DRUGS AND ADDICTION ASSIGNMENT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

DRUGS AND ADDICTION ASSIGNMENT - Essay Example Manifestly, the quality of the social setting influences a person’s varieties. Thus, it accentuates the prominence of social factors for enhancing behaviors and addictions. The work provides explanation people’s perceptions and main motives that facilitate abuse of specific drugs based on sociological theories. Specific areas of interests include the symbolic interactionism, structural functional and conflict forces (Brent & Lewis 2013). Besides, genetic dynamics influence individuals worth and societys reactions. Structural functionalism Interprets society as a complex system whose components work together to stimulate stability and solidarity. Thus, positive or negative individuals’ appeals are products of order ultimate provisions or the absence respectively. Consequently, drug abuse is a reaction to the weak or deteriorating standards in the American society. Significant modernization presents complex structures and prompt social variations. In turn, shared morals and norms become indefinite and indistinguishable. To a wider context, the situation causes social instability, which is responsible for inconsistencies, and social strains that increase drug abuse. Likewise, contradiction between the American Government agencies, health care providers, and advertisers promotes drug use among citizens. For instance, the health care warn about dangers associated with the drugs, promoters venerate the use of drugs and the government subsidizes prices of other substances like tobacco and alcohol industries. Whether it is controlled substance or legal products, the drugs still exist for human consumption. In addition, culture fosters drug use for example toasting champagne with groom and bride. Conclusively, substance abuse results from lack of a strong links between the society and individuals. Social challenges also arise from individual’s interaction with peers. The symbolic interactionist

Business Plan Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Business Plan - Assignment Example We are a socially responsible organization with policies relating to health & safety, training and the environment thereby providing assurance to our customers that they are working with a professional company, fluent in handling the industry's changing requirements while maintaining the traditions of customer satisfaction and quality by offering high end services. WYR Ltd willfully understands the challenges facing the house builders in the current market. This company is going to develop an enviable host of policies and procedures to manage customer requirements, backed up by vision and a financially astute management team. WYRL will be the part of The Intelligent Membrane Trade Association (IMA) which is a top UK based organisation which lists expert contractors as its members. The listing criteria of IMA are tough and only those contractors are listed which have successfully demonstrated highest quality standards. BehBehind the IMA is the strength of Icopal which is the largest manufacturer of roofing and building membranes in the world. Icopal has been manufacturing plants in the UK, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Belgium, France and the USA. Products are distributed by 7 offices across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. Icopal is the largest construction membrane company in the UK and Eire offering the widest possible choice of specification products that include: Built up Flat Roofing, Pitched Roofing, Acoustic Flooring Systems, Structural Waterproofing, and Geomembranes. WYRL aspires to be registered with Icopal in order to achieve industry wide quality standards. WYR Ltd. will be constant in its commitment to delivering high quality expertise and customer service to achieve the Programme requirements. This company can also mobilise its skilled workforce to service the needs of any project in any Wales and UK location. Product & Service Waterproof Your Roof Limited (WYRL) is a service oriented organization offering services to wide range of costumers belonging to both to our Industrial customers as well as general public. The basic services will include water-proof roofing, water-leakage roofing as well as installation of leak proof roofing. All the services may be availed as a complete package or can also be availed as standalone services. In order to further establish ourselves in the business, we shall be striving to develop our unique selling proposition of delivering high quality services at low costs. For this purpose, we will not charge our margins on the products purchased from third parties rather, our aim will be to offer high quality services backed up by inexpensive but highly effective material which can ensure high quality but durable roofline services. All such services will be delivered through highly trained experts who will be delivering all such services within allotted time period mutually agreed between our customers and us. WYRL shall also be cross selling

The capital punishment

The capital punishment Capital Punishment Capital punishment is the lawful act of taking the life of a person who has been convicted of a crime. There has much debate over the years concerning capital punishment and its effectiveness as a crime deterrence, retribution, and the methods in which the executions are carried out. All the mentioned factors lead to the question of should the United States use capital punishment? According to Cheatwood the deterrence argument for capital punishmentclaims that the existence of thedeath penalty and the use of that penalty will deter violent crime within the political jurisdiction in which the law exist and is applied. If that is true, then in two fundamentally similar jurisdictions that differ only in the existence and use of capital punishment the level of violent crime in the jurisdiction that employs the death penalty should be lower than the level in the jurisdiction that does not (Cheatwood,1993,para.17). Cheatwood(1993) found that in consideration of the research conducted in 1976 it showed that neither the existence of capital punishment at state level, nor the enactment of provision as demonstrated by the number of executions in the state would have an effect on deterring crime at the county level. Some think that capital punishment is brutal, others believe that it is retribution for horrific crimes committed (Zimring, 2000). Many would agree with me that in the case of Angel Diaz a man who was convicted and sentenced to death was subjected to brutal and inhumane conditions, something went terribly wrong. The drugs administered left his arms badly burned; the medical examiner said that none of the medication administered went to the right place. Witnesses stated the deceased seemed to suffer during the process, according to testimony it took 34 minutes, which is 20 minutes longer than usually required for an execution. According to testimony 14 vials of material was used before Diaz was successfully executed (National Public Radio,2007). Jed Bush who was the Governor of Florida during this botched execution called the moratorium in that state on all prosecutions until they could get to the bottom of what was going wrong with the legal injection protocol(National Public Radio, 2007). During an interview on National Public Radio Dahlia Lithwick stated that 22 of the 40 states that allow the death penalty either have moratoria or theyre considering imposing moratoria. Two other states formally banned lethal injection, and one has found the death penalty unconstitutional (National Public Radio,2007). Some states admit that they believe in capital punishment but do not agree with the disastrous way it is administered (National Public Radio,2007). Some states think that if the accused has committed murder then he or she must die as retribution. They believe that life imprisonment does not serve as retribution for the loss of innocent life. Defenders of capital punishment also argue that it is a crime deterrent. I do not agree with capital punishment, but many agree that it is just retribution. How can we stand behind a law that commits the same act that it convicts? I do agree that society has an obligation to protect its citizens. Murderers and others who commit crimes that are detrimental to the safety and welfare of society should be reprimanded but lawfully killing another is committing murder. Some feel that the only way to guarantee that a convicted murderer will not kill again is by imposing the death penalty. This is true; the accused will not kill again because he or she is deceased. Most research has produced no findings that capital punishment is a crime deterrent. There is no evidence to support the claim that the death penalty is a more effective deterrent of violent crime than, say, life imprisonment. In fact, statistical studies that have compared the murder rates of jurisdictions with and without the death penalty have shown that the rate of murder is not related to whether the death penalty is in force: There are as many murders committed in jurisdictions with the death penalty as in those without. Unless it can be demonstrated that the death penalty, and the death penalty alone, does in fact deter crimes of murder, we are obligated to refrain from imposing it when other alternatives exist (Andre Velasquez,1988,). This is a debate that will go on for years to come. Capital punishment should be abolished because of botched executions and claims of racism. It also fair to say that those who cant afford to appeal their cases because of lack of funds are more likely sentenced to death than those who can afford a good legal defense. In some cases innocent people are sentenced to death. All life is of value whether or not it is taken illegal or legal it is unjust. References Cheatwood, D.(1993).Capital punishment and the deterrence of violent crime in comparable counties.Criminal Justice Review(Georgia State University), 18(2), 165-181. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=truedb=sihAN=14243834site=ehost-live Zimring, E. F. (2000) Capital Punishment, Online Encyclopedia Retrieved from http://autocww.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/LawAndCourts/CapitalPunishment.html National Public Radio, Day to Day. (2007, February13). Florida mulls lethal-injection problems. Message posted to http://http:/www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=7382349 Andre, C., Velasquez, M.(1988).Capital punishment our duty or doom.Isssues in Ethics, 1(3), . Retrievedfromhttp://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v1n3/capital.html

Borders :: essays research papers

Borders are concepts which encompass and exclude. They exist everywhere. Some are literal visible physical lines whereas others go beyond sight and exist in terms of characteristics such as monetary wealth, or even humanity. Over time these boundaries are redefined and in turn change the flow of daily life for the individuals they effect. In many cases it is the powerful governments which are in control of the pen which outline these symbolic and physical lines. However as history can prove even though it is these powerful governments which give definition to these borders, it is very often them (the governmental officials) who are the ones who cross them. This hypocritical characteristic is blatantly apparent in regards to Central America. Both the ruling elite and the United States government has infringed upon the many levels of borders which exist in this part of the world. Numerous atrocities have been committed, thousands of lives have been shattered, countless victims have suffered all due to lack of respect for the borders which exist. All levels have been touched; political, economic, and even human. No outline is safe from being infringed upon or even shattered in Central America. While many of us may point fingers it is indeed our very own United States government which has not respected the political borders present in this part of the world. We have stepped into territory in this area that we have no business being involved with. Under our government’s supervision, the CIA carried out a coup in Guatemala in which it installed a self-perpetuation pro-American gang of military criminals who have held power for almost forty years. Their reproductive mechanism has been murder of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalams. After this unnecessary interaction of the CIA, US national security planners saw "Cuba as a highly inflammable element which unchecked, could spread communism - now interchangeable with revolution" (Landau 30). In response to this President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to repeat its ‘success’ in Guatemala. "Throughout the continent, US police and military advisers worked with torturers, murderers and Fascists to repress not only revolution, but all forms of democracy" (Landau 31). Our government officials have such extreme fears of the uprising of the poor in these nations that it did not care out of place it was to get involved. Their economic investments and trade guided our foreign relations. They would enter and cross the borders of this seemingly innocent third world section of the continent and intervene regardless of the fact that they did not belong there in the sense that it is not thier country and should not be involved.

HIV/AIDS patients in Zambia; Are they cared for? Essay

Executive summary Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic has created terrible burden for millions of individuals, families and communities worldwide. All sorts of exertions have been tried to curtail this tormentor and yet no known cure or vaccines have been discovered to prevent it. Religious prayers and even rituals have also seemed futile. However, the only option now is to only provide tender care, love and even nurture for those that are infected and consequently affected. This might prevent further spread and in turn minimise further impacts. This study seeks to improve on the care that should be rendered to HIV/AIDS patients and even strategize on how to improve the well-being of these ill-fated people. This study is a combination of situational analysis through a scientific study to understand various dynamics of management of HIV/AIDS patients in Zambia accompanied by formulation of strategies based on findings of the study. Background The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Zambia has even become one of the highest in the world. The prevalence rate in the general population is estimated to be 14.3 per cent with approximately 930, 000 people living with HIV/AIDS. Generally, despite all the campaigns, the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS still exists. On one hand, patients who are infected and have all the symptoms claim to be neglected at the hospitals and are not given the best services. It may not be out of order to query whether these health care providers are really taking care of HIV/AIDS patients. Several interventions have been staked so far but they do not seem to adequately address and even assess if HIV/AIDS patients are fully attended to by health care providers. For example, though not very successful, the National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB intervention strategy plan 2002–2005 was developed with providing care to people living and affected by HIV/AIDS as one of the strategies of reducing the spread of AIDS. This research endeavours to provide a fundamental overview of how best the society at large can prevent further spread of HIV through care. This is deemed necessary for the implementation of an HIV/AIDS free management policies. If it comes out necessary to quarantine HIV patients, we will not hesitate to articulate that. Rationale This study aims at creating space for all people living with HIV/AIDS in different settings; especially in hospital environment, where most of them seek medical advice. This study shall improvise core framework for any change/s at the institutional and individual levels and across all sectors that in turn shall help create an environment of understanding, empathy, love, trust, hope, human rights and dignity for those most in need, that is, HIV/AIDS patients. Problem The major problem is the increased levels of stigmatization, discrimination and violation of human rights of HIV/AIDS patients in various settings. Minor problems include: * Lack of better strategies to deal with matters of HIV/AIDS * Lack of consistency in delivery of health care * Lack of friendly or social relationship between HIV/AIDS patients and care takers Objectives In addressing the problems stated above, the following specific research objectives have to be achieved: i. To investigate the extent to which patients are cared for by health care providers and relations. ii. To investigate the nutritional well-being of HIV/AIDS patients. iii. To identify factors leading to stigma, discrimination and human rights violation of HIV/AIDS patients. iv. To frame recommendations/strategies for policy makers and other influential groups for improvements in social well-being of HIV/AIDS patients. Methodology Participants Our sample size is 150 and these consist of all HIV/AIDS patients in the selected hospitals within Lusaka. The number of patients to approach per hospital will be determined on the total number of admitted patients at the time of data collection. Our target population is all HIV/AIDS patients that have been admitted to the selected hospitals for at least one week. However, since it will be impossible to survey all HIV/AIDS patients in all hospitals in the City of Lusaka, our study population will be patients admitted to University Teaching Hospital (UTH) and Levy Mwanawasa General Hospital. These patients are to be found on weekdays/weekends during the stipulated visiting hours per hospital. Data Analysis Data will be entered in excel and analysed using SPSS version 16 and descriptive statistics will be computed using the same software. SPSS will be selected because it is user friendly. Research Method Our research method is to perform a situational analysis study using a questionnaire capturing the HIV/AIDS patients’ nutritional status, social relationship with care takers and how often they are visited by their relations. The questionnaire is as simple as possible to avoid frustrating the patients. Our sampling method will be convenience sampling where we would simply visit HIV/AIDS patients in hospitals under study. Convenience sampling will be used because this method would not impose a huge cost. Due to confidentiality and ethical considerations, the then main clinicians during data collection, at the hospitals under study will help to distribute questionnaires to those HIV/AIDS patients willing to participate. Currently, at UTH, we have Dr Nyirenda and Dr Musonda who are willing to administer the questionnaires in clinic five of UTH and Dr Alfred at Levy Mwanawasa General Hospital. We will simply approach any HIV/AIDS patient and ask them to volunteer in our survey. We will conduct an in-person survey by briefly introducing to them the purpose of our survey and explain why their participation will be valuable to the public. We will ask them if they have 3 minutes to do our survey. By having given them a brief introduction before we interview them, we can have a better sense of whether or not our survey is applicable to them. All non-HIV/AIDS patients in the stated hospitals will be ineligible to participate in the survey. In addition, a focus group will also be used to discuss the perceived prejudices that HIV/AIDS patients face. We will simply ask two HIV/AIDS patients, one representative from UNZA HIV/AIDS response office and one representative from the Ministry of Health to volunteer to give us one hour on one evening to get their opinions about the current levels of stigmatization, discrimination and violation of human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS. A facilitator will be present to conduct the group discussion and ask several open-ended questions while another representative will record the respondents’ answers during the discussion. The advantage of this focus group study is that it is not costly, not time consuming and we can get in-depth information and opinions from people who are directly and frequently affected by the problem. Anticipated Results Expected Outcomes: Mounting evidence suggests that no known cure for HIV/AIDS has been unearthed so far. This simply entails that we can only reduce further spread of the pandemic by improving the lives of the people who are infected and affected by the pandemic. Consequently, this study will not only enlighten the policy makers on the real strategy of reducing the further spread of HIV/AIDS but also propose measures that may deal with the problem more effectively. It is further expected that this study will generate a research report and a fact sheet on the dynamics and impact of stigmatization and discrimination on those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in Zambia. In the final analysis, it is expected that Government through the Ministry of Health and indeed the donors will be better informed, and could adopt some of the findings and recommendations in their policies. Impact: Results from this study are expected to feed into policies aimed at improving the well-being of HIV/AIDS patients in the country. From these, it is expected that the policies can be inferred to other countries facing HIV/AIDS. Utilisation: It is expected that findings from this study will be utilised by policy makers and implementers to enhance health care planning and ensure that the scarce national resources are allocated efficiently on projects that give the highest social and economic returns to HIV/AIDS patients. Dissemination Findings from this study will be disseminated through workshops that will be held so that all the stakeholders are informed about the viability of report findings as a remedial measure to the spread of HIV/AIDS in Zambia. Lastly, the study report will be available on the UNZA website and at UNZA HIV/AIDS response office for all to read.

Memory Boy Essay

Memory Boy The book that I choose to read this 9 week period is called Memory by Will Weaver. The book is based on the lives of a family of 4 people; Miles, Sarah, and their two parents. Memory Boy starts out in the Mid West after a mountain range in Washington erupts and spews ash what seems billions of feet up, and over the entire United Sates like a blanket. The ash is so thick that people have to wear dust masks outside to avoid the risk of breathing it in. Miles and his family finally decide to leave the town that they live in to head northwest.Since the ash is so heavy they can’t drive a car because those are restricted, and people can only use them on certain days to avoid the problem of pollution. So Miles assembles a new vehicle that he calls the Princess. It is a mix between a bicycle and a boat that they must pilot by either peddling, or when there is enough wind they have a sail from a boat to put up. They decide to leave under the curtain of night to avoid being d etected by other people who would want to take their vehicle from them.As they make their way North they must face encounters with many obstacles such as road blocks, bandits, hunger, the government, nature, each other, and other hazards. In between telling us about they’re adventure north, Miles, who is the main character tells us the events leading up to their departure, starting with the day that the eruption happened. The novel starts out a peaceful journey by the family but they soon learn that their trip will not be easy and they must work together to survive.Miles is our main character and we watch all the events happen through his point of view. He would be a junior in high school if they still actually went to school. Miles is a smart individual who enjoys doing the job of a mechanic. He built the Princess by himself and is the only one who is about to fix and maintain it throughout the book. He takes a strong leadership role; even his parents look to him to solve th e solutions. When the volcano erupted he was only in the 9th grade.So every other chapter he will flashback to his 9th grade year to tell us a story about after the volcano erupted. He often compares his life now to that of his 9th grade year, and how he would have done things different. He used to be disrespectful and would often act out in school to seek attention. He will explain to us how some of the events he tells us about have changed him. Miles sister Sarah is a few years younger than he is. She is a dark and morbid girl; the type that is into vampire, dark music, and dark literature.But even though she seems tough on the outside, but she is actually just hiding how scared she has been throughout this entire ordeal. She secretly looks up to miles even though she would never say so to him. She doesn’t like her father very much because he was always away when she was a child. Miles’s father was a jazz musician in a band before the eruption. He was always on the r oad with his band, so he wasn’t around much when Miles and Sarah were growing up.Although he seems quite docile at the beginning of the book we soon learn that he is actually quite the leader, and when Miles gets overwhelmed his father is always there to take the lead for awhile. Miles’s mother was the main caretaker of the children so she was always around. At the beginning of the book she kept the family together as a unit, they referred to her as being. The children see their mother as being helpless most of the time. It isn’t until later in the book that she really blooms as a character, and becomes a very useful asset to the group.

Honeymoon Is Over

Honeymoon Is Over The Honeymoon is Over This article is about a 28 year computer programmer named Jennifer and a 28 year old elementary school teacher named David. Both Jennifer and David have careers where they are immensely interested in becoming upwardly mobile. Jennifer and David have been living as a married couple for two years. Recently their marriage has met a road block. The couple are constantly arguing about the life changing choice of whether or not to have a family. Jennifer is not sure she wants a family yet. She is satisfied with concentrating on her career right now and maybe thinking about a family later in life where her and her husband are more financially stable. David wants a family right now. He feels pressure to get his family life going because his younger brother got married and his wife is already expecting. He believes that he and his wife should have a child now instead of later because right now they are both young and full of energy.JENNIFER O'CONNORJennifer doesn't under stand what the rush is, and David calls Jennifer selfish and states that she isn't thinking about anyone but herself.In Structural Functionalism people are not good at dealing with change. They believe that males are the bread winners and females should stay at home. David strongly supports this Framework, he wants his bride to have a family and not concentrate on her career as much. While Jennifer strongly disagrees with this Framework. She wants to change her role and become the bread winner and concentrate on her career.In Symbolic Interactionism there is emphasis on the active participation of people in creating their own destinies. They believe that life just doesn't happen you have to do something that will make it happen. This Framework also can be...

Mental Illness and Capital Punishment essays

Mental Illness and Capital Punishment essays Are all delinquents created equal? Should the state punish, and even in some rare cases sentence an individual to death? Indeed there are many levels of criminal activity that land offenders in jail, with a percentage of those criminals committing their crimes under the force of mental illness. These prisoners, while deserving of severe punishment, often do not have full control of their ability. These orphans of society are often compelled by an emotional or mental imbalance that provokes them to act savagely toward their fellow human beings. Many prisoners that are in jail have been convicted of crimes far beyond their control. Although some blame must be taken, many suffer from acute mental disorders. Those who are running evaluations on the prisoners at the time of punishment often misdiagnose schizophrenia. Many psychologists often see it as temporary insanity. Many of these individuals would benefit more from treatment than from punishment. Psychiatric help is in order for these repeat assault offenders, not a lifetime behind bars where the taxpayers money is not put to good use. By placing the criminals into long-term therapy, there is at least a small chance of rehabilitation that would not be present in a full security prison. With new tests that see if the criminal is really mentally challenged, government officials are beginning to change their perspective on the issue. Many have propositioned that the punishment should fit the mental capacity of the offender. Oftentimes, many criminals are given sentences that far surpass the crime that they have committed. By analyzing the crime and deciding on a proper course of action, most criminals could receive lighter sentences and more psychological help. Thus benefiting those who are mentally challenged. In reality most many federal prisons lack the facilities, and resources to help rehabilitate the individual who is stricken with this disease. ...

19th Century Rural New England Family Essay Example for Free

19th Century Rural New England Family Essay ? 19th Century rural New England family was a protrusion of slave-master relationship that affected all facets of American socio-cultural life. The narrative of Frederick Douglass describe that interracial relationships between a slave woman and male master were common but these relationships never got any social or religious sanctity. Douglass portrayal of his mother clearly indicates the relationship with her master provided no solace to him but rather aggravated her pathos and miseries. It further manifest that such relationships were not based on any mutual warmth but were a manifestation of ‘gratification of their (masters) wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable†. (p. 166) The slave child, production of this relationship, was not entitled to any privileges or rights, socially or legally. So it was quite likely that â€Å"the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the conditions of their mothers† (p. 167) These slave children were also deprived of maternal affection as â€Å"it [was] a common custom, in the part of Maryland†¦, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child [had] reached its twelfth month, its mothers is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off†¦ (p. 165) The mother-children relations were cordial but they were not allowed to meet quite often as Douglass himself saw his mother five or six times during her lifetime. The relationship never developed as there was very little communication between mothers and their children. These children were also kept ignorant of their birthdates and parentage. They were also shorn of basic necessities of life like clothing, lodging and nutrition. Furthermore, these slave-children were subjected to amplified hardship as compared with other slaves because they were â€Å"a constant offence to their mistress†. This also highlights that 19th century rural family of New England was not solely patriarchal but women had immense influence in the affair of household. For example, Douglass writes, â€Å"The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feeling of his white wife. †(p. 166) Similarly, relationship with other member of his parental family were used to be harsh and they were used to undergo harsh treatment and whipping by their white brothers quite frequently. There was no intimacy between slave brothers and sisters and their mutual relationship never developed due the absence of a central tie i. e. parentage. On the other hand, it is illustrated that the role of slave woman in the community were limited to heavy toil and labor at plantations, fulfillment of master’s lusts and sexual desires whenever needed. Their emotional, psychological and mental health was never taken into consideration. The relations of these slave girls and slave children to the community were totally utilitarian and totalitarian as they were used as tool to increase the agricultural production and to satisfy the savage desires and habitual formations of the masters respectively. These slaves were regarded as an entity that was included in their (master’s) property rights and were sanctioned by socio-legal system. So in the wide social perspective, slaves acted as economic instruments and this subordination was characterized not only by commercial necessities but also by psychological phenomenon i. e. to satisfy the human propensities by subjecting them harsh punishments. 19th Century Rural New England Family. (2016, Dec 05).

Business strategy discussion board Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Business strategy discussion board - Essay Example These confused and uninspired thoughts make us lose our initiative to express our thoughts freely and openly. Our confusion and lack of motivation led some of us to actively fail to involve ourselves in the project. Also, because we can't logically express ourselves out, we find it difficult to bind and unify our ideas together. As a result of this, there have been clashes and contradictions of ideas along the way that have just surfaced out as we passed our individual contributions for the group assignment. This even made our group even more difficult to manage. Another problem that we encountered is difficulty in interacting with each other. I admit that the internet makes our lives easy and more productive. But for me face-to-face conversation is still effective in a group project. I believe the atmosphere would be more enthusiastic and more interactive if meetings are done personally. I think this could have been solved if there is someone in the group will stand out and act as a leader. An effective leader streamlines any confusing or contradicting thoughts that the members in the group have. He also gives motivation for each member to eagerly involve themselves and participate in group meetings and discussions that are very vital for the success of the group.

To what extend can it be said that the 'West' won the Cold War Essay - 1

To what extend can it be said that the 'West' won the Cold War - Essay Example Did the West Really Win the Cold War? It has to be explained first what was involved in the end of the Cold War, by determining the major components in the strategy of Gorbachev after 1985 and the unforeseen results of the course of internal and external reform. The policy reforms of Gorbachev occurred in four major domains; in each instance the policy acquired impetus and became more revolutionary commencing around 1987 (Geoffrey 2008). Primarily, the Soviet administration commenced after 1985 to reform features of its military strategy viewed as particularly hostile by the West, and at the same time to alter its method of arms control (Suri 2002). Gorbachev embarked on reassessing military principle, pioneering the notion of ‘reasonable sufficiency at the nuclear level’ (Juviler & Kimura 2009, 139) which indicates that ‘lower nuclear weapons levels would be required’ (ibid, 139) and advancing toward ‘defensive defence at the conventional levelâ€℠¢ (Juviler & Kimura 2009, 140), in an effort to suppress the apprehensions of the West about surprise assault. Subsequently, Gorbachev indicated a reform in the ideological scope and proclaimed objectives of Soviet foreign policy, distancing from an idea of global class conflict toward a more broad-minded idea of peace and alliance. Propaganda about peace had contributed in Soviet policy beforehand, but Gorbachev placed a new emphasis on the essence of the United Nations and on ‘human values’ (Keohane, Nye, & Hoffman 1997). The Soviet Union escorted a new ideological approach with actual hints of a real policy reform, for instance, fulfilling its financial obligations to UN peacekeeping activities and collaborating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (Keohane et al. 1997). The last and most remarkable decision by Gorbachev was to modify Soviet policy toward the nations of East Europe (Phillips 2001). In his address in the UN in 1988 he declared that the Brezhnev Doctrine, stating the privilege of the Soviet Union to occupy Eastern Europe within the flag of socialist internationalism, had been discarded (Suri 2002). At some point in 1989 Solidarity made a compromise with the Polish United Workers’ party and adhered to the regime in August; a new multiparty elections and constitution in Hungary were declared in September (Suri 2002). In these two instances the deviation from the rule of the Communist Party was the outcome of an extended course of internal tension and the rise of strong party leaders, but reform was apparently permitted by the Soviet Union (Leffler & Westad 2010). Gorbachev tried to affect the more unruly administration of the German Democratic Republic (Geoffrey 2008). The Brezhnev Doctrine was officially abandoned by the Warsaw Pact when in the 1989 convention foreign ministers highlighted the right of each nation to be independent (Juviler & Kimura 2009). In spite of the recommendation of Gorbachev of large-scale re form in Eastern Europe, it is questionable if he expected, or aimed for, the disintegration of the coalition which took place after the revolutions in 1989 (Juviler & Kimura 2009). The concluding phase in the ending of the Cold War, the steady collapse of the USSR itself and the abandonment of the rule

Business Planning - franchise KFC Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Business Planning - franchise KFC - Essay Example KFC will introduce a range of edible coffee cups and food items like double down dog in London and hopes to launch them in the newly set franchise. Their coffee cups will be infused with various aromas such as coconut sun cream, fresh grass and wild flowers. They plan to introduce buckets of comfort food along with new ketchup made of marshmallows and lemonade. These newly introduced products are supposed to satisfy the demand of the local residents and result in increased sales (Lafontaine and Shaw, 2005). Their new product ranges are supposed to come with many health benefits for people. Their innovative range of products will fall under 400 calories and below 15 grams of fat so that even if people continue eating their foodstuffs at a regular basis that will serve to be a healthy choice for them. These food ranges will contain no trans fats and will contain adequate amount of calories required to remain healthy (Stier, 2004). Their combo meals will come under healthy diet plans and will serve best in taking care of health of their consumers. These newly invented unique recipes will not compromise the quality and will be made of sustainable materials. To gain a competitive advantage, the company will focus on expanding their business and increase its market share. Use of renewable resources will also differentiate the business to some extent. Majority of competitors tend to use plastic materials for their packaging. KFC will use edible coffee cups which will generate less waste and will confirm to be environment healthy (Tsai, Shih and Chen, 2007). It will develop new food products with great taste and value and also at the same time maintain health standards which will satisfy the expectations of the health concerned people too (Sivadas and Baker-Prewitt, 2000). The price of the new products will be reasonable and competitive with other neighbouring restaurants offering chicken menu. Also by offering unique introductory discounts, the new franchise will

Transportation in Manchester - Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Transportation in Manchester - Report - Essay Example The rural population moves to these urban cities for better opportunities of work, a chance of a better education; this influx of people is from foreign countries too. This human congestion leads to traffic congestion. Although, human influx helps these cities prosper in terms of human capital, intellectual capital and provision of labour; the paradox of traffic congestion comes into play (Smith, 1980). This report will highlight some of the issues that the city of Manchester faces due to traffic congestion. Also, some probable, implementable solutions to the problems will also be provided. Some of them may already be at work, however, can be implemented in a much better way. According to research in 2002, there are nearly half a million traffic jams in the Britain every year; this means that weekly there were about 10,000 congestion reports in a week. Surely, this figure has decreased in light of the initiatives taken by the transport authority; it still hasn’t completely solved the problem. The issues of traffic in Manchester are never-ending. These issues are likely to multiply if proper policy implementation and technology is not used to curtail the issues. Changing population demographics pose a threat to this deteriorating situation in the city. It is expected that by 2015, there will be multiple changes present in the size and of the city’s population; people will more to new places to work, with diverse backgrounds, increase in autonomy of the people in the policy system etc. The issue of hassle-free transportation has to be catered to on urgent basis and proper planning should be done, based on future projections and trends. One of the biggest issue that the people of Manchester faces considering the transport system is the traffic jams at rush hour. This is a pressing problem being faced all over the world. Traffic congestion at peak hours occurs as most of the vehicle owners start moving around the city. The

Hellenic and Hellenistic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Hellenic and Hellenistic - Essay Example Hellenic world had the following characteristics: small cities with self-government system, education gained with the help of private tutors, limited commercial activity, women's role limited to domestic affairs, widespread slavery usage, development of poetry and drama introduction, philosophical movements with emphasis on logic and ethic, introduction of experimental method into sciences, and belief into Olympian gods. Hellenistic world was similar to Hellenic world, however, several new features were common: cities ruled by the wealthy class with centralization of power in the hands of monarchs, education provided at gymnasiums, extensive trade both on the sea and land, introduction of the marriage contracts (women could possess slaves and be property owners), local cultures mixed with classic Greek, philosophical emphasis shifted to non-rationalism and mysticism, and significant advances in astronomy and medicine (Thornton, p. 16-23). Position of women in the society is one of the differences between Hellenic and Hellenistic societies. In Hellenic civilization, marriages were the form of contract between the father of the girl and the father of the boy and were seen as the mean to consolidate the power. Usually men married in their late thirties. They had access to women before: so-called hetairas (prostitutes) were very common. Women from the higher level families, on the other side, were completely isolated from the society, they were not allowed to show themselves in public or when the guests arrived. Women lived in their own side of the house and usually married very early, in their mid-teens. Hellenistic culture has made a significant step in making women's position almost equal to men's. Women were allowed to own the property and slaves, to be the agents in business affairs and could sign the marriage contract outlining the responsibilities of both parties, the divorce and property ownership. Women could be the initiator of the divorce without being looked upon by society. Polis was the distinctive characteristic of Hellenic civilization. Polis was the city-state with independent government - there have been hundreds of such cities in Greece. City-state was governed by the oligarchy or by the representatives of upper level social class. This was some form of the dictatorship. In the sixths century, however, some form of democracy has been introduced into Greek civilization: Athenian democracy when citizens were granted the right to vote hold the office and own the property (Thornton, p. 85-86). Hellenistic age has changed the situation: absolute centralized monarchy has been introduced and more opportunities were granted to upper class women. Women still could not vote or participate in political activities, however, they were involved indirectly and their opinion has been taken into account. Hellenistic monarchy has laid the foundation for the development of urban culture. The typical male representative of Hellenic culture was concerned with polis, conformist and oriented towards the public life, while the representative of Hellenistic culture was individualistic, possessed cosmopolitan outlook and was oriented towards

Business Planning - franchise KFC Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Business Planning - franchise KFC - Essay Example KFC will introduce a range of edible coffee cups and food items like double down dog in London and hopes to launch them in the newly set franchise. Their coffee cups will be infused with various aromas such as coconut sun cream, fresh grass and wild flowers. They plan to introduce buckets of comfort food along with new ketchup made of marshmallows and lemonade. These newly introduced products are supposed to satisfy the demand of the local residents and result in increased sales (Lafontaine and Shaw, 2005). Their new product ranges are supposed to come with many health benefits for people. Their innovative range of products will fall under 400 calories and below 15 grams of fat so that even if people continue eating their foodstuffs at a regular basis that will serve to be a healthy choice for them. These food ranges will contain no trans fats and will contain adequate amount of calories required to remain healthy (Stier, 2004). Their combo meals will come under healthy diet plans and will serve best in taking care of health of their consumers. These newly invented unique recipes will not compromise the quality and will be made of sustainable materials. To gain a competitive advantage, the company will focus on expanding their business and increase its market share. Use of renewable resources will also differentiate the business to some extent. Majority of competitors tend to use plastic materials for their packaging. KFC will use edible coffee cups which will generate less waste and will confirm to be environment healthy (Tsai, Shih and Chen, 2007). It will develop new food products with great taste and value and also at the same time maintain health standards which will satisfy the expectations of the health concerned people too (Sivadas and Baker-Prewitt, 2000). The price of the new products will be reasonable and competitive with other neighbouring restaurants offering chicken menu. Also by offering unique introductory discounts, the new franchise will

Hellenic and Hellenistic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Hellenic and Hellenistic - Essay Example Hellenic world had the following characteristics: small cities with self-government system, education gained with the help of private tutors, limited commercial activity, women's role limited to domestic affairs, widespread slavery usage, development of poetry and drama introduction, philosophical movements with emphasis on logic and ethic, introduction of experimental method into sciences, and belief into Olympian gods. Hellenistic world was similar to Hellenic world, however, several new features were common: cities ruled by the wealthy class with centralization of power in the hands of monarchs, education provided at gymnasiums, extensive trade both on the sea and land, introduction of the marriage contracts (women could possess slaves and be property owners), local cultures mixed with classic Greek, philosophical emphasis shifted to non-rationalism and mysticism, and significant advances in astronomy and medicine (Thornton, p. 16-23). Position of women in the society is one of the differences between Hellenic and Hellenistic societies. In Hellenic civilization, marriages were the form of contract between the father of the girl and the father of the boy and were seen as the mean to consolidate the power. Usually men married in their late thirties. They had access to women before: so-called hetairas (prostitutes) were very common. Women from the higher level families, on the other side, were completely isolated from the society, they were not allowed to show themselves in public or when the guests arrived. Women lived in their own side of the house and usually married very early, in their mid-teens. Hellenistic culture has made a significant step in making women's position almost equal to men's. Women were allowed to own the property and slaves, to be the agents in business affairs and could sign the marriage contract outlining the responsibilities of both parties, the divorce and property ownership. Women could be the initiator of the divorce without being looked upon by society. Polis was the distinctive characteristic of Hellenic civilization. Polis was the city-state with independent government - there have been hundreds of such cities in Greece. City-state was governed by the oligarchy or by the representatives of upper level social class. This was some form of the dictatorship. In the sixths century, however, some form of democracy has been introduced into Greek civilization: Athenian democracy when citizens were granted the right to vote hold the office and own the property (Thornton, p. 85-86). Hellenistic age has changed the situation: absolute centralized monarchy has been introduced and more opportunities were granted to upper class women. Women still could not vote or participate in political activities, however, they were involved indirectly and their opinion has been taken into account. Hellenistic monarchy has laid the foundation for the development of urban culture. The typical male representative of Hellenic culture was concerned with polis, conformist and oriented towards the public life, while the representative of Hellenistic culture was individualistic, possessed cosmopolitan outlook and was oriented towards

A summary of Amazon’s business Essay Example for Free

A summary of Amazon’s business Essay I’ve used Amazon in my books for over 10 years now since many companies, from startups and small businesses to large international businesses, can learn from their focus on the customer and the approach of using technology and analysis to improve results. It consistently outperforms other companies in its ACSI customer satisfaction rating too. I aim to keep the case study up-to-date for readers of the books and Smart Insights readers who may be interested. In it we look at Amazon’s background, revenue model and sources for the latest business results. I recommend anyone studying Amazon checks the latest Amazon revenue and business strategies from their SEC filings / Investor relations. The annual filings to give a great summary of eBay business and revenue models. A good summary of the latest business model initiatives is available in this Amazon annual report summary for 2011. For Q4, 2010: North America segment sales, representing the Company’s U.S. and Canadian sites, were $7.21 billion, up 45% from fourth quarter 2009. International segment sales, representing the Company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese and new Italian sites, were $5.74 billion, up 26% from fourth quarter 2009. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 29%. Amazon has come a long way since it launched in 1995: From: and it’s offices†¦ to it’s current Seattle headquarters: Amazon performs exceptionally efficiently measured against revenue per visitor, which is one of the key measures for any commercial website, whether it’s a media site, search engine, social network or a transactional retailer or offers travel or financial services. Of course profit per user would be quite different due to the significantly lower costs of other .coms like Facebook and Google. Note: SEC is the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which is a government agency for which companies have to submit an open evaluation of their business models and marketplace conditions. Further Amazon case information This case study created by FaberNovel â€Å"Amazon.com: The Hidden Empire† one of five â€Å"Most Favorited† slideshows and one of the five â€Å"Most Popular Technology Presentations† of 2011. Recommended: Amazon Case Study Context Why a case study on Amazon? Surely everyone knows about who Amazon are and what they do? Yes, well that’s maybe true, but this case goes beyond the surface toreview some of the ‘insider secrets’ of Amazon’s success. Like eBay, Amazon.com was born in 1995. The name reflected the vision of Jeff Bezos, to produce a large scale phenomenon like the Amazon river. This ambition has proved justified since just 8 years later, Amazon passed the $5 billion sales mark – it took Wal-Mart 20 years to achieve this. By 2008 Amazon was a global brand with other 76 million active customers accounts and order fulfillment to more than 200 countries. Despite this volume of sales, at December 31, 2007 Amazon employed approximately 17,000 full-time and part-time employees. In September 2007, it launched Amazon MP3, a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.1 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Amazon Vision strategy In their 2008 SEC filing, Amazon describe the vision of their business as to: â€Å"Relentlessly focus on customer experience by offering our customers low prices, convenience, and a wide selection of merchandise.† The vision is still to offer â€Å"Earth’s biggest selection and to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. Consider how these core marketing messages summarising the Amazon online value proposition are communicated both on-site and through offline communications. Of course, achieving customer loyalty and repeat purchases has been key to Amazon’s success. Many dot-coms failed because they succeeded in achieving awareness, but not loyalty. Amazon achieved both. In their SEC filing they stress how they seek to achieve this. They say: â€Å"We work to earn repeat purchases by providing easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfillment, timely customer service, feature rich content, and a trusted transaction environment. Key features of our websites include editorial and customer reviews;  manufacturer product information; Web pages tailored to individual preferences, such as recommendations and notifications; 1-Click ® technology; secure payment systems; image uploads; searching on our websites as well as the Internet; browsing; and the ability to view selected interior pages and citations, and search the entire contents of many of the books we offer with our â€Å"Look Inside the Book† and â€Å"Search Inside the Book† features. Our community of online customers also creates feature-rich content, including product reviews, online recommendation lists, wish lists, buying guides, and wedding and baby registries.† In practice, as is the practice for many online retailers, the lowest prices are for the most popular products, with less popular products commanding higher prices and a greater margin for Amazon. Free shipping offers are used to encourage increase in basket size since customers have to spend over a certain amount to receive free shipping. The level at which free-shipping is set is critical to profitability and Amazon has changed it as competition has changed and for promotional reasons. Amazon communicate the fulfillment promise in several ways including presentation of latest inventory availability information, delivery date estimates, and options for expedited delivery, as well as delivery shipment notifications and update facilities. This focus on customer has translated to excellence in service with the 2004 American Customer Satisfaction Index giving Amazon.com a score of 88 which was at the time, the highest customer satisfaction score ever recorded in any service industry, online or offline. Round (2004) notes that Amazon focuses on customer satisfaction metrics. Each site is closely monitored with standard service availability monitoring (for example, using Keynote or Mercury Interactive) site availability and download speed. Interestingly it also monitors per minute site revenue upper/lower bounds – Round describes an alarm system rather like a power plant where if revenue on a site falls below $10,000 per minute, alarms go off! There are also internal performance service-level-agreements for web services where T% of the time, different pages must return in X seconds. 2011 update on vision and importance of technology According to founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, technology is very important to supporting this focus on the customer. In their 2010 Annual Report (Amazon,  2011) he said: â€Å"Look inside a current textbook on software architecture, and you’ll find few patterns that we don’t apply at Amazon. We use high-performance transactions systems, complex rendering and object caching, workflow and queuing systems, business intelligence and data analytics, machine learning and pattern recognition, neural networks and probabilistic decision making, and a wide variety of other techniques.And while many of our systems are based on the latest in computer science research, this often hasn’t been sufficient: our architects and engineers have had to advance research in directions that no academic had yet taken. Many of the problems we face have no textbook solutions, and so we — happily — invent new approaches†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ All the effort we put into technology might not matter that much if we kept technology off to the side in some sort of RD department, but we don’t take that approach. Technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do†. The quote shows how applying new technologies is used to give Amazon a competitive edge. A good recent example of this is providing the infrastructure to deliver the Kindle â€Å"Whispersync† update to ebook readers. Amazon reported in 2011 that Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books. For every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company sold 115 Kindle books. Kindle apps are now available on Apple iOS, Android devices and on PCs as part of a â€Å"Buy Once, Read Anywhere† proposition which Amazon has developed. Amazon Customers Amazon defines what it refers to as three consumer sets customers, seller customers and developer customers. There are over 76 million customer accounts, but just 1.3 million active seller customers in it’s marketplaces and Amazon is seeking to increase this. Amazon is unusual for a retailer in that it identifies â€Å"developer customers† who use its Amazon Web Services, which provides access to technology infrastructure such as hosting that developers can use to develop their own web services. Members are also encouraged to join a loyalty programme, Amazon Prime, a fee-based membership program in which members receive free or discounted express shipping, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Competition In its SEC (2005) filing Amazon describes the environment for our products and services as ‘intensely competitive’. It views its main current and potential competitors as: 1) physical-world retailers, catalog retailers, publishers, vendors, distributors and manufacturers of our products, many of which possess significant brand awareness, sales volume, and customer bases, and some of which currently sell, or may sell, products or services through the Internet, mail order, or direct marketing; (2) Other online E-commerce sites; (3) A number of indirect competitors, including media companies, Web portals, comparison shopping websites, and Web search engines, either directly or in collaboration with other retailers; and (4) Companies that provide e-commerce services, including website development; third-party fulfillment and customer-service. It believes the main competitive factors in its market segments include â€Å"selection, price, availability, convenience, information, discovery, brand recognition, personalized services, accessibility, customer service, reliability, speed of fulfillment, ease of use, and ability to adapt to changing conditions, as well as our customers’ overall experience and trust in transactions with us and facilitated by us on behalf of third-party sellers†. For services offered to business and individual sellers, additional competitive factors include the quality of our services and tools, their ability to generate sales for third parties we serve, and the speed of pe rformance for our services. From Auctions to marketplaces Amazon auctions (known as zShops) were launched in March 1999, in large part as a response to the success of eBay. They were promoted heavily from the home page, category pages and individual product pages. Despite this, a year after its launch it had only achieved a 3.2% share of the online auction compared to 58% for eBay and it only declined from this point. Today, competitive prices of products are available through third-party sellers in the ‘Amazon Marketplace’ which are integrated within the standard product listings. The strategy to offer such an auction facility was initially driven by the need to compete with eBay, but now the strategy has been adjusted such that Amazon describe it as part of the approach of low-pricing. Although it might be thought that Amazon would lose out on  enabling its merchants to sell products at lower prices, in fact Amazon makes greater margin on these sales since merchants are charged a commission on each sale and it is the merchant who bears the cost of storing inventory and fulfilling the product to customers. As with eBay, Amazon is just facilitating the exchange of bits and bytes between buyers and sellers without the need to distribute physical products. Amazon Media sales You may have noticed that unlike some retailers, Amazon displays relevant Google text ads and banner ads from brands. This seems in conflict with the strategy of focus on experience since it leads to a more cluttered store. However in 2011 Amazon revealed that worldwide media sales accounted for approximately 17% of revenue! Amazon marketing Amazon does not reveal much about its marketing approach in its annual reports, but there seems to be a focus on online marketing channels. Amazon (2011) states â€Å"we direct customers to our websites primarily through a number of targeted online marketing channels, such as our Associates program, sponsored search, portal advertising, email marketing campaigns, and other initiatives†. These other initiatives may include outdoor and TV advertising, but they are not mentioned specifically. In this statement they also highlight the importance of customer loyalty tools. They say: â€Å"while costs associated with free shipping are not included in marketing expense, we view free shipping offers and Amazon Prime as effective worldwide marketing tools, and intend to continue offering them indefinitely†. How ‘The Culture of Metrics’ started A common theme in Amazon’s development is the drive to use a measured approach to all aspects of the business, beyond the finance. Marcus (2004) describes an occasion at a corporate ‘boot-camp’ in January 1997 when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ‘saw the light’. ‘At Amazon, we will have a Culture of Metrics’, he said while addressing his senior staff. He went on to explain how web-based business gave Amazon an ‘amazing window into human behaviour’. Marcus says: ‘Gone were the fuzzy approximations of focus groups, the anecdotal fudging and smoke blowing from the marketing department. A company  like Amazon could (and did) record every move a visitor made, every last click and twitch of the mouse. As the data piled up into virtual heaps, hummocks and mountain ranges, you could draw all sorts of conclusions about their chimerical nature, the consumer. In this sense, Amazon was not merely a store, but an immense repository of fact s. All we needed were the right equations to plug into them’. James Marcus then goes on to give a fascinating insight into a breakout group discussion of how Amazon could better use measures to improve its performance. Marcus was in the Bezos group, brainstorming customer-centric metrics. Marcus (2004) summarises the dialogue, led by Bezos: â€Å"First, we figure out which things we’d like to measure on the site†, he said. â€Å"For example, let’s say we want a metric for customer enjoyment. How could we calculate that?† â€Å"There was silence. Then somebody ventured: â€Å"How much time each customer spends on the site?† â€Å"Not specific enough†, Jeff said. â€Å"How about the average number of minutes each customer spends on the site per session† someone else suggested. â€Å"If that goes up, they’re having a blast†. â€Å"But how do we factor in purchase?† I [Marcus] said feeling proud of myself. â€Å"Is that a measure of enjoyment†? â€Å"I think we need to consider frequency of visits, too†, said a dark-haired woman I didn’t recognise. â€Å"Lot of folks are still accessing the web with those creepy-crawly modems. Four short visits from them might be just as good as one visit from a guy with a T-1. Maybe better’. â€Å"Good point†, Jeff said. â€Å"And anyway, enjoyment is just the start. In the end, we should be measuring customer ecstasy† It is interesting that Amazon was having this debate in about the elements of RFM analysis (described in Chapter 6 of Internet Marketing), 1997, after already having achieved $16 million of revenue in the previous year. Of course, this is a miniscule amount compared with today’s billions of dollar turnover. The important point was that this was the start of a focus on metrics which can be seen through the description of Matt Pounds work later in this case study. From human to software-based recommendations Amazon has developed internal tools to support this ‘Culture of Metrics’.  Marcus (2004) describes how the ‘Creator Metrics’ tool shows content creators how well their product listings and product copy are working. For each content editor such as Marcus, it retrieves all recently posted documents including articles, interviews, booklists and features. For each one it then gives a conversion rate to sale plus the number of page views, adds (added to basket) and repels (content requested, but the back button then used). In time, the work of editorial reviewers such as Marcus was marginalised since Amazon found that the majority of visitors used the search tools rather than read editorial and they responded to the personalised recommendations as the matching technology improved (Marcus likens early recommendations techniques to ‘going shopping with the village idiot’). Experimentation and testing at Amazon The ‘Culture of Metrics’ also led to a test-driven approach to improving results at Amazon. Matt Round, speaking at E-metrics 2004 when he was director of personalisation at Amazon describes the philosophy as ‘Data Trumps Intuitions’. He explained how Amazon used to have a lot of arguments about which content and promotion should go on the all important home page or category pages. He described how every category VP wanted top-center and how the Friday meetings about placements for next week were getting ‘too long, too loud, and lacked performance data’. But today ‘automation replaces intuitions’ and real-time experimentation tests are always run to answer these questions since actual consumer behaviour is the best way to decide upon tactics. Marcus (2004) also notes that Amazon has a culture of experiments of which A/B tests are key components. Examples where A/B tests are used include new home page design, moving features around the page, different algorithms for recommendations, changing search relevance rankings. These involve testing a new treatment against a previous control for a limited time of a few days or a week. The system will randomly show one or more treatments to visitors and measure a range of parameters such as units sold and revenue by category (and total), session time, session length, etc. The new features will usually be launched if the desired metrics are statistically significantly better. Statistical tests are a challenge though as distributions are not normal (they have a large mass at zero for example of no purchase) There are other challenges since multiple  A/B tests are running every day and A/B tests may overlap and so conflict. There are also longer-term effects where some features are ‘cool’ for the first two weeks and the opposite effect where changing navigation may degrade performance temporarily. Amazon also finds that as its users evolve in their online experience the way they act online has changed. This means that Amazon has to constantly test and evolve its features. Amazon.com Technology It follows that the Amazon technology infrastructure must readily support this culture of experimentation and this can be difficult to achieved with standardised content management. Amazon has achieved its competitive advantage through developing its technology internally and with a significant investment in this which may not be available to other organisations without the right focus on the online channels. As Amazon explains in SEC (2005) ‘using primarily our own proprietary technologies, as well as technology licensed from third parties, we have implemented numerous features and functionality that simplify and improve the customer shopping experience, enable third parties to sell on our platform, and facilitate our fulfillment and customer service operations. Our current strategy is to focus our development efforts on continuous innovation by creating and enhancing the specialized, proprietary software that is unique to our business, and to license or acquire commercially-developed technology for other applications where available and appropriate. We continually invest in several areas of technology, including our seller platform; A9.com, our wholly-owned subsidiary focused on search technology on www.A9.com and other Amazon sites; web services; and digital initiatives.’ Round (2004) describes the technology approach as ‘distributed development and deployment’. Pages such as the home page have a number of content ‘pods’ or ‘slots’ which call web services for features. This makes it relatively easy to change the content in these pods and even change the location of the pods on-screen. Amazon uses a flowable or fluid page design unlike many sites which enables it to make the most of real-estate on-screen. Technology also supports more standard e-retail facilities. SEC (2005) states: ‘We use a set of applications for accepting and validating customer orders, placing and tracking orders with suppliers, managing and assigning inventory to customer  orders, and ensuring proper shipment of products to customers. Our transaction-processing systems handle millions of items, a number of different status inquiries, multiple shipping addresses, gift-wrapping requests, and multiple shipment methods. These systems allow the customer to choose whether to receive single or several shipments based on availability and to track the progress of each order. These applications also manage the process of accepting, authorizing, and charging customer credit cards.’ Data Driven Automation Round (2004) said that ‘Data is king at Amazon’. He gave many examples of data driven automation including customer channel preferences; managing the way content is displayed to different user types such as new releases and top-sellers, merchandising and recommendation (showing related products and promotions) and also advertising through paid search (automatic ad generation and bidding). The automated search advertising and bidding system for paid search has had a big impact at Amazon. Sponsored links initially done by humans, but this was unsustainable due to range of products at Amazon. The automated programme generates keywords, writes ad creative, determines best landing page, manages bids, measure conversion rates, profit per converted visitor and updates bids. Again the problem of volume is there, Matt Round described how the book ‘How to Make Love Like a Porn Star’ by Jenna Jameson received tens of thousands of clicks from pornography-related searches, but few actually purchased the book. So the update cycle must be quick to avoid large losses. There is also an automated email measurement and optimization system. The campaign calendar used to be manually managed with relatively weak measurement and it was costly to schedule and use. A new system: Automatically optimizes content to improve customer experience Avoids sending an e-mail campaign that has low clickthrough or high unsubscribe rate Includes inbox management (avoid sending multiple emails/week) Has growing library of automated email programs covering new releases and recommendations But there are challenges if promotions are too successful if inventory isn’t available. Your Recommendations Customers Who Bought X†¦, also bought Y is Amazon’s signature feature. Round  (2004) describes how Amazon relies on acquiring and then crunching a massive amount of data. Every purchase, every page viewed and every search is recorded. So there are now to new version, customers who shopped for X also shopped for†¦ and Customers who searched for X also bought†¦ They also have a system codenamed ‘Goldbox’ which is a cross-sell and awareness raising tool. Items are discounted to encourage purchases in new categories! I have a more detailed article on Amazon personalisation / recommendation system He also describes the challenge of techniques for sifting patterns from noise (sensitivity filtering) and clothing and toy catalogues change frequently so recommendations become out of date. The main challenges though are the massive data size arising from millions of customers, millions of items and recommendations made in real time. Amazon Partnership strategy As Amazon grew, its share price growth enabled partnership or acquisition with a range of companies in different sectors. Marcus (2004) describes how Amazon partnered with Drugstore.com (pharmacy), Living.com (furniture), Pets.com (pet supplies), Wineshopper.com (wines), HomeGrocer.com (groceries), Sothebys.com (auctions) and Kozmo.com (urban home delivery). In most cases, Amazon purchased an equity stake in these partners, so that it would share in their prosperity. It also charged them fees for placements on the Amazon site to promote and drive traffic to their sites. Similarly, Amazon charged publishers for prime-position to promote books on its site which caused an initial hue-and-cry, but this abated when it was realised that paying for prominent placements was widespread in traditional booksellers and supermarkets. Many of these new online companies failed in 1999 and 2000, but Amazon had covered the potential for growth and was not pulled down by these partners, even though for some such as Pets.com it had an investment of 50%. Analysts sometimes refer to ‘Amazoning a sector’ meaning that one company becomes dominant in an online sector such as book retail such that it becomes very difficult for others to achieve market share. In addition to developing, communicating and delivering a very strong proposition, Amazon has been able to consolidate its strength in different sectors through its partnership arrangements and through using technology to facilitate product promotion and distribution via these partnerships. The Amazon retail platform enables other retailers to sell products online using  the Amazon user interface and infrastructure through their ‘Syndicated Stores’ programme. For example, in the UK, Waterstones (www.waterstones.co.uk) is one of the largest traditional bookstores. It found competition with online so expensive and challenging, that eventually it entered a partnership arrangement where Amazon markets and distributes its books online in return for a commission online. Similarly, in the US, Borders a large book retailer uses the Amazon merchant platform for distributing its products. Toy retailer Toys R’ Us have a similar arrangement. Such partnerships help Amazon extends its reach into the customer-base of other suppliers, and of course, customers who buy in one category such as books can be encouraged to purchase into other areas such as clothing or electronics. Another form of partnership referred to above is the Amazon Marketplace which enables Amazon customers and other retailers to sell their new and used books and other goods alongside the regular retail listings. A similar partnership approach is the Amazon ‘[emailprotected]’ program which enables third party merchants (typically larger than those who sell via the Amazon Marketplace) to sell their products via Amazon. Amazon earn fees either through fixed fees or sales commissions per-unit. This arrangement can help customers who get a wider choice of products from a range of suppliers with the convenience of purchasing them through a single checkout process. Finally, Amazon has also facilitated formation of partnerships with smaller companies through its affiliates programme. Internet legend records that Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon was chatting to someone at a cocktail party who wanted to sell books about divorce via her web site. Subsequently, Amazon.com launched its Associates Program in July 1996 and it is still going strong. Googling http://www.google.com/search?q=www.amazon.com+-site%3Awww.amazon.com for sites that link to the US site, shows over 4 million pages, many of which will be affiliates. Amazon does not use an affiliate network which would take commissions from sale, but thanks to the strength of its brand has developed its own affiliate programme. Amazon has created a tiered performance-based incentives to encourage affiliates to sell more Amazon products. Amazon Marketing communications In their SEC filings Amazon state that the aims of their communications  strategy are (unsurprisingly) to: Increase customer traffic to our websites Create awareness of our products and services Promote repeat purchases Develop incremental product and service revenue opportunities Strengthen and broaden the Amazon.com brand name. Amazon also believe that their most effective marketing communications are a consequence of their focus on continuously improving the customer experience. This then creates word-of-mouth promotion which is effective in acquiring new customers and may also encourage repeat customer visits. As well as this Marcus (2004) describes how Amazon used the personalisation enabled through technology to reach out to a difficult to reach market which Bezos originally called ‘the hard middle’. Bezos’s view was that it was easy to reach 10 people (you called them on the phone) or the ten million people who bought the most popular products (you placed a superbowl ad), but more difficult to reach those in between. The search facilities in the search engine and on the Amazon site, together with its product recommendation features meant that Amazon could connect its products with the interests of these people. Online advertising techniques include paid search marketing, interactive ads on portals, e-mail campaigns and search engine optimisation. These are automated as far as possible as described earlier in the case study. As previously mentioned, the affiliate programme is also important in driving visitors to Amazon and Amazon offers a wide range of methods of linking to its site to help improve conversion. For example, affiliates can use straight text links leading direct to a product page and they also offer a range of dynamic banners which feature different content such as books about Internet marketing or a search box.Amazon also use cooperative advertising arrangements, better known as ‘contra-deals’ with some vendors and other third parties. For example, a print advertisement in 2005 for a particular product such as a wireless router with a free wireless laptop card promotion will feature a specific Amazon URL in the ad. In product fulfilment packs, Amazon may include a leaflet for a non-competing online company such as Figleaves.com (lingerie) or Expedia (travel). In return, Amazon leaflets may be included in customer communications from the partner brands. Our Associates program directs customers to our websites by enabling independent websites to make millions of products available to their  audiences with fulfillment performed by us or third parties. We pay commissions to hundreds of thousands of participants in our Associates program when their customer referrals result in product sales. In addition, we offer everyday free shipping options worldwide and recently announced Amazon.com Prime in the U.S., our first membership program in which members receive free two-day shipping and discounted overnight shipping. Although marketing expenses do not include the costs of our free shipping or promotional offers, we view such offers as effective marketing tools. Marcus, J. (2004) Amazonia. Five years at the epicentre of the dot-com juggernaut, The New Press, New York, NY. Round, M. (2004) Presentation to E-metrics, London, May 2005. www.emetrics.org.

Post Impressionism and Vincent Van Gogh

Post Impressionism and Vincent Van Gogh In and around 1911, there were art critics that freely used the phrase post-impressionistic as a means to illustrate the work of several artists paintings reveal Impressionistic standards. Post Impressionism was a creative shift to follow Impressionism that was to break the Impressionistic style. Post-impressionism consisted of various movements by a group of individual artists searching for a new way to create art. The principal aim of Impressionism was to objectively record the natural world in terms of the protean effects of color and light. The Post-Impressionists modified this aim in favor of a more ambitious expression of color and light (Norfleet, 2009). The new styles that these artists created proceeded to additional influential abstract styles and formed the basis for 20th Century Modernism. Post-impressionist artists pushed Impressionist standards past what they had previously been explored. Arthur Kleinberg (2010) states that artists of the Post-Impressionism period are responsible for putting an extreme amount of emphasis on the movement of color and light, rather than concentrate on the significance of the artwork. The Post-Impressionists aimed to find more depth in the roles of color, form, and solidity in painting, resulting, in artists attempt to use more powerful, brighter or more contrasting colors, in addition to outline. In addition, artists also experimented with the mental properties of brushwork. Post-impressionism used ideas from impressionism, such as using brilliant colours and broken brushstrokes, but eliminated the idea of painting scenes exactly as they appeared. They experimented with unusual compositions and often used the consistency of paint. According to Nancy Moure (2001), European art signifies the style numerous distinct artists working between 1880 and 1906. Artists during this time were concerned with the termination of Impressionisms form and the attempt to invest more importance into paintings when more experiments are performed, during more experiments. The style supported by the Post-Impressionists is a signal of the previous movement where the artists works often possessed a loose-fitting and unclear quality painting that gave simply the idea of the subject instead of a natural duplication and also experiment with techniques like the use of colour. Artists that utilize colour and representation of light not only seize personal analysis of the scene like the Impressionists but also the emotion that the painter can associates with the subject at that time. Artists would often paint their work quickly to capture the light at a particular time of day. Also, artists would paint light-coloured canvases with flat brushes to enhance the brightness in the pieces. More important than subject matter was the artists painting style and the creation of a new paint application. Post-Impressionism includes all artists whose main goal is to express more than a visual interpretation but intend to portray emotion and intellect in addition to imagery. During this time, styles and techniques concentrated on personal impressions and an advanced use of colour to communicate moods and emotions. Post-Impressionism aimed to get additional form and structure, in addition to more expression and emotion into their paintings. However, Post-Impressionist artists continue to develop and experiment these principles with newer styles and procedures; the most famous being the expressionistic, ornamental and regularly abnormal use of colour to portray the artists emotional state. Moure (2001) expresses that Post-Impressionism was an important experimental linkage to modern art leading to upcoming styles. Modern Art obtains an extensive meaning for classifying itself. Modern Art could be sometimes labeled as an art of appearance and an art of freedom. Modern Art can consist of several techniques that are used. The style of art that exhibits an art of expression can be known as the style of Expressionism. In the early years of the expressionism, artists built on the ideas of the Post-Impressionism. Artists continued on with the similar experiments, view, and ideas that were given by the work. Artists continued to look for a new and more intense truth behind their painting. According to Architecture411.com (2006), modern expressionism is characterized as a creative style which the artist produces their artwork by combining illustrations or objects with emotions. This is accomplished by using both factual and theoretical emphasis on color, consistency, unclear su bject matter, deformation, abnormal strength, exaggeration and changed surrounding imagery. A Post-Impressionist painter that was most influential to the modern artists of the 20th century is Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh influenced expressionism in modern art. It was Van Goghs desire to create stunning things that come from within in addition his desire to reach to those around him that will help to label his role as a painter. In addition, Van Gogh was influential because when it came to expressionism, his work showed his emotions due to the fact that he suffered from depression. Van Goghs work conveys its outstanding colour, coarse brushwork, and curvy forms. These were a close reflection of his feelings as he painted. After Van Gogh moved to Paris, he brightened his colour palette under the influence of Impressionism, and before moving to Arles, in France, he developed the brilliant colours, brushwork and thick, textured paint called impasto of his ultimate style. Impastos provide Van Goghs pictures with a better sense of physical energy and a plain texture surface. Van Gogh achieved great impression about his works since he uses a variety of color pigments to express his paintings. Van Gogh used color for its symbolic and expressive values rather than to reproduce light and literal surroundings like Impressionist artists. In addition, he conveys feelings and generate moods with color randomly use it rather than use the real color of objects. Van Gogh is so instrumental and influential during the Post-Impressionism period because when creating his work of art, he would insert colors into skin where they did not belong. One of the earliest and most famous examples of Expressionism is Van Goghs famous oil paintings Starry Night. This painting was of a typical nocturnal scene in the neighborhood of the psychiatric hospital in Saint-RÃ ©my where Van Gogh stayed for a year. Van Gogh spilled his emotions into this painting. Starry Night is a struggle among a man and his depression. Van Gogh had a passion for the dark night. Starry Night replicates the pain the artist is going through. The brisk strokes, the animated colours of the stars in the painting next to the dark blues and the blacks in reference to the night imitate the need of a hopeless man in the center of the black, starry night. In conclusion, Post-Impressionism projected that the originality of 20th Century art was the primary focus. Artists developed their own style to produce works that lead to developments later in the art of the 20th Century. Some artists concentrated on the fundamental structure while other artists emphasize on the texture and pattern for significant effects. Because of the Post-Impressionist period, many artists have considered painting objects full of color with vigorous surfaces rather than scenes. Impressionalists created a permanent change and that art will constantly increase according to the artist. Whatever was cause, it cannot be denied that several great artists of this period assumed that the main function of art was to express intense feelings to the world. Vincent van Gogh is very influential the modern artists of the 20th Century since he altered the point of views of several artists with his personal paintings. Van Goghs used bright colours when painting and the uniqueness shows through the curves and lines that he used in his paintings as well as the attention of colour that is used to express his emotions which modern artists will continue to do throughout the 20th Century.

Persuation Paper -- essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When watching college athletes participating in their sports, does it ever cross one’s mind that the athletes getting paid? â€Å"The NCAA establishes rules and regulations for universities to follow and one of the most important rules is that student athletes should not receive any money with the exception of scholarships towards their tuition and housing† (Winn). In 1999, the Chronicle of Higher Education surveyed atheletes’ statistics on â€Å"graduation rates for scholarship college athletes in the NCAA’s top Division I.† Fifty-one percent of football players and 41 percent of male basketball players graduated in six years (Meggyesy). NCAA Chief Operating Officer Dan Boggan stated; â€Å"before the eligibility standards, some student-athletes including minority student-athletes, were brought onto campuses solely for their athletics ability, with little chance for them to graduate† (quoted in Reith).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This makes me really disappointed that some schools take sports to be more serious than academics. The schools are willing to dish out a couple of hundred dollars to get the best athletes so that they can get a championship victory at their schools. That is just not right.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Another thing that makes me very angry is that the media and fans want basketball and football players to leave school early because they have the talent to go straight to the pros. But when they do choose to do so, the media has s...

Child Labor Essay example -- essays research papers fc

Child Labor   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Child Labor, refers to the economically active population under the age of fifteen years old, who are employed in various industries (Grootaert, 2). Recently, child labor has become a large topic of debate; however, in most cases, it is very unfavorable. The perception that globalization is leading towards the exploitation of children, is becoming an important problem for international business. In my opinion, child labor should be eradicated. It is not only harmful to the health of children, but it takes away their chance for an education, and simply takes away their childhood.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The International Labor Organization estimates that 250 million children around the world, between the ages of five and fourteen, work. Out of the 250 million, 120 million of them work fulltime (ILO, 5). Child labor is common in industries such as agriculture, domestic services, carpet and textile, quarrying and brick making, and also prostitution. Some children work in factories and other workplaces in the â€Å"formal economy;† however, many work on farms or in homes. Child labor has many hazardous effects on the health of children. Some children work in areas such as stone quarries, tanning leather, and electroplating metals. All of these working conditions endanger the health of the child. Children in different occupations face different fatal diseases. Silicosis, which is caused from working in stone cutting, brick factories, granite and slate factories is one such disease. Tuberculosis, is also another disease endeared by children in pottery related i ndustries. Another very big problem, because of poor living conditions, is malnutrition.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The lack of education for working children is also another very serious problem. Child laborers work for most of the day, and in some cases 16 hours a day. There is no question, that education is a major contributing factor to the overall development of the child. Yet, because of the long working hours, children are deprived of time for education. Some children are more or less slaves, controlled by their employer to work all the time. In other cases, the parents are even responsible for child labor, because they give priority to labor and making money, over education. Some children must earn the income for the entire household (Grootaert, 3). Asi... ...). However, developing countries including Brazil and India, which have very high rates of child labor, rejected the proposal. But the rate of child labor is still dropping. In 1996, Brazil had 3.3 million child laborers. Soon after, international pressures, forced President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to create an anti-child labor initiative. This program basically paid parents to send their children to school. By the year 2000, the amount of child workers decreased to 2.5 million.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Today, child labor is still decreasing, but it seems almost impossible to eradicate. Child labor is ethically wrong and immoral; and yet, there are still businesses that choose to turn their heads away. Works Cited: Bachman, S. L. â€Å"The Political Economy of Child Labor and its Impacts on International Business.† Business Economics Jul. 2000: 1-4. Buckley, Stephen. â€Å"The Littlest Laborers: Why does Child Labor Continue to Thrive in the Developing World?† Washington Post 16 Mar. 2000: 1-5. Grootaert, Christian. â€Å"Child Labor: an Economic Perspective.† International Labor Review 136. 1995: 2, 3, 7. International Labor Organization. 1996. 20 Jun. 2001.

Buddhism in America

Buddhism is above all the religion of illumination. It seeks to aid those who study and practice at its feet to break throughout all that can fetter or delude in the monarchy of conditioned reality, and become free in Nirvana, Unconditioned Reality. Buddhism does this by leading one to identify the Four Noble Truths the Buddha himself discovered some twenty-five hundred years ago on the eve of his enlightenment. Beneath the numerous sectarian forms and rich accruals the faith of the Enlightened One has acquired in its journeys through numerous cultures and many centuries, Buddhism eventually depends on these principles.First, life as it is typically lived is unsatisfactory, shot through with anxiety, suffering, and insignificance. Second, this state is the result of attachments or desires, for in a universe of frequent flux and change, seeking to cling to anything from the grossest passion to the subtlest idol of the mind to the idea of being a permanent separate self can never bring anything but sorrow in the end. Third, the condition of suffering and desire can be struck at its point of origin ; there can be an end to desire. Fourth, that can be attained by following the Eightfold Path, which culminates in Right Concentration or Meditation.For meditation is the condition of mind that reverses the mind's ordinary outflow toward entangling objects of sensory or mental attachment. Zen has been the best-known form of Buddhism in America. This is first of all since it has been fortunate in producing a remarkable series of advocates on these shores: Soyen Shaku, Nyogen Senzaki, above all D. T. Suzuki. That in turn owes to Zen's relative tolerance and emphasis on humanistic culture and education in its homelands, and its relation to China and Japan's great custom of arts and letters.But it is also no doubt true that no other account of Buddhism would have communicated itself quite so well to the American mind. Zen's boast of breaking through words and philosophies i n favor of â€Å"direct pointing† and â€Å"immediate experience,† its artistic minimalism and rapport with nature, all appealed to major strands of American consciousness. â€Å"Senzaki, certainly, considered Zen none other than the American practicality of William James or John Dewey in another guise† Rick Fields, 1992, p14.Yet that other guise was not without significance, for while Zen could hark to the American images of ease and self-reliance, it also offered entree into another world of spiritual and cultural wonders, from the inscrutable Zen â€Å"riddles† or koans to the Zen-related martial arts. Zen's draw for Americans has lain first in its spiritual efficiency, second in its combination of otherness and homeliness. Its greatest spokesman in the West, D. T. Suzuki, like his disciple Alan Watts, subjugated the mix with a sure hand, offering the reader now a whiff of the exotic, now a supportive correlation with a motif of the West.Different aspe cts of Zen have appealed to diverse segments or generations of Americans. The age of Soyen Shaku and Senzaki Nyogen was, to judge from their own words, eager to hear of the sensibleness of Buddhism as well as its pointing to that beyond all reason. In the 1950s, the image of the â€Å"Zen lunatic† came to the fore in the work of such â€Å"Beat† writers as Jack Kerouac, who summed it all up in The Dharma Bums. The 1960s and 1970s, the era of the great Zen centers and the counterculture, was involved in Zen as a spiritual discipline and total, often communalistic, way of life.All through, still others, from poets like Gary Snyder to composers like John Cage, have been mostly interested in the relation of the Zen vision to artistic creativity. The tensions of these varying Zens are well spoken, and perhaps resolved, in the essay by Alan Watts here reproduced, Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen. Whether in tragic conflict or massively lucrative trade, seldom have two nations o f such diverse cultural heritage been as intensely involved in one another's lives as have Japan and the United States in the twentieth century.The diffusion of Zen to America, though but a tiny fragment of that exchange, helps divulge the spiritual dimensions, too seldom yet appreciated, of this significant meeting. From a historical perspective, American Buddhism is also an era making undertaking. One of the great spiritual traditions of Asia is moving west. For about four hundred years, western missionaries, explorers, scholars, and seekers explored Asia, wondered about Buddhism, and studied it. A few even practiced it.The foundation for the transmission of the dharma to the West was ready by many people over many years, but the appearance of the dharma as a significant element in American religion is a development that by comparison occurred only very lately. During the eighties and nineties, many Americans were debating amongst themselves what Buddhism was in this country and w hat they required it to be. They came up with many diverse ideas about how to form American forms of the dharma, so there is not a single answer to that question, nor is there likely ever to be.There is not one American Buddhism, any longer than there is one American Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. Zen meditation is valuable among Americans, Western associate with Zen has now reached a point where an understanding of the larger historical framework within which Zen articulated itself is also necessary. Such an understanding is significant not only for a more balanced academic view, but also for a more staid appraisal of the meaning of Zen practice for modern American life. The fundamental character of Zen emerged as part of a complex dialectic within Buddhism, and we cannot understand Zen until we realize what it is critiquing.If we take its statements out of their Buddhist context and construe them instead within our own cultural context, they are apt to mean something quite diver se, particularly in the realm of ethics. Zen's iconoclasm had a different meaning within a cultural context where Buddhist moral teachings were extensively affirmed than it does today to contemporary Americans who lack any such background and who are perhaps already suffering from an excess of moral relativism (Rick Fields, 1992, 194). Buddhist meditation developed and practiced in East Asia.It thus seeks to balance our acquaintance with Zen meditation which, as it is the only East Asian practice with which many Westerners are familiar, is often held up as the archetypal form of East Asian Buddhist meditation by placing it alongside other, evenly representative and vital forms of meditation: the invocation of the Buddha's name (nien-fo) in Pure Land; visualization (as exemplified by Hsuan-tsang's visualization of Maitreya); and Chih-i's monumental T'ien-t'ai synthesis of Buddhist ritual, cultic, and meditation practices.Meditation has been a notoriously vague and multivalent ideaâ⠂¬â€a circumstance that stems, no doubt, from its comparative lack of elaboration and systematization in the Western religious traditions, particularly in their post-Enlightenment forms. That the concept lacks any clearly defined and usually accepted referent in our own general cultural experience does not restrict its attractiveness indeed, it in fact enhances it. Meditation is a very useful category in particular as it can be understood in so many ways.In America it is believed that we should employ â€Å"meditation† in the broadest possible sense in the same sense that we find Buddhists using the term â€Å"dhyana† to include both samatha-bhavana and vipasyana-bhavana (Kapleau, Philip, 1980). There are two reasons for doing this both significant, and both inextricably consistent. First, we must recognize that such an inclusive conception of meditation is required if we are not to obscure what is most distinctive and characteristic about the Buddhist viewpoint on re ligious practice.Second, only by coming to terms with what is distinguishing and characteristic in Buddhist culture can we gain a better understanding of ourselves. The understanding we seek must not only inform our perception of the alien culture; it should also change our own experience, the understanding of our own culture. The true value of any cross-cultural exploration, after all, lies not in how successful we are in reducing the alien culture to the terms of our own experience.True understanding, rather, is born only when we should expand our own perspective to hold what initially appears to be alien. Yoga is also very significant type of meditation that is very popular among Americans. In yoga, lengthy meditations lead first to the telepathic powers such as those the Buddha attained and eventually to the realization of the illusoriness of all material appearances. In the Yogacara view, there is a sense in which any experience is just as real as any other, whether actually in ternal and hallucinatory or ostensibly external and objective.All that is eventually real and continuous of the individual is the pure subject, the mind store (alaya-vijnana), although it, too, changes. â€Å"It is this mind store, or alaya-vijnana, that experiences, judges, contemplates, and remembers, thus comprising a locus of identity and continuity through many obvious bodies, or lifetimes†. Ellwood, Robert, 1986. It might well be argued that the alaya-vijnana concept is just a rehabilitation of the old Hindu notion of atman, without the persistence on its ontological permanence and immutability.The early Buddhist perspective says that phenomenon are all that exist and that the apparent self is dogged by the phenomena that it encounters. The Yogacara philosophy, by contrast, says that mind is all that exists, and all obvious phenomena are merely its own projections. Coupled with the belief in medium teachings, the concept that all is only mind has tremendous implications for Vajrayana Buddhism. If all is only mind, the procedure of death and rebirth is no longer an inevitable feature of an external reality to which all must submit.It then becomes unnecessary to actually undergo a long succession of lifetimes, for by changing one's conscious thoughts, the whole succession can be broken or abridged. Even the law of karma is elevated to a completely different level. No longer are physical actions seen as having expected physical effects. Rather, mental acts are the only acts that have any effects at all, either in actually external happenings or in apparently internal feelings and visions.Karmic determination of an individual's future good or ill can thus also be evaded or aborted by mental purification and concentration. Mantras, mudras, and samadhi are requisite to affect this change of consciousness necessary to attain nirvana. Here, too, the Vajrayana departs from conventional Samkhya Yoga, in allowing the consumption of meat and wine, and even in tercourse with women, encouraging at each step the understanding that none of these phenomena are ultimately real.Under the tutelage of a Vajrayana Lama (guru), the student expects to develop psychic powers, to leave his body, and to experience the Absolute in reverie. Thus, he will prepare himself for the moment of death when he will direct his consciousness out of his body and into final union with Truth (dharmakaya), rather than permitting any further cycles of rebirth. Though, many Americans think that Zen is a Buddhist tradition without formal ritual, which is not actually the case.Zen was first introduced into this country in books that led lots of Americans to think of it as a philosophy rather than a spiritual tradition along with concepts of meditations especially yoga. People also be apt not to think of Zen sitting meditation, while a practitioner might face a wall or sit with downcast eyes for hours, as ritual activity. But every day or even twice-daily stints of yoga, du ring which a practitioner notes the movement of his or her mind, help to structure the lives of numerous American Buddhists, one of the primary functions of rite.In America, Zen calls up particular genus of art and verse, ink wash, tea ceremonies, haiku poetry, whose special genius is to portray nature just as it is, without theory or theology, yet so vividly as to leave one deeply moved without being quite sure why. Work Cited Ellwood, Robert, ed. Zen in American Life and Letters. Los Angeles : Undena Press, 1986. Kapleau, Philip. The Three Pillars of Zen. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965, rev. ed. 1980. Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, 3rd rev. ed. ( Boston: Shambhala, 1992), 194.