Essay Dramatistic Analysis on Breaking Bad Essay Example for Free

Essay Dramatistic Analysis on Breaking Bad Essay Cady is going to encounter psychological struggle and unwritten social rules that teenage girls face today. Through the Marxist perspective, the movie will be analyzed in order to show how sometimes the pull to conform to hegemony is so important that we have no choice that letting us be dragged to respect the established hierarchy. Mean Girls is an excellent artifact, worthy of investigation in the way that it shows how we expect teenage girls to act, but also how difficult it is for them to refrain from acting that way. When using the Marxist perspective, we begin by identifying the subject positions, as models or anti-models. Mean Girls provides clear subject positions about the models – characters that viewers are encouraged to want to be like, and the anti-models – characters that viewers are encouraged to no want to be like. Thus, the models appear to be â€Å"The Plastics†, a group composed of the three teenage girls Regina George, Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith. By analyzing â€Å"The Plastics†, it seems like teenage girls need to follow a specific pattern in order to be popular. That is to say, on a physical standpoint, teenage girls need to be thin, pretty, and wear tight and revealing clothes, while on a behavioral standpoint, they spend their time gossiping, partying, dating, and talking about boys, rather than focusing on their academic success. On top of the hierarchy is Regina George, and the two other â€Å"Plastics† are her subordinate. On the contrary, the anti-models, challenging the status quo and considered as abnormal or undesirable are represented by Janice and Damien. Both of them are belonging to the oppressed group, or the group that is considered as â€Å"inferior† and â€Å"subordinate† to the dominant group. Mean Girls depicts how easy it is for a dominant group (â€Å"The Plastics†) to impose its ideology on other groups. The interests of the empowered group are then promoting as being natural. Indeed, in Mean Girls, the dominant social group keeps the control over the other groups because nobody dares challenging the authority claimed by â€Å"The Plastic†. â€Å"The Plastics† keep their status quo by oppressing and manipulating the other subordinate groups. They dictate how things should be. The positive power of popularity combined with the negative disempowerment of being unpopular and rejected ultimately reinforces hegemony. That is to say, those who are popular are empowered even if popularity is just a facade for these teenage girls, and those who are not popular are disempowered. By focusing on Cady Heron, and observing how from an innocent teenage girl, she becomes a terrible â€Å"Plastic†, we can deduce that once accepted by the dominant group, people have trouble in seeing the flaws and drawbacks of the hegemony they are in. In order for them to be aware of it, they have to become a member of the subordinate group. Only the anti-models characters are able to see how wrong is the hierarchy they live in, and are willing to change it in order to create a more equal system. Mean Girls proposed both a preferred and an oppositional view on the hegemony. Indeed, from the beginning to the middle of the movie, Mean Girls brings a preferred reading with Cady altering her original beliefs, joining the dominant group and becoming a â€Å"Plastic†. Cady’s desire to respect conformity can be explained by a need to fit in and avoid ridicule. As a consequence, the viewers, siding with her, support the status quo. On the other hand, from the middle to the end of the movie, Mean Girls gives an oppositional reading by considering that â€Å"The Plastics† ought not to be empowered, in order to have a more equal system. Indeed, by the middle of the movie, Cady understands that her destructive behavior made her loose her two closest friends (Janice and Damien). She also realizes she needs to stop acting like a â€Å"Plastic† and to categorize people according to superficial traits, and that she should start considering people according to different characteristics (intelligence over beauty for example). As a consequence, Cady, desirous of putting things right, starts to think how she could readjust the hegemony around her. Thus, she considers destroying the hegemony reigning at school in order to challenge the status quo. At that time, the movie gives the viewers an oppositional reading rejecting the hegemony. In spite of the casualty and frivolity of the topic addressed (teenage girls movie), Mean Girls is still interesting to study because it gives us some interesting and engaging acumen into Marxist perspective and hegemony. Mean Girls shows us how hard it is to resist hegemony when everyone else is subjected to it. Mean Girls also makes viewers being more critical about how hegemony is reproduced in regular patterns of life, like the passage in high school for example.

Adaptive Thresholding :: essays research papers

Summary We have to develop an adaptive thresholding system for greyscale image binarisation. The simplest way to use image binarisation is to choose a threshold value, and classify all pixels with values above this threshold value as white and all other pixels as black. Thresholding essentially involves turning a colour or greyscale image into a 1-bit binary image. If, say, the left half of an image had a lower brightness range than the right half, we make use of Adaptive Thresholding. Global thresholding uses a fixed threshold for all pixels in the image and therefore works only if the intensity histogram of the input image contains distinct peaks corresponding to the desired subject and background. Hence, it cannot deal with images containing, for example, a strong illumination gradient. Local adaptive thresholding, on the other hand, selects an individual threshold for each pixel based on the range of intensity values in its local neighbourhood. This allows for thresholding of an image whose global intensity histogram doesn't contain distinctive peaks. The assumption behind method is that smaller image regions are more likely to have approximately uniform illumination, thus being more suitable for thresholding. Firstly, we develop a method based on the local row average to binarise the current line using that threshold. We then extend this technique to a moving window of different sizes. Method For the first part of the assignment, we develop a method based on the local row average to binarise the current line using that threshold. We consider each individual row at a time; calculate the average brightness value for that row based on the brightness values of all the pixels in that row. We then use this average value to binarise that row. We then proceed to the next row and so on. In this way we binarise the whole image. For the second part of the assignment, we make a window of user defined size around the centre pixel under consideration, calculate the average value for all the pixels in this window and then binarise that centre pixel using this average value as the threshold value. We continue this procedure till we binarise the whole image. For the pixels towards the edges of the image, we check for the number of pixels preceding the centre pixel. If this number is less than half the window size, we modify our code accordingly to take care so that we calculate the average value for that centre pixel.

Effects of Osmosis on Living Tissue Essay

What is the effect of osmosis on a slice of potato in varying salt solutions? Six different concentrations of salt water (0%, 0,4%, 0,8%, 1,2%, 1,6% and 2,0%) will be used in order to observe how the inserted potato slice changes. The length of the potato slice will be measured before and after leaving it for 24 hours in the various solutions. Hypothesis: Salt solutions will be hypertonic to the potato cells thus decreasing it in size as placed in higher solutions. Materials: †¢ 6 petri dishes †¢ Fresh potato sticks †¢ Dissecting razor blade †¢ Ruler †¢ Distilled H2O, 0,4% NaCI solution, 0,8% NaCI solution, 1,2% NaCI solution, 1,6% NaCI solution, 2,0% NaCI solution Procedure: (Obtained from the worksheet) 1. Obtain 6 Petri dishes 0.4% NaCl; 0.8% NaCl; 1.2% NaCl; 1.6% NaCl; 2.0% NaCl. 2. Add enough of the appropriate liquids to nearly fill each of the Petri dishes. 3. Obtain six fresh potato strips. Using a razor blade, angle cut one end of each strip to a beveled point. 4. Measuring from the tapered end, carefully and precisely angle cut each strip to a length of 70 mm so that both â€Å"points† are on the same side of the strip. 5. Place one measured potato tissue strip into each of the prepared Petri dishes. Cover the dishes and leave undisturbed for 24 hours. 6. After 24 hours, remove the strips of potato, one at a time, immediately measuring the length (mm) of each. Data Collection: Group 1 Test Solutions (% salt) Initial Length li (mm) Final Length lf (mm) Change in Length ∆ l (lf – li) (mm) Rigidity of the Strip Distilled H2O 30 mm 33 mm +3 mm Solid, Hard 0,4 30 mm 32 mm +2 mm Solid, hard 0.8 30 mm 31 mm +1 mm Flexible 1.2 31 mm 31 mm 0 mm Flexible, soft 1.6 31 mm 30 mm -1 mm Very flexible, soft 2.0 31 mm 30 mm -1 mm Very flexible, soft Group 2 Test Solutions (% salt) Initial Length li (mm) Final Length lf (mm) Change in Length ∆ l (lf – li) (mm) Rigidity of the Strip Distilled H2O 42 mm 46 mm +4 mm Hard 0,4 42 mm 44 mm +2 mm Hard 0.8 42 mm 41 mm +1 mm Flexible 1.2 42 mm 40 mm -2 mm Flexible 1.6 42 mm 39 mm -3 mm Flexible 2.0 42 mm 39 mm -3 mm Very flexible Data Processing: Group ∆ l (mm) Distilled H20 ∆ l (mm) 0.4% NaCl ∆ l (mm) 0.8% NaCl ∆ l (mm) 1.2% NaCl ∆ l (mm) 1.6% NaCl ∆ l (mm) 2.0% NaCl 1 +3 mm +2 mm +1 mm 0 mm -1 mm -1 mm 2 +4 mm +2 mm +1 mm -2 mm -3 mm -3 mm Average ∆l (mm) +3.5 mm +2 mm +1 mm -1 mm -2 mm -2 mm Result: In both groups the size of the potato increased when put into distilled H2O, 0,4% solution and 0,8 solution. From 1,2% solution and upward, the size of the potato stayed the same or decreased in both groups. One last similarity is that from 0,8% solution onwards the rigidity of the potato strip changed from hard to flexible and soft. Conclusion: Different concentrations of solute do affect the length of the potato strips. Our data shows that water moved from lower solute concentration to higher solute or descriptions of trends shown concentration. Hypertonic solutions, which have higher solute concentration and therefore graphs. The explanation should contain lower water concentration, cause the cells to lose mass and shrivel because water moves out observations, trends or patterns of the cell through the plasma membrane. This was the case with the slice left in salty where revealed by the data.the sample lost 9.09% of its original mass. Hypotonic solutions, on the contrary, have lower solute concentration and higher water concentration and cause the potato cells to expand because the water moved into the cells. In this case, the distilled water and the tap water samples were hypotonic to the potatoes and hence the potato slices gained 54.4% and 17% mass respectively. These results also indicate that the distilled water was more hypotonic than the tap water compared to the potatoes as the water mass gained by the potato slice was considerably higher in distilled water.

Scientific Method in Real Life Essay - 1241 Words

Scientific method paper Part I. It was the finals of the 2004 swimming state championships. I was seated second in the 100-yard individual breaststroke. My heart was pounding as I swam my warm up laps. I would have to drop about a second or so to have any shot at the title and the gold. I hopped out of the warm up pool, and headed over to grab my towel and work out a strategy plan with my coach. The first order of business was to address the main problem. I needed to win. My coach had gathered information on my competition. We knew her best personal times, the way she trained, and how much she had rested for this meet. From all of this info being hurriedly spoken to in my ear, as I made my way to the blocks, enabled me to†¦show more content†¦Then it was time to test the hypothesis, make an experimental design, and make our observations. I made my move on the third lap, and ended up winning the race. Here the actual race was the experimental design, from which my coach and I were able to make the observations that sense I won, our hypothesis was indeed correct. We could have made a graph showing all the racers in the race if we would have liked. We then were able to support the hypothesis, and also publish any types of results we would have liked. My personnel experience coincides with the scientific method all the way through. We unknowingly pretty much did all of the steps in the scientific method on our own accord. The ones left out such as the graphs were not necessary for my specific problem. Part II. I am currently dealing with the problem of cooking a salmon dinner for my boyfriend. I am a good cook, and really good baker, but I am not as familiar nor as comfortable using the grill. This would be my problem. I need to do a good job grilling salmon for him for our anniversary dinner. So I first need to identify the problem at hand, which is needing to cook a successful meal. Next, the scientific method states that I need to collect information on how to accomplish this task. I went to the local bookstore and bought a book on ways to grill your favorite foods. Now it would be time for me to form my hypothesis. My hypothesis is that if I grill the salmon for 20 minutes on 450Show MoreRelated Essay on Fame in Djerassi’s Cantors Dilemma1070 Words   |  5 PagesOpportunistic scientists, the most hypocritical deviants of the modern age, revolve around the scientific method, or at least they used to. The scientific method once involved formulating a hypothesis from a problem posed, experimenting, and forming a conclusion that best explained the data collected. Yet today, those who are willing to critique the work of their peers are themselves performing the scientific method out of sequence. I propose that scientists, or the treasure hunters of that field, areRead MorePhilosophy: â€Å"Explain the Differences Between Plato and Aristotle’s View of Reality†.818 Words   |  4 Pagesfurther believed that our physical world and its Forms participate or imitate the real Forms in a disorderly way. He claimed that there was a relationship between the realm of Forms and our world. This relationship revealed to us mortals the forms and brought order to life. Aristotle objected to Plato’s view, arguing that one cannot know the type of interaction which is occurring between the two Forms. If the â€Å"real or ideal forms† are eternal, pure and unchanging then how do they relate to the materialRead MoreEssay about The Use of the Scientific Method in Psychology777 Words   |  4 Pagesthe Use of the Scientific Method in Psychology This essay examines the advantages and disadvantages of using a method primarily for gathering research on human subjects that can be examined for later use. It will give a basic outline of the methods of investigation, their uses and their suitability. I will also look at the scientific method as a whole and examine the criticisms of this method using the writings of Hume and Popper. The first method I will look at is the rt method which is builtRead Morescientific literacy Essay1687 Words   |  7 PagesScientific literacy Introduction and audience When talk about science, perhaps majority of us think it is less relative with real life. However, as society developed, science encompassed us everywhere. This situation forces everyone to acquire the ability to learn and understand science. Some may think that, scientific literacy is what a scientist should have and nothing about normal people, however it is just too narrow. Look around the surroundings of us, everything is conned with science. AlsoRead MoreArt with Science: The Italian Renaissance and Art1479 Words   |  6 Pagescan paint well without a thorough knowledge of geometry† (qtd. in Butterfield 27). The Italian Renaissance is famous for its art which includes unique style of painting and sculpting, however, the Renaissance made significant remark on the use of scientific techniques which also can be considered as the influence of classical ideas. Although, classical ideas were not advanced like in the Renaissance, it provided the foundation for the Renaissance to revive it again. The Italian Renaissance transformedRead MoreNaturalistic Observation : Observing People999 Words   |  4 Pages Naturalistic Observation – observing people in their natural setting. The advantages to his method are; realistic natural behaviours, low demand characteristics, can generate new ideas for research and test existing findings. However the disadvantages are; lack of control of variables, observer bias, limited to public places or certain types of behaviours, which may create ethical issues. Controlled Observation – allows researchers to observe in a natural setting, giving focus on whatRead MoreThe Science of Psychology Essay1122 Words   |  5 PagesThe Science of Psychology â€Å"Psychology is the scientific study of mind, brain and behaviour. Some of what you do learn may seem like ‘common sense’, or at least familiar to you because you are learning about topics in which you can relate to. However some things you may believe is true, but is incorrect. The way we know this is through the application of scientific methods.† Mark Leary suggests that the subject matter of psychology is much more familiar to mostRead MoreScience Is The Term For A Unique Means Of Understanding The World1469 Words   |  6 Pagesinvolved need to agree to a great extent on what they are studying, how they will study it and how they will express their explanations. Scientific theories are logically created and dependant on empirical evidence. Scientific theorising is self-correcting, as when a theory is wrong it will eventually be proved to be so by the findings that are acquired. Scientific theories are not to be deemed as ‘the ultimate truth’ as even if they do account for all the data currently obtainable, there might alwaysRead MoreScience And Religion Distinct Or Overlapping Domains?976 Words   |  4 Pagesthat they have different methods of making—and verifying—their respective claims of truth. But they overlap (which is to say, are similar) in some of their social elements, e.g. in their day to day rituals, social structures, clashes of paradigms, political conflicts, battles with dogmas and conceptions of truth (e.g. â€Å"what defines the atom?† or â€Å"what is a God? What is our life’s ultimate purpose?†). But they also overlap in the respect that both religious and scientific paradi gms attempt to explainRead MoreKnowledge Is A Complex, Time Consuming Process1371 Words   |  6 Pagesown or others experiences, ideas, and information. Knowledge is relative to a social frame of reference, meaning that it is both social and personal, and both objective and subjective at the same time. Knowledge is a part of the process of daily life, yet it includes moments of detachment and reflection. It is both a belief and a potential for action. Knowledge aims for socialization and externalization. It grows and expands further by overcoming and incorporating the responses from external resources