Van Gogh and Braque Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Van Gogh and Braque - Research Paper Example Vincent van Gogh is a post-impressionism artist who first practiced the impressionist styles of using bright colors as reflected in nature. Like any other post impressionist, he wanted to explore other forms of expressing himself in his artworks by going beyond what is generally seen and experiment on changing the colors or combining them to come out with the desired combinations or contrasts. His painting entitled The Church at Auvers 1890 which is a subject in this paper is said to have been drawn during the late years of the artist when he was struggling with his mental health. Georges Braque on the other hand is a cubist who started the era with Pablo Picasso who in the early years of the twentieth century was experimenting on his artwork with the same idea as that of Braque. They were greatly influenced by Paul Cezanne who advised them that artist should approach their works with spheres, cylinders and cones. Comparing the The Church at Auvers with Braque’s Woman with a Guitar, it is observed that the colors are not as bright as other artists use in contrast to the impressionists as mentioned earlier as well as the romantic artists who believed in depicting nature as they are visually observed with its natural colors unchanged. The primary colors and the combination of which were used in both works of art inclining the hues to be of the darker shade. Unlike the bright colored paintings, the two may not be those which easily attract audiences with untrained eyes for arts rather would most probably be noticed by those who have some knowledge of the beauty and differences in artworks. The lines used in the aforementioned works are short, The Church at Auvers shows one of the passions and reasons why the post impressionists moved from their contemporaries, which is the use of short broken lines, not really following the normal lines which are seen in the natural things. Woman with a Gu itar on the other hand uses short lines but not in the way used by the impressionists which still gives a nearly photographic appearance but are used in order to have the appearance of a picture with cubes cut from it. The objective of the cubists in ‘cubing’ their paintings is not only for them to analyze artworks but to engage their audiences in the analysis. It could be said that they have been successful in this through their arts because indeed, one has to look more intently at the paintings in order to decipher what the image is all about. Lines in both paintings have been very essential in the expression of the artists’ thoughts because an audience who looks closer can see deeper to the thoughts of the painter. For instance, the cubes, spheres, straight and curved lines used by Braque show his interest in the mathematical aspect of his passion while van Vogh’s lines show mental state when he was working on his piece. Although the two artists used oi l in canvass for their paintings, Braque also used charcoal which defined the darker shades of color in his art. First glances of the two artworks already show their differences. Drawn by artists who were of different eras, the paintings tell the story of their existence. Von Vagh used soft contours in his painting and though did not follow the romantic style with the photographic effect of his paintings it still clearly shows what the picture is all about. The bird’s eye view shows at once the subject of the painting which in this paper is also the title of the painting, the church at Auvers. The details however give a different story like the lines used, the colors and the subject itself as related to the painter. The size of the objects in the artwork is normal where the church looks bigger than the woman going towards it, reflecting the influence of impressionism as compared to the size of objects in the works of Dadaists who make their subjects have extreme sizes. Althou gh the painting is two-dimensional, it reflects a picture that is almost

Effect of video games on people Essay Example for Free

Effect of video games on people Essay Video games are frowned upon by parents and seen as time-wasters, and worse, some education experts think that these games corrupt the brain. â€Å" Violent video games are easily blamed by the media and some experts as the reason why some young people become violent or display extreme anti-social behavior. But many scientists and psychologists find that video games can actually have many benefits – the main one is making kids smart,† stated by Rase Smart Kid website. Video games may actually teach kids high-level thinking skills that they will need in the future. Video games change your brain, according to University of Wisconsin psychologist C. Shawn Green. Playing video games change the brain’s physical structure the same way as learning to read, playing an instrument, or orientate yourself with the help of a map. Much like exercise can build muscle, the powerful combination of concentration and surges of neurotransmitters can build the brain. Video games are not as bad as many envision them to be. There are many beneficial skills that can be drawn from video games that are not even taught by schools, these skills include strategy, perseverance, accuracy, quick thinking, problem solving and logic, multitasking, taking risks, situational awareness, and management. Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You: How Todays Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, calls this telescoping. Gamers must deal with immediate problems while keeping their long-term goals on their horizon. All gamers know that in order to get to your goal, you must get through everything else which may include traps and enemies. Facing strong enemies also requires a good strategy in order to defeat them whether its persistence or taking a new risk. A lot of games have multiple levels, for example Unblock Me. If a gamer fails one time, they will certainly play again and again to reach their destination or move onto the next level. Focus and planning is required most of the time. Action games, according to a study by the University of Rochester, train the brains of players to make faster decisions without losing accuracy. In today’s world, it is important to move quickly without sacrificing accuracy. Not only first person shooter games require accuracy but also action games. Whether it is tossing an apple in a bucket or swinging a wrecking ball at an abandoned building, both need accuracy to succeed. Sometimes the player makes fast decisions or analyses almost every second of the game giving the brain a real workout. According to researchers at the University of Rochester, led by Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist, games simulating stressful events such as those found in battle or action games could be a training tool for real-world situations. The study suggests that playing action video games primes the brain to make quick decisions. Video games can be used to train soldiers and surgeons, according to the study. Importantly, decisions made by action-packed video game players are no less accurate. According to Bavelier, Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference. In strategy games, for instance, while developing a city, an unexpected surprise like an enemy might emerge. This forces the player to be flexible and quickly change tactics. One must hold off on building a unit and train troops instead to withstand the upcoming enemy. Most of the time if there are not enough troops trained, the player sacrifices a lot of their resources and must change to a different tactic once again. When kids play games such as The Incredible Machine, Angry Birds or Cut The Rope, they train their brain to come up with creative ways to solve puzzles and other problems in short bursts. When owning a business and something goes wrong or an unexpected situation occurs, the speed of a single correct decision will make a great impact and may save jobs for a lot of people. Winning in any game involves a players courage to take risks. Most games do not reward players who play safely. Taking risks does not mean that one must play recklessly and lose everything all at once if at the point of losing. Taking risks may very well be cautious as well. Taking risks means moving forward with anything a player can do whether it is making a move in one direction or the other, or even buying an item that may or may not help the player at all. In strategy games, players take different risks depending on the situation. One must analyze the situation prior to taking any risk. By doing so, the chances of winning are great than simply going about a routine. Defense News reported that the Army include video games to train soldiers improve their situational awareness in combat. Many strategy games also require players to become mindful of sudden situational changes in the game and adapt accordingly. Changes in combat require changing tactic or making new decisions. Sometimes they are for the better and sometimes for the worse. If the right decision is made in the right time, that has the potential to change almost everything. The player learns to manage resources that are limited, and decide the best use of resources, the same way as in real life. This skill is honed in strategy games such as SimCity, Age of Empires, and Railroad Tycoon. The way a player uses their resources in the early game will show in the late game how well their decisions really were. As far as video games go, they change a lot of things in the world today. Those that see the true power of video games will say that they do a lot of positive things. Those that do not understand video games, blame them for crimes and see them as very corrupting, often saying that they destroy lives. Video games have many good sides to them. For some people they are fun, for others they exercise the brain. It all depends on how you choose to look at games. The media is often opinion biased and not always true.

Game Development Essay Example for Free

Game Development Essay Once upon a time, the peaceful Kingdom of Greenland was invaded by the unexplained monster ruled by a tyrannous Garviod who was famous for his black magic. The beautiful Kingdom fell into ruin and despair. The inhabitants become an unexplainable creature. Some are became plants, trees, animals and those who are unkind to the nature became stones, garbage and monsters. Unfortunately, one of the inhabitants that have been transformed by a black magic was the old Prophet living in a cage and he became an old Tree. According to his prophecy, there will be a simple gardener who will have the power to fight the monsters in the Kingdom. The old prophet Tree traveled to find the man on his prophecy. As he traveled, he found Seedy. Humble and loving nature gardener who was transform to a seed. The old Tree gives him a map to find the treasure of X-lost. Then he said, â€Å"That the only way to break the evil spell and return the inhabitants of Greenland into normal was the magical light hidden in the treasure of X-lost.† But the ruling monsters Garviod heard about the magical treasure of X-lost and he keeps the treasure in one if his castle. Seedy humbly vowed to rescue the Kingdom and he started his journey to find the treasure of X-lost in the Castle of Garviod. Could Seedy overcome the many obstacles facing him and became a true hero? Let’s find it in the â€Å"Adventure of Seedy†. 1.2 Statement of the Problem The following problems were identified: 1. In many computer games, others kids are rewarded for being more violent. The child practicing violence in his own like killing, stabbing and shooting. 2. Some computer games are teaching kids a wrong values. 3. Some of games are simply for entertainment. 1.3Objectives The aims of the study are: 1. To development a game that would not portray violence. Rather than using a objects that represents violence, the proponent will design an object that are simple yet related to the environment. 2. To design a game that will teach the kids/user the value of environment. 3. To develop a game that makes learning fun not only to entertain. The items, weapons and object in the game are design next to the concept of environment.

Exams are Not Good Forms of Assessment

Exams are Not Good Forms of Assessment Assessments can be classified into few categories which are discussion, self- report, observation, portfolio assessment, practical work, demonstration, class activities and oral presentation. In the similar way, assessment can also be defined as a learning process that provides information on students learning and guides student to make great changes in their studies (Business Dictionary). In general, examination is non-destructive inspection, detailed investigation, or analysis of objects, products, or materials to decide their conformation to specifications with no special laboratory apparatus or technique. It includes sensual experiment such as auditory, visual, tactual, olfactory and gustatory or simple manipulation and measurement. Besides, it is also a testing of qualification of students in their examinations. (Business dictionary).There are two types of examinations that can be found which are standardized exams (commercial) and locally developed exams. 1.2 Current Statistical Information At present many schools, colleges, and universities assess their students by means of final examinations. These can be very stressful and majority of students usually do worse in normal exams compared to in other forms of assessment. However, it may be a good early practice for students for their future if success depends on the ability to deal with pressure and perform well on big occasions (Newman 2000). Based on the experiment that conducted by Qureshi, Alam, Khan and Sheraz (2002) in Women Medical College, Abbottabad, Pakistan, the statistics shows that a rise in systolic blood pressure by an average of fifteen mm Hg was observed in eighty eight percent of the students as compared to pre-examination readings. The parameters of blood cell determined before examination and during examination were compared .Those results are recorded and presented in Figure 1 and Figure 2. As a result, it has been proven that examination stress can affect the blood cell parameters and bring such huge impact to students health. First of all, the main reason examination should not be replaced with other forms of assessment is because of the equality of opportunity it has. The best application of it is the content of knowledge and it is fair enough to all the students who have to sit for the same exam using the same method in one particular country. For an instance, examination allows for a standardized administration to a large numbers of students and thus it is more convenient to measure and compare students standard. Of course, it cannot be denied that it is very useful for accessing individual students as well. 2.2 Test on students performance. Besides that, examination can test on students performance by reflecting the way how students express themselves in their own words based on what they have been taught in class. Throughout the whole process of examination, student will be able to adopt and implement in a faster speed and improve their knowledge and performance during assessment (Assessment Handbook 2006). For this purpose, students can spend more time to do revision on other weaker subjects. 2.3 Brings knowledge to students. In addition, students will gain more knowledge. This is because examination is used to determine students ability to draw on a wide range of knowledge. It is to make sure that students can fully apply their knowledge in their daily life but not misuse their knowledge. The knowledge on science, geography and mathematics will be helpful for them to do better in everything in their life. Examinations should be replaced with other forms of assessment. 3.1 Assessment gives better explanations to students, The very first advantage all learners can have by doing assessment is that assessment gives better explanations to students. So that learners will be able to understand clearly and quickly on what they have learned after doing all the assessments. This ensures that students can absorb the syllabus completely but not partially and understand what they are learning about. As everyone knows, students who have good understanding will surely do better than those that do not understand every single thing. 3.2 Assessment helps learners to improve their performance. Moreover, learners are given timely feedback about the quality of their works and try to improve it without repeating any mistakes (Young 2005). Learners are also given some useful advices and recommendations by teachers about how to make things better. Every learner always needs good suggestions and feedbacks from others so that it will lead them to the road of success. This statement can be shown that assessment helps learners to improve their performance. 3.3 Assessment tests children in a proper and better way. Additionally, assessment tests children in a proper and better way as it could determine childrens ability to express oneself during oral presentation. For an example, children will be more confident in talking, presenting and voicing out their views, opinions and ideas. Apart from that, a good assessment could test children on their analysis skills and creativity. Through that particular way, children will be having the opportunity to learn to improve on their thinking skills and have more mature thinking than previous as efficient assessment are more focusing on higher level thinking skills (Crehan 1991). Students will probably give out more creative and special ideas. In the similar way, students will also get to sharpen their research and planning skill after doing many researches for assessment. 3.4 Examination does not work on students. Other than that, the reason why examination does not work on students is because of examinations usually test on students memory but not their real understandings (Newman 2000). In the other words, this statement also means that student who has good memory can do excel in all the tests. On the other hand, student with bad memory might get low grades. There are also some lazy students who always do last minute revision tend to memorise everything on their notes without even trying to understand the principles. Therefore, students often assume that they understand and eventually they will never remember things that they have learned before. Also, examinations tests students ability to keep cool more than their intelligence. (Newman 2000). A case in point, during the examination, if a student is too nervous, the student normally will forget about everything. Hence, student frequently needs to keep himself /herself cool so that student can perform well in exam and avoid themselves from d oing mistakes in the test. 3.5 Examination brings negative effects to students. Furthermore, examination brings more negative effects than giving more positive effects to students. Firstly, over-testing will also cause children to have stress. In most of the schools, students will be sitting for more than four examinations in a year and that can be so stressful to students. Stress is invisible and difficult to be seen. That is why many people do not realise the power of stress. Consequently, there are many commit suicide cases that can be seen in newspaper in our country recently such as a large number of students who get unsatisfied results in the exam. Some of the students cannot handle the pressure and accept the fact will eventually choose to end their life by committing suicide. Besides, dreadful examinations can cause personal problems such as peer pressure and low confidence to students. According to some legal reports, students will lose their self confidence in their studies and prone to exhaustion and illness when they cannot bear with the large tensio n. Conclusion Based on the evidences that I have pointed out, I strongly agree that examination should be replaced with other forms of assessment. The main reason is because I always believe that other forms of assessments are more beneficial to students compared to written examinations. As I have mentioned above, the disadvantages of examination are slightly more than its advantages and it has greater impact on students. Thus, there are several serious actions that are needed to be carried out in order to solve this problem. To overcome this particular problem, the very first thing government, ministry of education, or other relevant bodies should do is to start practicing both study methods which are examination and assessment on students. Those relevant bodies will have to examine students performance from time to time. So, comparisons and differences can be easily made and seen after some period of time. Then, the effects of other forms of assessment on students can be proven to everyone. Of c ourse, the importance of other forms of assessment should not be ignored too. In fact, education department should try to emphasis more on the advantages assessments and also introduce this new education system to every school. For example, students grades are all depended by their performance in the form of presentation, oral assessment, practical work and many more to count. So that it will be an early practice for students before they step into their later working life or social life. It can be said that all of us are afraid of examinations. In the meantime, examinations should be replaced with other forms of assessment in all the schools as it may be a huge burden for students. Huge burden will not only cause students to lost interest and but also lost concentration in studying. Last but not least, I personally think that the process of doing assessment is much more interesting than sitting for examination. At least, assessment is less stressful compared to examinations and thus it may be an attraction to students. Through assessment, we can learn many things that can never be found in the text books. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. Students will have improvement in their studies if they are hard working to do more practices and never ever try to give up whenever they fall. On the contrary, if students do not even bother to put effort in their studies, no one can actually help them. In short, efforts are to be made to lead our education to reach a higher level.

oppertunity costs :: essays research papers

In today’s society, economic decisions made involve the concept of scarcity. There are â€Å"opportunity costs† associated with any choice that you make. In order for an economy to produce more of one type of product, it will be forced to sacrifice units of production of another product. The shifting of resources from the production of one good to another involves increasing sacrifices of the first good in order to generate an equal increase of the second good. This is known as the â€Å"law of increasing opportunity costs.† The economic rational for the law of increasing opportunity costs is that economic resources are not completely adaptable to alternative uses. The opportunity cost of producing a product tends to increase as more of it is produced because resources less suitable to its production must be employed.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Prices are a measure of opportunity cost because they provide information about the value of one product in relation to another.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The shape of the Productions Possibility Frontier, (PPF), illustrates the principle of increasing opportunity costs (Graph 3). As more of one product is produced, increasingly larger amounts of the other product must be given up. In Graph 3, some factors of production are suited for producing both Product A and Product B, but as the production of one of the other brands increases, resources better suited to production of the other must be diverted. Producers of product A are not necessarily efficient producers of product B and just the opposite, so the opportunity cost increases as one moves toward either extreme on the curve of the production possibility frontier. If two products are very similar to one another, the production possibility frontier may be D’Orlando 2 shaped more like a straight line (Graph 2). As an example, let’s say that two brands of wine are produced, Brand A and Brand B. These two brands of wine use the same grapes and the production process is the same. The only thing that is different is the name on the label. The same factors of production can produce either brand equally efficiently. If an increase in production of Brand B goes from 0 to 3 bottles, the production of Brand A must be decreased by 3 bottles. In this case, the two products are almost identical and can be produced equally efficiently using the same resources. The opportunity cost of producing one over the other remain constant between the two extremes

Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools :: Essays Papers

Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools In April of 2002, the Google Engineering Team released an API (application programming interface) to their search engine technology. Initially aimed at software developers, the Google Web API program offers three services that developers can integrate into their own applications: access to the company's search engine; access to cached Web pages; and a spelling correction API that points users to alternate spellings of misspelled words typed into the search engine. The authors state in the preface that "the idea of Google Hacks is not to give some exhaustive manual of how every command in the Google syntax works, but rather to show you some tricks for making the best use of a search and show applications of the Google API that perform searches that you can't perform using the regular Google interface". (p. xviii) Learn to save time and get more precise results from your Google searches by getting the most out of Advanced Search or building/modifying code using the API. Sections devoted to search syntax are particularly helpful. Mari Stoddard, Head of Educational Services at Arizona Health Sciences Library, is a fan of Hack #11, date-range searching. The syntax allows you to narrow your search results to fresher content and to compare results over time. Although Google doesn't support "stemming", Hack #13 explains the full- word wildcard. (Google's wildcard character is *). Combine a special syntax with Google News (#32) and take advantage of its clustering capabilities. Try out examples of other hacks online at hacks.oreilly.com/pub/ht/2. In Chapter 8, The Webmaster Side of Google, topics range from the PageRank Algorithm and Google's AdWords program to how to remove your content from Google. You don't have to be the webmaster of a commercial site to find this information useful. Mari Stoddard thought this book was helpful "for people who don't spend their lives researching search engines" like she does because it organizes the hacks in one reference tool.

Evaluating Mintzs Sweetness and Power :: Sugar Sweet Tooth Foods Essays

Evaluating Mintz's Sweetness and Power Why would anyone feel the need to write an entire book on such a mundane topic such as sugar? Look around at some food products you might have and you will realize that many if not all of them contain sugar in some form or another. For example, a can of soda, which most people drink everyday, contains (depending on the brand) approximately 40 grams of sugars. Look further and you might find that even things such as cheese or chips or soup contain several grams of sugar in them. The wide diversification of products that contain sugar just goes to show you how widespread the use of sugar really is. This fact alone could be enough to convince someone to create a book solely about sugar. One passage that Mintz quotes on page 15 that really seems to capture our (Westerners) infatuation with sugar, and a strong reason the book at hand is as follows: Western peoples consume enormous per capita quantities of refined sugar because, to most people, very sweet foods taste very good. The existence of the human sweet tooth can be explained, ultimately, as an adaptation of ancestral populations to favor the ripest-and hence the sweetest-fruit. In other words, the selective pressures of times past are most strikingly revealed by the artificial, supernormal stimulus of refined sugar, despite the evidence that eating refined sugar is maladaptive. With such an obsession with sweet foods, there is an obvious desire for an explanation of how such a once unknown substance took center stage on everybody's snack, dessert, and candy list. That's where Sidney W. Mintz comes into play. He decided to write this book Sweetness and Power, and from the looks of all the sources he used to substantiate his ideas and data, it seems that he is not the first person to find the role that sugar plays in modern society important. By analyzing who Mintz's audience is meant to be, what goals he has in writing this book, what structure his book incorporates, what type, or types, of history he represents within the book, what kind of sources he uses, and what important information and conclusions he presents, we can come to better understand Mintz's views and research of the role of sugar in history, and how much it really affects our lives as we know them.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To begin to understand and evaluate Mintz's Sweetness and Power, one must first understand who his book is aimed toward, in other words, his audience.