Mandelas Leadership

Executive summary Mandela is one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century. By the turn of the millennium, Mandela had become a household name because of his success in ending apartheid in South Africa. Not only did he successfully lead South Africa in the fight against apartheid, but he also united people of different races after he became President, and thereby prevented civil war in South Africa.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Mandela’s Leadership specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Mandela is also one of the most selfless leaders the world has ever seen. During his term in office, which ran until 1999, he never misused power. Instead, he sought to empower the masses by exemplifying cohesion. He forgave his tormentors and urged the South African public to live in harmony with one another regardless of their race. After one term, he left office and became the first African leader to do so. His succ ess as a leader can be attributed to the fact that he was a charismatic, transformative and democratic leader. Introduction Nelson Mandela is indubitably a revolutionary leader. The transformative aspects of his leadership brought changes that are treasured by South Africa two decades after the country’s independence. He remarkably negotiated for the end of apartheid and persuaded the South African public to forgive each other and live in harmony despite their racial differences. He left office after only one term as President, paving way for other leaders. Mandela never misused power while in office, a fact that explains why he never held to it in the first place. He used his power to better the lives of the public in South Africa and set an example of selfless leadership. Mandela’s effectiveness in leadership can be attributed to his personal traits and decisive selection of good leadership styles. He is a charismatic and democratic leader. His leadership is also tra nsformative in nature because he transformed the mindset of the public. He ended apartheid, ushered in democracy and promoted a cohesive government, a feat that was seemingly unachievable during the years of apartheid. This paper analyses Mandela’s leadership styles and investigates his use of power.Advertising Looking for report on biography? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Mandela’s leadership style and behaviour In his fight against apartheid and during his advocacy for democracy, Mandela always used the charismatic leadership style. In leadership studies, charisma is defined as a quality that differentiates the person who possesses it from others, giving him/her unrivalled persuasive power (Dalglish Miller 2010). Mandela’s charismatic leadership had a touch of democracy. A democratic leader engages followers in discussions and encourages interactions among the followers with the aim of reaching consen sus in decision making (Ripka 2007). It is however important to note that without certain traits, a leader cannot successfully adopt the charismatic and democratic styles of leadership. Charismatic leaders are particularly good in persuasion, speech and organizing (Rabinowitz 2013). They are honest, open minded and they have good listening skills. Mandela was the kind of leader who could listen to an argument for hours without making a comment and later help the people involved to reach consensus. He â€Å"is legendary for listening to all sides of the argument, taking guidance and then offering his analysis† (Curnow 2011, p. 1). He sometimes made proposals, which he gladly accepted as unfeasible if other people made him realise so. For instance, he once proposed voting age to be brought down to fourteen in South Africa. After public backlash on the proposal, he gave up on it. These are some of the qualities of a charismatic and democratic leader. Mandela’s experiences in the hands of the minority government had made him synonymous with the anti-apartheid movement. He found himself being the unquestionable leader of anti-apartheid groups across South Africa. In addition to this, Mandela was the symbolic leader of a myriad of liberation movements that were established during the fight against apartheid. He became the story through which people were made to understand the evil nature of apartheid (O’Fallon 2012). This status was a delicate affair for Mandela, who could have easily lost the confidence of the people if he adopted a poor leadership style. However, Mandela is intelligent and he possesses a sociable charisma that enabled him to connect well with the masses as well as the oppressive administration. Mandela also believes in non-violence and thus â€Å"his weapons were those of persuasion not of guns and bolts.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Mandela’s Leadership specifically for you for onl y $16.05 $11/page Learn More He was not a revolutionary bent upon seizing power. His ambition was higher, to convince all South Africans to embrace reconciliation, fairness and learn to live in harmony† (Bray n.d., p. 1). Mandela used dialogue and consensus to solve issues. These are important aspects of any democracy, and the leader of the democracy must be good in nurturing them. One of the reasons for Mandela’s success in leadership is his understanding of the fact that in South Africa, democracy could not be achieved without reconciliation. Additionally, he knew that justice was not achievable without peace. Mandela was ready to pursue whatever means to liberate the South African public, but being a wise man, he knew he had to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s example of non-violence. Upon this realization, Mandela employed his political cunning, charm and farsightedness to achieve a dream for which he had been imprisoned for decades (Carlin 2013). This shows his charismatic leadership because he was able to control himself in order to realize his dream of a peaceful South Africa where people of different races lived together in harmony. Mandela’s transformative and transactional leadership Transformative aspects of Mandela’s leadership Leaders are often encountered with the need to change the status quo. Some qualities are a must for transformative leaders. The first is charisma. The leader needs to â€Å"have vision and a sense of mission† (Dalglish Miller, 2010, p. 140). The leader has the confidence, respect and loyalty of his/her followers. This kind of framework ensures that the transformative aspects of the leader are fully realized. Mandela was such a leader. Mandela’s vision of â€Å"a beautiful South Africa† (Le 2009, p. 1) had profound effects on governance in South Africa. The vision actually resulted in a changed nation, after the Mandela influenced the public to share his vision. Tr ansformative leadership is all about realizing change that has been envisioned before the realization (Shields 2010), and thus Mandela was rightfully a transformative leader. Dalglish and Miller (2010) state that transformative leaders are more likely to be successful if they are inspirational. â€Å"Part of the inspiration derives from communicating a vision with fluency and confidence† (Dalglish Miller 2010). By appealing to supporters and supporting them emotionally, a leader is able to inspire his/her supporters to exceed the expectations they initially had. The leader must be a skilful communicator like Mandela was. Mandela was among the few leaders who are capable of inspiring audiences beyond their country. â€Å"Few others would have managed to unite the disparate warring parties and steer South Africa from what seemed to be the brink of civil war† (Nelson Mandela 2013, p. 1). The cohesive transformation brought by Mandela was one of his most remarkable accomp lishments.Advertising Looking for report on biography? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Lastly, transformational leaders offer personal attention to their followers and support them in the steps they take to realize their mission (McDowelle 2009). Mandela was such a leader. While in prison, he devised new communication methods that helped in organizing for hunger strikes. The strikes led to better living conditions in the prison. However, the most transformative aspect of Mandela’s leadership was his leadership against apartheid, and the subsequent reconciliation. Transactional aspects of Mandela’s leadership In a transactional leadership, there is an exchange between the leader and followers (Lai 2011). The transaction does not have to be composed of pre-defined valuables, but rather the leader gets something he/she needs and his/her followers also get something they need. However, the transaction must be acceptable to both parties (Dalglish Miller 2010). In Mandela’s case, he offered the public with inspiration and vision, which turned them from ordinary to extra-ordinary. Mandela also saved South African masses from the polarization that had threatened their peace for long. He shared his vision of peace in multicultural communities and set an example not only to South Africans, but also to the world. His Gandhi-inspired belief in non-violence has also been treasured by South Africans and the world because it is arguably the reason South Africa did not descend into civil war. The masses on the other hand, offered Mandela companionship in the fight against the apartheid government. After election into office, the South African public offered Mandela unwavering support that increased his confidence and made him more determined to serve his country (Baale 2013). Mandela’s use of power The most remarkable aspect of Mandela’s leadership is perhaps his use of power for the good of the public, and his lack of greed for power. During the fight against apartheid, Mandela remarkably used his intellectual and political power to influence the administration until it gave him a chance to implement his vision of reconciliation, protection of property, protection of human rights and the rule of law. This was accomplished after the minority government gave in to the demands for a democratically elected government in the year 1994. Instead of holding on to power after being elected President, Mandela sought to empower the public (Le 2009). Mandela’s style of managing power is proof of his transformative leadership skills. Lowe, Kroech and Sivasubramaniam (1996, p. 407) state that a â€Å"transformational leader, through intellectual stimulation, instils feelings of power in followers to attain higher goals through socialized power rather than the pure charismatic leader who attempts to exert dominance and subjugate followers through personalized power†. Mandela used his visionary power, charm and negotiation skills to win the confidence of the minority government, which eventually agreed t o voluntarily give up power. Among his powers were expert and referent power that he utilized well as he led South Africa in the fight against apartheid. Mandela was a trustworthy individual who could easily convince his opponents, both in political circles and in prison, to follow his ideals. He remarkably used his intellect and charm to negotiate with prison warders for better living conditions. After he won the subsequent 1994 elections with two-thirds of the votes, he used his power to reconcile the people who had previously been fighting, a step that led to worldwide peace efforts. â€Å"Unlike dictators and so many populist Presidents, he left office after only one term. He showed no love for power, only a fearless commitment to the most noble of values, which he celebrated even in the most terrible of times† (Bray n.d., p. 1). This decision has earned Mandela the respect of world leaders, as he showed no greed for power because he did not misuse power during his term i n office. It is common knowledge that Presidents who hold on to power do so to protect themselves from prosecution for abuse of the power bestowed upon them. Mandela’s knowledge and skills gave him influential power over South African populace. Mandela had graduated from the University with a degree in Law and he enjoyed political power because of his tenure as the ANC (African National Congress) leader. Mandela also enjoyed prestige power because he was a member of the South African elite before his political endeavours (Read 2010). The aforementioned power would prove helpful to Mandela even in prison. As mentioned above, he used his political power in prison to rally support against poor living conditions (Le 2009). Mandela’s power management skills are arguably the reason he succeeded in leading South Africa against apartheid and in becoming the global icon he is today. Conclusion Mandela is arguably the greatest leader alive. He is famously known for leading the f ight against apartheid in South Africa, and subsequently reconciling the public when he was elected President. During his politicking days, Mandela showed transformative, democratic and charismatic leadership styles. He is a gifted individual who used his persuasive power to get the approval of both the public and the apartheid administration. Mandela is open minded, honest and a good listener. These qualities made him a successful charismatic and democratic leader during the fight against apartheid. He is also confident and good in speech, qualities that indubitably make him the great leader he is. He remarkably encouraged people from different racial backgrounds in South Africa to live in harmony with each other, and thereby avoided a civil crisis. He embraced his tormentors and encouraged the masses to emulate his forgiveness. He became synonymous with the struggle against apartheid because he was the central figure and the leader of the anti-apartheid movement. After serving onl y one term as President, Mandela handed over power, becoming the first African leader to do so. Reference List Baale, L 2013, Valuable Leadership Lessons From Nelson Mandela, viewed on http://www.leadership.ng/nga/columns/50686/2013/03/23/valuable_leadership_lessons_nelson_mandela_2.html Bray, R n.d., Nelson Mandela, http://www.capetown.at/letters/mandela.htm Carlin, J 2013, Nelson Mandela’s Legacy, http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/pages/articledetails.aspx?aid=69 Curnow, R 2011, Mandela’s Leadership Lessons, http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/mandela%E2%80%99s-leadership-lessons/ Dalglish, C Miller, P 2010, Leadership: Understanding its Global Impact, Tilde University Press, Australia. Lai, A 2011, ‘Transformational-Transactional Leadership Theory’, AHS Capstone  Projects, Paper 17, http://digitalcommons.olin.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013context=ahs_capstone_2011 Le, T 2009, Leadership Style: Nelson Mandela Vs Adolf Hitler, ht tp://articles-book.com/Article/Leadership-Style–Nelson-Mandela-Vs-Adolf-Hitler/377375 Lowe, K, Kroeck, K Sivasubramaniam, N 1996. ‘Effectiveness correlates of transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic review of the MLQ literature’, The Leadership Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 385-415, http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/K_Lowe_Effectiveness_1996.pdf McDowelle, J 2009, ‘A Contemporary Consideration of Transformative Leadership’,  Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 1-5, East Carolina University, DOI 10.3776/joci.2009.v3n2p1-5 Nelson Mandela: Leader Among leaders 2013, http://www.southafrica.info/mandela/mandela.htm#.UW5NkRdHLsQ O’Fallon, S 2012, Nelson Mandela and Unitive Leadership, http://integralleadershipreview.com/7460-nelson-mandela-and-unitive-leadership Rabinowitz, P 2013, Styles of Leadership, http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1122.aspx Read, J 2010, ‘Leadership and Pow er in Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom’,  Journal of Power, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 317-339, Taylor Francis Online, DOI 10.1080/17540291.2010.524792 Ripka, J 2007, Nelson Mandela and His Leadership Style, http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/j/m/jmc441/NelsonMandela.htm Shields, C 2010, ‘Transformative Leadership: Working for Equity in Diverse Contexts’, Educational Administration Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 558-589, Sage Journals, DOI 10.1177/0013161X10375609 This report on Mandela’s Leadership was written and submitted by user Emery Yang to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

billy bathgate essays

billy bathgate essays Billy Bathgate, is a book of a young boys transition into manhood. It is an amazingly well-written book that intrigued me the entire way through. It starts out in Billys hometown, the Bronx of New York in the twenties; a time of social unrest and prohibition. The apartment building Billy lives in is not the epitome of cleanliness. The streets are littered with papers and loud noises of the trains that go by every hour. Rundown little bungalows and an occasional three-story fake brick building separate the boatyards and factories in Billys neighborhood. Across the street from Billys apartement building is an orphanage which he visits often because of a girl, Rebecca who he screws two times for a dollar. His mother works at a laundromat, washing clothes for a company and has been driven insane by the poverty she lives in. She doesnt really take care of Billy and in essence he learns how to survive in the Bronx with the street smarts he has taught himself. He knows that he has something special; a desire to work and be prosperous that many of the other younger boys do not. He acts older than his age and maybe that is why he catches the eye of Dutch who also lived in the neighborhood and is now rich. Dutch is the leader of a mob that has one of their main warehouses located in the Bronx. All the boys here wish they could become like Dutch; as someone that rose from this dirty place and made a place in the world for themselves. One day, Billy was juggling on the train tracks when he hears someone yell, Hey, boy! He is motioned to come over to Dutch who hands him ten dollars and compliments him on his juggling. This is where the fire in Billy is sparked and he becomes determined to join Dutchs gang. After following and watching around the neighborhood, Billy finds out about another warehouse on Park Avenue and brings a brown paper bag, so he will be allowed to get in...

Algae Production For Biofuel Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Algae Production For Biofuel - Article Example Traditional ethanol and oil rich plants such as sugarcane, corn and rapeseed have been tried successfully in various regions of the world to yield biodiesel for industrial use. However, the economics of biodiesel production has still to provide figures for potentially feasible and sustainable means to this end. Algae, which are simple botanical forms of life possessing the ability to reproduce at a fast rate with minimal of inputs are being looked at as a potential sources of biodiesel, as some of the millions of its species have been discovered to be rich in triglycerides and other fats/oils necessary for biofuel production. The major advantage of using algae for biofuel production is that they grow in ponds and wastewater, which do not encroach upon terrestrial territory already reserved for the cultivation of food crops. Moreover, algae possess the ability to double their biomass in as less as one day under optimized conditions (Odlare et al, 2011). The high growth rate however ha s to be optimized in relation to oil production within the organism as these two properties are contradictory to each other (Csavina et al, 2011). Methodologies and technologies are therefore being developed to cultivate algae in controlled conditions to achieve this objective. Lipids, sugar and hydrogen gas are considered the primary units of energy and a study at the University of Arizona reveals that algae have a distinct advantage over terrestrial cultivable crops such as corn as they possess a 300 fold advantage in producing the basic units for producing biofuel (Littin, 2011). Although the cost of production of fuel from algae still exceeds the value of the final product, intensive research is going on at the university as well as other parts of the world to optimize the process towards a profitable direction (Littin, 2011). Moreover, it has been discovered that secondary wastewater rich in nitrogen and phosphorus can be utilized to grow algae eliminating the need of fertilize rs (Littin, 2011). In turn, the algae besides producing lipids for potential use as biofuel purify the water as well, resulting in a double benefit. Grown in controlled conditions of specific light exposure and deprivation of nitrogen and sulfur at particular stages of their life promote lipid production in the algae, which are the strategies being explored by the scientists involved in this research (Littin, 2011). Biofuel or biodiesel can be produced from any biomass which has high lipid content. The process involves extraction of oil from the biomass by a process called transesterification which yields triglycerides, which possess the properties ideal for a biofuel (Taylor, 2011). Algae can either be grown in open ponds or in controlled conditions in what is known as a photo-bioreactor (Taylor, 2011). The latter is a sealed aquaculture system in which conditions can be optimized and manipulated according to required objectives of high lipid production by the organisms. Such biore actors are however costly to build as well as maintain and may not be the ideal means for biofuel production from algae. Identification of the appropriate species and varieties of algae growing in natural ponds and wastewater reservoirs in natural conditions, which provide the maximum yield of lipids can be the only means, once identified, to make economically feasible and sustainable methods for

Analytical Science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Analytical Science - Essay Example Others are counterfeit drugs and outright fake ones. The need of the drug regulations was necessary so as to guarantee that there was efficiency safety, and superiority of drugs in addition to exactness and the correctness of the drug information that are available to the society (Habet, 32) . The work was not aimed to rank the countries under the study against any criterion. Rather, the aim was to synthesize their experiences and later draws conclusions on generic from countries that were participating and others get to learn from them. There was a systematic study was done of drug regulations and its surroundings across countries and there was shed a new illumination on the state of affairs of the country. these was so since there needed to provide a new perspective about the constraints it was facing, and also provide the options on the way to advance the means the method was to function. The structures of drug regulations that exist today that is the drug regulatory, laws, evalua tion boards, quality control laboratories, informational centers have evolved over with time. In this process the scope of the regulatory powers and legislative had gradually expanded, in regards to both the increasing complexity of the increasingly sophisticated pharmaceutical sector, and the perceived requirements of the society (Foroutan, 69). In other countries, the enactment of the comprehensive drugs regulations was as a result of the crisis-led change, when the society demands led then the adoption of laws that are restrictive so as to provide greater safe guards to the society. The drug regulation body is a society policy that response to the perceived requirements and the problems of the society. Consequently, the laws need to be upgraded to keep up the pace of the changes and the new challenges in the surroundings (Pika 24). The laws ought to be protective to the society from dubious and harmful drugs and practices. They need to be inclusive adequate to cover up all areas of pharmaceutical activities in the country. These include the herbal or homeopathic drugs they ought to be legal mandates that are imposed on the importation of drugs. The essay laid down the conclusions on generic from the weakness and strengths of different types and then identifies the features that affect the performance of the regulation of drugs. The government acted as the guardian of controlling the private powers in the public purposes. These have ensured the efficacy, safety and the quality of drugs that are available to the society was the main aim of the drug regulation. If the goals based on regulatory were to be achieved, then the appropriate structures were to be invented and the correct activities carried out acquire the desired goals. The rapid HPLC method for Analysis Temperature (Â °C) Old Formulation Methylprednisolone Conc. (ppm) New Formulation Methylprednisolone Conc. (ppm) 30 45.21 Â ± 3 46.1 Â ± 2.100 40 41.34 Â ± 4.2 40.45 Â ± 4.123 50 40 Â ± 3.54 39 Â ± 5 60 35.67 Â ± 6 38.987Â ± 4 70 37 Â ± 2.456 37.34 Â ± 3.654 80 21.567 Â ± 3.234 36.321 Â ± 1.567 90 23 Â ± 5 37.23 Â ± 5.012 Â   Â   Â   Temperature (Â °C) Formulation 1 Methylprednisolon

Strategic management case study-skf case Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Strategic management case study-skf case - Essay Example At such a point in time when the world has become a global village, and when companies need to put extra efforts to get noticed by the customer, it is important for a company to stay focused. SKF, the company which is the focus of this report, needs to maintain a consistency strategy when it comes to the future and what it aims to do with respect to the new decision that it has to make. SKF needs to maintain the strategy that they have been using till now, that is, to price their product at a premium price and play on value based selling, that is, they have designed and developed their product so well that it comes out to be one of the best in the industry and the perception that they have created in the eyes of the consumer is that of a premium product which cannot be easily replicated by any other company. It is important for companies to follow such a strategy in this clutter filled world, and where product differentiation can only be done in perceptions, and not in reality. SKF is thinking of changing its value based strategy to the strategy where it will compete on price and cater to the markets where price is an important factor. This will be a very wrong strategy for SKF, since till now, they have been premium priced and price was never a factor that they even considered. Customers came to SKF when they wanted true value for whatever money that they give. There will be value that will be reflected in the products that they receive. It was a win-win situation for both the consumers and the SKF Company. But this decision to change the strategy to compete on price would take the organization into a wrong direction, and they need to correct themselves as soon as possible. One of the first things that they need to remember is that there should be consistency in the strategy of a company, especially when the strategy has helped the company build the brand name that it has, and has helped it secure the

HR Strategies That Google Has Implemented

HR Strategies That Google Has Implemented Management of human resources has become one of the most important business functions for any company in todays dynamic business environment. With the high level of competition and a multitude of options available to the employees, attrition rates have grown tremendously. Companies are struggling to attract and retain the best talent. Companies have started coming up with many innovative strategies to attract the best talent and keep them happy at the workplace. Google is one such company that has implemented non-conventional HR strategies and believes in providing maximum value to its employees. This report talks about the HR strategies that Google has implemented and what their ramifications have been. Also the reasons behind implementation of these strategies and the how they would help the company achieve its long term goals. This report also studies the unique working environment prevalent at Google and what keeps the employees motivated and committed to innovation. Also the very important role of hiring and retaining the best talent available in the market, performed by the HR machinery has also been discussed in this report. Introduction Google has a highly energetic and dynamic working environment. The employees, known as Googlers in popular jargon know how to work hard and at the same time have fun at the work place. The entire campus in Mountain view, CA exudes a lot of creative energy and dynamism. The office has a relaxed environment of a college campus with no compulsory dress code or daily formal meetings of any kind. The campus has the facilities for the employees to play games like beach volleyball, foosball, table tennis and many others. The employees are instilled with the belief that they are superior to the competition not just in terms of the money they earn but also in terms of their lifestyle and culture. They are taught to believe in values of teamwork and satisfaction through creative achievements. As a result of this culture, the employees also feel proud to be a part of the Google brand. Google has comprehensive HR policies that help employees grow both personally as well as professionally. People of many communities and ethnicities work in Google, who are all made to feel part of one big Google family. Also the employees have a firm belief that they are working for the best company in the world and the work they are doing be it either organizing information or creating advertisements is for the betterment of the society. The motto of the company is Dont be Evil and encourages the employees to strictly adhere to the ethical norms of the company. Google HR Policies: Critical and Theoretical Analysis Success of Google: Employee Motivation Theory Perspective Google encourages its employees to work on 70-20-10 rule where in the employees have to devote 70 % of their time to core search and advertising work, 20% on a project of their choice and 10 % on working on far-out ideas. The product innovations of Google Talk and Gmail have been a result of this kind of initiative. The business benefits of the 20 % off time are very limited as far as their core search and advertising businesses are concerned. However the HR department and the executives still continue to encourage the employees to go for these efforts to remain motivated and committed to innovation and novelty. The compensation policy of Google is highly rewarding with the employees getting salaries, bonuses and stock awards at regular time intervals. Google also encourages and rewards outstanding performance achievements amongst the employees. The Google premise has a big collegiate environment with many sporting facilities and other benefits that the employees can avail. The whole idea behind creating such an environment is that the employees feel very comfortable and easy working in the office and can be as creative as possible. In order for the employees to maintain work life balance, Google offers the employees flexible working hour options, work from home facility, telecommuting and a generous vacation policy. This combined with the TGIIF sessions that are held every Friday afternoon which is a get together within the company itself. The company has a strong code of conduct and encourages its employees to report any violation of policies and feel safe doing the same. The HR policies are all aimed at improving employee productivity. The offices are designed in such a way so as to provide color, lighting and a shared room to the employees. The employees are seated very close to each other and made to share offices, thus making knowledge sharing an essential part of the everyday culture at Google. On an average, each employee generates more than 1 million in revenue each year. This gives leverage to the Google employees and manager to try out new things, make mistakes and learn from their failures, which is again a great motivating factor for the employees to try out new stuff. So as a result any employee in the company has a chance to create a new product or a feature. Hiring Job Design Practices: The Organizational Perspective Google is considered by many employees to be the best place to work. The core strength of the company is its employees. All the benefits provided by the company help it in recruiting the top employees who are willing to spend their entire day at the work place itself. The entire HR policy of Google is based around hiring the best talent; make them work hard and long and manage to keep them at Google for a long time. Google also carries out various people programs in order to support the growing expansion of the Google workforce across different countries in the world. These programs are run to explain the many virtues of Google as an employer and also to deal with the cultural diversities of the workforce across the nations. Google has an innovative hiring strategy and hiring the right people is one of the core pillars of the HR policy of the company. The company has a centralized hiring team, comprising of specialists whose main endeavor is to identify the best talent in the market and retain them. The branding team of Google also plays a very important role in attracting the best of the professionals to work for Google. The candidates have to go through a tough screening process. Google uses an innovative recruiting tool that relies on algorithms to identify the potential talent rather than traditional ways of hiring like those based on academic grades, SAT scores, degree from well-known colleges, prior industry experience, interviews and subjective test results. This gives Google the power to identify and select the candidates on a more data driven approach. The whole idea behind this screening procedure is to evaluate the candidates on their innovative and dynamic skill and to check their ability to work in a flat organizational structure with small teams as present in Google, which is also referred to as Googleyness. This recruiting team is also well funded with 1 recruiter being provided for every 14 employees, which again makes it the best funded recruiting functions amongst the product based organizations in the country. Google has HR Business partners who perform the task of developing and implementing innovative programs and technology in place to identify and resolve end user issues across the company anywhere in the world. They collect and maintain important user data collected over an employees life cycle which is then used to find out important traits and trends of employee behaviors and identify the potentials problems. Google has quarterly hand holding sessions with the senior executives to celebrate the achievement of the previous quarter and set the agenda for the next quarter. However for those who are not comfortable of speaking up in a public forum, the company conducts regular surveys which are kept anonymous to understand the trends and identify the problem areas if there are an y. Googles Learning and Leadership Development (LLD) team innovative learning programs to identify and groom the companys existing talent. The managers perform the task of being life coaches and advise the young employees on a lot of aspects apart from work also. Google HR Policies: Practical Implications Employee Motivation Factors Google has got huge financial strength at its disposal. It spends a lot of money on providing its employees with a lot of benefits which are not comparable to any other company in the world. This makes it a highly motivating work place for any employee. Google has a very flat organizational structure where in the employees can go and talk to the executives and other team members and share their ideas and thoughts. Google has pushed very hard to remove the bureaucratic boundaries that normally exist in such a big company. This is also explains the fact as to why there is no dress code of the company and also no formal meeting structure that the employees need to follow. The young work force that the company has also proliferates such an environment. This is also one of the major reasons why so many talented young people want to work with Google. Google has been successful in building a brand over the years that has made it the most lucrative company to work, for the employees, not onl y in terms of compensation but also in terms of attaining ones creative pursuits. It has been constantly cited as one of the best companies to work for in the world in many surveys over a period of time. So for any other company to emulate the same feat would be a huge task both in terms of financial capability and also in terms of brand value. Hiring Job Design Practices The hiring process that Google follows is also very innovative and non-conventional. In a normal conventional company the process would involve interviews, academic background check, work experience in the industry and so on, but not in Google. Google has come up with a very innovative hiring procedure based on algorithms making the entire process of hiring very scientific and data driven. However there are criticisms for this kind of process also as it goes on for months and is very inconvenient for the applicants, but it has been very fruitful to Google from a business perspective as it has been able to hire the best of the talent from the industry. Such a long hiring cycle again might not be feasible for any other company in todays day and time. Also the applicants are ready to wait for months despite the inconvenience because working with Google is such a lucrative proposition in itself. However its difficult to imagine that the applicants would be ready to go through such a long and a tedious hiring cycle for any other company. Moreover it is not only the HR department that is involved in the hiring process in the case of Google; its the entire company that gets involved as the application first needs to be approved by the team that has the opening. So its the entire machinery of the company that is involved in the hiring process. Google can do this because of its flat organizational structure. Other companies however would have to remove the bureaucracy in their system and create small team structures in order to implement something on similar lines. Conclusion Google is one of those companies that puts its employees at the core of their strategy and looks at the long term benefits that they would bring to the shareholders and their peers. In fact, in 2008 when Google began cutting its employee perks, its employee productivity and stock prices both fell. This shows a direct correlation between gaining and retaining outstanding employees with innovative ideas and the overall company growth. The companys success has been based on the fact that they have been innovative, flexible and dynamic in their functions. Managing growth by keeping the same collegiate environment in the future will be essential to companys success. As Google grows in shape and size, the challenge for the company will be to maintain the same level creative activism and sense of empowerment amongst its employees. Google is having problems finding the right talent in its other offices worldwide especially in its South Asia operations. The employees must be encouraged to wor k in a more entrepreneurial manner and they must be provided adequate resources and finances for the same. Google is one of the few companies where in the employees know that they will be paid for their innovative efforts irrespective of the fact whether the product that they are working on, may or may not come out right. This is a highly motivational factor for the employees to remain committed to innovation. This is also an example how a HR strategy of a company is directly linked to its business strategy.

Team Project Narrative: The Midtown Perspective Essay -- Urban Develop

For many decades, the midtown inner city area has been the most focused essential location for future economic prosperity, residential and business growth, inner-city vitality and vibrancy, and city wide expansion. The reason is that Rochester, New York was most known for being a key Rust Belt city which specialized in large scale production in transportation, electricity, and industrial processes. In the last 2 decades it has been universally known that with the new generation of emerging technology and the decreased use of old traditional factories, our foundation to economic uphold would soon decease. This example is shown simply by the presence of many huge vacant buildings located within the downtown city of Rochester. Not only does this harshly affect our industrial businesses and the city’s economic growth, but it also affects the entire community downtown, residents, visitors, and also changes the perception of what Rochester’s downtown area used to be. Every bu siness, retail shop, market, or educational facility in the area has been severely struck by this ripple effect. Rochester was also very popular among the U.S being the first to implement a downtown enclosed shopping center called Midtown Plaza in the heart of the city. This place was a prime source for highly concentrated economic success and population increase. When suburban malls were then built in neighboring towns, the Midtown Plaza also suffered a great loss. From being one of the most prosperous places during the 1960’s – 1970’s era, to this day of April 26th, 2012, the Midtown Plaza no longer standing resulting in nine acres of shovel ready development property; desperately awaiting offers. In the mist of the mess, remained the presence of the Monroe Comm... ...t/article.asp?aID=190595 Cooper, C. (2012). Mcc statement on efforts to negotiate a lease at the sibley building. MCC News, Retrieved from http://www.monroecc.edu/etsdbs/pubaff.nsf/HomePageNews_Include/58897C9EA54C116985257983006DBA02?OpenDocument Kress, A. (2011). An open letter on mcc's proposed downtown campus at kodak. Manuscript submitted for publication, Monroe Community College, Monroe Community College, Rochester, New York. Retrieved from http://www.monroecc.edu/downtown/docs/OpenLetterfromDrKress.pdf Richards, T. S. (2011). Mcc student focus group: What they said. 13Wham Blogs, Retrieved from http://www.13wham.com/content/blogs/story/MCC-Student-Focus-Group-What-They-Said/TC377v9_3kaZ8QHgHRr3ng.cspx Stewart, J. S. (2012). Mcc extends lease at sibley building, for now. Education, Retrieved from http://wxxinews.org/post/mcc-extends-lease-sibley-building-now

Dunkirk and the battle of Britain Sources Questions

1) How useful is sources A, B and C in understanding what the battle for Dunkirk was like? Explain your answer. Source A is useful in the effect of giving us a first hand account of the events that occurred. The only problem with this source is that we don't know if it applied to many people, or if it just applied to Commander Thomas Kerr. We also need to know the date that this source was written to find out how accurate it really is. Source B also gives us a first hand account of what happened on the beach. But also, only gives us one mans views of what he was experiencing and we don't know how popular this sort of thing was, we would need more evidence to find out how useful this source is. Source C unfolds one mans views of a brave soldier attacking many planes. But this source may have only applied to this certain individual. After long hard thort, I have come to the conclusion that source B and C supports each other in the sense that the British army are fighting back. But sources B and C don't support source A. 2) â€Å"Dunkirk was a great deliverance and a great disaster.† Is there any sufficient evidence in sources d-j to support this interpretation? Use the sources and your own knowledge to explain your answer. This interpretation is correct in the sense that Dunkirk was a triumph and a disaster. It was written by A.J.P Taylor. Although at the time of Dunkirk it was only seen by people as a great triumph. Only after time as historians studied sources the thought of disaster was introduced. Source D shows the beaches with people being rescued from them. It also shows plains bombing. Its factual accuracy unknown. This is because it is on its own and on its own, the source is hard to tell how accurate it actually is. Also the government used to employ artists to paint ‘glorified' pictures of events. The painting was actually painted by a British man named Charles Cundull. If the government didn't employ this man his versions of events would have been bias anyway. The government also stopped all paintings during the war unless they were designed specifically for positive propaganda. Source E shows thousands of troops lining up on the beaches to be picked up. This source is pretty accurate because it is a photograph and photographs don't lie. But on the other hand we know that not all the troops were this well behaved. But because it is only a photograph we can only see one instant of time. And only gives us a glimpse of the events that unfolded. Source F shows the allied troops defending them self's and shooting at German plains. This source is interesting because it backs up source B. this source fits in well with other sources but again, only provides us with one instant of time. Source G is a speech about the spirit of the British army. It was written by Antony Eden. He was minister of war. It was written in 1940. This speech was almost certainly written and spoke to keep moral high. We can't exactly rely on this source due to the position that Britain was in at the time this was written. Source H is a source extracted from a British newspaper, published in 1945. The basic facts it explains are correct. What's not accurate is the way the people felt. The way they express this is a little bit bias. this source is also for boosting moral but not as much as source G. this source tells a bit more of what the conditions are really like. Source I is a historians view of the Dunkirk operations. This sources factual accuracy is very good as far as the facts go. This was written by A.J.P Taylor, and was published in 1965.

Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System

Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System Free Online Research Papers Capital punishment is the legal imposition of death on a person convicted of a crime. At the root of this controversial subject are moral, legal and ethical concerns. It is said to be reserved for the most serious, heinous crimes and its use has been justified through claims of deterrence and prevention of further crimes. The death penalty has often been warranted from a religious viewpoint, quoting the command of Exodus in the saying an â€Å"eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life† (Meltsner, 1973, p. 46). In contrast to this way of thinking, many people have come to heed the words of the late Martin Luther King, Jr. who warned that an eye for an eye attitude only makes everyone blind (Bessler, 2003). One would think it strange if one would suggest that we rape the rapist or rob the armed robber. Yet, our society continues to justify murdering the murderer. Throughout history, minorities, especially African Americans, have been treated differently than their white counterparts in the criminal justice system. Dating back to the days of the â€Å"Old South† where blacks were lynched for the slightest infraction, there have been documented cases of African Americans having been punished more harshly than whites for the same law violations. This racial bias is especially evident in the administration of capital cases. According to the United States Census Bureau, about sixty-nine percent of the American population is of white, non-Hispanic background and African Americans make up approximately twelve percent of the population. Yet, when looking at death row inmates, blacks consist of forty-two percent of inmates. This is quite a difference in relation to their population numbers. As of July 2004, there were 3,490 inmates sitting on death row, forty-four percent of those taking residence in just three states, California, Texas, and Florida. And, published research has shown that the death penalty in Florida, Georgia, and Texas is reserved almost exclusively for those (white or black) who kill whites (Death). During this year alone, fifty-nine prisoners have been killed at the hands of the state (â€Å"Facts†, 2004). The manner in which capital punishment is administered in this country is far from being free of discrimination in its application. The Supreme Court of the United States first officially recognized this bias in the landmark decision, Furman v. Georgia (1972), in which the court held that by imposing the death penalty, punishment is â€Å"cruel and unusual†. And most recently, New York declared its use of the death penalty unconstitutional (â€Å"Facts†, 2004). All of the justices in the majority of the Furman decision had different views on why the death penalty infringed on the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, however they all agreed that it was unconstitutional (Bessler, 2003). Justice William Douglas wrote: The words cruel and unusual certainly include penalties that are barbaric. But the words, at least when read in light of the English proscription against selective and irregular use of penalties, suggest that it is cruel and unusual to apply the death penalty or any other penalty selectively to minorities whose numbers are few, who are outcasts of society, and who are unpopular, but whom society is willing to see suffer though it would not countenance general application of the same penalty across the board. There is increasing recognition of the fact that the basic theme of equal protection is implicit in cruel and unusual punishments. A penalty . . . should be considered unusually imposed if it is administered arbitrarily or discriminatorily. The extreme rarity with which applicable death penalty provisions are put to use raises a strong inference of arbitrariness. Yet we know that the discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty enables the penalty to be select ively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout, or if he is a member of a suspect or unpopular minority, and saving those who by social position may be in a more protected position (Furman v. Georgia, 1972). Justice Brennan, also in the majority, wrote, â€Å"When a country of 200 million rarely inflicts an unusually severe penalty, the inference is strong that the penalty is unfairly and irregularly applied, that it runs counter to community values, and that there is a deep-seated reluctance to employ it. The notion that because people fear death the most, the death penalty is a superior deterrent to crime only applies to those who think rationally about committing capital offenses† (Bessler, 2003, p. 94). In the Furman v. Georgia (1972) decision, the concurring justices agreed that the Constitution prohibited the execution of the 631 men and two women held on death row in 32 states. Of those 633 inmates, 547 were murderers, 80 were rapists and four were armed robbers; of which 351 were black, 267 white and 13 of other racial backgrounds. All of the condemned had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, to a term of years, or, in a few cases, to new trials (Bessler, 2003). The Supreme Court eventually rescinded this decision in 1976. In relation to discrimination in capital punishment, Bessler (2003) identifies seven common myths: Myth #1: Innocent people aren’t executed. The Stanford Law Review published a study in 1987 and found that since 1900, at least 23 people who were possibly innocent have been put to death. Over 100 people have been released from death row since 1973 because of uncertainties about their guilt or because DNA or other evidence positively proved their innocence (Bessler, 2003). So far this year, there have already been five exonerations (â€Å"Facts†, 2004). Bessler (2003) calls attention to a study conducted by James Liebman, a professor at Columbia Law School, which showed just how many mistakes are made in death cases. The study looked at 4,578 capital sentences reviewed by state appellate courts and 599 capital sentences reviewed in federal habeas proceedings from 1973 to 1995. Of the 4,578 death sentences reviewed on direct appeal, 41% were tossed out due to serious error. Even more sentences were vacated in state habeas corpus proceedings, and of the 599 sentences reviewed by federal courts, 40% were set aside because of potentially fatal errors. In those instances, it took on average more than seven years to detect the errors. Incompetent defense attorneys were responsible for 37% of mistakes, 20% involved faulty jury instructions and 19% were due to police or prosecutorial error. At retrials, 75% of convicts whose death sentences were vacated got lesser sentences or acquitted. The overall error rate from 1973 to 1995 in capital c ases was 68% (p. 89). A margin of error that high is hardly acceptable on university level exams, yet our society continues to allow people to be put to death under such circumstances. George W. Bush, former governor of Texas, expresses confidence that no innocent inmates were ever executed during his gubernatorial tenure. â€Å"I know there are some in the country who don’t care for the death penalty,† he once said on the presidential campaign trail, â€Å"but I’ve said once and I’ve said a lot, that in every case we’ve adequately answered innocence or guilt† (Bessler, 2003, p. 71). Yet, under his administration, Bush decided that 30 minutes was too long to spend on a final review of a death sentence, so he cut reviews to a mere 15 minutes. How can someone â€Å"adequately† determine guilt or innocence in a 15-minute review? A former French justice minister, Robert Badintor, was so bothered by Bush’s oversight of (and lack of oversight of) more than 100 Texas executions that he called Bush â€Å"the world champion executioner† (Bessler, 2003, p. 77). Perhaps Bush should have followed the lead of Illinois Governor George Ryan, who in 2000, declared a moratorium on executions in his home state. After 13 death row inmates were exonerated by new evidence, Ryan said he would not allow any more executions unless an independent panel could give him a â€Å"one hundred percent guarantee† against any mistaken convictions (Bessler, 2003, p. 68). Also in 2000, President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno concluded that a moratorium on federal executions was necessary to conduct a further study of the problem. That study was ditched in 2001, when President Bush’s newly appointed Attorney General, John Ashcroft, declared that another study showed â€Å"no evidence of racial bias in the administration of the federal death penalty† and who declared the Department of Justice would not postpone executions on the basis of doubts about racial fairness (Bessler, 2003, p. 88). Myth #2: Death row inmates all get fair trials. How much does a trial cost? For some, it is merely a monetary issue. For others, it can cost them their life. A fair trial inherently revolves around the ability to retain competent counsel, and under most circumstances, competent counsel does not come under the guise of a court appointed attorney. For example, in Alabama there is no state funded public defender system. Attorneys, subject to severe compensation restrictions by the state, end up representing defendants in capital cases who are unable to afford counsel. Until 1999, Alabama’s cap on compensation in capital cases was the lowest in the nation. Alabama’s hourly rate of compensation was $20 per hour for out-of-court work and $40 per hour for in-court activity. Out-of-court compensation was capped at $1,000 per phase of a capital trial. These restrictions led many lawyers to neglect the time necessary to effectively assist their clients in capital cases. (Stevenson, 2004). When a poor person is tried for a capital case with a court appointed attorney, more often than not, they are receiving less consideration in their cases than someone like Scott Peterson, a California man recently convicted of murdering his wife and unborn child. Peterson was able to retain a high profile lawyer and, although he was convicted, his lawyer gave 110% to ensure Peterson was afforded every opportunity under the law. Naturally, Peterson’s lawyer was well compensated for his efforts. Another high profile example of this is the OJ Simpson case. Simpson, accused of brutally murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman, was acquitted after his team of lawyers proved how inept the prosecution was and a showed a conspiracy with the local police department. A person of modest means, who would have no way to afford such diligent attorneys, often falls prey to the injustices of the criminal justice system. In other cases, condemned inmates have been represented by drunk attorneys and lawyers who fell asleep in court or called their own clients â€Å"wetbacks† or â€Å"niggers† (Bessler, 2003, p. 75). The Chicago Tribune found that 33 people sentenced to die in Illinois were represented by attorneys who were later disbarred or suspended from practicing law. Lawyers less than a year out of law school have been appointed to defend capital cases, and incompetent attorneys have failed to hire investigators or experts, present evidence of a defendant’s mental illness, or put on any evidence at all at the penalty phase of a capital case (Bessler, 2003). In 1997, Stevenson (2004) represented a death row prisoner on appeal whose appointed attorney did not call a single witness or present any evidence whatsoever on behalf of his client at either the guilt or penalty phase during the trial. The evidentiary portion of the penalty phase takes up less than a single page of the court’s transcript. And, in a 2000 Dothan, Alabama, case, the entire trial lasted only seven hours-including closing statements and jury instructions-before an underprivileged man accused was convicted of capital murder. After the state’s presentation of evidence, the defense presented no witnesses and the jury began deliberating at 3:15pm on the same day that the trial had started. The jury sentenced the defendant to death. (Stevenson, 2004). Bedau (1987) says that, â€Å"Persons are sentenced to death and executed not because they have been found to be uncontrollably violent or hopelessly poor confinement and release risks. Instead they are executed because at trial they have a poor defense (inexperienced or overworked counsel), they have no funds to bring witnesses to court, they are transients or strangers in the community where they are tried, the prosecuting attorney wants the publicity that goes with â€Å"sending a killer to the chair†, there are no funds for an appeal or for a transcript of the trial record, or because they are members of a despised racial or political minority (p. 44). Reasons beyond the scope of control for a defendant are not legitimate enough to execute them. Myth #3: There’s no discrimination in the death penalty’s administration. Between 1930 and 1990, 53% of the 4,016 people executed in the US were black, and from 1930 to 1976, when blacks made up just 12% of the US population, 90% of all rapists executed were black. According to one report of six white men sentenced to death for rape since 1940, five had received clemency or had their convictions reversed by the courts. In contrast, of the forty-eight black rapists sentenced to death since 1940, twenty-nine had died in the electric chair. Of those remaining, twelve were awaiting execution at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. The convictions of only four of the forty eight blacks were reversed by the courts; only two of the forty eight persuaded the Pardon Board to commute their death sentences; the forty eight was killed in custody by a white sheriff under mysterious circumstances (Meltsner, 2003). Every study of the death penalty has confirmed that black male rapists (especially where the victim is a white woman) are far more likely to be sentenced to d eath and executed than white male rapists (Bedau, 1987). In some capital cases, the existence of racial bias is overt. Stevenson (2004) called attention to the case of Victor Saldano. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2000 after the attorney general of Texas conceded that the â€Å"prosecutions’ introduction of race as a factor for determining ‘future dangerousness’ constituted a violation of the appellant’s right to equal protection and due process.† At trial, the state’s expert testified in the penalty phase that one of the factors associated with a defendant’s future dangerousness was his race or ethnicity. The state’s â€Å"expert† identified the Argentinean defendant as Hispanic and relied on the overrepresentation of â€Å"black and brown† people in prison to support his assumption about the correlation between race and dangerousness. After the United States Supreme Court reversed the lower courts decision based on the Texas attorney general’s co nfession of error, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reinstated the death sentence. The Texas court held that the attorney general had no authority to confess error in a death penalty case appealed to a federal court. In another case, Anthony Ray Peek, an African American, was wrongly accused of capital murder and sentenced to death in Florida after a white trial judge inappropriately admitted evidence and expedited the penalty phase proceedings by stating from the bench, â€Å"Since the nigger mom and dad are here anyway, why don’t we go ahead and do the penalty phase today instead of having to subpoena them back at cost to the state† (Stevenson, 2004, p. 87). In 1989, another case of clear discrimination was documented when a federal judge found that Wilburn Dobbs, was tried by a state court judge who had spent his life defending racial segregation and would only refer to Mr. Dobbs at trial as â€Å"colored† or â€Å"colored boy.† A jury, some who later revealed that they believed the Ku Klux Klan did â€Å"good things in the community† and that black people are more violent than whites, convicted Dobbs of capital murder. Mr. Dobbs was defended by an attorney whose own racist views included a belief that black people are â€Å"morally inferior, less intelligent, and biologically destined to steal.† The District Court and the Eleventh Circuit Court nevertheless affirmed Mr. Dobbs’ conviction and death sentence. The United States Supreme Court eventually reversed the lower court’s ruling on other grounds (Stevenson, 2004 p. 88). Myth #4: The death penalty is cheaper than life without parole sentences. In Texas, a typical death penalty case costs $2.3 million, three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at a maximum-security prison for 40 years. In Florida, death sentences cost over $3 million, compared with $516,000 for a life sentence, and in North Carolina, they cost at least $2 million more per. A recent study in California showed taxpayers would save more than $90 million per year by abolishing the death penalty (Bessler, 2003). Myth #5: Impartial jurors hand out death sentences. In a process approved by the US Supreme Court, all capital juries are â€Å"death qualified,† meaning death penalty opponents are excluded from sitting in judgment in capital trials (Bessler, 2003). An 11 state study of capital juries showed that 4 of 5 jurors agreed with the statement â€Å"persons sentenced to prison for murder in this state are back on the streets far too soon†. Those jurors, however, routinely underestimated how long a defendant would be incarcerated if not sentenced to death. In all 11 states, citizens’ release estimates for murderers often fell far below the mandatory minimum sentence required by state law. Defendants are thus sentenced to die by jurors on the basis of misinformation (Bessler, 2003, p. 82). Myth #6: Death sentences are a better deterrent than life without parole sentences. Bessler (2003) reports statistics from active death penalty states to show how ridiculous it is to say the death penalty deters or reduces violent crime more effectively than incarceration. In 1997, Louisiana had 15.7 murders per 100,000 residents; by comparison, Minnesota’s murder rate was 2.6 per 100,000. Texas has one of the country’s worst records when it comes to violent crime. From 1988 to 2000, 1,608,276 violent crimes were reported, including 23,795 murders. There were, on average, over 10 murders per year, per 100,000 residents. A recent study commissioned by the New York Times examined FBI data and found that death penalty states’ average homicide rates consistently exceed those of non-death penalty states. That study showed that, â€Å"over the last twenty years, death penalty states’ murder rates have been, on a per capita basis, an astonishing 48 to 101 percent higher than those in non-death penalty states† (Bessler, 2003, p. 35). As one can easily detect from the examples provided, racial discrimination can rear its ugly head in most aspects of the criminal justice system. In capital cases especially, continued bias from judges, juries and attorneys often condemn defendants before they are even tried. Justice Harry Blackmun, who stated in his bold dissent in Callins v. Collins (1994) â€Å"From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than twenty years I have endeavored- indeed, I have struggled- along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor.† Blackmun continued, â€Å"Rather than continue to coddle the Courts delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. â€Å" It is virtually self-evident to me,† he says, â€Å"now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies.† â€Å"The basic question-does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants deserve to die? -cannot be answered in the affirmative,† Blackmun wrote. â€Å"The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.† Even when the problems with the administration of justice in capital cases are recognized, no action has been taken to prevent problems for occurring in the future. So the debate continues, as it has for hundreds of years. Bedau (1987) summed it up simply: The actual study of why particular persons have been sentenced to death shows those executed were usually the unlucky victims of prejudice and discrimination, the losers in an arbitrary lottery that could have just as well spared them, the victims of the disadvantages that almost always goes with poverty. However, heinous murder and other crimes are, the system of capital punishment does not compensate for or erase those crimes. It tends only to add new injuries of its own to catalogue of human brutality (p. 44). References Bedau, H. (1987). Death is Different. Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press. Bessler, J. (2003). Kiss of Death. Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press. Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141 (1994) Facts About the Death Penalty. (2004). Retrieved November 24, 2004, from Death Penalty Information Center Web site: deathpenaltyinfo.org/FactSheet.pdf Haas, K. C., Inciardi, J. A. (1988). Challenging Capital Punishment: Legal and social approaches. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications. Meltsner, M. (1973). Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment. New York, New York: Random House. Stevenson, Bryan (2004). â€Å"Close to Death: Reflections on Race and Capital Punishment in America† in Bedau and Cassell eds., Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Research Papers on Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice SystemCapital PunishmentBook Review on The Autobiography of Malcolm X19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraThe Masque of the Red Death Room meaningsThe Effects of Illegal ImmigrationArguments for Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS)Comparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoWhere Wild and West MeetHip-Hop is ArtThe Relationship Between Delinquency and Drug Use

101 Woman Hollering Creek and La Llorona Professor Ramos Blog

101 Woman Hollering Creek and La Llorona Female Mexican Stereotypes Quick Write A theme is a central idea in a piece of writing or other work of art. What theme or themes did you notice in Woman Hollering Creek? Female Mexican Stereotypes The Virgin La Malinche La Llorona La Llorona Prezi 2019 The Curse of La Llorona Analysis vs Summary Summary versus Analysis. What is the difference? What does it mean to analyze literature? Woman Hollering Creek What are some themes, recurring topics or ideas, that you have noticed? Lets come up with a list of characters. Arguable Thesis Start with what interests you, to develop a point of analysis. You can choose a character, theme, issue, context, patterns, metaphors, authors style or language, etc. What is standing out to you and then you can develop that into a thesis. You will be arguing that your analysis of the work is valid. Developing Strong Thesis Statements In Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros is recasting traditional negative Mexican female archetypes in a positive light. Alternate Interpretation Student Video

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (Historical) PowerPoint Presentation

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (Historical) - PowerPoint Presentation Example People then were impartial to slavery, â€Å"nativism and religious beliefs. â€Å"(Baltimore† n.d.) The birth of Benjamin came at a time when people have no knowledge of medical research and science, and the phenomenon that happened in the story was not understood. Even medical science books did not provide information about the advanced stage of mind and body of Benjamin when he was born. Since people are bound by religious beliefs, a baby born out of the ordinary situation is a clear sensation in such a small community of Antebellum, Baltimore. Population of Baltimore in 1860 was only 212,000 but the city was bustling in economy because of trade brought about by the railways and steamships, and the first translantic cable system. (â€Å"Baltimore†) The family of Benjamin was one of the elites in the society and they had anticipated the birth of their son with much enthusiasm. This is the time too that discrimination is rife because of the existence of the black slavery. Discrimination is shown in the story not by the color of Benjamin’s skin but by his physical appearance that led to his non-acceptance to Yale. Yale and Harvard are the two most prominent schools most wealthy families send their children for schooling, but it could be seen that there are also student discriminations on these two colleges. The period of 1869 to 1896 was the construction boom in Baltimore. Construction of housing became the major factor in Baltimore’s economy. (â€Å"Baltimore†) It is assumed that this is the time where Benjamin took control of the hardware business of the family that gave them immense wealth. By that, it is calculated he is 20 years old with looks of a 50 year old man when he began to help his father in their business. Baltimore, during the time of the story, was torn by a civil war. It was also agog with politics that kept people interested in their three party political system, powerful bosses, orchestrated political violence and the emergence of

Noise in Multimedia System Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Noise in Multimedia System - Essay Example Noise is defined as any unwanted thing in the desired one. Though in some special cases in electronics like oscillator where noise is intentionally introduced but, most of the times they create hindrance to the actual motto. Suppose after faithful encoding data is sent over transmission medium. Spurious electrical signals from environment may interfere to the original signal resulting noise. In other cases noise appears as flicker of screen. For portable devices developers need to design layout for the target device and developing pixels of precise width and resolution sometimes give erroneous result. Again, online content developers who work independently for target devices finally come out with objects which have problem in mapping. This paper explicitly concentrates on various noise sources and their effect on multimedia products. It also outlines ways to overcome it. Noise in one sense is defined as measurable amount of loss of data. It is a random parameter that can be measured by its statistical properties. In telecommunication channel noise is generally gets added in medium during transmission. Figure 1 shows such a transmission channel. In between transmitter to receiver there is the medium. It can be either wire in case of line communication or free space for wireless communication. Signal gets interfered by noise in the medium by various means e.g. thundering, signal from other sources if two signals are close to each other and from mismatch between transmitter and receiver. Shannon defined the limit of transmission in a noisy channel for a given channel capacity in order to maximize the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio1. But it does not guarantee noise free transmission. This is nothing but the post transmission noise and before it gets received. Different methods exist to detect any error has arisen and if so, to correct it. The seven layer OSI model works well for error detection and correction in any computer communication process. From multimedia perspective transmission and reception methods are somewhat more complex where; total display is fragmented into different components and then all together information is sent to the target end maintaining timing constraint. SMIL is a language format used for encoding multimedia presentations for transmission over the web. It's a structured composition of autonomous media objects. Figure 2 shows one basic timing containers2. In SMIL seq container begin time is relative to predecessor's end. Par container has begin time relative to the containing par but for excl object a is started whenever object x (not shown) is activated and object b, c are started when object y and z (not shown) are activated. It is to be noted that no two common timeline should be used to model the relationship between a, b and c. If it's not maintained then there will be overlap between the objects that will turn to give timing mismatch, which may appear as noise in display. Other than this, before transmission objects are encoded into convenient form. During encoding data might get lost. For example if it's an image then it might have been encoded into jpg form where loss of data and as a result noise can get introduced. This noise will be incorporated throughout its processing and appear finally in