Thursday, December 26, 2019

The Most Articulate Hustler By Malcolm X - 867 Words

During his course of brief life, Malcolm X spent seven years in prison due to criminal commitment involved with the underground world of thieving, pimping, and drugs. Though he is â€Å"the most articulate hustler† – an eloquent speaker in the street, he feels frustrated at not being able to express his own thoughts and ideas he wants to convey in writing, especially in the letters to Elijah Muhammad – the Islam spiritual leader. For instance, when writing to his friends, he can’t use slang words that he has ever used articulately in the street such as â€Å"Look daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat. Elijah Muhammad,† (Haley 174) which means â€Å"Listen buddy, let me draw your attention to this guy –Elijah Muhammad.† So, the desire of making his letters to be more eloquent has inspired him to educate himself and became â€Å"one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of black America during the 1960s.† (Malcolm X 189) The impressive success in â€Å"prison education† that brings a marvelous influence to the life of Malcolm X proves that education always brings many benefits to learners and the society no matter what their social status is. Nowadays, this perception still remains its true value. Indeed, the education that many inmates acquire making use of their time in prison will facilitate positive changes, provide personal development, transform their lives, and significantly reduce the risk from recidivism (Mastrorilli). RAND corporation – the officiallyShow MoreRelatedComing From An Awareness Of Language By Malcolm X1175 Words   |  5 PagesIn Malcolm X s biography Coming to an Awareness of Language he reveals that he struggled with expressing himself in his writing due to lack of education. He grew up speaking only slang and even though he was well respected for being one of the best speakers in the streets, it didn t get him very far when he needed to be seen in the eyes of professionals. While incarcerated inNorfolk Prison Colony, Malcolm X wrote to various people about a variety of issues that he deemed important. However noneRead MoreQuitting Was Not An Option For Malcolm X918 Words   |  4 Pages Quitting was not an option for Malcolm X. Throughout his problematic life, Malcolm had to deal with so many obstacles in his way of success. He faced orphanage at an early age due to his father’s death and mother’s insanity, got caught up in criminal activity and even went to prison because of his actions. When he believed he found his calling in the religious group, the Nation of Islam, he was eventually betrayed by it’s leader, Elijah Muhammad, and was absolutely broken. Anyone in hisRead MoreEssay on Malcolm X962 Words   |  4 PagesMalcolm X On May 19, 1925 Malcolm Little was born to Louise and Earl Little. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Malcolm was the seventh of eleven children. Malcolms father, Earl, was a Baptist minister from Reynolds, Georgia. His mother was raised in Grenada in the British West Indies. His father was also became an organizer for Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association. Marcus Garvey and his followers fought for racial separation and more power for blacks. Growing up, MalcolmsRead MoreMalcolm X And His Own Life Experiences891 Words   |  4 Pagesfeelings are heavily influenced by the amount of education that we receive. Education is the backbone to a person’s subjectivity and authority. Malcolm X brought much attention to the importance of improving academic knowledge in his essay â€Å"Learning to Read† through his own life experiences. Malcolm X claimed that â€Å"in the street, [he] not only wasn’t articulate, [he] wasn’t even functional† and that â€Å"[he] became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what [he] wanted to convey in his lettersRead MoreAnalysis Of Malcolm X English Language1165 Words   |  5 Pageshad been the most articulate hustler out there- I commanded attention†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (pg.68). This realization provided the spark he needed to start improving his language ability. Malcolm X pinpointed another source of motivation in his article by pointing to a fellow prisoner and his command of the English language. That envy drove him to emulate the man and provide the necessary spark to continue to improve his vocabulary and language use. It was after he transferred prisons that Malcolm X became moreRead MoreThe Debate Of Rehabilitation Vs. Reparation948 Words   |  4 Pagessociety, while increasing the overall safety of the society. A strong rehabilitation program would additionally cut down the number of repeat offenders, which is financially responsible as it is very expensive to keep a prisoner behind bars. One of the most effective methods of reforming prisoners is continuing their education. Furthering the education of prisoners helps to improve their quality of life upon release, and proves to be fiscally responsible as it cuts down recidivism rates. TheRead More Malcolm X and the Shakespearean Tragic Hero Essay example1801 Words   |  8 PagesMalcolm X and the Shakespearean Tragic Hero   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Aristotle defines a tragic hero as â€Å"good but flawed, must be aristocratic, must be believable, and must behave consistently.† The Muslim leader Malcolm X can be compared to such tragic heroes such as Othello and Hamlet. Malcolm’s life and his personality have similar traits from both of the famous Shakespearean heroes. In this paper we will look deeper into the life of Malcolm X and find the similarities between him and the tragic heroes, alsoRead MoreMalcolm X the Tragic Hero1843 Words   |  8 PagesPaper December 11, 2001 Malcolm X and The Shakespearean Tragic heroes Aristotle defines a tragic hero as good but flawed, must be aristocratic, must be believable, and must behave consistently. -Aristotle. The Muslim leader Malcolm X can be compared to such tragic heroes such as Othello and Hamlet. Malcolms life and his personality have similar traits from both of the famous Shakespearean heroes. In this paper we will look deeper into the life of Malcolm X and find the similarities betweenRead MoreWhy Is Learning A Language?1387 Words   |  6 PagesHow many languages is there in the world? And how many languages are there to be learned? On an average count of people, two language is the most that someone has knowledge of, making them bilingual. However, it is not easy to learn a language that is native to them. Some take most interest in learning, but some are required to learn by taking a language class in high school. Besides learning a different language, what about learning a language that is native to you? Just because a language is nativeRead MoreEssay on Malcolm X1967 Words   |  8 PagesMalcolm X In the course of human history there will always be change. In order to bring about that change there must be something that is so controversial that it can break people away from the normal routine they have been accustomed to. Few people can raise the amount of attention needed to fuel that controversy. Malcolm X was one of those few that would die trying to achieve that attention. Earl Little was a black Baptist minister and an avid civil rights activist. On May 19, 1925 in Omaha

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Risks Associated With An Individual Perspective Of A Risk...

*In a manufacturing company process consideration is needed to be given to the potential risks associated with ongoing day to day activities. Risks can arise due to the nature of the materials in used, the equipment, the people, and so forth. However, it is important that a program is put into place which identifies the various risks that can occur, to understand the probability of the risks occurring and the potential impact on the business, the staff, the shareholders, customers, suppliers and the community, were a risk can be identified. *Nonetheless, in order to provide a structure for risk analysis, and to help with the allocation of the responsibility for managing the different types of risk, risks need to be categorized properly. In a manufacturing company the individual perspective of a risk management program would be to minimize injury to staff, to customers, or the local community. Otherwise, the focus may be on the financial risks, which is an important part of the busin ess or the impact on shareholder financial returns. Many manufacturing businesses are motivated on keeping a good reputation, and any potential damage to the business reputation could have a long term effects, therefore, the risks could impact on the reputation of the organization which will need to be identified and controls implemented to reduce the potential risks. When a manufacturing business wants to understand and control their risks, every manufacturing process there will be a need for aShow MoreRelatedComparison Paper1140 Words   |  5 Pagespublic programs like Medicaid and Medicare strains state and federal budgets. Higher insurance premiums pose a challenge for employees and burden workers with higher health costs and lower wage increases. â€Å"The burden of rising health care costs is particularly problematic for small businesses, which tend to have much smaller pools of workers to spread risk and increasingly choose not to offer any health insurance to employees.† (Carroll, R. 2007). This paper will compare three terms risk, resourcesRead MoreEssay about Evolution of Community and Public Health Nursing1093 Words   |  5 Pagesmeasures improvement or decline in student ability through grades 3-8 annually in math and reading (Frontline, 2013). The key issue is children need to be as healthy as possible to perform to the best of his or her ability in school. Perspective/goals The perspective that all children are important and education should be available to all children. Regardless of the economic status, race, language barrier, or community environment along with making sure schools are liable for student growth is theRead MoreAnalysis Of The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act888 Words   |  4 PagesAmerican Health Benefit Exchange for individuals and businesses to purchase health insurance plans (as well a similar exchange for small businesses). Fourth, the act requires that states establish at least one reinsurance (a program in which an insurer transfers a portion of its risks to a third party) entity, which helps expand the availability of coverage plans. Fifth, by 2014, individuals would be required to obtain at least a minimal form of health insurance, or risk a fine. Sixth, employers with fiftyRead MoreRisk Management Process1617 Words   |  7 Pages4 DESCRIPTION 4 RISK MANAGEMENT FLOW 5 ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 6 RISK TRACKING PROCESS 7 Identify Risks 7 Assess and Prioritize Risks 7 Determine Course of Action 8 Review and Monitor Risks 8 RISK MANAGEMENT LOG ENTRY DEFINITIONS 9 PROCESS ASSISTANCE, QUESTIONS, OR RECOMMENDATIONS 10 APPENDIX A: RISK MANAGEMENT LOG 11 Document Overview Purpose The purpose of this Risk Management Process document is: †¢ To provide a framework to track and monitor project risks throughout the projectRead MoreBenefits Of Retirement Planning For Retirement917 Words   |  4 PagesRetirement planning is essential for the future well-being of retirees. Gaining knowledge and perspective on the process will be beneficial. A lack of preparedness may stem from the overwhelming amount of variables affecting and contributing to retirement planning. The following literature reviews provide awareness on planning for retirement. In an article by Burke Goldman (2015), three strategies are presented to adopt and implement proven features and solutions. First, automatic planRead MoreQuality Department Analysis718 Words   |  3 PagesFrom a healthcare perspective, this program helps to alleviate unnecessary and often overcrowded emergency room visits, allowing the emergency room providers and nursing staff to focus on the critically ill patients. One of the main departments of the healthcare facility, of which will be the focus of this analysis, is the Quality department. The Quality department is comprised of three main areas: quality and patient safety, regulatory-accreditation readiness, and risk management. Each of these complianceRead MoreEssay on Risk Management Process1603 Words   |  7 Pages Purpose The purpose of this Risk Management Process document is: †¢ To provide a framework to track and monitor project risks throughout the project lifecycle †¢ Establish roles and responsibilities of all participants in the process Scope This process will be used by the entire project team. As such, this document defines the Risk Management process and flow for a project. Description A risk is any factor that may potentially interfere with a successful completion of a project by havingRead MoreThe Department Of Homeland Security Essay1380 Words   |  6 Pagessaying, â€Å"Take calculated risk. That is quite different from being rash.† Great success can be obtained by calculating risks. Lives can be saved, infrastructure protected, and evil avoided, but how does one calculate risk? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed a risk management system to help address risks, primarily terrorism risks. It is important to realize that this is a system. Comprising this system of risk management are some key steps, such as the risk assessment and decisionRead MoreFinancial Information Based On Current Literature1509 Words   |  7 Pagesprojected organizational cost for the proposed MNMP is based upon the reported average RN mentor salary of $30.21 and the reported average newly hired RN salary of $26.04 in 2015 (Salary.com, 2015; Simplyhired, 2015 ). The MNMP will be a one-year program with each RN mentor and RN protà ©gà © averaging approximately 40 hours a week collaboratively for a total of 12 weeks, plus an additional 10 hours devoted to mentor training for the RN mentor. In reality, the RN mentor may have a total of four protà ©gà ©sRead MoreThree Levels of Health Promotion1264 Words   |  6 PagesNRS-429V July 13, 2014 A process that will enable people to improve and have control over their health is called health promotion. For social and environmental interventions as our focus we will need to move beyond individual behavior. It seeks development of individual measures and communities to enhance well being by changing their lifestyles. Promoting public health is an important role for the nurse by changing their behavior and prevents disease. Nurse’s roles include clinical

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Marketing and Brand Management

Question: Discuss about theMarketing and Brand Management. Answer: Introduction: The present study is based on an organization that has a specific product that the customers of the company prefer the most to buy. This study shows the elusive concept of value and a discussion has also been done on how the organization offers the products that are of value to the customers. Smartphone manufactured by Samsung Electronics is considered in this study. Due to reasonable cost of smart phone with wide range of features, demand for Samsung Smartphone is growing in the market. The Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.: In the present study, the organization that has been chosen for showing the value of the products and services of value to the consumers is the Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. This is a South Korean multinational company and has its sales network in around 80 countries. The annual revenue of the company in the year 2015 was around à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ©140.650 trillion which is just second to the revenue of Apple. This company manufactures different electronic components such as chips, semi conductors, hard drive, and lithium ion batteries for their clients. In recent years, the product profile has been diversified to include smart phone and home appliances. Samsung Galaxy has immense popularity in mobile market across the world. The Principle Customers: From the view point of age and gender, the principle customers for the Samsung products are both male and female but the age group is generally between the 20- 50. The age group of children mainly from 14-25, are mainly the consumers of smart phones and the adult age group, 26-50, are the consumers of almost all types of Samsung electronics product. Among all of the Samsung products, the Galaxy S7 smart phones are the most selling product of the company and the top most selling brand of smart phones. The main age group that focuses on being the customers of it varies between the 20- 40 (Khani et al 2013). Customer- Orientation of the Company: The Samsung Company comes under one of the most customer oriented companies. The company, by focusing on its customers, changed some of the part of the companys electronic business because the bringing out of the same kind of the end user and the consumer oriented business was the motive of the company. For this purpose and the objective of the company, the company had to change its total Samsung Digital Imagings RD. The marketing team of the company earlier was based on technical and price consideration but later changed it to one based on lifestyle and emotion. Organizations Current Product Value: The Samsung Company provides its customers with high value for products to its customers. The company manages to provide this for the customers in the terms of different terms that it could serve it customers with. The services of such include the ordering ease, product quality, delivery of the goods, maintenance and repairs. Availability of Samsung Smart phone at low cost has made it easily accessible to the customers and increases the product value. Value of the Brand: The present brand value of the Samsung Company stands at the third of the most valuable brand globally. This is a well renowned brand and the results of the brand finance states that after the apple and Google, the Samsung comes on the number three position in the terms of the global brand value. The Samsung Company has reached to this level of brand popularity because of the increase in the smartphones sales of the company and achieving the top selling manufacturer of smartphones (Kapferer 2012). Conclusion: The present research study above holds the research that has been done on the Galaxy range of smart phones that are manufactured by the Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. for analysing the customer orientation of the company and the brand and the product value of the Samsung brand. References: Kapferer, J.N., 2012.The new strategic brand management: Advanced insights and strategic thinking. Kogan page publishers. Khani, S., Imanikhah, S.M., Gheysari, H., Kamali, S.S. and Ghorbanzadeh, T., 2013. The Relationship of Appliance Consumer Personality Trait, Brand Personality, Brand Loyalty and Brand Equity in the Mobile Phone Industry.International Journal of Fundamental Psychology Social Sciences,3(4), pp.63-70.

Monday, December 2, 2019

Just Stop It, An Insult Directed Towards Nikes Classic Ad, Just Do Es

?Just Stop It?, an insult directed towards Nikes' classic ad, Just Do It. The insults and the questions all began at the demise of Nike's Corporate Image. For a long time Nike was considered a conscientious company who had honest concern for their global cohorts. Nike is truly a global company with affiliations world wide,. The company has approximately 350 contract factories in thirty three countries employing nearly 5,000,000 people. The leading producers of Nike Product are : Indonesia, China, South Korea, Vietnam and the United States. To, date Nike has only come under fire for the Asian Factories, specifically Vietnam, China and Indonesia. The primary products produced in these countries are shoes. Nike uses labor in Asia because, ? The industry has its roots in this region due to a number of factors, including access to raw materials, high levels of expertise and quality and cost of labor.? the company has had relations from the very beginning with subcontractors in Asia. The r eason for this was that the prospect of using asian labor promised to be much cheaper and more effective then if the shoes were manufactured in the United States. Because of this long lasting relationship Nike has had with different asian subcontractors, consumers assumed that the company was treating their workers well and providing them with a safe, clean work environment. We were wrong. In the 1980's Nike manufactured their products primarily in Taiwan and Korea, but recently in that past five years, manufacturing plants have moved at an alarming rate to countries like, Indonesia, china, and Vietnam. The reason for this sudden move, was that the economies of both Taiwan and Korea were growing at a rapid rate. Global investors were establishing plants their on a frequent basis , while the locals were benefiting from all the work and extra money plummeting into their market place. These countries benefited by growing at a rapid rate both economically and socially. The workers began to expect more money for their work, thus big companies like Nike, moved out. Nike primary reason for manufacturing their shoes and accessories in countries like Taiwan and Korea was so that they could utilize the low production cost and make a vast profit selling the final product. Nike had no loyalty to these workers nor the countries, so they simply picked up their stuff and moved to ano ther country where laws were lenient, labor was plentiful and production was cheap. Nike does not own any of the factories that produce its products in Asia, and they do not directly employ any of the factory workers or the management. They contract out work to factories that make all of the product and run all of the factories. The reason that Nike operates this way, is because by contracting out their manufacturing the company is less ?responsible? and liable for whatever goes on in the manufacturing facility. Nike states the price that the company is willing to pay per shoe to be made and the subcontractor, once they agree to the deal is responsible for manufacturing the quoted number of shoes for the stated price. A second reason as to why Nike contracts out its manufacturing jobs, is because of the constantly changing styles of shoes. Consumers tastes and preferences change so rapidly that the manufacturing companies don't have time to finish producing one style before an order for another style comes in. The factory managers are the ones that are creating the harsh working environments and the unreasonable hours. However, Nike, because of the amount of work they provide these manufcaturing companies with, have a huge influence on how these manufacturing plants operates. To ensure good labor practices Nike has a code of conduct that every subcontractor must agree to adhere to in order to get the contract finalized with Nike. If the Code of Conduct was an actually working model then it would have insured the workers a safe working environment, reasonable pay and reasonable hours and would have protected them from mistreatment and discrimination. However since the majority of the Nike workers are completely unaware that the company even has something like the code of conduct, they are unable to defend themselves through using

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Introduction to the Structure of U.S. Government

Introduction to the Structure of U.S. Government For all that it is and does, the United States federal government is based on a very simple system: Three functional branches with powers separated and limited by constitutionally declared checks and balances. The executive, legislative and judicial branches represent the constitutional framework envisioned by the Founding Fathers for our nations government. Together, they function to provide a system of lawmaking and enforcement based on checks and balances, and separation of powers intended to ensure that no individual or body of government ever becomes too powerful. For example: Congress (legislative branch) can pass laws, but the president (executive branch) can veto them.Congress can override the presidents veto.The Supreme Court (judicial branch) can declare a law approved by Congress and the president unconstitutional.The president can appoint judges to the Supreme Court, but Congress must approve them. Is the system perfect? Are powers ever abused? Of course, but as governments go, ours has been working quite well since Sept. 17, 1787. As Alexander Hamilton and James Madison remind us in Federalist 51, If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Recognizing the inherent moral paradox posed by a society in which mere mortals govern other mere mortals, Hamilton and Madison went on to write, In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place The Executive Branch The executive branch of the federal government ensures that the laws of the United States are obeyed. In carrying out this duty, the President of the United States is assisted by the Vice President, department heads – called Cabinet Secretaries – and the heads of the several independent agencies.   The executive branch consists of the president, the vice president and 15 Cabinet-level executive departments. The President The President of the United States is the elected leader of the country. As the head of state, the president is the leader of the federal government, and Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. Elected according to the Electoral College process, the president serves a four-year term and is limited to serving no more than two terms. The Vice President The Vice President of the United States supports and advises the president. Under the process of presidential succession, the vice president becomes president if the president becomes unable to serve. The vice president can be elected and serve an unlimited number of four-year terms, even under multiple presidents. The Cabinet The members of the president’s cabinet serve as advisors to the president. The cabinet members include the vice president, heads or â€Å"secretaries† of the executive departments, and other high-ranking government officials. The heads of the executive departments are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by a simple majority vote of the Senate. Legislative Powers of the PresidentRequirements to Serve as PresidentPresidents Pay and Compensation The Legislative Branch The legislative branch, composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate, has the sole constitutional authority to enact laws, declare war and conduct special investigations. In addition, the Senate has the right to confirm or reject many presidential appointments.   The Senate There are a total of 100 elected Senators- two from each of the 50 states. Senators may serve an unlimited number of six-year terms. The House of Representatives ï » ¿There are currently 435 elected Representatives, according to the constitutional process of apportionment, the 435 Representatives are divided among the 50 states in proportion to their total population as reported by the most recent decennial U.S. Census. In addition, there are non-voting delegates who represent the District of Columbia and the territories in the House of Representatives. Representatives may serve an unlimited number of two-year terms. The Powers of CongressRequirements to be a U.S. RepresentativeRequirements to be a U.S. SenatorSalaries and Benefits of U.S. Congress MembersHow Bills Become LawsWhy We Have a House and SenateThe Great Compromise: How Congress was Created The Judicial Branch Composed of federal judges and courts, the judicial branch interprets the laws enacted by Congress and when required, decides actual cases in which someone has been harmed. Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, are not elected. Instead, they are appointed by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. Once confirmed, federal judges serve for life unless they resign, die, or are impeached. The U.S. Supreme Court sits atop the judicial branch and federal court hierarchy and has the final say on all cases appealed to it by the lower courts. There are currently nine members of the Supreme Court- a Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices. A quorum of six Justices is required to decide a case. In the event of tie vote by an even number of Justices, the decision of the lower court stands.   The 13 U.S. District Courts of Appeals sit just below the Supreme Court and hear cases appealed to them by the 94 regional U.S. District Courts which handle most federal cases.

Saturday, November 23, 2019

How to Write a Term Paper Thesis

How to Write a Term Paper Thesis How to Write a Term Paper Thesis There are many tips a student needs to keep in mind while writing a term paper thesis. A student needs to put in as much effort as possible in order to secure a decent grade. First of all, it is imperative that the student starts early and makes sure that their topic is chosen within first seven days, during the next week the student should study the research articles. If the student becomes lazy and does not follow such a schedule, it will create problems for the student. It is important that students take into consideration what interests them when selecting a topic. Students should also make sure that sufficient discussion has taken place with the professor before the topic has been finalized. Regular meetings should continue to take place with the professor to ensure that the student is on the right track, while making sure that the selected topic is neither too narrow, nor too broad. It is always a good idea to see your professor on a regular basis, since the professor will see you are working hard and you will also extract information, regarding proper indexes and catalogs, from the instructor. You should also make a complete list of potential key words that might be used to collect research material for the research topic. It will be best if you try to use mostly primary sources for your research material. Meanwhile, remember tips such as noting down ideas in a separate journal so that you do not forget them, and you can make use of them later. Clearly identify the notes on research material, and point out the areas which are to be directly quoted, and which are to be rephrased. One must be careful to avoid plagiarism since it is still considered a crime if it is detected. Ensure that your paper is checked for plagiarism and corrected before it is submitted. Note taking is also very crucial in order to maintain the progress you have made while making sure that the notes are clear and not vague. If you consider making the notes on a computer then you can easily retrieve them whenever they are required. However, it could complicate things since you will not be able to view all the notes at the same time, so this could cancel out the benefit of ease of access that computer note taking brings. Moreover, it is important that a very good outline for the paper is created before starting to write the paper. This will ensure that the structure of the paper is well managed and systematic, while also making sure that you have covered all the points. You need to ensure that a proper and clear thesis has been stated and that the whole study revolves around that thesis statement. Meanwhile, stating facts and figures is a very crucial element of a research paper. Ensure that the statistics that have been stated on the paper are accurate by checking them several times. Finally, the sources used for the research should be mentioned carefully, and after concluding the essay, there should be sufficient time for the student to proofread the document several times, to ensure the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in the document is flawless. will gladly help with term paper writing on any topic and discipline. Our writers are willing to write high-quality custom term papers from scratch!

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Operating (income) statement, statement of cash flow and balance sheet Personal

Operating (income) , of cash flow and balance sheet - Personal Statement Example A ratio of more than 1 indicates that the firm is not efficient in generating revenues. The working capital position of the hospital is not good. The current ratio is 0.21 in 2004 and 0.32 in 2003. The ideal current ratio is 2:1. The current ratio of the hospital signifies that it will not be able to pay off its obligations at this point of time. The company’s financial health is not at all good and is heading towards bankruptcy. If the hospital is unable to meet its current obligations then the operations will come to a standstill or halt (Troy, 2008, p xviii). The biggest concern is the hospital’s ability to continue as a going concern. There are no adjustments made to the financial statements which could reflect the possible recovery or revival of the hospital. The working capital deficiency and recurring operating losses has created doubts on the existence of the entity. In its present form the hospital requires additional financing to meet its working capital requirements but it will take them into more of a debt trap if they take loans for that additional financing. Sustainable profits are dependent on the increase in the utilization of Hospital’s services for which the hospital has to increase awareness among consumers and this will again call for incurring cost on advertisements and promotion of their services. The working capital position of the hospital is such due to the uncollectible accounts and the unwanted loan burden. The recurring losses can be reduced by taking some strict cost cutting measures. I would recommend you to reduce contractual allowances, take some measures to curb uncollectible accounts and free care, and reduce unwanted expenses which would enhance the profitability of the hospital. If uncollectible accounts are collected and the loans are curbed then the working capital position will improve and therefore will lead to revival of the

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

The ministry of Spiritual Direction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The ministry of Spiritual Direction - Essay Example to pay attention to their own religious experiences and to respond accordingly to what God communicates to them in their own personal experiences. In my own experiences, I have realized that good spiritual direction should be based on religious experience. Before I was helped by my spiritual director to listen to the voice of God through my own experiences, I was a practising member of the apostolic church, but as a matter of fact, I did not have a live and a vibrant relationship with my God. This is because, although, I was a practising Christian and I used to attend the church regularly to pray, I however, felt aloof and alienated from God. I had expressed this problem to my previous spiritual directors, but my spiritual directors kept on lecturing me on how I should abandon sin, be more prayerful, and align my life to the will of God. I had tried in vain to adhere to the advice of my spiritual directors. Later, I choose another spiritual director who started directing me to engage in silent and contemplative prayers as a way of listening to God as He communicated to me. My new spiritual director also advised me to take time each day at least 15 minutes per day, to reflect on my personal experiences and to focus on the religious dimensions of those experiences, i.e. to pay attention to how God was communicating to me through those daily experiences. Through this new method of spiritual direction, I was able to discern, in a very clear manner, how God was constantly communicating with me. Through the silent prayers and reflections, I was also able to respond to God as He communicated with me, and to express my feelings, my hopes, my fears, my frustrations, and my gratitude to him. Ultimately, my prayer life improved substantially and my relationship with God became stronger and stronger. This experience, therefore, made me to believe that the best form of spiritual direction should be based on

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Majority-Minority Question in the Writings of Gandhi and Jinnah Essay Example for Free

Majority-Minority Question in the Writings of Gandhi and Jinnah Essay Two major political leaders stand out in early twentieth century history of India. These two men are Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In the lead up to the demand of Indian political leaders for independence from British colonial rule, a major political party was formed, and named ‘The Indian Congress Party’. All areas of British colonial India was represented in the Congress party. British colonial India was made up of people of many religions; the two major ones being Hinduism and Islam. Hindus were in the majority, while Muslims were in the minority, though a sizable minority. Both Gandhi and Jinnah were members of Congress Party. The initial push for independence from British colonialism was supported by people of all religions and from all regions. Of the main actors in the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi advocated a single united India composed of people of all religions in a secular constitutional democracy. Mohammad Ali Jinnah on the other hand, wanted an India made up of two states of equal parity, Pakistan and Hindustan. Hindustan would be ruled by the majority Hindus while Pakistan would be ruled by the minority Muslims, not as a democracy, but as an Islamic state. His difference of opinion with other Congress Party leaders like Gandhi, led Jinnah to leave Congress Party and to join ‘The Muslim League’. The inability of the two different and extreme positions to reach a consensus, eventually led to the division of British colonial India into two different countries at independence in 1947: India and Pakistan. Gandhi’s Position on Indian Independence Mahatma Gandhi was first and foremost a Hindu. When Gandhi entered Indian politics by joining the Indian Congress Party, he had three major objectives in view. The first was to unite all the people from diverse regions and religions into one united, indivisible India. The second was to awaken in all Indians a sense of nationalism and moral rearmament. The third was to use non-violent civil disobedience to force the British colonialists to grant India both political and economic independence. His speeches and writings were tailored towards these three objectives. Prior to Gandhi’s entry into Indian politics, there had been agitations for political autonomy by Indians. Many of these agitations had turned violent. The British on their part forcefully put down these violent protests, with consequent heavy loss of life of protesting Indians. Gandhi institutionalized non-violent protests as an effective method of forcing British colonialists to grant, first economic concessions and later political self determination to Indians. One of Gandhi’s most quoted famous speeches is one address to all Britons and given in 1942. Leave India to God. If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy. (Gandhi, May 1942) ‘†During the struggle for freedom, Gandhi had written this speech as an appeal To Every Briton to free their possessions in Asia and Africa, especially India†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (Philips and Wainwright, 567). In order for both Gandhi’s Indian Congress Party and the Muslim League to present a common front to the British for a unified Indian independence, Gandhi had meeting with Jinnah on many occasions. However, because of their diametrically opposed positions on the majority/minority issue, their talks yielded no positive results. While Gandhi and his Congress party wanted a unified India with a secular constitutional democracy, Jinnah and his Muslim League wanted a two state structure with the Muslim minority being granted political parity with the Hindu majority. Thus the stage was set for division of India into two separate political entities, one secular and the other religious. Jinnah’s Position on Hindu/Muslim Parity The stance of the Muslim minority of British colonial India was articulated by Jinnah in his speeches and talks with British colonial administrators and Gandhi. ‘In 1940 Jinnah said So far as I have understood Islam, it does not advocate a democracy which would allow the majority of non-Muslims to decide the fate of the Muslims’ (Quaid-e-Azam, Vol II) ‘†Also in 1940 Jinnah spoke of how the Muslims constituted not a mere minority, but a nation and must have their own homeland. (Gwyer and Appadorai, 1957) Hence from his speeches and writings, Ali Jinnah left no room for meaningful compromise with those like Gandhi, who wanted a unified independent India, with a secular democratic constitution. Jinnah and the Muslim minority in India feared that the Hindu majority would dominate them and subjugate them in reprisal for the way the Muslim rulers of pre-colonial India had subjugated the Hindu populace which they ruled. In the words of Burke, ‘†At best, Jinnah and his colleagues were apprehensive of the intentions of the Hindu-dominated Congress towards the Muslims, and its ability and willingness to provide for and facilitate the progress and well-being of the minorities. In short, they were seeking to â€Å"escape the yoke of the more numerous Hindus. †Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (Burke, 1973) NOTES 1. Philips and Wainwright, eds. The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935-1947. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1970. 2. Speech delivered at Aligarh, March 6 1940, Speeches, Statements and Messages of the Quaid-e-Azam, Vol II, Khurshid Yusufi, Bazm-i-Iqbal, Lahore 3. Speech at Lahore Session of the All India Muslim League, March 22, 1940,Speeches and Documents on the Indian Constitution 1921-47,Vol II, Gwyer and Appadorai, 1957 4. Burke, S. M. Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis (London: Oxford University Press, 1973) p. 65. Bibliography 1. Burke, S. M. Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis (London: Oxford University Press, 1973) p.65. 2. Philips and Wainwright, eds. The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935-1947. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1970. 3. Speech delivered at Aligarh, March 6 1940, Speeches, Statements and Messages of the Quaid-e-Azam, Vol II, Khurshid Yusufi, Bazm-i-Iqbal, Lahore 4. Speech at Lahore Session of the All India Muslim League, March 22, 1940,Speeches and Documents on the Indian Constitution 1921-47,Vol II, Gwyer and Appadorai, 1957 Internet Sources 5. Gandhi, May 1942, quoted in â€Å"The Partition of India† http://www. english. emory. edu/Bahri/Part. html

Friday, November 15, 2019

Bill Evanss Effects on Modern Jazz Essay -- musicology, musicians, his

The term modern jazz generally referred to the musical period after bebop, when musicians begun to approached harmony in different aspect. Modern jazz was often overlooked, often defined as jazz derivation or hybrid and was influenced by variety of musicians; among them was Bill Evans. He was one of the most important jazz pianists, and remained to be one of the most influential musicians of post-bebop jazz, due to his prominent sound that made him recognizable to everyone. According to Bert Konowitz, â€Å"Bill Evans Sound is created by using chords in the left hand that often do not have the root of the chord on the bottom, as well as voicing chords with tone clusters† (198). Bill Evan’s sound was distinct and involved unique technique like chord cluster and block chord. Bill Evans was an important figure that influenced the development of modern jazz, including the progress of modal jazz technique, the re-harmonization by chord voicing and the expressivity of jazz. Bill Evans was an impressionist piano player, influenced by his earlier age of classical music. He learned piano when he was a child and also attended Southeastern Louisiana University majoring in music (Pettinger 14). His educational background on classical music allowed him to improvised and explored the depth of jazz. As Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz suggested, "The most personal characteristics of his work were his uniquely delicate articulation, his oblique harmonic approaches and manner of voicing chords, his occasional use of the left hand in rhythmic duplication of the right-hand line, and the ability to create a warm, beautiful mood within the framework of a popular song, a jazz standard or an original work". According to Professor Harrison’s lectur... ...to jazz with modal jazz and chord voicing was extremely influential to the modern jazz scene. These new technique brought variations to new musicians, influencing their personal style yet also pushing them to strive for their own freedom of improvisation. Bill Evan’s contribution to the jazz world is vast and he still continued to influence the jazz pianists until this day. Works Cited Israels, Chuck. "Bill Evans (1929–1980): A Musical Memoir." The Musical Quarterly LXXI.2 (1985): 109-15. Web. . Konowitz, Bert. Blues & Jazz Complete: Book & 2 CDs. Alfred Music Publishing, 1999. Larson, Tom. History and Tradition of Jazz. Kendall Hunt, 2002. Nisenson, Eric. The making of Kind of blue: Miles Davis and his masterpiece. Macmillan, 2001. Pettinger, Peter. Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings. Yale University Press, 1998.

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

How I Learned to Drive Analysis Essay

In Paula Vogel’s â€Å"How I Learned to Drive†, we follow our protagonist nicknamed â€Å"Lil Bit† on a gut wrenching, and downright disturbing journey through her adolescence, told as a series of narrations, monologues, and flashbacks with the occasional interjection of a PSA like voice over. The play recounts the physical and emotional abuse Lil Bit encountered from the ages of eleven to eighteen at the hands of her uncle Peck, while he teaches her to drive. The main flaw I saw in Lil Bit was that she is too smart for her own good. You see this characteristic throughout the play as she manipulates Peck. For example, it was most obvious for me when their roles of adult and child are reversed, and Peck is explaining to Lil Bit what a good boy he has been for not drinking. Knowing how much Peck lusts after her she offers him a reward for his good behavior in the form of undoing her bra. Another great example is when prior to her and peck going on a road trip and Lil Bit’s mother indicates that she has a sense of what Peck has on his mind, she responds by saying â€Å"I can take care of myself. And I can certainly handle uncle Peck.† At this point in the story she is only eleven. It’s hard to imagine a child of that age so grown up emotionally. Overall, most of the characters had likeable qualities, with the exception of the grandmother. I didn’t really like the way she meddled in the Parenting of Lil Bit. I liked â€Å"Big Papa† the best. He’s a crabby old timer who speaks anything that comes into his head with reckless abandon. It brought me some levity in an otherwise melancholy play. The climax of the play occurs on Lil Bit’s eighteenth birthday. She and Peck are in a hotel room, and she’s been ignoring peck for some time leading up to this meeting as he’s been sending her cards counting down to her birthday. Lil Bit is obviously conflicted about their relationship now that she has gotten older, but Peck is looking forward to a time when it’s not illegal for them to be together. This is creepy enough on its own, but when Peck drops the marriage bomb, the creep factor skyrockets. I was honestly disgusted at the idea of a man leaving his wife to be with his niece whom he has known since birth, blood related or not. Prior to the climax, one major event occurs and that is in the monologue that Aunt Mary delivers indicating that she knows what’s going on between Peck and Lil bit. The words used during this monologue, indicate to me a couple of key points about this character. First of all she is very intelligent. Her thoughts are well put together and the words she uses indicates to me that she has some sort of education. She is also very intuitive, she picks up on the subtle, non-verbal signals that peck gives off when he’s got something on his mind and presumably when he’s around Lil Bit. Also, the words used by Lil Bit in her different flashbacks have a direct correlation to her age. It’s obvious as you read them, that during the later ones she is forming more complex thoughts and emotions, which is indicative of growth. For the music in this play, Paula Vogel suggested period correct music spanning two generations. She mentions Motown several times, as well as Roy Orbison and the Beach Boys. Most of this music is romantic and happy with little hints of sexuality and sometimes-pedophilic references. For some weird reason the voice of the announcer in my head was played by the Moviephone guy. The car in the play was described as a Buick Riviera, but in my mind it was more like a Camaro or GTO. The main reason for this is the obvious relationship between Peck and his car. The way he describes the way the aggressive way men are taught to drive and the feeling of a cars’ response to your touch, just makes me think of those fast nimble sports cars. Taking place in the 1960’s, the costumes in my mind were bell-bottoms and flowered shirts, polyester leisure suits, and fringes all over the place. This was your typical 1960’s attire. I believe the overall theme of this play is about the effect of time on relationships. The relationship between Peck and Lil Bit starts out strong, for her and fragile for him. She has a strong male figure giving her attention while he is nurturing a relationship that he knows is illegal and immoral. As time progresses, the roles ultimately reverse leaving Peck with much confidence in the relationship while Lil Bit comes to realize the truth about it which leads to its demise. It just goes to show that time will always change relationships, jus not always in the way you imagined.

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Culture of American Indians Essay

In Against the Grain, environmental journalist Richard Manning (2004) argues that notions of class and property are a direct result of the emergence of agricultural civilizations beginning 10,000 years ago. This is because of the social necessities demanded by distribution and storage of surplus. Conversely, he points out the contrastingly egalitarian nature of the hunter-gatherer lifestyles and the deeper social ties which result from cooperative food acquisition. Consider for example, the Plains Indians of North America prior to the arrival of European settlers, who would utilize their knowledge of buffalo movement patterns to haze and herd them, towards a cliff. By diverting the stampede of a large number of animals to their sudden vertical death, they would obtain a caloric pay-off through minimal effort, but â€Å"required social organization and sharing, both of the labor and of the proceeds.† (Manning, 2004; South Dakota State Historical Society Education Kit, 2008) Yet despite this element of uncertainty in hunting and gathering, Richard Steckel notes that towards the end of the 19th century, the Plains Indians were among the tallest people in the world and argues despite the numerous technological and agricultural advances they did not have, they were surprisingly well-nourished compared to whites, indicating that agriculture should not be taken for granted as the sign of social advancement it is purported be, Manning notes that, in the absence of storage means and preservation technologies, it was impossible for the Plains Indians to hoard bison meat. Therefore wealth accumulation was impossible. As such, â€Å"communal feasting became the payoff for social organization,† argues Manning Agriculture on the hand, created social stratification in the form of governance, hierarchy and other institutions necessary for the management of food surplus. Although there is certain room for question to be made about the true egalitarianism of the hunter gatherer cultures of the Plains Indians, they certainly lacked some of the rigidly defined political structures which characterized those belonging to the cultures of Europeans at the point of first contact. Comanche leadership was rather informal, usually identifiable by consensus rather than by any formal nomination to the position and the longevity of a war chiefs authority lasted only as long as they were at war. (Bial, 2000) The Blackfoot people maintained a flexible social structure, a band, which was in constant flux. As such, social relationships were not determined solely by kinship but by residence. In modern times, the case for the difference between hunter-gatherer Native Americans such as the Plains Indians of pre-modern times and the agricultural Native Americans can be observed in the difference between the Inuit peoples, who live a predominantly hunter-gatherer lifestyle out in the Arctic regions (Snow, 1996) and the peoples of the Cherokee and Lakota. The Inuit are noted for their strong sense of community and flexible division of labor among gender lines. The Cherokee and the Lakota, however, have now long been agricultural societies characterized by their class and gender divisions, as well as their contentious disposition towards identity and blood quantum laws. REFERENCES Bial, R. (2000) Lifeways: The Comanche. New York: Benchmark Books. Manning, R. (2004) Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization. New York: North Point Press. â€Å"Buffalo and the Plains Indians.† (2008, April 4) South Dakota State Historical Society Education Kit. Retrieved July 3, 2008 from: http://www.sdhistory.org/mus/ed/Buffalo%20Kit%20Activiteis/Teacher%20Resource.pdf Snow, D. R.. (1996) â€Å"The first Americans and the differentiation of hunter-gatherer cultures.† North America. Eds. Bruce G. Trigger and Wilcomb E. Washburn. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Friday, November 8, 2019

Maori essays

Maori essays Its called the land of the long white cloud and scientists say that this beautiful place was created millions of years ago by a huge, nearly unimaginable earthquake caused by the movement of large plates of the Earths crust. The Maoris, who represent the original inhabitants, in contrast are convinced that this was the heroic deed of a fish. New Zealand seems to be a country where not only continental-plates but also whole worlds and cultures collide. New Zealand was the largest country of Polynesia before it was annexed by the British in 1840. By the 1920s the British still controlled internal and external policies of the country, although it didnt become fully independent until 1947. So far New Zealand is still an independent member of the Commonwealth. Behind New Zealand's spectacular landscape lies an issue unresolved for 160 years. About 95% of the land is owned by the descendants of white settlers while the native people have become rare. New Zealand has always prided itself on good race relations but the battle for equal rights for the minority (Maoris) is steadily heating up.The following text will give an overview of New Zealands history. Furthermore the difficult situation of the Maoris within New Zealands society will be mentioned. No precise archaeological records exist of when and from where the first human inhabitants of New Zealand came, but it is generally agreed that Polynesians from eastern Polynesia in the central Pacific reached New Zealand more than 1,000 years ago. Bergmann, P. (1993). New Zealand. In The new encyclopedia Britannica (Vol. 24, pp. 916-930). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica. Others believed that the Polynesian navigator Kupe was the first man to sight New Zealand around AD 950 and then returned home to tell his tribe of the findings. About 400 years later seven great migratory canoes sailed from Hawaiki to New Zealand. They called the island Aotearoa ...

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Dos and Donts for How to Win at Missing Work

Dos and Donts for How to Win at Missing Work Whether you have some personal days in your arsenal to play hooky or need to scrounge some legitimate reasons to miss work because faking a cold isn’t going to cut it, you can probably get some mileage about of this list of Dos and Don’ts.   DoI’ve earned it.This option requires some prep work and some sweat equity. Come in early and stay late for a few days a week, then by the time you go to your boss with a request for some flex time or a day off you will have earned it. You’ll feel better about the time away, and your coworkers will appreciate you didn’t just leave them in the lurch.I’m [Doing Professional Activity] with a client.This only works if your workplace routinely has to entertain clients or meet with them outside the office. Do not say you are playing golf with a client if you are a publisher and your client is an author or if you are an administrative assistant and your client is Staples. You will also have to actually meet up with a client for some reason!I have a doctor’s appointment.The savvy timing of doctor’s appointments is one of the best, least-arguable routes to a free afternoon for Netflix and snooze. Schedule a check-up or a physical or a cleaning for 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon and you’ll be on your way right after lunch.I have cramps.Honestly I would be way too embarrassed to use this one- and I actually do get bodacious cramps and occasional accompanying migraines. But, if you’ve got an easily flustered male boss and are a female employee with some moxie, this could have you stopping by the drug store for ice cream and some Red Box DVDs before you know it.I’m working from home.My husband is the most honest Work-From-Homer on the planet. He applies all that extra time he saves by not commuting to the work he gets done, and then we both get to knock off together around dinnertime. This requires you to stay near your email for any pressing questions, but wi ll definitely carve the edges of your work day when you need a breather.  Noooooo. Just DONT!I’ve had a death in the family.My students are still trying this one occasionally, along with car accidents, family engagement parties that ran late, and last-minute flights back from Australia. Clichà ©s are clichà © and there’s no going back.I’m too sleepy.At my first job out of school we had an intern who fell asleep at his desk every day for at least an hour. It was baffling. It was distracting. His internship did not last longer than a month. If you can’t get enough sleep, definitely get enough caffeine.I can’t get my car out of the garage. (See also: The L train isn’t running.)Getting your car out, or taking the L, is something you have to do often enough to know how long it takes (or how to work around any common delays or obstacles).I can’t find my polling place.Apparently this is a real thing that happened and not just a sit-in pr otest for a national election holiday. Find out where you have to vote ahead of time; taking a whole day to do it is weird.I have a personal emergency.This nonspecific all-purpose band-aid for just not wanting to go to work doesn’t score you any points or make you look responsible. I know someone who uses â€Å"plumbing emergency† every month or so just so he can go in late. It’s fine if you actually have terrible plumbing (or a real emergency you can appropriately disclose later).Whatever you do or say to get the mental health days you need, don’t lie to get it, and be responsive to your coworkers when you can! I hope you and your snooze-button will be very happy together.

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Plato's The Republic Criticism of Democracy Essay

Plato's The Republic Criticism of Democracy - Essay Example Instead, Plato favored the Republic as the best form of government. His depiction of a Republic was one where it was ruled by the lovers of wisdom and/or the lovers of honor. This is quite contrary to today's belief that democracy is the best and the only fully justifiable political system. Today's concept of democracy has been popularized specifically with the American view of democracy as a government of the people by the people and for the people. As much as it may seem surprising, Plato found inherent flaws in democracy as a political system and as a form of government. More surprising is the fact that although Plato's thoughts may seem to be outdated and ancient, his criticisms of democracy are quite in certain modern democratic societies. Plato's criticism of democracy is hinged on his belief that democracy has the tendency to degenerate into anarchy. This, he believes, is democracy's greatest weakness. Although such a belief may not seem as apparent in today's democratic societies, a deeper analysis of certain democracies today may reveal that there is indeed some truth to Plato's assertions. However, one must not be mistaken in thinking that the flaws of democracy that may be applicable to the modern form of democracy predominant in today's world cannot be changed. These flaws are not fundamental to all democracies today. There are but certain democratic societies that need to alter their political system because of cert ain flaws that are contrary to the fundamental principles of modern democracy. Plato views democracy as the second worst form of government. In his work, The Republic, he points out that the biggest weakness of a democracy is that it can easily lead to anarchy. Moreover, because of its essential features coupled with certain attributes of man, a democracy can lead to tyranny. His rationale behind his dislike for democracy is that democracy tends to lead to excessive freedom. Although Plato believes in the significance and true value of freedom, he asserts that with the form that democracy takes, it is not unlikely for people to exercise excessive freedom. When people have the freedom to do as they please, there is that tendency to lead to anarchy. Democracy is hinged on the ideology that every person has the equal right and equal capacity to lead. However, in Plato's point of view, he sees this as an avenue which may lead to a government that is ruled by individuals in pursuit of personal gains rather than for public good. In The Republic, Plato wrote; ....Is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship... ...When a democratic city athirst for liberty gets bad cupbearers for its leaders and is intoxicated by drinking too deep of that unmixed wine, and then, if its so-called governors are not extremely mild and gentle with it and do not dispense the liberty unstintedly, it chastises them and accuses them of being accursed oligarch. In this sense, democracy is indeed highly corruptible. Democracy, viewed from this light, opens gates to demagogues, potential dictators, and can thus lead to tyranny. Before, one judges Plato's view, it must be noted that his conception of democracy is based on what he saw in Athenian democracy. In certain respects, not all of his thoughts and ideas may be applicable to

Friday, November 1, 2019

Critical tussle between Democrats and Republicans Essay

Critical tussle between Democrats and Republicans - Essay Example In the recent past, the U.S government found itself in a shutdown status. The government shutdown, as Weisman and Jeremy describe, was caused by a critical tussle between democrats and republicans in the congress. This article essentially fits into the critical thinking field of deductive reasoning and/or argument. To start with, deductive arguments begin at a generalized platform, after which valid and logical conclusions are made from the premises of the argument. This critical thinking approach is applicable to Weisman and Jeremy’s article.The two authors make a claim that links government shutdown to the budget impasse. The presentation of the claim occurs in a general setting, thus requiring the deduction of what exactly caused the shutdown with regard to the budget impasse. In this respect, the article explores diverse aspects of the matter, with an aim to show that the government shutdown due to an impasse that was primarily budget-based. The standoff between democrats and republicans is discussed and subsequently linked to the issue in question.In light of the argument made in the article, the premise validly and logically informs the conclusion. The cause of the government shutdown was purely budgetary. On the same note, both democrats and republicans were the primary parties in the premise of the argument. Moving from a generalized statement to the valid and logical conclusion of what exactly happened, the article is fundamentally informed by critical thinking concepts.

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Democracy Promotion for Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism Essay

Democracy Promotion for Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism - Essay Example Realism believes that democracy promotion is suspicious because states cannot be certain of the true intentions of democracy-promoting states and because the existence of a democratic international system is impossible (â€Å"Realism Introduction† 8, 15). Realism does not think that democracy can be trusted because it is someone else’s democracy. The U.S. is not only projecting values because its democracy promotion is projecting U.S. power too. At the same time, promoting democracy internationally is hardly attainable because there is no government authority that can enforce an international form of democracy (â€Å"Realism Introduction† 8). In particular, if the U.S. promotes democracy in the Middle East, and the projection of values can undermine the power structures in autocratic states, the latter would want to reduce American influence on cultural values and political systems. Others might create alliances to engage in war with more democratic states. The r esult could be violent conflicts where weak autocratic states attack weaker autocratic or more democratic states, in an attempt to block America’s democracy promotion in the region. Liberalism promotes democracy that could lead to a strong, economically-interdependent international society. Economic liberalism believes that trade and economic interdependence can build peace (â€Å"Liberalism Introduction† 6). U.S. democratic values that positively impact the motivation for regional and international economic agreements for involved states are needed to establishing interdependency.

Monday, October 28, 2019

Motivate or influence behavior Essay Example for Free

Motivate or influence behavior Essay Communication is defined by the text as the process by which information is exchanged and understood by two or more people, usually with the intent to motivate or influence behavior. ____ is necessary for communication to be considered two-way. Feedback Which of the following, in the communication process, has the responsibility to decode the symbols and interpret the meaning of the message? Receiver ____ and ____ are potential sources for communication errors, because knowledge, attitudes, and background act as filters. Decoding, encoding Channel richness refers to the amount of information that can be transmitted during a communication episode. Which communication channel would be most successful to inform managers of impending company-wide layoff? Face-to-face contact When an electronic mail system is installed as part of the communication system, what element of the communication process is changed? Channel ____ does not focus on a single receiver, uses limited information cues, and does not permit feedback. Bulletins Compared to men, women tend to use their unique conversational style to show involvement. Which of the following is the most familiar and obvious flow of formal communication? Downward communication ____ refers to messages designed to motivate employees to adopt the companys mission and cultural values and to participate in special ceremonies. Indoctrination Many organizations use suggestion boxes, open door policies, and surveys to facilitate centralized Which of the following links employees in all directions, ranging from the president through middle management, support staff, and line employees? The grapevine What percent of the details passed through a grapevine is accurate? 70 to 90 percent According to the text, all of the following are ways managers can improve their writing skills EXCEPT: Write lengthy explanations One of the most important things that a manager can do for the organization, according to the text, is to create a climate of trust and openness. Managers communication is _______-directed, in that it directs everyones attention toward the vision, values, and desired goals of the team or organization and influences people to act in a way to achieve the goals. purpose Which of the following is the best advice for written communication that is highly important? Get a second opinion To be effective communicators, managers should: Encourage the use of multiple channels of communication

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Science Behind Dreams Essay -- Scientific Research

Did you ever wonder why you dream? Or if your dreams mean anything? Dreams can tell you many things. Dreams are a mental activity associated with rapid-eye movement or REM period of sleep. REM is in sleep, which the eyeballs dart back and forth under closed eyelids. When awakened from REM sleep, people frequently report they had just been dreaming.(Lemonick) They are made up of visual images, scenes or thought expressed in terms of seeing rather than in those of the other senses or in words. During dreams the blood pressure and heart rate increases, and breathing is quickened, but the body is still immobile. Science has uncovered the purpose and meaning of dreams. While they were looking for their answer, they researchers are probing the minds of cats, sleepwalkers , and stroke survivors. They found it is a mix of personal stories and fascinating study results keep the show moving at a lively pace. The dreamworld affects both mental health and problem solving in our waking lives.(L. K.) Electroencephalography studies electrical; activity of the brain during REM sleep. They have shown that young adults dream for 1 Â ½ to 2 hours of every 8-hour period of sleep. While infants spend an average of 50% of their sleep in the REM phase. They are believed to dream more often than adults, and it will decrease steadily with age.(Hobson) Research shows that infants in the womb spend nearly all their time in REM sleep and scientist think they’re using that time to develop brain circuitry, which suggests that the very structure of our minds may be something we have dreamed up. While extensive experiments on maze-running rats and video game playing humans, along with studies of people experiencing failing relationships and depression, have demons... ...Dreams are complex and confusing to understand. There are a lot more questions to be answered about dreams, and why we dream. I don’t think we will ever completely understand the dream world and the questions that want answered. Works Cited Coeman, Bennett. (2012): n.pag. Web. 20 April 2012. . Greengroos, Gil. "Why Do Memories of Vivid Dreams Disappear Soon After Waking Up?." June 3, 2011. n.pag. Web. 20 April 2012 Hobson, J.A. "The Dreaming Brain." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia 6. 11/1/11. n.pag. Web. 20 April 2012. JackWh, . "What Cause Dreams?." 3/17/12. n.pag. Web. 20 April 2012. Kasschau, Richard. Understanding Psychology (2008): 188-189. Web. 20 April 2012.z Lemonick, Michael D. "Time International (Canada Edition)." 163.10 3/8/2004. 44. Web. 20 April 2012. Tyrrell, Mark. "Why Do We Dream?." n.pag. Web. 20 April 2012.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Critical Reading Of Professional Literature

How do pesticides disrupt food chains? TWO: Review the homework by asking student volunteers to suggest ways one population's growth can lead to another population's disappearance during succession. ; Display a blank copy of a K-W-L Chart (ERE, p. GAP-8) on pollution. Have students individually complete the chart except for the L column. ; (Teacher Note: The K-W-L Chart will be completed during the Warm-up section of tomorrows lesson, so you may wish to collect it from students for safekeeping. SW: Organize the students in groups of 3-4, and ask each group to write down ways that pollution released into the environment might affect plants or animals in an ecosystem. Have students list as many possibilities as they can think of in five minutes Saba, Subs, cashed, cash, cashed, cash, cash How do populations grow and what factors limit population growth? TWO: Use Figure 4. 3 in GAL., p. 97, to explain how populations grow exponentially. ; Ask students why populations cannot continue to grow endlessly.Explain carrying capacity, using â€Å"Inside Story' in GAL., p. 98, to illustrate population growth patterns. ; Define and provide examples of limiting factors on populations. Explain that factors that limit one population in a community can also affect other populations (e. G. , populations in the same food chain). Teacher Note: See GAL., up. 68, 97, and 100-101, for examples of limiting factors. SW: Have students study the graph in Figure 4. 8 in GAL., p. 02, and suggest reasons the lynx and hare populations rise and fall together.Explain that population sizes can be controlled by interactions among organisms in a community, including predation, competition, and crowding. INSTRUCTION THURSDAY Saba, chubs, cashed-e, chubs, coaches, cashed How can you model the way ecologists determine the size of an animal population? TWO: Have students brainstorm (ERE, p. GAP-4) the following question for three minutes in groups of 4-5 students: If you had to count all of the squi rrels in a park, how would you do it? Have each group decide upon and present one method. Write a word or two on the board to describe each group's method.Briefly discuss the pros and cons of each idea with students. SW: Ask students to explain why electioneering is effective and to suggest ways that other species of animals (e. G. , owls, wolves) could be marked without harm for recapture. ; Have students answer questions #2-5 of the Analyze and Conclude questions in GAL., p. 109. FRIDAY TWO: Teacher will review limiting factors. SW: Students will be given a quiz on limiting factors. 10/1/12-10/5/12 Saba, CUBIC, Sub, Subs, cash, cash SECT: cells Why is water important? TWO: ; Explain the dependence of all organisms on water for survival. Sub) ; Describe how plants are adapted to use the capillary action of water to obtain ground water. (Subs) ; Read about the properties of water and relate them to organism survival in a graphic organizer. (Cash, Cash) SW: Have students select one o f the properties of water discussed in the text and write two or three sentences about how that property is vital for the survival of organisms. Encourage students to use an example that is not discussed in the text to support their claim. Saba, CUBIC, cash, cash How does the interaction of atoms drive life processes?TWO: Explain to students that atoms are the building blocks of all matter, including organisms. Discuss how atoms form compounds and that compounds interact in chemical reactions, upon which life processes depend. Remind students of the dissolving properties of water, emphasizing that a salt dissolving in water is a chemical reaction. SW: Think-pair-share: Water is a substance that is vital to the survival of organisms. List as many vocabulary terms from the lesson that can be applied to water as possible, and explain why each term fits. INSTRUCTION SIB b-c, cash-b, cash, cashHow does temperature affect the reaction rates of enzymes? TWO: Review the following terms: che mical reaction, substrate, product. ; DOD Shared Reading (ERE, p. GAP-12), explaining the action of enzymes using the example in GAL., p. 166. Emphasize the specificity of enzymes to specific substrates. Explain that chemical reactions require energy, and enzymes often lower the amount of energy required to carry out a chemical reaction. SW: Describe in a short paragraph the importance of digestive enzymes in the chemical breakdown of food, including an example of a digestive enzyme and its specific role in digestion.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Feminism in the Late 20th Century

Chapter 4: A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late 20th Century* DONNA HARAWAY History of Consciousness Program, University of California, at Santa Cruz 1. AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously.I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist-feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blas- phemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about hu- mor and serious play.It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women’s movements have constructed â€Å"women’s experience†, as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective ob- ject.This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative ap- prehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late 20th century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion. Contemporary science fiction is full of cyborgs—creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted.Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality. Cyborg â€Å"sex† restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice * Originally published as Manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. Socialist Review, no. 80 (1985): 65–108. Reprinted with permission of the author. 117 J. Weiss et al. eds. ), The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, 117–158. o C 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands. organic prophylactics against heterosexis m). Cyborg replication is uncou- pled from organic reproduction. Modern production seems like a dream of cyborg colonization work, a dream that makes the nightmare of Taylorism seem idyllic. And modern war is a cyborg orgy, coded by C3I, command- control-communication-intelligence, an $84 billion item in 1984s US defence budget.I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our so- cial and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Michael Foucault’s biopolitics is a flaccid pre-monition of cyborg politics, a very open field. By the late 20th century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized, and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. This cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics.The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined cen- ters structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of â€Å"West ern† science and politics—the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other— the relation between organism and machine has been a border war.The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. It is also an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a post-modernist, nonnaturalist mode and in the utopian tradi- tion of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. Nor does it mark time on an oral symbiotic utopia or post- oedipal apocalypse.As Zoe Sofoulis argues in her u npublished manuscript on Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, and nuclear culture, Lacklein, the most terrible and perhaps the most promising monsters in cyborg worlds are embodied in non-oedipal narratives with a different logic of repression, which we need to understand for our survival. The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexu- ality, preoedipal symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity.In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense—a â€Å"final† irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptictelosof the â€Å"West’s† escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space. An origin story in the â€Å"Western†, hu- manist sense depends on the myth of original unity, fullness, bliss, and terror, represented by the phallic mot her from whom all humans must separate, the task of individual development and of history, the twin potent myths inscribed most powerfully for us in psychoanalysis and Marxism.Hilary Klein (1989) has argued that both Marxism and psychoanalysis, in their concepts of labor and of individuation and gender formation, depend on the plot of original 118 unity out of which difference must be produced and enlisted in a drama of escalating domination of woman/nature. The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense. This is an illegitimate promise that might lead to subversion of its teleology as star wars. The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and per- versity.It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private, the cyborg defines a technologicalpolisbased partly on a revolution of social relations in theoikos, the household. Nature and culture ar e reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other. The relationships for forming wholes from parts, including those of polarity and hierarchical dom- ination, are at issue in the cyborg world.Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein’s monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cosmos. The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. Perhaps that is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy.Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not remember the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection—they seem to ha ve a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. I want to signal three crucial boundary breakdowns that make the following politicalfictional (political-scientific) analysis possible.By the late 20th cen- tury in United States scientific culture, the boundary between human and ani- mal is thoroughly breached. The last beachheads of uniqueness have been pol- luted if not turned into amusement parks—language, tool use, social behavior, mental events, nothing really convincingly settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel the need for such a separation; indeed, many branches of feminist culture affirm the pleasure of connection of human and oth er living creatures.Movements for animal rights are not irrational de- nials of human uniqueness; they are a clear-sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture. Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern or- ganisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional dis- putes between life and social science. Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse.Biological-determinist ideology is only one position opened up in scien- tific culture for arguing the meanings of human animality. There is much 119 room for radical political people to contest the meanings of the breached boundary. 1 The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary be- tween human and animal is transgressed. Far from signaling a walling off of people from other living bein gs, cyborgs signal disturbingly and plea- surably tight coupling. Bestiality has a new status in this cycle of marriage exchange.The second leaky distinction is between animal-human (organism) and machine. Precybernetic machines could be haunted; there was always the spectre of the ghost in the machine. This dualism structured the dialogue between materialism and idealism that was settled by a dialectical progeny, called spirit or history, according to taste. But basically machines were not self- moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man’s dream, only mock it. They were not man, an author himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream.To think they were otherwise was paranoid. Now we are not so sure. Late 20th-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. O ur machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert. Technological determination is only one ideological space opened up by the reconceptions of machine and organism as coded texts through which we engage in the play of writing and reading the world. â€Å"Textualization† of everything in post-structuralist, post-modernist theory has been damned by Marxists and socialist-feminists for its utopian disregard for the lived relations of domination that ground the â€Å"play† of arbitrary reading. 3 It is certainly true that post-modernist strategies, like my cyborg myth, subvert myriad organic wholes (for example, the poem, the primitive culture, the biological organ- ism). In short, the certainty of what counts as nature— a source of insight and promise of innocence—is undermined, probably fatally.The transcendent authorization of interpretation is lost, and with it the ontology grounding â€Å"Western† epistemology. But the alte rnative is not cynicism or faithlessness, that is, some version of abstract existence, like the accounts of technologi- cal determinism destroying â€Å"man† by the â€Å"machine† or â€Å"meaningful political action† by the â€Å"text†. Who cyborgs will be is a radical question; the answers are a matter of survival. Both chimpanzees and artifacts have politics, so why shouldn’t we? (de Waal, 1982; Winner, 1980).The third distinction is a subset of the second: The boundary between physical and nonphysical is very imprecise for us. Pop physics books on the consequences of quantum theory and the indeterminacy principle are a kind of popular scientific equivalent to Harlequin romances as a marker of radical change in American white heterosexuality: They get it wrong, but they are on the right subject. Modern machines are quintessentially microelectronic devices: They are everywhere and they are invisible.Modern machinery is an irreverent upstart god, mocking the Father’s ubiquity and spirituality. The 120 silicon chip is a surface for writing; it is etched in molecular scales disturbed only by atomic noise, the ultimate interference for nuclear scores. Writing, power, and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. Miniaturization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beau- tiful as pre-eminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles.Contrast the TV sets of the 1950s or the news cameras of the 1970s with the TV wrist bands or hand-sized video cameras now advertised. Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but sig- nals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines are eminently portable, mobile—a matter of immense human pain in Detroit and Singapore. People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque. Cyborgs are ether, q uintessence.The ubiquity and invisibility of cyborgs is precisely why these sunshine- belt machines are so deadly. They are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness— or its simulation. 4 They are floating signifiers moving in pickup trucks across Europe, blocked more effectively by the witch- weavings of the displaced and so unnatural Greenham women, who read the cyborg webs of power so very well, than by the militant labor of older mas- culinist politics, whose natural constituency needs defence jobs.Ultimately the â€Å"hardest† science is about the realm of greatest boundary confusion, the realm of pure number, pure spirit, C3I, cryptography, and the preservation of potent secrets. The new machines are so clean and light. Their engineers are sun-worshippers mediating a new scientific revolution associated with the night dream of post-industrial society. The diseases evoked by these clean machines are â€Å"no more† than the minus cule coding changes of an antigen in the immune system, â€Å"no more† than the experience of stress.The nimble fin- gers of â€Å"Oriental† women, the old fascination of little Anglo-Saxon Victorian girls with doll’s houses, women’s enforced attention to the small take on quite new dimensions in this world. There might be a cyborg Alice taking account of these new dimensions. Ironically, it might be the unnatural cyborg women making chips in Asia and spiral dancing in Santa Rita jail5 whose constructed unities will guide effective oppositional strategies. So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work.One of my premises is that most American so- cialists and feminists see deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formula- tions, and physical artifacts associat ed with â€Å"high technology† and scientific culture. FromOne-Dimensional Man(Marcuse, 1964) toThe Death of Nature (Merchant, 1980), the analytic resources developed by progressives have in- sisted on the necessary domination of technics and recalled us to an imag- ined organic body to integrate our resistance.Another of my premises is that the need for unity of people trying to resist worldwide intensification of 121 domination has never been more acute. But a slightly perverse shift of per- spective might better enable us to contest for meanings, as well as for other forms of power and pleasure in technologically mediated societies. From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defence, about the final appropri- ation of women’s bodies in a masculinist orgy of war (Sofia, 1984).From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory stand- points. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters.Cyborg unities are monstrous and illegitimate; in our present political circumstances, we could hardly hope for more potent myths for resistance and recoupling. I like to imagine LAG, the Livermore Action Group, as a kind of cyborg society, dedicated to realistically converting the laboratories that most fiercely embody and spew out the tools of technological apocalypse, and committed to building a political form that actually manages to hold together witches, engineers, elders, perverts, Christians, mothers, and Leninists long enough to disarm th e state.Fission Impossible is the name of the affinity group in my town. (Affinity: Related not by blood but by choice, the appeal of one chemical nuclear group for another, avidity. )6 2. FRACTURED IDENTITIES It has become difficult to name one’s feminism by a single adjective—or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun. Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gen- der, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in â€Å"essential† unity.There is nothing about being â€Å"female† that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as â€Å"being† female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social prac- tices. Gender, race, or class-consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the co ntradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. And who counts as â€Å"us† in my own rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a potent political myth called â€Å"us†, and what could motivate enlistment in this collectivity?Painful fragmentation among feminists (not to mention among women) along every possible fault line has made the concept of woman elusive, an excuse for the matrix of women’s dominations of each other. For me—and for many who share a similar historical location in white, professional middle-class, female, 122 radical, North American, mid-adult bodies—the sources of a crisis in political identity are legion. The recent history for much of the US left and US femi- nism has been a response to this kind of crisis by endless splitting and searches for a new essential unity.But there has also been a growing recognition of another response through coalition—affinity, not identity. 7 Chela Sandoval (n. d. , 1984), from a consideration of specific historical mo- ments in the formation of the new political voice called women of color, has theorized a hopeful model of political identity called â€Å"oppositional conscious- ness†, born of the skills for reading webs of power by those refused stable membership in the social categories of race, sex, or class. Women of color†, a name contested at its origins by those whom it would incorporate, as well as a historical consciousness marking systematic breakdown of all the signs of Man in â€Å"Western† traditions, constructs a kind of post-modernist identity out of otherness, difference, and specificity. This post-modernist identity is fully political, whatever might be said abut other possible post-modernisms. Sandoval’s oppositional consciousness is about contradictory locations and heterochronic calendars, not about relativisms and pluralisms.Sandoval emphasizes the lack of any essential criterion for identifying who is a woman of color. She notes that the definition of a group has been by conscious appropriation of negation. For example, a Chicana or US black woman has not been able to speak as a woman or as a black person or as a Chicano. Thus, she was at the bottom of a cascade of negative identities, left out of even the privileged oppressed authorial categories called â€Å"women and blacks†, who claimed to make the important revolutions.The category â€Å"woman† negated all non-white women; â€Å"black† negated all non-black people, as well as all black women. But there was also no â€Å"she†, no singularity, but a sea of differences among US women who have affirmed their historical identity as US women of color. This identity marks out a self-consciously constructed space that cannot affirm the capacity to act on the basis of natural identification, but only on the basis of conscious coalition, of affinity, of political kinship. Unlike the â€Å"woman† of some streams of the white women’s movement in the United States, there is no naturalization of the matrix, or at least this is what Sandoval argues is uniquely available through the power of oppositional consciousness. Sandoval’s argument has to be seen as one potent formulation for feminists out of the worldwide development of anti-colonialist discourse; that is to say, discourse dissolving the â€Å"West† and its highest product—the one who is not animal, barbarian, or woman; man, that is, the author of a cosmos called history.As orientalism is deconstructed politically and semiotically, the identities of the occident destabilize, including those of feminists. 9 Sandoval argues that â€Å"women of colour† have a chance to build an effective unity that does not replicate the imperializing, totalizing revolutionary subjects of previous Marxisms and feminisms which had not faced the consequences of the disorderly polyphony eme rging from decolonization. 123 Katie King has emphasized the limits of identification and the politi- cal/poetic mechanics of identification built into reading â€Å"the poem†, that generative core of cultural feminism.King criticizes the persistent tendency among contemporary feminists from different â€Å"moments† or â€Å"conversations† in feminist practice to taxonomize the women’s movement to make one’s own political tendencies appear to be the telos of the whole. These taxonomies tend to remake feminist history so that it appears to be an ideological strug- gle among coherent types persisting over time, especially those typical units called radical, liberal, and socialist-feminist. Literally, all other feminisms are either incorporated or marginalized, usually by building an explicit ontol- ogy and epistemology. 0 Taxonomies of feminism produce epistemologies to police deviation from official women’s experience. And of course, â€Å"w omen’s culture†, like women of color, is consciously created by mechanisms inducing affinity. The rituals of poetry, music, and certain forms of academic practice have been pre-eminent. The politics of race and culture in the US women’s movements are intimately interwoven. The common achievement of King and Sandoval is learning how to craft a poetic/political unity without relying on a logic of appropriation, incorporation, and taxonomic identification.The theoretical and practical struggle against unity-through-domination or unity-throughincorporation ironically not only undermines the justifications for patriarchy, colonialism, humanism, positivism, essentialism, scientism, and other unlamented -isms, but all claims for an organic or natural stand- point. I think that radical and socialist/Marxist-feminisms have also under- mined their/our own epistemological strategies and that this is a crucially valuable step in imagining possible unities. It remains to be s een whether all â€Å"epistemologies† as Western political people have known them fail us in the task to build effective affinities.It is important to note that the effort to construct revolutionary standpoints, epistemologies as achievements of people committed to changing the world, has been part of the process showing the limits of identification. The acid tools of post-modernist theory and the constructive tools of ontological discourse about revolutionary subjects might be seen as ironic allies in dissolving West- ern selves in the interests of survival. We are excruciatingly conscious of what it means to have a historically constituted body. But with the loss of innocence in our origin, there is no expulsion from the Garden either.Our politics lose the indulgence of guilt with the naivet ? e of innocence. But what would an- other political myth for socialist-feminism look like? What kind of politics could embrace partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed construction s of personal and collective selves and still be faithful, effective—and, ironically, socialist-feminist? I do not know of any other time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of â€Å"race†, â€Å"gender†, â€Å"sexuality†, and â€Å"class†. I also do not know of any other time when the kind of unity we might help build could have been possible.None of â€Å"us† have 124 any longer the symbolic or material capability of dictating the shape of reality to any of â€Å"them†. Or at least â€Å"we† cannot claim innocence from practicing such dominations. White women, including socialist-feminists, discovered the non-innocence of the category â€Å"woman†. That consciousness changes the geography of all previous categories; it denatures them as heat denatures a fragile protein. Cyborg feminists have to argue that â€Å"we† do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. Innocence, and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for nsight, has done enough damage. But the constructed revolutionary subject must give late 20th-century people pause as well. In the fraying of identities and in the reflexive strategies for constructing them, the possibility opens up for weaving something other than a shroud for the day after the apocalypse that so prophetically ends salvation history. Both Marxist/socialist-feminisms and radical feminisms have simultane- ously naturalized and denatured the category â€Å"woman† and consciousness of the social lives of â€Å"women†. Perhaps a schematic caricature can highlight both kinds of moves.Marxian-socialism is rooted in an analysis of wage labor which reveals class structure. The consequence of the wage relationship is systematic alienation, as the worker is dissociated from his [sic] product. Ab- straction and illusion rule in knowledge, domi nation rules in practice. Labor is the pre-eminently privileged category enabling the Marxist to overcome illusion and find that point of view which is necessary for changing the world. Labor is the humanizing activity that makes man; labor is an ontological category permitting the knowledge of a subject, and so the knowledge of subjugation and alienation.In faithful filiation, socialist-feminism is advanced by allying itself with the basic analytic strategies of Marxism. The main achievement of both Marxist- feminists and socialist-feminists was to expand the category of labor to ac- commodate what (some) women did, even when the wage relation was subor- dinated to a more comprehensive view of labor under capitalist patriarchy. In particular, women’s labor in the household and women’s activity as mothers generally (that is, reproduction in the socialist-feminist sense), entered theory on the authority of analogy to the Marxian concept of labor.The unity of women here rests on an epistemology based on the ontological structure of â€Å"labor†. Marxist/socialist-feminism does not â€Å"naturalize† unity; it is a pos- sible achievement based on a possible standpoint rooted in social relations. The essentializing move is in the ontological structure of labor or of its ana- logue, women’s activity. 11 The inheritance of Marxian-humanism, with its pre-eminently Western self, is the difficulty for me. The contribution from these formulations has been the emphasis on the daily responsibility of real women o build unities, rather than to naturalize them. Catherine MacKinnon’s (1982, 1987) version of radical feminism is itself a caricature of the appropriating, incorporating, totalizing tendencies of Western theories of identity grounding action. 12 It is factually and politically wrong to 125 assimilate all of the diverse â€Å"moments† or â€Å"conversations† in recent women’s politics named radical femin ism to MacKinnon’s version. But the teleological logic of her theory shows how an epistemology and ontology—including their negations—erase or police difference.Only one of the effects of MacKinnon’s theory is the rewriting of the history of the polymorphous field called radical feminism. The major effect is the production of a theory of experience, of women’s identity, that is a kind of apocalypse for all revolutionary standpoints. That is, the totalization built into this tale of radical feminism achieves its end—the unity of women—by enforcing the experience of and testimony to radical non-being. As for the Marxist/socialist-feminist, consciousness is an achievement, not a natural fact.And MacKinnon’s theory eliminates some of the difficulties built into humanist revolutionary subjects, but at the cost of radical reductionism. MacKinnon argues that feminism necessarily adopted a different analyti- cal strategy from Marxism, looking first not at the structure of class, but at the structure of sex/gender and its generative relationship, men’s constitution and appropriation of women sexually. Ironically, MacKinnon’s â€Å"ontology† constructs a non-subject, a non-being. Another’s desire, not the self’s labor, is the origin of â€Å"woman†.She therefore develops a theory of consciousness that enforces what can count as â€Å"women’s† experience—anything that names sexual violation, indeed, sex itself as far as â€Å"women† can be concerned. Fem- inist practice is the construction of this form of consciousness; that is, the self-knowledge of a self-who-is-not. Perversely, sexual appropriation in this feminism still has the epistemolog- ical status of labor; that is to say, the point from which an analysis able to contribute to changing the world must flow. But sexual objectification, not alienation, is the consequence of the structure of sex/ gender.In the realm of knowledge, the result of sexual objectification is illusion and abstraction. However, a woman is not simply alienated from her product, but in a deep sense does not exist as a subject, or even potential subject, since she owes her existence as a woman to sexual appropriation. To be constituted by another’s desire is not the same thing as to be alienated in the violent separation of the laborer from his product. MacKinnon’s radical theory of experience is totalizing in the extreme; it does not so much marginalize as obliterate the authority of any other women’s political speech and action.It is a totalization producing what West- ern patriarchy itself never succeeded in doing—feminists’ consciousness of the non-existence of women, except as products of men’s desire. I think MacKinnon correctly argues that no Marxian version of identity can firmly ground women’s unity. But in solving the problem of the contra dictions of any Western revolutionary subject for feminist purposes, she develops an even more authoritarian doctrine of experience. If my complaint about social- ist/Marxian standpoints is their unintended erasure of polyvocal, unassimil- able, radical difference made visible in anti-colonial discourse and practice, 126