Consider the benefits and challenges of social media amongst young Australians Essay Example for Free

Consider the benefits and challenges of social media amongst young Australians Essay The use of social media by young Australians has become increasingly popular. This essay will show that social media can have many benefits to young Australians by enabling them to engage with peers, the creativeness it brings out and enhanced learning opportunities. Cyber bullying and privacy issues are some of the challenges that can arise with the use of social media. One of the benefits of social media is the ability to connect and engage with others. Keeping in touch with friends and family who live far away can be made a lot easier by communicating through social media by sharing updates, photos, videos, and messages. ’In 2008, Facebook reported having 67 million active users, with more than half of them returning daily and spending an average 20 minutes per day on the site’. Social media provides young people with the right tool to be able to make new relationships as well as strengthened existing relationships. The strong sense of community and belonging fostered by SNS [social networking services] has the potential to promote resilience, which helps young people to successfully adapt to change and stressful events. Social media is a significant tool for enabling creativity and innovation for young Australians. Through social media they are able to develop a diverse range of skills such as editing content, interactive blogging, encourage the creation and sharing of poetry, arts, photography, and video content. A study conducted last year by the University of Minnesota suggested that using social networking sites improved technology and communication skills, boosted creativity and exposed students to new and diverse world views. These students also tended to do better in exams. Education through social media has great benefits for young people. Being able to learn everything from foreign languages to how to write a computer code and everything in between. Social networking services can facilitate learning and skill development outside formal learning environments by supporting peer-to-peer learning of knowledge and skills, collaboration, diverse cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace , and a more empowered conception of citizenship. Cyber bullying on social media is a risk for young Australians. Cyber bullying is purposely using social media to communicate wrong, humiliating, or hostile information about another person. The most frequently used nature of harassments are name calling and gossiping. ‘Thirty three percent of youth reported an online harassment in the last year’. Young people usually react by pretending to ignore it, by really ignoring it or by reacting and bullying the bully. Cyber bullying is quite common and can occur to any young person online. Cyber bullying can have devastating effects to a young person including depression, anxiety, isolation and suicide. The improper use of social media by young Australians can put their privacy at risk. The volume and accessibility of personal information available on social media have attracted malicious people who seek to exploit this information. Young people who lack an awareness of privacy issues often post on social media inappropriate messages, pictures, and videos of themselves and others without understanding that it could result in future reputations being damaged. ‘Adults are concerned about invasion of privacy, while teens freely give up personal information’. Sharing too much information on social media can also make young people easier targets for marketers and fraudsters. Communicating and sharing information on social media to someone who you do not know their identity can be very dangerous as this sort of behaviour can attract online predators. To conclude, it is clear young Australian’s are faced with many benefits and challenges when using social media. From cyber bullying and privacy issues social media opens up avenues for problems but along with these challenges come opportunities for young people to learn in many different ways and express themselves creatively. It is up to the user how they want to engage and use social media.

Augustan Poetic Tradition Essay -- The Outlaw Seamus Heaney Poetry Ess

Augustan Poetic Tradition "I do not in fact see how poetry can survive as a category of human consciousness if it does not put poetic considerations first—expressive considerations, that is, based upon its own genetic laws which spring into operation at the moment of lyric conception." —Seamus Heaney, "The Indefatigable Hoof-taps" (1988) Seamus Heaney, the 1995 Nobel laureate, is one of the most widely read and celebrated poets now writing in English. He is also one of the most traditional. Over a decade ago, Ronald Tamplin summed up Heaney's achievement and his relation to the literary tradition in a judgment that remains sound today: "In many ways he is not an innovative poet. He has not recast radically the habitual language of poetry. He has not challenged our preconceptions with a new poetic form nor has he led us into the recognition of new rhythms and metres. Instead he has worked with what was to hand and brought to it great powers of expression and art as well as a significant subject matter" (Tamplin 1). At the same time, Sidney Burris was making a similar point: "Readers of his verse must continually remind themselves that Heaney, perhaps more so than most other contemporary poets, is a deeply literary poet, one whose consolations often lie in the invigorating strains of the poetic tradition itself" (Burri s ix). For Heaney, those strains are primarily formal. "I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing," Heaney writes in "Personal Helicon," the final poem in his first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966). Although rhyme here signifies, more generally, writing in verse, whether rhymed or free, Heaney is certainly drawn to rhyme and closed forms. He is especially partial to rhymed tr... ... Wilson. "The Poetry of Seamus Heaney." Critical Quarterly 16 (Spring 1974): 35-48. Fussell, Paul. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971. Girard, Rene. Violence and the Sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Heaney, Seamus. Poems 1965 - 1975. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980. ____________. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968 - 1978. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980. O'Neill, Charles L. "Violence and the Sacred in Seamus Heaney's North." In Seamus Heaney: The Shaping Spirit. Edited by Catharine Malloy and Phyllis Carey. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996: 91-105. Parker, Michael. Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. Tamplin, Ronald. Seamus Heaney. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989.

Network security and business

Company X is reputed to be the world's leading manufacturer and supplier of sportswear (sports shoes and vestments) and sports equipments with its headquarters situated in Oregon, Portland metropolitan area. The company presently accrued 16 billion US dollar worth excess revenue in 2007 only. In the year 2008, that company is credited to have recruited 30,000 employees globally, while at the same time maintaining its status as the sole grand crown holder of the Fortune 500 title as far the state of Oregon is concerned. In this essay, the vulnerabilities experienced by the company shall be looked at in respect to network security which entails working towards the protection of information that is passed o0r stored through or within the computer. The company was founded in 1964 and then later re branded in 1978. The company is so well established that it does not only sell its products under its own company name, but it also does so through its subsidiaries. In addition to this, company X also owns other sports companies. In an effort to realize expansion, company X extended its services to run retail stores under its name. As a result of this, the company X has approximately 19,000 retail departments in the US alone. In the same vein, the company sells its products to about 140 countries globally. The company has been traditionally sponsoring sportsmen and women around the globe and has very distinct logo and slogans. The slogans used by this company unlike those of the fellow competitors, made it to the top five slogans of the 20th century, and was accredited for this by the Smithsonian Institution. In 1980, company X had hit the 50% market share mark in the the United States, being only 16 years old. The most recent type of inventions by this company involves the production of new models of cricket shoes which in comparison to their competitors, are 30% lighter (Bernstein, 1996). The company seeks to maintain its vibrant market and maintains its upper hand against its competitors by producing products that are appealing to the tastes of the materialistic youth. The sports wear company produces and sells assortments used in sundry and diverse world of sports sch as basket ball, athletics, golf, American football (rugby), tennis, wrestling, skating, football and skate boarding, among others. The company X having become a global entity, also faces many problems that come with expansionism. The troubles touch on cases of workers' rights in relation to the occupation safety and health matters. These cases are more distributed in the developing economies than in developed ones. Conversely, there are also issues about social responsibility that border on the environmental safety in relation to the production processes and wastes produced by the company. The problem also stretches to its outsourcing vendors, who together with the company have been challenged by critics to work towards carbon neutrality. Critics have also dismissed as lies the claim by the company that it increased the salary scale of its workers by 95%. These critics posit that the company seeks to always exploit its workers, of whom 58% are young adults aged between 22- 24 years, while 83% of the workers are women. Half of these workers in these companies are said   to have gone through their high school educational programs.   Because few of these people have work related skills, critics maintain, the subsidiaries of company X are reported to be using this state of affairs to exploit their employees by issuing them very minimal wages (Mc Nab, 2004). Again, it is reported that out of company X's contract factories, 20% deal in the casual production of of the products. These factories are always bedeviled by cases of harassment and abuse (of which the company has moved in to sort out the situation by liaising with the Global Alliance in order to review the first twenty one of the most notorious factories. The company also set up the prescribed code of conduct so as to inculcate social responsibility among the workers. Spates of continual human rights abuse nevertheless continued to persist. In Indonesia for example, 30.2% of the workers of company X are reported to have been victims of exploitation. 56% of these workers are said to have undergone verbal abuse. In about the same spectrum, 7.8% are reported to have succumbed to unwanted sexual comments, while 3.3% are said to have been abused physically. In Pakistan, the matter deteriorated to cases of child abuse and the conscription of child labor. For instance, in the same country, the issue came to the global attention when pictures were displayed, portraying children knitting football which were to be then sold by this company. Another matter that haunts this company X is the protection of information, or commonly called by the corporate world and the computer science and management as network security. Of recent developments, concerns over privacy have soared, and become subject to public furore and debates when it was found out by security experts after conducting a research in the University of Washington, that company X's iPod sport kit had the ability to track people . Initially, the surveillance system that works through the company's iPod sports kit had been designed to allow the user (mainly the sports person) of this facility to take note of the calories that have been burned, the speed, the distance covered and the time dispensed when undertaking sports activities. The kit was fitted with a transmitter that was designed to be stuck on the shoes and the iPod's transmitter. The tracking is made possible by the fact that the transmitter relays particular ID. Although the problem first seemed minuscule due to the fact that the information could only be accessed from a 60 feet away shoe, yet it was found out later that more problems, it seemed would set in since the surveillance or tracking system was then fed to the Google maps (Sloot, 2003). In order to bring in ameliorations in this matter, comprehensive laws are being proposed so that company X and its counterparts who use these systems can be forced to beef up security into the models- a measure which these companies are ignoring. Some related speculations are also rife that the company's retailing contractors   are using the RFID tags for tracking their consignments and keeping track of the stock market. This problem is hydra headed since apart from the obvious fact that this may scare away potential customers, it still has exposed the company to anti company X campaigns which have widely been   activated and managed by the Caspian organization in the US. Customers will shy away from the products since the communication system of the company X seems to have been compromised in its CIA (confidentiality, integrity and availability) of information security. Confidentiality portends that only the permitted authorities access information, while integrity ensures that information stays only within the precincts of the authorized handlers. Availability on the other hand demands that those who are authorized access information are be able to so do efficiently and quickly. The external leaking in and out of confidential information can be very costly and should always be avoided Company X is working out to ameliorate this problem. On 5th March 2008, in Oregon, it held a meeting in which the departmental heads and subsidiary representatives met, and analyzed the extent of the vulnerability (they had already come into the board meeting, having known the nature, and the extent of the risk). As an immediate contingency, company X decided that it was going to suspend the sale of the iPod transmitters as a measure to instill risk avoidance. Having also become aware that there was also the danger of information systems being invaded by hackers, (as was seen in the 31st July, 2007 when in Pakistan tens of its computers succumbed), consensus was arrived at that all computer systems in the organizations adopt the man- in- between technique by adopting the firewall computer security system that will be able to detect the nature of the on coming information. On another front, the company X agreed that it was to globally look at its wireless networking: the technology that the supports the connectivity of each computer to a specific network or networks. This does not portend coming up with a new system of networking, but bolstering the configurations and the security systems. New and stronger RAMs( Random Access Memory ) were bought and have already been set in place.   This will ensure that the roiter system within the company's area of jurisdictions are very strong and very fast in detecting anomalies (Raquet and Saxe, 2005). The computer technicians in company X suggested that the leaking of the company's secret information could be due to the fact that the computer connectivity in Pakistan could have been in the open mode configuration. These technicians elaborated that open computer mode connectivity allows anyone even without the building to access information from an open mode configured computer. The situations becomes more vulnerable in the present day due to the portability of the computers (laptops and palm tops). Open mode wireless computers have a preset name that makes the computer to, on being turned on, start broadcasting packets which prompt all wireless devices within the precincts about the availability of connectivity (Albanese and Sonnenreich, 2003). However, should the computers be switched on to closed configuration, the beacon packets are no longer broadcasted by the access point. It was also discovered that although the headquarters were already filtered, yet not all of the subsidiaries were. It is an this backdrop that the computer technicians under the aegis of the company's information and technology department recommended that the Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP)   be introduced to ward off even the most sophisticated hackers. Wireless Encryption Protocol ensure that the data that is being relayed is not in the readable format, but instead, it becomes only readable after being decoded in a backward manner on being received. This leaves the data unreadable on being captured in between transition since the data is still encoded. The hacker is frustrated unless in possession of the knowledge about the   original address. Conclusion. As a concept, network security is very important in the realization of a company's secret information. Good and comprehensive network security keeps secret information from flowing outwards to unwanted parties, while at the same time, enabling efficient flow of information within an enterprise. The systems of communication ( the hardware, the software and the orgware ) is also adequately protected. Company X would accrue higher returns if it enhanced all of its network security systems within its disposal. References. Albanese, J. and Sonnenreich, W. (2003). Illustrations on network security. US: Mc Graw Hill. Bernstein, T. (1996). Internet security designed for business. US: Wiley. Mc Nab, C. (2004). Assessment of network security. US: O' Rielley. Raquet, C. and Saxe, W. (2005). Advocacy and governance of business network security. US: Cisco Press. Sloot, P. (2003). International conference of computational science.

Architect Antonio Gaudi Essay

The work of Antonio Gaudi can be seen as visionary. Ahead of his time in many respects, it becomes clear when viewing his work that he influenced many of the great revolutionary artists of the early 21st century. The significance of his life-works as an artist and particularly as an architect reveals extraordinary contributions to the thought processes of the ‘Modernists’. Looking at some two of his architectural pieces, we can discover an entirely new meaning to architecture altogether. Antonio Gaudi displays many of the fantasy elements indicative of the Surrealist movement, although his work was categorised as Art Nouveau. His progression from Art Nouveau to near-Surrealist work can be seen in comparing the reasonably modest Palau Guell (1886-1890) to Casa Battlo (1906-1908). Palau Guell is a grand scale expression of extravagance which still has many of the attributes of Classicism. It is beautiful and decadent with every aspect of glamour and frivolity related to the Art Nouveau period. Gaudi, I feel has restrained his imagination in the sense that he has not indulged in the same fantasy world we see in his later works. The Palau Guell is almost a modern incantation of the ancient Greek and Roman Colloseums. Casa Battlo represents a rather unusual perspective of the artistic movement itself. The Casa Battlo in its design resembles more of a candy-castle than a functional building. The exterior of the building is scattered with ceramic designs that Gaudi had plastered into the facade. At face value this gives the viewer a sense of the ‘other world’, a place where children go in their dreams. This was in fact, in my opinion, the beginning of the Surrealist manifesto. Completely out of keeping with the original idea of architecture, Gaudi creates a building that not only performs a function but contributes to the aesthetic value of the surroundings into which it is placed. The roof of the Casa Battlo is covered in what appears to be scales, almost aquatic in its construction, but at the same time not intrusive. At this stage it is difficult to ascertain in ones own mind whether you like it or hate it. The balconies extending from the large bay-windows are also intricately carved and resemble to a degree, alien-like heads with large gaping eyes. The vision of Art Nouveau as outrageously decorative, embellished and facetious is clearly visible in this particular piece of Gaudi’s work. The exploration of the fantasy world gives it an uncanny feel of something out of the fairytale Hansel and Gretel and can make you fell uneasy. In the strict sense of the word ‘influence’, I can be certain that I see the predecessor to the Surrealist movement in Gaudi’s work. The idea of dreams rather than reality begins to emerge in his later work which is passionately infused with richly decorative mosaics and other ceramic artefacts. If one takes into account the impression Art Nouveau wanted to make, I think Gaudi surpassed it with the kind of architectural eloquence worthy of being called a ‘visionary’. Art Nouveau’s mantra of snubbing Classical rigidity was flouted by Gaudi and his contemporaries and led to the influence of architectural movements such as Bauhaus and sculptural artistic endeavours such as Tatlin, Dali and Leger. The previous attempts at breaking from traditional art as explored by the Impressionists served to fuel a more fertile mind in terms of the architecture of Gaudi. In Gaudi’s work we see the expression of the mind in tactile form. Looking at the features built around Guell Park, evidences of the movement into the exploration of colour in architecture is also visible. The water fountains are embellished with mosaic fish and other aquatic-like creatures that by some people’s standards would be described as ‘kitsch’. However, for me this fantasy world does exactly what it was intended to do: create a feeling of euphoria and joy. It is not functional beyond the aesthetic. Gaudi is ahead of his time.

Free Essays on Winamp Skins

on the skin. The pledit.txt file defines the font and color of the playlist text, and almost all colors are specified in hexidecimal format. (You should change only the name of the font and the values of the color; messing around with other text might result in an unsightly or nonfunctional skin.) For Advanced Users The region.txt file lets you define which portions of Winamp you want to show and which you want to be transparent. This can be useful if you want to change the shape. The copy of region.txt in the skin includes comprehensive documentation; be sure to read the whole file before editing it. If you don't want to make any region changes, you ca... Free Essays on Winamp Skins Free Essays on Winamp Skins Step One Create a new folder in C:/Program Files/Winamp/Skins, and call it something you'll remember, such as My Winamp Skin Rocks. Then unzip the contents of the Winamp base skin into that folder. You'll find 27 files ending in .cur, 15 files ending in .bmp, and three files ending in .txt. Step Two Click the curvy Menu symbol at the very top left of Winamp, then click Skin Browser and choose the folder you created in step one as the Current Skin. You can design your skin by editing the BMP files in your favorite photo editor and the CUR files in a cursor editor. Paste in photographs, change the texture of the image, or just randomly scribble over everythinghow your skin turns out is up to you and you alone. Step Three Get a sense of which files correspond to which graphical elements in Winamp by comparing the BMP files you're editing with a live, running Winamp program. (After all, you need to be listening to tunes in order to create.) The names of the files indicate their purposes; for example, EQTitle.cur is the cursor that pops up when you mouse over the equalizer's title bar. Restart Winamp to see changes you've made take effect. Step Four Finally, edit Winamp's TXT files in any text editor (Notepad, which comes standard with Windows, should work fine) to change words on the skin. The pledit.txt file defines the font and color of the playlist text, and almost all colors are specified in hexidecimal format. (You should change only the name of the font and the values of the color; messing around with other text might result in an unsightly or nonfunctional skin.) For Advanced Users The region.txt file lets you define which portions of Winamp you want to show and which you want to be transparent. This can be useful if you want to change the shape. The copy of region.txt in the skin includes comprehensive documentation; be sure to read the whole file before editing it. If you don't want to make any region changes, you ca...

PSAT Score Needed for National Merit Scholarship

PSAT Score Needed for National Merit Scholarship SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Each year more than1.5 million juniors take the PSATin the hopes of qualifyingfor the National Merit Scholarship Program. But what score do they need to earnSemifinalist distinction? In this guide,we'll let you know whatPSAT score you need to qualify for Semifinalist status in your state and potentially move on to win a National Merit scholarship. What's a Good Score for National Merit Scholarship? The exact PSAT score for National Merit consideration varies from year to year and by state, but it's alwaysthe top 1% of students (about 16,000 juniors) who qualify as Semifinalists.About 15,000 students in this group then move on to become National Merit Finalists and win scholarship money. To be named a Semifinalist, youneed to score in the top 1% of yourstate - not the whole country. What scores do you need to qualify?To answer this question, you must first understand how the PSAT is scored. The PSAT is scoredfrom 320 to 1520.In addition to thatcompositescore, your score report will tell you yourtest scores forMath, Reading, and Writing and Language. These scores fall between 8 and 38. For National Merit eligibility, these are the most important score types. NMSC adds each section test scoretogether and then multiplies the sum by 2 to create a National Merit Selection Index Score. The resulting Selection Indexscore determines your National Merit eligibility. For example, let's sayyou got a 31 on Math, a 32 on Reading, and a 30 on Writing and Language. The sum of these subscores comes out to 93. You would then multiply this by 2toget your Selection Index Score: 186. In equation form, it looks like this: (31 + 32 + 30) * 2 = 186. Unfortunately, a Selection Index of 186 doesn'tqualify for National Merit Semifinalist status. What score do you need, then, to achieve this recognition? Read on for the full list of National Merit cutoffs in each state. Want to improve your PSAT score by 150 points? We have the industry's leading PSAT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and SAT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so that you get the most effective prep possible. Check out our 5-day free trial today: Qualifying Score for National Merit Semifinalistby State We've compiled a list of the qualifying scores for National Merit Semifinalist by state. These cutoffs applied tostudents who took the redesigned PSAT in the fall of 2017. State Selection Index Alabama 216 Alaska 215 Arizona 220 Arkansas 214 California 223 Colorado 221 Connecticut 222 Delaware 222 DC 223 Florida 219 Georgia 220 Hawaii 220 Idaho 214 Illinois 221 Indiana 219 Iowa 216 Kansas 218 Kentucky 218 Louisiana 217 Maine 217 Maryland 223 Massachusetts 223 Michigan 219 Minnesota 220 Mississippi 215 Missouri 217 Montana 214 Nebraska 216 Nevada 218 New Hampshire 219 New Jersey 223 New Mexico 215 New York 221 North Carolina 220 North Dakota 212 Ohio 219 Oklahoma 215 Oregon 221 Pennsylvania 220 Rhode Island 220 South Carolina 216 South Dakota 215 Tennessee 219 Texas 221 Utah 215 Vermont 216 Virginia 222 Washington 222 West Virginia 212 Wisconsin 216 Wyoming 212 Average Score 218 As you can see, scores vary depending on where you take the test. National Merit Index Selection Cutoffsregularly vary a few points between years, so aim to achieve a score at least 2-5 points higher than the predicted cutoff for your state! What Does This Mean for You? What Should Your Target PSAT Score Be? If you haven't taken the PSAT yet, then you can use the above chart to set target PSAT scores. Let's say you live in Nebraska. To be named a Semifinalist, you'll need a Selection Index score of 216. What scores do you need on each section of the PSAT to achieve this score? As you read above, your Selection Index equals the sum of your section scores (between 8 and 38) multiplied by 2. To figure out what PSAT scores you need based on your state's cutoff,simply work backward. As a Nebraska resident, your first step will be todivide Nebraska's cutoff score by 2: 216 / 2 = 108 Now, split 108 into three: 108 / 3 = 36 To get a Selection Index of 216, you'd need a 36 on each of the three sections (Math, Reading, and Writing and Language). Of course, youdon't have to set your target scores equally among the three sections. If you're especially strong at verbal skills, for example, you could instead aim for 38s on both Reading and Writing and a 32 in Math. Once you have a sense of what scores you'll need to meet your state's cutoff score, distribute them however you like based on your own academic strengths and weaknesses.Again, you can set target PSAT scores by dividing your state's cutoff in half and then splitting that quotient into three scores, each on a scale of 8-38. As mentioned above, the state cutoffs vary slightly from year to year depending on how students do on the PSAT. If you're really serious about getting named National Merit Semifinalist, then you should aim to score a little higher than this year's cutoff. By setting a goal for each section and devoting some time each week to prepping for the PSAT, you can achieve your goals and put yourself in the best position to earn a National Merit distinction. What’s Next? Are you taking the PSAT this year or next? Learn all about the newly redesigned test. Hoping to get the National Merit Scholarship?Get expert tips onhow to become a Semifinalist and how to win the scholarship. Are you interested in applying to othercollege scholarships? Read abouthow to get merit scholarships at state schools, how to win a Walmart Scholarship, and how to win these unusual scholarships. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Read this stories and pull out imporatant 3 qoutes from each story Essay

Read this stories and pull out imporatant 3 qoutes from each story (6qoute) - Essay Example As a cripple, I swagger†. (p 1) â€Å"I wake up in the morning feeling the way most people do at the end of a bad day, and I take it from there. As a result, I spend a lot of time in extremis and, impatient with limitation, I tend to ignore my fatigue until my body breaks down in some way and forces rest. Then I miss picnics, dinner parties, poetry readings, the brief visits of old friends from out of town. The offspring of a puritanical tradition of exceptional venerability, I cannot view these lapses without shame. My life often seems a series of small failures to do as I ought†. (p 2) â€Å"A friend who also has MS startled me once by asking, "Do you ever say to yourself, Why me, Lord?" "No, Michael, I dont," I told him, "because whenever I try, the only response I can think of is Why not?" If I could make a cosmic deal, whom would I put in my place? What in my life would I give up in exchange for sound limbs and a thrilling rush of energy? No one. Nothing. I might as well do the job myself. Now that Im getting the hang of it†. (p 8) â€Å"It was at that moment I realized the deceit I had been living under. Children growing up in the American Southwest, drinking contaminated milk from contaminated cows, even from the contaminated breasts of their mothers, my mother--members, years later, of the Clan of one-Breasted Women†. (p 2) â€Å"But one by one, I watched the women in my family die common, heroic deaths. We sat in waiting rooms hoping for good news, always receiving the bad. I cared for them, bathed their scarred bodies, and kept their secrets. I watched beautiful women become bald as cisplatin, Cytoxan, and Adriamycin were injected into their veins. I held their foreheads as they vomited green-black bile and I shot them with morphine when the pain became inhuman. In the end, I witnessed their last peaceful breaths, becoming a midwife to the rebirth of their souls.