masteral studies and job as historical journalist in CNN, made me long to go back to my country. I wanted to stay with my family, reunite with old friends, and render my hard work to my countrymen. I know that my studies and my work have led me to different places across the globe, meet new peoples, and lead a wonderful and meaningful life. However, as the rugged saying goes â€Å"there is no place like home†. Upon the completion of my thesis my concluding documentary, and my book about the Philippines in France, I bade everyone â€Å"au revoir† â€Å"until next time† and happily went back to Philippines. Inside the plane we were given all the luxuries that we can afford in this long ride home, that almost always include a newspaper. As I browsing through the pages of the newspaper, I was awestricken by the names that I saw in the bylines. They were of Jenzen Anzano – writing news for the Metro; and Valeriano Onia – reporting about the recent battle of Ginebra versus Rain or Shine. But the good news doesn’t just end there, Mila Mary Lyn Maralit’s chemical invention have earned her an award from the President of the Philippines, Alyssa Mae G. Daraog. Then on the Health and Fitness Section was the full-page length column of the famous psychologist Richard Sanchez. With all their abilities and talents way back our high school years, we knew that these former classmates would indeed become successful and it is heartwarming to learn that these Lucians were pioneers in adhering to the CORE values that we cherished in our high school years. Many hours passed and the song in the plane shifted from The Beatles; to the Lady Antebellum’s; to SNSD’s; to the Hotdog’s Manila. By then we knew that we are approaching the Philippine territory and in no more than an hour we shall be landing. Suddenly, a lady in black dress approached me. It was Mara Cassandra Gomez! She told me that she was in France for two weeks to attend for an international conference in Psychology. We talked and talked until we are notified to go back our seats and fasten our seatbelts for our landing. I can feel the plane slowly going down and sudden gosh of excitement and relief that embraced my being when I finally felt the bump of the wheels in the land of my country. I’m finally back! My first two weeks were spent in countless reunions and homecoming then I wondered where are my high school schoolmates, classmates, friends? I hope to meet them again. However, now is not the time to think about those, we will soon find our ways. By now, I have to work-on my job in the National Historical Commission of the Philippines. Right there and then, I was accepted and given projects. First on the list was the Bangon Tribe in Mindoro. I am thrilled because I am the one in-charge of such meticulous and comprehensive task that we shall carry-on. I decided to go to the bookstore to enhance my knowledge and to at least familiarize myself with their environs. As my car was driving along EDSA the billboard of Rowielyn Singh and Jaypee De Castro, the hosts of WilTime Big Time was prominently displayed, then there is also another billboard of pop star singers, Ma. Diana Derpo, Binna Azucenas, and Ericka Faye delos Santos inviting everyone to join in their concert at the Mall of Rommel Concepcion’s Concert Grounds. Lucians of batch 2012’s progress can’t be stopped. From De Castro to Rosario Village/Tramo ; now Lucians are domineering EDSA and filling up the key positions in our society! As I went inside the bookstore, my attention was caught by the book at top of the best-sellers list. That was the name of Rhoxanne Villasin, she is the author of this year’s bestselling book. I grabbed my copy of her book then bought the materials that I needed for my work. Nearby I saw a new mall named Von’s. I went inside and I was really amazed with the beauty and intricate details of the place. While strolling along I heard someone shouted my name. Few steps away from me was Glenn Rose Baculanlan! Dressed like a Parisian doll, she and four other ladies in office attire went to me. Glenn Rose is now a model and the four ladies with her are Roselyn Monforte, Louise May Mackay, Cynthia Mae Pama, and Angel Mae Bahay were the accountants at Von’s the mall that Christian Von Geminiano owns. We went inside the pub named Muppets and had some coffee. While having our funny chats, we reminisced the good-old days wherein being a historian, an accountant, and a model were just a confusing dream†¦ a vague possibility. Just when we are about to part ways a lady appeared before us and introduced herself as Shirlyn! Indeed it was she†¦ Shirlyn Alvario the owner of Muppets restaurant. She informed us that Lucians are involved in the foundations of her restaurant with Bhenz Benig (now a food technologist) as her business partner. Joseph Perez and Rances Marticio were in charge of the place’s architectural design, Bernardino Rodelas for the engineering plans and construction, and the famous artists: Cedrick Caguing, Cyril Flora and John Paul Dogillo for the details and designs. Neither one of us wouldn’t want to end our girl talks and reminisces but then we knew that we have works to do so we exchange contact numbers and promised to meet soon. Back to work, I indulged myself with my project. Busy all day studying, preparing, preparing, studying. One day, three days before my five-member team went to Mindoro, I was informed that certain groups would like to join our trip and they all had their recommendations. Of course, I do not like them to go with us because our work might be exploited by their presence. But then, I couldn’t just discredit their requests so I immediately called my assistant to call their representatives to explain their intentions at exactly two p.m. today. After an hour, my secretary informed me that all the persons that we’ve been waiting to talk to are already inside the conference room and they are quite noisy. I immediately went inside my conference room and . . . it seems like I’m a high school student once more! The faces inside are all my high school classmates and friends. Indeed all of them, wow! Aarone Jhone Julian is now the managing president of the Apple Company in the Philippines; Jennelyn dela Cruz, Ma. Kathleen Adona, and Mark Anthony Borja are now the Division Supervisors of Pasig City; Kimberly Mae Chua, Stefany Cabantog, and Mharianne Yalega, are now head doctors of Lucia General Hospital; Francesca Ann Balmonte, is recognized as one of the bests photographers in country; and Sir Eljun Velga is now the Principal of Sta. Lucia High School. They explained to me that they wanted to join to help and contribute something for progress that has always been OUR dream. Right there and then, I agreed and we’ve planned the flow of our own respective missions consecrated towards the fulfillment of one goal. At home, I packed my things for our mission then watched the news anchored by Merleen Mercolita. News about Ramlou Demegillo’s outstanding performance in the International Dance Sport Competition; Nigel Paulino, Renmar Moses, Julius Caesar Brutas, and Marcelino Loza’s gold in the recent Olympic games; Jovy Ann Sta. Ana, manager of SNSD; Arjay Gervacio-Ventura, the new business tycoon; Ronnel Villamar tops the Bar Exams; and Shelly Ann Ruales’s proclamation as the Philippine Ambassadress to the USA.