Global Warming Photo Essay Experience

After I finally decided that I wanted my photo essay to be about Global Warming, I figured that the easiest way to find pictures on the subject would be to use the Google images function. The process was fairly easy, but did require a minimum amount of effort. This included searching through all the hits and picking pictures I felt best represented the issue without being over dramatic.
Google’s image search function is especially helpful, because it does not just pop up with a bunch of random pictures. Whenever you click on an image Google takes you to the site from which the image was found during the search. Which is particularly helpful for the purpose of extending credit towards those sites, when using their pictures.
Another factor as to why I had such an easy time finding images related to Global Warming is the fact that it has become a focus of national attention ever since the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. There have been numerous news articles since then which contain empirical evidence in support of the phenomena, as well as numerous on-site photographs of the effects of climate change. These photographs are mainly images of glaciers melting, because that is the most direct sign of Global Warming. Other signals are the numerous dangerous tropical storms and hurricanes, which are caused by warm fronts coming off of different oceans. It is more difficult to link Global Warming and hurricanes, so for the most part their images do not evoke the same reaction from the public as melting glaciers.
All in all, this assignment was fairly easy, mostly because the topic I chose is fairly prominent in the mainstream right now, which makes viable photographs easy to locate.

Global Warming Photo Essay

A diagram of the greenhouse effect, the scientific cause for global climate change. It was posted on the Union for Concerned Scientists website.

Greenland's ice sheet, the earth's second-largest reservoir of fresh water, is melting three times as fast, as it has in the past five years. These shocking discovery was published in Journal Science, and reported by the Boston Globe.

A photo of the polar ice caps melting. It is both beautiful and ominous. Credit

Glaciers in between Yakutat bay and the Stikine Icefield, which stretches into northwestern British Columbia, have been melting at twice the rate scientists originally estimated. Credit

This is Male the capital city of the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. With maximum elevation of only eight feet above sea-level, no other nation has taken potential climate change as seriously. In order, to help defend against rising water levels, a sea wall has been built to surround Male.

The BBC History Website

The BBC History website is operated by the BBC television network, a public corporation owned by the government of the United Kingdom. Most of its information is comprised of articles written by university professors, independent historians, journalists, or other experts of history. Usability is good, as its menu system is easy to use as well as aesthetically pleasing. The Website offers four main categories: Ancient History, British history, World Wars, and Recent History. Each of these main groups is then split up into more specific sub-categories, which include both articles and interactive maps that contain information regarding the geographical location of key historical sites. On presentation, I should add that these maps are surprisingly well done, containing almost as much information as the articles, combining excellent graphics with a very use-friendly menu system.

The content on this site appears to be organized according to how much information the web designers were able to find about each topic. For example, in the Ancient History section, there are specific categories for the Romans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, and British Prehistory. Articles related to other Ancient Civilizations are lumped together in one category labeled Other Cultures, possibly owing to the fact the number of examples of wide interest may be limited and that available content on them could be modest. Other forms of information are available for historical events that took place within the last century.

The website provides a variety of vehicles to transmit content. Photographs are accompanied by audio describing the event captured in the picture, as well as radio broadcasts by Winston Churchill and FDR, for instance. One problem I encountered at this site was that when I attempted to listen to Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches, I received a “page could not be found” error. It was a bit frustrating, but it turned out to be temporary problem. Indeed, a website run by such a large corporation can be expected to have the resources to solve such a problem quickly. The interactive movies that can be found on the site are collages of old photographs as well as sound bites of different people commenting on the event. There is realism in sound bites, as they sound as if they were taken from news broadcasts from the era of the event portrayed.

Scholarship is reasonably good, with content that appears well researched. Articles, interactive maps, and interactive movies have sections attributing due credit in an extremely thorough manner. In fact, the thoroughness of the credits in this website is what influenced me to review it. My first choice had been an amateur site about the Roman Empire where I could not find any record of the creator, or bibliography, besides the authors of some articles. In contrast, the BBC took no chances on this website, as every source of information is properly cited.

The parent company of the project is a news network, so naturally one could have expected the website to reflect news media to a large extent. However, there was not much news media to be found. In fact all that I could find was located in the Recent History section, which is understandable (modern news media did not exist during many of the other historical categories). The Recent History section was in fact comprised of mostly news media concerning only three subjects: The war in Iraq, the attacks of September 11, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. Probably the three recent historical events most relevant to the British public.

El Salvador's contribution to music

My cousin showed me this, and I had to post it somewhere El Salvadoran Music

Commentary on My Valentine’s Day Essay Experience

This project was interesting to undertake, because in the process of completing it, I learned much about a holiday that I previously believed to have been invented by Hallmark. The legend of St. Valentine was actually very interesting to read. What I found most interesting about it was that, what he was remembered for was marrying couples when marriage was outlawed. Yet, Valentine’s Day is the holiday for lovers, not necessarily married couples. I find it odd that the original reason for why St. Valentine was executed was distorted in the holiday that was named for him. Seeing as how he was a priest I am sure he was simply performing his duties to the church. I think that if he knew the present nature of his holiday, he would not be pleased. Besides that amusing piece of irony, the rest of the tale is somewhat predictable.

The research for this project was fairly easy. In order to find the websites needed for the project, I used the Google search engine. After finding the initial sites on general Valentine’s Day history, I narrowed my hunt by searching for specifics. The most notable one was Esther A. Howland. Once I saw a reference to her as the first person to mass-produce Valentine’s Day cards, I immediately did a search for her. The information I found on her was pretty general, but still useful for my purposes. Much of the information that I needed for this project was readily available on free websites, and made my work that much easier.

The History of Valentine’s day

Valentine’s day is one of the more commercialized holidays. Each year corporations take the opportunity to push sales for romantic ready-made cards. While this does not actually detract from the romantic meaning of the holiday, it makes people like myself skeptical of its legitimacy. For those unaware of the holiday’s origins, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the greeting card companies invented it. That was my opinion until I researched deeper into the background surrounding Valentine’s Day.

According to legend, St. Valentine was a Roman Christian priest during the third century A.D. This was towards the end of the Roman Empire, and barbarian tribes, including the Gauls, Turks, Slavs, and Huns were encroaching on the borders of the Roman Empire. The Emperor Claudius decided that he needed the best soldiers in this time of danger. He concluded that married men did not make good soldiers because of their emotional attachments to their families. Therefore, he banned marriage in order to make men better soldiers. This of course caused a lot of discontent among the populace, because of their inability to marry their loved ones.

Valentine was a Christian bishop who felt that such a decree was unjust and unchristian. He began to meet couples in secret and to marry them. When he was discovered, Valentine was brought before Emperor Claudius. The Emperor was impressed with the priest’s conviction, and attempted to convert him to the Roman gods. His attempt was unsuccessful and Valentine was sentenced to death. While he was imprisoned, Valentine’s jailer asked him to help his blind daughter. According to legend, one of the miracles St. Valentine performed was to cure the jailer’s daughter of her blindness. The legend ends with St. Valentine writing the first Valentine, which was a note to the jailer’s daughter that ended with “From your Valentine.”

Valentine’s day began to be popularly celebrated in Great Britain around the 1600s. It only became common for people of all social classes to exchange love notes in the middle of the 1700s. Like many aspects of British culture, this practice also migrated to the American colonies. However, it was not until the 1840s that Valentine’s Day cards began being produced en masse. The person responsible for this commercialization was Esther A. Howland. Howland was a young entrepreneur that was surprised to find a large demand for Valentine’s cards. She took advantage of the holiday and started a business that eventually grew large enough to gross one hundred thousand dollars annually, which, at the time, was a very significant sum of money.

Today, Valentine’s Day is a widely celebrated holiday. However, it has, and never will be, an important enough holiday to suspend work or school. The holiday is a luxury, it is not religious in nature, and does not really provide any significant service to society, other than to boost card consumption. Yet, it gives people a reason to celebrate their love for each other, so I am sure it will always remain popular.

How do web sites represent different approaches to history on the Internet?

After reviewing four websites: The Valley of Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, The History Channel, Do History, and National Museum of American History, I discovered two distinctive approaches to history on the internet. The first approach is represented by The Valley of Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War and Do History. I refer to their style as the scholarly or non-profit approach. Both have very specific information on their topics, and appear to be designed with education as the principal objective. While these Web Pages display a comparatively less attractive format, they are still well designed and very easy to navigate. For instance, students looking for letters that circulated among members of the Evans-Sibert Family during the period of the Civil War could simply go to the search function and enter in “Evans-Sibert” and all the records of such letters would come up. Such features are very handy for research, especially because they facilitate easy access to an abundance of primary sources.

While the civil war site contains a massive amount of primary sources, the Do History site is designed to be a teaching tool. It contains instructions on how to use primary sources for effective research, as well as a guide on how to teach using the website. This guide provides variants calibrated to different educational levels, from middle school to college. It is very detailed and could definitely aid new teachers with their curriculum.

The other approach to history on the web could be referred to as the marketing approach. Both The History Channel and National Museum of American History use this approach on their websites. These websites have an extremely well designed layout and graphic designs. However, their aim appears to be promoting and advertising events. These include shows and specials, in the case of The History Channel, and events and exhibits at the National Museum of American History. Much of the information on these sites is not very detailed or in-depth. In fact, the only information useful for research are the old T.V. clips of historical events and speeches on The History Channel website. While I am sure that all the productions promoted in these websites are well researched and informative, the web sites themselves are not.

The latter approach to history on the web does not make the Internet the actual source of information. Instead, it uses the Internet to support other forms of media or content. If one wished to research a topic by using these sites, one would not actually gain much information from the sites themselves. Instead, one would need to use the sites to find out when and where one could view a program or exhibit containing the required information. For example, if someone wanted to do research on the slave trade, they could go to the National Museum of American History site in order to ascertain what exhibits they have on display. It turns out that the closest exhibit available would be the West African Slave castle exhibit.

Unfortunately, since these companies rely on viewers and visitors for income, they gear their programs more towards education than legitimate scholarly research.