Saturday, January 25, 2020
The Lost Boy Essay -- essays research papers
THE LOST BOY SOCW 3220: Human Behavior II ABSTRACT      Imagine a boy who is nine years old and who is alone. He doesn't have a home, and the only possession he has is what he can carry in a brown paper bag. In the novel The Lost Boy, the author David Pelzer tells his experience of this first hand. David was removed from his abusive biological mother when he was nine years old and placed into a foster home.      Soon after his first placement, he began to come out of his shell. He was going through an adjustment period where he had to get use to being a boy instead of it. During this transition he became overly aggressive, and full of energy. This energy and aggression landed him in trouble on a few occasions. He was forced to move from one foster home to the next because of this trouble.      During this period, David not only had to adjust to his new surroundings; he also had to adjust to the awkward years of adolescence. This adjustment was especially hard for David because he was never really a boy. However, he was able to overcome it and grow up to live a normal life, as a pilot for the Air Force.           In the novel The Lost Boy, the main character was David Pelzer. David became a foster child because he was severely abused by his alcoholic mother. This book looks at his life from ages 9 to 18, when he was a foster child. The theoretical concept of development that applies to David during this stage of his life is Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory.      Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory has eight stages of development. These stages are as follows: Stage          Crisis                    Age Important Event 1     Basic trust versus basic mistrust     Birth to 18 months Feeding 2     Autonomy versus Shame and doubt 18 months to 3 years Toileting 3     Initiative versus guilt                3 to 6 years    &n... ... their children to associate with him. This was evident when David tried to talk to a girl he liked in his neighborhood. David went to her house to speak to her, but instead of speaking to her he spoke to her mother. She told David that she did not know why they allowed his kind in the neighborhood. She said that he was a filthy hooligan, and he reeked of street trash. He was told that he is not allowed to talk to her children or approach her house. This response is an example of issues of diversity.      Because David was different from these women's family, she did not approve of him. This type of prejudice is evident throughout the novel. Many people told David that the sooner he learns that he is only an F-child, the better off he will be. He was told to stick with his own kind. This was just a different type of prejudice that David went through. I though that this novel was very well written. It kept my attention and made me want to read more. I would recommend that this novel be read by all social workers that want to work with abused or fostered children.               Â
Friday, January 17, 2020
Jeremy – Pearl Jam
â€Å"Jeremy†is based on two different true stories. The song takes its main inspiration from a newspaper article about a 15-year-old boy named Jeremy Wade Delle, born February 10, 1975, from Richardson, Texas who shot himself in front of his English class at Richardson High School on the morning of January 8, 1991 at about 9:45 am. In a 2009 interview, Vedder said that he felt â€Å"the need to take that small article and make something of itâ€â€to give that action, to give it reaction, to give it more importance. †Delle was described by schoolmates as â€Å"real quiet†and known for â€Å"acting sad. After coming in to class late that morning, Delle was told to get an admittance slip from the school office. He left the classroom, and returned with a . 357 Magnum revolver. Delle walked to the front of the classroom, announced â€Å"Miss, I got what I really went for†, put the barrel of the firearm in his mouth, and pulled the trigger before his tea cher or classmates could react. A girl named Lisa Moore knew Jeremy from the in-school suspension program: â€Å"He and I would pass notes back and forth and he would talk about life and stuff,†she said. He signed all of his notes, ‘Write back. ‘ But on Monday he wrote, ‘Later days. ‘ I didn't know what to make of it. But I never thought this would happen. †When asked about the song, Vedder explained: It came from a small paragraph in a paper which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. Sixty-three degrees and cloudy in a suburban neighborhood. That's the beginning of the video and that's the same thing is that in the end, it does nothing †¦ nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back. The other story that the song is based on involved a student that Vedder knew from his junior high school in San Diego, California. He elaborated further in a 1991 interview: I actually knew somebody in junior high school, in San Diego, California, that did the same thing, just about, didn't take his life but ended up shooting up an oceanography room. I remember being in the halls and hearing it and I had actually had altercations with this kid in the past. I was kind of a rebellious fifth-grader and I think we got in fights and stuff. So it's a bit about this kid named Jeremy and it's also a bit about a kid named Brian that I knew and I don't know†¦ the song, I think it says a lot. I think it goes somewhere†¦ and a lot of people interpret it different ways and it's just been recently that I've been talking about the true meaning behind it and I hope no one's offended and believe me, I think of Jeremy when I sing it.
Thursday, January 9, 2020
Clovis, Black Mats, and Extra-Terrestrials
Black mat is the common name for an organic-rich layer of soil also called sapropelic silt, peaty muds, and paleo-aquolls. Its content is variable, and its appearance is variable, and it is at the heart of a controversial theory known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH). The YDIH argues that black mats, or at least some of them, represent the remains of a cometary impact thought by its proponents to have kicked off the Younger Dryas. What is the Younger Dryas? The Younger Dryas (abbreviated YD), or Younger Dryas Chronozone (YDC), is the name of a brief geological period which occurred roughly between 13,000 and 11,700 calendar years ago (cal BP). It was the last episode of a series of fast-developing climatic changes that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. The YD came after the Last Glacial Maximum (30,000–14,000 cal BP), which is what scientists call the last time glacial ice covered much of the Northern Hemisphere as well as higher elevations in the south. Immediately after the LGM, there was a warming trend, known as the Bà ¸lling-Ã…llerà ¸d period, during which time the glacial ice retreated. That warming period lasted about 1,000 years, and today we know that it marks the start of the Holocene, the geological period which we are still experiencing today. During the warmth of the Bà ¸lling-Ã…llerà ¸d, all kinds of human exploration and innovation developed, from the domestications of plants and animals to the colonization of the American continents. The Younger Dryas was an abrupt, 1,300-year return to the tundra-like cold, and it must have been a nasty shock to the Clovis hunter-gatherers in North America as well as Europes Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Cultural Impact of the YD Along with a substantial drop in temperature, the sharp challenges of the YD include the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions. The large-bodied animals that disappeared between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago include mastodons, horses, camels, sloths, dire wolves, tapir, and short-faced bear. The North American colonists at the time called Clovis were primarilyâ€â€but not exclusivelyâ€â€dependent on hunting that game, and the loss of the megafauna led them to reorganize their lifeways into a broader Archaic hunting-and-gathering lifestyle. In Eurasia, the descendants of hunters and gatherers began domesticating plants and animalsâ€â€but thats another story. YD Climate Shift in North America The following is a summary of the cultural changes that are documented in North America around the time of the Younger Dryas, from most recent to oldest. It is based on a summary compiled by an early proponent of the YDIH, C. Vance Haynes, and it is a reflection of current understanding of the cultural changes. Haynes was never fully convinced that the YDIH was a reality, but he was intrigued by the possibility. Archaic. 9,000–10,000 RCYBP. Drought conditions prevailed, during which Archaic mosaic hunter-gatherer lifestyles predominate.Post-Clovis. (black mat layer) 10,000–10,900 RCYBP (or 12,900 calibrated years BP). Wet conditions are in evidence at the sites of springs and lakes. No megafauna except for bison. Post-Clovis cultures include Folsom, Plainview, Agate Basin hunter-gatherers.Clovis stratum. 10,850–11,200 RCYBP. Drought conditions prevalent. Clovis sites found with now-extinct mammoth, mastodon, horses, camels, and other megafauna at springs and lake margins.Pre-Clovis stratum. 11,200–13,000 RCYBP. By 13,000 years ago, water tables had fallen to their lowest levels since the Last Glacial Maximum. Pre-Clovis is rare, stable uplands, eroded valley sides. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis The YDIH suggests that the climatic devastations of the Younger Dryas were the result of a major cosmic episode of multiple airbursts/impacts about 12,800 /-300 cal bp. There is no impact crater known for such an event, but proponents argued that it could have occurred over the North American ice shield. That cometary impact would have created wildfires and that and the climate impact are proposed to have produced the black mat, triggered the YD, contributed to the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and initiated human population reorganization across the Northern Hemisphere. The YDIH adherents have argued that black mats hold the key evidence for their cometary impact theory. What is a Black Mat? Black mats are organic-rich sediments and soils that form in wet environments associated with spring discharge. They are found throughout the world in these conditions, and they are abundant in Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene stratigraphic sequences throughout central and western North America. They form in a wide variety of soils and sediment types, including organic-rich grassland soils, wet-meadow soils, pond sediments, algal mats, diatomites, and marls. Black mats also contain a variable assemblage of magnetic and glassy spherules, high-temperature minerals and melt glass, nano-diamonds, carbon spherules, aciniform carbon, platinum, and osmium. The presence of this last set is what the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis adherents have used to back up their Black Mat theory. Conflicting Evidence The problem is: there is no evidence for a continent-wide wildfire and devastation event. There definitely is a dramatic increase in the number and frequency of black mats throughout the Younger Dryas, but thats not the only time in our geological history when black mats have occurred. Megafaunal extinctions were abrupt, but not that abruptâ€â€the extinction period lasted several thousands of years. And it turns out the black mats are variable in content: some have charcoal, some have none. By and large, they seem to be naturally-formed wetland deposits, found full of the organic remains of rotted, not burned, plants. Microspherules, nano-diamonds, and fullerenes are all part of the cosmic dust that falls to earth every day. Finally, what we now know is that the Younger Dryas cold event is not unique. In fact, there were as many as 24 abrupt switches in climate, called Dansgaard-Oeschger cold spells. Those happened during the end of the Pleistocene as the glacial ice melted back, thought to be the results of changes in the Atlantic Oceans current as it, in turn, adapted to changes in the volume of ice present and water temperature. Summary The black mats are not likely evidence of a cometary impact, and the YD was one of several colder and warmer periods during the end of the last Ice Age that resulted from shifting conditions. What seemed at first like a brilliant and succinct explanation for a devastating climate change turned out on further investigation to be not nearly as succinct as we thought. Thats a lesson scientists learn all the timeâ€â€that science doesnt come as neat and tidy as we can think it to be. The unfortunate thing is that neat and tidy explanations are so satisfying that we allâ€â€scientists and the public alikeâ€â€fall for them every time. Science is a slow process, but even though some theories dont pan out, we still must pay attention when a preponderance of evidence points us in the same direction. Sources Ardelean, Ciprian F., et al. The Younger Dryas Black Mat from Ojo De Agua, a Geoarchaeological Site in Northeastern Zacatecas, Mexico. Quaternary International 463.Part A (2018): 140–52. Print.Bereiter, Bernhard, et al. Mean Global Ocean Temperatures During the Last Glacial Transition. Nature 553 (2018): 39. Print.Broecker, Wallace S., et al. Putting the Younger Dryas Cold Event into Context. Quaternary Science Reviews 29.9 (2010): 1078–81. Print.Firestone, R. B., et al. Evidence for an Extraterrestrial Impact 12,900 Years Ago That Contributed to the Megafaunal Extinctions and the Younger Dryas Cooling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.41 (2007): 16016–21. Print.Harris-Parks, Erin. The Micromorphology of Younger Dryas-Aged Black Mats from Nevada, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. Quaternary Research 85.1 (2016): 94–106. Print.Haynes Jr., C. Vance. Younger Dryas Black Mats and the Rancholabrean Termination in North America. Proceedings of th e National Academy of Sciences 105.18 (2008): 6520–25. Print.Holliday, Vance, Todd Surovell, and Eileen Johnson. A Blind Test of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. PLOS ONE 11.7 (2016): e0155470. Print.Kennett, D. J., et al. Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas Boundary Sediment Layer. Science 323 (2009): 94. Print.Kennett, James P., et al. Bayesian Chronological Analyses Consistent with Synchronous Age of 12,835–12,735 Cal B.P. For Younger Dryas Boundary on Four Continents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.32 (2015): E4344–E53. Print.Mahaney, W. C., et al. Evidence from the Northwestern Venezuelan Andes for Extraterrestrial Impact: The Black Mat Enigma. Geomorphology 116.1 (2010): 48–57. Print.Meltzer, David J., et al. Chronological Evidence Fails to Support Claim of an Isochronous Widespread Layer of Cosmic Impact Indicators Dated to 12,800 Years Ago. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.21 (2014): E2162–71. Print .Pinter, Nicholas, et al. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: A Requiem. Earth-Science Reviews 106.3 (2011): 247–64. Print.van Hoesel, Annelies, et al. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: A Critical Review. Quaternary Science Reviews 83.Supplement C (2014): 95–114. Print.
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