Crime Scene Reconstruction Essay Example for Free

Crime Scene Reconstruction Essay It has moved beyond a physical barrier allowing analysts to dissect the crime scene to identify evidence often missed simply walking through the traditional steps of sketching. There is now the opportunity for anyone to revisit the crime scene the next day, next week, or years from now. This is an important the crime scene leaving nothing to the Jurors imagination. According to the Department of Safety for the State of Connecticut, forensic crime scene reconstruction is the process of determining the sequence of events about what occurred during and after a crime (Department of Public Safety Scientific Services, 010). Crime scene reconstruction normally starts ideas of what happened during the crime and then moves to an analysis of the evidence at the scene. It focuses on gathering as much data and evidence to form a valid hypothesis. The hypothesis can then be subjected to various tests to prove or disprove the overall interpretation of the reconstruction. Once the reconstruction is formalized a theory can be determined in support of the reconstruction. There are three types of crime scene reconstructions. They are specific incident reconstruction, specific event reconstruction, and specific physical evidence reconstruction. Specific incident reconstruction involves reconstructing a crime scene where an accident or incident occurred. This will be needed during such incidences as traffic accidents or homicides. The purpose is to identify the types of evidence that can be associated with these incidents. Using specific event reconstruction, the sequence of events or timelines can be established. This form of reconstruction looks at how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together. With specific event reconstruction the sequence of events can be determined. The final type of reconstruction is specific physical evidence reconstruction. This involves evidence such as blood and bullets. Through reconstruction of blood splatter, it can be determined where the shooter was standing during a homicide. It will also help identify the location of the bullet if it is exits the body of the victim. Capturing the crime scene is an important part of the crime scene reconstruction process. Typical methods include sketching the crime scene using graph paper and a pencil or taking photographs from a digital camera. Both of these methods do provide a snapshot of the crime scene for preservation but, they do not capture the scene in its entirety. A sketch will note measurements of physical evidence in their relation to the victims body or to such items as furniture and doorways. However, it is completely relying on the investigator to supply accurate measurements and identification of the physical evidence. Using 3D technology, the entire crime scene can be analyzed for accurate measurements at anytime. An advantage that 3D technology has over other methods of crime scene reconstruction is that it can preserve the crime scene in a moment in time. This is vital if the scene is in a populated area and needs to return to its natural state as soon as possible. Think about a crash scene involving two vehicles on an expressway in Los Angeles during rush hour that resulted in a fatality. The time it takes to clear the scene is a very important variable when collecting the evidence. Under these conditions, there may be evidence that goes unnoticed by an investigator that is sketching the scene. Not to mention the time that it takes to do physical measurements. Using 3D technology can allow the investigator to collect the data and have confidence that nothing will missed. In order to capture a crime scene in its entirety multiple scans of the scene must be considered. The collection of data comes from only the viewpoint of the investigator. Consider capturing the image of an automobile. If we were to stand at the front of the automobile we would not be of the automobile to in order to collect a complete image. One tool used to collect 3D images from a crime scene is a calibrated digital camera. It uses a technology called stereo photography. Standard photographs are only 2-dimensional representations of what you see. 3-dimensional photographs are taken from two perspectives. Because we have two eyes, we will need two perspectives on a scene. By forcing each eye to see only one photograph, i. e. the left eye sees the left photograph and the right eye sees the right photograph, your brain will reconstruct the depth information from the two pictures and you will see a 3D image (3dphotography, 2010). The use of calibrated digital cameras allows the viewer to see the image as it would have been seen by the individual taking the pictures. When multiple photographs are combined, a reconstruction of the scene is created. Another tool that is used to collect 3D images from a crime scene is a 3D scanner or laser. A 3D scanner is known for high-accuracy and long range. Most 3D scanners can collect data from 900 feet away. It can operate in bright sunlight or total darkness, indoors or out. The built-in digital camera allows the measured 3D data (known as a point cloud) to automatically be mapped creating a 3D rendering of the scene (3D Forensic Mapping, 2010). The 3D scanner quickly digitizes a scene using both panoramic photography and 3D laser scanning which is the process of making millions of highly accurate measurements in Just a few minutes. The result is an accurate 3D representation of he scene from which any measurement can be made, even long after the scene has been vacated. Whether using a calibrated digital camera or a 3D scanner, it is time to create a 3D model of the data. The models are assembled in 3D animation software. This is when the data that was collected at the crime scene is put into the software. In the case of the using a calibrated digital camera, each pixel is assigned a coordinate. The coordinate is made up of XYZ; where X is an Easting coordinate, Y is a Northing coordinate, and Z is the elevation. The pixels or coordinates are then lotted on a 3 dimensional grid. If we consider a sketch that is typically performed at a crime scene, it is laid out on a piece of graph paper. The investigator assigns a certain measurement between squares and then plots all the relative items of the crime scene at the respected distance. This would be considered a 2 dimensional drawing where only X Y are plotted. In a 3D plot, it includes the Z value. This gives the 3 dimensional model its depth. So, the multiple photographs taken with the calibrated digital camera are overlaid, assigned a coordinate, and modeled into a 3D image. The 3D scanner is not much different from a calibrated digital camera, although it uses an infrared laser to collect data points instead of pixels. The hardware then assigns coordinates to each data point and the software plots them. A 3D scanner can collect as many as 100,000 data points per second (Oberle, 2009). This creates a huge advantage over using digital camera which can only collect upwards of 8 million pixels with each photo (Patterson, 2010). It would only take a scanner Just over a minute to surpass a digital camera in resolution. At this point, the scene is ready for review. With the combination of photo-like images the software will allow the viewer to spin the images 360-degrees. Looking at the computer screen, you will be able to enter the crime scene as if you were actually there. This can be copied and viewed by anyone with access to the 3D software. It becomes a crime scene, the more likely evidence will not go unnoticed. When reviewing the crime scene reconstruction, measurements can be achieved right from the office. Because each data point is assigned a coordinate, the distance formula can be used to calculate distances between two points. The software includes an algorithm that can quickly calculate the distance between any points selected by the user. Therefore, determining specific physical evidence reconstruction such as blood splatter is made possible back at the office. In blood spatter evidence, the measurements will help calculate the mass of each drop from the size of its stain, and use this to calculate its maximum potential velocity. Air drag would tear apart a droplet if it travelled faster than this limit (Marks, 2010). With that information, and an angle of impact estimated from the shape of the stain, the software projects a ealistic trajectory backwards in time to locate the origin of the blood spatter.

History Of Music An Overview

History Of Music An Overview The definition of music is defined in many ways; Websters definition is as follows an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, or harmony. There are many theories regarding when and where music formed. Many agree that music began even before man existed. Researchers point out that there are six periods of music and each period has a certain style of music that made what music is today. Here are some resources for you to better understand the history of music. (Estrella 2001) Music is traced back as far as ancient Israel a thousand years before Christ; King David composed and sang hundreds of songs called psalms. A few of them are written in the old testament in the book of Psalms. But music as we know it now, as having structure and form, may have begun in the 10th century with the Gregorian chants. These songs were organized and detailed with soloists and small groups singing distinctive parts. The music we are more in common with began around the year 1200 and soon after, troubadours singing folk music starting to appear in parts of Europe. The appearance of composers, made music, and the creation of the instruments such as the piano and lute. (Ezine Articles 2005) The years 1750 to 1820 is known as the Classical period with the piano being a composers instrument of choice. Mozart wrote his first symphony, Bach performed in London, and Beethoven was finally born. Many of the symphonies we enjoy today were written during this time. Music has truly evolved since this period though. In 1900, a man named Scott Joplin had composed and published the Maple Leaf Rag, an event many see as the beginnings of the music we know today as popular music. Soon after, new musical forms were taking hold. Jazz in the 1930s (Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday), big band music in the 1940s (Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington), and rock-and-roll (Elvis Presley, Chuck Barry) in the 1950s. Other countries (most notably France and Spain) were creating their own popular music during this time. (Ezine 2005) The three time periods I want to focus on is Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary. This is all known to us to day as Opera, RB, Rock, Hip Hop, Soul, etc. Music has been around for years and can be broken down into many stages or cycles. People everywhere all over the world make their own style of music. Every genre, sound, melody is different in some way. When we look at the medieval music, we are dealing with the longest and most distant period of musical history. Saint Gregory is credited with organizing the huge repertory of chant that developed during the first centuries of the Christian church, hence the term Gregorian chant. He was pope from 590 to 604, and the medieval era continued into the 1400s, so this period consists of music. One of the principal difficulties in studying medieval music is that a system for notating music developed only gradually. The first examples of musical notation date from around 900. For several centuries, notation only indicated what pitch to sing. The system for notating rhythm started in the 12th or 13th century. Gregorian chant is monophonic, meaning music that consists of only one melodic line without accompaniment. The beauty of chant lies in the serene, undulating shapes of its melody. We do not know who wrote the melodies of Gregorian chant. Like folk melodies, the music probably mutated as it was passed down through generations and eventually reached its notated form. Polyphony, music where two or more melodic lines are heard simultaneously, did not exist (or was not notated) until the 11th century. Unlike chant, polyphony required the participation of a composer to combine the melodic lines in a pleasing manner. Although most medieval polyphonic music is anonymousthe names of the composers were either lost or never written down at allthere are composers whose work was so important that their names were preserved along with their music. (Ezine 2005) Renaissance is reflected by the changing role of the composer in society. Unlike most of their medieval times, the great masters of the Renaissance were created in their own lifetimes. The technique of printing music, while slow to evolve, helped in the preservation and distribution of music and musical ideas. Sacred music was still predominant, though other music became more prevalent and more sophisticated. The repertory of instrumental music also began to expand significantly. New instruments were invented, including the clavichord and virginal and many existing instruments were improved. Masses and motets were the primary forms of sacred vocal polyphony. Other vocal forms included motets, madrigals and songs (generally accompanied by lute or a small instrumental ensemble or consort). Instrumental pieces were usually short polyphonic works or music for dancing. (Ezine 2005) Compared with the medieval style, Renaissance polyphony was lush and sonorous. The era between Josquin Desprez and Palestrina is known as the golden age of polyphony. Imitationwhere one melodic line shares, or imitates the same musical theme as a previous melodic linebecame an important polyphonic technique. Imitation was one method composers used to make complex music more easily comprehensible and give the listener a sense of structure. Imitative polyphony can be heard in the masses and motets of composers from Josquin onward and is featured in instrumental music by Byrd, Gibbons, and the Gabriellis. Baroque music is often highly ornate, colorful and richly textured when compared with its predecessors. Opera was born at what is considered to be the very beginning of the Baroque era, around 1600. This unique form combines poetry, theater, the visual arts and music. It came about because a group of Italian intellectuals wanted to recapture the spirit of ancient Greek drama in which music played a key role. The first great opera was Orfeo, by Claudio Monteverdi, first performed in 1607. Musics ability to express human emotions and depict natural phenomenon was explored throughout the Baroque period. Vivaldis famous set of concertos, The Four Seasons, is a famous example. Although imitative polyphony remained fundamental to musical composition, homophonic writing became increasingly important. Homophonic music features a clear distinction between the melody line and a subsidiary accompaniment part. This style was important in opera and other solo vocal music because it focused the li steners attention on the expressive melody of the singer. The homophonic style gradually became prevalent in instrumental music as well. (Ezine 2005) Many Baroque works include a continuo part in which a keyboard (harpsichord or organ) and bass instrument (cello or bassoon) provide the harmonic underpinning of chords that accompanies the melodic line. New polyphonic forms were developed, and as in the Renaissance, composers considered the art of counterpoint (the crafting of polyphony) to be essential to their art. Canons and fugues, two very strict forms of imitative polyphony, were extremely popular. Composers were even expected to be able to improvise complex fugues on a moments notice to prove their skill. The orchestra evolved during the early Baroque, starting as an accompanist for operatic and vocal music. By the mid-1600s the orchestra had a life of its own. The concerto was a favorite Baroque form that featured a solo instrumentalist (or small ensemble of soloists) playing against the orchestra, creating interesting contrasts of volume and texture. Many Baroque composers were also virtuoso performers. For example, Archang elo Corelli was famous for his violin playing and Johann Sebastian Bach was famous for his keyboard skills. The highly ornamented quality of Baroque melody lent itself perfectly to such displays of musical dexterity. (Grieg 2002) The word Classical has strong meaning, mixed with the art and Philosophy of Ancient Greece and Rome, along with their ideals of disciplined expression. The late Braque was complex and melodically different. The composers of the early Classical period changed direction, writing music that was much simpler to understand. Homophony music, another part of classical music in which melody and charm are distinct, and has dominated the Classical style is another form of classical music. New forms of composition were developed to accommodate the transformation. Santana Form is the most important of these forms, and one that continued to evolve throughout the Classical period. Although Baroque composers also wrote pieces called sonatas, the Classical sonata was different. The essence of the Classical Sonata is difficult to understand. A highly simplified example of such a conflict might be between two themes of contrasting character. (Grieg 2002) This contrast would be found during the course of the sonata, and then resolved. Sonata form allowed composers to give pure instrumental music recognizable dramatic shape. Every major form of the Classical era, including the string quartet, symphony and concerto was molded on the dramatic structure of the sonata. One of the most important developments of the Classical period is the growth of the public concert. Although the aristocracy would continue to play a significant role in musical life, it was now possible for composers to survive without being the employee of one person or family. This also meant that concerts were no longer limited to palace drawing rooms. Composers organized concerts featuring their own music, and attracted large audiences. The increasing popularity of the public concert had a strong impact on the growth of the orchestra. Although chamber music and solo works were played in the home or other intimate settings, orchestral concerts seemed to be naturally designed for big public spaces. As a result, symphonic music composers gradually expanded the size of the orchestra to accommodate this expanded musical vision. (Grieg 2002) Just as the word Classical conjures up certain images, Romantic music also does the same. Whether we think of those romance novels with the Romanticism implies fantasy and sensuality. The Classical period focused on emotional restraint. Classical music was expressive, but not so passionate that it could overwhelm the work Beethoven, who was in some ways responsible for igniting the flame of romanticism, always struggled (sometimes unsuccessfully) to maintain that balance. (Greig 2002) Many composers of the Romantic period followed Beethovens model and found their own balance between emotional intensity and Classical form. Others reveled in the new atmosphere of artistic freedom and created music whose structure was designed to support its emotional surges. Musical story-telling became important, and not just in opera, but in pure instrumental music as well. The tone-poem is a particularly Romantic invention, as it was an orchestral work whose structure was entirely dependent on the scene being depicted or the story being told. Color was another important feature of Romantic music. A large palette of musical colors was necessary to depict the exotic scenes that became so popular. In addition to seeking out the sights and sounds of other places, composers began exploring the music of their native countries. Nationalism became a driving force in the late Romantic period and composers wanted their music to express their cultural identity. This desire was particularly intense in Russia and Eastern Europe, where elements of folk music were incorporated into symphonies, tone-poems and other Classical forms. (Wagner 1999) The Romantic period was the days of the virtuoso. Gifted performers and particularly pianists, violinists, and singers became enormously popular. Liszt, the great Hungarian pianist/composer, reportedly played with such passion and intensity that woman in the audience would faint. Since, like Liszt, most composers were also virtuoso performers, it was inevitable that the music they wrote would be extremely challenging to play. The Romantic period witnessed a glorification of the artist whether musician, poet or painter that has had a powerful impact on our own culture. (Wagner 1999) This style of music became known as being romantic. The evolution of music is at least partly shaped by the influence one composer has on another. These influences are not always positive, however. Sometimes composers react against the music of their recent past (even though they might admire it) and move in what seems to be the opposite direction. For example, the simplified style of the early Classical period was almost certainly a reaction to the extreme intricacies of the late Baroque. The late Romantic period featured its own extremes: sprawling symphonies and tone-poems overflowing with music that seemed to stretch harmony and melody to their limits. It is certainly possible to view some early 20th century music as an extension of the late Romantic style, but a great deal of it can also be interpreted as a reaction against that style. 20th century music is a series of isms and neo-isms. The primal energy of Stravinskys Rite of Spring has been called neo-Primitivism. The intensely emotional tone of Schà ¶nbergs early music has b een labeled Expressionism. The return to clearly structured forms and textures has been dubbed neo-Classicism. (R. Strauss) These terms have been employed in an attempt to organize the diversity of styles running through the 20th century. Nationalism continued to be a strong musical influence in the first half of the century. The study of folk songs enriched the music of numerous composers, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams (England), Bela Bartok (Hungary), Heitor Villa Lobos (Brazil) and Aaron Copland (USA). Jazz and popular musical styles have also been tremendously influential on classical composers from both the United States and Europe. Technology has played a increasingly important role in the development of 20th century music. Composers have used recording tape as a compositional tool (such as Steve Reichs Violin Phase). Electronically generated sounds have been used both on their own and in combination with traditional instruments. More recently, computer technology has been used in a variety of ways, including manipulating the performance of instruments in real time. (R. Strauss) So as you can see, music has been around for centuries. Many people have helped music evolve over the years. The six long periods of music that were discussed above really helped music become what is today. Although each individual listen to various types of music they all started the same, with either a rhythm or beat. Music was originated long before humans even existed and grew from there. Music in general has made the world a better place. It gives people a way to express themselves. Music has been called The International Language; a very simple thought with much meaning behind it. Even if you cant speak the language of a country, you can move, sway, dance and most of all enjoy the music of the country. We may not understand the words of a musical selection but we do understand the beauty. (Ruth 2008) Musics interconnection with society can be seen throughout history. Every known culture on the earth has music. Music seems to be one of the basic actions of humans. However, early music was not handed down from generation to generation or recorded. Hence, there is no official record of prehistoric music. Even so, there is evidence of prehistoric music from the findings of flutes carved from bones. The influence of music on society can be clearly seen from modern history. Music helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. When he could not figure out the right wording for a certain part, he would play his violin to help him. The music helped him get the words from his brain onto the paper. In general, responses to music are able to be observed. It has been proven that music influences humans both in good and bad ways. These effects are instant and long lasting. Music is thought to link all of the emotional, spiritual, and physical elements of the universe. Music can also be used to change a persons mood, and has been found to cause like physical responses in many people simultaneously. Music also has the ability to strengthen or weaken emotions from a particular event such as a funeral. People perceive and respond to music in different ways. The level of musicianship of the performer and the listener as well as the manner in which a piece is performed affects the experience of music. An experienced and accomplished musician might hear and feel a piece of music in a totally different way than a non-musician or beginner. This is why two accounts of the same piece of music can contradict themselves. (ODonnell 2001) According to The Center for New Discoveries in Learning, learning potential can be increased a minimum of five times by using this 60 beats per minute music. For example, the ancient Greeks sang their dramas because they understood how music could help them remember more easily). A renowned Bulgarian psychologist, Dr. George Lozanov, designed a way to teach foreign languages in a fraction of the normal learning time. Using his system, students could learn up to one half of the vocabulary and phrases for the whole school term (which amounts to almost 1,000 words or phrases) in one day. Along with this, the average retention rate of his students was 92%. Dr. Lozanovs system involved using certain classical music pieces from the baroque period which have around a 60 beats per minute pattern. He has proven that foreign languages can be learned with 85-100% efficiency in only thirty days by using these baroque pieces. His students had a recall accuracy rate of almost 100% even after not r eviewing the material for four years. The article above discusses how the history of music not only helped human beings but impacted their lives greatly to where we learn better and think better. (ODonnell 2001)

Social Media and Law Enforcement | Essay

Social Media and Law Enforcement | Essay Social media is becoming routine in everyday interactions, including being involved with crime. While there has been an increase in using it to start and partake in crime, there has also been an interest in using it to help combat and solve crimes. There are many ways social media can be used to aid the Police, one is by visiting the pages which the user has updated themselves to see if they have inadvertently disclosed information which could hold them accountable for certain crimes by either revealing a picture or information relevant to the crime which has been committed, or noticing a change in lifestyle as a result from the offense. These could be monitored by the Police or sent in as a tip from a source which could lead to the crime being solved quicker than without social media. Studies within America have the support of the Police force and would like to use social media more within investigations, however lack of education on the subject means time could be wasted by not understanding the information as well as finding it. There is also a fine line with using social media to find information relevant to the crime and using this irresponsibly and finding information through unethical means. The public have also been using social media to help solve their own crimes by drumming up interest and getting others involved and talking about the topics to build publicity to solve a crime. These could have been achieved through the loss of a person or pet or by attending an event where the organisers actively promoting social media use to keep the peace within an event. These have then stemmed into other websites being set up based around this to help solve crimes for the future. When the general public get hold of information regarding criminals, they have taken it upon themselves to publicise this within their community to warn other people of the dangers within the local area. This has had drastic effects, especially when promoting about individuals who have served their time for crimes in the past. There have been on-going debates over whether this information has been allowed to be disclosed and resulted in several court battles with pages from the internet being removed as the information is not theirs to disclose. Within the UK, large scale crimes have resulted in companies setting up various pages online and through social media to help solve crimes and promote safe environments. Due to this, there is already a large network of active users who can help promote these messages and support them in reducing crimes. These need to be modified and adapted within the constraints of the companies, which are largely cost based, in order for them to become sustainable for the future in solving crimes. Introduction In September 2012, Facebook reached 1 billion users worldwide (Fowler, 2012) with Twitter following in second place with over 500 million users (Herngaard, 2012). The audience, therefore, to potentially help prevent or to initiate crimes through social media is huge and constantly growing with more people joining these websites and others every day. Social media including Twitter and Facebook are a tool used by the masses for inciting disorderly behaviour. However, as much as social media is being used to start antisocial behaviour, it is also being used to try to combat these actions and be used in a more productive and constructive way. Information Present Through Social Media Since social media gained popularity, the public are more willing to disclose private information through these to friends or acquaintances. On Facebook, a study undertaken in 2005 disclosed that only 0.03% of profiles investigated showed no information of value which could be used to either identify individuals or to source information about individuals (Gross Acquisti, 2005). From this, social media users enable themselves to being visible to anyone who comes across their personal page. This is also the same for Twitter users whose profile is automatically public unless the privacy settings are configured. Therefore many people could be unknowingly uploading personal information about themselves which could be accessed by criminals, their employers or even the Police. Trotter (2012) mentions that social media is a means for communication, but it is increasingly a source of information for the police, which is true of particular cases. Certain criminals including Michael Baker from Kentucky, USA posted a picture of himself siphoning petrol from a Police car on Facebook which later led to his arrest over the crime (Siu, 2012). While this case is obvious to the police that the user has committed the crime, other more subtle ways have been used such as flaunting goodies which have been stolen or bought through crime. LexisNexis (2012) investigated over 12000 law enforcement professionals and showed that 69% questioned had use social media as part of crime investigation. The main reason this is not used more thoroughly is due to lack of training or lack of use within office hours or computers. If more law enforcement professionals were able to use social media within office time, this could help officers within investigations to speed up finding information on top of what has been readily provided, with 67% people questioned agreeing that it will solve investigations quicker. This would lead to more time during the working day to work on other investigations, and in turn solving more crimes than before. Current uses of Social Media by Police Keeping up with innovation, multiple local authorities within the UK, including the Metropolitan Police, are setting up Facebook pages to create awareness within the community. However, in such an early state of social media being used by the Police, many disclaimers indicate that this is not a method to report a crime but to promote public safety and campaigns within the area. This has increased the visibility of the police forces which may be useful if using social media in the future to help report and solve crime as there will already be a base of users readily connected to the service. The reason that these websites cannot be used to report crimes is due to the lack of Police man hours which could be spent monitoring these websites. Lothian and Borders Police in Scotland are one of the first forces in the country to actively allow Facebook users to report crimes online through their Made from Crime initiative, launched August 2011 (Cotton, 2011). The site was to catch criminals who are living beyond their means using the proceeds of crime by allowing anonymous tips through the Facebook page or Crimestoppers Website. Crimestoppers have also launched an application for use on smartphones called TipSumbit to help report crimes in USA through tips or videos directly to the Police (Urbaszewski, 2012). Both of these methods allow the user to remain anonymous which can be a certain appeal for witnesses. However, with both communications being relatively new to the field, there is limited monitoring by the Police so tips sent in may not be read and acted upon instantly, which could lead to the information becoming out of date. This could be counteracted by employing more employees within the police in UK, however, due t o government budget cuts; the police force has been declining for the last couple of years with over 24,000 police jobs being lost since the general elections (Burns-Murdoch, 2012). For an application or website such as these to work efficiently a significant amount of money would needed to be invested into it for it to have a chance to succeed. The current economic situation in this country is one of many reasons why this improvement in reporting crimes is occurring at a slow pace and has not taken off nationwide. Leveson Inquiry In 2012, the Leveson Inquiry was brought about after there were breaches in the privacy of both celebrities and the general public which warranted the investigation into the media and how it acted. It recommended a new independent body to moderate the press. Although this is regarding the current press, which is mainly newspapers, similar findings can be applied to social media as news is slowly moving into online media including social media so the recommendation from Leveson can be used for the data provided on social media websites. Leveson (2012) concludes that there have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist. This could be used to describe the Police using social media to support investigations it undertakes when looking for evidence online. The Police have not been trained to use it, nor is the data valid so using it would be a breach of ethics. The information, although has been proved useful in certain cases, if its not obvious, could lead to the Police jumping the bandwagon and following a suspect who may not be the person they are looking for or hold an individual responsible for a crime they did not commit if the information they have provided online was misinterpreted. As all data inputted through social media is self-edited, it may not be truthful, so should not be taken for granted. This is where using social media to help solve or understand crimes is unreliable due to the freedom people have with what they post and upload to these websites. Self Policing The general public has tried to use social media itself to self-promote crimes to help solve them. This has worked well through certain websites, mainly twitter, to drum up publicity for the crime to solve it. The majority of cases where this has worked are when a pet has been stolen, such as Charley, a 12 week old bulldog who was stolen and found through twitter due to friends and family tweeting about the puppy to drum up interest (BBC, 2012). Through the combined effort of conversation online and people talking about the missing dog offline, Charley was discovered. This may not have happened, or at least not as quickly, if the attention had not been brought to the front of the publics mind through twitter. Small firms, such as one in Erie, Pennsylvania, have created their own Facebook sites to publicise lost pets with their owners and have achieved a 50% success rate with users of the site (Van Rheenen, 2012). This could prove to be more effective than twitter as the focus of the website is on missing pets, however, visitors may not go onto the website if they have not lost a pet themselves. The rescue efforts would then be limited to active users of the website. Certain companies have also tried to rally consumers at large events to help report crimes as they occur during the affair. This occurred at Download Festival 2010 where the promoters encouraged festival goers to tweet through a monitored twitter stream any problems occurring at the festival. There was a 41% reduction in crime compared to the year before (BBC, 2010a). Due to decrease in crime at this large event, other festival organisers could use this as it seemed to have a beneficial effect on the customers by improving their safety. Controversial Facebook Pages As mentioned earlier, one major problem with the Police using social media to report or help solve crime is the lack of funding to use it as a reliable resource set up and monitored through the Police. This has led to groups of individuals creating Facebook groups to warn others of the problems within their local communities. The most publicised case of its kind was in Northern Ireland where Keeping our Kids safe from Predators was launched. At first it was used by parents to alert others about paedophiles in the local area which has been brought about more through Sarahs Law, which is a Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme which allows parents to ask the Police whether or not a person with access to their child is a sex offender (BBC, 2010b). This does not provide as much information as Megans Law in America which also provides parents with information such as addresses of paedophiles. The information provided through this should be given to the parents who ask for it and not passed on to others. Information obtained through this has been made public on Facebook pages which have led to convicted criminals being the centre of hatred from the wider community. One unnamed offender claimed the content found on the website was a breech to his right for privacy which led to degrading treatment through the site. This in turn led to actions against him in the real world which jeopardised his safety. This individual was convicted and charged for his crimes over 20 years ago and believed he had served his time; however the parents within the community did not and deemed him still to be a danger to society, which escalated into the abuse online. A judge ruled that the man was within his rights to a private life, regardless of past convictions and the page was shut down within 72 hours (Silverman, 2012), however follow up pages have been set up but not to the extent of the original one. The results from this case have produced an on-going discussion to whether or not parents should be allowed to publicise information they have obtained to protect local children. However, this case has confirmed that criminals have a right to privacy, no matter how long ago they were convicted. Nevertheless, from this, there could be a way for parents to be able to obtain the information, such as maps of areas (large enough not to be able to identify individuals from it) to show if they live in a high risk area of criminals. This could give parents peace of mind without having to obtain sensitive information from the Police. Though, the Police have limited resources so producing and maintaining a system such as this would be unfeasible at the moment. Funding could become available if there was an increased demand for this and if they could prove it would be worthwhile for the communities exposing the privacy of past criminals. The London Riots In Summer 2011, riots broke out across the country after starting in London. There was a large presence online with starting and organising riots, but also with helping to clean up after the riot. Crimestoppers, a crime fighting charity, reported a large increase in twitter followers during the riot which it used to promote ways to report crimes or posted pictures of crimes happening in the local areas to help the Police with their investigations (Hall, 2012). They regarded social media as a quick effective way to contact the public to give information about the rioters including where to avoid. Additionally, the Metropolitan Police also set up a Flickr site after the riots to try and catch criminals who were still at large (London Disorder Haringey, 2012). Although they do not promote this, it is still present on the internet for anyone to use and to come forward with any additional information they have. After the riots, Crimestoppers set up several online ways it can provide information to the public as well as receive tips about crimes through their website. A sizable network of followers on Twitter and their website means that if a large scale crime was to occur again, Crimestoppers would be well equipped to provide information to the public and would probably gain tips quicker and in greater numbers. Although Crimestoppers only allows crimes not of an urgent nature to be reported on their website, if the demand increased for reporting crimes online, more employees could be used to monitor the tips on the website which would be answered quicker. Recommendations From addressing the points within this report, it is clear that the general public needs to be educated with regards to social media. As it is a relatively new technology, the rules and regulations regarding this are being modified everyday when a new problem arises. A school in Somerset has started to address problems within social media by teaching students about it as part of the curriculum (Walker, 2012). This will assist new users of the dangers of writing information online and who is able to see it. This should be introduced nationwide as lessons such as this are invaluable for children as it can open their eyes to the dangers of what they post online. Using social media as a way of reporting crimes is a difficult issue to address. Due to the lack of funding within the Police which is constantly being cut by the government and charities such as Crimestoppers relying solely on money raised for the website to still operate, the chances of a network being set up and managed on a 24 hour basis may not happen within the next few years. However, using social media to monitor criminals and crime taking place would be a cheaper way to fight crime as no infrastructure would need to be set up as they would use the established social networks. Training would need to be undertaken by the officers who would be responsible for monitoring to avoid such blunders as shown by the Lothian and Borders Police in Scotland (Enoch, 2012) where Police Officers were seen befriending criminals. Strict budget cuts are forever present within the Police, so finding the money and time for officers training for social media may prove costly and ineffective in the long run. An alternative way could be to hire an external online research company as they would have greater knowledge on the subject. This could be cheaper than in house but as the Police need to be secure with all information obtained and used within investigations, this may not be a suitable solution. However, until the issue of cost is overcome within the Police, then the recommendations cannot become a reality.

Mining In Canada :: essays research papers fc

The Importance of Mining Industry The importance of mining is definitely significant to Canada. Mining, is an important industry, and Canadians are very advanced in their mining technology, but during the mining process, there is certain level of pollution produced. The Canadian government and the mining companies have very good plans and controls toward this problem, while ensuring the smooth running of the industries, and also helping to create strong economy and employment. The world of today could not exist without mineral products. Canada produces about 60 minerals and ranks first among producing countries1. As well, Canada is the largest exporter of minerals, with more than 20 per cent of production shipped to world markets2. In a typical year, the mining industry is responsible for almost 20 per cent of Canada's total export earnings3 (See Appendix A). As for the employment rate, over 70 per cent of the mines are owned by Canadians and approximately 108,000 Canadians are directly employed in the mining industry4. Mining is very important in Canadian life. Not only do the products power the family car and heat the family home, the manufacturing sector, the high tech industries and even the better known resource industries are all dependent, in some way, on the mining industry. The mining industry will continue to be an important support to the economy. Mining is taking full advantage of the quick expansion of computers and microelectronics. These technologies are found in nearly every aspect of mineral development activity - from exploration methods, through production, mineral processing and even marketing. Computers and related equipment now have a lot of different applications in geophysical logging, geochemistry, geological mapping and surface contouring5. At the mine planning stage, the job of designing a mine is now greatly simplified by automation. Through the use of advanced software, geological models can be produced from drill hole data. Computers are also being used to develop plans for mine expansion, develop mining schedules for yearly, quarterly and in some cases, weekly operations. At the operating stage, this new technology is everywhere6. Both in research and operational applications, automated mine monitoring systems now determine immediate information on the status of equipment in underground or remote locations. Canada produces its 60 mineral products from roughly 300 mines across the country7. Before these products can make the trip from mines to the marketplace, they must be searched for, staked, tested, analyzed, developed.

Reuniting the Grey Wolf :: science

Reuniting the Grey Wolf In 1914 the United States Congress approved the funding to destroy wolves. Many of the Government bounty hunters decided to help farmers to protect there livestock from the destructive creatures. Sixty years later the wolves are considered as endangered. In 1973 the United State Congress passed another law (Endangered Species Act) this act stated that all endangered species could not be killed by anyone or they would face a fine of one thousand dollars and as much as one year in jail. So many organizations started programs to help the wild life one of which was called the Wolf Recovery Program. The Wolf Recovery Program was set to help gray wolfs adapted back into there natural habitat. Since the program has been started they have introduced over 160 new wolves into the wild. But not everybody was in favor of reintroducing wolves into the wild. Today the United States Fish and Wild life Service have been considering the removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list once I daho, Montana, and Wyoming raise enough wolves to be considered to continue to expand the wolf population, this requires that each of the three states have to have a management plan in effect to prevent the gray wolf from becoming endangered again. With the current attitude of the governments in these states federal support under the Endangered Species Act it would only serve to cause the wolves to become endangered once more, or at least, hold to absolute minimum of the population that the state scan pass off as a self-sustaining population. Many of the states like Idaho want to get rid of the gray wolves completely rid of in fact it has been said that â€Å"The State of Idaho is on the record asking the federal government to remove wolves from the state by the adoption in 2001 of House Joint Memorial No. 5. The position reflected in House Joint Memorial No. 5 continues to be the official position of the State of Idaho†. Now these are the problems facing the gray wolfs today . Farmers Many of the states legislature made room for the destruction of the gray wolf because they value the economies farming industries more than the preservation of wild life. The farmer aren’t helping with the restoration with many unsubstantial losses with no attempt to validate these statements. The settlers would let there cattle to roam off public property.

Lennie and George in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Essay

Lennie and George are considerably different from the other ranch workers mainly unlike the workers who are all shown to be lonely, George and Lennie have each other. They relay on each other and their dreams together. There is a bond of trust and friendship between the two main characters which is tragically highlighted in the closing lines of the novel. The novel ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck is set in the early 1930’s following the collapse of the New York wall street market known as the depression years. In this time there was heavy unemployment; migrant workers from all over America came to California where the novel is set in the Salinas valley in search of prospects of work. The ranch itself is a microcosm of the life for migrant workers in that time, their insecurities are shown through the characters such as Curley, Candy, Curley’s wife and also the life of Black people through Crooks. All the characters are lonely except for Lennie and George who have each other and this is shown through their hopes and dreams. Lennie and Georges history together opens up when George talks to Slim a character that everyone respects, even Curley. George openly speaks to Slim about the incident when George tells Lennie to jump into the river jokingly, but to everyone’s surprise Lennie jumps in without questioning George not realising he cannot swim and almost drowns if George didn’t rescue him, even then Lennie thanks George for saving him even though it was George who told him to do it in the first place. At this point George’s fear is shown at Leannie’s inability to comprehend logical and illogical things, George realises at that moment that if he is not careful Lennie could do the wrong thing again. George’s other fears are also shown in the incident at weed, while talking about it to slim he describes Lennie being ‘slow’ as he likes to touch everything he likes, just wants to feel it. So he reaches to feel a girls red dress and the girl screams, Lennie gets scared all he can think to do is hold on and that George had to hit him with a fence picket to make him let go. Again Lennie’s strength becomes an issue and the writer almost foretelling the future. George is afraid of Lennie not understanding right from wrong and his strength scares George making him think that he might to  what he did at weed again. Lennie is shown to be a child in a mans body . throughout the book he wants to be told their dream almost like a bed time story and doesn’t feel closure until he has been told it. And again like a child he likes soft and fury things relating to the reason why he likes to touch dresses. Lennie’s greatest fear of the all is that he won’t be able to tend the rabbits if he did something wrong like the incident at weed again, he is also afraid of his own strength and not being able to let go. Lennie and George’s dream of having a place of their own ‘living of the fat of the land’ and Lennie and his alfalfa patch and tending the rabbits, keep’s them going and hoping that they won’t have to worry about Lennie doing the wrong things again, and George being able to do what he wants do and not think about what will happen to Lennie. Their dreams create hope for other characters like Candy and Crooks even for a short while. On the face of it, it appears that Lennie, because of his mental immaturity, is totally reliant upon George for his survival and for obtaining work at various ranches. Equally important however, is the extent to which George relies on Lennie for companionship in the generally unfriendly and lonely environment of the migrant labourer. As George admits to Slim when discussing himself and Lennie ‘it’s a lot nicer to go around with a guy you know’. It can be seen; therefore that George might not be with Lennie purely out of a sense of pity or duty to Lennie’s aunt Clara. From the start of the novel Steinbeck raises the questions in the minds of the reader about why these characters should be involved in such an unlikely partnership: George is short of stature, intelligent and projects self-confidence, Lennie on the other hand, is a giant of a man, ponderous in his gait and his mind of a young child. The course of events that unfold are tragic, most of it starts with Curley and his insecurity about his height and his always willing to pick a fight with bigger men to prove he is not weak. Steinbeck calls him calculating and  pugnacious and gives him reptilian animal like qualities representing his behaviour to a crocodile while Lennie is shown to have bear and horse like qualities compared to animals with admirable traits. Ch 3 begins when Curley busts in looking for Slim who he thinks is with his wife. When Slim re-enters the room telling Curley that he’s sick of Curley asking him about his wife. Curley can’t fight with Slim so he moves to Carlson who warns him not to pick a fight with him, as they all join in Curley feels defenceless and so turns on to Lennie given any excuse to fight with him. As Curley begins to fight him, Lennie gives out a cry of terror and turns to George for help as he was too frightened to defend himself. George immediately gets onto his feet yelling ‘Give it to him Lennie, don’t let him do it’. George was afraid of Lennie’s strength but he wouldn’t let Lennie go down like that he was protective over him. As Curley goes for another blow to the blood covered face, Lennie grabs his fist. Curley is described to be flopping as a fish. Then just like in weed Lennie held on to the closed fist being crushed by Lennie’s hand. It took both George and Slim to make Lennie let go. Curley was warned not to say a word about what happened. After this Curley’s wife became very interested in what happened actually happened to Curley’s hand but nobody spoke to her. When Lennie kills the pup in the barn, while wondering what to do Curley’s wife comes in. even though he shouldn’t talk to her he does, she tells him how she is lonely and just wants someone to talk too, also how unhappy she is in her marriage to Curley, this is the only point in the novel where her story comes out, how she was never loved at home, how she married Curley to get away from her life, her dreams of becoming famous in movies. As Lennie feels her hair vents repeat themselves he can’t let go and in her struggle to get free and Lennie’s fear that she will call George he breaks her neck in attempt to silence her again his inability to control his strength has taken a turn for the worst. He realises what he has done and remembers that if he did anything bad George said to go to the brush where he’d find him there, so Lennie quickly and quietly leaves. Candy is the first to find her in the barn and gets George who knows instantly what has  happened he tells candy to let him go to the bunk house first then tell the rest of them so he doesn’t look involved. There dream is destroyed and candy blames Curley’s wife, when he tells the rest of them Curley shows no sign of remorse all he can do is think about getting Lennie back. As they all take off to find Lennie, George manages to find him first by the lake; even now he is still afraid he won’t be able to tend the rabbits. George knows that there is no way out for them, knowing Curley he would just want to kill him he wouldn’t put him in jail, and if he let him go the Lennie couldn’t look after himself he would die without food, shelter and someone to look after him. George knew that he would have to kill him when he found Lennie. Just like Candy’s dog to put him out of his misery for the sake of Lennie. Also he couldn’t let someone else do it he told Lennie about their dream one last time as he told it he quietly put the gun to the back of Lennie’s head without him realising and shot him, it was a sympathy kill. At the end it is Slim who comforts him in telling George that he had to do it. Bibliography: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Eugene O’Neill Essay

INTRODUCTION 1. 1. Origin and Development of American Literature A fundamental difference subsists between American literature and proximately all the other major literary traditions of the world: it is essentially a modern, recent and international literature. The American continent possessed major pre-Columbian civilizations, with a deep heritage of culture, mythology, ritual, chant and poetry. Many recent American writers, especially recently, have looked to these sources as something essential to American culture, and the extraordinary variety and vision to be found there contribute much to the complexity  and increasing multiethnicity of Contemporary American experience. But this is not the originating tradition of what we now call American literature. That originated from the meeting between the land and usually despised Red Indians and the discoverers and settlers who left the developed, literatre cultures of Renaissance Europe, first to explore and conquer, then to populate, what they generally considered a virgin continent – a â€Å"New World† already promised them in their own mythology, now discovered by their own talent and curiosity. Owing to the sizably voluminous immigration to Boston in the 1630s, they brought their conceptions of history and the world’s purport; they brought their languages and above all , the book. The book was both a sacred text, the Bible (to be reinvigorated in the King James Authorized Version of 1611), and a general instrument of expression, record, argument, and cultural dissemination. In time, the book became American literature, and other things they shipped with it — from European values and prospects to post-Gutenberg printing technology– shaped the lineage of American writing. So did the early records kept of the encounter and what they composed of it. Of course a past was being ravaged as well as an incipient present gained when these travelers/ settlers imposed on the North American continent and its cultures their forms of interpretation and narrative, their Christian history and iconography. This American when first came into existence out of writing – European writing – and then went on to demand a new writing which fitted the harshness and grandeur of its landscape, the mysterious potential of its seemingly boundless open space. But â€Å"America† existed in  Europe long before it was discovered, in the speculative writings of the classical, the medieval and the then the Renaissance mind. â€Å"He invented America; a very great man †. Mademoiselle Nioche says about Columbus in Henry James’ The American (1877). 1. 1. 1. Periods of American Literature The division of American literature into convenient historical segments, or â€Å"periods,† lacks the consensus among literary scholars. The many syllabi of college surveys reprinted in Reconstructing American Literature, ed. Paul Lauter (1983), and the essays in Redefining American Literary History, ed. A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry W. Ward (1990), demonstrate how variable are the temporal divisions and their names, especially since the beginning of efforts to do justice to literature written by women and by ethnic minorities. 1607-1775 : This era, from the founding of the first settlement at Jamestown to the outbreak of the American Revolution, is often called the Colonial Period, in which writings were for the most part-religious, practical, or historical. William Bradford, John Winthrop, and Cotton Mather are the notable writers. The period between 1765 and 1790 is sometimes distinguished as the Revolutionary Age. It was the time of Thomas Paine’s influential revolutionary tracts; of Thomas Jefferson’s â€Å"Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom,† â€Å"Declaration of Independence,† and many other writings. The years 1775-1828, the Early National Period, ending with the triumph of Jacksonian democracy in 1828, signalized the emergence of a national imaginative literature, including the first American stage comedy (Royall Tyler’s The Contrast, 1787), the earliest American novel (William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, 1789), and the establishment in 1815 of the first enduring American magazine, The North American Review. Washington Irving achieved international fame with his essays and stories; Charles Brockden Brown wrote distinctively American versions of the Gothic novel of mystery and terror; the career of James Fenimore Cooper, the first major American novelist, was well launched. The span 1828-1865 from the Jacksonian era to the Civil War, often identified as the Romantic Period in America, marks the full coming of age of a distinctively American literature. This period is sometimes known as the American Renaissance, the title of F. O. Matthiessen’s influential book (1941) about its outstanding writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson,  Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne; it is also sometimes called the Age of Transcendentalism, after the philosophical and literary movement, entered on Emerson, that was dominant in New England. In all the major genres except drama, writers produced works of an originality and excellence not exceeded in later American literature. Emerson, Thoreau, and the early feminist Margaret Fuller shaped the ideas, ideals, and literary aims of many contemporary and later American writers. It was the age not only of continuing writings by William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, and James Fennimore Cooper,  but also of the novels and short stories of Pow, Hawthorne, Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the southern novelist William Gilmore Simms; of the poetry of Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the most innovative and influential of all American poets, Walt Whitman; And of the beginning of distinguished American criticism of Poe, Simms, and James Russell Lowell. 1865-(1914) The cataclysm of the Civil War and Reconstruction, followed by a burgeoning industrialism and urbanization in the North, profoundly altered American self-awareness, and also American literary modes. The years 1865-1900 are often known as the Realistic Period, by reference to the novels by Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James, as well as by John W. DeForest, Harold Frederic. These works, though diverse, are often labeled â€Å"realistic† in contrast to the â€Å"romances† of their predecessors in prose fiction: Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. Some realistic authors grounded their fiction in a regional milieu; these include (in addition to Mark Twain’s novels on the Mississippi River region) Bret Harte in California, Sarah Orne Jewett in Maine, Mary Wilkins Freeman in Massachusetts, and George W. Cable and Kate Chopin in Louisiana. Chopin has become prominent as an early and major feminist novelist. Whitman continued writing poetry up to the last decade of the century, and was joined by Emily Dickinson; although only seven of Dickinson’s more than a thousand short poems were published in her lifetime, she is now recognized as one of the most distinctive and eminent of American pets. Sidney Lanier published his experiments in versification based on the meters of music; the African-American author Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote both poems and novels between 1893 and 1905; and in the 1890s Stephen Crane, although he was only  twenty-nine when he died, published short poems in free verse that anticipate the experiments of Ezra Pound and the Imagists, and wrote also the brilliantly innovative short stories and short novels hat look forward to two later narrative modes: naturalism and impressions. The years 1900-(1914) although James, Howells, and Mark Twain were still writing, and Edith Wharton was publishing her earlier novels—are sometimes discriminated as the Naturalistic Period, in recognition of the powerful although sometimes crudely wrought novels by Frank Norris, Jack  London, and Theodore Dreiser, which typically represent characters who are joint victims of their instinctual drives and of external sociological forces. (1914)- 1939. The era between the two world wars, marked by the trauma of the great economic depression beginning in 1929, was that of the emergence of what is still known as â€Å"Modern literature†, which in America reached an eminence rivaling that of the American Renaissance of the mid-nineteenth century; unlike most of the authors of that earlier period, however, the American modernists also achieved widespread international recognition and influence. Poetry magazine, founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, published many innovative authors. Among the notable poets were Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and E. E. Cummings— authors who wrote in an unexampled variety of poetic modes. The literary productions of this era are often subclassified in a variety of ways. The flamboyant and pleasure-seeking 1920s are sometimes referred to as â€Å"the Jazz Age†, a title popularized by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). The same decade was also the period of the Harlem Renaissance, which produced major writings in all the literary forms. Many prominent American writers of the decade following the end of World War I, disillusioned by their war experiences and alienated by what they perceived as the crassness of American culture and its â€Å"puritanical† repressions, are often tagged ( in a term first applied by Gertrude Stein to young Frenchmen of the time) as the Lost Generation, a number of these writers became expatriates, moving either to London or to  Paris in their quest for a richer literary and artistic milieu and a freer way of life. 1939 to the Present, the Contemporary period. World War II, and especially the disillusionment with Soviet Communism consequent upon the Moscow trails for alleged treason and Stalin’s signing of the Russo-German pact with Hitler in 1939, largely ended the literary radicalism of the 1930s. A final blow to the very few writers who had maintained intellectual allegiance to Soviet Russia came in 1991 with the collapse of Russian Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For several decades the New Criticism—dominated by conservative southern writers. The Agrarians, who in the 1930s had championed a return from an industrial to an agricultural economy—typified the prevailing critical tendency to isolate literature from the life of the author and from society and to conceive a work of literature, in formal terms, as an organic and autonomous entity. The eminent and influential critics Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling, however—as well as other critics grouped with them as the New York Intellectuals, including Philip Rahv, Alfred Kazin, Dwight McDonald, and Irving Howe—continued through the 1960s to deal with a work of literature humanistically and historically, in the context of its author’s life, temperament and social milieu and in terms of the work’s moral and imaginative qualities and its consequences for society. The 1950s, while often regarded in retrospect as a period of cultural conformity and complacency, was marked by the emergence of vigorous anti-establishment and anti-traditional literary movements: the Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; the American exemplars of the literature of the absurd; the Black Mountain Poets? Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan; and the New York Poets, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery. It was also a time of confessional poetry and the literature of extreme sexual candor, marked by the emergence of Henry Miller as a notable author. The counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s continued some of these modes, but in a fashion made extreme and fevered by the rebellious youth movement and the vehement and sometimes violent opposition to the war in Vietnam. Important American writers after World War II is Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, Saul Bellow, R P. Warren, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and many others. 1. 2 RISE OF AMERICAN DRAMA â€Å"In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? † -Sydney Smith, The Edinburgh Review (1820). This was the most profoundly preconceived thought around the world before the epoch of American Drama among many literary critics as well as the literate people, half of those harsh comments were due to impediment and the remaining were sort of ill-treatment. â€Å"There is not, and there never has been, a literary institution,  which could be called the American Drama† †¢ Dion Boucicault This statement provoke very little argument from most American critics more than a hundred years later. In fact, the neglect of American drama is so pervasive that Ruby Cohn, in her history of twentieth-century drama for the Columbia Literary History of the United States (1988), begins with the observation: â€Å"Given the chokehold on drama of a misnamed Broadway, given the lure of Hollywood, and given the power of some small-minded reviewers in the daily press, it is a virtual miracle that American drama merits admission to a history of American literature†. Despite its segregation from the main corpus of American literature, American drama has never been written in a vaccum. It has mirrored peculiarly American social, political, and historical issues in traditional as well as challenging forms and experimental styles. It has been the forum for a plurality of American voices. American drama has always responded to national and regional problems, either in reifying prevailing sentiments or by challenging dominant ideologies. Like other forms of American literature, drama embodies the American struggle. For decades scholars and critics of American literature, engaged in establishing discipline with  canonical hierarchies and feeling embattled in the face of longer-lived English literary studies, have practiced generic hegemony; as a consequence, American drama historically has been the most devalued and overlooked area in American literary studies. Besides all these, there was great theatrical activity during the 19th century a time when there were no movies, TV, or Radio. Every town of any size had its theater or â€Å"opera house† in which touring companies of actors performed. However, no significant drama was performed in this century, with audiences preferring farce, melodrama, and vaudeville to serious efforts. European drama, which was to influence modern American drama profoundly, matured in the last third of 19th century with the achievements of three playwrights: Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Anton Chekhov. Ibsen who was profoundly influenced by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, tackled subjects such as guilt, sexuality, and mental illness. Strindberg brought to his characterizations a unprecedented level of psychological complexity. And Chekhov shifted the subject matter of drama from wildly theatrical displays of external action and emotions to the concerns of everyday life. These trio presented characters and situations more or less realistically chiefly known as â€Å"slice-of-life† dramatic technique. Soon after the beginning of the 20th century, realism became the dominant mode of American drama. Very soon after the little theaters off Broadway succeeded with realistic plays. In 1916 and 1917, two small theater groups in New York (the Provincetown Players and the Washington Square Players) began to produce new American plays. They provided a congenial home for new American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill, whose first plays were produced by the Provincetown Players in MA. These small play groups would produce any play, in any style, that commercial theater would not touch. These groups were the beginning of modern American dramatic theater. The post- World War II years brought two important figures to prominence in American drama : Arthur Miller (((1916))-2005) and Tennessee Williams (1911-1983). They remain the dominant figures of the second half of the 20th century. Miller and Williams represent the two principal movement in modern American drama: realism, and realism combined with an attempt at something more imaginative. From the beginning, American playwrights have tried to break  away from the strict realism of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov and to blend it with a more poetic form of expression. Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949),Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (1944) and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938) are some of the best examples of this style of writing. Contemporary American Theater In the mid 19th century, realism in drama was conceived as a revolt against crude theatricalism. Currently there is a revolt against realism itself and a move toward more theatricalism, with its emphasis on stage effects and imaginative settings. Once again, American  drama is changing to reflect the changing attitudes of American theater-going audiences. Dramatists today have the freedom to express their deepest feelings, whatever they may be, in any form they choose- provided that their approach can be made comprehensible to an audience and touch their emotions. 1. 3 LIFE AND CAREER OF EUGENE O’NEILL â€Å"I was born in a hotel and, damn it, I’ll die in a hotel†- Eugene O’Neill Eugene Gladstone O’Neill (16- October- 1888 to 27- November-1953), the son of James O’Neill and Ella Quinlan was born in an up-town family hotel, named Barret House on broadway at 43, Street, New York. James O’Neill, was a successful touring actor in the last quarter of the 19th century whose most famous role was that of the Count of Monte Cristo in a stage adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel. Ella accompanied her husband all the times except for the birth of her first son, James Jr,. and for Eugene. His parents were ardent follower of Catholicism. Ella was exceptionally beautiful woman. She loved music and practiced a curled hand-writing. As he was born in a hotel, he spent his childhood in hotel rooms, on trains and backstage. This filled him with a sense of instability and insecurity. O’Neill later deplored the nightmare insecurity of these early years experience and blamed his father for the tragedies that happened in the life of O’Neill. â€Å"Wherever he (O’Neill) lived, the houses he bought were always big, as if their very size would ensure stability: the other side of the picture is, of course, to be seen in his restless experimentation, which ever allowed him exactly to repeat a way of writing he had once essayed. † O’Neill was educated at boarding schools such as Mt. St. Vincent in the Bronx and Betts Academy in Stamford, Conn. His summers were spent at the family’s only permanent home, a  modest house overlooking the Thames River in New London. He attended Princeton University for one year (1906-07), after which he left school to begin what he later regarded as his real education in â€Å"life experience. † The next six years very nearly ended his life. He shipped to sea, lived a derelict’s existence on the waterfronts of Buenos Aires, Liverpool, and New York City, submerged himself in alcohol, and attempted suicide. Recovering briefly at the age of 24, he held a job for a few months as a reporter and contributor to the poetry column of the New London Telegraph but soon came with tuberculosis. Confined to the Gaylord Farm Sanitarium in Wallingford for six months then he confronted himself soberly and seized the chance for what he later called his â€Å"rebirth†. O’Neill’s first efforts were awkward melodramas, but they were about people and subjects—prostitutes, derelicts, lonely sailors, God’s injustice to man—that had, up to that time, been in the province of serious novels and were not considered an apt subjects for presenting on the American Stage. In the autumn of (1914), O’Neill entered G. P. Baker’s Academy at Harvard to take lessons in playwriting, because of a theatre critic suggestion to his father. O’Neill’s first appearance as a playwright came in the summer of 1916, in the quiet fishing village of Provincetown, where a group of young writers and painters had launced an experimental theater. In their tiny, ramshackle playhouse on a wharf, they produced his one-act sea play Bound East for Cardiff. The talent inherent in the play was immediately evident to the group, which that fall formed the Playwright’s Theater in Greenwich village. Their first bill, on 03-November-1916, included Bound East for Cardiff—O’Neill’s one-act sea plays, along with a number of his lesser efforts. By the time his first full length play, Beyond the Horizon? was produced on Broadway, staged in Morosco Theater, when the young playwright already had a small reputation. In 1918 he married Agnes Boulton, and they lived for several summers at Peaked Hill, a reconditioned life-saving station near Provincetown. During the rest of the year, they lived in other places. They had two children before separating in 1827. His third wife, Carlotta Montercy, accompanied him on many long journeys, to Europe, to Asia, to the American West. They were to be frequently on the move during the rest of O’Neill’s life, and they were to experience many  painful things including the suicide of Eugene O’ Neill Jr. O’Neill’s last years were marked by physical suffering ( his hands paralysed so that he could no longer write), by increasing isolation, by family trouble and dissension. He died on 27 November, 1953. 1. 4 O’Neill’s contribution to American Drama In his own life-time, O’Neill was established as the leading American dramatist. He was awarded Pulitzer Prizes for Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, and Long Days Journey into Night ( he received the highest international recognition in the award of the  Nobel Prize in Literature; a considerable number of books and articles have been devoted to his work since the nineteen-twenties, and in recent years the sign of interest has grown markedly pronounced. His plays are quite popular in the English-speaking world. Despite some critical effort to depreciate O’Neill, he remains America’s outstanding playwright, the only one to win international fame and recognition, and the Novel Prize. He not only built up the American theatre, but also put it on the world map, where now it has a dynamic and distinguished place beside the European and continental theatre—Arthur Miller and  Tennessee Williams helping to sustain that edifice. Unlike Shakespeare, whom popular fancy depicts as a wild bird who sat on the bough and warbled his wood-notes wild, O’Neill had the theatre in his blood and made a lifelong strenuous conscious effort to achieve glory in this field and leave foot-prints on the sands of time. Also, unlike Shakespeare, O’Neill was a highly personal writer, in whose case the partions that divide autobiography and objective reality are very thin paper thin so that his dramatic works constitute a series of personal obsessions, ending up with the most personal of them all- Long Day’s Journey into Night. Full-length plays †¢BREAD AND BUTTER, (1914) †¢SERVITUDE, (1914) †¢THE PERSONAL EQUATION, (1916) †¢NOW I ASK YOU, 1916 †¢BEYOND THE HORIZON, 1918 – PULITZER PRIZE, (1920) †¢THE STRAW, (1919) †¢CHRIS CHRISTOPHERSEN, (1919) †¢GOLD, (1920) †¢ANNA CHRISTIE, (1920) – PULITZER PRIZE, (1922) †¢THE EMPEROR JONES, (1920) †¢DIFF’RENT, (1921) †¢THE FIRST MAN, (1922) †¢THE HAIRY APE, (1922) †¢THE FOUNTAIN, (1923) †¢MARCO MILLIONS, (1923–25) †¢ALL GOD’S CHILLUN GOT WINGS, (1924) †¢WELDED, (1924) †¢DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, (1925) †¢LAZARUS LAUGHED, (1925–26) †¢THE GREAT GOD BROWN, (1926) †¢STRANGE INTERLUDE, (1928 – PULITZER PRIZE) †¢DYNAMO, (1929) †¢MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, (1931) †¢AH, WILDERNESS! , (1933) †¢DAYS WITHOUT END, (1933) †¢THE ICEMAN COMETH, (WRITTEN 1939, PUBLISHED 1940, FIRST PERFORMED 1946) †¢HUGHIE, WRITTEN (1941, FIRST PERFORMED 1959) †¢LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, (WRITTEN 1941, FIRST PERFORMED 1956 – PULITZER PRIZE 1957) †¢A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, (WRITTEN 1941–1943, FIRST PERFORMED 1947) †¢A TOUCH OF THE POET, (COMPLETED IN 1942, FIRST PERFORMED 1958) †¢MORE STATELY MANSIONS, (SECOND DRAFT FOUND IN O’NEILL’S PAPERS, FIRST PERFORMED 1967) †¢THE CALMS OF CAPRICORN, (PUBLISHED IN 1983) One-act plays The Glencairn Plays, all of which feature characters on the fictional ship Glencairn—filmed together as The Long Voyage Home: †¢BOUND EAST FOR CARDIFF, ((1914)) †¢IN THE ZONE, (1917) †¢THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, (1917) †¢MOON OF THE CARIBBEES, (1918) Other one-act plays include: †¢A WIFE FOR A LIFE, (1913) †¢THE WEB, (1913) †¢THIRST, (1913) †¢RECKLESSNESS, (1913) †¢WARNINGS, (1913) †¢FOG, (1914) †¢ABORTION, (1914) †¢THE MOVIE MAN: A COMEDY, (1914) †¢THE SNIPER, (1916) †¢BEFORE BREAKFAST, (1916) †¢ILE, (1917) †¢THE ROPE, (1918) †¢SHELL SHOCK, (1918) †¢THE DREAMY KID, (1918) †¢WHERE THE CROSS IS MADE, (1918) †¢EXORCISM (1919) 1. 5 His Themes.