Milk and Cassava Cake

CASSAVA CAKE INGREDIENTS * 2 pounds Cassava root, grated * 1 can Coconut Cream * 1 can Coconut Milk * 3 Eggs, beaten * 1 cup Whole Milk * 1 stick or 1 cup Butter, melted * 2 cups Sugar * 1/2 teaspoon Salt * 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract * 1/2 cup grated Cheese (optional) Topping: * 1 can Condensed Milk * 1/3 cup Coconut Cream * 3 Egg yolks * 1/2 cup grated Cheese PREPARATION TIME : 15 minutes COOKING TIME : 60 minutes Pre-heat oven at 400  °F 1 Mix together all the cassava ingredients except the topping. Portion the mix into 2 separate baking pans (or one rectangular pan) and pop them in the oven. Bake for 35 – 40 mins or until the top is firm and set. 3 Mix together the topping and simmer for a minute. Set aside. 4 Pour the topping onto the cake and bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown. Test for doneness – please see Cook's Tip below. 5 Let the Cassava Cake cool down for 30 minutes or longer before slicing and serving. BENG'S TIPS * The cassava cake cooks f aster if you portion the mix into 2 or 3 smaller pans than baking them all in one pan. The center of the cake gets cooked last so to test for doneness – the top should be golden brown, then insert a toothpick in the center and if comes out clean, it's done. * Substitution : for a creamier, tastier cake, use Half and Half, light cream or evaporated milk instead of whole milk. Also, you can use 6 egg yolks instead of 3 whole eggs. Read more: http://www. filipino-food-recipes. com/cassavarecipefilipino. html#ixzz2OUdbDbsQ Cassava Cake Cassava cake is another all-time favorite dessert in the Philippines.It is made from grated cassava which Filipinos call kamoteng kahoy or balanghoy. Desserts made from cassava are very popular because cassava is easily grown anywhere in the country. This is another kakanin (Filipino native sweet delicacies) that is so perfect for special occasions and even for regular snack or dessert. It is so easy to make —just mix all the ingredients and put it in the oven! The only hard part is waiting for it to bake! 🙂 Cassava cake is so popular that there are a lot of different versions available. Check out mine! I shared this on Miz Helen's Country Cottage's Full Plate Thursday, It's a Keeper Thursday, and Sweet Tooth Friday. Prep Time: 10 minutes   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Cook Time: ~1 hour and 20 minutes   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Servings: 12-15 Ingredients: Cake: * 2 packs grated cassava (1 lb each) * 1 ? 14-oz. can condensed milk * 1 14-oz. can coconut cream * 1 12-oz. can evaporated milk * 3 eggs * ? cup sugar (If you want it sweeter, you can double the amount of sugar) Toppings: * ? can condensed milk * 1 egg Procedure: 1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 2. In a small bowl, mix ? can condensed milk and 1 egg. Set aside. 3.In a large bowl, mix all cake ingredients thoroughly. 4. Transfer to a lightly greased baking dish or pan. Bake for 1 hour. 5. Pour the condensed milk and egg mixture on top of the cassav a cake. Bake for 20 minutes more or until desired brown color is achieved. (I usually bake it for 25-30 minutes because my husband loves it with a little burnt sides. ) 6. Remove from oven and allow to cool down completely. (In the Philippines, it is usually topped with grated cheese, but my daughters don’t like it that way so I omitted that part. ) 7. Slice and serve for dessert or even for snack.

Cultural object Essay

The object is an illustration present in a rectangle paper. The paper itself is glossy, thin and fine meshed. In the object, the words â€Å"SUPERMAN† can be found illustrated at the top of the paper in a block, all caps font, colored yellow with red lining. Below it and slightly to the right can be found the words â€Å"SUPERMAN ON EARTH† set in yellow all caps block font. At the center of the rectangular paper is a depiction of a male Caucasian garbed in a blue colored fitting suit, with a red triangular cloth covering the genitalia and a red cape flowing from the shoulders. Situated at the center of the man’s chest is a symbol, an â€Å"S† painted in red inside a red outlined pentagon filled with yellow. The illustration of the male Caucasian is seen standing over a depiction of the horizon of the world. On the left side of the male is an illustration of an explosion, with rocks being scattered. At the center of the explosion is an illustration of an elderly man and a woman garbed in a grey suit. The elderly man has the same symbol on his chest as that of the male in the center, although the elder man’s symbol is outlined in black. To the right of the male Caucasian in the center is a depiction of a star, pale white in color, with spires arising from the four primary and four secondary directions. The background is set in a black sky dotted by stars. A circular emblem colored blue and white and containing four stars set around the letters â€Å"DC† can be found on the upper left corner. Slightly below it is the words â€Å"No. 1, May ‘02† inside a yellow star like object. From the treatment of the paper to make it glossy, it is probable that this superman figure is of some importance to their (American) culture. The words â€Å"Superman on Earth† denotes his origin as extraterrestrial, as seen when accounting for the stellar background. The couple to his right is probably his parents since the elder man has the same symbol emblazoned on his chest. Deriving meaning from the name, superman means a man above the rest or a man better than the rest, giving a clue that the man is no ordinary human and may be imbued with special powers. His bearing whilst sanding over the world is more of as a guardian that as a creator giving a hint that as someone with extraordinary powers, he may have used those powers to guide or guard the world. In considering all of this, the figure could be a mythical hero of their culture whose exploits are recorded or told in a series of manuscripts using detailed illustrations and words to convey the story. The â€Å"no1, May 02 may refer to the date this illustration was created or made available. Biological Context of the Object Humanity’s interest in mythical heroes can be seen throughout history. These heroes usually have above average traits that set them apart from the normal persons of the times. This drive can be a result of humanity’s recognition of evolution and the principle that those with particular traits like incredible strength or stamina survived much longer and are better equipped to accomplish more than their ordinary counterparts. This veneration for those with extraordinary powers probably arose upon man’s recognition of his own physical limitations. When compared upon his prey, animals, man saw that there are some traits that would be useful. Flight in birds, speed in cheetahs, strength in bears, endurance of mammoths, and these traits made man wish that they had them. These wishes translated to mythical accounts of what it would be like to have those kinds of powers, accounts that are now perceived as myths and legends. Humans are the only species to be found capable of abstract thought. This allows us to manipulate resources in order to derive enjoyment. Literature, arts, these things enable us to derive enjoyment from our current society. Throughout history, civilizations have tried, after realizing their basic needs, to indulge in pleasure. Curiosity in man has also led to advancement. Myths and legends are byproducts of mans inquiry as to the nature of the world and philosophy as to the nature of the self. The object is a product of man’s persistent question, what if? Cultural/historical context: Depictions of individual with powers greater than that of mortal men can be found throughout history, in various cultures. These can be found in depictions of supernatural beings with extraordinary powers. Usually, myths stem from established cultures whose basic needs like food, shelter and security are ensured. It is then that the society turns to explaining the world around them. These are the foundation of first the creation myths, found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Greek, Babylonian and Nordic myths, as well as the Bible. Levi Strauss argues that myths stem from people’s intellectual inquiry, from the desire to explain self, surroundings and society. Various cultures around the world have provided objects by which beings with powers are depicted. These includes clay tablets where the epic of Gilgamesh is written,, the bible, ceramics depicting Hercules, Aztec pottery depicting Quetzalcoatl, among others. In these, it is evident that the heroic figures play a much important role to society than merely stories. Myths are closely tied with religion, as with the Norse, The Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. The concept of myths in early civilizations is most often a reflection on the prevalent culture, society, politics and beliefs of the people. Not all heroic stories stem from myths however. Most often, heroes in folklore have also superhuman powers. And most often, the stories portray the hero not just in one setting or one plot. Instead multiple stories abound, yet the protagonist remains the same. This is evident in Beowulf, the labors of Hercules and in American folklore, Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan. In American culture, folk heroes usually offer a glimpse of the culture of the times. The spectacular deeds of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan reflect upon what was considered the ideal American of those times, strong rugged, humorous and witty. They reflect a culture that is wild, that sees itself as being capable of great things. Looking at the object, we see that it gives a hint on the culture. From the object itself, one may deduce that the protagonist, Superman, was not of this Earth ( the stellar background, Earth’s view from a space perspective and the phrase Superman on Earth). The belief in an extraterrestrial coming to earth is not unknown of in world cultures. The Mayans, Aztec, and Egyptians all had beliefs in extraterrestrial life. This belief could be said to stem from a sense of terrestrial achievement. A sense that the culture is at its peak and that progress or destruction comes not from itself or from other cultures but from extraterrestrial sources. The object can be perceived as a story telling device of a mythical hero, not unlike clay tablets or parchment. This may be for amusement or inspiration. However, the use of graphics and words as means of expression, just like that of Egyptian pictograms and hieroglyphics shows that the object is intended for a wide audience based those who can intellectually understand as well as those who can appreciate the aesthetic value of the story. In standing over the world, it may be seen that their culture not only values their nation’s advancement, but may also see themselves as responsible for the welfare of other cultures, much like the Roman, Persian and Muslim empires. This may again stem from a sense of cultural supremacy, as well as from advancement in the various aspects of civilization. Much like oral tradition was used in the past, and later on the written word, for storytelling, so this object may be the means of telling the stories of this culture. Its use of graphics provides a starting point by which the imagination, conjured up by words, can take off into the realm of the supernatural. Just like myths and folklore of the past, the object provides a reflection not only on different aspects of the culture but also on its intended destination for the future. Economic Context Looking at the object, it really has no material value in the simplistic context. It is not edible, is not made of precious metals or gems, nor can it be used as a weapon. A society that produces these kinds of objects with only their aesthetic value and meaning and not that of necessity has presumably moved past the barter system of trade where only goods of necessity has any value. The object then can be either religious or secular in origin. The object could be religious as a representation of a believed and worshipped deity or secular as a means of entertainment. In observing the material by which the object is imprinted upon, the use of a higher quality paper denotes a higher value for the object, as well as the apparent detail in its production. Only a society with an advanced economic system is capable of allocating so much resource into a single representation, more so that the object is presumably for entertainment purposes. Most cultures that give priority to the arts are those whose economies are capable of allocating value to something that does not satisfy man’s basic needs but its wants. These civilizations, like that of the Italian Renaissance, the Aztec civilization, Egypt and Rome, use graphical representation to please a society satisfied with life. The same could be said of the economy and society that produced this object. It could be deduced that economically and socially, a majority of those living in the culture whence the object came from have their basic needs, food, water, shelter and security satisfied. Hence, they can allocate more in the pursuit of entertainment, education and other abstract needs. It could be seen that the culture is first technologically advanced, and second, is economically capable of obtaining materials for production. First, the paper in which the object consists of is glossy, not easily tearable, and water resistant and fine wired. This could only be a result of technological processing. The colors used in the paper can only come from pigments. In various cultures, it is only those with advanced economies which could lead to the middle and lower classes, and small objects, being painted with such detail. Ecological Context Ecology has at its maxim that the strongest population has the greater chance of passing on its traits to its off springs and thus enduring. The stronger population can secure resources, protect against attacks and obtain more space. Thus, rooted in ecology is the desire to be above others. In a sense, the appearance of a Superman would signify complete ecological dominance. That a culture would idealize a concept like this signifies that that culture, in terms of ecological population, has secured food, space and security from other neighboring populations. That the logical next step for this culture would be provided by an outside, or extraterrestrial source since all terrestrial aspects can be deemed fulfilled. The materials of which the object is composed of also give a clue that the civilization it belongs to is capable of producing synthetic material. Production of synthetic material is primarily a result of two things, scarcity of natural resources, or economic superiority by which materials can be obtained without touching one’s natural resources. Summary/Closure: The object can be said to be a means of entertainment and storytelling. It portrays a being with superhuman powers coming into Earth and protecting it. This object is a result of and shows different anthropological aspects of the culture that produced it. Biologically, the object can be perceived as the product of man’s desire to improve himself, and also his awareness of his limitations. The object also shows man’s capabilities throughout history to utilize its abstract thought to derive pleasure and ideas from the surroundings. Man’s innate curiosity has lead to the production of myths, featuring beings with supernatural powers, which serve as both answers regarding questions about the natural world and representations of the civilization itself. Throughout history myths have propagated, portraying the general psyche of a civilization. Methods of passing stories from one person to another includes oral, which became written, which as evidenced by this object became a combination of both. The depiction of men with supernatural powers have in history, generally been a representation of the strength and power of a civilization. The depictions of heroes that are larger than life exhibit a culture’s greatness. The wide spread indulgence of this can only come if all basic needs of the people within the culture are satisfied. Then the culture can indulge in other fields. The object signifies that in the culture that produced it, the basic needs are supplied, that help will come from others, not from other nations. The use of this object means that the society is willing and capable of allocating resources to personal entertainment. By looking at the object, one may be able to make deductions regarding its use and the culture that produced it. However, these deductions may or may not hold true, and requires much more evidence to be able to get a thorough knowledge of the culture. REFERENCES Harris, M. Culture. People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975. Keesing, Roger M. Cultural Anthropology. Sidney: Holt, Rinehart and Wilson, 1976.

The-Impact-of-Mergers-&-Acquisitions-on-It-Governance-Structures

958 The Impact of Mergers & Acquisitions on IT Governance Structures: A Case Study Pauline O. Chin Florida Atlantic University, USA George A. Brown Technologies Consultant, Jamaica Qing Hu Florida Atlantic University, USA Chapter 2. 32 ABSTRACT Developing information technology (IT) governance structures within an organization has always been challenging. This is particularly the case in organizations that have achieved growth through mergers and acquisitions.When the acquired organizations are geographically located in different regions than the host enterprise, the factors affecting this integration and the choice of IT governance structures are quite different than when this situation does not exist. This study performs an exploratory examination of the factors that affect the choice of IT governance structures in organizations that grow through mergers and acquisitions in developing countries using the results of a case study of an international telecommunications company.We find that in addition to the commonly recognized factors such as government regulation, competition and market stability, organizational culture, and IT competence, top management’s predisposition toward a specific business strategy and governance structure can profoundly influence the choice of IT governance in organizations. Managerial implications are discussed. Copyright  © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. The Impact of Mergers & Acquisitions on IT Governance StructuresInTRoduCTIon The business environment has become increasingly complex and competitive due to the rapid advances in technology and globalization of the world economy over the last two decades. In order to survive and to compete on a global scale, organizations have sought to increase their market share through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) both locally and internationally. In a publication by the Bureau of Census (2002) on merg ers and acquisitions in over 41 industries for the year 1998, it was reported that there were 3,882 cases of U.S. companies acquiring other U. S. companies. These data also indicated that there were 483 cases of foreign companies’ acquisitions of U. S. companies at an estimated value of US $233 billion, and 746 cases of U. S. companies acquiring foreign companies at an estimated value of US $128 billion. The trend toward mergers and acquisitions has been clearly demonstrated within the telecommunications industry worldwide (Oh, 1996; Ramamurti, 2000; Trillas, 2002; Wilcox et al. , 2001).Over the last several years, telecommunications companies in North America, Europe, and Asia have looked toward acquisitions and mergers for their survival and growth. During the last decade there has been an increasing number of local and foreign investments in the industry (Oh, 1996; Ramamurti, 2000), due primarily to the deregulation of the telecommunications markets as well as the move tow ard total or partial privatization of telecommunications companies within developing regions (Gutierrez & Berg, 2000; Melody, 1999).Foreign investments in developing countries within Latin America and the Caribbean have increased tremendously over the last 20 years due largely to changes in the regulatory policies within these regions. Historically, companies in Latin America and the Caribbean were owned primarily by the local states. This changed dramatically in the mid-1980s to 1990s as the increasing economic and financial demands on the industry forced companies in the region to look toward foreign investments in order to stay competitive.Gutierrez and Berg (2000) reported that between the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, 14 out of the 24 telecommunications firms in the region privatized their companies. This strategy is also credited with setting into motion the current trend in a majority of the region’s telecommunications companies toward increased partial or total privatizatio n (Gutierrez & Berg, 2000; Ramamurti, 2000). As a consequence of this massive privatization and merger-and-acquisition movement in the telecommunications industry, the role f IT in these organizations has changed significantly over the last decade. The traditional relationship of IT providing support services to individual departments within an organization has evolved into one where IT now plays a broader role in achieving the overall strategic goals of the organization via a focus on global enterprise-wide support that encompasses not only multiple departments, but often different countries and cultures as well.As a result, IT governance in the dynamic and complex business environment has been pushed to the forefront of critical issues facing the management of these organizations, in spite of the fact that little research exists on IT governance that attempts to identify and explain the multiple factors that may affect the choice of IT governance structures in the context of merge rs and acquisitions in developing regions.In order to address these issues, this article examines the evolution of a governance structure within a global telecommunications network organization, based on a framework developed from the extant literature on corporate and IT governance theories and practices. The article addresses the general research question: In the process of integrating foreign subsidiaries into the host company, what are the factors that influence the choice of IT governance structure? The primary purpose of the article is to contribute to a broader understanding 959 2 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the â€Å"Add to Cart† button on the publisher's webpage: www. igi-global. com/chapter/impact-mergers-acquisitions-governancestructures/9761 Related Content Information and Communication Technology and Good Governance in Africa G. Onu (2007). Encyclopedia of Digital Government (pp. 1026-1034). www. irm a-international. org/chapter/information-communication-technology-goodgovernance/11628/ Internet Voting: Embracing Technology in Electoral Processes Andru Riera, Jordi Sanchez and Laia Torras (2002).Electronic Government: Design, Applications and Management (pp. 78-98). www. irma-international. org/chapter/internet-voting-embracing-technology-electoral/9997/ Identifying Barriers to e-Government Services for Citizens in Developing Countries: An Exploratory Study Subhajyoti Ray (2011). International Journal of Electronic Government Research (pp. 79-91). www. irma-international. org/article/identifying-barriers-government-services-citizens/56100/ The State of Mobile Government in Turkey: Overview, Policy Issues, and Future Prospects Mete Yildiz (2008).Electronic Government: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 236-248). www. irma-international. org/chapter/state-mobile-government-turkey/9708/ The â€Å"Quicksilver Initiatives† as a Framework for e-Government Str ategy Design in Developing Economies Kelvin Joseph Bwalya, Tanya Du Plessis and Chris Rensleigh (2012). Handbook of Research on EGovernment in Emerging Economies: Adoption, E-Participation, and Legal Frameworks (pp. 605-623). www. irma-international. org/chapter/quicksilver-initiatives-framework-government-strategy/64874/

Women forced into prostitution Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Women forced into prostitution - Research Paper Example Research in many parts of the world has shown that women are most usually tricked into a life of prostitution and servitude. It is a life no one wants, for it brings shame, disrespect and dishonor not only to the woman concerned but also her family (Troubnikoff, 27). In fact, few self respecting individuals would want to associate with her. Not only does prostitution affect her physically, but women are also shown to have mental and psychological effects from these experiences. She cannot and usually does not marry, and in fact carries in her heart a lifelong hatred and disregard for men, especially those who have enticed or tricked her into this sordid way of life. Discussion History calls prostitution one of the oldest professions known to women. But how did women come to know the effect that their beauty had on men? Most likely it was the man who was enticed by her beauty and wanted to sleep with her. Scientists have maintained that men and women are attracted to very different th ings when it comes to love. For the man, it is almost always the physical attributes of a woman that are more attractive. For the woman, they say that she is more captivated by the nature of a man. This shows that men can be attracted in an instant, while women only after getting to know the nature of the person they prefer. Love poems and songs that speak of a woman’s smile, hair, eyes, smoothness of skin and body etc are almost always written by the male sex. In fact the whole cosmetic and fashion industry are based on this premise (Perkins, 12). The world loves both handsome men and beautiful women. They are the stuff of dreams and everyone wants to possess them or be close to them. A woman can be forced into prostitution for many reasons. Chief among them are economic reasons. If despite her education and upbringing, she cannot get a job to make ends meet or enough to support her parents and other siblings, then she may be forced to get into prostitution, especially if sh e is poor. However in places like Thailand and India, the truth is often worse. We find people who can entice even parents to part with one of their daughters under the guise of gainful employment in the city (Lim, 15). Unbeknown to them, once she is under his control, she is usually shipped off to the red light areas in busy cities and forced to please men and satisfy their sexual desires and perversions (Flowers, 80). She cannot communicate with her parents. Usually someone else even begins sending false letters to her family back home saying that she is doing fine. Then the letters stop under the pretext of finding another job etc. In this way she becomes a money-making machine for her paramour, pimp and madam, doing all the work while earning nothing in exchange. To avoid suspicion sometimes, human traffickers even send home some money in the beginning just to placate her family. Later on this is stopped as well as the communication (Cundiff, 2). We also have cases where playboy types get a girl to love them and then reveal their true identity as pimps after she has given up her body to them. It can start with the boy, lead to his friends, and finally when she is used to the money and the lifestyle, she is forced to join the sex industry by such created circumstances. At this point usually she has nowhere else to go and cannot tell anyone because of the shame she feels. As she gets used to this life and its demands, she learns to please and entice men. It becomes a game and a profession for her, just like any other (Carpenter, 18). Research has indicated that prostitution has a deep and lasting impact on women, especially those who have been tricked into this profession. They cannot

Your own contemporary utopia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Your own contemporary utopia - Essay Example A principal aspect of many Utopias is peacefulness. This implies that there is zero tolerance for violence on the part of the community members. Alternatively, members of a utopian community may result to policies of diplomacy thus treating other societal members with utmost courtesy. This requirement of peaceful coexistence may even encompass living things other than humans. For instance, one of the most renowned imaginary ideal communities, Platos Republic, bears the description of a peaceful community irrespective of its relatively rigid economic equality and social classes supposed to uphold state functions (Grube and Reeve 41-49). Fictional ideal communities serve the purpose of criticizing prevailing societal issues. In the case of Ashram West, the teachings are not any different since they are based on customary Hindu Tantra and Vedanta philosophy. These teachings foster integration of all life factors with spirituality, inclusive of sexuality. Vedanta philosophy also teaches that nature is divine, pure, and perfect, while Hindu Tantra develops additional awareness of an individual’s divine self. Additionally, Ashram West community guards against gay stereotyping, as is evident from giving refuge to gay people. The ideal utopian society according to Ashram West (n.pag) advocates for reverence, equality, and knowledge. Knowledge refers to the information acquired by individuals and utilized to enhance awareness and comprehension of issues. On the other hand, reverence alludes to the respect accorded to highly esteemed individuals or beliefs. Finally equality refers to the same level ranking of all individuals irrespective of their conditions or status in the society. These three aspects constitute other fundamental grounds upon which a utopian society prevails. These aspects are also evident in Ashram West’s case, since even

Joint Venture with X-Tech (Sweden) and Y-Tech (Albania) Assignment

Joint Venture with X-Tech (Sweden) and Y-Tech (Albania) - Assignment Example This memorandum outlines various principles of cross-cultural management, while also carrying out some cultural profiling of the two countries we are meeting, in comparison to our country. The main goal is to educate and guide Z-Tech managers, who will soon become expatriate managers, and who will need to avoid obstacles such as expatriate failure through culture shock, by improving their respective cultural intelligence (CQ). After posting these cross-cultural management paradigms to achieve optimal success for Z-Tech, the current memorandum concludes with specific recommendations. Z-Tech faces a future prospect of a successful joint venture with Albanian and Swedish companies. However, the conflict must be avoided in order to optimize results and create a win-win situation. A major organizational challenge that needs to be overcome, is conflict. Conflict occurs when members of a group or team cannot reach an agreement through common negotiation. There are many causes of conflict in the organizational environment. Conflict is negative, and effective communication embraces an aspect of positive sharing of information that reflects upon both the sender and the receiver. Only by truly communicating our plans, needs, and desires can we garner effective results. These results are often the result of a decision-making process, which is closely linked to patterns of effective communication and structural organizational theory. The importance of positive and practical decision-making cannot be over-stressed in the organizational environment. In the case of intercultural concepts, the vision or guiding principle or goal of Z-Tech should be looked at in an inclusive way. That is, the concept is inclusive to the culture in this construction, and bears communication across cultural barriers and boundaries to a greater understanding of the positive side of communication.

Managerial Decision Making SA Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Managerial Decision Making SA - Case Study Example This plays a great role in reducing loses that might emanate from negative impacts. Communication is the key towards making rational decisions as different individuals are able to view a certain situation in different perspective an aspect that makes it easy to understand the weaknesses associated with making a specific decision (Bazerman & Moore 2013). The main aim of making critical decisions in business is to maximize profits and minimize risks. As a result, it’s important not to make quick decisions which are not well thought of as this might leave loopholes for the competitors to use against the business or organizations (Bazerman & Moore 2013). In conclusion, I believe that the model can be used in making decisions but other aspects should be incorporated because every challenge that faces an organization is unique in nature. As a result, this can be used as a platform for making decisions but other models should also be taken into

Strategic Management of Harley-Davidson Research Paper

Strategic Management of Harley-Davidson - Research Paper Example Notably, the company is a US based multinational which specializes on motorcycles. The company was established in the year 1903 and is recognized to possess a strong competitive stance in the current market scenario of the 21st century (Harley-Davidson, â€Å"History†). Based on this thought, the essay shall conclusively intend to identify the major opportunities and threats existing in the US market and the strengths as well as weaknesses possessed by the company. 2.0 The External Environment 2.1 Factors of the Natural Physical Environment Affecting the Corporation and the Industry The components belonging to the natural physical environment of the USA, which affect Harley-Davidson and the motor vehicle industry, can be identified as the energy sources and the trend in its consumption and pricing. The energy sources existing in the US natural physical environment are bioenergy, fossil fuel, coal, hydrogen, hydropower, oil, solar, wind, geothermal and others. It is worth menti oning in this context that the economy maintains a strategic reserve of fuels in order to face the future challenges. This provides the company and the industry with the opportunity of minimized threats in terms of lacuna in energy efficiency of the economy and increasing prices of the fuel which in turn can hamper the future prospects of the company and the industry as a whole. On the contrary, it also raises the future threat of stringent legal barriers and increased tax rates due to the reduction in the level of reserve (U.S. Department of Energy, â€Å"Strategic Petroleum Reserve Annual Report for Calendar Year 2009†). 2.2 General Environmental Forces Affecting the Corporation and the Industry US economy is observed to be at its recovery stage, after being strongly affected by the recent global recession. The GDP rate is growing moderately with an increase in the unemployment rate. This in turn is expected to reduce the consumer purchase rate and thus prove to be a signif icant threat for the company and the industry in the current phenomenon (The Economic Times, â€Å"US Economy Grows 1.8% In Q1, Jobless Claims Rise†). However, political reforms can be recognized to provide with significant opportunities with facilitated investment in the technology sector (U.S. Census Bureau, â€Å"Science and Technology†). With the growing influence of the climate change and other environmental hazards, the US economy has undertaken several strategic measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by the motor vehicle industry. The measures include strict legal barriers under the regulatory bodies such as, National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), Clean Air Act (1970) and others (United States Environmental Protection Agency, â€Å"Automotive Repair and Maintenance Sectors (NAICS 8111)†; Natural Resources Defense Council, â€Å"U.S. Environmental Laws†).

Movie Review of Batman - The Dark Knight Rises Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Of Batman - The Dark Knight Rises - Movie Review Example Just like mere mortals, Batman underwent hindrances. Bruce Wayne took up the cudgels for his bankrupt Wayne Enterprises. Wayne erroneously funneled most of his Wayne money in Miranda Tate’s clean energy program. Wayne was wrongly persuaded that the nuclear power project would improve Gotham City’s community life. However, the project was shelved because of the possible environmental damage. Nuclear power generates a deadly by-product, radiation. Bruce Wayne was distressed, just like an average person. And just like most happy endings, he was able to bounce as Batman. As Batman, Wayne saves Gotham city by bringing the bomb outside the city’s boundaries. The bomb explodes over the bay area, thanks to recuperated Bruce Wayne. I admire Alfred Pennyworth. He is a person who has character (Darius 59). Alfred Pennyworth decided to spend his life caring for the needs of Bruce Wayne. He was not discouraged because he was not born with a silver spoon, living in a rich family. Pennyworth gave his 150 percent to each of his Wayne Mansion responsibilities. He used all his persuasive power to convince Bruce Wayne to make the original Batman crop up again. His loyalty was finally broken when the butler could no longer stand Bruce Wayne’s wasting his valuable time away in rotting flesh fashion. The former felt he was no longer effective as Bruce Wayne’s personal adviser, counselor, Butler, and friend. I deeply hate Bane. Bane is the epitome of a criminal, especially with the likes of Joker, Penguin, Cat Woman, and Mr. Freeze.

Analytical Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Analytical Report - Essay Example After an extensive and intensive research, it became evident that, the hotel can either opt for in house training or out house training that will involve sending delegates away for training. This report presents the benefits of in house training, the cost implications for the hotel as well as its effects on the employees under training. On the other hand, the report compares in-house training with out-house training using similar criteria. After the analysis, and comparison, the report offers the preferred alternative that the hotel can adopt. After a close analysis of the current situation of the employees, and in accordance with the hotel’s current determination to become a leader in the hospitality industry, it becomes evident that the staff needs empowerment. Without doubt, the employees need to acquire new skills that will serve to enable them to register remarkable performance as they deliver their services to the hotel’s customers. According reliable research in the hotel management, the loyalty of customers depends on the quality of services provided by the staff. Being a service provider business, responsiveness, promptness and courtesy are some of the critical attributes that customers use in their rating of the quality of services rendered by the hotels. Therefore, employees need regular training so that they may have the capacity to meet the expectations of the customers. This is the reason why the hotel has identified the need to offer additional training to the hotel staff. However, there are two alternatives that the hotel must choose from in its bid to offer additional training to their staff. One of the options that the hotel has to choose from is offering in-house training within the hotel premises. The other alternative involves organizing an out-house training at a venue away from the hotel. Both options have

What Is Literature Essay Example for Free

What Is Literature Essay I am grateful for help with this book from many people, especially Julian Wolfreys, Jason Wohlstadter, and Barbara Caldwell, my â€Å"Senior Editor† and invaluable assistant at the University of California, Irvine. I thank Simon Critchley for ? rst suggesting that I might write this book for the series he edits, as well as for his careful reading of the manuscript. I am grateful also to the co-editor of the series, Richard Kearney, for a helpful reading of the manuscript. Muna Khogali and Tony Bruce, of Routledge, have been unfailingly generous and courteous. Tony Bruce read the manuscript with care and made useful suggestions. A preliminary version of some of the ideas in this book, especially those in Chapter 4, was presented as a lecture for the Koehn Endowed Lectureship at the University of California, Irvine, in Febuary 2001. The lecture was called â€Å"On the Authority of Literature. † Subsequently, the talk was given as the ? rst annual Lecture on Modern Literature for the Department of English at Baylor University in April, 2001. The lecture was then printed there as a pamphlet for local circulation. I am grateful to my host and sponsor at Baylor, Professor William Davis, for his many kindnesses. Di?  erent versions of the talk were given at two conferences, in August 2001, in the People’s Republic of China: at a triennial conference of the Chinese Association for Sino-Foreign Literary and xi On Literature Cultural Theory, held in Shenyang, and at an International Symposium on Globalizing Comparative Literature, sponsored by Yale and Tsinghua Universities. I thank Professor Wang Ning for arranging these invitations and for many other courtesies. A German translation will be published as my contribution to a research project on â€Å"representative validity,† sponsored by the Zentrum fur Literaturforschung in Berlin. I especially thank Ingo Berensmeyer, as well as other colleagues in Berlin, for the chance to try out my ideas on them. A Bulgarian translation will be published in a Festschrift for Simeon Hadjikosev, of So? a University. I thank Ognyan Kovachev for inviting me, and for other kindnesses. Altogether, my preliminary ideas for Chapter 4 and for some other germs of this book have had the bene? t of many helpful comments and reactions. Finally, I thank the dedicatee of this book for su? ering once more through my ordeals of composition. She had to endure my faraway look, my dreamy absentmindedness. I was dwelling again in imagination on the other side of Alice’s looking-glass or on the deserted island where the Swiss Family Robinson made such an enchanting home. It has taken me a good many months to ? gure out what to say about that experience. Sedgwick, Maine December 15, 2001 xii Acknowledgements What is Literature? One FAREWELL LITERATURE? The end of literature is at hand. Literature’s time is almost up. It is about time. It is about, that is, the di? erent epochs of di? erent media. Literature, in spite of its approaching end, is nevertheless perennial and universal. It will survive all historical and technological changes. Literature is a feature of any human culture at any time and place. These two contradictory premises must govern all serious re? ection â€Å"on literature† these days. What brings about this paradoxical situation? Literature has a history. I mean â€Å"literature† in the sense we in the West use the word in our various languages: â€Å"literature† (French or English) â€Å"letteratura† (Italian), â€Å"literatura† (Spanish), â€Å"Literatur† (German). As Jacques Derrida observes in Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, the word literature comes from a Latin stem. It cannot be detached from its Roman-ChristianEuropean roots. Literature in our modern sense, however, appeared in the European West and began in the late seventeenth century, at the earliest. Even then the word did not have its modern meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word â€Å"literature† was ? rst used in our current sense only quite recently. Even a de? nition of â€Å"literature† as including memoirs, history, collections of letters, learned treatises, etc. , as well as poems, printed plays, and 1 On Literature  novels, comes after the time of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary (1755). The restricted sense of literature as just poems, plays, and novels is even more recent. The word â€Å"literature† is de? ned by Johnson exclusively in the now obsolescent sense of â€Å"Acqaintance with ‘letters’ or books; polite or humane learning; literary culture. † One example the OED gives is as late as 1880: â€Å"He was a man of very small literature. † Only by the third de? nition in the OED does one get to: Literary production as a whole; the body of writings produced in a particular country or period, or in the world in general. Now also in a more restricted sense, applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the grounds of beauty of form or emotional effect. This de? nition, says the OED, â€Å"is of very recent emergence both in England and France. † Its establishment may be conveniently dated in the mid-eighteenth century and associated, in England at least, with the work of Joseph and Thomas Wharton (1722–1800; 1728–90). They were hailed by Edmund Gosse, in an essay of 1915–16 (â€Å"Two Pioneers of Romanticism: Joseph and Thomas Wharton†), as giving literature its modern de? nition. Literature in that sense is now coming to an end, as new media gradually replace the printed book. WHAT HAS MADE LITERATURE POSSIBLE? 2 On Literature What are the cultural features that are necessary concomitants of literature as we have known it in the West? Western literature belongs to the age of the printed book and of other print forms like newspapers, magazines, and periodicals generally. Literature is associated with the gradual rise of almost universal literacy in the West. No widespread literacy, no literature. Literacy, furthermore, is associated with the gradual appearance from the seventeenth century onward of Western-style democracies. This means regimes with expanded su? rage, government by legislatures, regulated judicial systems, and fundamental human rights or civil liberties. Such democracies slowly developed more or less universal education. They also allowed citizens more or less free access to printed materials and to the means of printing new ones. This freedom, of course, has never been complete. Various forms of censorship, in even the freest democracies today, limit the power of the printing press. Nevertheless, no technology has ever been more e? ective than the printing press in breaking down class hierarchies of power. The printing press made democratic revolutions like the French Revolution or the American Revolution possible. The Internet is performing a similar function today. The printing and circulation of clandestine newspapers, manifestoes, and emancipatory literary works was essential to those earlier revolutions, just as email, the Internet, the cell phone, and the â€Å"hand-held† will be essential to whatever revolutions we may have from now on. Both these communication regimes are also, of course, powerful instruments of repression. The rise of modern democracies has meant the appearance of the modern nation-state, with its encouragement of a sense of ethnic and linguistic uniformity in each state’s citizens. Modern literature is vernacular literature. It began to appear as the use of Latin as a lingua franca gradually disappeared. Along with the nation-state has gone the notion of national literature, that is, literature written in the language and idiom of a particular country. This concept remains strongly codi? ed in school and university study of literature. It is institutionalized 3 What is Literature? in separate departments of French, German, English, Slavic, Italian, and Spanish. Tremendous resistance exists today to the recon? guration of those departments that will be necessary if they are not simply to disappear. The modern Western concept of literature became ? rmly established at the same time as the appearance of the modern research university. The latter is commonly identi? ed with the founding of the University of Berlin around 1810, under the guidance of a plan devised by Wilhelm von Humboldt. The modern research university has a double charge. One is Wissenschaft, ? nding out the truth about everything. The other is Bildung, training citizens (originally almost exclusively male ones) of a given nation-state in the ethos appropriate for that state. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the modern concept of literature was created by the research university and by lower-school training in preparation for the university. After all, newspapers, journals, non-university critics and reviewers also contributed, for example Samuel Johnson or Samuel Taylor Coleridge in England. Nevertheless, our sense of literature was strongly shaped by university-trained writers. Examples are the Schlegel brothers in Germany, along with the whole circle of critics and philosophers within German Romanticism. English examples would include William Wordsworth, a Cambridge graduate. His â€Å"Preface to Lyrical Ballads† de? ned poetry and its uses for generations. In the Victorian period Matthew Arnold, trained at Oxford, was a founding force behind English and United States institutionalized study of literature. Arnold’s thinking is still not without force in conservative circles today. Arnold, with some help from the Germans, presided over the transfer from philosophy to literature of the responsibility for Bildung. Literature would shape citizens by giving them 4 On Literature knowledge of what Arnold called â€Å"the best that is known and thought in the world. † This â€Å"best† was, for Arnold, enshrined in canonical Western works from Homer and the Bible to Goethe or Wordsworth. Most people still ? rst hear that there is such a thing as literature from their school teachers. Universities, moreover, have been traditionally charged with the storage, cataloguing, preservation, commentary, and interpretation of literature through the accumulations of books, periodicals, and manuscripts in research libraries and special collections. That was literature’s share in the university’s responsibility for Wissenschaft, as opposed to Bildung. This double responsibility was still very much alive in the literature departments of The Johns Hopkins University when I taught there in the 1950s and 1960s. It has by no means disappeared today. Perhaps the most important feature making literature possible in modern democracies has been freedom of speech. This is the freedom to say, write, or publish more or less anything. Free speech allows everyone to criticize everything, to question everything. It confers the right even to criticize the right to free speech. Literature, in the Western sense, as Jacques Derrida has forcefully argued, depends, moreover, not just on the right to say anything but also on the right not to be held responsible for what one says. How can this be? Since literature belongs to the realm of the imaginary, whatever is said in a literary work can always be claimed to be experimental, hypothetical, cut o? from referential or performative claims. Dostoevsky is not an ax murderer, nor is he advocating ax murder in Crime and Punishment. He is writing a ? ctive work in which he imagines what it might be like to be an ax murderer. A ritual formula is printed at the beginning of many modern detective stories: â€Å"Any 5 What is Literature? resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. †This (often false) claim is not only a safeguard against lawsuits. It also codi? es the freedom from referential responsibility that is an essential feature of literature in the modern sense. A ? nal feature of modern Western literature seemingly contradicts the freedom to say anything. Even though democratic freedom of speech in principle allows anyone to say anything, that freedom has always been severely curtailed, in various ways. Authors during the epoch of printed literature have de facto been held responsible not only for the opinions expressed in literary works but also for such political or social e?ects as those works have had or have been believed to have had. Sir Walter Scott’s novels and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin have in di? erent ways been held responsible for causing the American Civil War, the former by instilling absurdly outmoded ideas of chivalry in Southern gentry, the latter by decisively encouraging support for the abolition of slavery. Nor are these claims nonsensical. Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Chinese translation was one of Mao Tse Tung’s favorite books. Even today, an author would be unlikely to get away before a court of law with a claim that  it is not he or she speaking in a given work but an imaginary character uttering imaginary opinions. Just as important as the development of print culture or the rise of modern democracies in the development of modern Western literature, has been the invention, conventionally associated with Descartes and Locke, of our modern sense of the self. From the Cartesian cogito, followed by the invention of identity, consciousness, and self in Chapter 27, Book II, of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, to the sovereign. I or Ich of Fichte, to absolute consciousness in Hegel, to the I as 6 On Literature  the agent of the will to power in Nietzsche, to the ego as one element of the self in Freud, to Husserl’s phenomenological ego, to the Dasein of Heidegger, explicitly opposed to the Cartesian ego, but nevertheless a modi? ed form of subjectivity, to the I as the agent of performative utterances such as â€Å"I promise† or â€Å"I bet† in the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others, to the subject not as something abolished but as a problem to be interrogated within deconstructive or postmodern thinking – the whole period of literature’s heyday has depended on one or another idea of the self as a selfconscious and responsible agent. The modern self can be held liable for what it says, thinks, or does, including what it does in the way of writing works of literature. Literature in our conventional sense has also depended on a new sense of the author and of authorship. This was legalized in modern copyright laws. All the salient forms and techniques of literature have, moreover, exploited the new sense of selfhood. Early ? rst-person novels like Robinson Crusoe adopted the direct presentation of interiority characteristic of seventeenth-century Protestant confessional works. Eighteenth-century novels in letters exploited epistolary presentations of subjectivity. Romantic poetry a? rmed a lyric â€Å"I. † Nineteenth-century novels developed sophisticated forms of third-person narration. These allowed a double simultaneous presentation by way of indirect discourse of two subjectivities, that of the narrator, that of the character. Twentieth-century novels present directly in words the â€Å"stream of consciousness† of ? ctional protagonists. Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of Ulysses is the paradigmatic case of the latter. 7 What is Literature? THE END OF THE PRINT AGE Most of these features making modern literature possible are now undergoing rapid transformation or putting in question. People are now not so certain of the unity and perdurance of the self, nor so certain that the work can be explained by the authority of the author. Foucault’s â€Å"What is an Author? † and Roland Barthes’s â€Å"The Death of the Author† signaled the end of the old tie between the literary work and its author considered as a unitary self, the real person William Shakespeare or Virginia Woolf. Literature itself has contributed to the fragmentation of the self. Forces of economic, political, and technological globalization are in many ways bringing about a weakening of the nation-state’s separateness, unity, and integrity. Most countries are now multilingual and multi-ethnic. Nations today are seen to be divided within as well as existing within more permeable borders. American literature now includes works written in Spanish, Chinese, Native American languages, Yiddish, French, and so on, as well as works written in English from within those groups, for example African-American literature. Over sixty minority languages and cultures are recognized in the People’s Republic of China. South Africa after apartheid has eleven o? cial languages, nine African languages along with English and Afrikaans. This recognition of internal division is ending literary study’s institutionalization according to national literatures, each with its presumedly selfenclosed literary history, each written in a single national language. The terrible events of the mid-twentieth century, World War II and the Holocaust, transformed our civilization and Western literature with it. Maurice Blanchot and others have even argued persuasively that literature in the old sense is impossible after the Holocaust. 8 On Literature In addition, technological changes and the concomitant development of new media are bringing about the gradual death of literature in the modern sense of the word. We all know what those new media are: radio, cinema, television, video, and the Internet, soon universal wireless video. A recent workshop I attended in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) brought together American literary scholars and representatives of the Chinese Writers Association. At that meeting it became evident that the most respected and in? uential Chinese writers today are those whose novels or stories are turned into one or another television series. The major monthly journal printing poetry in the PRC has in the last decade declined in circulation from an amazing 700,000 to a â€Å"mere† 30,000, though the proliferation of a dozen or more new in? uential poetry journals mitigates that decline somewhat and is a healthy sign of diversi? cation. Nevertheless, the shift to the new media is decisive. Printed literature used to be a primary way in which citizens of a given nation state were inculcated with the ideals, ideologies, ways of behavior and judgment that made them good citizens. Now that role is being increasingly played, all over the world, for better or for worse, by radio, cinema, television, VCRs, DVDs, and the Internet. This is one explanation for the di? culties literature departments have these days in getting funding. Society no longer needs the university as the primary place where the national ethos is inculcated in citizens. That work used to be done by the humanities departments in colleges and universities, primarily through literary study. Now it is increasingly done by television, radio talk shows, and by cinema. People cannot be reading Charles Dickens or Henry James or Toni Morrison and at the same time watching television or a ? lm on VCR, though some 9 What is Literature? people may claim they can do that. The evidence suggests that people spend more and more time watching television or sur? ng the Internet. More people, by far, probably, have seen the recent ? lms of novels by Austen, Dickens, Trollope, or James than have actually read those works. In some cases (though I wonder how often), people read the book because they have seen the television adaptation. The printed book will retain cultural force for a good while yet, but its reign is clearly ending. The new media are more or less rapidly replacing it. This is not the end of the world, only the dawn of a new one dominated by new media. One of the strongest symptoms of the imminent death of literature is the way younger faculty members, in departments of literature all over the world, are turning in droves from literary study to theory, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media studies (? lm, television, etc. ), popular culture studies, Women’s studies, African-American studies, and so on. They often write and teach in ways that are closer to the social sciences than to the humanities as traditionally conceived. Their writing and teaching often marginalizes or ignores literature. This is so even though many of them were trained in old-fashioned literary history and the close reading of canonical texts. These young people are not stupid, nor are they ignorant barbarians. They are not bent on destroying literature nor on destroying literary study. They know better than their elders often do, however, which way the wind is blowing. They have a deep and laudable interest in ? lm or popular culture, partly because it has done so much to form them as what they are. They also have a proleptic sense that traditional literary study is on the way to being declared obsolete by society and by university authorities. This will probably happen not in so 10 On Literature many words. University administrators do not work that way. It will happen by the more e? ective device of withdrawing funding in the name of â€Å"necessary economies† or â€Å"downsizing. † Departments of classics and modern languages other than English, in United States universities, will go ?rst. Indeed, they are in many universities already going, initially through amalgamation. Any United States English department, however, will soon join the rest, if it is foolish enough to go on teaching primarily canonical British literature under the illusion that it is exempt from cuts because it teaches texts in the dominant language of the country. Even the traditional function of the university as the place where libraries store literature from all ages and in all languages, along with secondary material, is now being rapidly usurped by digitized databases. Many of the latter are available to anyone with a computer, a modem, and access to the Internet through a server. More and more literary works are freely available online, through various websites. An example is â€Å"The Voice of the Shuttle,† maintained by Alan Liu and his colleagues at the University of California at Santa Barbara (http://vos. ucsb. edu/). The Johns Hopkins â€Å"Project Muse† makes a large number of journals available (http:// muse. jhu. edu/journals/index_text. html). A spectacular example of this making obsolete the research library is the William Blake Archive website (http:// www.blakearchive. org/). This is being developed by Morris Eaves, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. Anyone anywhere who has a computer with an Internet connection (I for example on the remote island o? the coast of Maine where I live most of the year and am writing this) may access, download, and print out spectacularly accurate reproductions of major versions of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and some 11 What is Literature? of his other prophetic books. The original versions of these â€Å"illuminated books† are dispersed in many di? erent research libraries in England and the United States. Formerly they were available only to specialists in Blake, to scholars with a lot of money for research travel. Research libraries will still need to take good care of the originals of all those books and manuscripts. They will less and less function, however, as the primary means of access to those materials. Literature on the computer screen is subtly changed by the new medium. It becomes something other to itself. Literature is changed by the ease of new forms of searching and manipulation, and by each work’s juxtaposition with the innumerable swarm of other images on the Web. These are all on the same plane of immediacy and distance. They are instantaneously brought close and yet made alien, strange, seemingly far away. All sites on the Web, including literary works, dwell together as inhabitants of that non-spatial space we call cyberspace. Manipulating a computer is a radically di? erent bodily activity from holding a book in one’s hands and turning the pages one by one. I have earnestly tried to read literary works on the screen, for example Henry James’s The Sacred Fount. I happened at one moment not to have at hand a printed version of that work, but found one on the Web. I found it di? cult to read it in that form. This no doubt identi? es me as someone whose bodily habits have been permanently wired by the age of the printed book. WHAT THEN IS LITERATURE? 12 On Literature If, on the one hand, literature’s time (as I began by saying) is nearly up, if the handwriting is on the wall, or rather if the pixels are on the computer screen, on the other hand, literature or â€Å"the literary† is (as I also began by saying) universal and perennial. It is a certain use of words or other signs that exists in some form or other in any human culture at any time. Literature in the ? rst sense, as a Western cultural institution, is a special, historically conditioned form of literature in the second sense. In the second sense, literature is a universal aptitude for words or other signs to be taken as literature. About the political and social utility, import, e? ectiveness of literature I shall write later, in Chapter 4, â€Å"Why Read Literature? † At this point my goal is to identify what sort of thing literature is. What then is literature? What is that â€Å"certain use of words or other signs† we call literary? What does it mean to take a text â€Å"as literature†? These questions have often been asked. They almost seem like non-questions. Everyone knows what literature is. It is all those novels, poems, and plays that are designated as literature by libraries, by the media, by commercial and university presses, and by teachers and scholars in schools and universities. To say that does not help much, however. It suggests that literature is whatever is designated as literature. There is some truth to that. Literature is whatever bookstores put in the shelves marked â€Å"Literature† or some subset of that: â€Å"Classics,† â€Å"Poetry,† â€Å"Fiction,† â€Å"Mysteries,† and so on. It is nevertheless also the case that certain formal features allow anyone dwelling within Western culture to say with conviction, â€Å"This is a novel,† or â€Å"This is a poem,† or â€Å"This is a play. † Title pages, aspects of print format, for example the printing of poetry in lines with capitals at the beginning of each line, are as important in segregating literature from other print forms as internal features of language that tell the adept reader he or she has a literary work in hand. The co-presence of all these features allows certain collocations of  13 What is Literature? printed words to be taken as literature. Such writings can be used as literature, by those who are adept at doing that. What does it mean to â€Å"use a text as literature†? Readers of Proust will remember the account at the beginning of A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) of the magic lantern his hero, Marcel, had as a child. It projected on Marcel’s walls and even on his doorknob images of the villainous Golo and the unfortunate Genevieve de Brabant, brought into his bedroom from the Merovingian past. My version of that was a box of stereopticon photographs, probably by Matthew Brady, of American Civil War scenes. As a child, I was allowed to look at these at my maternal grandparents’ farm in Virginia. My great-grandfather was a soldier in the Confederate Army. I did not know that then, though I was told that a great-uncle had been killed in the Second Battle of Bull Run. I remember in those awful pictures as much the dead horses as the bodies of dead soldiers. Far more important for me as magic lanterns, however, were the books my mother read to me and that I then  learned to read for myself. When I was a child I did not want to know that The Swiss Family Robinson had an author. To me it seemed a collection of words fallen from the sky and into my hands. Those words allowed me magical access to a pre-existing world of people and their adventures. The words transported me there. The book wielded what Simon During, in Modern Enchantments, calls in his subtitle, â€Å"the cultural power of secular magic. † I am not sure, however, that secular and sacred magics can be all that easily distinguished. This other world I reached through reading The Swiss Family Robinson, it seemed to me, did not depend for its existence on the words of the book, even though those words were my only window on that virtual reality. The 14 On Literature LITERATURE AS A CERTAIN USE OF WORDS Literature exploits a certain potentiality in human beings as sign-using animals. A sign, for example a word, functions in the absence of the thing named to designate that thing, to â€Å"refer to it,† as linguists say. Reference is an inalienable aspect of words. When we say that a word functions in the absence of the thing to name the thing, the natural assumption is that the thing named exists. It is really there, somewhere or other, perhaps not all that far away. We need words or other signs to substitute for things while those things are temporarily absent. If I am out walking, for example, and see a sign with the 15 What is Literature? window, I would now say, no doubt shaped that reality through various rhetorical devices. The window was not entirely colorless and transparent. I was, however, blissfully unaware of that. I saw through the words to what  seemed to me beyond them and not dependent on them, even though I could get there in no other way than by reading those words. I resented being told that the name on the title page was that of the â€Å"author† who had made it all up. Whether many other people have had the same experience, I do not know, but I confess to being curious to ? nd out. It is not too much to say that this whole book has been written to account for this experience. Was it no more than childish naivete, or was I responding, in however childish a way, to something essential about literature? Now I am older and wiser. I know that The Swiss Family Robinson was written in German by a Swiss author, Johann David Wyss (1743 –1818), and that I was reading an English translation. Nevertheless, I believe my childhood experience had validity. It can serve as a clue to answering the question, â€Å"What is literature? † word â€Å"Gate,† I assume that somewhere nearby is an actual gate that I can see with my eyes and grasp with my hands to open or shut it, once I get in sight of it and get my hands on it. This is especially the case if the word â€Å"Gate† on the sign is accompanied by a pointing arrow and the words â€Å"? mile,† or something of the sort. The real, tangible, usable gate is a quarter of a mile away, out of sight in the woods. The sign, however, promises that if I follow the arrow I shall soon be face to face with the gate. The word â€Å"gate† is charged with signifying power by its reference to real gates. Of course, the word’s meaning is also generated by that word’s place in a complex di? erential system of words in a given language. That system distinguishes â€Å"gate† from all other words. The word â€Å"gate,† however, once it is charged with signi? cance by its reference to real gates, retains its signi? cance or signifying function even if the gate is not there at all. The sign has meaning even if it is a lie put up by someone to lead me astray on my walk. The word â€Å"Gate† on the sign then refers to a phantom gate that is not there anywhere in the phenomenal world. Literature exploits this extraordinary power of words to go on signifying in the total absence of any phenomenal referent. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s quaint terminology, literature makes use of a â€Å"non-transcendent† orientation of words. Sartre meant by this that the words of a literary work do not transcend themselves toward the phenomenal things to which they refer. The whole power of literature is there in the simplest word or sentence used in this ? ctitious way. Franz Kafka testi? ed to this power. He said that the entire potentiality of literature to create a world out of words is there in a sentence like, â€Å"He opened the window. † Kafka’s ? rst great masterpiece, â€Å"The Judgment,† uses that power at 16 On Literature the end of its ? rst paragraph. There the protagonist, Georg Bendemann, is shown sitting â€Å"with one elbow propped on his desk . . . looking out the window at the river, the bridge, and the hills on the farther bank with their tender green. † Stephane Mallarme gave witness to the same amazing magic of words, in this case a single word. In a famous formulation, he pronounced: â€Å"I say: a ? ower! and, outside the forgetting to which my voice relegates any contour, in the form of something other than known callices, musically there rises, the suave idea itself, the absence of all bouquets. † Words used as signi? ers without referents generate with amazing ease people with subjectivities, things, places, actions, all the paraphernalia of poems, plays, and novels with which adept readers are familiar.

No Child Left Behind Essay Example for Free

No Child Left Behind Essay The education policy that I chose is on education today and the influence of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act. The NCBL is a United States Act of Congress, which includes Title 1 (program for disadvantaged students offered by the government). This Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills. Each state is required to give these assessments to all students to receive federal school funding. This Act does not set the standards nationwide; each individual state sets the standards. Diane Ravitch, an education philosopher was a supporter of this Act when it was being passed. She believed that every child had the right to a proper education. As the years passed she acquired more experience and knowledge on the Act, and is now completely opposed to the NCLB Act. Ravitch believes that the states dumb down the standards in light of the NCLB. The question now is: is the No Child Left Behind Act seeking to repair the problem, or is it the cause? Under NCLB, the accountability of a childs education is examined by the Federal government and turned into the hands of the state. This was the first time an American president has set a goal of universal proficiency in reading and mathematics for all children. The federal emphasis on literacy, reading, and mathematics emphasizes teacher and school accountability, with negative consequences when schools do not meet established improvement goals (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Under NCLB the state must have accountability provisions that include how they will close the achievement gap. According to the Department of Education the achievement gap is defined as such; The difference between how well low-income and minority children perform on standardized tests as compared with their peers. For many years, low-income and minority children have fallen behind their white peers in terms of academic achievement (Department of Education, 2002). States must also monitor that every student not excluding the disadvantaged achieve academic proficiency. Yearly assessments must be produced to inform parents of the progress of both the state and the  community. Schools that do not meet the academic proficiency standards must offer supplemental services and take corrective action. If within five years the school is still not making yearly progress, than dramatic changes in the schools academic direction must be made. Dramatic changes according to the Department of Education are defined as follows; †¦additional changes to ensure improvement. The definition raises the question of whether there is a plan for failure at all. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, in its National Report Card shows that these goals may be falling short. Students in fourth grade show temporary improvement in math right after No Child Left Behind became a law, but returned to pre-reform growth rate. The NAEP estimates that by 2014 less than 25% of financially challenged and African American students will achieve NAEP proficiency in reading. Using the same time frame less than half the financially challenged and African American students will obtain proficiency in math. With so much pressure on the states to perform well, a trend is becoming apparent that they are inflating proficiency levels of students. This causes discrepancies between the NAEP and state assessments especially among the financially challenged, African American, and Hispanic students. With no sufficient evidence shown on that NCLB is working, the question is as follows; is the federal government capable of running our school systems? There are undoubtedly dangers in the public school system teaching a federally mandated curriculum. When one controls peoples perception of history, one controls the present. There is, of course, a point to be made that if the nations children are kept in watered down public schools, positions of power will be opened to the children of the aristocracy, who without fail, are being sent to private schools. So many of those Politicians who stand in the way of allowing poor children to escape failing schools, send their own children to private schools (sic). In New York City, where I have spent most of my professional life, both the current and the past chancellor of schools sent their children to private schools. Six of the seven members of the now-defunct Board of Education had  also sent their children to private schools at one time or another. One might add to the list other notables in New York-the governor, the mayor, the leaders of both houses of the legislature, and the junior U.S. senator (and former first lady). In fact, I cannot remember a mayor of the city who sent his children to public school (Viteritti, 2003). The reports of success of NCLB are encouraging to those who support the project. There have been schools in Sterling, Virginia and New York City that have received No Child Left Behind blue ribbons for their success in closing the achievement gap. Other schools have earned national praise for instituting such curriculum as Fit for the Future, a standards-based health and fitness curriculum for grades 1-10; and an anti-bullying intervention program in York, Pennsylvania (Department of Education, 2005). These programs are used to show the benefits of NCLB but are they academic necessities? The curriculum in a kindergarten class in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin included a lesson entitled The Little Convincer. In which a state trooper came into the classroom with a mechanism designed to simulate a car accident. In a discussion about car seat laws, a topic critics of the curriculum call too heady for kindergarteners, the students, ages five to six years old, were asked repeatedly which one of them were actively using car seats, and whether their parents wore seat belts as well. One child who innocently told the officer that his daddy did not wear his seatbelt was told by the trooper that his daddy could go through the windshield and the glass would cut his face and arms like ribbons, and once he hit the road, the car would roll on top of him. The dramatic lesson ended with each of the students taking a turn in the mechanism that simulated the car crash. The officer would speak softly to the child asking them questions about their class or the clothes that they were wearing and when the child began to speak would jerk them forward violently to teach them that an accident could happen at anytime. The question is, are these academic lessons that parents assume that their children are attending school for? Is placing the curriculum in the hands of legislators going to further our childrens grasp of the three Rs as most parents hope, or are they going to be taught how to become complacent law abiding citizens? The problem in purposing that the public school system is flawed beyond repair is offering an alternative that people are comfortable with. When a conversation about privatizing the school system begins many questions must be answered to abate the fears of the public. Would privatizing schools be affordable to all families? Many debates have waged on the validity of a voucher program, allowing families to choose any school they desire whether it is parochial, private, public, or chartered. Without public schools, there are no taxes necessary to support the program, and that money can be returned to the families of school aged children, creating extra funds for private education. In a system of free market education the individual and specialized institutions of learning would have to compete for students, because the money would be linked to the students themselves. Never in the history of the free market have advances been made without competition. When the monopoly on our childrens future ends, a true marketplace of ideas will be born. In an interview with US News, Ravitch was asked What needs to happen to make the law more effective for school? she responded I think the main thing to change is . . . to get rid of the remedies and the sanctions because the remedies dont work and the sanctions dont work. What No Child Left Behind has given the United States is an atmosphere of punitiveness. The word accountability has come to be a synonym for punish. If students dont learn, its the teachers fault. Fire the teachers. Close the schools. Were now on a wrecking mission to destroy American public education. Ravitch has completely rejected this Act, and believes we should do something to make our education system stronger. I questioned? Is the No Child Left Behind Act seeking to repair the problem, or is it the cause? I now have the answer. The NCLB Act sounded very tempting as it was passed by congress, and many like Diane Ravitch had hopes in such a great project for our education system, but everything is not perfect. The NCBL offers great support to schools, although standardized testing is not the correct way of determining the amount of financial support each school deserves or requires. After long hours of research I believe that the No Child Left Behind Act has taken a part in the cause of our problem in our education system today. Schools will not improve if the value is set only on what is tested. The tests we have now provide useful information about students progress in reading and mathematics, but they cannot measure what matters most in education. (Ravitch. The Death and Life of The Great American School System, pg. 226) In order to improve our public school system we must start by focusing on our schools, offering them an authentic and sincere education that encourages our students to learn.

Simply Speaking Legal Positivism Philosophy Essay

Simply Speaking Legal Positivism Philosophy Essay Simply speaking legal positivism is synonymous with the positive norms as against the principles of natural law. Legal positivism is often contrasted with Natural law. Going by the natural law school of jurisprudence, most written laws must be or are usually informed by, or made to comport with, universal principles of morality, religion, and justice, such that if not considered fair, it loses the very basic premise for being termed law. For example, persons engaging in peaceful protest through civil disobedience often appeal to a higher natural law in denouncing societal practices that they find objectionable. Legal positivism acknowledges the existence and influence of non-legal norms as sources to consult in evaluating human behaviour, but they contend that these norms are only aspirational, for persons who contravene they suffer no immediate adverse consequences for doing so. By contrast, positivists emphasize that legal norms are binding and enforceable by the police power of the administration, where persons who disrupt the law may be made to face serious consequences which may include fine, custody, loss of property, may end up with death. Legal positivism is based on the ways in which laws have been created and does not demand justification for the content of law or a decision for or against the obedience to law. As such emphasis is mostly on the way laws have emerged over time through practicing, deciding or tolerating certain ways of creating a law. Positivism is based on the framework that issues of legal validity must be strictly separated from questions of morality. What is ought to be has nothing to do what the law actually is. Legal positivism finds it roots way back in ancient Christianity. It is believed that the Ten Commandments held sacred and pre-eminent values. When ancient Greeks intended for a new law to have permanent validity, they inscribed it in stone or wood and displayed it public for all to see. Prior to the American Revolution, English political thinkers like John Austin and Thomas Hobbes came up with the command theory of law. This philosophy model said that the only lawful establishments that the Courts should recognize are the commands of the sovereign. This was because only the Sovereign is entrusted with power over the military and police force. Three varied schools of thought emerge in discussion of legal positivism. 1. The Pedigree Thesis: The pedigree thesis asserts that legal validity is a function of certain common truths. Deriving profoundly from Jeremy Bentham, John Austin  [1]  contends that the major characteristic feature of a legal system is the presence of a sovereign who is habitually obeyed by most people living in the society, but not in the routine of observing any specific human superior. Austins assessment, a rule R is lawfully binding (that is, is a law) in a society S if and only if R is directed by the sovereign in S and is backed up with the danger of an approval. The severity of the threatened sanction is irrelevant; any general sovereign imperative supported by a threat of even the smallest harm is a law. For Austins command theory of law there is a need for the existence of identifiable sovereign in self-governing civilizations. In the United States of America, for instance, the final political power appears to belong to the common people, who pick leaders to represent their welfares. The chosen leaders have the authority to compel the behaviour but are regarded as servants of the people and not as repositories of independent power. The polling population, on the other hand, seems to be the source of the final political authority, yet it lacks the immediate power to coerce behaviour. Thus, in democracies like that of the United States, the final political authority and the power to coerce behaviour seems to reside in different entities. However according to the reputable H. L. A. Hart  [2]  , every legal system must contain so-called primary rules that regulate citizen behaviour, a system consisting entirely of the kind of liberty a restriction found in the criminal law is, at best, a elementary or nascent legal system. The Pedigree theory focuses on the specific rule, namely that necessitates citizens to do or abstain from certain actions, whether they wish to or not. On Harts view, Austins stresses on powerful force that leads him to overlook the presence of a second kind of primary rule that confers upon citizens the authority to produce, alter or extinguish rights and obligations in other persons. Hart lays down, the guidelines for leading the creation of contracts and wills cannot plausibly be characterized as restrictions on freedom that are backed by the danger of a approval. These directions allow people to structure their legal relations within the coercive framework of the law-a feature that Hart corre ctly regards as one of laws greatest contributions to public life. The concept relates clearly to a complete monarchy, but it is not vibrant when applied to a society where some group is the sovereign. L. A. Hart argues that the command theory cannot distinguish between a legitimate government and an armed robber (give me your cash or else). The above-mentioned philosophy is completely based on compulsion. Therefore, on Harts opinion, there are two basic situations that are necessary for the existence of a legal system: On one hand those rules of behaviour which are valid according to the systems ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and, on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behaviour by its officials. Harts view is vulnerable to the same criticism that he levels in contradiction of Austins. Hart discards Austins interpretation as the official application of coercive force can no more give rise to an obligation than can the application of coercive enforced by a gunman. Nevertheless the condition is not unlike that, if the gunman takes the internal point of view towards his authority to give rise such to a hazard. Regardless of the gunmans confidence that he is permitted to make the threat, the victim is grateful, but not obligated, to obey the gunmans commands. A gunmans behaviour is no less coercive because he believes he is entitled to make the threat. 2. The Separability Thesis: Legal positivism also finds its explanations in the Separability thesis. In its universal form, is the Separability thesis asserts that law and morality are conceptually distinct. According to this theory only an object-level claim is made about the existence of conditions for legal validity. More commonly, the Separability thesis is interpreted as making only an object-level claim about the existence conditions for lawful legitimacy. For example H.L.A. Hart  [3]  defines it, the Separability thesis is no more than the simple contention that it is in no sense a necessary truth that laws reproduce or satisfy certain difficulties of morals; however in detail they have frequently done. Insofar as the objective level of understanding the Separability thesis denies it, its a necessary truth that there are moral constraints on legal validity, it suggests the presence of a conceivable legal system in which there are no moral constraints on legal validity. 3. The Discretion Thesis: Another theory commonly associated with positivism is the discretion thesis, conferring to which judges resolve problematic cases by making new law in the exercise of discretion. According to this theory a set of valid legal rules is exhaustive in nature and if any persons case is not covered under such a rule, then that particular case cannot be decided by applying that particular law. This gives the judges a quasi-legislative power to create or promulgate a law in circumstances where a case is not covered by a rule and hence the case cannot be decided by interpreting by applying an existing law/rule. Though often associated by positivism, the discretion thesis does not fit into the positivisms hypothetical idea. The pedigree and Separability theories mean to be conceptual claims that are true of every possible lawful arrangement. These two entitlements jointly proclaim that, within in every possible legal structure, the intentions of law are lawful in virtue of having been manufact ured according to some set of social agreements  [4]  . In this regard, there are no ethical restraints on the content of law that hold in every possible legal system. There could be three different senses in which a judge might be said to have discretion: (1) a judge has discretion when she exercises judgment in applying a legal standard to a particular case; (2) a judge has discretion when her decision is not subject to reversal by any other authority; and (3) a judge has discretion when her decision is not bound by any legal standards. Going by these, the discretion thesis is inconsistent with ordinary legal exercise. Even in the greatest problematic cases where there is no clarity appropriate law, lawyers dont request the judge to adapt the relevant issue by making new law. Each lawyer cites cases favourable to her clients position and argues that the judge is bound by those cases to decide in her clients favour. As a practical matter, lawyers hardly, if ever, acknowledge th ere are no legal morals governing a case and ask the judge to legislate in the exercise of discretion. 4. Conclusion: I conclude by saying that the modern rules in relation to particular place or people were mostly traced or taken from the past rules or from another lawful organization. All the contemporary laws have its individual creation, the issue of conflict of positivists view and historical interpretation is not as real as it thought. The most influential criticism of legal positivism all flow from the suspicion that it fails to give principles its due. The law has significant tasks like bringing harmony and peace in our lives, preceding the common good in safeguarding human rights, or to rule with honesty and therefore it has more relevance with our morals. A. Lon Fuller denies the separation of law and morality. He considers that all the good qualities and characteristics flow by clear consistent and open practices, which can be found not only in law but also in all other social practices in which those features including custom and positive ethics prevail. Further he reproaches that if law is a matter of fact then we are without an explanation of the duty to obey. If amoral law is made there is an obligation to obey.

Two Perspectives of Organization Theory Essay -- Business Management

Organization theory is the body of knowledge related to the examination and analysis of both the internal workings of organizations and their interactions with their external environments. This knowledge is generated either through practical experience or through scientific inquiry. Organization theory is also concerned with applying this knowledge to designing and managing organizations. Contrary to what the term â€Å"organization theory† might suggest, the literature of this field of study teems with a variety of organization theories. Each theory offers a perspective for understanding organizations. The wealth of perspectives in organization theory stems from the diverse, complex, and dynamic nature of organizations and the wide range of academic disciplines underlying the field of organization theory. For any field of study as diverse as organization theory, controversies are bound to occur. Such a clash of perspectives occurred when Herbert Simon published â€Å"The Pro verbs of Public Administration†---a biting criticism of classical organization theory as exemplified by the work of Luther Gulick. I shall first summarize Gulick’s and Simon’s central ideas about organizations, laying the ground to compare and contrast their approaches. Then I will consider Simon’s critique of Gulick, and to be fair to Gulick, we shall also examine arguments from an article written in Gulick’s defense by Thomas Hammond. In the course of the discussion of the Gulick-Simon debate, I will take the liberty to interpose my comments on the arguments put forth. My global comments on this debate are collected toward the end of this think piece. Let us first consider Gulick’s perspective on organizations. Gulick’s work on organization theory belongs t... ...e possibility for cross-fertilization between the existing paradigms exists. Perhaps, the best that can be done is to establish frameworks in which multiple paradigms provide different viewpoints from which to examine the complexities of organizations. Works Cited Gulick, Luther H. 1937. â€Å"Notes on the Theory of Organization† in Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick (eds.), Papers on the Science of Administration, 1–45. New York: Institute of Public Administration, Columbia University. Simon, Herbert A. 1946. â€Å"The proverbs of Administration,† Public Administration Review 6, 53–67. Simon, Herbert A. 1947. Administrative Behavior. Fourth edition 1997. New York: The Free Press. Hammond, Thomas H. 1990. â€Å"In Defence of Luther Gulick’s ‘Notes on the Theory of Organization.’† Public Administration 68, 143–173.

Assisted Suicide: The End of Suffering :: Euthanasia, Physician Assisted Suicide

Huge purple, grape-like masses are what a man named Richard Chinn saw under a patient's chin when he went to work for a hospital. This patient was diagnosed with cancer, and those huge masses were the cancerous tumor. When this man would eat, the cancerous growth would start collecting food, of whatever he didn't swallow quickly. When it would start growing to about grapefruit size, or larger, the doctors would amputate it. However, this did not do much justice, because the growth would just come back. Amputation after amputation made the patient very uneasy and want to end his life. He and his family numerously asked doctors to put him out of his misery, and even went to court, but he was still told "no." There was no more point to this man's life, he was suffering miserably and the cancer would never go away. Eventually he came down with ammonia, and instead of trying to revive him, they finally let him have his peace (Chinn). If Euthanasia was legal, then this suffering m an could have ended his pain early, but due to complications in the legal system, his life was drug out too long. Euthanasia is defined as a painless, happy and easy death, which is derived from the Greek words Eu Thanatos. Looking back to ancient Greece and Rome, Euthanasia was practiced regularly. If they saw a person suffering miserably and they could do nothing for them, they would end their life early by feeding them poison. However, throughout time religion was increased, and the life of a human being was viewed as sacred. Because of this, euthanasia was slowly portrayed as wrong ("The Controversy"). There are two main types of euthanasia- passive and active. Although both are illegal in all states but Oregon, passive euthanasia is easier for people to accept. Passive involves taking a person off of their life support, and letting them die naturally, while active is ending a suffering persons life prematurely, by helping them die, with an overdose of medication (A Euthanasia Glossary). Although Euthanasia is not widely accepted, nor legal, there are people who try to break the rules. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, was convicted of first-degree murder, in March of 1999, and will spend 10-25 years in prison. He injected a man named Thomas Youk with a deadly level of medicine and killed him.

College Binge Drinking: Not All Just Fun and Games Essay -- Essays Pap

College Binge Drinking: Not All Just Fun and Games For those who go out and drink in college, it is all about the good times, right? What everyone does not think about is the potential danger that drinking can cause, especially to the astonishing amount of college students who drink heavily on a regular basis. Alcohol abuse is the leading cause of death among teens and young adults, and according to many professionals, the high rate of binge-drinking and its effects on college students and the school or university is the top social issue on campuses. Despite all the attention given to this issue, especially in the past few years, no noticeable improvement has been seen. Drinking has even been called a â€Å"college pastime;† however, there is often a high price to pay for those who claim that they just want to have a good time, especially when it comes to the drinking that goes on at college campuses. Many first-time college goers need to realize that certain people have a higher tendency to drink heavily, and it is prove n that there is high risk for both those who do participate in this dangerous activity and for their non-drinking peers. It is a proven fact that young adults are among the heaviest drinkers in the United States, and college students tend to drink more than their non-college attending peers. These statistics don’t make all that much sense considering most people would say that they go to college to get ahead; however, if you use college as an excuse to go out and get drunk all the time (which many seem to do), then you might be worse off than those who do not go to college at all. Laura G. Hensley, a writer for the Journal of College Counseling, reports that â€Å"Binge drinking [also known as heavy episodic dr... ...k Groups.† American Journal of Public Health 93.11 (Nov 2003): 1929-1934. Academic Search Premier EBSCO. Roesch Library, Dayton. 26 March 2004. . Weitzman, Elissa R. â€Å"Social Developmental Overview of Heavy Episodic or Binge Drinking Among U.S. College Students.† Psychiatric Times 21.2 (Feb 2004): 57-60. Academic Search Premier EBSCO. Roesch Library, Dayton. 26 March 2004. . Williams, David, Adrian Thomas, Walter C. Buboltz Jr., and Maibel McKinney. â€Å"Changing the Attitudes that Predict Underage Drinking in College Students: A Program Evaluation.† Journal of College Counseling 5.1 (Spring 2002): 39-49. Academic Search Premier EBSCO. Roesch Library, Dayton. 27 March 2004. .