Heroin Addiction Essay Example for Free

Heroin Addiction Essay According to The National Institute on Drug Abuse, heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants. It is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as â€Å"black tar heroin†. Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is†cut† with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment. According to the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which may actually underestimate illicit opiate (heroin) use, an estimated 3. 7 million people had used heroin at some time in their lives, and over 119,000 of them reported using it within the month preceding the survey. An estimated 314,000 Americans used heroin in the past year, and the group that represented the highest number of those users were 26 or older. The survey reported that, from 1995 through 2002, the annual number of new heroin users ranged from 121,000 to 164,000. During this period, most new users were age 18 or older (on average, 75 percent) and most were male. In 2003, 57. 4 percent of past year heroin users were classified with dependence on or abuse of heroin, and an estimated 281,000 persons received treatment for heroin abuse. According to the monitoring the Future survey, NIDA’s nationwide annual survey of drug abuse among the Nation’s 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, heroin use remained stable from 2003-2004. Lifetime heroin use measured 1. 6 percent among the 8th graders and 1. 5 percent among 10th- and 12th graders. The 2002 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), which collects data on drug related hospital emergency department (ED) episodes from 21 metropolitan areas, reported that in 2002, heroin -related ED episodes numbered 93,519. NIDA’s Community Epidemiology Work Group (CEWG), which provides information about the nature and patterns of drug use in 21 areas, eported in its December 2003 publication that heroin was mentioned as the primary drug of abuse for large portions of drug abuse treatment admissions in Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, New York, and San Francisco. How is heroin used? Heroin is usually injected, sniffed/snorted, or smoked. Typically, a heroin abuser may inject up to four times a day. Intravenous injection provides the greatest intensity and most rapid onset of euphoria (7 to 8 seconds), while intramuscular injection produces a relatively slow onset of euphoria (5 to 8 minutes). When heroin is sniffed or smoked, peak effects are usually felt within 10 to 15 minutes. NIDA researchers have confirmed that all forms of heroin administration are addictive. Injection seems to be the predominant method of heroin use among addicted users seeking treatment; in many CEWG areas, heroin injection is reportedly on the rise, while heroin inhalation is declining. However, certain groups, such as White suburbanites in the Denver area, report smoking or inhaling heroin because they believe that these routes of administration are less likely to lead to addiction. With the shift in heroin abuse patterns comes an even more diverse group of users. In recent years, the availability of higher purity heroin (which is more suitable for inhalation) and the decreases in prices reported in many areas have increased the appeal of heroin for new users who are reluctant to inject. Heroin has also been appearing in more affluent communites (z). According to the NDIA the immediate effects of heroin (the short term), soon after injection (or inhalation), heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier. In the brain, heroin is converted to norphine and binds rapidly to opioid receptors. Abusers typically report a feeling a surge of pleasurable sensation-a â€Å"rush†. The intensity of the rush is a function oof how much drug is taken and how rapidly the drug enters the brain and binds to the natural opioid receptors. Heroin is particularly addictive because it enters the brain so rapidly. With heroin, the rush is usually accompanied by a warm flushing of the skin, dry mouth, and a heavy feeling in the extremities, which may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and severe itcing. After the initial effects, abusers usually will be drowsy for several hours. Mental function is clouded by heroin’s effect on the nervous system. Cardiac function slows. Breathing is also severely slowed, sometimes to the point of death. Heroin overdose is a particular risk on the street, where the amount and purity of the drug cannot be known. The long term effects of heroin use and the most detrimental is addiction itself. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, and by neurochemical and molecular changes in the brain. Heroin also produces profound degrees of tolerance and physical dependence, which are also motivating factors for compulsive use and abuse. As with abusers of any addictive drug, heroin abusers gradually spend more and more time and energy obtaining and using the drug. Once they are addicted, the heroin abuser’s primary purpose in life becomes seeking and using drugs. The drugs literally change their brains and their behavior. Physical dependence develops with higher doses of the drug. With physical dependence, the body adapts to the presence of the drug and withdrawal symptoms occur if use is reduced abruptly. Withdrawal may occur within a few hours after the last time the drug is taken. Symptoms of withdrawal include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (cold turkey), and leg movements. Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 24 and 48 hours after the last dose of heroin and subside after about a week. However, some people have shown persistant withdrawal signs for many months. Heroin withdrawal is never fatal to otherwise healthy adults, but it can cause death to the fetus of a pregnant addict. At some point during continuous heroin use, a peson can become addicted to the drug. Sometimes addicted individuals will endure many of the withdrawal symptoms to reduce their tolerance for the drug so that they can again experience the rush. Physical dependence and the emergence of withdrawal symptoms were once believed to be the key features of heroin addiction. We now know this not to be the case entirely, since craving and relapse can occur weeks and months after withdrawal symptoms are long gone. We also know that patients with chronic pain who need opiates to function (sometimes over extended periods) have few if any problems leaving opiates after their pain is resolved by other means. This may be because the patient in pain is simply seeking relief of pain and not the rush sought by the addict. The Medical consequences of chronic heroin injection use include scarred and/or collapsed veins, bacterial infections of the blood vessels and heart valves, abscesses (boils) and other soft –tissue infections, and liver or kidney disease. Lung complications (including various types of pneumonia and tuberculosis) may result from the poor health condition of the abuser as well as from heroin’s depressing effects on respiration. Many of the additives in street heroin may include substances that do not ready dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs. Immune reactions to these or other contaminants can cause arthritis or rheumatologic problems. Ofcourse, sharing of injection equipment or fluids can lead to some of the most severe consequences of heroin abuse-infections with hepatitis B and C, HIV, and a host of other blood-borne viruses, which drug abusers can then pass on to their sexual partners and children.

Why People Are Failing In High School Education Essay

Why People Are Failing In High School Education Essay Over the years, plenty of teenagers have had problems in a high school environment. Researchers have been getting statistics from all over the country to determine the amount of people dropping out of school or just failing in general. This topic has been an issue for many years. The percentages of high school dropouts have gone up and gone down. Most will say though that it is usually on the negative end. This is a huge problem and there has to be something done about it quick. The majority of dropouts come from a low income family. They need to provide for their family financially instead of opening a book. That is not the reason for everyone though. This research is going to explain the percentages and major reasons for students failing in a high school. Stay tuned. Failing in High School 1 Why are People Failing in High School? The Facts are here There are a lot of students that succeed in a high school environment and go off to a great university to find out what they want to achieve in their lives. However, not every student is blessed with the luxury to go to college or even finish high school. There are plenty of reasons on why students dont graduate from high school. Based on my research, the majority of the students that fail in a high school environment come from a low income family. These students fail because of having to deal with their families financial problems as well as being a part of an environment that is surrounded by negativity. We need to set goals for our children and help them grow as people. If we can do that, our future can look brighter and more positive. The following information will be exploring this huge problem. Can we find a solution towards the following facts? The students that drop out of high school are all types of races. The majority of the high school dropouts are black, Hispanic, or American Indian. The teenagers that are a part of these races generally live in the poorest parts of our economy. That is one of the main reasons why they fail. More Asians and whites graduate with a diploma and on time. Males are also less likely to graduate then females. All kinds of people of certain races drop out of high school. Basically, the students that dropout are the students who come from the gutter and arent given the right direction to succeed. Students drop out of high school for different reasons. Some get kicked out of school for fighting and get expelled for good. Some students get pregnant and have to deal with that instead. Then the father of that child may have to get a full time job and drop out of high school to support his child. Another reason may be because a certain student is having trouble keeping up with the school work. Some people tend to quit when they feel they are failing. That is where the parents need to come in. The kids that are a part of families with a low income have it the worst. I say that because they did not ask to be a part of that kind of environment. These types of students struggle through school because they need to help their parents by getting jobs to help the family and dont have time to go to school. They need to make money now. Being a part of a low income family and around poverty is not easy at all. It makes you angry and irritated. You are constantly around drugs, gangs, dope hea ds, pimps, drug dealers, and more. That is a lot of negativity to be around and when a teenager sees that, he or she may want to become a part of that lifestyle. Those types of lifestyles do not involve school and the future of your education. Those types of street professions involve making money and that is Failing in High School 2 why the low income parents tell their kids to go do that kind of illegal activity. A kid that comes from poverty may even decide for them self to make money on the street. It isnt always just the parents. They see it as easy money and also think to themselves that sitting in a classroom is pointless if I am making money now. Some of the parents that have a low income and are living in the projects do drugs or drink alcohol on a daily basis. When their kid sees that, he or she may want to start doing drugs also. Drugs will make kids lazy and not want to do anything. Certain drugs can effect a students motivation to succeed. Is Money Really That Important? A lot of those problems that I have just mentioned have to deal with people that are a part of a low income family. As I said earlier, that is the main focus on why students fail. They are surrounded by filth. A lot of people that are a part of poverty are nice and good hearted. They just have to do certain things because of the environment that surrounds them. I found some research concerning this problem. In 2005, the event dropout rate for students living in low-income families was approximately six times greater than the rate of their peers from high-income families (8.9 percent compared with 1.5 percent). Students from low-, middle-, and high-income families experienced an overall decline in event dropout rates during the three-decade period of the mid-1970s through 2005, including a downward trend during the first half of that period (1975 to 1990). From 1990 to 1995, students from low-income families experienced an upward trend in rates, while their peers from middle- and high -income families experienced no significant change. In the last decade (1995-2005), the event rates for low-income groups trended downwards, a trend not found among students from middle- and high-income families { National Center for Education Statistics, 2009, pg.1-2}. That was good information that was provided by the NCES. What this information tells me is that we need to make some serious changes and it makes me sick that money is the reason for some students not having the same chance to succeed. The main purpose for an education is to make money in the future. Some of these parents are basically telling their kids that they have to live by the day. They cant live and think about their future. That is not fair for a kid that has dreams and has the potential to succeed. Some of the parents did this to Failing in High School 3 themselves. They waste their own money on drugs and bring themselves down. The kids see that and may start living that life in the near future. Hopefully for our futures sake, we can start bringing hope to these kids and explain to them that an education is the most important thing to receive when you are a teenager. Who Are the Students That Fail In a High School Environment? The study found that seven in 10 students graduate from high school with a regular diploma. But about half of American Indian and black students graduate, compared with more than three-quarters of non Hispanic whites and Asians. The Hispanic graduation rate is 55.6%. Male students are consistently less likely to graduate than females, a pattern than can be found across every racial and ethnic group examined, according to the report { Report:1.2 Million Students Fail to Graduate High School, NSTA, Kristin Collins, 2006, p.3} Blacks and Hispanics have the highest rate not to graduate from high school. These two races also have the highest rate of being a part of a low income family. Trying to Make a Change Another resource that I found concerning this topic was in the Axia student library. This article is called Examining the high school dropout rate among African American and Hispanic students. The focus of this study was the problem of the high dropout rate among African American and Hispanic students enrolled in Westchester, New York, high schools during the 2003-2004 school year. A mixed method was used to collect data in this study. The 90 participants consisted of minority and nonminority high school students who had dropped out of school or who were still in high school as well as teachers, administrators, and parents from the Westchester high school districts in New York State. One group consisted of high school dropouts between 14 and 21 years old and potential high school dropout students between 14 and 21 years old with a grade point average below 2.0. The second group included parents, and the third group consisted of teachers/staff. The study was designed to establish the factors that contribute to the dropout rate among African American and Hispanic students enrolled in Westchester high schools. The results of the study showed that students who dropped out of Failing in High School 4 high school were influenced by socio-cultural, educational, and economic factors. The findings in this study helped identify specific factors that contribute to a higher incidence of dropping out of inner city high schools today to support a best practices approach. This approach included a profile for failure for African American and Hispanic students that can lead to the development of alternative strategies and an academic support plan for this at-risk group of students to help reduce the dropout rate in the urban high schools in Westchester, New York {Digneo, Mriam L., NorthcentralUniversity, 2009, pg 1}. A support plan can be a great help to these people. We need to start somewhere. This author gives a perfect example on certain races that are being affected by poverty and is trying to show that we are creating a strategy to change. Which City Has the Worst Graduation Rate? Another report from Kristen Collins was this, The report found that graduation rates vary widely across the nations largest school districts. For example, the graduation rate in Fairfax County, Virginia, (the nations 14th largest school district) was 82.5% while the Detroit public school system (the nations 11th largest school district) had a rate of 21.7% {Kristin Collins, NSTA, 2009, pg 4}. Those statistics scare me. I live in Michigan and I know how Detroit is. It would be a horrible place to live in some parts. It is nice though in certain areas. However, a graduation rate of 21.7% for a city that has the 11th largest school district in the nation is pathetic and embarrassing. The city of Detroit does have a lot of families that make a low amount of income. There is a lot of poverty out in that city and changes are trying to be made. This rate needs to change or else are future is in turmoil. No one in that city is being educated and the teachers have a lot to do with that also. The parents not caring whether or not their children go to school is a factor as well. Being a part of poverty is depressing and can stop someone of becoming who they were meant to become. Poverty Can Lead to a Variety of Things In Detroit and all over the world, there is a lot of violence and people joining gangs as well. If you fight in school, that is usually an automatic suspension and sometimes it can lead to getting kicked out of school for good. The majority of people who become a part of gangs come from a low income family. They join the gang and eventually start selling drugs, killing people, hurting people, and more. This can lead to that student dying themselves. Its just like a pattern. It keeps happening every day and we need to make a change. Forty-eight percent of all late high school dropouts come from families in the lowest quarter (bottom 25 percent) of the socioeconomic status distribution, and 77 percent of late high school dropouts come from the lowest half of the socioeconomic status distribution {Late High School Dropouts; Characteristics, Experiences, and Changes Across Cohorts, Ben Dalton, Elizabeth Glennie, Steven J. Ingels, 2009, pg 1}. It is no secret that money rules the world. I t is a shame as well. The Failing in High school 5 students that are a part of this economy should have just as good of opportunity to succeed as anyone else. We need to help these families in some possible way. Motion creates emotion. What can be done about these problems is very little. When it comes down to it, the student is in control of his or her own life. They have to put into their mind that they do not want to be around poverty forever. They want to create a change and education is the ticket for that. It may take time, but it will be worth it in the long run. These kids need to start thinking about the future and not just today. There is very little that we can do, but it could be enough to improve some students lives. We need the parents to motivate their children and stop caring about when their next buzz is going to come. That will help also. Poverty leads teens to think too much about the rich and famous also. They start to imitate what they see on T.V. and from rappers and it leads to negativity. It is very important to address this problem because our countries future is depending on it. As I said earlier, most people that dont have an education turn out to be bums, drug dealers, prostitutes and so on. There are some people that do succeed without a high school diploma. It is rare though. Those people are usually Hollywood stars, rap stars, or lottery winners. After finding all this research, I have realized that our country is going to have more problems as the years go by. There are too many people without an education and it already has caught up to us. If the population keeps growing, there will be chaos all over the country. We need to come up with a plan. A specific approach towards all these problems that create students failing in high school needs to be thought of. The kids of today will have to take care of us someday. Remember that. Failing in High School 6

Ernest Hemingway and the African Safari :: Ernest Hemingway Essays

Hemingway’s Obsession with the African Safari In 1953, Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Mary, accompanied by photographer Earl Theisen, traveled to Kenya in what turned out to be the waning years of the grand African safari. Soon after, a wave of independence swept the continent, which had largely been under European domination since the end of the last century. And as people worldwide became increasingly aware of their environment and the threats to it, the notion of killing animals for sport began to be looked at in a different light. While the heyday of the African safari may be in the past, our society has legacies from that era that require knowledge of the safari. A key to understanding Hemingway is his obsession with the African safari. If hunting is the act of seeking, following and killing animals for food or for display, then the African safari is the act of doing all of those to big game, or large animals in Africa. African safaris usually used to take place on the eastern side of the African continent, but now can take part in any region of Africa. Most of Hemingway’s trips were taken in this region. The famous plane crash that he survived landed in Uganda, which is on the eastern coast. However, the trend has changed. The eastern countries that used to have safaris no longer have stable governments. Most safaris now take place in other parts of Africa, such as South Africa. South Africa, with the most stable government in the continent, provides a safer environment for hunters to enjoy their safari. The weather is an important factor in planning any safari. In South Africa, it rains a great deal during the winter months (their summer months), and very little during the rest of the year. Countries further up north have similar weather. The big difference comes in the difference in temperature. The temperature in South Africa is very temperate – during any safari season (which is from March to October) the lowest temperature will be around 35 degrees and the highest will be around 80 degrees. The rain hampers any attempt to have a safari the rest of the year. Clothing during an African safari is generally simple, layered and of a neutral color. Camouflage is generally not worn and wearing it in some areas is illegal.

The War on Terrorism Essay -- Religion, Islam, Taliban

Before the September 11 attacks many Americans believed the United States, a country founded upon its bravery and freedom, was untouchable. On that dreadful day, America was knocked off its pedestal and forced into the war on terror. Inadvertently to many Americans, they fail to realize why this war was unique and not like any other conflict the United States has come across before. America now faced a new type of enemy the Taliban, an organization known for its ruthless behavior and severe attacks and driven by the true nation of Islam. Many Americans wondered why such a violent organization would attack the United States, as well as, what would drive an organization to revert to such evil tactics. Upon research to answers to these questions all too often religion came into play. The nation of Islam seems to be the driving force into the war on terrorism. Religion has always been a controversial subject. Many had suffered and loss their lives because of their personal beliefs. Strangely, what’s even more revealing is that the nation of Islam has an integral role in the war on terror. The nation of Islam has ties to some of the most dangerous and violent groups of people. Within the nation of Islam there are a couple of groups that are notorious for their terrorist behavior. The Taliban, Hamas, and the Hezbollah are the most lethal and violent. For example, the Taliban was founded in 1994, which is pretty young for organization that is notoriously known for violence. The Taliban began as a small group of students that studied Islam from Afghan refugee camps (Berman 4). The Taliban members were poor and started off originally with good intentions. They sought to provide services, both spiritual and tangible to local residents... ...fer about the idea of religion having its role on terrorist organizations. As stated by Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University, he says† So, is it religion that causes terrorism? Does Islam in particular have a terrorism problem?† The question is simple but the answer is difficult to define. Of course religion has its role on terrorist organizations but the concept of terrorists groups having just radical members is absurd. Many of the members of these organizations are moderate and believe that such attacks like the September 11 attacks are justifiable (Esposito 1). The point that many fail to realize is that radicals simply wield religion instrumentally (Esposito 1). Members of these organizations used religion to make the things they do justifiable. Comparably many of the members of the Taliban and other organizations are considered to be fanatics.

Air Pollution in Mexico City Essay examples -- Environment Polluted Es

Air Pollution in Mexico City Mexico City adds an estimated one million new residents each year, resulting in one million new aggravates to the city’s already abominable air quality (Collins, 119). Over the span of a generation, Mexico City’s air has gone from being one of the world’s cleanest to one of the world’s most polluted, as well as the most polluted in its country. The average visibility in the city is down from almost 100 km in the 1940s to only 1.5 km today, removing the once beautiful landscape of the surrounding snow-capped volcanoes (Yip, 1). More significantly, however, Mexico City’s air problems have resulted in a notable decrease in the health of its residents, particularly its children. There are a variety of reasons for the decline in air quality, including factory emissions, suspended particles, vehicles, as well as problematic geographic hindrances. Fortunately, Mexico City is doing a lot in response to the problem, including vehicle control, mas s transit improvements, required industry emission reductions, and an investing in research and education programs. Regardless of these actions, however, Mexico City’s air is still significantly affecting the quality of life for its residents, and the city must continue to make changes in order for real progress to occur. Vehicles are responsible for up to eighty percent of air pollution in Mexico. There are close to four million automobiles, buses, and trucks in the city, the average of which is ten years old, and thus in poor repair with ineffective emission controls. Emissions are increased by the excessive traffic compressed into narrow streets with few parking spaces, requiring low-speed cruising (Collins, 125). Even new engines oft... ...ificant goals set for measured air quality improvements, so while their future is not yet clear, it is at least a little less smoggy. Works Cited Collins, Charles, and Steven Scott. "Air Pollution in the Valley of Mexico." Geographical Review 83 (1993): 119-133. Hibler, Michelle. "Taking Control of Air Pollution in Mexico City." International Development Research Center. 12 Aug. 2003. . Loomis, Dana, Margarita Castillejos, Diane Gold, William McDonnell, and Victor Borja-Aburto. "Air Pollution in the Valley of Mexico." Epidemiology 10 (1999): 118-123. "Mexico City Air Hurting Children." Health and Energy. 11 Mar. 1998. . Yip, Maricela, and Pierre Maldl. "Air Pollution in Mexico City." 14 Dec. 2002. University of Salzburg, Austria. .

Deception Point Page 107

Rachel fell onto her back against the cockpit's rear wall. Half submerged in sloshing water, she stared straight up at the leaking dome, hovering over her like a giant skylight. Outside was only night†¦ and thousands of tons of ocean pressing down. Rachel willed herself to get up, but her body felt dead and heavy. Again her mind reeled backward in time to the icy grip of a frozen river. â€Å"Fight, Rachel!† her mother was shouting, reaching down to pull her out of the water. â€Å"Grab on!† Rachel closed her eyes. I'm sinking. Her skates felt like lead weights, dragging her down. She could see her mother lying spread-eagle on the ice to disperse her own weight, reaching out. â€Å"Kick, Rachel! Kick with your feet!† Rachel kicked as best as she could. Her body rose slightly in the icy hole. A spark of hope. Her mother grabbed on. â€Å"Yes!† her mother shouted. â€Å"Help me lift you! Kick with your feet!† With her mother pulling from above, Rachel used the last of her energy to kick with her skates. It was just enough, and her mother dragged Rachel up to safety. She dragged the soaking Rachel all the way to the snowy bank before collapsing in tears. Now, inside the growing humidity and heat of the sub, Rachel opened her eyes to the blackness around her. She heard her mother whispering from the grave, her voice clear even here in the sinking Triton. Kick with your feet. Rachel looked up at the dome overhead. Mustering the last of her courage, Rachel clambered up onto the cockpit chair, which was oriented almost horizontally now, like a dental chair. Lying on her back, Rachel bent her knees, pulled her legs back as far as she could, aimed her feet upward, and exploded forward. With a wild scream of desperation and force, she drove her feet into the center of the acrylic dome. Spikes of pain shot into her shins, sending her brain reeling. Her ears thundered suddenly, and she felt the pressure equalize with a violent rush. The seal on the left side of the dome gave way, and the huge lens partially dislodged, swinging open like a barn door. A torrent of water crashed into the sub and drove Rachel back into her chair. The ocean thundered in around her, swirling up under her back, lifting her now off the chair, tossing her upside down like a sock in a washing machine. Rachel groped blindly for something to hold on to, but she was spinning wildly. As the cockpit filled, she could feel the sub begin a rapid free fall for the bottom. Her body rammed upward in the cockpit, and she felt herself pinned. A rush of bubbles erupted around her, twisting her, dragging her to the left and upward. A flap of hard acrylic smashed into her hip. All at once she was free. Twisting and tumbling into the endless warmth and watery blackness, Rachel felt her lungs already aching for air. Get to the surface! She looked for light but saw nothing. Her world looked the same in all directions. Blackness. No gravity. No sense of up or down. In that terrifying instant, Rachel realized she had no idea which way to swim. Thousands of feet beneath her, the sinking Kiowa chopper crumpled beneath the relentlessly increasing pressure. The fifteen high-explosive, antitank AGM-114 Hellfire missiles still aboard strained against the compression, their copper liner cones and spring-detonation heads inching perilously inward. A hundred feet above the ocean floor, the powerful shaft of the megaplume grabbed the remains of the chopper and sucked it downward, hurling it against the red-hot crust of the magma dome. Like a box of matches igniting in series, the Hellfire missiles exploded, tearing a gaping hole through the top of the magma dome. Having surfaced for air, and then dove again in desperation, Michael Tolland was suspended fifteen feet underwater scanning the blackness when the Hellfire missiles exploded. The white flash billowed upward, illuminating an astonishing image-a freeze-frame he would remember forever. Rachel Sexton hung ten feet below him like a tangled marionette in the water. Beneath her, the Triton sub fell away fast, its dome hanging loose. The sharks in the area scattered for the open sea, clearly sensing the danger this area was about to unleash. Tolland's exhilaration at seeing Rachel out of the sub was instantly vanquished by the realization of what was about to follow. Memorizing her position as the light disappeared, Tolland dove hard, clawing his way toward her. Thousands of feet down, the shattered crust of the magma dome exploded apart, and the underwater volcano erupted, spewing twelve-hundred-degree-Celsius magma up into the sea. The scorching lava vaporized all the water it touched, sending a massive pillar of steam rocketing toward the surface up the central axis of the megaplume. Driven by the same kinematic properties of fluid dynamics that powered tornadoes, the steam's vertical transfer of energy was counterbalanced by an anticyclonic vorticity spiral that circled the shaft, carrying energy in the opposite direction. Spiraling around this column of rising gas, the ocean currents started intensifying, twisting downward. The fleeing steam created an enormous vacuum that sucked millions of gallons of seawater downward into contact with the magma. As the new water hit bottom, it too turned into steam and needed a way to escape, joining the growing column of exhaust steam and shooting upward, pulling more water in beneath it. As more water rushed in to take its place, the vortex intensified. The hydrothermal plume elongated, and the towering whirlpool grew stronger with every passing second, its upper rim moving steadily toward the surface. An oceanic black hole had just been born. Rachel felt like a child in a womb. Hot, wet darkness all engulfing her. Her thoughts were muddled in the inky warmth. Breathe. She fought the reflex. The flash of light she had seen could only have come from the surface, and yet it seemed so far away. An illusion. Get to the surface. Weakly, Rachel began swimming in the direction where she had seen the light. She saw more light now†¦ an eerie red glow in the distance. Daylight? She swam harder. A hand caught her by the ankle. Rachel half-screamed underwater, almost exhaling the last of her air. The hand pulled her backward, twisting her, pointing her back in the opposite direction. Rachel felt a familiar hand grasp hers. Michael Tolland was there, pulling her along with him the other way. Rachel's mind said he was taking her down. Her heart said he knew what he was doing. Kick with your feet, her mother's voice whispered. Rachel kicked as hard as she could. 130 Even as Tolland and Rachel broke the surface, he knew it was over. The magma dome erupted. As soon as the top of the vortex reached the surface, the giant underwater tornado would begin pulling everything down. Strangely, the world above the surface was not the quiet dawn he had left only moments ago. The noise was deafening. Wind slashed at him as if some kind of storm had hit while he was underwater. Tolland felt delirious from lack of oxygen. He tried to support Rachel in the water, but she was being pulled from his arms. The current! Tolland tried to hold on, but the invisible force pulled harder, threatening to tear her from him. Suddenly, his grip slipped, and Rachel's body slid through his arms-but upward. Bewildered, Tolland watched Rachel's body rise out of the water. Overhead, the Coast Guard Osprey tilt-rotor airplane hovered and winched Rachel in. Twenty minutes ago, the Coast Guard had gotten a report of an explosion out at sea. Having lost track of the Dolphin helicopter that was supposed to be in the area, they feared an accident. They typed the chopper's last known coordinates into their navigation system and hoped for the best. About a half mile from the illuminated Goya, they saw a field of burning wreckage drifting on the current. It looked like a speedboat. Nearby, a man was in the water, waving his arms wildly. They winched him in. He was stark naked-all except for one leg, which was covered with duct tape.

Formative Assessment Essay

The Rape of the Lock, written by Pope in response to a feud between two friends about the theft of a lock of hair, is revolutionary in its evolution of the comic satire genre into the field of epic poetry. Pope, an avid student of the Greek epics (he produced his own translations of some that provided much of his income during his life), takes the basic skeleton of an epic: its structure, critical content and even linguistic points; and crafts around the skeleton a poem of wit and comedy that is at its core epic, but also uses this very epic backbone to undermine its tales own importance and to satirise the content that has been moulded around the form. This creation from Pope marks the offshoot of the epic genre, transforming it into mock epic, an independent genre that bears many of the traits of its forebearer in a new light. The transformations to the epic that Pope undertakes in the Rape of the Lock to satiric effect can be broadly split into transformations of heroic content and transformations of heroic language. The former can be clearly observed here: Pope takes a staple of epic writing, heroic weaponry, and twists its use to his satirical needs. The weapon itself is given, through the use of a similar description, equal place with great weapons like Agamemnon’s sceptre, whose lineage was used to reinforce Agamemnon’s dominance and power in the Iliad, being forged by Hephaestus and owned by the Gods from Zeus to Kronos. Belinda’s weapons lineage is far less great. Instead of a scepter, the weapon of kings and priests in Homer’s writing, Belinda wields a bodkin, a hair needle. Even that difference itself is satirical: Agamemnon’s kingship is of great import to the Iliad so the parallel with a bodkin, which links to the hair in question much like the scepter links with kingship, makes a clear statement on the relative importance of the quarrel in the Rape of the Lock. The lineage too satirises the pointlessness of dispute: no claim of divinity (and thus righteousness) is made on the part of Belinda’s weapon; in fact its lineage mainly consists of feminine objects with the only male mentioned in its lineage also being the only one to explicitly be mentioned dying. Perhaps Pope, often accused of being somewhat sexist, is using this contrast and development to imply that the whole issue is a woman’s trifle and nothing next to the male quarrels of Achilles and Agamemnon. On top of this, the weapon is not the fixed centre of the lineage as in the Iliad, in which the weapon started as a divine weapon and stayed that way. Instead the object is mutable: it starts as signet rings, develops into a buckle and then becomes a bodkin. Pope changes up the epic formula of the mighty weapon into something changeable and thus insignificant, paralleling with the argument he is satirising, the implication being that it is insignificant and will easily be forgotten. The weapon also shows another perversion of the epic poem that Pope uses. Protection, be it through armour or weaponry, tends to have a high place in the Greek epics. Heroes often wear famed suits of armour or use shields/weapons to survive insurmountable odds (for example the reflective shield in Perseus’ tale in Ovid’s Metamorphoses that slays Medusa). This element of protection, divine or otherwise, is a theme that Pope subverts consistently. From the slyph Ariel who is â€Å"half dissolv’d† even by light to the â€Å"Cosmetic powers† of her dress and make-up, nothing effectively protects Belinda. The bodkin is no different, it fails to protect her locks from being cut in the initial case, and here, although she uses it to attack the Baron, it fails to return its charge, her hair, to her. Pope is modernising traditional epics, using these typical ‘protections’ to mock high societies fixation on appearance. All of her outward facing beauty and quaint bodkin’s cannot protect her from the advances of a single man, so what, Pope asks, is the use of all this artifice? Pope also mutates generic language elements from epic literature for his satirical intentions. In this passage, the clearest example is in his use of the ten syllable rhyming heroic couplet. Pope takes the rhyme of the couplet and uses it to link together two separate words or ideas, often to a comical effect. Here, in the lines, â€Å"Nor feared the chief the unequal fight to try, Who sought no more than on his foe to die. â€Å" Pope has the first line of the couplet set up the Baron’s bravery by expounding his fearlessness in fighting against Belinda in â€Å"unequal† combat (ironic in itself due to Belinda’s natural weakness compared to his â€Å"manly strength† referred to in the next couplet) before defeating the heroic xpectancy with a sexual pun; the phrase â€Å"to die† holding at the time a dual meaning referring to sexual climax, and often premature climax at that. His heroism is built up and destroyed within a couplet with the contrast of noble bravery and base desire providing a humorous and satirical twist on the typical heroism of the heroic couplet by suggesting that the drive behind the Baron’s actions is, at its deepest level, sexual, rather than noble or courtly.