Standard, Standardize, and Standardized

Standard, Standardize, and Standardized Standard, Standardize, and Standardized Standard, Standardize, and Standardized By Maeve Maddox A reader has asked for a discussion of the words standard, standardize and standardized: I ask because of a statement I made sometime ago, where I said, we took a standard test. But my friend thought it should have been we took a standardized test. I think Im correct since standard in this context is an adjective that qualifies the noun test. On the other hand, standardize is a transitive verb and it should convey a sense of action. However, when I surfed the internet to see how these words are used, I found a puzzling example: â€Å"There was no standardized time until train travel became common.† Would you consider this a correct way of using the word standardized? The verb standardize derives from the noun standard. Among the different meanings of the noun and the verb, these are the ones relevant to this discussion: standard noun: An authoritative or recognized exemplar of correctness, perfection, or some definite degree of any quality. standardize verb: To bring to a standard or uniform size, strength, form of construction, proportion of ingredients, or the like. Both standard and standardized function as adjectives, but with different meanings. One can speak of a â€Å"standard test† or a â€Å"standardized test,† but the two phrases do not mean the same thing. A standard test is the usual test given. For example, a â€Å"standard driving test† requires the learner to parallel-park. A â€Å"standard joke† is one that is often repeated. A â€Å"standard excuse† for not doing something is â€Å"I didn’t have time.† A  standardized test  is a  test designed, administered and scored according to specific guidelines based on a standard that has been established by some authoritative body. It’s even possible to speak of a â€Å"standard standardized test.† For example, a particular standardized test like the PARCC or ACT might be the â€Å"standard standardized test† in one state or district, but not in another. As for the phrase â€Å"standardized time,† the same sort of contextual considerations apply. One may speak of â€Å"standardized time† and â€Å"standard time.† Before train travel became common, local times, based on the sun or a locally chosen meridian, were sufficient. Once people had to plan journeys with departure and arrival times in different regions, a standardized method of telling time became necessary. The result of the nineteenth-century century standardization of time is standard time: a standard system of reckoning based on geographical time zones. Context, of course, rules, but generally speaking, standard conveys â€Å"the usual,† whereas standardized conveys something systematically designed and administered. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Writing Prompts 101One Fell SwoopApostrophe with Plural Possessive Nouns

Hitler's table talk Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Hitler's table talk - Essay Example He categorically states that our body follows the cycle of nature. He advises humans to conform to the laws of nature and take inspiration from it and that is the way one can triumph over religion. He asserts that in nature a will of stronger prevails and it is perfectly a natures way of doing the things (38). He vehemently put his views on social class stating that "as long as social classes existed, it was impossible to set free the forces of the nation" (108). He never believed in rejecting anyone from the national community (108). He was clear in his thinking that class prejudices had no place in a socially advanced state like Germany (255). Hitler believed in shaping the Germany in such a fashion that whosoever happened to visit Germany would be relieved off his or her prejudices against Germany (22). Hitler made a special mention about Germany describing its uniqueness in a sense that it was the only country having no unemployment issue (42). He also argued about the Germany having several towns in its fold of a high cultural level and because of that Germany did not suffer either from any inferiority complex or from any superiority feelings (47). His views on Church and Christianity described his philosophy to govern people as well. He did not believe in making a pact with the Church for it could not offer long lasting benefits. The scientific advancement sooner or later, in all likely hoods, would expose the harmful effects that such compromise might bring. For this reason he kept party matters separate from the religious beliefs – that is how one could keep confrontation between Catholic and Protestant groups. He further stated that it was better to be clever in this matter rather than invite the trouble in the long run. He accepted the fact that the human beings were afraid of so many unknown things of nature for which no explanation is available. Science would resolve enquiries of metaphysical nature

Discuss whether or not plea bargaining should be abolished Essay

Discuss whether or not plea bargaining should be abolished - Essay Example However, this fact can not be ignored that plea bargaining is an essential component of the justice system because it allows the trial convictions, to be more thoroughly considered when the judges are not under the pressure of too many cases. Plea bargaining reduces the number of cases that would otherwise go for trial conviction to less than half, thus improving the efficiency of the trial conviction cases. Without the facility of plea bargaining, the whole justice system is likely to collapse under the immense and unbearable work load. If the option of plea bargaining is eliminated, this would overcrowd the courts and the attention will have to be focused also on futile and pointless cases along with potentially strong and complicated cases that genuinely require trial convictions. Every day, thousands of cases of petty crimes are taken to the court, and if each and every case was given the highest consideration, the idea of a functional justice system would become unapproachable. Therefore, it is important to have a system in place that would cater for crimes of petty nature, and plea bargaining sufficiently serves this purpose. Plea bargaining allow the defendants to enter into reasonable agreements in a very short period in comparison to the lengthy trials that are conventionally conducted in cases of severe crime cases.

Student's Post Week 8 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Student's Post Week 8 - Research Paper Example erstanding diversity through understanding concepts of cultural sensitivity and cultural intelligence would be a more comprehensive and general approach to adapting leadership styles in any diversified environment. Cultural sensitivity will for example allow you to detect a difference or a barrier without external assistance or force, and cultural intelligence will allow you to comprehend best practices in new cultural set ups (Kreitner, 2008). I have read your post and understood your perspective about leading in a diversified environment. You identify communication, together with knowledge, motivation, and flexibility as essential elements to leadership in a cross-cultural environment but do not develop a strategy for implementing the elements towards effective leadership in international, cultural, and ethical issues. I believe that you should have explained how you would use these elements in leadership. You could have for example explained an approach to developing cross cultural communication competence such as learning interpersonal and cross-cultural communication skills towards leadership in diversified set ups. I also think that your post focused on personal narration than on strategies to competent leadership in international, cultural, and ethical issues (DuBrin,

Poetry Essay Example for Free

Poetry Essay Understanding and interpreting poetry requires a different method of reading than the method which is generally associated with prose. While a given poem, especially a lyric poem, may be literally read in a matter of minutes, the comprehension of the poem may take a lifetime. This is due to the extraordinary ability of poets to compress meanings and also develop complex and multi-layered associations of language, figurative language, image, rhyme, and even narrative within a very brief literary forms. Contemplating a poem is as much a part of experiencing it as merely reading a poem. In the hands of a talented and inspired poet, the minimal use of words and the seemingly constricted forms offered by poetry are actually platforms to convey thoughts, themes, and emotions that would find no more complete expression even if given the larger platform of a novel, essay, or even memoir. As an example of this multi-tiered expression that is found in good poetry, Anne Sextons poem, Starry Night provides a rich demonstration of how poetry conveys multiple meanings and associations within a minimalist form. To begin with, Sexton’s poem â€Å"The Starry Night† is an exercise in ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is a type of poem written about another art-form. Most often, in poetry, it involves painting. When writing a poems inspired by paintings, poets attempt to make language, image, and meter evoke the same emotional or thematic impact which is delivered by the visual techniques and textures of paintings. In â€Å"The Starry Night,†Anne Sexton was inspired not only by Vincent Van Goght’s painting of the same title, but by a letter the artist wrote to his brother, which contained the epigraph for Sexton’s poem: â€Å"That does not keep me from having a terrible need/of— shall I say the word— religion. Then I go/out at night to paint the stars. † By including the quotation form Van Goght above the body of her poem, Sexton accomplishes a clever bit of compression, in fact: explicating the poem’s theme before a word of the poem, proper, has a chance to even be read by the reader! This sly trick is compatible with Van Gogh’s technique in the painting â€Å"The Starry Night† which discards subtlety in favor of grandeur and obscurity in favor of explicit emotional expression. In the painting we see a night sky crowded with swirling clouds, blazing starts with burning halos and a moon which reflects each of the lunar phases in one image. All of these attributes are exaggerated, pulling the viewer into a setting of epic epiphany and emotional release. Van Goght’s sky is alive and engages the viewer relentlessly. The overall initial experience is one of being overwhelmed by the immensity of cosmic nature. Below a set of rolling hill lies a small town. The focal point of the town is the large church- steeple, which presides over the rest of the buildings. This steeple seems to anchor the town and the rest of the scene beneath the sky, suggesting that it is the religious and spiritual dialogue between humanity and the cosmos which is of the most importance, not the town itself. Similarly, Sexton begins her poem, â€Å"The town does not exist† establishing the primacy of a non-linear mode of perception, as well as setting the stage for the eventual, climactic religious epiphany. Van Gogh painted Starry Night while in an Asylum at Saint-Remy in 1889. According to many sources his behavior was erratic during this period of his life. During his youth, Van Gogh had dedicated his life to the church. Many believe that Genesis 37:9: And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me† greatly influenced Van Gogh’s â€Å"The Starry Night. † Sexton, too, carefully reserves the numerical symbolism of the painting in her lines: â€Å"The night boils with eleven stars. /Oh starry starry night! This is how/I want to die! † By repeating the adjective â€Å"starry,† Sexton gains the â€Å"crowded† feeling of Van Gogh’s canvas in her stanza. She grasps the â€Å"living sky† element in the following lines: â€Å"It moves. They are all alive. /Even the moon bulges in its orange irons. † The key to Sexton’s masterful ekphrasis seems to lie in her use of compressed diction: â€Å"The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars. †This, like Van Gogh’s hurried, thick brush stroked invokes a sense of both urgency and passion. Sexton’s use of the refrain â€Å"This is how I want to die! † encapsulates the theme of Van Gogh’s paining, that of religious ecstacy, by merging the erotic/death urge so common in Elizabethan poetry and here marked by an additional shading of surrealism â€Å"sucked up by that great dragon, to split/from my life with no flag. In so doing, Sexton remains true to her confessional mode, also capturing an element which is perhaps understated in Van Gogh’s original, but present nonetheless, a â€Å"confession† of deep loneliness and alienation, marked by the darker swirls of color on the painting’s peripheries and also by the lone black tree, which Sexton describes as â€Å"a drowned woman† marking for posterity her close identification with the emotional confessional and religious themes of Van Gogh’s painting. Sexton’s poem is a wonderful counterpoint to Van Gogh’s painting, a rich example of the artistic and expressive potential of transposing the themes textures and techniques from one art medium to another.

Response of Fredrick Douglass to Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher S

Fredrick Douglass' Response to Uncle Tom's Cabin      Ã‚   Frederick Douglass was arguably the most prominent African American abolitionist during the mid-19th century. He established his notoriety through his narrative entitled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave published in 1845. Frederick Douglass also produced an African American newspaper, Frederick Douglass' Paper, which highlighted the reception and critiques of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Frederick Douglass praised Uncle Tom's Cabin through not only his writing but in the critiques and letters contained in his newspaper. It is important to look at these reviews to understand Douglass' intentions. However, C.V.S. from the Provincial Freeman critiques Douglass' hypocrisy in his critique of Uncle Tom's Cabin.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Douglass provided a forum in his newspaper for critical reception of book. The first critique of Uncle Tom's Cabin that appeared in Frederick Douglass' Paper was by William G. Allen in the form of a letter. Overall his letter praised the novel; however, he did respond negatively to the colonization and racialism in the text. Another regular contributor to Douglass' newspaper named William J. Wilson, signed Ethiop, wrote a review praising the novel's reception in New York City. Ethiop writes, "This species of abolitionism finds its way into quarters here, hitherto so faced over with the adamant of... ...e Harris." Provincial Freeman. 22 Jul. 1854, unpaged. Douglass, Frederick. "Letter to Mrs. Stowe." 8 Mar. 1853. Frederick Douglass' Paper. 2 Dec. 1853, unpaged. Ethiop. "Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin." Frederick Douglass' Paper. 17 June 1852, unpaged. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. 24 Mar. 2002  Ã‚   http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/.   Levine, Robert S. "Uncle Tom's Cabin in Frederick Douglass' Paper: An Analysis of Reception." Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 1994. 523-542. Railton, Stephen. Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive. 24 Mar. 2002 < http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/. >    Response of Fredrick Douglass to Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher S Fredrick Douglass' Response to Uncle Tom's Cabin      Ã‚   Frederick Douglass was arguably the most prominent African American abolitionist during the mid-19th century. He established his notoriety through his narrative entitled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave published in 1845. Frederick Douglass also produced an African American newspaper, Frederick Douglass' Paper, which highlighted the reception and critiques of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Frederick Douglass praised Uncle Tom's Cabin through not only his writing but in the critiques and letters contained in his newspaper. It is important to look at these reviews to understand Douglass' intentions. However, C.V.S. from the Provincial Freeman critiques Douglass' hypocrisy in his critique of Uncle Tom's Cabin.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Douglass provided a forum in his newspaper for critical reception of book. The first critique of Uncle Tom's Cabin that appeared in Frederick Douglass' Paper was by William G. Allen in the form of a letter. Overall his letter praised the novel; however, he did respond negatively to the colonization and racialism in the text. Another regular contributor to Douglass' newspaper named William J. Wilson, signed Ethiop, wrote a review praising the novel's reception in New York City. Ethiop writes, "This species of abolitionism finds its way into quarters here, hitherto so faced over with the adamant of... ...e Harris." Provincial Freeman. 22 Jul. 1854, unpaged. Douglass, Frederick. "Letter to Mrs. Stowe." 8 Mar. 1853. Frederick Douglass' Paper. 2 Dec. 1853, unpaged. Ethiop. "Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin." Frederick Douglass' Paper. 17 June 1852, unpaged. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. 24 Mar. 2002  Ã‚   http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/.   Levine, Robert S. "Uncle Tom's Cabin in Frederick Douglass' Paper: An Analysis of Reception." Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 1994. 523-542. Railton, Stephen. Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive. 24 Mar. 2002 < http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/. >   

Effects of Technology Essay

The advent and development of computer technology through the past three decades may be the most important and revolutionary technology ever invented in history. It has completely changed the way people do things, from interpersonal communication to professional transactions. Computers have affected the cultures of families, friends, offices, academes and even states and countries. The effect of computer technology can be felt starting with the most basic social institution, the family. The personal computer has become a regular fixture in millions of homes around the world as much as the television or the couch. Some families even own more than one computer units. Of course, the statistics would be lower among less developed countries. Nevertheless, an effect of the prevalence of the personal computer is that it has become more and more affordable. For third world countries, the idea of catching up has also come to mean being competitive when it comes to computer literacy compared to developed countries. Parents use the computer to surf the Net, look for job-related information or anything that interests them like news or hobby sites. The children use the computer as aid in making assignments and research, playing video games or make friends they won’t ever see in person through the chat rooms. Outside the home, the influence of computers is felt much more. Offices cannot survive without computers as they are used for word processing, calculations, presentations, and other tasks. Internet technology, an offshoot of computers, has created a thriving electronic-based commerce which has made millionaires out of people whose capital has been their mere creative minds. Other activities that before were done without computers are now computer aided. Automated banking has made banking and bill payments possible even outside office hours. People can shop online using their credit cards without the hassle of crowds and miles of walking inside malls just to find the perfect shirt or gift. Government agencies keep voluminous records and provide computer-aided services making it possible to make transactions with the public even without the latter’s physical appearance. Like all technologies, the computer has its downsides, too. For instance, it has caused concern regarding the privacy of people as with the interconnectedness of networks in cyberspace it has become easy to look for information about anybody. Another is that computers, being machines, break down. Since people have grown dependent to this machine, a crash or malfunction of computers especially those doing tasks which a lot of people depend on (like ATMs when they go offline or very important data that suddenly become irretrievable with a crash) could result to a lot of frustration and anxiety. Computer technology has also created computer addicts and affected the health and social skills of some people who would rather sit in front of a monitor than interact with humans or play ball outside. Computer technology has become so prevalent and people and nations have become dependent to it so much so that in modern times it has become unimaginable to survive without computers. The future is going to be defined by how fast and how far computer technology is going to take humankind and to be computer-illiterate in this modern world is to be left behind in the past.