An Exercise in Market Orientation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

An Exercise in Market Orientation - Essay Example Thru the evolution of time, the rudiments became to be more complex as taxes, trade caravans and other forms of business negotiations began to take shape. It does not necessarily follow that our business concepts today are different from past practices. Indeed, some of the elements of modern business and marketing practices that we know of today were actually practiced as early as the time of the Ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians and the Venetian traders. The marketing concept now commonly dubbed as the market orientation finds its first proponent in Adam Smith when he forwarded the notion that the customer should be the focus of the business in the 1700's. However, it was only in the 1960s when the marketing concept was reintroduced. Nevertheless, from a short span of time, it has become the philosophical foundation for marketing academics and practitioners alike. As we have said earlier, the term 'market orientation' was originally known as 'marketing concept'. There were many who advocated customer satisfaction as the primary objective of business (Drucker 1954, Keith 1960, Levitt 1960). However, the doctrine has been more of an article of faith than a practical basis for managing a business (Day 1994). Thru the works of Kohli and Jaworski (1990), the term 'marketing concept' was differentiated from 'market orientation' with the former being a business philosophy whereas the later refers to the actual implementation of the marketing concept. 1.3 Other Business Orientations There are other business orientations aside from marketing orientation. These are Sales orientation and Production orientation. Market orientation, however, was tagged as superior among the group. In this paper, we proceed to define what Market Orientation is (i.e. its structures, focus, processes) and compare it to the other business orientations. 2. Comparing Business Orientations 2.1 Definition and Focus A marketing oriented firm is one where strategic decisions are driven by the wants and needs of the customers. We can only speculate that it is the driving logic behind the formulation of the saying that "the customer is always right". All aspects of the firm are designed to systematically respond and create customer value. Later on in this paper, we will be discussing a market oriented company. (Narver and Slater, 1990) The concept of marketing orientation was reintroduced and developed in the late 1960s by scholars of the Harvard University with the participation of a number of companies. (Tutor2u.Net, 2006) A marketing oriented firm has the following characteristics: Extensive use of marketing research Broad product lines Emphasis on a product's benefits to customers rather than on product attributes Use of product innovation techniques The offering of ancillary services like credit availability, delivery, installation, and warranty A production oriented firm is concerned primarily with production, manufacturing, and efficiency issues and was eminent during the 1950's period. The basic notion behind this concept is best expressed by French economist Jean-Baptiste Says who forwarded the notion that 'supply creates its own demand'. Simply put, the concept revolves around the notion that if a product is made, somebody will

The Vietnam Wars Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Vietnam Wars - Research Paper Example The president used the constitutional powers in the office to order the deployment of US ground troops to the region in the end of the first quarter of 1965. The action, notwithstanding, President Johnson's objective for his country’s participation in Vietnam was not driven by the quest to win the battle, but for the military to stabilize South Vietnam's forces and government control of security situation in the region. Butterfield suggests that the ability of the Viet Cong "to build up their effort was consistently underrated" by the United States2. In light of this, President Johnson ordered what would turn out to be unpopular among Americans, when the country found itself mired in a deadlock with the warring factions of Vietnam. Although, the country participated in aerial bombings of the enemy North, President Johnson was of the opinion that the bombardment be restricted to defending South Vietnam. By restricting the battlefields, the American troops would not carry out a significant ground invasion of the North to eliminate the communist icons and structures nor would they seriously destabilize the Ho Chi Minh Trail or the major infrastructure used by his government. Impact of the 1965 American intervention in Vietnam The eight years of America's participation in Vietnam witnessed its military campaign fluctuate from enormous escalation of firepower to slow withdrawal. The American approach to the war, also evolved in its implementation, from a general â€Å"Search and Destroy† mission, which was intended to wear the enemy, to complete "Clear and Hold" strategies. The end result was based on pacification initiatives. Whereas, critics continue to argue that America’s poor performance in Vietnam was bound to happen, owing to the then prevailing political, social, and military issues, others are of the opinion that America’s involvement should not be regarded as such: that the â€Å"winning strategy† of the US military was t o decisively prolong the conflict in order to wear down the North Vietnamese military3. Nevertheless, the North Vietnamese strategy of implementing a complex program of insurgency and long-drawn guerilla war proved an elusive goal for the superior American military, hence its eventual defeat and de-escalation4. America’s attrition strategy The 1965 US intervention in Vietnam greatly impacted the conduct of the war. Unlike previously, when the country played a limited role of offering military advice to the South Vietnamese military, American forces took part in combat, complete with ground troops. From 1965 to 1968, the main strategy of the United States was taking control of the combat in South Vietnam from the local South Vietnamese Armed Forces (SVAF). The American ground forces based their successes on the "Search and Destroy" missions, while the Air Force carried out air raids under the Rolling Thunder bombing crusade. Although, General Westmoreland was confident these s trategies would wear down the Viet Cong forces and guerillas, political challenges driven by fear of attracting more states to the battlefield, such as China and or Soviet Union prompted the Johnson government to limit their combat to a strategic protection of South Vietnam. And whereas, Soviet played the role of a â€Å"diplomatic channel between Washington and Hanoi. . . Moscow always seemed unwilling to pile pressure on North Vietnam to give up its

Analysis of Attribution Selection Techniques

Analysis of Attribution Selection Techniques ABSTRACT: From a large amount of data, the significant knowledge is discovered by means of applying the techniques and those techniques in the knowledge management process is known as Data mining techniques. For a specific domain, a form of knowledge discovery called data mining is necessary for solving the problems. The classes of unknown data are detected by the technique called classification. Neural networks, rule based, decision trees, Bayesian are the some of the existing methods used for the classification. It is necessary to filter the irrelevant attributes before applying any mining techniques. Embedded, Wrapper and filter techniques are various feature selection techniques used for the filtering. In this paper, we have discussed the attribute selection techniques like Fuzzy Rough SubSets Evaluation and Information Gain Subset Evaluation for selecting the attributes from the large number of attributes and for search methods like BestFirst Search is used for fuzzy rough subset evaluati on and Ranker method is applied for the Information gain evaluation. The decision tree classification techniques like ID3 and J48 algorithm are used for the classification. From this paper, the above techniques are analysed by the Heart Disease Dataset and generate the result and from the result we can conclude which technique will be best for the attribute selection. 1. INTRODUCTION: As the world grows in complexity, overwhelming us with the data it generates, data mining becomes the only hope for elucidating the patterns that underlie it. The manual process of data analysis becomes tedious as size of data grows and the number of dimensions increases, so the process of data analysis needs to be computerised. The term Knowledge Discovery from data (KDD) refers to the automated process of knowledge discovery from databases. The process of KDD is comprised of many steps namely data cleaning, data integration, data selection, data transformation, data mining, pattern evaluation and knowledge representation. Data mining is a step in the whole process of knowledge discovery which can be explained as a process of extracting or mining knowledge from large amounts of data. Data mining is a form of knowledge discovery essential for solving problems in a specific domain. Data mining can also be explained as the non trivial process that automatically collects the useful hidd en information from the data and is taken on as forms of rule, concept, pattern and so on. The knowledge extracted from data mining, allows the user to find interesting patterns and regularities deeply buried in the data to help in the process of decision making. The data mining tasks can be broadly classified in two categories: descriptive and predictive. Descriptive mining tasks characterize the general properties of the data in the database. Predictive mining tasks perform inference on the current data in order to make predictions. According to different goals, the mining task can be mainly divided into four types: class/concept description, association analysis, classification or prediction and clustering analysis. 2. LITERATURE SURVEY: Data available for mining is raw data. Data may be in different formats as it comes from different sources, it may consist of noisy data, irrelevant attributes, missing data etc. Data needs to be pre processed before applying any kind of data mining algorithm which is done using following steps: Data Integration – If the data to be mined comes from several different sources data needs to be integrated which involves removing inconsistencies in names of attributes or attribute value names between data sets of different sources . Data Cleaning –This step may involve detecting and correcting errors in the data, filling in missing values, etc. Discretization –When the data mining algorithm cannot cope with continuous attributes, discretization needs to be applied. This step consists of transforming a continuous attribute into a categorical attribute, taking only a few discrete values. Discretization often improves the comprehensibility of the discovered knowledge. Attribute Selection – not all attributes are relevant so for selecting a subset of attributes relevant for mining, among all original attributes, attribute selection is required. A Decision Tree Classifier consists of a decision tree generated on the basis of instances. The decision tree has two types of nodes: a) the root and the internal nodes, b) the leaf nodes. The root and the internal nodes are associated with attributes, leaf nodes are associated with classes. Basically, each non-leaf node has an outgoing branch for each possible value of the attribute associated with the node. To determine the class for a new instance using a decision tree, beginning with the root, successive internal nodes are visited until a leaf node is reached. At the root node and at each internal node, a test is applied. The outcome of the test determines the branch traversed, and the next node visited. The class for the instance is the class of the final leaf node. 3. FEATURE SELECTION: Many irrelevant attributes may be present in data to be mined. So they need to be removed. Also many mining algorithms don’t perform well with large amounts of features or attributes. Therefore feature selection techniques needs to be applied before any kind of mining algorithm is applied. The main objectives of feature selection are to avoid overfitting and improve model performance and to provide faster and more cost-effective models. The selection of optimal features adds an extra layer of complexity in the modelling as instead of just finding optimal parameters for full set of features, first optimal feature subset is to be found and the model parameters are to be optimised. Attribute selection methods can be broadly divided into filter and wrapper approaches. In the filter approach the attribute selection method is independent of the data mining algorithm to be applied to the selected attributes and assess the relevance of features by looking only at the intrinsic propert ies of the data. In most cases a feature relevance score is calculated, and lowscoring features are removed. The subset of features left after feature removal is presented as input to the classification algorithm. Advantages of filter techniques are that they easily scale to highdimensional datasets are computationally simple and fast, and as the filter approach is independent of the mining algorithm so feature selection needs to be performed only once, and then different classifiers can be evaluated. 4. ROUGH SETS Any set of all indiscernible (similar) objects is called an elementary set. Any union of some elementary sets is referred to as a crisp or precise set otherwise the set is rough (imprecise, vague). Each rough set has boundary-line cases, i.e., objects which cannot be with certainty classified, by employing the available knowledge, as members of the set or its complement. Obviously rough sets, in contrast to precise sets, cannot be characterized in terms of information about their elements. With any rough set a pair of precise sets called the lower and the upper approximation of the rough set is associated. The lower approximation consists of all objects which surely belong to the set and the upper approximation contains all objects which possible belong to the set. The difference between the upper and the lower approximation constitutes the boundary region of the rough set. Rough set approach to data analysis has many important advantages like provides efficient algorithms for find ing hidden patterns in data, identifies relationships that would not be found using statistical methods, allows both qualitative and quantitative data, finds minimal sets of data (data reduction), evaluates significance of data, easy to understand. 5. ID3 DECISION TREE ALGORITHM: From the available data, using the different attribute values gives the dependent variable (target value) of a new sample by the predictive machine-learning called a decision tree. The attributes are denoted by the internal nodes of a decision tree; in the observed samples, the possible values of these attributes is shown by the branches between the nodes, the classification value (final) of the dependent variable is given by the terminal nodes. Here we are using this type of decision tree for large dataset of telecommunication industry. In the data set, the dependent variable is the attribute that have to be predicted, the values of all other attributes decides the dependent variable value and it is depends on it. The independent variable is the attribute, which predicts the values of the dependent variables. The simple algorithm is followed by this J48 Decision tree classifier. In the available data set using the attribute value, the decision tree is constructed for assort a new item. It describes the attribute that separates the various instances most clearly, whenever it finds a set of items (training set). The highest information gain is given by classifying the instances and the information about the data instances are represent by this feature. We can allot or predict the target value of the new instance by assuring all the respective attributes and their values. 6. J48 DECISION TREE TECHNIQUE: J48 is an open source Java implementation of the C4.5 algorithm in the Weka data mining tool. C4.5 is a program that creates a decision tree based on a set of labeled input data. This algorithm was developed by Ross Quinlan. The decision trees generated by C4.5 can be used for classification, and for this reason, C4.5 is often referred to as a statistical classifier (†C4.5 (J48)†. 7. IMPLEMENTATION MODEL: WEKA is a collection of machine learning algorithms for Data Mining tasks. It contains tools for data preprocessing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualization. For our purpose the classification tools were used. There was no preprocessing of the data. WEKA has four different modes to work in. Simple CLI; provides a simple command-line interface that allows direct execution of WEKA commands. Explorer; an environment for exploring data with WEKA. Experimenter; an environment for performing experiments and conduction of statistical tests between learning schemes. Knowledge Flow; presents a â€Å"data-flow† inspired interface to WEKA. The user can select WEKA components from a tool bar, place them on a layout canvas and connect them together in order to form a â€Å"knowledge flow† for processing and analyzing data. For most of the tests, which will be explained in more detail later, the explorer mode of WEKA is used. But because of the size of some data sets, there was not enough memory to run all the tests this way. Therefore the tests for the larger data sets were executed in the simple CLI mode to save working memory. 8. IMPLEMENTATION RESULT: The attributes that are selected by the Fuzzy Rough Subset Evaluation using Best First Search method and Information Gain Subset Evaluation using Ranker Method is as follows: 8.1 Fuzzy Rough Subset Using Best First Search Method === Attribute Selection on all input data === Search Method: Best first. Start set: no attributes Search direction: forward Stale search after 5 node expansions Total number of subsets evaluated: 90 Merit of best subset found: 1 Attribute Subset Evaluator (supervised, Class (nominal): 14 class): Fuzzy rough feature selection Method: Weak gamma Similarity measure: max(min( (a(y)-(a(x)-sigma_a)) / (a(x)-(a(x)-sigma_a)),((a(x)+sigma_a)-a(y)) / ((a(x)+sigma_a)-a(x)) , 0). Decision similarity: Equivalence Implicator: Lukasiewicz T-Norm: Lukasiewicz Relation composition: Lukasiewicz (S-Norm: Lukasiewicz) Dataset consistency: 1.0 Selected attributes: 1,3,4,5,8,10,12 : 7 0 2 3 4 7 9 11 8.2 Info Gain Subset Evaluation Using Ranker Search Method: === Attribute Selection on all input data === Search Method: Attribute ranking. Attribute Evaluator (supervised, Class (nominal): 14 class): Information Gain Ranking Filter Ranked attributes: 0.208556 13 12 0.192202 3 2 0.175278 12 11 0.129915 9 8 0.12028 8 7 0.119648 10 9 0.111153 11 10 0.066896 2 1 0.056726 1 0 0.024152 7 6 0.000193 6 5 0 4 3 0 5 4 Selected attributes: 13,3,12,9,8,10,11,2,1,7,6,4,5 : 13 8.2 ID3 Classification Result for 14 Attributes: Correctly Classified Instances 266 98.5185 % Incorrectly Classified Instances 4 1.4815 % Kappa statistic 0.9699 Mean absolute error 0.0183 Root mean squared error 0.0956 Relative absolute error 3.6997 % Root relative squared error 19.2354 % Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 100 % Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 52.2222 % Total Number of Instances 270 8.3 J48 Classification Result for 14 Attributes: Correctly Classified Instances 239 88.5185 % Incorrectly Classified Instances 31 11.4815 % Kappa statistic 0.7653 Mean absolute error 0.1908 Root mean squared error 0.3088 Relative absolute error 38.6242 % Root relative squared error 62.1512 % Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 100 % Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 92.2222 % Total Number of Instances 270 8.4 ID3 Classification Result for selected Attributes using Fuzzy Rough Subset Evaluation: Correctly Classified Instances 270 100 % Incorrectly Classified Instances 0 0 % Kappa statistic 1 Mean absolute error 0 Root mean squared error 0 Relative absolute error 0 % Root relative squared error 0 % Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 100 % Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 25 % Total Number of Instances 270 8.5 J48 Classification Result for selected Attributes using Fuzzy Rough Subset Evaluation: Correctly Classified Instances 160 59.2593 % Incorrectly Classified Instances 110 40.7407 % Kappa statistic 0 Mean absolute error 0.2914 Root mean squared error 0.3817 Relative absolute error 99.5829 % Root relative squared error 99.9969 % Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 100 % Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 100 % Total Number of Instances 270 8.6 ID3 Classification Result for Information Gain Subset Evaluation Using Ranker Method: Correctly Classified Instances 270 100 % Incorrectly Classified Instances 0 0 % Kappa statistic 1 Mean absolute error 0 Root mean squared error 0 Relative absolute error 0 % Root relative squared error 0 % Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 100 % Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 33.3333 % Total Number of Instances 270 8.7 J48 Classification Result for Information Gain Subset Evaluation Using Ranker Method: Correctly Classified Instances 165 61.1111 % Incorrectly Classified Instances 105 38.8889 % Kappa statistic 0.3025 Mean absolute error 0.31 Root mean squared error 0.3937 Relative absolute error 87.1586 % Root relative squared error 93.4871 % Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 100 % Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 89.2593 % Total Number of Instances 270 CONCLUSION: In this paper, from the above implementation result the Fuzzy Rough Subsets Evaluation is gives the selected attributes in less amount than the Info Gain Subset Evaluation and J48 decision tree classification techniques gives the approximate error rate using Fuzzy Rough Subsets Evaluation for the given data set than the ID3 decision tree techniques for both evaluation techniques. So finally for selecting the attributes fuzzy techniques gives the better result using Best First Search method and J48 classification method.

Sonnet 50 :: essays research papers

William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 50" ,on first read, is the story of a man on a sad journey, leaving a loved one and riding a horse that seems more reluctant to go than he does. Upon second evaluation one must ask, why would it pain the horse to leave? The answer is that the horse represents the writers heart. The trudging journey in the sonnet is a metaphor for the speakers grief and pain of parting with someone he loves. In stanzas 1-4, the speaker's problem is brought to light. For some unknown reason, the speaker cannot be with his friend any longer and must move on. He says that his journey's end will be when he can say to himself with no pain, "Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend!" If he can reach that point, his grief will truly be over. The beast that he rides, which would most likely be a horse, is introduced in stanzas 5-8. The horse "plods" along slowly as if, "by some instinct" it knows that the speaker doesn't really want to leave. The speaker "lov'd not speed, being made from thee." "Thee" refers to the person the speaker is parting with. The horse is, in a sense, the speaker's heart, reluctant to keep moving, although it must bear his grief. The speaker, in stanzas 9-12, frequently gets frustrated and tries to force himself on, as shown by the "bloody spur" which indicates repeated use. The groan that the beast makes from the spurring is "more sharp to me[the speaker] than spurring to his[the beast's] side". The more the speaker tries to force himself along, the worse his pain. Knowing this, in stanzas 13-14, the speaker says, "My grief lies onward, and my joy behind." He is leaving what makes him happy, therefore, he will be sad.

Development Assistance Essay

The best way for international donors to quicken development in poor Asian countries is to maximize overseas developmental assistance. ODA should be provided both to governments directly and to international and local NGOs. † Development can be considered as one of the most omnipresent concepts today. This term had been a commonplace in governments and non-governmental organizations alike (Nault, 2008). Overseas developmental assistance also referred to as official overseas assistance (ODA), had been a vital part of world economies especially to those who belong to the third world. As early as 1960s, underdeveloped and developing countries have seen the importance of receiving grants in forms of ODA from more developed countries (Berlage and Stokke, 1992) It is now given that most of the countries, which are underdeveloped, or those who are still in the process of developing are indeed in great need of ODAs coming from their more developed counterparts. The lack of resources on the part of the poor countries makes them suffer the opportunity cost of not attending to other pressing issues in within their territories. This paper will present arguments in two fold. First, it will make a point on how international donors can quicken development in poor Asian countries by maximizing the amount it gives through ODAs. Second, it will argue on why is there a necessity to give funds directly to international and local NGOs rather than just giving it to the government; it having the sole discretion on the funds’ disbursement. Similar to the case in developed countries, rising and relentless budget deficits had become one of the major causes for concern in developing countries. Asian countries have been suffering from massive budget deficits for the past recent years (Gupta, 1992). Given that most of the developing and underdeveloped countries are suffering from budget deficit, there really is a need that ODAs should be intensified in order to address other social concerns that are being neglected by the governments due to lack of budget. These social concerns, which deals with welfare and other public issues are often taken for granted by governments despite their noble ideas because they lack resources in financing these programs. If resources will be provided through ODA, the local government will be better equipped of bringing service to their people. Aside from mere economic progress, development must also entail improvements with regard to life expectancy, education levels, literacy, and access to resources (Nault, 2008). With more funds, which are easily available to finance social programs of the government, people may easily reap the benefits of ODAs coming from developed countries. The funds coming from the ODA can be allocated to programs aimed at empowering the grassroots and improving the living conditions of the people. With regard to economic progress, there is also a great need for the funds, which are given by more developed countries. Given the lack of resources of underdeveloped countries, they have no enough assets to stimulate their respective economies. Nowadays, government-initiated economic policies are necessary to save the worsening condition of the global economy. The world economy is being threatened by massive recessions. Hence, there is a necessity for state intervention in stimulating the economy. ODAs can be used by the government to back up state-initiated economic programs aimed at ameliorating the country’s economy. ODAs may be used as capital by the government and also as investment so that it would yield to higher profits in the future. ODAs can also be used by the government in coming up with schemes that will help protect the economy from the global trend of economic downturns by implementing regulations, which will somehow put safety nets to the national economy. ODAs may be used in employment training and job creation in order to assure that the citizens of the country are equipped with appropriate knowledge, which they may use in finding employment. Having established the necessity of increasing the amount of ODAs being transferred by developed countries to their poorer and less fortunate counterparts of Asia, the argumentation will shift towards the necessity of diverting funds not only to state governments but to non-governmental organizations as well. First, the author of this paper acknowledges the vital role being played by the government with regard to managing ODAs. Much substance have been given earlier in this paper and it is beyond argumentation that state-government acceptance of ODAs is indeed necessary. However, a new concept is being realized and offered which relates to the offering of ODAs from developed nations directly to international and local NGOs in the country. Perhaps one of the reasons to such proposition is the lessening trust of developed nations to their underdeveloped counterparts in Asia when it comes with governance. Many Asian countries, especially those who are financially-burdened, are often described in the international arena as engaging in the process of corruption. Documented evidence is being studied to support such claim (Lindsey and Dick, 2002). Good governance within the public sphere is indeed crucial in creating an environment, which will help mobilize resources, both domestically and internationally as well (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2002). Grantors of ODAs take into consideration the political climate within the country, which will receive their grant. They give premium to those who are practicing good governance. However, most countries in Asia had been involved in cases related to corruption. Hence, they do not appear as flawless to those who are sending them their ODAs. On the other hand, NGOs send a message of altruism to the international community. These NGOs project an image that they are indeed concerned in bringing progress to the countries where they have offices in. They appear as the good guys, whose business is to promote the welfare of the oppressed. NGOs are also offering programs that are aimed at bringing progress and development to their host countries. Sometimes, such programs from the NGOs are not being offered by state-governments. Another point is the fact that since grantors of aids are losing trust to corrupt governments, they are finding alternative channels to send their ODAs to residents of the receiving countries. Most NGOs in the international levels have earned themselves of the reputation to help others due to their noble causes. In spite of the manner as to how developed countries will be sending in their grants, what matters most is the fact that these grants are indeed helpful in bring progress and development to underdeveloped countries. References Berlage L. and Stokke, O. (1992). Evaluating Development Assistance: Approaches and Method. London: Routledge Publishing. Gupta, K. L. (1992). Budget Deficits and Economic Activity in Asia. London, Routledge Publishing. Lindsey, T. and Dick, H. W. (2002). Corruption in Asia: rethinking the governance paradigm. Annandale: NSW Federation Press. Nault D. M. (2008). Development in Asia: Interdisciplinary, Post-Neoliberal, and Transnational Perspectives. Boca Raton: Brown Walker Press. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2002). Official development assistance and private finance: attracting finance and investment to developing countries. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Cultural Artifact Essay †Blue Jeans Essay

Blue jeans in the last thirty years have attained such world wide popularity that they have come to be considered an American icon. However jeans have not always been held in high stead, but rather have had a troubled history including its beginnings within the working class movement, being considered unsavory by religious leaders and also seen as a rebellious statement about ‘western decadence’. According to the University of Toronto, no other garment has served as an example of status ambivalence and ambiguity than blue jeans in the history of fashion. Throughout this essay I will discuss how jeans have become such a common treasured and even expensive item crossing over class, gender, age, regional, and national lines as reflected by the many changing political views and acceptance from various social classes over the past 50 years. History of Blue Jeans According to the University of Toronto, blue jeans were originally created for the California coal miners in the mid-nineteenth century by the Morris Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who relocated to New York in 1847. Mr Strauss’ fate and the history of clothing changed forever when in 1872 he received an offer from Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno Nevada. Mr. Davis, in order to improve the durability of the pants that he made for his clients, had been adding metal rivets to the highly stressed seams. The idea was successful and he wished to patent it, but due to financial constraints required a partner and hence Levi became the financial backer and partner. In 1873, the new partners received a patent for â€Å"an improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings†, and thus the history of blue jeans as we know them began. Blue jeans were originally called â€Å"waist overalls† by Levi Strauss and Co and in the 1920’s these were the most widely used worker’s pants in America. The name of these trousers changed to â€Å"jeans† in the 1960’s when Levi Strauss and Co. recognized that this was what the product was being called by the young, hip teenage boys. The history of â€Å"waist overalls† continues as the history of blue jeans. â€Å"Jeans† is now generally understood to refer to pants made out of a specific type of fabric called â€Å"denim† (Fashion Encyclopedia). Blue Jeans through the decades The popularity of blue jeans spread among working people, such as farmers and the ranchers of the American West. According to the Encyclopedia of Fashion, in the 1930’s jeans became so popular among cowboys that Wrangler formed just to make denim work clothing for those who rode the range. Jeans have tended to follow along in popularity with popular culture as evident with the popular Western films which found adventure and romance in the adventures of the cowboys who rode horses, shot bad guys, and wore blue jeans. Those who wished to imitate the casual, rugged look of the cowboys they saw in films began to wear jeans as casual wear (Fashion Encyclopedia). This effect is not hard to understand, as even today fashion trends are greatly influenced by what highly publicized celebrities choose to wear. During World War II blue jeans became part of the official uniform of the Navy and Coast Guard, and became even more popular when worn as off-duty leisure clothing by many other soldiers. In his book, â€Å"Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon†, James Sullivan states that the rise of the popularity of jeans after the WWII can greatly be attributed to the influence of the film and music industry, during the 1950s many young people began to wear jeans when they saw them on rebellious young American film stars such as Marlon Brando and James Dean. By 1950, Levi’s began selling nationally and other brands started emerging, such as Lee Coopers and each with its own particular fit (Sullivan 287). According to the University of Toronto, in the 1960’s and 1970’s jeans were embraced by the nonconformist hippie youth movement, and the history of blue jeans even gets linked to the downfall of communism. Behind the iron curtain, jeans became a symbol of â€Å"western decadence† and individuality and as such were highly sought. Jeans had become extremely popular, but were still mainly worn by working people or the young. In the 1980’s through to the 1990’s jeans were no longer seen as rebellious or a source of individuality, but they were transformed as the term ‘designer jeans’ was discovered. Many designers such as Jordache and Calvin Klein came on board to create expensive jeans and some jeans even reached haute couture status (Fashion Encyclopedia). In the new millennium denim is seen on designer catwalks and there are now hundreds of styles, types and labels available and of various price ranges. Changing Popularity According to Peter Beagle in his book â€Å"American Denim: A New Folk Art†, the popularity of jeans can be attributed to the fact that jeans can be seen to embrace the American democratic values of independence, freedom and equality. Some Americans even consider jeans to be the national uniform. Blue jeans have evolved from a garment associated exclusively with hard work to one associated with leisure. What began as work clothes has transformed into one of the â€Å"hottest† items available on the consumer market today. What was once apparel associated with low culture has undergone a reversal in status. Blue jeans were the first to accomplish a rather revolutionary cultural achievement bringing upper class status to a lower class garment. Conclusion At one point or another throughout history, blue jeans have been the uniform of many groups and are considered the one garment of clothing that has remained hip for over a century and has survived everything from World War II to the eighties. For half a century blue jeans have helped define every youth movement, and every effort of older generations to deny the passing of youth. Fifty years ago America invented the concept of teenager, and it is probably no coincidence that the enduring character of blue jeans, claiming independence and the right to self-expression, can be traced to the same time. Jeans were once seen as clothing for minority groups such as workers, hippies or rebellious youth, but are now embraced by the dominant American culture as a whole. Works Cited â€Å"Material Culture†. Utoronto. ca. University of Toronto Department of History, University of Toronto, n. d. Web â€Å"European Culture 19th Century – Blue Jeans†. Fashionencyclopedia. com. Fashion Encyclopedia, Advameg, June 2010. Web. â€Å"Modern World 1980 – 2003, Designer Jeans†. Fashionencyclopedia. com. Fashion Encyclopedia, Advameg, June 2010. Web. Sullivan, James. Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print. George, Diana and Trimbur, John. Reading Culture: Contexts for critical reading and writing. New York: Longman, 2007. Print. Beagle, Peter. American Denim: A New Folk Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975. Print.

Single Adoption essays

Single Adoption essays Should Single Individuals be Allowed to Adopt There are some conflicts concerning whether or not single individuals are capable to adopt. This paper discusses why singles have the need to adopt. It also discusses some issues they may encounter when considering adoption. In addition, provided is my personal opinion as to why I believe single parents should be able to adopt. The desire to raise a family and nurture a child is common among both married couples and singles. Single individuals may wish to adopt a child in order to fulfill their need to nurture. They may feel as though their life may be incomplete and therefore consider adopting a child. One single commented I had a stable job and could give a child many benefits. (About.com, 2000) Children are placed in orphan homes due to various reasons. Such reasons may include abuse, abandonment, neglect, homelessness or death. There is an extremely high amount of children who are in need of a stable home. For example, in 1998 there were 42,000 children in the New York City foster care. Of those 42,000, 6,500 children had parental rights terminated and were in pre-adoptive placements. Five hundred of those children had rights completely terminated and were in the need of a home. Approximately 8,000 children were expected to have their parental rights terminated. Therefore, they would become eligible to be put up for adoption. Many single individuals have an awareness that these children have needs and feel that they can provide a better life for them. A teacher commented, Because I continually saw children in my special education classes who live in institutions or went from foster home to foster home, I decided that even as a single parent I could do more for a child. (About.com, 2000) (About.com, 2000) (Feeney, 1998) There are many conflicts that singles face when they decide that they wish to adopt a child. These conflicts a...

The Cold War and the Berlin Wall essays

The Cold War and the Berlin Wall essays 1. The Cold War was caused by the differences in idealism between the Western and Eastern superpowers. Yet, that idealism was not necessarily the reigning idealism of the people within the nations of the United States and the Soviet Union. Many citizens within the Soviet Union and its satellite nations proved to abhor the tyrannical Communist regime of Stalin and his predecessors. However, there were forced to adopt the nationalization seen in Communism. The United States used this tyrannical image to portray a savior image of its own representation. Based on the occurrences which led to the rise of these two very different idealisms, it is apparent that the Cold War could not have been averted, but in fact we should consider ourselves lucky for not escalating further. 2. East and West Berlin, to me, represented a single country divided by political circumstances which plagued millions of lives for generations. It is seen through the efforts of East Germans to escape over the Berlin Wall that many East Germans hated the tyrannical puppet government which proved a slave to the Soviet Union. As West Germany combined and began to flourish with the Western world, East Germans were forced to envy their western counterparts from across the ugly concrete wall. The stadium built for the 1936 Olympic Games was just a reminder of a distant past haunted by unification under the wrong mores. 3. Once the two zones were once again united after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the city and country was re-united. When the two zones were officially united in 1990, much of Eastern Germany had refocused in consumer goods and a free-market economy. Germans were allowed to freely travel between the formerly guarded Berlin border. The Western culture was allowed to influence the formerly Communist East Germany. Yet, still some regional differences continued to persist within a small portion of the population. Old Communist buildings littered ...

Boston Chicken Case

Boston Chicken implemented a franchising strategy that differed from most other franchising companies at the time. Boston Chicken focused its expansion through franchising the company through large regional developers rather than selling store franchises to a large number of small franchisees. In that, an established network of 22 regional franchises that targeted their operations in the 60 largest U.S. metropolitan markets and in order to do so, the franchisee would have been an independent experienced businessman with vast financial resources and would be responsible for opening 50 – 100 stored in the region. Boston Chicken focused on widespread continuous expansion of its operations to become to developed across the board food chain. Scouting for real estate assured the highest standards for developing properties and was critical to the company’s future success. To assist in future growth of the franchises, Boston Chicken implemented a communications infrastructure, which provided a supporting link for communication between its networks of stores. In addition in efforts to improve operating efficiency, the company locked in low rates from its suppliers and developed flagship stores, which did most of the initial food preparation which inadvertently reduced employee training costs. Many of these regional developers were given a revolving credit line to help support expansion. This type of financing came with credit risk while the franchises average revenue from operations were not sufficient enough to cover the expenses which raises doubt for the repayment of such loans. 2. The accounting policy of reporting the franchise fees from Boston Chicken’s area developers as revenue seemed most controversial. These franchise fees, which accounted for more than 50% of total revenue, did not represent revenues from operations. Also, the source of most of the ranchise fees came from the financing provided by Boston Chicken, the franchiser, where the money coming in was the same money that was going out. This overstated earnings of the company. Since the debentures can be converted into shares of common stock, most of the revenue from franchise fees should have been deferred. Reporting revenues that included these franchise fees his the fact the most of the franchised stores were operating at a loss, which provided a false impression to investors. While Boston Chicken, the franchiser reported a net income from operations of $24,611 in 1994, if they excluded the income provided by franchise fees, they company-operated stores would have been operating at a loss, which would have been a more accurate picture for the company’s operations and its question of having a profitable future. 3. Boston Chicken, the franchiser, reports revenue based on franchise fees (includes royalties, initial franchise development costs, interest income from area developer financing, lease income, software fees, and other related franchise fees), and company operated stores. The revenue reported on the income statement does not reflect the operating income or losses generated by the area developers, with most of these area developers operating at a loss. Since the franchiser provides financing to the area developers, it seems that consolidation of the financial statements would provide vital information to the users of the financial statements especially since the repayment of loans relies heavily on the profitability of the franchisees. Basically, Boston Chicken was not reporting the results of operations from its area developers because Boston Chicken did not have an equity position in these firms; rather their stake in these franchises was reported as debt financing. In doing so, Boston Chicken did not have to report the losses that were incurred in these operations. By manipulating the financial statements, the company gave a false impression on its future prospects of the company, allowing them to more freely raise capital through the issuance of common stock, and inadvertently inflating tock prices. 4. The balance of notes receivable from area developers as of December 25, 1994 was at $201,266. Of this amount there was no allowance for loan loss and as a result, revenues would be overstated. With the high probability of uncollectibility on notes receivable due to the majority of operating losses of the area developers, creating an allowance for loan losses would more accurately reflect the financial position of Boston Chicken. Even with just a 25% allowance for uncollectibility the company would be operating at a loss of $25,714. 5 7. In the financial information provided in the case for 1994, Boston Chicken’s Operating profit for the year was $24,611, and net earnings $0. 38 per share. In 1995 Operating Profit for the year increased to $67,238 and net earnings to $0. 66 per share. Boston chicken continued to recognize profits in 1996, but was forced to amend its reported profits in May of 1997 due to improperly stating revenues. In 1998 the company files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and was subsequently purchased by McDonalds Corporation in 2000. As seen in Table 1 on the following page, it seems that since around the 2nd Quarter in 1997 to mid 2004 the stock price of the plummeted from around $50 per share to under $1 per share. At the time the stock price dropped drastically to $0. 00010 per share. In 2007, the company was sold to Sun Capital and went private. 6. After the company filed for bankruptcy, the stock price took a huge hit. In 1999 the company searched for a buyer as its stock price continued to steadily decline. As you can see in Table 1, trading volume drastically fell during the 1999 – 2000 period, and showed an increase in 2000 when McDonalds Corp purchased the company.

No fixed topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

No fixed topic - Essay Example The four famous composers of this period included Dunstable, Despres, Ockeghem, and Dufay. Following the beginning of tradition in the sixteenth century, many people who were interested in music readily associated themselves with the classical music leading to the abandonment of the model system of the harmonic music. Many music composers shifted from composing harmony music and started composing classical. Composers moved away from composing these traditional types of music, which had lasted for over three hundred years introducing a strong sensation in songs with a definite tonal key (Gangwere 256). This was also termed as a golden period since many masses, anthems, motets, and madrigals followed this new form of music. In addition, this high demand of music lead to the establishment of instrumental music especially keyboard music, which was in the form of fantasies, variation, and dance movements. Some of the note-composers who emerged during this period included Dowland, Byrd, Vi ctoria, Lassus, Cardoso, and many others. During 11th century, one of the genius music composers Guido applied the concept of music to stringed instruments. His diatonic scale, which had eight full tones and seven intervals with two semitones, was the first keyboard to be in use. This type of keyboard had only twenty keys. There are no reliable historical sources showing the first person who applied the concept of the chromatic scale. Later on in 1548, Guiseppe Zarlino added the remaining two semitones to his keyboard. During the sixteenth century, almost every keyboard manufacturers used chromatic scale, which the same thing associated with the modern pianos. Since the development of keyboard, many amendments have been made to the chromatic keyboard to perfect its performance. In 1811, Dr. Krause constructed an improved keyboard whose semitones were of the same level, and all the keys had a uniform color. Later, another piano maker from Vienna constructed a keyboard in the form of concave. The aim of constructing concave-formed keyboard was to follow the learning of the keyboard players’ arm. This is evidence that, the modern keyboard has gone through many amendment, especially the concept of the keys layout. The layout of the whole and semi-tones has evolved over centuries (Gangwere 272). 5. Examine how Enlightenment philosophy and the spirit of capitalism influenced the music of the Classical period. The enlightenment age began in 17th through the 18th century. This was a cultural movement, which started first in Europe and later in the America. The main purpose of enlightenment age was to bring change to the society helping people abandon their traditional believes and cultural practices, and advancing their living standards through scientific measures. It promoted scientific knowledge, which brought intellectual change hence opposing traditional cultures like power abuses by churches and state. This idea of enlightenment had many impacts on culture , politics, and western government. Enlightenment philosophy had great impacts on art. It brought some emphasis on learning whereby arts and music became widespread especially among the middle class people. It also led to the establishment of many study areas where literature, philosophy, science, and expensive art

How to establish an Ethical culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

How to establish an Ethical culture - Essay Example In this regard, a good leader should not only address the issues of misconduct but also he or she must adopt comprehensive strategies in order to create ethical firm. This paper aims at discussing how to establish an ethical culture from leadership in an organization. Ethics entails standard of conduct that an organization should follow in its day to day activities. Based on the diversity that exists in the definition of ethical behavior, it is paramount for any firm to come up with a policy that clearly defines its ethical guidelines. In the current business arena, the importance of ethics in local and international companies cannot be overlooked (Ellis, 2007). To the employees, ethics in an organization ensure their security, respect and honest. On their part, leaders must hold ethics as a way of complying with the government regulations while at the same time creating a good opportunity for the development of the employees. Managers must come up with a compliance program that is i n line with the goals of their firms making it to be embraced by all the stakeholders. One of the benefits of such a program is that it will make the employees be aware of the ethical standards and what is expected from them by the managers (Wallace, 2007). Secondly, it allows managers to respond in a timely manner to deal with ethical issues once they arise. Thirdly, it makes the employees to make independence decisions and report any ethical issue that may jeopardize the operations of the company. Three key aspects that leaders should emulate before initiating an appropriate ethics program include integrity, trust and accountability. As mentioned earlier, an ethics program must be in line with the goals of a firm. Thus there is need for the leaders to emulate various components that ensures the needs of their firms are met by the ethics program they initiate. For example, the leaders should that their code of ethics is comprehensive (John, 2000). This means that the program should cover all the issues that may arise in a firm including hiring process, dismissal of employees and promotion of workers among other areas. Secondly, the program should include the training of the management and the employees. Thirdly, it should indicate the communication system and process adopted in the form. Fourthly, the program should clearly indicate the investigating procedure emulated by the company as well as the consequences that arise as the result of violation of the ethics by the employees and the managers (Singer, 2000). As the world economy improves after the recent economic downturn, unethical behaviors such as theft and fraud among the finance managers and employees may rise. In this regard, ethics program should essentially allow for extensive training of the managers in order to provide with skills that are vital in detecting a fraud. Additionally, the employees should be trained on how to report cases of wrong doings by their fellow workers. Use of 3 Cs to establ ish a culture of character In their efforts to ensure that the culture of ethics is established in an organization, managers can employ the concept of 3Cs (code, character and conversion) as advocated for by Turknett leadership group (Turknett leadership group, 2012). By use of the three aspects at each level in the organization, it becomes easier for the managers to keenly monitor the conduct of all the employees. Being the first step, managers must come up with

Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 22

Report - Essay Example ..........6 People Plus is one of the leading recruitment firms for employers and people seeking employment. The company opened its doors in 1990 by the founder Harriet Henley. The company has grown and had over two thousand staff members. It has opened two hundred offices all over the UK. The People Plus clients get access to the largest database in the United Kingdom for the candidates from the company. The company has experienced financial losses just like many other companies. The employees are not happy, by the way, the company treats them after the financial loss experience. The article will talk about the employees’ complaints and how to overcome the financial problems in the future. The psychological contracts are about reciprocal obligations made between employees and the organizations about the kind of work they are to do and how best to perform their duties. The contract is important as it lays a foundation for the relationship between the employers and employees. The various trends in different organizations; downsizing, restructuring, an increase in the temporary worker recruitment in the organizations are impacting negatively on the employees of the companies (Hemanth and Shruthi 2012). For instance, the changes People Plus has in their organization had a negative effect on Sam and the other staff members. There was reassignment of the staff members’ jobs to different people. The shuffle in the job description did not sit well with the staff. It is because the change means the work description you have perfected has another person do it, and you get reassigned to a new job. It means that the staff members have to undergo training in the new job des cription assigned to them. Training takes a while, and it becomes difficult to get new clients in a different section of the job. The current trend makes it unclear what the staff members and the employers owe one another. The traditional job security that has always

Answer the questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Answer the questions - Essay Example Chapter 4 (bearing the name, â€Å"Holocaust: the Genocide of the Jews†), Chapter 5 (named â€Å"Holocaust: the Gypsies†) and Chapter 6 (with the name, â€Å"Holocaust: The Genocide of Disabled Peoples†) focuses on the recent pattern of genocides across the globe and examines the trend of transformation regarding the nature of the practice from the twentieth to twenty-first century. Here, the author is found to establish initially the meaning of genocide as it appeared before the world through the extermination of almost 5 to 6 millions of Jews by the Nazis. The next chapter focuses on the historical perspectives and parameters on which it flourished. The undermining of the brutal murder of one-quarter and one-half million of Sinti and Roma in the recent histographic representation of the Nazi genocide is found in the next chapter. The last chapter focuses on more gruesome and horrifying killing of the chronically mentally ill patients or patients severely injure d or disabled after World War II by the medical establishment of Germany who were acting both with and without the knowledge of the government by the Nazis. These patients were termed by their doctors as â€Å"useless eaters† and were brutally slaughtered. The points put forwarded by Totten and his historical analysis for the reason of these genocides and compelling suggestion to stop the brutal act as well are not only convincing but are accepted by any reader easily as they are all culminated systematically and backed by

Human resource management challenges in knowledge-intensive sectors Essay

Human resource management challenges in knowledge-intensive sectors and solutions - Essay Example Based on this research human resource management (HRM) is of crucial importance for the optimum functioning of the organisation, irrespective of whatever sector they operate in. As the organisations in all the sectors including knowledge-intensive sectors will have humans or employees, human resource management is inevitable. With the organisations in the knowledge intensive sectors maximally dependent on the employees and their intellectual assets than other sectors like manufacturing, service, etc., (which could have use of infrastructures and machineries), HRM has to play a major role to solve all the HRM centric challenges. In any organisation, Human Resource Department (HRD) in association with other departments will play a variety of roles. HRD as part of HRM will select of the right people for the right jobs or designations through aptly conducted recruitment drives. Then, they have to provide a healthy and effective work environment for them to exhibit high productivity. Effe ctive work environment in the sense, the employees can be made to work as part of teamwork, can be involved more in the decision making processes and importantly could be given timely incentives so that their efficacy levels are always at the peak. All these key aspects have to be taken by the organisation or the management with good inputs from the HRD in line with optimum HRM. Workers are the integral part of any successful organisation and that includes Knowledge-Intensive Firms (KIP). This paper will discuss the HRM centric challenges and problems that will normally arise among the employees in KIPs, and importantly discuss how it can be solved, thus making the employees provide optimum productivity and thereby keep the operations of those firms, running in a smooth, well lubricated manner. Knowledge-intensive sector or Knowledge-Intensive Firms (KIPs) The concept of KIFs is apparently distinct from other organisational categories or organisations in other sectors. This is becau se in other traditional organisational categories, the emphasis will be more on the raw materials, capital, machineries, etc., with employees and their intellectual assets playing a complementary role. However, in the case of firms in the Knowledge intensive sectors, their entire operations will depend on humans and their knowledge. â€Å"KIFs are generally considered to be diametrically opposite to traditional manufacturing firms in that the knowledge rather than physical or financial capital is central to the companies’ existence† (Jorgensen, Becker and Matthews 2009, pg. 451). Thus, the firms operating in the Knowledge Intensive sector carry out their operations based on the professional knowledge exhibited by their employees. That is, using the knowledge of the employees, they mainly provide knowledge based support, service and even products for other business processes. As stated by Rylander and Peppard (2005, pg.4), â€Å"KIFs are characterized as organisations where well-educated and qualified employees form a major part of the work force and engage in mainly â€Å"intellectual work†. Certain organisations, which do and provide these types of works or services comes under this knowledge intensive sector. For example, consulting organisations, financial companies, law firms, private banks, architecture companies, etc., comes under this sector because these companies will use their employees’ knowledge and data analysis skills to provide service to the other businesses or clients. Because of this main focus on the employees and their knowledge, more than their physical skills, their mental abilities will be focused. Thus, these firms will have a different employment structure than the traditional firms. For example, â€Å"their employment structures are heavily weighted towards scientists, engineers, auditors and other experts in specific fields.† (Metcalfe and Miles 1997, pg. 8). Thus, it is clear that the organisation al and employment struct

Australian Election and Voting Behaviour Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Australian Election and Voting Behaviour - Essay Example This paper uses data from the 2001 Australian Election Study (AES), to investigate the level of party identification, political attitudes and voting behaviour in the election in Australia.This paper finds that whereas a weakening in the strength of party identification is associated with the potential significance of the development of the major1 and minor parties2. Partisan de-alignment is also changing the dynamics of the determinants of turnout. Since non-identifiers are more strongly influenced by the political context than strong identifiers, and there are now more non-identifiers than previously, the political context is becoming a more important factor in determining whether people vote or not. A question of potential importance is whether to study vote in the House of Representatives or in the Senate, or even possibly party identification. In part, this is because the voting system in the Senate is more 'minor party-friendly' because of its more proportional outcomes, but a f urther reason for examining Senate vote is the greater consistency in choice offered to voters (Charnock, 2004). In the House, voters in each of the electoral divisions (of which there are usually just fewer than 150) face differing choices, with (apart from the possible importance of electorate-specific issues and personalities) not all parties offering candidates in every contest. In particular, it becomes impossible to separately analyse voters for the National and Liberal parties: in view of the way in which One Nation apparently obtained much of its support in National areas, this is an important deficiency for 1998 in particular.3 In the last two decades, Australian major political parties, like those in other western democracies, have faced serious problems. These include challenges to the relevance of their traditional ideologies and institutional support bases, slipping memberships and rank and file participation, declining party identification, an erosion of confidence in majoritarian party government and the rise of new parties and social movements (Marsh 1995; Smith 1998). Party Identification Party identification is a political term to describe a voter's underlying allegiance to a political party. The term was first used in the world politics in the 1950s, but use of the term has decreased in usage as the process of party dealignment has accelerated. Party identification is a pychological attachment toward a political party that tends to influence a person's decisions on social, economic and political issues. Some researchers view party identification as " a form of social identity" (Hershey, 101), in the same way that a person identifies with a religious or ethnic group. This identity develops early in a person's life mainly through family and social influences. This description would make party identification a stable perspective, which develops as a consequence of personal, family, social and environmental factors. Other researchers consider party identification to be more flexible and more of a conscious choice. They see it as a position and a choice based on the cont inued assessment of the political, economic and social environment. A person who identifies with a particular political party is called a partisan. The partisan accepts the standard beliefs

Human resource management challenges in knowledge-intensive sectors Essay

Human resource management challenges in knowledge-intensive sectors and solutions - Essay Example Based on this research human resource management (HRM) is of crucial importance for the optimum functioning of the organisation, irrespective of whatever sector they operate in. As the organisations in all the sectors including knowledge-intensive sectors will have humans or employees, human resource management is inevitable. With the organisations in the knowledge intensive sectors maximally dependent on the employees and their intellectual assets than other sectors like manufacturing, service, etc., (which could have use of infrastructures and machineries), HRM has to play a major role to solve all the HRM centric challenges. In any organisation, Human Resource Department (HRD) in association with other departments will play a variety of roles. HRD as part of HRM will select of the right people for the right jobs or designations through aptly conducted recruitment drives. Then, they have to provide a healthy and effective work environment for them to exhibit high productivity. Effe ctive work environment in the sense, the employees can be made to work as part of teamwork, can be involved more in the decision making processes and importantly could be given timely incentives so that their efficacy levels are always at the peak. All these key aspects have to be taken by the organisation or the management with good inputs from the HRD in line with optimum HRM. Workers are the integral part of any successful organisation and that includes Knowledge-Intensive Firms (KIP). This paper will discuss the HRM centric challenges and problems that will normally arise among the employees in KIPs, and importantly discuss how it can be solved, thus making the employees provide optimum productivity and thereby keep the operations of those firms, running in a smooth, well lubricated manner. Knowledge-intensive sector or Knowledge-Intensive Firms (KIPs) The concept of KIFs is apparently distinct from other organisational categories or organisations in other sectors. This is becau se in other traditional organisational categories, the emphasis will be more on the raw materials, capital, machineries, etc., with employees and their intellectual assets playing a complementary role. However, in the case of firms in the Knowledge intensive sectors, their entire operations will depend on humans and their knowledge. â€Å"KIFs are generally considered to be diametrically opposite to traditional manufacturing firms in that the knowledge rather than physical or financial capital is central to the companies’ existence† (Jorgensen, Becker and Matthews 2009, pg. 451). Thus, the firms operating in the Knowledge Intensive sector carry out their operations based on the professional knowledge exhibited by their employees. That is, using the knowledge of the employees, they mainly provide knowledge based support, service and even products for other business processes. As stated by Rylander and Peppard (2005, pg.4), â€Å"KIFs are characterized as organisations where well-educated and qualified employees form a major part of the work force and engage in mainly â€Å"intellectual work†. Certain organisations, which do and provide these types of works or services comes under this knowledge intensive sector. For example, consulting organisations, financial companies, law firms, private banks, architecture companies, etc., comes under this sector because these companies will use their employees’ knowledge and data analysis skills to provide service to the other businesses or clients. Because of this main focus on the employees and their knowledge, more than their physical skills, their mental abilities will be focused. Thus, these firms will have a different employment structure than the traditional firms. For example, â€Å"their employment structures are heavily weighted towards scientists, engineers, auditors and other experts in specific fields.† (Metcalfe and Miles 1997, pg. 8). Thus, it is clear that the organisation al and employment struct

Mark Twain Short Stories Essay Essay Example for Free

Mark Twain Short Stories Essay Essay Mark Twain has composed a myriad of short stories over a long period of time. Twain writes with the passion to charm and amuse the reader. Every single sentence he writes makes one want to keep reading on to see what happens next. His stories also offer a comment on human nature and Twain often questions conventional wisdom. Just because someone’s life did not attach to with what many people see normal, Twain seems to be asking if that makes them lucky when they don’t fail. He responds to that question and challenges the reader to think twice in his short stories. Mark Twain’s stories seem to never be lacking hilariousness. In Luck, for example, he brings out the subject, Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, as a dignified and decorated soldier but then makes a quick turn by quoting the town Reverend saying, â€Å"Privately – he’s an absolute fool† (Twain 265). This blunt change allows Twain the chance to recount the tale told by the Reverend concerning Scoresby’s many failures in battle. Additionally, he sets up the reader in The Story of the Bad Little Boy by painting a dreary picture as to what could happen to the main character. Twain then excitedly breaks the ice with an amusing reveal of what actually happened. Twain writes, â€Å"Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn’t it sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother’s jam?† and then he didn’t kneel down all alone and promise to never to be wicked any more, no that is the way with all other bad boys in the books†¦ He ate that jam, and said it was bully; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully, also, and laughed, and observed that the old woman would get up and snort† (11). This process of creating a sullen circumstance and then flamboyantly reversing course is depicted in most of Twain’s stories and was used to have a great effect. Mark Twain used humor to thrill the reader, which he did effectively and consistently, but he also used it make a clear point. The most frequent point he was trying to make was that society is too uptight. In The Story of the Bad Little Boy, he underlines a wide range of â€Å"bad† things that the main character does but wraps it up that it had little bearing on him when he became a man. Twain writes, â€Å"And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest  scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the legislature† (13). This was Twain’s way of getting at the notion that a naughty child will always be a bad person. He does this again in Science vs. Luck in which he pokes fun at the over-the-top laws against gambling and games of chance. Twain does this through the main character, a nifty attorney, who argues that the game of seven-up is actually a game of science rather than chance so should not be considered gambling. Twain writes, â€Å"We, the jury in the case do hereby unanimously decide that the game commonly known as old sledge or seven-up is eminently a game of science and not chance†¦ In demonstration where of it is hereby and herein stated, iterated, reiterated, set forth and made manifest that, during the entire night, the â€Å"chance† men never won a game† (73). By using humor to sink in the message, Twain was able to poke fun at the conservative folks that ruled his day, and ours. Conservative thinking includes the presumption that people who succeed while acting in an unconventional manner must be lucky. Twain also poked fun at that thinking as well. The hero in Luck, Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, was privately thought to be a fool and the luckiest man on earth to survive in the military for decades. Twain then brings up nearly a dozen events in which Scoresby went against conventional wisdom and managed to live, leaving the reader to wonder the question, â€Å"Was it really luck or was Scoresby just good at what he did?† He also attains a familiar and similar goal in The Story of the Bad Little Boy in which the main character survives many near-fatal events to become a pillar of society. Twain seems to ask, â€Å"Was the boy really lucky to survive his childhood or was society too uptight?† Finally, in Science vs. Luck, Twain points out that games of â€Å"chance† are nothing more than complicated science or math problems. Once again, Twain intrigues the reader to consider whether the conservative view is the one and only view. Mark Twain wrote short stories with strong intent. He had a critical yet comical perspective that allowed him to see the humor in serious matters. Twain wrote about them in a way that was entertaining while also serving to share his perspective on his literature. For those readers who took themselves too seriously, they probably only saw the humor part. To those who chose to read between the lines laughed, but also probably stopped to reflect on the message. In his unique way, Mark Twain may have changed the course of human nature and society with his writings. Works Cited Twain, Mark. The Complete Short Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Print.

Child Abuse And Child Protection Criminology Essay

Child Abuse And Child Protection Criminology Essay The objective of this paper is to deliberate the role the Internet has on the sexual exploitation of children today. The central premise is the crime of online child sexual exploitation with the specific attention on sexual predators online grooming behaviours for procurement of children for sexual abuse. The paper begins with a brief overview of child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation, followed by a short background of computers and the Internet. The paper shall examine and discuss sexual predators, online grooming, accessibility, anonymity, content, and victimisation and highlight an opposing view. During the course of the paper, the term children implies the ages 12 to 17 years, and the expression sexual predators applied to define adults who habitually seek out sexual situations that are deemed exploitative while the use of the word Internet encompasses the terms World Wide Web and cyberspace. Throughout the course of this paper, I intend to demonstrate that, compared to previous generations, technology and the Internet has exposed children of the digital and virtual generation to the immeasurable vulnerability of becoming a victim of child sexual exploitation. Child abuse is universal; it is an extensive social phenomena on a global level that occurs through four methods; neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse or sexual abuse (Rivett Kelly, 2006 and Lancaster Lumb, 1999). Child sexual abuse occurs when an adult uses their power or authority to involve a child in sexual activity (Child Rights International Network (CRIN), 2012). Child sexual abuse is a multi-layered problem; astonishingly complex in its characteristics, dynamics, causes and consequences with no universal definition (Hobday Ollier, 2004; Price-Robertson, Bromfield, Vassallo, 2010 and Browne Lynch, 1995). Therefore, child sexual abuse can be understood to encompass physical, verbal or emotional abuse (Barber, 2012 and Friedman, 1990) and can involve exposing a sexual body part to a child, and talking in a sexually explicit way (Finkelhor Hotaling, 1984). With the introduction of the Internet, online child sexual abuse has subsequently entered the perplexing realm of child abuse. Child sexual abuse now encompasses; sending obscene text messages or emails, or showing pornographic photographs to a child, solicitation, and online grooming to facilitate procurement of a child for sexual contact (Davidson Gottschalk, 2011; Stanley, 2003). Choo indicated that a study showed that 85 to 95% of child sexual abuse cases, the child knew the perpetrator as an acquaintance or family member in real life but had used the Internet and other technology to further their grooming activities (2009, p. xiii). Therefore, it could be suggested that technology has enhanced opportunities of child sexual abuse for offenders. The first personal computer became available in 1975 (Peter, 2004), and a new phenomenon entered the global landscape in 1969, but it was not until 1993 that it became a commercial product the Internet (Jones Quayle, 2005 and Peter, 2004). The Australian Bureau of Statistics, (2012), revealed Internet access exploded from 286,000 Internet households in 1996 to an incredible 13.1 million in 2010/2011. In almost two decades, the Internet has moved from an ambiguous communications vehicle to a vast virtual world and a ubiquitous fixture in homes, schools and workplaces; an indispensable component of millions of peoples lives (Davidson Gottschalk, 2011 and Quayle, Vaughan, Taylor, 2006). The universality of this technology revolution has changed lives in dramatic ways by shortening the geographical distances and facilitating ways to share information (Stanley, 2001). Computers and the Internet are valuable tools for childrens learning, but like all revolutions, the Internet has simul taneously brought about a darker side (Won, Ok-Ran, Chulyun, Jungmin, 2011; Jones Quayle, 2005 and Stanley, 2001) including the establishment of online child sexual exploitation from sexual predators. Child sexual exploitation is an umbrella term for a spectrum of negative sexual experiences including exposure to unwanted sexually implicit material and uninvited requests for sexual conversations (Burgess, Mahoney, Visk Morgenbesser, 2008 and Jones Quayle, 2005). The Internet created a portal for sexual predators to further facilitate child sexual exploitation. The Internet has become is a double edged sword (Won et al, 2011), although it is an indispensable element of life with the average Australian child spending between 11 to 21hrs per week online (Irvine, 2009), it also delivers new prospects for sexual predators to sexually exploit young Internet users. Sexual predators have been part of society throughout history (Choo, 2009), and now the Internet provides an opportunity for sexual predators to employ grooming behaviours online for solicitation, harassment, exploitation, production of abuse images and participate in abusive acts (Dombrowski, LeMansey, Ahia, Dickson, 2004 and Quayle, Vaughan, Taylor, 2006). Feather (1999) acknowledges that the internet has been shown to act as a new medium through which some commonly recognised forms of child maltreatment, sexual and emotional abuse may be pursued. Australia, in 2006, had 130 completed prosecutions for online child sexual exploitation offenses, in the same year the United Kingdom ha d 322 cases while the United States case reports grew from 4,560 in 1998 to an astonishing 76,584 by the end of 2006 (Choo, 2009, pp. xi -xii). The Internet has provided an accessible gateway for sexual predators to enter the homes of children previously unattainable as prior to the Internet the act of grooming by sexual predators would have required the predator to physically stalk their victims or to know them through legitimate reasons (Armagh, 1998). Child grooming typically begins through a non-sexual, manipulative approach to assist the enticement of a child through active engagement, and by utilising their skills of power and control to lower a childs inhibitions, to desensitise them and to gain their trust before luring them into interaction (Australian Institute of Criminology Online child grooming laws, 2008; Choo, 2009; Davidson Gottschalk, 2011; Beech, Elliott, Birgden Findlater, 2008 and Gallagher, 2007). Child grooming is not a new phenomenon; it dates back to when child sexual abuse was first identified and define (Martellezzo, cited in Davidson Gottschalk, 2011, p. 104). The traditional process of child grooming entailed close physical proximity to a child and many sexual predatory selected jobs as child-serving professionals or volunteers, this enabled them to have positions of authority and to gain childrens trust more easily (Berson, 2003, p. 10). The conventional methods placed the sexual predator at significa nt personal risk as they were exposed to suspicion of any special attention or affection directed towards a child (Armagh, 1998 Gallagher, 2007). The Internet aids sexual predators to shorten the trust building period and to simultaneously have access to multiple victims across the globe (Berson, 2003 and Davidson Gottschalk, 2011). Sexual predators utilise the Internet to groom a child for either immediate sexual gratification or to persistently groom a child online to lay the foundations for sexual abuse in the physical world (Davidson Gottschalk, 2011 and Quayle, Vaughan Taylor, 2006). Choo (2009, p. xii) stated that in the United States in 2006, there were 6,384 reports made regarding online enticement. The advent of the Internet facilitates sexual predators a formidable utopia of opportunity for sexual abuse through easier, simpler and faster instant access to potential child victims worldwide. The central differences for sexual predators in the physical world and the online world are accessibility and anonymity. The Internet changed the way people interact, and online communication has become an integral part of society. Instant messaging and chat rooms are readily accessed by sexual predators to discover and target potential victims (Berson, 2003; Choo, 2009; Davidson Gottschalk, 2011 and Stanley, 2001). Choo (2009) indicates that studies have shown 55% of sexual predators utilise social networking sites to enable quick, effective and ostensibly with confidentiality. Sexual predators employ their skills by exploiting search engines to locate publically available information on children and their activities, and acquiring personal information from participating in chat rooms which, then permits them to attract, manipulate and build long term virtual relationships with potential victims (Berson, 2003; Choo, 2009; Davidson Gottschalk, 2011 and Stanley, 2001). According to Choo (2009) a study in the United States in 2006 indicated that 71% of children have established an online profile on soc ial networking sites with 47% of them allowing their profiles to be public- viewable by anyone. 40% of sexual predators will read online profiles of children in an attempt to identify potential victims according to a study conducted by Malesky (2007). Social networking sites, chat rooms, and instant messaging support sexual predators access to children through real time open access to specific subject forums, searchable profiles, display of personal information, message boards and instant contact (Aiken, Moran Berry, 2011; Calder, 2004; Davidson Gottschalk, 2011; Dombrowski et al, 2004 and Marcum, 2007). Before the Internet, this type of information and access would have been almost impossible for a predator to acquire. The Internet provides a previously unattainable degree of anonymity and this allows a sexual predator to hide behind their masquerade personas to entice interaction with children (Choo, 2009). One of the main attractions of the Internet for sexual predators is the anonymity. A child does not always know who they are interrelating with, and they may think they know, but unless it is a school friend or a relative, they genuinely cannot be sure. Utilising concealment of identity, many sexual predators are more inclined to behave deviant; uninhibited through anonymity and the depersonalised isolation of the virtual world with little risk of detection (Aiken et al, 2011 Burgess et al, 2008). Feather (1999, p. 7) specified that many child sexual predators lurk in chat rooms they remain in the background intensively reading chat room posts without actually commenting themselves, they monitor the rooms looking for potential victims or they use a pseudonym to facilitate interaction. In 2006 , there were 850,000 cases of children receiving unwanted sexual approaches in chat rooms online in the United Kingdom, many anonymously or posing as a child (Choo, 2009). The main aim of concealing their identities is to gain the trust of a child to facilitate the eventual physical contact. A study by Malesky (2007) revealed 80% of participants frequented chat rooms geared towards minors and used pseudonyms to improve their chances of making contact with a child and to eventually generate an offline meeting. Technical advances have introduced sexual predators to protocols and programs that enable them to conceal their identities which makes it difficult to trace and locate them (Choo, 2009). The proliferation and ease of accessibility has allowed for child sexual predators to electronically creep into the bedrooms of children where they engage in sexually explicit chat, cyber voyeurism and exhibitionism over the expanding Internet. Since the Internet is largely uncensored and only partially regulated (Stanley, 2003) it has enabled sexual predators to expose children to negative content such as pornography and sexually explicit material. The unprecedented ease of access to the Internet introduced a vehicle for the flow of digital and electronic data of sexually exploitative material including sexual imagery. The Cyber Tipline in the United States advocates that in 2002, 51 million images and videos of pornography were on the Internet depicting children and indicated that between 1998 and 2012, there were 1.3 million reports regarding sexual inappropriate conduct and material these included child pornography and unsolicited obscene material sent to a child (National Center for Missing Exploited Children, 2012). Sexual predators use pornography and sexually explicit materials to desensitise children to deviant sexual stimuli to encourage them to participate in sexual activities. 1 in 25 children have been asked t o send sexual pictures of themselves to someone on the Internet (Mitchell, Finkelhor Wolak, 2007). Children are the targets for most sexual predators as their social skills are generally incomplete and they are less likely to pick up on the relevant clues of grooming such as inappropriate remarks (Choo, 2009). Children in the higher age brackets are more likely targets for sexual predators due in part to their greater mobility, sexual curiosity and autonomy (Choo, 2009 and Davidson Gottschalk, 2011). These children have an intense interest in expanding social networks, taking risks and forming emotional bonds with others. They share more personal information, interact with strangers via chat rooms, email or post pictures online, visit adult content websites and chat rooms and agree to meet with someone in person when they met online. Examination of literature for this paper indicated that the Internet poses real dangers to children and they can be vulnerable to sexual predators (for example see, Bersen, 2008; Choo, 2009 Davidson Gottschalk, 2011; Jones Quayle, 2005; Malesky, 2005 and Stanley, 2001). Even though Byron cited in Moran et al indicated that sexual predators may be increasingly moving online, given the increasingly restrictive real world access to children, it is impossible to determine the full extent of the numbers of children who have experienced online child sexual exploitation due to most cases not being reported but an Australian study estimated 28% of girls and 9% of boys have in some form been sexually exploited online (Choo, 2009). Wolak, Finkelhor, Mitchell and Ybarra (2008) argue that the Internet has only provided a new avenue for an old crime and suggest that through their research Internet initiated sexual abuse numbers are largely inaccurate. They suggest that the majority of the physical offline encounters is between adult men and underage adolescents who used online communities and were aware they were conversing with adults who rarely deceived them about their sexual interests and that the estimated 500 arrests in the United States for statutory rape occurring from internet contact 95% are non-forcible the adolescent was a willing participant. Richards (2011) suggests that situational and environmental factors play a key role in sexual offending and research has shown that most sexual predators are known to their victims; they are not targeted by strangers. Tomison (2001) specifies that in Australia it was not until the late 1900s did welfare groups begin to recognise that most perpetrators of child s exual abuse were from within the family; known as intrafamilial sexual abuse (Smallbone Wortley, 2001). In the 1920s child sexual abuse became characterised as abuse committed by strangers; known as extrafamilial sexual abuse (Smallbone Wortley, 2001). Today it appears to be seen as a mixture of both. In conclusion, child sexual abuse is a multifaceted problem, and the Internet has now contributed to the complexities of this. Child sexual predators are those who take unfair advantage of some imbalance of power between themselves and a child in order to sexually use them either online or in the physical world. Sexual predators predominately utilise the art of grooming to entice the trust of a child and while has been a part of the physical world of sexual predators in previous generations, the Internet has facilitated the use of grooming to a whole new level on the next generation. The Internet is a continuous, evolving entity that has become part of mainstream life. It has evolved from humble beings in the late 1960s to an immeasurable phenomenon way into the future, millions of families have instant, fast access the Internet daily and this too shall continue to grow with the introduction in Australia of a national broadband network. This paper demonstrated that most sexual predators, who commit sexual abuse on a child in the physical world, initially become acquainted with the child by communication over the Internet and employed more advanced grooming techniques to gain a childs trust. The paper established that the Internet has had a dramatic impact on the evolution of child exploitation by providing an avenue for sexual predators to seek out potential victims and to communicate with them. The rapid development and explosive use of the Internet have allowed for increased opportunities for recruiting children for sexually purposes through social networking sites and chat rooms and the paper identified the Internet as an ideal setting for child sexual exploitation through anonymity and the ease with which one can masquerade. Finally, this paper has identified and ultimately demonstrated that through the revolution of the Internet it provided new tools for sexual predators to sexually exploit children in the digi tal and virtual generation.

Gordon Wood’s Radicalism of the American Revolution Essay -- Essays on

Gordon Wood’s Radicalism of the American Revolution is a book that extensively covers the origin and ideas preceding the American Revolution. Wood’s account of the Revolution goes beyond the history and timeline of the war and offers a new encompassing look inside the social ideology and economic forces of the war. Wood explains in his book that America went through a two-stage progression to break away from the Monarchical rule of the English. He believes the pioneering revolutionaries were rooted in the belief of an American Republic. However, it was the radical acceptance of democracy that was the final step toward independence. The transformation between becoming a Republic, to ultimately becoming a democracy, is where Wood’s evaluation of the revolution differs from other historians. He contributes such a transformation to the social and economic factors that faced the colonists. While Gordon Wood creates a persuasive argument in his book, he does how ever neglect to consider other contributing factors of the revolution. It is these neglected factors that provide opportunity for criticism of his book. The overall feeling one gets from reading Wood’s book is that republicanism was not a radical concept to the American colonists. Wood believed the American colonists had a deep- rooted concept of Republicanism that existed before revolutionary ideas were conceived. The idea of republicanism could be seen in the colonial belief in independence and self-sacrifice. These principles were the founding forces that led to the beginning of the revolution. Wood would seem to believe that these founding forces were not as radical as the transformation to democratic thought. It is here that Wood points out the â€Å"uncontrolla... ... social and economic forces with those of traditional forces his book would have a better claim on legitimacy. Gordon Wood gives an interesting insight into the Revolution. Overall, I find Wood’s argument to be persuasive and refreshing. There is little doubt that the forces that Wood proclaims as significant in his history of the Revolution are important. However, it is this same concentration on non-traditional forces that leads to my criticism of his book. Wood should not have focused entirely on his commonly overlooked social and economic forces. Instead, he should have combined his insight along with the insight of other traditional forces to give his book a well-rounded theory behind the American Revolution. Work Cited Gordon S. Wood. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Vintage; Reprint edition. March 2, 1993

Dress and Food During World War II :: essays research papers

Quite a range of fashion shifts occurred during and after World War II. Some of the major changes included: an increasing shift to casual dress, less elaborate fashions, and the disappearance of knickers. Short pants began to be worn as summer attire, and American boys stop wearing knee socks and long stockings. Short hairstyles become popular for boys in America after the War. Anything using vast amounts of cloth or thought unnecessary were not allowed, such as: leg-of-mutton sleeves, aprons, overskirts, decorative trim, patch pockets and petticoats. Men’s suits consisted of two-piece suits—a jacket and pants without cuffs, although before 1942 they consisted of four pieces—two pairs of pants, a vest and a double-breasted jacket. (Feldman)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The war, bringing on many civilian shortages, substitution became a way of life stateside, affecting daily life. Even though, powder, eye makeup and lipsticks were considered necessary for persevering wartime spirits, some ingredients were no longer available. Military and civilian provisions included the same manpower, facilities and fibers. The government wanted to conserve materials to prevent shortages and also keep the prices up, without harming standing industries. Private citizens had to adjust any new clothing to the conditions with very few exceptions. These were not the only changes being made. There were changes in the food supplies also. The Nazis made the living conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto as terrible as possible. There were curfews, and guards were put on duty at all times near the walls to make sure no Jews escaped from the ghetto. Many Jews suffered from unemployment and diseases. A typhus epidemic, which killed many Jews, broke out about a year after the ghetto was created. Due to low food rationing, many Jews starved to death. Some chose to kill themselves because they could not stand the physical and emotional pain anymore. From the moment that the Jews were isolated from the Polish society and were surrounded by a fence, their food distribution was entirely controlled by the Germans. A strict food rationing was in effect. A working person was given food rationing that was sufficient barely for one person. In order to feed the sick and the old, they were put on the list of the producing people and their relatives had to cover for them by working even longer hours and producing a larger quota. The quantity of allocated food was insufficient and many basic food items were non existent in the ghetto.

Plato, Descartes, and The Matrix Essay

The Matrix movie had many similarities with the readings from Plato and Descartes. All three discussed the scenario in which reality was discovered to be a non-reality. Specifically, in The Matrix, reality that was experienced by multitudes of people is actually a computer simulation called â€Å"The Matrix†. This is actually a deviation from the Plato and Descartes readings in that computers were not mentioned or available at the time of those writings. Plato (380 BC) speaks of people having their â€Å"legs and necks fettered from childhood†, while a source of the restraint is not specifically mentioned, it is most certainly a physical restraint as opposed to the material, computer generated reality as described in The Matrix movie. Descartes was the only one of the three situations that contemplated God in the various reality verses truth contemplations. Plato speaks to the initial shock of discovering that known reality is actually a lie and goes on to speak of the resulting repercussions of this discovery. The denial of the true reality is so tangible that the people in the described scenario would rather believe that the lie was real than to believe and accept what they were actually experiencing. In The Matrix movie (1999) Morpheus asks â€Å"Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?† Similarly, Descartes (1641) also contemplates how often he dreamt that he was in familiar circumstances, dressed and by a fire, only to realize that he was undressed and lying in bed. Plato, Descartes, and The Matrix are all similar in that they consider people living in a world that they discover is not real and that they exist in perceived delusions that produce resulting anti-realities. The Matrix movie is parallel to the Descartes reading in that they both examine our senses as sources of realities. Descartes contemplates how our senses occasionally mislead us  whereas The Matrix describes a continual sensual overhaul which is controlling our mind and ultimate realities while our bodies lay dormant. In The Matrix movie Neo never expresses happiness over his liberation from the computer program but he does feel the need to liberate those still living under the control of the computer program. In contrast, the Plato reading describes and expresses a feeling of joy that would be experienced after emerging from the controlled reality. Can we prove the world we are experiencing is real? In order to contemplate how we know that our current state of being is real we must first decide what â€Å"real† is to us. What is reality? In my opinion, reality is what we see, hear, smell, feel and taste in the present. Reality is what is occurring to us right now, this very second. Is what is happening to us, the world we are experiencing, real and can we prove that it is real? How do we know we are not dreaming? It has been my experience that dreams do not produce anything but thoughts and visions. I do not feel, taste or smell while dreaming. Therefore I can prove that the world I am currently experiencing, while I type this essay, is real because I can feel the keyboard that I am typing on and I can taste and smell the coffee that I am drinking. Which is better: the harshness of reality or the â€Å"ignorance is bliss† of illusion? In my opinion, the harshness of reality is a far better state than the â€Å"ignorance is bliss† illusion. I believe this to be true because I believe that true depth of character cannot be achieved without experiencing the full harshness of reality. How can our intellects and philosophies be explored without experiencing the full range of life events? If you lived your life in ignorance then the world you experienced would skew the thoughts you pondered while excluding the full range of contemplations, restricting them to a bliss-filled reality. With intelligence comes a plethora of knowledge, both good and bad. Conclusion In conclusion, through the viewing of The Matrix and the reading of both Plato and Descartes, we can see that all three bring to mind many philosophical questions related to actual and perceived reality. Obviously, it is very fascinating to imagine a world where alternative and controlled  realities are possible and even very real. The truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and, in my opinion, The Matrix and the thoughts contemplated by Plato and Descartes are just stories that will never be reality. I believe that my Christian worldview is such that would prevent me from ever believing any different. While all of the situations explored were interesting, they will remain, in my mind, fantasies. References Plato. (380 BC). â€Å"The Allegory of the Cave.† In The Republic (Book VII, 514A1 – 518D8). Descartes, R. (1641). Meditation I of The Things of Which We May Doubt. In Meditations on First Philosophy. Wachowski, Andy, and Lana Wachowski. The Matrix. Directed by Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1999.