Deforestation in Cuba.

Deforestation in Cuba. Centuries prior to the ruling of the Castro government, in the 16th centuryprecisely, 90 percent of Cuba was covered with forests. Agriculture Ministry officials inCuba revealed that the Castro government, in the last for decades, had sown 1.24million acres of trees, of which were mainly derived from the mountainous zones of theSierra Maestra, Escambray, and Sierra de los Organos. This reduced Cuba's forestcover to 53 percent and by 1960 it was down by 13.5 percent. Ultimately, mining,farming, sugar planting, supplying timber and setting up cattle ranches, demolishedCuba's forests over the centuries.Deforestation, in any case, is both detrimental to the environment and to theeconomy of Cuba. Forest products are extremely important to the economical well-beingof Cuba because they play a primary role in the production of tobacco, sugar, and citrusfruits, a few of the island's main exports, as well as in construction and electrical andtelephone services.Pico Torquino in the Sierra Maest ra, Cuba's highes...Above all, forests play a crucial role in the protection andconservation of Cuba's natural resources and their contribution to improving theenvironment as a whole.In Cuba, there are approximately 40,000 persons who are employed in theforest sector, which includes 1,200 professionals, 2,000 technicians, and 70 researchers,to name a few. Since forests are a source of long-term employment, particularly in ruralcommunities, many people who work in the forest sector, who rely on forests as theirmain source of income, find themselves facing the possibility of unemployment with theonset of deforestation.Currently, several initiatives are being undertaken to improve the issue ofdeforestation. Current initiatives include a joint initiative of the Cuban and Canadiangovernments as part of their cooperation program called the Institutional Strengtheningof the Cuban Forest Service...

A Dirty Job Chapter 10

– Dag Hammarskjà ¶ld 10 DEATH TAKES A WALK Mornings, Charlie walked. At six, after an early breakfast, he would turn the care of Sophie over to Mrs. Korjev or Mrs. Ling (whoever’s turn it was) for the workday and walk – stroll really, pacing out the city with the sword-cane, which had become part of his daily regalia, wearing soft, black-leather walking shoes and an expensive, secondhand suit that had been retailored at his cleaner’s in Chinatown. Although he pretended to have a purpose, Charlie walked to give himself time to think, to try on the size of being Death, and to look at all the people out and about in the morning. He wondered if the girl at the flower stand, from whom he often bought a carnation for his lapel, had a soul, or would give hers up while he watched her die. He watched the guy in North Beach make cappuccinos with faces and fern leaves drawn in the foam, and wondered if a guy like that could actually function without a soul, or was his soul collecting dust in Charlie’s back ro om? There were a lot of people to see, and a lot of thinking to be done. Being out among the people of the city, when they were just starting to move, greeting the day, making ready, he started to feel not just the responsibility of his new role, but the power, and finally, the specialness. It didn’t matter that he had no idea what he was doing, or that he might have lost the love of his life for it to happen; he had been chosen. And realizing that, one day as he walked down California Street, down Nob Hill into the financial district, where he’d always felt inferior and out of touch with the world, as the brokers and bankers quickstepped around him, barking into their cell phones to Hong Kong or London or New York and never making eye contact, he started to not so much stroll, as strut. That day Charlie Asher climbed onto the California Street cable car for the first time since he was a kid, and hung off the bar, out over the street, holding out the sword-cane as if charging, with Hondas and Mercedes zooming along the street beside him, pas sing under his armpit just inches away. He got off at the end of the line, bought a Wall Street Journal from a machine, then walked to the nearest storm drain, spread out the Journal to protect his trousers against oil stains, then got down on his hands and knees and screamed into the drain grate, â€Å"I have been chosen, so don’t fuck with me!† When he stood up again, a dozen people were standing there, waiting for the light to change. Looking at him. â€Å"Had to be done,† Charlie said, not apologizing, just explaining. The bankers and the brokers, the executive assistants and the human-resource people and the woman on her way to serve up clam chowder in a sourdough bowl at the Boudin Bakery, all nodded, not sure exactly why, except that they worked in the financial district, and they all understood being fucked with, and in their souls if not in their minds, they knew that Charlie had been yelling in the right direction. He folded his paper, tucked it under his arm, then turned and crossed the street with them when the light changed. Sometimes Charlie walked whole blocks when he thought only of Rachel, and would become so engrossed in the memory of her eyes, her smile, her touch, that he ran straight into people. Other times people would bump into him, and not even lift his wallet or say â€Å"excuse me,† which might be a matter of course in New York, but in San Francisco meant that he was close to a soul vessel that needed to be retrieved. He found one, a bronze fireplace poker, set out by the curb with the trash on Russian Hill. Another time, he spotted a glowing vase displayed in the bay window of a Victorian in North Beach. He screwed up his courage and knocked on the door, and when a young woman answered, and came out on the porch to look for her visitor, and was bewildered because she didn’t see anyone there, Charlie slipped past her, grabbed the vase, and was out the side door before she came back in, his heart pounding like a war drum, adrenaline sizzling through his veins like a hormonal ti lt-a-whirl. As he headed back to the shop that particular morning, he realized, with no little sense of irony, that until he became Death, he’d never felt so alive. Every morning, Charlie tried to walk in a different direction. On Mondays he liked to go up into Chinatown just after dawn, when all the deliveries were being made – crates of produce, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, melons, and a dozen varieties of cabbage, tended by Latinos in the Central Valley and consumed by Chinese in Chinatown, having passed through Anglo hands just long enough to extract the nourishing money. On Mondays the fishing companies delivered their fresh catches – usually strong Italian men whose families had been in the business for five generations, handing off their catch to inscrutable Chinese merchants whose ancestors had bought fish from the Italians off horse-drawn wagons a hundred years before. All sorts of live and recently live fish were moved across the sidewalk: snapper and halibut and mackerel, sea bass and ling cod and yellowtail, clawless Pacific lobster, Dungeness crab, ghastly monkfish, with their long saberlike teeth and a sin gle spine that jutted from their head, bracing a luminous lure they used to draw in prey, so deep in the ocean that the sun never shone. Charlie was fascinated by the creatures from the very deep sea, the big-eyed squid, cuttlefish, the blind sharks that located prey with electromagnetic impulses – creatures who never saw light. They made him think of what might be facing him from the Underworld, because even as he fell into a rhythm of finding names at his bedside, and soul vessels in all manner of places, and the appearance of the ravens and the shades subsided, he could feel them under the street whenever he passed a storm sewer. Sometimes he could hear them whispering to one another, hushing quickly in the rare moments when the street went quiet. To walk through Chinatown at dawn was to become part of a dangerous dance, because there were no back doors or alleys for loading, and all the wares went across the sidewalk, and although Charlie had enjoyed neither danger nor dancing up till now, he enjoyed playing dance partner to the thousand tiny Chinese grandmothers in black slippers or jelly-colored plastic shoes who scampered from merchant to merchant, squeezing and smelling and thumping, looking for the freshest and the best for their families, twanging orders and questions to the merchants in Mandarin, all the while just a second or a slip away from being run over by sides of beef, great racks of fresh duck, or hand trucks stacked high with crates of live turtles. Charlie was yet to retrieve a soul vessel on one of his Chinatown walks, but he stayed ready, because the swirl of time and motion forecast that one foggy morning someone’s granny was going to get knocked out of her moo shoes. One Monday, just for sport, Charlie grabbed an eggplant that a spectacularly wizened granny was going for, but instead of twisting it out of his hand with some mystic kung fu move as he expected, she looked him in the eye and shook her head – just a jog, barely perceptible really – it might have been a tic, but it was the most eloquent of gestures. Charlie read it as saying: O White Devil, you do not want to purloin that purple fruit, for I have four thousand years of ancestors and civilization on you; my grandparents built the railroads and dug the silver mines, and my parents survived the earthquake, the fire, and a society that outlawed even being Chinese; I am mother to a dozen, grandmother to a hundred, and great-grandmother to a legion; I have birthed babies and washed the dead; I am history and suffering and wisdom; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your fucking hand off my eggplant before you lose it. And Charlie let go. And she grinned, just a little. Three teeth. And he wondered if it ever did fall to him to retrieve the soul vessel of one of these crones of Chronos, if he’d even be able to lift it. And he grinned back. And asked for her phone number, which he gave to Ray. â€Å"She seemed nice,† Charlie told him. â€Å"Mature.† Sometimes Charlie’s walks took him through Japantown, where he passed the most enigmatic shop in the city, Invisible Shoe Repair. He really intended to stop in one day, but he was still coming to terms with giant ravens, adversaries from the Underworld, and being a Merchant of Death, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for invisible shoes, let alone invisible shoes that needed repair! He often tried to look past the Japanese characters into the shop window as he passed, but saw nothing, which, of course, didn’t mean a thing. He just wasn’t ready. But there was a pet shop in Japantown (House of Pleasant Fish and Gerbil), where he had originally gone to buy Sophie’s fish, and where he returned to replace the TV attorneys with six TV detectives, who also simultaneously took the big Ambien a week later. Charlie had been distraught to find his baby daughter drooling away in front of a bowl floating more dead detectives than a film noir festival, and after fl ushing all six at once and having to use the plunger to dislodge Magnum and Mannix, he vowed that next time he would find more resilient pals for his little girl. He was coming out of House of PFG one afternoon, with a Habitrail pod containing a pair of sturdy hamsters, when he ran into Lily, who was making her way to a coffeehouse up on Van Ness, where she was planning to meet her friend Abby for some latte-fueled speed brooding. â€Å"Hey, Lily, how are you doing?† Charlie was trying to appear matter-of-fact, but he found that the awkwardness between him and Lily over the last few months was not mitigated by her seeing him on the street carrying a plastic box full of rodents. â€Å"Nice gerbils,† Lily said. She wore a Catholic schoolgirl’s plaid skirt over black tights and Doc Martens, with a tight black PVC bustier that was squishing pale Lily-bits out the top, like a can of biscuit dough that’s been smacked on the edge of the counter. The hair color du jour was fuchsia, over violet eye shadow, which matched her violet, elbow-length lace gloves. She looked up and down the street and, when she didn’t see anyone she knew, fell into step next to Charlie. â€Å"They’re not gerbils, they’re hamsters,† Charlie said. â€Å"Asher, do you have something you’ve been keeping from me?† She tilted her head a little, but didn’t look at him when she asked, just kept her eyes forward, scanning the street for someone who might recognize her walking next to Charlie, thus forcing her to commit seppuku. â€Å"Jeez, Lily, these are for Sophie!† Charlie said. â€Å"Her fish died, so I’m bringing her some new pets. Besides, that whole gerbil thing is an urban myth – â€Å" â€Å"I meant that you’re Death,† Lily said. Charlie nearly dropped his hamsters. â€Å"Huh?† â€Å"It’s so wrong – † Lily continued, walking on after Charlie had stopped in his tracks, so now he had to scurry to catch up to her. â€Å"Just so wrong, that you would be chosen. Of all of life’s many disappointments, I’d have to say that this is the crowning disappointment.† â€Å"You’re sixteen,† Charlie said, still stumbling a little at the matter-of-fact way she was discussing this. â€Å"Oh, throw that in my face, Asher. I’m only sixteen for two more months, then what? In the blink of an eye my beauty becomes but a feast for worms, and I, a forgotten sigh in a sea of nothingness.† â€Å"Your birthday is in two months? Well, we’ll have to get you a nice cake,† Charlie said. â€Å"Don’t change the subject, Asher. I know all about you, and your Death persona.† Charlie stopped again and turned to look at her. This time, she stopped as well. â€Å"Lily, I know I’ve been acting a little strangely since Rachel died, and I’m sorry you got in trouble at school because of me, but it’s just been trying to deal with it all, with the baby, with the business. The stress of it all has – â€Å" â€Å"I have The Great Big Book of Death,† Lily said. She steadied Charlie’s hamsters when he lost his grip. â€Å"I know about the soul vessels, about the dark forces rising if you fuck up, all that stuff – all of it. I’ve known longer than you have, I think.† Charlie didn’t know what to say. He was feeling panic and relief at the same time – panic because Lily knew, but relief because at least someone knew, and believed it, and had actually seen the book. The book! â€Å"Lily, do you still have the book?† â€Å"It’s in the store. I hid it in the back of the glass cabinet where you keep the valuable stuff that no one will ever buy.† â€Å"No one ever looks in that cabinet.† â€Å"No kidding? I thought if you ever found it, I’d say it had always been there.† â€Å"I have to go.† He turned and started walking the other direction, but then realized that they had already been heading toward his neighborhood and turned around again. â€Å"Where are you going?† â€Å"To get some coffee.† â€Å"I’ll walk with you.† â€Å"You will not.† Lily looked around again, wary that someone might see them. â€Å"But, Lily, I’m Death. That should at least have given me some level of cool.† â€Å"Yeah, you’d think, but it turns out that you have managed to suck the cool out of being Death.† â€Å"Wow, that’s harsh.† â€Å"Welcome to my world, Asher.† â€Å"You can’t tell anyone about this, you know that?† â€Å"Like anyone cares what you do with your gerbils.† â€Å"Hamsters! That’s not – â€Å" â€Å"Chill, Asher.† Lily giggled. â€Å"I know what you mean. I’m not going to tell anyone – except Abby knows – but she doesn’t care. She says she’s met some guy who’s her dark lord. She’s in that stage where she thinks a dick is some kind of mystical magic wand.† Charlie adjusted his hamster box uncomfortably. â€Å"Girls go through a stage like that?† Why was he just hearing about this now? Even the hamsters looked uncomfortable. Lily turned on a heel and started up the street. â€Å"I’m not having this conversation with you.† Charlie stood there, watching her go, balancing the hamsters and his completely useless sword-cane while trying to dig his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. He needed to see that book, and he needed to see it sooner than the hour it would take him to get home. â€Å"Lily, wait!† he called. â€Å"I’m calling a cab, I’ll give you a ride.† She waved him off without looking and kept walking. As he was waiting for the cab company to answer, he heard it, the voice, and he realized that he was standing right over a storm drain. It had been over a month since he’d heard them, and he thought maybe they’d gone. â€Å"We’ll have her, too, Meat. She’s ours now.† He felt the fear rise in his throat like bile. He snapped the phone shut and ran after Lily, cane rattling and hamsters bouncing as he went. â€Å"Lily, wait! Wait!† She spun around quickly and her fuchsia wig only did the quarter turn instead of the half, so her face was covered with hair when she said, â€Å"One of those ice-cream cakes from Thirty-one Flavors, okay? After that, despair and nothingness.† â€Å"We’ll put that on the cake,† Charlie said. A Dirty Job Chapter 10 – Dag Hammarskjà ¶ld 10 DEATH TAKES A WALK Mornings, Charlie walked. At six, after an early breakfast, he would turn the care of Sophie over to Mrs. Korjev or Mrs. Ling (whoever’s turn it was) for the workday and walk – stroll really, pacing out the city with the sword-cane, which had become part of his daily regalia, wearing soft, black-leather walking shoes and an expensive, secondhand suit that had been retailored at his cleaner’s in Chinatown. Although he pretended to have a purpose, Charlie walked to give himself time to think, to try on the size of being Death, and to look at all the people out and about in the morning. He wondered if the girl at the flower stand, from whom he often bought a carnation for his lapel, had a soul, or would give hers up while he watched her die. He watched the guy in North Beach make cappuccinos with faces and fern leaves drawn in the foam, and wondered if a guy like that could actually function without a soul, or was his soul collecting dust in Charlie’s back ro om? There were a lot of people to see, and a lot of thinking to be done. Being out among the people of the city, when they were just starting to move, greeting the day, making ready, he started to feel not just the responsibility of his new role, but the power, and finally, the specialness. It didn’t matter that he had no idea what he was doing, or that he might have lost the love of his life for it to happen; he had been chosen. And realizing that, one day as he walked down California Street, down Nob Hill into the financial district, where he’d always felt inferior and out of touch with the world, as the brokers and bankers quickstepped around him, barking into their cell phones to Hong Kong or London or New York and never making eye contact, he started to not so much stroll, as strut. That day Charlie Asher climbed onto the California Street cable car for the first time since he was a kid, and hung off the bar, out over the street, holding out the sword-cane as if charging, with Hondas and Mercedes zooming along the street beside him, pas sing under his armpit just inches away. He got off at the end of the line, bought a Wall Street Journal from a machine, then walked to the nearest storm drain, spread out the Journal to protect his trousers against oil stains, then got down on his hands and knees and screamed into the drain grate, â€Å"I have been chosen, so don’t fuck with me!† When he stood up again, a dozen people were standing there, waiting for the light to change. Looking at him. â€Å"Had to be done,† Charlie said, not apologizing, just explaining. The bankers and the brokers, the executive assistants and the human-resource people and the woman on her way to serve up clam chowder in a sourdough bowl at the Boudin Bakery, all nodded, not sure exactly why, except that they worked in the financial district, and they all understood being fucked with, and in their souls if not in their minds, they knew that Charlie had been yelling in the right direction. He folded his paper, tucked it under his arm, then turned and crossed the street with them when the light changed. Sometimes Charlie walked whole blocks when he thought only of Rachel, and would become so engrossed in the memory of her eyes, her smile, her touch, that he ran straight into people. Other times people would bump into him, and not even lift his wallet or say â€Å"excuse me,† which might be a matter of course in New York, but in San Francisco meant that he was close to a soul vessel that needed to be retrieved. He found one, a bronze fireplace poker, set out by the curb with the trash on Russian Hill. Another time, he spotted a glowing vase displayed in the bay window of a Victorian in North Beach. He screwed up his courage and knocked on the door, and when a young woman answered, and came out on the porch to look for her visitor, and was bewildered because she didn’t see anyone there, Charlie slipped past her, grabbed the vase, and was out the side door before she came back in, his heart pounding like a war drum, adrenaline sizzling through his veins like a hormonal ti lt-a-whirl. As he headed back to the shop that particular morning, he realized, with no little sense of irony, that until he became Death, he’d never felt so alive. Every morning, Charlie tried to walk in a different direction. On Mondays he liked to go up into Chinatown just after dawn, when all the deliveries were being made – crates of produce, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, melons, and a dozen varieties of cabbage, tended by Latinos in the Central Valley and consumed by Chinese in Chinatown, having passed through Anglo hands just long enough to extract the nourishing money. On Mondays the fishing companies delivered their fresh catches – usually strong Italian men whose families had been in the business for five generations, handing off their catch to inscrutable Chinese merchants whose ancestors had bought fish from the Italians off horse-drawn wagons a hundred years before. All sorts of live and recently live fish were moved across the sidewalk: snapper and halibut and mackerel, sea bass and ling cod and yellowtail, clawless Pacific lobster, Dungeness crab, ghastly monkfish, with their long saberlike teeth and a sin gle spine that jutted from their head, bracing a luminous lure they used to draw in prey, so deep in the ocean that the sun never shone. Charlie was fascinated by the creatures from the very deep sea, the big-eyed squid, cuttlefish, the blind sharks that located prey with electromagnetic impulses – creatures who never saw light. They made him think of what might be facing him from the Underworld, because even as he fell into a rhythm of finding names at his bedside, and soul vessels in all manner of places, and the appearance of the ravens and the shades subsided, he could feel them under the street whenever he passed a storm sewer. Sometimes he could hear them whispering to one another, hushing quickly in the rare moments when the street went quiet. To walk through Chinatown at dawn was to become part of a dangerous dance, because there were no back doors or alleys for loading, and all the wares went across the sidewalk, and although Charlie had enjoyed neither danger nor dancing up till now, he enjoyed playing dance partner to the thousand tiny Chinese grandmothers in black slippers or jelly-colored plastic shoes who scampered from merchant to merchant, squeezing and smelling and thumping, looking for the freshest and the best for their families, twanging orders and questions to the merchants in Mandarin, all the while just a second or a slip away from being run over by sides of beef, great racks of fresh duck, or hand trucks stacked high with crates of live turtles. Charlie was yet to retrieve a soul vessel on one of his Chinatown walks, but he stayed ready, because the swirl of time and motion forecast that one foggy morning someone’s granny was going to get knocked out of her moo shoes. One Monday, just for sport, Charlie grabbed an eggplant that a spectacularly wizened granny was going for, but instead of twisting it out of his hand with some mystic kung fu move as he expected, she looked him in the eye and shook her head – just a jog, barely perceptible really – it might have been a tic, but it was the most eloquent of gestures. Charlie read it as saying: O White Devil, you do not want to purloin that purple fruit, for I have four thousand years of ancestors and civilization on you; my grandparents built the railroads and dug the silver mines, and my parents survived the earthquake, the fire, and a society that outlawed even being Chinese; I am mother to a dozen, grandmother to a hundred, and great-grandmother to a legion; I have birthed babies and washed the dead; I am history and suffering and wisdom; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your fucking hand off my eggplant before you lose it. And Charlie let go. And she grinned, just a little. Three teeth. And he wondered if it ever did fall to him to retrieve the soul vessel of one of these crones of Chronos, if he’d even be able to lift it. And he grinned back. And asked for her phone number, which he gave to Ray. â€Å"She seemed nice,† Charlie told him. â€Å"Mature.† Sometimes Charlie’s walks took him through Japantown, where he passed the most enigmatic shop in the city, Invisible Shoe Repair. He really intended to stop in one day, but he was still coming to terms with giant ravens, adversaries from the Underworld, and being a Merchant of Death, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for invisible shoes, let alone invisible shoes that needed repair! He often tried to look past the Japanese characters into the shop window as he passed, but saw nothing, which, of course, didn’t mean a thing. He just wasn’t ready. But there was a pet shop in Japantown (House of Pleasant Fish and Gerbil), where he had originally gone to buy Sophie’s fish, and where he returned to replace the TV attorneys with six TV detectives, who also simultaneously took the big Ambien a week later. Charlie had been distraught to find his baby daughter drooling away in front of a bowl floating more dead detectives than a film noir festival, and after fl ushing all six at once and having to use the plunger to dislodge Magnum and Mannix, he vowed that next time he would find more resilient pals for his little girl. He was coming out of House of PFG one afternoon, with a Habitrail pod containing a pair of sturdy hamsters, when he ran into Lily, who was making her way to a coffeehouse up on Van Ness, where she was planning to meet her friend Abby for some latte-fueled speed brooding. â€Å"Hey, Lily, how are you doing?† Charlie was trying to appear matter-of-fact, but he found that the awkwardness between him and Lily over the last few months was not mitigated by her seeing him on the street carrying a plastic box full of rodents. â€Å"Nice gerbils,† Lily said. She wore a Catholic schoolgirl’s plaid skirt over black tights and Doc Martens, with a tight black PVC bustier that was squishing pale Lily-bits out the top, like a can of biscuit dough that’s been smacked on the edge of the counter. The hair color du jour was fuchsia, over violet eye shadow, which matched her violet, elbow-length lace gloves. She looked up and down the street and, when she didn’t see anyone she knew, fell into step next to Charlie. â€Å"They’re not gerbils, they’re hamsters,† Charlie said. â€Å"Asher, do you have something you’ve been keeping from me?† She tilted her head a little, but didn’t look at him when she asked, just kept her eyes forward, scanning the street for someone who might recognize her walking next to Charlie, thus forcing her to commit seppuku. â€Å"Jeez, Lily, these are for Sophie!† Charlie said. â€Å"Her fish died, so I’m bringing her some new pets. Besides, that whole gerbil thing is an urban myth – â€Å" â€Å"I meant that you’re Death,† Lily said. Charlie nearly dropped his hamsters. â€Å"Huh?† â€Å"It’s so wrong – † Lily continued, walking on after Charlie had stopped in his tracks, so now he had to scurry to catch up to her. â€Å"Just so wrong, that you would be chosen. Of all of life’s many disappointments, I’d have to say that this is the crowning disappointment.† â€Å"You’re sixteen,† Charlie said, still stumbling a little at the matter-of-fact way she was discussing this. â€Å"Oh, throw that in my face, Asher. I’m only sixteen for two more months, then what? In the blink of an eye my beauty becomes but a feast for worms, and I, a forgotten sigh in a sea of nothingness.† â€Å"Your birthday is in two months? Well, we’ll have to get you a nice cake,† Charlie said. â€Å"Don’t change the subject, Asher. I know all about you, and your Death persona.† Charlie stopped again and turned to look at her. This time, she stopped as well. â€Å"Lily, I know I’ve been acting a little strangely since Rachel died, and I’m sorry you got in trouble at school because of me, but it’s just been trying to deal with it all, with the baby, with the business. The stress of it all has – â€Å" â€Å"I have The Great Big Book of Death,† Lily said. She steadied Charlie’s hamsters when he lost his grip. â€Å"I know about the soul vessels, about the dark forces rising if you fuck up, all that stuff – all of it. I’ve known longer than you have, I think.† Charlie didn’t know what to say. He was feeling panic and relief at the same time – panic because Lily knew, but relief because at least someone knew, and believed it, and had actually seen the book. The book! â€Å"Lily, do you still have the book?† â€Å"It’s in the store. I hid it in the back of the glass cabinet where you keep the valuable stuff that no one will ever buy.† â€Å"No one ever looks in that cabinet.† â€Å"No kidding? I thought if you ever found it, I’d say it had always been there.† â€Å"I have to go.† He turned and started walking the other direction, but then realized that they had already been heading toward his neighborhood and turned around again. â€Å"Where are you going?† â€Å"To get some coffee.† â€Å"I’ll walk with you.† â€Å"You will not.† Lily looked around again, wary that someone might see them. â€Å"But, Lily, I’m Death. That should at least have given me some level of cool.† â€Å"Yeah, you’d think, but it turns out that you have managed to suck the cool out of being Death.† â€Å"Wow, that’s harsh.† â€Å"Welcome to my world, Asher.† â€Å"You can’t tell anyone about this, you know that?† â€Å"Like anyone cares what you do with your gerbils.† â€Å"Hamsters! That’s not – â€Å" â€Å"Chill, Asher.† Lily giggled. â€Å"I know what you mean. I’m not going to tell anyone – except Abby knows – but she doesn’t care. She says she’s met some guy who’s her dark lord. She’s in that stage where she thinks a dick is some kind of mystical magic wand.† Charlie adjusted his hamster box uncomfortably. â€Å"Girls go through a stage like that?† Why was he just hearing about this now? Even the hamsters looked uncomfortable. Lily turned on a heel and started up the street. â€Å"I’m not having this conversation with you.† Charlie stood there, watching her go, balancing the hamsters and his completely useless sword-cane while trying to dig his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. He needed to see that book, and he needed to see it sooner than the hour it would take him to get home. â€Å"Lily, wait!† he called. â€Å"I’m calling a cab, I’ll give you a ride.† She waved him off without looking and kept walking. As he was waiting for the cab company to answer, he heard it, the voice, and he realized that he was standing right over a storm drain. It had been over a month since he’d heard them, and he thought maybe they’d gone. â€Å"We’ll have her, too, Meat. She’s ours now.† He felt the fear rise in his throat like bile. He snapped the phone shut and ran after Lily, cane rattling and hamsters bouncing as he went. â€Å"Lily, wait! Wait!† She spun around quickly and her fuchsia wig only did the quarter turn instead of the half, so her face was covered with hair when she said, â€Å"One of those ice-cream cakes from Thirty-one Flavors, okay? After that, despair and nothingness.† â€Å"We’ll put that on the cake,† Charlie said.

Introduction to Communication- Self-Awareness-repost Personal Statement - 1

Introduction to Communication- Self-Awareness-repost - Personal Statement Example Apparently, the hidden self is more prominent at work because one cannot love and care for colleagues’ more than family members. Essentially, one spends a lot of time with the family members and they end up knowing a lot about a person compared to colleagues. Nevertheless, maintaining a definite level of openness is crucial. From the episode, â€Å"is data alive† by Nicholson, data’s actions do not represent what a reasonable person can do. It is important to affirm that an individual with the right mind cannot sacrifice life to avoid destruction of machines (Nicholson 1). Personally, I believe that all individuals should learn to prioritize life compared to artificial objects. It is not common to find a person who is willing to sacrifice the life of an individual in favour of material things. Therefore, no person despite race or gender is capable of performing Data’s

A Winning Political Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

A Winning Political Strategy - Essay Example From this paper it is clear that the Progressive Socialists (PS) Party’s ideology is on reformed communism whereas the ideology for the Conservatives of Urbania (CU) is conservative. These two ideologies when brought together and blended well will automatically win the elections with a landslide. Information states that the votes swing to the left meaning that the Progressive Socialists Party is in a better position to form a coalition with the Conservatives of Urbania Party. The Progressive Socialists have an exceptionally strong winning point on the ideal tax rate, which is to keep the tax rates as low as possible as compared to the other parties. This is a strong campaign point since the majority of the Urbanians will be able to enjoy extra savings after taxation. This is ideal for the economy since it will spur growth and individual investments will increase. Naturally, people are attracted to parties that will ensure that they will tax them minimal tax, which is an advantage to the Progressive Socialists Party.As the discussion outlines the ideological type of the Progressive Socialists Party also is particularly strong considering the concept that they have in regard to being reformed communist. Currently in the world, there is a humungous concept that capitalism is not working. This is evident from the recent recession that happened just recently and currently what is happening in Europe. Europe is experiencing the Euro Crisis due to the capitalis t’s ideology and therefore the reformed communist ideology is decidedly much ideal. The Conservatives of Urbania (CU) Party ideology is on conservative. This means that a combination of both ideologies, which are, reformed communist and conservative will be a strong alliance when both parties merge for a coalition.

the kill artist :: essays research papers

Modern Middle East As the Middle East peace negotiations putter along, Daniel Silva's fictional book, The Kill Artist, could not be timelier. The story is a country-hopping cat-and-mouse game between two master assassins, one Palestinian, one Israeli. The story begins with the assassination of an Israeli ambassador in Paris, pulled off by Tariq, a master Palestinian assassin. Rumors of Tariq's plans to disrupt the ongoing peace talks reach Ari Shamron, head of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. To find and kill Tariq, Shamron calls on ex-agent Gabriel Allon. The story mixes real people and places with fictional characters, providing an authentic feel for the storyline. The main theme is that a retired Israeli deep cover agent is brought out of retirement to face an old terrorist enemy. We learn that Allon was once one of the Mossad's most skilled assassins, tracking down and dispatching terrorist enemies of Israel. But the cost was horrendous. After his wife and child became two of Tariq's targets, he thrust himself into seclusion. Now that he is called back, he along with a female partner masquerading as a model, attempt to destroy the network of terror created by Tariq. More and more people are drawn into the action as time goes on including the American CIA and international businessmen. The terrorist Tariq always seems to be one step ahead of his opponents as they are bested time and time again. The scene changes from country to country as the two groups battle in an international arena, and we finally discover the true purpose of Ta riq's mission as the story arrives at its conclusion. Prior to becoming an author, Silva was a CNN executive producer and journalist who covered the Middle East. The background those experiences gave him only intensify the story, making for a convincing read. Silva's time as a journalist and CNN executive producer, covering everything from Washington politics to Middle East conflicts, is evidenced in The Kill Artist. Details gleaned from his research into the inner workings of the PLO and the cutthroat world of international art brings settings and characters alive, as each comes up against the complications of romance in the rich, and the murky underworld of the spy Although I liked the flow of action in this novel, a large number of superfluous characters are introduced in the first part of the book that never get fully fleshed out. Some of the characters more integral to the story also seemed a little shallow in their presentation.

The Observation of Adult-Сhild Interaction

During this semester, we were required to make an observation on the adult-child interaction. This review essay will explain briefly about the interaction occurred, feedback from both parties and the significant of theory in child language development. Therefore, on 4th November 2013, I had an observation at an early childhood center, SMART LITTLE BEE in Putrajaya. Smart Little Bee is not just an ordinary childhood center, the founder Miss Nor Julia bt Mohammad Nor tried to implant new exposure in educating the child using the Montessori Theory which had been used in several countries such as Australia, United Kingdom and United States.Montessori education is an educational approach developed by Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori. The Montessori approach is designed to support the natural development of children in a well-prepared environment (Early childhood education today, 2011). The children educate themselves through self-directed learning by sensory materials invit e to promote learning. Children are grouped in multi-age environments and learn by manipulating materials and working with others.In Malaysia, the efforts were spreading in the country where the numbers of childhood center using Montessori approach were increasing especially in urban areas. In Smart Little Bee, the capacity intake of children is limited due to the law restricted for an early childhood center or we called â€Å"Taman Asuhan Kanak-kanak (TASKA)† in Malaysia that built in home-based environment. Even though, the requests from parents are quite high as they can see the differences in orderliness, independent children, self-directed learning in their child. There were total of 13 children at age range 2 – 6 years old registered.There was neither classroom nor syllabus structured by ministry of education. There was one big living room that has been renovate for well-prepared environment for the children to play, do activities and learned by them. Moreover, t here are five basic principles fairly and accurately represent how Montessori educators implement the Montessori Method in their programs and Miss Julia was a well-trained Montessori educator when she was living in Australia for several years. The first one is respect for the child, it is the cornerstone on which all other Montessori principles rest.Miss Julia said, â€Å"Teachers should show respect for children when they guide and scaffold their learning, enable them do things and learned for themselves†. Next, the absorbent mind is one of the ideas that the minds of young children are receptive to and capable of learning. The child learns unconsciously by taking in information from the environment. This ideology is proved by the child learns to speak his native tongue through the environment. Furthermore, Montessori believed there are sensitive period when children are more susceptible to certain behaviors and can learn specific skills more easily.In my opinion, there are intersections in theories that model programs for child language development. As we learned through several of theories, majority of them believed children have their sensitive period which stated in Affective transformation by Greenspan & Shanker(2007), Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development and sensory-motor stage and much more. Next, prepared environment, a place in which children can do things for themselves. In Smart Little Bee, the living room that has been renovated and design suitable for children to learn while playing, the facilities are comfortable, well-organized with books, toys and table.The children have their own freedom to explore materials of their own choosing. The materials and activities provided for three basic areas of child involvement which are practical life or motor education, sensory materials for training the senses and academic materials. During my observation, the theme for that week is BALL, Miss Julia explained particularly through a ba ll we can teach the children in physical, emotional and cognitive thinking aspects. There were different themes for each week, as an example is an apple, shoes and many more.The activities done help children to improve their skills related to everyday living such as toilet training and tied the shoes lace. Lastly, concept of auto-education in children those are capable of educating themselves through appropriate materials and activities. It is facilitative language input and behavior where educators avoid using directiveness which contain less facilitative features. Early in the morning when their parents deliver their children, Miss Julia will let the children to play whatever they want to play.After having their breakfast, the activity began at 10 o’clock. During the session, Miss Julia asked them to pick up all the toys by saying â€Å"okay kids, it is time to do activity pick up the toys and make a circle† in a rhythmic way like a song. The kids pick up their toys to where it was belong while singing along with Miss Julia the â€Å"pick-up† song. This routine had implanted in their memory motor to reflect whenever Miss Julia sing the song and how anyone would imagine that picking up the toys could be this fun?After they done, Miss Julia sit on a small chair with the kids in a circle, using low tone voice like whispering Miss Julia asked the children to sing together all the songs they learned and the kids were hopping and ready to sing but Miss Julia stopped and asked them back â€Å"which one of the songs that they want to sing first?† I can hear thousands of requests, however Miss Julia with a calm voice asked them again â€Å"which one of the songs? † and they look to each other and with one voice they choose the spider’s web song. So, Miss Julia was counting down the number from three to one and they started to sing happily with the moves.Miss Julia also singing along with them as one part where Miss Julia will pause to let them finish the lyrics, technique used in this response is called cloze procedures. It is good to provide redundancy, increase the saliency of the input in order to allow more cognitive response for learning (Girolametto, 2006). While they were singing happily the children use immature or incorrect lyrics, Miss Julia will response by reformulating the additional semantics in the lyrics and generally corrects the child’s error which term used is conversational recasting (Camarata & Nelson, 2006).After they sang all the songs, the activity continues with â€Å"ball painting†. The children were so excited, they were asked to hold one rectangle box together with a painted golf ball in it. The task was they need to shake the box for the ball to roll up and leaves the paint on the paper inside. They started to shake the ball carefully first, but when they see the traces left by the paint they began to excite and wonder the colours, design thus they shook vigoro usly the box. This showed how the confident built in and the cognitive thinking was developing inside them. As the time flow, they finished the activity and had their lunch.As a Muslim, their routines in daily life were performing the prayer. When they finished their lunch, they were preparing to do the prayer together under Miss Julia guidance. Following the schedule, once they finished performing the prayer at 2 o’clock they need to sleep. Everyone was exhausted, they need to recharge. Miss Julia did mention â€Å"the children need to have enough sleep not just because for their growth but it is also for their health, physically and mentally† the end for the session. As a last point, I can see how Montessori approach affects the child not only in language but also the maturity and independence of the child.The theory itself guides the caregivers to be in the child’s world instead of trying to bring them into our world. The approach might not be acceptable in c ertain cultures; cultural differences may result in variations the way children being exposed as the first impression. When there are collectivist societies or individualistic society both wanted the best for their children but in different method approaches. In a nutshell, I firmly believed that children were born with the ability and desire to learn and explore the world when we initiate it with the environment around them.Language is a system of arbitrary codes used as a communication medium and that is shared by a community for parents-child interaction or teacher-student interaction. The language and environment input was crucial in developing the child’s language. I hope that caregivers could apply the theories in some of the way to teach their son or daughter became more quality than yesterday. I found that the importance in child development not only the language but also the environment, attitudes and behaviors.

One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest - 1403 Words

Jood Abuali I.B. English Written Assignment- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Mr. Rader 23 November 2016 Word Count: 1411 In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the author Ken Kesey 1.enthralls the reader’s attention by displaying events of 2.diminished 3.humanity all throughout the book. This book revolves around the idea that women may be a threat to the masculinity of mental ward patients. The manipulation that occurs within the ward has do with making other characters betray one another and reveal their shame. The manner in which the dominant characters attack the other s’ â€Å"manhood† demonstrates their methods for manipulating the inferior characters under their control. The 4.diverse types of minority groups become 5.conspicuous as the author reveals the 6.inclement and 7.sadistic character, Nurse Ratched, the stories antagonist, , who runs the ward with 8.morbid intentions to 9.desiccate the courage of the people around her. The power in which she portrays is10. ample to the point it becomes 11. flagrant. Her choice of words and background knowledge on the pa tient s weaknesses, 12.engender her ability to control people within the ward using insinuation. Although she claims that her actions are in favor for everyone she has contact with within the ward, they are just 13.facades in which 14.covert her manipulation. Throughout the novel, the power of emasculation was a common implement in which controlled the ward, dismayed the courage of many patients andShow MoreRelated One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Essay2464 Words   |  10 Pages One Flew Over The Cuckooamp;#8217;s Nest The significance of the title can be interpreted in this quote. The story is about a struggle in a psychiatric ward, where many amp;#8220;cuckoos; reside, amp;#8220;Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes, sheamp;#8217;s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts amp;#8216;em in pensamp;#8230; wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flockamp;#8230; one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckooamp;#8217;s nestamp;#8230; O-U-T spells outamp;#8230;Read MoreOne Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest Essay1604 Words   |  7 Pages The Truth Even If It Didn’t Happen: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest By: Aubree Martinez Period 1 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is one of the greatest novels of the 1960s that expertly uses mental illness, rebellion, and abused authority to captivate the readers. This book is densely populated with interesting characters, such as the new admission R.P. McMurphy, that makes you dive below the surface of sanity, rebellion, and authoritative issues that are spread throughoutRead MoreSummary Of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest 1489 Words   |  6 PagesDelgado Period 7 One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest Essay Prompt: 2. Does McMurphy win or lose his battle with Nurse Ratched? Justify your answer with three specific examples from the text. ​Red haired, rowdy, and raunchy are three words to describe the crazy, infamous McMurphy, while the Nurse is a prude, prideful and frigid ruler who is power-hungry over the mental institution. These two mixed together lead to a cunning war of dominance in the hospital. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is a 1962 novelRead MoreOne Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest1541 Words   |  7 Pages One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey. The book was published in 1962, by Signet, an imprint of New American Library. The book itself has 325 pages total, and rather than being divided into chapters, it is divided into sections. As a result of this, I doubled the required number of questions needed for the study guide section of this project, and based them off of each specific section. This book tells the story of how a troublemaker named Randle McMurphy, a manRead MoreOne Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest1161 Words   |  5 Pages Have you ever been to a mental institution? The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is about Randall McMurphy becoming a patient in a mental institution. McMurphy is a white-trash degenerate with many problems, but mental instability is not one of them. He is an alcoholic with a gambling problem that gets into fights. He was recently convicted of alleged rape. McMurphy, somehow, conned his way into being enrolled into the mental institution instead of going to a work farm for his actions, â€Å"theRead MoreOne Flew over the Cuckoos Nest Essay2656 Words   |  11 PagesOne Flew Over The Cuckoo#8217;s Nest The significance of the title can be interpreted in this quote. The story is about a struggle in a psychiatric ward, where many #8220;cuckoos#8221; reside, #8220;Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes, she#8217;s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts #8216;em in pens#8230; wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock#8230; one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo#8217;s nest#8230; O-U-T spells out#8230; goose swoops down and plucksRead MoreOne Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest1549 Words   |  7 PagesOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest In today’s world with the recent chaos that has erupted many people tend to think that the world has become insane and that they are the last sane individuals alive. However, in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the ones who are seeking treatment for insanity seem more reasonable then the sane ones. This is because in the novel, the person that holds jurisdiction, Nurse Ratched also maintains a fearsome reputation. Many people would agree that the theme thatRead MoreAnalysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest 943 Words   |  4 PagesThe Subversion of Gender Roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest In today s society, as well as in the past, men are typically placed in a position of power over women. Although gender equality is increasing, a more patriarchal society is considered to be the norm. However, in certain situations the gender roles that are played by men and women are reversed, and women hold most, if not all of the power. Such as in Ken Kesey s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest, in this instance the ward is aRead MoreOne Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest2100 Words   |  9 PagesIn One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the narrator, Chief Bromden, perceives the Big Nurse as the evil head of the mental institution for a decade because he is â€Å"dehumanized to a machine created by the evil Nurse Ratched† (Porter 49), he befriends Mr. Randle McMurphy, or just Mac, and is able to recover back to feeling human emotions. The Nurse, as a matter of fact, is not actually cruel, but just doing her daily duties at the ward. Every single complication, dilemma, and dis pute that arises subsequentRead MoreOne Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest962 Words   |  4 Pages In the film â€Å"One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest† the character Randal â€Å"Mac† McMurphy decides that spending a 68 day sentence in the psychiatric ward would be an easy task compared to the same amount of time in jail, but quickly finds out that Nurse Mildred Ratched has just as much hidden deviance within her as he is trying to portray outwardly to stay in the ward and not be sent to jail where he truly belongs for raping a 15 year old girl. McMurphy and Nurse Ratcheds battle of power and wills escalates