Deception Point Page 90 Free Essays

Face-to-face with him, Rachel felt like a teenager standing on the doorstep with a new boyfriend. â€Å"Thanks. No problem at all. We will write a custom essay sample on Deception Point Page 90 or any similar topic only for you Order Now Really.† Something inside her sensed Tolland wanted to kiss her. After a beat, he turned shyly away. â€Å"I know. You want to get to shore. We should get to work.† â€Å"For now.† Rachel smiled softly. â€Å"For now,† Tolland repeated, taking a seat at the computer. Rachel exhaled, standing close behind now, savoring the privacy of the small lab. She watched Tolland navigate a series of files. â€Å"What are we doing?† â€Å"Checking the database for big ocean lice. I want to see if we can find any prehistoric marine fossils that resemble what we saw in the NASA meteorite.† He pulled up a search page with bold letters across the top: PROJECT DIVERSITAS. Scrolling through the menus, Tolland explained, â€Å"Diversitas is essentially a continuously updated index of oceanic biodata. When a marine biologist discovers a new ocean species or fossil, he can toot his horn and share his find by uploading data and photos to a central databank. Because there’s so much new data discovered on a weekly basis, this is really the only way to keep research up-to-date.† Rachel watched Tolland navigating the menus. â€Å"So you’re accessing the Web now?† â€Å"No. Internet access is tricky at sea. We store all this data onboard on an enormous array of optical drives in the other room. Every time we’re in port, we tie into Project Diversitas and update our databank with the newest finds. This way, we can access data at sea without a Web connection, and the data is never more than a month or two out of date.† Tolland chuckled as he began typing search keywords into the computer. â€Å"You’ve probably heard of the controversial music file-sharing program called Napster?† Rachel nodded. â€Å"Diversitas is considered the marine biologist’s version of Napster. We call it LOBSTER – Lonely Oceanic Biologists Sharing Totally Eccentric Research.† Rachel laughed. Even in this tense situation, Michael Tolland exuded a wry humor that eased her fears. She was beginning to realize she’d had entirely too little laughter in her life lately. â€Å"Our database is enormous,† Tolland said, completing the entry of his descriptive keywords. â€Å"Over ten tera-bytes of descriptions and photos. There’s information in here nobody has ever seen-and nobody ever will. Ocean species are simply too numerous.† He clicked the â€Å"search† button. â€Å"Okay, let’s see if anyone has ever seen an oceanic fossil similar to our little space bug.† After a few seconds, the screen refreshed, revealing four listings of fossilized animals. Tolland clicked on each listing one by one and examined the photos. None looked remotely like the fossils in the Milne meteorite. Tolland frowned. â€Å"Let’s try something else.† He removed the word â€Å"fossil† from his search string and hit â€Å"search.† â€Å"We’ll search all living species. Maybe we can find a living descendant that has some of the physiological characteristics of the Milne fossil.† The screen refreshed. Again Tolland frowned. The computer had returned hundreds of entries. He sat a moment, stroking his now stubble-darkened chin. â€Å"Okay, this is too much. Let’s refine the search.† Rachel watched as he accessed a drop-down menu marked â€Å"habitat.† The list of options looked endless: tide pool, marsh, lagoon, reef, mid-oceanic ridge, sulfur vents. Tolland scrolled down the list and chose an option that read: Destructive Margins/Oceanic Trenches. Smart, Rachel realized. Tolland was limiting his search only to species that lived near the environment where these chondrulelike features were hypothesized to form. The page refreshed. This time Tolland smiled. â€Å"Great. Only three entries.† Rachel squinted at the first name on the list. Limulus poly†¦ something. Tolland clicked the entry. A photo appeared; the creature looked like an oversized horseshoe crab without a tail. â€Å"Nope,† Tolland said, returning to the previous page. Rachel eyed the second item on the list. Shrimpus Uglius From Hellus. She was confused. â€Å"Is that name for real?† Tolland chuckled. â€Å"No. It’s a new species not yet classified. The guy who discovered it has a sense of humor. He’s suggesting Shrimpus Uglius as the official taxonomical classification.† Tolland clicked open the photo, revealing an exceptionally ugly shrimplike creature with whiskers and fluorescent pink antennae. â€Å"Aptly named,† Tolland said. â€Å"But not our space bug.† He returned to the index. â€Å"The final offering is†¦ † He clicked on the third entry, and the page came up. â€Å"Bathynomous giganteus†¦ † Tolland read aloud as the text appeared. The photograph loaded. A full-color close-up. Rachel jumped. â€Å"My God!† The creature staring back at her gave her chills. Tolland drew a low breath. â€Å"Oh boy. This guy looks kind of familiar.† Rachel nodded, speechless. Bathynomous giganteus. The creature resembled a giant swimming louse. It looked very similar to the fossil species in the NASA rock. â€Å"There are some subtle differences,† Tolland said, scrolling down to some anatomical diagrams and sketches. â€Å"But it’s damn close. Especially considering it has had 190 million years to evolve.† Close is right, Rachel thought. Too close. Tolland read the description on the screen: â€Å"‘Thought to be one of the oldest species in the ocean, the rare and recently classified species Bathynomous giganteus is a deepwater scavenging isopod resembling a large pill bug. Up to two feet in length, this species exhibits a chitinous exoskeleton segmented into head, thorax, abdomen. It possesses paired appendages, antennae, and compound eyes like those of land-dwelling insects. This bottom-dwelling forager has no known predators and lives in barren pelagic environments previously thought to be uninhabitable.† Tolland glanced up. â€Å"Which could explain the lack of other fossils in the sample!† Rachel stared at the creature on-screen, excited and yet uncertain she completely understood what all of this meant. â€Å"Imagine,† Tolland said excitedly, â€Å"that 190 million years ago, a brood of these Bathynomous creatures got buried in a deep ocean mud slide. As the mud turns into rock, the bugs get fossilized in stone. Simultaneously, the ocean floor, which is continuously moving like a slow conveyer belt toward the oceanic trenches, carries the fossils into a high-pressure zone where the rock forms chondrules!† Tolland was talking faster now. â€Å"And if part of the fossilized, chondrulized crust broke off and ended up on the trench’s accretionary wedge, which is not at all uncommon, it would be in a perfect position to be discovered!† â€Å"But if NASA†¦,† Rachel stammered. â€Å"I mean, if this is all a lie, NASA must have known that sooner or later someone would find out this fossil resembles a sea creature, right? I mean we just found out!† Tolland began printing the Bathynomous photos on a laser printer. â€Å"I don’t know. Even if someone stepped forward and pointed out the similarities between the fossils and a living sea louse, their physiologies are not identical. It almost proves NASA’s case more strongly.† Rachel suddenly understood. â€Å"Panspermia.† Life on earth was seeded from space. â€Å"Exactly. Similarities between space organisms and earth organisms make excellent scientific sense. This sea louse actually strengthens NASA’s case.† â€Å"Except if the meteorite’s authenticity is in question.† Tolland nodded. â€Å"Once the meteorite comes into question, then everything collapses. Our sea louse turns from NASA friend to NASA linchpin.† How to cite Deception Point Page 90, Essay examples

Internet Censorship Essays (1402 words) - Pornography Law

Internet Censorship Computer, Internet, Privacy INTERNET REGULATION: POLICING CYBERSPACE The Internet is a method of communication and a source of information that is becoming more popular among those who are interested in, and have the time to surf the information superhighway. The problem with this much information being accessible to this many people is that some of it is deemed inappropriate for minors. The government wants censorship, but a segment of the population does not. Legislative regulation of the Internet would be an appropriate function of the government. The Communications Decency Act is an amendment which prevents the information superhighway from becoming a computer red light district. On June 14, 1995, by a vote of 84-16, the United States Senate passed the amendment. It is now being brought through the House of Representatives. 1 The Internet is owned and operated by the government, which gives them the obligation to restrict the materials available through it. Though it appears to have sprung up overnight, the inspiration of free-spirited hackers, it in fact was born in Defense Department Cold War projects of the 1950s.2 The United States Government owns the Internet and has the responsibility to determine who uses it and how it is used. The government must control what information is accessible from its agencies. This material is not lawfully available through the mail or over the telephone, there is no valid reason these perverts should be allowed unimpeded on the Internet. Since our initiative, the industry has commendably advanced some blocking devices, but they are not a substitute for well-reasoned law. 4 Because the Internet has become one of the biggest sources of information in this world, legislative safeguards are imperative. The government gives citizens the privilege of using the Internet, but it has never given them the right to use it. They seem to rationalize that the framers of the constitution planned & plotted at great length to make certain that above all else, the profiteering pornographer, the pervert and the pedophile must be free to practice their pursuits in the presence of children on a taxpayer created and subsidized computer network.3 People like this are the ones in the wrong. Taxpayer's dollars are being spent bringing obscene text and graphics into the homes of people all over the world. The government must take control to prevent pornographers from using the Internet however they see fit because they are breaking laws that have existed for years. Cyberpunks, those most popularly associated with the Internet, are members of a rebellious society that are polluting these networks with information containing pornography, racism, and other forms of explicit information. When they start rooting around for a crime, new cybercops are entering a pretty unfriendly environment. Cyberspace, especially the Internet, is full of those who embrace a frontier culture that is222 hostile to authority and fearful that any intrusions of police or government will destroy their self-regulating world.5 The self-regulating environment desired by the cyberpunks is an opportunity to do whatever they want. The Communications Decency Act is an attempt on part of the government to control their free attitude displayed in homepages such as Sex, Adult Pictures, X-Rated Porn, Hot Sleazy Pictures (Cum again + again) and sex, sex, sex. heck, it's better even better than real sex6. What we are doing is simply making the same laws, held constitutional time and time again by the courts with regard to obscenity and indecency through the mail and telephones, applicable to the Internet.7 To keep these kinds of pictures off home computers, the government must control information on the Internet, just as it controls obscenity through the mail or on the phone. Legislative regulations must be made to control information on the Internet because the displaying or distribution of obscene material is illegal. The courts have generally held that obscenity is illegal under all circumstances for all ages, while indecency is generally allowable to adults, but that laws protecting children from this lesser form are acceptable. It's called protecting those among us who are children from the vagrancies of adults.8 The constitution of the United States has set regulations to determine what is categorized as obscenity and what is not. In Miller vs. California, 413 U.S. at 24-25, the court announced its

Types of Reduced Relative Clauses

Types of Reduced Relative Clauses Reduced relative clauses refer to the shortening of a relative clause which modifies the subject of a sentence. Reduced relative clauses  modify the subject and not  the object of a sentence.   Much like adjectives, relative clauses, also known as adjective clauses, modify nouns. The man who works at Costco lives in Seattle.I gave a book, which was written by Hemingway, to Mary last week. In above  examples, who works at Costco modifies- or provides information about- the man who is the subject of the sentence. In the second sentence, which was written by Hemingway modifies the object book. Using a reduced relative clause we can reduce the first sentence to: The man working at Costco lives in Seattle. The second example sentence cannot be reduced because the relative clause which  was written by Hemingway modifies an object of the verb give. Types of Reduced Relative Clauses Relative clauses can also be reduced to shorter forms if the relative clause modifies the subject of a sentence. Relative clause reduction refers to removing a relative pronoun to reduce: An adjective/person who was happy:  happy personAn adjective phrase/man who was responsible for:  man responsible forA prepositional phrase/boxes that are under the counter:  boxes under the counterA past participle/student that was elected president:  student elected presidentA present participle/people who are working on the report:  people working on the report Reduce to an Adjective Remove the relative pronoun.Remove the verb (usually be, but also seem, appear, etc.).Place the adjective used in the relative clause before the modified noun. Examples: The children who were happy played until nine in the evening.  Reduced: The happy children played until nine in the evening.The house, which was beautiful, was sold for $300,000.  Reduced: The beautiful house was sold for $300,000. Reduce to an Adjective Phrase Remove the relative pronoun.Remove the verb (usually be, but also seem, appear, etc.).Place the adjective phrase after the modified noun. Examples: The product, which seemed perfect in many ways, failed to succeed in the market.  Reduced: The product, perfect in many ways, failed to succeed in the market.The boy who was pleased by his grades went out with his friends to celebrate.  Reduced: The boy, pleased by his grades, went out with his friends to celebrate. Reduce to a Prepositional Phrase Remove the relative pronoun.Remove the verb be.Place the prepositional phrase after the modified noun. Examples: The box, which was on the table, was made in Italy.  Reduced: The box on the table was made in Italy.The woman who was at the meeting spoke about business in Europe.  Reduced: The woman at the meeting spoke about business in Europe. Reduce to a Past Participle Remove the relative pronoun.Remove the verb be.Place the past participle before the modified noun. Examples: The desk, which was stained, was antique.  Reduced: The stained desk was antique.The man who was elected was very popular.  Reduced: The elected man was very popular. Reduce to a​ Past Participle Phrase Remove the relative pronoun.Remove the verb be.Place the past participle phrase after the modified noun. Examples: The car, which was purchased in Seattle, was a vintage Mustang.  Reduced: The car purchased in Seattle was a vintage Mustang.The elephant, which was born in captivity, was set free.  Reduced: The elephant born in captivity was set free. Reduce to a Present Participle Remove the relative pronoun.Remove the verb be.Place the present participle phrase after the modified noun. Examples: The professor who is teaching mathematics will leave the university.  Reduced: The professor teaching mathematics will leave the university.The dog that is lying on the floor wont get up.  Reduced: The dog lying on the floor wont get up. Some action verbs reduce to the present participle (-ing form) especially when the present tense is used: Remove the relative pronoun.Change the verb to the present participle form.Place the present participle phrase after the modified noun. Examples: The man who lives near my home walks to work every day.  Reduced: The man living near my home walks to work every day.The girl who attends my school lives at the end of the street.  Reduced: The girl attending my school lives at the end of the street.

Alioramus - Facts and Figures

Alioramus - Facts and Figures Name: Alioramus (Greek for different branch); pronounced AH-lee-oh-RAY-muss Habitat: Woodlands of Asia Historical Period: Late Cretaceous (70-65 million years ago) Size and Weight: About 20 feet long and 500-1,000 pounds Diet: Meat Distinguishing Characteristics: Moderate size; numerous teeth; bony crests on snout About Alioramus An awful lot has been abstracted about Alioramus ever since a single, incomplete skull was discovered in Mongolia in 1976. Paleontologists believe this dinosaur was a medium-sized tyrannosaur closely related to another Asian meat-eater, Tarbosaurus, from which it differed in both its size and in the distinctive crests running along its snout. As with many dinosaurs reconstructed from partial fossil specimens, though, not everyone agrees that Alioramus was all that its cracked up to be. Some paleontologists maintain that the fossil specimen belonged to a juvenile Tarbosaurus, or perhaps was not left by a tyrannosaur at all but by an entirely different kind of meat-eating theropod (hence this dinosaurs name, Greek for different branch). A recent analysis of a second Alioramus specimen, discovered in 2009, indicates that this dinosaur was even more bizarre than previously thought. It turns out that this presumed tyrannosaur sported a row of five crests on the front of its snout, each about five inches long and less than an inch high, the purpose of which is still a mystery (the most likely explanation is that they were a sexually selected characteristicthat is, males with bigger, more prominent crests were more attractive to females during mating seasonsince these growths would have been completely useless as an offensive or defensive weapon). These same bumps are also seen, albeit in muted form, on some specimens of Tarbosaurus, yet more evidence that these may have been one and the same dinosaur.

HARD ROCK CAFE MODULE 1 CASE ASSIGNMENT OPM Essay

HARD ROCK CAFE MODULE 1 CASE ASSIGNMENT OPM - Essay Example 5. Layout Design: How their restaurants and stores should look on both the inside and outside; how the kitchen and behind-the-scenes should be laid out for maximum efficiency; how large the facility must be to accommodate their goals Besides just observation, there are a number of calculations that can be performed in order to measure the productivity of the kitchen staff and wait staff at Hard Rock. These include Wage Cost % (of sales), Total Labor Cost % (wages, insurance, retirement, superannuation, payroll taxes), Total Labor Hours (hours worked in each section measured against sales), Function Labour Charge-Out (need consistent mark-up on charge-out to service staff that caterers offer), Sick Days Taken (measure of morale and management skills), Labor Turnover (number of new staff in a time period—should be low), Average Length of Employment (success of keeping staff), and Average Hourly Pay (total payroll divided by all staff’s work hours). (Profitable Hospitality 2008) The purpose of this paper has been to identify how each of the 10 decisions of operations management is applied at Hard Rock Cafà © and note how the productivity of the kitchen staff and wait staff at Hard Rock would be determined. According to the resources accessed, the above describes how each of these tasks should be accomplished. â€Å"Key Performance Indicators for Restaurants, Cafes, Catering, Clubs & Hotels.† 2008. Profitable Hospitality. Online. http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:h35dnlZY4eIJ:www.profitablehospitality.com/public/88.cfm+%22measure+kitchen+productivity%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=usReferences â€Å"Key Performance Indicators for Restaurants, Cafes, Catering, Clubs & Hotels.† 2008. Profitable Hospitality. Online.

Women Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Women - Essay Example The first feature, common for all these women, is their masculinity, interwoven with typically female manner of control. Queen Dido rules Carthage, Margot is a member of the Damned Few, the secret council of the Women's country, and Athena is a deity, a goddess of war, wisdom and knowledge, adored in the Ancient Greece. In order to understand Margot's roles and functions, let's look briefly at the organization of the Women's Country. "Within Women's Country, all the cities are walled and each city has, outside its walls, a garrison of male warriors to protect them from other male warriors protecting other cities" (Tepper, 1988, p.21). In exchange for this defense, the women have to give their male children to his father at the age of five. Warriors are allowed to enter Women's Country under two circumstances. First, they can visit it biannually for 'Carnival', a social event which encourages men and women to have intimate affairs in order to have children. Second, the warriors, who wish to change their life and turn it to more peaceful side, can return to the Women's Country as the servitors, who perform the women's commandments, but enjoy civilized life without any weapon, cruelty and violence. The ordinances and instructions made by the women are directed to day-by-day guidance for the inhabitant s, who want to lead healthy and productive lives. Furthermore, the Damned Few's policy is close-knit with the total abolishment of gender inequality and with making women independent. Margot is one of those who try to improve the lives of the citizens, who really long to construct, not to destruct.In spite of her great power, Margot hasn't become cruel, like many tyrannical political leaders. Margot is an elder and physician in Marthatown (ibid, p.43). Margot is a person, whose life is an example of righteousness in terms of women's country. She has to develop new the values of gender equality (or even of female dominance to some degree) in the Country, so she does not allow herself such trivial things as love while solving problems of great importance, such as problem of violence. Using the power her knowledge and wisdom, she rejects the power of her emotions and brings up her daughter Stavia in a similar way (ibid, p.82).Queen Dido is one of the first female characters of western literature. It is possible to say that she is a female parallel to Aeneas. Queen Dido experiences a loss, when her brother betrays and kills her husband Sychaeus. Nevertheless, she is actually a person who founded a new city, having led her people from the motherland as exiles. She has no intention to fall in love with Aeneas, but Cupid traps her with his arrow. Thus, diving into the love, Dido looses her masculinity and moral stability, and her city begins to weaken.Once Aeneas leaves her, she becomes anxious and gets a fixation on her feeling, and needs a child in order to comfort herself. Having broken her promise of fidelity, given to her husband's soul, and feeling completely desperate, she commits suicide but not without bothering the Trojans and predicting the wars between Rome and Carthage.Dido does not represent the typical woman of classical

Interview With Toni Morrison :: essays papers

"I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life. Also, there's more of the past for imaginative purposes than there is of the future." Q. Beloved is dedicated to the 60 million who died as a result of slavery. A staggering number -- is this proved historically? A. Some historians told me 200 million died. The smallest number I got from anybody was 60 million. There were travel accounts of people who were in the Congo -- that's a wide river -- saying, ''We could not get the boat through the river, it was choked with bodies.'' That's like a logjam. A lot of people died. Half of them died in those ships. Slave trade was like cocaine is now -- even though it was against the law, that didn't stop anybody. Imagine getting $1,000 for a human being. That's a lot of money. There are fortunes in this country that were made that way. I thought this has got to be the least read of all the books I'd written because it is about something that the characters don't want to remember, I don't want to remember, black people don't want to remember, white people don't want to remember. I mean, it's national amnesia. Q. You gave new insight into the daily struggle of slaves. A. I was trying to make it a personal experience. The book was not about the institution -- Slavery with a capital S. It was about these anonymous people called slaves. What they do to keep on, how they make a life, what they're willing to risk, however long it lasts, in order to relate to one another -- that was incredible to me. For me, the torturous restraining devices became a hook on which to say what it was like in personal terms. I knew about them because slaves who wrote about their lives mentioned them, and white people wrote about them. There's a wonderful diary of the Burr family in which he talks about his daily life and says, ''Put the bit on Jenny today.'' He says that about 19 times in six months -- and he was presumably an enlightened slave owner.