Examining switching costs as a moderator in the relationship between Essay - 1

Examining switching costs as a moderator in the relationship between service personalization, customer satisfaction and customer - Essay Example The customers may get time saving in searching, locating and evaluating the alternatives services providers. They do not need to waste their time on learning. They do not need to spend their efforts, while switching to other vendors. In commercial view, customer loyalty is the key precondition for achieving success in e-business (Reichheld and Schefter 2000). Loyal customers benefit firm, since they bring additional revenues but require little attention from organizations. Loyal customers are more likely to forgive services handicaps and decreased price sensitivity. Committed customers generate positive work-of-mouth to others, enhance firms’ resistance to competition, and decrease the costs of selling. As a result, customer loyalty can be treated as a valuable asset. It is also a major source of sustaining continued profitability and organizational growth (Dick and Basu 1994; Anderson and Mittal 2000). The current state of research provides numerous definitions of custome r loyalty. In general level, customer loyalty defines the features and attitudes that consumers exhibit towards products, services, brands, and advertising messages. Customer loyalty signifies customer's willingness to re-buy, repeat patronage behavior over a period of time and a desire to continue and keep a continued relationship with the service providers (Dick and Basu 1994; Oliver 1999). (Anderson and Srinivasan 2003) described customer loyalty as a customer’s favored or chosen provider that leads them to behave positively toward a service provider with repeat patronage behavior. In general, customer loyalty in literature is conceptualized as a form of attitudinal behaviors in marketing and business (Jacoby and Chestnut 1978; Dick and Basu 1994; Oliver 1999; Casalo, Flavian et al. 2008). From an attitudinal perspective, it includes cognitive loyalty and affective loyalty. The customers want sustained relationships with their service providers. From the viewpoint of behavior, cognitive loyalty is a form of repeated patronage that sets the pattern for repeated purchases. Theoretically, whenever customers identify and choose the product or service they like, which meets their quality and price expectations, they are willing to use this product on a long-term basis; as a result, they are no longer concerned with searching for alternatives and become disinterested in competitive and advertising messages and threats. (Oliver 1999). (Oliver 1999) introduced four stage loyalty model; cognitive loyalty is the first stage, which is essentially about the quality of buying behaviors that are affected by customer’s individual characteristics and the circumstances, in which purchase takes place. Customers cannot be loyal to the brand, unless they have information about it. Loyalty develops when customers have sufficient information to decide that the brand is a preferable choice relative to other alternatives. Brand attitudes can be based on pri or knowledge of the brand or brand experiences. Affective loyalty is the second stage, when customers link their knowledge and experiences about the brand to this very brand. Conative loyalty is the third step. This is a very deep commitment by a customer that would like to

Cirque Du Soleil Essay Example for Free

Cirque Du Soleil Essay Cirque du Soleil began in Quebec with two street performers (Guy Lalibert and Daniel Gauthier) back in 1982 and called their small group of young street performers ‘The High Heels club’ and decided to put on a small festival for the audience. By 1984 Cirque du Soleil was born, the name meaning ‘Circus of the sun’ in French. The main philosophy or aim of Cirque du Soleil is creativity and innovation of the circus to redefine the entertainment landscape, and thrill audiences around the world. Since its inception, Cirque du Soleil has created a lot of shows with incredibly different themes and issues. The most popular of these shows are: Saltimbanco- explores the urban experience in all its myriad forms, Alegria-explores power and the handing down of power over time, the evolution from ancient monarchies to modern democracies, old age, youth. Quidam-it could be anyone, anybody. Someone coming, going, living in our anonymous society. A member of the crowd, one of the silent majority. Dralion- Dralion derives much of its inspiration from Eastern philosophy with its perpetual quest for harmony between humankind and nature. Varekai- production pays tribute to the nomadic soul, to the spirit and art of the circus tradition, and to the infinite passion of those whose quest takes them along the path that leads to Varekai. Cirque du Soleil captures many dramatic forms including acts from contortionists, jugglers, feats of strength, clowning, dance, mime, light climates, puppeteers, stage maneuvers, comedy, interaction with public, acrobats and trapeze artists. An example of your typical act, is a man in a mouse wheel, being spun around in 360Â ° circles, doing tricks that amaze the audience because of the manipulation of gravity. Also, Cirque du Soleil does not make use of any such animals. Traditionally, Cirque du Soleil shows do not use pre-recorded music, with exceptions; all music is played live and in many circumstances sung live by singers with magnificent voices. The costumes used in the show are always very elaborate, or if flexibility is needed the costumes can be plain but are usually colourful and creative, matching the theme of the show. The sets for the shows are typically amazing again always matching the culture being performed on stage. Cirque Du Soleil has a vast range of characters in the huge number of performances and the company itself has over 4000 employees and 1000 artists. Characters in the performance are always bright, colourful and extremely skillful and always are doing amazing tricks that depict the theme of the show or that can lighten and entertain the audience. As the performance goes on most of the time you enter the life of some of the characters as they tell their life story (normally the host) and interact more and more with the audience.

Comparing The Sun Also Rises and Possessing the Secret of Joy :: comparison compare contrast essays

Similarities in The Sun Also Rises and Possessing the Secret of Joy      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Ernest Hemingway and Alice Walker, although separated by seven decades, show striking similarity in their definitions of love in their novels The Sun Also Rises and Possessing the Secret of Joy. It is a unique similarity of circumstances that links these two novels. Jake Barnes, the protagonist of The Sun Also Rises, is literally and symbolically castrated during his service in the First World War. Tashi, the protagonist of Possessing the Secret of Joy, undergoes an ancient tribal ritual of female circumcision that leaves her incapable of having sex. Through these two characters, Hemingway and Walker proclaim their belief that love can exist outside the parameters of a conventional relationship.    Both Jake and Tashi are wounded by serving their countries--Jake in the war, Tashi in an ancient tribal ritual. In both cases, their sacrifice is expected of them. Jake, after returning from the battlefield, is commended by his officer. It certainly was a "rotten way to be wounded," and Jake's officer says, "You gave more than your life." To his officer, however, if Jake had given more than his life it was given in honor of his country, so any consequences of his wound was a fate he would have to live with. He was supposed to be proud to have given so much for the war effort, but his wound does not make Jake a hero. Instead, he is reduced to something less than a man. His wound becomes a joke instead of a mark of a martyr. Jake thinks, "At one time or another I had probably considered it [his wound] from most of its various angles, including the one that certain injuries or imperfections are a subject of merriment while remaining quite serious for the person possessing them" (20). As the war grows distant, Jake must assimilate to life as a lover, not a soldier. In a time when people try to forget the war, Jake becomes not a hero but the object of a cruel joke.    "You have given more than your life." -The Sun Also Rises    Tashi is also wounded for her country. Her African tribe, the Olinkans, demands that everyone have their face scared with traditional tribal markings. For women this "initiation" also includes circumcision. Tashi wants to go through with the ritual--just as Jake decides to join the army--so that she can sacrifice for the traditions and culture she believes in.

Americans Eat More Than Required

According to The Journal Of the American Medical Association JAM), † More than one-third of adults and 17% of youth in the United States are obese†¦ † (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, and Flea) So why do we as Americans eat more than the usual human being? From personal opinion I believe it is all the resources and opportunities we have to constantly eat. There are vending machines everywhere, food vendors every†here, restaurants everywhere, food trucks everywhere, it is almost if our world revolved around eating.On top of that we like to get out moneys worth, so it constantly pushes restaurants to serve more food. Know when eat I usually eat what is on my late whether its a lot or a little, tend to finish. Working in the restaurant industry I see the same. Our portions tend to be about 8 ounces of meat and another 10-12 ounces worth of sides. That is a lot of food to put down in one sitting. Most people do it though. Very few people ever ask for a take out box. This pape r is not about how all Americans are obese, but instead to inform the reader that we should not be eating as much.We should be eating smaller portions and more frequently. In today's industry all the restaurants are offering healthier alternatives. McDonald's is getting ready to rebind itself and lean more in a healthy way. That itself should show America that we need to observe what we eat. The JAM article states, â€Å"Overall, there have been no significant changes in obesity prevalence in youth or adults between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012. Obesity prevalence remains high and thus It is important to continue surveillance. (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, and Flea) It is something that if we instill in the children of America they will understand it at a young age and begin their habits right instead of overeating from a young age, † Obesity and childhood obesity, in particular, are the focus of many public health efforts in the United States. (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, and Gall) To conclude I would like to say that I am not the â€Å"ideal† in shape American, but I also do not fall into the 17% of the youth that is obese.

Nurse on Thinking Outside the Box

Innovative thinking is required but In order to do so, one must gain ample experience to foresee crisis that may happen upon the application of the unconventional. Getting out of the box means sucking with the problem longer, and looking at It from various sides, which may not always be suitable for a fast paced nurse, even with the right time management nurses are naturally multi-tasters and are known to accomplish one job to get on with the other. In the box thinkers often believe that every problem needs only one solution; therefore, folding more than one possible solution is a waste of time.In Nursing Leaders/Supervisors: Nursing leaders on the other hand, thinking outside of the box may mean seeking the opinions of others which can help in the creative thinking process. As a nurse leader, one can improve out of the box thinking if one seeks ideas from those outside of one's own profession. Asking oneself on how things are being done in other industries could go a long way from J ust going around his/her own department. Through this, a leader can easily seek what ideas can be best applied to a particular situation/task/problem and this requires a willingness to take new respective to day-to-day work.As nurse leaders, they need to nurture their ability to think outside the box and promote this skill in others. In Nurses Working in Offices: While nurses who have ventured outside the clinical set-up and have chosen the cubicle type of work environment, by doing so only proves that they're one of the outside of the box thinkers. They are the ones who like to challenge their own assumptions on a regular basis, which can be the most difficult part of out of the box thinking. One must remember that Just because something has always been one ay, doesn't mean that it has to continue to be that way.Out-of-the box thinking requires openness to new ways of seeing the world and willingness to explore. It means considering other Innovative options, from roles as nurse edu cators, executive nurse leaders and policymakers, to nurse entrepreneurs, retail clinic nurses, nurse Informatics and researchers–to name a few–we have seen how nurses have been able to parlay their clinical backgrounds and health care skill sets Into entirely new realms, one must not stop because even great creative people can become In-the-box thinkers when they stop trying.

Free Essays on The Effects Of Anti-smoking Ads On The Youth Of America.

The effects of anti-smoking ads on the youth of America. Anti-smoking ads have hit America’s youth like a ton of bricks, and they are working. The â€Å"Truth† ads seem to be especially effective on the youth of today. I did not really realize that there were any other anti-smoking ads before the â€Å"truth† ads. It turns out that there have been anti-smoking ads since 1998. Those ads did not have much of an effect on the youth. They did not state any of the stats that the â€Å"truth† ads do, and they do not have a hard-hitting theme. The ads that did not have a hard impact were â€Å"think, don’t smoke† ads, and they featured such things as young athletes saying no to cigarettes and then going on to win or do good in something. As a result of these ads smoking is way down among high school students. The rate of smokers among teens is at the lowest tat it has been since 1991. In 1991 twenty seven and a half pe4rcent of high school students said that they smoked, and in 2001 the seniors in high school who smoke is about thirty five percent. It is still too many when about one in four kids in high school are still lighting up. More of what the reason this could be is because the price of cigarettes has risen as much as $1.50 more as in New York. 63.9 percent of high school students said that they have had at least taken one puff of a cigarette in their entire lives. Smoking is killing a lot of people. In Asia about 50,000 teenagers start smoking every day. About two-thirds of the people who are under twenty-five will start smoking in China. More than half of the children who are seven to seven-teen smoke in the Philippines. They say that there needs to be better control of the tobacco. Everywhere except a few countries in Asia have some of the world’s weakest tobacco control laws. Many different things affect the rate of smoking in teens. Certain anti-smoking ads have more of an affect than other anti-smoking ads. If you wan... Free Essays on The Effects Of Anti-smoking Ads On The Youth Of America. Free Essays on The Effects Of Anti-smoking Ads On The Youth Of America. The effects of anti-smoking ads on the youth of America. Anti-smoking ads have hit America’s youth like a ton of bricks, and they are working. The â€Å"Truth† ads seem to be especially effective on the youth of today. I did not really realize that there were any other anti-smoking ads before the â€Å"truth† ads. It turns out that there have been anti-smoking ads since 1998. Those ads did not have much of an effect on the youth. They did not state any of the stats that the â€Å"truth† ads do, and they do not have a hard-hitting theme. The ads that did not have a hard impact were â€Å"think, don’t smoke† ads, and they featured such things as young athletes saying no to cigarettes and then going on to win or do good in something. As a result of these ads smoking is way down among high school students. The rate of smokers among teens is at the lowest tat it has been since 1991. In 1991 twenty seven and a half pe4rcent of high school students said that they smoked, and in 2001 the seniors in high school who smoke is about thirty five percent. It is still too many when about one in four kids in high school are still lighting up. More of what the reason this could be is because the price of cigarettes has risen as much as $1.50 more as in New York. 63.9 percent of high school students said that they have had at least taken one puff of a cigarette in their entire lives. Smoking is killing a lot of people. In Asia about 50,000 teenagers start smoking every day. About two-thirds of the people who are under twenty-five will start smoking in China. More than half of the children who are seven to seven-teen smoke in the Philippines. They say that there needs to be better control of the tobacco. Everywhere except a few countries in Asia have some of the world’s weakest tobacco control laws. Many different things affect the rate of smoking in teens. Certain anti-smoking ads have more of an affect than other anti-smoking ads. If you wan...

Source monitoring involves thinking about our memories, it involves the processes in ascertaining the origins of our knowledge and making decisions about what sources the knowledge or memories The WritePass Journal

Source monitoring involves thinking about our memories, it involves the processes in ascertaining the origins of our knowledge and making decisions about what sources the knowledge or memories Introduction (2425) Source monitoring involves thinking about our memories, it involves the processes in ascertaining the origins of our knowledge and making decisions about what sources the knowledge or memories Introduction (2425)Method (1,397)ParticipantsMaterialsProcedureDesignEthicsResults (516)DiscussionBibliographyRelated Introduction (2425)    Human memory is far from perfect, often; we see somebody we ‘know’ in the street but can’t for the life of us think where we know them from. This is basically a mistake within our memory systems; more specifically it is a ‘source monitoring error’. Source monitoring involves thinking about our memories, it involves the processes in ascertaining the origins of our knowledge and making decisions about what sources the knowledge or memories are from (Johnson, Hashtroudi Lindsay, 1993). For example, source monitoring processes help us to decide whether we saw an event or whether we were simply told about it, whether we found important facts from a reliable source or a glossy magazine. Source monitoring errors may occur when someone is familiar with something (be it a person, place, event etc.) but misplaces the source of where that familiarity is from. For example one may see a person in the street whom one would not normally see in the street, the person may seem familiar to you, but you cannot place where you know them from. This familiarity, once placed with recollection will provide recognition of why one finds a particular person, place or event familiar. As with the person in the street, this problem is likely to arise when the subject is out of context, hence the ‘butcher-on-the-bus’ phenomenon (Yovel et al 2004). Familiarity does not help us out until it is combined with information such as spatiotemporal context of an episode, in which the memory was acquired, this will then aid recollection. When we are thinking about memories we undergo heuristic (automatic or unconscious) judgement processes in order to locate, effectively, where we know something from without making any conscious effort. Reality monitoring helps us know or realise what memories are internally generated (what memories are thoughts) and what memories are externally derived (what memories are of events that actually happened). Johnson et al (1993; 1997) build on Johnson and Raye’s (1981) reality-monitoring framework in order to produce a source monitoring framework that suggests that source monitoring is a combination of, different attributes or characteristics of memories and judgement processes which help to discriminate between different memories and types of memories (Johnson et al, 1993; Johnson, 1997). Source monitoring distinguishes between all the different internal thoughts; between different externally derived events and also between internal and external sources (e.g. dreaming about som ething, waking up and thinking it had actually happened) (Johnson et al 1997). By ‘source’ it is meant the general conditions under which a memory was acquired, i.e. the contexts of the event, how and when it was witnessed. Furthermore, source attributions are made, according to the source monitoring framework, to different degrees of confidence and specificity which depend on the quality and quantity of information available at the time of initial experience. Johnson et al also point out that among other things, information available, criteria used to determine the source of a memory and task demands of attributing a source are all important factors (Johnson 1993). When we are making judgements about memories (through a judgement process) we attribute source monitoring. Source monitoring takes into account different kinds of information, or different attributes, about memories in order to complete the task of locating the source of a given memory. Different characteristics of the memory that monitoring is based on are; perceptual information (acquiring sensory information), contextual information (spatial information and information about your surroundings at the time), semantic information (information about language use), affective information (emotions) and cognitive detail (thoughts or information that may have been acquired) (Johnson et al 1993, Johnson 1997). According to the source monitoring framework there are several factors which determine the ease and accuracy of identifying a source; the first is the type and the amount of   these different characteristics of the memory that monitoring is based on. The second is how distinctive t hese characteristics are from source to source, two sources with similar characteristics will be harder to distinguish from each other. The last factor is the effectiveness of the decision processes; richly detailed memories have unique attributes which enable decision processes to be effective (Johnson et al 1993). Although most source monitoring decisions are indeed made in this heuristic or automatic manner, sometimes, more strategic processes are required to gather the appropriate information in order to avoid detrimental effects or situations. As well as heuristic processing, systematic or more ‘controlled’ processing is sometimes used (Johnson et al 1993). This more extended version of source monitoring processes is more complex. There may be other reasons or factors for you deciding, for example, what particular event occurred and when. Sometimes other beliefs, specific memories or general knowledge may have to be accessed in order to evaluate what you believe to be the source of your target memory (the memory you are trying to find the origin of). For example you may recall an event where a friend told you a story at a certain party; however other information about that friend being away travelling that year may lead you to recall that it could not have been that friend but must have been another. Evidence that source monitoring involves memory characteristics is shown by comparing memories for perceived and imagined events. Events that are actually perceived have more perceptual and contextual detail, hence if a large amount of perceptual information is found; it is easier to make a source monitoring decision on that particular memory (Johnson et al 1993). One study that supports this framework is Johnson et al (1988), he asked participants to rate real events and dreamt or imagined events and rate them on memory characteristics, participants rated actually perceived events as having clearer temporal and spatial information and more perceptual information (Johnson et al 1993). Evidence that memories are attributed to sources by processes during the source monitoring procedure is shown by Raye, Johnson and Taylor. In their studies they used two different strategies to compare features of memories for internally generated and externally perceived events finding that given stric ter instructions, participants are more selective about what information they need to preserve (Raye, Johnson Taylor 1980). Evidence, through developmental research, that reality monitoring, external source monitoring and internal source monitoring are different classes of source monitoring problems is supported in poor performance on one but not another situation. As Hashtroudi found, older adults can be impaired in internal external source monitoring but not in reality monitoring (Hastroudi et al, 1989). Source monitoring can also be linked in with a range of other psychological and day to day phenomenon; such as; old-new recognition (Ferguson et al 1992), direct and indirect tests of memory (Richardson-Klavehn Bjork, 1988), eyewitness testimony (Loftus, 1979) and misattribution of familiarity (Johnson Foley 1984). Although source monitoring can be applied in these different ways (automatic and controlled) and are used in every day life, there are indeed ways in which source monitoring errors can occur as seen with the example of the person in the street, in Jacoby’s False Fame effect and also through dà ©j vu . These inevitable source monitoring errors can incur practical, social and emotional consequences (Johnson et al 1993) and can happen in a number of ways. For example a source monitoring error may result in you telling a joke to someone who originally told you the joke, a source monitoring error may also result in accidental plagiarism that could have been easily avoided. Peters et al (2007) has shown that people who have ‘memories’ or beliefs about abnormal or implausible life events, commit an increased amount of source monitoring errors or in other words they make more source monitoring errors by ‘misclassifying familiar non famous names as famous names†™ (Peters et al 2007, p162) in the false fame task than people who do not have these memories or beliefs. (Peters et al 2007). Peters et al (2007) specifically tested people who claimed to have ‘hypnotically induced previous life memories’ against a control group (Peters et al 2007, p163). Furthermore, Clancy et al (2002) found that people who claim to have experienced alien abduction or claim to have memories of such abductions, tend to falsely recall and recognise critical lure words that they have not been presented with (Clancy 2002) in the DRM paradigm (Deese 1959; Roediger McDermott 1995). One particular phenomenon related with source monitoring errors evolved in 1989. Jacoby et al compiled a paper containing studies that showed what he called the False- Fame effect (Jacoby Woloshyn, 1989). During a false fame task participants are shown a list of non-famous names to read aloud and are told that all of the names are non famous. Later, the participants are presented with the same (old) non-famous names mixed with different (new) non-famous names as well as actual famous names and ‘fame judgements’ are made on each name. In general, findings show that old non-famous names regularly get judged as famous due to a source monitoring error wherein the participant has misattributed the familiarity of a name, the correct source of the name would be from the initial list studied however the participant has incorrectly judged the name to be famous due to familiarity and a source monitoring error combined. After being explicitly told that the names studied within the study stage are non famous names, the act then, of naming a non famous name as famous at test, must be a source monitoring error. Jacoby’s false fame effect is also evidence that the past can be used to influence present performance without intervention of conscious recollection. If conscious recollection was indeed present, the participant would remember that they saw the non famous name earlier in a study stage and locate that as the source of the memory, and not think to themselves ‘I recognise that name therefore it must be famous’. In Jacoby et al’s (1989) study, the unconscious influence of memory is due to divided attention as Jacoby tested participants on the false fame test in full vs. divided attention groups.   Jacoby Woloshyn’s (1989) False-Fame Effect is a good way to show source monitoring errors (Jacoby Woloshyn 1989). A second phenomenon that is often seen to be related with source monitoring errors is when something may seem so familiar that you feel as though you have experienced it before, be it a place, a conversation or an event. This phenomenon is also to do with familiarity and is the familiar feeling of dà ©j vu. Due to the nature of dà ©j vu it has proved hard to study the phenomenon, however recent neurological advances have thought that dà ©j vu could potentially, at any one time, be down to one of the following; a slight and brief change in speed of transmissions; a short split in perceptual information causing the (present) experience to seem as though it is two different experiences or the presence of unconscious familiarity without the conscious recollection of the source of the familiarity. Dà ©j vu literally means ‘already seen’, Neppe (1983) described dà ©j vu as â€Å"any subjectively inappropriate impression of familiarity of a present experience with an unde fined past† (Brown, 2003, p394). Brown (2004) also described dà ©j vu as a ‘jolting confrontation between our subjective sense of familiarity and our objective evaluation of unfamiliarity’ (Brown, 2004, p256). The dà ©j vu experience is often seen as another example (as well as the false fame effect) where the source of ‘familiarity’ is not recollected, and so is essentially a source monitoring error. Kusumi (2006) states that dà ©j vu is caused by ‘comparable present experience and past experiences’ (Kusumi, 2006, p303). If one realises that they are experiencing or that they have experienced dà ©j vu it is because reality monitoring helps one to confirm that an experience is new even though it feels familiar, however at the time of dà ©j vu it is likely that one does not know they are experiencing it. Jacoby 1989 shows that the past can be used to influence present performance without the intervention of conscious recollection and with source monitoring errors. This study remains in sync with this notion as participants are shown a set of stimuli and then shown again later knowing that they have previously seen a selection of the stimuli and know that those specific stimuli are non-famous. Therefore if they are to label an old non famous stimulus as famous their performance has been influenced by the past without conscious recollection. If the participants had consciously recollected where they recognised the stimulus from then they would have known they already saw it, remember correctly that they had been told it was non famous and then at test, they would have labelled the stimulus correctly as non-famous rather than incorrectly as famous. Jacoby also shows that he has produced this effect of unconscious influences through the help of dividing attention. The earlier mentioned examples are a few ways in which the false fame test has been manipulated, or tested combined with different factors; the present study aims to explore into combining the false fame test with alternative stimuli that is; it will try to see if the same effects are seen when the participants look at actual images of faces on a computer screen rather than reading out words (names in word form). This study will also look into the question of whether people who experience the phenomenon of Dà ©j vu frequently do worse when tested on the false fame paradigm than people who do not experience it as often (frequency of dà ©j vu is defined by answers of the Inventory of Dà ©j vu Experiences Assessment (IDEA). This is believed to be an appropriate next step to take into research about source monitoring errors and who is more susceptible to making these errors. The hypothesis is ‘Are people with higher frequency dà ©j vu encounters more susceptible to False Fame t ests?’ My predictions include that errors made on a false fame test will relate to frequency of dà ©j vu. That is, people who experience dà ©j vu more frequently will be more susceptible to false fame and therefore make more fame judgement errors at test, than people who experience dà ©j vu infrequently or less frequently. This is due to †¦.****************Another prediction is that old non famous faces will be judged wrongly as famous more often than new non famous faces due to unconscious influence of the past combined with source monitoring errors. A third prediction is that both the factors of frequency of dà ©j vu and also the type of face presented will have an overall joint affect on source monitoring errors and people will be more susceptible to false fame. Method (1,397)    Participants The total number of participants tested was 76; 64 females and 12 males. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 44, the mean age was 20.17 years with a standard deviation of 2.96 indicating that most of the ages are close to the mean. The participants were recruited from the University of Lincoln by advertisement of the study through email and recruitment via word of mouth; participants reading Psychology were enticed by a credit point which would in turn allow them to access the student pool during their own Independent study. All of the participants were either undergraduate students at the university reading various courses or otherwise involved with the university. The participants were placed into groups, after testing, based on the frequency of dà ©j vu experienced, established by the Inventory for Dà ©j vu Experiences Assessment (IDEA). Group 1 were participants who in general, encounter a low frequency of dà ©j vu and group 2 are participants who encounter a high frequency of dà ©j vu. Materials To conduct the experiment 60 images of non-famous faces and 30 famous faces were presented over three different displays for the first and third stage of the experiment combined. All the faces were cropped to a grey scale, chin to forehead, ear to ear section of each face in order to try to eliminate anything recognisable other than the face e.g. clothing, setting, body language, hair style and colour. These faces were all cropped to a width of 10cm to try to ensure that they were all roughly equal sizes and recognition would not be due to over or under sized images. The images were presented to participants using a presentation file with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 on a plain black background via a 15.6† HD screen. For the second part of the experiment the participants were given the first part (part A) of the Inventory of Dà ©j vu Experiences Assessment (IDEA) to fill in. The IDEA is a 24 part questionnaire designed to capture qualitative information about dà ©j vu experiences. The questionnaire is comprised of 2 sections; A and B consisting of 9 and 14 items respectively. Participants completed the first half of the questionnaire as a distracter task in between study and test, this then indicated whether participants experienced dà ©j vu often or not very often. The second part (part B) of the IDEA was given to participants who revealed a high frequency of dà ©j vu experienced in the first part and more specifically the first question. Procedure Each participant was greeted and given a consent form to read, sign and date. Once this was completed the participant was prompted to ask any questions he or she may have had. The participants were then given instruction to carry out the first, study stage of the experiment. This involved a timed presentation of 30 faces to which the participant was asked to make an age judgement on each face by stating ‘over’ if the participant believed the face to be over 25 or ‘under’ if the participant believed the face to be under 25. This age judgement ensured deeper encoding of the faces by the participants and each face appeared on the screen in front of the participant for 3 seconds. During the study stage, one of two study presentations, containing 30 different non famous faces each, were used and assigned to participants where, for one study presentation, old non famous faces in the test presentation would be new non famous faces when the second study presentation was used. This first section of the experiment lasted approximately 90 seconds. ***CHECK***After the presentation the participants were explicitly told that all of the faces t hey had just seen were non famous. The participants were then handed the first part of a 2-part, 23-item questionnaire to be completed and given back for the second stage of the experiment. This part of the questionnaire was to be filled out by everyone partly as a distracter task between study and test stage but also for the information about dà ©j vu experiences, the first half of the questionnaire lasted about 3 minutes.***CHECK*** The third part of the experiment was the test stage in which participants were again shown a timed presentation (each face appearing once again for 3 seconds) of the 30 previously seen faces from the study stage, a new set of 30 non famous faces and a further 30 famous faces randomly mixed all together to make a presentation 90 faces big. An effort was made in attempt to find faces that participants would hopefully recognise as famous but would not know the accomplishment that had led them to fame straight away without systematic processing. The participants would not have time to be able to think about this however as the presentation would very quickly move onto the next face for them to judge. Instructions read to participants at this point were very careful and precise. The participants were asked to state famous for a face that was ‘even vaguely familiar’ to them, participants were told that none of the famous faces that they would see would be as famous as someone like David Beckham but that a famous face would be famous on some level even if it was to a really low degree. The participants were asked to state out loud ‘famous’ if they recognised the faces as famous or ‘non famous’ if they did not recognise the face as famous. The experimenter noted the answers on a previously made checklist for all participants. Due to the counterbalance of faces in the first study stage, half the participants were seeing new non famous faces that the other half would see as old non famous faces. After completion of the last stage of the experiment, participants were debriefed, thanked, awarded with their credit point and could then leave. Design The design consists of one unrelated (or between) subjects factor, frequency of dà ©j vu with two levels; low frequency of dà ©j vu and high frequency of dà ©j vu. The design also consists of one within (or related) subjects factor, type of face; with two levels; old non famous faces (that the participant had previously seen) and new non famous faces (that the participants had never seen before). Due to this a two-way mixed repeated measures ANOVA was computed to determine whether people who experience a higher frequency of dà ©j vu are more susceptible to making source monitoring errors with in a false fame task. A related t-test was also carried out on the scores obtained from famous faces, i.e. the number of famous faces that were actually judged (correctly) as famous to determine any differences of famous faces correctly being judged as famous between the two groups of high and low frequency of dà ©j vu.    Ethics During testing all relevant ethical issues surrounding the study, delineated by the BPS guidelines were regarded. The participants were all given a consent form to read, sign and date to prove that they had given their informed consent in to taking part. Informed consent was given to make sure participants were not tricked into anything they were not aware of; false or misleading information was not given to participants simply to gain consent; withholding slight information for purpose of study that will not negatively affect the participant in any way is different to deceit. Within the consent form they were informed that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any time and that their partaking was completely voluntary. Throughout testing and afterwards all information about participants was kept completely private and confidential as the Data Protection Act (1998) requires. All data gained was kept anonymous and no results attached to identities were exposed in any way. Participants were assigned codes in cases of withdrawal or if the participant needed to contact the experimenter for other reasons. During the study participants were not exposed to any kind of risk or anything that would make them feel uneasy, stressed or anxious. After the whole study was complete, participants were debriefed and any information not thoroughly explained before the testing due to purpose of study was explained. Debriefing also ensured that participants were still happy to be included as research and that they could now withdraw if they were not. Participants took away the consent and debrief forms with information about how to withdraw is they so wished after they had left the room. Results (516) For each subject the proportion of famously judged faces (the number of old non famous faces judged as famous, the number of new non famous faces judged as famous and the number of actual famous faces judged as famous) was calculated as a function of dà ©j vu frequency. These data are shown in Table 1.   Response times were not recorded. Table 1. Mean proportion of scores (incorrectly judged fame) of all three types of face in both high and low groups of frequency of dà ©j vu. From the table it is obvious that more errors were made on judgements given for old non famous faces than new non famous faces in both groups of low and high frequency of dà ©j vu experienced. This result on its own is in continuation with other false fame tasks that have revealed non famous but already seen faces (names in other cases) to be judged as famous regardless of participants being told explicitly that the faces are non famous (Jacoby et al 1989, Bartlett et al 1991, Peters et al 2007more?) On average, both groups of frequency of dà ©j vu judged approximately half the amount of actually famous faces, (Mean =0.52 for both groups) as famous. The mean proportions of scores also show that the number of errors for old non famous faces were indeed higher in the high frequency dà ©j vu group than the low, suggesting my hypothesis may be true, however further analysis has shown that difference to be non significant. The results of the Mixed Repeated Measures ANOVA treating the frequency of dà ©j vu (Group) as the between subjects factor and the type of face shown (Type) as the within subjects factor, showed the interaction between Group and Type to be not significant [F (1, 74) = 7.624; p = 0.007] indicating that the frequency of dà ©j vu experience had no direct effect on incorrectly judging old or new non famous faces as famous. The interaction was calculated in order to find out the effect of both factors together on fame judgements. This being a main prediction of the research question leads to a null hypothesis to be taken. The analysis of variance failed to reveal an overall effect of Group [F (1, 74) = 0.179; p = 0.673], indicating that the overall proportion of incorrect fame judgements did not differ between low and high frequencies of dà ©j vu experience, (one tailed). A main effect of test (Type) was found [F (1, 74) = 45.393; p 0.001(p=0.00)] showing that incorrect fame judgements were greater in judgement of old non famous faces than new non famous faces (one tailed); this is still in continuation with other, previous research. The famous faces judged as famous had the same mean proportion across both Groups, those who experience dà ©j vu at a low (SD=0.20) and high (SD= 0.17) frequency indicating that there is no difference in correct fame judgements of famous faces between the two Groups. An unrelated t-test showed that any difference there may be between scores was not significant [t (74) =0.000; p=1.000] as 1.000 is greater than 0.05. Discussion The amount a face was judged as ‘famous’ was measured (see table 1.) for each of the three types of face; famous, old non famous and new non famous and in each of the groups; high frequency of dà ©j vu experience and low frequency of dà ©j vu experience. This was in order to find out if people who experience a high frequency of dà ©j vu are more susceptible to false fame, i.e. will they make more incorrect judgements or source monitoring errors during the task. The proportions of means suggested at first that people who experience a higher frequency of dà ©j vu are indeed more susceptible to a false fame task. Further analysis was carried out and an interaction calculation between group and type in order to find out whether people do indeed do worse on a false fame test if they experience higher levels of dà ©j vu showed that they do not. Therefore a null hypothesis rejecting my hypothesis is to be taken showing that people with higher levels or frequencies of dà © j vu experience do not necessarily do worse on a false fame test that uses faces as stimuli as opposed to names in word form. A calculation on the effect of group showed that the factor of whether people experience high or low frequencies of dà ©j vu does not affect how many errors are made. In other words no significant difference was found in the number of incorrect fame judgements, or source monitoring errors, between the two groups. This is contrary to the prediction that people in the higher frequency of dà ©j vu experience will do worse at the false fame test and obtain more incorrect fame judgements on old non famous faces than people in the low frequency dà ©j vu groups. However people in this high frequency of dà ©j vu experience group did, on average, make slightly more incorrect fame judgements (Mean=0.30) than people in the lower frequency of dà ©j vu group (Mean=0.27 ). A calculation on the main effect of test was found, showing that people made more source errors or incorrect fame judgements on old non famous faces than new non famous faces which is in keep with Jacoby et al’s false fame experiment (1989) and also confirms my prediction that old non famous faces will be judged wrongly as famous more often than new non famous faces due to unconscious influence of the past combined with source monitoring errors. In other words people were more likely to judge a face as famous if they had already seen it regardless of the fact that they had been explicitly told that the faces they had seen in the study stage were all non famous faces. talk about – past influence, familiarity no recollection and source monitoring error combined. As already stated my hypothesis did not turn out to be true and people who experience high frequencies of dà ©j vu were not more susceptible to false fame in this experiment, however if the same experiment was to be carried out with the original stimuli, i.e. using words instead of faces plus similar groups the outcome may be desirable. This may be due to the fact that the original test had been used and been successful in the past. People who are more ****well travelled etc***** are more susceptible to the false fame test therefore people who experience dà ©j vu may be too. (is it people who experience dà ©j vu are oftern wel travelled etc or is it people who do bad on false fame task I think its dà ©j vu In which case that is wrong Overall my results do support other false fame tests such as Jacoby et al (1989), Peters et al (2007)†¦ Bartlett et al 1991 find all examples I can where false fame effect are shown; intro? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-monitoring_error http://psiexp.ss.uci.edu/research/papers/memory/KelleyJacoby.pdf http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=false+fame+studieshl=enas_sdt=0as_vis=1oi=scholart Findings of my experiment What it shows What it supports Possible reasons for results   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   e.g. different instructions relationships of anything use of distractor tasks links to current experiment further research in area evidence of false fame effect    Older adults more likely to call old nonfamous names famous in fame judgement task, however dà ©j vu is observed less frequently in older adults which adds a reason to the point that people who experience dà ©j vu more oftenwould not be more susceptible to the false fame task.    Bibliography Brown, A. S. (2003). A Review of the Dà ©j vu experience. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 394-413. Brown, A. S. (2004). The Dà ©j vu Illusion. Current directions in Psychological Science, 13(6), 256-259 Ferguson, S., Hashtroudi, S. Johnson, M. K. (1992). Age differences in using source-relevant cues. Psychology and Aging, 7, 443-452. Hashtroudi, S., Johnson, M. K., Chrosniak, L. D. (1989). Aging and source monitoring. Psychology and Aging, 4, 106-112. Jacoby, L. L., Woloshyn, V. (1989). Becoming Famous Without Being Recognised:Unconscious Influences of Memory Produced by Dividing Attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 118, 115-125. Johnson, M. K., Foley, M. A., (1984). Differentiating fact from fantasy: The reliability of children’s memory. Journal of Social Issues, 40(2), 33-50. Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., D. Lindsay, S. (1993). Source Monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28. Johnson, M.K. (1997). Source Monitoring and Memory Distortion. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 352 (1362) 1733-1745. Kusumi, T. (2006). Human metacognition and the dà ©j vu phenomenon. In K. Fujita S. Itakura- (Eds.) Diversity of Cognition: Evolution, Development, Domestication and Pathology, (pp 302-314). Kyoto University Press. Loftus, E. F. (1979). Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Peters, M. J. V., Horselenberg, R., Jelicic, M., Merckelbach, H. (2007). The false fame illusion in people with memories about a previous life. Consciousness and Cognition 16, 162-169. Richardson-Klavehn, A. Bjork, R. A. (1988) Measures of memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 39, 475-543. Yovel, G., Paller, K. A. (2004). The neural basis of the butcher-on-the-bus phenomenon: when a face seems familiar but is not remembered. NeuroImage, 21, 789- 800. psywww.com/resource/apacrib.htm

Chicago Referencing †How to Cite a Book

Chicago Referencing – How to Cite a Book Chicago Referencing – How to Cite a Book The Chicago Manual of Style actually sets out rules for two separate citation styles: in-text â€Å"author–date† citations and a footnote/bibliography system. Depending on your outlook, this dual system is either admirably versatile or unhelpfully confusing. Nevertheless, whichever approach you’re using, it’s vital that you know how to cite a book correctly. On our academic blog today, we run through the basics for doing this using both approaches. Author–Date Citations As with many parenthetical referencing systems, Chicago-style author–date citations require you to provide the author’s surname and the date of publication in the main text when referencing a source. A citation of a book by cheeky French philosopher Paul Ricoeur would, therefore, appear as: Interpretation involves the metaphorical and speculative domains of meaning (Ricoeur 1978). If the author is named in the text, only the year is required in the citation. The only other thing you’ll need to provide in in-text citations are relevant page numbers when quoting a source: Ricoeur (1978, 17) states that â€Å"metaphor is defined in terms of movement.† All cited texts should then be added to a reference list at the end of your document, with sources listed alphabetically by author surname and full publication details provided. For a book, this includes: Author Surname, First Name. Year of Publication. Title. City of Publication: Publisher. In Ricoeur’s case, this translates to: Ricoeur, Paul. 1978. The Rule of Metaphor. London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Footnotes/Bibliography The other form of Chicago referencing places citations in footnotes, as indicated by superscript numbers in the main text (e.g., 1, 2, 3). The information required for the first citation of a book is: n. Author Name, Title (City of Publication: Publisher, Year), Page Number(s). Returning to our philosopher friend, the first footnote for The Rule of Metaphor would therefore appear as: 1. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1978), 24. Subsequent citations of the same text can be shorted to just author surname, a shortened version of the book title and the relevant page number (or â€Å"pinpoint reference,† as it is otherwise known): 2. Ricoeur, Rule of Metaphor, 112. As well as footnotes, this version of Chicago referencing lists all cited texts in a bibliography at the end of the document. The information required is similar to the first footnote, but with slightly different punctuation and the author name reversed so that sources can be listed alphabetically by surname: Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor. London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1978. A Final Thought Since these two versions of Chicago referencing are very different, the single most important thing you can do before you begin writing is check which version is specified by your style guide. Also, it’s worth mentioning that Paul Ricoeur would probably have rejected being described as â€Å"cheeky.† Nevertheless, it’s how we prefer to think of him.

Eating Disorders for High School Students Essay

Eating Disorders for High School Students - Essay Example Sometimes individuals with anorexia work out excessively or purge by the use of diuretics, laxatives, or vomiting to avoid adding weight (Swain, 2006). Bulimia is also an eating disorder in which people of near-normal or normal weight engage in periodic binge-eating, which is instantly preceded by feelings of depression and guilt. Actions are then taken to eliminate the calories, for instance laxative use, self-induced vomiting, excessive dieting, or fasting (Kinoy, 2001). A recent study by the National Mental Health Institute exposed that roughly 15% of teenagers in high school take part in these disordered eating behaviors. Bulimia, anorexia and other eating disorders are crucial health worries. Some of the medical effects of eating disorders consist of infertility, osteoporosis, hypokalemia, acute electrolyte disturbances and renal failure (Stewart, 2010). Anxiety, depression, impaired relationships, repeated self harm and restrictions on social functioning are a few of the psycho logical effects that can occur in people who have constant eating disorders. Maybe the most worrying truth about eating disorders is that they are the most lethal of all psychopathologies. Nearly 20% of individuals with an eating disorder die from their physiological sequelae (Alfano, Hodges & Saxon, 2010). This paper will research on the causes of eating disorders for high school students and how they can be mitigated. Literature Review Turning to food as a way of dealing with low self-esteem is a key psychological factor in the growth of an eating disorder (Alfano, Hodges & Saxon, 2010). If a young person feels powerless, he or she can focus on... The research will explore teachers and adolescents in rural, high schools, in relation to their knowledge and prevalence of eating disordered behavior. The research focuses on prevention efforts in educational environs and clarifies that prevention of eating disorders is best tackled by creating a positive and supportive school surrounding. Recommendations for further research and study are discussed in the paper. This essay approves that In high school, students may have immense pressure to be slim or super muscular so as to be accepted by their peers. Some might also want to attract potential romantic partners. Other writers also support this. Such scenarios have appeared all over especially in California and Texas. The two are considered as one of the most fitness, diet and weight-crazed states in the United States. In these living conditions, other teenagers are encircled by unhelpful â€Å"body talks† all the time, in the playing ground, in the dorm rooms and dining halls. Students cannot escape these comments. The comments can make crucial teenagers go crazy. They will start worrying about their own weight and make them feel awkward about their own body, even though they have never worried about their bodies before. This report makes a conclusion that there might be limitations to this research such as financial constraints and not all students wanting to take part in the survey. However, the findings contribute extensively to information regarding rural teenagers eating disordered behaviors and attitudes, and also rural educators level of preparedness and knowledge.

Principles of Microeconomics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Principles of Microeconomics - Essay Example The limitations need to be worked upon so that sanity could prevail within the related domains. The limits and constraints that make it so hard to achieve include the fact that man has at times over-utilized these resources which has made them scant. The limitations have come about with the passage of time and need to be analyzed and researched upon properly within the future. 2. A big debate in both politics and economics is the extent to which the government should be involved in stabilizing the economy through taxing and spending measures. Do you think that government is involved too much, too little, or just enough these days? The role of the government within the taxing and spending measures is a bit too much. It should work upon making sure that the goals and objectives of its very basis are being handled well more than anything else. This will resolve a number of disputes and long standing issues within the relevant scheme of things. The economic role should be allotted to the people who can do the best possible jobs. This could even include the relevant departments and units which are specialized to undertake such tasks and activities. This will make sure that the taxing and spending measures are being amicably taken care of within any nation of the world. 3. Over the past several years, prices for personal computers and related computer equipment have fallen dramatically, but suppliers have offered more and more of them for sale. Does this refute the law of supply? Explain how this situation may have occurred in the market for personal computers. The supply and demand philosophy banks on the more the customers buy over a period of time, the demand goes up and the supply becomes lesser. This is vice versa in the case of the supply being more and demand being less, and hence the price variations are very direct and have a long-lasting consequence. The law of supply has not been refuted under such a situation as there is an overall increase in the wake of understanding the supply and demand of personal computers and computer related equipment. The situation has come about in the wake of the personal computers because people have relied more on laptops and hence the price ranges of the personal computers have come down considerably. 4. Discuss this statement: "Health care is too expensive. The government should limit the prices doctors charge so that everyone can afford health care." It is a fact that the price of health care has crossed the limits. This is the reason why doctors have been able to make big bucks out of the related settings that the patients find themselves engulfed within. The role of the government under such situations is of immense significance. This is because the government has to wrest its initiatives more than anything else. It needs to make sure that the health care is reasonably priced and is not too costly for the poor and needy. In fact, the people should receive it free of cost as health is essential oneà ¢â‚¬â„¢s priority number one. The prices that these doctors charge is just too much and the affordability aspect is an important consideration that must be taken into proper perspectives before one can suggest that the health care is not expensive any more. 5. You hear a candidate for the United States Congress state that a tax on corporate stocks is an equitable way for the government to raise revenue, because it only affects the very wealthy. Evaluate this statement. The United States C

The oil and gas industry in China Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The oil and gas industry in China - Case Study Example China’s plight may have been averted. China government should have executed efficient corporate governance and guarantee that the oil and gas industry recognized it as a strategy for the government’s accountability to improve the legal, institutional and regular framework. Consequently, the corporations would ensure their operational performance and attract international capital in order to stabilize the domestic industry. This would have enabled the industry to keep up with the increased domestic demand and continue exporting of oil and gas. The Chinese government should have implemented the privatization of the oil and gas industry in order to encourage healthy competition. This would result in superior mining production of oil and gas enough for domestic use and export. From this case, we learn the pertinence of an efficient corporate governance model for companies in business. We also learn that a company’s success in both local and international business ope rations is largely attributed to international standards of corporate governance. We learn that businesses should be free of political interference to ensure success. Therefore, the separation of ownership and control of the main players of the oil and gas industry ensures companies are run with minimal influence from local party committees.As a business professional in 2012, it is vital to read this because the case study demonstrates to me a practical scenario of the effects on both the internal and external environments to a business.

The Reality of Work Cultures in the Modern Economy Essay

The Reality of Work Cultures in the Modern Economy - Essay Example Work culture plays a significant part in bringing the best out of workers and enabling them stay in the work place for a prolonged period. Work culture is significant as it leads to contented workers and enhanced productivity. Richard Sennett asserts that individuals’ work culture will be defined by the novel ideas of flexibility, decentralization and control, flextime, work ethics and teamwork, and change. Moreover, the stated concepts have an impact on character as articulated by commitment and loyalty and eventually lead to the lessening of personal traits and values that are attractive in society (Sennett 1999, p. 9). The modern way of working makes it extremely demanding to get a life as asserted by Sennett. He claims that the personal effects of work in the New Economy have made the individual to be disoriented due to notions such as flexibility, decentralization and control, flextime, work ethics and teamwork, and change. In the contemporary way of life, there has been a spatial modification of work activities on a universal degree, as space and geography have become significantly essential components of work, labour relations, and labour markets (Sennett 1999, p. 9). This means that workers will use most of their time trying to engage in activities that will help them adapt to new working requirements, therefore, it will be difficult for them to get a life. Nonetheless, modern way of working has enhanced connections between individuals, nations, and organizations. This has been made possible by developments in technology and has made it extremely simple to transport people, capital, and commod ities in and across regions as a rapid speed. This has also made employers, customers, and employees focus solely on work activities, and losing their individual existence, hence not getting a life. In addition, the modern way of working has liberated employers from standard spatial and temporal restrictions and facilitated them to position their work activities finely and to gain inexpensive sources of labour. Therefore, workers who provide their labour in exchange for low wages cannot have a life simply because their income cannot match their needs (Golden 2001, p. 240). Moreover, the modern way of working entails developments in communication and information technologies. These advances permit capitalists to impose restraint over spatially and decentralized distributed labour processes. Also, in the contemporary way of working, an individual has to engage in activities that will maintain and enhance their job skills. This will help them to keep up with shifting job needs. Numerou s people find it demanding to find ways of staying employable in a rapid-changing working environment in which talents become quickly out of date. Unlike employees of the early periods, modern day workers are most probable to go back to school or engage in activities that will enhance their talents as they change careers. This will make it difficult to get a life as argued by Sennett. Sennett highlights flexibility, decentralization and control, flextime, work ethics and teamwork, and change as the issues which lead to the corrosion of character. For Charles Stuart Mill flexibility signified the source of individual freedom and which continues to have an impact on our comprehension of the flexibility notion. Sennett asserts that search for flexibility has lead to the development of new structures of control

Homelessness and the Failure of the Welfare System Essay

Homelessness and the Failure of the Welfare System - Essay Example In his time on the streets, he speaks of Billy Jack, a longtime homeless person who has recently gotten out of jail after five years. For him, being homeless is a matter of pride and a sense of place. He panhandles, he drinks wine, and he waits every morning for the Sally Ann truck to come by with breakfast and clothing. He is settled in his routine. The Parkdale recreation centre in Toronto is a shelter for the homeless, but, according to Stackhouse, public opinion does not consider these people homeless. Some have mental problems; some, such as Jim, have at least a part-time job. Jim works to supplement his disability income and believes that working is a way to be healthier. What constitutes a homeless person Is it simply a matter of not have a mailing address or is it based on income Stackhouse says: When I had set out a week earlier to live homeless, I did not expect to be eating pancakes and sausage for breakfast and pastries before bed, or to earn $20 an hour simply by sitting on the ground with a cardboard sign in front of me (233). On the other side of the coin, Stackhouse goes on to mention his surprise at how much crack passes through the shelters considered representative of public goodwill. He also makes note of the fact that as he moves from one shelter to another, he is apt to see the same people, who are also moving. Some shelters are better than others, for instance in an affluent area of Toronto, Stackhouse talks with an overnight guest, who apologizes for being there and says he knows he shouldn't be. He has a truck, hauls scrap metal to dumps, and makes about $600 to $700 a week. The problems, Stackhouse has discovered, are more psychological than physical and often not related to simply shelter for the homeless. To be homeless, according to Stackhouse, is to be without a stable environment. He quotes one homeless man in this affluent shelter who says: "This is a real traditional neighborhood (comparing it with his transient existence). I bet these people never have to go anywhere" (232). Refutation of Opposing Argument It is said by some that the homeless do not have the resources, opportunities and skills they need to go back to the main society. Jack Layton, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, offers a more academic view of homelessness in his rebuttal of Stackhouse's article. But instead of looking at the specific details of Stackhouse's experience, Layton makes this a personal vendetta, ignoring the underlying implications in the reporter's series. The situations referred to by Layton are that, after one week outdoors, Stackhouse claims, according to Layton, that public resources are used by crack dealers, that beggars earn professional wages and that there is "more free food than the homeless can eat" (Layton, 235). Although Layton implies that he is quoting from the article, the phrase about free food is not even in it, which immediately weakens his argument. Layton does admit that emergency shelters alone are not the answer, but his only reference to the personal aspects of the homeless is their need for more respect. He seems to consider money and

Social context of Asian business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Social context of Asian business - Essay Example This essay argues that Japanese business behaviour is largely influenced by four major forces, namely, sense of belonging, loyalty, perfection, and time. Japanese businesses can be depicted as big clans or extended families. The fact that approximately 30% of the total number of employees of major companies acquired their jobs through their personal networks reveals the significance of personal connections and referrals before employment (Hein, 2013, 48). Usually a business organisation hires apprentices referred by a university teacher or another, or by a higher-ranking employee. Khalid Mehtabdin (1986 as cited in Alston, 2005, 1) observed that the person who brought a prospective recruit to the company usually becomes the permanent guide of that recruit and is thus answerable to his/her actions or performance throughout his/her career. The higher-ranking guide trains the new recruit to observe ‘appropriate behaviour’ (Alston, 2005, 1). Employees do not choose an employer due to the appeal of a compensation package or a particular position. Employees are requested to become part of the company in general and they are not employed for a particular group of duties. The initial period of employment are devoted to the process of discovering where the employee can most productively or efficiently be positioned and where s/he will be the most successful or beneficial for the company (Hein, 2013). Hence, employees become a part of a corporate ‘family’. Regular task rotations and OJTs enhance the employee’s abilities and reveal where s/he should be positioned in the corporation, though individual or personal reasons are taken into consideration to a certain extent (Goldman, 1994). In Japan, the person is encouraged to adjust to the group instead of the other way around. The previous head of the Idemitsu Petroleum Company, Ishida, explained this image of the business organisation as family (Alston,

Homelessness and the Failure of the Welfare System Essay

Homelessness and the Failure of the Welfare System - Essay Example In his time on the streets, he speaks of Billy Jack, a longtime homeless person who has recently gotten out of jail after five years. For him, being homeless is a matter of pride and a sense of place. He panhandles, he drinks wine, and he waits every morning for the Sally Ann truck to come by with breakfast and clothing. He is settled in his routine. The Parkdale recreation centre in Toronto is a shelter for the homeless, but, according to Stackhouse, public opinion does not consider these people homeless. Some have mental problems; some, such as Jim, have at least a part-time job. Jim works to supplement his disability income and believes that working is a way to be healthier. What constitutes a homeless person Is it simply a matter of not have a mailing address or is it based on income Stackhouse says: When I had set out a week earlier to live homeless, I did not expect to be eating pancakes and sausage for breakfast and pastries before bed, or to earn $20 an hour simply by sitting on the ground with a cardboard sign in front of me (233). On the other side of the coin, Stackhouse goes on to mention his surprise at how much crack passes through the shelters considered representative of public goodwill. He also makes note of the fact that as he moves from one shelter to another, he is apt to see the same people, who are also moving. Some shelters are better than others, for instance in an affluent area of Toronto, Stackhouse talks with an overnight guest, who apologizes for being there and says he knows he shouldn't be. He has a truck, hauls scrap metal to dumps, and makes about $600 to $700 a week. The problems, Stackhouse has discovered, are more psychological than physical and often not related to simply shelter for the homeless. To be homeless, according to Stackhouse, is to be without a stable environment. He quotes one homeless man in this affluent shelter who says: "This is a real traditional neighborhood (comparing it with his transient existence). I bet these people never have to go anywhere" (232). Refutation of Opposing Argument It is said by some that the homeless do not have the resources, opportunities and skills they need to go back to the main society. Jack Layton, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, offers a more academic view of homelessness in his rebuttal of Stackhouse's article. But instead of looking at the specific details of Stackhouse's experience, Layton makes this a personal vendetta, ignoring the underlying implications in the reporter's series. The situations referred to by Layton are that, after one week outdoors, Stackhouse claims, according to Layton, that public resources are used by crack dealers, that beggars earn professional wages and that there is "more free food than the homeless can eat" (Layton, 235). Although Layton implies that he is quoting from the article, the phrase about free food is not even in it, which immediately weakens his argument. Layton does admit that emergency shelters alone are not the answer, but his only reference to the personal aspects of the homeless is their need for more respect. He seems to consider money and

The Making of a Football Blog Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Making of a Football Blog - Essay Example The author is the one to usually generate the content of a weblog, or blog for short and simple terminology. All blogs have a home on the internet somewhere. That home could be your own website, e.g. http://yoursite.com. But, your blog’s home could also be upon a free blogging site, such as http://yoursite.wordpress.com or http://yoursite.blogspot.com. Even though you have a site for your football blog and are ready to generate content, you still must have a working knowledge of the subject matter that you are writing. For example, if you want to write about your favorite Premier League Football Club your blog could be called the United Ones, Manchester U, Manchester FC, United Biggest Fan, etc. This would not necessarily be the name of your blog to which you would write stories, articles, interviews, game recaps, boxscores, matchup previews, etc. about Manchester United or your favorite Football Club. Generated content is the main thing that is on a blog. You do need to make sure that when generating the content that not only does you have the knowledge of the material that you are presenting, that you are accurate in your spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Lastly, you also want to make sure that the content written on your blog is original and not a copy of anybody else’s work without giving them the credit they so rightfully deserve. Social Media and Blogs Social media can allow for your blog to have increased visibility to gain you more followers than you would have without the use of the social media that is available to you out on the internet. Technology allows us to get information at our fingertips instantly, and social media allows us to instantly connect with another person from anywhere in the world. Using social media, like Twitter and Facebook, in conjuncture with your blog will allow your blog to be visible in places where it might not have otherwise been seen or by people who otherwise would not go searching fo r it. Furthermore, the use of Twitter and Facebook can allow your followers to ask questions more directly and be able to give comments and advice to you about how to possibly improve your blog. Also, if you plan on using a blog with a lot of images within it, then it might be best if you had a photo streaming account with a site like Flickr. This might be useful for a blog about a football club, using images from the team in a photo gallery or highlight reels. With Twitter, you can even keep up with the game live as it is being played down upon the field. Lastly, with the social media of today, you can link one with another so if you are tweeting about the game, then your Facebook account can receive those same tweets posted directly to your wall. Podcasts Another way you can provide information on your blog to your followers is through the use of podcasts. Podcasts are essentially an audio format that is posted onto the web in either QuickTime, WAV, or even Flash formats. These po dcasts can be downloaded and listened to upon an MP3 player for further listening pleasure. With this feature, you can place upon your blog a recorded interview you did with Manchester United’s star, David Beckham about the upcoming match with Wolverhampton about how he feels his club lines up with Wolverhampton.  

Adidas Marketing Plan Essay Example for Free

Adidas Marketing Plan Essay The acquisition of Adidas by French financier Robert Louis-Dreyfus in 1993 has been the beginning of a big brand name; Adidas has expanded its product line and absorbed other sports-gear makers. It closed a $3. 8 billion acquisition of competitor Reebok International Ltd. Adidas planned maintain the Reebok line and promote it globally along side with the Adidas brand. Adidas during 2006 made a decision to purchase Reebok and though they purchase another shoe company business did not flourish. Adidas had to deal with the fact that the company they acquired was not doing well in the market and a new marketing promotion plan needed to take place to reinvigorate the consumer’s purchase of the product. Adidas has to strengthen there brand and the idea was to build the brand name with sponsorship during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The sponsorship opportunity in Beijing was a springboard to gain a larger share of the worlds fastest-growing major market and become the marketing leader in China during 2008. The marketing strategy was a blend of action photography and computer graphics. The series was released in phases during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. â€Å"Together in 2008, Impossible is Nothing† is an integrated marketing campaign. Through a combination of TV, print, outdoor, PR, digital, point-of-sale and road shows across the country of China, the campaign provides various platforms enabling consumers to get closer to the athletes and the Olympic Games. The Beijing Olympics is fast approaching and this early, most companies who want to place their ads and endorsements in this monumental event are trying strategically to place themselves and capture a piece of the market. For Adidas, there is a battle at hand and that of which is to give rival company Nike a run for their money. Nike is a known brand in China and surely they have the obvious advantage. Adidas reportedly shelled out 70 million Euros to be an official Olympic sponsor. Adidas gear was also all over Olympians, great for television, the company clothed 27 out of 28 teams. But aside from shoes and uniforms, Adidas was not particularly visible in Olympic venues. It had no special presence on the Olympic Green, but its beautiful flagship store in Sanlitun near the Workers Stadium and Workers Gymnasium saw lots of foot traffic. Its Olympic ad campaign, though beautifully designed and fitting in concept â€Å"Together in 2008, Impossible is Nothing†, came up short in the personnel categories. That campaign had four primary faces, in sports that are very popular in Chinadiver Hu Jia, footballer Zheng Zhi, basketball player Sui Feifei and a few womens volleyball players. Hu pulled out due to injury, Zheng and the mens football team had an embarrassing performance and Sui Feifei was only sixth in scoring on Team China. The womens volleyball team played strong in a very tough field, but in the end only came through with the minimum result acceptable to the hometown fans, a bronze medal. After the Olympics the sales of sports apparel went up in China, sales of premium sportswear in China have rocketed from almost zero a little more than a decade ago to $350 million for Nike and $300 million for Adidas last year and sector was worth $3 billion in total last year and is expected to grow 20 percent in 2009. 09.

The Biography of Bob Marley Essay example -- Bob Marley Music Biograph

"I love the development of our music, that's what I really dig about the whole thing. How we've tried to develop, y'know? It grows. That's why every day people come forward with new songs. Music goes on forever." --Bob Marley, August 1979 We remember the brilliant and evocative music Bob Marley gave the world; music that stretches back over nearly two decades and still remains timeless and universal. Marley has been called "the first Third World superstar," "Rasta Prophet," "visionary," and" "revolutionary artist." These accolades were not mere hyperbole. Marley was one of the most charismatic and challenging performers of our time. Bob Marley's career stretched back over twenty years. During that time Marley's growing style encompassed every aspect in the rise of Jamaican music, from ska to contemporary reggae. That growth was well reflected in the maturity of the Wailers' music. Bob's first recording attempts came at the beginning of the Sixties. His first two tunes, cut as a solo artist, meant nothing in commercial terms and it wasn't until 1964, as a founding member of a group called the Wailing Wailers, that Bob first hit the Jamaican charts. The record was "Simmer Down," and over the next few years the Wailing Wailers -- Bob, Peter Mclntosh and Bunny Livingston, the nucleus of the group -- put out some 30 sides that properly established them as one of the hottest groups in Jamaica. Mclntosh later shortened his surname to Tosh while Livingston is now called Bunny Wailer. Despite their popularity, the economics of keeping the group together proved too much and the two other members, Junior Braithwaite and Beverley Kelso, left the group. At the same time Bob joined his mother in the United States. This marked the en... ...der for the following winter. At the end of the European tour, Bob Marley & The Wailers went to America. Bob played two shows at Madison Square Garden but, immediately afterwards he was seriously ill. Cancer was diagnosed. Marley fought the disease for eight months. The battle, however, proved to be too much. He died in a Miami Hospital on May 11,1981. A month before the end Bob was awarded Jamaica's Order of Merit, the nations' third highest honor, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the country's culture. On Thursday, May 23,1981, the Honorable Robert Nesta Marley was given an official funeral by the people of Jamaica. Following the funeral -- attended by both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition -- Bob's body was taken to his birthplace where it now rests in a mausoleum. Bob Marley was 36 years old. His legend lives on.

THEME ON EMILY DICKINSON :: essays research papers

Poems of Emily Dickinson Thesis of my paper that I am trying to prove to the reader is that Emily Dickinson is a brilliant extraordinary writer. She talks about mortality and death within her life and on paper in her poem works. Although she lived a seemingly secluded life, Emily Dickinson's many encounters with death influenced many of her poems and letters. Perhaps one of the most ground breaking and inventive poets in American history, Dickinson has become as well known for her bizarre and eccentric life as for her incredible poems and letters. Numbering over 1,700, her poems highlight the many moments in a 19th century New England woman's life, including the deaths of some of her most beloved friends and family, most of which occurred in a short period of time (Introduction, Paragraph 2). In many short poems, several readers or critics of Dickinson point out her methods of exploring several topics in "circumference," as she says in her own words. Death is perhaps one of the best examples of this exploration and examination. Other than one trip to Washington and Philadelphia, several excursions to Boston to see a doctor and a few short years in school, Dickinson never left her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. In the latter part of her life she rarely left her large brick house, and communicated even to her beloved sister through a door often left "slightly ajar." This seclusion gave her a reputation for eccentricity to the local towns' people, and perhaps increased her interest in death (The Belle Of Amherst, Dickinson). Some knew Dickinson in Amherst as, "the New England mystic,". Her only contact to her few friends and correspondents was through a series of letters, seen as some authors and critics to be equal not only in number to her poetic works, but in literary genius as well (Introduction Dickinson). Explored thoroughly in her works, death seems to be a dominating theme through out Dickinson's life. Dickinson, although secluded and isolated, had a few encounters with love; two perhaps serious affairs were documented in her letters and poems. But, since Dickinson's life was so private the exact identity of these people remains unsure. What is known, is during the Civil War, worried for her friends and families' lives, death increased in frequency to be a dominant theme in her writings. After 1878, the year of her influential father's death, (a treasurer of Amherst College, and a member of the Congress), this theme increased with each passing of friend or family, peaking perhaps with the death of the two men she loved (The Belle of Amherst, Dickinson).

An unsuccessful learning experience

My unsuccessful learning experience was when I was 16 and starting my Maths A level. We had 2 teachers who split the course material between them, one taking pure maths and the other applied maths. The teacher in charge of the pure maths, which had enjoyed up to A level and received an A for (in the days before A* existed, so top marks in other words), was a young man who had just qualified from his PGCE and came to teach us A level maths.The main problem wasn't the teacher's age, I'm sure plenty of young teachers are very capable, the issue was more that he didn't have the self confidence to stand up to the more lively characters in the class. He didn't know how to respond when a pupil would try and disrupt the class by talking about something irrelevant, like last nights television, therefore that pupil would carry on talking and valuable lesson time would be wasted. Even when he did ask people to be quiet a fair amount of disruption had already been made.The other issue was that h e didn't know his subject, in this case pure maths, well enough. I remember clearly one day the entire class followed him working out a complicated equation, writing down his calculations as we went along. After using up two blackboards worth of calculations he came to his answer, only for one of the pupils to check the answers in the back of out text book and announce it was the wrong answer. By then he had erased half of his calculation and he couldn't go back to see where he had made a mistake.It wasn't the only time his calculations were wrong or he was unsure of his subject, which made the pupils very nervous. The short term result was that my class was time-tabled extra maths lessons to try to cover for this teacher's lack of covering his subject, with the other maths teacher working longer lesson hours to try to get us through the exam. The longer term result was that the Pure maths results for that year were far lower than expected and the teacher was moved down to teaching 11-12 year olds maths.

A Peculiar Person I Met

A peculiar person I met â€Å"Humble beginnings seldom pay†- When I was traveling to Mumbai from Vadodara by train during last summer vacation along with my parents, met one young man who was sitting opposite to my seat. He was looking good and obviously confident also. After passing few minutes he asked about me and thus started our interaction. He was none other than Mr. Sarath Babu, who is known as a â€Å"mealion†boy. As mentioned in starting, â€Å"Humble beginnings seldom pay†. But E Sarath Babu will not buy that. For this 28-year-old, rags-to-riches are not just another adage.It’s his very foundation of success. From a slum in Chennai to the top echelons of academia with an enrolment in chemical engineering at BITS Pilani and IIM-A, and now as the steward of his Food King Catering business, Sarath has come a long way. His humility perhaps made him reject several high-brow offers from MNCs after his MBA. That, in a way, was the genesis of Food King C atering—with paltry Rs 2,000 seed money. I was really impressed by his politeness; simplicity and clarity about his way carry forward in life.He told me that today, his food business spans six locations with a Rs. 9-crore turnover and have a plan to increase the same to Rs. 20-crore by end of the year. For Sarath, his mother, who once sold idlis on the pavements of Chennai and worked as an ayah, is a pillar of strength. â€Å"Her sacrifice eggs me on†, says Sarath. Apart from bringing up four children, Sarath’s mother worked as a cook for the mid-day meal scheme for 11 years and got paid just a rupee each day. He was really struggled during his study period and only source of income was his mother’s income.He was well aware that he should do very well in his studies and get sufficient income for him as well his family. He studied hard and completed his engineering and further MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. It was the real example of success which is over coming inadequate resources. I remember that often we used to misuse the facilities we are having and complain about silly things. We have good house to reside, good cloths to wear, bycicle to ply to school and tuition and pocket money whenever demanded. Still not satisfied!!.Now I am sure that how much high the level of struggle you have in life, your progress also will be very high in life, and the same will make a strong foundation of your future life and guide you towards positive growth. Mr. Sarat still remembering that as his mother’s income was insufficient, she mom sought refuge in the food business to supplement her meager income. As she rolled dough in the form of idlis, dosas, bhajjis and appams, it was Sarath’s job to sell them in the neighbourhood. â€Å"For kids living in a slum, idlis for breakfast is something very special,† says Sarath even to this day.A natural entrant to the food business with acquired acumen in childhood, Sarath has trained his sigh t higher. From the current 250 people, he’s aiming to recruit 2,000 people by next year, â€Å"and probably, 5,000 in the next two years†. This shows his vision, mission and planning accordingly. In everybody’s life all should have a clarity that what should do and where we will stand after certain period. That is first set your goal, plan accordingly and act immediate. This will surely ensure your success.Initially, his catering business, with two units in Ahmedabad, was Rs 2,000-per -day in the loss. â€Å"But I burnt the midnight oil literally to get a solution,† Sarath told me. It’s worth a mention here that Sarath spent most of his childhood in the dark, without electricity. He focused on volumes rather than simple servings, and started taking contracts from institutions and companies. Please remember that if you want to grow think big and do big. To bag an order, Sarath even slept on the platform of Mumbai’s railway station. â€Å"Tha t’s one of my finest nights I’ve ever had,† Sarath reminisces.Today, Food King is targeting 100 clients, including 50 top institutions and 50 corporates for the snacks business — South Indian, North Indian and Chinese food. Food business is not just about selling but also taking care of quality and the people associated with it, Sarath points out. He now envisions FoodKing’s Palace (food malls) across cities where all kinds of Indian food would be served at â€Å"economical rates†. And how does he manage his team? â€Å"I ask them to write their dreams on a piece of paper and advise them to think of developing themselves,† says Sarath.As mentioned before, think big, plan and act. You are the best judge of you, not any one else. Make clear strategy and homework before getting in to anything in life. The will boost your morale and confidence level. I was indeed impressing upon how he is taking advantage of reverse situations also. Is he really worried about inflation or price-rise in food products? When most of the restaurants have increased their prices, Sarath sees an opportunity to serve at a cheaper price. â€Å"Sourcing from one place makes a lot of difference.I will tap this opportunity,† says Sarath. Today, he drives a Chevrolet to take his mother for a ride to oversee his business units in Chennai. â€Å"Next, I want to build a house for my mother,† says Sarath. Remember- don’t panic on when adverse situations happens in life, treat it as an opportunity and learn to convert the same in to success. I still remember this peculiar person I met during my journey which has really improved my thought process and given me a clear cut clarity how to think, plan and act on the things we want to do in life.

Reflection of Being Catholic

People who are raised Catholic, would know what I mean when I say most parents of newborns will have their babies baptized into the faith very young, probably within the first 6 months after birth. I was a late bloomer. When I was 6 years old, my grandparents gained full custody of me, and being that my mother had never done anything to introduce me into the family's religion, my grandparents did not waste any time in having me baptized. Being that I was not baptized until I was six, I immediately had to take Sunday school classes for my First Reconciliation and my First Holy Communion.When I was in second grade I was already altar server, which was not an opportunity for kids until they were in fifth grade. Grade school kids who were altar servers helped with simple duties during mass such as processing in with candles, holding the prayer book for the priest to read from, etc. As a kid, I placed a lot of importance on my faith; it was really all I had. My mother was a drug addict an d had left me alone worrying about what she was doing days at a time, so then my grandparents came to my rescue. With all the misfortunes in my life, religion was a means of hope and happiness.By third grade, my grandparents had me attend to St. Hughes, a Catholic school. I was saying my prayers at night, something that most kids probably would not have time for. As I continued to grow and mature, it was only typical that I encountered such problems as being out casted amongst students in class, and heartbreaks over boys throughout high school. I usually turned to prayer for relief and comfort. As life in general continued to get me down and bring me heartache, I came to the realization that perhaps there was not a God, or if there was, I had no idea how my prayers and church-going would help me.By the time I was a junior, I had stopped going to church (except for when there was holiday mass. ) I considered myself uncertain at this point. I had gone from church going altar server wh o said their daily prayers to someone who, dared to pray at all, I was screaming curses at God, blaming him for all the misery in my life. After high school, I immediately moved out of my grandparents place. I then decided to move in with my boyfriend and we then split three months later, due to him cheating when we were engaged to be married. I was so heart broken and confused.I saw everything I earned and worked for in my relationship was all for nothing. I went through a party girl phrase for a while with my good friend Desiree, after she found her fiance had killed himself, we just kept partying and hanging out with a crowd of bad people who did drugs and who did not care about their life. I was at a different point in my life; I felt I could see things more clearly and more for what they are. My grandmother has always offered me advice and still does to this day, but always with some â€Å"Catholic† twist to it.If life got me down, or if I was going through a rough patch , my grandmother encouraged me to pray and believe in Jesus. Though listening to her advice never felt it would do me any good. There were moments of thinking God was punishing me for not being true to my faith and for the choices I was making. Today, I have changed in a lot of ways. I did move back in with my grandparents for a few more years, which was quite helpful for me to get back on my feet. I met the most amazing man of my life, who I will be marrying in 2014. I took another chance and I moved out again and I now leave in Lansdale with my fiance.I have a chance to be a step parent to two beautiful girls and show them that there are always choices in life that you will have to make that you believe are right. I do not party anymore, but I do have some concerns for my girlfriend Desiree who still does it and has a 4 year old daughter at home, but I do the best that I can to be a friend and convince her that there is more to life then partying, especially with having a child ho me wondering when you will be home. I do follow some of my catholic traditions I do pray here and there to God for help in certain things like good grades, better job opportunities, and of course, health.I have not attended church still for a long time unless it is a wedding or a funeral. I believe that God puts obstacles in front of us that he knows we are able to handle. I still believe that God works in mysterious ways. I have convinced myself that there is karma. I believe in what comes around goes around and I state this because I recently heard my ex-fiance has been hit with money problems, which was something he left me with when we decided to get a home together and I took out a loan to put a down payment for a home, which made me glad he will feel the stress I felt with paying back so much in a short time.I went through so much in my life that I did believe God was mad at me because I stopped praying to him or not attending church anymore, which made me think he was punishi ng me for all the wrong doing and hate I had towards others. I know now that I can make things turn around for the better. The past only makes you look forward to what the future has in stored for you, only you can make what you believe are the right decisions in your life either with faith or without. What happens in your past makes you stronger for the future is what I believe.