Initial European perceptions of Native Americans viewed them as uncivilized savages who, with time and effort, could be educated and assimilated into European culture. Christopher Columbus reported his opinion of the Indians in the following manner:

They should be good servants and of quick intelligence, since I see that they very soon say all that is said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, for it appears to me that they had no creed. Our Lord willing, at the time of my departure, I will bring back six of them to your Highness, that they may learn to talk (Hurtado 46).

This passage shows that Columbus believed the Indians intelligent and would be easily converted to European ways, but did not think them equal to Europeans. Columbus demonstrates his ethnocentricity by disregarding Native American religious beliefs, and by assuming that because they did not speak a European language they could not “talk.”

Europeans viewed the Indians as having inferior cultural practices such as their laws, government, economics, mode of living, religion, property ownership, and education/writing. However, the Europeans believed that these cultural traits of the Native Americans could with little difficulty be changed to resemble European cultures. In 1620, the first college for Native Americans was established to educate Indians in European ways, and in 1640, Harvard opened a college for Indians. This proves that the main objective of the Europeans was to assimilate the Native Americans into European culture by way of education. Europeans justified their conquest of the Indians because they believed they had a divine purpose to convert them to Christianity. Also Europeans believed they could “redeem the savages” in much the same way the Roman Empire had conquered and civilized the rest of Europe.

Indians did not come to be viewed as inherently different in regards to color until the mid-eighteenth century and the label “red” was not used until the mid-nineteenth century. Some causes of the changing perception were an increase of Europeans, bloody conflicts and atrocities, codification of laws designed to control Native peoples, and the view of Europeans began to unify as being “white.”

The changing perception of Indians also caused a change in how Europeans dealt with them. In the beginning, Europeans intermarried with them, and used teachers and missionaries to convert them to European culture and religion. Later, education ceased and Europeans moved to subjugate the Indians through displacement on reservations and by war/genocide.

The Dawes Act of 1877 reverted back to assimilation of the Indians through education and the practice of farming. The reservation lands were divided up into individual sections for private ownership. Also the federal government came to believe that educating the Indian children would be the quickest and most effective manner to destroy Indian lifestyles. Boarding schools were established for Indian children to teach them American values and customs, while eroding their Native American beliefs.

At first contact, Europeans believed Indians could be assimilated into European culture. Then they shifted to the removal and reservation policy. In the late 1800s, Americans returned to assimilationist policies, and in the 20th century Indians have struggled to resist total assimilation by striving to maintain their cultural and religious beliefs.

Bibliography

Hurtado, Albert, Peter Iverson, and Thomas Paterson, editors. Major Problems in American Indian History: Documents and Essays. Houghton Mifflin Company Collegiate Division, 2000.

Mary Arnold is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers

Her writing portfolio may be viewed at http://www.Writing.com/authors/ja77521

Our prisons are more populated per capita than any other country in the world. The recidivism rates are ridiculous, repeat offenders are not rehabilitated and what about the responsibility of raising the rascals?

Many agree that rehabilitation is best but there, but I also agree on responsibility of parents and of self. Many are not so much into the forgiving thing when it comes to criminals, whether they are in jail, walking the streets or straddling the law working for both sides; IE law enforcement, lawyer, government worker.

There needs to be responsibility for those who have offspring to raise them right and take care of them. We make people get driver’s licenses to drive a car, but not have children. It costs on average $250,000 to raise a kid until adulthood, for those who have not the money, or care not to spend it to make things right.

Well why should the teachers be baby sitting them, why should doctors prescribe Ritilin, Prozac or some other such medicine and why should I the taxpayer have to pay for rehabilitation, police, probation officers, prisons or the salary of the guards on top of potentially being a victim of a crime? Some propose rehabilitation and I am leaning more on a $ .22 solution for hardened criminals, child molesters and violent ones. Because rehabilitation is not working and the taxpayer keeps paying.

What are we going to do in our civilization with our prison systems? What can we do to rehabilitate? What we are doing now does not work and we all know it? We must face the reality of these recidivism rates and work to make more parents responsible. Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Homeland security has become much more than an often used catch phrase for describing national, regional, state and local efforts to eliminate the threat of terrorism. The expenditures that collectively make up the U.S. homeland security budget are now a substantial portion of our federal spending. State and local spending for homeland security related measures has also risen proportionately. One result of this spending and it’s increasingly prominent portion of our gross national budget can be seen in the availability of positions that are related to homeland security.

>From local law enforcement to the administrative levels of the Department of Homeland Security itself, new positions have been created for the express purpose of meeting the nations ever expanding demand for qualified personnel in this field. Unprecedented growth for homeland security related employment opportunities is expected for the next several years, as the complete development of the protocols that will serve as an integrated national security policy are implemented and fully realized. The availability of non-federal homeland security positions has dramatically increased for state and local governments, municipalities, townships and private industry. Emergency preparedness for every conceivable event, from disasters to data loss, has become a major industry in the last few years.

Unquestionably, the lack of properly trained personnel to fill the specialized positions that have arisen from this new source of employment is of great concern. While upper echelon management positions are often appointed, there are several administrative and non-supervisory positions which will need to be filled. The efforts of all levels of intelligence gathering and law enforcement personnel must be collected, coordinated and culminated into an efficient working database that can be accessed by the various agencies that are responsible for our nation’s security. The orchestration of a task of this magnitude is massive in scale and will require a substantial labor force.

The road to understanding Japanese in littered with lies. These lies aren’t intended to harm. The fact is, in the beginning the lies seem natural and helpful. They help make the language ‘feel’ closer to our native language (English, most likely). Unfortunately, the more knowledge you try to pile on the top of these lies, the more your house of learning resembles a home built on a foundation of sponges. Instead of helping, these myths only make life harder.

At points, they can make you wonder: “Why can’t I understand Japanese?” “What’s wrong with me?” “I must just be stupid.” When I started taking a formal Japanese class a few months ago, I realized how harmful those ‘friendly lies’ can be. I noticed that a class full of people who had completed almost three quarters of a textbook still couldn’t conjugate verbs in a negative plain form. I realized that it was difficult for my classmates to naturally conjugate an adjective. It was more than simple memory slips - my classmates genuinely didn’t understand how verbs worked. Though they had the benefit of a native Japanese teacher, and classroom conversation time, still, the basic verb seemed to evade them.

I realised, as the class progressed, that my classmates were victims of a number of myths that I had also faced. These myths seem inherent in most of the learning materials for students. Unless you are the kind of person who looks at an inconstancy, and really searches to find out why that inconsistancy is there, it’s easy to drink in these lies, until they grow so big they claw their way out of your brain, and go skittering into the night. .

So over the course of the next week, I’m going to post up all of the myths I’ve learned about Japanese verbs, and how you can defeat them. Hopefully you’ll find them helpful.

Know Your Verb! (Some myths about Japanese Verbs as seen from a student of Japanese)

Desu = Is

If you think ‘desu’ = is, congratulations, you are about to defeat your first big myth about Japanese.

Let me make this clear:

DESU DOES NOT MEAN IS!

Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Desu is a word that has no equivilant in English. In short, it makes what you are saying more polite. This is exactly, word for word, what a Japanese friend told me.

Okay, but what about:

Kore wa penu desu This is a pen. (This is possibly the most inane sentence ever)

Doesn’t desu mean is in that sentence?

Now we get to the real secret of desu. Desu will sometimes pretend to mean is, if it is the last word in the sentence, and if there isn’t a more active verb at the end of your sentence. It’s exactly the same thing as using the masu form of a verb to make a verb more polite (The Masu Myth we will defeat next).

So why does believing that desu = is give me problems?

Because, a whole bunch of the time, desu doesn’t mean is at all. Further, if you try to think ‘desu’ means ‘is’ it will only confuse you to what’s really going on in a sentance.

EG:

Kore wa penu ja nai. This, a pen, is not. (casual)

Kore wa penu ja nai desu. This, a pen, is not (more polite - not normally heard, but gramatically correct and equivilant to penu ja arimasen)

Kore wa penu ja nai ‘n desu. This, a pen, is not. (I’m saying this to explain something - see previous post: no da/no desu. Polite. Seen often.)

If you believe (as I did) that ja nai means ‘is not’ and desu means ‘is’, the last two sentances are a complete mind-twist.

Lit: This, a pen is not, is …WTF!

You may convince yourself: well, something like that is just an exception to the rule, and memorize it. But if you are forced to memorize everything that is an exception to the desu = is myth, eventually, you will quickly experiece desu burnout. You also really run into trouble when you meet the word has a meaning a lot closer to is: (what the Genki textbook calls the ‘plain form’ of desu, though calling it a plain for of desu is more of the ‘desu’ = ‘is’ crap)

Da Is (in the sense of ‘this is a pen’)

I say a lot closer to is, because the word ‘is’ in English is a lot different than ‘is’ in Japanese. Japanese has a bunch of different kinds of words to express existence. The most common ones you will meet are:

da, aru (inanimate objects exist), iru (animate objects exist)

Also, because you tend to drop redundant parts of the sentence in Japanese, sometimes the word ‘is’ will be left off entirely. Finally, the word ‘is’ is wrapped up in every other verb, depending on how you conjugate it (which is why you don’t need to use a ‘to be’ verb to say, I am going to the store - Mise ni itte iru) We will get into that more as more myths are busted.

I hope this helps clear up points of confusion with desu/da.

Future myths busted: The Masu Form (it’s not the real deal) Adjectives and Verbs: One and the Same How to conjugate verbs and adjectives without sweating blood.

I love being a homeschooler. I am proud of my lifestyle. I love my family and am willing to make sacrifices to insure that my values and priorities are evident in everything we do.

So, why do I feel defensive? Why am I apprehensive at times to discuss my chosen lifestyle with those who disagree? Why should I care about those who don’t share my philosophy and are suspect of the sacrifices I make?

Well the short answer is most of the time, I don’t! But faced with the barrage of criticism from all sides, there have been times when I questioned my decision to homeschool and wondered if it’s worth it.

I started homeschooling 15 years ago when it I saw what was happing to the public schools. Private school were too expensive. At that time I was viewed as a weirdo, as an “overprotective” snob, and as someone raising socially deviant antisocial misfits. I was constantly justifying my position to people who just did not get it! It was difficult to constantly have to explain and defend my priorities to those who, I felt, abdicated their responsibilities to others they know nothing about.

I felt then as I do now that homeschooling is the best world for my children. The woman’s movement of the 70’s created unnecessary confusion for many women. Men always knew their identity was in their career. I knew woman could do anything, but timing was key. It was obvious to me that my children would be my career. Like any other profession, homeschooling required education, commitment, dedication, patience and creativity. We, as homeschooling pioneers, steamed forward and professed that our families were our careers and they would get the benefit of our education and training. I do not feel I wasted my 17 years of education.

This commitment to the family started a ground swell and now millions of families teach their children at home. We all know how students and teachers behave in the public schools. The metal detectors, DEA agents, police, gangs, riots, barbed wire, lock downs and random searches tell the sad story. I empathize with the innocents who are subjected to this cesspool daily.

Homeschooling is a gift I give to my children without reservation because they are special and deserve the best. The business world never missed my creativity and energy, but my children would have.

Accounting is defined as the measurement of assurance about certain information in the aid of resource allocation for managers and other decision makers. The most popular and most commonly practiced branch of accounting is financial accounting. This branch of accounting involves processes where data is recorded, summarized, analyzed, organized, interpreted and communicated to others concerned. Many individuals are enticed to enter the accounting field because it can be a very lucrative job.

Accounting is a very exciting field. It presents many opportunities for growth and development. It is perfect for individuals who are fond of solving problems and who are comfortable with working with numbers.

So you wanted to learn accounting and become a professional accountant? Don’t know what accounting school is right for you? With the increasing number of schools and colleges offering accounting courses, the choice of accounting school can get really confusing.

The best thing you can do in choosing an accounting school is to first determine and preferably list down the things you are looking for in a school. After doing this, the next step is to weigh the pros and cons of each school to determine which one could meet your needs.

The next thing to do is to perform the actual search for the accounting school. You can start by asking people you know, particularly those who have taken up or who are currently taking up accounting. You can visit the schools, colleges or universities near your location. You should also make very good use of technology. The Internet is a very good place to search the best accounting schools. Not only will it save you time and energy, the Internet can also be a very convenient way to compare accounting schools. Most schools list down course requirements and curriculum on the Internet.

These may seem like very tedious tasks. Yes, it definitely would take some time, but you can never be too careful when it comes to your education. Below are other tips to find the best accounting school.

Be sure of the things you want to gain by enrolling in an accounting school. Do you want an accounting degree or do you just want to simply learn the fundamentals of accounting? If you want a degree in accounting then you must consider schools that offer accelerated levels of teaching. But if you simply want to learn accounting then this is not very important.

If you are busy or if you are already working, then it is highly advisable that you choose an accounting school that will give you the greatest flexibility. Do you want to learn from home? Then choose an accounting school that offers distant online learning and courses. Distant learning schools are excellent choices for busy individuals. If you do not want distant learning, then choose schools that offer night or weekend classes.. For sure there are many of those out there.

Choose the schools that offer the best financial plan. Most schools offer financial plans that will help you and other students afford the high cost of getting and education.

Getting the right accounting school is very important. It is the choice that will determine the learning that you will acquire and most probably your future in accounting. So weight your options very carefully. Perform a very good research before you enroll and take up an accounting course.

I respect the powers of the mind. What I mean by this is I understand how powerful knowledge, or lack there of is. I know how soothing or traumatizing memories can be. I recognize that our mind is what makes us human, that separates us from the other animals. It is fulfilling to learn knowledge and expand your mind, but at the same time it can seem empty.

Even though I love knowledge, I can’t find the way to love school again. I used to love it, but I don’t anymore, I can’t. To me it’s all unimportant. All the knowledge we learn in school is inevitably useless, because it will never make us a better person in life, just in society. We strive to be accepted and to get the greatest education that we can, but in the end it’s useless.

I still want a good education. I know I need it to survive in society, but I don’t work for it. I can’t be the complete A’s on my report card kind of person that I used to be. I’m happy with C’s and B’s now, and I get even worse sometimes. I don’t do homework anymore, and I pass in reports late. I just can’t help but feel that I’m wasting my time with school.

Education is wonderful, but it’s not everlasting; wisdom is everlasting. What I crave is wisdom. What I long for, search for, endlessly hope for is wisdom. Simple facts of who was the first president of the U.S., how many bones does a human body have, what is the cube root of 8257, or who wrote A Tale of Two Cities just seems too pointless to me. That’s the kind of information you know for a bonus, for interest or boredom, but not to remind yourself you’re human. If you major in one of those fields than it is fine to want to know that stuff, but I feel that we aimlessly follow knowledge and then we realize too late it leads us away from our purpose.

There truly are intelligent people and wise people. Intelligent people want all the erudite information and knowledge they can gather, while wise people want experience and philosophy, views and feelings. They are complete opposite, but yet they coexist in peace. I do find knowledge fascinating at time, but overwhelming to say the least. I just feel that by wanting such great knowledge of facts, one can be mislead and restrained from the truth. I lust for the truth. I lust for it so badly, that I bring suffering to myself, but still I push on more.

School is strange to describe. It is necessary, but not to the point where it should be the focus of one’s life. It can be fun and useful, but teachers make it so boring these days, seeming to forget the beauty of knowledge and just endlessly preaching fact after fact in hopes that one might settle into a student’s brain.

Knowledge is a beautiful thing that should be honored and respected, loved and feared. It can create great people while at the same time ruin civilizations. I guess that might be my greatest concern with it. People don’t have enough respect for their mind and what it can create.

Reason 1 Thousands of students travel abroad each year to learn Italian language. They realize that the most effective way to learn Italian language is to learn in the country the language is spoken and may be used not only in the classroom, but all day and in the street, shops, restaurants…

Reason 2

Italy is a world leader in the culinary arts, interior design, fashion, graphic design, furniture design, etc. Those planning careers in such fields greatly benefit from knowing Italian and Italy.

Reason 3

Living in Italy can be a fantastic cultural experience. Although it can be said that Italian cannot be considered as a vehicular language, it is just as true that it cannot be relegated to a language of the past. If you are you an art and culture enthusiast, Italy is the country with the highest concentration of art, history, culture, nature, good food and wine in the world, is one of the most popular vacation countries in Europe. Wherever you choose to study Italian in Italy you will find something unique: beautiful natural scenery, history, customs, delicious food, colourful festivals and warm people.

Reason 4

The Italian welcome is warm everywhere, people are friendly and all seasons are good for a visit.

Jeremy Jackson, a student at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, enrolled in a Digital Video Production summer course at iD Tech Camps UCLA location. At this weeklong, hands-on technology summer program for ages 7-17 located at universities nationwide, Jeremy developed an understanding for shooting, editing, and creating special effects using Adobe software.

Jeremy’s father, an animator for Disney, inspired his son at a young age with a passion for filmmaking and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). Since perfecting his skills at camp, Jeremy attends Hollywood movie premieres as the cinematographer for 16 year-old Fred Medill, the host of “Fred TV.” A series with informative interviews of celebrities in motion pictures and television, and star athletes, “Fred TV” has taken Hollywood by storm. Jeremy can be seen at many Hollywood premieres behind the camera as Fred interviews celebrities.

While having used Adobe® software for school projects, Jeremy never used Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe After Effects® to create special effects for a movie until attending iD Tech Camps. Along with classmates, Jeremy created high-end special effects and learned advanced compositing and cinematography. Many of the effects that they created have been used in popular Hollywood movies. While a completely new program for Jeremy, After Effects quickly became a favorite.

“You can do everything with After Effects, from making it rain to making a guy freeze in mid-air,” said Jeremy while describing his camp movie The Majority Report- A movie about the powers of good vs. evil. Jeremy and his classmates used an effect which caused three fleeing men to freeze in mid-air, before resuming running.

During camp, Jeremy’s movie premiered at Family Showcase. “Everyone watching the movie was very impressed by the quality of the special effects my son’s group was able to create in just one week,” said Jeremy’s mom, Meredith Jackson. “The movie was a hit and I think we’ve watched it 100 times since then!”

Students like Jeremy use digitized footage in Adobe After Effects to add special effects like chroma key. They composited multiple layers of video to give the footage different effects. The software is so user-friendly that even a teenage camper like Jeremy can easily add impressive lasers and fire using plug-ins.

“It’s exciting teaching campers how to composite layers within their digital movie,” said Jeremy’s instructor, Kevin Painchaud, owner of a Hollywood-based production company whose movie “NTV-1″ had a sellout crowd for their screening at the Hollywood Film Festival. “Jeremy’s passion for filmmaking poured out of him each day, inside and outside of the classroom. He just really wanted to learn everything there was to know about filmmaking and caught on very quickly,” said Mr. Painchaud. It looks like the next Steven Spielberg may have just gotten his start!

As for now, Jeremy continues to accompany Fred to Hollywood premieres, getting experience shooting the stars. Someday he hopes to be a Cinematographer for motion pictures, just like his mentor from camp, Mr. Painchaud.

“Celltradeusa.com offers 17 Million College Students a Way out of Their Cell Phone Contracts without Penalty” Celltradeusa.com has launched the world’s first online service that gives approximately 17 million college students a way out of their cellular phone contracts without paying early termination fees or harming their credit ratings.

Cellular service providers such as Cingular, Verizon, T-mobile, and Nextel require a 1-2 year cellular service agreement to activate their service. After signing a binding contract, students and especially transfer students often find that they have inadequate service on campus.

College students that were dissatisfied had two options to exit their contract before Celltradeusa.com, pay a $150-$250 early contract termination fee per line or they could transfer their contract responsibility to someone else. Students wanting to get out of their contract would often get meager results from asking friends and family to take over, and those same students would remain “stuck” to avoid costly termination fees.

“Too often, we see students not paying their cell phone bill either because they are financially overstretched or because they’ve gotten so annoyed with inadequate cell phone service they simply don’t pay their bill. The fact remains that they are in a contract and some will do harm to their credit ratings before they even get their diploma. We hope to give students more options. ” says Craig Wurtenberg, co-founder of Celltradeusa.com.

Celltradeusa.com provides a solution to this dilemma. Celltradeusa.com has expanded the transfer of contract responsibility that service providers already offer. Whereas each customer had only one or two people to ask to take over their contract, they now have access to a nationwide network of deal-seeking customers that are willing to take over their contract.

Celltradeusa.com facilitates the transfer process by allowing its Get Out and Get In members to register for free, and provides an incentive system based on free phones, cash, and other “creative” barter arrangements to entice people to take over contracts. The Get Out customer is free and clear once a match is made and the transfer process is completed with the respective provider.

Celltradeusa.com Get Out and Get In members can now switch carriers when they want regardless of how many months left in their contracts, avoid those high termination fees, and take their numbers with them.

(Celltradeusa.com is always Free to register, but is a paid subscription service that helps to avoid $150-250 termination fees. Celltradeusa.com fees are 19.99 for the person getting out of their contract and always Free for the person getting In.) For further information, go to www.celltradeusa.com and please speak with Eric Wurtenberg at 1-888-991-6177)

Media Contact:

Eric Wurtenberg Celltradeusa.com 1-888-991-6177 201-889-8689 ( cell ) ericw@celltradeusa.com http://www.celltradeusa.com/press/