Lord of the Flies Antrhopology

Thomas Hobbes was one of the most controversial philosophers of all time. He argued that the, â€Å"Life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short† (Hobbes 77). Clearly he didn’t think that humanity was a good group of beings. In the Lord of the Flies by William Golding, one character, Jack Merridew, displays many characteristics of Hobbes’ philosophy on man. Time after time, Golding subtly refers to Hobbes’ philosophy through Jack and his reactions with other characters in the book. After Golding introduces the boys, they want to elect a chief, and already, Golding is using Hobbes’ anthropology.In Hobbes’ Leviathan, he states, â€Å"And therefore, if any two men desire the same thing which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies† (Hobbes 76). The two main contenders for the chief position are Ralph and Jack. Jack fervently believes that he should be chief, and he says, â€Å"’I ought to be chief,â €™ said Jack with simple arrogance, ’because I’m chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp’† (Golding 15). Fortunately, Ralph is elected chief, and Jack is disappointed. This simple election creates the dispute between the two boys for the whole book.Ralph and Jack cannot share the position, and both cannot enjoy it, so Jack begins to have an aversion to Ralph. Hobbes’ philosophy basically predicted that this would occur. They both wanted a thing, leadership, and one got it, making them both enemies. This enmity that Jack has eventually pushes him to the point of wanting to kill Ralph in order to lead the island without opposition. This craving for murder also demonstrates another philosophical point by Hobbes. Far later in the book, Jack’s relations with Ralph once again clearly display one of Hobbes’ points.In Leviathan, Hobbes writes, â€Å"In all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their indepen dency, are†¦ in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on one another† (76). After Jack splits from the tribe in order to make a new one, he immediately sees the other tribe as a threat. He even literally has his weapons pointed at Ralph in one scene specifically, in which the two leaders are dueling. The narrator narrates, â€Å"Jack made a rush and stabbed at Ralph’s chest with spear. Ralph sensed the position of the weapon from the glimpse he caught of Jack’s arm and put the hrust aside with his own butt† (Golding 159). Even though Hobbes may have intended this to be figurative without the actual leaders fighting, but their armies doing their work, this seems to fit the same kind of description. Hobbes really means that kings, or in this case chiefs, are always looking to fight each other, always ready for battle, always looking to rid themselves of their opponents. In the same way, Jack is always lo oking to fight Ralph, always ready for battle against Ralph, always looking to rid himself of Ralph. Golding ultimately connects Jack to Hobbes through Jack’s lack of mercy and justice.An unknown author composed a summary of Hobbes’ argument pertaining to this subject, and wrote â€Å"The state of nature†¦ was founded upon a savage egoism which drove man to seek a maximum of pleasure without hindrance from a norm of justice or mercy toward other men. Every man was continually engaged in war against all other men† (Paragraph 9). Throughout the book, Jack fastidiously tries to not offer mercy or due justice to people. In one instance, Ralph pleads for mercy upon the twins, Sam and Eric. The narrator says, â€Å"’Grab them! ’ No one moved. Jack shouted angrily. I said ‘grab them’! ’ Their spears were taken from them. ‘Tie them up! ’ Ralph cried out hopelessly against the black and green mask. ‘Jack! â€℠¢Ã¢â‚¬  (Golding 161). The key word of this scene is â€Å"hopelessly. † This simple word makes Ralph’s plea seem impossible; henceforth, Jack is not giving mercy at any cost. Jack wants the twins to leave Ralph and join his tribe. This essentially gives him pleasure because he knows that Ralph is hopeless. Whatever plea Ralph makes will not be granted because it will hinder his pleasure. Justice will not be served because it will hinder his pleasure.Mercy will not be served because it will hinder his pleasure. Hobbes directly says that people will not give justice or mercy when it will hinder his own pleasure. For Jack, to offer mercy is to rid himself of pleasure; therefore, he will not give the mercy according to Hobbes’ philosophy. Golding clearly thought of Hobbes’ philosophy when he was contriving Jack. Jack displays almost all of the qualities that a human being should display according to Hobbes. First, his enmity toward Ralph is solely based on a thing that he can’t have, which is what Hobbes predicted would happen.Second, he and Ralph, because they are both opposing leaders, have weapons pointed at each other, symbolizing how opposing leaders always quarrel with each other according to Hobbes. Third, his lack of mercy and justice for those who deserve it is nonexistent because it will hinder his pleasure according to Hobbes. In conclusion, in almost every act that Jack does, he relates back to Hobbes’ philosophy pertaining to human nature. Works Cited â€Å"The Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. † 1998. The Radical Academy. 15 March 2010. <http://www. radicalacademy. com/philfthomashobbes. htm>.Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. The Harvard Classics. 1904-14. ——————————————– [ 1 ]. I used passive voice because the subjects are more important than Jack, who would be doing the action. (This isn’t rhet oric, it’s just and explanation) [ 2 ]. I used epistrophe to emphasize the point that Jack will not do the things that will hinder his pleasure [ 3 ]. I used antithesis here to kind of show a cause and effect. If he was to offer mercy (the cause) then he would accept defeat (effect). It seemed more logical to use antithesis right here than other forms of rhetoric.

Abortion Should Be Legal

Abortion is the deliberate ending of a pregnancy by removing the fetus from the mother's uterus and should only be carried out by trained medical personnel. Abortion was introduced at a very early age in society. I believe people should choose their own path and their own future, right down to abortions. I believe in choice. Pro-choice. People's lives and rights should not be interfered by the opinion of another. There are certain rights given to a person which cannot be removed or changed.This gives the choice-maker the right to live with his/her own decision without the guilt or disturbance of a third party. Live your own lives. A body belongs to one soul, giving one soul the rules and rights over it. People tend to forget that. As in an economy, when something is in demand, legal or not, people will sell and buy it. But what about those people who feel guilt over something that shouldn't pressure them? May it be abortion or not. Most people would like to live under the choices the y make without the world pushing them over or religions battering them with stones.With the evolving moral standards of society, abortions are becoming more and more justified. Abortions, the practice of removing a fertilized egg from a mother has become a controversial issue in American society, but should be generally supported because there are circumstances where the mother to be is unable to sustain a pregnancy safely. Young low income women and or girls who become mothers have grim prospects for the future and in the case of rape or incest, forcing a woman made pregnant by this violent act would cause further psychological harm to the victim.In, â€Å"The Cost of Choice†, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) and Planned Parenthood, among other pro-abortion advocacy groups and organizations, have formulated and published standards and guidelines for affiliated clinics and physicians. In fact, Planned Parenthood clinics, with few exceptions, must adhere to the operation al standards and protocols mandated by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. State legislatures have obtained copies of these standards and protocols and have used them to formulate minimum health and safety standards for abortion care. Encounter Books, 2004. p 128. ) Those who are against legalizing abortion/pro-life believe that a fetus is a person and should be granted life just as every other living being on this earth. Imagine a mother and child falling into dangerous river rapids and a family member or bystander must decide who to save. It's a terrible decision that must be made. Regardless of the decision, one life will be lost and one saved. This situation differs so fundamentally from abortion on demand, which is to kill the unborn baby for convenience, as opposed to choosing which life will be saved.Pro-life activist / believers think that abortion is murder, and that life begins at conception. â€Å"In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism reproducing by sexual reproduction begins at conception (fertilization). † â€Å"By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception. † â€Å"Human life begins at the time of conception. † â€Å"Human life begins when after the ovum is fertilized the new combined cell mass begins to divide. â€Å"The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter – the beginning is conception. †(Boonin, 2002, p. 21) Pro-choice believer think that Adoption is a viable alternative to abortion and accomplishes the same result, however statistics show that most women who carry a child do not give their child up for adoption. They might also believe that, an abortion can result in medical complications later in life; the risk of ectopic pregnancies double.Abortion for medical reasons where the mother's life is in jeopardy that should be left to the discretion of the mother, family, and doctor. It's true, the mother and the unborn baby are still two separate individuals/entities, but under these difficult circumstances, it's truly a personal decision for those directly involved. Abortion in cases of rape and/or incest should be treated the same as abortion for medical reasons. It should be up to the victim of the rape or incest what she wants to do in this rare and terrible situation.Some countries now with moderately restrictive laws permit abortions to protect a women's health, to end pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, to avoid genetic or other defects, or in response to social problems such as unmarried status or low income. Rape one of the top reasons why I believe that a woman should be able to have an abortion. Rape is the act of sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent or with a minor. Having a child resulting from the mother being rape causes many metal problems for the mother as the birth of the child could be a remembrance of what happen.Incest is sexual intercourse between people who are of blood relations this is one of the reasons why abortion should be legal. It is believed that 50% of all incest cases happen to children fewer than 17 years of age. It has also been stated that children who are conceived by incest are more likely to the possibly leading to mental retardation Birth defects are any abnormalities in the structure or function of the fetus. About twenty percent or more of malformed fetuses are aborted; the rest results in a newborn baby with a birth defect.Each type of birth defect is rare . All live births can cause increased percent of infant deaths in the period immediately after birth. Low income is when people have little or no money coming into the home. To care for a child is very expensive you need to buy pampers, milk, formula's, clothes, powder, cream, soap, towels, cribs and if u are working u need to pay for ah baby sitter. It takes an average o f $15000 a year to care of a child. There are now 1. 3 million surgical abortions per year in the United States. 0 The Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood) reports that women have abortions for two primary reasons: lack of financial resources and lack of emotional support. .(Encounter Books, 2004. p 198. ) One needs to take into consideration the developmental stages of the fetal life span. Most abortions occur soon after the confirmation of pregnancy, (usually prior to 12 weeks gestation. ) The first twelve weeks is known as the first trimester or the embryonic phase. At this time the fetus is about 3-3. inches long having a weight of 15-20 grams. The neurological system is primitive at best, demonstrating only vague swimming motions. In the late 1880’s, The American Medical Association led the fight to criminalize all abortions. The campaign was a total success, with every state outlawing abortion. However, criminal prohibition did not stop wom en from obtaining illegal abortions, which sometimes resulted in severe medical problems. (Abortion, 2002, para. 8) I think this would cause more harm than good to make abortion illegal.Every woman should have the right to make that decision without the government getting involved. I do not recommend abortion as a birth-control method of choice. I merely state that it is a fact the most important single method of birth-control in the world today, and to cut down on population growth we should make abortion easy and safe while we continue to develop other and more â€Å"satisfactory† methods of family limitation. In addition to the 5 million women in the U. S. without access to birth-control for whom abortion would seem a mater of right when they want t, there are the uncounted thousands who after conception suffer some diseases of discover some defect which makes the birth of a live healthy baby unlikely, and the many, too, whose contraceptive methods occasionally do not work . Today abortion under modern hospital conditions is safer than childbirth. Instead of making abortion more difficult and dangerous for women, lawmakers should promote policies that reduce the need for abortion. Almost 50 percent of all pregnancies in this country are unintended, including over 30 percent within marriage.And over half of all unintended pregnancies end in abortion. In the Roe vs. Wade the Supreme Court ruled that a woman was allowed by the Constitution's 14th Amendment to receive an abortion before the first trimester. It now appeared that the pro-choice advocates had won the political tug-o-war at last. However, violence continues between the two groups as the animosity and resentment has grown to new heights. The most important part of reproductive rights is the principle that a woman has the right to decide whether and when to have a child.Religious beliefs, politics, incident of pregnancy, support, economy, long term consequences, such as regrets and depression, being able to take responsibility, and health issues are major factors that must be taken in consideration before resulting to abortion. For any pregnant woman, making a decision to abort her child is painful and ruthless, but under certain situation such as rape, young age and financial reasons, a woman should have the right to choose to terminate her pregnancy if she chooses to do so by aborting her unborn child.

Math Literacy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Math Literacy - Essay Example Literacy is a highly complex notion. Traditionally literacy has referred to a comprehension of language elements. Increasingly, however, literacy has come to refer to an understanding and proficiency with an endless array of subjects. For instance, today there is media literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. A number of researchers and agencies have proposed spectrums of literacy. In this way the National Institute for Literacy indicates that major aspects of literacy include, â€Å"decoding/phonemic awareness and phonics, morphology, vocabulary, fluency, and text comprehension† (National Institute of Literacy 2007, p. 3). For the purpose of this research literacy is considered in terms of language fluency. There are a number of aspects of literacy that exist in my subject area of mathematics. Perhaps the most overarching consideration is the notion of content literacy. Conley refers to content literacy as students’ comprehension of specific reading and fl uency knowledge that contributes to their understanding of the specific subject (Conley 2008). As my subject is mathematics there are a variety of ways that content literacy is important. In a sense, students’ actual fluency with solving mathematic problems can be regarded as a sort of literacy. Still, specific language fluency in terms of phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and text comprehension is required in much math content. ... that, â€Å"Mathematical literacy is attained only when students can decipher the numbers, apply abstract symbols, and use words to construct mathematical meaning.† This is a more comprehensive recognition of literacy as encompassing numbers as forms of literate expression. There are a variety of ways that literacy within mathematics exists. In solving math equations one recognizes that, â€Å"Although understanding the mathematics involved†¦is certainly essential, being able to read, understand, and respond in writing to the item in specialized ways is also crucial. Content area literacy involves showing students how to adjust their reading and writing to the specific demands of different kinds of knowledge and tasks† (Conley 2008, p. 22). In this way literacy within mathematics occurs in particular situations that aid the solving of mathematics equations. For instance, mathematics often has terminology such as box plot, quartile 1 and interquartile, or minimum an d maximum. Students must recognize these concepts in order to advance to the problem-solving portion of the mathematics. One considers that in science students more thoroughly focus on words and patterns. In the language arts students must develop thorough reading comprehension skills. The notable recognition in these regards is that literacy in mathematics, as contrasted with most other subject areas, functions to aid the direct comprehension of the subject rather than being the subject itself. Other theorists have additionally considered that oftentimes literacy in mathematics, in terms of specific vocabulary, oftentimes takes on a different meaning than in outside contexts. For instance, it’s noted that the word ‘functions’ takes on a different meaning in terms of math than in other contexts (Franz

Origins of global warming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Origins of global warming - Essay Example These trapped gases are called greenhouse gases. The human activities create carbon dioxide CO2 which is a type of a greenhouse gas that slows the escape of heat from the earth. Trees and plants contribute a lot in removing these gases from the environment through photosynthesis. However, due to illegal logging and other similar activities, there are only fewer trees and plants today. Aside from human activities, it is also proven that natural processes also cause global warming. These processes include the increase of energy given off by the sun due to depletion of the ozone layer. The effects of this phenomena is resulting in to animals change of habitats, impairment of ocean life, weather damage, rising sea level, changes in crop yield, and threats to human health. Extensive alteration of temperature among habitats causes animals less possibility to adapt with the environment. Warmer waters increase the stress and spread diseases on the marine ecosystem. Global warming causes a la rge amount of ice to melt and leads to higher sea level. Many crop plants can not tolerate higher temperature and eventually die. Lastly, tropical diseases among human beings such as malaria and dengue are more visible to larger regions. Intense heat waves, drought and floods increase number of people die due to hunger, malnutrition, heat stroke and other illnesses. The great impacts of global warming are not only observable to human beings but also to the entire ecosystem. It is irrevocable that in any issue, there are skeptics. Despite the fact that effects of global warming are highly noticeable, disbelievers still arise even from the group of scientists. In fact, an atmospheric physicist Fred Singer said that "The observational evidencesuggests that any warming from the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations of the climate, and therefore inconsequential". Giving less importance to the issue leads to resistance of resolving it. Probably, it is one of the reasons why in spite of vocal suggestions concerning avoidance of harmful human activities, it is near impossible to reduce the effects of global warming. Given this fact, it is absolutely necessary to settle this disbelief even before the misperception continues to spread. Green leaders, on the other hand, stand to their stance that current changes in the ecosystem are triggered by something and this is global warming. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences declared in 2005 that "greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise," adding that "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action." Amongst these two counter-arguments, how is it possible to create one's' own stand There is no absolute answer for this. However, put in mind that if people will act in accordance with the green leaders, no one can be harm. If people choose to take global warming for granted which turn out to be fact, thus, life of everyone even those innocent creatures is at high risk. The future depends on a well-thought decision. This explains half of what's' global warming is about. There is lot of details to research before it is fully defined. However, the basic knowledge of its causes and effects is

Ebola Virus Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Ebola Virus - Essay Example Accordingly, there exists up to five Ebola virus species. Out of the five, only four can be accountable for causing diseases in humans. The Ebola virus disease is known to affect West and Central African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Guinea. In recent times, there have been plentiful reports of the illness finding its way to Asian countries and the United States a fact that has been made possible through the global travel of the infected persons out of Africa. Ebola virus was initially revealed in the year 1976 in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo near River Ebola, where the disease borrows its name (Peters and LeDuc ix). The illness was initially disregarded as a threat; consequently, no vaccine was developed. In addition, the earlier cases of the disease could be contained easily and in the event of fatalities, fewer deaths were reported. It took the attention of the United States military to study the possibilities of weaponizing the virus that made the disease widespread. However, the idea was dropped, and the current outbreaks are said to have originated from fruit bats. The virus was initially thought to be airborne; however, studies conducted by the University of Sussex revealed that it is transmitted through body fluids. Also, the virus finds its way into the human body through cuts on the skin and mucous membranes. The Ebola virus has also been found to be transmitted through sexual intercourse, physical contact by the infected persons and ingestion of breast milk. The disease incapacitates the immune system of the host victim. Persons infected with Ebola virus bear symptoms such as mild nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pains, and bleeding from the eyes. The disease also halts the body from clotting blood resulting in gastrointestinal bleeding. This result to increased wear out of the intestinal mucous membranes and any cuts on the body will ooze blood endlessly (Brooks 32). The

I have to choose a good topic from the area of ICT industry Essay

I have to choose a good topic from the area of ICT industry - Essay Example Or is Knowledge Management just another term for Information Management that is almost the exclusive work area of ICT? The first step in trying to find an answer in this regard is to acquire a clear understanding of the difference between information and knowledge. In other words, knowledge, its properties and its qualities, has to be defined in very clear and comprehensible terms. The definition of knowledge is based on the sequential definitions of data and information (Barnes, 2001). Data, is defined as observations of facts outside any context; data within a meaningful context is information; and ‘information plus’ or information combined with experience, context, interpretation, and reflection within a very highly contextual environment is termed as knowledge. The high-value form of information that is ready for application to decisions and actions within organizations is e termed as Knowledge (Davenport, 1998). It is therefore a type of value-added information. A further distinction is made between two categories of knowledge – tacit or implicit and explicit knowledge. Tacit Knowledge is defined as the type of knowledge that is both understood and applied at the subconscious level. It is knowledge difficult to deliberately express, manifest or articulate, and said to be developed, again subconsciously or involuntarily, through personal interactions, conversations, storytelling and shared experience. Explicit knowledge, on the other hand â€Å"is more precisely and formally articulated, although removed from the original context of creation or use...† (Zach, 1999). Barnes (2001) defines Knowledge Management as an attempt to improve or maximize the use of knowledge that exists in an organization. Knowledge Management has assumed crucial significance for all business organizations that seek to utilize its own experience and that of others to retain a decisive competitive edge over other players in the market.

The Technological Innovations and the Business Strategy of BBC Essay

The Technological Innovations and the Business Strategy of BBC - Essay Example Over the years, the company grew from a single person entity to one that employs people in the thousands and spans across the globe in its operations. (Briggs, 1985) The BBC is well known for its record of impartiality and independence in reporting and coverage of news events. Though there has been some criticism in the recent past about the way in which it has handled some events, nonetheless, on the whole, the record of BBC has been relatively unblemished. The BBC is a pioneer in terms of launching a global news channel covering almost all regions in the world. To quote from the profile of BBC on its website, â€Å"The BBC is the largest broadcasting organization in the world. Its mission is to enrich peoples lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain. It is a public service broadcaster, established by a Royal Charter and funded by the license fee that is paid by UK households. The BBC uses the income from the license fee to provide services including 8 national TV channels plus regional programming, 10 national radio stations, 40 local radio stations and an extensive website.† (BBC, 2010) The business strategy of BBC is relatively straightforward. The primary revenue earner for BBC is through its license fee that averages around 145 GBP per year per household. This is the fee paid by individual households to receive the broadcast television in the UK. Though there is no fee to own a television in the UK, there is a fee to receive the cable TV. However, the world service of the BBC is funded by government and as the website puts it, â€Å"BBC World Service broadcasts to the world on radio, on TV and online, providing news and information in 32 languages. It is funded by a government grant, not from the license fee.† (BBC, 2010) The technological innovations that have been introduced by the BBC are to do with the re-launched news website that receives visitors in the millions. The BBC claims the site to be "Europe's most popular content-based site" and states that 13.2  million people in the UK visit the site's more than two million pages each day.

Feminism in the Light of Feminist Narratives Essay

Feminism in the Light of Feminist Narratives - Essay Example Barbara Findlen’s Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation is able to provide me a new way of understanding women’s struggle in the third wave. My previous understanding of feminism resolves in the surge of women’s situation from their old tradition as mere caretakers of the household, denied of education and employment, and had a limited right to suffrage. Feminism had been a political idea, had always been, and still is. When women earned their right to education and employment, bid goodbye to being merely relegated to the sidelines as a mother and wife, and finally being able to vote, I thought that the woman is then free and all she has to do is to ensure that this freedom is not taken from her. However, the third wave feminism proves that the feminist struggle continues on and the issues that every female must resolve are reflected on language, gestures, and movements of people and society in everyday living. My perceptions about the third wave feminist struggle made a shift or would I say, an improved turn over the course of the semester as aided by the authors of Listen Up. Not being a racist, but my previous consciousness on feminism has always been directed towards Europe, the proponent of feminism, neglecting or putting into sidelines the other female experiences in other parts of the world. The feminist struggle is not limited to a certain race, social class, or ethnicity, but encompasses all these and Findlen’s Listen Up was able to reiterate this point.

Healthy Cell Phone Essay Example for Free

Healthy Cell Phone Essay Teenagers and The Over Use of Cell Phones The use of cell phones should be banned for teenagers. Similar to the legal age of purchasing alcohol and tobacco, the same law should be enforced when it comes to the use of cell phones among teenagers. Although the thought of this may sound insane to most adolescence, it maybe the solution to limiting and promoting healthy cell phone use amongst todays youth. The following solution would also be in their best interest without them even realizing it. The over use of cell phones by teenagers will have a negative effect on their academic, social, and mental development. Teenagers who use their cellphones very often will have their academic progress negatively affected due to being distracted. It is not a rare occurrence for teenagers to have their phones with them while they are in class, but that is mainly because many of them do not realize the impact it is having on their grades. Researchers, Christian M. End, Shaye Worthman, Mary Bridget Matthews, and Katharina Wetterau at Xavier University did a study about the impact of cell phone rings on academic performance. After completing the study they said, Findings indicated that cell phone rings during a video presentation impaired academic performance. Specifically, participants in the ringing condition performed worse on disrupted test items and were less likely to have recorded pertinent test information (End, Worthman, Matthews, Wetterau, 2010, p. 55-57). The study shows that Just the ringer on a cell phone alone can have an impact on how a student takes notes. However, not everyone thinks that cell phones are a bad idea. Authors Kevin Thomas and Blanche Obannon wrote an article titled Cell Phones In The Classroom: Preservice Teachers Perceptions, which talks about cell phone use in the class room and how it would be beneficial to students. Mentioning that by 201 5 two-thirds of all suggest that this can be a positive thing with the use of tools provided by cell phones for content creation, student centered learning, authentic learning, differentiation of instruction, assessment, and reflection (Thomas ; Obannon, 2013). Given that cell phones can be used as a tool to better educate; it still would not be a good idea because studies prove that a ringer alone can distract a student. Also that text messages and social media cites such a Facebook and Twitter will also be a distraction away from school work. If students were openly able to utilize their cell hones while in class this would cause a distraction and decrease in their grades. A teenager who pays more attention to their phone while in school can cause them to not be academically successful. When a teenager depends solely on communicating through their cell phone it will cause them to have a difficult time with face-to-face interactions. Many teens would prefer to send a text message or make a phone call to their friend in the next room rather than Just walking over and talking to them. Not only does this encourage laziness but it also affects their social skills. An Article in the Washington Post by Masuma Ahuja called Teens are spending more time consuming social media, on mobile devices, which talks about teens spending a long amount of time on social media and how it effects their social skills. Ahuja says, Teens spend so much time interacting with each other on social networks and phones that they are growing less comfortable with in-person interactions and not developing essential social skills (Ahuja, 2013). It is clear that teenagers who prefer talking on a cell phone, sending a Facebook message or sending a text message are more likely to have trouble in a social setting. Cell phones have also made a great impact with the way families interact with one another. It causes teenagers to subconsciously disrespect their parents by using their cellphones while at the dinner table or picking up a phone call while being spoken to by their parents. An article called The Cell Phone as an Agent of Social Change written by Abu Sadat Nurulla from the University of Alberta talks about the effect that cellphones have on the way youth interact with family and their peers. Nurulla says that cell phones cannot solve ongoing child and parent communication issues, such as quality and flow of communication (Nurulla, p. 1). Although a teenager having a cell phone may help with keeping in touch with their parents for emergencies, but it does not otherwise benefit the relationship due. Teenagers seem to not be aware of the effect of being overly indulged with communicating on cell phones; it can seriously hinder their ability to socialize because they are use to sitting behind a phone. Teenagers over dependence and use of their cell phone can lead to depression. Something as minor as falling asleep with their phone beside them can cause lack of sleep due to the phone going off in the middle of the night, which will cause lack of leep and could lead to the teenager having a bad day. An article called How Mobile Phones Affect Sleep in the Huffington Post talks about how mobile phones affect a good nights sleep, while making reference to a study funded by a major mobile phone maker. It says, People exposed to major radiation took longer to fall asleep and spent less time in deep sleep (Huffington Post, 2013). So it is clear that cell phones can be linked to teens not sleeping well at night. Also in the Medical Post an about a study done to link the over use of cell phones by teen to depression. The tudy showed that compared to teens in the lower scoring group than the group of adolescence that used their phones more often had significantly higher scores in the depression inventory scale and interpersonal anxiety scale, as well as scoring low on the self-esteem scale (Hodges, 2006). These results reflect that teenagers are very likely to suffer from depression if they continue to spend too much time in their cell phones. Depression and lack of sleep will lead to severe mental issues if not sustained at an early stage. Youth today are overly dependent on cell phones. So dependent that many of hem seem to be out of touch with reality. Due to the mental, social, and academic effects of cell phones, teenagers are being sent down the wrong path. These three aspects are very important to human development as a whole. They are more critical at the adolescent stage, where teenagers should be attempting to reach their full potential without the distraction of cell phones. A teenager should be able to sleep well in order to go to school, be attentive, and be able to socialize with their peers and teachers without the interruption of receiving a text message or a phone call.

Employee Handbook Essay Example for Free

Employee Handbook Essay When employers are putting together the employee handbook, they need to include some legal issues that may apply when there are any disputes or how go along with some procedures. The handbook is used to familiarize the employees with the policies and procedures that are to be followed in the organization. Employers may include certain provisions that dictate how the employees may carry out certain activities without putting the employer’s business in jeopardy. The employers should ensure that they use the right language that will be later be interpreted by the employees in the right manner and that may not be violating employee organizational rights. Most employers ensure that the employee handbook has certain restrictions that prevent employees from sharing the employer’s confidential information with outsiders. Such information is not usually available to the public and if it happens that it is leaked out, it would cause some damages to their business. However, it is under the National Labor Relations act (NLRA) that the employees are free to discuss details about their compensation or conditions against which they have been employed with other people who are not part of the organization. The NLRB prohibits employers from giving policies of this nature. One of the Sections in the NLRA states that employees have a right to join or form unions or even be engaged in concerted activities. However another section states that there are unfair labor practices that may be faced by an employer if employees join or form these unions or engage in other concerted activities. There may be problematic employee organizational rights that are under the NRLA but the employers can draft them in such a way that they are lawful according to the Act. The employers may include some anti-union statements that may be used when employees engage in unfair labor practices. Whatever provisions are included in the handbook about legal considerations such as how the employer may violate the rights of the employees and generally how each party should conduct its activities without hurting each other. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS With many and different types of employees from different parts of a nation or even region, there is always a need for the employers to have certain considerations concerning the ethical culture of the organization. The ethical culture of an organization defines how the employees are to carry out all the operations in the organization. Employees are supposed to treat customers with much respect since they are the major source of profits for the organization. They are supposed to take care of the interests of the employers and at the same time take care of their own interests. These interests should not be in conflict since they depend on the employer and the employer also depends on their efforts. The ethical considerations may also involve how to pass information to their core workers or the line managers or even to the top management. They are supposed to use a certain communication channel that has been specified in the employee handbook. Communication is one of the important aspects in a business and therefore employers may consider this as one of the elements that determine the public image that they depict to the general public. Privacy is also a matter of ethical consideration whereby the employees are obligated to keep information about their employer to themselves and not discuss their terms and conditions of their employment. Each organization and employer will have their own considerations to include in the employee handbooks but they should conform to the Acts of the National Labor Relations Act. Roger K. G. , Bankovich, C. Browning,J. (2005). What’s in Your Employee Handbook? Some Provisions May Be Harmful Rather Than Helpful Under the National Labor Relations Act. ASHHRA/IRI 24th Labor Activity Report. Papademetriou, L. (2003). Employee Handbook: We Scare Because We Care. London: Random House Publishers.

Effect of Buffers on pH Levels

Effect of Buffers on pH Levels   Abstract A buffer is a solution that helps keep the pH of other solutions at a steady level with the addition of limited acids or bases. The purpose if this experiment was to figure out how to create an optimal buffer and to determine how effective buffers are at stabilizing the pH of different solutions. An optimal buffer was made after calculating the [H+] levels and determining how much weak acid and conjugate base was needed to test when added to beakers containing either acidic or basic solutions. The results found that the buffers helped get the solutions closer to a neutral pH and were found to be effective pH stabilizers. Introduction In the real world, pH levels are important in the function of many life processes. For instance, the average human bodys average pH level is approximately 7.4, and if there are any changes to that pH at all, no matter how small it may be, one would eventually get sick and die, since the human body is not meant to handle such a large fluctuation of pH levels. These pH levels are the measurement of Hydronium ions (H3O+) in a solution and are measured on a pH scale going from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral, anything less than 7 would be considered acidic, and anything greater than 7 would be considered basic. One might wonder how a persons pH levels do not change so easily, and the answer is because of a solution is known as a buffer. The main function of buffers is to help keep pH levels steady when a certain amount of acids or bases are introduced in a solution. Once a buffer has reached its limit, the solution will exponentially increase or decrease, depending on if a base or an acid were used, respectively. In the graph shown, it depicts how the buffer helps to keep the pH levels steady for as long as it can, but when too much base is added, the buffer will reach its capacity and the excess base will cause the pH to rise quickly, while an addition of excess base will cause the pH to drop quickly. Buffers are made from weak acids or bases paired with their conjugate bases or acids, and weak acids and bases are used because they do not disassociate fully in a solution and the hydrogen or hydroxide (OH) ions will mostly stay connected to the other molecules, unlike strong acids or bases that will completely dissociate into either the hydrogen or hydroxide ions. A good weak acid to use is acetic acid (CH3COOH), which is commonly found in vinegar. Another thing to keep in mind is how this relates to Le Chateliers Principle, which means for acetic acid that if a base were added, the equilibrium would shift to the right to want to produce more hydrogen ions, and if an acid were added, the equilibrium would shift left to want to produce more conjugate base. Lastly, a good buffer should have equal amounts of a weak acid and a conjugate base, which is done experimentally. Materials and Methods Materials used: Three 250 mL beakers One 50 mL graduated cylinder One 10 mL graduated cylinder An unknown weak acid Ka=[CH3COO]/[CH3COOH] pH=-log[H+] [H+] =10-pH Ka=([H+]*[WA])/[HWA] Procedures: Obtain three 250 mL beakers, and a 10 mL and a 50 mL graduated cylinder. To the first beaker, add a pipette bulb of the unknown weak acid and 110 mL of distilled water. Measure 50 mL of the acid solution and add it to each of the remaining two beakers, and then wash it out and keep the beaker. Label one beaker [HWA], or acid, and the other [WA], or conjugate base. Fill burette with an NaOH solution and add two to three drops of phenolphthalein indicator to [WA] beaker and titrate solution using base in burette to indicator end point, which will be signaled through a pink color change, so HWA will be converted to WA. Determine the volume of base added to [WA] beaker during titration and add that same volume of water to the [HWA] beaker so that the [HWA]=[WA]. Make an optimal buffer by mixing 20 mL of [HWA] and 20 mL [WA] in the third beaker. Prepare pH meter by standardizing it with standard solutions of pH 4 and 7. Take pH of optimal buffer and calculate [H+] from pH reading. Determine Ka value and show calculations to TA, and a new buffer will be assigned to be made. Using assigned buffer, determine [H+]. Use Ka equation to determine volume of conjugate base needed when 10 mL of acid is used, and use Ka value from step 10, [H+] value from pH, and 10 mL to replace [CH3COOH] to find volume of [CH3COO] needed. Make a new buffer using these volumes in a clean beaker, then take the pH of the new buffer to see how close the found pH is to the assigned value. Get two 50 mL beakers and add 5 mL of new buffer to one beaker and 5 mL of distilled water to the other. Add five drops of NaOH to each beaker and read pH for each one and record both. Thoroughly wash out small beakers and repeat step 13. Add five drops of HCl to each beaker and read pH for each one and record both. Clean up and turn in data sheet. Results: Data and Calculations 0.10 M NaOH added to 50 mL of acid mixture: Initial Burette Reading mL Final Burette Reading 34.7 mL Volume of NaOH Added 16.3 mL pH of Optimal Buffer 4.7 Ka of Unknown Weak Acid 2*10-5 10-4.7=2*10-5=Ka Assigned pH of new buffer to make: 4.85 New Buffer Data: [H+] needed 1.41*10-5 Ka: [H+]=(Ka/[H+]) 1.42 [A]:[HWA]=(Ka/[H+]) 1.42 Volume of A 14.2 mL Volume of HWA 10 mL pH of New Buffer 4.84 (2*10-5)/(1.41*10-5)=1.42 Test of New Buffer: pH of Distilled Water with Acid 2.88 pH of New Buffer with Acid 4.5 pH of Distilled Water with Base 10.9 pH of New Buffer with Base 5.18 Discussion/Conclusion In conclusion, the results determined that the buffer was effective at stabilizing the pH of both solutions containing distilled water and either an acid or a base added. The results also showed that the new buffer pH was very similar to the assigned pH, indicating that the overall reactions in this experiment were precise and accurate. A buffer is a solution that controls the pH of other solutions it is added in from fluctuating, and it is made by mixing equal amounts of a weak acid with its conjugate base. The reason it needs to be a weak acid because it will not dissociate fully when added in a solution, so the hydrogen ions will mostly be intact and not free floating. This would be able to help the pH of the solution in which it is added stable when combined with the conjugate base that is formed when the hydrogen ion dissociates from its original molecule from which it was connected.   The Ka of the weak acid used in this experiment was determined after titrating NaOH to the acid mixture until the indicator turned light pink and then taking the pH reading of the titrated solution and using the 10-pH formula to find [H+] which equaled the Ka of the weak acid. The new buffer was then made when the newly assigned pH was taken, the [H+] needed to achieve that new pH was determined, the Ka value by the needed [H+] value was divided, and the decimal for the product was moved one decimal place to the right, since the amount of HWA needed was 10 mL, and the pH was then determined from that solution, and it matched very closely to the assigned pH. Lastly, although not major, there was one experimental error that occurred when the solutions prepared in the first part of the lab were accidentally disposed of early, but a new solution was made again which was the same pH of the previous solution, so that error did not affect the overall results of this experiment.

Organizational Behavior: Terminology and Concepts :: essays research papers

Organizational Behavior: Terminology and Concepts   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Organizations today often encourage change to better the work environment. However, these changes often cause unwanted results which were not expected. This leads us to observe organizational behavior (OB) in hopes of minimizing unwanted and/or negative changes within an organization. Organizational behavior, organizational culture, diversity, communication, organizational effectiveness and efficiency, and organizational learning are all factors within an organization. These terms must first be defined in order to create a truly more efficient work environment. Centrix Financial ensures their growth and success by establishing an effective pattern which includes all of the factors of organizational behavior. Organizational behavior is defined as â€Å"the study of individuals and groups in organizations†. (Schermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn, 2003, p. 2) This definition helps us to better understand the organizational behavior which businesses practice on a day-to-day basis. At Centrix Financial, organizational behavior is helps managers implement new ideas. This is done by observing the changes which must be made in order to achieve a more productive and successful organization. Organizational culture is defined as â€Å"the system of shared actions, values, and beliefs that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members. In the business setting, this system is often referred to as the corporate culture. Just as no two individual personalities are the same, no two organizational cultures are identical.† (Schermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn, 2003, p. 2) Communication within the organizational behavior helps with many aspects of an organization. First, open-communication allows employees to feel respected and valued because they can walk into their manager’s office and discuss any thoughts he or she may be have. Second, communication ensures that all problems are dealt with and not over-looked. The third benefit to communication is that new ideas can be generated from anyone who wishes to help out the organization.

Mark Twain Essay -- essays research papers fc

Mark Twain was a pilot, a comic lecturer, a humorist, a short story writer, and a novelist, to name a few of his many accomplishments. On November 30, 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, became the first man of any importance ever to be born west of the Mississippi River. He has become an icon as the American writer. This is because his way of writing cannot be simulated by Europeans or anyone else, due to the fact that the western setting of America creates a whole new atmosphere and style of writing. Mark Twain is a classic American writer that acquired fame by using satire, writing with single-minded use of words, and by writing the way that most people think and speak. Twain writes with single-minded use of words, which is understood to be plain and simple, yet still intelligent, which enhances American literature. He writes what comes into his mind without fear. This is an example from Huckleberry Finn: ... "then comes a h-wack! bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum - and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away" ... (Twain 45). This enriches American literature, because it is a clever way, and the only way to make the reader actually seem to hear and feel the sounds the writer is trying to convey. This is an example from Tom Sawyer : "Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! chow! ch-chow-wow! chow!". (Twain 15). This dialect can be explained as a familiar speech spoken around us all the time. It is the speech of the illiterate, the preliterate, the children, and the poor people (Bloom 46). This is actually a very intelligent style of writing, for it is difficult for an author to write in a different level of dialect than they actually speak. The reader can tell that this dialect isn’t Twain’s own, since he doesn’t write with it in every part of the book. Huckleberry Finn is supposed to be written from Huck’s point of view. The story is written as he would speak it, so mistakes inevitably appear. However, this single- minded dialect was worked, composed, and written by Twain. It was not done haphazardly (Bloom 46). American literature would not be the same if not for Twain’s ideas for ways of writing in a way that spectacularly conveys the feelings of touch, sound, and sight by the use of single-minded words. Another way that Mark Twain enriche... ...inded words captures the reader’s attention, making them feel almost as if they are in the book themselves. His masterful use of the vernacular portrays the speech of early rural America. Twain’s use of the vernacular lets the reader read more smoothly since they do not have to pay attention to the structural significance of the word. Since Mark Twain was the first truly great western author to define American writing, he has opened the way for many future authors to come. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Interpretations of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. NewYork: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Clemens, Samuel L. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. NewYork: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1953. Clemens, Samuel L. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. NewYork: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1958. Http://galenet.gale.com/a/acp/netacgi/nph...thor-search.html/&r=1&f=l3;1; + "1647-1".ID. Kesterson, David B. ed. Critics on Mark Twain. Florida: University of Miami Press, 1973. Rasmussen, Kent R. Mark Twain A to Z. NewYork: Facts on File, Inc., 1995. Stapleton, Michael, comp. The Cambridge Guide to English Literature. NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Existential consumption and irrational desire Richard Elliott University of Oxford, Oxford, UK If marketing is truly the â€Å"ultimate social practice of postmodern consumer culture† (Firat, 1993) then it carries the heavy burden of â€Å"determining the conditions and meanings of life for the future† (Firat and Venkatesh, 1993). Certainly, social theory is now focusing on consumption as playing a central role in the way the social world is constructed, and it can be argued that marketing is too important just to be left to marketers as it plays a â€Å"key role in giving meaning to life through consumption† (van Raaij, 1993).Marketing has been criticized from within as being a â€Å"technique† without moral regard for the consequences of its actions, and there is no shortage of critics of its most public face: advertising. This paper aims at identifying some of the issues raised by postmodern and poststructuralist accounts of consumption. In particular, it is argued that consumption can be conceptualized from cultural, social and psychological perspectives as being a prime site for the negotiation of conflicting themes of freedom and control.It is proposed here that in postmodernity the consumption of symbolic meaning, particularly through the use of advertising as a cultural commodity, provides the individual with the opportunity to construct, maintain and communicate identity and social meanings. This use of consumption as a resource for meaning creation and social transactions is a process that involves the making of choices that are sufficiently important to be considered as existential.This is not an attempt at rehabilitating the practice of marketing, but is intended to demonstrate that the consumer is far from being a passive victim but is an active agent in the construction of meaning. In part this can be seen as a response to Olander’s call for â€Å"consumer research for the consumer’s sake† (Olander, 1993), but also as providing theoretical underpinning for concepts such as â€Å"advertising literacy† (Ritson and Elliott, 1995a) which attempt to build new socially located and meaning-based-models of advertising.Exploring some consumption dialectics As a heuristic device to help unpack some of the complexity of the consumption experience, five dialectics will be explored and their (sometimes polar) tensions used as analytical frames for reviewing competing discourses on the meanings of consumption: My thanks to Geoff Easton and Rolland Munro for discussions which improved the ideas in this paper, some of which have been explored in Elliott and Ritson (1995). Existential consumption and irrational desire 285 European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 1 No. 3/4, 1997, pp. 285-296.  © MCB University Press, 0309-0566 European Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 286 (1) the material versus the symbolic; (2) the social versus the self; (3) desire versus satisfaction; (4) rationality versus irrationality; and (5) creativity versus constraint. It is acknowledged that binary oppositions are essentially structuralist and thus in danger of betraying the complexity of the poststructuralist accounts they are being used to elucidate here, and that they are inevitably reductionist.However, postmodernism is riven with contradictions, even Baudrillard’s account of postmodernity is itself a totalizing â€Å"meta-narrative† (Hebdige, 1989), so we must learn to participate in the â€Å"tolerance of incompatible alternatives† (Lyotard, 1984) and â€Å"the juxtaposition of opposites and contradictions† (Foster, 1983) called for by postmodern theorists in the hope that it can develop our understanding(s) of the meaning(s) of these complex ideas.As a heuristic device, these bipolar oppositions should not be read as posited structures but merely as aids to coming to grips with the sometimes mind-numbing interrelations between what are often incommensurable co ncepts. The binary opposition is false and should, of course, be allowed to â€Å"melt into air† (Berman, 1983). The material versus the symbolic As soon as a product’s ability to satisfy mere physical need is transcended, then we enter the realm of the symbolic and it is symbolic meaning that is used in the search for the meaning of existence (Fromm, 1976).Central to postmodern theories of consumption is the proposition that consumers no longer consume products for their material utilities but consume the symbolic meaning of those products as portrayed in their images; products in fact become commodity signs (Baudrillard, 1981). â€Å"The real consumer becomes a consumer of illusions† (Debord, 1977) and â€Å"the ad-dict buys images not things† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994). This semiotic perspective of products as symbols raises difficult questions about the location of cultural meaning.The term symbol itself can relate to the product that carries meaning or to the meaning it carries, and the interpretation of meaning is a complex product of what is contained in the representation and what the individual brings to the representation (LeVine, 1984). Symbolism can be analysed semiotically by examination of the system of signs and what they signify. It has been realized, however, that this leads to an infinite regress as one sign leads to another without there ever being anything â€Å"real† outside the system.All meaning is socially constructed and there is no essential external reference point, so ultimately â€Å"There is nothing outside the text† (Derrida, 1977). To complicate matters further, symbolic interpretation is essentially non-rational improvisation that does not obey the codes of language but operates at the unconscious level (Sperber, 1975). A Jungian analysis goes even further and suggests that the full significance of a symbol cannot be Existential grasped in purely intellectual terms, if it becomes fully definable in rational consumption and terms it is no longer a true symbol (Storr, 1973). rrational desire But even for the sign-dependent human being things are never purely material nor purely meaningful, there is always a mediated relation between matter and meaning. This mediated process operates through the materiality 287 of language as a dynamic force in the transformation of an indeterminate range of human possibilities into a restricted moral economy of meaning, in which we are simultaneously authors of and authored by the language with which we try to communicate (Pfohl, 1992).This relationship is partly a function of the individual’s ability to understand and control the interaction between the material and the symbolic, and material objects themselves are always in transit and their meaning is likewise on a trajectory (Appadurai, 1986). The social versus the self The functions of the symbolic meanings of products operate in two directions, outward in constructing the social world – social-symbolism – and inward towards constructing our self-identity: self-symbolism (Elliott, 1995).Consumption of the symbolic meaning of products is a social process that helps make visible and stable the basic categories of a culture which are under constant change, and consumption choices â€Å"become a vital source of the culture of the moment† (Douglas and Isherwood, 1978). The meanings of consumer goods are grounded in their social context and the demand for goods derives more from their role in cultural practices rather than from the satisfaction of simple human needs (Douglas and Isherwood, 1978). Consumer goods, then, are more than just objects of economic exchange, â€Å"they are goods to think with, goods to speak with† (Fiske, 1989).Consumption as a cultural practice is one way of participating in social life and may be an important element in cementing social relationships, while the whole system of consumption is an unco nscious expression of the existing social structure through a seductive process which pushes the purchasing impulse until it reaches the â€Å"limits of economic potential† (Baudrillard, 1988). It is within this social context that the individual uses consumer goods and the consumption process as the materials with which to construct and maintain an identity, form relationships and frame psychological events (Lunt and Livingstone, 1992).The self-symbolic role of material goods is long established in social anthropology and the individual’s attachment to objects may be a culturally universal function which symbolizes security, expresses the self-concept and signifies connection to society (Wallendorf and Arnould, 1988). Consumer goods are not only used to construct our self-identity but are also used by others to make inferences about us that guide their behaviour towards us (Dittmar, 1992). But now in postmodernity we are able to use consumer products to become any of our â€Å"possible selves† (Markus and Nurius, 1986) inEuropean Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 288 which we utilize consumer goods to construct pastiches of others we have been exposed to via the media or more directly. â€Å"In cyberspace, I can change myself as easily as I change my clothes† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994). But the choices as to which self to construct and present are attended by the possibility of social consequences which may be very negative for example, a failure of a young person to utilize symbolic capital in the form of knowledge of the appropriate meaning of advertising can lead to rejection by the peer group (O’Donohoe, 1994).Desire versus satisfaction The symbolic gratification promised by advertising manages to recode a commodity as a desirable psycho-ideological sign (Wernick, 1991), and the operation of advertising at the unconscious level is driven by the search for an imaginary self which motivates the individual with desire for cohere nce and meaning (Lacan, 1977).Advertising feeds the desire to achieve the unobtainable unity of the self with destabilized meanings (Featherstone, 1991), images which separate commodities from their original use and offer the possibility to reconstruct the self by purchasing the symbolic meaning of goods and constructing a â€Å"DIY self† (Bauman, 1991). For as Williamson (1978) points out, â€Å"The conscious chosen meaning in most people’s lives comes from what they consume†, and this is energized by the attachment of bodily desire to symbolic meaning where the inchoate needs of the pre-linguistic self are channelled into language.Central to Lacanian theory is the mirror-phase, where the child recognizes itself in a mirror and assumes an image through a transformation from the imaginary to the symbolic. The symbolic for Lacan is linked with absence, in that symbols represent a world of people and things that are not there. The â€Å"real† can only be ap proached through the symbolic medium of language, yet language itself contains the contradictions and fragmentations of gender, power and meaning (Kristeva, 1980).The symbolic focus of much promotional activity in postmodernity is desire, and for Lacan desire exists in the gap between language and the unconscious. â€Å"Desire does not desire satisfaction. To the contrary desire desires desire. The reason images are so desirable is that they never satisfy† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994). Postmodern consumption is inextricably linked with aspects of sexuality, both conscious and unconscious, as it promises the satisfaction of previously taboo desires through imagery and representations (Mort, 1988).These desires are constructed through the symbolic linkage between consumption and the human body (Kellner, 1992), and operate in large part through the consumption imagery with which we are surrounded and which makes even mundane consumer actions, such as looking in shop windows, high ly significant in our psychic lives (Bocock, 1993). Thus meaning is created through a search for links between identity (the social) and the self and the pursuit of sexual satisfaction through consumption, both of which are doomed to failure.Rationality versus irrationality Existential This postmodern fragmentation of the experience of self has been termed the consumption and condition of â€Å"multiphrenia† by Gergen (1991), who points out that the new irrational desire opportunities for exercise of choice are almost unlimited and so bring with them a â€Å"vertigo of the valued† where the expansion of â€Å"wants† reduces our choice to â€Å"want not†, a multiplicity of competing values and beliefs which make â€Å"the very 289 idea of rational choice become meaningless†.The mass media, and advertising in particular, are responsible for an â€Å"expansion of inadequacy† which is encouraged by a barrage of new criteria for self-evaluation. Cushman (1990) argues that we are in an era of the â€Å"empty self† in which alienation and loss of community can be solved by the â€Å"lifestyle† solution in which the consumer constructs a â€Å"self † by purchasing and â€Å"ingesting† products featured in advertising, a behaviour which can be construed as, at best, of limited rationality.In the Lacanian perspective there is a stress on the individual subject as being fragmented and incoherent, and this leads to the framing of the consumer as simultaneously both rational and irrational, able to both consume and reject what is being consumed, to desire and yet consume without satisfaction (Nava, 1991). â€Å"Identity becomes infinitely plastic in a play of images that knows no end. Consistency is no longer a virtue but becomes a vice; integration is limitation† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994).The consumption of meaning, even the meaning of supposedly unambiguous television soap operas, is always am bivalent and contradictory (Ang, 1985), and the modes of rationality which operate in the space between the unconscious world of the imaginary and the symbolic world of language are little understood as they are constrained by the â€Å"despotic signifying semiologies† which limit the possibilities for other forms of semiotic systems and other forms of rationality (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983).The conceptualization of other modes of (ir)rationality is paralleled by the recent development in social cognition of the theory of motivated choice, which emphasizes the role of emotion in decision processes (Forgas, 1992; Kunda, 1990). Motivated choice is where judgement is driven by an emotional desire to arrive at a particular conclusion, where biased information search and reasoning processes are used â€Å"to arrive at those conclusions they want to arrive at† (Kunda, 1990).From these perspectives, cool, rational, informationprocessing choice is at least uncommon, and may i n fact be very rare, for â€Å"the real, the really real, is irrational, that reason builds upon irrationalities† (de Unamuno, 1962). Creativity versus constraint The dialectic between freedom and control in the consumption domain is typified by the influence of advertising. The ability of consumers to resist the influence of advertising and thereby exercise freedom has been minimized by the Marxist analysis of its central role in the maintenance of capitalism (Leiss etEuropean Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 290 al. , 1990) which operates through the creation of â€Å"ideological hegemony† (Goldman, 1992). Marxists have also portrayed advertising as a â€Å"magic system† (Williams, 1980) of magical inducements and satisfactions which validates consumption, if only in fantasy, by association with social and personal meanings and thus transforms goods which had rational use-value into irrational symbols.This focus on the power of the symbolic is further developed by Williamson (1986) who argues that advertisements function at an unconscious level at which the consumer is unable to resist latent meaning transfer. More recent post-Marxist analyses have weakened their deterministic stance and recognized that â€Å"the meanings and uses of products cannot be entirely controlled† (Williamson, 1986).However, hegemony still exists, but now depends on affective gratifications provided by mass-mediated popular culture where â€Å"everyday life in amusement society proceeds within a dialectic of enfeeblement and empowerment† (Langman, 1992). From a post-structuralist perspective limited freedom is allowed to the individual through consumption choices: â€Å"for most members of contemporary society individual freedom, if available at all, comes in the form of consumer freedom† through which the individual must take responsibility to invent and consciously create a self-identity (Bauman, 1988).Through the â€Å"new existentialism† (Laermans, 1993) consumers can exercise the freedom to create new meanings for goods through their own idiosyncratic performance of everyday life (de Certeau, 1984). This freedom can be used for collective and individual resistance against the imposed meanings of the dominant cultural categories, particularly through the choice of style and the use of bricolage tactics (Fiske, 1987; Hebdige, 1979).A sustained argument for the active exercise of freedom through consumption is developed by Willis (1990), who characterizes the consumption choices of the young as the behaviour of â€Å"practical existentialists†. The young are seen as exercising choice through consumption-related symbolic creativity which operates via the concept of â€Å"grounded aesthetics†, a process which builds higher-level symbolic meaning structures from the mundane concrete experiences of everyday life.This allows the young a small creative space for making the received social world, to some ext ent, controllable by them. This process is very similar to the marginal â€Å"tactics† (de Certeau, 1984) by which the powerless make sense of consumption, and in relation to advertising would allow them some control over the meaning of a text, but not control over the agenda within which the text is constructed (Morley and Silverstone, 1990).This is a limited freedom where we â€Å"make our own spaces within the place of the other† (Fiske, 1989) but yet it is potentially liberating in that to escape from dominant meanings is to construct our own subjectivity (Condit, 1989), and can therefore be conceptualized as â€Å"authentic† existential choice, rejecting the â€Å"bad faith† of accepting the dominant consumption meanings as inevitable or unproblematic (Sartre, 1969). Advertisements can be seen as cultural products in their own right, and Existential young people consume them independently of the products and have a creative consumption and symbolic r elationship with them.Although Willis (1990) sees advertising as irrational desire manipulative to some extent, he emphasises the scope for individual choice and creativity in meaning and identity construction, as individuals use advertising images as personal and social resources. These are invested with specific 291 meanings anchored in everyday life, via the process of grounded aesthetics, which are then used to construct or maintain personal and social identities. These creative practices are particularly prevalent amongst young people of â€Å"Generation X† (O’Donohoe, 1994; Ritson and Elliott, 1995b).The construction of social identity through â€Å"styles of consumption† is referred to in terms of lifestyle membership of â€Å"neo-tribes† by Bauman (1990), where one may join the tribe by buying and displaying tribe-specific paraphernalia. The neo-tribe is informal, without authority and only requires acceptance of the obligation to take on the iden tity-symbols of the tribe. The consumer may thus exercise the freedom to choose social groupings through existential consumption.The exercise of choice through consumption now flows across national boundaries in a global cultural economy through the operation of advertising â€Å"mediascapes† which are image-centred strips of reality which offer the consumer a series of elements â€Å"out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives, their own as well as those of others living in other places† (Appaduri, 1990). If aspects of advertising imagery can be appropriated at will by â€Å"practical existentialists† then they may, as Baudrillard (1983) suggests, â€Å"live everywhere already in an ‘aesthetic’ hallucination of reality†, in which the real and the simulated are indistinguishable.However, the extent to which, in a â€Å"mediacratic† age, advertising reflects reality or actually creates it is problematic. Are the â€Å"practica l existentialists† using advertising or is it really using them? Schudson (1984) suggests that advertising is â€Å"capitalist realist art† and that although it does not have a monopoly of the symbolic marketplace, different social groups are differentially vulnerable especially during transitional states of their lives. This form of art idealizes the consumer and portrays as normative, special moments of satisfaction.It â€Å"reminds us of beautiful moments in our own lives or it pictures magical moments we would like to experience† (Schudson, 1984). This suggests that young people in particular, who are at a transitional state in their lives, may be subject to excessive influence by â€Å"buying-in† to advertising’s depiction of a false reality. In contrast, young people may be exercising (limited) freedom in their use of advertising as a cultural commodity for â€Å"even as the market makes its profits, it supplies some of the materials for alte rnative or oppositional symbolic work† (Willis, 1990).This dichotomy between creativity and constraint (Moores, 1993) in the context of advertising is represented by the problematic of hegemony, which sets parameters on the freedom to construct meaning (Ang, 1990). Hegemony European Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 292 does not dominate from outside but is a â€Å"thick texture† which interlaces resistance and submission, opposition and complicity (Martin-Barbero, 1988) and which therefore poses difficult problems for ethnographic analysis to unpack.Structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) offers a solution to the dualism of structure versus agency, by positing that the â€Å"structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organise†. Thus the consumption of advertising can be both an active and creative practice yet is carried out within constraints imposed by material situation and ideological hegemony. Desire, irrati onality and choice Desire develops from physical need through a growing awareness of the existential choice between a desire to have and a desire to be, desire being defined by absence or lack of being (Sartre, 1969).Lacan’s identification of language as the symbolic order which develops from the pre-verbal imaginary order accompanied by increasing anxiety about the self has been reframed by Kristeva (1980) as the two orders of the semiotic and the symbolic. The imaginary/semiotic order is unconscious whilst the symbolic order is rational, but there is potential for â€Å"slippage† between the two orders of meaning, with a regression to the unconscious and irrational order of the imaginary where desire for the unattainable comfort of the perfect mother holds sway.The gap between the fantasy world of consumption day-dreams of perfect pleasure and the disappointments of reality is the basic motivation for Campbell’s (1987) â€Å"autonomous imaginative hedonismâ⠂¬  which results in limitless wants and a permanent state of frustration. The limited resources of the individual consumer must therefore require choices to be made, choices of which desire to feed and which to deny, which meanings to consume and which to reject or avoid. This vital act of consumer choice may not be to choose that which is most pleasing, but to reject that which is most distasteful.Bourdieu (1984) suggests tastes that â€Å"when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes†. We may define ourselves not by what we like, but by what we dislike, and it is strong negative emotional reactions to the consumption practices of others that may structure our social categories. This â€Å"refusal of tastes† seems to operate at the level of the imaginary/semiotic and be driven by pre-verbal inchoate emotion. While consumption may often operate at the level of the imaginary/semiotic or day-dream, it can also have â€Å"real† effects in facilitating the construction of self-identity (Falk, 1994).Phenomenological descriptions of the everyday consumer experiences of women (Thompson et al. , 1990) have surfaced a dominant theme of being in control/being out of control which reflected an anxiety about not buying in the â€Å"right† way, so that women felt guilty when they perceived themselves as not making rational purchase decisions. However, they nevertheless admitted to making purchases in a â€Å"dreamlike† way when they were â€Å"captivated† by a product. In this situation, to act in a self-perceived rrational fashion, to surrender to the symbolic, is itself an authentic existential Existential act of creating meaning through choice, the choice to be irrational. consumption and But to what extent is existential consumption the conscious exercise of irrational desire freedom through choice as idealized by existentialism? Certainly there are severe limits to the fr eedom contained in consumption choices due to individuals having unequal access to the necessary resources, so existential 293 consumption may only exist for some people in some societies.However, the lived experience described by consumers (Elliott and Ritson, 1995; Thompson et al. , 1990) conveys a strong sense of Sartre’s â€Å"engagement† even if not at the level of decisional seriousness discussed by Kierkegaard (Macquarrie, 1972). Marxists may dismiss an individual’s claim to be making conscious choices about consumption as â€Å"false consciousness† but this is to deny the â€Å"situated meaningfulness of everyday consumer experiences† (Thompson et al. , 1990). The freedom of practical existentialism is authentic, even if it is constrained by inequalities in the economic system and by ideological hegemony.The emotion-laden experiences of the consumer – irrational, incoherent and driven by unconscious desires; constrained by the market economy yet obtaining limited freedom through existential consumption and symbolic creativity; able to build a DIY self through consumption yet suffering an expansion of inadequacy through advertising – this constructs the subjectivity of the postmodern consumer with whom postmodern marketing (Brown, 1995) must deal. References Ang, I. (1985), Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, Methuen, London. 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World’s tallest building

On 4th of January,2010, Dubai, where there was merely wind-blown litter a coevals ago, witnessed the gap ceremonial of the universe ‘s tallest edifice, † Burj Khalifa † . A superb work of art with hard structural jobs took 1,325 yearss to completion since the start of the digging work in January,2004. â€Å" Burj Khalifa † has returned the name of the â€Å" World ‘s Tallest Structure † back to the Middle-Eastern constructions where the Great Pyramid of Giza claimed that award for 1000000s of old ages before the building of Lincoln Cathedral in England in 1311. It is astonishing to cognize that the triple-lobed pes print is inspired from the desert flower â€Å" Hymenocallis † which is common in Dubai. Bing located in Dubai, UAE, the tower was influenced by Islamic and middle-eastern architecture.This influence resulted in the tri-axial geometry of Burj Khalifa. The tower consists of three wings arranged around the a cardinal nucleus in the form of Y.As the tower rises from the level desert land, reverses occur through the 26 coiling degrees diminishing the cross-section of the tower as it spirals skywards. The Y-shape program is ideal for residential and hotel use maximising outwards position and inward natural light.Plus, it allows maximal position of the Arabic Gulf. As a super-tall construction, there were many hard structural problems.To guarantee safety and effectivity of the selected design, a theoretical account of the edifice was subjected to extended equal plan. Interior designers used the â€Å" buttressed nucleus † in â€Å" Burj Khalifa † consisting of a hexangular hub buttressed by three wings poising each other organizing the Y-shape. Not merely poising each other but moving as a tripod base which is more stable than a four-cornered base. The corridor walls of the wings widening from the cardinal nucleus to the terminal of each air current terminate in a thickened cock caput walls. The chief intent of the Y-shape is to cut down the air current effects every bit good as maintaining the construction simple, safe and surrogate constructability. The consequence is a stiff tower that can back up itself laterally and overcomes writhing. Reverses in each grade occur in a coiling stepping form up the edifice. These reverses confuse the air current as the air current whirls ne'er get organized because at each tier the edifice has different form. The hexangular nucleus provides the indispensable torsional opposition like a closed tubing.The flying walls and hammer caput walls behave as webs and rims of a beam defying air current shears and minutes. Specific strength of concrete walls ranges from C60 to C80 regular hexahedron strength utilizing Portland cement and fly ash. The C80 concrete used in the lower part of the edifice has a specified Young ‘s Elastic Modulus ( E ) of 43,800 N/mm2 after 90 yearss. Wall and column sizes were determined utilizing Virtual work/LaGrange multiplier methodological analysis which consequences in really efficient construction. Wall thickness and column sizes are adjusted to cut down the consequence of concrete weirdo and shrinking. To cut down the consequence of differential column shortening between margin columns and interior walls, the size of margin columns were adjusted such that the self-weight gravitation emphasis moving on it is equal to that emphasis on the interior walls. As shrinking in concrete occurs faster in dilutant elements, the margin columns had the same thickness of interior corridor walls ( 600 millimeter ) to guarantee that both columns and walls will shorten by the same rate due to concrete shrinking. That super-structure had foundations dwelling of a strengthened concrete raft of thickness 3.7 metres supported by 194 hemorrhoids. Pouring the raft was divided into four separate pours. Self consolidated concrete ( SCC ) of C50 regular hexahedron strength was used. Each heap is 1.5 metres diameter ; 43 metre long buried more than 50 metres deep. Hemorrhoids were designed to back up 3,000 dozenss each and while burden trials, they supported over 6,000 dozenss. Unfortunately, the tower ‘s infrastructure is constructed in a groundwater holding chloride and sulphate concentrations higher than those in sea H2O! Having these aggressive conditions, a rigorous plan of steps was required to guarantee the lastingness of the foundations.Measures applied specialised waterproof screens, increasing concrete thickness, add-on of corrosion inhibitors to the concrete mix and a cathodic protection system utilizing Ti mesh. To acquire higher strength and lower permeable concrete screen to the steel bars, a controlled permeableness formwork was used. Besides, a particular concrete mix was designed to defy the onslaught from the groundwater. The concrete mix for hemorrhoids holding 25 % fly ash,7 % silicon oxide smoke and a H2O to cement ratio of 0.32, was designed to be to the full self consolidating concrete holding slack of 675 ±75 millimeters to avoid defects during building. For that unprecedented tallness of the edifice, it was indispensable to calculate air current forces and ensuing gestures in the upper degrees as they became dominant factors in the structural design. Wind tunnel trials were undertaken under the way of Rowan Williams Davies and Irwin Inc ‘ . The air current tunnel plan included rigid-model force balance trial, a full multi-degree of freedom aeroelastic theoretical account surveies, measurings of localised force per unit areas, prosaic air current environment surveies and climatic surveies. Models used was of scale 1:500. The air current tunnel informations was so combined with the dynamic belongings of the tower to acquire the full tower ‘s dynamic response to weave and the overall effectual air current force distributions. The tower has six of import air current waies. The chief three wind waies are when the air current is blowing into the olfactory organ of each of the three wings. The other three waies when the air current is blowing between the wings. The orientation and reverses of the tower were selected comparative to the most frequent strong air current way for Dubai. A several unit of ammunition of air current tunnel trials were undertaken during the building of the tower. After each unit of ammunition of trials, the geometry of the tower every bit good as the figure and spacing of reverses changed to minimise the consequence of the air current forces on the tower by confounding the air current. As the design reached its terminal, a more accurate aeroelastic theoretical account was made. The aeroelastic theoretical account is every bit elastic as the edifice. The consequences of proving the aeroelastic theoretical account showed that the predicted tower ‘s gesture was within the ISO criterion recommended values without the demand of any subsidiary damping. At the tallest point of the tower, it sways a sum of 1.5 metres. Particular concrete mix design holding compressive strength of 10 MPa at 10 hours for the perpendicular elements to allow the continuity of building rhythm and a design strength/modulus of 80 MPa/44GPa. The concrete trials indicated that the compressive strength of used concrete used was much higher than the needed 1. One of the most hard issues in concrete design is to guarantee pumpability of concrete to make universe record highs particularly in high summer temperatures. Four basic separate mixes were developed to enable decreased force per unit area pumpability when the edifice gets higher. A horizontal pumping test was conducted in February 2005 holding the same force per unit area losingss equivalent to height of 600 metres to find the pumpability of these mixes.The concrete mix used contained 13 % fly ash and 10 % silica smoke with maximal aggregative size of 20 millimeter. The mix is virtually self consolidating concrete holding slack of 600 millimeter and used for pumping force per unit area transcending 200 bars. After the degree 127, a less strength concrete is required ( 60 MPa compressive strength ) holding maximal aggregative size of 10 millimeter. High quality control was required to guarantee pumpability to the highest concrete floor sing the terrible conditions of conditions which vary from a really cool winter to a really hot summer with temperature transcending 50 & A ; deg ; degree Celsiuss. Pumping concrete was executed utilizing Putzmeister pumps which are capable to pump concrete up to 350 bars through high force per unit area 150 mm grapevine. To change over the dream of Burj Khalifa to world, the latest promotions in building techniques and material engineering were used. The walls ‘ signifiers were made utilizing Doka ‘s SKE 100 automatic self-climbing formwork system. Steel signifiers were used in the round olfactory organ. Columns and the floor slabs are poured on MevaDec formwork. The building sequence for the construction began with the cardinal nucleus and slabs being cast in the three subdivisions, followed by the wings walls and slabs and so the nose columns and slabs. To guarantee the verticalness of the construction, a particular GPS monitoring system was developed to supervise the verticalness of the edifice as it gets higher. This was due to the limited convential appraising techniques in the site. When completed, Burj Khalifa has become the universe ‘s tallest construction. Bing a brilliant accomplishment in utilizing the latest engineerings and stuffs, able to incorporate the architectural design construct with the structural design, Burj Khalifa will ever be a particular instance to analyze. N.B: Highlighted sentences are from ( Engineering the World ‘s Tallest – Burj Dubai )