Worldviews and Culture an Example by

Worldviews and Culture The three worldviews governing international relations are: the system maintainer, system reformer and the system transformer. First, the system maintainer perspective is associated with strong political orientation. Critical in this worldview is the emergence of newly industrialized countries, which can pose a threat to the current dominance of US hegemony. This emergence might cause a chaotic relationship in the international system. Need essay sample on "Worldviews and Culture" topic? We will write a custom essay sample specifically for you Proceed Given that those states who incorporates this view is anarchic in quality, the challenge that the system maintainer perspective may encounter is the probable resistance of some of the states in the internationalization trends. Another challenge for this worldview, is centered on its assumption that a state must be military equipped and superior, as this point has over the years gained negative feedbacks from the public. Until now, there are growing discontentment on the US pursuit for extra military power and its continuing involvement in wars. The second worldview is the system reformer. Critical in this worldview is its utopian character rather than being realist. The challenges posted to this worldview are towards really solidifying rival nations and create policies that shall manage conflicts in the global political arena and ensure equality among the rich and the poor. Another is the probability of linking nations to cooperate for the pursuit of common interests has always been questionable and it has never occurred in the past that nations work together for common interest, but rather for the benefit of their personal goals. The third world view is the system transformer. Critical in this worldview is its difficulty to assess if there are countries who can play the role of being a system transformer in its altruistic sense rather than being a fake. The challenges that this worldview faces is with regards to its little popularity in the global arena particularly in the US. Somehow, cooperation seems less appealing to the people and favors more an arms race to ensure political and economic stability through military supremacy. Another challenge is that, as this view works to save the Third World from conflicts, it is the case that Third World countries would always seem to favor being associated with First World countries even it would be detrimental to their economy because these underdeveloped countries would tend to seek for protection. The increasing popularity of internet as a means of globalization has widely affected the promotion of loyalty and maintenance of national identity. The advent of internet popularity has been used to manipulate and extract information that although some would serve useful to others, may mean detrimental to a nations culture. The discontentment of France for example towards the published articles and auctioned items in the internet which were vital to their historic heritage is a proof how can internet be used as an agent of cultural loyalty or disloyalty. The internet as it can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world is one of the most powerful tool in shaping the identity of an individual. The inability to restrict the information that can be shown in the internet may serve dangerous to others. Although there are facts that are to be well-gathered and disseminated, cultural relativism must always be employed. Restriction policy based on the cultural importance of certain facts must be properly guided. If a content of a certain article or feature can promote discontent or disillusionment towards the cultural membership of the people, they must be restricted from access or at least be regulated. Political culture plays a big role in the undertaking of this regulation. The politics of culture dictates which of the facts are detrimental to their culture or which of those can promote their identity and heritage, thus they can influence which of those should be restricted from access. Though, it must also be ensured that the facts stated will also render truthful information and shall not be biased towards other criticisms. Works Cited Lamy, Steven L. Challenging Hegemonic Paradigms and Practices: Critical Thinking and Active Learning Strategies for International Relations. October 8, 2007 http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/Lamy_APSA_2006.pdf Lamy, Steven L. ed. US Perspectives on the Soviet Union. Contemporary International Issues. 1988.

The World of Suzie Wong

The World of Suzie Wong Paramount produced the film "The World of Suzie Wong" adapted from a best-selling novel written by Richard Mason in 1961. The film tells a love story between an American artist and a Hong Kong prostitute who overcome pride and prejudice and start a new stage of life. The story is set in Hong Kong in the late fifties of the last century.Robert Lomax is a middle-aged American architect. Tired of his routine, he takes a year off traveling to Hong Kong to pursue his dream of being an artist. He encounters an attractive girl on Hong Kong's Star Ferry to Kowloon, who pretends herself as coming from a wealthy family. Before he has a chance to learn about her, she disappears in the crowd. To save money, Robert checks into a cheap local Wan Chai hotel. To his astonishment, Robert finds that the hotel is actually a brothel, and he also spots the girl from the ferry and learns that she is not a rich girl as she said at all.SuzieIn fact, she's the most popular prostitute in the hotel, named Suzi e Wong. Robert works as a painter and Suzie is his model. They become friends and like each other. Suzie offers to be Robert's "permanent girlfriend", but Robert refuses. Their relationship grows increasingly complex.Thus, Suzie begins to date a British businessman named Ben Marlowe, who is a playboy separated from his wife. At the same time, Robert meets blonde beauty Kay O'Neill, a British banker's daughter. Kay falls in love with Robert and helps him to sell his paintings. She looks down on Suzie and is jealous of her relationship with Robert because he spends more time with Suzie than her. Robert doesn't really like Kay and Ben ends the relationship with Suzie. One...

On the Issue of Debt Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

On the Issue of Debt - Essay Example This brief analysis will consider what this student believes to be the most pressing and important issue surround the seemingly ever-increasing levels of debt that both federal and state budgets are currently facing. Furthermore, as a function of this increase in overall debt, the negative externalities that such a change portends are vast and systemic. Whereas in previous times the degree and extent to which governments dealt with the issue of debt has always been a high concern for law-makers and citizens, the level and extent to which the current situation weights upon both the government decision makers and the electorate is unprecedented. As a result, the very nature of governance the degree to which this process encompasses nearly every aspect of society and the economy has only exponentially grown (Eichler 1216). For those that are concerned with the overall sovereignty and freedom of the society, this has naturally become a primal concern due to the fact that many nations are able to leverage the United States due to the level of its debt that they hold in the form of bonds and other financial mechanisms. Furthermore, as a function of these factors that have thus far been enumerated upon, this brief work will seek to elaborate upon some key mechanisms through which the problem itself can be lessened over time. The Simpson-Bowles committee put forward what many outside of the realm of politics would deem a fair approach to an infinitely complex issue. The mixed approach that this committee put forward hinged upon the need to make budget cuts, re-work the tax plan, secure Social Security, and reduce the size of the annual budget deficit. The reason that the plan was not latched on to by either political party is due to the fact that it required both an increase in tax revenue and a decrease in spending/budget cuts in order to make the goals that it defined (Croxson 103). These two mechanisms specifically are precisely what must be targeted for the federal (as well as state) budget deficits that currently exist to be minimized. As it is painfully clear, seeking to reduce and/or cancel budget deficits and debt in a relatively short period of time is beyond the realm of possibility. As a result of this, each political party and or leader wants to ignore the issue due to the fact that no political capital can ultimately be gained by seeking to fix an issue that they themselves nor their party will ever receive credit for; however, the larger issue is the fact that the debt crisis threatens the very sovereignty and vitality of the nation, its economy and society (Barth 98). The issue itself is not only a concern for future generations, although this is perhaps one of the greatest concerns that helps to define the size and scope of the problem. Rather, the issue weighs heavily on the way in which the government, both state, federal, and local, seek to provide key services to the communities which they serve. Rather than building more park s, maintaining infrastructure, and providing a litany of other adequate services, the government is forced to expend a large percentage of its annual budget (which itself is already over and above current tax receipts) to service the debt that currently exists. What this portends is a situation in which the government is borrowing money in order to pay the interest on the money that it is already borrowed. It does not take a degree in advanced economics to instantly realize that such a stance is untenable and cannot be long continued without the structure and legitimacy of the entire economic system falling into a state of collapse. As such, the current status quo with regards to debt level and spending is both untenable and unwise. One need look no further than examples of Greece and other nations to rapidly realize what maintaining a dangerously high percentage of debt to national GDP portends. Similarly, whereas the solution mechanism may be a shared sacrifice over a period of ma ny years, the

Scavenger Hunt Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Scavenger Hunt - Research Paper Example Question 2: sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that can cause infertility The two main sexually transmitted infections that cause infertility are gonorrhea and Chlamydia (Wingood & DiClemente, 2002). Gonorrhea is caused by bacteria and dwells in the bodily fluids. It is contacted through vaginal, anal or oral sex. It leads to a condition known as epididymitis and Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) (Fogel & Woods, 2008). This is due to the infection of the urethral tract and the vaginal duct. Chlamydia is also caused by bacteria that stay in vaginal fluid and semen. It left untreated Chlamydia causes infertility where a condition known as epididymitis and PID causes the infertility (Covington, & Burns, 2006). Question 3: Giardiasis The disease is commonly known as Beaver fever (Veliah, 2005). It is a gastrointestinal illness that is exhibited by serious diarrhea. The disease is caused by a parasite that is known as Giardia Lamblia. This is disease is water-borne and it affects the human intestines where it affects over 200 million populace globally every years (Langford, & Langford, 2002). The disease is reported to have affected about 90 communities in the United States in the years between 1964 and 1984 (Caveney, Jones & Ellis, 2012). Question 4: peer-reviewed journal article on smoking cessation Michele A Faulkner, (2009), Smoking cessation: an economic analysis and review of varenicline, Journal: Clinical Economics and Outcomes Research, Vol. 1, issu 1. Pgs 25-30 is a peer reviewed article that addresses the attempts in reducing the use of tobacco. The article raises concerns that despite the many efforts in reducing the use of tobacco the rate of smoking continues to go high leading to premature death and morbidity. There are economic costs related to smoking which include health care costs and loss of productivity (AJHP, 1986 & Callahan, 2000). The main program raised in the article is the varenicline novel mechanism aimed at addressing the ability to r educe the addiction and withdrawal symptoms (Michele, 2009). Question 5: Durham Region with the highest percentage of births to teenagers According to various findings it has been established that Oshawa area in the Durham Region has the highest rate of births to teenagers which replicates the place the mother was living at the time the child was born (Smithard, 2009). The high births rates are as a result of availability of less expensive housing and the supports and motivation from the mothers (Goldin, Reinert & World Bank, 2007; Vargas, 2009). Question 6: The difference between angina and a heart attack Angina is a term that is applied by doctors to refer to the pain in the chest as a result of insufficient oxygen supply to the heart muscles (Jevon, 2012). This form of pain is identical to the pain as a result of heart attack (Jackson, 2004). On the other hand heart attack is a long lasting damage to the heart muscle which might lead to inability of the tissues to function well d ue to lack of blood supply. The heart muscles need regular oxygen supply which is initiated through the blood (Ramaiah, 2008). Question 7: The Cost of Type 2 Diabetes in Canada The type 2 diabetes is along life state where

The communist Manifesto Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The communist Manifesto - Essay Example Marx and Engels influenced by the philosophy of Hegel, set out to change the face of the earth by calling the workers to unite to overthrow the capitalists. The Communist Manifesto was meant to provide the proletariat with required impetus for a social change. The Communists have no other interests but the proletariat. Since capitalism exploits the laborers but offers them only their subsistence wages, Communism is opposed to capitalism. The bourgeoisies' notions of freedom, culture, law, etc., are determined by their economical conditions. Communism, hence, abolishes eternal truths, religions and morality, for they are products of historical development. The core agenda is to acquire political supremacy by abolishing the private property and thereby uprooting the bourgeoisies. The proletariat, then, will centralize all instruments of production, and increase the productive forces. As class distinctions disappear, the proletarians will have an association, in which the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all (Marx and Engels, Proletarians). Capitalism is characterized by private property, freedom of enterprise, profit motive, consumers' sovereignty, freedom of saving and investment decisions, and existence of competition, among others. Capitalist system necessarily envelops the private ownership of the means of production.

Interactive Video Delivery Services

Interactive Video Delivery Services Video-On-Demand Interactive Services Interactive video delivery services are a fundamental change in the TV interface  paradigm. They shift the delivery paradigm from carrying many simultaneous parallel  streams (channels) to one that carries concurrent accesses through separate channels into a  database. Traditionally, in a broadcast TV system, many stations broadcast their programs  simultaneously and the user selects a specific channel to view. As a result, a user is  restricted to a chronology of parallel and competing programming whereas, an interactive  system makes all programming available to its users without this restriction. There is no  temporal restriction. All programming becomes available any time to the user. Types of Interactive Services Based on the amount of interactivity allowed (adapted from [4]), interactive services can be classified into several categories. The user is a passive participant and has no control over the session in broadcast (No-VOD) services that are similar to broadcast TV. The user signs up and pays for specific programming, similar to existing CATV PPV services in pay-per-view (PPV) services. The users are grouped based on a threshold of interest in quasi video-on-demand (Q-VOD) services. By switching to a different group, users can perform rudimentary temporal control activities. The functions like forward and reverse are simulated by transitions in discrete time intervals (on the order of 5 minutes) in near video-on-demand (N-VOD) services. The multiple channels with the same programming skewed in time [5, 15] can provide this capability. The user has complete control over the session presentation in true video-on-demand (T-VOD) services. The user has full-function VCR (virtual VCR) capabilities including forward and reverse play, freeze, and random positioning. For T-VOD, only a single channel is necessary; multiple channels become redundant. Technological Inhibitors There are other inhibiting issues to the ubiquitous deployment of interactive multimedia applications than just technological issues. In the digital environment, information is readily copied, reproduced, and altered, jeopardizing the established markets of the information providers. To convince an information provider to accept an all-digital system, certain incentives like mechanisms like encryption to protect intellectual property rights – that will maintain their data and thus help them stay in business are needed. (The Internet does not copy data, people copy data.) System Components for Video-on-Demand 5A detailed analysis of these issues is beyond the scope of this paper. An interesting survey of the  intellectual property rights problem has been provided by Samuelson [14]. Hundreds (if not thousands) of users with different viewing preferences will access a VOD system simultaneously. The quality of each session must remain within specified bounds to achieve customer satisfaction. This ensures the quality of the system. We will survey the individual technologies in the context of an end-to-end architecture for a VOD system. A typical VOD scenario contains a local database and server connected to user homes  via a communications network. The user home consists of a network interface coupled to a  display [4]. The user interacts with the system via a mouse or a computer keyboard. Fig. 2 illustrates this architecture. user interface and display high-speed backbone local database local server home viewer network interface multimedia archive and distributor multimedia archive Figure 2: A Simple VOD Architecture Management of System Resources in VOD We identified some of the technical problems in designing a VOD system in the previous sections. A VOD system is required to support a large customer population and many movie titles. Most existing prototypes are constricted to laboratory or office environments and support at most a few hundred users and up to a hundred movies. Large scale commercial systems  should need to more closely match the per-user resource requirements and usage patterns to  achieve economic feasibility. In this section, we look over some of these problems and discuss  existing research in this area. Resource Reservation One of the fundamental problems in developing a VOD system is one of storage and network I/O  bandwidth management. The VOD system possesses a finite amount of resources measured in  terms of storage I/O and communication bandwidths. As various customers compete for the same  system resources, efficient schemes that ensure fairness of allocation have to be designed. The service provider wants to generate the maximum revenue from the offered services. A  balance between these two often opposing requirements is necessary to tap the potential  benefits of the system. The first step to solve this problem is the development of an  accurate system model. We use the model proposed in Fig 2 as the basis for the remainder  of this discussion. The end-to-end VOD system comprises of three basic components; the storage server,  the network, and the user interface. The metadata server provides an additional level of  complexity to the system model. The time dependency of continuous media requires the  VOD system to ensure that the data transmission mechanism can provide for strict deadlines.   If these deadlines are missed, it is possible for the quality of the session to degrade. To ensure customer satisfaction, resources should be reserved along the entire data path of a connection on a per-session basis. The complexity of the resource reservation mechanism depends on the  application under consideration. Interactive services need the resource reservation to be made per-session along the entire data path, including at the source. A crucial factor which is affecting resource reservation is Quality-of-Service (QOS). The common interpretation of QOS is from a network perspective rather than a user or customer perspective. A more suitable view makes use of the two perspectives and yields two QOS characterizations (we can call them delivery quality and system QOS). A present  challenge is to identify the mapping from delivery quality to system QOS for a range of  system design parameters (e.g., data compression and network switching modes). User Traffic Characterization Although customers access the VOD system randomly, having a priori knowledge about  user access patterns can lead to a more efficient design. The system can make use of this information to manage network and storage bandwidths. As an example, if the traffic characteristics indicate that a movie is popular at a particular site, the system can replicate the movie locally to increase availability. The access pattern of users to the system will not be uniform over a given  24 hour period. Typically, one would expect the load to be low to moderate during the  daytime and to increase gradually through the evening and decrease again during the night. A hypothetical graph characterizing the access to a VOD database for a 24 hour period  is shown in Fig. 4. The access to the database is high during the evening hours, peaks at  around 9:00 PM, and is low-to-moderate during the day. This access pattern can be used for  designing schemes for various considerations like resource management; to update popularity tables, redistribute data, and reconfigure the system during off-peak hours. 0 5 10 15 20 time-of-day database-load Figure 4: A Schematic Daily-Access Model for a VOD System Similar models can be implemented and maintained for different geographical regions, movie categories, and individual titles. Such models are able to accommodate the differences in programming choices (e.g., children’s movies are more popular during the early evening hours) of different user groups. However, the complexity of these models, and their tractability is still to be established. Load Balancing An issue related directly to resource reservation is load balancing. The load balancing of VOD can be viewed as a combination of two sub-problems (i) The movie-storage  allocation problem and (ii) the resource location and connection establishment mechanism. Even though these problems are solved more easily individually, they are not independent  with respect to performance. From the perspective of a generic interactive  system, solving these issues is an open problem; however, simplifications can yield tractable solutions. As an example, if one assumes that a VOD system supports only stored data; i.e., movies  have to be digitized and stored before they can become available online, then the data  characteristics of a movie are well known in advance (e.g., the system has a priori knowledge  about the average bandwidth, burst rates, burst durations, etc.). This knowledge once available, can be used to simplify the design process. Making use of the metadata mechanism as described in Section 3 simplifies the task of management by decoupling the storage problem from the location problem.

Life Experience Growing Up Essay

It is hard to explain to most people the reason why even though I was born in the United States of America and had a complete set of parents at the time of my birth, I was still sent to Haiti to be raised by a surrogate family. Not everyone understands the crazy things that parents do when their marriage is failing and the family is falling apart, as my parents chose to do. I do not remember much about my childhood in the USA because I left when I was seven years old. All that I could remember about that time was that my mother came home one day really sad and she asked my two sisters and I to pack up our things because we were going on an airplane ride. When I asked her where we were headed, thinking that we were probably going to Disneyland or something, she told me that we were going to take a vacation at her sister’s house in Haiti. This did not strike me as strange at the time because I had never met my mother’s sister at that point in time so I was excited to meet her. Mom told us that we had cousins in Haiti and we would get to meet them for the very first time during this trip. When I asked my mom if Dad would be joining us on this trip, she said that he was too busy at work to come along but that he loved us and wished us a safe trip. So it happened that I left my country of birth in 1973 to embark on a life that was thrust upon me without a choice nor a reason why I had to live it. Our mother spent a whole month with us in Haiti. I have some vague recollection of my mother sitting at the dining table at night with her sister, crying and in need of consolation. At the end of the month, I remember seeing my mother packing her suitcase. I thought it was time to go home and that she had simply forgotten to tell my sisters and I to pack up our things. So I began doing so without being instructed to. When mom saw what I was doing, she asked me to stop and come out to the backyard to have a talk. We sat on the swing in the small backyard of my aunt’s house as my mother explained what our new family situation was. She asked me if I remembered how she and dad had been fighting a lot lately and sometimes he would not come home for days because of the arguments. I recall that at the time I had vague recollections of my parents voices breaking through the bedroom walls at night when they thought we were already asleep. Slowly, mom explained to me that the marriage was in trouble and that the family was falling apart. She assured me that they both still loved us more than life itself but that they felt it would be best if we stayed n Haiti while they finalized the divorce and they both tried to get back on their feet after. It hurt me a lot to be indirectly told that my sisters and I had no place in our parents lives anymore. I felt abandoned and betrayed by both my parents. I was angry that even though I was just a little girl, I would have to find a way to explain what was going on to my sisters and make sure that they would be able to adjust to a life without our real mom and dad. We were all born in New York City and were accustomed to its lifestyle and culture. O when we were forcibly left in Haiti by our mom, we had to overcome the culture shock and social difficulty of having to live in a different environment from what we were used to. My sisters and I also had to lowly began to adjust to life with our surrogate parents. That is, our aunt and her husband. We had surrogate siblings as well because they eventually had their own children. We were a large, convoluted, extended family. As time passed, we became less American and more Haitian. French became our mother tongue and English was a stranger to us. We were happy and well adjusted kids who saw no difference in the way we were treated by our guardians who loved and treated us as if we were their own flesh and blood. Our parents? We spoke to them separately over the phone 4 times a month. We were strangers who did not really know anything about each other and did not have much to talk about over the phone. Those times were more like mandatory duties that our aunt and uncle made sure we accomplished without fail.

A Brief History of Economics Essay

Through his use of dialectical materialism, Marx not only changed the history of economic thought, but found great illumination for himself regarding the bonds of human society. The concept that seems relatively simple in today’s complex economic world was utterly revolutionary in the time of Marx: people develop their ideas about the world (and thereby, their ideas for how society should be organized and stratified) based on the material aspects of their lives. It was an elegant extension of basic Marxist theory: capitalism, according to Marx, is interested in offering naked materialism as a kind of booby prize to make up for the means of production being taken away from the people. If the people can no longer work for themselves and no longer work at perfecting their own craft as individuals, then, as Marx correctly deduced, people would require something to validate their work. This became the center of capitalism, as Marx understood it: materialism exists as a kind of justification for capitalism, and since materialism has permeated our culture to such an extreme degree, eventually social orders began to revolve around it. Hence, what capitalism serves as the cause of what Marx saw as nothing less than ongoing class warfare. It is interesting to note that Marx believed a violent revolution on the part of the proletariat was not simply a possible method of changing things, but actually served as the only method of changing things. This is because materialism was so embedded into class structures (which, in turn, was so embedded in power structures), and the only way for society to functionally survive was for it to become overturned completely. It is also interesting to note the ongoing effect that Marx has had on philosophic thought: materialism had previously been dislodged by Descartes and the famous declaration â€Å"I think, therefore I am;† as far as most people who pondered these things could conclude, thought preceded matter. However, Marx not only brought materialism to the philosophic forefront—the then-controversial idea that material preceded thought—but illustrated the notion that the abstractions of materialism had been concretized by capitalism into purchasable goods. 2: Marx and the Secret Source of Profit Perhaps the most enduring notion of Marx’s is the so-called secret of the source of profit under a capitalistic society†¦though such is Marx’s legacy of intellectual thought, a great many people simply accept this notion as reality: the source of profit is the surplus value that an employer gains from laborers. After all, the means of production have been taken from the people: skilled artisan cobblers have been replaced by factory line workers churning out shoe after shoe after shoe. The money saved by employing this assembly-line method of industrial production becomes pure profit for the employer. Interestingly, Marx tethered this to his own theories on circulating capital—that is, something that does not last, and is used up in the production of other goods and services, in direct opposition to fixed capital, which is traditionally held for over a year by a business or institution. Marx astutely deduced that the distinction between these concepts is not only relative, but arbitrary: the idea that capital held for 365 days is circulating and that capital held for 366 days is fixed is absurd. However, it allows the proletariat to essentially gloss over their own necessity to the entire institution of capitalism: they are led to believe that society is held up by the fixed capital of major investors and their long-term investments. In reality, society is held aloft by the ongoing purchases of the common man (and woman): their disposable income is burned off to provide them a sense that capitalism is worth it†¦it turn, their disposable income is used to make the rich richer, as the cliche goes, all the way up the capitalist pyramid. In Marx’s view, this is one of many ways that those in power forestall the seemingly unavoidable class war that he advocates: those with power—the purchasing power of the common man—are convinced they have none, and are bought off with trinkets. It is interesting to note that this echoes the master/slave morality inversion of Nietzsche. 3: Marginalists and the Economy In the evolution of economic theory, the impact of marginalism cannot be overstated. Once one had accepted the blunt realities of Marx—specifically, that society was organized based on the perceived value of items—the logical question remained: how does one quantify the value of an item? Marginalism illustrated the diminishing returns on the marginal utility of resold products, which dramatically impacted analysis of capitalist economy, the focus of economic analysis, and theories of value and distribution. Regarding the analysis of capitalist economy, marginalism helped solidify the supply and demand notion of economics as that of mainstream economic thought, as opposed to the labor theory of value espoused by Karl Marx. To put it mildly, this has had ongoing economic effects for the last century and a half. The focus of economic analysis shifted accordingly, as marginalism interacted with price theory: this allowed economics to project demand curves utilizing marginal rates of substitution as a means of determining not only when, but why a seller is willing to relinquish a product for a particular price. Perhaps one of the most lasting effects of marginalism on economic thought has been its effect on theories of value and distribution. With the previous measures in place, economists (as well as common people) now had a more-or-less accurate measure of determining the value of any given product in any given social context. Of course, this also effects the ongoing distribution of certain products to certain demographics in order to maximize profitability. Interestingly, this is one of the chief criticisms of marginalism as well: that it is a vague pseudoscience whose intent is to maintain not only the economic status quo, but the appearance of the status quo. It is no surprise, then, that Marxists continue to grapple with marginalist theory: they see it as a means of keeping the proletariat in check, and preventing any uprisings from them. 4: Thorstein Veblen: Survival of the Fattest Thorstein Veblen, for better or worse, specialized in bringing the human element into economic theory. Specifically, he theorized that the institution of the leisure class was a parasite feeding upon America: upon the backs of workers who are actually productive are a class who seek only profit and produce nothing but waste. He essentially created and popularized the notion of conspicuous consumption as the epitome of this theory: that wealthy individuals spend large amounts of money on ostentatious goods whose sole benefit is to publicly display their wealth to the world. Unfortunately, this has become an integral part of the economy: although an engineer might weep at the man spending over a hundred thousand dollars for a car, the American economy would be crippled if conspicuous consumption vanished overnight. Hence, the parasite metaphor: conspicuous consumption and naked profit helps the wealthy to bloat themselves on the backs of the poor until the entire enterprise inevitably crumbles under its own weight. Veblen perceived quite clearly that human notions about the world are social constructs created by individuals, and as time went on, those notions would change, necessitating a change in economic thought as well. He makes frequent comparisons to evolution to further this end: idle curiosity spurs innovation, innovation spurs conflict between the old guard and the innovators, and an economic Darwinism is born. The advent of industry and technological revolutions merely expanded his original point: the parasitic relationship continued unabated, as the innovations of the productive engineer class were inevitably utilized as means of conspicuous consumption and waste on the part of the leisure class. Planes are developed as a result of idle curiosity, for instance, but it is the leisure class that necessitates the invention of first class as a way of displaying their own status in the social hierarchy.

Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye

Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye Famed Egyptologist Zahi Hawass considers the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, one of the final rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty, as the greatest monarch ever reign over the Two Lands. Dubbed the Magnificent, this fourteenth-century B.C. pharaoh brought in unprecedented amounts of gold to his kingdom, built tons of epic structures, including the famed Colossi of Memnon and lots of religious buildings, and depicted his wife, Queen Tiye, in an unprecedentedly egalitarian fashion. Lets dive into the revolutionary era of Amenhotep and Tiye. Amenhotep was born to Pharaoh Thutmose IV and his wife Mutemwia. Aside from his alleged role in re-establishing the Great Sphinx as a big tourist spot, Thutmose IV wasnt that notable of a pharaoh. He did, however, do a bit of building, especially at Amuns temple in Karnak, where he explicitly identified himself with the sun god Re. More on that later!   Sadly for young Prince Amenhotep, his dad didnt live very long, dying when his kid was about twelve. Amenhotep ascended the throne as a boy king, exercising his only dated military campaign when he was about seventeen in Kush. By his mid-teens, though, Amenhotep wasnt focusing on the army, but his one true love, a woman named Tiye. Shes mentioned as the Great Royal Wife Tiye in his second regnal year - meaning they got married when he was just a kid! Tip of  the Hat to Queen Tiye Tiye was a truly remarkable woman. Her parents, Yuya and Tjuya, were non-royal officials; Daddy was a charioteer and priest called the Gods Father, while Mom was a priestess of Min. Yuya and Tjuyas fabulous tomb was uncovered in 1905, and archaeologists found lots of riches there; DNA testing performed on their mummies in recent years has proved key in identifying unidentified bodies. One of Tiyes brothers was a prominent priest named Anen, and many have suggested that the famous Eighteenth Dynasty official Ay, alleged father of Queen Nefertiti and eventual pharaoh after King Tut, was another of her siblings.   So Tiye married her husband when they were both quite young, but the most interesting item about her is the way in which she was portrayed in statuary. Amenhotep deliberately commissioned statues showing himself, the king, and Tiye as the same size, showing her importance in the royal court, which was on par with that of the   pharaoh! In a culture in which visual size was everything, bigger was better, so a big king and an equally big queen showed them as equals.   This egalitarian portrayal is pretty much unprecedented, showing Amenhoteps devotion to his wife, allowing her to wield influence comparable to his own. Tiye even takes on masculine, regal poses, showing up on her own throne as a Sphinx who crushes her enemies  and getting her own Sphinx colossus; now, shes not only equal to a king in the way shes portrayed, but shes taking on his roles! But Tiye wasnt Amenhoteps only wife - far from it! Like many pharaohs before and after him, the king took brides from foreign countries in order to form alliances. A commemorative scarab was commissioned for the marriage between the pharaoh and Kilu-Hepa, daughter of the king of Mitanni. He also wed his own daughters, as other pharaohs did, once they came of age; whether or not those marriages were consummated is up for debate. Divine Dilemmas In addition to Amenhoteps marital program, he also pursued massive construction projects throughout Egypt, which burnished his own reputation - and that of his wife! They also helped people think of him as semi-divine and created money-making opportunities for his officials. Perhaps more importantly for his son and successor, the Heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, Amenhotep III followed in his fathers sandalprints and identified himself with the biggest gods of the Egyptian pantheon on the monuments he built.   In particular, Amenhotep placed great emphasis on sun gods in his construction, statuary, and portraiture, displaying what  Arielle Kozloff aptly called a solar bent in every aspect of his realm. He showed himself as the god of the sun at Karnak and contributed extensively to Amun-Res temple there; later in life, Amenhotep even went to far as to consider himself as a living manifestation of  all  deity, with an emphasis on the sun god Ra-Horakhty, according to W. Raymond Johnson. Although historians dubbed him the Magnificent, Amenhotep went by the moniker of the Dazzling Sun Disk. Given his fathers obsession with his connection to the solar gods, its not too far of a stretch to get to the aforementioned Akhenaten, his son by Tiye and successor, who declared that the sun disk, Aten, should be the sole deity worshipped in the Two Lands. And of course Akhenaten (who started his reign as Amenhotep IV, but later changed his name) stressed that  he, the king,  was the sole intermediary between the divine and the mortal realms. So it looks like Amenhoteps emphasis on the   godly powers of the king went to an extreme in his sons reign. But Tiye may have also set a precedent for her Nefertiti, her daughter-in-law (and possible niece, if the queen was the daughter of Tiyes putative brother Ay). In the reign of Akhenaten, Nefertiti was depicted as occupying roles of great prominence in her husbands court and in his new religious order. Perhaps Tiyes legacy of carving out a great role for the Great Royal Wife as partner to the pharaoh, rather than mere spouse, carried on to her successor. Interestingly, Nefertiti also assumed some kingly positions in art, as her mother-in-law did (she was shown smiting enemies in a typical pharaonic pose).

Learn the Building Blocks of Chinese Characters

Learn the Building Blocks of Chinese Characters While learning to speak Chinese at a basic level isnt that much harder than learning other languages (its even easier in some areas), learning to write is definitely and without a doubt much more demanding. Learning to Read and Write Chinese Is Not Easy There are many reasons for this. First, its because the link between the written and spoken language is very weak. While in Spanish you can mostly read what you can understand when spoken and you can write what you can say (bar some minor spelling problems), in Chinese the two are more or less separate. Second, the way Chinese characters represent sounds is complicated and requires much more than learning an alphabet. If you know how to say something, writing is not just a matter of checking how its spelled, you have to learn the individual characters, how they are written and how they are combined to form words. To become literate, you need between 2500 and 4500 characters (depending on what you mean by the term literate). You need many times more characters than the number of words. However, the process of learning to read and write can be made a lot simpler than it first seems. Learning 3500 characters is not impossible and with proper reviewing and active usage, you can also avoid mixing them up (this is actually the main challenge for non-beginners). Still, 3500 is a massive number. It would mean almost 10 characters per day for a year. Added to that, you would also need to learn words, which are combinations of characters that sometimes have non-obvious meanings. ...But It Neednt Be Impossible Either Looks difficult, right? Yes, but if you break these 3500 characters down into smaller components, you will find that the number of parts you need to learn is very far from 3500. In fact, with just a few hundred components, you can build most of those 3500 characters. Before we move on, its perhaps worth noting here that we are using the word component very deliberately instead of using the word radical, which is a small subset of components that are used to classify words in dictionaries. The Building Blocks of Chinese Characters So, by learning the components of characters, you create a repository of building blocks that you can then use to understand, learn and remember characters. This is not very efficient in the short term because each time you learn a character, you need to learn not only that character but also the smaller components its made of. However, this investment will be repaid handsomely later. It might not be a good idea to learn all components of all characters directly but focus on the most important ones first. I will introduce some resources to help you both with breaking characters down into their component parts and where you can find more information about which components to learn first. Functional Components Its important to understand that each component has a function in the character; its not there by chance. Sometimes the real reason the character looks like it does is lost in the mists of time, but often its known or even directly apparent from studying the character. At other times, an explanation might present itself that is very convincing, and even though it might not be etymologically correct, it can still help you to learn and remember that character. In general, components are included in characters for two reasons: first because of the way they sound, and second because of what they mean. We call these phonetic or sound components and semantic or meaning components. This is a very useful way of looking at characters that often yields much more interesting and useful results than looking at the traditional explanation of how characters are formed. Its still worthwhile to have that in the back of your mind when learning, but you dont really need to study it in detail. A Writing Example Lets look at a character most students learn early on: Ã¥ ¦Ë†/Ã¥ ª ½ (simplified/traditional), which is pronounced  mÄ  (first tone) and means mother. The left part Ã¥ ¥ ³ means woman and is clearly related to the meaning of the whole character (your mother is presumably a woman). The right part é © ¬/é ¦ ¬ means horse and is clearly not related to the meaning. However, it is pronounced  mÇŽ (third tone), which is very close to the pronunciation of the whole character (only the tone is different).  This is the way most Chinese characters work, albeit not all. The Art of Combining Characters   All this leaves us with hundreds (rather than thousands) of characters to remember. Apart from that, we also have the additional task of combining the components we have learned into compound characters. This is what were going to look at now. Combining characters is actually not that hard, at least not if you use the right method This is because if you know what the components mean, the character composition itself means something to you and that makes it a lot easier to remember. There is a huge difference between learning a random jumble of strokes (very hard) and combining known components (relatively easy). Improve Your Memory Combining things is one of the main areas of memory training and something that people have had the ability to do for thousands of years. There are many, many methods out there that work really well and that teach you how to remember that A, B, and C belong to each other (and in that order, if you like, although this is often not necessary when it comes to Chinese characters, because you quickly get a feel for that and only a very small number of characters can be mixed up by accidentally moving character components around). The main takeaway is that memory is a skill and its something you can train. That naturally includes your ability to learn and remember Chinese characters. Remembering Chinese Characters The best way of combining components is to create a picture or scene that includes all the components in a memorable way. This should be absurd, funny or exaggerated in some way. Exactly what makes you remember something is something you need to figure out by trial and error, but going for the absurd and exaggerated often works well for most people. You can, of course, draw or use real pictures rather than just imaginary ones, but if you do, you need to be really careful that you dont break the structure of the character. Simply put, the pictures you use to learn Chinese characters should preserve the building blocks that that character consists of. The reason for this should be apparent at this point. If you just use a picture that is suitable for that character, but which doesnt preserve the structure of the character, it will only be useful for learning that very character. If you follow the structure of the character, you can use the pictures for the individual components to learn tens or hundreds of other characters. In short, if you use bad pictures, you lose the benefit of those all-important building blocks. Helpful Resources for Learning Chinese Characters Now, lets look at a few resources for learning the building blocks of Chinese characters: Hacking Chinese: Here youll find a list of the 100 most common radicals. We are mostly concerned with components here, not radicals, but it so happens that radicals are often semantic components, so this list is still useful.Hanzicraft: This is an excellent website that allows you to break down Chinese characters into their component parts. Note that the breakdown is purely visual, so it doesnt really care if its historically correct. You can also find phonetic information here, which is again based only on mechanical comparison of the pronunciation of the components and the full character (its not historically correct either, in other words). Also on the plus side, this site is fast and easy to use.Zdic.net: This is an online, free dictionary that offers decent information about the structure of a character that is also more in line with what we know about the development of a specific character (its manual, not automatic).ArchChinese: This is another online dictionary that gives yo u the ability to both breakdown characters and see the components in context (with frequency information, which is quite rare in other dictionaries). Semantic component posters from Outlier Linguistics: These posters show 100 semantic components and apart from being very informative, they also look great on your wall. They come with information on how to utilize them and accurate descriptions (manually made by people who know a lot about Chinese characters). That should be enough to get you started. There will still be cases you cant find or that dont make sense to you. if you encounter these, you can try a number of different methods, such as creating a picture specifically for that character or making up the meaning on your own - this is easier than trying to remember meaningless strokes.

Relationship Between Culture And Psychological Processes Essay

Relationship Between Culture And Psychological Processes - Essay Example Different cultures have different personalities, and this also differs between males and females (Mead). People of different cultures have personalities that connect them with their culture. Some communities share the same personalities between men and women while others have different personalities among the genders. According to Mead, culture is extremely powerful and determines the fate of a person. Ruth Benedict was also a successful anthropologist who was also an instructor on anthropological studies (Benedict, 3). Both Ruth and Mead studied culture and its relation to human personality, and human sexuality. She studied different cultures and how they mould the personality of individuals, and also tried to recognize the association between psychosomatic processes, and cultural processes (Meyerowitz, 1063). These two are interrelated as they influence the emotions and cognition of human beings. Culture and personality brought about a large group of people including anthropologist s and psychologists. They, however, had different views on the same topic of culture and psychological processes. While Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead were anthropologists, Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalyst but they all joined hands in exploring culture and human personalities. Mead and Benedict shared their views that culture is responsible for individual development and emotions of cultures. Freud tried to explain that psychoanalytic theory could be used in the study of culture. It focused on child and toilet training and their influence on the development of children. Human personality is plastic according to Sigmund Freud and can be changed in any environment including culture. If somebody relocated, to another are which practice different cultural activities, he, or she will adapt be forced to that environment. Their personality will change, as well. Individual behaviors are much controlled by their minds; they are not only controlled by culture. Psychology plays a crucial rol e in the way an individual acts and thinks and, therefore, it is extremely vital in the studying of culture and human personalities. Both Mead and Benedict worked tirelessly in order to prove that the biological aspect of individuals did not determine the culture (Benedict, 16). This differed with Freud’s theory which explained that, both biological and psychological aspects played a role in cultural development. Race and ethnicity, according to their research do not determine the culture too. They, therefore, chose to study the relationships of the native groups because they argued that the native groups had not been exposed to modernity incredibly much. They further explained that civilization had been brought about by the contribution of many races and could not be attributed to only one race. It takes different personalities in order to build an economy, social system and also political systems. These different personalities are from different cultural organizations. Each element of culture has its own history and some cultural traits are shared among different communities (Meyerowitz, 1065). Cultural traits are not limited by boundaries and can spread to a large area. Sigmund Freud found out that personality and culture could be explained through the use of the psychoanalytical hypothesis. This included use of examinations and interviews (Meyerowitz, 1064). The views of Margaret mead and Ruth Benedict on culture and human sexuality are related to those of Sigmund Freud in such that they believe that personality changes according to the area of residence and situations. Personality traits are largely based on the surrounding environment and can be acquired by anyone. Every human being s unique in nature, and they perceive things in different ways. This

Integrated Marketing Communications Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5250 words

Integrated Marketing Communications Plan - Essay Example As the paper declares marketing is the one function of management which has to be more concerned with activity that is external to the organisation, than that which is internal. Marketing activities are mainly conducted outside the organisation and are often undertaken by various managers, for instance, travel agents and web developers. The marketing process is also a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and exchanging products of value with others. This essay stresses that in order to have a successful marketing strategy it is essential that the organisation understands and has the right balance of the marketing mix, which consists of four elements; product, price, promotion and place/distribution. The marketing mix is central to the organisations marketing tactics and once the market situation has been identified and evaluated, a decision is made to either penetrate or develop a particular market. Time is also an important factor in assessing the marketing mix to be offered as market situations are no longer stable, and instead can change rapidly over a short period of time. These changes can be brought on by global events such as natural disasters to industry changes, such as a major competitor suddenly leaving the scene from bankruptcy. By using the marketing mix as a tactical tool for planning marketing activities, it is quite possible to adapt in a timely manner and profitably to changes in the market environment. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (RCCL) is one organisation that is seeking to expand its capacity despite an unfavourable operating environment. The economy of its home country, the United States is not performing well and serious risk to passenger safety have been posed in the form of the threat of terrorist attacks to health threats. This puts RCCL in a vulnerable position in terms of earnings and profits as a reduction in passenger numbers could jeopardise the future of its 27 300 employees. As marketing is almost solely responsible for generating sales and revenue, it is important for RCCL to consider a change in marketing activities, as well as undertake an environmental analysis