About Marcel Breuer, Bauhaus Architect and Designer

About Marcel Breuer, Bauhaus Architect and Designer You may perceive Marcel Breuers Wassily seat, however you know Breuers Cesca, the fun metal rounded lounge area seat with the (frequently phony plastic) stick seat and back. A unique B32 model is in the assortment of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City Even today, you can get them, since Breuer never took a patent on the plan. Marcel Breuer was a Hungarian planner and designer who moved with and past the Bauhaus school of structure. His steel tube furniture carried twentieth century innovation to the majority, however his striking utilization of precast cement empowered huge, present day structures to be worked under financial plan. Foundation: Conceived: May 21, 1902 in Pã ©cs, Hungary Complete Name: Marcel Lajos Breuer Passed on: July 1, 1981 in New York City Hitched: Marta Erps, 1926-1934 Citizenship: Immigrated to the U.S. in 1937; naturalized resident in 1944 Instruction: 1920: learned at Vienna Academy of Fine Arts1924: Master of Architecture, Bauhaus School in Weimer, Germany Proficient Experience: 1924: Pierre Chareau, Paris1925-1935: Master of the Carpentry Shop, Bauhaus School1928-1931: Bund Deutscher Architekten (Association of German Architects), Berlin1935-1937: Partnership with British planner F.R.S. Yorke, London1937: Begins instructing at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts1937-1941: Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer Architects, Cambridge, MA1941: Marcel Breuer and Associates, Cambridge (MA), NYC, and Paris Chosen Architectural Works: 1939: Breuer House (own living arrangement), Lincoln, Massachusetts1945: Geller House (Breuers first post-war bi-atomic structure), Long Island, NY1953-1968: St. Johns Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota1952-1958: UNESCO World Headquarters, Paris, France1960-1962: IBM Research Center, La Gaude, France1964-1966: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City1965-1968: Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, Washington, DC1968-1970: Armstrong Rubber Company Headquarters, West Haven, Connecticut1980: Central Public Library, Atlanta, Georgia Most popular Furniture Designs: 1925: Wassily chair1928: Cesca seat otherwise called the B32 Chosen Awards: 1968: FAIA, Gold Medal1968: Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture1976: Grand Medalle dOr French Academy of Architecture Breuers Students at Harvard University: Philip JohnsonI.M. Pei Impacts and Related People: Walter GropiusPaul Klee, Swiss artistLudwig Mies van der RoheRichard NeutraBreuer, alongside Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson, and Eliot Noyes, were known in New Canaan, Connecticut as The Harvard Five In the Words of Marcel Breuer: Source: Marcel Breuer papers, 1920-1986. Chronicles of American Art, Smithsonian Institution In any case, I dont need to live in a house which was stylish twenty years back.- Defining Modern Architecture [undated] ...objects have their various appearances because of their changed capacities. In that they ought to exclusively fulfill our necessities, and not struggle with one another, they together offer ascent to our style....objects gain a structure comparing to their capacity. Rather than expressions of the human experience and artworks (kunstgewerbe) origination where objects of a similar capacity take on various structures because of varieties and inorganic trimming.- On Form and Function at the Bauhaus in 1923 [1925] Sullivans proclamation structure follows work needs a completion to the sentence however not generally. Likewise here we need to utilize our very own judgment great detects, additionally here we ought not acknowledge aimlessly the custom.- Notes on Architecture, 1959 One needs no specialized information to consider a thought however one needs specialized capacity and information to build up this thought. In any case, imagining the thought and acing the method don't require the equivalent abilities....The primary concern is that we demonstration at where something required is missing, and utilize the potential that we have available to us to locate a financial and cognizant arrangement.- On Form and Function at the Bauhaus in 1923 [1925] In this manner present day design would exist even without fortified solid, pressed wood or flooring. It would exist even in stone, wood and block. It is critical to underline this since dogmatic and unselective utilization of new materials misrepresents the fundamental standards of our work.- On Architecture and Material, 1936 There are two separate zones, associated distinctly by the passage lobby. One is for normal living, eating, sport, games, cultivating, guests, radio, for consistently powerful living. The second, in a different wing, is for focus, work and dozing: the rooms are planned and dimensioned with the goal that they might be utilized as private examinations. Between the two zones is a yard for blossoms, plants; outwardly associated with, or essentially a piece of, the lounge room and the corridor.- On a Design of a Bi-Nuclear House, 1943 Be that as it may, what I esteem the vast majority of his accomplishments is his feeling of inside space. It is a freed spaceto be experienced by your eye, however felt by your touch: measurements and tweaks comparing to your means and developments, grasping the grasping scene.- On Frank Lloyd Wright, 1959 Find out More: Who is Marcel Breuer?The Bauhaus, 1919â€1933, The Metropolitan Museum of ArtA Bauhaus Life: Is Bauhaus Too International for America?Marcel Breuer Digital Archive at Syracuse University LibrariesThe Harvard Five in New Canaan by William D. Barons, Norton, 2006Saint Johns Abbey Church: Marcel Breuer and the Creation of a Modern Sacred Space by Victoria M. Youthful, University Of Minnesota Press, 2014 Sources: Marcel Breuer, Modern Homes Survey, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2009; Biographical History, Syracuse University Libraries [accessed July 8, 2014]

The Struggles of Odysseus free essay sample

Odysseus’s Struggles Odysseus faces numerous contentions in The Odyssey. He faces both inner and outer clashes. He has a wide range of choices to make, for example, to confront Scylla or Charybdis with is group. As I would like to think, the three most significant clashes are when Odysseus’s men won't listen when he advises them not to eat the steers, the way that he was pulled away from his better half, Penelope, and their infant child, and when Odysseus faces the Cyclopes. One thing that I learned while perusing this story as that Odysseus’s men are difficult. They will not hear him out. They ate Helios’s (the sun god) cows. This had some negative responses from the remainder of the divine beings. The fundamental piece of the result was when Zeus obliterated Odysseus’s transport, and slaughtered his men. A while later, Odysseus attempted to get back home to Ithaca, into the caring arms of his significant other and (presently more seasoned) child. We will compose a custom paper test on The Struggles of Odysseus or on the other hand any comparative point explicitly for you Don't WasteYour Time Recruit WRITER Just 13.90/page Another principle struggle was when Odysseus was yearning the solace of his wife’s arms and needing to really invest energy with his child. Odysseus adored his better half. He had two occurrences where goddesses needed to hold him to their selves, yet he despite everything wanted his dear Penelope. Penelope brought forth Odysseus’s child the day Odysseus needed to leave to battle in the Trojan War. Odysseus was away for around 10 years, and he had possibly observed his child when he was first conceived. He would have gotten a kick out of the chance to perceive how his child had grown up, however he hadn’t had the option to, until he at long last got back, following 10 years. Odysseus was striking in attempting to look through the Cyclopes’ cavern. He needed to trust that the Cyclops will come back to perceive what the Cyclops would offer him. At the point when the Cyclops returned, in any case, it caught Odysseus and his men in the cavern, and nibbled on a couple. Odysseus accepted that visitors ought to be treated with the most extreme regard, yet the Cyclopes didn’t feel that path toward visitors. The Cyclopes didn’t have faith in any traditions, or laws so far as that is concerned. I feel that Odysseus has had numerous battles in his undertakings, and that he had the right to at last discover his way back to his family. Odysseus has had numerous contentions in The Odyssey, yet only a couple of them were progressively significant, to me, than the others. The three most significant ones are when Odysseus’s men didn’t tune in and chose to eat the sun god’s steers, his extraordinary aching for his better half and child, and his experience with the Cyclops. I accept that Odysseus took in an important exercise in this story, and that is, not to underestimate anything.

Academic Blogging Impressing a Professor in 350 Words Richmond Writing

Academic Blogging Impressing a Professor in 350 Words Richmond Writing image source: Creative-Commons licensed image from xkcd My colleagues are, increasingly, reading blogs and assigning them in classes. Weblogs, the full name for this medium, appear in every class I teach. I use them for weekly reading responses, warm-ups for formal writing, and even for graded multimedia projects impossible on paper. A blog like this, rather than a closed discussion list at a course-management system like Blackboard, provides students with several real-life advantages. First, the secondary audience for a blog, one far greater than professor and classmates, enables writing for publication in the real-world Internet, rather than what we techies often call a walled garden. Second, blogs resemble the sorts of collaborative tools coming into use in the workplace. Finally, blogs are not bound by the conventions of print, and that enables them to do things impossible on paper. How to Get Started In planning the workshop on academic blogging, I decided to first write what journalists call a nutgraf, or a few sentences that sum up the focus and claims the writer will make. Heres mine:  Academic blogging opens a new and easily used venue for student and faculty writers. A blog provides a number of advantages when compared to traditional papers, such as the ability to embed photos and videos, the use of easy-to-manage feedback from other writers in a class, and an informal style that tends to help writers still learning to write for the academy. Blogs also pose certain problems, and in my blog post I will outline them as well. Now that you have my nutgraf, how about   those problems? From my experience with many student bloggers, here are some issues that hurt their assessment when I ask them to blog. Paper-based thinking: Blogs and other Web-based media do not need double-spacing and they do not tend to support paragraph indents. Instead, single-spacing, left-justification, and one blank line between paragraphs suffice. Unclear focus: preparing a nutgraf avoids the sort of rambling monologue that can afflict a new blogger. Keep in mind, readers, that your readers choose to visit your site. Keep them informed and stay focused. For this reason, blogs rarely cover more than a single topic. Broken links: Non-working links hurt all sorts of Web texts, but a blogger should take extra care; ones reputation depends on providing accurate references to other materials. In print, an analogous mistake might be a severe error in a citation, such as providing the wrong title for a printed work. To avoid such errors, be certain that every link works when you preview or publish the post. Note that links to on-campus resources requiring a university log-in will not work off campus. Check all links from a computer at home or find a public version of the material. Clumsy links: Also beware of pulling in URLs (Web addresses) like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=1oref=sloginref=magazinepagewanted=print Instead of testing readers patience, if the post needs a URL rather than a link from text (as I have just done) consider a Web site that can make long URLs short. These crunched URLs persist, and I have had good luck with bit.ly and tinyurl.com. I used the latter to shorten that monster address above: http://tinyurl.com/6e4fyez In some classes, and for formal projects published online, you may not be permitted to do this. Check with your professor and a handbook for documentation. Both MLA and APA formats now give advice on how to shorten a URL for publication. Microsoft Word Blogging: Word is designed for printed documents, no matter what appears under its save as menu. Word works wonders on paper, partly because the software enables dozens or even hundreds of fonts, sizes, and margin-changes. But Word does this through hidden formatting codes.   We never see them when cutting and pasting to a blog, but in some blogging software, these typographic phantoms cause nightmares. I just typed this line into Word: Now is the time for all talented geeks to come to the aid of Cyberspace. Here is what I got when I copied the text from Word and pasted it to the editor of Googles Blogspot:                     style @font-face { font-family: Cambria; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times New Roman; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } /style div class=MsoNormal Now is the time for all talented geeks to come to the aid of Cyberspace./div Oh oh. Normally, this is not a problem, if a blogger does not put any bolds, underlines, or other formatting into Word. If those features appear, however, it may take hours to untangle the mess. I have encountered lines that do not want to single-space, strange changes of fonts, and more. Random eye-candy: Why use a photo, video, or other illustration in a blog? They can emphasize an argument and save you words. In every case, they should be placed close to the material referenced. When choosing images, search for those licensed for non-commercial reuse. You can do this with the advanced options for Google image search as well as Flickr. Im sure that most other image-sharing sites have ways to find content with Creative-Commons licensing. The candy-apple image appeared licensed for reuse in a Google search. Bad Tags: Tagging blogs permits readers to aggregate topics by clicking a tag. Huge sites need this. Ive found that even my blog on virtual worlds and gaming, In a Strange Land, needs tags so I can, say, separate how-to advice for folks from general news about the industry.   At the same time, tagging can be tedious when misused. Why on earth, at this blog, would I need to tag this post or any other with writing? That is, after all, the focus on the entire blog and its sponsor. My post has gone on far more than 350 words (its at 991 now!), but I think it presents the basics. The hardest part remains the writing itself. No medium changes that. Refer to links at this Writers Web page for more advice on academic blogging. Good luck with your posts!

Lewis Structures or Electron Dot Structures

Lewis structures, also known as electron dot structures, are named after Gilbert N. Lewis, who described them in a 1916 article titled, The Atom and the Molecule. Lewis structures depict the bonds between atoms of a molecule, as well as any unbonded electron pairs. You can draw a Lewis dot structure for any covalent molecule or coordination compound. Lewis Structure Basics A Lewis structure is a type of shorthand notation. Atoms are written using their element symbols. Lines are drawn between atoms to indicate chemical bonds. Single lines are single bonds, double lines are double bonds, and triple lines are triple bonds. (Sometimes pairs of dots are used instead of lines, but this is uncommon.) Dots are drawn next to atoms to show unbonded electrons. A pair of dots is a pair of excess electrons. Steps to Drawing a Lewis Structure Pick a central atom. Start your structure by picking a central atom and writing its element symbol. This will be the atom with the lowest electronegativity. Sometimes its difficult to know which atom is the least electronegative, but you can use the periodic table trends to help you out. Electronegativity typically increases as you move from left to right across the periodic table and decreases as you move down the table from top to bottom. You can consult a table of electronegativities, but be aware different tables may give you slightly different values, since electronegativity is calculated. Once youve selected the central atom, write it down and connect the other atoms to it with a single bond. (You may change these bonds to double or triple bonds as you progress.)Count electrons. Lewis electron dot structures show the valence electrons for each atom. You dont need to worry about the total number of electrons, only those in the outer shells. The octet rule states that atoms with eight electrons in their outer shells are stable. This rule applies well up to period 4, when it takes 18 electrons to fill the outer orbitals. Filling the outer orbitals of electrons from period 6 requires 32 electrons. However, most of the time when youre asked to draw a Lewis structure, you can stick with the octet rule.Place electrons around atoms. Once you have determined how many electrons to draw around each atom, you can begin placing them on the structure. Start by placing one pair of dots for each pair of valence electrons. Once the lone pairs are placed, you may find that some atoms, particularly the central atom, dont have a complete octet of electrons. This indicates there are double or possibly triple bonds. Remember, it takes a pair of electrons to form a bond. Once the electrons have been placed, put brackets around the entire structure. If theres a charge on the molecule, write it as a superscript on the upper right, outside of the bracket. Further Resources for Lewis Dot Structures You can find more information about Lewis structures at the following links: Step-by-Step Instructions for Drawing a Lewis StructureLewis Structure Example: Exceptions to the Octet RuleLewis Structure Example Problem: Formaldehyde

Nathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown - 1186 Words

In â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne uses anticipation and mystery to grab the attention of the reader. From the start of the story to the ending, Hawthorne leaves the reader asking the question â€Å"What does all of the witchcraft and double-sides lives of the characters have to do with anything? What do they mean?† The reader cannot look at â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† as just any suspense short story, but they also have the see the different forms of symbolism. Hawthorne shows the reader that having a strong faith is the greatest asset of any man or woman, but when faith is compromised, the effects can be devastating. It can cause someone to be filled with doubt toward the world. Before Brown enters the forest, he has a strong sense of faith, even as he is making his journey to the black mass. Hawthorne uses Brown’s wife’s name, Faith, as a symbol of his own faith throughout the story. Brown’s faith can be seen th rough his description of Faith: â€Å"And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Hawthorne, 619-620). In this quote, Hawthorne suggests she is innocent and pure, as is Brown’s faith. The reassuring replies Brown gives his wife suggest that his faith cannot be broken: Amen! cried Goodman Brown. ‘Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee (Hawthorne, 620). Goodman Brown sets off on his journey with a strong willShow MoreRelatedNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1543 Words   |  7 PagesIn Nathaniel Hawthorne s short story of Young Goodman Brown, the author uses symbolism and allegories in order to showcase the Puritan faith as well as man s conflict between good and evil. This analysis will break down the techniques that the author uses to critique the puritan society and to show the difference between how people appear to be in society and the true colors that they are hidden inside of them. There has been a lot of great authors in our time, but none more interesting thanRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1065 Words   |  5 PagesWhen it comes to the topic of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, most of us will readily agree that duplicity is a major theme in the piece, or the idea of different versions of reality. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of whether Hawthorne is implying that man is inherently evil. Whereas some are convinced that Young Goodman Brown was good until tainted by the Devil, others maintain that he was evil from the beginning and was completely aware of the evil heRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown905 Words   |  4 PagesThough Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author of many great works, his short story â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† still stays relevant because it has themes and subjects that are relatable in today s world. In the story â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† Good man Brown leaves his wife Faith, to go into the woods near Salem to have a meeting with the devil. Appearance vs. reality is shown in â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† through the plot, the character of Goody Cloyse, and the symbol of the maple staff. The characterRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1312 Words   |  6 PagesWithin Nathaniel Hawthorne s short story Young Goodman Brown (p.317), Young Goodman Brown travels through a dark and mysterious forest late at night. Ignoring the pleas of his pure wife Faith, he ventures deep into the woods with many dangers around him, only to emerge in the morning a changed man with bewildered views on his own Puritan life and the Puritan community around him. At the cause for this change in mindset, the dream of an old man symbolizing the devil appears, showing him the communityRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown Essay1274 Words   |  6 PagesIn Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† the devil says, â€Å"Evil is the nature of mankind† (â€Å"Young† 627). Since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and attempted to hide conceal their sin from God, humans have tried to hide their sin from others. Although ever yone sin is human nature, everyone has a different reaction to sin. While some acknowledge sin, others ignore it. In Hawthorne’s other short story, â€Å"The Minister’s Black Veil,† Father Hooper wears a black veil to represent the sin heRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown Essay1449 Words   |  6 Pages â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† is a short story that is filled with symbols and mystery. Nathaniel Hawthorne provides plenty forms of symbolism for readers to digest. Hawthorne displays strong faith as the greatest virtue for a man or woman, and when the faith is compromised, one can be filled with skepticism and uncertainty towards the rest of the world. The story begins as a conventional allegory, creating the expectation that the characters will be able to consistently display the abstractions they symbolizeRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1695 Words   |  7 Pagesstory, Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in Puritan New England. Hawthorne uses symbolism, description, scenery, and Goodman’s journey to illustrate and symbolize the battle of good versus evil. In the first scene, we see how Young Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith, to start on his â€Å"evil† journey through the woods. Though Faith asks him to stay with her, he chooses to continue on even though he knows the evilness lies ahead. As the story continues, we see how Hawthorne uses FaithRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1492 Words   |  6 PagesIn Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story of Young Goodman Brown, the author uses symbolism and allegories in order to showcase the Puritan faith as well as man’s conflict between good and evil. This analysis will breakdown the techniques that the author uses to critique the puritan society, and to show the difference between how people appear to be in society and the true colors that they are hidden inside of them. There has been a lot of great authors in our time, but none more interesting than NathanielRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown2532 Words   |  11 PagesNathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† demonstrates how Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith, to do an errand within the woods with a man that is believed to be the devil. During the time period in which this took place, the 1620’s, many of the people from the village were practicing Puritanism. Puritanism is an intense practice of religion retrieved from Protestants, only removing its Catholic influence. When Goodman Brown entered the woods to meet the devil, he soon turned intoRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown894 Words   |  4 Pagesread. In â€Å"Young Goodman Brown†, I found several romanticism characteristics to be in this story. One being, the emphasis on feelings and emotions. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, â€Å"The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing through the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response.† The cry of anguish and pain are very applicable to the protagonist idea in this story. Brown also expresses feeling when he doesn t want to leave his wife Faith, but he feels that it s his role to

Warm Bodies Step one wanting Free Essays

I am dead, but it’s not so bad. I’ve learned to live with it. I’m sorry I can’t properly introduce myself, but I don’t have a name any more. We will write a custom essay sample on Warm Bodies Step one wanting or any similar topic only for you Order Now Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries. Mine might have started with an ‘R’, but that’s all I have now. It’s funny because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people’s names. My friend ‘M’ says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can’t smile, because your lips have rotted off. None of us are particularly attractive, but death has been kinder to me than some. I’m still in the early stages of decay. Just the grey skin, the unpleasant smell, the dark circles under my eyes. I could almost pass for a Living man in need of a vacation. Before I became a zombie I must have been a businessman, a banker or broker or some young temp learning the ropes, because I’m wearing fairly nice clothes. Black slacks, grey shirt, red tie. M makes fun of me sometimes. He points at my tie and tries to laugh, a choked, gurgling rumble deep in his gut. His clothes are holey jeans and a plain white T-shirt. The shirt is looking pretty macabre by now. He should have picked a darker colour. We like to joke and speculate about our clothes, since these final fashion choices are the only indication of who we were before we became no one. Some are less obvious than mine: shorts and a sweater, skirt and a blouse. So we make random guesses. You were a waitress. You were a student. Ring any bells? It never does. No one I know has any specific memories. Just a vague, vestigial knowledge of a world long gone. Faint impressions of past lives that linger like phantom limbs. We recognise civilisation – buildings, cars, a general overview – but we have no personal role in it. No history. We are just here. We do what we do, time passes, and no one asks questions. But like I’ve said, it’s not so bad. We may appear mindless, but we aren’t. The rusty cogs of cogency still spin, just geared down and down till the outer motion is barely visible. We grunt and groan, we shrug and nod, and sometimes a few words slip out. It’s not that different from before. But it does make me sad that we’ve forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else’s, because I’d like to love them, but I don’t know who they are. There are hundreds of us living in an abandoned airport outside some large city. We don’t need shelter or warmth, obviously, but we like having the walls and roofs over our heads. Otherwise we’d just be wandering in an open field of dust somewhere, and that would be strangely horrific. To have nothing at all around us, nothing to touch or look at, no hard lines whatsoever, just us and the gaping maw of the sky. I imagine that’s what being full-dead is like. An emptiness vast and absolute. I think we’ve been here a long time. I still have all my flesh, but there are elders who are little more than skeletons with clinging bits of muscle, dry as jerky. Somehow it still extends and contracts, and they keep moving. I have never seen any of us ‘die’ of old age. Maybe we live for ever, I don’t know. The future is as blurry to me as the past. I can’t seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present, and the present isn’t exactly urgent. You might say death has relaxed me. I am riding the escalators when M finds me. I ride the escalators several times a day, whenever they move. It’s become a ritual. The airport is derelict, but the power still flickers on sometimes, maybe flowing from emergency generators stuttering deep underground. Lights flash and screens blink, machines jolt into motion. I cherish these moments. The feeling of things coming to life. I stand on the steps and ascend like a soul into Heaven, that sugary dream of our childhoods, now a tasteless joke. After maybe thirty repetitions, I rise to find M waiting for me at the top. He is hundreds of pounds of muscle and fat draped on a six-foot-five frame. Bearded, bald, bruised and rotten, his grisly visage slides into view as I crest the staircase summit. Is he the angel that greets me at the gates? His ragged mouth is oozing black drool. He points in a vague direction and grunts, ‘City.’ I nod and follow him. We are going out to find food. A hunting party forms around us as we shuffle towards town. It’s not hard to find recruits for these expeditions, even if no one is hungry. Focused thought is a rare occurrence here, and we all follow it when it manifests. Otherwise we’d just be standing around and groaning all day. We do a lot of standing around and groaning. Years pass this way. The flesh withers on our bones and we stand here, waiting for it to go. I often wonder how old I am. The city where we do our hunting is conveniently close. We arrive around noon the next day and start looking for flesh. The new hunger is a strange feeling. We don’t feel it in our stomachs – some of us don’t even have those. We feel it everywhere equally, a sinking, sagging sensation, as if our cells are deflating. Last winter, when so many Living joined the Dead and our prey became scarce, I watched some of my friends become full-dead. The transition was undramatic. They just slowed down, then stopped, and after a while I realised they were corpses. It disquieted me at first, but it’s against etiquette to notice when one of us dies. I distracted myself with some groaning. I think the world has mostly ended, because the cities we wander through are as rotten as we are. Buildings have collapsed. Rusted cars clog the streets. Most glass is shattered, and the wind drifting through the hollow high-rises moans like an animal left to die. I don’t know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it’s not so important. Once you’ve arrived at the the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took. We start to smell the Living as we approach a dilapidated apartment building. The smell is not the musk of sweat and skin, but the effervescence of life energy, like the ionised tang of lightning and lavender. We don’t smell it in our noses. It hits us deeper inside, near our brains, like wasabi. We converge on the building and crash our way inside. We find them huddled in a small studio unit with the windows boarded up. They are dressed worse than we are, wrapped in filthy tatters and rags, all of them badly in need of a shave. M will be saddled with a short blond beard for the rest of his Fleshy existence, but everyone else in our party is clean-shaven. It’s one of the perks of being Dead, another thing we don’t have to worry about any more. Beards, hair, toenails . . . no more fighting biology. Our wild bodies have finally been tamed. Slow and clumsy but with unswerving commitment, we launch ourselves at the Living. Shotgun blasts fill the dusty air with gunpowder and gore. Black blood spatters the walls. The loss of an arm, a leg, a portion of torso, this is disregarded, shrugged off. A minor cosmetic issue. But some of us take shots to our brains, and we drop. Apparently there’s still something of value in that withered grey sponge, because if we lose it, we are corpses. The zombies to my left and right hit the ground with moist thuds. But there are plenty of us. We are overwhelming. We set upon the Living, and we eat. Eating is not a pleasant business. I chew off a man’s arm, and I hate it. I hate his screams, because I don’t like pain, I don’t like hurting people, but this is the world now. This is what we do. Of course if I don’t eat all of him, if I spare his brain, he’ll rise up and follow me back to the airport, and that might make me feel better. I’ll introduce him to everyone, and maybe we’ll stand around and groan for a while. It’s hard to say what ‘friends’ are any more, but that might be close. If I restrain myself, if I leave enough . . . But I don’t. I can’t. As always I go straight for the good part, the part that makes my head light up like a picture tube. I eat the brain and, for about thirty seconds, I have memories. Flashes of parades, perfume, music . . . life. Then it fades, and I get up, and we all stumble out of the city, still cold and grey, but feeling a little better. Not ‘good’, exactly, not ‘happy’, certainly not ‘alive’, but . . . a little less dead. This is the best we can do. I trail behind the group as the city disappears behind us. My steps plod a little heavier than the others’. When I pause at a rain-filled pothole to scrub gore off my face and clothes, M drops back and slaps a hand on my shoulder. He knows my distaste for some of our routines. He knows I’m a little more sensitive than most. Sometimes he teases me, twirls my messy black hair into pigtails and says, ‘Girl. Such . . . girl.’ But he knows when to take my gloom seriously. He pats my shoulder and just looks at me. His face isn’t capable of much expressive nuance any more, but I know what he wants to say. I nod, and we keep walking. I don’t know why we have to kill people. I don’t know what chewing through a man’s neck accomplishes. I steal what he has to replace what I lack. He disappears, and I stay. It’s simple but senseless, arbitrary laws from some lunatic legislator in the sky. But following those laws keeps me walking, so I follow them to the letter. I eat until I stop eating, then I eat again. How did this start? How did we become what we are? Was it some mysterious virus? Gamma rays? An ancient curse? Or something even more absurd? No one talks about it much. We are here, and this is the way it is. We don’t complain. We don’t ask questions. We go about our business. There is a chasm between me and the world outside of me. A gap so wide my feelings can’t cross it. By the time my screams reach the other side, they have dwindled into groans. At the Arrivals gate, we are greeted by a small crowd, watching us with hungry eyes or eye sockets. We drop our cargo on the floor: two mostly intact men, a few meaty legs and a dismembered torso, all still warm. Call it leftovers. Call it takeout. Our fellow Dead fall on them and feast right there on the floor like animals. The life remaining in those cells will keep them from full-dying, but the Dead who don’t hunt will never quite be satisfied. Like men at sea deprived of fresh fruit, they will wither in their deficiencies, weak and perpetually empty, because the new hunger is a lonely monster. It grudgingly accepts the brown meat and lukewarm blood, but what it craves is closeness, that grim sense of connection that courses between their eyes and ours in those final moments, like some dark negative of love. I wave to M and then break free from the crowd. I have long since become acclimatised to the Dead’s pervasive stench, but the haze rising off them today feels especially fetid. Breathing is optional, but I need some air. I wander out into the connecting hallways and ride the conveyors. I stand on the belt and watch the scenery scroll by through the window wall. Not much to see. The runways are turning green, overrun with grass and brush. Jets lie motionless on the concrete like beached whales, white and monumental. Moby-Dick, conquered at last. Before, when I was alive, I could never have done this. Standing still, watching the world pass by me, thinking about nearly nothing. I remember effort. I remember targets and deadlines, goals and ambitions. I remember being purposeful, always everywhere all the time. Now I’m just standing here on the conveyor, along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn’t lurch or groan like most of us; her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her, that she doesn’t lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her as we approach. For a brief moment we are side by side, only a few feet away. We pass, then travel on to opposite ends of the hall. We turn around and look at each other. We get back on the conveyors. We pass each other again. I grimace, and she grimaces back. On our third pass, the airport power dies, and we come to a halt perfectly aligned. I wheeze hello, and she responds with a hunch of her shoulder. I like her. I reach out and touch her hair. Like me, her decomposition is at an early stage. Her skin is pale and her eyes are sunken, but she has no exposed bones or organs. Her irises are an especially light shade of that strange pewter grey all the Dead share. Her graveclothes are a black skirt and a snug white blouse. I suspect she used to be a receptionist. Pinned to her chest is a silver name tag. She has a name. I stare hard at the tag, I lean in close, putting my face inches from her breasts, but it doesn’t help. The letters spin and reverse in my vision; I can’t hold them down. As always, they elude me, just a series of meaningless lines and blots. Another of M’s undead ironies – from name tags to newspapers, the answers to our questions are written all around us, and we don’t know how to read. I point at the tag and look her in the eyes. ‘Your . . . name?’ She looks at me blankly. I point at myself and pronounce the remaining fragment of my own name. ‘Rrr.’ Then I point at her again. Her eyes drop to the floor. She shakes her head. She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t even have syllable-one, like M and I do. She is no one. But aren’t I expecting too much? I reach out and take her hand. We walk off the conveyers with our arms stretched across the divider. This female and I have fallen in love. Or what’s left of it. I remember what love was like before. There were complex emotional and biological factors at work. We had elaborate tests to pass, connections to forge, ups and downs and tears and whirlwinds. It was an ordeal, an exercise in agony, but it was alive. The new love is simpler. Easier. But small. My girlfriend doesn’t talk much. We walk through the echoing corridors of the airport, occasionally passing someone staring out of a window or at a wall. I try to think of things to say but nothing comes, and if something did come I probably couldn’t say it. This is my great obstacle, the biggest of all the boulders littering my path. In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses. So far my personal record is four rolling syllables before some . . . thing . . . jams. And I may be the most loquacious zombie in this airport. I don’t know why we don’t speak. I can’t explain the suffocating silence that hangs over our world, cutting us off from each other like prison-visit Plexiglas. Prepositions are painful, articles are arduous, adjectives are wild overachievements. Is this muteness a real physical handicap? One of the many symptoms of being Dead? Or do we just have nothing left to say? I attempt conversation with my girlfriend, testing out a few awkward phrases and shallow questions, trying to get a reaction out of her, any twitch of wit. But she just looks at me like I’m weird. We wander for a few hours, directionless, then she grips my hand and starts leading me somewhere. We stumble our way down the halted escalators and out onto the tarmac. I sigh wearily. She is taking me to church. The Dead have built a sanctuary on the runway. At some point in the distant past someone pushed all the stair-trucks together into a circle, forming a kind of amphitheatre. We gather here, we stand here, we lift our arms and moan. The ancient Boneys wave their skeletal limbs in the centre circle, rasping out dry, wordless sermons through toothy grins. I don’t understand what this is. I don’t think any of us do. But it’s the only time we willingly gather under the open sky. That vast cosmic mouth, distant mountains like teeth in the skull of God, yawning wide to devour us. To swallow us down to where we probably belong. My girlfriend appears much more devout than I do. She closes her eyes and waves her arms in a way that almost looks heartfelt. I stand next to her and hold my hands in the air silently. At some unknown cue, maybe drawn by her fervour, the Boneys stop their preaching and stare at us. One of them comes forward, climbs our stairs, and takes us both by the wrists. It leads us down into the circle and raises our hands in its clawed grip. It lets out a kind of roar, an unearthly sound like a blast of air through a broken hunting horn, shockingly loud, frightening birds out of trees. The congregation murmurs in response, and it’s done. We are married. We step back onto the stair seats. The service resumes. My new wife closes her eyes and waves her arms. The day after our wedding, we have children. A small group of Boneys stops us in the hall and presents them to us. A boy and a girl, both around six years old. The boy is curly blond, with grey skin and grey eyes, perhaps once Caucasian. The girl is darker, with black hair and ashy brown skin, deeply shadowed around her steely eyes. She may have been Arab. The Boneys nudge them forward and they give us tentative smiles, hug our legs. I pat them on their heads and ask their names, but they don’t have any. I sigh, and my wife and I keep walking, hand in hand with our new children. I wasn’t exactly expecting this. This is a big responsibility. The young Dead don’t have the natural feeding instincts the adults do. They have to be tended and trained. And they will never grow up. Stunted by our curse, they will stay small and rot, then become little skeletons, animate but empty, their brains rattling stiff in their skulls, repeating their routines and rituals until one day, I can only assume, the bones themselves will disintegrate, and they’ll just be gone. Look at them. Watch them as my wife and I release their hands and they wander outside to play. They tease each other and grin. They play with things that aren’t even toys: staplers and mugs and calculators. They giggle and laugh, though it sounds choked through their dry throats. We’ve bleached their brains, robbed them of breath, but they still cling to the cliff edge. They resist our curse for as long as they possibly can. I watch them disappear into the pale daylight at the end of the hall. Deep inside me, in some dark and cobwebbed chamber, I feel something twitch. How to cite Warm Bodies Step one wanting, Essay examples

Sports In Society Essays - Applied Psychology, Sport Psychology

Sports In Society Laura Ann Giraldi Sports in Society Sports Psychology: Self -- Confidence in Sport Activity November 21, 1996 (1) Sports Psychology is one of the most up and coming sciences of the present time. This practice focuses on training athletes to use their mental capacities along with their physical talent to reach what is known as peak performance. Sports Psychologists analyze the performance of athletes and use motivational, cognitive, and behavioral principles to teach them peak performance levels. Sixty to ninety percent of success in sports is due to mental factors and psychological mastery. Sensing the importance of mental training in recent years, scientists have developed mental training programs. These programs all vary in technique, however, they all include skills focused on mastering the art of self-confidence. There are considerable amounts of evidence in sports literature that there is a direct correlation between self- confidence and peak performance. Self-confidence exists in all walks of life. It is defined as: the strong relationships between a person's thoughts, feelings, and behavior which if motivated correctly can help an individual excel with confidence in anything they try to do. Most of the time self-confidence is viewed in accordance with how well an athlete performs at a certain sport activity. To examine this further one must look at how an athlete prepares themselves before the task in order to understand how their self-confidence reigns so high when it comes time for them to actually compete. An athlete must trust what enables them to build their self-confidence. (2) To start, an athlete needs to know themselves and what their limitations are. Through personal experience an athlete will know what they are capable of doing, and also what challenges them. From such personal experiences an athlete can recall past success as well as past failures. Therefore, an athlete must strive off that knowledge of past success to reassure themselves that they have done it once, and that they can do it again. All is easier said then done. Building self-confidence can be one of the hardest things an athlete has to do. This involves a great deal of mental awareness and self-discipline. For it could take only one negative experience to destroy an athlete's ego. This is when the process of filtering comes into play. Filtering involves using negative experience in a positive way. More specifically an athlete must look at such experiences carefully and learn from them. They must not focus on the bad, but how it can help them in the future. For example, a basketball player who missed a foul shot that could have won the game must not view the experience as I am a loser; he must say My foul shooting needs a little help. In turn, this athlete should take a little time before and after practice to drill this technique. By doing this he is not focusing on the negative he is building towards a positive. This technique is very important to the athlete who is looking to strive for peak performance. For an athlete who dwells on the negative aspects (3) of their performance will never appreciate or accentuate their positive aspects. This in the long run will not allow them to develop to their full potential. A second technique in gaining self-confidence is a skill called self- talk. This is indeed a skill. This should be done when the athlete is spending quiet time with themselves. This is the time when an athlete must throw out all modest tendencies and falsehoods. This is a time when the athlete must be completely honest with themselves and their performance. This is also the time when the athlete must allow themselves to be their own best friend. These self- talks should be very detailed and taken seriously. They should include statements about past success, hard work, team cohesion, uniqueness, talent, endurance, persistence, and determination. This list may vary greatly, however it is these positive reinforcements that make all the difference. Self-talk is also a time when an athlete may reflect on compliments he has received and success up to this point. This technique is as important as any in the road toward peak performance. A third technique in gaining self-confidence is imagery. Imagery if done properly does build confidence. Imagery or mental rehearsal is the process of creating mental images of yourself performing at optimal levels. Confidence increases because you avoid dwelling on the past, where you could find experiences of failure. Confidence is further enhanced when you maintain focus in (4) the present time rather than letting your imagination drift into the future, where the possibilities