Anorexia in the Fashion Industry Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Anorexia in the Fashion Industry - Research Paper Example The voluptuous curves which used to be admired in the past have been switched to straighter angles and lines on fashion model’s bodies. With these skinny fashion models gracing the covers of the most exclusive and trendy magazines, many teenage girls seem to be drawn to the idea that in order for them to be as beautiful and as accepted as these models, they have to look like them. This obsession has even created the psychological disorder known as anorexia nervosa. Anorexia is a life-threatening disease, which mostly involves the act of starving oneself in order to look as thin and as â€Å"beautiful† as the fashion models. Deaths have been reported for some anorexic teenagers and models, as the unacceptable image that these models and teenagers see in their mirrors never seems to reach acceptable standards. This paper shall now investigate how the fashion world and designers influence models and girls to become extremely thin, and how they cause these girls to be anorexic. It will also note the lengths to which these girls go to in order to be and to stay as thin as possible and the impact on these girls lives. This paper shall also discuss the changing trends surrounding weight issues and fashion modeling -- from the earliest days when such trends made an impact on the world and on contemporary times. This discussion shall cover opinions and scholarly studies conducted on the subject matter, focusing on the thin fashion models and celebrities and the impact of the skinny obsession on teenagers and on girls in general. The end of the First World War brought about the raising of the hems and the lowering of the waists in women’s fashion. Panati (p. 235) points out how the dresses designed in the 1920s called for women to be flat-chested and boyish, and those who had fuller breasts were also forced to bind their chest to flatten their chests.  

Why Medical Marijuana Is a Good Choice for the Economy Essay Example for Free

Why Medical Marijuana Is a Good Choice for the Economy Essay Medical marijuana is full of possible opportunities, some large and some small. One of the largest opportunities would be the governments ability of taxation. Medical marijuana can be used to relieve many types of conditions. It can be used to effectively relieve pain for individuals that suffer from serious conditions such as AIDs and Cancer, and also less serious conditions such as nausea and eating disorders. Marijuana is by far less toxic than most of the prescription drugs that are prescribed every day to people suffering with a range of medical conditions. The pharmaceutical companies already have plenty of money to go around, why not let the government make some in tax. There are only fourteen states that have passed medical marijuana laws since 1996. America needs to listen to the thousands of very satisfied medical users and the thousands of scientists that prove medical marijuana is a smart choice, on top of the numerous economists that support and back it. It is time to change the federal laws on marijuana to allow medical use in every state and to be allowed to benefit from the revenue created by marijuana. The government would be able to charge a sin tax on medical marijuana, making this a highly profitable item for them. The same type of sin tax that is on tobacco sales and liquor sales. A sin tax is normally a higher percentage than a regular sales tax. A Harvard economist has estimated that the government could raise $7billion in annual revenues if marijuana is taxed (Bineli). There is an estimated forty million users of marijuana either for medical use or recreational use in the United States. A recent government survey found one in ten people in the United States use marijuana on a semi regular basis, this includes medical and recreational.(NORML) Billions of dollars being brought in though the taxation of marijuana could be used to dwindle away our national debt and possibly help pull our economy out of the current slump. By allowing people to legally purchase medical marijuana this would help stimulate the nations GDP. Its been here, probably in an illegal capacity, for a long time, but now theres an opportunity for industry, said Sumaya Abu-Haidar ,mayor of Nederland a town in Colorado where medical marijuana is legal and generally accepted. Theres an opportunity for free enterprise, an opportunity for people to make a living in a way that wasnt available before (Johnson). While many communities around the nation were still pushing through tough economic times, sales taxes collected in Nederland came in 32 percent higher than the month before that did not include marijuana (Johnson). From growers to sellers at a storefront, and every step in between there are many types of new jobs that would become available directly and indirectly. If the federal government made medical marijuana legal, the cost of medical marijuana would go down, with more and more farmers being able to grow it there would be more of it so it just goes down to basic rules of supply and demand. This would allow the government to set a higher tax rate, while still maintaining fair prices for consumers. Farmers of medical marijuana could also use the left over stalk to produce hemp and other profitable products. The marijuana plant is one of the most useful plants known to man today. Practically every piece of the plant can have some purposeful use. Kevin Bonsor’s Book reveals the following The marijuana plant has many uses. Its stiff, fibrous stalk can be used to make lots of products, from food to ship sails. The stalk is comprised of two parts ,the hurd and the bast. The bast provides fibers that can be woven into many fabrics. These fibers (also called hemp) are woven to create canvas, which has been used to make ship sails for centuries. The hurd provides pulp to make paper, oil to make paints and varnishes, and seed for food. Marijuana plants produce a high-protein, high-carbohydrate seed that is used in granola and cereals(Bonsor). As Kevin shows, marijuana has multiple beneficial uses that people tend to over look. The flowers of the plant are the only part that are actually used for medical purposes. Marijuana would be a very profitable crop to grow. In California there is a place called the Emerald Triangle, which consists of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity county. These are three neighboring counties where there is an abundance of legal medical marijuana growers. An article by Mark Bineli in the Rolling Stone magazine about the Emerald Triangle states, there would be numerous other new revenue streams, beyond just the sale of marijuana itself. The Emerald Triangle could market pot tourism, much as Napa Valley does with its wineries. And naturally, there will also be elaborate new types of vaporizers and pipes and rolling papers to serve the growing market. Britains GW Pharmaceuticals, for instance, has been developing an asthma-type inhaler to regulate the exact amount of medical marijuana one might inhale (Bineli). The billions of dollars wasted on incarcerating tens of thousands of people for simple possession of marijuana could be spent on healthcare or schools or even other more desirable uses (Bobbiesi). In the present time almost every city has a problem not having enough space in jail for inmates, and many inmates dont even have a bed and are forced to sleep on the floor. If medical marijuana became legal it would help free up jails across the nations for more serious offences like murderers and rapists. Many debate that marijuana should not be legalized for medical use because it is addictive. There is no physical evidence that marijuana is even addictive in the smallest way so the government wouldnt have to waste money on rehab or quitting programs like they do now with cigarettes. Smoking anything is not the best thing on your lungs, but there are plenty of other ways to get the positive effects from marijuana without smoking, such as vaporizing and ingesting. What is the government trying to tell us by legally allowing people to smoke tobacco that is much worse to inhale due to having nicotine in it to make a user addicted to it, along with the hundreds of poisonous ingredients added to cigarettes, such as rat poison? Marijuana is an all natural plant with not a single chemically added ingredient that has actual health benefits unlike tobacco. People have been smoking marijuana for thousands of years for medical purpose, and they are going to continue to do so. The jails are full of people that are just trying to medicate themselves in a way that works for them better than prescription drugs. As taxpayers we are paying for the thousands of marijuana users to be wrongly imprisoned. The number of individuals who use marijuana for medical purposes are growing as more and more states allow medical marijuana, which means the government is already missing out on the possible proceeds. And these smart states that already have pro medical marijuana laws are making a nice healthy revenue, the federal government is foolishly missing out on free money. When will the federal government accept the truth that marijuana does indeed have a medical purpose, and open up the endless possibilities of a great revenue source?

Organisational Audit Of T Mobile Management Essay

Organisational Audit Of T Mobile Management Essay According to Kourdi, Business Strategy is the plans, choices and decisions used to guide a company to greater profitability and success. An inspired and clearly considered strategy provides the impetus for commercial success, whereas a weak or misunderstood strategy may lead to a company going out of business. Understanding what constitutes strategy is therefore crucial in developing a successful business, as is avoiding the tendency to label every plan and decision strategic when most are about implementing strategy rather than setting it. Equally important is for a strategy to be clear and effectively communicated to everyone with a role in implementing it, and to shareholders and other stakeholders. For the purpose of this assignment, my chosen company is the T-Mobile. History and Background of T-Mobile T-Mobile UK is a joint French and German-owned mobile network and mobile broadband operator in the United Kingdom. It is owned and operated by Everything Everywhere, the UKs largest mobile network. T-Mobile UK started life as Mercury One2One, a GSM mobile network operated by the now-defunct Mercury Communications. Later known simply as One2One, it was the worlds second GSM 1800 network when it was launched in September 1993. In its final days it was operated as a joint venture between Cables and Wireless and American cable provider Mediaone Group, which had a number of investments in Britain dating back to its days as the US West Media Group. One 2 One was purchased by Deutsche Telekom in 1999 and rebranded as T-Mobile in 2002. On 1 April 2010 Deutsche Telekom and France Telekom finalized the deal to merge their UK based operations, causing Orange UK and T-Mobile UK to cease to exist, although the brands was maintained for at least 18 months. On 11 May 2010 it was announced that both the Orange and T-Mobile brands would remain on British high streets, although their new merged parent company will be called Everything Everywhere  [1]  . The T-Mobile brand is present in 11 European countries   Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany (as Telekom), Hungary, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Globally, T-Mobile International subsidiaries have a combined total of approximately 150 million subscribers, making the company the worlds third-largest mobile-phone service provider by subscribers and the third-largest multinational after the UKs Vodafone and Spains Telefà ³nica. T-Mobile offers both pay-as-you-go and pay-monthly contract phones. The pay-monthly contracts consists of set amounts of minutes and flexible boosters which allow the customer to change them month-to-month depending on their needs. Prior to this T-Mobile had a contract option known as Flext, which gave the user an amount of money to use for calls, texts, MMS and mobile internet as necessary. (Wikipedia, 2012) 3.0 The challenge that T-mobile is facing T-Mobile is the largest mobile service providers in UK. They are at the moment facing severe competition from other service providers such as 3G, Vodafone, Virgin, O2. Competition is coupled with other environmental factors that create a very challenging market for them. The current situation (Riots August 2011) in UK, the increasing debt situation in US and Europe had further worsened the business environment, which makes it unsuitable for business like T-Mobile to grow. The situation is quite alarming and it is high time for T-Mobile to act and tackle the above serious problem. In delaying to do so, would definitely give opportunity to competitors to take the lead. 3.1 The Business Strategies for T-Mobile In reference to the problem above, several strategies can be implemented by T-Mobile during this recession period. Doing nothing is not an option and passivity will only make things worse. At a starting point, T-Mobile would have to make sure that all the strategies that would be agreed upon would have to be in line with its Mission and Vision. Mission and Vision are the inspiring words that would assist T-Mobile to focus in a particular direction by keeping its values. The following are the two business strategies of T-Mobile that need to be implemented. 3.1.1 Concentrate on continuous support to customers. T-Mobile is dependent on their revenue-paying customers and cannot afford to stand by while those customers decline. One-way to make sure T-Mobile survives the economic downturn is to keep focusing on the customers. In a down economy people focus their spending on companies they trust most, as they get choosy. Customers need to be valued, not just for their money, but also for whom they are. In order to do this, T-Mobile has to make sure that its staffs are addressing the customers need for a strong sense of belonging and significance. For instance, make sure that staffs are positive and proactive with complaints rather than negative and reactive. Leaders of a large consulting firm have told their staff that they should worry more about their clients than about themselves, thinking up ways their clients can survive, even if every microsecond isnt billable. Generosity might not bring anything now, but help to position for the future, hopefully with healthier customers and bigger ideas. The big threat to T-Mobile is its competitors such as; 3G, Virgin, Vodafone, O2 and others and without any doubt, the competitors are also working on strategies of how to survive the down turn. So, T-Mobile has to try its utmost in delivering outstanding services to its customers. 3.1.2 Expand in other countries. Other than the two strategies above, T-Mobile can consider expanding in other part of the planet where recession is not present and where the markets are on great demand and wide. The secret to survive a recession is opportunity recognition. The first step in opportunity recognition is to know and believe that there will always be opportunity for those who seek and pursue it. Having focussed a lot in the European market and USA since its existence, T-Mobile might consider penetrating the UAE and Asia markets. For instance, China and India with its high population are two countries that are developing at a rapid pace. T-Mobiles good reputation in the Europe and USA is a good reason for other countries to welcome its presence. Sometimes, it is best method to move away from the recession zone and built from scratch for a better result other than keep fighting in the bush with less profit or no profit at all. Having branches also around the globe would support other branches that are in trouble such as recession, high inflation, political and legal implication or even natural disasters. The strategic plan above addresses the what which is the answer for the challenges that T-Mobile are facing, the why and as from this point the implementation will address the: who, where, when, and how. The Organizational Audit of T-Mobile The first and foremost task that needs to be done in order to implement the above strategies is the gathering of information in relation to the strategic plan. Organisational audit or strategy audit is to arm T-Mobile managers with the tools, information, and commitment to evaluate the degree of advantage and focus provided by their current strategies. An audit produces the data needed to determine whether a change in strategy is necessary and exactly what changes should be made. T-Mobiles actual direction is the sum of what it does and does not do, how well it is internally aligned to support the strategy, and how viable the strategy is when compared to external market, competitor and financial realities. Thus, the internal assessment and the external or environmental assessment, make up the major elements of an organizational audit. The following are the steps that T-Mobile will have to analysed and at the same time make the necessary adjustment before venturing. Ammunition has to be made available before reaching the battlefield otherwise it will be a disaster before venturing. Before Implementation An analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat of T-Mobile An analysis of the political, economical, social, technological, environmental and legal aspect that can impact T-Mobile strategic plan An examination of T-Mobiles stakeholders and how to bring them more closer to achieve the goal as one body Making sure that resources such as: human, financial, physical and information resources are available and ready to achieve the objectives together During Implementation Ensuring an honest and solid integration between departments. All the elements in the business plan; the mission, vision, values, goals, strategy and behaviours need to be understood by each and everyone. Simultaneously, commitment and support are needed throughout the process at all management levels: strategic, tactical and operational level. After Implementation Proper monitoring to make certain that targets are achieving in the time frame set and rectifying any issues that may arise in order for the implementation to be a success The SWOT Analysis of T-Mobile An examination of the strengths weaknesses, opportunities and threats of T-Mobile, also called the SWOT analysis. Strengths (S) and Weaknesses (W) are considered to be internal factors over which T-Mobile have some measure of control whereas Opportunities (O) and Threats (T) are considered to be external factors over which it has essentially no control. SWOT analysis is the most renowned tool for audit and analysis of the overall strategic position of the business and its environment. Its key purpose is to identify the strategies that will create a firm specific business model that will best align an organizations resources and capabilities to the requirements of the environment in which the firm operates. According to David (2006) a SWOT analysis involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favourable and unfavourable to achieve that objective. (David, 2006) Strengths The qualities that enable T-mobile to accomplish its mission T-Mobile has been able to create strong brand equity and also made itself recognized across the Europe and the US. Customers are familiar with the T-Mobiles brand; they hold a strong positive and distinctive bond with its name. T-mobile has been able to establish 4G  [2]   network bases in Europe and the same is growing in US. Thus, having a step ahead over its competitors. T-Mobile has got numerous alliances with industry leading corporations in mobile services technologies, allowing it to offer better services to its customers accordingly. For instance, Comcast Cable and T-Mobile USA, Inc. has announced a strategic marketing alliance to offer the T-Mobile Hotspot Wi-Fi Internet service to Comcasts nearly five million high-speed Internet customers. Thus, Comcast customers can experience the convenience, reliability and value of a T-Mobile wireless broadband connection when theyre away from home, via Wi-Fi, at the more than 4,000 T-Mobile Hotspot locations nationwide. (newsroom.t-mobile.com,2012) T-Mobiles has been able to position itself as the third largest mobile company in the world. T-Mobile has rightly chosen its slogan Everything Everywhere. The two words define T-Mobile purpose on the planet, which instantly create some kind of attachment and curiosity to existing and new customers respectively. T-Mobile was first to introduce Google-based phone in the UK, using android technology Weaknesses Weaknesses are the qualities that prevent T-Mobile from accomplishing its mission and achieving its full potential. T-mobile has no presence in the key emerging markets of the world although it is classified as the third largest mobile company in the world. Customers have reported complaints in consumeraffair.com. They faced issue such as no signal and dropped calls on the roadside, where there was good coverage for other carriers. (theultimatewireless.com, 2011) Coverage of network is not prominent in some areas. It some areas it is intermittent where as in some areas it is simply dead coverage of network. Customers are moving from one mobile service to another and brand loyalty is not present in the customers. Retention of customers strategy is absence. Offering limited bandwidth to its customers. The cap of 500 MB restrained T-Mobile subscribers from using the Internet freely. Opportunities The environment within which T-Mobile operates presents Opportunities Increasing 4G-network coverage in the UK would make T-Mobile stand out from the crowd. 4G, also known as LTE (long term evolution), are the next evolution of mobile network technology. With the customer base that keeps growing steadily, T-Mobile can could easily surprised the world one day to climb the ladder from third to first largest mobile company in the world. T-Mobile could probably expand in ASIA, instead of concentrating only in Europe and the US. China, India and UAE are the key parts in ASIA that T-Mobile could consider expansion. T-Mobile could also amalgamate with other mobile company as it did with Orange mobile company. Thus, more mobile company under the same umbrella Everything Everywhere. Threats Threats arise when conditions in external environment jeopardize the reliability and profitability of T-Mobile Intensifying competition in the UK market. For instance, Virgin Company, 3G mobile Company, O2 and Vodafone Company are the direct rivals of T-Mobile, which T-Mobile has to be very vigilant of. Economic slowdown in the European Union and the US had an adverse effect on T-Mobile. People become very choosy and cautious when it comes to spend money during those economic crises. Proper strategy is important in order to retain and attract new customers. European Union regulation on cross-border cell phone usage by customers (managementparadise, 2011). Sometimes or most of the times Government regulations can be bad for business, such as T-Mobile. 6.0 PESTEL Analysis of T-Mobile After an examination of the SWOT analysis is done, a PESTEL analysis of T-Mobile is essential. They are both commonly used together to get a better understanding of the competitive and economic environment, but they represent two contrasting approaches. SWOT analysis differs from PESTEL in the sense that, it is more flexible and can be applied to various forms of business functions where as PESTEL analysis is more nonconforming, used only to fully understand the implications of entering a new market. PESTEL Analysis is a convenient tool to analyse the macro-environment, which is also called the far environment. PESTEL is an acronym that stands for Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal. It is used for determining the opportunities and risks of global expansion. Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal issues often differ domestically and even more so internationally. Hence, it provides a strong framework to set the stage to develop specific tactics to mitigate the risks involved in executing vision in unfamiliar environments such as in strategy (3.1.2) above, expansion in a different country. Political, Government and Legal Forces: Political influences relate to government or constitutional policies that may affect a business and so do legal forces. There were a number of regulatory hurdles that were overcome before the merger was agreed of T-Mobile and Orange. It was by no means guaranteed that UK competition authorities would have approved the deal without some stringent requirements, such as obliging the operators to help to provide rural broadband coverage. These were met and the merger took place back in 2010. (itvoir, 2011). The governments current policies are unable to handle the current riots, which is a direct threat for a healthy business environment, and may affect T-Mobile. So, the actual place of operation are experiencing political, governmental and legal issues representing a barrier for growth. Due to these, T-Mobile has to consider moving in other countries where their political, government and legal system are favourable to operate and grow without any hurdles. T-Mobile would have to make sure that the intended country is politically stable as well its legal system. Economical: With economic downturn, the interest rates are at low of 0.5pc. (telegraph, 2010). This is a great opportunity for the consumers in the form of low lending rates. The government is encouraging consumers, which would ignite the stagnant economy. Now this is a good sign for T-Mobile network in two ways. Firstly, they can borrow at lower rates and secondly, it will increase the consumer buying power as the low rates ignite the economy. But for now the market is quite stagnant and increasing market share looks a bit difficult. (123helpme, 2011) Infact, the strategy of expanding in another country has emerged due to the economic situation that are prevailing in the Europe. Companies including T-Mobile are finding themselves in turmoil to move a step ahead. The economic situation of the intended country needs to be analysed carefully before venturing. Socio-cultural: Socio-cultural influences encompass such factors as class, age and gender, demographics as well as issues such as culture   both local and international and diversity. When T-Mobile started with its Short Messaging Service (SMS), it was the beginning of the mobile multimedia era. T-Mobile also offers Multimedia Messaging (MMS) Service, which enables customers to send and receive picture messages. Both SMS and MMS are popular among women and are seen as a social tool for interact (Mintel, 2011) .In the summer of 2002, T-Mobile launched their GPRS (General Pocket Radio Service) which has seen great success ever since. Customers of T-Mobile generally gain access to the most up-to-date handsets, which are very admired for mobile-conscious people. With increasing trends towards the Android based mobiles and tablets, a new market has emerged. Online application stores require high-speed connectivity; this has increased the usage of Wi-Fi and Internet based services. Thus, a whole new market for T-Mobile to emerge. Approximately 20% of the population lives without a mobile phone. Not being heavy users of mobiles-by their nature, retired people need less mobile contact than those still going to work. Age groups beyond 55 figure little in to the marketing objectives and advertising targets of the mobile industry. But it will come a day where the older generation will be influenced and find the use of mobiles a necessity. (mintel, 2011) It is now easier to switch networks more frequently particularly because handsets are now offered free as part of the service when customers sign up to a 12, or more recently 18-month contract. Exceptionally with private customers (not businesses), they can sometimes have their line rental discounted for a number of months depending on the length of agreement. T-Mobile also offers Fix It option, which allows customer to choose their own free minutes and free text messages according to their usage. Technological: Better performance and faster mobile Internet speeds with T-Mobile supercharged 4G networks. Its three times faster than standard 3G.4G network that offers blazing-fast average download speeds of 10Mbps and peak speeds of up to 27Mbps. The market is competitive but T-Mobile is coping well and offering the best to its customers with new 4G networks. T-Mobile can also consider alliances with other companies that already have already a telecommunication backbone / structure. Both together, hand in hand can offer an excellent service to their subscribers. For instance, T-Mobile and COMCAST in USA came together to better serve their customers. A quote from (newsroom.tmobile, 2012): Comcast Cable and T-Mobile USA, Inc. today announced a strategic marketing alliance to offer the T-Mobile Hotspot Wi-Fi Internet service to Comcasts nearly five million high-speed Internet customers. With todays announcement, Comcast customers can experience the convenience, reliability and value of a T-Mobile wireless broadband connection when theyre away from home, via Wi-Fi, at the more than 4,000 T-Mobile Hotspot locations nationwide. As part of this strategic marketing alliance, Comcast high-speed Internet customers will receive a special offer when they sign up for T-Mobile Hotspot through their Comcast portal homepage. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨Comcast customers who subscribe to the T-Mobile Hotspot service can surf the Web, check email or view streaming media at wireless broadband speeds with a Wi-Fi enabled laptop or PDA at T-Mobile Hotspot locations These kinds of alliances would rapidly spread the name of T-Mobile around the intended country. Environmental: Although there is no evidence that they are harmful to public health, transmitter masts are regarded by many as an unwelcome presence in the environment, especially when they are close to schools. Discarded handsets also constitute an environmental problem because of the hazardous materials they contain. For a better world for youà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ is T-Mobiles environmental motto (t-mobile, 2011). The aim is to minimize their business impact on the environment and all T-Mobile companies in Europe have implemented environmental management programs in order to reduce waste and energy consumption. Other solutions how to safeguard a green environment is continuously reviewed. As demands of new technology increases, more base stations is inevitable but T-Mobile recognizes genuine public concern over mobile communications phones and network infrastructure. Nevertheless, it is worth for T-Mobile to check if its presence would cause any environmental issues in the intended country. The significance of Stakeholders Diagram from Mindtools.com Having known the information about the macro-environment, it is also vital to analyse T-Mobiles microenvironment (Stakeholders), which is also referred to the near environment. As can be seen from the diagram, an organisation is surrounded by both the near and the far environment. Any alteration in them has an impact on the organisation. According to Ryan (2004), a stakeholder is anyone who has a financial interest in a particular business and according to businessdictionary.com (2009), a stakeholder is a person, group or organization that has interest or concern in an organization. Stakeholders can affect or be affected by the organizations actions, objectives and policies. Some examples of key stakeholders are creditors, directors, employees, government (and its agencies), owners (shareholders), suppliers, unions, and the community from which the business draws its resources. T-Mobile has the following stakeholders: Customers Competitors Suppliers Staffs Investors and Shareholders Creditors 7.1 Loyal customers are the lifeblood of businesses and in order to retain them, T-Mobile has to spend time and listen to their customers when developing strategies. They have to get closer to their customers to better understand their needs and concerns and to anticipate their desires. Customer requirements are constantly changing as lifestyles keep on changing. Adding up to the down turn, attention should be more focussed as explain in strategy at (3.1.1) above. Customers should become the focal point as T-Mobile need them to at least survived in such a difficult period. Customers become choosy before spending a penny and their expectations are high too. So, T-mobile has to provide an outstanding and a unique service, which is not comparable to their competitors. Customers should not get the chance or should not at all attempt to make a complaint like in the examples in (3.1.1) instead all the good words should be heard from customers. Failure to do so would compel customers to look for other alternatives, such as looking for another providers, which can be done at a click on the Internet. In relation to the second strategy, the approach to customers would defer. T-Mobile has to research about the market, the culture, the buying pattern, the cost and standard of living. T-Mobile should get the trusts and build a good relationship of the new market right at the beginning. There should be proper marketing, deals and offers to attract the new market. 7.2 An awareness of the competitors position in the market place needs to be known. To do that, a competitive analysis needs to be performed and the diagram below might help. It analyses the strength in four important areas such as: Creativity, level of service, the cost that might incurred and the reputation position. Diagram from Managingabusiness.com Competitive analysis of the marketplace demonstrated that the major competitors had a poor reputation and were not perceived to be innovative or adding value. Hence, helping T-Mobile to be at the forefront of the game. For instance, the android technology was a good shot for T-Mobile. The latter is famously known to be the first provider to introduce it. 7.3 Other forces that can have an adverse effect on the changes are the suppliers. Without suppliers support, businesses including T-Mobile would not be able to survive or even exist. The bargaining power of suppliers and the actions they take can directly influence an organization. So, an excellent relationship is imperative and long terms reasonable contract should be maintained between T-Mobile and its different suppliers to gain competitive edge over its competitors. For examples, Blackberry, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericson, Alcatel are among its suppliers. 7.4 Staffs sayings, interests and contribution are also vital to T-Mobile growth. Workforce is directly impacted on an organizations performance. In an economic downturn, employees become increasingly anxious about job security and financial worries, satisfaction with the job they have, commitment to their company and engagement with their work are all affected detrimentally. This trend could be self-fulfilling in that disengaged employees could have a negative impact on T-Mobiles products or services and lead to its decline, which would inevitably see the company failing. The employees concerned are about whether or not they would keep their jobs and whether or not they would be compensated if their company did not survive the recession. So, T-Mobile has serious reason to be concerned about the emotional well being of their employees by constantly motivating them, involving them, re-assuring them, appreciating them and rewarding them. 7.5 Investors and shareholders concern are necessary to consider, as they are injectors of capitals and cash into the business. Their main concern is the success of the business without interfering about the mechanisms to make it successful. All the answers about how to tackle potential risks need to be explained to them in order to reassure the return on their investments. Recently T-Mobile USA has failed to impress the MetroPCS Communications shareholders, which has disrupted a merger between them due to a fall in revenue by 5.9% to $ 4.9 billion. (new.investors.com, 2012). Well, thats a bad example to convince the other parties to join T-Mobile. Confidence is very important to investment in a recession. 5.6 Creditors are also important stakeholders who definitely have an interest in T-Mobile growth. If they were not willing to lend more money then the latter would be in deep dilemma. So, good credit scoring, positive financial statement such as profit loss account, balance sheet and cash flow statement would be desirable to convince creditors for the ongoing money borrowing. Good professional relationships with the stakeholders and regularly interacting with the stakeholders are crucial for project completion. Organizing regular meetings with stakeholders, accompanied by documentation, will help boost the confidence levels of shareholders. Lack of regular communication with stakeholders will instill in the minds of the stakeholders needless apprehensions and unfounded fears. Thus, the above stakeholders analysis is crucial to T-Mobile, as any sort of reluctance on their behalf would have an adverse effect, which may to lead to losing subscribers and goes bankrupt. 8.0 Resource Requirements to Implement the Strategy for T-Mobile Another aspect that is fundamental for T-Mobile to look at before actually implement the above strategy is the availability of resources and allocating them effectively for the benefit of the strategy. To organize the operational process of a Company, resource is a basic element of that company. A resource or set of resources helps organization to obtain competitive advantage. When the resources are combined they can lead to the formation of competencies and capabilities. According to Kourdi (2009), A better approach is to adopt a rigorous, dynamic and time-based view of resources, the factors driving success or failure. That is, success is determined by whether resources strengthen or decline. 8.1 Human resource: Having just a pool of staffs is not enough but a well trained and experience team is needed. The first stage of implementing the strategy plan is to make sure to have the right people on board. The right people include those individuals with required competencies and skills that are needed to support the plan. In the months following the planning process, expand employee skills through training, recruitment, or new hires to include new competencies required by the strategic plan. If T-Mobile cannot afford to recruit then to reinforce the workforce, re-shuffling of employees to perform different jobs is important. This can be done through job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment. It is also a mean to motivate staffs, as the latter feel valued in knowing and performing different tasks. T-Mobile has to ensure high morale at works, involving staffs in decision-making, creating team spirits, providing good working environment and friendly frequent meeting. In short, T-Mobile should create an environment that connects employees to the organizations mission and that makes them feel comfortable. To reinforce the importance of focusing on strategy and vision, reward success. The rewards may be big or small, as long as they lift the strategy above the day-to-day so people make it a priority. T-Mobile directly employs around 36,000 people. It has 300 retail shops and 13 million mobile customers. (T-Mobile, 2011). They are the part of the biggest mobile operator (Everything Everywhere) In UK. (bizyahoo, 2011). It has a young, enthusiastic and trained workforce across the country that can be re-shuffling to work in other countries if T-mobile is considering expanding in other countries like China. Since the workforce is young, they will be easily adept to the new technology of the merging company, for instance, Blackberry. 8.2 Financial resource: T-Mobile would need to have sufficient funds. The answer to this would be analysis of the Balance sheet. Stakeholders support like Shareholders, investors and creditors support are primary a

One Man, One Vote? Essay -- essays research papers

One Man, One Vote?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Joseph Farkas thinks that every vote cast should equal every other vote. He feels that many people are voting without knowing why they are voting for a certain person or why they aren't voting for another. He says that a vote cast by a person with no or very little knowledge in the election should not count as much as a vote cast by a person who knows alot about the election. The people who care about who has an important role in the government should have a bigger say in who is going to have that important role. The votes cast by a person who doesn't really know why they are voting for someone should not equal as much as an election educated person.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I do not think that this is a good idea at all. It would not encourage people to learn more about the election but keep them away from the voting area. It will probably make people not want to vote because many of them would think that their vote will not mean as much to the election. It would make the people who are familiar with the candidates want to vote because they would have a bigger say in who gets elected. It would be very hard to decide who know what about the running candidates and issues that are being addressed. They would have to give some kind of multiple-choice question test that you had to fill out while voting. It would take a long time for each person to vote and I think that would make people less encouraged to come and vote. Sin... One Man, One Vote? Essay -- essays research papers One Man, One Vote?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Joseph Farkas thinks that every vote cast should equal every other vote. He feels that many people are voting without knowing why they are voting for a certain person or why they aren't voting for another. He says that a vote cast by a person with no or very little knowledge in the election should not count as much as a vote cast by a person who knows alot about the election. The people who care about who has an important role in the government should have a bigger say in who is going to have that important role. The votes cast by a person who doesn't really know why they are voting for someone should not equal as much as an election educated person.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I do not think that this is a good idea at all. It would not encourage people to learn more about the election but keep them away from the voting area. It will probably make people not want to vote because many of them would think that their vote will not mean as much to the election. It would make the people who are familiar with the candidates want to vote because they would have a bigger say in who gets elected. It would be very hard to decide who know what about the running candidates and issues that are being addressed. They would have to give some kind of multiple-choice question test that you had to fill out while voting. It would take a long time for each person to vote and I think that would make people less encouraged to come and vote. Sin...

International Gecko

INTERNATIONAL GECKO AND ANTIQUE BUYER WE GUARANTEE A REAL TRANSACTION 15/08/12 International gecko and antique buyer Thank you for visiting our blog! Contact : Ichsan. Email   Ã‚  Ã‚   : [email  protected] com cellphone : +6281319518787 or +6285255966267 or +6287886022939 address  Ã‚   : Gading Serpong sektor 6, blok GB2 no 32, Tangerang, Indonesia We are International gecko and antique buyer from Indonesia wants to have a professional transaction with you, we are working globally to buy tokay geckos and antiques with the following criterias : TOKAY GECKO 1. Tokay gecko/gekko gecko species. 2.In good health. 3. Not wounded and has complete body parts. 4. The head of the gecko must be wider and bigger compared to its stomach/belly. 5. Sensitive and responsive. 6. Achieve the minimum weights and package. 7. Has the shape of a house lizard with red/green/white/purple spots. 8. Can stick to wall/wooden/glass surface. 9. Tokay is naturally fed and has a yellowish chest 10. No black magic PRICES DATED APRIL 16th 2012| | | PACKAGES| QUANTITY| PRICE IN INDONESIAN RUPIAHS| PRICE IN USD| 330-349 gram| 8 pcs/package| 15. 000. 000. 000/pce| 1,666,666/pc| 350-379 gram| 4 pcs/package| 20. 00. 000. 000/pce| 2,222,222/pc| 380-399 gram| 1 pce| 50. 000. 000. 000/pce| 5,555,555/pc| 400 gram up| 1 pce| 300. 000. 000. 000/100 gram| 33,333,333/100 gram| 500 gram up| 1 pce| 310. 000. 000. 000/100 gram| 34,444,444/100 gram| 600 gram up| 1 pce| 320. 000. 000. 000/100 gram| 35,555,555/100 gram| 700 gram up| 1 pce| 330. 000. 000. 000/100 gram| 36,666,666/100 gram| 800 gram up| 1 pce| 340. 000. 000. 000/100 gram| 37,777,777/100 gram| 900 gram up| 1 pce| 350. 000. 000. 000/100 gram| 38,888,888/100 gram| 1000 gram up| 1 pce| 600. 000. 000. 000/100 gram| 66,666,666/100 gram| net price, tax free (paid by buyer) * All contract is signed using Indonesian Rupiahs, but maybe converted to usd for overseas payment, the price of usd value is an approximate depending on Indonesian currency exch ange rate. * if the tokay is only 1 pce it must have the weight of minimum 380 gram to pass the weight examination, and also fulfills the other criterias as posted above. if it is below 380 g must be sold in package (see the list) * Currency exchange rate of the above calculation is Rp. 9000/ usd, and may   vary depending on Indonesian economic stability and exhange rate.

China vs. Rome Compare and Contrast

China and Rome China and Rome were astonishing civilizations that managed to advance technology and civilations. Both civilizations were rapidly growing and making changes to the world. The two cultures were pretty similar, yet very different. Their religions were something to be modest about. When it came to religion it helped the decline of both societies, by religion changing. When it came to technology though, its change is what caused the societies to flourish. As for education the both leaders of China and Rome worked on making it easier, evident from the letters, for common people to gain knowledge. Changing things in their kingdom clearly took time. With politics being something of a fight in many respects; came as part living in an ancient society. Peaceful changes in power was a rare occasion in Rome but, highly common in China. Both societies treated each other differently, no matter if it was regarding slaves, or women. The underclass was not treated well not out of hate but out of a well beaten attitude that whoever they were, somehow they were always better. Both societies were similar yet highly different it’s surprising how it came about. When two societies emerge like the Romans and Chinese, we would expect conflict, yet none came about, here is a look into both societies as truly empires. The Han China and The Roman Empire were well-organized bureaucracies. In Han China their government was based on Confucian ideas a main one of which was; that a ruler should learn self-discipline, should govern his subjects by his own example, and should treat them with love and concern. An example of this is in document four when it calls a governor â€Å"he was a generous man and his policies were peaceful. † This shows how clearly the people loved their emperor. While in all but the last few years of the roman rule the religion was very scattered. Due to the vastness of the Roman Empire uniting them under one religion was impossible. But one of the things that did spread was the idea that the Emperor was a god. No one ever came out and bluntly said it but a change in ideals that came with Christianity led to the famous saying of Emperor Constantine which was â€Å"I am simply the first among equals. † This truly represented a new era for Rome that helped lead to its decline. The politics of Han China were all about the good of the people. Showing this is in document one where it is said â€Å"and supply enough workers to those carry out the repair work in each district. † Clearly this document is showing a want of the work to be done, for the good of the people. While in Rome it seems the Emperor had less respect for his people when even one of his advisors writes â€Å"I do not believe that tools for the crafts were invented by wise men. †(Document 7) This total lack of respect for the common people is rather disgusting. Even though the two had different political philosophies, both managed control over their vast empires. In technology there is so much to be said for these two empires they managed to change the world with their developments. Rome had many technologies that gave new life to their capital. The first of which is aqueducts, â€Å"The abundance of water is sufficient not only for public and private uses and application but truly even for pleasure. † (Document 8) The point of this is that they had enough water coming into the city to do whatever they wanted to do. That’s how Rome ended up with so many fountains, bath houses and other water related activities. Another accomplishment of Rome is roads level, and strait. It took a long process of building to achieve what they did; making something rival to The Great Wall of China. Traditionally known to the Chinese as the â€Å"Long Wall of Ten Thousand Li†, the stretch of formidable defensive structures built to ward off invasion of the Celestial Empire by barbarians from the North. If all the fortified walls built in the different dynasties around northern China are included, the total length would exceed 31,000 miles. This is so long and large that the Great Wall of China can even be seen from space. When it came to water like the Romans Chinese were controlling it like putty in their hands. The main thing was the grand canal which brought water from one city to another and acted as a road way. The Grand Canal is the world's longest man-made waterway, being 1,800 kilometers long. The canal connects the present cities of Beijing in the north and Hangzhou in the south, which served as dynastic capitals in the past, and contains 24 locks and 60 bridges. Since most of China's major rivers flow from west to east, the fact that the Grand Canal runs north and south provides it as an important connector between the Yangtze River valley and the Yellow River valley. A good example of their care for water is in Document 1 â€Å"I request that you establish water conservation offices in each district and staff them with people who are experienced in the ways of water. † When it says this you can tell how much they care about the water. Both societies clearly had a good grip on the control of water, for their benefit and their pleasure. The last topic that shows the intellect of the people and the emperor, it seems that these peoples were highly intelligent. When you are looking at Document 5 it says â€Å"all craftsman spend their time in vulgar occupations; no workshop can have anything enlightening about it. I take this as the upper class looking down on what their lower class does to support their lifestyle. Slavery was commonly practiced throughout all ancient history, but no other people in history owned so many slaves and depended on them so much as the Romans. Many Romans had slaves do their dirty and hard work for them. These slave s were bought and sold in the slave markets. Some slaves were soldiers who had been captured in wars, while others were the children of slave parents. If they tried to run away, they were whipped, burned with iron, and sometimes even killed. Slavery was accepted as part of life in ancient Rome by the slaves themselves and by the society. Women were treated differently, as time went forward. When a young woman married in the early years of the Roman Republic she left her childhood home and the authority of her father and entered not only the home of her husband but his power and control as well. In law her status was not very different from that of her husband’s daughter. As Rome’s empire grew and more and more money poured in things began to change. Any amendments to the law probably seemed quite insignificant at the time they were made, but the reality of day to day life gradually began to transform the way society viewed women and the way they viewed themselves. By the end of the First Century women had achieved a level of freedom they would not see again in Western Society until the last half of the Twentieth Century. While in China slaves were less prominent in history, they were simply people with debts to pay off, and people who created with, in some cases their lives and blood and sweat the greatness that was ancient China. Women in ancient China were considered inferior to men. This meant that their whole lives were spent being subservient to the men in their families. Generations of one family often lived in the same house together and older people were greatly respected. It seems that even though there are changes to society over time both treated others in their society badly. Even with the greatest of technology some societies just have issues with the idea of equality. Even though the quality of life was a concern as shown in document 3 â€Å"later, water power was also applied, and the benefit was increased a hundredfold. † This truly shows an attempt on improving quality of life.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE AROUND THE WORLD essays

POLITICAL VIOLENCE AROUND THE WORLD essays 1. Title of the story: FAMILY BASHH. Rafael Miranda and his three teenage children (a girl and two win boys) has filed a lawsuit for being wrongfully arrested and violently handled by police for allegedly arguing and yelling at an off duty police officer. Miranda was picking up his two sons from catholic school. The incident erupted when Ramon Miranda and the off duty police officer clashed as they attempted to negotiate a lane closure near the school. Miranda yelled to the other driver in Spanish, You need to learn how to drive. Ramon Miranda claims that the officer shouted obscenities back, and then blocked the Mirandas path by moving his vehicle alongside a parked NYPD patrol car. As the off duty officer spoke to the uniformed cops, Miranda sent one of his sons to investigate. The suit claims the son was quickly surrounded by cops, handcuffed and held face-down on the hood of the off duty officers town car. Miranda and his other son rushed out of their car and also manhandled and arrested, according to the suit. The lawsuit alleges Miranda and his sons, who were in their school uniforms, were put in a choke holds with the father and one son thrown across the hood of the Town Car by several cops. Photos taken by Mirandas daughter Sarah support the allegations and even suggest cops may have used arm twisting holds outlawed by the NYPD. Sarah alleges she was hit by cops and arrested when they spotted her snapping the incident with a disposable camera she had hurriedly purchased from a nearby store. Medical records show she received a cut above his eye. All four members of the Miranda family were charged in the incident, police records show, but charges against the boys have since been dropped. Miranda and his daughter still face charges they interfered with cops and resisted arrest. # (2) Type of violence: POLICE BRUTALITY # (3) People perpetrating the ...

Pro Death Panalty Speech †Fiction

Pro Death Panalty Speech – Fiction Free Online Research Papers Good day ladies and gentlemen. I would like to thank all of you for coming out today and hope you are all enjoying the croissants and Starbuck’s coffee provided as a courtesy of your great state. Please allow me to introduce myself before we get started. My name is Slick Perry and if you didn’t already know, I am the state governor of Texas. You are all aware that we are reviewing our recidivism rate to various crimes and reviewing our stance regarding the death penalty as we approach 2009. Everyone here understands that capital punishment is a very controversial topic in the United States. In Texas, from December 1982 through August 2008, only 361 criminals of the millions of Texans in our good state were executed for the wickedest of crimes. We would all like to think more people would think twice before committing murder, knowing that they had to sit in jail for the rest of their lives with a life surrounded by complete boredom and misery. Unfortunately, this is not the case nor is it our desire to place people on death row matter-of-factly just because it’s an option available to us. We continually strive to make our judicial system fairer anticipating that the best verdicts are handed down based on the sound judgment of your peers. Anyone who has sat on a jury panel with the death penalty as a choice o f punishment knows this can be a very difficult thing to do, is one of our most difficult decisions but, inevitably, will be decided again. When European settlers came to the new world, they brought the practice of capital punishment with them. The first recorded implementation of the death penalty was Captain George Kendall which occurred in the Jamestown colony of Virginia, 1608. George Kendall was executed for being a spy for Spain. In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, where executions were not as humane as today and the death penalty was carried out by crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement. Thankfully we have evolved more humanitarian methods. In Texas, after sentencing, if the death penalty is handed down by the judge, most cases are appealed giving the vile defendant a chance to circumvent the just desserts. Many death penalty cases are appealed by a writ of habeas corpus action to determine whether the person in the custody of legal authorities is lawfully detained in accordance with the constitutional rules. It is at this point that the Eighth Amendment from the U.S. Constitution protects those Texas inmates where, ‘excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Since, by some, the death penalty is considered ‘cruel and unusual punishment this has become a popular appeal. Yes, it is true that Texas leads the nation in the number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, but it is our ethical legal moralism, our law enforcement officers and the duty of our fellow Texans doing what we should be doing stopping the evil s courge of society! Your society! In the 1958 the Supreme Court ruled in Trop v. Dulles (356 U.S. 86), which itself is not a death penalty case; the Eighth Amendment contained an evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society. Death penalty opponents used this case as a basis for their argument that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment because the U.S. had evolved to a point that its standard of decency no longer tolerated the death penalty. This is not the case my good people and the decency we offer convicted murderers is a painless alternative to those methods used in the 1600s. The practice of using the death penalty continued until it was suspended in the early 1970s. On June 29, 1972, in the case of Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendments prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. This was due in part to the fact that juries had complete sentencing discretion which could result in arbitrary sentencing, and the Courts deemed it was also a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process. Keep in my mind that in Texas only the most vial and cruel criminals are placed on death row, and, who are the most deserving. The consequences of the Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling voided 40 death penalty statutes, thereby commuting the sentences of 629 death row inmates around the country, 45 from Texas and suspending the death penalty because existing statutes were no longer valid. However, this ruling went against the U.S. public majority where, in fact, over 55% of U.S. citizens were in favor of the death penalty. Some states rewrote their death penalty laws to address the unconstitutionality of giving juries complete discretion in sentencing by setting a mandated capital punishment for those convicted of capital crimes. The Supreme Court ruled in Woodson v. North Carolina (1976) this was also unconstitutional. A different approach by some states was to introduce mitigating and aggravating factors when determining sentencing where, in 1976, the Supreme Court ultimately approved. The Supreme Court also held that the death penalty itself was once again constitutional under the Eighth Amendment allowing states a new dawn for a better society. On January 17, 1977, the suspension of the death penalty officially ended with the execution of Gary Gilmore in Utah, by firing squad, and that same year the introduction and use of the new kinder gentler lethal injection was administered by Oklahoma. In 1977, after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, over 65% of U.S. citizens were in favored of it. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty the Supreme Court has further defined the Eighth Amendments relationship to the death Penalty. In the same year it was reinstated the Courts ruled that it was deemed to harsh for instances of kidnapping, rape, being mentally incompetent and juveniles younger that 15. However it was determined in Stanford v. Kentucky that the constitution does not prohibit the death penalty for 16-year olds who commit murder. Since 1977 our state has focused every effort to save your taxpaying money and kept Texans protected from paying a state sales tax. Unlike other states we’ve done this by managing inmate total cost and making executions cost effective as possible with renowned success. We’ve even managed to redirect that extra money towards repairing our roads and funding school programs for our kids. You! The Texas taxpayer, paid an average of 43% lower cost than the other states to house inmates and less than one-hundred dollars to rid the state of each of its worst offenders. My fellow Texans, I know the death penalty is a very touchy subject to a few of you and the views of individuals who either favor or oppose the action are coupled with not only moral values and ethical beliefs, but are as personally diverse emotionally regarding race, abortion, religion and if McCain or Obama should be the next president. The most popular alternative of death penalty opponents is life in prison with no possibility of parole and the additional penalty of restitution compensation to victim’s families. Unfortunately, there is no effect of this swaying proponents of the death penalty nor is there any substantial evidence of its effectiveness to reduce the number murders committed nationwide. Currently, over 65% of the U.S. is in favor of the death penalty. In our great state of Texas we have become a kinder gentler state where we, Texans, have implemented the use of lethal injection as means of execution. We started this in 1977, used it for the first time in 1982 and continue to use it to this day. I have two promises for you my friends. My first promise to you and my personal guarantee is that we will keep capital punishment as it is and continue to reevaluate its effectiveness and use; continually reviewing its pros and cons. If a majority of Texans agree that there are better restorative justice methods or positive retribution alternatives we will change our stance to how we administer capital punishment. My second promise and guarantee is for as long as the death penalty is still practiced, the malevolent and immoral death row inmates who make it to execution will never hurt you, your family, your friends or your children ever again. Death row inmates are fulfilling the appropriate punishment handed down to them by our Texas due process of law. Only God is left for them to answer to in their final judgment. My fellow Texans, I hope ya’ll stick around to enjoy the free lunch sponsored by Chili’s and remember to vote for me for reelection. Thank you. Research Papers on Pro Death Panalty Speech - FictionComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoNever Been Kicked Out of a Place This NiceThe Fifth HorsemanThe Effects of Illegal Immigration19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraIncorporating Risk and Uncertainty Factor in CapitalBringing Democracy to AfricaHip-Hop is ArtAssess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 EuropeTwilight of the UAW

Crime scene in the novel and film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Crime scene in the novel and film - Essay Example of the said author that deals with important political and social issues such as terrorism, anarchism and the events that can be related to such issues. The main point of view of the said novel is mainly on the side of the antagonistic character in a society mainly on the basis of the perception that it presents on the people involved with the act of terrorism and other criminal dealings. Based on the experience brought about by the novel, it can be considered that in cases of extreme belief in certain philosophies, people are capable of crimes and actions that the norms can consider as evil. The nature of human being then can be considered highly complex and cannot be boxed through cultural and moral standards. The main character of the story represents a normal person with a family which often has conflicts regarding different aspects of life. Basically, one of the highlight of the character’s life is regarding the peers with similar point of view specifically anarchists who rooted for revolution using unconventional actions. Although this is the case, the wife of the main character depicted the capability if a person to hurt another which can also considered as an act of terrorism and anarchy specifically when she had killed her husband. The representation presented by Conrad reflects the human nature that is outside the stereotypical view. That includes the focus on the irony of perceptions on the weakness of the women in the society; the limitations in the harm one human can do to another regardless of relationship; and that capacity to do crime is not limited to the distraught and the people without morality. Crimes can be committed regardless of culture, norms and character of a person. The novel The Great Gatsby is another notable published work by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is a representation of the American society after the WWI. The novel represents the conflicts occurring in the society due to different factors that are interplaying. One

I coundn't decide yet. Could you decide Research Paper

I coundn't decide yet. Could you decide - Research Paper Example Lacks died after eight months, but her cells live, the first cell line to survive, cultured in vitro at the Hospital’s laboratory for cervical research and since then literally immortal (Brodwin 2000 54-57). Those cells are still being cultured today and are used for research on cancer, AIDS, various other diseases and gene-related studies. In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Lacks’ children grieved at the fact that others made a multi-million industry of their mother’s cells while they are living a life of poverty (Skloot 2010). Despite the medical benefits brought about by HeLa, there are those who believe that an ethical breach occurred when Lacks cells were used for research without her and/or her children’s knowledge and consent. According to Anders Nordgren, dialogue, which includes informed consent, is central to ethical research. There is an unwritten agreement among the research community that a research must always be preceded by the consent of the subject concerned (2001 p 128). Informed consent, which involves disclosure, understanding, voluntariness, authorization, and precondition (Nordgren 2008 p. 128), is merely in keeping with the right of a person to privacy, one of the rights mentioned by the 9th Amendment to the Constitution. In the case of Pavesich v New England Life Insurance Company 50 S.E. 68 (Ga. 1905), the Court concluded that the right to privacy is an independent right under a state constitution (Schultz 576). Moreover, modern trends in ethical research suggests the significance and impact of informed consent to the entire family lineage of the individual whose cells are being made a subject of research (Lea et al 1998 p.91). The elements of disclosure and understanding requires that a person must be notified and recognize the various aspects of the research, such as its

Economy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Economy - Essay Example tanding of how the economy is utilizing scarce resources, economists delve into classifications of GDP and its effects on the several forms of spending occurring in the country. The GDP is divided into four main components. These include consumption, investment, government purchases and net exports. All these components when added together equal the GDP. The relationship between GDP and its four components can be expressed in the form of an equation as follows: This equation represents an identity (Mankiw 208). This means that the variables of the equation are going to decide on the validity of the equation. In the equation, all sorts of expenditure that is done in the country are classified into either of the components of the GDP. The largest part of the GDP is consumption purchases and constituted 70% of the GDP in the US in 2007 (Mankiw 211). They entail the expenditure of the household on consumer goods and services in a particular period. Consumption purchases entail a flow concept (Gwartney et al. 153). The services and goods that the consumers opt for are mostly nondurable in nature. Expenditures done on food, clothing, entertainment and medical services are part of consumption purchases. These products are not very long-lasting and are used up in a short span of time. On the other hand, durable products such as cars form only one-ninth of the total consumption purchases and are used up over a long period of time. Investment entails the production of capital goods that are going to cause a flow of future services. They are not consumed over a short period of time and include the investments of companies into machineries and equipments as well as houses. Gross private investment can be carried out for the purpose of replacing old machinery or for adding net additions to the existing pool of capital assets (Gwartney et al. 153). Net investment is crucial in knowing the future scope of productivity of the economy. In 2007, they equaled to 15% of the GDP in

Discuss the arguments for and against the use of Closed Material Term Paper

Discuss the arguments for and against the use of Closed Material Procedures (CMP) in national security matters - Term Paper Example Thus, courts in many cases, have to deny access of specific documents or information to individuals, from the point of view of public interest. Though such measures have been introduced with the primary objective of safeguarding public interest, the issue of CMP has become a controversial topic due to its far-reaching implication of the criminal justice system as a whole. In normal court proceedings, individuals and their legal representatives are allowed to be present and examine all the documents that are allowed as evidences in a case during the trial and such proceedings are known as open procedure. However, in cases where the examination of any documents by individuals is considered as a breach of national security, individuals are not allowed to examine the relevant document and such materials are known as â€Å"closed† materials.3 However, a government appointed lawyer, who represents the individual, or Special Advocate, will be allowed to â€Å"attend all parts ofâ₠¬  the proceedings and extended access to all the documents examined during the trial.4 This is to ensure that the government preserves a â€Å"strong and independent judiciary† to protect the rights and freedom of its citizens.5 On the other hand, the government has a primary responsibility for protecting national security to guarantee the safety and security of the citizens. Thus, it becomes significant that the government strikes a balance between the protection of national security and safeguarding the rights and freedom of individuals. The debate regarding CMPs, thus, focuses its attention on protecting the national security without injuring or compromising the concepts of the freedom of individuals and facilitating them a fair trial. One of the main arguments against CMPs is that the system of suppressing material is â€Å"inherently unfair† and that a hearing that disallows individuals from being present or examining the documents â€Å"undermines the credibil ity† of the legal system.6 The opponents of CMPs further argue that the system of allowing the prosecution, usually represented by the government, to â€Å"present its case† without extending the defence an opportunity of â€Å"public scrutiny† is against the principles of justice.7 They also contend that apart from the inherent risks associated with CMP, it considerably reduces the â€Å"degree of judicial and Ministerial scrutiny† of how the cases are tried and this can have a detrimental effect on â€Å"transparency and accountability† of justice system as well as compromise its â€Å"credibility.†8 Thus, the main argument against CMPs relies on the premise that this practice undermines the concept of fair trial to individuals as in this system they are not allowed to examine all the documents that the prosecution relies on for the purpose of proving their case. It is needless to mention that when a defendant is disallowed the opportunity of viewing a prosecution document, it necessarily pre-empts him or her from properly preparing his or her defence. Thus, this procedure, to a

Religion Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Religion - Coursework Example Smith further said that religion is indeed, nothing more than an outcome of the study of many scholars, who utilize it as a means to carry out analysis of various social aspects, otherwise, it does not exist outside the academic world. Smith’s generalization of religion as an academic myth is an overt expression of his association with the school of thought that negates the existence of religion in practical world. Another scholar who belongs to the same school of thought but came up with a more philosophical explanation of the reason of its people’s belief in religion is Edward Burnett Taylor who visualized the religion as an animated concept developed by humans in an attempt to conceive the physical world around them in a better way while Sigmund Freud said religion exists simply because people want to believe in it. (Anon., 2010). However, there are other scholars that do believe in religion and make reasonable arguments for the purpose of the existence of religion and acknowledge its role and impact in the society. One such scholar has been Mircea Eliade who believed in religion and expressed the opinion saying that religion is something too special to be limited to social, cultural or psychological concerns alone. (Anon, 2010). In addition to them, there have been scholars who simply referred to religion as an outcome of some phenomenon. For example, James George Frazer explained that religion surfaced when magic failed to address people’s longing for spiritual satisfaction. (Anon., 2010). Frazer said that the psychology of some people caused them to trust spiritual beings and seek help from them. This resulted in the formation of religion. An in-depth analysis of the opinions of various scholars in the history of literature suggests that many saw religion as a man made concept. A vast majority of philosophers and educationalists denies the belief in religion and refers to it as an animated

WHAT IS MEANT BY STIGMA,AND DOES IT LINK WITH THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL Essay

WHAT IS MEANT BY STIGMA,AND DOES IT LINK WITH THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL EXCLUSIONS AND WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE - Essay Example In this regard, social labelling that discredits individuals’ virtual identities (Crocker et al 1998, p.505), inevitably leads to stigmatization that often times leads to distortion of individual identities. Social exclusion, on the other hand, refers to the state of being locked out from participation in the central social activities in one’s own society (Burchardt et al 2002, p.30); this means that if an individual fails to take part in social activities then they are ‘socially excluded’. The purpose of this paper is to explain what is meant by the term ‘stigma’, and to explore the possible linkage there is between this term and the concept of social exclusion; consequently, the conclusion of this paper will draw upon this knowledge to give implications for policy and practice. Simply put, stigma denotes ‘a mark of shame’ (Oxford Dictionaries, 2012), concomitant particularly with certain individuals in the society, thus, people who are stigmatized actually view themselves inferior due to social labels that describe them so, distorting their real identities. According to Chamberlin, stigma often leads to discrimination implying that the individual being stigmatized has a problem (Sayce 1998, pp.331-332); in this case, language is a powerful tool that functions in the creation of certain perceptions and stereotypes about individuals. When people make biased judgments concerning others, this negative labelling coupled with the resultant social labels and subsequent stigmatization that arises can be attributable to mental health issues. Language is very effective in helping people with mental illnesses to manage and eventually overcome their problem especially because the words used in reference to people influence their perceptions and expectatio ns respectively (Lynn 2010 p.1). For instance, existing knowledge shows that relapse rates of patients with mental

Discuss the arguments for and against the use of Closed Material Term Paper

Discuss the arguments for and against the use of Closed Material Procedures (CMP) in national security matters - Term Paper Example Thus, courts in many cases, have to deny access of specific documents or information to individuals, from the point of view of public interest. Though such measures have been introduced with the primary objective of safeguarding public interest, the issue of CMP has become a controversial topic due to its far-reaching implication of the criminal justice system as a whole. In normal court proceedings, individuals and their legal representatives are allowed to be present and examine all the documents that are allowed as evidences in a case during the trial and such proceedings are known as open procedure. However, in cases where the examination of any documents by individuals is considered as a breach of national security, individuals are not allowed to examine the relevant document and such materials are known as â€Å"closed† materials.3 However, a government appointed lawyer, who represents the individual, or Special Advocate, will be allowed to â€Å"attend all parts ofâ₠¬  the proceedings and extended access to all the documents examined during the trial.4 This is to ensure that the government preserves a â€Å"strong and independent judiciary† to protect the rights and freedom of its citizens.5 On the other hand, the government has a primary responsibility for protecting national security to guarantee the safety and security of the citizens. Thus, it becomes significant that the government strikes a balance between the protection of national security and safeguarding the rights and freedom of individuals. The debate regarding CMPs, thus, focuses its attention on protecting the national security without injuring or compromising the concepts of the freedom of individuals and facilitating them a fair trial. One of the main arguments against CMPs is that the system of suppressing material is â€Å"inherently unfair† and that a hearing that disallows individuals from being present or examining the documents â€Å"undermines the credibil ity† of the legal system.6 The opponents of CMPs further argue that the system of allowing the prosecution, usually represented by the government, to â€Å"present its case† without extending the defence an opportunity of â€Å"public scrutiny† is against the principles of justice.7 They also contend that apart from the inherent risks associated with CMP, it considerably reduces the â€Å"degree of judicial and Ministerial scrutiny† of how the cases are tried and this can have a detrimental effect on â€Å"transparency and accountability† of justice system as well as compromise its â€Å"credibility.†8 Thus, the main argument against CMPs relies on the premise that this practice undermines the concept of fair trial to individuals as in this system they are not allowed to examine all the documents that the prosecution relies on for the purpose of proving their case. It is needless to mention that when a defendant is disallowed the opportunity of viewing a prosecution document, it necessarily pre-empts him or her from properly preparing his or her defence. Thus, this procedure, to a

WHAT IS MEANT BY STIGMA,AND DOES IT LINK WITH THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL Essay

WHAT IS MEANT BY STIGMA,AND DOES IT LINK WITH THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL EXCLUSIONS AND WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE - Essay Example In this regard, social labelling that discredits individuals’ virtual identities (Crocker et al 1998, p.505), inevitably leads to stigmatization that often times leads to distortion of individual identities. Social exclusion, on the other hand, refers to the state of being locked out from participation in the central social activities in one’s own society (Burchardt et al 2002, p.30); this means that if an individual fails to take part in social activities then they are ‘socially excluded’. The purpose of this paper is to explain what is meant by the term ‘stigma’, and to explore the possible linkage there is between this term and the concept of social exclusion; consequently, the conclusion of this paper will draw upon this knowledge to give implications for policy and practice. Simply put, stigma denotes ‘a mark of shame’ (Oxford Dictionaries, 2012), concomitant particularly with certain individuals in the society, thus, people who are stigmatized actually view themselves inferior due to social labels that describe them so, distorting their real identities. According to Chamberlin, stigma often leads to discrimination implying that the individual being stigmatized has a problem (Sayce 1998, pp.331-332); in this case, language is a powerful tool that functions in the creation of certain perceptions and stereotypes about individuals. When people make biased judgments concerning others, this negative labelling coupled with the resultant social labels and subsequent stigmatization that arises can be attributable to mental health issues. Language is very effective in helping people with mental illnesses to manage and eventually overcome their problem especially because the words used in reference to people influence their perceptions and expectatio ns respectively (Lynn 2010 p.1). For instance, existing knowledge shows that relapse rates of patients with mental

Personality psychology Essay Example for Free

Personality psychology Essay Freud said that the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious conscious. He certainly made that the goal of his work as a theorist. And yet he makes the unconscious sound very unpleasant, to say the least: It is a cauldron of seething desires, a bottomless pit of perverse and incestuous cravings, a burial ground for frightening experiences which nevertheless come back to haunt us. Frankly, it doesnt sound like anything Id like to make conscious! A younger colleague of his, Carl Jung, was to make the exploration of this inner space his lifes work. He went equipped with a background in Freudian theory, of course, and with an apparently inexhaustible knowledge of mythology, religion, and philosophy. Jung was especially knowledgeable in the symbolism of complex mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, Alchemy, Kabala, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. If anyone could make sense of the unconscious and its habit of revealing itself only in symbolic form, it would be Carl Jung. He had, in addition, a capacity for very lucid dreaming and occasional visions. In the fall of 1913, he had a vision of a monstrous flood engulfing most of Europe and lapping at the mountains of his native Switzerland. He saw thousands of people drowning and civilization crumbling. Then, the waters turned into blood. This vision was followed, in the next few weeks, by dreams of eternal winters and rivers of blood. He was afraid that he was becoming psychotic. But on August 1 of that year, World War I began. Jung felt that there had been a connection, somehow, between himself as an individual and humanity in general that could not be explained away. From then until 1928, he was to go through a rather painful process of self-exploration that formed the basis of all of his later theorizing. He carefully recorded his dreams, fantasies, and visions, and drew, painted, and sculpted them as well. He found that his experiences tended to form themselves into persons, beginning with a wise old man and his companion, a little girl. The wise old man evolved, over a number of dreams, into a sort of spiritual guru. The little girl became anima, the feminine soul, who served as his main medium of communication with the deeper aspects of his unconscious. A leathery brown dwarf would show up guarding the entrance to the unconscious. He was the shadow, a primitive companion for Jungs ego. Jung dreamt that he and the dwarf killed a beautiful blond youth, whom he called Siegfried. For Jung, this represented a warning about the dangers of the worship of glory and heroism which would soon cause so much sorrow all over Europe and a warning about the dangers of some of his own tendencies towards hero-worship, of Sigmund Freud! Jung dreamt a great deal about the dead, the land of the dead, and the rising of the dead. These represented the unconscious itself not the little personal unconscious that Freud made such a big deal out of, but a new collective unconscious of humanity itself, an unconscious that could contain all the dead, not just our personal ghosts. Jung began to see the mentally ill as people who are haunted by these ghosts, in an age where no-one is supposed to even believe in them. If we could only recapture our mythologies, we would understand these ghosts, become comfortable with the dead, and heal our mental illnesses. Critics have suggested that Jung was, very simply, ill himself when all this happened. But Jung felt that, if you want to understand the jungle, you cant be content just to sail back and forth near the shore. Youve got to get into it, no matter how strange and frightening it might seem. Biography Carl Gustav Jung was born July 26, 1875, in the small Swiss village of Kessewil. His father was Paul Jung, a country parson, and his mother was Emilie Preiswerk Jung. He was surrounded by a fairly well educated extended family, including quite a few clergymen and some eccentrics as well. The elder Jung started Carl on Latin when he was six years old, beginning a long interest in language and literature especially ancient literature. Besides most modern western European languages, Jung could read several ancient ones, including Sanskrit, the language of the original Hindu holy books. Carl was a rather solitary adolescent, who didnt care much for school, and especially couldnt take competition. He went to boarding school in Basel, Switzerland, where he found himself the object of a lot of jealous  harassment. He began to use sickness as an excuse, developing an embarrassing tendency to faint under pressure. Although his first career choice was archeology, he went on to study medicine at the University of Basel. While working under the famous neurologist Krafft-Ebing, he settled on psychiatry as his career. After graduating, he took a position at the Burghoeltzli Mental Hospital in Zurich under Eugene Bleuler, an expert on (and the namer of) schizophrenia. In 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach. He also taught classes at the University of Zurich, had a private practice, and invented word association at this time! Long an admirer of Freud, he met him in Vienna in 1907. The story goes that after they met, Freud canceled all his appointments for the day, and they talked for 13 hours straight, such was the impact of the meeting of these two great minds! Freud eventually came to see Jung as the crown prince of psychoanalysis and his heir apparent. But Jung had never been entirely sold on Freuds theory. Their relationship began to cool in 1909, during a trip to America. They were entertaining themselves by analyzing each others dreams (more fun, apparently, than shuffleboard), when Freud seemed to show an excess of resistance to Jungs efforts at analysis. Freud finally said that theyd have to stop because he was afraid he would lose his authority! Jung felt rather insulted. World War I was a painful period of self-examination for Jung. It was, however, also the beginning of one of the most interesting theories of personality the world has ever seen. After the war, Jung traveled widely, visiting, for example, tribal people in Africa, America, and India. He retired in 1946, and began to retreat from public attention after his wife died in 1955. He died on June 6, 1961, in Zurich. Theory Jungs theory divides the psyche into three parts. The first is the ego,which Jung identifies with the conscious mind. Closely related is the personal unconscious, which includes anything which is not presently conscious, but can be. The personal unconscious is like most peoples understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason. But it does not include the instincts that Freud would have it include. But then Jung adds the part of the psyche that makes his theory stand out from all others: the collective unconscious. You could call it your psychic inheritance. It is the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious of it. It influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the emotional ones, but we only know about it indirectly, by looking at those influences. There are some experiences that show the effects of the collective unconscious more clearly than others: The experiences of love at first sight, of deja vu (the feeling that youve been here before), and the immediate recognition of certain symbols and the meanings of certain myths, could all be understood as the sudden conjunction of our outer reality and the inner reality of the collective unconscious. Grander examples are the creative experiences shared by artists and musicians all over the world and in all times, or the spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions, or the parallels in dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy tales, and literature. A nice example that has been greatly discussed recently is the near-death experience. It seems that many people, of many different cultural backgrounds, find that they have very similar recollections when they are brought back from a close encounter with death. They speak of leaving their bodies, seeing their bodies and the events surrounding them clearly, of being pulled through a long tunnel towards a bright light, of seeing deceased relatives or religious figures waiting for them, and of their disappointment at having to leave this happy scene to return to their bodies. Perhaps we are all built to experience death in this fashion. Archetypes The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. Jung also called them dominants, imagos, mythological or primordial images, and a few other names, but archetypes seems to have won out over these. An archetype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way. The archetype has no form of its own, but it acts as an organizing principle on the things we see or do. It works the way that instincts work in Freuds theory: At first, the baby just wants something to eat, without knowing what it wants. It has a rather indefinite yearning which, nevertheless, can be satisfied by some things and not by others. Later, with experience, the child begins to yearn for something more specific when it is hungry a bottle, a cookie, a broiled lobster, a slice of New York style pizza. The archetype is like a black hole in space: You only know its there by how it draws matter and light to itself. The mother archetype The mother archetype is a particularly good example. All of our ancestors had mothers. We have evolved in an environment that included a mother or mother-substitute. We would never have survived without our connection with a nurturing-one during our times as helpless infants. It stands to reason that we are built in a way that reflects that evolutionary environment: We come into this world ready to want mother, to seek her, to recognize her, to deal with her. So the mother archetype is our built-in ability to recognize a certain relationship, that of mothering. Jung says that this is rather abstract, and we are likely to project the archetype out into the world and onto a particular person, usually our own mothers. Even when an archetype doesnt have a particular real person available, we tend to personify the archetype, that is, turn it into a mythological story-book character. This character symbolizes the archetype. The mother archetype is symbolized by the primordial mother or earth mother of mythology, by Eve and Mary in western traditions, and by less personal symbols such as the church, the nation, a forest, or the ocean. According to Jung, someone whose own mother failed to satisfy the demands of the archetype may well be one that spends his or her life seeking comfort in the church, or in identification with the motherland, or in meditating upon the figure of Mary, or in a life at sea. Mana You must understand that these archetypes are not really biological things, like Freuds instincts. They are more spiritual demands. For example, if you dreamt about long things, Freud might suggest these things represent the phallus and ultimately sex. But Jung might have a very different interpretation. Even dreaming quite specifically about a penis might not have much to do with some unfulfilled need for sex. It is curious that in primitive societies, phallic symbols do not usually refer to sex at all. They usually symbolize mana, or spiritual power. These symbols would be displayed on occasions when the spirits are being called upon to increase the yield of corn, or fish, or to heal someone. The connection between the penis and strength, between semen and seed, between fertilization and fertility are understood by most cultures. The shadow Sex and the life instincts in general are, of course, represented somewhere in Jungs system. They are a part of an archetype called the shadow. It derives from our prehuman, animal past, when our concerns were limited to survival and reproduction, and when we werent self-conscious. It is the dark side of the ego, and the evil that we are capable of is often stored there. Actually, the shadow is amoral neither good nor bad, just like animals. An animal is capable of tender care for its young and vicious killing for food, but it doesnt choose to do either. It just does what it does. It is innocent. But from our human perspective, the animal world looks rather brutal, inhuman, so the shadow becomes something of a garbage can for the parts of ourselves that we cant quite admit to. Symbols of the shadow include the snake (as in the garden of Eden), the dragon, monsters, and demons. It often guards the entrance to a cave or a pool of water, which is the collective unconscious. Next time you dream about wrestling with the devil, it may only be yourself you are wrestling with! The persona The persona represents your public image. The word is, obviously, related to the word person and personality, and comes from a Latin word for mask. So the persona is the mask you put on before you show yourself to the outside world. Although it begins as an archetype, by the time we are finished realizing it, it is the part of us most distant from the collective unconscious. At its best, it is just the good impression we all wish to present as we fill the roles society requires of us. But, of course, it can also be the false impression we use to manipulate peoples opinions and behaviors. And, at its worst, it can be mistaken, even by ourselves, for our true nature: Sometimes we believe we really are what we pretend to be! Anima and animus A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play. For most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung, like Freud and Adler and others, felt that we are all really bisexual in nature. When we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only gradually, under the influence of hormones, become male or female. Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male nor female in the social sense. Almost immediately as soon as those pink or blue booties go on we come under the influence of society, which gradually molds us into men and women. In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, usually based on our different roles in reproduction, but often involving many details that are purely traditional. In our society today, we still have many remnants of these traditional expectations. Women are still expected to be more nurturant and less aggressive; men are still expected to be strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung felt these expectations meant that we had developed only half of our potential. The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together, they are referred to as syzygy. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, even argumentative. The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our other half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that fills our anima or animus archetype particularly well! Other archetypes Jung said that there is no fixed number of archetypes which we could simply list and memorize. They overlap and easily melt into each other as needed, and their logic is not the usual kind. But here are some he mentions: Besides mother, their are other family archetypes. Obviously, there is father, who is often symbolized by a guide or an authority figure. There is also the archetype family, which represents the idea of blood relationship and ties that run deeper than those based on conscious reasons. There is also the child, represented in mythology and art by children, infants most especially, as well as other small creatures. The Christ child celebrated at Christmas is a manifestation of the child archetype, and represents the future, becoming, rebirth, and salvation. Curiously, Christmas falls during the winter solstice, which in northern primitive cultures also represents the future and rebirth. People used to light bonfires and perform ceremonies to encourage the suns return to them. The child archetype often blends with other archetypes to form the child-god, or the child-hero. Many archetypes are story characters. The hero is one of the main ones. He is the mana personality and the defeater of evil dragons. Basically, he represents the ego we do tend to identify with the hero of the story and is often engaged in fighting the shadow, in the form of dragons and other monsters. The hero is, however, often dumb as a post. He is, after all, ignorant of the ways of the collective unconscious. Luke Skywalker, in the Star Wars films, is the perfect example of a hero. The hero is often out to rescue the maiden. She represents purity, innocence, and, in all likelihood, naivete. In the beginning of the Star Wars story, Princess Leia is the maiden. But, as the story progresses, she becomes the anima, discovering the powers of the force the collective unconscious and becoming an equal partner with Luke, who turns out to be her brother. The hero is guided by the wise old man. He is a form of the animus, and reveals to the hero the nature of the collective unconscious. In Star Wars, he is played by Obi Wan Kenobi and, later, Yoda. Notice that they teach Luke about the force and, as Luke matures, they die and become a part of him. You might be curious as to the archetype represented by Darth Vader, the dark father. He is the shadow and the master of the dark side of the force. He also turns out to be Luke and Leias father. When he dies, he becomes one of the wise old men. There is also an animal archetype, representing humanitys relationships with the animal world. The heros faithful horse would be an example. Snakes are often symbolic of the animal archetype, and are thought to be particularly wise. Animals, after all, are more in touch with their natures than we are. Perhaps loyal little robots and reliable old spaceships the Falcon are also symbols of animal. And there is the trickster, often represented by a clown or a magician. The tricksters role is to hamper the heros progress and to generally make trouble. In Norse mythology, many of the gods adventures originate in some trick or another played on their majesties by the half-god Loki. There are other archetypes that are a little more difficult to talk about. One is the original man, represented in western religion by Adam. Another is the God archetype, representing our need to comprehend the universe, to give a meaning to all that happens, to see it all as having some purpose and direction. The hermaphrodite, both male and female, represents the union of opposites, an important idea in Jungs theory. In some religious art, Jesus is presented as a rather feminine man. Likewise, in China, the character Kuan Yin began as a male saint (the bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara), but was portrayed in such a feminine manner that he is more often thought of as the female goddess of compassion! The most important archetype of all is the self. The self is the ultimate unity of the personality and is symbolized by the circle, the cross, and the mandala figures that Jung was fond of painting. A mandala is a drawing that is used in meditation because it tends to draw your focus back to the center, and it can be as simple as a geometric figure or as complicated as a stained glass window. The personifications that best represent self are Christ and Buddha, two people who many believe achieved perfection. But Jung felt that perfection of the personality is only truly achieved in death. The dynamics of the psyche So much for the content of the psyche. Now lets turn to the principles of its operation. Jung gives us three principles, beginning with the principle of opposites. Every wish immediately suggests its opposite. If I have a good thought, for example, I cannot help but have in me somewhere the opposite bad thought. In fact, it is a very basic point: In order to have a concept of good, you must have a concept of bad, just like you cant have up without down or black without white. This idea came home to me when I was about eleven. I occasionally tried to help poor innocent woodland creatures who had been hurt in some way often, Im afraid, killing them in the process. Once I tried to nurse a baby robin back to health. But when I picked it up, I was so struck by how light it was that the thought came to me that I could easily crush it in my hand. Mind you, I didnt like the idea, but it was undeniably there. According to Jung, it is the opposition that creates the power (or libido) of the psyche. It is like the two poles of a battery, or the splitting of an atom. It is the contrast that gives energy, so that a strong contrast gives strong energy, and a weak contrast gives weak energy. The second principle is the principle of equivalence. The energy created from the opposition is given to both sides equally. So, when I held that baby bird in my hand, there was energy to go ahead and try to help it. But there is an equal amount of energy to go ahead and crush it. I tried to help the bird, so that energy went into the various behaviors involved in helping it. But what happens to the other energy? Well, that depends on your attitude towards the wish that you didnt fulfill. If you acknowledge it, face it, keep it available to the conscious mind, then the energy goes towards a general improvement of your psyche. You grow, in other words. But if you pretend that you never had that evil wish, if you deny and suppress it, the energy will go towards the development of a complex. A complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster constellate around a theme provided by some archetype. If you deny ever having thought about crushing the little bird, you might put that idea into the form offered by the shadow (your dark side). Or if a man denies his emotional side, his emotionality might find its way into the anima archetype. And so on. Heres where the problem comes: If you pretend all your life that you are only good, that you dont even have the capacity to lie and cheat and steal and kill, then all the times when you do good, that other side of you goes into a complex around the shadow. That complex will begin to develop a life of its own, and it will haunt you. You might find yourself having nightmares in which you go around stomping on little baby birds! If it goes on long enough, the complex may take over, may possess you, and you might wind up with a multiple personality. In the movie The Three Faces of Eve, Joanne Woodward portrayed a meek, mild woman who eventually discovered that she went out and partied like crazy on Saturday nights. She didnt smoke, but found cigarettes in her purse, didnt drink, but woke up with hangovers, didnt fool around, but found herself in sexy outfits. Although multiple personality is rare, it does tend to involve these kinds of black-and-white extremes. The final principle is the principle of entropy. This is the tendency for oppositions to come together, and so for energy to decrease, over a persons lifetime. Jung borrowed the idea from physics, where entropy refers to the tendency of all physical systems to run down, that is, for all energy to become evenly distributed. If you have, for example, a heat source in one corner of the room, the whole room will eventually be heated. When we are young, the opposites will tend to be extreme, and so we tend to have lots of energy. For example, adolescents tend to exaggerate male-female differences, with boys trying hard to be macho and girls trying equally hard to be feminine. And so their sexual activity is invested with great amounts of energy! Plus, adolescents often swing from one extreme to another, being wild and crazy one minute and finding religion the next. As we get older, most of us come to be more comfortable with our different facets. We are a bit less naively idealistic and recognize that we are all mixtures of good and bad. We are less threatened by the opposite sex within us and become more androgynous. Even physically, in old age, men and women become more alike. This process of rising above our opposites, of seeing both sides of who we are, is called transcendence. The self The goal of life is to realize the self. The self is an archetype that represents the transcendence of all opposites, so that every aspect of your personality is expressed equally. You are then neither and both male and female, neither and both ego and shadow, neither and both good and bad, neither and both conscious and unconscious, neither and both an individual and the whole of creation. And yet, with no oppositions, there is no energy, and you cease to act. Of course, you no longer need to act. To keep it from getting too mystical, think of it as a new center, a more balanced position, for your psyche. When you are young, you focus on the ego and worry about the trivialities of the persona. When you are older (assuming you have been developing as you should), you focus a little deeper, on the self, and become closer to all people, all life, even the universe itself. The self-realized person is actually less selfish. Synchronicity Personality theorists have argued for many years about whether psychological processes function in terms of mechanism or teleology. Mechanism is the idea that things work in through cause and effect: One thing leads to another which leads to another, and so on, so that the past determines the present. Teleology is the idea that we are lead on by our ideas about a future state, by things like purposes, meanings, values, and so on. Mechanism is linked with determinism and with the natural sciences. Teleology is linked with free will and has become rather rare. It is still common among moral, legal, and religious philosophers, and, of course, among personality theorists. Among the people discussed in this book, Freudians and behaviorists tend to be mechanists, while the neo-Freudians, humanists, and existentialists tend to be teleologists. Jung believes that both play a part. But he adds a third alternative called synchronicity. Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events that are not linked causally, nor linked teleologically, yet are meaningfully related. Once, a client was describing a dream involving a scarab beetle when, at that very instant, a very similar beetle flew into the window. Often, people dream about something, like the death of a loved one, and find the next morning that their loved one did, in fact, die at about that time. Sometimes people pick up he phone to call a friend, only to find that their friend is already on the line. Most psychologists would call these things coincidences, or try to show how they are more likely to occur than we think. Jung believed the were indications of how we are connected, with our fellow humans and with nature in general, through the collective unconscious. Jung was never clear about his own religious beliefs. But this unusual idea of synchronicity is easily explained by the Hindu view of reality. In the Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea: We look out at the world and each other and think we are separate entities. What we dont see is that we are connected to each other by means of the ocean floor beneath the waters. The outer world is called maya, meaning illusion, and is thought of as Gods dream or Gods dance. That is, God creates it, but it has no reality of its own. Our individual egos they call jivatman, which means individual souls. But they, too, are something of an illusion. We are all actually extensions of the one and only Atman, or God, who allows bits of himself to forget his identity, to become apparently separate and independent, to become us. But we never truly are separate. When we die, we wake up and realize who we were from the beginning: God. When we dream or meditate, we sink into our personal unconscious, coming closer and closer to our true selves, the collective unconscious. It is in states like this that we are especially open to communications from other egos. Synchronicity makes Jungs theory one of the rare ones that is not only compatible with parapsychological phenomena, but actually tries to explain them! Introversion and extroversion Jung developed a personality typology that has become so popular that some people dont realize he did anything else! It begins with the distinction between introversion and extroversion. Introverts are people who prefer their internal world of thoughts, feelings, fantasies, dreams, and so on, while extroverts prefer the external world of things and people and activities. The words have become confused with ideas like shyness and sociability, partially because introverts tend to be shy and extroverts tend to be sociable. But Jung intended for them to refer more to whether you (ego) more often faced toward the persona and outer reality, or toward the collective unconscious and its archetypes. In that sense, the introvert is somewhat more mature than the extrovert. Our culture, of course, values the extrovert much more. And Jung warned that we all tend to value our own type most! We now find the introvert-extravert dimension in several theories, notably Hans Eysencks, although often hidden under alternative names such as sociability and surgency. The functions Whether we are introverts or extroverts, we need to deal with the world, inner and outer. And each of us has our preferred ways of dealing with it, ways we are comfortable with and good at. Jung suggests there are four basic ways, or functions: The first is sensing. Sensing means what it says: getting information by means of the senses. A sensing person is good at looking and listening and generally getting to know the world. Jung called this one of the irrational functions, meaning that it involved perception rather than judging of information. The second is thinking. Thinking means evaluating information or ideas rationally, logically. Jung called this a rational function, meaning that it involves decision making or judging, rather than simple intake of information. The third is intuiting. Intuiting is a kind of perception that works outside of the usual conscious processes. It is irrational or perceptual, like sensing, but comes from the complex integration of large amounts of information, rather than simple seeing or hearing. Jung said it was like seeing around corners. The fourth is feeling. Feeling, like thinking, is a matter of evaluating information, this time by weighing ones overall, emotional response. Jung calls it rational, obviously not in the usual sense of the word. We all have these functions. We just have them in different proportions, you might say. Each of us has a superior function, which we prefer and which is best developed in us, a secondary function, which we are aware of and use in support of our superior function, a tertiary function, which is only slightly less developed but not terribly conscious, and an inferior function, which is poorly developed and so unconscious that we might deny its existence in ourselves. Most of us develop only one or two of the functions, but our goal should be to develop all four. Once again, Jung sees the transcendence of opposites as the ideal. Assessment Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers found Jungs types and functions so revealing of peoples personalities that they decided to develop a paper-and-pencil test. It came to be called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and is one of the most popular, and most studied, tests around. On the basis of your answers on about 125 questions, you are placed in one of sixteen types, with the understanding that some people might find themselves somewhere between two or thre.