Unlike almost anyone else in Hollywood, McGowan had a history
of speaking out against sexism, even if it meant she wouldn’t get movie roles. She once tweeted out the insulting clothing requirements on a casting notice for an Adam Sandler movie: “tank that shows off cleavage (push-up bras encouraged).” In general, her tone on social media
was tough, confrontational: “It is okay to be angry. Don’t be afraid of it,”
she had tweeted a month earlier, later adding: “dismantle the system.”
a
If McGowan, as much an activist as an actress, would not have one off
the-record conversation with Jodi, which would be kept confidential,
who would?
Harvey Weinstein was not the man of the moment. In recent years, his moviemaking magic had faltered. But he still had power, specifically the power to make and boost careers. First he had invented him
self, going from a modest upbringing in Queens, New York, to concert promotion to film distribution and production, and he seemed to know how to make everything around him bigger-films, parties, and most of all, people. Over and over, he had propelled young actors to star
dom: Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Michelle Williams, and Jennifer
Lawrence. He could turn tiny independent movies into phenomena. He
had pioneered the modern Oscar awards campaign, winning five Best
Picture statues for himself and armloads for others. His record of rais
ing money for Hillary Clinton, and joining her at countless fundraisers,
was almost two decades long. When President Obama’s daughter Malia
had sought an internship in film, she worked for “Harvey”—first name only, used even by many strangers. By 2017, even though his movies were
less successful than they used to be, his reputation remained outsized.
Rumors had long circulated about his treatment of women. But
Register for the live student panel at 1 p.m. Eastern on January 27.
In October 2017, New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story of the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct. Their reporting helped ignite the #MeToo movement and initiate policy changes around the world.
In “Chasing the Truth,” their new book for young people, Ms. Kantor and Ms. Twohey share the methods behind their reporting process as a guide for aspiring journalists. They argue that you don’t have to be a New York Times journalist to conduct investigations that reveal the truth and make a difference in your community.
Ms. Kantor and Ms. Twohey will speak directly to students about investigative journalism at our live panel on Jan. 27. We recommend that classrooms prepare for the panel with the two teaching resources below, which include excerpts from “Chasing the Truth.” We also encourage students to submit video questions by Jan. 20that may be played during the panel.
Prepare for the Panel
Before viewing the panel, we ask teachers and students to use one or more of the following resources, each of which features an excerpt from the book, “Chasing the Truth.”
Our Lesson of the Day invites students to read the first chapter of “Chasing the Truth” and examine how Ms. Kantor and Ms. Twohey began their investigation.
Submit Video Questions
What questions do you have for Ms. Kantor and Ms. Twohey? Submit a video through this formby 11:59 Pacific time on Jan. 20, and we may play it during the panel. Each video should be no longer than 30 seconds.
Students are also invited to submit a short video sharing what they would like to investigate and why. Learn more in our Student Opinion question.
Get to Know the Panelists
For their work on Harvey Weinstein, which helped to shift attitudes, and spur new laws, policies and standards of accountability around the globe, Ms. Kantor and Ms. Twohey, together with a team of colleagues who exposed harassment across industries, were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service, journalism’s highest award. They also received or shared in numerous other honors, including a George Polk award and being named to Time magazine list of 100 most influential people of the year.“She Said,” the book Ms. Kantor and Ms. Twohey wrote recounting the Weinstein investigation, was called “an instant classic of investigative journalism” by the Washington Post. “Chasing the Truth” is a young readers’ adaptation of that work.
But before they broke the Weinstein story, both journalists had done extensive reporting that has helped to spur societal change. Jodi Kantor’sarticle about the havoc caused by automated scheduling systems in Starbucks workers’ lives led to changes at the company and helped spark a national fair-scheduling movement. After she and David Streitfeld investigated punishing practices at Amazon’s corporate headquarters, the company changed its human resources policies, introducing paternity leave and eliminating its employee ranking system. And Ms. Kantor’s report on working mothers and breastfeeding inspired two readers to create the first free-standing lactation suites for nursing mothers, now available in hundreds of airports and stadiums. Ms. Kantor has also done extensive reporting on Barack and Michelle Obama, and her best-selling book “The Obamas,” about their behind-the-scenes adjustment to the jobs of president and first lady, was published in 2012.
Megan Twohey has reported on Donald J. Trump, helping to reveal allegations of sexual misconduct against him, his business interests in Russia and illegal efforts to silence two women who claimed they had affairs with him. She exposed an underground network where parents gave away adopted children they no longer wanted to strangers met on the Internet in a practice known as private re-homing. The series, “The Child Exchange,” showed how the dangerous black market took place with no government oversight and at great risk to children, and was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. Ms. Twohey was one of the first journalists to expose how police and prosecutors were shelving DNA evidence collected after sex crimes, robbing victims of the chance for justice. In response to her stories, Illinois passed the first state law mandating the testing of every rape kit.
If you’re getting ready for your first interview for an Object-Oriented Programming (OOPs) role, congratulations! We know you’ve put in a lot of time and effort to get this far. You’re probably now wondering what kinds of OOPs interview questions to expect.
That’s why we’ve put together this list of 13 common OOPs interview questions and how to answer them. Between studying these OOPs-specific questions and our guide on technical interviews, you’ll feel confident and prepared before the big day.
1. What are OOPs?
Object-oriented programming is a programming model based on objects rather than procedures or functions. Objects contain data as well as methods, or functions, that operate on that data.
2. What are the advantages of OOPs?
There are many advantages to OOPs, including:
OOPs abstraction helps make code easier to use and understand.
OOPs reuse code which helps reduce redundancy and save coding time.
OOPs can easily handle and manipulate complex datasets.
OOPs support a lot of flexibility through polymorphism.
3. What are some examples of OOP languages?
The most popular OOP languages are:
4. What are the four main concepts of OOPs?
The four main concepts or principles of OOPs are:
Encapsulation
Polymorphism
Inheritance
Abstraction
5. What is encapsulation?
Encapsulation refers to the consolidation or bundling of all data and methods into a single unit. At the same time, encapsulation hides or restricts any unnecessary data and methods to minimize complexity.
For example, if you define an object that contains a list of integers, your object will always include the method used to calculate the average of those integers, even if you can’t access the source code directly.
6. What is polymorphism?
Polymorphism is the concept of having a single function or method do different things depending on the object class. For example, using the “+” operator will perform a summation if the inputs are numbers. But the same “+” operator will perform concatenation if the inputs are strings. In other words, the “+” is an operator that takes on several forms — it’s polymorphic.
7. What is inheritance?
Inheritance is the concept of a class or object gaining certain properties and methods from a parent class.
For example, suppose we created an “Animals” class with properties like age and weight. If we create a child class called “Mammals,” we might add mammal-specific traits like hair color. But, as a child class of “Animals,” the “Mammals” class would automatically inherit properties of age and weight. That’s how inheritance works in OOPs.
8. What is abstraction?
Abstraction is the concept of hiding unnecessary details about an object, method, or function from someone using your program. For example, when you use a coffeemaker to brew a cup of coffee in the morning, all you need to do is add water and coffee beans. You don’t need to understand the mechanics of your coffeemakers or how the sensors are calibrated.
So, while your code may include a complex function or method, following abstraction means that anyone using your program only needs to provide the necessary inputs for the function or method to work. And the only outputs are those that are useful to the person using your program.
9. What’s the difference between a class and an object?
Both classes and objects are essential components of OOPs. A class is essentially a template, or blueprint, for an object. An object is a member of, or an instance of, a particular class.
In other words, all objects belong to a class that defines the object’s properties and how that object can interact with other objects. And, while you need to declare a class only once, you can create as many objects as you need to — even objects that are part of the same class.
10. What are subclasses and superclasses?
A subclass is a class that inherits from another class. For example, you can create a class called “Animals” that includes properties such as age, weight, and natural habitat. These properties can apply to any animal.
When you create a subclass called “Birds,” the subclass, or child class, inherits everything from the parent “Animals” class — age, weight, and natural habitat — but can also include bird-specific attributes like egg size and wingspan.
A superclass is a class that acts as a parent to one or more child classes or subclasses.
11. What is method overloading?
Method overloading is creating different methods that are defined under different classes but share the same name. For example, if you have two classes, “Dogs” and “Cats,” then you may assign both classes a method with the same name, “Speak.”
For “Dogs,” the “Speak” method outputs “Woof,” while for “Cats,” the method outputs “Meow.” When you create a new object, “MyPet,” and call the “Speak” method, the output will be different, depending on whether “MyPet” falls within the “Dogs” or “Cats” class.
12. What is a constructor?
A constructor is a special method or subroutine of a class that initializes a new object of that class. When the object is first declared or created, the constructor sets values to properties of the object, which can be default values or user-defined. Constructors will have the same names as the class itself, but they’re not considered to be true methods because they don’t have a return type.
13. What is an exception?
An exception is a problem that interrupts program execution. For example, an exception may occur when a user inputs a string into a function that only accepts integers. Proper exception handling can resolve many exceptions — for example, checking that input data is the correct type and displaying a notification that the function only accepts integers.
Be prepared for your next OOPs interview
We know you have what it takes to succeed as an OOPs developer. Once you’ve mastered these OOPs interview questions, make sure to check out our guide to technical interviews as well as our technical portfolio guide to make sure you’re ready for anything. A little interview prep goes a long way toward impressing the hiring manager!
Then, once you’re ready to start practicing with real technical interview questions, test your coding skills with one of our Code Challenges. Not only will they give you a sense of what to expect when you walk into your first technical interview, but they’ll also help you identify the concepts you’ll need to refresh your knowledge of if you find yourself stuck.
For more tips on launching your career in development, visit our Career Center.
Alyse Wicentowski, “Heart” Angel Zhao and Fiona Xing, “teenage homage” Bobby Goldyn, 14, “Lost Voices” Cassie Garrett, 14, “Kindness in the Pandemic” Dorothy Du, 16, “The Sound of Rain” Eliana Robin, 15, “Warning: The World is Crumbling” Eveleen Jiang, 17, “Out of Touch” Hailey Jones, 15, “Growing Up in 2021” Hiewon Ahn, “A Cutlery Awakening” Ilona Lebron, 18, “Painting Something New” James Kim, 17, “Life was rough.” Jingyi Yang, 17, “Daydream in Heatwave” Kalina May, 15, “Shame of Experimenting (in highschool)” Kasie Leung, 15, “neurons and wings and other fleeting things” Kevin Park, 16, “The March of Nature” Kia Brazhnikova, 15, “Impassive” Leona Su, 15, “Chinatown” Phoebe Han, 16, “Burdened Puppet” Selina Zhan, 13; Mia Kang, 14, “Diving into the Device” Sena Chang, “Triptych: INFODEMIC” Stella Turowsky-Ganci, 15, “what’s inside my head” Surya Newa, 17, “To Each Their Own” Xinyi Zhang, 16, “Me in the Mirror” Ziqi, “Nest” Zoey Lestyk, 14, “Just Do It”
Honorable Mentions
Find the full list of students whose submissions received an honorable mention here.
Thank You to Our Judges
The team that helped choose these finalists included educators, Learning Network staff and Times journalists, as well as teenagers who have won previous Learning Network contests. In alphabetical order they were:
Adee Braun, Amanda Brown, William Chesney, Nicole Daniels, Shannon Doyne, Jeremy Engle, Nora Fellas, Ross Flatt, Annissa Hambouz, Henry Hsiao, Michael Gonchar, Karen Hanley, Callie Holtermann, Susan Josephs, Isabel Hui, Isabel Hwang, Phoebe Lett, Simon Levien, Rachel Manley, Sue Mermelstein, John Otis, Natalie Proulx, Katherine Schulten, Ana Sosa, Ananya Udaygiri, Emma Weber, and Clare Zhang
The Times has gathered “18 Sports Highlights From 2021 Worth Watching Again,” but before you take a look at our list, we’d love to hear yours.
Whether they come from sports you played yourself, or sports you watched, live or on TV, tell us about some of your most memorable sports moments of 2021, and why you think they’ve stayed with you.
Post your thoughts in the comments then read the related article to see the Times’s list.
Want more Picture Prompts? Find them all in this column.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
A friend who has long grown hoyas, or wax plants, has tried to convert me to this variable-looking genus with succulent leaves. But maybe Ryan Wilhelm, the operations manager at Steve’s Leaves, has finally succeeded. A representative of this tropical member of the dogbane family (Apocynaceae), the same family as milkweed, may be destined for a sunny window here.
One caveat, Mr. Wilhelm said: Be careful with the water — as their succulent leaves are trying to tell you — because “they can crash quickly, if overwatered.”
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word caveat in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how caveat can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
Have you ever been in a situation that required bravery? What were the circumstances? Did you take action?
Davyon Johnson, 11, couldn’t quite understand it: the pizza party, the accolades from the mayor of Muskogee, Okla., his picture in the newspaper and on television — and the word that had been linked to his name: hero.
Why, the sixth grader asked his mother, was he being rewarded for doing the right thing?
“I told him, ‘You saved two people’s lives,’” said LaToya Johnson, Davyon’s mother. “‘That is special.’”
And so began a whirlwind December for Davyon, who lives in Muskogee, Okla., who loves wrestling, basketball, remote-controlled cars and Fortnite, and who was honored by his community this month for saving the life of a fellow student who was choking and an older woman who was escaping a house fire, both on the same day, Dec. 9.
The Muskogee Police Department and Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office presented Davyon with a certificate on Dec. 15, naming him an honorary member of their forces.
“Always willing to help, always just a friend to everyone,” Latricia Dawkins, the principal at his school in the Muskogee public school district, said on Sunday.
“He said to me: ‘I don’t want everyone to pay attention to me. I kind of did what I was supposed to do,’” Ms. Dawkins said, adding, “I don’t think he actually internalized how important the feat was that he did.”
Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
This lesson is a part of our new Accessible Activities feature, which aims to welcome a wider variety of learners to our site and to The Times. Learn more and tell us what you think here.
In this lesson, you will join the reporter Aina J. Khan as she visits a spice farm in Zanzibar, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that is part of Tanzania, to find out how cinnamon, cardamom and other spices are produced.
Then you will research a spice you’re curious about so you can teach others about it.
Warm-Up
What are your favorite spices? Which spices do you or your family members regularly cook with, eat or drink?
As a class or with a partner, share the spices on your lists and discuss how much you know about where they come from. For example, with a spice like vanilla or ginger, do you know where it grows, what the plant looks like or how it is harvested?
Vocabulary
Here are eight words you’ll find in this article that you may not know:
Read the article and watch the short videos in each slide. Then answer the following questions:
1. What is the nickname for Zanzibar? How did it get that name?
2. Describe the process for making the spice nutmeg.
3. Why was Ms. Khan, the reporter, particularly interested in the origin of cardamom? What did she learn about how it was grown?
4. How are cinnamon quills harvested?
5. How do Zanzibaris use local ingredients for healing purposes? Do you or your family members ever use home remedies, like the one mentioned in the article or something different?
Going Further
Choose one or more of the spices on your list from the warm-up activity and find out where they come from. You can use one of these sites to do your research:
As you research, answer these questions:
Where does the spice originate?
What plant or tree does the spice come from?
When and how is it harvested?
What else did you learn that was interesting?
Why is the spice special or meaningful to you? When and how do you use the spice?
Then create an infographic (here are sample templates) or a slide show (with or without videos) to present what you learned about the spice. Finally, your classmates can teach one another about the different spices around the world.
Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here.
Meet Alyssa! Alyssa graduated from De La Salle University in 2014 and started working in the media industry as a TV host and producer. After a year, she decided to explore the creative side of media, and enrolled in the New York Film Academy to learn camera work and video editing. Upon graduating, she landed a video editor position in Singapore. “My job in Singapore was different from the ones before—I was dealing directly with clients. This is where I discovered I really enjoyed building relationships with people.”
When Alyssa lost her job due to the pandemic, she began to think about her career path, and what industry she was truly interested in. “I didn’t know what to do during the pandemic. I didn’t have anything stable, and I was doing a lot of freelancing.” Alyssa loved connecting with people, building relationships, and had always had an interest in working in the tech industry. “I’ve always been inspired by tech companies. There’s always something innovative that they’re launching. They’re always willing to try new things.”
She started researching how to transition into a new career field and discovered the Salesforce Sales Development Representative Professional Certificate program on Coursera. “I knew that Salesforce was widely used in the tech industry, and having this certification would give me an edge-up when applying to jobs in tech sales.” Now, she’s an Internal Communication Specialist at a tech start-up.
“If I could offer one word of advice, it’s to just go for it. I know you’ve been thinking about it! It can be scary leaving an industry you’re comfortable in, but don’t be afraid to start over. There are resources like Coursera that can help you reach your career goals.”
Slow and steady definitely does not win the race when it comes to blogs and websites. A slow site can be frustrating for readers and can kill you in search engine rankings. However, making your WordPress load faster isn’t always that straightforward. To help you out, today we are going to take a look at ten tips that will dramatically speed up your WordPress site. If you are on Blogger, take a look at this post for tips that apply to you.
How to make your WordPress load faster
Before you start tinkering around with your site speed, it’s best to have a starting point so you can see how your site performs before and after making changes. GT Metrix is a great tool for analyzing the performance of your site.
Tip #1: Use a Great WebHost
The hosting provider you choose plays a huge role in website speed. Of course, we are huge fans of BlueHost around here (learn how to set up a site on BlueHost here).
If you are currently using another web host, you can move your site over to BlueHost. If you find that your site gets more traffic than a shared server can handle, you can always upgrade in the future to a dedicated server for even better performance.
Tip #2: Use a Solid Framework & Theme
We use the Genesis framework in all of our WordPress designs because of its speed and customizability. Genesis comes free with our WordPress designs and is one of the most solid frameworks out there. Some frameworks and themes come with far more features than you’ll ever need or use. Sticking with the simplicity of Genesis is the best way to keep things clean and running lightning quick.
Tip #3: Delete Post Revisions
There is nothing worse than a site cluttered with too many copies of post revisions, trashed items, and spam comments. Who needs all of that? I love the WP-Optimize plugin because you can set it to routinely clean up your database so it’s not weighed down by all that garbage. Once it’s installed, just go to Settings > Optimize Database to configure the settings you want. You’ll love how tidy your site feels after using this amazing plugin.
Tip #4: Optimize Images
We’ve been talking a lot lately about how important it is to optimize and resize your images before uploading them to your blog. The larger the images you upload, the longer your site will take to load, so remember to resize, resize, resize! I usually recommend using images not larger than 1000px on the wider side. It is also perfect to have them weigh less than 500kb.
You can use sites like TinyPng to optimize the size of your photos.
Tip #5: Identify Plugins that are Slowing Your Site Down
An easy way to determine which plugins may be slowing your site down is to install and run the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler). It shows you exactly which plugins are impacting your page load time. Once you determine which plugins are slowing down your website, you can then decide whether or not those plugins are worth keeping. If not, get rid of them.
Be sure to delete the P3 plugin after you finish, because leaving it activated will slow your site down. As a general rule, it’s best to keep the number of plugins on your site under 20. Remember that less is more when it comes to plugins and to choose plugins wisely.
Tip #6: Compress Your Site
Compressing your site using Gzip is a great way to make your WordPress load faster. Gzip zips up all of your website files so they are easier for your server to transmit them to your reader’s browsers, hence decreasing page load time. There’s really no drawback to installing Gzip and the increase in speed can be pretty significant. You can install Gzip using a plugin or you can contact your hosting provider and ask if they can assist you with compressing your site.
If you are comfortable digging into the backend of your site, you can try to edit your .htaccess file via your file manager. Locate it in the root directory of your server and simply add this code to it:
Every time your website is loaded by a user, all sorts of mechanisms are taking place on the back end to allow your user to view it.
Caching is essentially like taking a picture of your site when your visitors land on it so that when they return, your website can simply load the “picture” of the website instead of having to load everything on the back end again, which makes your site load time much faster for returning visitors.
It’s essential when installing a caching plugin that you follow the installation instructions exactly or you’ll end up doing your site far more harm than good.
WP Total Cache is one of the best caching plugins out there, but again, please be certain to follow the installation instructions carefully. You’ll be amazed at the dramatic improvements you’ll see in site speed and YSlow score after installing this plugin, but again I cannot stress enough how important it is to install it correctly. WP Total Cache is a very powerful and advanced plugin, so if you are a novice, it would probably be best to skip this tip. You’ll still see dramatic improvements in site speed by following the other 9 tips.
Tip #8: Optimize Your Database
WordPress uses a database to store everything about your site – posts, pages, comments, plugins, settings, etc. It’s all there in your database. Every time someone loads your site, the database has to be read. If the database is packed to the brim then the information can take a long time to load causing a slow loading site. WP-DBManager plugin is a great plugin that will help you easily back up, repair, and optimize your database, which in turn will speed up your site.
Tip #9: Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Using a CDN helps to speed up your site because it takes all of your static files like images, CSS, Javascript, etc. and it serves them on servers as close to your users as possible. Cloudflare is a CDN I recommend. It’s free and you can get a CDN set up for your site in less than five minutes. Once you get this setup, you’ll see dramatic improvements in your site speed as well as your YSlow score.
Tip #10: Declutter Your Site
Remember that less is always more when it comes to your site. Rid your site of anything that isn’t absolutely essential. Some final ways to declutter and speed up your site:
remove any inactive plugins and widgets that you don’t need/use
limit the number of posts shown on your blog
show post excerpts/summaries instead of the full post
simplify your sidebar by removing widgets that aren’t absolutely necessary
limit the number of ads, pop-ups, etc.
remember that your users visit your site for content and/or products, not for the millions of widgets and ads you have on your sidebar. Don’t let your widgets and ads overshadow your content.
Keep it simple!
I hope that those ten tips made your WordPress load faster and improved how your site works. Remember that if you need help with your site, you can always contact us!
We’d love to hear about the improvements you’ve seen on your site after applying these tips. Share them with us in the comments!
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