Why Teenagers Should not be Able to Drive at 16 Research Paper

Why Teenagers Should not be Able to Drive at 16 - Research Paper Example According to Zasa and Thompson (8), most global transportation needs are provided by motor vehicles. Motor vehicles have broken the geographical barrier that hindered movement of people and cargo across vast distances. Although vehicles are predominantly applied for enhancing mobility of goods and people, they are also used for recreation and entertainment. Many motor vehicle industries are producing technologically enhanced vehicles in large volumes. This has dramatically reduced the cost of acquiring motor vehicles and they are no longer a preserve for the wealthy individuals. In this respect, motor vehicles are increasingly accessible to the people of different ages including teenagers. In United States for instance, 16-year-old teens are legally allowed to drive motor vehicles. However, road safety experts have in the recent past lobbied against this decree because of the high rates of accidents that these young drivers cause in roads across the country. This paper discusses the reasons why teenagers are not able to drive at 16 years. According to Peden, et al (17), teenage drivers are at the greatest risk of traffic crashes especially in developed countries. CDC (200) noted that road accidents is the leading cause death among teenagers in the United States. Both male and female teenage drivers from 16 to 19 years have the highest road accidents and violation of traffic rules in the country than any other group. In 2008 for instance, NHTSA (51) reported that 600,000 teenagers were injured in road accidents and 4000 of them died. In view of these alarming statistics, experts in road safety have elucidated various factors as the cause of accidents among this group. These include poor hazard detection, low perception of risks, uncalculated risk taking on the roads, failure to wear safety belts and lack of skill while driving. In addition, use of alcohol, hard drugs, driving at night and the carrying passengers while driving are other important factors that con tribute to high rate of accidents among teenage drivers in the 16-19 age groups (NHTSA, 38). In this respect, the major underlying factors of this behavior on the roads are lack of experience and distraction of the teenagers while driving. Teenagers should not be allowed to drive at sixteen years until they attain a sensible age where there are reasonably mature and experienced to drive. At sixteen years, many teenagers are still under the care of parents or guardians and they do not have many responsibilities that warrant use of motor vehicles in their daily activities. One of the main factors that attribute to high use of cars especially in developed countries is the convenience that they provide when attending to various duties such as work and other commitments. In this case, most adults who comprise the largest proportion of working class people own cars to enhance speedy execution of their activities. Due to the crucial role that vehicles play to such individuals, it is appare nt that they are more cautious and watchful than sixteen year olds who use vehicles for other reasons but not to attend work. Adults are thus more careful because they are also legally responsible for any offense that they cause on the roads by the careless driving. This is in contrast to sixteen year old who do not have much to lose when they violate traffic offense (DMV). Lack of foresight that dangerous driving could cost their lives and inflict permanent disabilities is some of the main shortcomings of sixteen-year-old drivers’ judgment (Abdel 63). Most teenage motorists drive for various reasons such as experiencing the thrill of driving at very high speeds. This makes them prone to accidents

Last poem Essay Example for Free

Last poem Essay Dogen was greatly surprised by the fact that making a strong accent on the study of koan Chinese masters did not teach their disciples Buddhist sutras, which made the core study in Buddhist monasteries in Japan (Tanahashi, 5). Dogen’s discontent with the style of teaching became even a reason of his refusal to take Dharma transmission from one of the masters. In 1225 Dogen decided to leave Rinzai school of Chan Buddhism and started his journey in order to visit Ru-jing, whose style of Zen teaching differed from ones which disenchanted Dogen. Ru-jing was the thirteenth patriarch of Soto lineage of Zen Buddhism. During that time he lived at Tiantong Mountain in Nongbo. Soto school, presented by Ru-jing made an accent on sitting meditation, or zazen. In general it used much softer methods than Rinzai School did. Studying Zen with Ru-jing Dogen has finally reached enlightenment of mind and body. The legends state that he finally reached liberation after hearing the Master’s words: â€Å"Cast of body and mind† (Tanahashi). These words became especially meaningful for Dogen and he later used them in many his writings. As he states in one of his works: †To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever† (Kim, 195). In 1227 Dogen received Dharma transmission from Ru-jing and finally admitted that he has reached the answer for the question of all his life. Dogen was greatly influenced by his teacher Ru-jing. All Dogen’s religious philosophy is marked by two major tendencies. The first peculiarity of all Dogen’s teaching is his attachment to Buddhism tradition and second one is a strong accent on individual search. These tendencies can be traced not only in Dogens’s books but also in his lifestyle. Dogen did not reject traditional Buddhism. He only wanted people to give critical evaluation of its doctrines and principles. Dogen criticized competition among different schools of Zen because they were tiring Buddhism to pieces. He proclaimed identity of faith and believed it could have been found in Soto Zen. He did not even want to apply the name Zen for his sect and did his best to follow his teacher’s lifestyle living without attachment to anything. In 1228, after reaching enlightenment, Dogen returned to Japan. He came back to ti Kennin-ji, a monastery where he spent several years learning from Eisai and his successors. After coming back he wrote a detailed description of sitting mediation called Zazen. The manual was called Fukan Zazengi, which can be translated as â€Å"Universally Recommended Instruction for Zazen. † His teaching appealed to many people and he gathered a lot of adherents around himself. After some time he had to leave Kennin-ji because of tension, which arouse inside the Tendai community. This tensions with caused by the desire of Buddhist leaders to suppress new forms of Buddhism, including Zen. Dogen left Kinnin-ji temple in 1230 and moved to empty temple situated to the south from Kyoto in the place called Uji (Tanahashi , 40). Dogen founded small temple in this place and soon this temple grew into Kosho-Hirniji Temple. The tension between Dogen and Tangai community did not stop, though. That is one of the reasons Dogen gladly accepted Hatano Yoshishige’s proposition to relocate to Echizen province, located far from Kyoto. After relocation Dogen’s disciples built a new center for Zen practice and called it Daibutsuji Temple. Dogen later renamed this center to Eihei-ji. This temple remains one of the most popular Zen temples in modern Japan. Dogen spent all his further life living and teaching in this temple. Shogun regent Hojo Tokiyori invited Dogen to come and teach him Zen in 1247. Dogen accepted this invitation and made a long journey to Kamakura in order to meet Shogun and retuned to Eihei-ji the next year. In 1252 Dogen became seriously ill and after realizing that he was not going to recover he gave his robes to his favorite disciple Koun Ejo. This way Koun Ejo became Abbot of Eihei-ji. After appointing Koun Ejo an abbot Dogen left for Kyoto looking for remedies from his illness. The remedy was not found and Dogen died in 1953. Soon before death he wrote his last poem.

Impact of Gender Discrimination on Employee Performance

Impact of Gender Discrimination on Employee Performance Since the independence Pakistan has seen the formation of its banking system with the birth of State Bank of Pakistan in 1948, till 70s the banks were state owned and it was in 70s when they started to get privatized, till the 80s the banks saw the ups and downs but it was in the 90s when banking sector witnessed change. In the 90s the state-owned banks got privatized, first banks to undergo the privatization were Muslim Commercial Bank and Allied Bank, privatized between 1991 and 1993. In 2002 the third largest bank called United Bank got privatized and Habib Bank got privatized in 2004. Currently there are 54 banks operating in Pakistan which include 4 public sector banks, 5 Islamic banks, 20 private banks, 7 foreign banks, 8 DFIs, 4 special banks like IDBP, PPCB, ZTBL and 6 micro finance banks/institution (Banks in Pakistan, 2008). Currently banking sector is the soundest working sector of the country and even when in 2008 world witnessed global crunch the banking sector of Pakist an exhibited sound position due to its policies. The reason for choosing the banking sector as a study field is that it is the most developed institution of Pakistan it is has most developed and most operationalized Human resources system and thousands of people are employed by the banks. Oxford dictionary defines Discrimination as a distinction (made with the mind, or in action), discrimination is a phenomenon that is present in any and almost every organization, discrimination simply defined is a biased treatment of a person based on his/her affiliation with a certain group, it is a behavior exhibited to other people. In workplace discrimination the employee or group of employees are made target of prejudice (Major, Quinton, Schmader, 2003) and the person that is being discriminated is not given the opportunities that others are availing or are available to others and furthermore it point to the tools for demonstrating and establishing the social relation of dominance and oppression (Kreiger, 1999) . According to United Nations Discriminatory behaviors take many forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or rejection, so the discriminations eventually affect an individual or group by excluding him/them from privileges that others are enjoying. There are dif ferent kinds of discriminations like racial/ethnic, age, gender, identity, cast, employment, disability, reverse, religious discriminations to name a few. Discrimination at a workplace means that the employee or group of employees are not treated fairly as compared to others and the reason for this treatment is not related with the ability of employees or group of employees to perform their specific job assigned by the organization. For this study direct discrimination is of more interest, direct discrimination is the type in which an employee or group of employees are affected by the decision which is based on an assumption stemming from employee or group of employees belonging to a certain status. In this study the focus would be on form of discrimination that is without legal basis but allowed as a norm and not the other kind which is prohibited by law. The topic aims at studying the effects of discrimination on the performance of an employee of an organization and the kind of di scrimination that is being under research is the gender based discrimination which may arise between superiors and subordinates and also between peers. Gender discrimination is attitude and belief of the discriminator of giving or refraining to give rights to the employee due to his/her gender, it also can be behavior, policy, interaction, action and procedure which affects the work of an employee negatively by creating a disparate treatment or creation of intimidating work environment or hostile environment which is according to sex (Carr, et al., 2000). In developing countries this practice is prevalent and the main target of this kind of discrimination are women although gender harassment doesnt mean that only women are prone to this type of discrimination but mostly women are the victims of such type of discrimination. Discrimination regardless of its type can cause ill effects of the mental health of an individual for example discrimination causes social disconnection and cause s a sense of distress (Eisenberger Lieberman, 2004), discrimination can be an important kind of a stress which can affect health of an employee badly, stress due to discrimination can trigger psychological reactivity, and it affects the mental health (Williams, 1999). Another effect of discrimination is the trust; discrimination negatively affects the trust between discriminator and the discriminated, trust being a psychological condition covers a state of perceived risk that is result of an individuals ambiguity concerning possible actions and intentions of those upon whom that person is depending (Kramer, 1999) and while trusting an individual puts his fate in the TRUSTED persons hands hoping/expecting that he will perfrom his/her duty diligently. Third the organizational commitment is an important issue here, the organizational commitment is a relation between the employer and his employee, organizational commitment creates in an employee responsibility towards the employer whic h improves the employees work behavior (Shore Wayne, 1993).Organizations use the technique of gender mainstreaming to promote the equality among the employees of an organization and it is defined as a process of change that includes how an organizations system and structure is causing dicrimination indirectly and to change that structure and system to get rid of that discrimination all over the world this technique is used to cater to the specific problem of discrimination. All of the above have their own individual effects which when combined can affect an individual in many different ways by affecting his personal life as well as his professional life. The objective of this study is to see if there exists a significant relationship between the gender discrimination and the employee performance in an organization. The gender discrimination has many outcomes but for this study the outcomes that are under study include mental health of an individual which is affected by the discrimination regardless of the nature or kind of such discrimination, it is in this study that effect on trust between the employer and the employee is also observed whether it affects the employee performance or not, the discrimination when occur would also affect an emplyees commitment towards the organization that he is working with and when this happens the employee would lose interst and that affects the perfromance of that employee negatively. Of interst to this research is to study the work conditions of the banking sector of Pakistan where equal employment opportunity is provided to both men and women and where both gender are coworkers, with banks having a strong human resource setup it is of interest to observe what is the scenario of discrimination in such a work environement. The research question for this study include questions such as observing if the gender discrimination exists in the working environement of Pakistani banking sector. The second question would be to observe the significance of such relation which means to observe if that relation is stong or mild or negligible. The third question that would need answering is that do the out comes of gender discrimination which have been mentioned above affect the employee performance and how intense their relationship with employee performance is. The next queston addresses the gender mainstreaming and to what extent gender mainstreaming moderates the effect of gender discrimination, this would also reveal whether pakistani banking sector is making any efforts proactively to prevent the problem of workplace gender discrimination or not. And then the question would arise that in current pakistani culture which is heavily male dominated culture and where discrimination maybe considered a norm then in su c conditions what would be the effect of such discrimination on an employees perfromance, would the effect be considerable or would the effect be minimal? The business reason for this study is to observe how well the banking sector of the country is doing as the banking sectoe actively encourages women through their advertisements to join the banking industry and also because for a few years the banking industry is single most booming industry of the country and because even though women are encouraged to work in the sector it is still mainly a male dominated society where gender discrimination may manifest at some point of time, the business reason would be to identify whether the practice of gender discrimination exists or not and to what extent such phenomenon exist and how its is affecting the workers of the sector. By identifying the prevalence of this phenomenon in the sector the banking companies can take measures to control such issues and that inturn would benefit the em[ployees of those companies by providing them healthy work environement where all the employees regardless of their gender could achieve the full potential tha t they are capable of. This study is of interest because it taks about a phenomen that has been mostly observed in the western work and social environment, to observe this phenomenon in Pakistani cultual settings and work settings is of great interest that would reveal the amount of the penomenon in existance and its significane and it would also be of interst to see if Pakistani banking sector has acknowledged the existence of this phenomenon and if they are doing anything about it or not. LITERATURE REVIEW: Gender discrimination is one is an apparent issue in the society of Pakistan, Pakistan got independence in 1947 and since it was once a part of India the Indian influence exists still today that is why equality of genders is an issue and to resolve this issue a culture change would have to be applied still Pakistan in more advanced than its neighbor in terms of female rights. Discrimination itself is a phenomenon that that is found worldwide take America for example where inequality is ever more present due to discrimination (Darity Jr Mason, 1998) and brithish labor market is no different either there also exist gender discrimination as in UK womens compensation is lower than that of a man (Wright Ermisch, 1991), simply we can say that discrimination is a biased behavior towards certain individuals. Scholars have identified discrimination as the situation where employee or group of employees are made target of prejudice (Major, Quinton, Schmader, 2003) and the target is deprived if the opportunities that are available to rest, furthermore it point to the tools for demonstrating and establishing the social relation of dominance and oppression (Kreiger, 1999). According to United Nations Discriminatory behaviors take many forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or rejection, so the discriminations eventually affect an individual or group by excluding him/them from privileges that others are enjoying. Among the different kinds of discriminations like racial/ethnic, age, gender, identity, cast, employment, disability, reverse, religious for this study gender discrimination that occurs at the workplace is of interest. Discrimination at a workplace is that when employees as individuals or in groups are not treated fairly as compared to others and the reason is not their professional capability to perform specific task as assigned to them. In this study the focus would be on evaluating keeping in mind the social and cultural differences the extent of ex istence of gender discrimination in the Pakistani work environment. Gender discrimination is a discrimination which is unbalanced approach towards a person because of his/her gender, furthermore Gender discrimination is attitude and belief of the discriminator of giving or refraining to give rights to the employee due to his/her gender, it also can be behavior, policy, interaction, action and procedure which affects the work of an employee negatively by creating a disparate treatment or creation of intimidating work environment or hostile environment which is according to sex (Carr, et al., 2000).Discrimination on the base of gender hampers performance by affecting the level of professional self-esteem and confidence, career satisfaction and being secluded in a work environment affecting their performance (Carr, Szalacha, Barnett, Caswell, Inui, 2003). In developing countries this practice is prevalent and the main target of this kind of discrimination are women although gender har assment doesnt mean that only women are prone to this type of discrimination but mostly women are the victims of such type of discrimination. For this study of gender discrimination and its effect on employees performance the independent variable is Gender discrimination and there are many outcomes of gender discrimination and from those outcomes 3 have been taken to be included in this study. The first outcome is the JOB STRESS; stress can be called an result of a person and that outcome is because of the workplace environment that is for him unsafe (Bashir Ramay, 2010).Scholars have documented that discrimination causes ill effects on the mental health of an individual and causes social disconnection and a sense of distress (Eisenberger Lieberman, 2004), stress can affect health of an employee badly, stress due to discrimination can trigger psychological reactivity, and it affects the mental health (Williams, 1999). Job stress is the biggest contributor to the organizational expenditure and when the employee is exposed to job stress for prolonged periods to time it eventually leads to job burnout (Maslach, 2003) and th e burn out diminishes an employees job performance as a result. Stress inducing effects of gender discrimination have been documented also by (Kreiger, 2002) who reported that gender discrimination affected a persons health by significantly elevating the stress levles of the affected. Job Stress occurs from the social relations that are within the confines of an organization (Le Blanc, De Jonge, Schaufeli, 2000). Further the job stress stemming form gender discrimination directly affects the performance of an employee in an organization. Further (AbdulRub, 2004) also reported that there existed relation between job stress and performance,scholars have found that gender discrimination affects the career satisfaction, professional self confidence and esteem and seclusiveness. Another study conducted suggested that job stress significantly decreases the performance of an employee (Bashir Ramay, 2010). The other outcome for the independent variable of this study is TRUST; the study of trust in an organizational setting has been significant since 1995 and now more and more scholars are looking into the effects of trust in the organizational setting, trust can be defined as a two part process where one has confidence in others dependability and purity and it should also be mentioned that the trust comes from social interaction and in its absence the level of trust decreases. Through trust between parties affects the important mechanisms of the organization and the results within an organization (Mayer Davis, 1999) and trust empowers the employee and thus improves his/her performance at work (Gomez Rosen, 2001). As far as the link between gender discrimination is concerned a study in Finland documented that discrimination leads to low level of trust (Liebkind Lathi, 2000). In a work setting it is to be noted that there may be trust in existence between employer and the employee or the subordinate and the superior but at some point due to discrimination and specifically gender discrimination this trust turns into distrust which would likely to be psychological incident for the individual who is putting the trust in other (Schoorman, Mayer, Davis, 2007). It is evident that there exist a relation between the gender discrimination and trust now and behavior of the management is an important cause in develpoing the association between the management and the employees (Whitener, Brodt, Korsgaard, Werner, 1998) and it is to be seen that what would be its effect on the employees performance in an organization when the effect of trust would be accompaniying effects of other elements too, this would also reveal about the existence of that relation as well as the significance in case of its existence. Third the third element in the equation is organizational commitment, organizational commitment is an important issue to discuss it is documented that organizational commitment is affected by discrimination (Ensher, Grant-Vallone, Donalidson, 2001), as the organizational commitment is a relation between the employer and his employee organizational commitment creates in an employee responsibility towards the employer which improves the employees work behavior (Shore Wayne, 1993). Organizational commitment promotes in an employee the sense of organizational citizenship as well as it increases the employee performance, even if at the time the performance of an employee is not increasing at the moment but still commitmtnet increases the expectation regarding their performance and as a result those employees perform positivlely (Meyer Allen). Discrimination affects the oranizational outomes that include organizational commitment (Sancez Brook, 1998), so the effect of the element of co mmitment would be observed how it would in combination with other element affect employees performance in an organization. In this study the gender mainstreaming is used as an moderator to moerate the effect of gender discrimination on the employees performance. Gendermainstreaming is the a concept that suggests that there should be promotion of the equality among the employees of an organization and it is defined as a process of change that includes how an organizations system and structure is causing dicrimination indirectly and to change that structure and system to get rid of that discrimination, three legged equality stool acknowledges the interconnectivity of equal treatment perspective, womens perspective, this technique is widely used to cater to the specific problem of discrimination. UNDP has also made an effort in coping with gender discrimination by using the tool of gender mainstreaming. And for this study the dependent variable is of the employees job performance. The performance of an employee is of utmost importance for any organization and employer, any organzation that is doing well in the moarket can easily attribute its performance with performance of its employees and without satisfactory performance in workplace satisfactory organzational performance is not possible. The employee job performance can be defined as a combination of questions as how much an employee is contributing to the overall performance of the work unit? how much task assigned to the employee has been completed by him/her? as compared to hi/her unit how good his/her performance is? and does the performance of the employee meets the standard of the employees supervisor?. An employees job performance is a set of elemets that include effort, skill and results which are of importance to an employee as well as the organization (Lusch Serpkenci, 1990). The aim here is to see how gender discrimi nation would affect this set of elements and its significance. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The study for this research work would be a non-intervention study as no intervention would be made and only data would be gathered from the researchable situation. The study includes an element of both qualitative and quantitative study. Gender MainstreamingTHEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Job Stress GENDER DISCRIMINATION Employee performance Trust Organizational commitment In this model Gender discrimination is the independent variable, job stress, trust and organizational commitment are its three outcomes that have been taken into consideration, in the model the gender mainstreaming is playing the role of moderator by moderating the effects of the gender discrimination while employees job performance is the dependent variable that is being affected by the discrimination. HYPOTHESES From the model for the purpose of this study following hypotheses have been drawn. H1- Job stress negatively affects the employee job performance. It is hypothesized that as the job stress would increase the employees job performance would decrease. H2- Low trust between the employer and the employee negatively affects the employees job performance. The second hypothesis states that as the trust between employer and the employee decreases the employees job performance is affected negatively. H3- Lack of organizational commitment negatively affects the employee job performance. The third hypothesis states that when an employees organizational commitment would decrease his job performance would also decrease. H4- The more the gender discrimination at the workplace the lower will be performance of an employee at his/her job. This hypothesis states that as the gender discrimination increases the employee job performance would decrease. H5- Gender mainstreaming moderates the effect of gender discrimination on to employees job .performance. Fifth hypothesis states that gender mainstreaming in an organization would moderate the effect of gender discrimination in a work environement. SAMPLE SIZE For this study the target sample is the workforce employed at the bank, both man and women would be equally taken into the sample. The type of sampling would be convenience sampling due to the budget and time constraints; the research questionnaire shall be administered to all three designation levels of banking staff which are Officer Grade 1, Officer Grade 2 and Officer Grade 3. The questionnaire shall be administered in all the banks situated in Lahore; the amount of questionnaire per bank would be ten and the questionnaires would be administered women as the gender discrimination is more specifically a womens issue especially in our region. To collect the data, a questionnaire would be used which would consist of questions regarding discriminatory behavior faced by the respondents, questions related to mental health and organizational commitment as well as questions related to trust would be included in the questionnaire and employees job performance questions would include quest ions regarding knowledge of principles, facts, ideas about the job and knowing what to do, the procedural knowledge would be covering elements like how to do the work and skill include cognitive, perceptual and interpersonal skill and last but not the least motivation questions and thats how the questionnaire would be complete. The software used for this study will be SPSS with whose help correlational, regression based analysis would be conducted on the variables. ANOVA would be used for the moderator. SPSS would be used due to its easy availability and also due to its ease of use and data importability and exportability to other MS office packages. LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS The study has some limitations as it is not possible to and beyond the scope of the study to venture into other avenues. The first limitation is that the study setting is of a bank so the results cannot be generalized to other sectors, other studies with different sectors would have to conduct to obtain the generalizability of the outcomes. Second limitation is that other is the sample size; future scholar should take a bigger sample size to observe its effect on the results. The third limitation could be that of the culture, Pakistan has a unique culture so the result may also be unique to this very culture, future researcher should replicate this study to see the consistency of the results. The main benefit of this study would be to the banking sector as the study specifically aimed the banks. This study could allow HR professionals as well as the management officials of the banking companies to look for the opportunities within their workspaces to tackle the practice of gender discrimination which would ultimately benefit the organization as his/her commitment, trust towards the organization would increase he/she would be able to concentrate better to his/her job as a result of improved mental health and hence the job performance of the employee would increase ultimately contributing positively towards the overall organizational productivity.

Plagiarism and The Red Badge of The Great Gatsby :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

The Red Badge of Gatsby Last week, several journalists accused me of plagiarizing entire passages in my most recent novel, "The Red Badge of Gatsby." My accusers claim that in this book, my 27th in the last three years, I lifted sections from, among other sources, "A Tale of Two Cities," "War and Peace," "Pride and Prejudice," "Goldfinger," "Go, Dog. Go!" and the Lands' End holiday catalog. Friends have urged me to follow the example of another celebrated author who recently responded to similar allegations with a public apology. I must remind them, however, that copying what other writers have already done is exactly what got me into this mess. Let us take a look, then, at the passage my accusers allege I appropriated from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter": " 'Hester Prynne,' said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, 'thou hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which I labor.' " Now, here is the so-called similar passage from my work: " 'Hester Prynne,' said he, leaning over the balcony, and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, 'it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and what is up in that tree? A dog party! A dog party! A dog party in the tree!' " Those determined to find evil intent will, of course, focus on certain surface similarities between my passage and Hawthorne's. But readers who expect an author's work to be totally free of literary influences are, I believe, hopelessly naïve about the writing process, magining that an author creates a book by arduously filling up blank pages with words of his own. When I write a book, I never go anywhere near a blank page. Instead, I buy an already written book and start crossing out the words I have no intention of using.

Miseducation of Filipino Essay

Prof. Renato Constantino, in his essay entitled â€Å"The Miseducation of the Filipino†, writes about the coming about of the miseducation and the consequences of such action in the lives of the Filipinos, then, now, and perhaps the future. Promoting and imposing the â€Å"unFilipino† identity in Filipinos was the miseducation that Americans pursued during the time when they â€Å"posed† as a benevolent ally to the Philippines, and they proved victorious indeed because they had completely subjugated the Filipinos, both in minds and in hearts. Education is a very vital factor for one’s development. And as we all know, through education, one’s mind is molded because of the teachings, ideas, and values taught to him. Due to this fact, it’s only either of the two that will happen: the person will become productive provided that he was taught with the right things, or, the person will become otherwise since he acquired negative things. Personally, I learned and realized many things about the history and relationship between the Americans and the Filipinos upon reading this paper. It is quite intriguing what the main reasons really were the Americans in taking power over the Philippines. Was it for the good of the Filipinos or the Americans’ good? Whatever it was, they succeeded in almost every aspect of conquering the land because they knew the most effective way to subjugate Filipinos minds: by controlling our education. They created a new generation of good colonials, the â€Å"unFilipino† Filipinos. The indigenous ways of life of Filipinos had been changed to the American way of life. That was ridiculous because certainly, America and Philippines vastly differed from each other in so many ways, and therefore, their ways of life based on their differing needs should be entirely different. But the Americans insisted on creating a â€Å"carbon-copy† of themselves in Filipinos through the imposition of their language in their education. I went to elementary and high school in the Philippines, and I know for a fact they used both English and Tagalog as the media of teaching. In the long run, I think this resulted in both positive and negative ways — positively, because I was uprooted to the U. S. and I was able to use the â€Å"smattering† English I know to communicate with others, and negatively, because as I have just realized, I feel the â€Å"impediment† in my thought process because I cannot think consistently in one language. All in all, I liked this piece because it reiterates the importance of education to not only produce literate people but also to produce people who would use that education to better their nation.

Biotherm in business Essay Example

Biotherm in business Essay Example Biotherm in business Paper Biotherm in business Paper In business, the term marketing (marketers) and sales (salesperson) are often interchangeable. In fact, they have different role in an organization but they are complementary. According to Philip Kotler, marketers are those who have role to define value of a product using the perspective of customers; in this perspective, modern enterprises are moving closer and closer to the concept of marketing based management. It is then reasonable that, nowadays, enterprises pay great attention to marketing issues in order to smooth the sales. Concerning the marketing issue, this paper will elaborate marketing challenges of Biotherm, manufacturers offering skin-care programs that owned by LOreal. The discussion includes the vision and branding for Biotherm, 2. Vision and branding for Biotherm – is the vision and branding strategy for Biotherm mainly global or local? Explain and give examples. Concerning Biotherm vision and branding, the company practices the approach of strengthening the product leadership. Biotherm constantly active new product development projects because of several reasons. First, the product of the company has a very short natural life cycle. The industry of cosmetics is a very actively changing industry. One of the reasons of such characteristics is because it is an industry driven by style, fashion and trends, some of the most complicated phenomena of culture that changes rapidly and constantly. Second, the company has a very vast market segment. It sold millions of products to customers in different countries and diverse cultures. Some product segment is aiming at young women as future customers, another is aiming at business women, and some skin products are even aiming at male customers. Having diverse product segments means having diverse customers with different preferences. In order to gain revenues from local and foreign markets Biotherm need to satisfy each local needs and preferences. For instance, Asian people might have significantly different requirements for their cosmetics compare to American customers. This enhances the importance of having an actively operating team of product development. 3. Maslow Hierarchy of Needs According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, comfort in the workplace, achievement in work and appreciation are considered more significant then financial needs. However, in most ‘real’ situations, job seekers still value a good salary more than convenience at work. In short, there are several points that describe the importance of a good financial reward system. ? Financial compensation is a major factor that attracts and retains employees to an organization. ? A good compensation system increases employee retention, decrease turnover rate and save the company all the replacement costs created by a high turnover rate. 4. Marketing communication Cosmetics industry is interesting since women as the main consumers have different taste, which drive manufacturers to produce various kinds of cosmetics like eye shadow, foundation, lipstick, and mascara etc, each with different color, shape and price. There are several current issues affecting the cosmetic industry. Some of those issues are: Internet marketing Internet use as sales channel and system infrastructure is increasingly important within recent years. Several reports exhibit that the use of internet has increased efficiency and product sales for cosmetic companies. Corporate Responsibility Issues (CSR) Despite some doubts from the public that CSR is only a tool of company propaganda, several aspects of CSR produce real influence on the cosmetic industry. Animal testing Animal testing also becomes important issue in cosmetics industry. Recently, the European Union, for example, announces its decision to ban animal testing on cosmetics products, which immediately raise pros and contras.