Railway Station Essay Example for Free

Railway Station Essay The stench of boiling coffee wafted around the deserted railway station, there were flutters of pigeons scuffling around, scrounging all the left over nibbles that had been left on the floor by the commuters from the evening before. It was dawn and as the sun was rising, so was a brisk wind that every now and then swarmed through the dark station whisking away severely crumpled newspapers that on their round, the cleaners had missed with the dust pan and brush earlier that morning. The hustle and bustle of the ordinary public hurled its way into the calm, collected station. Information boards began to rustle and the sounds of trains departed from what was now like another world, the smelly crammed station that had lost all its sense of dignity was now ready and waiting for what the day had in store. When people boarded the train that was due to take them to their destination it was like they had no concept of what was going on around them, completely oblivious to all the other passengers. Newspapers went up in the hot and clustered train compartment and people tucked themselves away in them for the duration of their journey even if they had already read it all, they would do anything to avoid the eye of a fellow commuter. The old escalators whined as they continually roamed up, and then back down again, as they carry frustrated, dizzy passengers who are always having to hurry around, never having anytime to stop on there busy, rushed route to work. Along one of the hard, cold walls a man sat there still, with his dog as a companion, eagerly anticipating the kind passer by, who frequently would be able to spare a moment of their time to drop in a few valuable Pennines. A warm, soft smell filled the right hand side of the station. The shoe polish from the repair stand that made everyone tilt there heads towards as the brushed by. Every now and then a well groomed business man popped in and had his shoes polished, before returning to his recurring hassle of his job. Throughout the chilled station a repeated yell took place every so often, coming from the four newspaper stalls, which echoed all around the station, Standard, come and get ya standard. The friendly face that occurred in the same place, at the same time, every day of the working year. Desperate to sell the days loads of papers to the commuters passing through the station. The stench of boiling coffee wafted around the deserted railway station, there were flutters of pigeons scuffling around, scrounging all the left over nibbles that had been left on the floor by the commuters from the evening before. It was dawn and as the sun was rising, so was a brisk wind that every now and then swarmed through the dark station whisking away severely crumpled newspapers that on their round, the cleaners had missed with the dust pan and brush earlier that morning.

Technological Progress In Computer Industry :: essays research papers

Comparison and contrast essay Technological progress in computer industry. Computer one of the most important and necessary things in our life. There are different tasks that can be performed with computer such as: typing documents, making worksheets, sending mail, just playing with a computer and many others. But all these different tasks would be done better and faster with the Pentium 4 computer than with the Pentium 2 computer. The computer with  «Pentium 4 » chip is better than the computer with  «Pentium 2 » chip. As I’ve already said, different types of tasks can be done better by the more powerful computer. The measure of power or performance among computers is the number of machine cycles done per second. It is usually called cycle speed. The cycle speed is measured in megahertz (abbreviated MHz, which stands for million of cycles per second). Computer with Intel  «Pentium 2 » chips had cycle speed from 200 to 400 MHz, thus they could handle only simple operations like word processing, mail sending and receiving. These computers cannot work even with graphics, because they don’t not have enough power. The recent innovation, Pentium processor, gave the opportunity to work not only with sophisticated word editors, but also with graphics and animation. Pentium enables people to organize tough databases, where records can be found in some seconds. Pentium processor cycle speed is ranging from 600 MHz to 1200 MHz nowadays. Having made all calculations It can be stated that an a verage Pentium 4 with 800 MHz cycle speed is 40 times faster and more powerful than the best computer with Intel Pentium 2 chip and 200 MHz cycle speed. Not only performance makes such a huge gap between these two computers, but also upgradability. Upgradability means that an owner of a computer can easily install a new hardware into a computer or just update the old one. The  «motherboard » of a pentium 2-model computer did not allow to install different internal features, while the  «motherboard » of a Pentium 4 computer did allow to do that. There are lots of hardware types like CD-ROMs, VideoCards, AudioCard, and internal modems, and all these devices can be easily installed into the Pentium 4 computer. The RAM (Random Access Memory) of a Pentium 4 computer can be upgraded up to 2 GB (2 Gigabyte is (2048)3 bytes which makes 1.

Culture and Culturally Competent Counselors Essay

Being Culturally Competent Letitia Batton Walden University Being Culturally Competent Counselors should have a sense of compassion and respect for people who are culturally different. As a social worker, it is easy to make diagnosis based on verbal and non-verbal presentation of our clients. Hays (2008) stated there are many factors to assess which include race, class, family structure, culture, relationships, religion, and generational/cultural influences. Based on the case study of Mrs. Hudson her externalizing behaviors may stem from an underlying anxiety disorder. It seems that her attacks are not medical in nature that is why she was referred by her primary doctor. She just recently started having these attacks and they happen out of the home and when she has to interact with others. Her assessment reveals that she is presently considered middle class, attended church prior to attacks, family oriented, and educated. Some potential concerns could be her daughter’s illness and past issues with her father that never got closure. Haitian culture relies on spiritual healing more so than Americanized tradition and this may be a big step for Mrs. Hudson (Pierce & Elisme, 2001). Counselors must be trained and competent when implementing diagnosis with culturally diverse clients. (Sue, 2008). DSM-IV provides counselors a tool to evaluate client’s cultural context (Hays, 2008). This process helps counselor’s assess their client’s background, cultural explanation of their issues, client’s environment, relationships, and overall cultural assessment to diagnosis and treatment (APA, 2002). Researchers have argued that the DSM-IV does not accurately represent all minorities (APA, 2002). It is important that counselors understand the family structure in order to provide the most accurate assessment information possible. Unfortunately, counselors are not immune to stereotypes. Beliefs in stereotypes, whether conscious or not, may lead to incorrect diagnosis and misunderstandings between the clinician and the client (Hays, 2008). These beliefs may stem from television or news reports. If believed, they may cause counselor to incorrectly interpret the diagnosis. When this happens the client may become offended and end counseling. Counselors should have knowledge of their own general views, as well as specific knowledge about diverse client’s issues (Sue, 2008). Diversity in family structure should also be taken into consideration when formulating goals and assessing treatment success or failure (APA, 2002). Counselors also attempt to understand the cultural values of each client to gain feelings of trust. Some issues with culturally competent assessments is that it is not race specific and whether existing instruments measure the correct attributes, based on different cultures (Hays, 2008). Diversity plays a role in many aspects of assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. Clarity in these three characteristics may allow counselors to better assist families from diverse backgrounds and that will bring about better treatment outcomes (APA, 2002). Counselors should have an attitude of cultural humility in knowing their limits of knowledge and skills in rendering diagnosis with certainty than reinforcing stereotypes and generalizations (Sue, 2008). While guidelines exist for conducting a culturally competent assessment, few of these guidelines provide the link between the information gathered, the initial decision making, and the development of the treatment plan (APA, 2008).

What Xenophobia Is With Examples

Xenophobia shapes public policy, drives political campaigns, and even sparks hate crimes. Yet the meaning of this multisyllabic word remains a mystery to many of the people who adopt xenophobic attitudes or find themselves subjected to them. Definition Pronounced zeen-oh-fobe-ee-ah, xenophobia is the fear or contempt of foreign people, places or things. People with this â€Å"fear† are known as xenophobes and the attitudes they have as xenophobic. While phobia refers to fear, xenophobes aren’t scared of foreign people in the same way that a person with arachnophobia fears spiders. Instead, their â€Å"fear† can best be compared to homophobia, as hatred largely drives their repulsion to foreigners.   Xenophobia can occur anywhere. In the United States, known for being the land of immigrants, multiple groups have been the targets of xenophobia, including Italians, Irish, Poles, Slavs, Chinese, Japanese and a variety of immigrants from Latin America. As a result of xenophobia, immigrants from these backgrounds and others faced discrimination in employment, housing, and other sectors. The U.S. government even passed laws to restrict the number of Chinese nationals in the country and to strip Japanese Americans from the country’s coasts. Chinese Exclusion Act More than 200,000 Chinese nationals traveled to the United States after the gold rush of 1849. Over three decades, they became 9% of California’s population and a quarter of the state’s labor force, according to the second volume of America’s History. Although whites excluded the Chinese from higher-wage jobs, the immigrants from the East made a name for themselves in industries such as cigar-making. Before long, white workers came to resent the Chinese and threatened to burn the docks from which these newcomers arrived. The slogan â€Å"The Chinese Must Go!† became a rallying cry for Californians with anti-Chinese biases. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to halt the migration of Chinese nationals. America’s History describes how xenophobia fueled this decision: â€Å"In other parts of the country, popular racism was directed against African Americans; in California (where blacks were few in number) it found a target in the Chinese. They were an ‘infusible’ element who could not be assimilated into American society, wrote the young journalist Henry George in a famous 1869 letter that made his reputation as a spokesman for California labor. ‘They practice all the unnameable vices of the East. [They are] utter heathens, treacherous, sensual, cowardly and cruel.’† George’s words perpetuate xenophobia by casting the Chinese and their homeland as vice-ridden and, thus, threatening to the United States. As George framed them, the Chinese were untrustworthy and inferior to Westerners. Such xenophobic opinions not only kept Chinese workers on the sidelines of the labor force and dehumanized them but also led to U.S. lawmakers banning Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Japanese Internment The Chinese Exclusion Act is far from the only U.S. legislation passed with xenophobic roots. Just months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, allowing the federal government to force more than 110,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast from their homes and into internment camps. Roosevelt signed the order under the guise that any American of Japanese descent was a potential threat to the United States, as they could join forces with Japan to commit espionage or other attacks against the country. Historians point out, however, that anti-Japanese sentiment in places such as California fueled the move. The president had no reason to view Japanese Americans as threats, especially since the federal government never linked any such person to espionage or plots against the country. The U.S. appeared to make some headway in its treatment of immigrants in 1943 and 1944, when it, respectively, repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and allowed Japanese American internees to return to their homes. More than four decades later, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which offered a formal apology to Japanese American internees and a payout of $20,000 to internment camp survivors. It took until June 2012 for the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a resolution apologizing for the Chinese Exclusion Act. Proposition 187 and SB 1070 Xenophobic public policy isn’t limited to the anti-Asian legislation of America’s past. More recent laws, such as California’s Proposition 187 and Arizona’s SB 1070, have also been labeled xenophobic for striving to create a sort of police state for undocumented immigrants in which they’d constantly be under scrutiny and denied basic social services. Named the Save Our State initiative, Prop. 187 aimed to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving public services such as education or medical treatment. It also mandated teachers, healthcare workers, and others to report individuals they suspected of being undocumented to the authorities. Although the ballot measure passed with 59 percent of the vote, federal courts later struck it down for being unconstitutional. Sixteen years after the controversial passage of California’s Prop. 187, the Arizona legislature passed SB 1070, which required police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspected to be in the country illegally. This mandate, predictably, led to concerns about racial profiling. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately gutted some parts of the law, including the provision allowing police to arrest immigrants without probable cause and the provision making it a state crime for unauthorized immigrants not to carry registration papers at all times. The high court, however, left in the provision allowing authorities to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws if they have reasonable cause to believe the individuals reside in the U.S. illegally. While that marked a small victory for the state, Arizona suffered a highly publicized boycott because of its immigration policy. The city of Phoenix lost $141 million in tourism revenue as a result, according to the Center for American Progress.   How Xenophobia, Racism Intersect Xenophobia and racism often coexist. While whites have been targets of xenophobia, such whites usually fall into the â€Å"white ethnic† category—Slavs, Poles, or Jews. In other words, they’re not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the Western Europeans historically deemed as desirable whites. In the early 20th century, prominent whites expressed fear that white ethnics were reproducing at higher rates than the WASP population. In the 21st century, such fears continue. Roger Schlafly, son of Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the conservative political group Eagle Forum,  Ã‚  expressed his dismay in 2012 about a New York Times article that covered the rise of the Latino birthrate and the dip in the white birthrate. He lamented the growing number of immigrants with little in common with the 1950s American family, which he describes as â€Å"happy, self-sufficient, autonomous, law-abiding, honorable, patriotic, hard-working.† In contrast, according to Schlafly, Latino immigrants are transforming the country to its detriment. He said that they â€Å"do not share those values, and †¦ have high rates of illiteracy, illegitimacy, and gang crime, and they will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps.† In short, since Latinos aren’t 1950s WASPs, they must be bad for the United States. Just as blacks have been characterized as welfare-dependent, Schlafly argues that Latinos are too and will flock to Democrats for â€Å"food stamps.† Still Prevalent While white ethnics, Latinos and other immigrants of color face negative stereotypes, Americans typically hold Western Europeans in high regard. They praise the British for being cultured and refined and the French for their cuisine and fashion. Immigrants of color, however, routinely fight off the idea that they’re inferior to whites. They lack intelligence and integrity or bring disease and crime into the country, xenophobes claim. More than 100 years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, xenophobia remains prevalent in U.S. society.