Wednesday 16 May 2012

Editorial persuasive essay

Why the Extended Essay needs to be finished before the end of grade eleven! ......"................. The extended essay, not a simple task with the IB on your back. The extended essay is assigned to you a long time before the other final assessments for the other subjects you have and can be finished a long time before or just in time the first year ends. Finishing the extended essay before summer break is a good choice you have the option to make. ..................... The IB contains eight large areas, ToK, EE and the six subjects each student picks. Extended essay, a 4000 word essay with the question of your choice. It was given to you a month or two after your christmas break so there has been plenty of time to start. If you finish the essay before the first year ends you only have 7 out of 8 subjects over a period of 200 days, roughly. It is a load of work off your back. Not only is it a load off your back but you will have more time to focus on the other subjects and increase your grade so you can apply to the prestigous university you want to go to. ........................ The IB program stresses normal teenagers out and they freak out and procrastinate over their work. Finish the extended essay and you will have less stress and sleepless nights. In the second year in most subject you have a lot to learn and on top of that you have to study for exams. Procrastinating over the extended essay will only give you more work to do in a shorter period. It would be a waste of time, you could have spent the time before summer break to ease up your life for the upcoming year. Do your work and get it over with and you can spend your summer with relief. ....................... Mature, educated and sophisticated. It is known that when we grow we become more and more mature and sophisticated and we receive more knowledge about everything in general. This could happen over the summer and over the period of the last year and if it does it will drastically change the way you perceive the essay. You will also have a more conceptual understanding over the way to write the essay and what language best suits the context. But if you finish the essay before summer you can always revisit it and change it to some extent and that will not take that much time. ................ Finishing it before the break or end of year eleven gives you two options. Either you finish it completely and put it behind your back or you finish it roughly and revisit the essay to improve it with your more mature language and knowledge. You think it will only be a load of your chest but it will also improve your grade for the extended essay. Be less miserable and aggitated next year by finishing your extended essay
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Wednesday 9 May 2012

Persuasive and Essay Editorials.


In praise of ... literary bequests


First Doris Lessing, now Alan Bennett: for some leading writers, the season of goodwill is already here. Bennett is donating his entire archive to the Bodleian Library in Oxford; Lessing has given 113 of her letters to the University of East Anglia. Theirs may not be the most noteworthy of literary bequests: Shakespeare's famous second-best bed will always be hard to better. However, their gifts will delight scholars, along with the recent acquisition by the British Library of the papers of Ted Hughes. This £500,000 purchase, however, underscores Lessing and Bennett's generosity. In his essay A Neglected Responsibility, the poet and librarian Philip Larkin called for the archives of living writers to be secured. Even in the late 1970s he saw how British institutions would lose out on estates of the illustrious dead (thanks to the chequebook archivism of American libraries). For Larkin, the worth of such collections was twofold: meaningful and also "magical". Manuscripts reveal the evolution of a text, letters the evolution of writers. Such knowledge is not necessary to enjoy a work, but essential if we are truly to understand one. But the collector in Larkin also appreciated the other, more arcane, value of such papers: intimate, unique, thrillingly human. And now that word-processed manuscripts are the norm, and sterile emails have replaced dog-eared missives, Bennett's longhand drafts and scribbled-on typescripts are perhaps particularly worth celebrating.


- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/24/leadersandreply-leaders?INTCMP=SRCH


In praise of ... kimchi

Korean cuisine which marries raw vegetables with spices is enjoying growing popularity far west of Seoul or Pyongyang
If the thought of eating fermented cabbage makes you squirm, then perhaps you're not ready for it – but plenty of others are. Kimchi, a staple of Korean cuisine which marries raw vegetables with spices, is enjoying growing popularity far west of Seoul or Pyongyang. A spicier, more colourful, cousin of Germany's sauerkraut, it can lighten up a number of meals: simply eaten with rice, added to stews for depth of flavour, slathered on a fried egg sitting on top of a bed of wilted spring greens, or replacing onions in a hot dog. Variations are almost infinite, but a good start would be to bring together shredded Napa cabbage, daikon radish, garlic, ginger, fish paste and sugar, along with a generous helping of chilli powder. A few days fermenting in a glass jar does the trick – it is ready when the concoction starts bubbling. The result is pungent, but don't let the strange smell put you off: it's part of the experience. Best of all, it keeps for weeks.


Fugitive justice

Illinois is one of about a dozen states that protect close relatives when they help a family member flee the country to avoid prosecution, no matter how brutal the alleged crime.
On Wednesday, the Illinois House voted 114-0 to end that astonishing loophole.
The bill, inspired by the findings in the Tribune series "Fugitives From Justice," now goes to Gov. Pat Quinn. We trust he'll sign it.
This came to light in the outrageous case of Muaz Haffar, accused of beating to death Tombol Malik, a 23-year-old political science major at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 2005.
Haffar's father bought him a plane ticket so Haffar could flee to Syria to escape the murder charge, law enforcement officials told the Tribune. Haffar's father denies that he bought the ticket. What's undeniable: Haffar has never been extradited to face charges. His father couldn't be charged with assisting Haffar because Illinois law wouldn't allow it.
The bill, which also sailed through the Illinois Senate on a 52-0 vote, would apply only to relatives who are at least 18 and who intentionally helped prevent a fugitive's arrest or helped him flee the jurisdiction of the offense. The penalty: a one- to three-year prison sentence.
We hope that will make family members think twice before assisting a relative avoid criminal charges. We hope that will provide some measure of solace to families like Malik's, who still wait for justice.
There's a lot more work to do, in Illinois and across the country, to stop the flight of fugitives.
Credit U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. for taking the lead. Last month, he introduced a bill that would direct $1 million to $3 million a year to a fund dedicated to enhancing efforts to apprehend international fugitives. The new fund would come from bail bonds and other fees forfeited by federal defendants who flee justice.
In January, Durbin convened a meeting of top federal, state and local law enforcement officers to find ways to improve the government's faltering efforts to apprehend violent fugitives who cross U.S. borders to evade justice in Illinois.
The officials from the Justice Department and various northern Illinois agencies pledged to more closely coordinate their international fugitive apprehension programs. They said they would better manage mounting caseloads. They pledged to train local prosecutors and police in the long, complex and frustrating extradition process.
From Chicago to Cumming, Ga., police detectives have reopened cases. Three of the fugitives highlighted in the series have been captured in recent weeks.
So there is progress. But there are so many families out there who still wait, intensely frustrated that their families cannot find peace, cannot see justice. The Illinois Legislature took an important step Wednesday to stop that heartbreaking list from growing.

France evades reality


To sustain its economic future, a country needs reasonable taxes, an affordable public sector and an economic climate conducive to job creation. This is not exactly a blinding revelation in the United States or much of Europe, which has seen painful encounters with economic reality in Italy, Greece and Spain. But in France, it seems to be a well-kept secret.
The French are holding the first round of balloting on Sunday in their presidential election. Instead of coming to grips with the new constraints on leaders in a turbulent world economy, the candidates are running the other way. Incumbent Nicolas Sarkozyadvocates a tax boost on upper-income citizens, a higher value-added tax and an "exit tax" on French who have the nerve to leave the country.
That's the bad news. The worse news is that Sarkozy is the more conservative of the two main candidates. His opponent, who leads in the polls, is Francois Hollande. The Socialist candidate, who has said, "I don't like the rich," wants to raise the top income tax rate to a staggering 75 percent, hire 60,000 new teachers, and lower — yes, lower — the retirement age.
From all this, you might not guess that government spending is higher in France (56 percent of gross domestic product) than in any of the other countries in the eurozone, or that its public debt, already 90 percent of GDP, is swelling. Unemployment is stubbornly high, the result of chronically stalled growth.
Germany, by contrast, is prospering partly because of its relative fiscal discipline. It also pays lower yields on government bonds than the French government does, a tribute to investor confidence.
But the French seem oblivious to the obvious lessons that can be drawn. "It is not unusual for politicians to avoid some ugly truths during elections," says The Economist magazine, "but it is unusual, in recent times in Europe, to ignore them as completely as French politicians are doing."
Sarkozy won the last presidential race promising to downsize the overgrown government sector, but he's moved on. Though both candidates have promised to reduce the budget deficit to 3 percent of GDP next year, a report from the national auditing agency said neither has proposed cuts that would meet the goal.
The auditor also saw major peril in this refusal. "It is essential to prevent markets from sensing any risk of France's debt being unsustainable," said the report. "The snowball effect would ensure that the debt would quickly become uncontrollable." What would happen next requires no great imagination, thanks to the experience of countries like Greece: economic and political turmoil, with a crash program of fiscal austerity.
But the presidential candidates hold out the hope that the European Central Bank will somehow come to their aid by doing more to "support growth" even if it means feeding inflation. Given Germany's long-standing and unshakable belief in the importance of price stability, and its dominant influence over monetary affairs, Sarkozy and Hollande are deluding themselves.
At some point, France's leaders are going to have to come to grips with what needs to be done. They apparently plan to postpone that day as long as possible, which will only make it harder when it comes.
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Wednesday 25 April 2012

Article from the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/24/news-corp-leveson-inquiry-jeremy-hunt Jeremy Hunt urges Leveson inquiry to give him a chance to clear his name as Labour leader calls for him to resign First Sentence Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, has begged the Leveson inquiry to give him a chance to salvage his reputation after emails released by News Corp appeared to show that Hunt and his office passed confidential and market-sensitive information to the Murdoch empire to support its takeover of BSkyB. - 48 Words! Facing calls from the Labour leader Ed Miliband to resign, Hunt urged Lord Justice Leveson to change his hearings timetable and give him a chance to clear his name As the day-long questioning of James Murdoch ended, Hunt rushed to a meeting with David Cameron and the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to explain the emails and texts that appeared to show he ignored his commitment to MPs to act in a quasi-judicial and impartial capacity over the £8bn bid, one that only failed in the wake of the Milly Dowler phone-hacking furore. In the most dramatic day of hearings at Leveson yet, the inquiry was shown emails written by James Murdoch's chief lobbyist, Frédéric Michel, written the day before Hunt was due to make a market-sensitive statement to parliament, which appeared to indicate that he was minded to approve the bid in negotiation with News Corp. The statement came just a couple of days after the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson was forced to resign as communications chief at No 10 amid mounting hacking allegations. Michel told Murdoch at 3.21pm on Monday 24 January, with stock markets in London and New York open, that he had "managed to get some infos [sic] on the plans for tomorrow (although absolutely illegal!)" which set out the timetable of Hunt's announcement due next morning and quoted from the planned announcement. Hunt said that he wanted to negotiate with News Corp over potential undertakings in lieu (UIL) of a referral to the Competition Commission. Murdoch said on Tuesday that the reference to "illegal" material was a joke. A day earlier, Michel explained in an email to Murdoch what he understood to be the culture secretary's true thinking behind his public remarks. "His view is that once he announces publicly he has a strong UIL, it's almost game over for the opposition … He very specifically said he was keen to get to the same outcome and wanted JRM [James Murdoch] to understand he needs to build some political cover on the process." In another email, Michel reported a request from the Hunt team that News Corp "try and find as many legal errors as we can" in the Ofcom report on the public interest implications of the bid. When Hunt cancels a meeting with James Murdoch in November 2010 because he has received "very strong legal advice not to meet us today as the current process is treated as a judicial one", Michel reports to his boss that he can still talk to him on his mobile phone "which is completely fine". James Murdoch confirmed on Tuesday that Hunt had called him following this exchange. The emails were handed over by News Corporation on the order of the Leveson inquiry in a 163-page disclosure that had the effect of deflecting attention from James Murdoch's testimony, and even threatening to overshadow Rupert Murdoch's evidence on Wednesday. James Murdoch told Leveson that Michel was simply "doing his job" in trying to get the bid approved, and that in any event he took all communications with politicians with a "grain of salt". Hunt was co-operative because "he didn't want to take any heat alone" and that "I have never met a politician who did". The emails appear to show how News Corp expected Hunt to push for the BSkyB deal to be approved. After speaking to Hunt or a member of his team "before he went in to see Swan Lake" in February 2011, Michel told his boss: "I told him he had to stand for something ultimately … and show he had some backbone." Cameron's spokeswoman robustly defended Hunt, saying he had acted throughout on the basis of independent advice, in a process Hunt repeatedly described as "quasi-judicial". But Robert Jay, the QC for Leveson, suggested to Murdoch that the communications revealed amounted to the judge in a case "telling you behind the scenes ... that you're going to win". In a statement on Tuesday, Hunt pleaded for time, saying: "Now is not a time for kneejerk reactions. We've heard one side of the story today but some of the evidence reported meetings and conversations that simply didn't happen. Rather than jump on a political bandwagon, we need to hear what Lord Justice Leveson himself thinks after he's heard all the evidence. "Let me be clear: my number one priority was to give the public confidence in the integrity of process. I asked for advice from independent regulators – which I didn't have to do – and after careful consideration I followed that advice to the letter. I would like to resolve this issue as soon as possible which is why I have today written to Lord Justice Leveson asking if my appearance can be brought forward. I am very confident that when I present my evidence the public will see that I conducted this process with absolute objectivity and scrupulous fairness." His statement implies he believes he has Cameron's support to cling to office for months including through the Olympics since Justice Leveson is unlikely to report in the short term. Hunt was resting his defence partly on the admission by Michel that some of his internal emails referring to contacts with JH were in fact "no more than shorthand for what I was told by someone within Jeremy Hunt's office, almost invariably his special adviser Adam Smith". But Michel states: "His advisers were there to assist and advise Jeremy Hunt and it was my understanding that when they told me something, it was always on behalf of the minister and after having conferred with him." Hunt's aides were refusing to blame Smith, or accuse him of acting as a rogue operator, suggesting Hunt may have been aware of the content of these contacts. But Hunt's aides insisted the culture secretary will give evidence under oath and reveal his phone records. Miliband said: "Hunt should have been standing up for the interests of the British people. In fact it now turns out he was standing up for the interests of the Murdochs. He himself said that his duty was to be transparent impartial and fair in the BSkyB takeover. But now we know that he was providing advice guidance and privileged access to News Corporation. He was acting as a back channel for the Murdochs."
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Tuesday 24 April 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9225077/Mitt-Romney-sweeps-to-victory-vowing-end-to-Obama-presidency.html Mitt Romney "sweeps to victory vowing end to Obama presidency." His way to success and they compare him to Ronald Reagan, a renowned president from the 1980's. It kept me reading with the big topic of Obama and his end of presidency, begins with the who what when and then a quote which represents him and his way. His attacks on Obama and his harsh methods f winning the people over.
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Monday 23 April 2012

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Tuesday 6 March 2012

Extended essay

http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/briefing/index.html

The Cuban Missile Crisis - October 1962
Soviet field commanders in Cuba were authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if invaded by the U.S. The whole event was in the hands of R.F Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Us - Soviet Relations.
After a summit for the Berlin situation Khrushchev left thinking Kennedy was a weak president. Every superpower kept increasing their military power and the U.S.S.R felt threatened by the U.S. The U.S had nuclear weapons in Turkey which was close to the U.S.S.R. This tension between the two nation would inevitably lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Premier Fidel Castro was aware that the U.S government wanted to oust him of his position. During several events they tried, subsequently Castro became friend with Khrushchev who promised protection. The US cut off all businesses with Cuba. The soviet rushed to aid Castro and these factors lead to the placement of soviet  missiles in Cuba.
The crisis begins
It began when a pilot discovered soviet nuclear missiles (Check out the Recon Room,  http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/recon/recon_room.html which provides an in depth look at recon during the crisis.)
Kennedy was informed the morning the day after and assembled his 12 most important advisers the EX-COMM. Most of them supported air strike but they werent aware of Khrushchev, knowing communications with Moscow and Cuba was unreliable and that he had advised soviet field commanders to used tactical nuclear weapons if the U.S was to attack.
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Wednesday 29 February 2012

The Great Swindle


The Great swindle
The video "The Great Swindle" was created to prove that ´Global Warming´ is a swindle but are they  using the right methods to evaluate the theories? The creators of the "The Great Swindle" have created a belief that it was created by high placed people, an economic conspiracy. They are using what they believe in and tries to find evidence to support their statements, this is called confirmation bias. In this essay I will evaluate the eight parts of the video and explain how they used confirmation bias and why the video is invalid.

In the first part of the video sequels they discuss areas such as CO2 n relation to global warming and the reason behind the idea of why anyone would create a conspiracy like this. The creators conspire again around the theroy of confirmation bias, having a belief and finding evidence to support it. The "scientists" in the documentary have an idea that the global warming is simply not human caused. They  take the example of CO2 and say it has been around for thousands of years and has no relation to the temperature. They took data from global warming evidence and dragged it out to fit their statement. Because the CO2 has been higher before does not mean there is not a global warming occuring. They also use the economy as an example of a reason to create this. They are trying to persuade people to understand why someone would do this and enable them to enchance their theory in the eyes of the audience.

The second video is relying the past experiences from long back to a closer past and have found evidence to support their theory. The evidence is mostly emotional and very basic and the reasoning behind it is not strong enough. They are pointing out that because in the past nothing happend they say that nothing will happend today. Again they found evidence to support their argument and to emotionally make conclusions out of pictures are simply nonscientific. Circumstances change all the time and they do not back it up with solid theory. "The ice fairs was a lot of fun for the people in the little ice age" is not a scientific argument, they are persuading people into believing that people enjoyed climate change before so why not today? They are using confirmation bias to support their own believes and the evidence is very narrow is each field. They also mention the relation between the industrialization and the temperature increase. When the industrialization began CO2 would increase but the temperature decreased when the rate of production of cars and etc was the highest. The scientific reasoning behind the arguments are shallow, it is based on emotions and unevaluated data. They still use confirmation bias and a very thin string of relations. They weigh the importance of their argument and the global warming.

The third video is disproving the statement that CO2 is a major cause of global warming. They crank down on the global warming theories and interpret them differently. They base their belief on evidence found through their experiments and theories. They do not look at the whole picture and only evaluates the part that concerns them.  They say that if CO2 is the reason behind global climate change, why has the temperature on the surface increased more than the temperature in the troposhpere. They make the statement that the theory of global warming does not relate and that the evidence falsefies their statement. A very shallow conclusion and there is no data evaluation, their reason is very basic and it does not show any sign of expertise. The "scientists" are using confirmation bias by finding evidence, not evaluating data properly and making assumptions based on the evidence. They are being cnfirmation bias by looking for evidence to support their belief, again. As in every part so far they try to win the audience by praising CO2, "every living creature emits CO2, it is not pollution, it is nature". They then look at the ratio of CO2 emission and say that industry only emits a small amount of CO2. They say it is insignifigant but shows no real calculations. How can we trust them if they do not show us that they are experts?

In the fourth video they "evaluate" the relation between the sun and the temperature and "proves" the irrelevant relation between CO2 and temperature. There are a lot of questions to ask about their arguments and it only proves that their reasoning is very hollow. They make the conclusion by a graph that CO2 and temperature moves differently and that means that they are not related. They make the conclusion that sun and temperature are directly proportional and therefore the CO2 and temperature relation i irrelevant. The sun obviously is the source of temperature and will always have a relation with temperature but the small deviation in the relation could be a result of CO2. They do not elaborate on the areas and briefly explain it creating a very basic understanding of the issues. They are like always looking for evidence to support their answers and they cross out the things with irrelevent theories.

In the fifth video it is discussed how Global warming is related to politics and environmentalists. The environmentalists are seen as strong advocated who want to go back to the medieval age and live primitively without CO2. They say that if they are against CO2 they are against industrialization and then they are against economical growth. They are weighing the importance of the CO2 in todays society. They also mention that they are against cars, development, growth and the US.The politicians are seen as greedy and that they created an area of issue to raise money and if this were to collapse it would result in great loss in jobs. The right winged capitalist Margaret Wente created an alliance with the left environmentalists in a campaign for global warming. Environmentalists to save the world and the politicians for fundings. They are trying to prove that those who believe in global warming are either insane or greedy in a sense. They are portraying the global warming group in a negative picture to persuade their audience.

The sixth video is about a new branch of journalism and the program models used to calculate future temperature. They convey the message that journalists are going to the extreme in order to keep their jobs and that the program models cannot really be trusted. They say that the modeling of the future can be way off and it is only as good as its assumptions. They do not mention the whole picture, what is a good assumption and how would they rely on it. It is simple and straight forward. They also blame the environmentalist journalists for being bias. They base their articles on small issues and make them radical, like any other journalist. Journalists also "blame" nature catastrophes on global warming. Environmental journalists are not different from other journalists and I do not need to be an expert to say that. Journalists want people to read it and go to extreme lengths to catch their audiences eyes. Again portraying the environmentalists in a negative frame.

After all the videos I have seen it is quite easy to make a conclusion. The creators and the context of this video are not reliable. The "scientists" are using confirmation bias in almost every argument and have failed to mention important factors. They make quick conclusions by using the data found for global warming and then found "evidence" that looks the same and said they are correlated. They say that global warming's evidence is irrelevant just because their evidence is more a like the other evidence. The Great swindle is itself the Great lie.
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