Friday, April 10, 2020

Essay Writing Tips For Your Nursing Fundamentals High School Class Essay

Essay Writing Tips For Your Nursing Fundamentals High School Class EssayOne of the ways that a student can get in the mood to work hard and achieve their goal is by doing an exercise, such as a nursing fundamentals high school class essay. These essays make sure that your ideas are organized and make sure that you aren't too formal or too casual in tone. The trick with this kind of assignment is to find one that suits your personality. Here are some ideas for doing an essay.I remember when I was in my first year of nursing fundamentals high school class I couldn't believe how much room there was to fill in these tests. Even though we had a lot of classes to take, the amount of different subjects was staggering. And I think that's the problem with schools, they cram too many subjects into one class. Make sure that you have a good idea of what you want to write about before you begin.To begin with, find out who your Nurse Practitioner, or NP, is. An NP is the one you are going to train with. You will be working with them throughout the nursing experience, so it would be best if you knew who they are. This way you won't get lost in the multiple names that are on your syllabus.Write a description of a typical patient you may encounter in a generic field medicine. You should consider the difference between this patient and an intern. Many intern patients are generally happy and cooperative, while this patient will likely be more uncooperative. This can help you relate to the NP you are going to work with and give you a better idea of the environment in which you will work.What is your goal in nursing? This is a very important question, as it may determine what kind of career you will have. However, you need to be honest about what it is that you hope to accomplish. If you don't know what you want to do, then you will be at a disadvantage, as the NP you are working with will not have a full picture of your goals.One of the things you can do when you are working on an essay, is make sure that you practice what you are going to write before you submit it. Go to a paper writing center and get some practice. These centers have the ability to let you write out an essay from scratch and edit it. They also have plenty of whiteboards to do your paper writing on.The only way to excel in nursing fundamentals high school class essays is to know what you are writing. It may seem simple to make it sound interesting, but you need to keep it factual and organized. The Nursing Principles and Practice Essay, written with both passion and seriousness, is what you want your Nurse Practitioner to see.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Alzheimers Essays (1167 words) - Cognitive Disorders,

Alzheimers Disease Alzheimer's Disease is a progressive, degenerative disease that attacks the brain and results in impaired memory, thinking and behavior (Internet). It is a degenerative disease affecting nerve cells of the frontal and temporal lobes of the cerebrum of the brain. The disease is the major cause of presenile dementia (i.e., the loss of mental faculties not associated with advanced age) and is thought to be the largest single cause of senile dementia as well (Britannica, 306). It causes the connections between cells to become ineffective and the cells themselves to shutdown and eventually die (Davies, 1). Alzheimer's is a progressive, irreversible, fatal neurologic disorder that affects an estimated 4 million American adults. It is estimated by 2040,approximately 14 million Americans will be diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Approximately 9% of the population older than 55 years and 20% of those older than 85 years have Alzheimer's Disease. The duration of AD averages 2 to 10 years but can be up to 20 years. By 1992, Alzheimer's Disease was the fourth leading cause of death among adults (more than 100,000 American deaths per year). It is projected that the number of people with Alzheimer's Disease will triple in the next 50 years. This epidemic of dementia is not confined to sex, race, social, or economic class. The public knows this disorder as "senility", although the term Alzheimer's is becoming more common (Rosdahl, 1356). According to a quote from Hasselbring " Alzheimer's disease." Medical Self-Care 53- 57,January-February, 1986, a 61-year-old woman in early stages of Alzheimer's disease stated, "My mind goes to an empty and horrible place. When I come back, I'm in a room full of strangers. I fell so lost and afraid." Many Alzheimer's patients echo these sentiments. The disease is frightening and disabling (1356). Alois Alzheimer, a German neuropathologist, originally described the disease in 1906. In the autopsy of a 55-year-old patient who had died with severe dementia, Alzheimer noted the presence in the brain of two abnormalities (Britannica, 306). Recent studies have shown that in the autopsies of the brain of people who have died from Alzheimer's, there is much higher concentration of aluminum than is normal (Weiner, 17). Accounting for about half of all dementia cases, Alzheimer's is more common in certain groups. Women are at higher risk, so are those who have a first-degree relation with the disease, or a history of head trauma (RN magazine, 26). Unfortunately, many people fail to recognize that these symptoms indicate something is wrong. They may mistakenly assume that such behavior is a normal part of the aging process; it isn't. Or, symptoms may develop gradually and go unnoticed for a long time. Sometimes people refuse to act even when they know something is wrong. It's important to see a physician when you recognize these symptoms. Only a physician can properly diagnose the person's condition, and sometimes are reversible. Even if the diagnosis is Alzheimer's disease, help is available to learn how to care for a person with dementia and where to find assistance. Ten warning signs to watch for are: (1) memory loss, (2) difficulty performing familiar tasks, (3) problems with language, (4) disorientation of time and place, (5) poor or decreased judgement, (6) problems with abstract thinking, (7) misplacing things, (8) changes in mood or behavior, (9) changes in personality, (10) loss of initiative (Internet). Typical problems that should alert us that a person needs some kind of help are repeated car accidents, getting lost, losing things and not recalling the previous day (Davidson, 13). Symptoms of the illness represent deficits in many areas of how a person remembers and thinks. For instance, problems with memory may be manifested as forgetting names, dates, places, whether a bill has been paid for, or something said over and over. Intellectual abilities are lost eventually. Reasoning with the affected person is no longer a successful way to understand and deal with his problems. Judgement about common everyday situations is drastically diminished. The individual's capacity to express himself verbally gradually shrinks. Neither is he able to comprehend what others say to him. As the disease progresses, he may gradually lose the ability to speak. Psychiatric symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations can occur. The person can become anxious, restless, agitated, and may even appear to be depressed. His personality will change. In fact, he may not seem to be the same person (Gruetzner, 9). Alzheimer's disease begins insidiously and progresses slowly but inexorably, until the sufferer cannot attend to the simplest details of self-care and may not even remember his or her name. Although the symptoms may

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Disparate vs Desperate

Disparate vs Desperate Disparate vs Desperate Disparate vs Desperate By Ali Hale Two words that sometimes get confused are â€Å"disparate† and â€Å"desperate†. They have quite different meanings, but they can sound very similar in some accents, and if you’re using autocorrect, you might find that you get the wrong one. What Does â€Å"Disparate† Mean? Disparate is an adjective that refers to things that are separated in some way – and perhaps even incompatible with one another. Dictionary.com defines it as meaning â€Å"distinct  in  kind;  essentially  different;  dissimilar.† It comes from the Latin â€Å"disparatus†, meaning â€Å"separate.† Here are a couple of examples of â€Å"disparate† in use: Perhaps Labour’s most significant  proposal in its manifesto was for a national education service (NES), a scheme to join up the disparate elements of education, providing free lifelong learning from nurseries through schools to universities and adult education. (From The Guardian) To understand patriotisms uneasy place in Nigeria, you have to go back to 1914 when the Southern and Northern protectorates and Lagos Colony were brought together to form a single country. In the process about 250 disparate groups including the three major ones of Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba were welded together in a Tower of Babel of sorts. (From the BBC.) While â€Å"disparately† is also a valid word (it’s an adverb), it’s rare to come across it being used. What Does â€Å"Desperate† Mean? The word â€Å"desperate† is, like â€Å"disparate†, an adjective. â€Å"Desperate† has the same route as the word â€Å"despair†, and it is used for several different purposes: Wanting something very badly (e.g. â€Å"I’m desperate for a cup of tea.†) Indicating that something is very serious or bad (e.g. â€Å"Our situation is desperate. We are completely out of supplies.†) Being willing to do something risky or extreme (e.g. â€Å"The rescuers took desperate measures to reach the stranded children.†) As an adverb, â€Å"desperately† can be used to modify a verb (e.g. â€Å"She desperately needed to sleep.†) Here are three examples of â€Å"desperate† in use: In a study of 872  acquisitions  made by 401 firms, the authors found that managers who were desperate to show growth- as measured by their firm’s weak growth as compared to that of comparable companieswere more likely to overpay for an acquisition. (From Inc.com) If you approach your job search with the mindset I dont care what kind of job I get  -   I just need a job!, that desperate energy will radiate from you in waves and everyone around you will feel it. (From Forbes.com) Period poverty  is pushing women in  Zimbabwe  to desperate measures  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ and the  homeless are bearing the brunt of the crisis, according to campaigners. (From The Independent) If you’re struggling to know which you should use at any given time, remember: Disparate can usually be replaced in a sentence with the word â€Å"separate†. Desperate can usually be replaced in a sentence with the word â€Å"wanting† or the word â€Å"extreme†, depending on how it’s being used. In most situations, especially in informal writing such as social media posts, the word you want is likely to be â€Å"desperate†. Don’t trust your autocorrect if you end up with â€Å"disparate† instead. Desperate vs Disparate Quiz For each of the following sentences, select the word that makes the most sense: 1. When I finally finished the run, I was [desperate/disparate] for a drink of water. desperate disparate 2. This program of study combines several [desperate/disparate] elements. desperate disparate 3. In these terrible times, we must take [desperate/disparate] measures. disparate desperate 4. I am [disparately/desperately] keen to work in the tourism industry. desperately disparately Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:12 Signs and Symbols You Should Know35 Genres and Other Varieties of FictionCareful with Words Used as Noun and Verb

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

The Greatest Supply Chain Disasters of All Time Case Study

The Greatest Supply Chain Disasters of All Time - Case Study Example This is a major risk to company operations. Foxmeyer made an assumption that its new system would be highly effective, hence estimated benefits from such efficiency. It started bidding future contracts based on a system that was notyet operational. This can only be considered poor management, which entails poor planning, poor project management, and poor change management. Poor planning is because the company managers did not include certain risks that may have affected the project. This then means there was poor project management. The company’s project manager, in his or her plan, should include risk assessment, which should have the risk of the project not going according to plan. Execution risk should also include the risk of the current company system not integrating smoothly with the new system, and the risk that some required activities may not be recognized in time. This mistake is seen in other companies such as; Boeing, GM, WebVan, Adidas, Denver Airport, Toys RUs.co m, Mattel, Hershey Foods, Cisco, Nike, Apple, Loblaws, Ford, GM, Aris Isotoner, and Chrysler. In Boeing, there is also poor change and stakeholder management. A new system is implemented in the company which requires the cooperation of suppliers. These suppliers are not informed in time, are not informed of the company’s expectations, and the challenges that may come with such speedy and change in the production system. In the end, the suppliers cannot supply the products in time. They may have even produced poor quality products which may have caused the company more loses. An assessment was not done to find out the capability of the company, and the suppliers, to steer the project to completion in time. No consideration was given to the supplier, an important stakeholder in the success of the project. Lack of thorough assessment of a project’s feasibility is also a common problem in almost all the companies in the case study. Most of the companies go ahead with the p rojects, without a thorough assessment of the project’s feasibility and compatibility with the current systems. Almost all the companies ignore the risks that are ahead of them. They only assume that such big projects have to bring profit. There are risks associated with new systems, and these are all ignored. The companies work on expected benefits. In all the companies, big projects failed to meet the expectations. Most of the new projects were IT and system overhaul projects. It only means that any new projects that have no verified results of implementation should not be implemented and managed under traditional methods of steering a project to its completion. Traditional methods of management do not focus on the outcome. They focus on assigning duties to specific skills and departments, and expecting outcomes as described in project expectations. After implementation, that is when a manager realizes that the system was not compatible with the company’s operations, the system needed other sub projects, the system needed more time, and so on. New information Technology systems mean; new operational systems, and new roles and so new skills. All these should be accompanied by effective change management, since they will be accompanied by challenges in change management. The Case of â€Å"Denver Airport Cannot Manage the Luggage† This international airport implemented â€Å"a hugely automated baggage handling system†. This did not work as planned. This was an Underground Railroad network, driven by computers. The system was expected to speed up the delivery of bags to customers, and make the process of baggage handling efficient. It came with problems such as derailed cars, mis-delivered luggage, and jammed tracks.

Monday, February 3, 2020

The capitalistic nature of Ben Franklin Research Paper

The capitalistic nature of Ben Franklin - Research Paper Example Earlier, he was the 1st United States Postmaster General. Apart from his politician role, he was also a scientist, an inventor, a statesman, a civic activist, a satirist and last but not the least, a diplomat. Ben Franklin was proud of his working class roots and hence became a renowned newspaper editor and a printer. He partnered with William Goddard and Joseph Galloway where all of these three individuals published the Pennsylvania Chronicle; a newspaper known for its out of the league emotions and criticisms of the British monarchy within the reins of the American colonies. His wealth is accredited due to the publishing of Poor Richard’s Almanack as well as The Pennsylvania Gazette. Ben Franklin’s life was considered very colorful because he knew a lot of traits and under his aegis; undertook professions which had far-reaching conclusions. This paper discusses the capitalistic nature of Ben Franklin. As an author, Ben Franklin started to publish the renowned Poor Ric hard Almanack. This happened in 1733. He did so for both the original and borrowed content. He used the pseudonym Richard Saunders for the same. His popularity is based on this rendition. This provided him the platform to pen down further publications with several pseudonyms. The character of Richard Saunders was in denial of the role of Ben Franklin within the publication of Poor Richard Almanack, however it was well-known amongst the relevant people as the secret had come out in the open very vividly and there was no hiding. Poor Richard’s proverbs came out of this almanac where one of the most famous ones is â€Å"a penny saved is two pence dear†, or more clearly suggested as â€Å"a penny saved is a penny earned†. Another one is the â€Å"fish and visitors stink in three days†. These are common proverbs in this day and age and remain very popular within the Western folklore. These are adapted within different occasions within the society’s hold and have the ability to be termed alongside the very popular ones that are being made use of in the society (McCrary, 2009). It was in those times that the people considered it wisdom to have an adage for every occasion and Ben Franklin’s readers were always prepared for such adages. By estimates, he sold about 10,000 copies annually, which by current times are equivalent to three million or more. It was in the year 1758 that Ben Franklin stopped writing for the Poor Richard Almanack. This was the time when he printed Father Abraham’s Sermon which was widely recognized as The Way to Wealth. Similarly, Ben Franklin’s autobiography kicked off in 1771 but got published after he died in 1790. This autobiography was hailed as one of the best known classics of the related genre. Ben Franklin was also a noted inventor. His work spoke for his own self. He invented a number of items, most important of which remained the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, flexible urinar y catheter, the bifocal glasses and glass armonica. The glass armonica is a glass instrument and is very different from the metal harmonica. The most unfortunate part of his inventions was that he never patented them. In his autobiography, he confessed that he enjoyed utilizing others’ inventions but then was the time to allow others to make use of his inventions, and allow the people around the world to delve into the scope of how these inventions worked. He mentioned that he needed to do

Sunday, January 26, 2020

Assembler, compiler and interpreter

Assembler, compiler and interpreter Assembler 1. An assembler is not equivalent to an interpreter, or compiler, assembly language is a low level language. 2. An assembler is one form of program translation. This is one relationship between assembler, compiler and interpreter. Each assembly language statement directly corresponds to one machine instruction. 3. The Assembler changes Assembly instructions into machine language, whereas a Compiler runs a higher level programming language instructions into Assembly instructions and then those are converted into executable machine language. 4. Accumulated programming languages normally generate lots of lines of Assembly instructions for each program report. 5. An assembler creates object code by changing symbols or substitute names into machine code.One could conclude that Assembly language is not a programming language at all, just guilty by association. Assembly language is nothing more than a shorthand system of writing, machine language, programs using symbols that friendless personality lacking, knuckle dragging WOW players, otherwise known as programmers, can understand. Compiler 1. A compiler converts an entire program written in source code and translates it into object code. 2. A second relationship is that the compiler and interpreter both process source code. 3. A compiler translates source code from a high-level programming language to assembly language/ machine code. A compiler works with what is called higher-levellanguages3rd generation languages, such as Java and C. Typically a person writes source code using an editor in a language such as C, Pascal or C++. The programmer then selects the appropriate compiler for the source code. Interpreter 1. Another relationship is that the interpreter is the step by step version of a compiler. Obviously this takes a lot of time and resources compared to previously compiled program. 2. An interpreter doesnt have to examine the entire program before it can begin executing code. 3. An interpreter is a computer program that takes source code and processes one line at a time. Interpreters translate code one line at time, executing each line as it is translated, Interpreters do generate binary code, but that code is never compiled into one program. Instead, the binary code is interpreted every time the program executes. Nonprocedural Language or Declarative language 1. Non procedural languages say what conditions the answer should match but not how to satisfy them. 2. With nonprocedural language you are stuck with whatever options the program allows 3. A Nonprocedural language example is Excels style of programming. Considered a 4th generation language also called declarative language. Structured Software 1. Structured software is for the most part fitting for applications that have many independent functions that do not correlate to a great extent. 2. This technique is not very fitting where data is going to change as opposed to the function 3. Structured programming is primarily a way of breaking a problem into routines. It gives emphasis to functionality without stressing the data. The most likely application is for problems where significant functionality is probably going to change rather than the data. At the point at which you have recognized the object boundary and you start writing the code to support them within the sections; it is common to change to a structured design. Structured software may fail on projects with 100,000 lines of source code or more. Object-Oriented Software 1. Object-oriented software makes it easier to develop, debug, reuse, and maintain software than is possible with other programming languages. 2. Object orientation takes the concepts of structured programming and puts it in 4-wheel drive. Object oriented software is equivalent to combining the usability of the fork and the food moving abilities of the spoon and comes up with a Spork. 3. object-oriented software is a computer program using object-oriented programming that revolves around the concept of an object. Object-oriented languages make it easier to reuse, and maintain software than is possible with other languages. Now, instead of data structures and separate program structures, both data and program elements are combined into one structure called an object. The object data essentials are called attributes, while the object program essentials are called methods. Together, attributes and methods are called the objects members. Usually, an objects methods are the only programs able to operate on the objects attributes. The easiest way to understand this is an analogy. Pretend you are building a house. With earlier generation programming, each and every component was written and designed for an exact function or result. This would be the same as making kitchen cabinets out of the lumber at the house piece by piece. Every house you built would require making cabinets at the location, out of the lumber that was supplied for the house. The sanity saving technique of object-oriented programming follows the logic of making a kitchen cabinet as a module. In programming terms, these cabinet modules are objects. This type of programming makes the effort much more efficient by allowing instructions from one program to be integrated into another. If for example a circle needs drawn on the screen you can use a circle object from another program. If the circle needs to be modified then a small amount of programming may be needed, but you no longer have to build it from scratch.

Saturday, January 18, 2020

The Crying of Lot 49 – the Mystery of Trystero

Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 is his second novel, and its his shortest novel, and many even consider it more of an experimantal novel. This novel is about a woman named Oedipa Maas and her quest for the secret behind a hidden and a shadowy organization known as Trystero ( it is also sometimes spelled as Tristero ). This novel was written in 1960s which was a very turbulent time in the history of the United States. Many things happened during this period, many of them had a dramatic influencce on the lives of the ordinary people. During this period, the world witnessed the assassination of J. F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, there was also the rise in the rights women and Civil Rights movement. This was also a time of the so called drug culture, for the abuse of drugs was very common. The novel shows us this world as a world that is constantly high, constantly on drugs and drunk, filled with secrets, information from questionable sources and secret identites. The subject of this paper is the secret society and an organization known as Trystero and their secret underground war against United States government and the official state postal system. Before we move on to the story of the novel, we must first remind ourselves of the postmodern novel and what constitutes a postmodern literature. Postmodern literature, as postmodernism as a whole, is very hard to define for there are no standards for it nor are there any founding fathers, writers who set the standards for it. We could say that postmodern literature is a continuation of the experimantation started by the modernist writers and authors and their usage of fragmentation, paradox, questionable authors, etc and it is also a reaction against the enlighment ideas set by modernist literature. As it was mentioned, postmodern literature is very hard to define and many even say that is no longer exists, also hard to determine. However, many authors and literary critics agree on common themes that occur in postmodern literature, themese that are almost always present in these works and that are always grouped together in order to create irony, humour or to parody something. These themes are however not always used all the postmodern authors, so they can not be called standard postmodern themes, but they occcur most commonly. Thomas Pynchon and his novel The Crying of Lot 49 are an example of postmodern writing, for Pynchon always uses parody, paranoia, playfulness and black humour in his works, and this work is also filled with these themes. Postmodern authors, Pynchon among them, usually treat serious themes and subjects in a humorous and funny manner. Pynchon does that in this novel. In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon deals with a serious topic about lives of people in a modern consumer America, about secrets and mysterious organizations, secret identities and also how information can influence our thoughts and even confuse and disturb us, but he approached all of that in a humorous and a funny way. This novel is a sort of a parody of a detective novel. This is because in real detective novels, the hero starts to solve the mystery starting from various and numerous clues, from a, we could say, chaos of information and draws a conclusion which leads to the truth behind the mystery and reveals the bad guy. In this novel however, we have Oedipa who opens a mailbox to get the letter and discovers that she has a job to do, pretty simple really, but as the novel progresses, her life and task become more complicated and complicated, she learns about the Trystero and her ex-boyfriend’s job and business undertakings but instead of making things clear, instead of solving the mystery of the Trystero, she became even more confused than she was when she first found out about them, so much confused that she almost lost her mind and started to think if it all was nothing more than a joke, created by her deceased ex-boyfriend or even maybe this was all just the work of her own imagination. This novel also has paranoia present in itself, Oedipa becomes paranoid about the world and the people around herself, but she is not the only one really. Almost all characters are paranoid, and the existence of the Trystero is more than enough to create a paranoid world. What also makes this novel postmodern is the usage of wordplay. Pynchon plays with words, names of the people, like Pierce Inverarity, Mike Fallopian, Stanley koteks, Oedipa Maas, with the names of the towns like San Narciso and we also have the wordplay with words like waste which is turned here in this novel into an acronym W. A. S. T. E. and KCUF radio station. What also makes this novel postmodern is that we have unreliable narrator. Oedipa Maas is the main protagonist of this story, but we see the action of the novel only as she does and we know what we know, no more no less, and she is almost always drunk or on drugs, just like all other characters that appear in the novel. We can say that this novel also combines elements of both modern and postmodern novels, because the relation between these two genres is often connected because they share both similarities and differences. Oedipa Maas is the heroine, a modernist heroine who is trapped in a postmodern world. Her quest is not only to discover the death of Mr Inverarity and of the Tristero, but also to discover her inner self and her inner soul. She meets people who can be considered as lost causes, but Pynchon sees them as someone really worth fighting for as they have shown the real self-discovery. We could say that this is the novel of the character development, a bildungs roman, for Oedipa develops her character, no matter how confused she is in the end, she becomes stronger and more determined to discover the real truth, no matter how weird and confusing that truth really is. She continues and carries on even though her quest is a lost cause. However, Pynchon also uses his postmodern novel in order to criticize the modernist vision of the world by showing us a society that filled with discarded objects and discarded people. The most obvious example of this is the acronym WASTE, which becomes a central theme in the novel, but will talk about it later in the paper. There are also discarded people who formed secret underground groups and societies as a response to various forms of rejection by their society. For example we have IA group, created by a man who swore off love after his wife cheated on him, The Alameda County Death Club and the Peter Pinguids, a group of people who are against industrial capitalism etc. As it was stated in the beginning, the subject of this paper is the mysterious Trystero organization. This novel is a bout a world, a world that seems to be constantly on drugs or drunk. We could think that this is the world that many people try to get away from, trying to vanish from it, for in this novel Oedipa meets various people who just want to be left alone, forgotten perhaps. We see people who have not rebelled against the government and they are not the deserters, they have just chose to leave, to hide and stay hidden. Oedipa sees this as their first real independent choice, a choice they have all made away from the press, the government and its institutions. They don’t use official state institutions, in this case the official postal system of the United States. This is the world of secrets and hidden identities, and of course secret societies, underground organizations, like Trystero is. What is this Trystero? Who are they? What is their goal? Their mission and agenda? Oedipa wants to find out just that, who they are and what they want, but unfortunately all she accomplishes is to end up completely baffled by everything and everyone she meets. As it was mentioned in the previous paragraph, she does not give up and is determined to continue with her search. Trystero represents this main aspect of underground and of hiding away from the government and the world. We as readers of this novel know about Trystero as much as Oedipa does and we also in the end, as she does, end up confused and baffled if all of this was actually real or was it all just her imagination or a bad joke. The bulk of the book is spent following Oedipa as she tries to track down what exactly the Trystero is. She stumbles upon this one night when she and Metzger are at The Scope, a club frequented by Yoyodyne employees, a huge defense contractor for the military in the area. While in the ladies’ room Oedipa notices the following written near a drawing of a muted horn: â€Å"Interested in sophisticated fun? You, hubby, girl friends. The more the merrier. Get in touch with Kirby, through WASTE only, Box 7391, L. A. †1 The book then follows a play-within-a-play format when Oedipa watches a play called The Courier’s Tragedy which puts into some context the history between Tristero and Thurn And Taxis, the latter being a real mail distribution company throughout Europe for many centuries. It is from this play that Oedipa learns about the history of Trystero. According to the story, Trystero was defeated by Thurn and Taxis in the 1700. and since then it has been hiding and went underground. This Trystero now exists, or at least it appears to exist, or maybe not, as a secret society that is completely separated from the United States government and the official postal service. Oedipa even believes that Trystero battled with Pony Express and United States Postal Service over the control of information flow. However, this battle seems to go on, between Tristero and US Postal Service. Tristero is the symbol of the underground here in the novel and they are present as an invisible force with a hidden agenda and goals. Their symbol is a muted post horn which is the first thing Oedipa sees of the Tristero in a club mentioned early and their way of communicating and transfering of information is through the WASTE system which uses clever disguises – their way of transferring information, a kind of parody to the official postal service, is by using waste-bins as their post-boxes. Thomas Pynchon does a very good job in making us believe that this society indeed really exists, but he also confuses by putting various names, most of them of people who are actually not so important for the story of the novel, but he does manage to create and illusion of a conspiracy. The most important part of the novel is the reproduction of the fictional Jacobean Drama known as The Courier’s Tragedy. This play is where Oedipa first hear the name Tristero and of their struggle with Thurn and Taxis. This play provides us with the first account of the Tristero, but it is their symbol that really draws our attention. We will now discuss the symbols of Tristero, for they are the key to understanding it, or at least trying ot understand the story behind them. These include the muted post horn and WASTE system. We will begin with the first symbol that Oedipa comes in contact with and tha th is the muted post horn. Oedipa first sees this symbol in the bathroom of a club The Scope, as a part of a small message, more like an add. Fro mthat moment she will see this symbol everywhere she goes. Genghis Cohen will show her the post horn tha ris hidden in a certain stamp collection that was I nthe possession of her late ex-boyfriend, mr Inverarity. Later she will see the same symbol being scribbled on paper by a technician in Yoyodine building, Stanley Koteks. Oedipa even sees it when children draw it in the park and play a game in which they mention Tristero. This post horn, as Oedipa finds out from Cohen, was a symbol of Thurn and Taxis. Their symbol is a post horn, while Tristero uses a muted post horn, probably as a way to mock them. Tristero, as it is given, fought against Thurn and Taxis and lost the battle. Tristero went into the hiding and managed t oreach United States somewhere arund 1853. nd fought the Pony Express and Wells, Fargo, and their agents were always either dressed as outlaws in black or as indians, Oedipa manages to recover a ring fro man old man, Mr. Thoth, who lives in a retirement home bulit by Pierce Inverarity. He tells her that this ring, which ha s the muted post horn engraved on it, was given to him by his grandfather who got it from an indian he killed. However, at one time, Oedipa met a man who wore a pin with the muted post horn: â€Å"What if I told you, â€Å" she adressed the owner of the pin, â€Å"that I was an agent of Thurn and Taxis? † â€Å"What, â€Å" he answered, â€Å" some theatrical agency? †2 Here we have a different story about the origin of the muted post horn. According to his story, this is a symbol of Inamorati Anonymus, a group of people who forsook love, which they see as the worst addiction of all. The creator of the organziation and of the symbol was a Yoyodine executive, who found the Inamorati Anonymus after finding out that his wife was cheating on him. This leads us back to point when Oedipa saw for the first time the muted post horn as a part of the advertisement for this organization, which makes us believe if Tristero really is real or just an organization of people who have forsook love and make sure that no one else ever falls in love are using secretive methods to communicate with each other. Another characteristic of this novel, and another symbol of the Trystero, is the so called WASTE. This can stand as an acronym which means We Await Silent Trystero Empire, which is always written on regular waste bins. This can also stand for a secret undergrounf information network that is used by people who forsook their own lives and chosen t olive I nsecrecy and away form the government. There are even corporations who refuse to use the official postal system, like Yoyodine, and there is also an organization known as Peter Penguid Society, of which Mike Fallopian is the member, who oppose the monopoly of the US Postal Service and are using their own private system. This is a system of information transfer that is used by those who want to remain hidden, secret, and there are signs that Tristero is the runner of it. They use waste bins and their postman, or couriers,are bums and other social missfits. Inamorati Anonymus is the organiztion that openly uses the WASTE system for their communication. These two symbols, the muted post horn and the WASTE system, give us and Oedipa clues about Tristero but the lalso confuse us, brcause as we learn about their connectionwith Tristero, we also learn their other meanings and that they are being used by some other ynderground isoalted groups and organizations. After all this confusion, Oedipa returns to the Jacobean Drama, where she first heard the word Tristero. She comes in contact with Emory Bortz, a proffesor at San Narciso College, for the information about the play itself, especially the Tristero version of the play. Unfortunately, the only person who knew the real story about the play was Driblette, who directed the play Oedipa saw, and he commited a suicide. As we draw near to the end of the novel, we see that Oedipa discovers a great deal of historical Tristero, about its origins. She discovers that it was created around 1577, I nthe Netherlands. After William of Orange achieved independence from Spain and the Holy Roman empire, he replaced the people who were in control of the Thurn and Taxis and Leopold I’s rule, and in their place put a man named Jan Hinckard. However, Hinckard was challenged by his cousin Hernando Joaquin de Tristero y Calavera. Tristero fought a guerilla war against Hinckard from 1578. until 1583. Tristero gives up the fighting and sets up a covert system. However, Oedipa finds out that during 17th Century, Thurn and Taxis struggle to maintain their system ,and this may mena that Tristero was very effective during that time and period. Tristero’s presence as the black coated bandits was confirmed by Proffesor Bortz wh ogave her a book An Account of the Singular Peregrinations of Dr. Diocletian Blobb. Dr. Blobb survived one of their attacks with him being captured by them and sent back to England in order t otell everyone of the power of Tristero. Oedipa in the end managed t odiscover a great deal of historical information about the Tristero, but this did not satisfy her because she still did not know why Driblette mentioned the Tristero in his work, when in the original work there is no mentioning of them at all. Wheteher this is true or not, Oedipa tells everything to Mike Fallopian back at the Scope, where she first saw the muted post horn. Fallopian, after hearing her story and her findings, asks Oedipa if she ever considered the possibility that this may all had been a joke orchestrated by Pierce Inverarity. She did consider this, but refuses to think like that anymore. Later she goes back and again searches through all of the Pierce’s possesions and finds out that Pierce had presence in all the places and had inlfuence on all the people she met. He owned Zapf’s Used Bookstore, where she bought her copy of the Jacobean drama, he also owned the Tank Theater, where she saw Driblette’s production of â€Å"The Courier’s Tragedy†. Proffesor Bortz works at San Narciso College, which was founded by Pierce himself, and even blobb’s Peregrinations were bought at Zapf’s Used Bookstore. Thisl eads her to believe that Fallopian may be right, that all of this was nothing more than joke, a gag produced by Pierce himself. The ending of the novel also does not help us, for it is open ended. Oedipa goes to an auction of Peirce’s stamp collection, which is under the name Lot 49, but that is where it all ends. In a conclusion, we are left confused whether this was all real. Pynchon did a great job of providing the information about the historical founding of the Tristero, but he also filled his novel with other information, all of it made up, even the historical. Instead of finding answers, we find more and more questions. The Crying of Lot 49 shows a fragmented world in which there are always more alternatives, in this world information leads to more information which create more questions and answers. This leads people, like Oedipa in this case, to create various alternate interpretations just in order to create some sort of the bigger picture onto which they will hold to. This entire Tristero conspiracy may have been a joke or a paranoid creation by Oedipa herself, or maybe there is truth behind it all. We will never know. We do know, that there are secret organizations who uses secret and undercover means of communicating, there are people who have secret identities, who seek truth somewhere else. We all live in the world filled with information and symbols and who knows, maybe there is a secret undercover conspiracy by a secret postal system who wants t obring down the monopol of the government’s postal system. Personally, I find this novel to be very interesting because it deals with a mystery and search for the truth. When I read it, I found it hard t ounderstand it in the end, whether this is all true, if there really is Tristero, or maybe this was all just a paranoid dream by Oedipa or maybe even a possibilty that this was all a bad joke by Pierce with Oedipa as its target. Whatever the truth is, we will never really know, for the novel has the open ending, but all quests, all attempts to find some sort of truth end up like that – with more questions than answers and with multiple interpretations of evidence and information. End Notes 1. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, First perennial fiction library edition, 1986. Pg. 52 2. ibid. , Pg. 111 Bibliography www. wikipedia. org www. sparknotes. com http://www. examiner. com/x-13462-West-Palm-Beach-Literature-Examiner~y2009m7d19-Modernism-v-Postmodernism-part-one-The-Crying-of-Lot-49 http://cl49. pynchonwiki. com/wiki/index. php? title=The_Crying_of_Lot_49 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, First perennial fiction library edition, 1986