Racism against black people Essay

Slavery in the United States began after English colonists first settled Virginia and lasted until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865. The American colonies were established with the idea of freedom and liberty to all but has change into racism. Now, racism against African Americans in America has been a huge problem in the south. Slavery in the United States began soon after English colonists first settled Virginia and lasted until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865. The 19th century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Although technically able to vote, poll taxes, acts of terror (often perpetuated by groups like the KKK) and discriminatory laws kept African Americans disenfranchised, particularly in the South. During this time, segregation, racial discrimination and expressions of white supremacy all increased, as did anti-black violence such as lynching and race riots. Racism, which had been viewed primarily as a problem in the Southern states, burst onto the national consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the Southern states to the industrial centers of the North after World War I. This took place particularly in cities such as Boston, Chicago and New York (Harlem). In northern cities, racial tensions exploded most violently in Chicago. The 1950s and 1960s saw the peaking of the American Civil Rights Movement with the desegregation of schools in 1954 and the organizing of widespread protests across the nation under a younger generation of leaders. Martin Luther King was a catalyst for many nonviolent protests in the 1960s, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government and in employment and invalidating the Jim Crow laws (which mandated segregation in all public facilities, with a â€Å"separate but equal† status for black Americans and other non-white racial groups) in the southern United States. It became illegal to force segregation of the races in schools, housing or  hiring. This signified a change in the social acceptance of racism that had been written into American law and an increase in the number of opportunities available for people of color in the United States. However, African American poverty and education inequalities continue and have deepened in the post-industrial era.

Rhetoric in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Essay

Throughout various plays and pieces, rhetoric is used to persuade characters into committing to a significant action or decision. In William Shakespeare’s plays, rhetoric is used regularly by characters that plan to persuade others into doing certain actions that satisfy their own personal opinions and needs. As it can lead to many dangerous outcomes, the art of persuasion, evoked through uses of rhetoric, can be seen as a lethal weapon that has the power to cause damage and harm. Similarly, the use of rhetoric also has the power to reveal truths and identities, that have been hidden and kept secret and are only able to be discovered through the schematic initiation of persuasion. To completely persuade someone else, a character must use rhetoric to overcome one of three key decision-making factors: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, appeals to Logos, Pathos, and Ethos are effectively used to reveal character, as seen in Cassius, Antony, a nd Brutus respectively, throughout the play. Cassius chooses to persuade different characters through appeals to Logos, which indicates his true qualities and aspects, and how they reflect his motifs. To appeal to Logos, one must appeal to the logical side of a person’s mentality; they must use reasoning and syllogism to persuade another person into believing that their opinion is completely logical, and is therefore the best decision to make. This can be seen in Cassius numerous times, and it establishes how he is calculating, logical, and cold. In the second scene of the first act, Cassius tells Brutus that Caesar is not the godly king the he sets himself up to be, and persuades Brutus that Caesar must be overthrown. Cassius convinces Brutus that Caesar is not fit for the thrown by using recollections of past experiences, in which Caesar can be seen as frail and impotent, to insult Caesar and convince Brutus that he is surely not strong enough to be crowned the leader of Rome, â€Å"His coward lips did from their colo ur fly, and that same eye whose bend doth awe the world did lose his lustre†. (1.2.122-124) The message is that Caesar is weak, and is no stronger than the average mortal Roman. If Caesar is weak and frail, how will he be able to lead an entire nation? This use of syllogism appeals to Brutus’ Logos, and convinces him that it is only logically fit to have a strong and capable man as leader, if there were to be a leader, through the simple cause-and-effect method. This is an example of Cassius being calculating, logical, and cold as he calculates that Brutus can be persuaded through a reasonable, syllogistic appeal, he uses logic to show Brutus evidence that Caesar is weak, and he is cold to the fact that Brutus is a very close friend of Caesar, and that turning such good friends against each other would be dishonourable, disrespectful, and inconsiderate to the bond they share and the significance of their relationship. Antony uses rhetoric through appeals to Pathos to effectively persuade others, and this reveals how he can be seen as smart, empathetic, and loyal. An appeal to Pathos is an appeal to emotion, rather than logic or credibility. Antony understands the power of one’s emotions, and uses his knowledge of this to persuade people into satisfying his needs by convincing them that their emotional desires are the most reasonable factor in making a decision. In the second scene of the third act, Antony gives a moving speech to the Plebians about Caesar’s death, and how he believes it was a traitorous act by the conspirators, and that his murder must be avenged. Antony knows full well that the common mob is not an intellectual group in the slightest, and chooses to appeal to emotions in an emotionally overwhelmed crowd, showing that he is smart and clever. To persuade the Plebian audience into fully believing that Caesar did not deserve to die, Antony decides to render Caesar’s death as a personal loss to each individual Plebian by overstating the fashion in which Caesar was killed, and by exaggerating the betrayal of Caesar’s close friend, Brutus, â€Å"Through this the well-loved Brutus stabb’d, and as he pluck’d his cursed steel away, mark how the blood of Caesar follow’d it, as rushing out of doors to be resolv’d if Brutus so unkindly knock’d or no, for Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel†. (3.2.174-179) By dramatizing Caesar’s death, Antony convinces the Plebians that Caesar, the man they had loved so much, did not deserve to die in such a gruesome manner, betrayed by his close friends, and thus causes the Plebians to feel resentful and vengeful for the death of such a seemingly innocent man. By persuading the Plebians into believing that Caesar’s dea th must be avenged through an exploitation of their emotional dominance in the decision making process, Antony can be seen as empathetic, as he understands the emotional connection between the Plebians and Caesar and uses it to his advantage, and loyal, as he desires, so strongly, for his best friend to be avenged for such a heinous and disloyal crime. Ethos is Brutus’ rhetorical device of choice, and his various uses of it to persuade other characters shows that he is proud, honourable, and naà ¯ve. In the first act of the second scene, Cassius brings the conspirators to Brutus’ house, where they discuss their plan to kill Caesar. Up until this point in the play, Brutus declares that he is very honourable towards his morals, and only does what he believes is right after considering both sides of an argument. Thus, Brutus can be seen as honourable, and proud of his morals, honour and the fact that he always contemplates the right decision by considering the significance of each factor. Much like the way Brutus presents himself in such a manner during the beginning of the play, Brutus can also be seen as honourable and pride through his uses of rhetoric. In this specific scene, Brutus insists that an oath is unnecessary, as they are all honourable men and plan on doing what is best for Rome, â€Å"No, not an oath! If not the face of men, the sufferance of our souls, the time’s abuse-If these be motives weak, break off betimes, and every man hence to his idle bed; so let high-sighted tyranny range on, till each man drop by lottery† . (2.1.114-119) Here, Brutus tries to persuade the conspirators into becoming honourable, if they already aren’t, and believing that their only motif for killing Caesar should be for the greater good of the Roman Republic. This shows that Brutus has pride, as he believes that his mentality of honour is the best mentality for this decision, and he is honourable, as he believes that their actions should only be the most honourable ones. However, Brutus’ pride in his honour causes him to be naà ¯ve and blind to the fact that not every one of the conspirators agrees with his honourable mentality. Brutus’ pride causes him to believe that his personal mentality is the only possible mentality, and renders him blind to the fact that the conspirators are not killing Caesar for Brutus’ honourable reasons. By becoming completely absorbed to the belief that their only possible motif is for honour, Brutus causes himself to be naà ¯ve, through his own honour and pride.

Airasia Essay 7

Company Background AirAsia Berhad as know as AirAsia is a Malaysian low-cost airline. It operates scheduled domestic and international uflights and is Asia's largest low fare, no frills airline. AirAsia pioneered low cost travelling in Asia. The airline was established in 1993 and started operations on 18 November 1996. A government-owned conglomerate DRB-Hicom originally founded it. On 2 December 2001, the heavily-indebted airline was purchased by former Time Warner executive Tony Fernandes's company Tune Air Sdn Bhd. AirAsia is the first airline in the region to implement fully ticketless travel and unassigned seats. However, as of 5 February 2009, AirAsia has implemented allocated seatings across all AirAsia flights, including in their sister airlines, Indonesia AirAsia and Thai AirAsia. In 2003, AirAsia opened a second hub at Senai International Airport in Johor Bahru near Singapore and launched its first international flight to Bangkok. AirAsia has since started a Thai subsidiary, added Singapore itself to the destination list, and commenced flights to Indonesia. Flights to Macau started in June 2004, while flights to Mainland China (Xiamen) and the Philippines (Manila) started in April 2005. Flights to Vietnam and Cambodia followed later in 2005 and to Brunei and Myanmar in 2006, the latter by Thai AirAsia. Its main base is the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). LCCT will initially handle 10 million passengers a year. Its affiliate airlines Thai AirAsia and Indonesia AirAsia have hubs at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Thailand and Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Indonesia, respectively. The airline is also considering founding Hong Kong AirAsia in the future. AirAsia's registered office is in Petaling Jaya, Selangor while its head office is on the grounds of Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Selangor. AirAsia operates with the world’s lowest unit cost of US$0. 023/ASK and a passenger break-even load factor of 52%. It has hedged 100% of its fuel requirements for the next three years, achieves an aircraft turnaround time of 25 minutes, has a crew productivity level that is triple that of Malaysia Airlines and achieves an average aircraft utilisation rate of 13 hours a day. AirAsia is currently the largest single customer of the Airbus A320. AirAsia â€Å"Rock India† Campaign This new development is subsequent to AirAsia's huge success of Tiruchirapplalli (Trichy) followed-by Kolkata, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) recording an average of 80% load factor on all four existing routes. Thus, these new services will not only complement AirAsia's aggressive growth in India, but is also feeding more traffic into the country. The reason why AirAsia is choosing India market is because India market is second only to China in growth, as the India market is booming AirAsia has decided extending its footprint with the launch of its direct flights to 6 new routes in the first quarter of 2010. This new services to key metro cities include Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi from Kuala Lumpur and from Penang to Chennai. It is also noteworthy to highlight that AirAsia is the only airline from Malaysia which will be flying to Bangalore and Hyderabad from Kuala Lumpur and from Penang to Chennai. The Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad sectors will be serviced by AirAsia's A320 aircrafts, Mumbai and Delhi will be served by its long-haul affiliate, AirAsia X via its new Airbus A330 fleet. AirAsia is the only airline which connects to the most points in India from Malaysia with a total of 148 flights weekly. Segmentation To promote India tourism sport and stimulate new travel demands and further tap markets AirAsia is focus on working adult, families and backpackers. Especially to young working adults and families, to travel to Malaysia and thereafter use Kuala Lumpur as a gateway to over 130 routes in Asia, that includes regional ASEAN cities or long-haul sectors serviced by AirAsia X. And to achieve AirAsia objective â€Å"Now everyone can fly† AirAsia will support this by liberalizing the air travel with undisputed low-fares, opening-up the India market to the world and support businesses and more. Database Marketing Approximately 60% of overall bookings are made online through AirAsia website. The remaining 40% of bookings are done through Nationwide Call Centre, Preferred Travel Agents, AirAsia's Airport Stations and Sales Offices. Consumers who choose online purchase ticket have to fill up name, gender, occupation and others information and for consumers who wish to get latest news or promotion from AirAsia they can create an account and become a member of AirAsia. With all database that collect from online booking and sales office, AirAsia able to track their customer and segment them by Demographic segmentation. With these databases AirAsia able to retain consumer by sending E-gift voucher for them. The E-Gift Voucher is an innovative gift for all occasions as well as being a much-appreciated corporate gift for its high perceived value. ) Direct Marketing Offer Planning While everyone is focusing on China market, AirAsia develop and create a wonderful strategy and come out with special offering to their customer to successfully in their business by taken a first move a dvantage extends their business to India and have the advantage of being the first low cost airline in India with using Price Leadership Strategy to attract consumer form Malaysia or India. This allow it to establish itself before competition increases in this low cost segment, apart from competition that already exists across segments (low cost vs full service carriers). This is a major strength, as AirAsia will be laying down the rules and frameworks for the industry in a manner that suits its business and operational model. This also bring cross selling to AirAsia. To add value, AirAsia, under GoHoliday at www. airasiago. com, also offers some great online hotel deals to stretch the dollar where guests can choose their holiday lodgings from over 50,000 hotels, tour packages and ground transfers. Guests are also encouraged to purchase food, supersize their baggage, hot seats online to enjoy more discounts and savings through www. airasia. com. AirAsia's low-cost model, with its ultra low fares and modern fleet of comfortable and spacious aircraft, is undoubtedly an attractive consumer proposition, strong enough to compete with premium airlines. At any time after a booking has been made AirAsia may change their schedules or cancel, terminate, divert, postpone reschedule or delay any flight where they reasonably consider this to be justified by circumstances beyond their control or for reasons of safety or commercial reasons. Unfortunately the Terms and Conditions of AirAsia don't allow for a refund but to protect consumers in the event of such flight cancellation, AirAsia shall at their option, either carry consumer’s at the earliest opportunity on another of AirAsia scheduled services on which space is available without additional charge and, where necessary, extend the validity of consumer’s booking or choose to travel at another time, retain the value of consumer’s fare in a credit account for future travel provided that consumers must re-book within three month.

Wal-Mart Negotiation Analysis

Although it was several years ago now, in 1988 a 24-year old man was injured at his local Wal-Mart store after tripping over several rocking chairs. The man claims that as he turned the corner of an aisle he tripped over three 1. 5 foot-high children’s rocking chairs, which caused several injuries, some of which were lacerated forehead, several strains and sprains, a jaw injury and even blackout spells (Laska, 2000). This example of a negotiation lawsuit would classify as a distributive negotiation because of several different reasons. First, the only item of value being discussed is settlement money, and in order for the negotiation to be considered an integrative negotiation, the opposing parties typically have additional items of value to discuss for trade. Also, there is no personal relationship between the opposing sides of the negotiation, which in this particular case are the Wal-Mart Corporation and the injured man. Finally, a distributive negotiation is considered to be a win-lose scenario and clearly, either the man or the Wal-Mart Corporation would win the negotiation. Originally, the injured man sued the company for $100,033. 57, and although the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in his favor, the amount was lowered. The jury determined that although his injuries were worth compensation, $73,525. 18 was considered a more appropriate sum. In addition, the plaintiff’s wife was awarded $10,000 for loss of consortium. Even though some people may feel as though an injury due to tripping over a child’s toy is a case that does not hold much water, fortunately for the injured man his case was fairly cut and dry. The store could have prevented the injury if the rocking chairs were properly displayed. Therefore the store was responsible and held liable. This type of negotiation is intended for the benefit of one party and is typically settled out of court because companies try to avoid court appearance when possible. Integrative Article: NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement Although the National Basketball Association will be facing changes to their Collective Bargaining Agreement within the next year, the most recent negotiation, which is held between players and teams, was held in 2005. This negotiation is intended to discuss important terms in the players’ contracts, which include salary amounts, length of contracts, rookie salary terms, and salary caps. On the other end of the negotiation, the teams are interested in discussing factors such as trade rules, the escrow level, and the allowed tax on the teams (Morton, 2010). This article demonstrates an integrative negotiation because it is more of a win-win scenario for the opposing parties, which as previously mentioned, include the players and the teams. Since both parties have much to gain from the agreement, they are willing to put more on the table. Also part of an integrative negotiation, both parties have not only their best interest in mind, but also the interest of the opposing side, primarily because of the relationship established between the two. The players and teams are interested in the well being of each other because both are affected by each other. This demonstrates why distributive negotiations are different from integrative, because there is no relationship between the two parties. Although integrative negotiations are often successful, most negotiations are distributive because most opposing parties are not interested in the other. This type of negotiation technique is intended for a established pair of negotiators. Examples in the Workplace Considering that I work in a childcare center, negotiation strategies are not commonly used. However, a childcare director would have a few different scenarios in which negotiation techniques could be beneficial. Although in society today, distributive negotiations are much more common, integrative negotiations are used more often in childcare, in fact, they are used more often in most workplaces. One example of how integrative negotiations are used is through a request for a pay raise. Just like the article examining the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, I have used integrative negotiation techniques in the past when I asked for an hourly pay raise. Instead of demanding a raise, which would be more like a distributive negotiation, I discussed how both the center that I work for and myself would benefit from a raise. I explained what I had to offer the company in exchange for the raise, while the benefit to myself is obviously of monetary value. It is similar to the saying, you will catch more bees with honey than vinegar, I will have more success in getting what I am asking for by being professional and polite than by having high expectations and demanding to get what I ask for. Although both types of negotiation techniques can be successful in the appropriate setting, integrative negotiations are more practical for my line of work.

Competing through Operation: KFC Report Essay

INTRODUCTION The report focuses on KFC – the leading chicken fast food restaurant in the world, and one of the largest players in the fast food market. By using five performance objectives and various research methods, the report aims to  analyze how the restaurant perform and manage its operation capacity in order to provide qualified food and service to the customers. Besides, the restaurant’s capacity constrains and capacity strategies are discussed base on the primary data from KFC Union Street, Bristol City centre. It would link to the relationship between Capacity strategy and five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004), as well as, how they support each other. COMPANY PROFILE KFC first starts in 1930s, when Harland Sanders opened his restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. KFC now spreads out to more than 100 countries with around 15500 outlets worldwide. Of these, there are more than 800 restaurants located in the UK. The restaurant has concentrated on fried-chicken-on-bone products under the name Original Recipe and expanded the offers with other items include chicken sandwiches and chicken wings, as well as, biscuits, mashed potatoes, corn, potato wedges and desserts. The new line-grilled chicken with fewer calories, fat and salt than the Original Recipe- was launched in 2009. It was called â€Å"one of the biggest new product rollouts in the history of the company† by the KFC president Roger Eaton. Being tested in many regions included the UK; this new line has been well received as a healthier alternative which retains good in taste. The following part will discuss about how KFC applies five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004) into its operation and which of the five objectives is concentrated on. FIVE PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES The theory has been applied for many companies worldwide for over 10 years in order to manage operating performance. Due to the limitation of resources, each company tends to put only some of the five objectives in priority  during particular periods. It is considered as one of smart methods to maximize profits. Source: (Adapted from Slack et al, 2004) FIGURE1. FIVE PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES Figure 1 explains the idea and meaning of five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004) in general. QUALITY is the responsibility to always provide the good product or service that company has claimed. It also requires doing the right thing at the right time and meeting customer specifications, which give customer satisfactions. In KFC, main factors listed as Quality objective are quality of food (delicious, tasty, fresh, healthy, etc), quality of service (clean, supportive, friendly, etc)†¦ SPEED is defined as how fast the company responds their customers. This is one of the most important things required in fast food restaurant, especially in rush hours. Applying to KFC restaurant, speed objective is considered as the elapsed time between customers’ placing orders and the food or services being delivered. FLEXIBILITY measures how much variety in products, services, and solutions for a dynamic market environment in order to meet customers’ need. It is shown as KFC’s various menus, the launch of line â€Å"Grilled Chicken†, the more customization, etc DEPENDABILITY is doing things on time as promises. It not only gains customer’s trust but also has an influence on cost, which are saving money, saving time and giving stability to improve the efficiencies (Strecker, Ulrich, 2011). In KFC, it is on-time deliveries. COST is the product or service price that enables company compete the market, as well as ensure the return. The company aims to maximize their profit;  therefore, reducing the cost is necessary. Cost objective in KFC is measured by the cost of food, cost of manager and staff’s salaries, etc. The Polar diagram below shows how KFC restaurant performs in manager, staff and customer perspectives base on the data that was collected. (Adapted from Slack et al, 2004, p58) FIGURE2. POLAR DIAGRAM OF KFC RESTAURANT The Polar diagram is designed by the result of KFC manager’s interview, staff’s questionnaire and customers’ questionnaire (Appendix 1.0, appendix 2.0 and appendix 3.0). According to KFC manager, the restaurant is performing quite well in quality, cost and dependability objectives while speed needs to improve, especially in rush hours (16:00pm to 20:00pm). Staff and customers have the same opinion about improving speed objective in KFC. â€Å"Although we have 8 queues† – as the manager – â€Å"it is hard to serve a large number of customers at 19pm. However, we tend to give the staffs more training sessions to increase their speed in taking order and cooking. Focusing on people will push up dependability, flexibility and speed all.† (Appendix 3.0) It is the fact that most of the customers want a lower price for their food and services. However, with a fixed price tag, the restaurant tries their best to prove that the food and service offered to customers are worth their paying. The next part of report will focus on how the restaurant meets its customer’s fluctuating demand. CAPACITY The capacity of an operation is the highest level of value added after certain period of time that the process would be able to achieve under certain conditions (Slack et al, 2001). It includes: actual output, design capacity and effective capacity. FIGURE3. CAPACITY OF KFC RESTAURANT ON UNION STREET, BRISTOL Planned losses Avoidable losses Actual capacity 1929 people Planned losses Effective capacity 2331 people Design capacity 2680 people (Adapt from Slack et al, 2001) The figure is resulted from calculations below. DESIGN CAPACITY Design capacity is â€Å"the capacity which its technical designers had in mind when they commissioned the operation† (Slack et al, 2001, p335). The KFC restaurant on Union Street is the largest KFC outlets in Bristol which can serve maximum 100 customers a day (approximate number from KFC manager). Design capacity Daily 100 people Weekly 670 people (7 working days, less working hours on Sunday) Monthly 2680 people EFFECTIVE CAPACITY While design capacity is â€Å"everything according to a plan†, effective capacity helps to show what might happen if something not goes as a plan. Effective  capacity is calculated as design capacity minus planned losses, which is 13% (from KFC manager). Effective capacity Daily 87 people (100 – 100Ãâ€"13%) Weekly 582people (670 – 670Ãâ€"13%) Monthly 2331 people (2680 – 2680Ãâ€"13%) ACTUAL OUTPUT Actual output is the amount of a product that a production facility actually produces, as opposed to the amount that it could produce if it were to run at full theoretical capacity. It is calculated as design capacity minus planned losses and avoidable losses which is 15% (from KFC manager). Actual output Daily 72 people (100 – 100x[13%+15%]) Weekly 482 people (670 – 670x[13%+15%]) Monthly 1929 people (2680 – 2680x[13%+15%]) Planned losses: Public holidays (Christmas, New Year, etc) Human issues (Illness, pregnant †¦) The time customers waiting to be served Avoidable losses: Weather (Storm, heavy snow, etc) Machine failure. CAPACITY CONSTRAINTS Capacity constraints are considered as factors that limit the number of customers served by operation (Dettmer, 2003). For KFC, these are: number of staffs, number of queues, available eating space, speed of cooking and delivering. These factors would push the restaurant to its limit points of operation, which called Bottle necks. NUMBER OF STAFF: There are many shift of working hour a day in KFC. The maximum number of staffs that needed in rush hour is 12 people approximately (with 8 front-men taking customers’ orders and cleaning, 2 middle-men making burgers and chips, and 2 cooks in the kitchen working strenuously). At the busiest hour, the staffs face pressure of too many customers waiting in the queues, shortage of food available, and the mess in eating place. 2 or 3 front-men have to make burger and chips in order to provide food on time. NUMBER OF QUEUE: It often happens in the fast food restaurant that long lines of customers are waiting to be served. Although KFC Union Street has 8 queues, it does not mean that there are always staffs available. AVAILABLE EATING SPACE: It is hard to find a clean table in rush hours because of the large number of customers and the busy staffs. SPEED OF COOKING AND DELIVERING: To ensure the fresh of food provided to customers, the middle-men just make some available. Hence, if a big order is placed or many orders are placed at once, it will take time to make more burgers. Some constraint factors would be solved by staff’s working flexibility, some, however, could not avoid because they links to other factors. For example, KFC could make more burgers available to avoid customers’ waiting time and increase speed performance objective; however, the foods will not as good as the just-in-time one, which reduces quality performance objective. Therefore, it is essential for the restaurant to decide which objectives are priorities. The analysis of KFC’s capacity and capacity constraints lead to the following part which will discuss about which strategy it uses to manage the operation. CAPACITY STRATEGY (Sasser, 1976) There are 2 evidences from the data collected that shows Chase demand plan (Sasser, 1976) is the strategy KFC following. There are different staff numbers and the amount of food ready in a day. Due to staff contracts, the manager arranges a large number of staffs for rush hour, which is from 16:00pm to 20:00pm each day while reduce staffs at the opening (9:30am) and the closing time (22:00pm). In 30 minutes before closing, the kitchen stops working and the front-men focus on cleaning rather than standing behind order place. This arrangement is based on which time customers usually come to the restaurant. It helps reduce cost of staff salaries and avoid human surplus on the time not many customers. Besides, working flexibility is required for all the staffs, which are ability of working in different positions (front, middle or in kitchen), doing different tasks and even overtime, if needed. The other one – amount of food ready in a day – does show that KFC is applying Capacity leads demand theory (Sasser, 1976). KFC always provides the amount of food slightly over than customer’s demand so as to ensure available service in working time. The food left changes to waste because it could not be stored due to KFC’s quality standard. This waste, according to the manager, is not significant and enables to bear with. From the analysis above, it is clear to see that KFC is doing right because the strategy not only fits to identity of fast food market, but also expresses KFC’s customisation, which highly focus on satisfy its customers. After discussing about five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004) and capacity strategy (Sasser, 1976), the final part will clarify relationship between those and how they support each other. THE RELATIONSHIP OF CAPACITY STRATEGY AND FIVE PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES (Slack et al, 2004) Before having strategy, the objectives have to be set. It could be simply explained that objectives are the place you want to drive to while strategy is vehicle that helps to get there. For KFC as a whole, the company expresses its concentration on Quality objective through the slogan â€Å"Don’t worry. Eat happy† (http://www.kfc.co.uk/dontworryeathappy) and various actions to be healthier for the customers, such as â€Å"Get fresh inspiration from our Deli Deluxe Range†, â€Å"We’re fighting trans-fats, not flavour†, â€Å"We’ve done away with 25% of saturated fats†, or â€Å"Fitted out with green energy†, etc. Quality is known as the vital factor to compete with other big brands like Subway, MacDonald’s, Burger King†¦, and gain fast food market share when customer’s health concern is increasing more and more. (http://www.propertyweek.com, Domino’s pizza tops the market article) FIGURE4. FAST-FOOD MARKET SHARE IN THE UK However, for smaller scale, according to the manager of KFC Union Street, the  restaurant put Speed objective as their first priority to strive because quality standard as well as promotions is already fixed. â€Å"It is KFC Company’s job to upgrade and spread out how good the food is.† – Said the manager – â€Å"Our job is to provide food with the same standard, and serve the customers those come to our restaurant best services, and it is speed†. Hence, the restaurant tends to increase the factor it can control, which differentiates it among the others. Following the objective above, the Chase demand plan (Sasser, 1976) is decided to make it done. This strategy fits to fast food restaurant’s identity so as to utilize time, human, and money resources. Then, considering either capacity lags demand, which allows demand never less than capacity or capacity leads demand (Sasser, 1976), which is that capacity always meets forecasted demand, KFC Union Street chose the second one. The restaurant gives up waste in order to better its service for customers. Amount of food available reduces waiting time for delivering, as well as, waiting time to be ordered. The customers would be more satisfied thanks to fast service. CONCLUSION To sum up, the report is designed from result collected at KFC Union Street, Bristol. With five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004), capacity, capacity strategy (Sasser, 1976) analysis, it clarified how KFC operates and how theories links to each other, as well as, are applied into practice with particular circumstances. REFERENCES Dettmer, H.W., 2003. Strategic Navigation: A Systems Approach to Business Strategy. ASQ Quality Press. James, P., Rowland-Jones, R., O’Brien, L., 2010. Operations and Business Systems management, 2nd Ed., Harlow: Pearson. Samuelson, Paul A., Nordhaus, William D (2009). Economics, 19th Ed., McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Slack N, Chambers, S., Johnston R., 2001, Operations management, 3rd Ed., London: Pittman Publishing. Slack N, Chambers, S., Johnston R., 2001, Operations management, 4th Ed., London: Pittman Publishing. Slack N, Chambers, S., Johnston R., 2001, Operations management, 5th Ed., Harlow: Prentice Hall. Schoenborn, G., 2009, Personal Communication. Strecker, S., Ulrich, F., 2011. Information Systems and E-Business Management. A modelling method in support of the reflective design and use of performance measurement systems [e-journal] 7(1). Available through: Springer. http://www.kfc.co.uk/dontworryeathappy

Different Country, Different Culture Essay

A country is just like an onion; the innermost skin is Culture. Culture is like the soul of a country. All countries have their own unique cultures to live by, which means that people who have grown up in different places will have different ways of behaving, different ways of thinking about things and different ways of expressing themselves. Each country has its own culture, and there are many differences between different countries in culture. Those differences make our world a more colorful and exciting place to live. We can have a better understanding of it if we compare the big cultural differences between America and China. According to my two years of study in America and Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks by LaRay M. Barna, which talked about the difference between different cultures, I find two big differences in friendship and education. First difference is friendship. Time is often the best way to test friendship and friends. For the Chinese, to know each other for a long time, the communication needs to be at a certain depth, finding out each other’s habits, temperament, similar interests and the common experience of â€Å"suffering†. Then they will make the recognition of each other as a friend in the heart, and they will value this friendship. Once friendship is established, it will be lifelong, and hard to break. Chinese can share almost everything with their friends, for example, when you are in China, at restaurant, you can actually see people fight for the bill. It’s not about showing off to their friends or someone else. It’s just because they want to show their appreciation for their friendship. On the other hand, for most Chinese, we think Americans are â€Å"superficial,† like what Barna said â€Å"They talk and smile too much† (67) and â€Å"Their friendship are, most of the time, so ephemeral compared to the friendship we have at home. Americans make friends very easily and leave their friends almost as quickly† (67). For Americans, in general it seems to them that Chinese and some other people from different countries are â€Å"not necessarily snobs but are very unfriendly,† (67) Because we don’t talk and smile a lot. The reason why Chinese and Americans have a different opinion on friendship is because  our cultures are different. We can’t tell which kind of friendship is right or wrong because there is no such a thing as wrong culture. There are all just different cultures. The second difference is in education.† What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country.† says a Chinese proverb. As we all know, American and Chinese education systems are different, which creates different culture in turn. American education focuses on the students’ creativity and practical ability. In their classes, the teachers just play a role as leaders. Students do lab homework, group work to find out the answer by themselves. However in China, the school is more like a concert hall. This means that students are completely listeners. Students all focus on the textbook, try to memorize everything from the book, and then get a good score. They hardly come up with their own ideas. That’s why Barna says, â€Å"U.S. students often complain that the international members of a discussion or project seem uncooperative or uninterested†. (66) But both of those two educations’ intentions are good. In my view, we should learn the academic knowledge well, but we should also take part in the school activities, improve our interpersonal skills, and creative thinking, so that, we can prepare well for the future challenges. In one word, each country has its own culture. Although there are many differences between different countries, we should respect them and learn from each other. Especially, in the modern century, each country has to communicate with other countries more than ever. So, we must understand the differences in different countries’ culture well, only in this way, we can get along with each other in peace.

Assignment4 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Assignment4 - Assignment Example Saxophones are a common instrument in the contemporary society. Thus, the instrument can be found in musical classes or other Jazz sessions. The shiny nature of the instrument portrays it as an artistic masterpiece that arouses varied feelings on musical players. The instrument was originally intended for military and classical musical purposes. Owing to the versatility of the instrument, musicians in other genres around the globe are now playing the saxophone. Consequently, musicians in the avant-garde, classical, jazz, and pop and rock are playing the saxophone. The instrument can sound wild and poignant or smooth and stifling (Stewart et al., 5). The instrument can seamlessly blend into any joint, be it jazz big bands or orchestras. Moreover, the saxophone blends into the ensemble rock band solos or jazz quartets. Musicians in the contemporary world are trying to stretch the instruments into accommodating virtually every genre of music. Thus, the saxophone is steadily finding novel purpose in many genres of music. The design features of the saxophone depict an exceptional work of art. The design features appear attractive from the outward look to the inner features that create sound. The saxophone is a wind instrument of the nature of a conical bore. The instrument has a varying that increases from one end to the other (Hippe, 40). Thus, the instrument begins with a single diameter in one end that expands proportionately to the lowermost end of the instrument. By contrast, cylindrical instruments such as the clarinet, maintain uniform diameters in the whole length of the instrument. The varied design features of the saxophone have inner functionalities besides the outward looks. Conical bore instruments characteristically produce mellower and warmer qualities of tone compared to cylindrical instruments. Although saxophones are typically constructed using brass, plastic, gold and silver can also be utilized in the construction (Hippe,

Distribution center, warehouse, and plant location Essay

Distribution center, warehouse, and plant location - Essay Example In order to know the number of people and their characteristics, census needs to be conducted in such areas. Although the information collected may vary, it still helps the distribution planners to know how to distribute their goods depending on the population size. Most organizations look at a number of characteristics that may affect labor. These factors may be appreciably related; for instance, the amount of the workforce may be directly comparative to wage rates. Transportation availability is an important aspect in facility location decisions. It may also influence the space cost and the availability of labor. Transport availability mostly depends on the kind of products that need to be transported. If the products are bulky, then a lorry can be used, but in case of light products a pickup can be used (Zvi and Hamacher 58). Facility relocation is when a plant is closed from an area where there is low demand to an area where the demand is high while facility closing is when a plant is closed permanently. The companies should form laws on how the employees should be paid if a plant is closed. In case of facility relocation, the wage rates should increase because the demand has also

'The Searchers' Film Review Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

'The Searchers' Film Review - Assignment Example For example, traditional Western cowboys came from somewhat disadvantaged backgrounds and they did not occupy high position on the social ladder. However, Wayne’s character is not poor. He never had any financial problem and always seems to have a comfortable supply of gold. The Native Americans may or may not be the same as portrayed in the movie. Some Indian tribes may be vicious, but the same cannot be said for all and there is no reason to possess such racial hatred for the Indians as is possessed by Ethan in the film. There are power inequalities implied in the film between the Indians and the whites. These inequalities range from political power to employment to social relationships. The whites are certainly more privileged in all three areas than the Native Indians appear to be, hence the tension between the two racial groups grows. There is a dominant ideology of white supremacy which is depicted in the film. Through Indian warriors, backlash demonstrated by the tribes, massacres, kidnappings, and hatred towards slavery, the film shows a hegemonic negotiation

Current Challenges Facing IT & Recommendations Essay

Current Challenges Facing IT & Recommendations - Essay Example Failure of a business organization may as well arise due to problems caused by IT failures. These organizations can be used as cases to learn more concerning Information Technology (IT). Failure always comes because of challenges affecting a particular organization. One of the companies in the US that has been facing challenges is Otisline, a company that specialized in the distribution and provision of elevators. The essay will look into details, the overview of Otisline, challenges facing it, as well as, the recommendations required to make Otisline better. Case overview Otisline Company improved the performance of different business organizations. The company, other than the supply and provision of elevators, also provided regional, district and NAO management with the required amount of quality information. When a problem arose, the management was the first to know from the customer complaints. Different managements responded differently to the clients’ callbacks. This dep ended on the number of callback, for instance, district managers handled three or more callbacks in a month. The company made corrections using these callbacks. Otisline had many impacts on NAO’s business including customer service, information service, dispatching, and controlling of mechanics. Otisline had several impacts in NAO in different sectors such as information service, which involved the use of sms database with an IBM 3083 computer (Stoddad & Harvard University 198). This was meant to make response to the clients as fast as possible. An example of a place where the Otisline was applied was in the customer service whereby it recognized buildings in four distinct ways: telephone number, building identification number, building address as well as the building name, state and city. The Otisline service center was also organized in a way that it easily promoted dispatcher efficiency. Otisline software was applied in other areas such as marketing services, and control a nd dispatching of service mechanics. The following describes the factors that brought about the problem in Oisline. The factors explain succinctly the challenges that the IT controlled company is undergoing. The factors are unsatisfactory consumer services, lack of enough human resource, obsolescence, IT complexities, poor marketing and public relations, poor data storage and retrieval methods, and poor budgeting. Challenges Facing IT Customer service: IT is affected by bad reputation when taking customer need satisfaction. As evidenced by the Otisline, there is a high chance of doing the work incorrectly according to the customer’s requirements (Stoddad & Harvard University 218). This is what leads to several callbacks. This is the same in the corporate field. The customer normally wants and expects to be told what they want. The automated recommendation tone always seems arrogant. This may always lead to infusion of negative mentalities and attitudes towards the IT. This ch allenge can be corrected or recommended by listening to customer needs and making them the number one priority; not allowing them to be controlled by the IT system or software like that of Otisline, in this case. It leads to lose of human resource. There is always a normal trend of worker lay off when a new program or software that can replace the employees and do the work efficiently is discovered. The same has affected Otis Corporation whereby six workers were laid off after the realization of the company’

Report on Religious Field Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 4

Report on Religious Field Research - Essay Example Religion forms the epicenter of human being’s social life. This paper intends to examine the Buddhism religion by attending a church service and interacting with the members of this faith. The church service attendance intends to serve as a channel to understand fully the sentimental attachments of the members to the faith through observation. More over, information will be sought through interviewing. The church of attendance is the Oregon Buddhist Temple in the Northwest District in Oregon (Ganeri, 2002). Further, this paper intends to incorporate any misconceptions that were realized after finding more information about the religion. Further, more this paper will test personal assumptions and perceptions of Buddhism through the intended interaction. Buddhism is one of the most common religions in the globe.    Its roots go back to 563 B.C.E. when Siddhartha Gautama was born.    Gautama is commonly referred to as the â€Å"Buddha†, which means the â€Å"Awakened One† (Ganeri, 2002).    Buddhism spread speedily all over Asia and other parts of the world. However, this religion remained practically unfamiliar in the West until the last half century.       â€Å"The Western scholars; writers and artists, philosophers and the arrival of Asian immigrants brought diverse forms of Buddhism to North America, Australia and Europe† formed the main channels through, which the teachings and beliefs attributed to Buddhism spread to other parts of the world (Wilkinson & Teague, 2003). My mother, and her close friend, Nhu Lan Nguyen (Lan) are representatives of immigrants from Vietnam who brought the principles of Buddhism to the US following the War of Vietnam. It is imperative to note that, Buddhism arose as a Spartan movement during the period of Brahman custom (Gethin, 1998).    Discuss any misconceptions you had about the religion you researched Having been raised in a Roman Catholic family, attending a Buddhist church seemed to be unbelievable, but because of clearing the misconception, I went on to attend Buddhist service. I attended the Oregon Buddhist Temple with one of my friend who is Buddhist. In the temple, I encountered numerous believers who turned out to be friendly, welcoming and courteous. In fact, this context made the research interview easier since, the members were ready to share their experience and beliefs on the Buddhism religion (Wilkinson & Teague, 2003). My misconceptions about the Buddhism religion were dual-pointed. The first misconception is about the Buddhism culture as being foreign and whimsical. The fact that, I did not understand beliefs and values attributed to the religion, I did not imagine that Buddhism religion existed in the real world. I assumed that, the whole picture about Buddhism, I acquired from books and other sources of the media, represented fantastical and fictional works for entertainment. However, from the outset of the service, a keen consideration and study of the set of beliefs set me to the basic level of understanding that Buddhism is a religion that people practice like any other religion (Wilkinson & Teague, 2003). The second misconception is that of believing that, all religions conduct the series and prayers the same way. I misconceived this belief because I thought if all religions belief in one creator, God, then, the God is served in the same way. This was not then case after attending the Buddhism service, settings were different, prayers and services were conducted differently. Analyze how

ShutterFly's ProGrowth and ProProfit Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

ShutterFly's ProGrowth and ProProfit - Essay Example Shutterfly has had great commercial successes and fulfilled 12 million orders, sold 370 million prints, stored one billion consumer photos and their net revenues increased from $31.4 million in 2003 to $54.5 million to 2004 and $83.9 million in 2005. Shutterfly was also voted one among the top 500 fastest growing private companies in 2005. The company also got publicly enlisted and offered about 23.5 million shares of common stock. Shutterfly rides on the growth of the photo industry market that allows online consumers to store, share, print and edit photos for the present and future generations. User friendly websites and increased access to the internet have been increasing the number of online photography users and photo prints have been generating revenue of $10 billion in 2005. Greeting cards, scrapbooks, calendars and other general merchandise on digital photography are some of the other revenue generating consumer products that are sold by the company. However several issues such as branding, competition, innovation and expansion, marketing strategies, profits and growth, market shares, consumer preferences have to b considered to analyse the various orientations to growth or profits. It would be interesting to analyse whether profits or growth of a company should be brought about with two different forms of governance, one for increasing profits and other for increasing growth. Certain firms tend to give equal attention to profits and to growth and may allocate equal amount of resources to bring about profits and growth and costs, quality and time spent on PG and PP efforts would be the same (also in Armstrong and Levesque, 2002). It would be necessary to understand whether the PP and PG efforts of a company are opposed or mutually beneficial. In certain cases, the firm would focus only on increasing profits and in certain cases the focus is on growth. With the focus on both profits and growth, there may be conflicting market ori entations and strategies although this would be an interesting combination to analyse the firm's success. Roper (1999) delineated how strategy choices affect market position and business performance of firms and suggested that a firm's turnover growth and return on assets are weakly related for short-term profits. Roper also states that firm performance also depends strongly on strategy choice, with turnover growth being particularly strategy dependent. Thus turnover growth and general profitability of a company as well as long term growth of a company would be all related to strategy choice. Even in case of Shutterfly's business analysis, the primary importance could be given to the strategy and market choices used by the company. Considering the uses of PG and PP, it would be interesting to note that when both PP and PG are allocated, executed and achieved simultaneously, they would together increase the total value of the firm. When these models are used exclusively, then downturn in the firm's performance can lead to the use of an alternate model so the focus would be on either of the two, the PP model or the PG model and either the profits or the growth of the company would be important. In fact Han (2005) noted that the management of two paradoxical forces such as pro-growth strategy and pro-profit strategy could provide for strategic ambidexterity

Development and application of a diatom-inferred pH model Research Paper

Development and application of a diatom-inferred pH model - Research Paper Example The RMSE gives a measure of the ‘apparent’ error in the model and thus over-optimistic while the RMSE calculated using bootstrap is a more reliable indicator of the true predictive ability of a transfer function. Analysis of the dataset with both simple weighted averaging (WA) and weighted averaging with tolerance down-weighting (WA(tol)) resulted in the selection of WA for pH reconstructions as it gave lower estimates of the RMSEP (Table 2). After having decided on criteria that maximize the performance of the model, I have applied it to a lake sediment core, Llyn Hir to perform a pH reconstruction. In WA reconstructions, averages are taken twice, once in WA regression and once in WA calibration. The resulting shrinkage of the inferred environmental variable is corrected for using inverse or classical deshrinking regression (Birks et al., 1990). Following analyses using both methods, trends in residuals revealed that inverse deshrinking was more prone to be biased than classical deshrinking technique (Table 3). The resulting WA classical deshrinked transfer function was applied to fossil diatom assemblages enumerated from the Llyn Hir sediment core. WA regression and calibration (both with and without tolerance down-weighting) were performed using C2 Programme. The WA model shows a strong predicted relationship between observed pH and diatom-inferred pH values (r2 = 0.83) (Figure 2). Statistical results for both simple and tolerance down-weighted WA show that the predictive ability of the WA and WA(tol) models, in terms of the predicted r2 and the RMSEP, are comparable (Table 2). Simple WA was chosen as it gives slightly higher predicted correlation between measured and diatom-inferred pH and lower predicted estimates of the error in this model. A total of 124 diatom taxa were observed throughout the Llyn Hir core, 8 of which did not occur in the training dataset. This means that over 90% of the diatoms occurred in training set which makes our

Teenage pregnancy in the uk and possible strategies to prevent it Research Proposal

Teenage pregnancy in the uk and possible strategies to prevent it - Research Proposal Example It is for these reasons a policy was evolved in early 1990s to reduce the rate of teenage pregnancies progressively and to reduce it by at least half by the year 2010. The brief literature review shows teenage pregnancies do not show any signs of abating and the problem is exacerbated by the tendencies of the teenagers giving a second birth before they reach 20 years. There are also fears that babies born to teenage mothers will themselves become teenage mothers due to built-in culture developed over generations. Systematic literature review is the sole research methodology adopted for the dissertation. The above results of literature review conducted justify a detailed secondary research further on the issue of teenage pregnancies in the U.K. This proposal is for a dissertation as part of the researcher’s B.Sc. Health field curriculum at the University of East London at the end of the degree in level III. The chosen topic is â€Å"Teenage Pregnancy In The UK And Possible Strategies To Prevent It† on which the researcher is required to make a systematic literature review as a secondary research. Teenage pregnancy worldwide is causing concern as it is associated with girls’ health mostly as unwed mothers susceptible to mortality as child bearers at the adolescent age without full grown body and HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) Half the world population comprises of people, less than 25 years of age. People between the ages 10-19 are adolescents. The adolescents in their second decade of life contract STIs, HIV/AIDS more than any other age group. This target population is the hope for governments to substantially reduce the incidence of the said diseases. Only a very few countries have achieved limited incidences of STIs and HIV mainly by teaching their adolescents safe sexual practices. Among U.S., Canada, France and the U.K., the U.K. has

Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 44

Case Study Example The takes a lot of time and many customers end up being dissatisfied. The company is also thinking of ways it can to make sure that the products reach the customers much faster. Easy shopping is also a problem that the company is facing. The company is planning to enroll a new program where each inventory has 8 images taken on all angles before being posted on their website. The company is also making a lot of loses on shipping redeliveries. Training and development can help the firm reduce on return deliveries. Competent and knowledgeable staff can help customers choose merchandise that fits them. Training on innovation may also help the employees come up with programs that will help counter some of the challenges the company is facing. Training will also help reduce the amount of time taken before the goods finally reach the customers. In the year 2009, the company was ranked as one of the best companies to work for in the United States of America by fortune (Zappos.com, 2015). In order to increase employee engagement the company offers perks. The company believes that having happy employees is critical to ensure that the organization is successful. The company provides free lunch and even has a game and nap room (Zappos.com, 2015). The company also believes by offering their employees perks, they will not feel that like they are being forced to work. This makes the employees work harder, be committed to their work and are not likely to leave the company. Zappos has core 10 core values. Some of the core values can be influenced through training and development. One of the company’s values is to deliver WOW service (Zappos.com, 2015). This simply means delivering exemplary and unique service to the company’s customers. The company can train its employees on how to offer WOW service to their customers. The other core value that can be influenced through training and development is,

Future Career Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Future Career - Essay Example I have always had a way with children. Their curiosity and complete lack of inhibition has fascinated me and I have enjoyed hours of fun and frolic with kids. I am a good listener and am patient and tactful. I enjoy an excellent rapport with kids due to my sense of humor and storytelling skills. I can be perceptive, and time spent with children never tires me - in fact I find it a refreshing change from work or study. I believe this attachment to children has been a major factor in my chosen career options of either Early Childhood Teacher or Children’s psychologist. Early childhood teaching is a specialized field; hence I shall have to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education. I shall also have to look up the requirements of the state where I shall want to work to attain further teaching credentials. This will enable me to get a job as an early childhood educator. I may have to begin as an assistant in order to gain some experience before I can be hired as a teacher. I shall also have to learn special skills to be able to descend to the level of my young charges and view life from their perspective in order to hold their interest and make learning a rewarding and enriching experience for them. Besides, I shall need to improve my arts and crafts skills so as to increase their creativity and learn to think on my feet in order to be able to handle sticky situations. The first years of a child’s life are crucial because here the foundations of their social skills, sense of self, moral values as well as perception of the ir surroundings and cognitive skills are laid. This is also the time when the human brain grows at its fastest pace. Therefore these first few years are critical to nurture healthy development of a child’s physical and mental abilities. At this point in their lives, when they will probably be interacting with people outside their immediate family for the first time; I shall have to adapt to the emotional needs

Data Mining Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Data Mining - Assignment Example The more the business understands why some of its customers are loyal and how it can continue to retain and attract customers from different segments, the more the business will be able to come up with compelling offers and messages that are relevant. Predictive analytics results in an analytical framework which helps in the prediction of product preferences and customer buying habits required in the discovery of meaningful relationships and patterns in the customer data so as to accomplish better market targets and drive customer loyalty and value (Turkey, 1997). Association discovery can be employed in a business to determine the affinity patterns of its products. This information is important in optimizing the manner in which the business orders are picked and accumulated from their centers of distribution. The same information obtained through association discovery can be based on to generate dynamic rules which would permit business orders to be picked or accumulated taking into consideration the chances of another order that is identical occurring in a span of few days. The outcome of such an optimization is that decisions take less time thus substantially saving on the business costs (Agresti, 2002). Web mining allows the business to sift through information regarding the market situation so as to identify where the market value is. Such discoveries will help the business come up with new opportunities as the business with such information will have the ability to implement parallel processing systems and high performances as it is in a position to analyze large data in a very short time. The business can also make use of data mining to try out different business models to best understand the market situation and adapt to it. Such information also helps the business in making better predictions (Witten and Eibe, 2011). The clustering of information using data mining related to customers have served as important networks to business in the process of hand ling numerical market data. The market is normally the main target for any business when it comes to information clustering. This data mining technique helps the business segment potential customers on the basis of given sets of attributes. The technique also helps businesses to adapt the best operation methods through discovering market facts that are hidden giving the business an added advantage when it comes to its competitive position. The business will also be in a position to understand better what their customers really need and want. 2. Assess the reliability of the data mining algorithms. Decide if they can be trusted and predict the errors they are likely to produce Data mining algorithms is one of the main methods used in the exploration of linkages and relationships among sets of data. Such algorithms have been relied on by many businesses as they are believed to have the ability of reducing computational efforts and are in a position to deal with structural systemâ€⠄¢s failure mode. Despite data mining algorithms being viewed as being highly accurate and efficient in their operation, the algorithm has been associated with a number of identification, exploration and exploitation errors. Reliability is seen in the way any given data mining model operates on different sets of data. A model that is reliable is one which comes up with the same

Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Analysis - Essay Example However, King Alfonso’s most important request was that Portuguese merchants stop making Congo a transit for slaves. He requested that they do not accept free men being traded as slaves. King Alfonso always made reference to God’s service in his letters. However, he also reiterated his problem of losing control over his people. In his first letter, he wrote, â€Å"vassals†¦.beginning to claim their independence.† This was due to the fact that his people were beginning to see how good free life is as they see from the lives of the Portuguese merchants. Also, this could be attributed to the fact that they were now able to obtain goods that were previously forbidden from them. King Alfonso believes that his kingdom is an extension of Portugal and that they must be given the same attention by the Portuguese King as he would give to his native land. Furthermore, Alfonso’s letters demonstrate the dependence of his kingdom on Portugal which may be seen as the same reason why he never requested that slave trade be ended or that Portugal vacate his kingdom immediately. Lastly, King Alfonso knows that without the Portuguese and the practice of Christianity his reign will be in jeopardy. Christopher Columbus’ journal serves as a window into his travels. It reflects his views regarding the places he visits and the people he meets. For instance, his journal relates his experience upon meeting the people of the new world. He described these people as people with very well-formed and handsome bodies, short coarse hair similar to the tail of a horse, and people that wear various colors of paint in different places on their face and body. He also noted their distinct complexion which was neither black nor white. Most importantly, Columbus described them as being â€Å"poor in everything.† He probably attributed such to the fact that they willingly accepted even the littlest of items that were given to them. He noted that what they were giving

Free Will and Moral Integrity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Free Will and Moral Integrity - Essay Example ....and chaos from recommencing her topsy-turvy reign" (William James, Essay p. 5) This essay intends to show, in the final analysis, that compatibilism and determinism can in fact operate side by side, but it is his argument on free will, or 'chance' as he likes to term it, which willbe explored. The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, as presented in his work 'Leviathan' will be used to refute the concept of free will and morality, with E. M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops' as a counter argument in support of James. For the purposes of this discussion, free will is defined as 'being able to make a choice, without constraint, given the circumstances of the individual.' (A personal definition) William James - Free Will, Morality and 'The Dilemma of Determinism': James argues that if we take the word 'chance, consider it to be the possibility of different choices and subsequent outcomes, then free will is being applied. Following on from the quotation, an interpretation of his words might be that he considers that determinists believe chance decisions and ambiguity of outcomes are not how the universe or the world work If such a preposterous notion were to be accepted and acted upon, (can we call this notion free will) then everything would fall apart, given that the history of the universe is fixe... Yet there is much weight behind his claim that a dilemma exists, as he cites the possible response to the Brockton murder, which determinism, of necessity, would have to make - he fears the possible outcome to be a pessimistic acceptance of evil, almost, that's how it is, what can be done His argument brings to the fore, the moral questions of right and wrong, good and evil, coming down squarely on the side of free will. The beliefs in an outside Providence, in man's own ability to make moral decisions, may well be translatable to the concept of compatibilism and determinism going hand in hand. But it is the aspect of free will and morality which drives his argument, and when he states, "Chance" is ---what Just this, -- the chance that in moral respects the future may be other and better than the past has been. This is the only chance we have any motive for supposing to exist." (James, p. 19) we are convinced of his sincerity. He further contends that whether it be our creator or ourselves who decides to choose good over evil, matters little, it is necessary to admit that all decisions are in the here and now, we make them, and he describes it thus "gives the palpating life reality to our moral life and makes it tingle." (James p. 21) James is convinced that man has and uses free will, and in so doing, demonstrates a moral integrity. He considers that determinists face a dilemma in accepting that chance and choice can play a part in understanding self and the world, that a philosophy such as this denies man choice or the right to belief in Providence or humanity. The argument is supported by the events depicted in 'The Machine Stops', portraying a reality of the

Qualitative Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Qualitative Analysis - Essay Example Compared to other developed countries Singapore has low tax rates with a very high per capita GDP globally. Singapore has a very innovative and stable economy which is merged with efficient economic planning under the Economic Development Board that helped to establish a free market. Singapore’s main exports include; chemicals, services and electronics which provide the main sources of revenue for the country. Most firms are registered as private Limited companies. The country experiences a very low supply of water with a limited arable land for agriculture. Moreover, Singapore has a port that is strategic enough to give it an edge over the neighboring countries that carries Entrepot trade. Most of its labor comes within the population which is owed to the efficient education policy in the country that produces skilled labor for the industries in the country. The Argentinean economy is dominated by agriculture, which contributes the largest percentage of the GDP. The country h as fair economic policies that aim at increasing the exports from the main productive sectors. The main natural resources that contribute immensely to the country’s economy are minerals such as zinc, lead, copper, tin, oil and natural gas, uranium, iron, manganese and lithium. The main agricultural products produced in the country include; grains and livestock products. The country does not have a free economy like that of Singapore hence its economy is not that well established. The industries operating in Argentina include: oil refinery, food processing, machinery and equipment, petrochemicals and textile industry. Most of the country’s exports are taken to Europe and Brazil which are the country’s main trading partners. The main sector which is Agriculture has recently shown a rapid recovery with an increasing industrial production which replicates that of its immediate neighbor Brazil. The tax revenues are slowly growing with the debt services reducing. Ther e is a probability of volatility in the financial markets due to the conflict that exist between the central bank and the federal government. Comparison of the Political Environment between Singapore and Argentina Singapore has one of the most efficient political and regulatory policies globally. According to the surveys conducted the country ranks 122 out of the 138 countries in terms of creating a conducive political environment for business. This is in connection with press freedom in regard to the World information technology report of 2011 (Huff 745). The uniqueness of Singapore’s political environment comes in the fact that the immigration rules and laws are not that strict compared to Argentina or any other country. There are very strong law enforcement agencies which make cases of political unrests rare and efficient for business operation. The country is controlled by very few political parties with the main political party being People’s Action Party. This st ability in terms of political party policies ensures effective business environment for the development of country. The government of Singapore also ensures free trade agreements and employment laws in industries where a majority of the foreigners are in the job market. The main countries that have set up businesses in the country include China, Europe and the United States. As such, most foreigners use this country as an avenue to establish and expand their businesses through a

Individualism in the extreme Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Individualism in the extreme - Essay Example damage, or endanger the life, property, or rights of another person or people in society, there is an obligation to restrict individual rights in the interest of the larger population. It is the obligation of society to keep individuals from victimizing others during the active pursuit of their own interests. Fraudulent business practices, such as pyramid and Ponzi schemes, are designed to enrich an individual by preying on others and co-opting their property (money) for their own use. As a result, it is unacceptable to engage in such openly predatory behaviors which cause unprovoked harm and hardship and it is society’s duty to prevent and redress such practices by individuals through restrictive and punitive methods. Similarly, action or a lack of action by an individual in society which endangers others as a result direct or indirect result of their decisions and desires must also be restricted. Individuals who engage in activities which represent a danger to society are often legally and socially unallowable. Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol would fall into this category. Though a person may derive some personal enjoyment or entertainment from their behavior, it is detrimental to the individual as well as the population and so activities of this kind must be restricted. While this type of direct action creates a dangerous environment for the community, a failure to act can produce comparable results. If the owner of a small business or factory acts in his own interests, preferring not to spend money to provide safe conditions and safety equipment, they are endangering others. This type of narrow self-interest must also be restricted by society through mandatory protection requir ements. Beside these instances in which the expression of individual rights directly affects another person or people, consequences of action which directly affect society as a whole must also be necessarily restricted. Environmental damage which results from an

Ethical Dilemma paper-second moral language Essay

Ethical Dilemma paper-second moral language - Essay Example odel of the Second Moral Language, in which he has described the ethical dilemma and moral conflict arising in man’s mind as an outcome of his moral values and ethical principles. I also had to undergo the same situation during my studies at university. I also had to undergo such a precarious situation last year at university, which could be stated as the ethical dilemma, where there was serious conflict in respect of taking a bold decision on the basis of moral duties. I was the student of English Literature, and loved Milton’s Paradise Lost and the moral lessons it conveyed. Besides, I had studied theology including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the noble characters of the holy personalities i.e. Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Zachariah, John, Christ, Muhammad, Ali, Hassan and Hussein (peace and blessings of Almighty God be upon them all). In the same way, I got acquaintance with ancient and modern western philosophers including Seven Sages, Thales, Socrates, Descartes, Machiavelli, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hobbes and others, all of which always preached morality, impartiality, forgiveness, charity and goodness of heart and mind. Hence, truth, justic e, fair play and politeness were the principles that developed my personality, which I tried to apply in my everyday life at university. But it was not the case in real practical life. On the other hand, fairness and morality used to be taken as synonymous to foolishness and perhaps ignorance too in this world of bitter realities. Due to my politeness, intelligence and impartiality, my class-mates elected me as their class-representative and spokesman during the first year at university. It was really a token of regard as well as the gesture of goodwill and their unflinching trust in my person. I decided to run the affairs of the whole class as well as the department and staff, with complete consensus and co-operation without

Finally, Obama is President Essay Example for Free

Finally, Obama is President Essay The American people has sworn into office the most unlikely man of all – African-American, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother, but possessed in himself the capacity to bind different sectors of American society in believing that Change can really happen, that a return to the old ways is not the path in the next few years of the proud and mighty American people. Today, on the 20th of January, 2009, Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America, the land of the free, and truly the land where perhaps anything is possible. In his speech, Barack Obama touched upon many ideas – of freedom, of the need to continue remembering the past as the guidepost of the future, of the need to expose false world leaders that cling to power through the silencing of dissent and corruption – but none perhaps would be most remembered than his attribution to our nation’s rich historic fabric, which is now shaping the current political discourse under the new Obama administration. Obama mentioned the American war struggles, to wit – For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Obama made reference to the great wars our people fought – Concord as one of the greatest battles during the American Revolution against the British Empire; Gettysburg as the site of the bloodiest civil war battle between the Union and Confederacy; Normandy as the landing site of American troops involved in the Western front of World War II; and Khe Sanh, as the venue of our soldiers’ valiant stand against Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam. Obama used these historic references of war to remind the people of the collective struggle of the American people in pursuit of democracy, not only its establishment in American soil, but to spread and extol its virtues around the world – defense of democracy against British colonialism, German fascism, Soviet-proxy communism, perhaps even against the racism and white supremacist tendencies of the Confederate states. As to the truth of the reference to the actual history, no one can deny the blood and sweat and lives which the American people sacrificed for our own democratic ideal. We have sent the best and brightest of our men and women into the different theaters of war in order that our way of life as a nation may be preserved, and contribute into the building of a democratic internationalism around the world, from the dismantling of fascism in the aftermath of World War II, to the discrediting and eventual collapsing of the Soviet Union in 1991. Had it not been for Normandy, together with other Allied powers including the Soviet Union fighting in both the Western and Eastern fronts, World War II would have all been lost under the might of the Third Reich. Had it not been for Concord and Lexington, American democracy as we know it might not have been ever established, where there exists co-equal three branches of government with check-and-balance powers, and individual freedoms such as the right to assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances might have never been codified. Had it not been for Vietnam, our people would never have known that not all wars are just and necessary, and some wars are in pursuit of an aggressive military agenda, serving no purpose save for being a proxy war with the Soviet Union. Had it not been for Gettysburg and the American Civil War, the struggle for the abolition of slavery may have waited a little longer, allowing perhaps the continuing treatment of African-Americans as mere chattel. Barack Obama’s use of these historic references serves to prove that his presidency is nothing short but historic, albeit a revolutionary administration that shall sweep the country off its feet, in the same manner as all these historic references had – in changing to the core the politics, economy, and culture of our country. In light of the deepening economic crisis we are facing today, it is true that Obama and the American people deserve nothing short but revolutionary changes in order for us to rise above the quagmire of recession. If Obama needs to sequester erring banks for mismanaging the funds of the people, he must do so to save the American economy. If he must further bail-out the different basic industries of the country such as the automotive industry in order for it to continue functioning as stable American brands, he must do so too. If he must leave the war in Iraq to concentrate on the real war in Afghanistan and the rising Al-Qaeda threat, he must be as resolute as the American soldiers who recovered the France town-after-town from the German Army. What is most important in his historical referencing to our own great wars and battles would be the role of the American people in all of these revolutionary changes, that he unflinchingly said, to wit – Time and again, these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction. In his speech, he always glorified the necessary role of the American people in changing American society. It was not through leaders like him, nor policymakers and generals of old, do we win our wars and battles, but through the collective resolve and action of our people. It is the American people that create their history, not great men. Referencing Today’s Recession With the Great Depression April 2, 2009 The past few days, leaders of the different states from all parts of the globe attended the G20 Summit in London to discuss the ways and means by which the world may find itself out of the current global financial meltdown straddling economic growth not only in the industrialized world but is not affecting much of the developing countries as well. Barack Obama, in his speech reminded the world to cease involving itself with greater protectionism that only through believing in the glory of free-but-now regulated market can the world find itself out of the economic mess it finds itself in. He even mentioned the Great Depression, to wit – Now, just keep in mind some historical context. Faced with similar global challenges in the past, the world was slow to act, and people paid an enormous price. That was true in the Great Depression, when nations prolonged and worsened the crisis by turning inward, waiting for more than a decade to meet the challenge together. Even as recently as the 1980s, the slow global response deepened and widened a debt crisis in Latin America that pushed millions into poverty. What is most interesting for our purposes today is the constant referencing of today’s crisis to the American Great Depression of the 1930s, where millions of Americans lost their jobs, banks closed and severe internal migration among Americans ensued. The Great Depression of the 1930s is being used as a reference to describe the gravity of the economic recession faced by the country and the world today. The news is replete of its effects at present – massive retrenchments and lay-offs, the closure of factory and once mighty businesses, the foreclosure of homes, the inability of parents and students to pay college tuition, the closure of banks and the general absence of confidence in our markets. Scenes of the Great Depression are repeated again and again, with pictures of the infamous Great Crash of 1929 played and replayed in cable news channels juxtaposed with references to the current state of economic affairs. If the question is whether, there exists a one-to-one correspondence with regard to the gravity of the circumstances of both the Great Depression and today’s recession, we cannot say yet at the moment, as we still stand at a point of historical equipoise, due to the continuing crisis ravaging the American economy. However, the historic reference with regard to describing almost the same economic situation of today and the Great Depression is correct, as the latter was also a global economic downturn, and completely showed how far the free market can fall, and what its effects on the people may be. Like the Great Depression, the present crisis is broad-ranging in scope, as it affected not only the stockbrokers, bankers, hedge fund managers, among other financial professionals and investors, but it also damaged the American lower- and middle-classes whose houses were foreclosed and their education loans sapped, due to many factors, such as fund mismanagement by creditors, eventual unemployment, among others. Even the economic remedies being proposed at this moment, such as the financial bail-out and the general trend towards greater government spending and regulation are hallmarks of the Great Depression, with Keynesianism becoming a relevant economic theory once again, signaling a clear break from the mainstream neo-liberal economic thought that demanded less government intervention in the economy to keep the market free. The Keynesian idea was simple, and is alarmingly true even today when viewed with the current economic policies set by the Obama administration to keep people fully employed, governments have to run deficits when the economy is slowing because the private sector will not invest enough to increase production and reverse the recession. At this moment, the Obama administration has a trillion-dollar spending plan to pump-prime the economy at a time when markets are most reluctant to part with their investment money. As to whether this shall trigger an eventual reverse from the downtrend, we will know soon enough. The use of the Great Depression in the contemporary moment serves a dual purpose – to state concretely the dire situation the American people faces today and warn the nation from being drowned in complacency and disbelief, and to serve as a reminder that there is no crisis that the American people failed to withstand, that at the end of these dark nights of recession, a New Deal shall soon be implemented and with all our help, we shall overcome as we have had in the past. Images of past crises have been powerful enough to rouse the people into meaningful action – the spectre of Nazi and Soviet invasion in American soil threatening our way of life was enough to convince much of American men to enlist in the fight against fascism in World War II and in the Korean and Vietnam wars during the Cold War era. The images of internal human migration, hunger, unemployment, destitute citizens with no bread on the table through the Great Depression, in like manner, serve its clear political objective – inform the people of the reality of the economic situation, but nonetheless challenge them to become patriots and contribute to the building of the nation amid the ravages of the present recession. The State of the Union Address February 25, 2009 On the 25th of February 2009, a little over a month since being inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America, President Barack Obama addressed the nation, its Congress and unleashed his economic reform agenda to combat the deepening economic recession. In answer to the growing cynicism that government must keep its hands off the economy and retain the old neoliberal economic model, President Obama stated clearly that government has a role to play in ‘laying the foundations of our common prosperity. ’ In furthering his point, he turned to historic policies that shaped the country as we weathered from crisis-to-crisis, to wit – For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world. In this excerpt, President Obama makes several historical references to different socio-economic milestones in American society that were achieved despite political and economic difficulties. Obama posits that in the middle of the military offensives between Union and Confederate forces, the foundations of the modern American railroad system were laid. He states that from the American public school system was born from the push-and-pull of the Industrial Revolution. He asserts that the GI Bill was responsible for educating war veterans who were fresh from our victories in Europe and the Pacific. He also says that amid the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the nation was able to establish the Interstate Highway System, send Neil Armstrong and company to the moon, and facilitate a growth in science and technology. These historical references were used to again highlight the greatness and resilience of the American people amid crisis situations like the economic recession we face today, creating images of hope that we shall all overcome soon enough. The references were also used to add historic weight to his new economic agenda, which included the one-trillion dollar stimulus package, a pump-priming plan different from the seven-hundred billion dollar bail-out plan of the Bush administration. The historic milestones were used to buttress the point that his own economic agenda shall be a milestone in itself, given the chance and support of Congress and the American people. As a general statement on the integrity of the historic reference, these were well researched assertions, somewhat intimating a causal relationship between crises and economic milestones. It is a fact that it was during the civil war when Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act in 1862, a statute that authorized the creation of a transcontinental railway. It is true that due to the onslaught of the Cold War, (1) Dwight Eisenhower envisioned the creation of an Interstate Highway System to help in the deployment of supplies to military troop in the event of an invasion, (2) the space race prompted NASA to fast-track research on space travel, and soon after laid the stimulus for greater technology research. He was also correct in his assertion that the GI Bill indeed provided college and vocational education to returning war veterans, notwithstanding other benefits. Again, as in the previous entries with regard to the historical references of the Obama Presidency, President Obama uses these historic references to draw attention to his own making of history, as the President of the US amid a recession, in the mold of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Roosevelt. On the other hand, the historical references again serve as a reminder to the American people that amid the global economic recession – they shall overcome, that despite the foreclosure of homes, the retrenchment of jobs, and the closure of banks, historic reforms shall soon be in place to ensure that the economic milestones of decades past shall not be reversed fully and that our people may continue enjoying the fruits of our democratic ideals. The historical references also show that we only have to turn to our own past and history as a nation to determine that a decisive remedy for our economic woes shall soon be in sight. It appeals to the patriotic nature of a great number of our fellow Americans, where nativist tendencies continue to linger, particularly in America’s heartland areas. Moreover, President Obama’s historical references are consistent with his unrelenting call for collective action and unity amid the crisis, because none of those achievements would have been possibly without the labor and support of the people themselves. None of those were ever achieved by the single stroke of a President’s pen nor the policymaker’s brief, but was perfected by the sacrifices of men and women in American history. Obama on the Use of Nuclear Weapons Prague, Czech Republic April 5, 2009 On the fifth of April, 2009, fresh from the G20 Summit on the global economic crisis, President Barack Obama delivered a speech on his policy on nuclear weapons. He acknowledged the dangers posed by the production, proliferation and use of nuclear weapons, and has pledged to ensure that international law measures shall be put in place in pursuit of preventing its production, spread and use among states, and more importantly, illegal trading among terrorists in the black market of secrets and even excess warheads from former Soviet satellites. He proposed a strengthening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an escalation of a US-Russia bilateral treaty on the reduction of dangerous weapons, protective measures against proliferation of materials for the production of weapons-grade uranium, among many other proposals that have roused the Czech public into countless applause. On the other hand, he acknowledge the right of Iran for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, subject to strict inspections but warned the Islamic Republic from forcibly pursuing nuclear and ballistic weapons, as it would only further its isolation from the rest of the community of nations. In view of this policy context, President Obama referred back to the origins of the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union to show the unjustness of the very existence of these weapons, to wit – The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that existed for centuries, that embodied the beauty and the talent of so much of humanity, would have ceased to exist. The historical reference here is the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which started in the aftermath of World War II, when the world was fiercely divided between the camps espousing capitalist democracy as represented by the Americans, and the socialist camp as led by the Soviet Union. While no bullets were ever shot during the entire course of the War from the late 40s to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, both states were engaged in proxy wars in different third world countries, such as Korea in the 1950s where the US sided with the South and the Soviets provided support to the North’s Kim Il Sung. More importantly, the entire period of the Cold War was also the venue for the arms and space race between the two great powers, in which both camps sought to produce the most powerful weapons and rockets, including those of the nuclear kind. In the course of the War, both camps produced an overwhelming array of nuclear weapons, in order to check on each other’s growing military might. The use of the historical reference was more to warn the world of the horrors of a prospective nuclear war, and that his government shall never be a party to such a war, notwithstanding taking concrete measures to ensure that the very fissile materials to be used in producing weapons-grade nuclear power shall never be placed in the wrong hands. Moreover, his references to the Cold War nuclear race were also done to buttress his position on the other uses of nuclear technology such as the production of electricity, which Iran, as a sovereign state, may fully do. President Obama was correct in his depiction of a nuclear war which may destroy entire cities and civilizations. Even prior to the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War, the world was already a witness to the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, when American bomber planes dropped atomic bombs over these entire cities and vaporized a majority of its population. The paranoia of the world and the American people on threat of nuclear war was so great that different states sought the ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to pressure nuclear-wielding states, either to abandon their nuclear program fully or decrease the number of stockpiled nuclear weapons. With regard to the meaning of the historical reference as per the contemporary moment, he posits that the Cold War proliferation of nuclear weapons is one of the most dangerous consequences of the then bipolar world, in which all efforts must be done towards the reversal of such a situation, whether through consented desistance of nuclear-powered states, or through the creation of tougher and more engaging multi-lateral treaties dealing with the subject of nuclear weapons. Its meaning today is no different from the dangers that lurked in the use nuclear weapons in decades past, and President Obama is fully concerned that nuclear energy must remain in the hands of only those states that would harness its benefits peacefully and never in pursuit of aggressive military, even terrorist, objectives. References: 1. ___________. (2009). Transcript: Obamas G20 Press Conference. CBS News. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from http://www. cbsnews. com/stories/2009/04/02/politics/100days/worldaffairs/main491 4735. shtml? source=RSSattr=Politics_4914735 2. Obama, B. (2009). Prague Speech on Nuclear Weapons. Huffington Post. Retrieved April 5, 2009 from http://www. huffingtonpost. com/2009/04/05/obama-prague-speech-on- nu_n_183219. html. 3. Obama, B. (2009). Obama Inaugural Address. The New York Times. Retrieved January 22, 2009 from http://www. nytimes. com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text- obama. html? _r=1. 4. Obama, B. (2009). Remarks of President Barack Obama Address to Joint Session of Congress. The White House Briefing Room. Retrieved February 27, 2009 from http://www. whitehouse. gov/the_press_office/remarks-of-president-barack-obama- address-to-joint-session-of-congress/. 5.