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In F. Scott Fitzgerald's (158) novel, The Great Gatsby, narrator Nick Carraway calls Tom and Daisy Buchanan "careless people" who "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." While Nick's comments regarding his friends are accurate, they can also be applied to Nick himself, who acknowledges that he has been something less than "the honest, straightforward person" that his former girlfriend, Jordan Baker, once believed him to be" (156). Nevertheless, each of these characters, along with the central figure of Jay Gatsby, are in pursuit or possession of elements of the so-called American dream during a period in history when excess was the order of the day. The reader is immediately made aware that Carraway is a person of some status. As the story begins, Nick announces that his father told him that "whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in the world haven't had the advantages that you've had" (7). Nick's ba

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Stalder argues that "Media are never neutral....To understand the kind of bias introduced into our current culture by the spread of computer networks....the best place to investigate is not the Internet, but, rather, the financial networks" (Stalder 1999 104). The idea here is the representation of money as what Stalder calls "a pure medium (104). Since money can take any form and still be money, Stalder considers the current financial markets as the most advanced and most media-specific electronic space. While these market networks are fully automated, still Stalder sees a bias which affects everything done through these networks. He states that the surrounding larger social and economic environment is structurally separated and therefore, only relevant when it seems

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Petronius' "The Widow of Ephesus" is a story that reveals many values important to Roman culture but also its hypocrisies. For instance, the widow of Ephesus' fidelity is so "famous" she is referred to as a "prodigy" and women from neighboring towns and villages come to just gaze upon her (Petronius 16). Obviously, her fidelity being this rare means infidelity was commonplace i

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In The Yacoubian Building, Alaa Al Aswany creates a memorable cast of characters who, taken as a whole, may represent the range of groups or classes in contemporary Egypt. In addition, by using a single structure as the physical locus in which many of these characters initially meet or ultimately live and work, the author has centered his story in a manner that depicts changes taking place both physically and socially in Egypt over time. This essay will first examine a small number of characters in the novel as they appeal to the reader and relate to Egyptian culture. Second, it will focus on the actual role played by the building itself in creating a meeting place where new loves and old animosities flourish. One of the most compelling characters in the novel is Busayna, described by Al Aswany (vii) as "the oldest daughter of a poor family that lives in the shacks on the roof of the Yacoubian building." This young woman is intelligent, educated, and beautiful. Required to w

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The philosopher Epictetus maintains that one need only look at the choice to keep a secret to see that human beings have freedom of choice. Despite free choice in such matters, this does not mean there are no constraints on our decision-making. In Discourses, Epictetus asks, "Is it possible for [man] to be unimpeded? No. Therefore, he cannot be free" (Bk. IV, Ch. 1). The ethical dilemma at hand involves representing a client against her landlord, with the knowledge that the client is faking her injuries. This dilemma demonstrates that Epictetus is incorrect. Individuals can be free, but to act freely there is often a harsh price to be paid due to external constraints on free choice. In this sense, Epictetus is correct in that we cannot be absolutely free to choose. The choice at hand concerns my interview of a client who wishes to sue her landlord for negligence in connection with severe injuries she received on her apartment house staircase. It is obvious to

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There are two primary reasons that I want to be a teacher working in a high-needs New York City school. First, I started out by being a passionate student, and I want to convey my passion for learning to my students. I loved school, and I deeply enjoyed learning new and challenging things, and that is a love that can be shared and exchanged to fuel the love for learning among my students. Second, I believe that learning is the catalyst to achievem

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When one is born into poverty and oppression, it is difficult to believe one can achieve more than the community expects one can achieve. Despite the abject poverty and slavery faced by both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, both overcame the forces against them and went on to become writers who advocated abolition of slavery. Douglass' journey is chronicled in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, while Jacobs wrote of her experiences in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. However, despite both Douglass and Jacobs being treated to extreme cruelty and violence, they overcame the obstacles of slavery through a form of accommodation that ultimately was a truer and more profound form of resistance than any form of violence could hope to effect. A conclusion will address why the form of accommodation used by Douglass and Jacobs ended up being more enduring than violence. It is difficult to imagine experiencing the life of slavery

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Bosses played an important role in the United States in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Economic bosses like labor contractors and political bosses like Tammany Hall's George Washington Plunkitt epitomized, for better or worse, that era. Merlino (1893) reported on common labor practices and asserted that contractors oppressed laborers, especially Italian immigrants. This is because there were so many men seeking work and contractors took advantage of the situation for their own financial benefit. There were no laws to prevent contractors from requiring a fee before hiring workers and a "contractor [was] sure to depart from the terms of the contract either as to wages, or hours of labor, or the very nature of the work (Merlino, 1893, p. 73)." Workers were at the mercy of contractors because contractors would demand fees from wo

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While in high school, I was elected as president of my senior class, an honor that was to require me to spend a great deal of time in activities that had relatively little to do with my academic work. School "politics" of this type can be, as noted by Hurwitz (22), both challenging and frustrating. While it is thrilling to be selected by one's peers as a leader, with lead

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Topic 1: KCC/Safat is a company that is ripe for revolutionary change. According to a recent analysis, it needs to develop a business strategy, a mission and vision, needs brand building and an image makeover, must develop a sales and marketing department, needs a new pricing strategy, has to address high operating costs, should improve its liquidity position, and needs a better organizational and management structure. This paper will provide a complete conceptual makeover for the company from the top down, addressing each of these areas. The result will be a transformation plan that re-purposes KCC/Safat and restructures it into an organization that can survive these difficult economic times. To accomplish this, an analysis of the current organization and its structure, processes, and workflows will be performed, research and generic bench

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The FDA and the Bush Administration finally came to terms with the fact that the American consumer needs to know, definitively, what is in the food products he or she buys. The result was the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. "(This Act) provides FDA with specific authority to require nutrition labeling of most foods regulated by the Agency; and to require that all nutrient content claims (i.e., 'high fiber', 'low fat', etc.) and health claims be consistent with agency regulations" ("Guide for Review" para. 1). The specific law passed in 1990 refers specifically to packaged foods. Therefore, restaurant foods, meats, poultry, and egg products were exempt. However what the medical establishment, especially those involved in reducing illness and death due to heart disease, finds important in this law is that "requires the Food and Drug Administration to establish standards and definitions for food descriptors such as 'low,' 'lean,' 'lite,' 'reduced,' etc." ("Nutrit

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In Terry Eagleton's (1) The Idea of Culture, the author provides a discussion of the idea of "culture," an idea he lists among "one of the two or three most complex words in the English language." In a similar vein of thought, in Culture as Praxis Zygmunt Bauman (1) asserts that "The unyielding ambiguity of the concept of culture is notorious." Eagleton shows how culture is a concept that derives from nature. However, culture alters nature. As Eagleton (3), "Nature produces culture which changes nature." He also makes it clear that concepts of culture are most always connected to discussions of power, authority and government. In Eagleton's view there is an intimate connection between culture

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Improving the Bottom Line at FYC Introduction FYC is a furniture company that is moving slowly into the twenty-first century as far as technology is concerned. It has only recently enabled its customers to place orders on the Internet (previously, they used the Internet as a catalog and placed the order via phone). Internally, there is a broad spectrum of eagerness to embrace new technology as well as a broad spectrum of technology available. Some departments continue to use manual paper methodology while other managers use Excel spreadsheets. At the same time, the company is considering how best to integrate its Web presence with external customers and vendors, and leverage the technology that it recently implemented to reduce transaction costs. This research considers the next step-intranet or extranet-for FYC. Analysis An intranet, as its name implies, takes an internal focus within an organization. It connects departments and enables data to flow free and be manipulated throughout the organization. An extranet connects the company to the outside world, but in a more controlled environment than "just" a website. Extranets are ofte

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FYC's administration and operations departments could benefit greatly from computerization of manual processes revamped information systems. In finance and accounting, which is the most computerized department at FYC, standalone PC-based packages are used for general ledger, account reconciliation, invoicing and payments, and the like. In manufacturing, inventories, budgets, and product manual rollout time is either manually calculated or determined using Excel spreadsheets. The corporate website is primarily an e-catalogue, with no interactive ordering capability. New technologies exist that could improve all of these areas and bring them out of a manual environment. Rather than a series of standalone applications on individual PCs, FYC could roll all of its business processes into one larger system accessible across the company. This would provide greater data visibility, and manual applications could be computerized and achieved far more efficiently. Networked applications would allow data to flow between as well as within departments, thus reducing the need to provide data manually and al

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Creative Brief: Restoring Public Support for & Public Confidence in the American Automobile Industry Executive Summary A creative campaign is proposed in support of the renewal of the American automobile manufacturing industry. The end goal of the proposed campaign is to assure the public and governmental support that will be required for the industry to remain viable over the long-term. The key to this effort will be the restoration of public support for and public confidence in the American automobile manufacturing industry. The primary target audience for the campaign will be the American public, as opposed to politicians, industry leaders, or media personalities. The rational for this approach is three-fold. The only way to assure long-term viability of the American automobile manufacturing industry is for the industry to secure long-term financial support from the federal government. The only way to assure such financial support is for federal politicians to perceive strong public support for the industry. The only way to assure strong public support for the ind

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Introduction It's quiet here among the haunted tenses: Dread Swiss germs pass the rabbit's throat, Chemical rain in its brave green hat Drinks at a South Coast Bar. Peter Porter (1929 - ) Acid rain is any form of precipitation that is measurably more acidic than normal rain (Chestnut & Mills, 2005). In order to fully understand acid rain, some basic chemistry is in order. In this regard, it is important to realize that, chemically, an acid is a substance that gives off hydrogen ions, while a base is a substance that gives off hydroxyl ions (Timberlake, 2008). The acidity of any solution is measured using a pH scale with the pH being an expression of the concentration of hydrogen ions in a given solution (Zumdahl & Zumdahl, 2006). The pH scale ranges from 1 to 14 points. If a given substance has a pH below 7, the substance is said to be basic and if it has a pH above 7, the substance is said to be acidic. A pH of 7 is termed 'neutral' which means th

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When I decided to major in biology as an undergraduate, I had already decided that I wanted to become a doctor. I also recognized that I might encounter challenges that other students might not have to face. Some years ago, my father had given up his career as a successful lawyer in India with the intent of creating better opportunities for our family. In the United States, he and my mother went to work in low-paying grocery-store jobs while planning to set up their own convenience-store franchise. I helped them develop a business plan and acquire a loan. All the while, my family of four lived in a one-bedroom apartment. Health insurance was a precious commodity that we certainly could not afford. My undergraduate degree in biology built a strong, science-based foundation for my future academic and professional endeavors. The first few years of college, however, were challenging for me. My parents had just gotten their new business off the ground, and I was responsible for he

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One of the best ideas for increasing productivity, improving employee performance, and reducing cost(thus increasing profitability(is to create a work environment that promotes these factors. Telecommuting, workgroup collaboration, and an innovative corporate culture can all help Wataniya achieve these goals. Diaz cites a Computing Technology Industry Association survey that found that "Companies that give their workers the option of telecommuting are seeing greater productivity, lower costs, improved employee health and greater employee retention." In fact, Diaz asserts that employers wanting to increase productivity should send their empl

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Performance appraisals should be "fair, accurate and supported by evidence and examples," but producing appraisals like this is not automatic; supervisors need to quantify and document what employees do ("Legal Aspects," 2006). The single performance appraisal developed for Kudler to evaluate each level of the job classifications would have five competencies or skills pertinent to each job classification. In addition, it would have a weighting system that enables the manager to evaluate the employee on each of the five competencies in terms of the specific position. For example, for the position of bagger, one of the five competencies would be to bag items quickly, and the weighting system would allow the manager to rank the employee's bagging competency based on how many items he can bag per minute. The appraisal would specify how many items must be bagged per minute to achieve each rank in that competency, e.g., 115 items per minute is top rank, 85 items is second rank, 65 items is third rank, 40 items is fourth rank, and under 40 items is fifth rank. This approach relieves the manager of trying to figure out what would be a fair

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Principles of disaster planning have been at issue in public discourse for some years. Experts have identified phases of disaster, which refers to prescriptive activities that are meant to assist institutions in taking control of the process of planning against disaster and responding to it should a catastrophe occur. Four phases cycle into one another: preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation (Auf der Heide, 2000). Of these four phases, only response is engaged in an actual disastrous event at the time of occurrence. Even so, the other three phases are meant to diminish the severity of response and the impact of the occurrence. Response, as the term implies, refers to the engagement of emergency intervention and rescue personnel. In the case of XYZ that would refer to the process of salvaging the damaged physical assets and preparing them for the next phase: recovery. A data-recovery enterprise may or may not be able to reclaim payroll and e-mail data, although of co

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Introduction The purpose of this paper is to discuss three aspects of philosophy of religion: Liberation Theology, Economic and Social Justice, and the claim that compassion is the core of most religions. Each of the areas discussed is in response to a particular statement or question concerning that area. In each section of the paper, the question or statement is first presented and this is followed by a discussion of the pertinent literature in relation to that question or statement. Liberation Theology This section of the paper is a response to the following question: What are the two streams of liberation theology and how does each evaluate popular religion? In order to place this question in context, it is helpful to briefly define terms. In this regard, it should be noted that 'popular religion" refers to communal, usually ritualistic, practices of an overtly religious character, many of which are intimately related to the culture of the community, e.g., Italian A

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Introduction: According to an essay published online on the in-quito.com website, Quito has a unique position in history thanks to its relationship with the struggle for liberation in South America from Spanish colonial rule. At the height of the period of Spanish domination, Quito Ecuador was the scene of a radical popular uprising provoked by the introduction of the Sales Tax and Customs duties. Eugenio Espejo, who was one of the great intellectual figures of his time, lived and worked in Quito. The first cry for independence was heard on August 10th, 1809. Nearly everyone involved in this liberation movement were murdered almost exactly a year later by troops loyal to Spain. The principal leaders involved in the Sales Tax Revolt were summarily hung and later beheaded, their heads being displayed in the main square (The seeds of liberty of Quito). Background: According to an essay published on the MaquiNet website, the first Spaniards landed in northern Ecuador in 1

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The problem of homelessness is one that has a significant bearing on the health of the homeless, particularly homeless children. More than half of the homeless population in many cities consists of families with children, and the lack of a permanent home, a basic necessity for their growth and development, puts the children at risk in terms of their health ("Health Needs of Homeless Children and Families," 1996). Homeless children suffer from a range of acute problems, including upper respiratory tract infections, tooth decay, ear infections, scabies, and conjunctivitis, as well as a notably higher incidence of trauma-related injuries and chronic diseases such as asthma, sinusitis, visual and neurologic deficits, and bowel dysfunction ("Health Needs of Homeless Children and Families," 1996). Homeless children have iron deficiency anemia at a rate two to three times greater than that of children that are not homeless, and they tend to have an inadequate diet with too few calor

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Appearance: The patient is well groomed and dressed appropriately in clean and casual clothes. He is alert and answers questions when asked. He appears even-tempered. Speech: The patient presents with normal speech, volume, tone, and rate, with no idiosyncratic symbols or other odd speech. Motor activity:

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The Hope Partnership for Education (HPE) is a Philadelphia-based "independent organization designed to offer an alternative model of middle school education, an after school program, and adult education to parents and neighborhood residents" ("Strategic Business Plan," 2004, p. 3). Located in an area of town where median family incomes are below the poverty level and crime is rampant, HPE serves a student population of which 80% scores below standardized testing's basic level ("Strategic Business Plan," 2004, p. 3). The middle school's charter states that it will "serve students of low-income urban families, who would not otherwise have access to such an education," highlighting the fact that HPE-as its name suggests-provides hope where hope may already have been lost ("Strategic Business Plan," 2004, p. 3). The school will be faith-based, will have classes limited to 15 students, and will feature a longer school day lasting from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ("Strategic Business Pl

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