TROUBLE BREWS AT STARBUCKS--Case Study Case Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Inconvenience BREWS AT STARBUCKS - Case Study Example Basically, the 5Cs examination, which was at first the 3Cs procedure, incorporates components, for example, client, organization, partners, atmosphere and contenders. The key angles that Schultz had at the top of the priority list were client, contenders, and the organization itself all together for the vision to extend Starbucks to be sensible. Fundamentally, Schultz expected for Starbucks to serve espresso at its outlets with a similar taste of that made at home and considered in the developing rivalry from contestants, for example, McDonalds, which was winning its client base. The principle target showcase for Starbucks as a component of this vision was to be the individuals that want to mix their espresso from home in light of the fact that very few chain stores served espresso that was of their ideal quality. The worth situating to clients would be that Starbucks would have the option to serve espresso that was equivalent to that prepared at home thus sparing their clients the hustle of having to just depend on home ground espresso with the taste that they know. Moreover, Schultz additionally analyzed Starbucks position and looked to stay app licable in the market by giving its needs and meeting consumer loyalty while enrolling benefits. Schultz vision met protections, yet Starbucks later got tied up with the thought wherein the initial phase in usage dependent on the 4Ps showcasing blend was to make a spot or environment that clients would unwind in. The thought was to make the third spot after home and work where their objective market would appreciate the vibe of Starbucks while tasting on some espresso (3). The feel of the ‘third place’ incorporated the entrance to music, books, and films as a major aspect of its item conveyance alternatives, which was effective in expanding client stream to their stores (7). The other factor was that Starbucks likewise focused on regions with substantial populace stream, for example, air terminals, which prevailing with regards to catching a more extensive objective market. Furthermore, Starbucks additionally prepared its staff on the

Aphra Behns Poem To the Fair Clarinda Essay -- Aphra Behn Fair Clarin

Aphra Behn's Poem To the Fair Clarinda In her sonnet â€Å"To the reasonable Clarinda,† Aphra Behn composes of a friendship between the speaker and Clarinda. This paper will endeavor to demonstrate that Clarinda is a bisexual rather than a lady as is prominently accepted, in this manner totally changing the importance of the sonnet. In the initial scarcely any lines, the speaker chooses to call Clarinda â€Å"Lovely Charming Youth† (4) rather than â€Å"Fair dazzling Maid† (1). The speaker says that the name will â€Å"lessen my constraint† (6). This could allude to the sexual emotions that are holding her back on account of the womanly piece of Clarinda. â€Å"And without Blushes I the Youth persue† (7) tells how the speaker isn't humiliated to want Clarinda since she is alluded to as a Youth. More distant into the main refrain, the speaker discusses how the affection among her and Clarinda is right on the grounds that Clarinda is seen by the remainder of the world to be just a lady, and two ladies in a well disposed, sentimental relationship was impeccably ordinary as of now. The speaker says that Clarinda was conceived as a hermaph...

Why Empty Nesters Need to Keep Planning and Dreaming

Why Empty Nesters Need to Keep Planning and Dreaming Relationships Spouses & Partners Print Why Empty Nesters Need to Keep Planning and Dreaming By Sharon Greenthal linkedin Sharon Greenthal is a writer and editor who specializes in parenting, midlife, empty nesting, and marriage.   Learn about our editorial policy Sharon Greenthal Updated on February 23, 2020 Getty More in Relationships Spouses & Partners Marital Problems LGBTQ Violence and Abuse The day your last child leaves home, whether for college, a job, a marriage or any other reason, is as big of a change in the life of a parent as it was when you welcomed your first baby into your home. The way you think about yourself and the priorities you have â€" being a parent and putting your children first â€" is no longer who you are or how you need to think about your life. Empty nesting is the end of a phase of your life, but its also an exciting new beginning. Planning for the Future Its possible that you are looking at your empty nest and feeling sad and depressed, missing your children terribly and wishing you could go back and do it all over again. Instead of wishing for what was, its time to start planning and dreaming of whats to come. If you are a new empty nester, give yourself time to adjust and feel the loss of your day-to-day joy of raising your children â€" but start to think about what you would like to do next.   Many empty nesters dont know where to begin to fill the time they had devoted to the care of their children. A good place to start is to look back to when you were a child and what you enjoyed doing for play. Maybe you loved to draw or spent hours creating colorful images in coloring books. Perhaps you were always first in line to audition for a school play. You may have loved to play kickball or tennis. You may have created elaborate tales about your dolls or stuffed animals. Why not revisit those activities and pick up a paintbrush, volunteer at a local theater, take a few tennis lessons, or write a short story? Getting out Into the World   Parenting requires a great amount of time spent in and around the home and community. Youve now moved on from being scheduled and committed every day. Now is a great time to get out and see the world. You can now go on long-imagined trips without worrying about childcare. Vacations no longer need to be taken with your kids school responsibilities in mind. Weekends, which can seem empty and endless without childrens activities to attend or plan for can now be a time to explore local areas that you havent visited before, or take a day trip somewhere youve always wanted to see.   Downsizing Planning for the future as an empty nester can seem overwhelming and impossible to imagine. Your big family home can become a museum of your past without some changes. You may be interested in downsizing, or you may just want to freshen up your decor a bit. Either way, the process of reimagining your living space is not only exciting but also a great way to shift your thinking from the life of a parent to the life of an empty nester. If nothing else, you should close your kids bedroom doors for a while and practice walking past them without feeling blue. Downsizing is a wonderful way to not only let go of some of the pain of empty nesting by leaving the family home and living someplace new, but it also can free up finances to allow you to pursue other interests. You may want to buy an RV or a sailboat, or you may just want to put money away for your retirement. Whatever you want to do, its exciting to be able to plan for what you want to happen, not what your children need. Before we have children we imagine what our lives will be like while we are raising our families. We know there is a timeline of events â€" from infancy to toddlerhood, pre-school to elementary school, middle school to high school to college. Many of us â€" most of us â€" dont see life past that when thinking about the future â€" but theres still a lot of time and a lot of possibilities ahead of us. Life after raising kids can be as fulfilling, exciting and happy as you want it to be - it takes a little dreaming and a little planning to make it happen. Positive Aspects of Being an Empty Nester

What explanations are offered for the development of nationalism Free Essays

string(70) " after Cold War had come to control public life in the United States\." Introduction The roots of nationalism go back to the middle of the eighteenth century and a movement called romanticism. Affecting art, journalism, philosophy, music, and politics, romanticism was a mood or a disposition that defied rigid definition. It did indicate a revolt against rationalism and a consequent emphasis on sentiment, feeling, and imagination. We will write a custom essay sample on What explanations are offered for the development of nationalism? or any similar topic only for you Order Now The emotions of the heart, it was argued, though irrational, should be valued over and above the intellectualizations of the head. So that whereas Rene Descartes had said, â€Å"I think, therefore I am,† Jean-Jacques Rousseau proclaimed, â€Å"A thinking man is a depraved animal. † In this havoc of power and ideas, one familiar face has re-emerged: that of nationalism. For many it is as undesirable as it is unbidden and unexpected. For others its recurrence is regrettable but comes as no surprise. For still others, it symbolizes the only sure way forward after the sudden shatters created by totalitarianism in the developmental paths of so numerous societies. For all, nationalism symbolizes a stage in the evolution of humanity to ‘higher forms’ of culture, one that should be endured or embraced, but is certainly destined to pass after a few chaotic decades (Smith 1995; Brown, Micheal, 1997). None of these situations seems to accord with the chronological facts or sociological realisms of ethnicity and nationalism. Instead of treating ethnicity and nationalism as phenomenon in their own right, they persist on evaluating them by the yardstick of a liberal evolutionary scheme, overt or tacit, one that is intrinsically problematic and perceptibly irrelevant to the dynamics of nations, nationalism and ethnic conflict. For liberals and socialists dedicated to the view that humanity progresses in stages to greater units of comprehensiveness and higher values, the nation and nationalism can simply represent a halfway house to the aim of a cosmopolitan culture and a global polity. On the one hand, the nation can be applauded for superseding all those local, inscriptive ties and communities that have controlled innovation and opportunity and enchained the human spirit. Its wider horizons have brought collectively all kinds of peoples with changeable origins, religions, occupations and class backgrounds and turned them into citizens of the defensive, civic nation. Conversely, the nation today has become an obstruction to progress, seeking ineffectively to control the flow of information and the channels of mass communication, and to obstruct and control the great economic institutions–transnational companies, world banks and trade organizations and the global financial and commodities markets. Although the great forces of globalization, economic, political and cultural, have already diluted the power of the nation-state and are fast making all national boundaries and responses obsolete (Schopfin, George, 2000; Hobsbawm 1990: ch. 6). Romanticism rejected the idea of the independence of the individual and stressed identification with an external whole, with something outside of oneself. Quite normally, this outside whole took the form of nature, as marked in the works of such romanticists as Wordsworth in England; Herder, Schiller, and Goethe in Germany; and Hugo, Rousseau, and Madame de Stael in France. Frequently also, the center of one’s identification was the â€Å"folk,† the cultural group, or nation. Nationalism, in other words, was a political expression of romanticism (William Booth, 1996, p. A-1). In many ways, the major philosopher of nationalism was Rousseau, whose influence on the French Revolution has been generally recognized. Rousseau’s ideal was the small, well-knit community in which each person freely gave himself over, quite literally, to every other person. We should obey the community, Rousseau taught, because in observing the community we obey ourselves. The identity and unity of our wills produce a â€Å"General Will† that is completing, indivisible, infallible, and always for the common good. The individual’s commitment and fondness to the community and the General Will are total. French Revolution and Nationalism Following the French Revolution, nationalism spread across the continent of Europe and beyond. In a real sense, the past of nineteenth-century Europe is the history of nationalism or as a minimum this is one way of looking at it. The twentieth century saw the dispersal of nationalism throughout the world. No country has been spared; none is an exemption. â€Å"Some Euro-enthusiasts, have hinted at the prospect of transcending the state and nation by forming a wider federation and a district political identity. Yet the federalists have been continually frustrated by the continuing vivacity of the national idea†. James Mayall, 1990, 94-5 With the exclusion of two brief periods, Western nationalism has continued unabated. For about a decade after each of the two world wars, Western nationalism was in a state of decline, even of ill reputation. It was nationalism, after all, that had set in motion cataclysmic events, leading to appalling waste of human and material resources. But the decline of Western nationalism did not last long. Its renaissance after World War I was much hastened by the fascist and the Nazi movements of the 1920s and 1930s. After the Second World War, Western nationalism owed much of its vitality to the French Gaullist movement of the 1950s and the 1960s. More about this currently. The same world wars that led to the transient decline of nationalism in the West set the stage for the rise of nationalism in the East. The â€Å"new nationalism,† as it came to be called, took place, for the most part, in colonial areas; and it was in large appraise a reaction against the Western policies of imperialism and invasion. At the turn of the century, colonial nationalism (more exactly, anticolonial nationalism) was almost an unknown phenomenon. Following World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires, nationalism began to appear in a few countries, most notably in India. After the Second World War and the dissolution of the German, British, French, and other imperial designs, nationalism mushroomed in formerly colonial countries. Nationalism after Cold War Nationalism takes hold after the Cold war. By 1950, the philosophy of the Nationalism after Cold War had come to control public life in the United States. You read "What explanations are offered for the development of nationalism?" in category "Expository essays" It was an ideology of American nationalist globalism, in which the United States was seen to be locked in global struggle with forces of international communism, proscribed by a Soviet government intent on world invasion. That struggle was believed to intimidate fundamental American values, most particularly freedom of enterprise and freedom of religion, and the leeway of spreading those values, which were deemed collective, to the rest of the world, which longed for them. Within this ideology, almost all international problems or crises were seen as part of the overarching conflict between the United States and the USSR—between their contending ideologies and ways of life. Within this framework, a threat to â€Å"freedom† anywhere in the world was deemed a risk to the American way of life. This presented a simple, dichotomous view that seemed too many if not most Americans to elucidate the often frustrating and considerably more composite developments of the postwar world. The roots of this philosophy lay in a tradition of belief about America’s national mission and destiny, a ritual reaching back to the seventeenth century. Key elements of this ideology were in place at the end of World War II; some developed throughout the war, and others preceded it. The final pieces fell into place between 1945 and 1950. All through those years, the range of U. S. foreign policy discourse grew more and more narrow. Though, American nationalist ideology given the principal underpinning for the broad public consent that supported Cold War foreign policy. Seen through the prism of that principles, the U. S. had emerged from World War II as a completely matured great power, dedicated to comprehending freedom all through the world and prepared to usher in a new golden age in its own image. After the war, the Soviet Union became a relentless foe because it exposed this idea of the American Century. From the late forties through the late eighties, the United States waged cold war against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics not mainly in the name of capitalism or Western civilization (neither of which would have united the American people behind the cause), but in the name of America in the name, that is, of the nation. The potency of the Nationalism ideology that appeared between 1945 and 1950—an principles that dominated U. S. public life at least until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991—derivative largely from its nationalist appeal. Yet although the vast scholarly literature on the Cold War, American nationalism remains a little-studied element of postwar U. S. history. Indeed, as Stephen Vaughn noted practically twenty years ago in his study of democracy and nationalism in the propaganda work of the Committee on Public Information during World War I, twentieth-century American nationalism remains a subject deficiently in need of further study. (Vaughn, Stephen, 1980). Involvement of Soviet Empire Since the implosion first of the Soviet empire and then of the Soviet Union itself, nationalism has again affirmed itself as a force on the world scene, one not expected to fade away soon. The scholarly literature on nationalism is voluminous and seems to expand exponentially, mainly in the years since the earth-shaking events of 1989-91. The ideology around which the Cold War consent was forged from 1947 on consisted of three main constructs: national greatness, global accountability, and anticommunism. Anticommunism was the last leg of this ideological triad to fall into place. By illumination why the United States was having such a hard time meeting its global responsibilities while concurrently buttressing the nation’s claims to greatness, anticommunism put the entire ideology in working order. The third leg permitted the triad to stand. But the fundamental ideology was one of American nationalist globalism, not anticommunism. In itself, anticommunism was barely new to U. S. political culture in 1947. But with the Soviet Union sitting spanning Eastern and Central Europe, global anticommunism now became a defining constituent in U. S. foreign-policy ideology as signified in public discourse. The perception that the communist threat was worldwide received momentous amplification in 1949, with the â€Å"loss† of China to Mao’s army and the Soviet Union’s detonation of its first atomic device (William Claiborne, Washington Post, November 24, 1996, p. A-12). Nationalism and American Globalism The idea of the Soviet threat proved relevant precisely because it threatened the idea of the American Century. Global anticommunism fit impressively into the existing mixture of national greatness and global accountability, American nationalism and American globalism—as this mixture had already begun to function as an ideology of nationalist globalism that facilitated many Americans makes sense of their nation’s overriding place in the postwar world. Global anticommunism lent increased force to this ideological vision. The appeal of global anticommunism—and particularly the impact of the Truman Doctrine speech of March 12, 1947 should be understood in that context. In 1947 the Truman Doctrine provoked influential debate, though it clearly carried the day. In 1950 the application of that principle to Asia provoked overwhelming support. After the accent of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in the first six months of 1947, and particularly after congressional support of the Marshall Plan in the wake of the Czech coup in February and March of 1948, the range of adequate public debate about the basic objectives of U. S. foreign policy had grown gradually more constricted. Fairly, Henry Wallace attempted to make these objectives a central question of the 1948 presidential campaign. But Wallace and the foreign-policy questions he sought to heave were painted with a red brush that left them beyond the pale of adequate public discussion. Certain basics of the civil rights and labor movements attempted to express dissent over U. S. foreign-policy initiatives in planned terms, but to do so they accepted the terms of the debate as recognized by the Truman administration’s stated global objectives. In doing so, groups like the NAACP and the UAW sought to gain both government and public support to precede their own domestic agendas. While both organized labor and African Americans achieved certain objectives as a result, their acceptance of the official objectives of U. S. foreign policy put in to the narrowing of public discourse relating to both national and international issues. In late 1948 and 1949, systematic dissidents who forthrightly opposed the fundamental foreign-policy strategy of the Truman administration, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Henry Wallace, found themselves more insignificant than ever. The UE and other left-wing unions that divergent the Marshall Plan were debarred from the CIO, which in effect took away their status as well thought-of American trade unions. These dissenters had stepped outside the boundaries of legitimate discourse as distinct by the established notions of national greatness, global responsibility, and anticommunism. Wallace definitely preached his own principle of national greatness and global responsibility, but his failure to recognize global anticommunism nevertheless placed him beyond the pale. The lack of fundamental public debate concerning the nature and purposes of U. S. foreign policy after 1950 given to the development of an ever more militarized foreign policy controlled by narrow ideological blinders that covered fundamental international realities. â€Å"The so-called Cold War,† in the words of Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, â€Å"was far less the altercation of the United States with Russia than America’s expansion into the entire world—a world the Soviet Union neither proscribed nor created. † (Everett Carll Ladd, 1995) The ideology of American nationalist globalism, which distinct international reality in terms of a Manichaean struggle between the U. S. -led â€Å"free world† and Soviet-controlled communist totalitarianism, served to validate the expansion of U. S. power all through the world while obfuscating the enormous complications of a world experiencing the final collapse of European colonialism. It facilitated most Americans to feel pride in being citizens of a great nation that required only to protect its own way of life and to defend â€Å"free peoples everywhere† from totalitarian aggression. The absence of debate about the fundamental assumptions of U. S. foreign policy throughout most of the Cold War era served to reify that ideological commencement. Nationalism has been a momentous theme of the post-Cold War era. Throughout the Cold War, Americans welcomed refugees from the Captive Nations. After the Cold War, refugees either escaping the terror of dictatorial rulers or wanting to stake their claim to the American Dream lost their cachet with voters (accept those fleeing Castro’s Cuba). â€Å"The arrival of the greatest number of immigrants as the wave of eastern, central, and southern European ethnics in 1901-1910 caused anti-immigrant commitment to spread† (â€Å"Immigration,† Time/CNN, All Politics, Internet, March 25, 1996). Passions ran high in vote-rich states such as California, Florida, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, New York, and California. Throughout the 1994 midterm elections, Californians ratified Proposition 187, which banned all state spending on illegal immigrants and requisite police to report suspected illegal to the California Department of Justice and the U. S. Immigration Service. Television sets sputtered with pictures of illegal Mexicans swarming across the border as a presenter intoned, â€Å"They just keep . † (Barone and Ujifusa,1996, p. 81). As the campaign escalated, Republicans Jack Kemp and William Bennett accused the measure, claiming it was â€Å"politically unwise and essentially at odds with the best tradition and courage of our party. † (Dick Kirschten, 1995, p. 150). Regardless of their protestations, Proposition 187 won handily, 59 percent to 41 percent. But whereas whites gave it 64 percent backing, 69 percent of Hispanics disapproved–a sharp demarcation of the new â€Å"us-versus-them† politics. (J. Joseph Huthmacher, 1969) Pete Wilson, the GOP governor who made the vote initiative a cornerstone of his reelection bid, won by an almost equal vote of 55 percent to 41 percent. Two years later, Kemp realigned his immigration stance once he was chosen by Bob Dole to be the 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee. Conclusion However, the role of nationalism, and particularly the nationalist symbolism of American world power, remains a derelict factor in our understanding of the Cold War’s origins. As the Cold War itself recedes into history and the view that the Russians ongoing it and the Americans won it becomes ever more commonplace, it is more important than ever to observe the ways in which the United States contributed to the Cold War’s origins, mainly through the universalist pretensions of its political culture. The triumphalism embedded in Francis Fukuyama’s view that the end of the Cold War marked â€Å"the end of history† constitutes a new, traditionally contingent variation on the ideology that framed that conflict from the beginning. In a world growing less rather than more pliant to the dictates of U. S. policy, such ideological thinking is potentially quite precarious. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, the ideological basics of American nationalist globalism have been loosened but not undone. There is no longer a domineering consensus, because there is no longer a prime perception of a single, overarching threat to the United States. But most Americans are quite sure that their country won the Cold War and that they are citizens of the world’s favored nation. As the Persian Gulf War demonstrated, national enormity and global responsibility can activate a potent public consensus behind large-scale intervention without anticommunism playing a role. Until we have a more thorough debate over the nature and purposes of our nation’s foreign policy in a multifaceted rapidly changing world, we remain in danger of falling back into an ideological description of international realities. If that should happen particularly if it should happen in combination with declining U. S. global domination, domestic economic travails, and the determination of awesome U. S. military power, it could pose a grave new threat itself, both to the wellbeing of the republic and to the wellbeing of the world. References: â€Å"Immigration,† Time/CNN, All Politics, Internet, March 25, 1996. Barone and Ujifusa, â€Å"The Almanac of American Politics†, 1996, p. 81. Brown, Micheal E., Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict (MIT:1997); Dick Kirschten, â€Å"Second Thoughts,† National Journal, January 21, 1995, p. 150. Everett Carll Ladd, America at the Polls, 1994 ( Storrs, Connecticut: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 1995), p. 124. Hobsbawm, E.J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge:1992); J. Joseph Huthmacher, Massachusetts: People and Politics, 1919-1933 ( New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 162. Mayall, James, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge,1990); Schopfin, George, Nations, Identity, Power: The New Politics of Europe (Hurst, 2000) Smith, A., Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (1995) Vaughn, Stephen. Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980 William Booth, â€Å"In a Rush, New Citizens Register Their Political Interest,† Washington Post, September 26, 1996, p. A-1. William Claiborne, â€Å"Democrats Don’t Have Lock on Hispanic Vote, Latino Leaders Say,† Washington Post, November 24, 1996, p. A-12. How to cite What explanations are offered for the development of nationalism?, Essays

Mexican Mistreatment Essays - Human Migration, American Culture

Mexican Mistreatment Americans take many things for granted. For the majority of the population, life is relatively mild. People are normally not rich, but not poor, not ecstatically happy, but not too depressed either. One might say that the population generally has it easy, as compared to a large percentage of the rest of the world. It is for this reason that a great many people from other countries immigrate here. They are seeking a better life. Often, however, they get mistreated. Like the Mexican immigrants, who arrive here, only to be treated unfairly because of few opportunities, American prejudice, and Americanization. They do not come here to do harm, or to take advantage of Americans, or to do anything but find something better than their current situation. However, their experience here is often not as good as it could be. First of all, the opportunities the Mexican immigrants are presented with are very poor. This is due in part to the fact that they are willing to work hard for much less than they deserve (Perea 2). So naturally, companies are going to take advantage of this. The normal available employment to the Mexicans is often so bad, as Harris points out, that is characterized by harsh working conditions, enormous amounts of physical labor, and minimal remuneration (190). This work, although not constantly, is often seasonal, like field work, picking fruit, and other such things that bring to mind slave labor. One man, picks strawberries for a living, at only $4.00 an hour (Ungar 137). Not only are the jobs horrible, the pay is worse. Most of the time, if minimum wage is attained, then the worker can consider themselves lucky because it is rare (Alexander 78). The wages for these jobs are low often because the companies know that people will go for them. Often, their workers are illegal immigra nts anyway, and cannot request their rights. So whether or not the applicant is legal or not, if they look Hispanic, then they get judged unfairly by the employer (Nigel 46). Because of their appearance, Mexicans get judged as all the same, as Hing speculates, as uneducated, desperate, and hardworking (124). They are even sought after by potential employers because of this. One man speaks of finding some workers for a small job, saying, I'm going to find some Mexicans for the job?they've got a good attitude, they work cheap, and they're dependable deliberately seeking out workers which he can overwork and underpay (Ungar 238). Secondly, Mexican immigrants are badly mistreated by American prejudice. Something that fuels this prejudice is called nativism, which is an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of its foreign connections?a zeal to destroy the enemies of a distinctively American way of life (Perea 1). Those that believe in nativism, nativists, are against immigration, and are especially against Mexican immigrants. They pose a great problem to Mexican immigrants, especially if they happen to be illegal aliens. Nativists have passed something called Proposition 187, which was to Save Our State by preventing illegal aliens in the United States from receiving benefits or public services in the State of California (Harris 61). Although this is directed only at illegal aliens, it has an effect of legal Mexican Americans too, because many just assume by appearance that if one looks Mexican then he or she is an illegal alien. California Senator Craven even was quoted saying the state leg islature should explore requiring all people of Hispanic descent to carry and identification card that would be used to verify legal residence (Against). This same Senator was later again quoted saying more horrible things about Mexicans, that migrant workers are on a lower scale of humanity (Against). Mexicans also face a mass amount of disrespect because of their financial status, as if people fail to realize that they are coming here to improve that. It is not just the white population that is putting these people down, either. There are black groups around against Mexicans also, promoting to other African Americans in speeches and leaflets that Mexicans ?are taking away our jobs, our women, and everything else' (Ungar 365). Lastly, all Mexican immigrants are subject to the grossly unfair process of

Health care fraud and abuse within the Veterans Administration system Essays

Health care fraud and abuse within the Veterans Administration system Essays Health care fraud and abuse within the Veterans Administration system Paper Health care fraud and abuse within the Veterans Administration system Paper The VA was established in the year 1989. The main aim of its establishment was to provide federal benefits to the US military veterans and their respective families. The agency is perceived to be the second largest of the fifteen cabinet departments. It provides financial assistance, health care and burial benefit programs. It covers around sixty million people who are namely;  Ã‚   veterans, their respective family members and the veterans survivors. VA’s annual budget is higher than 90 billion dollars although it is seeking around $ 125 billion for next year (2011). Sixty billion dollars from its budget is stipulated for health benefits and the remaining is directed towards pensions and disabilities. Other benefits of VA include home loans, educational assistance, vocational rehabilitation for the disabled veterans and life insurance. The predecessor of VA was the veteran’s administration which had been established in 1930. VA is divided into, veteran’s health administration, national cemetery system and veteran’s benefits administration. It facilitates the management of the veterans hospitals or clinics and also disbursement and eligibility of the disability pensions (Answers.com. 2010). The VA has is plagued with many fraud cases which result from deception, poor system guidelines and many more other causes. This research proposal is going to discuss the top reasons as to why the VA is plagued with these fraud cases. Public recognition Lack of public recognition is perceived to be one of the top reasons as to why the VA is plagued with fraud. This is because no monitoring is done on the kind work of being done by men and women at the VA’s office. Vital work is basically done without much public recognition. This brings about schemes which are aimed at creating fraudulent claims for 100% disability that resulted in retroactive lump-sum payments to the deceased veterans. For example in the year 2001 a former supervisor at VA’s Atlanta regional office was sentenced for a 13- year imprisonment and also ordered to pay more than 11 million dollars as restitution for her taking part in a scheme to pay benefits in the name of deceased veterans. This calls for the undertaking in a number of corrective measures which must include technology-based and procedural controls than can quickly prevent and quickly identify similar frauds and stronger responsibility for the VA managers. Public recognition will require all the work of the veterans to be publicized and exposed in the notice boards and internal WebPages. Dysfunction of the system The second top reason as to why there is increased fraud in Veteran Affairs the dysfunction of the system which openly tends to invite fraud. Congress has also facilitated to the systems dysfunction because it has pressurized the VA into making it easier for the veterans especially when it comes to the settling of the disability claims. The VA has also currently proposed changes which will simplify the acts of deception from the veterans. Fraud emanating from deception is depicted by the higher number of veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq coupled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder thus making for it easier for the veterans to fake the disease. Medicalnewstoday.com,(2010) describes this deception emanating from the disorder as â€Å"profitably working the levers of sympathy for the wounded and obligation to the troops, and exploiting the sheer difficulty of nailing a surefire diagnosis of a condition that is notoriously hard to define. Each of these cases represents potentially millions of dollars in tax-free benefits over the veterans lifetime benefits that may continue while the veteran works and even into retirement. This deception is facilitated by the lack of availability of the clinicians who perform these disability evaluations. This is because the clinicians assume that it is not their responsibility to assess the patient’s stories. The new rule (making it easy for the veterans to settle their disability claims) should be thoroughly researched on traumatic and PTSD. With reports indicating that the number of Vietnam War veterans who committed suicide to be more than those who died in the battle field, much of the funds should be directed towards the treatment of the veterans. Most of the military women and men in uniform are usually stigmatized when they try to seek help for the demons in their brains or minds that forces them to contemplate suicide as the way out. It will therefore be important for the health specialist to evaluate every veteran once he or she comes from the damage (Medicalnewstoday.com, 2010). Trained staff The other top reason for fraud in VA is lack of a well trained staff. A staff which has no basic concepts of what they are doing may result into poor outcome or negative output when it comes to production. Fraud comes in on the side of auditors who have no explicit knowledge of auditing. Fraud is facilitated by construction works due to the excessive prices paid in major construction. This overpayment for constructions work should be returned to the reserve fund. Audit fraud is also facilitated by some contract award actions, adminstration, contract awards and administration must be enhanced to en sure that no excess prices are paid for construction work. To improve construction contracting the VHA should ensure that contracts always result better or reasonable prices for the work which is already completed. Contracts which are in the interests of the state government are efficiently controlled to prevent waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse. Contracting fraud was facilitated by the fact that the contractors aren’t enlightened enough to use the available resources to ensure that price determinations are adequately supported and reasonable and fair prices are achieved. Fraud is facilitated by the fact that the staff lacks the appropriate knowledge in the department’s information system. When the staff have the problem of obtaining accurate data from the information system the department basically overestimates the sum total of the reimbursements that it assumes that it will recover. For example in the year 2001 the department ended up retaining a consultant to help in billing of outstanding charges estimating that he could recover around d six million dollars, however the consultant ended up recovering a maximum of 450,000 million dollars. The VA aggravated its problems by collecting the reimbursements because it really missed training opportunities since the department and the homes have used money inefficiently in the past. Lack of training has resulted into an absence of the billing experts and also knowledge at the department insufficient training accompanied by poor management and lack of executive management sponsorship has immensely contributed to deficiencies and also errors in the department’s information system thus giving birth to a system that doesn’t work efficiently as it should. The department has tried to correct the cash flow problems but unsuccessfully. It always request loans from the general fund to enable it cover some of the timing differences cause by delays the department’s reception of federal funds or reimbursements. . Health care providers can minimize the fraud audits by training their staff well this is because it is always very easy for the poorly or untrained staff to make billing mistakes. Detailed records should also be very well kept by providers incase of any questions arising from the auditing process. Signature stamps should also be given very special considerations before they are given or used by others. Providers should safely keep the billing profiles cooperate with auditors and also take care with the collection efforts. Economic recession is also perceived to be another major reason as to why there is fraud in the veterans affairs. This is because it has caused many insurance frauds which are also evident t in veterans’ affairs. Recession is making everything so expensive that many people cannot afford. Due to this the veterans have found their salaries too little to accommodate their leisure and family needs and that is why some have been caught committing frauds through the insurance. To solve this VA should work hand in hand with the insurance fraud unit which provides focused and specialized efforts towards combating of specific crimes. Disaffection The other reason for fraud in the veteran affairs if veterans disaffection. This is because many veterans just like all the other employees see themselves threatened therefore turning into latent malefactors. This is because fraud has become an equal employer for all. Most of the veterans engage in this behavior because the can rationalize their acts to self or themselves. To discard this veteran’s disaffection which is causing fraud the VA must have special people who can maintain the organizations tradition of excellence. For this special people to be available the VA has to compete with other employer in order to attract them. VA is aware of the fact that its kind of employees become valuable over time and to keep the around then they should be offered a truly benefits package and superior compensation. The VA has been working hard to control employee disaffection for it offers a competitive salary and superior array of benefits for the veterans and their families (4.va.gov, 2009). Indifference to internal control The other reason of fraud in veteran affairs is indifference to internal control. This is because the department has poorly manage its cash and that of its three homes for it has failed to pursue some reimbursements to which it is entitled. Most of its funding for its department homes comes from the States General Fund and additional funds comes from the US department of veterans affairs from the fees paid by the residents belonging to the homes and reimbursement which is paid by Medicare. The department estimates that it loses more that 15 million dollars in state and federal funds due to some of the homes had become ineligible for reimbursements. The VA doesn’t take advantage of all the cash sources available. It also has inadequate implementation and use of its billing management information system thus causing additional loss of money. This is because billing errors and also inadequate documentation of costs the department some of the additional reimbursements for those services that the home supplies to its veterans. The VA department has also compounded it difficulties in cash flow by failing to promptly submit its claims for various reimbursements. Internal control basically controls to the fraud because it doesn’t address the lack of resources that effectively manage the fiscal operation of the veteran’s home. This makes the veterans department to poorly prepare inaccurate management reports. The other weakness of the department is that it doesn’t utilize many of the tools and also reports available in its information system. For example in the year 20012 it is estimated that homes didn’t use around 35 of   the system   modules purchased by the department including a   cost accounting module that would   have given the department   a valuable tracking and budgeting tool. Fraud is also facilitated by the fact that the veteran’s affairs department doesn’t extremely conduct limited reviews on its internal controls. For instance it is true that the VA doesn’t frequently keep current its policies and procedures manuals. It also doesn’t frequently produce some precise accurate operational reports which it could use as one of its management tools. To solve the problem of indifference in internal control the department should ensure that it has the ability to bill for the services which are provided by its three homes. This can be facilitated through the continuous seeking of recertification of its homes so that they can bill for Med-Cal and Medicare reimbursements it can also follow up some of the claims submitted to the secondary insurance providers to ascertain that it has received the reimbursements and submit or issue claims to the secondary insurers that it had not billed in the past. To ensure that there is prompt billing of charges the department should continue to mainly focus of the clearance of its backlog claims and also ensure that the staff performs all the assigned tasks so that claims can be billed promptly. To ascertain whether the consultants who assist when billing are a cost effective solution to some of its problems related to cash flow, the department should make use of the results of its current contractor as the basis to make analysis on the benefits and costs of continuing to hire the consultants. The department should also assess whether payments from medi-cal and Medicare and additional assortment of federal reimbursements will adequately or efficiently cover the cost of the consultants. The department should also take some steps in ensuring that adequate resources and tools are for controlling the fiscal operations are established. One of the steps is the development of periodic management reports which include aging reports of accounts receivable and regular reconciliation of the report with the department’s accounting records to assist the department in evaluating its cash flow and that of all its three homes. The reports however should not cover reimbursement, unbilled claims and accounts receivable. The other step is to ensure that there is a regular review of the department’s internal controls with the aim of ensuring that the department fulfils its missions and also that it keeps proper control over liabilities, expenditure, assets and reimbursement. The third step is to ensure that there are adequate training opportunities for the department employees and  Ã‚   especially the reimbursement staff to inform them of the current developments in Medicare policies and regulations (Bsa.ca.gov, 2001).

SAT Writing Prep The Best Methods and Strategies

SAT Writing Prep The Best Methods and Strategies SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips I’ve spent the past decade teaching SAT prep classes and helping hundreds of students prepare for the SAT Writing section. After taking my class, many of my former students were able to improve their SAT Writing scores by more than 200 points. My experience has taught me that having a disciplined, focused approach to your SAT prep will allow you to maximize your score. In this article, I have given you the best advice I have for preparing for SAT Writing. Using these methods will enable you to use your study time wisely and master the skills you need to be an SAT Writing superstar. I tried to arrange these tips by how important they are to acing SAT Writing. However, these are all crucial tips for SAT Writing success, and you need to follow them all if you want to fully prepare yourself. #1: Learn the Grammar Rules that the SAT Tests SAT Writing is primarily a grammar test. Knowing the grammar rules that appear on the SAT isthe most important way to prepare for SAT Writing. On the PrepScholar blog, we have written articles covering all of the grammar rules and errors that repeatedly appear on the SAT Writing section. Here they are: Subject-Verb Agreement Verb Tense and Forms Pronoun Agreement Pronoun Case Wordiness and Redundancy Idioms Run-On Sentences/Sentence Fragments Parallelism Faulty Modifiers Adjective and Adverb Errors Illogical Comparisons Relative Pronouns Word Choice/Diction You should focus your studying on the rules that are more commonly tested. We have written a post on the distribution of appearance of the grammar rules on SAT Writing (coming soon). For those of you striving for a highscore, you need to have a firm grasp on all of these grammar rules. And learn them. And understand them. #2: Do Tons of Practice Problems and Understand Your Mistakes If you want to do the best you can on SAT Writing, you have to put in the time. Doing tons and tons of practice problems will make you more confident with the material. You'll be able to recognize grammar errors more quickly and avoid falling into common SAT Writing traps. Frankly, there's a lot of SAT prep material out there that isn't good and will be of minimal help to you. The practice questions you're doing should be representative of the questions you'll find on your SAT. We've identified the quality material so you won't waste your time. To spend your time wisely, you want to do practice problems that are likely to resemble those you will encounter on the SAT. Practice with official SAT tests and make sure you're using the best books to prep for SAT Writing. Check out these articles on where to find the best SAT Writing practice tests and the best SAT prep websites you should be using. Additionally, PrepScholar has over 1500 practice problems customized to each skill. However, simply doing practice problems is not enough. Why You Need to Understand Your Mistakes While doing a bunch of practice problems will help you prepare for SAT Writing, if you keep repeating the same mistakes, your score is not going to improve. You need to understand why you're getting certain questions wrong so that you can reduce your weaknesses and raise your score. One of the most common mistakes students make in their SAT preparation is that they don't take the necessary time to comprehend their mistakes and figure out how to correct them in the future. Understanding your mistakes can be more difficult than just doing practice problems, but it's essential if you want to keep improving your SAT Writing score. How to Understand Your Mistakes Fully understanding your mistakes takes diligence and organization. Here is the process that I recommend to grasp why you made each mistake and how to improve for the future; this process is somewhat rigorous, but it's also the best way to prepare for SAT Writing: On every practice test or question set that you take, mark every question that you're even 20% unsure about. When you grade your test or quiz, review every question you marked or answered incorrectly. This way you'll be reviewing all your missed questions and the questions on which you were able to guess correctly. On your computer or in a notebook, write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and what you'll do to avoid that mistake in the future. Create different sections for each grammar skill and put the question in the appropriate section. Try to determine why you got questions wrong on your own. However, if you're having trouble figuring out your mistakes, the College Board website has an official test with explanations. Also, Khan Academy has helpful explanation videos for some of the questions on this test. Take notes on what you specifically missed and how to improve in the future. Be as specific and as thorough as possible. For example, don't just write that you missed a subject-verb agreement question and need to do more subject-verb agreement questions. Write down how the subject-verb agreement error was presented. Was the subject placed after the verb? Did you get confused by an interrupting phrase? What resources will you use to fully learn this rule and address your weakness? Don't just take notes on your content issues. Also, write down any information about your careless mistakes and what steps you'll take to prevent making them again. Do you need to read the question more carefully? Do you need to look at the answer choices more closely? You want to really dig into why you're missing questions and focus on specific ways to improve. #3: Identify Your Weaknesses and Drill Them If you do a thorough job of categorizing your missed questions and taking notes, you should be able to identify your weaknesses. When you notice patterns to the questions you miss, find extra time to practice the areas where you're struggling. Maybe there's a specific grammar rule like illogical comparisons or parallelism that is causing you problems. Do extra content review and practice problems related to those rules. The best SAT prep books and websites will have real or realistic SAT practice problems for each specific skill that is tested on SAT Writing. (We obviously believePrepScholar qualifies, and it'sdesigned to customize your SAT prep to focus on your weaknesses.) Furthermore, you should keep going over all of the questions you missed and marked. By focusing your studying on the areas where you're having the most difficulties, you'll be using your time most efficiently. Spending the majority of your time practicing stuff you already know is not an effective use of your time. Strengthen your weaknesses! The following tip relates to the approach you should use to answer SAT Writing questions. #4: Practice Relying on Grammar Rules to Answer Questions Don't rely on what sounds right to answer SAT Writing questions, except on idiom questions. Many of the SAT Writing sentences are lengthy or use uncommon phrases. The sentences might sound odd to your ear, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong. Similarly, some of the sentences contain grammar errors that are so common that these sentences are likely to sound fine to you. As such, it's vital that you practice approaching the test from a logical standpoint. Every time you answer a question, you should be able to justify your choice with a specific grammar rule. Here's an example of how you would rely on grammar rules to answer SAT Writing questions. The explanation I give to the question is similar to the thought process you should use when answering SAT Writing questions. Now, take a look at this question from a real SAT: Frequently on tour, a band called the Chieftainsrevered internationally as spirited performers oftraditional Irish music. (A) revered internationally as spirited performers (B) revered internationally and they are spirited performers (C) is revered internationally for its spirited performances (D) is revered internationally as giving spirited performances (E) are revered internationally as being spirited performers Explanation: When I first read the sentence, I immediately noticed that it does not express a complete thought. It’s a sentence fragment. The word â€Å"revered† is used as a participle and not a verb. I assumed that the correct answer would add a verb to fix the sentence fragment. Immediately, I eliminated answer choices A and B because they don’t fix the sentence fragment. Then, I had to determine whether to use the singular verb â€Å"is† or the plural verb â€Å"are†. Because the subject is â€Å"band†, which is singular, the verb should be in the singular form. I eliminated E because that would be a subject-verb agreement error. Answer choice D is incorrect because â€Å"as† is the wrong word. This is an idiom error, the only type of error in which you may have to rely on your ear for what sounds right. The correct answer is C. The sentence fragment has been corrected, the subject and verb agree, and â€Å"for† is the correct preposition to use in this sentence. When you're doing practice questions, be able to explain and justify your answer choices with your knowledge of SAT grammar. #5: Determine If You Have Time Management Issues. If So, Address Them How To Determine if You Have Time Management Issues Find an official SAT practice test, and take only the Writing sections. For each section, use a timer and treat it like a real test. If time runs out for that section and you're 100% ready to move on, then move on. If you're not ready to move on, keep on working for as long as you need. For every new answer or answer that you change, mark it with a special note as "Extra Time." When you're ready, move on to the next section, and repeat the above until you finish all Writing sections. Grade your test using the answer key and score chart, but we want two scores: 1) The Realistic score you got under normal timing conditions and 2) The Extra Time score. If the difference is more than 4 raw points, then you need to address your time management issues. How To Improve Time Management Issues Generally, time management improves as you become more familiar and confident with the content. If time management is a lingering issue for you, monitor your time spent per question. You should have a target time of 45 seconds foreach improving sentences question and 30 seconds for each identify the error question. No question should take longer than 1 minute. When you're doing your practice questions, keep track of how long you're spending on each individual question. Focus on finishing each question in the target time. For my final tip, I want to remind you about the shortest subsection on SAT Writing. #6: Don't Forget Paragraph Improvement Because there are only 6 paragraph improvement questions on each SAT, you should spend the majority of your time preparing for the sentence improvement and identify the error subsections. However, make sure you practice paragraph iprovement questions as well. Some paragraph improvement questions are similar to improving sentences questions, but others are unique to this subsection. Here are the major types of questions you will find on paragraph improvement: Macro Logic: how paragraphs relate to each other and to the main idea Transitional Logic: how sentences and ideas connect to each other Redundant Sentences: whether sentences or ideas are extraneous and can be deleted Conciseness and Style: how to choose words to express ideas succinctly and clearly When you practice paragraph improvement questions, you should use the same approach as for the other two subsections. Categorize your mistakes, take notes on why you made mistakes and how to improve, identify your weaknesses, and then spend extra time improving those weaknesses. Review this article on how to approach paragraph improvement. If you make a commitment to following the six tips I just gave you, I guarantee you'll be giving yourself the best chance to succeed on SAT Writing. Whenever your motivation starts to wane, think about your goals and why you want to do well on the SAT Writing section. What's Next? Review the article on how to get an 800 on SAT Writing. It offers more depthsome of the methods I presented in this post. Also, you'll want to check out the articles on my top study strategies and test-day tips for SAT Writing success (coming soon). Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep program. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by 160 points or more. Our program is entirely online, and it customizes what you study to your strengths and weaknesses. If you liked this Writing and grammar lesson, you'll love our program.Along with more detailed lessons, you'll get thousands ofpractice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Check out our 5-day free trial:

THE EFFECTS OF MOTOR PROCESS ON REACTION TIME Essay

THE EFFECTS OF MOTOR PROCESS ON REACTION TIME - Essay Example Consequently, it has been postulated that the principal anatomic structures affected by these disorders, namely, the cerebellum and basal ganglia are important in the effective running of the timing apparatus for these functions. The involvement of the cerebellum and the basal ganglia in the motor and perceptual timing has been documented by imaging of brain while performing various timing tasks, such as, repetitive and tapping maneuvers. This involves other parameters such as duration discrimination, velocity discrimination, rhythm discrimination, temporal discrimination, and time production and reproduction. Voluntary movements are prepared before they are executed. If there is an instruction stimulus, before the go cue, there would be a delay. With this concept, the reaction time can be defined as the latent period or time interval from the go cue to time of onset of movement. Reactions times are shorter when the delays are longer, suggesting there is some time-consuming preparatory process that is given a head start by this delay. Delay-period activity is typically tuned for the instruction and is therefore predictive of reaction time, and it is suspected that delay period activity is the substrate of motor preparation occurring at that time. A neural activity, if at all it is designed to generate movement must rise above a threshold to trigger the motor activity (Akkal, D., Escola, L., Bioulac, B., Burbaud, P., 2004). If there is an instructed delay, that could allow activity to attain threshold leading to reduction in the subsequent reaction time. If the motor system takes some time to rise to threshold, as is expected, higher firing rates would lead to shorter reaction times. Alternatively, the produced movement is a function of the state of preparatory activity after the trigger. For each probable movement, it is necessary that there would be a firing rate in the subspace that is optimal, optimal in the sense that it would be appropriate and sufficient to generate a sufficiently accurate movement. The time given for motor preparation thus therefore essentially is optimization that brings firing rates from their initial state to the appropriate subspace. This allows for a wait time for execution of the movement, and this wait time may lead to subtle drifts in the activity, but as long as firing rates remain within the optimal subspace, the motor preparation would remain complete. It can be predicted consequently that the delay period firing occupy a smallish subspace that is different and unique for each instructed movement. The reaction time is the time between the onset of a stimulus and the motor response to it. As a result, there would be a perceptual latency that is denoted by the time from stimulus onset to time of stimulus detection as well as in the motor time, which is the time it takes to perform the motor task. The motor process can vary from one to another individual depending on type, intensity, and the background of the stimulus. Subjective variations in motor process have been observed between individuals based on subject age, sex, educational levels, socioeconomic status, affective state, and attentional and arousal states (Doherty, J.R., Rao, A.,

Week 1 journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Week 1 journal - Essay Example According to (Millie, 2008) most of the antisocial behavior in children are brought up by poor parenting. Children in their industry vs. inferiority developmental stage according to Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory, learn a lot by observation. These children, when exposed to poor parenting, would emulate what the parents do and socialize the acts as the societally acceptable norms. Drawing an inference from the video â€Å"in the shadow of feeling,† I have come to understand that psychopathy is a trait attained by individuals at different stages of development. From interviews with doctors, business people and the identified psychopaths, the video give an insight on psychopathic cases that have not committed an actual crime (Bar-Levav, 2008). The intensity of the condition as well as the level of the provoking factor influence commitment of a crime by psychopathic children. Nevertheless, genetic predisposition is found to be one of the major psychological factors that expose children to psychopathic condition. Consumerism, which is the ever-growing desire to possess a greater amount of goods and services is equally associated to psychopath. Consumerism as psychopathy trait can be linked to childhood development, especially if the child was brought up in an environment with little resources. Consumerism thus acts as a compensatory mechanism for the earli er deprivations. Resch, F., Parzer, P., & Brunner, R. (2008). Self-mutilation and suicidal behaviour in children and adolescents: Prevalence and psychosocial correlates: Results of the BELLA study. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 17,

Persuasive essay on Hard Work -- Essays Papers

Hard work is challenging work. But why does it have to be challenging work? Because challenging work, when intelligently chosen, pays off. It’s the work that people of lesser character will avoid. And if you infer that I’m saying people who avoid challenging work have a character flaw, you’re right†¦ and a serious one at that. If you avoid challenging work, you avoid doing what it takes to succeed. To keep your muscles strong or your mind sharp, you need to challenge them. To do only what’s easy will lead to physical and mental flabbiness and very mediocre results, followed by a great deal of time and effort spent justifying why such flabbiness is OK, instead of stepping up and taking on some real challenges. Tackling challenges builds character, just as lifting weights builds muscle. To avoid challenge is to abandon one’s character development. Now it’s natural that we’ll tend to avoid what’s painful, so if we see challenge as purely painful, we’ll surely avoid it. But in so doing, we’re avoiding some very important character development, which by its very nature is often tremendou...

Influence of American Pop Culture and Media Essay

Pop culture and the media has firmly imbedded itself into the mindset of today’s society resulting in people emulating and interpreting as hard fact everything that they see and hear through TV, magazines or radio. This is due to the fact that popular media has becomes a window into the rest of the world for most people because of its availability, entertaining qualities and popularity with a majority of ones pears. This has caused a mindset to develop wherein individuals believe that what they see in the media and what is being espoused in popular culture is what they should be like. As a result what has been created is a culture of emulation wherein people dress like what they see on T. V. and in magazines, act the same way as their idols, develop systems of beliefs based on what they perceive to be the norm and finally go so far as to change their very bodies all in an effort to become what they perceive to be the way they should be as dictated by pop culture and the media. The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a depiction of the end result of a cultural attitude of relying too much on popular media as source of information in ones daily life. It portrays a dystopian society where books are illegal and people get all their information from TV or the radio shows resulting in a society where no new ideas are created and suffers from a distinct lack of being able to learn from its mistakes or to think for itself. Compared to today’s media based society where people have become increasingly reliant on popular media in the form of TV and radio to nearly the verge of addiction the future described by Bradbury doesn’t seem far off. What this paper will seek to examine is the positive and negative effects of popular media on society and how it effects the behavior of society in general. Positive effects of pop culture and the media Cultural Understanding Popular culture and the media has given rise to an assortment of cultural attitudes adopted by different cultures around which are distinctly American. As a result cultures and societies which normally wouldn’t have anything to do with the U. S. all of sudden have adopted American customs as their own due the influence of pop culture and the media. This has resulted in the spread of the English language, the creations of a distinct appreciation of the American movie industry as well as a growing dependence on American programming as way to pass the time. Through mass media people have been connected in a way that hasn’t been present since the start of civilization. Movie stars have fans in the millions, along with various TV actors and music artists. It has come to a point wherein American pop culture has an almost religious following in the form of the numerous fans who idolize American stars (Hollander 2010). Growth of American business Pop culture and mass media is an ever growing industry brining in hundreds of billions of dollars in annual earnings. In the form of advertising deals, satellite TV fees, merchandising and other forms of money making schemes generated by the industry. As a result the pop culture of American is actually helping to support the U. S. economy since not only are there people willing to buy products that they see on TV or in magazines in the U. S. but there are foreign buyers as well who are just as adamant in buying these products, if not more so (Hollander 2010) . Negative Effects of Media Creation of a materialistic culture Due to the obsession of the public over what they see in magazines and TV the result has been a culture that is obsessed over brand name goods, unique gadgets or anything that their idols on TV are shown to be using whether it be a brand of water or a type of earring the general public becomes so obsessed with trying to look like them that they spend thousands of dollars doing so. No where is this more obvious that with the brand of shoe wear Nike. In order to get specific shoe models like the Air Jordans or other such version associated with a famous star a lot of shoe aficionados are willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars just to collect items that for them are associated with a famous individual. This is due to the proliferation of commercials portraying their stars using these sort of products which results in people buying just for the sake of being more like their idols even if the product is grossly overpriced and overrated. Not only that but people in the process of buying these products develop huge credit card debt because of another development of pop culture namely the use of the credit card wherein instead of waiting and saving to obtain a certain product people satiate their immediate desires by using a credit card with its â€Å"buy now pay later† attractiveness. Which unfortunately has resulted in a attitude of bad spending and debt as a result of the America’s credit card culture. Creation of a TV centric culture Pop culture and the media has created a culture literally obsessed with televisions. Individuals spend hours on end watching TV and not moving from a single spot. This is due to the fact that a lot of shows are so entertaining and geared toward keeping an audience riveted in their seats that few people have the inclination to do otherwise. It is due to this that most people prefer watching TV than reading books or even going out for regular exercise resulting in a rise in the number of cases of people being overweight or even being obese due to lack of exercise. Not only that but a slow mental deterioration has occurred with a percentage of the population since instead of books they prefer the convenience of televisions resulting in a population that is actually more insular and less prone to new ideas and concepts as a result of this preference of TV over books. Effects on Society Development of Stereotypes Since popular forms of media such as TV, magazines and radio are thought of as windows to the world most individuals believe that the cultural connotations and the portrayal of individual ethnicities in TV programs as well as their unique characterizations are based on reality. The truth is that most of what is being portrayed is meant to entertain and amuse and audience and not be taken as hard fact. The end result is truth blended with fiction to such an extent that the distinction between the two is blurred and results in false impressions and perceptions. These impressions can cause a negative impact on how a particular ethnic group is thought of in reality. In movies and television series different ethnic groups always seem to have a generic characterization of the way that their particular race is suppose to act. This has resulted in a situation wherein these ethnic groups are rarely seen as anything else even outside of realm of media and popular culture. An example of this sort of perception is the characterization of African Americans in movies and programs. They are shown as loving to wear expensive jewelry, oversized clothes, have gold plated teeth or that nearly all of them are related to gang affiliated violence, have tattoos prominently placed on enjoy sporting shaved heads (Associated Content 2010). In reality this particular perception may not be true at all as evidenced by the current U. S. President who is an African American and does not seem to conform to the image portrayed by the media as what a black person is like. Unfortunately due to their portrayal in the media black Americans are often thought of as having criminal tendencies and being inherently violent with no actual basis on this perception aside from what is in the entertainment industry. Another ethnic group that is often maligned in movies and television shows are Asians. They are commonly associated as possessing the distinct inability to be understood, having a distinct inability in speaking the English language, are in possession of strange accents and strange association with all Asians as being of Chinese origin. As a result of their portrayal in popular media discrepancies occur in what people believe Asians to be and how they really are. Image Issues The power of the media is such that people are easily influenced by what they see. They choose to emulate even when that emulation leads to disastrous consequences. For adolescents the idea of what it means to beautiful is based upon their impressions of what is being portrayed by the media, these days the image that the media has been espousing is the idea that being thin equates to being beautiful. This is shown through the numerous commercial, magazine and billboard models who are all nearly stick thin and shallow faced. This has led to today’s popular notion that â€Å"being thin is in† resulting in the numerous cases of eating disorders of adolescents who are desperate to look thin in order to appear beautiful in other people’s eyes (Kendrick 2008). The popularity of dieting is such that based on studies that have been conducted nine out of 10 people have tried dieting in the past in order to lose weight. This obsession with dieting is due to constant references to it via popular media either through magazine articles, sitcom characters and even models quoted during interviews. It is a fact that the media has created the concept that in order for women to attract men they have to be beautiful and since the idea being popularized by the media is that being thin makes you look beautiful a lot of women wind up dieting in order to conform to this image of beauty to attract a potential partner (Perez – Cueto 2009). The media through its proliferation of programs, advertisements and articles that portray thin women as being beautiful and popular is definitely at fault for the growing number of adolescents who have been affected by eating disorders. Adolescents are at the age wherein they are easily influenced by whatever they see and hear. This results that they possess the need to be accepted by others and feel like they are needed. With the media showing that being thin means being popular and well accepted it is no wonder that cases of adolescent anorexia have risen. Conclusion While American pop culture and mass media does have a good side since it does support the proliferation of the American culture to other societies around the world the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages. Mass media has actually caused a devolution in the way people think since they prefer the mind numbing effects of television than that of mental stimulation from books. That through the spread of popular culture misconceptions arose about the different ethnic groups out there which people believe as the truth due to their reliance on popular media. That people have been becoming lazier, more easily influenced and more likely to cause irreparable damage to their bodies due the influences that have affected their minds. In the end American pop culture and mass media while being immensely popular is also a source of immense deterioration of the common sense and intellect of society.

Poverty Is A Lack Of Money - 1468 Words

Poverty isn’t just a lack of money, poverty is about not being able to participate in recreational activities; not being able to send children to school; not being able to afford utilities; not being able to pay for medications for an illness. These are all costs of being poor. Those people who can barely afford food and shelter simply cannot consider these other expenses. When people are excluded within a society, when they are not well educated and when they have a higher incidence of illness, there are negative consequences for society. There are billions of people living in poverty, mainly in developing countries but also in developed countries. During this time, several solutions have been suggested in order to reduce poverty. Among them, the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have received special attention and have been labelled as one of the best ways to â€Å"make poverty history† by specialists. The program, as the name suggests; transfers cash to people living in poverty upon meeting certain conditions. These conditions may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular medical check-ups, receiving vaccinations or the like. Although the impacts of these programs are still being studied, positive results have surfaced. Evidence of positive results has come from the Bolsa Familia program originated in Brazil. Bolsa Familia is one of the largest CCT programs in the world, and is cited as one of the key factors behind the positive social outcomesShow MoreRelatedPoverty Is A Lack Of Money895 Words   |  4 Pagesâ€Å"Poverty is not a lack of character, poverty is a lack of money†(Bregman) The end to poverty has been a huge debate dating back centuries ago. There has been numerous strategies of eradicating poverty, such as food stamps, social security, and basic welfare. They all seem to be immensely expensive, and poverty seems to be stuck at the same rate and may even be increasing. One idea that needs to be taken under consideration is the idea of a basic income for everyone, which originated with Thomas PayneRead MorePoverty Is The Lack The Scarcity And Safety Through Shelter And Money1333 Words   |  6 PagesPoverty in America Poverty is the lack the scarcity and safety through shelter and money. In the United stated this definition applies to over 13% percent of America’s population according to (U.S Census Bureau: 2014) Poverty has been an issue for years, it’s just not something that happened over night. For many people in the United States living in poverty means they live from paycheck to be able to survive each month without any savings, but in most cases living at the poverty line means throughRead MorePoverty is not having the money to meet a human’s basic needs. It’s the lack of shelter and1400 Words   |  6 PagesPoverty is not having the money to meet a human’s basic needs. It’s the lack of shelter and education. It’s having poor health because you don’t have the money or transportation to access a doctor. It’s parents not being able to send their kids to birthday parties, or on school field trips (WhatisPoverty.com). There are two horrible types of poverty. The first type is absolute poverty. This type is extremely life threatening. It is when a person does not have the necessities to survive like foodRead MorePoverty in America840 Words   |  4 Pageslived without enough money to support yourself? Last year, 13.2 percent of people in the United States did not have enough money to support themselves or their families. 1 in 7 people were at risk of suffering from hunger in the United States, as well as 3.5 million people that were forced to sleep in parks, under bridges, in shelters or cars. In this paper, you will learn about poverty’s history in America and its definition, the causes/reasons of poverty, the effects of poverty on America, and theRead MoreGrowing Up Of Poverty : An Important Aspect That Maintains An Individual s Place Essay842 Words   |  4 PagesENGL 1113 Comp I MWF 11:00 27th October 2016 Growing up in Poverty Economic status is an important aspect that maintains an individual’s place in the society. Economic status is the thing that matters more than gender, race or religion. Though it is not the actual fact but it is believed that you need to have an economic standard to create your identity in society. Society doesn’t give respect to poor and this is heart breaking. Poverty not only prevents you from getting a good and quality of lifeRead MoreThe World Of The Xxi Century Associated With The United States1326 Words   |  6 Pagespeople who live in poverty, which become the most significant problem in today s world. In addition, after 1960 government start became serious about poverty in the United States. The official poverty lines was determine as a minimum amount of money, which family needs at lowest level in accordance with current standards in the country. But, this official poverty lines was also criticized. Opponents do not believe in this realistic level. They think, that this measures of poverty does not reflectRead MorePoverty Is A Problem Of Poverty1462 Words   |  6 Pages â€Å"Poverty is hunger. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom† (World Bank, 2009). People all over the world, from different backgrounds, races, ages, and genders experience the horrible conditions of poverty. Living day by day on little to nothing, food insecurity, and having almost no one to be their voice to strike change is just the minimum of what the impoverished experience. This issue continuesRead MoreMarket Analysis For Pocahontas County926 Words   |  4 Pagesto understand the community an organization is working for, as well as come up with ideas for the future (Berkowitz, 2011). This is true for any organization, and even more important for smaller organizations, as that may not have a large amount of money to use for new ventures, services, and products. Not to mention the organization needs to determine the best plan of action for their consumers, as well as those that are not ye t utilizing the services and products being offered. Pocahontas MemorialRead MoreThe Causes Of Poverty With Special Focus On India1242 Words   |  5 Pagesliving in the Himalayas ended her life due to severe poverty. Poverty is one of the leading causes of death among people in developing countries. Poverty is defined by lack of the basic necessities to live such as food, water and shelter. Did you know over 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, which is 43% of the world’s population i.e almost half (worldbank). Poverty is caused by a variety of things including overpopulation, lack of education, environmental degradation and economic factorsRead MorePoverty Is Not A New Issue892 Words   |  4 PagesPoverty today still exists and is a major social issue; there will always be people who are homeless and hungry but now more than ever there are options for help. To the American population what is the meaning of poverty and how and who does it affect? Poverty is the lack of food, shelter and education; it affects all skin colors, religions and genders. Poverty creates a strain on life and makes it difficult for people to live a somewhat easy life. To begin, poverty is not a new issue it has been