Georgia Tech Essay Topic

A Classic Essay on Observation: Look at Your Fish! Samuel H. Scudder (1. American entomologist who studied under the noted zoologist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1. Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School. Essays Attachment Theory Quiz read more. In the following narrative essay, originally published anonymously in 1. Scudder recalls his first encounter with Professor Agassiz, who subjected his research students to a rigorous exercise in close observation, analysis, and description of details. Consider how the investigative process recounted here might be viewed as an aspect of critical thinking—and how that process can be just as important to writers as it is to scientists. Should Juveniles Be Tried As Adults Essays About Life.

Look at Your Fish!*by Samuel Hubbard Scudder. It was more than fifteen years ago that I entered the laboratory of Professor Agassiz, and told him I had enrolled my name in the scientific school as a student of natural history. He asked me a few questions about my object in coming, my antecedents generally, the mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the knowledge I might acquire, and finally, whether I wished to study any special branch. To the latter I replied that while I wished to be well grounded in all departments of zoology, I purposed to devote myself specially to insects. Business College Essay Examples. Those were not the days of ground glass stoppers, and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students will recall the huge, neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax- besmeared corks, half eaten by insects and begrimed with cellar dust. Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example of the professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the jar to produce the fish, was infectious; and though this alcohol had .

Still I was conscious of a passing feeling of disappointment, for gazing at a fish did not commend itself to an ardent entomologist. North Korea Nuclear Weapons Essay on this page. My friends at home, too, were annoyed, when they discovered that no eau de cologne would drown the perfume which haunted me like a shadow.

In ten minutes I had seen all that could be seen in that fish, and started in search of the professor, who had however left the museum; and when I returned, after lingering over some of the odd animals stored in the upper apartment, my specimen was dry all over. I dashed the fluid over the fish as if to resuscitate the beast from a fainting fit, and looked with anxiety for a return of the normal, sloppy appearance. This little excitement over, nothing was to be done but return to a steadfast gaze at my mute companion. Half an hour passed—an hour—another hour; the fish began to look loathsome. I turned it over and around; looked it in the face—ghastly; from behind, beneath, above, sideways, at a three- quarters view—just as ghastly. I was in despair; at an early hour I concluded that lunch was necessary; so, with infinite relief, the fish was carefully replaced in the jar, and for an hour I was free.

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On my return, I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at the museum, but had gone and would not return for several hours. My fellow- students were too busy to be disturbed by continued conversation. Slowly I drew forth that hideous fish, and with a feeling of desperation again looked at it. I might not use a magnifying glass; instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish: it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my finger down its throat to feel how sharp the teeth were. I began to count the scales in the different rows until I was convinced that that was nonsense.

1. An essay is a short work of nonfiction. In writing instruction, essay is often used as another word for composition.
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At last a happy thought struck me—I would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature. Just then the professor returned. I am glad to notice, too, that you keep your specimen wet, and your bottle corked. When I had finished, he waited as if expecting more, and then, with an air of disappointment: . Still more of that wretched fish! Quotes For Environmental. But now I set myself to my task with a will, and discovered one new thing after another, until I saw how just the professor's criticism had been. The afternoon passed quickly, and when, towards its close, the professor inquired: 1.

I will examine you before you look at the fish. I had a bad memory; so I walked home by the Charles River in a distracted state, with my two perplexities. The cordial greeting from the professor the next morning was reassuring; here was a man who seemed to be quite as anxious as I that I should see for myself what he saw. After he had discoursed most happily and enthusiastically—as he always did—upon the importance of this point, I ventured to ask what I should do next. In a little more than an hour he returned and heard my new catalogue.

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Georgia Tech Essay Topics 2012

We drew prancing star- fishes; frogs in mortal combat; hydra- headed worms; stately crawfishes, standing on their tails, bearing aloft umbrellas; and grotesque fishes with gaping mouths and staring eyes. The professor came in shortly after and was as amused as any at our experiments. He looked at the fishes.

Fake news, faith and reason. A dozen or so years ago, I was working on a profile of Zig Ziglar, the famous motivational speaker who died in 2. I went to hear him speak at his church in a suburb of Dallas. His topic, as a lay lecturer in adult Sunday school, was the threat of cults, and he began by mocking the creation myth of Scientology — the whole baroque science- fiction epic starting 4 quadrillion years ago and proceeding through the Galactic Overlord, the frozen thetans and the nuclear holocaust on a planet called Teegeeack.“Now, I ask you,” he said, wrapping up his recitation, “how could any of this fool an intelligent, thinking man or woman who has read the first four chapters of Genesis?”Well, yes, precisely. Scientology is incompatible with Christianity, or Judaism or Islam; you cannot by any stretch of reason believe in both.

What went without saying, to Ziglar and to his audience that morning, was the logical superiority of a six- day Creation and a talking snake, and by extension the flood and the ark, the litany of biblical miracles and the Resurrection. But from an agnostic standpoint, there’s no inherent reason to believe one account over the other.

They are stories written in books that function as their own authority. People believe in the Bible as a matter of faith, because they accept its message of redemption, not because of empirical evidence or the inherent plausibility of the individual stories within it. This has been true as far back as Augustine, who held that faith and reason go together, but faith leads the way: “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”Does that remind you of something transpiring in American society at this moment? Many Americans subscribe to conspiracy theories as preposterous as anything L.

Ron Hubbard could have dreamt up, and — because they relate to current events and real living people — far more dangerous. Just in the past few days, a man shot up a Washington pizzeria, acting under the delusion that it was the headquarters of a child- sex ring involving Hillary Clinton, and a woman who believed that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a government hoax was arrested for making threats against the parents of a child who died there. Conspiracy theories exist across the political spectrum, but some of the most influential purveyors populate the far right, including the radio commentator Alex Jones, who has claimed that not just Sandy Hook but also the 9/1.

Oklahoma City bombing were “false flag” operations staged by the federal government as pretexts to expand its tyranny. And Jones has had as a guest on his show Donald Trump, whose campaign abandoned even the pretense of grounding statements in empirical fact. The unemployment rate was whatever he said it was — “probably 2. Barack Obama was born in Africa right up until the moment it became expedient to say something else. Many of these absurd beliefs originate in “fake news,” clickbait posts whose authors may not even care if they are believed, as long as there are enough suckers out there to click on them. This has led to calls by media figures and other interested parties, Hillary Clinton among them, for a crackdown on the way social media sites abet the spread of nonsense.

But the bigger question is, how could someone possibly believe that one of the most visible and recognizable figures in the world, surrounded at all times by aides and security, was sneaking into the basement of a pizza parlor to have sex with children? Who are those people? North Korea Nuclear Weapons Essay there.

By a wide margin, Trump was supported by (white) evangelical Christian voters. And in Brooklyn, N.

Y., one of the few areas where he did well was the Orthodox and Hasidic enclave of Borough Park. Obviously, people supported Trump for all sorts of reasons, including some grounded in religious conviction, such as opposition to abortion, but also some that had nothing to do with faith. And, of course, many religious people voted the other way. Quotes On Patience With People there. But, to state the obvious, a precondition for believing, along with Jones, that Hillary Clinton is a literal demon from hell is a belief that demons and hell exist in the first place. High School Entrance Essay Samples.

It is much easier to ignore evidence about global warming if you believe, with Sen. James Inhofe, R- Okla., that Earth’s climate is controlled directly by God. More generally, is there something in the mindset of a religious believer — someone who accepts the reality of an unseen deity, based on ancient accounts of events with no parallel in everyday experience — that encourages the acceptance of unprovable claims in the realms of politics or science? It’s not an easy question.

Christians put Scripture in a separate epistemological category: It is the word of God, not subject to the same empirical testing as a weather forecast or an unemployment report. Some highly trained minds — Isaac Newton, for one, and Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian — have managed to maintain a strong Biblical faith while also rigorously pursuing objective truths about the natural world, but most of us don’t have the philosophical chops to pull it off. Conservative churches offer their believers certainty rather than ambiguity, and they attract congregants who are comfortable obeying, and exercising, authority. Brain- imaging studies show that doubt requires more mental effort than belief. Credulousness is the default setting for most people, most of the time. That is as true of crystal- gazing New Agers passing along posts about a conspiracy by Monsanto to control the world through genetically modified corn as it is of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, an elder of the Erath County Cowboy Church, who passed along an unfounded rumor that Clinton had been endorsed by the Communist Party. Miller, who is reported to be under consideration for nomination as secretary of agriculture, told reporters he doesn’t care whether it’s true or not.

So someone like Miller is essentially treating political discourse as a matter of faith. If your goal is to be saved, you don’t go around looking for logical holes in the Gospels; you leave that to the atheists. If your goal is to elect Republicans, you pass along anything that puts your opponent in a bad light and leave the fact- checking to the mainstream media. But is that any way to run a country?

Maybe it’s a time to reawaken our capacity for doubt, now when misinformation is more readily available and arguably more dangerous than ever before in history. Faith has a place in the lives of many people. But, per Augustine, it can no more stand alone than pure reason; a Christian must call on both to be strong in the world. That’s still good advice.