The story of John Forbes Nash depicted in the film “A Beautiful Mind” presents a condition identified as paranoid schizophrenia. In the film acted by Russell Crowe, and in Nash’s real life, the symptoms embodied for the disease have a consistency in the sense that the patient shows auditory variety hallucinations and perceptual disturbances. The film released in the United States in December 21, 2001 has captured the imagination of many fans, particularly by its peculiar depiction of the life of John Nash as a brilliant mathematician but occasionally delusional character. Both the film and real-life accounts do not accurately depict the exact causes of Nash’s condition, but there is common agreement that most mental illnesses are the direct result of imbalances of certain chemicals of the brain matter. It presents a subtle conclusion among many fans that great intellectual endowment often should accompany some mental illness, which is not the case. There are critical disparities between the film portrayal of Nash and the reality of the conditions manifested by Nash’s schizophrenic spectrum illness because films often seek to capture certain thematic orientations and idealized versions of mental illness, and the reality is starkly different.
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Educational institutions pose challenging social configurations while the curriculum content presents varying difficulty levels for the student. Achievement emotion is vital for the progression of learners in any educational task because of the inherent uncertainty, complexity, and ambivalence. In the cognitive function of each individual learner, emotional variables offer a vital system to evaluate preparedness and readiness for learning. There are emotional dispositions that augment better learning preparedness and readiness, while other emotional states score weak learner preparedness for institutional engagement and learning (Heffer & Willoughby, 2017). At the college level, there is a normal distribution among learners in their spectrum of learning readiness and preparedness for instructional engagement. Determining the relevant research praxis is a useful preliminary win in suitably orienting the research to establish correct correlations between the achievement emotions and academic excellence, and in this research endeavor, adequate care is taken to establish suitable correlation schemas. Research approaches in achievement emotion have traditionally compounded many aspects of learner environment, including peer-to-peer emotional engagement. Nonetheless, recent advancements highlight considerable fragmentation.
Continue readingSlavery of the African Americans may have the status of having been the most horrible economic relations history has ever witnessed. Still, its social consequences over the years, even after the Emancipation, have become even more daunting. Houston Hartsfield framed it even grotesquely, that “The colored people did not know how to be free, and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them.” Even in the aftermath of Emancipation, distrust, violence, and horrid conditions remained the common plight of the freedmen[1]. A lot of reconstruction work went into bridging the gaps and making race relations normal for many years with no avail. The Civil Rights Movement led by Rev. Martin Luther King in the 1960s at least made considerable progress, but among poor African American populations, discrimination and racial prejudice remain the hallmark of their American experience. In underscoring the plight of the freedmen, it is important to highlight the bleak institutional systems and the legal frameworks as well as the economic circumstances of the freedmen.
Continue readingSociety is characterized by disruptive technologies, and the leading among them are Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and Blockchain. It is expected that once the full potentials of supercomputing is achieved through ongoing research, a major shift in society will result because the computing power will perform amazing tasks with great simplicity and ease (Bughin et al., 2019). Machine learning enables diverse robotic and mechanical automation to be executed. Machines can be exposed to routine encounters using a massive amount of data to learn how to execute intelligent motion. Machine learning and artificial intelligence enable many hybrid and innovative functions to be inbuilt in automatic processes like in the vending machines and autonomous vehicles. Artificial intelligence and Machine learning are currently the most disruptive technologies in society because they have created massive automation in diverse fields and have supported the erection of computing systems in research where human capacity and operations would be severely limited. Giga factories with large-scale robotic and automated machine operations depend effectively on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Continue readingHuman interactions occur within a culturally defined environment and language only gets meaning to people through cultural lenses. First interactions are often characterized by abstract meanings and vague symbolism because background differences, particularly between cultures, can pervade effective concord (Faulkner 11). Both James Longenbach and Silvia Curbelo’s poems are full of abstractions that symbolize diverse interpretations that people can derive from everyday experiences seen from a strange eye view. The two poems, “Orphic Night” and “Fall,” written by Longenbach and Curbelo, respectively, open our eyes to new abstractions that can be drawn from familiar everyday events. For instance, the falling snow may be a familiar experience but may also solicit very diverse interpretations and meanings for people from a different culture or location where falling snow is hardly experienced. The two poets give a poetic touch to experiences people are familiar with, which creates a completely new experience and feeling about them like a first interaction.
Continue readingDemocracy is under the new threat of new surveillance state and in many nations across the globe; surveillance methods have permeated official government security functions. The emergence of new digital technology and the digital economy has shifted the typology of both government functions and private corporations seeking to promote their products. The convergence of the interests of corporations and the state on data has threatened the traditional constitutional safeguards of individual privacy to a bare minimum. In theory, both government and the corporate sector increasingly need private data from people to advance their varied interests. For the state, the needs for offering adequate security surveillance has clearly tilted the typology towards excessive data tapping from smartphones and other handy gadgets. The process of governance and business transactions in the new lifestyle depends entirely on the availability of data to support the new economic model and with it the need for extensive data privileges to the public domain.
Continue readingThe African American community is a particularly unique social category because of the history of slavery and official subjugation over the years. Working with the community for advocacy and social change is a particular interest bearing in mind the impetus for change the community has expressed after the Obama Presidency, which made a great deal of effort to address the community’s critical concerns. In the contemporary scene, the community has diverse role models and institutional systems that promise robust progress and a future of greater integration and societal acceptability particularly in the aftermath of the George Floyd fiasco with the criminal justice system, which has been accused of excessive use of force and ethnic profiling over the years. Poverty causes many problems like criminality, reckless drug use, and many socially retrogressive conditions. Through advocacy and social change, human service professionals can work with communities to alleviate the problems of poverty gradually to initiate progress.
Continue readingThe death penalty has been supported by the argument that it is a far better means of deterring criminal actions. However, the evidence does not attest to the practical value of the death penalty as opposed to alternative mechanisms like life imprisonment. In the United States, recently, the rates of crimes in states that use the death penalty and those that have it, historically shown no differences. Contrarily, the death penalty has been cited as an incitement to grievous criminal harm. The death penalty is challenged by the argument that espouses society’s duty to protect life and that individuals have a right to live.
Continue readingEdgar Poe was an American poet and literary critic whose body of works has been admired over many generations. The three poems selected in this analysis depict him not only as an icon of romanticism but also a keen poet whose characters show immense emotional and spiritual strength to overcome adversity and trying moments (Muhammad 4). Edgar’s literary career did not yield a comfortable life, and he was often in financial difficulty, which resonates with the themes of his poems. For instance, “Annabel Lee” is a sorrowful tribute to a loved one after her death, which many critics depict as Poe’s wife. The other poem, “The Raven” depicts a bleak fate of horror images and characters into the night, and the last poem, “A Dream within a Dream” is a 24 line poem that profusely exhibit disturbing emotions of loss and desolation. Based on the themes of romanticism and loss or the death of a loved one, Poe’s persona in the three poems resonates with horrific feelings that result from a melancholic isolation scary nightly comportment.
Continue readingPerspectives: Negotiating the Archive
Archival work has captured the imagination of many in the fields of history, and the arts as a central reference point of primary documentation. Still, the private notes, memoirs, and works of great historians and artists have been gathered to compose useful autobiographical archives that complement their public productions. The work of archivist and curators, as well as those whose journals are documented, has overlapped much recently. Many artists and historians have even resorted to cooperating with museums and other archival institutions to construct their content in a given manner for the advancement of particular individual interests. Breakell has advanced the view that futuristic archival work and curators of original documents have grown to depart considerably from traditional notions. The fundamental tenets of archival theory like authenticity have been traversed by new concepts of continuity, complexity, and ambiguity, which have been witnessed recently.
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