Behind every modern web page is code that identifies and describes the page. Part of the code, HTML, is structural, while another language called CSS, is presentational. Some pages may also contain additional code called JavaScript, a language which adds behaviors to a page. Another language, XML, adds increased functionality to web pages. These four languages or codes: HTML, CSS, XML and JavaScript are behind almost every page published on the World Wide Web.
HTML is an acronym for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is based on an older electronic document standard called SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). The current Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Tim Berners-Lee, and his colleagues from the renowned CERN laboratory in Switzerland, were the primary developers of HTML. His team created HTML, the HyperText Protocol (HTTP), and the Universal Resource Locator (URL), all as part of their work in developing the first web browser in the very early 1990’s. (Continued)
Drawing opens the mind. It enhances critical thinking skills and improves memory. Learning to draw instills the pride of craftsmanship; building self-confidence and self-discipline through accomplishment and the acquisition of skill. It teaches an appreciation for nature, encourages social cooperation and a sense of community. Drawing is a gateway to the imagination; it inspires and communicates ideas. It can even reveal the inner self; as a vehicle of self expression, drawing is an excellent way to interpret ourselves and world around us.
American educators have long appreciated the value of drawing skills. Beginning with the Massachusetts Drawing Act, several New England states throughout the 1870’s mandated drawing skills be taught in public schools. Section two of the New York Drawing Act was typical of these laws: “The board of education of each city in this state shall cause free instruction to be given in industrial or free hand drawing in at least one department of the schools under their charge” (Bolin, par. 21). Although many schools today consider drawing classes dispensable, as recently as 2007, the “National Assessment of Educational Progress found that schools in which children spent more time in arts classes did better academically” (Geist and Hohn, par. 4). In an article outlining the relationships between spatial ability and mathematical problem solving, Edens and Potter observed that drawing is ideally suited to teaching visual and spatial skills, especially toward the understanding of schematics and mathematical diagrams (par. 10). (Continued)
In recent years, the differences between online and traditional brick and mortar colleges have begun to substantially dwindle. Today, many of the traditional considerations when deciding which school to attend, can be applied to both types of colleges. However, the main reasons for choosing the online option remains the same as in the days of correspondence schools: the ability to attend school and work at the same time; the advantages of setting your hours, and, in some instances, progressing at your own speed; and, overcoming the disadvantages of living in a remote location.
According to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation report, Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008, during the last ten years, enrollment in online colleges has increased faster than enrollment in traditional brick and mortar schools of higher education. In addition, online enrollment is growing at a pace that exceeds the rate of enrollment in traditional colleges. The foundation also reports that the rate of enrollment in online classes is expected to continue. During the 2007 fall term, roughly 4 million students were enrolled in one or more online courses; 12 percent more than the fall of 2006 (par. 2). (Continued)
Understanding the different type of instruments in an orchestra enhances the listening experience. Knowing how the sounds are made and where those sounds fit into a composition gives the listener a much greater appreciation of all aspects of the music. For example, deeper satisfaction comes from knowing that the drums heard in a piece of music are not merely some nondescript percussion instrument, but rather a timpani drum. And, knowing a little about the timpani drum will increase the enjoyment. The same is true for all the different types of instruments that make up an orchestra.
The oldest of all the instruments are called idiophones (Niederriter). These instruments, along with drums, make up the percussion section of an orchestra and include the xylophone, bells, wooden blocks, cymbals and gongs. An idiophone is anything that makes a pleasing sound naturally in and of itself. Usually, the sound is made by striking the object, but sometimes the sound can be made just by moving the object. For example, a rain stick. Shakers and rattles are also idiophones. (Continued)
My very first performance was totally unexpected. Not long after I got my first guitar, a friend bought a place in the country and was having a big open house. It was late, and a group of us were sitting around an open fire built in the center of an old steel corn crib;– the kind that held ear corn and looked like a giant gazebo, complete with vines growing up the sides. I was talking to a friend about learning how to play the guitar, and he said he had his with him. He went and got it and parked it in my lap.
I’d never seen anything like it! It looked like a piece of fine furniture. I ask him, what’s this? And he said, it was a Martin. I asked him to play it, but he insisted I play. By then, everyone was encouraging me and I was in a total panic. I didn’t know a single song. I only knew two chords, and some blues box patterns. (Continued)
This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly, lush and American. The hour is midnight and the library is deep and carried like a dreaming child into the darkness of these pages. Though the library is “closed” I don’t have to go home because this is my home and has been for years, and besides, I have to be here all the time. That’s part of my position. I don’t want to sound like a petty official, but I’m afraid to think what would happen if somebody came and I wasn’t here.
So begins The Abortion: An Historical Romance, a poetically mundane story of an unusual man, the librarian of a strange library where unpublished books written by ordinary people are deposited and never read. Books like, “Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms by Mrs. Charles Fine Adams” (14). and “Printer’s Ink by Fred Sinkus. The author was a former journalist whose book was almost illegibly written in longhand with his words wrapped around whiskey. ‘That’s it,’ he said, handing the book to me. ‘Twenty years.’ He left the library unevenly, barely under his own power. I stood there looking down at twenty years in my hands” (30).
The novel was assailed by critics, the subject matter being even more controversial at the time is was published, than now. It tells the sad uneven story of how the librarian and and his girlfriend go through the experience of having an abortion. Richard Brautigan writes prose as if he were writing poetry. His work is imaginative, sometimes whimsical and sometimes profound. If you enjoy reading Kurt Vonnegut, then you might like reading Brautigan.
Brautigan, Richard. The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971
How we manage the music we buy has a long history of political and corporate litigation. In one of the few victories for the consumer, The Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) of 1992 removed from the law books the crime of recording music to cassette tapes for personal use. People were at last able to copy music from the albums and CDs they had purchased without feeling they were somehow breaking the law or depriving artists their royalties. However, the act does not cover music copied to a computer, so, technically, with only a few exceptions, copying an album or CD to your computer and then adding it to your iPod or burning a CD may be considered illegal (Wellen).
One exception is Apple’s licensing agreement, which states music downloaded from iTunes may be burned to CDs for noncommercial, personal use, such as coping to a laptop. Copying purchased music to CDs, although certainly not endorsed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), is something consumers can do without fear, so long as it’s for personal use only. (Continued)
The earliest participants in wireless broadcasting were already engaged in other “live” communications such as the telephone and the telegraph. It took a few years more for the recording industry to catch up and take its place amidst the technology of radio broadcasting.
Much like personal computing in the 1970’s, the early days of radio was the realm of hobbyists who built their own radios, and scientists like Dr. Lee DeForest and Edwin Armstrong. Outside of these pioneers, many people couldn’t see the implications of wireless technology; not as long as people had to build their own radios and all there was to listen to was Morse code through earphones. As early as 1910, DeForest, who perfected the arc radiotelephone in 1909 for the U.S. Navy, broadcasting the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso. A few years later, he installed a radiotelephone transmitter in his laboratory at Columbia Gramaphone in New York and began broadcasting Columbia phonograph records. But, it was Armstrong’s invention of the super heterodyne during World War I, which paved the way for loudspeakers, that the makings of radio as a mass medium were soon realized.
At the outbreak of world war in 1914, the American radio market was dominated by the wireless technology companies owned by the Marconi Company. During the war, the U.S. Navy was given control over all private wireless facilities. At the end of the war, pressured by the U.S. government, who was hostile to foreign ownership of broadcast radio, the British Marconi Company sold their American interests to General Electric, who, along with with other partners such as Westinghouse, American Telegraph and Telephone Company and Western Electric, to name but a few, and with significant U.S. government sponsorship, formed the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). (Continued)