Friday, January 24, 2020

Children of the Mission :: Babysitting Descriptive Personal Narrative Essays

Children of the Mission A few teenagers are sitting on the ground under a network of slides. There are a few younger children there with them, doing the various things children do at five years old. The mottled sunlight creates exotic patterns across the faces of those under the network of slides, and it plays with the features of the smaller children on their laps. A slight breeze picks up every now and then, but for the first time in a week it's a warm breeze that brings cheer, rather than rain. One toddler finds the camera stowed under a teenager's knee. This is an object of mystery. Another child grabs the hand of an older girl, showing her the round, convex mirror in the shade that shows a distorted image of the entire playground. For some reason, that mirror is the principal image I remember from our day of babysitting. It measured about two feet in diameter, and in its metallic reflection, every one appeared as a colorful blob, or, if a person was lucky, he had eyes and a wide-open mouth. Everything looked backwards and uniform in that mirror, and it fascinated me. The irony in my attraction to it is that just as when I looked into the mirror, when I looked at the playground around me that afternoon, I was blind to what was actually there. The sun, the breeze, and the delightful children all combined in my perception to look like something I thought I knew. It is only now, three and a half months later, that I realize I was not able to comprehend much of anything I saw that day. Our rooftop daycare is located about a half mile from the intersection of Wilson and Wilson in Uptown Chicago. It occupies the roof of the Uptown Mission and Homeless Shelter. The Shelter crouches on a wide, deceptively clean street where the shadows have eyes and the sharp stench of urine permeates the air. Last summer, our youth group came here as missionaries to try to "help" the homeless people. On this particular sunny afternoon, we were to baby-sit their children. However, since there were more babysitters than children, I wonder how effective our effort actually was. As I sat watching the kids run in and out, my mind flooded with memories of my own childhood. I noticed that despite the difference between the adults who'd grown up in upper-middle-class Topeka and those who were homeless in Chicago, there existed many similar characteristics between the children in both conditions.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Renaissance history

â€Å"Renaissance is a term with a variety of meanings, but is used widely in discussion of European history. Renaissance originates from the Latin word â€Å"Rinascere† and refers to the act of being reborn. It is believed that during the time from about 1400AD to around 1600AD, Europe was reborn. Originally the term Renaissance only referred to the time when man rediscovered the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans. However, modern historians have realized these rediscoveries were also crucial to the formation of modern culture. The term Renaissance is now used to indicate all the historical developments that have inspired the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern history. Thus, the term Renaissance has now taken on a more significant meaning: not only does the Renaissance mean the rebirth of knowledge, but also represents a step from the past and a leap towards the future. The Renaissance overlapped the end of a period in European history called the Middle Ages. During this time, the great accomplishments of the ancient Greeks and Romans had been largely, though not entirely forgotten. With the ending of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance great cultural movement arose. Beginning in Italy, the new Renaissance spirit spread to England, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and other countries. In Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries certain scholars and historians began to display a remarkable new historical self-consciousness. They believed their own time was a new age, at once sharply different from the barbaric darkness which was imagined had occurred in the centuries before. They grew to believe that there was more to be discovered about mankind and the world, than medieval people had known. The Italians are very eager to rediscover what clever Greeks and Romans had known in ancient times, as well as making their own intelligent attempts to understand the world. This renewed interest in the world and in mankind is called Humanism. Humanism was the most significant intellectual movement of the Renaissance. Humanism during the Renaissance received its name from one of the earliest concerns of the humanists: the need of a new education curriculum that would empathize a group of subjects known collectively as the ‘Studia Humanitatis† involving grammar, history, poetry, ethics, and rhetoric. However, this new education curriculum conflicted directly with the traditional education, which involved logic, science and physics, and often sharp clashes occured between the two educators. However, more was at stake than the content of education. The traditional education was intended chiefly to prepare students for careers in medicine, law, and above all theology. To Renaissance humanists this seemed too narrow, too abstract and too exclusively intellectual. They proposed a system of education that centred on the general responsibilities of citizenship and social leadership. Humanities essential contribution to the modern world is not found in its concern with ancient knowledge, but in its new attitude of flexibility and openness to all the possibilities in life. With people receiving education-involving leadership, they began to gain more confidants. More people began to reject ideas about science put forward by the ancient Greeks and began to search for the truth. They realized that the Greeks† ideas were often intelligent, but also often wrong. Many people still did not want the old ideas disapproved, and threatened scientists to stop having new ideas. However, this did not stop many brilliant scientific inventions being produced at this time. A great scientist of the Renaissance was the Polish student Nicolaus Copernicus who developed the theory that the earth was a moving planet. He is considered the founder of modern astronomy. In Copernicus† time, most astronomers accepted the theory the Greek astronomer Ptolemy had formulated nearly 1400 years earlier. Ptolemy stated that the Earth was the centre of the universe and motionless. He also stated that all the observed motions of the heavenly bodies were real and that those bodies moved in complicated patterns around the Earth. As the church supported Ptolemy theory no one dared to challenge it until Copernicus. Copernicus believed Ptolemy†s theory was too complicated. He decided that the simplest and most systematic explanation was that every planet, including the Earth, revolved around the sun. The Earth also had to spin around its axis once every day. Copernicus couldn†t prove his theory, but his explanation of heavenly motion was mathematically strong and was less complicated than Ptolemy†s theory. The later work of later scientists such as Galileo Galilei helped to prove that Copernicus† theory was correct. Galileo was a Florentine physicist, philosopher, and inventor, whose name became the chief emblem of Renaissance science and of ensuing technological revolution. In 1609, he heard that the rulers of Florence and Venice were searching for someone who could invent an instrument that made distant objects appear closer. Galileo set to work to construct one, and within a few days he had finished, naming it a telescope. During the winter, he turned his telescope to the sky with startling results. He announced that the moon surface was quite similar to earth†s – irregular and mountainous; the Milky Way was made up of a host of stars; and the planet Jupiter is accompanied by at least four satellites. The electrifying effects of these discoveries were amazing. They showed the human senses could be aided artificially to discover new truths about nature, something that neither philosophy nor theology had previous contended with. However, most importantly Ptolemy†s astronomical theory was impossible. Galileo had proven Copernicus theory correct. Galileo had great importance upon the history of ideas. The Renaissance produced many important people who invented or theorized very important advances in history. They all became strong symbols of revolt against the forces of authority, whilst the Renaissance flourished with the power of question. The Renaissance period provided modern culture with a variety of advances in technology, art, science and most importantly it gave mankind confidence. The ancient civilizations, in particular the Greeks and Romans, laid the foundations for civilizations and the Renaissance added the most important ingredient; the ability to ask why. It is appropriate to use the label ‘Rebirth† to describe European history in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

How unfair the justice system is in regards to race and...

Inequality: Race, Crime, and the Law Policing and punishment in America is hardly colorblind. It is not a coincidence that minorities serve longer sentences, have higher arrest and conviction rates, face higher bail amounts, and are more often the victims of police use of deadly force than white citizens. When it comes to criminals, many people have a preconception of what a criminal is. Usually when people think of a criminal they picture a Black or Latino face. The thought of an Asian criminal is often related to Asian gangs. Interestingly enough, White people as a group are rarely associated with the thought of crime, even though they account for 70% of arrests and 40% of the prison population each year (Russel xiv). This seems to be†¦show more content†¦Police brutality is known to be very common in the Bronx. With situations such as this one as well as the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, Blacks have become to fear the police. When a police car approaches them, they cant decide whether justice will be served or if the cops intentions are to harm or even kill them. The integrity of a police officer is not guaranteed to the citizen. In past cases police have been known to plant fake evidence simply to have a reason to arrest a suspect. As a result, African-Americans make up about 12% of the general population, but more than half of the prison population (Cole 4). With so much injustice being done to minorities in general, how can you expect minorities to respect a system that doesnt respect them? In fact, people are so quick to believe minorities are criminals that they are used as fake suspects by citizens who want to hide the real criminals. Racial Hoaxes are defined as: When someone fabricates a crime and blames it on another person because of his race OR when an actual crime has been committed and the perpetrator falsely blames someone because of his race. 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