Diabetes Mellitus As A Group Of Metabolic Diseases Essay

Introduction Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases characterised by hyperglycaemia (elevated blood sugar level) affecting the metabolism of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, resulting from the inability of the body to secrete and/or use insulin (American Diabetes Association (ADA), 2005; World Health Organisation (WHO), 2016). Patients with type-1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) requires insulin for survival as the cell-mediated destruction of the ÃŽ ²-cells of the pancreas eventually lead to a lack of insulin secretion (ADA, 2005; WHO, 2016) . Conversely, type-2 Diabetes Mellitus patients have insulin resistance (ADA, 2005) wherein their bodies cannot use the little insulin that it produces (WHO, 2016). In New Zealand, regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic status, T1DM is the most common form of diabetes in children and adolescents, increasing at a rate of 3–5% annually (Jefferies, Owens, Wiltshire, 2015). T1DM is of concern to the oral health professional because it has been linked to periodontal disease with the status of one influencing the other (Aldridge et al., 1995; Daniel, Gokulanathan, Shanmugasundaram, Lakshmigandhan, Kavin, 2012). Additionally, diabetes is a known risk factor for increased caries incidence (Siudikiene, Machiulskiene, Nyvad, Tenovuo, Nedzelskiene, 2008). This assignment will demonstrate the dental management of a patient with T1DM. Case History This is a case of a 15-year-old male—Ben—presenting at the Akoranga Integrated HealthShow MoreRelatedDiabetes Mellitus : A Group Of Metabolic Diseases Characterized By Hyperglycemia Resulting From Defects1463 Words   |  6 PagesDiabetes Mellitus is â€Å"a group of metabolic diseases characterized by hyperglycemia resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action or both. It is a disease which is caused by the insufficient insulin secretion or decrease in the peripheral effects of insulin. It is a serious problem in terms of morbidity and mortality. The hyperglycemia is associated with long term damage, dysfunction and failure of various organs especially the eyes, kidneys, nerves, heart and blood vessels. It’s associatedRead MoreDiabetes Mellitus : A Group Of Metabolic Diseases That Affect How Your Body Uses Blood Glucose949 Words   |  4 PagesDiabetes mellitus refers to a group of metabolic diseases that affect how your body uses blood glucose. Glucose is important to health because it is the source of energy for the cells that make up muscles and tissues. It is also the brain s main source of fuel. The disease is characterized by hyperglycemia that results from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action or both. It is estimated that 8.3% of the United States population have diabetes and another 7 million are undiagnosed (HuetherRead MoreDiabetes Mellitus And The Long Term Complications1385 Words   |  6 Pagesgeneral idea of diabetes mellitus, epidemiology, role factors and complications that arise from it, comparing and exhibiting the distinctions between type I type II diabetes, the people who are in jeopardy of developing diabetic renal diseases and hypertension due to the complications identifying the general pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus the long term complications that may transpire. Epidemiology of Diabetes Mellitus Diabetes Mellitus is one of the very prevalent metabolic diseases that affectRead MoreFactors Contributing Risk Factors For Diabetes Mellitus802 Words   |  4 PagesIntroduction Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is an endocrinal disease characterized by elevated blood glucose level, diagnosed by laboratory blood analysis with random glucose level 200mg/dL and fasting blood glucose of ≠¥126mg/dL.1 Risk factors The risk factors of T2DM are mainly attributed to the lifestyles and behavioral factors. Although the etiology cannot be pinpointed on a single cause it is proved that obesity, socioeconomic conditions and genetic factors increase the risk of T2DM. (Cite)Read MoreDiabetes Mellitus : An Autoimmune Disease1238 Words   |  5 Pages Diabetes or as doctors would refer by as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has a high blood glucose level (above 110 mg/dL) because insulin production is inadequate, the body’s cells do not respond properly to insulin or even both. Diabetes mellitus is also a contributing factor of development of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, renal failure, blindness, and stroke as individuals’ age. There are 3 different types of diabetes mellitus, type 1diabetes mellitusRead MoreDiabetes Mellitus : An Autoimmune Disease1261 Words   |  6 PagesDiabetes or as doctors would refer by as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has a high blood glucose level above 110 mg/dL because insulin production is inadequate, the body’s cells do not respond properly to insulin or even both. Diabetes mellitus is also a contributing factor of development of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, renal failure, blindness, and stroke as individuals’ age. There are 3 different types of diabetes mellitus, type 1diabetes mellitusRead MoreIntroduction:. Epigenetics Studies The Biological Information1364 Words   |  6 Pagesdevelopment [9]. The intrauterine environment can have short and long term effects on the health and future disease state of offspring. To look into the effects of the intrauterine environment, several factors need to be taken into account. This discussion will include the effects of maternal environmental conditions on the health of offspring, including type 1 and 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes, and maternal obesity and nutrition. The possible effects of paternal nutrition before fertilization willRead MoreDiabetes Mellitus As A Metabolic Disease1617 Words   |  7 PagesDiabetes Mellitus is a metabolic disease; when the body struggles to produce any or enough insulin (Mayo Clinic, 2015). Lack of insulin causes elevated levels of glucose in the blood. Today it is common to hear Diabetes Mellitus referred to as à ¢â‚¬Å"Sugar† or â€Å"Diabetes†. Diabetes can be distinguished into two forms; type one and type two. Diabetes is one of the ten leading cause of death in the United States. There is a wide range of risk factors that contribute to this metabolic disease. For example;Read MoreDiabetes Mellitus : A Major Public Health Problem Worldwide Essay1480 Words   |  6 PagesDiabetes Mellitus has increased in recent years due to bad eating habits and inactivity. Diabetes Mellitus is a major public health problem worldwide. Improved testing accuracy has improved which has confirmed more cases. There are two types of diabetes. In this paper I will explain the differences in both types of Diabetes and complications that are commonly associated with this disease, as well as treatment and plan of care for this disease. (American Medical Association) Type I DiabetesRead MoreDiabetes Mellitus : A Disease Affecting Multi Organ System1190 Words   |  5 PagesDiabetes mellitus or DM is a disease affecting multi-organ systems due to the abnormal insulin production, improper insulin usage or even both. It is a very serious health problem throughout the world effecting thousands of people.A survey conducted in United States showed that almost 6.2% of the population suffers from this disease. It is a matter of great issue that almost one -third of the population is unaware of the disease. Incidence Diabetes is actually the fifth leading cause of deaths

The Forbidden Game The Chase Chapter 4 Free Essays

â€Å"What message?† Dee said, frowning. The psychic was still staring at Jenny intently. â€Å"You’ve got the look,† she said. We will write a custom essay sample on The Forbidden Game: The Chase Chapter 4 or any similar topic only for you Order Now â€Å"You’ve seen them -the faery folk.† Audrey said sharply, â€Å"The faery folk?† In the paper house Audrey’s worst nightmare had been a fairy tale. A story about the Erlking, a spirit who haunted the Black Forest and stole children. The Elf-king. Julian had played the part to perfection, had even claimed to be the real Erlking. The Shadow Men. The faery folk. Different names for different ages. Oh, God, Jenny thought, she knows the truth. I should be happy, she thought wildly. But there was a knot in her stomach. The woman was answering Audrey. â€Å"The Elder Race. Some people have the gift of seeing them where everyone else only sees a wind in the grass, or a shadow, or a reflection of light.† Something about the woman’s tone brought Jenny up short. The psychic sounded too-pleased- about the subject. Not scared enough. â€Å"What do they look like?† The woman gave her a laughing glance. As if you didn’t know. â€Å"They’re the most beautiful things imaginable,† she said. â€Å"Creatures of light and happiness. I frequently see them dancing at Malibu Creek.† She held up one of her chains, and Jenny saw the charm, a beautiful young girl with gauzy wings and floating draperies. â€Å"Pixies in bluebells,† Dee said, absolutely straight-faced. Jenny’s muscles went slack. This woman didn’t know anything about the Shadow Men. Just another kook. The psychic was still smiling. â€Å"The message is: Vanished. They told me to tell you that.† â€Å"Vanished? Oh,† Jenny said. â€Å"Well, thank you.† She supposed it was as good a message as any, considering Summer’s situation. â€Å"Vanished,† the woman repeated. â€Å"At least-I think that was it. Sometimes I only get the vowel sounds. It might have been-† She hesitated, then shook her head and went back to her Mercedes. â€Å"For a moment there I thought she had something,† Audrey murmured. Jenny grabbed a handful of flyers and a map. â€Å"Let’s go.† Outside, they made their plans. â€Å"P.C.’s house is at thirteen-twenty-two Ramona Street,† Jenny said. She knew this by heart. It was the first place they had checked, along with Slug’s house. Of course, they hadn’t been able to search directly, but one of the kinder detectives had let them know that there was no paper house in either of the boys’ homes. â€Å"Dee, you and Michael can start there and cover everything west over to, say, Anchor Street. Audrey and I can cover everything east over to where Landana turns into Sycamore. Remember, it’s the girl we want now.† â€Å"In other words we’re canvassing the entire south side of town,† Michael said with a groan. â€Å"Door to door.† â€Å"Obviously we won’t cover it all today,† Jenny said. â€Å"But we’ll keep at it until we do.† She looked at Dee, who nodded slightly. Dee would keep Michael at it. Audrey didn’t look particularly happy, either â€Å"We’ve been to a lot of those houses before. What are we supposed to say when they tell us they already have flyers?† Dee grinned. â€Å"Tell them you’re selling encyclopedias.† She hustled Michael into the Bug. Audrey shook her head as she and Jenny got back into the Spider and drove away. The top was down, and the wind blew stray wisps of copper-colored hail out of her chignon. Jenny shut her eyes, feeling the rushing air on her face. She didn’t want to think about anything, not about the psychic, not about Zach, not about Tom. Especially not about Tom. Underneath she’d had some faint hope he might show up at the Center after school. He was avoiding her, that was it. Her nose and eyes stung. She wanted him with her. If she thought any more about him, about his hazel eyes with their flecks of green, about his warmth and his strength and his easy devil-may-care smile, she was going to cry. â€Å"Let’s go over by Eastman and Montevideo,† she heard herself saying. The words just came out of her mouth, from nowhere. Audrey cast her a spiky-lashed glance but turned south. Eastman Avenue, the scene of so many recent riots, was almost deserted. Jenny hadn’t been there since the day of Tom’s birthday, the day she’d walked there to buy a party game. As they approached Montevideo Street, everything Jenny had experienced the last time she’d been here-the blue twilight, the footsteps behind her, the fear-came back to her. She almost expected to see P.C. in his black vest and Slug in his flannels walking down the sidewalk. Audrey turned the corner on Montevideo and stopped. The mural on the blank wall still showed a street scene. In the middle of the mural was a realistic-looking store with a sign reading: More Games. But it was just paint and concrete. Flat. There was no handle sticking out of the door. Behind that blank wall she’d met Julian, in a place that wasn’t a real place after all. Scraps of paper lay in the street. One was the bright yellow of Summer’s flyer. Jenny felt suddenly very hollow. She didn’t know what she’d expected to find here, or even what had made her come. Audrey shivered. â€Å"I don’t like this place.† â€Å"No. It was a bad idea.† They drove north, backtracking. They were actually near Summer’s house now, in the kind of neighborhood where cars tended to be slightly dented, on blocks, or in pieces in the side yard. The afternoon seemed brighter here, and on the sidewalks the usual kids with sun-bleached hair and freckled limbs or night-black hair and brown limbs were running around. They parked the car by George Washington Elementary School and put the top up. At every house the spiel was the same. â€Å"Hi, we’re from the Summer Parker-Pearson Citizen’s Search Committee. Can we give you a flyer †¦ ?† If the people in the house looked nice, they tried to get invited in. Then came the transition from â€Å"We’re looking for Summer† to â€Å"We’re looking for an important clue in her disappearance†-meaning the paper house. And today, â€Å"We’re looking for somebody who might know something about her†-meaning the Crying Girl with the long dark hair and haunted eyes. Most of all, though, they tried to talk to kids. Kids knew things. Kids saw things. Usually the adults in the houses only listened politely, but the kids were always eager to help. They followed along on their bicycles, suggesting places to look, remembering that they thought they might have seen someone who could possibly have been Summer yesterday, or maybe it was the day before. â€Å"The paper house is really important, but it could be dangerous. Anybody could have picked it up, thinking it was a toy,† Jenny told one nine-year-old while Audrey kept his mother occupied. The nine-year-old nodded, his eyes bright and alert. Behind him, on a cracked leather sofa, a girl of four or five was sitting with a dog-eared book on her lap. â€Å"That’s Nori. She can’t really read yet.† â€Å"I can, too.† Tilting her face toward the book, although her eyes still remained on her brother, Nori said, â€Å"Then Little Red Riding Hood says, ‘Grandma, what big eyes you have.’ Then the wolf says, ‘The better to see you with, my dear.'† Jenny smiled at her, then turned back to the boy. â€Å"So if you see it or the white box, don’t touch it, but call the number on the flyer and leave a message for me.† â€Å"†¦ Grandma, what big ears you have†¦ .† â€Å"I’ll know what you mean if you say, ‘I’ve found it.'† The boy nodded again. He understood about things like clues and secret messages. â€Å"†¦ The better to hear you with, my dear. †¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Or if one of your friends knows about a girl with dark hair that was good friends with P.C. Serrani-â€Å" â€Å"†¦ Grandma, what big teeth you have†¦.† Audrey was finished with the mother. Jenny gave the boy a quick touch on the shoulder and turned to the door. â€Å"†¦ The better to EAT you with, my dear!† Nori shrieked suddenly, bolting up on the couch. Jenny whirled-and dropped her flyers. Nori was standing, eyes wide, mouth pulled into a grimace. For an instant Jenny saw, not a child, but a small, misshapen goblin. Then the mother cried, â€Å"Nori!† and Jenny was jerked back to reality. She felt herself turn red as she gathered the flyers. Nori began to giggle. Jenny apologized. The mother scolded. Finally they got out of the house. â€Å"I am never going to have children,† Audrey said, outside. They kept going. Some people were friendly, others were rude. A shirtless man laughed unkindly when they started the spiel about Summer and rasped, â€Å"Did you check the mall?† Almost all of them already had heard about the missing girl. Dinnertime came and went. They called their parents to say they’d be out for a little longer, while it was still light. Jenny glanced sideways at Audrey, a little surprised. Audrey wasn’t the suffering-in-silence type. Jenny had expected to have to cajole her to stay out this long. There was a lot more to Audrey than her glamour-magazine exterior let on. They came to a street where a lot of kids were playing. Jenny recognized the white-blond head of the one covering his eyes against a tree. It was Summer’s ten-year-old brother. â€Å"Cam!† she said, startled. He didn’t hear her. He went on counting, leaning on his folded arms. Other kids were scattering, hiding in open garages, behind bushes, in ivy. Jenny recognized two more of them. One was Dee’s little sister, Kiah, the other was her own younger brother, Joey. They came to play with Cam after dinner, she realized. It was a long way for Kiah, even on a bike. â€Å"What are they playing?† Audrey asked. â€Å"It looks like cops and robbers.† At Audrey’s blank expression Jenny remembered. Audrey had grown up in every place but America; her father was with the diplomatic corps. If he hadn’t retired early, she wouldn’t be in California now. â€Å"It’s a chase game. You capture the robbers and take them back to your home base as prisoners. Hey, watch out!† Jenny caught a small figure that had erupted out of the nearby ivy, tripped, and gone flying. It was Kiah, and Cam was close on her heels. Kiah looked up. She was never going to be tall like Dee, but she had Dee’s fine bones and wild, leaping beauty. Cam had hair like dandelion fluff, even lighter than Summer’s. It made him look oddly defenseless, although Jenny knew he was a tough kid. Unlike Summer, who hadn’t had a tough sinew in her, Jenny thought. Summer had been as fragile as spun glass. Ever since the night of the Game, Jenny’s emotions had been like boats bumping at a thick canvas barrier-cut off from her but still nudging. But suddenly, at the sight of Cam, they burst through. Grief for Summer. Guilt. Tears filled her eyes. What on earth could she say to him? â€Å"I’m sorry† was so inadequate it was pathetic. Other kids were coming out of hiding at the sight of Audrey and Jenny, gathering around curiously. Jenny still couldn’t speak. Audrey came to the rescue, improvising. â€Å"So what are you playing?† â€Å"Lambs and monsters,† Cam said. â€Å"I’m the monster.† â€Å"Oh. So how do you play it?† Kiah spoke up. â€Å"If you’re a lamb you hide, and then the monster comes looking for you. And if he tags you, then you’re captured and you have to go back to the monster lair. And you have to stay there until another lamb comes and lets you out-â€Å" â€Å"Or until the monster eats you,† Cam put in harshly. Kiah’s eyes flashed. â€Å"But he can’t eat you until he’s got all the lambs there. Ev-er-y sin-gle one.† Cops and robbers, Jenny thought. With only one cop and lots of robbers. The new name seemed a little savage, though, and so did the look in Cam-the-monster’s eyes. God, I wonder what it must be like for him at home, she thought. â€Å"Cam,† she said. His hard blue eyes fixed on her. â€Å"Cam, did your parents tell you what we said happened to Summer?† He nodded tightly. â€Å"Well-† Jenny had a feeling that Aba might not approve of what she was going to do next. But all these kids knew Cam, they cared. Jenny felt more of a connection here than she had anywhere else. â€Å"Well-I know it sounds crazy. I know your mom and dad don’t believe it. But, Cam, it was the truth. We didn’t hurt Summer, and we didn’t mean to let anybody else hurt her. You just don’t know how sorry-† The tears spilled suddenly, embarrassingly. Cam looked away and Jenny tried to get a grip on herself. â€Å"And what we’re doing now is trying to stop the person who hurt her from hurting anybody else,† she whispered, feeling stupidly like somebody on TV- â€Å"America’s Most Wanted.† Joey had joined the group and was flushed to his yellow hair roots with the humiliation of having a teenage sister bawling on the sidewalk. But Cam’s tight look eased slightly. â€Å"You mean all that stuff kids are saying about you guys looking for a cardboard house is true?† â€Å"Are they saying that? Good.† It’s working, Jenny thought. The junior grapevine. There was something heartening in these kids’ expressions. They weren’t closed off like adults, but open, interested, speculative. â€Å"Listen,† she said. â€Å"We’re still looking for that house, and now we’re looking for something else. A girl who was friends with P.C. Serrani.† For the hundredth time that day she described the Crying Girl. The kids listened. â€Å"We really, really want to talk to her,† Jenny said. Then she explained why. Why they needed the girl and why they needed the house. She explained, more or less, about Julian. A watered-down version, but the truth. When she finished, she let out a long breath-and saw something like determination coalescing in the steady young gazes. They’d weighed her claims, and they were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Even Joey, who’d been running away from her for the last two weeks, looked halfway convinced. â€Å"We’ll look for the girl tomorrow,† he said briefly. â€Å"We’ll talk to kids who’ve got, like, brothers or sisters in junior high. Because they might know her.† â€Å"Exactly!† Jenny said, pleased. She spared him the humiliation of being kissed by his sister in public. â€Å"Just be careful. If you see the paper house, do not touch it.† The last traces of doubt were wiped from the young faces, and there were grim nods. Her urgency had gotten through. She felt as if she’d recruited a team of small private detectives. â€Å"Thanks,† she said, and, feeling it was time for a judicious retreat, she gestured Audrey toward the next house. â€Å"One more game,† somebody behind her said, and somebody else said, â€Å"But who’s going to be It?† â€Å"Cam, unless he can guess who puts the eye in,† Kiah’s sweet voice fluted. On the doorstep Jenny glanced toward the street. Cam was turned around, undergoing some elaborate ritual for picking the next It. â€Å"I draw a snake upon your back,† Kiah chanted, tracing a wiggly shape. â€Å"Who will put in the eye?† Somebody lunged forward and poked Cam between the shoulder blades. â€Å"Courtney!† Cam shouted. â€Å"Wrong! You’re the monster again!† The door opened to Audrey’s knocking. â€Å"Yes?† Jenny tried to tear her attention from the game. Something about it†¦ and about that snake thing †¦ were all children’s games that gruesome? And their stories? The better to eat you with, my dear†¦. Maybe kids know something adults don’t know, Jenny thought, chilled, as a lady asked them into the house. When they came out, the sky was periwinkle blue and losing its color to the east. The light was fading. The street was empty. Good, Jenny thought, glad that Joey was on his way home-maybe even home by now. â€Å"Want to finish this block?† Audrey said, surprising her. â€Å"I-sure. Why not?† They worked their way down one side of the street and up the other. Jenny could feel herself getting more and more perfunctory at each house. The sky was now midnight blue and the light had gone. She didn’t know why, but she was starting to feel anxious. â€Å"Let’s stop here,† she said when there were still three more houses to go. â€Å"I think we should be getting back now.† The midnight blue slowly turned to black. The streetlights seemed far apart, and Jenny was reminded suddenly of the little islands of light in Zach’s nightmare. A nightmare where a hunter had chased them through endless darkness. â€Å"Hey, wait up!† Audrey protested. Jenny grabbed her arm. â€Å"No, you hurry up. Come on, Audrey, we have to get back to the car.† â€Å"What do you mean? What’s wrong with you? â€Å"I don’t know. We just have to get back!† A primitive warning was going off in Jenny’s brain. A warning from the time when girls took skin bags to get water, she thought wildly, remembering something she’d sensed with Julian. A time when panthers walked in the darkness outside mud huts. When darkness was the greatest danger of all. â€Å"Jenny, this is just so totally unlike you! If there was anything to be scared about, I’d be scared of it,† Audrey said, resisting as Jenny dragged her along. â€Å"You’re the one who always used to go off into the bad parts of town-â€Å" â€Å"Yes, and look where it got me!† Jenny said. Her heart was pounding, her breath coming fast. â€Å"Come on!† â€Å"-and I hate to tell you, but I can’t run in these shoes. They’ve been killing me for hours now.† The flickering streetlight showed Audrey’s tight Italian pumps. â€Å"Oh, Audrey, why didn’t you say something?† Jenny said in dismay. Something made her jerk her head around, looking behind her. Something rustled in the oleanders. Where everyone else only sees a wind in the grass, or a shadow†¦ â€Å"Audrey, take your shoes off. Now!† â€Å"I can’t run barefoot-â€Å" â€Å"Audrey, there is something behind us. We have to get out of here, fast. Now, come on!† She was pulling Audrey again almost before Audrey had gotten the pumps off. Walking as fast as she could without running. If you run, they chase you, she thought wildly. But she wanted to run. Because there was something back there. She could hear the tiny sounds. It was tracking them, behind the hedge of overgrown bushes on her right. She could feel it watching them. Maybe it’s Cam or one of the other kids, she thought, but she knew it wasn’t. Whatever it was, she knew in her heart that it wanted to hurt them. It was moving quickly, lightly, keeping pace with them, maybe twenty feet back. â€Å"Audrey, hurry___† Instead, Audrey stopped dead. Jenny could just make out her look of fear as she stood, listening. â€Å"Oh, God, there is something!† The rustling was closer. We should have run for a house, Jenny realized. Her one thought had been to get to the car. But now they had passed the last houses before the school grounds, and Audrey’s car was too far ahead. They weren’t going to make it. â€Å"Come on!† Don’t run don’t run don’t run, the hammering inside Jenny said. But her feet, clammy in their summery mesh loafers, wanted to pound down the sidewalk. It was gaining on them. It can’t be a persona person would show above those hedges, Jenny thought, casting a look behind her. Suddenly Jenny’s brain showed her a terrible picture: little Nori scurrying along spiderlike behind the bushes, her face contorted in a grimace. Don’t run don’t run don’t run †¦ The car was ahead, looking black instead of red in the darkness beyond a streetlight. Jenny seemed to hear eerily rapid breath behind her. Dontrundontrundontrundontrun †¦ â€Å"Get the keys,† she gasped. â€Å"Get the keys, Audrey-â€Å" Here was the car. But the rustling was right beside Jenny now, just on the other side of the hedge. It was going to come through the hedge, she thought. Right through the hedge and grab her†¦ . Audrey was fumbling in her purse. She’d dropped her shoes. Jenny grabbed the car door handle. â€Å"Audrey!† she cried, rattling it. Audrey flung the contents of her purse on the sidewalk. She scattered the pile with a desperate hand, seized the keys. â€Å"Audrey! Get it open!† Jenny watched in agony as Audrey ran to the driver’s side of the car, leaving the contents of her purse scattered. But it was too late. There was a crashing in the hedge directly behind Jenny. At the same moment a dark shape reared up from the shadows on the sidewalk in front of her. How to cite The Forbidden Game: The Chase Chapter 4, Essay examples

Self Reflective Essays Intellectual Development

Question: Describe about the Self Reflective Essays for Intellectual Development. Answer: Essay 1: Reflection on the ideas that is important for intellectual development: When I moved to this University, I encountered a huge change in the environment and surrounding. At the beginning, I was very uncomfortable in the situation but gradually I managed to cope up with the changes. I have witnessed many situations in my personal life that have compelled me to focus on my intellectual development. I have understood that academic excellence is indeed important to become successful in life. It is a long time that I have left my school and landed at the University. This has automatically increased my responsibility towards myself and that I have to focus more on studies that I can easily get through the places where I want to go. In my early education period, I used to rely on my tutors and teachers of my school and high school. For any kind of difficulties that I used to face in my studies I always used to rush to my mentors to get my queries resolves. However, in the recent time I have understood that self evaluation is most important to solve any query. There are many books and other sources available which can be used for developing understanding towards a topic. I have also understood that attending regular lectures and classes is indeed important. The things that are taught by the professors during the lectures should be utilized well and in case of any query, the doubts can be cleared out easily at the very moment when a particular subject is taught. Intellectual development can be improved by self grooming. Essay 2: A note to the future roommate: Dear Future Roommate, Let me tell you that you are going to experience a good time ahead because you are going to get me as me your future roommate. Let me tell you about myself. I am a fun loving person and always try to engage myself in some kinds of activities. I love to eat, dance and play. So if you are going to spend a good amount of time with me, you are sure to get engaged in many fun activities. The time that you will spend with me will be memorable and you will cherish these moments throughout your life. I know you must be finding it very ornamental but let me tell you one more important thing. I am very dedicated to my responsibilities and duties. I am here in this University to complete by academic career and move forward for a better future ahead. I know that it is very important to achieve academic excellence in life to become successful. Moreover, my family has lots of expectations from me and I can never let them down. So when it will be time for focusing on studies, there will be no distraction and all we will do is study hard so that we can perform best in our examinations. You are welcome to our little den. Together we will always stay happy and we will be there for each other to enjoy and help each other in needs. Hope to see you soon. Essay 3: Things that matter to me: If someone asks me, what matters to me the most? I would say that it is my Mother. My Mother means a lot to me because she is the one whom I found beside me at every point of time. I have worked very hard to reach to the position where I am today. In this complete journey, My Mother helped be a lot. I have faced lots of difficulties in my life, may it be academically or personally. I remember a time when I had a small fight with one of my classmates. I was very upset that day because I do not like to fight with people or create any kind of misunderstanding. In fact, she was one of my close friends whom I trusted a lot but that day I was very upset because she did something that I never thought of. I came at home crying and seeing me my Mom also got panicked but after listening to the whole situation, she explained me beautifully that there will be many situations in life when small issues will arise but we have to deal with these situations and have to tackle these things. There are innumerable such instances in my life where it was my mother who was there beside me. I can clearly give the credit to my Mom for all the good things that have happened to me and that will happen to me in future. I love and respect my Mother a lot.

The Politics of Punishment Media Framing and the Death Penalty in Crimes Against Dalits Essay Example

The Politics of Punishment: Media Framing and the Death Penalty in Crimes Against Dalits Essay The Politics of Punishment | Media Framing and the Death Penalty in Crimes Against Dalits| | Sabrina Buckwalter| | | When Ramdas Athavale, Republican Party of India (Athavale), announced that the death penalty verdict in the Khairlanji ruling (an infamous case of the rape and murder of a dalit family in 2006) was the first time such a sentence had been given in a caste crime, it was echoed by other activists, repeated by journalists and hailed as the coming of a new era in which the courts were finally acknowledging these crimes with serious punishment. The lone survivor of the massacre, Bhaiyallal Bhotmange, was pictured in newspapers with perhaps the first sign of a half smile anyone had seen from him in years, making peace signs with both his hands, surrounded by his group of supporters, all dressed in white. The significance of the ruling was the subject of editorials and became the anchor in communication about the case. The special public prosecutor in the case, Ujjwal Nikam had touted the sentencing as historic and remarked that, â€Å"This is a key judgment because it sends a very strong message that brutality, especially to low castes, will be dealt with very strictly. A supreme court judge was even overheard observing the seeming trend in capital punishment for caste atrocities. It turns out though that Khairlanji was the third case in which a crime committed against dalits was met with death penalty sentencing. No one who commented publicly on the ruling though had yet to hear of those cases perhaps because when the mass acres happened over 15 years prior, they didn’t receive the kind of media coverage the Khairlanji massacre garnered. We will write a custom essay sample on The Politics of Punishment: Media Framing and the Death Penalty in Crimes Against Dalits specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The Politics of Punishment: Media Framing and the Death Penalty in Crimes Against Dalits specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The Politics of Punishment: Media Framing and the Death Penalty in Crimes Against Dalits specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Less than two years later after the Khairlanji ruling, two more cases of death penalty sentencing in caste crimes were handed down, bringing the total of capital punishment cases to five. That meant that 80 percent of the death penalty sentencing in caste crimes was handed out within 17 months of each other. Most noteworthy is that those last two sentences were delivered even closer together, within just over a month of each other. Come June 15, the Indian Supreme Court’s decision on whether or not to stay the death sentence conviction in the Khairlanji case will be announced which could carry even more significance in the trend of capital punishment in caste crimes. With the historical absence of justice and punishment for crimes against dalits in India, how is it that the death penalty was a punishment never handed out in such cases just seven years ago, but today is a sentence that’s been awarded in five separate cases of caste atrocities? Through looking at another scholarly theory that argues the media framing of a particular issue shifts public opinion which in turn influences public policy and legal decisions, I make a connection to the Indian media’s recent portrayal of caste crimes and growing coverage of death sentencing to suggest an increasing support and subsequent rise in death penalty sentencing for crimes against dalits. In this paper, I will highlight the media coverage of the Khairlanji massacre and the Ranvir Sena dalit attacks in Bihar, illustrating a connection between the increased attention to caste crimes that preceded the rise of death penalty sentences. In the work done by three scholars at the University of Pennsylvania, the decreasing support for the death penalty in the U. S. is explained by media framing, specifically an â€Å"innocence frame† that has highlighted the wrongful conviction of people sentenced to death who were later found to be innocent. When various innocence projects at universities began discovering innocent people on death row, after DNA technology was proving innocence and when movies like â€Å"The Green Mile† depicted stories of innocent people sentenced to death, the media coverage of capital punishment began shifting from being portrayed as retribution for heinous crimes to it being the cause of wrongful death for innocent people. Capital punishment was ceasing to be a subject found in the context of justice-seeking and instead became an issue that appeared in the context of wrongful death. The scholars took over 50 years worth of New York Times indexed articles that mentioned capital punishment and coded each one for the level of positive or negative tone associated with the death penalty. They found a relationship between not only the frequency in coverage and public opinion but also the in the negative coded tone and public opinion. Through tracking public sentiment about capital punishment in polls, they were able to connect the declining support of the death penalty to the negative coded tones in media coverage. As the frequency increased with which the media began covering stories about death-row inmates who were falsely accused and other such stories, the public, over time, began to re-evaluate how they thought about capital punishment. â€Å"The result of this shift in framing has been a marked shift in aggregate public opinion and, even more strikingly, a dramatic decline in the willingness of juries to impose death sentences across the country. Framing drives policy making through a number of different channels, and key among these is public opinion. † For example, in stories that registered on their scale as pro-death penalty, certain key phrases would repeatedly show up, for example, â€Å"Retribution is warranted, family wants ‘justice’, certain crimes warrant this punishment. † Also, in articles where the victim was mentioned, 68 percent of them were pro-death penalty. When the defendant was mentioned, 79 percent of them were anti-death penalty. While this research highlights the causal relationship between media framing of the death penalty and its decline in public support, I believe it can also be used to highlight a similar connection between media framing of the death penalty in India and the rise in capital punishment sentencing. However, what’s important to point out is that a death penalty is rarely exercised in India. The last person to be executed was Dhananjoy Chatterjee in August of 2004 for the rape and murder of a young girl in 1990 and before that, Auto Shankar in 1995 for the death of six girls over the course of two years. Despite that incongruency, a death sentence award still carries an important message for death penalty supporters in India. The Khairlanji massacre and the role of the media In looking at one of the most notorious cases of caste atrocity in recent history, Khairlanji serves as the touchstone of dalit political uprising. If it weren’t for the media’s near month-long silence in telling the awful story of the Bhotmange family, it is fair to say that this news would have never received the sensational coverage it got. That such a massacre went undetected in the major media for month gave the story part of the shock-inducing value that drove the media interest in it after the story broke in the mainstream press on October 29, 2006. The massacre took place on September 29, 2006, in the village of Khairlanji outside of Nagpur. The Bhotmange family was one of the three lowest caste families in the village and the target of threats and intimidation by upper-caste villagers because of their land-owning status. One night, the tensions exploded and violence broke out. That evening at 6:00pm a mob had set out to the Bhotmange house in Khairlanji—they were carrying danda sticks, bicycle chains, axes and other blunt objects they could find. It is debatable whether or not the Bhotmange family would have even died that night though. The mob was looking for Surekha Bhotmange’s cousin, Siddharth Gajbhiye, a police patil, who employed a few of them at his store in town. Several weeks back before the attack on September 3, the men who worked for Siddharth, had already violently attacked him after he had failed to pay them for a month. The beating was cut short though when Surekha and her daughter Priyanka had witnessed the attack and reported it to the police. The men didn’t go to jail for several weeks, but once they did, they were released the same day—September 29—the day of the family’s attack. When they got out of jail that night, they assembled the mob ready to take revenge. They’d also heard  a rumor from local MLA Bhaskar Kawad that Siddharth’s brother had planned an attack on them, so they marched towards Siddharth’s store and when he wasn’t there, they decided to go after the Bhotmange family instead. The tension between the family and the villagers had been brewing for years by this point, even driving the family out to the edges of Khairlanji to escape the abuse. Their house stood out for its haphazardly constructed brick walls that sat stacked on top of one another without mortar to hold them together. The rest of the upper-caste homes were all made of solid, painted cement. Despite the outward appearance of such marked inequality, the Bhotmange family owned over seven acres of farm land, had a 19-year-old son who was in college working towards a degree in computer systems and a 17-year-old daughter who was one of few girls her age in school, 3rd in her class and working her way towards joining the army or police force. Such accomplishments did not go unnoticed and were repeatedly punished by other upper-caste villagers who took particular offense to Bhaiyallal’s land-owning status. In 2004, the villagers tried to claim two acres, claiming the land did not belong to him, in order to create a road. He relented, but when they demanded more land later, he refused. When Siddharth supported the family in conflicts like this it only added to the intensity of hatred the village had for this family. He would visit with them, look out for them, and it wasn’t long until rumors about an illicit affair between Surekha and Siddharth spread. Back on the night of the attack, on September 29, the mob reached the Bhotmange home where Priyanka was supposedly the first one the mob dragged out. She was stripped and raped repeatedly in the cattle shed located just 6 feet from their front door. The mob ordered her brothers to rape her and when they refused they mutilated their genitals. Surekha was stripped of her sari, left in just her petticoat and blouse. Their house was ransacked and red underwear, chili peppers and chili powder were all found scattered on the dirt floor of their house, suggesting chili peppers were used in the sexual assault of the women. Their beaten, stripped bodies were tied to bullock carts and paraded around the village till they reached the theatre in the village square. The mob of villagers standing in the audience demanded the Sarpanch to rape the women. Whether he did or not remains unknown but Priyanka’s vaginal cavity was allegedly stuffed with rods and sticks. Their bloodied bodies were eventually beaten to death and loaded back into the bullock carts and strategically thrown into various parts of the irrigation canal that skirted the village. During the attack Bhaiyallal returned home after he heard a commotion coming from the village. As he approached his home, he saw the mob but quickly retreated to Siddharth’s home for help. Upon hearing the news from Bhaiyallal, Siddharth called the police station at 7:07 pm to report the mob and seek assistance. The police inspector didn’t leave to investigate the mob report until 7:45pm and when he returned at 9:30 he had come back with little information. The next day, on September 30, Bhaiyallal went to the Andhalgaon police station to file an FIR to report his family missing, but was refused service and instead told to go look for his family again. Several hours later Priyanka’s body was found floating in the canal. As she was pulled out, a TV cameraman from local television station ETV filmed it, allegedly capturing evidence of the rods and sticks stuck inside Priyanka. There was also a photographer allegedly paid by police to take pictures as well. Priyanka’s body was then delivered to the hospital to conduct the post-mortem report. The official medical superintendent, Dr. Bante, received a phone call shortly after Priyanka’s body arrived and left the junior medical officer, Dr. Shende to carry-out the procedure. It was unusual that an urgent matter would take her away like that, but it was alleged she was lured away from the hospital by members protecting the mob who had money to pay various people to cooperate. Dr. Shende then conducted the post-mortem on Priyanka and despite being naked, failed to conduct a rape test as is customary when a body is found nude. Furthermore, he noted on the report that, â€Å"No injuries noted to the external genitals. †Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  On the following day, October 1, the bodies of Sudhir, Roshan and Surekha surfaced and were brought in for post-mortem reports. Though Dr. Bante had been present in the hospital that day, she again did not attend the post-mortem procedure. No genital injuries were noted in their reports either which was notable since both Sudhir and Roshan were stripped down to their underwear. That same day 28 people were booked and arrested in connection with the massacre. When the local newspapers first covered the attack, the reporting highlighted the alleged relationship between Surekha and her cousin Siddharth as the reason for the attack. In the Vidarbha Pulse, a local small town newspaper, the article outright blamed the deaths on an affair, â€Å"Four persons of a family were murdered over illicit relations at Khairlanji village near Mohadi in Bhandara district. †Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Not long after the first local news reports, various fact-finding missions from dalit and activist organizations conducted investigations. The Manuski Centre based in Pune was one of the first to visit Khairlanji and also the first to publish the pictures of the dead bodies. Consequently, the pictures were costly as the photographer asked for money before releasing them. Despite such a bribe, the pictures were crucial in communicating the horror of the attack. Nicolas Jaoul, a South Asian scholar based in France, traveled to Khairlanji not long after the attack and completed some of the most thorough research that exists on the massacre. In regards to the importance of pictures he writes, â€Å"These images played a major part in the protests and became the main incentive for producing collective anger. In Bhandara, Asit Bagde, an Ambedkarite activist who was among the first to take up the issue, explained to me: ‘We were able to use the pictures to speak about the murder (†¦) the same way that the photograph affected me, I could explain it to the next brother and he could explain to the next one; this way publicity spread orally in the first ten days. In the first ten days, it was only oral, and it went like this: this happened and it happened like this, and then they were murdered in this manner. ’ The news thus spread rom activist to activist, at the pace of a rumor, creating distress and building the tension in the local Buddhist community. †   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In fact, this is also the same way in which the story came to me—through dalit activists who had come to Mumbai from Nagpur to share this story with other dalit activists in the city, who would share the story with me. I was as a journalist for The Times of India then in 2006, based ful l-time out of Mumbai. I had received a call from a friend of mine Deelip Mhaske who was an activist I had just profiled for his work in the city. He asked to set up a meeting with me at the Indian Institute of Technology-Powai to meet with the other activists who had traveled from Nagpur about a rape and murder that occurred over 700 miles away. After hearing the gruesome details of the rape and murder with clues that seemed they’d undoubtedly reveal corruption, after reading the physical copy of the Vidarbha Pulse article that summed up the murder as a result of an affair and after hearing about the years of struggle and intimidation the Bhotmanges faced in Khairlanji, I pitched it to my editor. Though the circumstances and facts that surrounded the case were markedly grisly, it was the fact that the news had remained underground for a month that hooked my editor into supporting my coverage of the story. He knew our newspaper would be the first to break the news and understood how that could be used as a platform to spark the rest of the media outlets to cover it. The next day I left for the village with Deelip and one other activist friend. The account of the massacre I’ve shared here thus far is a result of that investigation. I filed the story from Nagpur and returned home after a week in Bhandara. The article, run on Sunday, October 30, 2006, titled, â€Å"Just Another Rape Story,† harbored a taunting tone for the silence that kept this story unnoticed. It ended with a paragraph written by my editor: â€Å"Bhaiyallal’s desperate wails, unburdened to anyone who is willing to listen, now echoes in the desolation of Khairlanjis perpetual anonymity. The little media interest that had surfaced when the bodies were first fished out from a canal has now almost entirely disappeared. Apparently, this is just another crime story in India today. †   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The first major outlet to pick up the story after that was NDTV the next day on October 30. After that was Tehelka on Saturday, November 4, by Shivam Vij. Four days later, the riots began. On Tuesday, November 6, 22 dalits were arrested in Kamptee, Maharashtra in connection with rioting. They threw stones, damaged police vehicles and lit them on fire. Six policemen were injured. That same morning in Nagpur, major riots began with 200 people that blocked roads and lit tires on fire. The role of fire in the Khairlanji case played an important part in drawing media attention, demanding justice and creating a spectacle that represented a rage much larger and more dangerous than a collective group of protestors could muster themselves. On Wednesday, November 7, after the fires and damage that broke out, over 18 different English-language and vernacular newspapers depicted the rioting on their front page. Later that same day more fires erupted and a curfew was installed in Nagpur. In Mumbai, protestors barged into Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s office demanding justice and protestors outside his office staged a dharna. On Thursday, November 8th, the fires continued and were burning all over Nagpur, but protesting had spread out to other towns and cities. Television news stations began covering the chaos every day and as a response to the huge jump in media coverage, the activists planned a walk called â€Å"The Long March,† set to take place on November 12 taking them from Nagpur to Khairlanji. In the nine days since news of the massacre had finally made it to the mainstream press, Bhaiyallal received 600,000 rupees in compensation as stipulated by the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 19 more people were arrested, the case was cleared to be taken over by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the case was approved to be put on a fast-track court. In any of the other caste atrocity cases, this might have taken months or even years. When the mainstream media first picked up this story and began covering it, the activists/protestors took immediate advantage and staged rallies and protests to further engage the media. When the first day of fires were set, the media responded with a huge swell of coverage. And when the activists/protestors reacted, the fires got bigger and more widespread which drew more media coverage to the cause in general. Without all the activists and protestors who capitalized on the media attention and organized their efforts, there would be no newsworthy element to cover. And if there had been no media interested in engaging with the activists and protestors, it would very difficult to produce the type of attention Khairlanji got—the relationship was very symbiotic. Bathani Tola In the cases of the dalit massacres in Bihar by the Ranvir Sena, the numbers of dead, the brutal manner in which they were killed and the repeated frequency with which they happened, made these series of riots some of the worst in India’s history. The Ranvir Sena formed in 1994 as an upper-caste landlord militia to protect land and retaliate against Naxal violence. The Naxalites had organized and formed a coalition of two Communist Marxist-Leninist parties who, â€Å"advocated the use of violence against the upper castes in organizing Dalits to achieve land reform. It’s worth mentioning that not all lower-caste villagers in predominantly Naxalite areas were Naxalites, Narula points out. So when the Ranvir Sena would carry out attacks against dalit villagers in retaliation for Naxalite violence, many innocent people were killed. On July 11, 1996, at Bathani Tola, in Bihar, 19 dalits and Muslims, mostly women and children, were killed in an attack where 60 R anvir Sena members lit houses on fire, beat villagers with lathis, used swords and shot them. During that time the Communist Marxist-Leninist parties were organizing to demand higher wages for agricultural workers. If they didn’t receive the raise, they wouldn’t work. Therefore in an effort to intimidate and prevent a strike, they planned their attack. In the aftermath it took four years to even charge those who were guilty in the attack, with 62 accused in March 2000. However, today, it now stands as the most recent case for which the death penalty was awarded. On May 12, 2010, Judge A. K. Srivastava handed out the death penalty to three people and life sentences to 20 others. According to a news report the charges were filed under the Indian Penal Code and Arms Act and not the POA Act. It is worth pointing out because like Khairlanji in which the POA Act was not observed, this practice could have long-standing consequences for the special rights granted under the POA Act. Laxmanpur-Bathe One of the most infamous dalit massacres in history, the Laxmanpur-Bathe attack took place a year and a half later after the Bathani-Tola massacre on December 1, 1997. Sixty-one dalits were killed over the supposed demand for more equitable land distribution in the village. Sixteen children, 27 women and 18 men were killed and at least five girls were raped before being shot and killed. In Smita Narula’s book, â€Å"Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s ‘Untouchables’,† she describes the Human Rights Watch visit with survivors of the attack—accounts that are very rare to read. In the case of the rapes that took place, one witness, Surajmani Devi, tells them: â€Å"Everyone was shot in the chest. I also saw that the panties were torn. One girl was Prabha. She was fifteen years old. She was supposed to go to her husband’s house two to three days later. They also cut her breast and shot her in the chest. Another was Manmatiya, also fifteen. They raped her and cut off her breast. The girls were all naked, and their panties were ripped. They also shot them in the vagina. There were five girls in all. All five were raped. All were fifteen or younger. All their breasts were cut off. † Part of the strategy of the Ranvir Sena was intimidation by way of sexually assaulting the women and killing children. In media reports and in Narula’s account, Sena members were quoted as saying, â€Å"We kill children because they will grow up to become Naxalites. We kill women because they will give birth to Naxalites. † In this case, the police were compliant in the violence because of their refusal to act on tips of impending violence. The Ranvir Sena had openly been touring the surrounding area of the village to fundraise for their attack. The police knew about their planning meetings, but did nothing about them because according to one officer, â€Å"It’s like crying wolf. The Communist Party of India (M-L) keeps sending us complaint letters every week; we can’t take action every time. Throughout the course of its existence, the Ranvir Sena has committed over 40 separate attacks against dalits, CPI (M-L) members, Muslims and other groups killing hundreds of people. They had approximately 400 troops and were financed by wealthy landowners. In 2000, each member of the militia was paid between 1,100 and 1,200 rupees per month for their work in the attacks. Each member was also insured. If they died during a massacre, the ir family would receive 100,000 rupees. In both the Bathani-Tola and Laxmanpur-Bathe massacres, media coverage did not match that of the Khairlanji massacre though the death toll was much higher. Various media reports and fact-finding missions covered the atrocities, but for various reasons it did not spark the same kind of interest and similar protests demanding justice that occurred in Khairlanji. However, it was just 17 months after the Khairlanji death penalty sentencing that this case became the next caste crime where the death penalty would be handed out. On April 7, 2010, 16 persons were sentenced to death by a court in Patna, Bihar, while 10 others got a life sentence. Those not sentenced to die were also ordered to pay a 50,000 rupee fine. Media framing and the death penalty in India While resistance to the death penalty is documented in Hindu texts as early as the Mahabharata, and despite the fact that several Hindu rulers refrained from imposing it, it was used by many. In some references capital punishment was supported as the fourth kind of punishment allowed to be inflicted, behind bodily punishment, punishment by fine and punishment by words. Today, the death penalty is a buzzword in caste atrocity crimes, routinely called for as a means for retributive justice in cases where dalits have been murdered at the hands of upper-caste mobs. While I do not possess the resources to carry out the review and coding of all the articles in a newspaper like The Hindu, or something comparable, to provide evidence for the connection between a pro-death penalty tone and the rise in capital punishment sentencing, I can point to the increased attention given in covering atrocity cases as highlighted by the Khairlanji case study, in addition to providing recent media examples in which capital punishment has a observable pro-death penalty tone as defined by Baumgartner. In the Laxmanpur-Bathe atrocity case, one of the prosecution lawyers was quoted as saying, â€Å"As Laxmanpur-Bathe was one of the biggest carnages, the court took strong view of the killing of the Dalits in a brutal manner and sentenced 16 people to death treating it as the rarest of rare case. † That it’s mentioned that the court took a strong view of the killing in light of the sentence can be seen as providing a justification for a pro-death stance. Former Union Minister of Law Arun Jaitly has made very clear statements that suggest a possible pro-death opinion: â€Å"The low rate of conviction leads us to the conclusion that crime in India is a very high profit and a low risk proposition. You commit a heinous crime and there is a 93. 5 percent possibility that you will get away with it. He made the comments in the context of communal and caste riots that fail to receive any convictions or trials. Kiran Bedi, the social activist and former Indian Police Service officer, uses justice and the death penalty in the same sentence, casting no doubt about her pro-death opinion, â€Å"The death penalty is necessary in certain cases to do justice to societys anger against the crime. In an op-ed piece in The Hindu, explaining the complexity of the Khairlanji death sentencing, Navanaya publisher S. Anand mentions the death penalty as an unfortunate form of justice for some people, â€Å"Given such pervasive apathy and hopelessness, the death penalty in the Khairlanji case, even when the judgment jettisons caste as a ground for the crime, deludes people into thinking that there is some justice, at last. And in the most recent death sentencing case (although outside the realm of caste violence), the trial of Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone survivor in the 26/11 terrorist attack, the judge openly claims there is no other solution than capital punishment, stating, â€Å"In the courts opinion, Kasab has no chance to reform. Keeping such a terrorist alive will be a lingering danger to the society and the Indian government. So while a thorough examination of decades of Indian media and its framing of capital punishment cannot be undertaken here, it has been my intention to highlight the media’s ability to shift how not only how caste crimes are regarded, (as was demonstrated by the lack of coverage and slow justice in the Ranvir Sena cases compared to the robust media coverage and speedy justice in the Khairlanji case) but how the increased attention on it and subsequent rise in death penalty sentencing will only contribute to an even greater rise of capital punishment in crimes agains t dalits. As I do not want to advocate for the death penalty per say, I have tried to illustrate the difference and inequality between a death sentence and an actual execution by showing the disparity between actual executions and death penalty sentences. As I mentioned, though a death sentence usually never means a person will be hanged to death, it still carries a strong message for those who support it for retributive justice.

Converting Fractions to Decimals - free worksheets.

Converting Fractions to Decimals - free worksheets. All worksheets are in PDF. Remember, look at the fraction bar as a divided by bar. For instance 1/2 means the same as 1 divided by 2 which equals 0.5. Or 3/5 is 3 divided by 5 which equals 0.6. Thats all you need to know to convert the following worksheets on fractions to decimals! Converting fractions to decimals is a common concept that is often taught in the fifth and sixth grades in most educational jurisdictions. Students should have plenty of exposure to concrete manipulatives prior to complete pencil paper tasks. For instance, work with fraction bars and circles to ensure a deep understanding is in place. 1. Worksheet 1Answers 2. Worksheet 2Answers 3. Worksheet 3Answers 4. Worksheet 4Answers 5. Worksheet 5Answers 6. Worksheet 6Answers Although calculators will do the conversion simply and quickly, it is still important for students to understand the concept in order to use the calculator. After all, you cant use a calculator if you dont know which numbers or operations to key in.

The Etymology (and Punctuation) of Fathers Day

The Etymology (and Punctuation) of Fathers Day The Etymology (and Punctuation) of Father’s Day Happy Fathers Day! And what better way to celebrate than with a little etymology? A slap-up meal followed by a nap in the sunshine, you say? There’ll be time for that later! For now, let’s look at where the word â€Å"father† comes from and why we use an apostrophe in â€Å"Fathers Day.† The Etymology of Father Our modern word â€Å"father† comes from the Old English fà ¦der, which meant â€Å"he who begets a child.† This is close to several words for fathers in other languages, including Old Norse (fathir), German (Vater), Sanskrit (pitar), and Latin and Greek (both use pater). In fact, the similarities between these words suggest a common source. As such, most experts trace â€Å"father† to a Proto-Indo-European term. And while we cannot know what this was exactly, it may have been something like pÉ™ter-. Fatherhood is tough when your kids look down on you. Pa, Papa, Dad, and More So if â€Å"father† comes from pÉ™ter-, where does this term come from? It may have evolved from the basic noise â€Å"pa,† which we still see in words like â€Å"papa.† The words â€Å"dad† and â€Å"dada† have similar origins in â€Å"da,† and we see these simple sounds in words for fathers all over the world. The main theory for why we see this pattern so much is that â€Å"da,† â€Å"pa,† and â€Å"ta† are some of the first noises babies can make. The same is true of the â€Å"ma† from â€Å"mama,† which becomes â€Å"mom.† As such, when babies start making noises like â€Å"da† and â€Å"pa,† we assume they’re addressing their parents. And over time, this has led to words like â€Å"dad† and â€Å"pa† entering our everyday speech. Fathers Day vs. Fathers Day As a rule, you should always include an apostrophe in Fathers Day. This is the traditional way of writing it, but it also makes sense. After all, you usually focus on your own father on this day. Thus, the â€Å"Father† in Fathers Day is typically one person, even if that person is different for each of us. Writing â€Å"Fathers Day† or â€Å"Fathers Day,† on the other hand, would imply you’re celebrating fathers in general. And while that would be admirable, you’d need a lot of stamps to send a card to every father in the world. All in all, then, you’re probably better off focusing on your own dad for today.

Rapid Economy Developmentt Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Rapid Economy Developmentt - Essay Example Both India and China government can now provide timely and more efficient services for everyone’s wellbeing. This is as a result of more people being able to pay their taxes as there are more employment opportunities. The availability of more revenue has thus enabled them to improve on the medical healthcare facilities and education. This not only has private benefit, but a healthy population can be more productive due to the increased life expectancy. There is also the reduction of crime. This is because those lower the social ladder are able to earn enough thus eliminating theft cases. Economic, environmental and global problems that have arisen and are likely to arise On the other hand, rapid growth has caused a lot of harm in China and India. These negative consequences have affected the economic sector, the environment and the global security. These issues arise from expansion of economic activities. As demand keeps on increasing, the more the global side effects. India a nd China being in the beginning phase are experiencing the structural shifts from agriculture to industrial growth. With this, there is a substantial decline in the agricultural share, in these two countries. This has led to the rural- urban migration and thus the amount of farming has reduced. While this happens, the levels of energy consumption go high thus the release of poisonous gases into the environment. To achieve economic growth, these two countries have to increase in manufacturing exports, and decline in manufacturing imports. This leads to increase in energy consumption levels which cause environmental dilapidation. Both China and India are dependent on coal, fuel and electricity as sources of energy. India consumes a lot of energy in the form of solids which include coal and commercial wood. With the rate of economic growth, they had to depend more on liquid fuel, which includes petroleum. However, with the scarcity of oil sources, India had to depend on liquids from th e rest of the world, therefore, started importing, which has peaked annually. China being a popular nation with rapid industrialization requires a lot of energy. From the availability of resources, China depended more on solid fuel mainly coal. However, the energy consumption went higher each year, creating the need for other sources of energy and that's when they started falling back on liquid fuel (Erol & Yu, 1987). By the year 2005, China was the second largest consumer of oil led by United States of America. The net imports for oil seem to be growing each year. This puts an economic strain on citizens who pay for these imports indirectly through their taxes. This high usage of energy in these two countries causes the main problem of pollution. While meeting the high energy demand, the energy production causes the release of toxic gases like carbon dioxide and sulphur. High dependency on coal in both China and India causes severe air pollution by release of sulphur in the air whi ch is the cause of acid rains. The continued emission of these gases is a leading cause of global warming, which causes the erosion of the ozone layer, resulting in the rise, in temperatures. The effects of this are already global; with the melting of snow ice and glaciers, the rivers are overflowing causing high dispensation of waters into the oceans. Other effects of global warming are the increase

Organizational behavior Article critique Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

Organizational behavior Article critique - Essay Example on of organizational behavior, â€Å"as the study of human behavior in organizations; a multidisciplinary field devoted to understanding individual and group behavior, interpersonal processes, and organizational dynamics† (Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn 3) Azman et al underscore the value and merit of studying the influence of relationships in organizations. This essay will critique how the writers developed their methodology, approach, and some of the results of the study. The critique will weigh whether the results presented in the article substantiated their claims adding worth to the continuous growing body of work on human relationships and their affect on organizational behavior. In addition to the article’s composition, grammatical and organizational structure, it readability and comprehensibility will be examined as well. Finally by reviewing the article determining if the information documented was presented in such a way as to increase the understa nding of the complexity of human relationships in organizations. Azman et al started by stating their purpose in writing the article, outlining the objectives of the paper, and discussed their method of approach for the study. They identify three main objectives 1) examine the relationship between transformational leadership and empowerment; 2) examine the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment; and 3) examine the mediating effect of empowerment in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment (92) . The objective of demonstrating the connection between healthy relationships within an organizational culture and performance remained the focal point throughout the article. The article was written in a way that each section of information built upon the previous with each section returning to the initial purpose. The traditional and non-traditional views of leadership provided the foundation for their initial

Defining Philosophy Essay Example for Free

Defining Philosophy Essay Philosophy derives from the two Greek words philein, which means ? to love, and sophia, which means ? knowledge or ? wisdom (Moore Bruder, 2002, p. 2). This is not the only definition of philosophy as philosophy is a very vast subject. A critical examination of reality characterized by rational inquiry that aims at the Truth for the sake of attaining wisdom (Russo Fair, 2000, 4). My interpretation of philosophy is a field of study where one thinks outside of the box in the search for knowledge or wisdom that does not involve scientific explanations. There is no consistency in the nature of philosophical questions. The nature of many philosophical questions concern norms. The application of norms, also known as standards occurs when people decide whether something is good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. Normative questions ask about the value of something. The field of science explains how things are but does not tell us how things ought to be. Sometimes philosophical questions arise when different people believe different things. For example, some people believe that a cause-and-effect relationship exists in everything. If a person drinks spoiled milk, he or she will get sick. There are others that believe when one voluntarily decides to do something- nothing made them decide to do that. This refutes the cause-and-effect relationship belief. Then there are many other ways to look at the situation. Is every happening caused? Or are some happenings uncaused? Or is it perhaps that decisions are not happenings? These questions cause a dilemma that involves philosophizing. The importance of some philosophical questions-Is there a God who is attentive, caring, and responsive to us? and Is abortion morally wrong? -is obvious and vast. A justification would have to be given for not contemplating them. But some philosophical questions are of more or less obscure, and seemingly only academic or theoretical, consequence. Not everything philosophers consider is dynamite. But then, every field has its theoretical and non-practical questions. Some questions are inherently interesting to the people who pose them. Some philosophical questions are asked because the philosopher wants to know the answer simply to know the answer. Most philosophical questions tend to fall into one of these four areas: Questions related to being or existence (Metaphysics), Questions related to knowledge (Epistemology), Questions related to values, and Questions of logic or the theory of correct reasoning. Metaphysics and Epistemology are branches of philosophy that are very similar to one another. The questions related to values are standards of conduct and conditions of responsibility. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with these areas: Cosmology- Theory of reality and Ontology- Theory of being. The two basic questions of metaphysics ask what is being?  and what are its fundamental features and properties? Some specific examples of metaphysics questions are: What is the mind? Do people have free will? Metaphysical bookstores, for example, specialize in all sorts of occult subjects, from channeling, harmonic convergence, and pyramid power to past-life hypnotic regression, psychic surgery, and spirit photography. However, the true history of metaphysics is quite different. Metaphysics has little to do with the occult or Tarot cards and the like. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge that asks what is the nature of knowledge and what are the criteria, sources, and limits of knowledge. Specific examples of epistemology questions are: What is truth? and Is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty? The questions related to values involve four different philosophies: (1) moral philosophy (ethics)- is the study of right and wrong in human action or the philosophical study of moral judgments; (2) social philosophy- the philosophical study of society and its institutions; (3) political philosophy- which focuses on the state and seeks to determine its justification and ethically proper organization; And (4) aesthetics- is the study of beauty or the philosophical study of art and of  value judgments about art. Questions of logic or the theory of correct reasoning, seeks to investigate and establish the criteria of valid inference and demonstration. Logic is the study of the principles of right reasoning. Logic is the basic tool that philosophers use to investigate reality. The questions raised by logic are: (1) What makes an argument valid or invalid (2) What is a sound argument? Philosophical questions differ from questions of a scientific or factual nature because philosophical answers usually entail making careful distinctions in thought, words, argument, and recognizing subtle distinctions among things and among facts. Philosophical solutions also require logic and critical thinking skills, discussion, and exposition. Philosophy involves one to learn how to look carefully for similarities and differences among things and develop an ability to spot logical difficulties in what others write or say and to avoid these pitfalls in their own thinking. In addition, in philosophy people learn to recognize and critically assess the important unstated assumptions people make about the world and themselves and other people and life in general. These assumptions affect how people perceive the world and what they say and do; yet for the most part people are not aware of them and are disinclined to consider them critically. Finally, learning philosophical lessons allow people not to become trapped by stubbornness. Philosophical lessons instill the value of open-mindedness and seeking solutions to problems that meet standards of coherence and reasonableness. References Moore, B. N. , Bruder, K. (2002). Philosophy: The Power of Ideas (5th ed. ). Boston: McGraw-Hill Russo, M. , Fair, G. (2000). What is Philosophy Anyway. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 17, 2006 from: http://www. molloy. edu/academic/philosophy/SOPHIA/what_is_philosophy_anyway. htm.

The Role of Computers in Family Life :: Technology Society

The Role of Computers in Family Life In this paper I will be explaining how computers play both a positive and negative role in the family life. Along with how much computers have changed the â€Å"Family Life†. I will explain how computers open the doors to endless access to the world. All this freedom however comes with a price. One must realize that you will be losing security with every new site signed up for or every purchase made on-line. Not to mention all the other problems that come along with having a computer. You must be ready and aware of the risks so you can be prepared when you hook-up your computer. Right now you can practically do everything you need to do right from your own computer. There are so many tools to work with and things you are capable of doing. You can virtually talk to anyone anywhere at anytime if they have the proper hook-ups. This also includes the newly on-line dating services that has pro’s and con’s of its own. Another plus for computers is instead of the children being glued to the TV for hours, they are now being productive on the computer. They are doing things that force their minds to keep thinking and not just zoning out. The introduction of computers to the family life also helps families come together and spend more quality family time together. The list can go on, but with all these opportunities we have, we also lose a lot. We lose privacy and security. There are also some greater drawbacks when in comes to the net, like Internet related crimes and identity theft. When you think of computers, what do you think about? Conducting business at work or writing assignments at school maybe. There is so much more to do with computers. I don't even know the half of them, but a computer at home can make things a whole lot calmer. First off, you can do all your bills on line. You can check on balances, or check when the payments were received. Also check your savings/checking accounts. This is a great feature because you get away from talking to machines and being put on hold. No more driving out in the cold or in traffic to see if you have enough money to cover your checks.

Last Sacrifice Chapter One

I DON'T LIKE CAGES. I don't even like going to zoos. The first time I went to one, I almost had a claustrophobic attack looking at those poor animals. I couldn't imagine any creature living that way. Sometimes I even felt a little bad for criminals, condemned to life in a cell. I'd certainly never expected to spend my life in one. But lately, life seemed to be throwing me a lot of things I'd never expected, because here I was, locked away. â€Å"Hey!' I yelled, gripping the steel bars that isolated me from the world. â€Å"How long am I going to be here? When's my trial? You can't keep me in this dungeon forever!' Okay, it wasn't exactly a dungeon, not in the dark, rusty-chain sense. I was inside a small cell with plain walls, a plain floor, and well †¦ plain everything. Spotless. Sterile. Cold. It was actually more depressing than any musty dungeon could have managed. The bars in the doorway felt cool against my skin, hard and unyielding. Fluorescent lighting made the metal gleam in a way that felt harsh and irritating to my eyes. I could see the shoulder of a man standing rigidly to the side of the cell's entrance and knew there were probably four more guardians in the hallway out of my sight. I also knew none of them were going to answer me back, but that hadn't stopped me from constantly demanding answers from them for the last two days. When the usual silence came, I sighed and slumped back on the cot in the cell's corner. Like everything else in my new home, the cot was colorless and stark. Yeah. I really was starting to wish I had a real dungeon. Rats and cobwebs would have at least given me something to watch. I stared upward and immediately had the disorienting feeling I always did in here: that the ceiling and walls were closing in around me. Like I couldn't breathe. Like the sides of the cell would keep coming toward me until no space remained, pushing out all the air †¦ I sat up abruptly, gasping. Don't stare at the walls and ceiling, Rose, I chastised myself. Instead, I looked down at my clasped hands and tried to figure out how I'd gotten into this mess. The initial answer was obvious: someone had framed me for a crime I didn't commit. And it wasn't petty crime either. It was murder. They'd had the audacity to accuse me of the highest crime a Moroi or dhampir could commit. Now, that isn't to say I haven't killed before. I have. I've also done my fair share of rule (and even law) breaking. Cold- blooded murder, however, was not in my repertoire. Especially not the murder of a queen. It was true Queen Tatiana hadn't been a friend of mine. She'd been the coolly calculating ruler of the Moroi–a race of living, magic-using vampires who didn't kill their victims for blood. Tatiana and I had had a rocky relationship for a number of reasons. One was me dating her great-nephew, Adrian. The other was my disapproval of her policies on how to fight off Strigoi–the evil, undead vampires who stalked us all. Tatiana had tricked me a number of times, but I'd never wanted her dead. Someone apparently had, however, and they'd left a trail of evidence leading right to me, the worst of which were my fingerprints all over the silver stake that had killed Tatiana. Of course, it was my stake, so naturally it'd have my fingerprints. No one seemed to think that was relevant. I sighed again and pulled out a tiny crumpled piece of paper from my pocket. My only reading material. I squeezed it in my hand, having no need to look at the words. I'd long since memorized them. The note's contents made me question what I'd known about Tatiana. It had made me question a lot of things. Frustrated with my own surroundings, I slipped out of them and into someone else's: my best friend Lissa's. Lissa was a Moroi, and we shared a psychic link, one that let me go to her mind and see the world through her eyes. All Moroi wielded some type of elemental magic. Lissa's was spirit, an element tied to psychic and healing powers. It was rare among Moroi, who usually used more physical elements, and we barely understood its abilities–which were incredible. She'd used spirit to bring me back from the dead a few years ago, and that's what had forged our bond. Being in her mind freed me from my cage but offered little help for my problem. Lissa had been working hard to prove my innocence, ever since the hearing that had laid out all the evidence against me. My stake being used in the murder had only been the beginning. My opponents had been quick to remind everyone about my antagonism toward the queen and had also found a witness to testify about my whereabouts during the murder. That testimony had left me without an alibi. The Council had decided there was enough evidence to send me to a full-fledged trial–where I would receive my verdict. Lissa had been trying desperately to get people's attention and convince them I'd been framed. She was having trouble finding anyone who would listen, however, because the entire Moroi Royal Court was consumed with preparations for Tatiana's elaborate funeral. A monarch's death was a big deal. Moroi and dhampirs–half- vampires like me–were coming from all over the world to see the spectacle. Food, flowers, decorations, even musicians †¦ The full deal. If Tatiana had gotten married, I doubted the event would have been this elaborate. With so much activity and buzz, no one cared about me now. As far as most people were concerned, I was safely stashed away and unable to kill again. Tatiana's murderer had been found. Justice was served. Case closed. Before I could get a clear picture of Lissa's surroundings, a commotion at the jail jerked me back into my own head. Someone had entered the area and was speaking to the guards, asking to see me. It was my first visitor in days. My heart pounded, and I leapt up to the bars, hoping it was someone who would tell me this had all been a horrible mistake. My visitor wasn't quite who I'd expected. â€Å"Old man,' I said wearily. â€Å"What are you doing here?' Abe Mazur stood before me. As always, he was a sight to behold. It was the middle of summer–hot and humid, seeing as we were right in the middle of rural Pennsylvania– but that didn't stop him from wearing a full suit. It was a flashy one, perfectly tailored and adorned with a brilliant purple silk tie and matching scarf that just seemed like overkill. Gold jewelry flashed against the dusky hue of his skin, and he looked like he'd recently trimmed his short black beard. Abe was a Moroi, and although he wasn't royal, he wielded enough influence to be. He also happened to be my father. â€Å"I'm your lawyer,' he said cheerfully. â€Å"Here to give you legal counsel, of course.' â€Å"You aren't a lawyer,' I reminded him. â€Å"And your last bit of advice didn't work out so well.' That was mean of me. Abe–despite having no legal training whatsoever–had defended me at my hearing. Obviously, since I was locked up and headed for trial, the outcome of that hadn't been so great. But, in all my solitude, I'd come to realize that he'd been right about something. No lawyer, no matter how good, could have saved me at the hearing. I had to give him credit for stepping up to a lost cause, though considering our sketchy relationship, I still wasn't sure why he had. My biggest theories were that he didn't trust royals and that he felt paternal obligation. In that order. â€Å"My performance was perfect,' he argued. â€Å"Whereas your compelling speech in which you said â€Å"if I was the murderer' didn't do us any favors. Putting that image in the judge's head wasn't the smartest thing you could have done.' I ignored the barb and crossed my arms. â€Å"So what are you doing here? I know it's not just a fatherly visit. You never do anything without a reason.' â€Å"Of course not. Why do anything without a reason?' â€Å"Don't start up with your circular logic.' He winked. â€Å"No need to be jealous. If you work hard and put your mind to it, you might just inherit my brilliant logic skills someday.' â€Å"Abe,' I warned. â€Å"Get on with it.' â€Å"Fine, fine,' he said. â€Å"I've come to tell you that your trial might be moved up.' â€Å"W-what? That's great news!' At least, I thought it was. His expression said otherwise. Last I'd heard, my trial might be months away. The mere thought of that–of being in this cell so long–made me feel claustrophobic again. â€Å"Rose, you do realize that your trial will be nearly identical to your hearing. Same evidence and a guilty verdict.' â€Å"Yeah, but there must be something we can do before that, right? Find proof to clear me?' Suddenly, I had a good idea of what the problem was. â€Å"When you say â€Å"moved up,' how soon are we talking?' â€Å"Ideally, they'd like to do it after a new king or queen is crowned. You know, part of the post-coronation festivities.' His tone was flippant, but as I held his dark gaze, I caught the full meaning. Numbers rattled in my head. â€Å"The funeral's this week, and the elections are right after †¦ You're saying I could go to trial and be convicted in, what, practically two weeks?' Abe nodded. I flew toward the bars again, my heart pounding in my chest. â€Å"Two weeks? Are you serious?' When he'd said the trial had been moved up, I'd figured maybe it was a month away. Enough time to find new evidence. How would I have pulled that off? Unclear. Now, time was rushing away from me. Two weeks wasn't enough, especially with so much activity at Court. Moments ago, I'd resented the long stretch of time I might face. Now, I had too little of it, and the answer to my next question could make things worse. â€Å"How long?' I asked, trying to control the trembling in my voice. â€Å"How long after the verdict until they †¦ carry out the sentence?' I still didn't entirely know what all I'd inherited from Abe, but we seemed to clearly share one trait: an unflinching ability to deliver bad news. â€Å"Probably immediately.' â€Å"Immediately.' I backed up, nearly sat on the bed, and then felt a new surge of adrenaline. â€Å"Immediately? So. Two weeks. In two weeks, I could be †¦ dead.' Because that was the thing–the thing that had been hanging over my head the moment it became clear someone had planted enough evidence to frame me. People who killed queens didn't get sent to prison. They were executed. Few crimes among Moroi and dhampirs got that kind of punishment. We tried to be civilized in our justice, showing we were better than the bloodthirsty Strigoi. But certain crimes, in the eyes of the law, deserved death. Certain people deserved it, too–say, like, treasonous murderers. As the full impact of the future fell upon me, I felt myself shake and tears come dangerously close to spilling out of my eyes. â€Å"That's not right!' I told Abe. â€Å"That's not right, and you know it!' â€Å"Doesn't matter what I think,' he said calmly. â€Å"I'm simply delivering the facts.' â€Å"Two weeks,' I repeated. â€Å"What can we do in two weeks? I mean †¦ you've got some lead, right? Or †¦ or †¦ you can find something by then? That's your specialty.' I was rambling and knew I sounded hysterical and desperate. Of course, that was because I felt hysterical and desperate. â€Å"It's going to be difficult to accomplish much,' he explained. â€Å"The Court's preoccupied with the funeral and elections. Things are disorderly–which is both good and bad.' I knew about all the preparations from watching Lissa. I'd seen the chaos already brewing. Finding any sort of evidence in this mess wouldn't just be difficult. It could very well be impossible. Two weeks. Two weeks, and I could be dead. â€Å"I can't,' I told Abe, my voice breaking. â€Å"I'm not †¦ meant to die that way.' â€Å"Oh?' He arched an eyebrow. â€Å"You know how you're supposed to die?' â€Å"In battle.' One tear managed to escape, and I hastily wiped it away. I'd always lived my life with a tough image. I didn't want that shattering, not now when it mattered most of all. â€Å"In fighting. Defending those I love. Not †¦ not through some planned execution.' â€Å"This is a fight of sorts,' he mused. â€Å"Just not a physical one. Two weeks is still two weeks. Is it bad? Yes. But it's better than one week. And nothing's impossible. Maybe new evidence will turn up. You simply have to wait and see.' â€Å"I hate waiting. This room †¦ it's so small. I can't breathe. It'll kill me before any executioner does.' â€Å"I highly doubt it.' Abe's expression was still cool, with no sign of sympathy. Tough love. â€Å"You've fearlessly fought groups of Strigoi, yet you can't handle a small room?' â€Å"It's more than that! Now I have to wait each day in this hole, knowing there's a clock ticking down to my death and almost no way to stop it.' â€Å"Sometimes the greatest tests of our strength are situations that don't seem so obviously dangerous. Sometimes surviving is the hardest thing of all.' â€Å"Oh. No. No.' I stalked away, pacing in small circles. â€Å"Do not start with all that noble crap. You sound like Dimitri when he used to give me his deep life lessons.' â€Å"He survived this very situation. He's surviving other things too.' Dimitri. I took a deep breath, calming myself before I answered. Until this murder mess, Dimitri had been the biggest complication in my life. A year ago–though it seemed like eternity–he'd been my instructor in high school, training me to be one of the dhampir guardians who protect Moroi. He'd accomplished that–and a lot more. We'd fallen in love, something that wasn't allowed. We'd managed it as best we could, even finally coming up with a way for us to be together. That hope had disappeared when he'd been bitten and turned Strigoi. It had been a living nightmare for me. Then, through a miracle no one had believed possible, Lissa had used spirit to transform him back to a dhampir. But things unfortunately hadn't quite returned to how they'd been before the Strigoi attack. I glared at Abe. â€Å"Dimitri survived this, but he was horribly depressed about it! He still is. About everything.' The full weight of the atrocities he'd committed as a Strigoi haunted Dimitri. He couldn't forgive himself and swore he could never love anyone now. The fact that I had begun dating Adrian didn't help matters. After a number of futile efforts, I'd accepted that Dimitri and I were through. I'd moved on, hoping I could have something real with Adrian now. â€Å"Right,' Abe said dryly. â€Å"He's depressed, but you're the picture of happiness and joy.' I sighed. â€Å"Sometimes talking to you is like talking to myself: pretty damned annoying. Is there any other reason you're here? Other than to deliver the terrible news? I would have been happier living in ignorance.' I'm not supposed to die this way. I'm not supposed to see it coming. My death is not some appointment penciled in on a calendar. He shrugged. â€Å"I just wanted to see you. And your arrangements.' Yes, he had indeed, I realized. Abe's eyes had always come back to me as we spoke; there'd been no question I held his attention. There was nothing in our banter to concern my guards. But every so often, I'd see Abe's gaze flick around, taking in the hall, my cell, and whatever other details he found interesting. Abe had not earned his reputation as zmey–the serpent–for nothing. He was always calculating, always looking for an advantage. It seemed my tendency toward crazy plots ran in the family. â€Å"I also wanted to help you pass the time.' He smiled and from under his arm, he handed me a couple of magazines and a book through the bars. â€Å"Maybe this will improve things.' I doubted any entertainment was going to make my two-week death countdown more manageable. The magazines were fashion and hair oriented. The book was The Count of Monte Cristo. I held it up, needing to make a joke, needing to do anything to make this less real. â€Å"I saw the movie. Your subtle symbolism isn't really all that subtle. Unless you've hidden a file inside it.' â€Å"The book's always better than the movie.' He started to turn away. â€Å"Maybe we'll have a literary discussion next time.' â€Å"Wait.' I tossed the reading material onto the bed. â€Å"Before you go †¦ in this whole mess, no one's ever brought up who actually did kill her.' When Abe didn't answer right away, I gave him a sharp look. â€Å"You do believe I didn't do it, right?' For all I knew, he did think I was guilty and was just trying to help anyway. It wouldn't have been out of character. â€Å"I believe my sweet daughter is capable of murder,' he said at last. â€Å"But not this one.' â€Å"Then who did it?' â€Å"That,' he said before walking away, â€Å"is something I'm working on.' â€Å"But you just said we're running out of time! Abe!' I didn't want him to leave. I didn't want to be alone with my fear. â€Å"There's no way to fix this!' â€Å"Just remember what I said in the courtroom,' he called back. He left my sight, and I sat back on the bed, thinking back to that day in court. At the end of the hearing, he'd told me–quite adamantly–that I wouldn't be executed. Or even go to trial. Abe Mazur wasn't one to make idle promises, but I was starting to think that even he had limits, especially since our timetable had just been adjusted. I again took out the crumpled piece of paper and opened it. It too had come from the courtroom, covertly handed to me by Ambrose–Tatiana's servant and boy-toy. Rose, If you're reading this, then something terrible has happened. You probably hate me, and I don't blame you. I can only ask that you trust that what I did with the age decree was better for your people than what others had planned. There are some Moroi who want to force all dhampirs into service, whether they want it or not, by using compulsion. The age decree has slowed that faction down. However, I write to you with a secret you must put right, and it is a secret you must share with as few as possible. Vasilisa needs her spot on the Council, and it can be done. She is not the last Dragomir. Another lives, the illegitimate child of Eric Dragomir. I know nothing else, but if you can find this son or daughter, you will give Vasilisa the power she deserves. No matter your faults and dangerous temperament, you are the only one I feel can take on this task. Waste no time in fulfilling it. –Tatiana Ivashkov The words hadn't changed since the other hundred times I'd read them, nor had the questions they always triggered. Was the note true? Had Tatiana really written it? Had she–in spite of her outwardly hostile attitude–trusted me with this dangerous knowledge? There were twelve royal families who made decisions for the Moroi, but for all intents and purposes, there might as well have only been eleven. Lissa was the last of her line, and without another member of the Dragomir family, Moroi law said she had no power to sit on and vote with the Council that made our decisions. Some pretty bad laws had already been made, and if the note was true, more would come. Lissa could fight those laws–and some people wouldn't like that, people who had already demonstrated their willingness to kill. Another Dragomir. Another Dragomir meant Lissa could vote. One more Council vote could change so much. It could change the Moroi world. It could change my world–say, like, whether I was found guilty or not. And certainly, it could change Lissa's world. All this time she'd believed she was alone. Yet †¦ I uneasily wondered if she'd welcome a half-sibling. I accepted that my father was a scoundrel, but Lissa had always held hers up on a pedestal, believing the best of him. This news would come as a shock, and although I'd trained my entire life to keep her safe from physical threats, I was starting to think there were other things she needed to be protected from as well. But first, I needed the truth. I had to know if this note had really come from Tatiana. I was pretty sure I could find out, but it involved something I hated doing. Well, why not? It wasn't like I had anything else to do right now. Rising from the bed, I turned my back to the bars and stared at the blank wall, using it as a focus point. Bracing myself, remembering that I was strong enough to keep control, I released the mental barriers I always subconsciously kept around my mind. A great pressure lifted from me, like air escaping a balloon. And suddenly, I was surrounded by ghosts.