Thursday, October 10, 2019
Fahrenheit 451: Journal #3 Quote Analysis Essay
In the quote above, Faber describes books and their content to Montag, who as started to rebel against society through books. Faber was a very special and memorable person Montag met in a park a few years back. They had a conversation in which Faber recited some poems to him and because of that, Montag knew he was a rebel; a reader. He was the only person Montag could think of that would help him in his situation. Faber is the one that uttered this quote and is, by far, my favorite character in the book. The way he describes books is so unique. He uses many figures of speech to explain books and even society. Because of this, what he says usually has indirect meanings. Take this quote for example. This quote contains metaphors and personifications that describe Montagââ¬â¢s society and why books are burned. ââ¬Å"Pores in the face of lifeâ⬠is a personification that represents the ââ¬Å"problems in life.â⬠Pores on our faces are unwanted, ugly, problematic. Same with the issues in our lives. It makes people unhappy, and brings torture in their lives. People are afraid of this; therefore, they are removed, avoided. Books reveal these ââ¬Å"pores in the face of life,â⬠so they are removed as well. Thatââ¬â¢s how Montagââ¬â¢s government controls Montagââ¬â¢s society. Through fake, hollow happiness. The government digs a hole and buries the locked treasure box filled with everyoneââ¬â¢s emotions (excluding happiness) and issues deep inside the hole. Heck, they even teach society to do that themselves! For the next sentence, ââ¬Å"flowersâ⬠is a metaphor for ideas. ââ¬Å"Good rainâ⬠and ââ¬Å"black loamâ⬠represents creativity and imagination. ââ¬Å"Flowersâ⬠need Good rainâ⬠and ââ¬Å"black loamâ⬠to blossom into something grand, special, unique. But, because the ââ¬Å"flowersâ⬠are growing on other ââ¬Å"flowers,â⬠they become identical to it. Each and every ââ¬Å"flowerâ⬠grows on each other until the world is covered in identical flowers. A few are different, yes, but they slowly dwindle through the influence of the identical ââ¬Å"flowersâ⬠and the disturbance of nature those ââ¬Å"flowersâ⬠created. Those ââ¬Å"special flowersâ⬠may transform into an ââ¬Å"identical flower,â⬠or, they die. Journal #4 May 5, 2013 ââ¬Å"â⬠¦They were gone. The Hound was gone. Now there was only the river and Montag floating in a sudden peacefulness, away from the city and the lights and the chase, away from everything.â⬠(Pg. 140, Fahrenheit 451) This quote occurs after Montag kills Beatty and two other firemen, as well as burn the Salamander, after his house was burnt by them. Because of that, he is now being chased by firemen in helicopters and Salamanders, and a more efficient and high tech Mechanical Hound. Montag visits Faber one last time, receiving money, new clothes, and directions from him, and then runs into the river, which carries him away to safety. The Hound and firemen then loses track of him. This quote is where, in my opinion, the climax ends and the resolution starts. Itââ¬â¢s when Montag completes his transition from ââ¬Å"mindless followerâ⬠to ââ¬Å"independent thinker.â⬠All with natureââ¬â¢s aid. Nature, at this moment, is shown as something that overrules technology. Even when itââ¬â¢s faced with the highest, most efficient technology that the humans can create, nature wins. Nature was able to bring Montag to safety from the Hound and the clutches of society and technology, to help him escape from everything that was holding him back. The peace and relaxation nature provides help Montag complete his thinking process, which was incomplete because he couldnââ¬â¢t really think when he was surrounded by the fast-moving, overly colorful things, people that didnââ¬â¢t give a damn about anything except for themselves and their happiness, and a government thatââ¬â¢s watching your every move. Not until he was completely separated from all that was he able to accept his new self and to move on; to make peace with his inner conflicts. Even he wasnââ¬â¢t able to accept and make peace when he was with Faber, someone he trusted and cared for. He was wounded by technology and healed by nature.
Las Ferreterias de Mexico
Good management- Most of the Employees value rewards of different nature and they are therefore motivated by positive rewards. Employees are known to put less effort to those activities or tasks that are not well rewarded and hence in order to motivate them in their work, a good scheme for rewarding them is important. These rewards are different in nature and include compensation, awards, off duties and many others. Mr. Gonzalez came up with the idea of implementing compensation plan as a way of improving performance of the employees in the company.His intention was to include managers, buyers and salesmen in this new compensation incentive. However, the consultancy firm found this to be difficult since it was challenging to measure the performance of the salesmen and buyers. The consultancy firm therefore advised Mr. Gonzalez to use the plan for managers of the companies only without including other staffs. The success of any plan or policy depends so much on the involvement of peop le who will be affected by that plan in its development.Employees will always support implementation of a plan they were involved in its development. For instance, considering their views before the development of the scheme will make them to own the plan and therefore support it when it comes to the implementation of the plan. This means that for the success of the new compensation plan, Mr. Gonzalez had to make sure that he involved all the parties who will be affected by the new plan. In the development of the new compensation schemes, Mr.Gonzalez sought the services of the consultancy firm who worked together with the human resource and finance department representatives. The involvement of these two departments was important in order take care of financial and human resource considerations during the plan implementation. However, the plan did not involve other staffs who were to be affected by the plan. This include managers from other departments such as store managers and sal es manager who were the beneficially of the new plan.This could make it difficulty for the company to implement the plan since there may be tradeoffs between the performance of the whole team and that of individual managers (Gerhart et al, 2009). During the development of the plan, it was necessary to take and consider the views of other managers and not just human resource and finance managers. This would have made the plan makers to consider all the issues like bonus pool allocation, performance measures to be used and other important issues that may affect theimplementation of the plan. This would have ensured issues like how the bonus will be allocated among the managers. The plan allocated 70% of the bonus to the store managers and the rest to corporate staffs and regional managers. Though, store managers perform a crucial role in sales, other department managers may not be comfortable with the way the bonus is allocated. The allocation of the bonus could have been agreed by al l departmental managers before the implementation of the new plan.BONUS POOL ALLOCATIONAccording to the new compensation plan, the bonus pool would be allocated among store managers depending on the bonus units they have earned. A 5% earning in ROI would earn a store manager one unit of bonus. Any additional percentage earning in ROI would earn an additional bonus unit. This formula will continue to apply as the percentage in ROI earning increases. The allocation will also put into consideration those store managers who have been in their position for a period less than a year.The allocation of bonus among regional managers would be different where the formula used will consider the bonus unit that has been earned by stores in the managersââ¬â¢ region divided by all total unit bonus that have been earned by all stores in the company. Finally according to the new compensation plan, bonus pool for the corporate staff would be divided by the CEO, depending on the ROI earnings of the corporation in that year. The formula used in the compensation plan is very clear and simple hence understandable by all managers. A good bonus plan should be simple and clear to the parties who are affected by that plan.This would make it simple for those party affected by the plan to implement it. Clarity of the compensation plan means that the plan has little or no ambiguity and uncertainty about the standards that will be used to measure the performance of the beneficiaries. This means that the superiors are not in a position to show any favourism or bias when measuring the performance of their subordinates. In this company, the formula applied is based on the allocation of bonus pool among the store managers according to the unit bonus they have earned relative to the ROI earning.The formula is simple and managers can easily understand it and work hard to increase their ROI earning in order for them to increase their bonus units. Again, the formula is fixed and it may not be p ossible for those people who will be assessing the performance of the managers to show any bias or favouritism. This will ensure the efficiency of the compensation plan. This also applies to the formula used to calculate bonus for regional managers and corporate staffs. A good reward system should produce some impacts to the corporation.The system used should be aimed to improve the performance of the organisation after its implementation. Managers and other staffs ought to be motivated to work hard by the reward system as they strive to earn the promised bonus. Their increased performance will be reflected in the increased performance of the whole company. In addition, a good reward system ought to be timely where employees are rewarded immediately without any delay. This will motivate workers to work even harder in the next period thus improving the performance of the corporation in the long term.THE PRINCIPLLE OF CONTROLLABILITYAccording to the controllability principle, all empl oyees ought to be held accountable only for those variables that are within their control (Giraud et al, 2008). Employees ought not to be penalized when things fail because of bad luck as well as not being rewarded when things succeed because of good luck. Thus managers should be held accountable for the outcomes of the variables they control. At managerial level, many factors that affect the performance of an organisation are only partially controlled. However, managers are usually in a position to make decisions that may make the uncontrollable factors affect result in a positive way.The advantage of this method is that managers can be held accountable for the areas they are intended to influence. This will direct all the effort of the managers to the areas that can improve the performance of the organistion (profit centre). For instance, the compensation plan employed by Mr. Gonzalez will hold managers accountable for their profit centre.The main profit centre of the corporation are the stores thus basing the compensation plan of the managers on performance of this area will ensure that, managers effort are directed to the profit centre. Managers will also be more responsible since they will be accountable for all the factors they are controlling in the stores. However managers should also be rewarded for those factors they do not control and yet affect the outcome of their division outcome.BONUS DECISION ON CORPORATE PROFITThe new compensation plan is based on the ROI earnings at the end of financial year. The allocation of bonus among corporate staffs is based directly on the ROI earning of the corporate while among the managers it is indirectly based on ROI earnings. This means the bonus compensation plan may have impact on the corporate profit as it becomes expenses to the company.Increased ROI does not necessarily translate to increased profit and therefore basing bonus compensation on ROI may reduce the profit of the company due to increased expenses. The payment of all bonuses may be too expensive to the corporation thus reducing the profit of the organisation. However, this does not mean that the increased performance of the managers would not increase the profit of the corporation.QUESTION TWO CHALLENGES OF USING ROI Though the use of ROI to measure the performance of different division has a many advantages, it also has many disadvantages (Rachlin, 1997). Using this method to measure the performance of managers in the corporation may pose a number of challenges to Mr. Gonzales. According to Hoffman and Rogelberg (1998), the method may be referred to as a discretionary system since it does not include all the staffs of the corporation. The plan only covers the managers and does not cover other players in profit generation such as salesmen and buyers.This means that the plan will not motivate all the workers together since it only covers some of them and not all of them. This will be difficult for all the employees to be unite d in order to achieve a common goal of improving performance of the organisation. Increasing ROI earnings can only occurs when all the employees of the organisation combine their effort together to achieve a certain level of ROI earnings. This is not possible when all the staffs are not rewarded fairly for their effort.ROI performance measures show the ratio of the profit in relation to the investment used to generate it. This measure at times may be problematic for instance when it comes to the determination of the investments that were used to generate a given level of profit. It is difficult to measure the amount of fixed asset that was used to generate a given level of profit. Mr. Gonzalez may find it difficult to relate the profit generated in a given store with fixed assets that were used to generate that profit. This because fixed assets will be used in more than one financial year.The use of ROI earnings to measure the performance of managers may lead to sub optimization whe re managers concentrate only on the ROI earnings of their division without necessary working to improve the performance of the whole corporation. Improving the ROI of a certain division is usually a short term goal which may not increase the performance of the organisation in the long term. Managers and other staffs may work very hard only for the purpose of earning the bonuses in the new compensation plan without necessary aiming to improve the performance of the company.The measure of earning on investments may also include those factors that are not controlled by the managers. This may include liabilities and assets that are not controlled by division managers and yet they affect the profit of a given store. Division managers usually control receivables and payments within that division and they should only be accountable for that. Holding division managers accountable for factors they do not control may be unfair to them. Thus Mr. Gonzalez ought to look for a method of measuring performance that will be fairer to all the managers.The use of ROI method may also create unhealthy competition among the store managers. Bonus pool is allocated among store managers according to the percentage of ROI they have earned in their stores. The managers can therefore do anything possible to increase their ROI so that they can increase their bonus. This may involve manipulating their revenue and expenses in order to report high profit figures at the end of financial period. This behaviour will create unnecessary short term pressure among the managers which can be avoided using a different method of measuring the performance of the managers (Eva & Mika, 2010).This may have a negative impact to the long term performance of the company. Each division may also work more independent without co-working with other divisions since different divisions will be operating like rivals which may also not improve the long term performance of the company. It is also difficult to know whe ther the increase in sale in a certain store is as result of the new compensation plan (Sammer, 2006). It may take sometime before Mr. Gonzalez knows whether the implemented plan is successful.This is because there are other factors that are not controlled by the manager that may result in increased ROI earning. The use of the ROI method compare all managers on the same platform without considering differences in areas like their division, their region and many other differences. For instances, managers in different departments carry out different operations that have different expenses and revenues. These differences will also affect their department profitability and thus their earnings in ROI.Different regions also have different rate of sales and although efforts put by manager in that region matters, regional differences will also affect the outcome of those regions. The use of ROI to measure the profitability of the manager does not put into consideration factors like regional differences which will affect the outcome of a certain region. Thus rewarding managers using ROI earnings which do not consider such factors will be unfair to some managers who may come from those regions that are not favourable.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Atypical Behaviors Reflection Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words
Atypical Behaviors Reflection - Movie Review Example This fetish is perceived to be very weird because balloons are associated with children and, accordingly, people who literally love balloons can be treated as pedophiles (Nikolaj Rantala). Foot fetish is one of a kind of fetish where people are attracted by some body parts (Ryohey Sasagawa). This fetish is treated as abnormality because people rarely pay attention to feet when it comes to romantic relationships or attractions. They are more likely to seek people with certain color or hair or eyes. The Love Dolls video by National Geographic deals with one more abnormal sexual behavior where men almost fall in love with human-like love dolls. Men give names to their dolls, take care of them and treat them like people. All these fetishes look strange to me because they really challenge traditional understanding of sexuality. I grew up in a traditional family with totally conventional beliefs about sex and relationships. Balloon and love dolls fetishes look really strange because I simply cannot understand why people feel sexually aroused by things like dolls or balloons. Overall, perception of sexual abnormalities heavily depends on the person who judges what is normal and what is
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
A Broadening Understanding of Islam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words
A Broadening Understanding of Islam - Essay Example In the bestselling The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, there is a gut-wrenching scene about a woman being stoned to death because she had not conducted herself according to Islamic law. Another bestseller entitled Reading Lolita in Tehran chronicles a womenââ¬â¢s book club that must meet clandestinely to read Western books that have been outlawed by the Islamic fundamentalists in power at the time. Texts such as these lead us to believe that Islam is an antiquated and oppressive religion that is forced upon people by their governments. If people do willingly participate in Islamic rituals, media sources often jump to the conclusion that they have been brainwashed to do so. Yet Tysonââ¬â¢s article tells an entirely different story about Muslims in Turkmenistan who risked persecution at the hands of the Soviet government to worship at sacred shrines. Thus the article very much helps to balance out the often one-sided depiction of theocratic states that force fundamentalist Islam onto its powerless subjects. Not only did the article expand my perspective as to the different contexts in which Muslims have practiced their faith, David Tyson also broadened my idea of how Muslims worship. While mosques, prayer rugs and religious observances such as Ramadan are very much part of the image depicted by the media, I was not aware that pilgrimages had so much religious significance. Tyson details the many holy sites that are significant to Turkmens and shows how they played such an important role in preserving Islam in the face of the Soviet Union that sought to eradicate it from their empire.
Monday, October 7, 2019
Palaeolithic-type diet and the metabolic syndrome Essay
Palaeolithic-type diet and the metabolic syndrome - Essay Example metabolic syndrome were randomized to a two-week dietary intervention with either a Palaeolithic-type diet (n=18), based on anthropological researches or a healthy diet reference (n=14), based on the guidelines of Dutch Health Council. Both primary and secondary outcomes of the study were measured. Oral glucose tolerance and characteristics of MetS (blood pressure, glucose levels, abdominal circumference, cholesterol levels) being primary. Intestinal permeability, inflammation and salivary cortisol were measured as the secondary outcomes. Emphasis was put on prevention of weight loss. 9 men and 25 women with an average BMI of 31.8 kg/m2 and average age of 53.5 years were evaluated. The Paleolithic type diet resulted in an overall decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels as well as an increase in HDL cholesterol levels as compared to those who were subjected to the reference diet. However, the waist circumference decreased in all the subjects. Even though body weight was supposed to be kept stable, there was an overall reduction in weight of those who were subjected to the Paleolithic type diet as compared to those who were subjected to the reference diet. No changes were noted in the intestinal permeability, salivary cortisol or
Sunday, October 6, 2019
The member of the wedding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words
The member of the wedding - Essay Example Jasmine and proceeds to try grown up things, like going to a bar and drinking, making a date with a much older military man, and dresses nicely with perfume. It is noticeable that both of these personas ââ¬â Frankie and F. Jasmine ââ¬â have the same obsession, which is to leave the town. In the end, Frankie seems to settle into her own identity of who she is in that moment, which is neither a boy, a woman, nor an adult, but is, in fact, an adolescent girl and it is only then that Frankie stops obsessing about leaving the town and settles into the normal life of schoolwork and hanging out with a best friend. Frankie Addams, while ostensibly a tomboy is also confused, as she is perched on the boundaries of childhood and adulthood, as well as straddling the lines between masculinity and femininity, while being subjected to sexuality that is presumably beyond her tender years. The masculine/feminine dichotomy is shown by the fact that Frankie has a boyââ¬â¢s name, and is, by all accounts, a tomboy, yet also puts on Sweet Serenade perfume (White, 1985, p. 89). In one scene, Frankie is cussing like a man, and threatening to shoot every person who said that she ââ¬Å"smelled badâ⬠with a pistol, then John Henry repeats that Frankie smelled like ââ¬Å"a hundred flowersâ⬠because of her perfume (McCullers, 1946, pp. 610-611). The feminine side is further shown when Frankie dreams about changing her name to F. Jasmine Addams (McCullers, 1946, p. 616), although this name is still a blend of the masculine and feminine. The Jasmine part is definitively feminine. Yet calling herself à ¢â¬Å"F. Jasmine Addamsâ⬠denotes a certain sound of masculinity. According to Groba (1994), in quoting Simon de Beauvoir, this is to be expected when young girls who rebel against society and refuses to accept the roles that others have thrust upon her, yet does not have the courage to completely repudiate the roles. This leads the young girl to either take flight from reality, as
Friday, October 4, 2019
Why I want to attend Virginia State University Essay
Why I want to attend Virginia State University - Essay Example My intention to take the Accounting program is because I would like to manage the family business and help in the administration of finances. I performed better in the lower grade level and business was my favorite subject. The other reason why I wish to pursue this course at Virginia State University is that it has facilities and resources that make learning favorable for future job commitments. The University should consider my application since I am self-motivated, disciplined and ambitious. I shall apply my strengths to enable the Finance and Accounting department attain its missions and visions of training competent workers. It is my belief that I shall be considered for a slot to attend the institution. I promise to observe the rules and work hard towards accomplishing the objectives of the department. I look forward to receiving a timely response from the applications committee and I am ready to attend interviews when called upon
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