Week 1 Essays - Psychology, Attitude Change, Mind, Behavior

Week 1: Buzz marketing: messages spread through social networks via word of mouth transmission Inexpensive and Self-perpetuating Reaches younger audiences more effectively Uber influencers: the right people to spread the message Mavens: people with specialized expertise; early adopters; opinion leaders Connectors: people with large social networks who carrier the message (from mavens) Salespeople: charismatic people who sell idea to friends Example :"You MUST see this movie." Persuasion as a science Biologists, Chemists, physicists, etc. are all persuaders Must convince people: The merit of their research The research was designed well and carried out correctly The results are interpreted correctly The merit of their theory over competing theories Persuasion of art Artists convey attitudes through their medium Movies can be used to change attitudes about a topic/bring awareness to something E.g., Black Swan, Inside Out Paintings convey some social conscience Guernica Pablo Picasso Shows victims of bombing in agony Painting made moral statement Interpersonal Influence Persuasion works better face to face because it is less conspicuous. The bait: Your friend calls: "Hey, what are you doing this Friday night?" The nibble: Anticipating an invitation, you say "Nothing much, why?" You're hooked and reeled in: "Well, I wonder if you could help me move into my new apartment then? 4 benefits of studying persuasion Instrumental function :Learn to be more effective persuader (increase communication competence) The knowledge and awareness function Knowledge is power; good to know about persuasive strategies The defensive function: Learn to be a more discerning consumer of persuasive messages The debunking function :Understand incorrect assumptions about how persuasion works. E.g., Subliminal messages aren't persuasive Critique of Persuasion Learning about persuasion fosters manipulation. No, persuasion is ethically neutral. The tool can be used for good or bad. Persuasive functions are too inconsistent. Persuasion should be studied so it is better understood. Some generalizations about persuasion have been uncovered Week 2 Defining Persuasion Pure: clear cut cases of persuasion about which everyone agrees. E.g., presidential debate Borderline: cases that are unclear; not everyone agrees E.g., involuntary bodily responses Decisions must be made about what persuasion includes: 1.)Intentionality: Problems with intentionality: Social modeling and socialization processes = persuasion? Outcomes might not be clearly sought. Persuasion can be spontaneous Unintended receivers Hard to capture intent; stated intent may differ from actual intent Interpersonally, mutual persuasion may occur 2.)Effects: Gass Seiter: persuasion can be ineffective Persuasion as a product versus a processes Persuasion can be happening simultaneously Difficult to assess the extent to which persuasion is effective/ineffective E.g., Vote Hillary because she supports Planned Parenthood 3.)Free will and conscious awareness: Persuasion versus coercion Based on recipient's free will (This implies persuasion cannot occur without conscious awareness) But sometimes people are unconsciously persuaded E.g., Preferring job candidates whose resume is on better paper 4.)Symbolic action: Some people say that persuasion is constrained to symbolic action (language, or other acts that are "meaning-laden"). This limits the channel through which persuasion can occur; thus not all communication is persuasion 5.)Interpersonal vs. intrapersonal: Some people: It takes two (+)for persuasion to occur Sometimes persuasion is unintentional Effects may not be discernible People don't always know persuasion is occurring Sometimes persuasion has coercive features Persuasion isn't limited to symbols People can self-persuade Persuasion as a process: Context determines nature of persuasion E.g., face-to-face is two-way, advertising is one-way Synchronous vs. asynchronous Ratio of verbal vs. nonverbal cues in message Which medium is used Goals of message: Self-presentational, relational, instrumental Sociocultural factors: different cultures may influence how a person is best persuade Persuasion- one or more persons who are engaged in the activity of creating, reinforcing, modifying, or extinguishing beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and/or behaviors within the constraints of a given communication context Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion: Two basic routes to persuasion: Central route (central processing): when people think critically about the message and it's content (cognitive elaboration) Peripheral route (peripheral processing): when people consider cues that aren't directly related to the message E.g., focusing on how cute the message sender is ELM posits that central and peripheral processing are the opposite ends of an elaboration continuum; though parallel processing can occur Central processing end = high elaboration; peripheral processing end = low/no elaboration Factors that impact processing route Motivation impacts whether central or peripheral processing is used Topic involvement can impact motivation; high versus low Ability Other variables such as personality traits (E.g., need for cognition) HSM: Two different processing routes: Systematic processing: thoughtful, deliberate processing (similar to central processing) Heuristic processing: relies on decision rules or heuristic cues to simplify the thought process. Simultaneous processing is possible Factors that impact processing: Motivation and Ability Sufficiency principle: People spend as much time and energy into decision-making as a decision requires ElM vs. HSM: Central=systematic Peripheral is broader than heuristic Peripheral includes cognitive, affective, and other responses that lead to simple decision-making Heuristic

Bryants poetry essays

Bryants poetry essays William Bryants poetry often leads to thoughts on nature, the meaning of life, and death. Meditation on death is the Greek translation for Thanatopsis which is one of his poems. The body of the poem speaks of everything that lives must die but also of how death is natural. This argues against Orthodox Christianity. The introduction and the conclusion of the poem promise something that the body does not fulfill. The beginning talks about those who Hold communion with nature and how she has Various languages for the changing of ones moods. How For gayer hours/ She has a voice of gladness and She glides/ Into his darker musings, with a mild/ And healing sympathy. This side of nature promises healing and consolation. However, the lines The venerable woods the rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks/ That make the meadows green: and, poured round all,/ Old Oceans gray and melancholy waste,/ Are but the solemn decorations all/ Of the great tomb of man show nat ure as merely a decoration not something in which you can Hold communion. Also in the body it talks of the people of the earth, no matter what their station, will all be buried together, All in one mighty sepulchre. The romantic notion of communication between man and nature is missing in the body of Bryants Thanatopsis. Although the notion is missing in the body it returns in the conclusion. Now the author tells us that By unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,/ Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch/ About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. This goes back to the idea of nature being more than just the decoration that the body speaks of. In Bryants poem Yellow Violent the narrator becomes changed by nature. The yellow violets modest bell/ Peeps from th...

Approaches To The Broken Windows Policy Explained Criminology Essay

Approaches To The Broken Windows Policy Explained Criminology Essay 1. Explain the Broken Windows theory of policing. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. Detail the two most important benefits and the two pitfalls of such an approach to policing. Police departments, in the past twenty years, have adopted a theory that says by resolving minor disorders serious crimes can be reduced. It is called the broken windows theory, â€Å"also known as â€Å"order-maintenance,†Ã¢â‚¬ zero-tolerance,† or â€Å"quality-of-life† policing.† (Harcourt & Ludwig, Winter 2006, p. 282) It came to the forefront after a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. The article argued that when low-level quality-of-life offenses were tolerated in a community, more serious crime would follow. The broken windows theory says that â€Å"the variation in disorder in neighborhoods that explains the variation in crime, holding structural disadvantage constant. The real trigger is disorderliness itself.â₠¬  (Harcourt & Ludwig, p. 281) According to this view, broken windows, abandoned buildings, public drinking, litter and loitering cause good people to stay in their houses or move out of the neighborhood entirely. The theory argues â€Å"that the minor events and incivilities that frightened people, far from being a distraction for police departments, should be identified as key targets of police action.† (Moore, 1992, p. 138) It leaves criminals free to roam and send a message that law violations are not taken seriously. â€Å"The focus of the broken windows policing strategy is to address community anxiety about public safety. Broken windows advocates argue that the role of the police is fundamentally to maintain public order.† (Dammert & Malone, Winter 2006, p. 39) Some of the advantages of the broken windows policing are that it reduces social and physical disorders, furthers joint safety endeavors, and bring communities together. â€Å"Broken windows theory assu mes an essentialist notion both of disorder and its connection to perception: visual cues are unambiguous and natural in meaning† (Sampson & Raudenbush, Dec. 2004, p. 320). The theory’s biggest test has been in New York City, where a dramatic decline in crime has been attributed in large part to â€Å"order maintenance.† Rundown parts of the city have been cleaned up, and police focus more on such problems as panhandling, turnstile jumping, and public drinking. Police have even cracked down on people who clean the windshields of cars at stoplights with squeegees (Parenti, 1999, p.77). Among the first and hardest hit were the homeless, who travel, beg, and live in the political and physical basement of the class system: the city’s six-story-deep concrete bowels. Advocates of such tactics argued that in order to address these crimes, the police must be afforded wide discretion and should not be hamstrung by constitutional rules. Still â€Å"broken windowsâ €  enforcement has won a proper place among trends in criminal-justice reform. But in doing so, the police ignored the principal lesson of their own theory. If the toleration of minor law violations leads to more serious crime on the street, it would also follow that the toleration of minor law violations by the police will lead to more serious crime on the force. And that is precisely what has happened. â€Å"The broken windows theory suggests that minor disorders, both physical†¦and social†¦is causally related to serious crime.† (Harcourt, 2001, p.68) â€Å"Broken windows gives rise to â€Å"wars† on the poor, racism, and police brutality.† (Weisburd & Braga, 2007, p. 80) As mayor, Giuliani appeared to show his eagerness to impose law and order at all costs with the implementation of the zero tolerance policy. This led to a dramatic increase in arrests for such crimes as riding a bike on the sidewalk and playing loud music.

ECE 330 Discussion 2-4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

ECE 330 Discussion 2-4 - Essay Example s manner, as the children’s thinking is developed, it is crucial to include items or materials in the classroom environment and curriculum that links to or facilitates the recalling of past lessons. Educators may observe and document what they see by placing children in their natural environments which include classrooms, the outdoors or home, mainly because the children will express more in actions that they would in words. Their actions, such as frustration by ripping pages, may be documented in anecdotal records that briefly describe specific incidents. Through pretend play, children are able to develop linguistic competence because they can first of all make sense out of their world and after developing cultural and social understandings, can express their feelings and thoughts. When a child pretends to be another person in play, he is able to construct statements and metacommunication appropriate to that role in order to maintain the episode of play. Through this, they will be able to internalize rule systems related to the language of the pretend play as well as ways of generating multiple forms of expressing thoughts (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Through an observation made from teaching experiences in which non-French children were learning basic French, a student expressed linguistic competence by noting another, who pretended to be a French baker, was not stressing the sound ‘R’. By playing with language, this student was already feeling in control of it and was showing competence in understanding the concept of sounds and syllables. That shows the significance of pretend play in supporting linguistic competence through focused verbal interactions. Not all the Field Experience sites give children opportunities to present their learning. However, it was observed that children can present their learning through pictures, numbers, athletics, music and words. Therefore, as educators it is important to first allow the students discover their own

Cardiogenic Pulmonary Edema Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Cardiogenic Pulmonary Edema - Research Paper Example On the other hand, non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema is due to an injury to the lung’s vasculature. Treatment for pulmonary edema is aimed at enhancing the respiratory function, treating the underlying cause, and avoiding more damage to the lung. In severe cases, pulmonary edema can result in respiratory distress, heart attack, and even death. Considering that cardiogenic pulmonary edema (CPE) is a type of pulmonary edema, the paper will focus on cardiogenic pulmonary edema. Lungs contain numerous small and elastic sacs referred to as alveoli (Luks, 2013). During gaseous exchange, these air sacs take in oxygen and blow out carbon dioxide. In normal cases, the respiration occurs devoid of any problems. However, in certain situations, the alveoli may be filled with fluids in place of air, thus preventing oxygen from being absorbed into the bloodstream. This results in a condition called cardiogenic pulmonary edema (Murray, 2012). Conventionally, cardiogenic refers to the left ventricle causes. In this case, cardiogenic pulmonary edema is as a result of failure of the heart’s left ventricle to effectively eliminate blood from the pulmonary circulation. As noted by Cleland, Yassin, and Khadjooi (2010), this may be attributable to increased pressure in heart leading to a fast or slow heartbeat, and accumulation of fluids. CPE is caused by problems in the heart muscle, valvular problems, and renal artery stenosis. When the mean pulmonary pressure increases from the normal of 15 mmHg to over 25 mmHg or is

Adaptation Evaluation Essay Example for Free

Adaptation Evaluation Essay Tom Bombadil: Add sense of mysteriousness. Boromirs confession: Proud, arrogant warrior The Spirit of LOTR: Was it kept? Improvements. A new power has arisen. All must unite or fall divided. This is the story of the Lord of the Rings. The ring of power, forged in secret by the dark Lord Sauron contained all of the might, malice and power of the Dark Lord. Its wearer would be invisible and almost invincible, but it would corrupt the heart of anyone who wore it. Lord of the Rings is a typical good vs. evil story. This time, however, good is losing badly. The Dark Lords forces will soon overcome all of Middle Earth, but there is one glint of hope for the forces of Good. Because the Dark Lord Sauron made the ring of power, his life is bound to it. If Good can prevent defeat for long enough so that the ring can be destroyed, Sauron shall be overcome. However, the ring of power can only be destroyed where it was made deep in Saurons realm. This means that hope is in speed and secrecy, not force. A fellowship of the ring is formed and the quest is begun. The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the ring is the first part of the trilogy, which shows how the fellowship evades the servants of the Dark Lord and how the fellowship eventually breaks. A mighty warrior, Boromir is a member of the fellowship. He is lured by the temptation of power and tries to steal the ring. He does not fully understand that the ring corrupts any wearer. He is then asked by other members of the fellowship as to whether he has done anything, but he refuses doing anything wrong due to his arrogance. In the film, the plot is changed so that Boromir does try to take the ring, but he confesses everything. This was a major change as Boromir is meant to be a proud and arrogant human the author J. R. R. Tolkien always shows most humans as easily corrupted. A large omission was Tom Bombadil. He was a father of the forest type man who has powers of song and looks after the ring bearer. Tolkien added him to add a sense of mysteriousness to Lord of the Rings nobody knew who he was or where he came from. This was missed out in the film. Characters like him really did help the spirit of Lord of the Rings. Form one point of view; the film did not keep the spirit of Lord of the Rings at all. Parts were missed out and some of the film seemed like a traditional Good vs. Bad film the beauty of Tolkien was that he took well known types of book and added a slight change, but meant that the whole plot would be different. For example, in the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins goes on a quest to retrieve dwarven treasure. However, he does not want to go and as a result ends up doing a better job of getting the treasure than if he had wanted the treasure. This is the reason why keeping the spirit of Lord of the Rings is so important, Lord of the Rings is unique. However, the film of Lord of the Rings has kept a large part of the spirit. It swings my emotions better than the book did and each character looked almost exactly as I imagined them to be. Because films need a great plot to be good, the director (Peter Jackson) has taken the good parts and made them great he has really concentrated on the right parts. The film however was a bit too different from the book at times and too close at others. For example, there is an Im dead, oh no Im not scene part which was fine in the book, but should have been changed in the film. Another change that should have taken place was the fact that elves are shown as a dying any fading race in the Lord of the Rings film. In the book, elves couldnt die and the elves simply were leaving the land, not dying out. This was probably shown to make humans seem better. In conclusion, the Lord of the Rings film made great use of an excellent plot and unusual story. I think that the film was very good, but there was a small amount of room for improvement.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy Essay example -- Self Image Weight Papers

Cognitive Behavior Therapy Cognitive Behavior Therapy for body image has been proven an effective way to improve body dissatisfaction. It has been applied to persons with eating disorders, obesity, body dysmorphic disorder, and normal weight, all of whom harbor negative feelings toward their bodies. It is critically important to target body image for specific treatment, as negative feelings about one's body are often a major precipitous to eating disorders. What is body image? Body image can be defined as the picture one has in his mind about the appearance (i.e. size and shape) of his body, and the attitude that he forms toward these characteristics of his body. Thus there are two components of body image: the perceptual part, or how one sees his own body, and the attitudinal part, or how one feels about his perceived bodily appearance (Gardner, 1996). A negative body image can be in the form of mild feelings of unattractiveness to extreme obsession with physical appearance that impairs normal functioning (Rosen, 1995). How do Americans feel about their bodies? The 1997 Psychology Today Body Image Survey revealed that Americans have more discontentment with their bodies than ever before. Fifty-six percent of women surveyed said they are dissatisfied with their appearance in general. The main problem areas about which women complained were their abdomens (71 percent), body weight (66 percent), hips (60 percent) and muscle tone (58 percent). Many men were also dissatisfied with their overall appearance, almost 43 percent. However body dissatisfaction for men and women usually means two different things. More men as opposed to women wanted to gain weight in order to feel satisfied with their bodies (Ga... ...4. Rosen, J.C., (1995). Body Image Assessment and Treatment in Controlled Studies of Eating Disorders. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 20, 331-343. Rosen, J.C., Orosan, P., & Reiter, J., (1995). Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Negative Body Image in Obese Women. Behavior Therapy, 26, 25-42. Rosen, J.C., Reiter, J., & Orosan, P., (1995). Cognitive-Behavioral Body Image Therapy for Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63, 263-269. Rosen, J.C., Saltzberg, E., & Srebnik, D., (1989). Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Negative Body Image. Behavior Therapy, 20, 393-404. Veale, D., Gournay, K., Dryden, W., Boocock, A., Shah, F., Willson, R., & Walburn, J., (1996). Body Dysmorphic Disorder: A Cognitive Behavioural Model and Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 34, 717-729.

Distripute Innovation

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in the new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.In contrast to disruptive innovation, a sustaining innovation does not create new markets or value networks but rather only evolves existing ones with better value, allowing the firms within to compete against each other's sustaining improvements. Sustaining innovations may be either â€Å"discontinuous†[1] (i. e. â€Å"transformational† or â€Å"revolutionary†) or â€Å"continuous† (i. e. â€Å"evolutionary†). The term â€Å"disruptive technolo gy† has been widely used as a synonym of â€Å"disruptive innovation†, but the latter is now preferred, because market disruption has been found to be a function usually not of technology itself but rather of its changing application.Sustaining innovations are typically innovations in technology, whereas disruptive innovations change entire markets. For example, the automobile was a revolutionary technological innovation, but it was not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower priced Ford Model T in 1908. [2] The mass-produced automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market. The automobile, by itself, was not.The current theoretical understanding of disruptive innovation is different from what might be expected by default, an idea that Clayton M. Christe nsen called the â€Å"technology mudslide hypothesis†. This is the simplistic idea that an established firm fails because it doesn't â€Å"keep up technologically† with other firms. In this hypothesis, firms are like climbers scrambling upward on crumbling footing, where it takes constant upward-climbing effort just to stay still, and any break from the effort (such as complacency born of profitability) causes a rapid downhill slide.Christensen and colleagues have shown that this simplistic hypothesis is wrong; it doesn't model reality. What they have shown is that good firms are usually aware of the innovations, but their business environment does not allow them to pursue them when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from that of sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). In Christensen's terms, a firm's existing value networks place insuff icient value on the disruptive innovation to allow its pursuit by that firm.Meanwhile, start-up firms inhabit different value networks, at least until the day that their disruptive innovation is able to invade the older value network. At that time, the established firm in that network can at best only fend off the market share attack with a me-too entry, for which survival (not thriving) is the only reward. [3] The work of Christensen and others during the 2000s has addressed the question of what firms can do to avoid oblivion brought on by technological disruption.

Anne Sexton Literary Essay

Anne Sexton transforms the well-known fairytale Snow White into a sardonic piece of writing that reflects societal perceptions of the woman. In her poem she explores the idea that a woman is nothing more than a doll, something that sits pretty on a shelf for all to admire. She also describes the reliance on men, and how women are becoming dependent and incompetent. She counteracts this with a women’s intelligence compared to her beauty and vanity, and what a woman should be. She explores the idea of beauty and vanity going hand in hand, meaning that even princesses can be vain. Fairytales aren’t real, and they are overrated- happily ever after does not exist, especially for those who aren’t beautiful. All fairytales have a female antagonist, and one that is usually a princess. Snow White is sexualized as the virgin. Good Day Mama,  and shut for the thrust  of the unicorn. She is unsoiled. She is as white as a bonefish. (9-13) This text explains that she innocent and untouched. All that matters to a prince is that she is beautiful and a virgin. A brand new doll with porcelain skin and glassy eyes. cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper, arms and legs made of Limoges, lips like Vin Du Rhà ´ne, rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut. (3-7) Sexton compares Snow White to a doll because she is merely an object for ones admiration and love. She is to be pampered and taken care of in return of sitting pretty on the shelf, to be admired. Beauty and vanity play the two-sided coin in this poem, you can’t have one without the other. The queen epitomizes vanity, when she asks the mirror who is the fairest of the land. When the reply is Snow White, she is outraged. Being the most beautiful person in the land is what the queen desires. She craves the attention because beauty is so valued, and Sexton makes that clear. If Snow White or the Queen weren’t beautiful, would anyone ever notice them? Sexton says,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Beauty is a simple passion.† Meaning everyone desires beauty, so those who have it are more noticed. Because Snow White is beautiful, both the prince and the dwarves value her. But with beauty comes vanity, and that is something that Sexton believes in. She believes women should be active and intelligent; beauty is just a faà §ade that relieves women of reaching their full potential. If a woman is beautiful, she can be just as successful as a smart woman without doing all the work because she can rely on men. Any man will want a beautiful wife that does not interfere with his matters. This is what the prince seeks, and finds when he falls in love with Snow White only for her beauty. He stayed so long his hair turned green and still he would not leave. The dwarfs took pity upon him and gave him the glass Snow White– its doll’s eyes shut forever– to keep in his far-off castle. Sexton believes all women should work to be smart, and beauty is no reason not to achieve that. Snow White is unintelligent because she keeps opening the door to the queen even when the dwarfs urge her not too. Her unintelligence is linked to her reliance on a man because she ends up in the happily-ever-after position as the wife of a prince even though she did nothing to deserve it. But what Sexton is trying to show us at the end of the poem that Snow White is now obsessed with herself and her status, and that she will one day be the queen that tries to kill the next young beauty. Meanwhile Snow White held court, rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut and sometimes referring to her mirror as women do. The fairytale ending is fictional. The world isn’t Prince Charmings, beautiful princesses, and evil queens that always lose. ‘The End’ isn’t ever the end because it’s a cycle of innocence, beauty, vanity, and then ultimately envy. Beautiful women are nothing more than an item; they rely on men and are not intelligent. They are envious, and full of vanity. The  perfect women doesn’t exist, and there will never be a happily ever after.

Interesting Facts and Data About American Indians

Interesting Facts and Data About American Indians Due to longstanding cultural mythology and the fact that Native Americans constitute one of the smallest racial groups in the United States, misinformation about indigenous peoples abounds. Many Americans simply regard Native Americans as caricatures that only come to mind when Pilgrims, cowboys or Columbus are the topics at hand. Yet American Indians are three-dimensional people who exist in the here and now. In recognition of National Native American Heritage Month, the U.S. Census Bureau has collected data about American Indians that reveal noteworthy trends taking place among this diverse racial group. Get the facts about what makes Native Americans unique. Almost Half of Native Americans Are Mixed-Race More than five million Native Americans live in the United States, making up 1.7 percent of the population. While 2.9 million U.S. indigenous peoples identify as solely American Indian or Alaska Native, 2.3 million identified as multiracial, the Census Bureau reported. Thats nearly half of the indigenous population. Why do so many Natives identify as biracial or multiracial? The reasons for the trend vary. Some of these Native Americans may be the product of interracial couples- one indigenous parent and one of another race. They may also have non-Native ancestry that dates back to generations past. On the flip side, many whites and blacks claim to have Native American ancestry because race mixing has taken place in the U.S. for centuries. There’s even a nickname for this phenomenon, â€Å"Cherokee Grandmother Syndrome.† It refers to people who claim that a distant ancestor such as their great-great-grandmother was Native American. This isn’t to say that the whites and blacks in question are always lying about having indigenous ancestry. When talk show host Oprah Winfrey had her DNA analyzed on the television show â€Å"African American Lives,† she was found to have a significant amount of Native American lineage. Many people who claim American Indian origin don’t know much, if anything, about their Native ancestor and are ignorant about Native cultures and customs. Yet they may be responsible for a boost in the indigenous population if they claim Native ancestry on the census. â€Å"Reclaimers are perceived as preying upon the current trendiness of Nativeness as well as perhaps embracing this heritage for economic, or perceived economic, gain,† Kathleen J. Fitzgerald writes in the book Beyond White Ethnicity. Margaret Seltzer (aka Margaret B. Jones) and Timothy Patrick Barrus (aka Nasdijj) are just a couple of the white writers who profited from writing memoirs in which they pretended to be Native American. Another reason for the high number of multiracial Native Americans is the spike in the number of Latin American immigrants in the U.S. with indigenous ancestry. The Census Bureau found that Latinos are increasingly choosing to identify as Native American. Many Latinos have European, indigenous and African ancestry. Those who are intimately connected to their indigenous roots want such ancestry to be acknowledged. The Native American Population Is Growing â€Å"When Indians go away, they don’t come back. Last of the Mohicans, last of the Winnebago, last of the Couer d’Alene people†¦,† says a character in the Native American film â€Å"Smoke Signals.† He alludes to the widely spread notion in U.S. society that indigenous peoples are extinct. Contrary to popular belief, Native Americans did not all disappear when Europeans settled in the New World. Although the warfare and disease that Europeans spread upon arriving in the Americas did decimate entire communities of American Indians, U.S. indigenous groups are actually growing today. The Native American population rose by 1.1 million, or 26.7 percent, between the 2000 and 2010 census. That’s much faster than the general population growth of 9.7 percent. By 2050, the Native population is expected to increase by more than three million. The Native American population is concentrated in 15 states, all of which have indigenous populations of 100,000 or more: California, Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, New York, New Mexico, Washington, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, and Illinois. While California has the largest number of Native Americans, Alaska has the highest percentage of them. Given that the median age of the Native American population is 29, eight years younger than the general population, the indigenous population is in a prime position to expand. Eight Native American Tribes Have at Least 100,000 Members Many Americans would draw a blank if asked to list a handful of the nation’s largest indigenous tribes. The country is home to 565 federally-recognized Indian tribes and 334 American Indian reservations. The largest eight tribes range in size from 819,105 to 105,304, with the Cherokee, Navajo, Choctaw, Mexican-American Indians, Chippewa, Sioux, Apache, and Blackfeet topping the list. A Significant Portion of Native Americans Are Bilingual Unless you live in Indian Country, it may be a surprise for you to learn that many Native Americans speak more than one language. The Census Bureau has found that 28 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives speak a language other than English at home. That’s higher than the U.S. average of 21 percent. Among the Navajo Nation, a whopping 73 percent of members are bilingual. The fact that many Native Americans today speak both English and a tribal language is, in part, due to the work of activists who have striven to keep indigenous dialects alive. As recently as the 1900s, the U.S. government actively worked to stop Native peoples from speaking in tribal languages. Government officials even sent indigenous children to boarding schools where they were punished for speaking tribal languages. As elders in some indigenous communities died, fewer and fewer tribal members could speak the tribal language and pass it on. According to the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project, a language dies every two weeks. More than half of the world’s 7,000 languages will vanish by 2100, and many such languages have never been written down. To help preserve indigenous languages and interests worldwide, the United Nations created a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. Native American Businesses Are Booming Native American businesses are on the rise. From 2002 to 2007, receipts for such businesses jumped by 28 percent. To boot, the number of Native American businesses increased by 17.7 percent during the same time period. With 45,629 Native-owned businesses, California leads the nation in indigenous enterprises, followed by Oklahoma and Texas. More than half of indigenous businesses fall into the construction, repair, maintenance, personal and laundry services categories.

Managing and leading change (CORUS) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Managing and leading change (CORUS) - Essay Example During severe changes, employees are supposed to have efficient and reasonable planning, confident and efficient decision-making, and timely communication. In order to survive and flourish in today’s environment, organization should become quicker and open to external demands. They should encourage experimentation and take initiative in innovating and managing change; rather respond to what has already occurred. Investment must be done in training and performance coaching. A new information system must only be implemented by examining human association with such changes, exploring whether the change is successful, supported or not (Alvesson, Bridgman & Willmott, 2009). Otherwise the changes are incomplete and create tension and drags down the momentum suppress results. 2. The organization is greatly decentralized; furthermore autonomy is permitted to member companies to large extent in terms of tactics and functions. The company’s approach to managing new acquisitions h as been entirely hardheaded. The Tata corporate brand is the main tool for bringing together the group, which represents the standards which are common by almost all the conglomerates of the group. Creating partnerships with the providers and the consumers is the new stratagem of the company that modifies the market as well as alters the interference and communication with the consumers. They show care, respect, consideration and kindness for partners, customers and providers around the world. Their mission is to increase rate for the shareholders, preserve position as one of the world’s lowest-cost steel manufacturer and strengthen position as a global competitor (Judge, 2011). 3. The organization has been itself changed a lot with the passage of time. These changes help to make sure that all the people pull in the same direction. The organization has provided a safe workplace and demonstrates high ethical standards. It also respects the environment and cares for its entire people. This strengthens the peoples’ trusts, hence increases the potential and they work more willingly. The business is conducted fairly, with sincerity and transparency (Pritchett & Pound, 1995). It also offers programs to encourage quality education. These strategies help in the development of organization along with its people. 4. Equal opportunity, enduring individual growth, equality, common belief and joint effort and collaboration are the core principles of their policy. Truthfulness, indulgent, brilliance, union and responsibility are the values that support these principles (Knill & Balint, 2008). Talented employees is vitally essential in any organization hence they are able to get the employee loyalty by providing them chances of improvement and enhancement, giving them fine and challenging jobs and by competitive reparation and profit schemes (Debrah & Smith, 2002). Diversity within the staff significantly boosts overall potentials, based on this fact they ensur e the equal opportunity for all the employees without any discrimination on the basis of race, social status, religion, color, parentage, gender, age, nationality, ethnicity or disability. They encourage and enable all in their organization to develop and grow with the development of the business by improving managerial and technical competences of employees through internal improvement and training programs. 5.

Recent Political Changes in the Middle East Coursework

Recent Political Changes in the Middle East - Coursework Example Arab Spring when translated means Arab Revolution is a wave of revolution in the Arab World, the aim of this Arab Spring is to protest against the regime which is being followed in several Arab countries. People have also effectively used social networking websites to take their protest to another level; websites like Facebook and Twitter have been used to raise awareness and to bring down the regime which is being followed in several of these Arab countries. 18 December 2010 was the exact date when the Arab awakening picked up the pace, it was in Tunisia that the people first started protesting against the ill-treatment and the corrupt policemen. This wave of unrest picked a pace and spread to other Arab countries triggering war-like circumstances in several Arab countries.The general elections in Lebanon which took place in 2009 hogged the limelight, the minimum age to vote was 21 that time, the age was to be changed from 21 to 18 but this required a constitutional bill to be passe d which did not happen and things remained as they were, completely unchanged. After much ado, the government was formed in Lebanon in the year 2009 but the government could not survive for too long, the same government fell in the year 2011 when 11 ministers who formed an integral part of the government withdrew their support. A lot of other significant developments also took place during 2009 and 2011. In February 2009Â   Lebanon fired two rockets which were aimed towards northern Israel, the two countries have not had the best of relationships in the past and this development made their relationship even worse, they were at loggerheads once again. This event was not the first of its kind, the two countries have been exchanging rocket strikes for quite some time now, this was the third of its kind during 2009. Hezbollah group has been actively involved in such strikes but on that occasion, they clearly came forward and denied any such wrongdoing, Palestinian militant groups are a lso very active in Lebanon and it was believed that they were behind this rocket strike which deteriorated the relationship of Lebanon and Israel even further. This was just the tip of the iceberg, the country faced several other major issues in the year 2009, and its relationship with other Arab countries remained the highlight throughout the year.