Wednesday, October 30, 2019

If you could pursue any occupation regardless of education, training, Essay

If you could pursue any occupation regardless of education, training, special talent, or expense, what would it be and why (maximum two pages, single spaced, - Essay Example Many companies require a bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Science or Scientific Programming, according to EUREKA. And experience is some times required too. The common experience wanted is two to six years in systems support, programming, network services, diagnostics and/or communications, again according to EUREKA. Some of the best colleges in California to earn a degree in computers are Cal Tech, Cal Poly, USC, and Cal State Fullerton. What should I take while in college to become a software business analyst? A software business analyst is a programmer first and foremost. So they need a strong background in computer programming. Also a software business analyst is required to have some skills in computer-controlled equipment, CAD/CAM system development, and familiarity with programming languages, such as C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic, XML, PHP, and Assembly. Other abilities needed include strong organization skills, principles in computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis and other techniques, knowledge of design software programs, and the ability to plan and oversee projects (1). There is a TV show called The Screen Savers that started in 1998 and continues today. I started watching the show from the beginning but I wasnt really interested in it fully, I really only cared about what games I could play on my computer. But about a year later something happened that sparked my current fascination in computers. So I find the career of software engineer will give me a great chance to learn a variety of different areas. I interviewed my computer teacher in Bangalore University, who has been in the computer field since 1988 and currently works at Bangalore University. I asked him what he thought was the best way to get in to computers and he said that getting a good education and that if you have a high enough GPA, some companies recruit students straight out of college. Another

Monday, October 28, 2019

Land Question and Ethnicity in Darjeeling Hills Essay Example for Free

Land Question and Ethnicity in Darjeeling Hills Essay ABSTRACT Although economic factors are often considered as essential for augmenting ethnic movements, the analytic relationship between economic issues and ethnicity is far from being clear cut. In an attempt to address the problem of ethnicity in a non-Marxist theoretical plane, most of the studies on ethnic problems inadvertently indulge such logical inconsistencies. Such a critical reading led us to conceptualize ethnicity as a lived-in category – much like the concepts of class or caste – where both the material and cultural domain of routine life congregates. With the help of a case study of the Gorkhaland movement in the Darjeeling Hills (India) and the input of a particular field of material predisposition – namely, the issues related with land and agrarian social formation, this paper attempts to argue that ethnic movements are a dynamic podium wherein the encoded meanings of material and/or economic issues/grievances are decoded in cultural idioms. Even if the discussions on ethnicity have an inbuilt tendency to develop a theoretical plane that criticizes Marxian class analysis and demands an autonomous conceptual frame duly encouraged by post-Marxist and poststructuralist/postmodernist theoretical renditions, literatures on ethnicity for the most part have stressed economic factors, in some way or the other. Hence, finding available studies, which have made considerable advances in understanding the problem of Gorkha ethnicity, that have concentrated their focus on economic factors as the root cause of ethnic antagonism and conflict in the Darjeeling Hills (West Bengal, India) is common. ‘Economic stagnation’ (Dasgupta 1988), ‘uneven implementation of development policies’ (Chakrabarty 1988), ‘economic deprivation and negligence’ (Bura Magar 1994; Lama 1988; McHenry Jr. 2007; Nanda 1987), ‘petty-bourgeoisie aggrandisements against the dominance of monopoly capitalists of the Centre and the State’ (Sarkar 1988), ‘economic negligence, exploitation, and unavailability of white-collar jobs’ (Chadha 2005), ‘growing unemployment and step motherly attitude of the state regarding the overall development of the hill areas’ (Timsina 1992), ‘uneven development’ (Dasgupta 1999; Datta 1991), ‘endemic poverty, underdevelopment, and the perception of being â€Å"malgoverned†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (Ganguly 2005), are some such factors many scholars put as the root cause of the Gorkhaland movement in the Darjeeling Hills. However, none of these studies have made it abundantly clear how economic conditions – the domain of the material – are linked to the desires of ethnic separatism, which conceptually remained under the rubric of culture – the non-material. Again, if the economic factors remarkably remained so significant, as the studies show, then why ultimately the cultural warpath (i.e., 81 ethnic conflict) and not an economic one (i.e., class conflict) appeared as a suitable remedial strategy? One obvious question arises thus: how the ‘material’ is transposed into ‘cultural’? The present paper is an attempt to answer such questions by analyzing the case of the Gorkha ethnicity and movement as it emerged out of the people’s grievances experienced through their quotidian life processes cloaked in their relative positions within the structural inequality. In fact, ethnic identity much like the issues of class or caste is a lived-in category that emerges out of the perception of reality and receives constant reformulation, since the reality is itself dynamic. In our treatment ethnic identification – much like all other identifications – is overall rooted in the larger canvas of social experience, which determines the processes of framing contending relationships between and among groups based on their varying capacity of possessing the valued and scarce resources available in the society. Instead of pinpointing the causes of the movement, our analysis attempts to show that the assertion of Gorkha ethnic identity has had payoffs with respect to resource access and utilization and that the protracted struggle of the Gorkhas for separate statehood is that trajectory wherein both the cultural and material aspects of routine life coalesce. Sometimes this happens even without an immediate ethnic ‘other’. This is particularly the case, as the study shows, with the hill agrarian sector. It thus becomes imperative that the problem should be studied in a historical plane putting utmost emphasis on the social formation of the Darjeeling Hills, which would help us focus the pattern of resource distribution on an ethnic plane vis-à  -vis the question of structural inequality. The importance of treating the issue of Gorkhaland movement as a historical phenomenon can hardly be ignored, especially when one finds that the Darjeeling Hills has experienced a century long historicity of protest – sometimes accommodative, sometimes violent – to achieve a separate politico-administrative arrangement for self rule. Moreover, the historical perspective is needed to show the fundamental changes that have taken place within the social formation of the region since the colonial days and had corresponding effects for furthering the cause of the movement in the post-colonial period. Therefore, a proper historical analysis of ethnicity can help us understand how the grievances of the masses were articulated and were translated into the courses of violent action, how new equations came up because of state intervention and how the overall dynamics of the movement kept on rolling, putting ethnicity at the center stage. SOCIAL FORMATION AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Indeed, there can never be a single cause of an ethnic movement that stretched over a century.1 However, our concern regarding the causes of Gorkhaland movement is not about degree but of kind, by which we mean that Gorkha ethnicity, or for that matter the Gorkhaland movement, is embedded in the social formation of the Darjeeling Hills. It is neither entirely the product of primordial sentiments nor even the result of elite manipulation, but had been the outcome of a dynamic social formation that reproduced its productive forces, relations of production, as well as the relations of subjugation and exploitation meted out by its incumbents. The onus of social formation in augmenting the cause of social movement has been stressed by most of the major theoretical paradigms in some form or the other. For example, functionalism, though lately emerging from its erstwhile position of bracketing social movements as pathological social behavior, became increasingly concerned with the analysis of social movement as a variety of (normal) collective action and showed the necessity of framing a general hypothesis on the social system while analyzing social movements as a collective phenomenon of some sort. Likewise, symbolic interactionism and resource mobilization theory, in their attempts to analyze social movement, put stress on the relational structures and on the complex processes of interaction mediated by certain networks of belonging, respectively. The Marxist tradition, perhaps, has given utmost emphasis on the necessity to view social movements in relation to structural arrangements available in the social formation. Each social formation is rooted in a particular structure of relationship and movement is not the cause but the outcome of the differentially arranged social order in which privileges and rewards are more in possession of some minority groups compared with the majority others. Even the post-Marxist or for that matter the New Social Movement (NSM) perspective in their zeal to study the identity-based movements as manifestations of post-material claims hardly denied the importance of social formation while understanding the so-called post-material claims of the NSMs. In outlining the principles for the analysis of collective action, Melucci (1996:24) – a prominent figure of NSM school – points out that the analytical field of the NSMs depends on the systems of relationships within which such action takes place and toward which it is directed. The recorded history of the Gorkhaland movement suggests that the first spurt of the movement can be marked out in the year 1907 when the hill people submitted a memorandum – for the first time – to the colonial government urging separation from the then Bengal and the need to formulate a separate administrative arrangement for the Darjeeling Hills. ALTHUSSER, SOCIAL FORMATION, AND THE DYNAMICS OF RURAL DARJEELING Taking a cue from the centrality of social formation in the study of social movement as analyzed above, an attempt has been made to focus on the social formation of the Darjeeling Hills2 and its contribution to the development of a protracted ethnic movement in the region. Our treatment of the concept of social formation is Althusserian in inspiration and is viewed as a complex whole composed of concrete economic, political and ideological relations that provide the pretext upon which the consolidation of selfhood of the individual or the group within a given social space becomes feasible. It is worth mentioning here instead of using such terms like ‘social system’, ‘social order’ or for that matter ‘society,’ Althusser (1997) preferred the use of ‘social formation’. Since he believed while terms like ‘social system’ and ‘social order’ presupposes a structure that reduces the form of all its emanations, ‘society’ as a concept is loaded with pre-Marxist humanist conception that treats social life as ultimately the product of individual human beings. Althusser has used the concept of social formation with some broader theoretical appeal. He problematized the so-called base-superstructure module by bringing together the notions of social system, order, and society closer to his postMarxist formulation of social formation. Social formation, for Althusser, is constituted of a complex of concrete economic, political, and ideological relations, bound together and given their particular character as capitalist, feudal or whatever by the fact that economic relations, is the ‘determinant in the last instance.’ Conceived in this manner the concept of social formation presupposes that under this model social reality is neither determined, nor to be explained by a single causal variable but always by the whole structure (a notion that he labels as ‘overdetermination’), which remains amenable to the economic determinant only in the last instance. The uniqueness in Althusser’s concept of social formation lies in the fact that it problematizes the ‘base-superstructure’ relationship (that remains central, almost invariably, to the whole realm of post-Marxist scholarship) to that extreme of Darjeeling has been one of the prominent hill stations developed by the British i n colonial India.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Delinquent Parents :: essays research papers fc

Delinquent Parents? Gone are the good old days when mom and dad were around to teach their children about morality and the basics of growing up. Instead, we see parents who have replaced caring and personal involvement with the purchase of material goods. We see parents who are afraid to discipline their children and who are afraid to set boundaries. We see parents who are afraid to hug their children and be involved in their lives. A child's behavior shows the kind of home he or she comes from. Parents are suppose to be role models, but what do we find. Parents are neglecting their responsibility. Parents, who ought to teach by precept and example, have fallen prey to the "do as I say, but not as I do" syndrome. We as a society, often times fail to look at the root cause of many of the adolescent problems being witnessed today. I watched a PBS documentary entitled "The Lost Children of Rockdale County." I found this documentary to be very disturbing look into th e lives of middle to upper class youth. Though the focus of the program was sexual promiscuity, drugs, pornography, and alcohol, but what I found far more troubling was the tremendous breakdown that exists between the children of Rockdale County and their parents. This entire documentary was full of houses that were empty and void of supervision and adult presence. Some recent research on adolescent behavior has provided an insight into factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency. The relationships between parents and children play a significant role in the social well being of the children. Children who do the best, have parents who use both a great deal of warmth and caring with their children and also exercise a high level of control over their children's actions. High levels of warmth and control characterize the form of parenting referred to as authoritative. (Teenagers in Trouble, Gallagher, p.2) Authoritative parents are both firm and fair. Rarely did I see this type of p arent in the program. "I thought that if I disciplined you, you would run away" was one comment made by a mother whose daughter had gone on a drinking bing at age twelve, blacked out, and realized she had been raped when she came to. Many of the parents documented were not able to connect with their children and even when they did, they thought that just showing concern was enough.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Gandhi’s Campaign Methods Essay

It’s clear that Gandhi’s campaigns of non-cooperation and attending political meetings with high ranked British officials during the early 1930s, were hugely significant as they mounted pressure on the Raj, leaving the British with no other alternative than to make concessions towards the nationalists. However, Purna Swaraj wasn’t achieved by Gandhi’s campaigns in the 1930s, due to the limitations of his methods as he was unable to cooperate and negotiate with the British. Conversely, demands for nationalism increased across India and the British began to lose any moral authority they had over the Indians. Gandhi’s methods of non-violent, civil disobedience were hugely effective in turning many Indians against British rule, increasing demands for Purna Swaraj and attacking the revenue that the British relied on to survive within India. Source 1 is a declaration written by Gandhi, a speech in which was broadcasted on Independence Day. The symbolism of broadcasting this speech across the whole of India on the 26th January 1930, shows Gandhi’s purpose of targeting the masses to enthuse them on a day of huge importance, to rise up against the ‘inhuman rule’ they’re being controlled under. ‘Inhuman rule’ emphasises how the British were keeping the Indians in subordination within no care or consideration for the wellbeing of its subjects. This is witnessed with the tax that the British put on salt. Salt is a necessity for every Indians health and survival due to living in such hot climates, so consequently, the British revenue increased as they knew every Indian had to purchase it in order to survive. However, Gandhi wanted to ‘stop the payment of taxes without violence’ and thus, publicised the boycott of salt tax with his salt march on 12th March 1930. Initially, the British disregarded it and treat it as a joke, until it caught the attention of the worlds press as a result of Gandhi connecting with the supportive masses, and drawing in tens of thousands at prayer meetings and gatherings before the actual march. This contradicts the view of Lawrence James in source 3, who believes the Indians had ‘never come close to toppling the Raj’, as source 1 makes it explicit that the increasing animosity and non-payment of taxes, generated by Gandhi, concerned the British a great deal. Gandhi directly attacked the Raj as he declared it a ‘crime’ to submit to its rule in hope he could connect with the Indians and encourage them to follow his lead. He successfully did this as a result of the Salt March. Although only 78 of his supporters followed him on the entire march, many other Indians got involved. On route of the march, many Indian officials resigned from their posts. Elsewhere, another march was organised in South India were protests in Bombay, the North West Frontier Province and 2000 non-violent demonstrators at a salt production plant in Dharasana were attacked to the ground by police. This again is evidence of the ‘inhuman rule’ Gandhi speaks about in hi s declaration, and consequently shows why the British lost a lot of moral authority over the Indians. Source 2 explicitly shows that Gandhi’s non-violent campaign methods were effective at challenging the Raj and allowing them no other option that to begin making political concessions towards the activists. It adds a lot of weight to source 1 as it shows the effectiveness of Gandhi’s campaigns in relation to the British response. Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India at the time, recognised that ‘political dialogue’ was the only way forward from the current position in 1931, due to the increasing hostility in India that was becoming a huge threat to the Empire. Consequently the Gandhi-Irwin pact was signed on the 5th March 1931 which was an agreement between both Gandhi and Irwin. The most significant aspect of this wasn’t the agreements themselves, which saw many political prisoners released, Indian officials reassigned and future political changes to be in the interest of India, but more so the fact that Gandhi was seen as an equal to a leading British official. This in itself unleashed hope that the British would start showing respect and help the Indians advance politically. It’s clear from source 2 that Irwin showed some respect for Indians as he states that the ultimate purpose for India is not to be under ‘perpetual subordination’ in the British Empire. This too conflicts with source 3 as it suggests the British have come to the realisation that they cannot hold on and control India forever, due to the increase in non-cooperation amongst the masses as a result of Gandhi’s campaigns and in the aftermath of the second round table conference. This conference was held in Britain on 7th September 1931, which aimed to start negotiations towards Indians progression to self rule. However, it achieved nothing due to Gandhi demanding nothing less than Purna Swaraj and thus blocked any further negotiations and progress for India. In addition to this, his arrogant approach in being the only representative to speak for eve ry Indian angered many groups within the population, in particular the untouchables. Source 2 therefore shows that Gandhi’s campaigning methods were limited, and only effective to a certain extent. As this modern source was written by Tim Leadbitter, a writer for academic studies, we can trust that his view is objective. However, he does express his own opinion when stating that Irwin ‘rightly’ recognised the dangers of mass movements. This is unusual in textbooks which are used for academic purposes and could cause the reader to believe his opinion is actually fact. Nevertheless, put in context its clear that the mass movements were a threat to the Raj and so followed awaited Government of India Act of 1935. The provisions of the act were too little too late and although it provided Indians with provincial control, it achieved no advancement in central or higher administration, and the electorate was still less than 10% of the overall population. Congress did benefit hugely from the 1937 election and in effect became the leading party in India wh ich in turn caused resentment and anger from the Muslim League. By this time, Gandhi lost his campaigning momentum after his arrest in 1931 however that is not to say the small but significant successes of the 1935 Government of India Act wasn’t a result of Gandhi’s campaigning efforts. Source 3 contradicts the evidence in sources 1 and 2 and completely disregards any lack of progress being made by Gandhi and the Indian nationalists in the 1930s, with the non-violent campagns. It takes facts at face value as James takes a broad sweep over the British Empire. As a result, his account ignores the underlying pressures and Gandhi’s non-violent methods that challenged the British rule in India. James undermines Gandhi’s efforts by stating they ‘never came close’ to toppling the Raj, therefore believing that the civil disobedience and non-cooperation as a result of Gandhi’s campaigns, were too weak to put even the slightest dent in the British hold on India. However source 2 explicitly opposes this as the British Viceroy Lord Irwin recognises the need to show that the British are willing to help India progress politically, to prevent further unrest and mass movements witnessed after the Salt March. The resulting 1935 Government of India Act and 1937 elections weren’t direct results of Gandhi’s campaigning, however the small changes witnessed in Indians advancing in politics and having more say at provincial level, wouldn’t have happened at all if it wasn’t for the pressure Gandhi put on the Raj. Without his non-cooperation campaigns, the British wouldn’t have felt the need to make any concessions at all towards Indians, but the fact remains that by 1939 Gandhi’s agenda of 1930 demanding Purna Swaraj hadn’t been achieved. However, James is not completely oblivious to the pressure the Raj is under, as he states they can ‘hold on’ in an unconvincing tone. It’s therefore apparent that if the Raj had to make the effort to hold on to their control, Gandhi’s campaigning efforts and mass movements are obviously causing them some concerns and mounting pressure, and so much have been effective to a certain extent . Lawrence James does actually give evidence to suggest that some Indians were actually content with British rule as he mentions the ‘backing of an army’ of ‘loyal’ sepoys, which the British utilised for general administration and control. However this alone doesn’t hold any weight when confronted with conflicting evidence from sources 1 and 2. It’s therefore undisputable that Gandhi’s non-violent campaign methods as mentioned in source 1 were hugely effective in amplifying the nationalism within India and thus rallying the masses in order to put strenuous pressure on the Raj as witnessed in source 2. It is apparent however that Gandhi became less influential after his arrest in 1931. His campaigns lost momentum and Congress became machine that followed up the progress Gandhi had made prior to the 1935 Government of India Act. Source 2 therefore bares the most weight as it makes it explicit that Gandhi’s campaigning left the British with no other option than to proceed to make concessions towards the Indians, who where now actively pushing for future self governing. The British were then obliged to relinquish some power, and accept that there would be no going back to having complete perpetual control over the Indians.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Lunenburg, Fred C. Organizational Structure Mintzberg Framework

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY, ACADEMIC, INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1, 2011 Organizational Structure: Mintzberg’s Framework Fred C. Lunenburg Sam Houston State UniversityABSTRACT Henry Mintzberg suggests that organizations can be differentiated along three basic dimensions: (1) the key part of the organization, that is, the part of the organization that plays the major role in determining its success or failure; (2) the prime coordinating mechanism, that is, the major method the organization uses to coordinate its activities; and (3) the type of decentralization used, that is, the extent to which the organization involves subordinates in the decision-making process.Using the three basic dimensions —key part of the organization, prime coordinating mechanism, and type of decentralization—Mintzberg suggests that the strategy an organization adopts and the extent to which it practices that strategy result in five structural configurations: simple s tructure, machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, divisionalized form, and adhocracy. Organizations exist to achieve goals. These goals are broken down into tasks as the basis for jobs. Jobs are grouped into departments. Departments in organizations may be characterized by marketing, sales, advertising, manufacturing, and so on.Within each department, even more distinctions can be found between the jobs people perform. Departments are linked to form the organizational structure. The organization’s structure gives it the form to fulfill its function in the environment (Nelson & Quick, 2011). The term organizational structure refers to the formal configuration between individuals and groups regarding the allocation of tasks, responsibilities, and authority within the organization (Galbraith, 1987; Greenberg, 2011) Very early organizational structures were often based either on product or function (Oliveira & Takahashi, 2012).The matrix organization structure crossed thes e two ways of organizing (Galbraith, 2009; Kuprenas, 2003). Others moved beyond these early approaches and examined the relationship between organizational strategy and structure (Brickley, Smith, Zimmerman, & Willett, 2002). This approach began with the landmark work of Alfred Chandler (1962, 2003), who traced the historical development of such large American corporations as DuPont, Sears, and General Motors. He concluded from his study that an organization’s strategy tends to influence its structure.He suggests that strategy indirectly determines such variables as the organization’s tasks, technology, and environments, and each of these influences the structure of the organization. More recently, social scientists have augmented Chandler’s thesis by contending that an organization’s strategy determines its environment, technology, and tasks. These variables, coupled with growth rates and power distribution, affect organizational 1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY, ACADEMIC, INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY 2_____________________________________________________________________________________ tructure (Hall & Tolbert, 2009; Miles, Snow, Meyer, & Coleman, 2011). Henry Mintzberg (1992, 2009) suggests that organizations can be differentiated along three basic dimensions: (1) the key part of the organization, that is, the part of the organization that plays the major role in determining its success or failure; (2) the prime coordinating mechanism, that is, the major method the organization uses to coordinate its activities; and (3) the type of decentralization used, that is, the extent to which the organization involves subordinates in the decision-making process.The key parts of an organization are shown in Figure 1 and include the following. Strategic Apex Technostructure Middle Line Support Staff Operative Core Figure 1. The key parts of an organization. ? ? ? ? The strategic apex is top management and its support staff. In school districts , this is the superintendent of schools and the administrative cabinet. The operative core are the workers who actually carry out the organization’s tasks. Teachers constitute the operative core in school districts. The middle line is middle- and lower-level management. Principals are the middlelevel managers in school districts.The technostructure are analysts such as engineers, accountants, planners, researchers, and personnel managers. In school districts, divisions such as instruction, business, personnel, public relations, research and development, and the like constitute the technostructure. The support staff are the people who provide indirect services. In school districts, similar services include maintenance, clerical, food service, busing, legal counsel, and consulting to provide support. ? The second basic dimension of an organization is its prime coordinating mechanism. This includes the following: FRED C.LUNENBURG _________________________________________________ ____________________________________3 ? ? ? ? ? Direct supervision means that one individual is responsible of the work of others. This concept refers to the unity of command and scalar principles. Standardization of work process exists when the content of work is specified or programmed. In school districts, this refers to job descriptions that govern the work performance of educators. Standardization of skills exists when the kind of training necessary to do the work is specified. In school systems, this refers to state certificates required for the various ccupants of a school district’s hierarchy. Standardization of output exists when the results of the work are specified. Because the â€Å"raw material† that is processed by the operative core (teachers) consists of people (students), not things, standardization of output is more difficult to measure in schools than in other nonservice organizations. Nevertheless, a movement toward the standardization of output in schools in recent years has occurred. Examples include competency testing of teachers, state-mandated testing of students, state-mandated curricula, prescriptive learning objectives, and other efforts toward legislated learning.Mutual adjustment exists when work is coordinated through informal communication. Mutual adjustment or coordination is the major thrust of Likert’s (1987) â€Å"linking-pin† concept. The third basic dimension of an organization is the type of decentralization it employs. The three types of decentralization are the following: ? ? ? Vertical decentralization is the distribution of power down the chain of command, or shared authority between superordinates and subordinates in any organization. Horizontal decentralization is the extent to which non administrators (including staff) make decisions, or shared authority between line and staff.Selective decentralization is the extent to which decision-making power is delegated to different units within t he organization. In school districts, these units might include instruction, business, personnel, public relations, and research and development divisions. Using the three basic dimensions—key part of the organization, prime coordinating mechanism, and type of decentralization—Mintzberg suggests that the strategy an organization adopts and the extent to which it practices that strategy result in five structural configurations: simple structure, machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, divisionalized form, and adhocracy.Table 1 summarizes the three basic dimensions associated with each of the five structural configurations. Each organizational form is discussed in turn. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY, ACADEMIC, INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY 4_____________________________________________________________________________________ Table 1. Mintzberg’s Five Organizational StructuresStructural Configuration Simple structure Machine bureaucracy Professional bureaucrac y Divisionalized form Adhocracy Prime Coordinating Mechanism Direct supervision Standardization of work processes Standardization of skills Standardization of outputs Mutual adjustment Key Part of Organization Strategic apex Technostructure Operating core Middle line Support staff Type of Decentralization Vertical and horizontal centralization Limited horizontal decentralization Vertical and horizontal decentralization Limited vertical decentralization Selective decentralizationSimple Structure The simple structure has as its key part the strategic apex, uses direct supervision, and employs vertical and horizontal centralization. Examples of simple structures are relatively small corporations, new government departments, medium-sized retail stores, and small elementary school districts. The organization consists of the top manager and a few workers in the operative core. There is no technostructure, and the support staff is small; workers perform overlapping tasks.For example, teach ers and administrators in small elementary school districts must assume many of the duties that the technostructure and support staff perform in larger districts. Frequently, however, small elementary school districts are members of cooperatives that provide many services (i. e. , counselors, social workers) to a number of small school districts in one region of the county or state. In small school districts, the superintendent may function as both superintendent of the district and principal of a single school. Superintendents in such school districts must be entrepreneurs.Because the organization is small, coordination is informal and maintained through direct supervision. Moreover, this organization can adapt to environmental changes rapidly. Goals stress innovation and long-term survival, although innovation may be difficult for very small rural school districts because of the lack of resources. Machine Bureaucracy Machine bureaucracy has the technostructure as its key part, use s standardization of work processes as its prime coordinating mechanism, and employs limited horizontal decentralization.Machine bureaucracy has many of the characteristics of Weber’s (1947) ideal bureaucracy and resembles Hage’s (1965) mechanistic organization. It has a high degree of formalization and work specialization. Decisions are centralized. The span of management is narrow, and the organization is tall—that is, many levels exist in the chain of command from top management to the bottom of the organization. Little horizontal or lateral coordination is needed. Furthermore, machine bureaucracy has a large technostruture and support staff. FRED C.LUNENBURG _____________________________________________________________________________________5 Examples of machine bureaucracy are automobile manufacturers, steel companies, and large government organizations. The environment for a machine bureaucracy is typically stable, and the goal is to achieve internal effi ciency. Public schools possess many characteristics of machine bureaucracy, but most schools are not machine bureaucracies in the pure sense. However, large urban school districts (New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) are closer to machine bureaucracies than other medium-size or small school districts.Professional Bureaucracy Professional bureaucracy has the operating core as its key part, uses standardization of skills as its prime coordinating mechanism, and employs vertical and horizontal decentralization. The organization is relatively formalized but decentralized to provide autonomy to professionals. Highly trained professionals provide nonroutine services to clients. Top management is small; there are few middle managers; and the technostructure is generally small. However, the support staff is typically large to provide clerical and maintenance support for the professional operating core.The goals of professional bureaucracies are to innovate and provide high-quality services. Existing in complex but stable environments, they are generally moderate to large in size. Coordination problems are common. Examples of this form of organization include universities, hospitals, and large law firms. Some public school districts have many characteristics of the professional bureaucracy, particularly its aspects of professionalism, teacher autonomy, and structural looseness. For example, schools are formal organizations, which provide complex services through highly trained professionals in an atmosphere of structural looseness.These characteristics tend to broaden the limits of individual discretion and performance. Like attorneys, physicians, and university professors, teachers perform in classroom settings in relative isolation from colleagues and superiors, while remaining in close contact with their students. Furthermore, teachers are highly trained professionals who provide information to their students in accordance with their own style, and they are usually flexible in the delivery of content even within the constraints of the state- and district-mandated curriculum.Moreover, like some staff administrators, teachers, tend to identify more with their professions than with the organization. Divisionalized Form The divisionalized form has the middle line as its key part, uses standardization of output as it prime coordinating mechanism, and employs limited vertical decentralization. Decision making is decentralized at the divisional level. There is little coordination among the separate divisions. Corporate-level personnel provide some coordination. Thus, each division itself is relatively centralized and tends to resemble a machine bureaucracy.The technostructure is located at corporate headquarters to provide services INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY, ACADEMIC, INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY 6_____________________________________________________________________________________ to all divisions; support staff is located within each division. L arge corporations are likely to adopt the divisionalized form. Most school districts typically do not fit the divisionalized form. The exceptions are those very large school districts that have diversified service divisions distinctly separated into individual units or schools. For example, a school istrict may resemble the divisionalized form when it has separate schools for the physically handicapped, emotionally disturbed, and learning disabled; a skills center for the potential dropout; a special school for art and music students; and so on. The identifying feature of these school districts is that they have separate schools within a single school district, which have separate administrative staffs, budgets, and so on. Elementary and secondary school districts that have consolidated but retained separate administrative structures with one school board are also examples of the divisionalized form.As might be expected, the primary reason for a school district to adopt this form of structure is service diversity while retaining separate administrative structures. Adhocracy The adhocracy has the support staff as its key part, uses mutual adjustment as a means of coordination, and maintains selective patterns of decentralization. The structure tends to be low in formalization and decentralization. The technostucture is small because technical specialists are involved in the organization’s operative core. The support staff is large to support the complex structure.Adhocracies engage in nonroutine tasks and use sophisticated technology. The primary goal is innovation and rapid adaptation to changing environments. Adhocracies typically are medium sized, must be adaptable, and use resources efficiently. Examples of adhocracies include aerospace and electronics industries, research and development firms, and very innovative school districts. No school districts are pure adhocracies, but medium-sized school districts in very wealthy communities may have some o f the characteristics of an adhocracy. The adhocracy is somewhat similar to Hage’s (1965) organic organization.Strategy and Structure The work begun by Chandler and extended by Mintzberg has laid the groundwork for an understanding of the relationship between an organization’s strategy and its structure. The link between strategy and structure is still in its infancy stage. Further research in this area, particularly in service organizations like schools, will enhance school administrators’ understanding of school organizations (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2012). In the meantime, school leaders must recognize that organization strategy and structure are related. FRED C.LUNENBURG _____________________________________________________________________________________7 Conclusion Henry Mintzberg (1992, 2009) suggests that organizations can be differentiated along three basic dimensions: (1) the key part of the organization, that is, the part of the organization that plays the major role in determining its success or failure; (2) the prime coordinating mechanism, that is, the major method the organization uses to coordinate its activities; and (3) the type of decentralization used, that is, the extent to which the organization involves subordinates in the decision-making process.Using the three basic dimensions—key part of the organization, prime coordinating mechanism, and type of decentralization—Mintzberg suggests that the strategy an organization adopts and the extent to which it practices that strategy result in five structural configurations: simple structure, machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, divisionalized form, and adhocracy. References Brickley, J. , Smith, C. , Zimmerman, J. L. , & Willett, J. (2002). Designing organizations to create value: From strategy to structure. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.Chandler, A. D. (1962). Strategy and Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chandler, A. D. (2003). Strategy and structure: Chapters in the history of the American industrial enterprise. Frederick, MD: Beard Books. Galbraith, J. R. (1987). Organization design. In J. W. Lorsch (Ed. ). Handbook of organizational behavior (pp. 343-357). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Galbraith, J. R. (2009). Designing matrix organizations that actually work: How IBM, Procter & Gamble, and others design for success. New York, NY: Wiley. Greenberg, J. 2011). Behavior in organizations (10th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hage, J. (1965). An axiomatic theory of organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 10, 289-320. Hall, R. H. , & Tolbert, P. S. (2009). Organizations: structures, processes, and outcomes (9th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kuprenas, J. A. (2003). Implementation and performance of a matrix organization structure. International Journal of Project Management, 21, 51-62. Likert, R. (1987). New Ppatterns of management. New York, NY: Garland.Lunenburg, F. C. , & Ornstein, A. O. (2012). Educational administration: Concepts and practices. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Miles, R. E. , Snow, C. C. , Meyer, A. D. , & Coleman, H. J. (2011). Organizational strategy, structure, and process. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Mintzberg, H. (1992). Structure in fives: Designing effective organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Mintzberg, H. (2009). Tracking strategies: Toward a general theory of strategy formation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Nelson, D. B. , & Quick, J. C. (2011). Understanding organizational behavior. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY, ACADEMIC, INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY 8_____________________________________________________________________________________ Oliveira, N. , & Takahashi, N. (2012). Automated organizations: Development and structure of the modern business firm. New York, NY: Springer. Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. (t rans. T. Parsons). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Secret Banking Elite Rules Trading In Derivatives Case Study

Secret Banking Elite Rules Trading In Derivatives Case Study Secret Banking Elite Rules Trading In Derivatives – Case Study Example Derivatives market There are various options in this case: Auditing of the books of the derivative traders should be doneso as to reveal how much they are earning from the trade. This will help influence the other players like those who need to trade with the dealers for derivatives to consider their position. This position will be either to trade in the derivatives or not. Banks and other institutions that want to join in the market should lobby for them to be able to operate in the market and hence loosen the reins of the trade from a few hands. This will make sure that other competitors enter the market hence promoting transparency.A transparent market like that of stocks and shares should be established through an intervention with the government so as to make sure that people are not exploited and that the trade does not remain within few hands that are not honest with their dealings. This can be done through the trade commission and the Department of Justice. This will make a s ecret trade exposed, and rules played in a legal manner. Firms should start trading in derivative markets despite the opposition that is faced from the secret group. With the help of the government and other state trade regulators, they can ensure their success and dominance in the field and even provide competition to the secret firms. With this competition, exploitation of people is bound to stop.All the alternatives above can be done jointly as the market is hard to penetrate and it is prone to unfair dealings as it is worth a lot of money to a few people who mean to protect it at all costs.ReferencesMiller, M. H. (1997). Merton Miller on derivatives. New York: Wiley.

Monday, October 21, 2019

Fidel Castro essays

Fidel Castro essays Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on January 13, 1926. He was an illegitimate child of Angel Castro y Argiz, an immigrant worker from spain and Lina Ruz Gonzalez. Fidel grew up in the mountainous region of Oriente province. As a boy, Fidel worked in the family's sugar cane fields and, at 6 years old he convinced his parents to send him to school. When Fidel turned 7 years old, Angel Castro married Fidel's mother so that his son could attend the Colegio La Salle in Santiago de Cuba. After attending the Colegio La Salle, he went to the Colegio Dolores also in Santiago, and then to the Belen High School in Havana. He proved to be an outstanding Athlete in the Belen High School. In 1945 Fidel entered the University of Havana, and earned a law degree. To further his political ambitions as an aspiring university student leader, Fidel joined one of two political gangsteraction groups,? the Union Insurreccional Revolucionaria (UIR), to break the dominance of a rival group, the Movimiento Socialista Revolucionaria (MSR), over the university. Fidel joined with rival MSR leaders in the Cayo Confites campaign to overthrow the dictator Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo in 1947. The following year, he tired to take a leadership role in the urban riots that swept through most of Bogota, Colombia. Fidel and Mirta Diaz-Balart were married on October 10, 1948. At the end of the summer of 1949 Mirta gave birth to Fidel's first and only son. He was named after his father and given the nicknameFidelito?. After Fidel graduated, he began to practice law and became a member of the Ortodoxos, a social-democrat party that was against Batista government. Fidel intended to campaign for a parliamentary seat in the election of 1952 but General Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar overthrew the government of President Carlos Prio Socarras and canceled the election. Castro went to court and charged the dictator with violating the constitution. The court rejecte...

Sunday, October 20, 2019

What to Do When You Are Bored in Class

What to Do When You Are Bored in Class Who hasn’t zoned out in class before? Whether your professor has a monotonous voice or you just didn’t get enough sleep last night, everyone has times when paying attention in class is a challenge. Here are some things you can do when boredom overcomes you during a lecture: Eat or Drink Something Depending on your class rules, a quick blood sugar or caffeine boost can be exactly what you need. Just make sure it’s not distracting to the rest of the class such as eating something crunchy or something with an overpowering smell. A fruit salad or cereal bar can be ideal snacks for a classroom setting. Chewing gum can also help give you something to do while you’re passing the time. A cup of coffee is a great pick-me-up for any time of the day and could be just the boost you need to make you sit up and pay attention. Record The Class If you simply can’t pay attention to the lecture, try using a recording app on your phone to make sure you at least have the class on file. That way you can listen to it later when you’re able to concentrate better. Some recording apps also give a written version of the recording, which can be convenient for you to look over. Take a Lot of Notes Sometimes when the teacher is droning on and it’s hard for you to keep focused on what they’re saying, it can be helpful to just write down as much as you can from their lecture. Keep your pen moving as he/she speaks and try to capture as much as you can. This will give you something to concentrate on and keep from zoning out. It will also ensure that you have some enviable class notes that your classmates who fell asleep will want to borrow. Participate More If your professor has class activities such as breaking you up into groups or allowing for question and answer periods, make sure you participate, even if you don’t feel like it. It can force you to wake up and engage more seriously with the material. Ask questions, offer to be a group leader or volunteer to take part in an informal debate. Read Your Textbook You might not be able to pay attention to what your professor is saying, but it could help if you look over your textbook to remind yourself of the context of their lecture. As you read, keep an ear tuned to your professor’s voice to see if what they’re saying connects with the content you’re reading to help you follow along better. Count Everyone has days when their attention span is less than desired. You can’t be â€Å"on† all the time. If you find yourself spacing out in the middle of a lecture, give yourself a break and count to 100. Counting will likely be more boring than your teacher’s lesson so take a big breath after you get to 100 and prepare yourself to focus. Every time you space out again after that, count to ten and then get your focus back on track. This gives your brain a temporary break and allows you to reset. Use Fun Note-Taking Tools When you were a kid, you probably liked using crayons or colored pencils or funny erasers and notebooks with your favorite cartoon characters for school. So, make note-taking fun again by buying some cool accessories, whether it’s colored markers, fun stationary, or other things that ignite your excitement. You could also use a note-taking app on your tablet that makes it more entertaining for you to go to class. Whatever you end up doing to get through class, just make sure you’re not interrupting your professor or being a distraction to your classmates. image credit: flickr.com

Saturday, October 19, 2019

The Future of Cybersecurity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Future of Cybersecurity - Essay Example As we have seen $14 billion has been invested by the U.S federal government to empower its security sector (Amoroso & Amoroso, 2007). This research aims to answer some of the important questions that are associated with cyber security. In this scenario, this paper attempts to answer the questions such as what changes need to occur in the cyber security industry of the future and why. And is cyber security becoming more important to national security than the security of kinetic weaponry? The outburst of Cyber Assault The countries which are currently attacking United States include China and Russia. In fact, the chances of cyber security attacks have increased to a huge extent from these two nations because of their original revival in the global economy. The United States has been accusing both China and Russia of current attacks that the United States has been experiencing. The current technological advancement has greatly influenced several nations which have mainly exposed China, United States, UK and Bangladesh. It is quite expected that physical defense associated with countries particularly talking about USA will be affected which mainly with cyber terrors. Threats for controlling systems can be associated from various resources especially antagonistic governments, terrorist associations (staysafeonline.org, 2013). Additionally, for ensuring confidentiality and privacy in the informatics, it is exceedingly recommended that there should be a national level association to demeanor the in vogue studies and prepare reports on issues in the works at the crossroads of cyber attacks and privacy, society level suggested boards that would help speak to these issues from local or community perspectives. In addition, there is also a risk that even the restricted public cyber attacks that have been modeled after the ethics committees to take in hand the explicit situations concerning health data and privacy should be working in order to preserve the restrictions rel ated to the field of cyber security. In this scenario, some of the major suggestions regarding implementation of security measures to deal with these cyber attacks include adopting the restricted, well defined, well practiced and fruitful public security requirements, including a focused assessment of security attentiveness for all public systems, and contemplation for split funding of the work compulsory to achieve ample security. It is an admitted fact that securing the rights of the people and retaining their due confidence is the responsibility taken up by the government and this has been very intensely regulated by institutions (govtrack.us, 2012). President Obama perception on Cyber Attacks A Cyber security executive orders were issued by the president of the U.S.A, Barack Obama, drew the attention by proposing policies that could defend the country from the current torment of cyber attacks

Friday, October 18, 2019

Global Business Environment - the Banking Sector of Pakistan vs Essay

Global Business Environment - the Banking Sector of Pakistan vs. Uk&Greece - Essay Example 1.2 The Crisis Chain The global financial crisis brought about a tremendous and dramatic turn around in the banking sector across the world and there were hardly any economies that remained unaffected by the same. Not just the banking sector, but the sub-prime mortgage crisis brought about a chain of crisis causing a high velocity downfall in real estate, stock exchanges, and insurance companies as well – many big names fell apart, bail out packages were developed in order to reduce the impact, inflation went sky rocketing, and at the end of the chain, consumers lost loads and loads of money. Krugman (2009) states that a situation came where economists describe that there were empty houses in the US, and homeless people outside the same – showing the reduced purchasing power, and high prices of land and mortgage. Economists call the year 2008 as the ‘Global Financial Earthquake’. This era was known as the most depressive economic scenario since after the Gr eat Depression of the early 30s. This assignment aims at discussing and comparing how the environmental and macroeconomic variables in countries like UK, Greece, and Pakistan have affected the banking sector in these respective regions. ... It shows the linkage of financial markets with government, the employment (or unemployment), organizations and corporate, households, and the commodities markets. There is strong co-relation between these entities and any jolt, can lead to a drastic effect on all the others. 2. Analysis of Banking Sector in UK 2.1 PLEST Analysis Paulson (2011) states that the global financial earthquake of 2008 ripped apart the exceptionally high growth of the previous years, closing the huge names of the financial sector close to bankruptcy. In terms of the banking sector in the UK, the banks are rather politically and legally secured – as UK is recognized as the pioneer of financial system globally. The banking sector is also technologically fairly sound. The 2008 decline was primarily witnessed due to the drastic changes in the economic and social habits and norms of the population. Primarily a sub-set of the sub-prime mortgage crisis that initiated the panic, UK’s economy took a dow nturn. The primary cause of this being the over -spending habits that had embedded in the norms of the society, which was in turn, was caused by the easy presence and availability of the credit cards. Lewis (2011) states that most of the consumers had over spent their budgets in expectation of their future cash flows, which did not happen as bankruptcy became a common feature, employees were laid off in one go, salary, were reduced, and big names like JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, etc. went off the hook. Government ultimately intervened with bail out packages to assist in the survival of the financial backbone of the economy. 2.2 Macroeconomic Indicators There are three primary macroeconomic

In what ways is British society a globalized society Essay

In what ways is British society a globalized society - Essay Example But likewise, as economies become more intertwined, we find that they can also become more vulnerable to unexpected shifts and new forms of opaqueness. This isn’t a reason to turn away from globalization, but it is a reason to be vigilant. This essay will look at the way Britain has become more dependent on other countries through the process of globalization and it will suggest that this has mostly been for the best. Although the exact moment of globalization occurring in Britain is a highly debatable question considering the length of Britain’s history and its extensive involvement in world affairs, it could be send that the election of â€Å"New Labour† in 1997 marked the rapid acceleration of the period. With Tony Blair’s successful efforts to remake the formerly left-wing, anti-free trade Labour party into a pro-market moderate party, Britain decided to go full steam ahead with economic global integration. The stage had been set a few years earlier. In the words of Merril Stevenson in a thoughtful article on the subject: Britain got its economic act together just as globalisation was accelerating, in the late 1980s. It has managed to catch and ride the current wave successfully, selling the world financial and business services where once it sold cotton textiles and machines. Shifting earlier and more decisively than most countries out of mass manufacturing, where it had few advantages over lower-cost competitors, to more easily defended high-value-added goods and services gave it an edge. Margaret Thatchers painful union-bashing left Britain with flexible labour markets at a time when countries such as France and Germany are struggling with unbudgetable workers and high unemployment.1 Of course, with current economic events shaking the world economy, we begin to see some of the potential negative effects of globalization for Britain. In a recent visit to the United States, Gordon Brown was keen to point out that the problems started

Thursday, October 17, 2019

U.S. Supreme Court Case Tennessee vs. Garner Study

U.S. Supreme Court Tennessee vs. Garner - Case Study Example The various arms and appendages of law while towing the practical manifestations of their powers do sometimes give way to special situations that alter and remold the conscience of a society and bring them under direct and enhanced observation and scrutiny of the masses and the intelligentsia. Infact such instances happen to be the important turning points in the legal and judicial history of any nation and do many a times lead to the evolution of the existing statutory provisions in the light of the current and emerging changes in the society. US Supreme Court case Tennessee vs. Garner is one such thought provoking event in the legal history of the US that strikingly challenged the existing statutory provisions pertaining to the use of force by the law enforcement agencies and called for reinterpretation and reshaping of this earlier taken for granted aspect of the policing in the US. October 3, 1974 was one other usual day in the life of the Memphis Police Officers Leslie Wright and Eton Hymon, when they were ordered to respond to a "prowler inside call". Both the officers promptly arrived on the scene of crime and after receiving relevant feedback from the neighbors, proceeded to scan the house being targeted. Hymon noticed a person running across the backyard and with the aid of his flashlight, was reasonably able to discern that the suspect, Edward Garner was an unarmed teenager of slight built (Findlaw, 2008). When Garner tried to climb over a fence, Hymon shot him in the back of his head to prevent him from escaping from the scene of crime (Findlaw, 2008). Later on a paltry ten dollars and a ring stolen from the house being scanned was found on the body of the suspect. Hymon acted in direct exercise of the authority given by a Tennessee statute to its police officers, sanctioning a deadly use of force so as to apprehend a fleeing suspect (Findlaw, 2008). The father of the deceased teenager filed a suit in the Federal District Court, to seek damages for the death and violation of his son's constitutional rights (Findlaw, 2008). The District Court upheld the constitutional credentials of the given statute and declared the officer's actions to be legal and valid (Findlaw, 2008). However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, while responding to an appeal by the appellee-respondent, reversed, stating that the use of force against a fleeing suspect in pursuance of the requirements of the Fourth Amendment is subject to be qualified in the light of the criteria of reasonableness (Findlaw, 2008). The basic issue that this case brings to fore is the ascertaining of the constitutionality of the deadly use of force by the law enforcement agencies against an unarmed, fleeing suspect (Findlaw, 2008). It questions the gross generalization of the provisions pertaining to the use of force by the law enforcement agencies against the relatively innocuous suspects who try to flee. Should the nature or proportion of force used by a police team against an escaping terrorist be same as that used against a harmless teenager, who attempts to escape from the scene of some petty crime This case highlights the human rights of the fleeing suspects and pragmatically checks the unrestrained use of force by t

The Main Codes Of Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Main Codes Of Ethics - Essay Example There is a difference however in the two groups codes when it comes to whether the principles are obligatory or aspirational. The ASPA's code is much shorter than the ACA's. If you were to ask the author of the ASPA's code if the principles were obligatory, he or she would probably say yes. However, because there is so little detail, the principles are really more aspirational. They do not cover specific situations (unlike the ACA's) and they are full of generalities. The ACA's code is much more specific and lays out what counselors should do when they are faced with various scenarios. This is a better form of guidance. ACA code A2a talks about Informed Consent—this is something much more specific than in the ASPA's code. This difference is noticeable as well in terms of illustrative versus exhaustive elements. The ACA's is exhaustive. It is long and complex and can be used in disciplinary hearings in order to punish counselors who go astray. It details what is appropriate and what is not appropriate regarding relationships with patients. The ASPA's code is not exhaustive. It isn't really illustrative either. It just lays out a few general ground rules. The sad truth is that we need such codes of ethics. Without them, each of these organizations would have trouble with their members. Codes of ethics bind together members. In today's world ethical relativism dominates so it is important to have codes that are carefully written down and that are exhaustive and detailed such as the ACA's. What is ethical relativism?

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

U.S. Supreme Court Case Tennessee vs. Garner Study

U.S. Supreme Court Tennessee vs. Garner - Case Study Example The various arms and appendages of law while towing the practical manifestations of their powers do sometimes give way to special situations that alter and remold the conscience of a society and bring them under direct and enhanced observation and scrutiny of the masses and the intelligentsia. Infact such instances happen to be the important turning points in the legal and judicial history of any nation and do many a times lead to the evolution of the existing statutory provisions in the light of the current and emerging changes in the society. US Supreme Court case Tennessee vs. Garner is one such thought provoking event in the legal history of the US that strikingly challenged the existing statutory provisions pertaining to the use of force by the law enforcement agencies and called for reinterpretation and reshaping of this earlier taken for granted aspect of the policing in the US. October 3, 1974 was one other usual day in the life of the Memphis Police Officers Leslie Wright and Eton Hymon, when they were ordered to respond to a "prowler inside call". Both the officers promptly arrived on the scene of crime and after receiving relevant feedback from the neighbors, proceeded to scan the house being targeted. Hymon noticed a person running across the backyard and with the aid of his flashlight, was reasonably able to discern that the suspect, Edward Garner was an unarmed teenager of slight built (Findlaw, 2008). When Garner tried to climb over a fence, Hymon shot him in the back of his head to prevent him from escaping from the scene of crime (Findlaw, 2008). Later on a paltry ten dollars and a ring stolen from the house being scanned was found on the body of the suspect. Hymon acted in direct exercise of the authority given by a Tennessee statute to its police officers, sanctioning a deadly use of force so as to apprehend a fleeing suspect (Findlaw, 2008). The father of the deceased teenager filed a suit in the Federal District Court, to seek damages for the death and violation of his son's constitutional rights (Findlaw, 2008). The District Court upheld the constitutional credentials of the given statute and declared the officer's actions to be legal and valid (Findlaw, 2008). However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, while responding to an appeal by the appellee-respondent, reversed, stating that the use of force against a fleeing suspect in pursuance of the requirements of the Fourth Amendment is subject to be qualified in the light of the criteria of reasonableness (Findlaw, 2008). The basic issue that this case brings to fore is the ascertaining of the constitutionality of the deadly use of force by the law enforcement agencies against an unarmed, fleeing suspect (Findlaw, 2008). It questions the gross generalization of the provisions pertaining to the use of force by the law enforcement agencies against the relatively innocuous suspects who try to flee. Should the nature or proportion of force used by a police team against an escaping terrorist be same as that used against a harmless teenager, who attempts to escape from the scene of some petty crime This case highlights the human rights of the fleeing suspects and pragmatically checks the unrestrained use of force by t

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Write a six to eight page paper on Joe Salatino, President of Great Essay

Write a six to eight page paper on Joe Salatino, President of Great northern american case study - Essay Example Additionally, the paper explains the role of self-efficacy in enhancing performance and hence productivity of a company. Any effective leader must pay attention to perception and attribution because they are important aspects of leadership. Perception is the process by which the mind organizes, identifies, and interprets sensory information to form a mental representation. All perceptions start as signals in the nervous system initiated by stimulation of sense organs. It is possible to shape perceptions through learning, memory, and expectation. To perceive something in certain way depends on the complex function of the nervous system. Employees of a company constantly receive huge sets of information that they need to disseminate and process. According to Hellriegel and Slocum, â€Å"perception is the process by which people select, organize, interpret, and respond to information around them,† (Hellriegel, Slocum, 2011, P. 71). It represents the psychological process by which people use their five senses to take information from the environment and make a meaning to their world. Different people will interpret and organize things differently in similar situations. It is important for a leader to watch the difference in perceptions keenly since some differences may arise because of perceptual errors. Such errors include stereotyping, projection, halo effect, impression management, and perceptual defense. Attributions theory explains how an average person constructs meaning of an event based on their knowledge of the environment. Attributions enable an individual to acquire a cognitive mind that can understand the causes behind different happening in life and around them. Additionally, attributions help in understan ding the behavior of others finding explanations to their behavior. Attributions support perceptions. A person makes attributions in

Monday, October 14, 2019

Chemistry and Anatomy Essay Example for Free

Chemistry and Anatomy Essay My life began as a simple and talented student in Geneva. My father was Alphonse Frankenstein, who was a wealthy, rich and benevolent man. I was the first son of my father, Alphonse Frankenstein. My mother Caroline visited a beautiful orphan girl, Elizabeth Lavenza, fair-haired girl. She was adopted by my family and was my cousin. I had two brothers who were very lovely and they loved me and Elizabeth a lot. My best friend was Henry Clerval, who was a considerate man. I became a student of Chemistry and Anatomy in the quest to determine what gives life. I was a young man who led a happy and peaceful life, but the events happened after, made a great change to my living. The world according to me was a secret of research, creation and experimenting. I learnt the theories of electricity and galvanization. I also initiated a theory of how to create human life using the principles of electricity. I became devoted to the human creation and the spark of life that I had abandoned earlier. I asked my University for specimens to make my creation. I figured out what gives life.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"I have begged my University for specimens. They say I’ve had all their best material for years, and produced nothing to show for it.† I feel that I have begged my University for some specimens to make my creation, but they refused to afford me the specimens because they say that they have given all the best pieces of specimens to me for creating nothing. Finally, I got the body parts from the graveyard. Then I went out without my meals to buy some chemicals. I took the body parts from the corpses. I stored my chemicals and specimens in the dissecting room so that it would be safe. I constructed a giant man, 8 feet tall, with super human strength and endurance from harvested body parts that I took from the corpses. I worked secretly without rest for almost a year. I can tell you that I was a bit disappointed with my creation. My perfect creation was a frightening disaster. My creation was a result of horror.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"No, this isn’t what I wanted. Oh, dear god, what have I done?†Ã‚  I was not at all happy with my monstrous creation. So, I rejected, abandoned and left him away. I was also scared, frightened and afraid of him. I also avoided my scientific studies because it remained me about the disastrous experiment. I wanted him to help and like mankind. This was not what I expected. I wanted my creation to be helpful rather than being a nuisance. My excitement soon changed when my creature came into life. My lovely, little brother William was murdered by my creation, the monster. Elizabeth cried a lot and I was not able to convince her. She also told me that my five- year-old brother, William and she went for a walk. She also told me that she saw William disappear. She was searching for him all over. I examined what had happened and found out that it was the monster, who was responsible for the murder of my brother. I was very angry with the behaviour of my creation. I created him to help human life and not to destroy them. He came to my room. I was very angry at him and wanted to destroy him. He told me to control my temper and he asked me to listen to him. He told me that the only person to be kind to him was Agathe, a young blind lady. The other villagers chased him away through their dogs. He also told me that his intention towards William was not to kill him. Then he explained to me about what had happened. He told me, â€Å"I put my hands to his mouth to silence him, because I was afraid.†Ã‚  The monster asked William to play with him for a while. But William shouted and refused to play with him. So, he just kept his hands in William’s mouth to silence him and request him to play with him. He also convinced me by telling the truth, but I am very sad that my brother is being murdered by my creation.  I was asked by the monster to make a bride to the monster. I agreed to him because as a creator, I should have to fulfill the wishes of my creation. He said to me that,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.† He conveyed me his feelings of how it was to be alone without a companion or a comrade. He also gave me two years time to make a complete creation. He also told me that he would not trouble me in the time in between. I repulsed myself to make a bride for the monster. I wanted to finish the bride before marrying Elizabeth. I was also worried that the monster may harm my family. I still found it difficult to make the second monster. I made it because he told me that he wanted to love. I also made it, but this creation was spoilt by the monster, himself. The thing where he went wrong was, giving wrong wire connections to the creation and made it destroy. I explained to him that,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"She’ll never live now! Monster, what have you done?†Ã‚  He thought that he knew to make his own creation. He acted over- smart by giving the wrong wire connections and destroying his bride by himself. I beautifully laid out the bride in white colour clothes, to symbolize that she was going to get married. There is no use for him to commit the murders of Elizabeth and Clerval, by knowing that was his fault. I was really angry when he killed my brother, William. Then, he explained to me about what had happened. He told me that,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"I put my hands to his mouth to silence him, because I was afraid.†Ã‚  It was my fault to create him and abandon him. Since I have created him I lost my Elizabeth, Clerval and my dear brother William. I got the feelings of how it was to face death. If I think of him, my first thoughts were, why did I create him? I found it like a battle of â€Å"Evil vs. Good†.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Assess Your Own Progress As A Student English Language Essay

Assess Your Own Progress As A Student English Language Essay The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to take a step back from your studies and to assess your own progress as a student. It is directly related to the learning outcome that concerns taking responsibility for your own learning while responding reflectively to tutor feedback. As with Assignment 02, this assignment aims to develop your awareness of the way in which you study and write. It aims to help you to think through your work on the course as a whole, at the moment at which you start to think about what to study next. You should begin by looking back over your previous assignments and your tutors comments on these assignments. (If you do not receive Assignment 06 back in time to take account of it in writing this assignment, there is no need to be concerned: just focus on Assignments 01 to 05.) You should then write a critical review of up to 750 words, examining the way in which you study and write your assignments. For example, you might consider how your skills in reading and taking notes or in planning and writing your essays have developed through the course. How you structure your review is up to you, but in the course of it, you should do the following five things: Identify one or more ways in which you have made progress as a student since starting The Arts Past and Present. (For example, you might describe a skill that you have developed, or a difficulty in studying that you have resolved.) Identify one or more ways in which your approach to study or your study skills could be improved. For at least one of these, identify some different sources of help. Identify one or more strengths that you have as a student. Consider which subject(s) you have most enjoyed studying, and which subject(s) you have got the best marks for. Has the experience of studying the course modified what you thought you would be interested in before you started the course? Do you now have a clearer sense of what youd like to study next? You should support what you say with specific examples taken from your experiences of working through the course materials and writing assignments. You may wish to refer to one or more of your tutors comments on your assignments. Answer: I think my assessor has been fair and just all through my course and her help has been invaluable in my progression. Her guidance and advice as well as support shaped my studies and gave me a solid foundation to work from. She has helped me to achieve so much through the last year without her I would not have come this far and achieved the levels I have. When I look back to my tmas I can see through the assessors comments that I had made some careless mistakes. E.g. forgetting to use capital letters and forgetting set dictionary on UK English, these I have tried to fix and have worked hard to improve on this. My referencing was nonexistent when I started this course and I needed so much work for me to improve, but thanks to my assessors comments I gained a better understanding what references I can and cannot use e.g. discussion groups and have changed the referencing in my essays to more suitable references. In addition, I needed to work on my paragraphs as I had a tendency to use too short a paragraphs. This can be seen in the extract I have selected below from my assessors comments. You`ve made many of these point in your essay, but because you haven`t drawn them together in proper paragraphs, the thrust of your argument is rather dissipated.  Ã‚  Ã‚  I would advise that for future assignments you write the essay, and then look at short paragraphs (if you have any) and see whether they need to stand alone or whether they can tidily be combined with another short paragraph to create a new, longer one.  Ã‚  But don`t go to the opposite extreme and have paragraphs which go on for pages, which is my particular fault and one which my tutors used to complain about!  Ã‚  You also need to watch the format for references and Bibliography, as I`ve indicated on your script. This is a promising beginning to the course.  Ã‚  You have clearly understood what the questions required you to do, and have made some good points.  Ã‚  You just need to arrange your material so as to make the best use of it Myra Cross assessor comments PT3e Tma 01 As you can gather from the assessors comments my work, the paragraphs were so short. However, through learning essay planning I soon learnt how to structure each paragraph to include the correct information needed and they started to form proper paragraphs and became less like bullet points. In addition, one of my other greatest strengths was the fact I could find the information I needed but my greatest flaw was I could not justify the key points. Therefore, I had to spend a lot of time trying to learn how to justify my key points better and I have to some extent rectified this as can be seen by my rising grades. I have made use of information that is included in the assessors comments on each tma to analyse what I have been doing wrong and used this information to help plan and improve on each subsequent tma. As to my essay plans they still needs work so I decided on doing a 10 point after this course in writing fiction this should give me more practice before next 60 point course and hopefully by the time I do the next 60 point course I should have rectified this problem. After reviewing tma06 I Have found a major area I need to concentrate on In the past essays I have cut material to get down to the word limit. I have found this is causing my essays not to read or flow correctly this may work for smaller essays but for larger it effects my grades. I am trying in the future to put rules in place that if I exceeded my word limits by large amount instead of cut and past exercise I rework my plan and rewrite essay to the new plan hoping this resolves this flaw. I have enjoyed this course so much when I started the course it was because I wanted to learn structure and improve my writing skills and AA100 was compulsory course for degree I wanted. Now I am nearly finished I look back and realise I have awakened a love in both arts and history I hope I can use these new loves in my books. In addition, I want to move into the study of the history the goal for my masters is to combine my love of books with my love of history and to research or study history of writing throughout the ages.

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Alcohol on Academics :: essays research papers

Alcohol, when consumed in reason, can be fine. But when it is taken in great quantities it can be very detrimental to a student. Heather Wilson and Jeremy Foster wrote a perspective on drugs and alcohol in a book aimed to warn people about the dangers of alcohol and drugs. Here is there account. "During parents weekend, she, her roommate, and their parents went to her best friend's room and found her soaked in blood and tears on the dorm-room floor. Heather's friend had a history of depression, and the combination of this, a bottle of Jack Daniel's Black Label, and too much cold medicine left her ravaged and suicidal"(Kuhn 21). The girl in the story turned out to be ok. She had tried to slit her wrists the night before. The story went on to say that, "They found her in time to save her, but she will always carry the scars where she cut her wrists"(Kuhn 21). In this paper I intend to prove how alcohol is detrimental to college students. Our brain controls everything we do. Without it we wouldn't be able to perform the simplest of tasks It is one of if not the most important thing we have as a person. As a college student I rely heavily on my brain to help me with all of the assignments for my classes. But what if my brain didn't work properly? When alcohol is inputted into the brain, it induces many output actions such as; impaired judgment, extreme emotion, and slowed behavior (Alcohol and its effects). Not only are the short term effects enough to side track any academic student, but the long term effects could have serious implications on your life. Long-term effects include damage in cognitive behavior, difficulty in learning new material, deficits in abstraction, problem solving, and reduced visuospatial abilities (Alcohol and its effects). One of the long term effects listed was difficulty in learning. Now if you start drinking in high school, like most college aged students do, you already have a disadvantage against everyother person who choses not to drink. Researchers have found that the brains of alcoholics are smaller and have an increased number of brain tissue loss then a nonalcoholic(Alcohol and its effects). This would lead someone to believe that somebody who is the same age and does not drink would be faster and quicker in cognitive abilities(Alcohol and its effects).

Friday, October 11, 2019

Philosophy of Truth Essay

There are many theories on the meaning of truth, and with those theories come beliefs and questions as to why one is more adequate than the others. The theory that I will discuss as the most adequate is the correspondence theory. Honestly, I don’t possess the capabilities to fully determine the most sufficient theory of truth. I do, however, have empirical evidence and solid reasoning to support the correspondence theory. There are many valid arguments and questions of this theory that I am not qualified to completely refute. For the sake of this essay I am only able to continue this age old discussion, not to conclude with an exact theory of truth to follow. First I will introduce the basic ideas of the correspondence theory and then I will show why I support these ideas. Then I will present what some other philosophers have said in regards to the correspondence theory and how I interpret these statements. To end, I will discuss the basic arguments against the correspondence theory, and show reasons as to why these arguments are applicable to any theory. The concept of the correspondence theory says that a statement is true only if the facts given match up with reality. (Solomon p. 268) This can be a very simple approach to determining the truth. The basic idea is that if, based on my understanding of reality, the statement given matches that reality then the statement is true. If the statement does not correspond to reality then it is false. A statement is a sentence that can be determined to be true or false but not both at the same time. So ultimately I use past experiences and beliefs to determine my concept of reality. Then, based on my idea of reality, I determine if a statement is either true or false. â€Å"To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true† (Solomon p 268) This was Aristotle’s belief in Metaphysics and seems to be a very clear-cut statement on how to determine truth. Either a statement is true or false. The law of contradiction says that a statement and its denial cannot both be true. (Solomon p. 266) This reinforces the belief that a statement cannot be true and false at the same time. As Aristotle also said in Metaphysics â€Å"It is impossible for the same man to suppose at the same time that the same thing is and is not. † (Solomon p 266) This however, as some still argue, does not solve the problem that what may true to one, may be false to another. If reality is based on my experiences, then having different experiences can cause different perceptions of reality. The argument of whom or what would determine the final truth is well beyond my qualifications. This can cause a contradiction of truth. This contradiction, based on an individual’s idea of reality, is another concept that I am able to only understand and take a position. I do not have the final answers to these arguments but I do have a perspective. An individual’s concept of reality is unique to that individual. Based on ones’ experiences comes that person’s concept of reality. Just because someone’s experiences cause them to believe one truth, doesn’t mean they are wrong if I believe another truth. This idea of reality is what causes philosophers to discuss different theories of truth and their credibility’s on many different levels. These extreme cases and abstract ideas is where the correspondence theory draws in the critics. I feel that some of these arguments, though valid, are applicable to any theory. The first argument of this theory roots from the name itself. This argument of the correspondence theory states that â€Å"there is no such thing as a statement or belief that by itself is capable of corresponding to anything. † (Solomon p268) This means that mainly because our words have different meanings in different languages there is not one single statement that can â€Å"correspond† to anything. I feel that this is a weak argument in that it would mean that nothing can be true. There are many different languages and there is no single word I know of that is universal. This argument could be applied to any theory of truth. If what I say is not true to everyone, then it is false. That seems to be the basis of this argument and because of this belief nothing could be true. To me that is an outrageous and un-realistic argument. The next point critics of the correspondence theory make is that there in some cases may be physical implications with verifying correspondence. One example of this for me may be my diabetes. If I say â€Å"my blood sugar is low† the only way to verify if that is true is through the use of my glucose meter. Without the correct equipment there is no way to tell if that statement is true. (At least until I’m in a coma! ). To me this still seems to have a simple solution; the truth isn’t known until it can be verified. I truly do not know if my blood sugar is low until I have tested it. This may cause me to have to rely on another person’s statement but then I can only form an opinion. If I cannot verify the truth physically then I do not know if it is true. This brings up the next argument. The final point I will talk about is that of abstract ideas. Some people will argue that the correspondence theory does not â€Å"work† for abstract ideas, such as love and feelings. These are difficult to verify since they are mostly feelings. There is no concrete source to â€Å"match† them up with. To find the truth in these areas is very difficult with any theory of truth. The best answer I have to counter this objection is that the truth to these abstract ideas is unique to every individual and is really more of an opinion. If someone says â€Å"I am hungry† that is really more of an opinion than a statement. Therefore these claims cannot be either true or false, they are a feeling and that is not for me to judge as truth or not. This leads me to conclude that the correspondence theory is the most adequate theory for determining truth. As long as a belief or statement corresponds with my perception of reality then it is the truth. Though there are valid arguments against this theory I feel that they are a stretch and can be argued against any theory of truth. Bibliography Solomon, Robert, Introducing Philosophy, 8th edition, (Oxford University Press, NY 2005) pp266-279.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Environmental Impacts from over Population Essay

Introduction The population of human beings on this planet has been gaining exponentially, since the dawn of Man. A basic feature of an exponential increase is that the numbers increase faster and faster as the population doubles and redoubles, with each doubling occurring in the same amount of time (Wright, 2008), As the population continues to multiply, so do the impacts upon our environment and surrounding ecosystems. As human populations increase, the demands for food, supplies, and housing also increase. With these increased demands, there is now a greater strain upon our resources more than ever before. The question then becomes, what are the impacts upon our environment by our population situation, and is there anything that can be done to deal with the problems from this dilemma? Population Impacts As civilization has continued to grow and develop, so has the impact upon our environment by our exploding population. As mankind began to â€Å"modernize†, the Earth began to feel impacts by the choices made from its inhabitants. Beginning with the agricultural revolution, humankind became able to manipulate his environment (Sharp, 2000). During the agricultural revolution, man was able to plant and grow food. As societies were still nomadic in their nature, mankind would use the resources of the Earth to their fullest extent, and then move on to the next area. This started with slash and burn techniques, and for the first time, CO2 levels were modified (Sharp, 2000) As the population of the planet continued to surge, the next great impact upon the environment would be the industrial revolution of the 1800’s. With the boom of the industrial revolution across the world, the demand for natural resources and the impacts upon the environment would soar. More people and natural resources were needed to sustain the new industrial system and the needs of growing societies (Sharp, 2000). The impacts of the industrial revolution were great and vast. For the first time in our world’s history, we could see the potential impacts of using our natural resources and dealing with an ever-growing worldwide population. The effects of population growth upon the environment are becoming revealed at an alarming rate. Between 1960 and 1999, Earth’s population doubled from three billion to six billion people (Rand, 2000). The world has changed dramatically over the last several years. The landscapes and ecosystems that were present hundreds of years of ago are no longer in existence. We are consuming our natural resources at an alarming rate. In fact, many environmental experts believe that human beings have reached their carrying capacity of sustainable life. How do we meet the challenges of population growth and managing our natural resources without exploiting the environment? First, we must begin to invest in technology that does not degrade the environment (Sharp, 2000). This is very critical to the retention of a sustainable environment for our future. In the past, countries developed around their economic strength. This factor often meant that most nations did not consider long-term environmental impacts by their decisions. These â€Å"slash and burn† techniques by many nations have resulted in devastating consequences to our ecosystems. There are entire species that have become extinct, all in the name of economic progress. This short-term economic gain for many of these nations has resulted in effects that will be felt from generations to come. The eye of man can see the effects of population growth. It also can now project the effects of population demand in the future. One of the growing problems facing mankind today is global climate change. From glaciers melting, to rising oceanic temperatures, and even climactic weather events, the effects of population upon the earth, have impacted our future for many years. Research suggests that temperatures have been influenced by growing concentrations of greenhouse gases, which absorb solar radiation and warm the atmosphere (Rand, 2000). There is still a great deal that we can do to preserve the environment and place a halt to the devastating environment impacts of our population growth. Our sustainability not only depends on us meeting this challenge, but also presents an opportunity to provide for the future of our civilization. An encouraging note is the simple fact that many companies are now becoming â€Å"green† companies, meaning that they are attempting to be environmentally conscious and pursue policies that offer to protect and not neglect our environment. The answers to this problem are two fold. First, we must address the growing populations in the developing world. The populations in these areas are growing at an alarming rate. Many of these areas are already facing critical famines and food shortages of historic proportions. Unfortunately, efforts to implement policies that stress birth control have not been effective. We must address the growing populations in these areas, if we are to tackle the problems that population growth has created upon the Earth. The next problem we must address, if we are to maintain adequate sustainability upon the Earth, is our own consumption issues. As a nation, we are consuming natural resources at an alarming rate. We consume more energy per capita than any nation on this planet. Moreover, we must develop better land-use policies in the developed world. The â€Å"slash and burn† tactics of the past must be stopped and we must acknowledge the fact that we cannot destroy entire ecosystems that have taken hundreds of years to develop, and believe we can replace them by simply planting hundreds of trees that will take years to grow. The impacts of our decisions are great. The choice is clearly impacted by economic factors. As a nation, our demand for consumer goods is at a high level. While our population is growing at a slow rate, our consumption levels have never been higher. Many Americans do not focus on the environmental impacts of their decisions today. We must implement sound environmental policies that embrace this factor. The choices are clear for society. As the population of the world continues to soar, so will the stresses upon our environment. There will be a greater need for usable water, natural resources, and even greater energy demands. While these demands pose a potential calamity for the environment, they also create opportunity for new industries. As mankind begins to recognize the negative effects upon the environment by poor decisions and usage in the past, we as a society can create and environment that fosters the development of â€Å"green† industries and elect government officials that encourage policies that promote the well being of our environment. Conclusion The effects on our environment from our population are visible everyday. One need only look to the smog filled sky, or read the newspapers decrying the shortages of drinking water, and the battles that are ensuing to lay claim to that drinking water to realize the impact of the decisions that face us as a society today. We can change the way we live and stop the poor use of the environment, and we can control the growth of the population in third world countries, or continue the status quo. If we choose poorly, we will face an environmental impact that will test the sustainability, not only of our civilization, but also of our planet.