Balance Of Power :: essays research papers

The Balance of Power Throughout the semester, a theme that has guided our thoughts has been the idea that the self is the capacity to have capacities. Through what we have read, written about, and discussed, we have been trying to come up with our own answers to the questions about the self; what a capacity is, how we find them, which ones are essential to human flourishing, what we do with them once they are found? Yet all of these questions lead us to answer that final and defining question of "what is the 'truth'?" A capacity is a capability or a realized power in a person. Some of the authors that we read throughout the semester believed that these capacities must be implanted into us, and then nurtured and trained. C.S. Lewis says that, "The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."(1-p.27) However, in this statement he contradicts his own belief. In order for irrigation to work and make things grow, there must be something there beneath the surface to begin with. This is exactly my belief. I agree with Lewis that our capacities must be trained and educated, but those that are essential to human flourishing are inside our hearts waiting to be uncovered. But how then, do we go about uncovering these capacities? The answer is so simple, and yet far to complex to completely explain in one paper. It takes thought. In fact, thought is the best example of a capacity. No one can teach thought. It is an innate quality of all human beings. However, thought is not complete in its original state. We must train and educate our ability to think. We can train it to be analytical, critical, evidential, logical, careful, clear, subjective, objective, etc. The list could go on and on. We can 'irrigate' it and watch it grow. But that is assuming that it is there in the first place. Kierkegaard was on the right track to uncovering what is inside of us. He believed that it would take subjective thought about ourselves, not being detached from our feelings, but letting our emotions be our guide to what we truly believe. However, subjective thinking alone cannot decipher what capacities are essential to our lives. It gives us a place to start from with what really matters to us in our hearts, but it is clouded by our biases and prejudgements.

Stereotyping Girls Who Drive Trucks :: Sociology

Stereotyping Girls Who Drive Trucks There is nothing more thrilling to me than being a girl who drives a truck. The sense of power you get almost makes up for the harassment. Driving a truck as a female automatically places you in one of two categories, whether they're true or not. You are either the cute lil' thang in Daddy's big pick-up, or you are a bull dike. Don't worry; there are ways to tell which category you're in. Should you be the cute lil' thang, you might be a little chunky or just plain little. You cannot however, be fat. One probably wouldn't want to be very tall either. Your pants should always be really tight, and skirts should be really short. These should always be worn with really small shirts. It should be noted that just tight or short, etc. is not accepted. "Really" must precede any adjectives. You should also thoroughly enjoy being called "sugar," and "darlin'" by mechanics trying to rip you off. Your truck must be really big and new. Even ridiculously big, and you should have trouble driving it (or at least give the appearance of such). Acrylic nails are big with this group, but not too long, and always maintained. The best advice is to imagine this group the cheerleaders of the road workers. The second group of lady pickup drivers is a substantially less desirable category. To be in this group, you need to be either skinny or fat. There is no in between. The hair should be worn in a ponytail or braid; a buzz cut is also acceptable. The lady mullet makes an occasional appearance as well. Cowboy hats (not the cute kind) and roper boots are good, and a big belt with lots of keys. If this is too much, a t-shirt and khaki shorts work too, as long as you promise to wear ankle socks and sandals. You truck should never be 4-wheel

Future of Indian Democracy Essay

For the use of the term â€Å"democracy† as referring to a system involving multiparty elections, representative government, and freedom of speech. Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Democracy allows eligible citizens to participate equally—either directly or through elected representatives—in the proposal, development, and creation of laws. It encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination. India is the largest democratic country in the world. All around the world, India’s democracy is taken as an example for the countries all over the world. But the real question is this type of democracy really beneficial for our country. Where is it taking our country in the near future? What is the future of Indian democracy? In India anybody can stand for elections and win to became member of legislative assembly of that area. Anybody can become prime minister, chief minister. But is this a good thing? Developed Countries like USA have highly educated people as their leaders. For a developing country like India where proper measures need to be taken for development, uneducated officials are useless for the development of the nation. The future of our country is in the dark as most of the ministers and leaders are less qualified or uneducated. Corruption is in the roots of our system. Most of the money sanctioned for development of the country such as roads, schools l, colleges, etc is consumed by oh our corrupt leaders. Most of the money we pay as taxes is eaten by our leaders. There is no strict measure for verifying or trying these leaders. The five year form of government is a curse for our country. All the ruling partiers enjoy the ruling power for the first four years and In the last year many rules are implemented to lure the voters and gain votes of the people. In thinking about Indian democracy and its future prospects, commentators have lavished far too much attention on â€Å"politics† in the narrowest conception of the term. There is much speculation, for example, on whether India might move towards a two-party system or some variation of it, with the Congress and the left parties constituting one bloc and the other bloc being constituted by BJP and its allies. But this kind of scenario has little room for parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), which together dominate politics in Uttar Pradesh, where efforts by the Congress to reinvent itself do not hold much promise of success. In the General Elections of 2004, the Left Front won 60 seats and came to hold the decisive swing vote. While so far the left has shown little inclination to revolt, and West Bengal is rapidly retooling itself to become attractive to the corporate world and foreign investors, the possibility of genuine and irreconcilable differences developing between the Congress and the Left Front should never be minimized. The wisdom and resilience of ordinary people has been exemplified not only at the ballot box, but in grassroots movements and cultural practices of syncretism. Secondly, the Constitution of India remains, despite attempts to subvert its emancipator provisions, a document and a vision that continues to hold out the promise of equality, justice, and opportunity. It has survived the wreckage of an authoritarian executive and will outlive the Supreme Court’s present disposition to allow massive land grabs in the name of progress and development. Thirdly, though Mohandas Gandhi’s assassins never seem to rest, the specter of Gandhi remains to haunt, guide, and inspire Indians who are resistant to everything that passes for â€Å"normal politics† and have not entirely succumbed to the oppressions of modernity. As I have elsewhere written, Gandhi took great risks and was not in the least cowed down by history, the sanctity of traditions, or scriptural authority. Some six decades ago, Indians entered into a tryst with destiny. Now is the time to gamble everything on the unique experiment that constitutes Indian democracy

Panera Bread Essay

What are the Panera Bread’s primary sources of competitive advantage? In your judgment, are these sources of advantages sustainable? Why or why not? Panera’s primary sources of competitive advantage are: (1) the distinctive nature of its bakery products, (2) its brand strength, (3) the atmosphere of its restaurants, and (4). its position in the restaurant industry Yes,Panera Bread Co. (NASDAQ: PNRA) operates the signature restaurant chain Panera Bread, selling hand-crafted breads, sandwiches, salads, and drinks. Panera Bread bakery-cafes are often associated with the concept of â€Å"fast casual†, a mixture between fast food and more upscale casual dining. Customers still pay for their food at the counter, like a traditional fast food restaurant, but Panera arranges tables and chairs to be conducive to group meetings. Most Panera Bread restaurants are located in suburban strip malls and regional malls. As of December 29, 2009, Panera had 1,380 bakery-cafes, spanning 38 states, as well as some locations in Canada. Traditionally, companies like Panera have suffered in recessions, which decrease the frequency with which consumers eat out at restaurants. 1] However, Panera’s strategy during the recession has been â€Å"to stay consistent and not to react to the recession†, keeping costs constant and offering new salads and sandwiches. [2] As a result, Panera’s â€Å"fast casual† niche (between casual dining and fast food) contributes to its relative success; this positioning allowed it to avoid discounting wars and maintain its margins by attracting customers with a higher quality product perceived to be a good value for the money. Panera bread has a great meal of Bacon Turkey Bravo with 28G of fat per meal.

A Comparison of “Everyman” and Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus”

A Comparison of â€Å"Everyman† and Christopher Marlowe's â€Å"Doctor Faustus† Everyman and Doctor Faustus are both Morality Plays, these are specifically plays that existed within the Medieval period. They were popular during this period as they were intended to instruct the audience in the Christian way and attitudes to life. The morality play is essentially an allegory written in dramatic form. In the fourteenth Century, morality plays were mainly based on the seven deadly sins as in everyman with each character representing each sin. Everyman centers around allegory. It focuses on the allegorical representations of moral issues with the inclusion of figures that represent abstractions of the issues that are confronted. Doctor Faustus follows the general five-act structure of an Elizabethan Romantic Tragedy. However Christopher Marlowe used the structure of an older Medieval form of English Drama, the morality play as a model. Morality plays tended to show the moral struggle of mans soul and the conflict of good and evil. This is evident in the play of Doctor Faustus who is embroiled in a battle between the temptation of the devil and God. You could argue that Doctor Faustus is not classed as a morality play. Because in the tradition of a morality play God and the devil are external forces that affect the individual. However, in Doctor Faustus it is far more of an internal drama inside Faustus? own mind. Both are entirely didactic in nature, they were made with the intent to educate their audience in one respect or another. There was a moral to each that conveyed similar messages. Therefore the term ? morality play? correctly defines each one. The medieval time period in which Everyman was written contained a society that revolved around religion (Ecclesiasticism) The fact that Everyman can get nowhere without turning to religion directly reflects on the attitudes of the middle ages. There is constant references to the beliefs and ideas of the Catholic Church such as confession, penitence and the Virgin Mary this suggests the catholic centered society in which the play existed. It concentrates on the qualities of the catholic religion that are important in the journey to heaven. Everyman is a symbol of the human condition and how t is understood by medieval Catholicism. Whereas in the sixteenth century in which Doctor Faustus was written, saw a shift of Christian ideals. No longer was there only the strict belief in God but also the equal belief in the existence of the devil and the ? work of the devil.? The medieval world placed God at the centre of existence, leaving the individual and the natural world in second place. The emergence of the Renaissance is evident in Doctor Faustus by the clash between the church and the introduction of knowledge through science. The Reformation caused a dramatic change at that particular time, England had converted from predominantly catholic to a protestant country. This shift becomes apparent in Doctor Faustus in the scenes with the Pope. The Renaissance was also a time when the bubonic plague was at its peak of destruction. As a result the plague was a great concern of the theatre, audiences and writers. The plague was a large part of Marlowe? s life and work. Marlowe refers to the plague regularly in Doctor Faustus with examples such as ? A Plague on her.? Here Marlowe is using specific language to reflect certain aspect of the precise period, being Reformation. When considering the audience of each play, this can again create disagreement concerning the meaning of the term ? morality play.? Morality plays, as I have mentioned like Everyman, primarily express aspects of moral doctrine to the audience. In the Play Everyman, the anonymous author may have been a priest or teacher who was explaining the Christian values to an uneducated society. It is written by and for people of catholic religion. This would fit accurately into the description as a ? orality play.? However, some may argue that Doctor Faustus is more comically delivered as opposed to morally. Elizabethan audiences often viewed great tragedies such as this in a slightly humorous manner. Scenes such as the one with the Pope? s food and drink being stolen highlights this point. Also Marlowe includes numerous comical characters such as Wagner and Faustus? servant. Therefore ca n we still group this together with the other morality plays such as Doctor Faustus? Contrary to this, it is clear that the audience of the play Doctor Faustus are not simply an audience of ? Commoners or clowns,? they have to employ a certain level of intelligence and education to understand the symbolism and allegory present in the play. We can acknowledge the play of Doctor Faustus as one from the Elizabethan period as its verbs differ from modern day usage, with phrases such as ? What see you and ? You look not well.? Also Elizabethan playwrights wrote in blank verse or iambic pentameter, as its evident here. Marlowe uses various Christian phrases to summon the devil, who is providing the power. The most obvious reference to Christian language is shown through Faustus? Latin Chant which is used to raise the devil. Marlowe? s technique of hyperbole is demonstrated by his regular usage of blasphemy in the play. By using exaggeration like this, Marlowe is affecting the audience? s perception of the character of Faustus. The language used gives the character heroic stature. Contrast to Doctor Faustus, The language in Everyman is solely based on religion. There is reference to the original sinner Adam and the seven deadly sins, this mainly focuses on the notions of Christianity. The language used in both Everyman and Doctor Faustus represents the conflict between power and Christianity. In conclusion, Marlowe borrows many of the conventions of a morality play especially with the inclusion of the good and bad angels. This symbolizes his divided will. This is mirrored in the play Everyman where there is an obvious spiritual crisis of an individual who must chose between good and evil. Both Everyman and Doctor Faustus effectively reflect the periods in which they were written. Faustus is the product of an era that was deeply torn, it stands in the threshold between two periods-The Renaissance and the Middle Ages. It includes the notions of Good and evil, sin and salvation, as did religious dramas of the medieval period such as Everyman. Although some may see this comparison as the rejection of the medieval due to further emphasis on the individual rather than God. After all, the opening scene of Doctor Faustus was praising science and magic in favour of God. So where do we draw the line? Everyman statically reflects the period of medieval whereas Doctor Faustus focuses on the actual change in that particular period of the Reformation. Therefore it is possible to see the alteration from one period to another.

Communispace Essay

Communispace offers a unique process for administering market research. It offers a view into the minds of the customers of a brand by building brand-focused online communities in order to enable members to communicate with each other and generate focus groups to discuss the product. A community is built as a long-term project; it continues to produce valuable information for companies over the course of its existence. The business model utilized by Communispace helps to provide facilitation and management powered by technology and innovation. Communispace differentiates itself by focusing on the strategy of building online communities that act as an invaluable resource for testing ideas, generating feedback and exploring customers’ mindsets. Communispace can begin its analysis within 24 hours of launching an online community as it reaches out to a particular subset of people that would be most interested in commenting on and speaking about a particular product. A Word of Mouth campaign utilizes a different strategy. A targeted community would receive the product in the mail and would then ideally spread word around about the product to friends and neighbors. This campaign, while a beneficial tool for market research, was not a tool that Communispace utilized. There were many competitors that were better at this method. Simmons is a highly recognized FMCG company holding 20 brands that are found in over 95% of US households. Simmons wanted to promote its new organic product for weight conscious consumers via Communispace using word-of-mouth. The business problem being faced by Communispace was that it could not determine whether it would be undermining its strengths and strategy by taking this type of project or whether it would be detrimental to turn such an influential client down. The case states the communities are built on the foundations of sense of trust and the feeling that their contributions are really making a difference for the company. Communispace built its business on a strategy that reached potential customers by building online communities and did not serve the purpose of receiving a free product and talking about it outside the community. As Julie Wittes Schlack, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Design and a cofounder of Communispace points out in the case, the company’s growth depended solely on its core competency. Moreover, due to low entry to barrier into this particular arena of market research, there were many other competitors that had built their competitive advantage on doing word of mouth campaigns. So another problem that Communispace would be to weigh the options of benefits gained by entering into this WOM arena where they have no real advantage versus the damage they might incur by compromising on their core competency. In my opinion, Communispace should focus on the strategy that has defined them and not sacrifice their identity and corporate strategy. From the success and expansion of Communispace it is clear that they have gotten their process for building communities down to a science, thus allowing companies to not only to listen, but learn. Flipping this model on its head not only would completely alter the process in which companies engage in with their community, but it would also make for a far less exact science in what Communispace does? Moreover, word of mouth is something that can’t be manufactured to find success repeatedly, rather it should happen organically and not by force. Hence, making that a core competence for Communispace would prove exceedingly difficult because it is difficult to draw the valuation of a successful WOM and then repeatedly recreate its success. That is how would Communispace measure the effectiveness of the WOM campaigns? In the present scenario, they can provide their clients with reports and analysis on the conversations in the community, but how would they measure how effective their members are outside the community? Though advertising and creative marketing campaigns can spur word of mouth, a community approach would seem as a dishonest approach with a possibility of no results or backfiring on the credibility of the community. This, in turn would hamper the reputation that Communispace enjoys and might be detrimental to its social health in the long run as it would incite distrust amongst its community members which might lead to loss of present clients. The intense competition that Communispace will face, the potential loss of credibility of community members when they understand that the community is only for advertisement and the short-lived nature of WOM campaigns, hence, the campaign-fuelled business can undermine the long-time subscription model are reasons that support the decision to stick to their core services and not digress into an arena that utilises a model that is completely dissimilar to Communispace’s original one.

Egoism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Egoism - Essay Example The nurturing that each individual goes through plays a critical role in ethical subjectivism.  Without a doubt, human experiences define the perception of each individuals nurture and nature. In this process, ethical subjectivism is a byproduct of personal experience and holds no a truth since there is no absolute standard. It is evident that experiences define a profound judgment. Ethical subjectivism and minimum concept of morality clash because MCM is purely objective set of standards. MCM emphasizes â€Å"it is the greatest happiness of the greatest amount of right and wrong whereas Ethical subjectivism is purely a perception of one’s view regarding ethics. As mentioned above, self-respect does play a huge role because it diminishes approval of others. This is crucial for development and self-personal growth in my humble opinions because one is not tied to any other perceptions. Ethical egoism  is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from Kantian ethics because it differs from moral theories that avaries in this ream. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims one must take everything itno account. a. You and your significant other have been together for over a year. Your friends have started to point out that you do everything for this person. In particular, your best friend has pointed out that you no longer hang out with your old friends, you volunteer to do their chores around the house, and pay for many of the dates you go on. Additionally, you have neglected your own apartment and needs for the benefit of your significant other. S/he has asked you to skip work and take him/her to the doctor and run some errands around town. You just started a new job and you are not entirely sure of what the attendance policy is or if you can take off work. Considering all the facts and your history