Public Administration and Analytical Observations on the works of T Research Paper

Public Administration and Analytical Observations on the works of T. J. Lowi - Research Paper Example The Entrepreneurial Republicans were the ones that celebrated the free enterprise system and sought reduction, even elimination, of taxes and government regulations. The Evangelical Republicans perceived a shocking social decay and hunger around them for the return of a moral community made its basis on Christian certitude. The Eurocentric Republicans feared cultural relativism in their institutions through the mixing of racial minorities and illegal aliens in their midst, along with loss of jobs in the new global economy. This alliance was significantly white and male dominated in its composition, and has set the tone of the contemporary political debate in the United States. Theodore J. Lowi examines the nature of this coalition and its internal contradictions in his school of thought, and writings. In doing so, Lowi traces the foundation and potential demise of both the current Republican majority and Republican government in the United States. In â€Å"The End of the Republican Era†, Theodore J. Lowi predicts not only a collapse of the Republican coalition but also the potential collapse of the United States' republican experiment at large. Professing that the ideologies of dominant political coalitions contain the seeds of their own destruction, Lowi suggests that the efforts of a new conservative Right to enforce a national, religion-based morality has brought about the demise of the Republican era. Section ii: The life of Theodore J. Lowi Theodore J. Lowi, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University, is a highly acclaimed political scientist and an expert on the American presidency. He was the former President of the American Political Science Association (1998). He is currently first vice president of the International Political Science Association and a member of its research committee on world pluralism and minority representation. Lowi’s works are primarily ideological exegesis. He has written numerous bo oks, including â€Å"The End of Liberalism,† â€Å"The End of the Republican Era,† â€Å"Democrats Return to Power: Politics and Policy in the Clinton Era,† and â€Å"The Pursuit of Justice,† which was co-authored with Robert F. Kennedy. Section iii: Analyze and discuss scholar’s work/Summary of Lowi’s Reasoning and Argument The main argument of Lowi stood that â€Å"Interest-group liberalism† fights against democracy and good government, thus taking away its authoritativeness. Lowi believed that such liberalism corrupted the democratic government by treating all values as equivalent interests. By confusing expectations about democratic institutions, it rendered these institutions impotent. Additionally, it rusted the government’s abilities by multiplication in the number of available plans, but no addressing towards their implementation. According to Lowi, â€Å"Interest-group liberalism† demoralizes government because without a value-system, it is unable achieve justice, which is then obviously not an issue for discussion. It decreases the necessary importance of formal procedures and rules, thus allowing too much informal bargaining. Lowi, in fact, argues against Truman that â€Å"Interest-group liberalism† fails because it neither tries to, nor can recognize the greater national interests. Theodore J. Lowi’s Overview on Liberalism Lowi illustrates the ideological

Philosophy of Teaching Essay Example for Free

Philosophy of Teaching Essay I consider my ultimate strength that I bring to the classroom is the desire and eagerness that I have for teaching children. A dynamic part of being a teacher is to motivate the students to know that the skills and information they are learning is worth learning and are valuable lessons to be used in the future. If I can convince the children that the material is enjoyable, powerful, and beneficial then they will want to make the effort to learn. I make it a significance priority to convey drive and enthusiasm to the classroom. It is difficult to learn if you are uninterested and almost not difficult to learn if the learning method is enjoyable and appealing. Additionally it is imperative for the students to appreciate why they are learning and what the importance of learning is. My objectives for teaching in the classroom are limited but crucial ones. I want my students to learn the materials taught in an extensive, everlasting way. I want them to apply the thoughts of these ideas to all subject material taught. I will use the means that I have learned and continue to learn to get the maximum learning potential of my students as a whole. Secondly, I inspire to transform lives so that they determine life paths that have not ever been reflected on before. Reassurance is important and I aim to be their biggest fan. Thirdly, I want to reinvent the practice of teaching. Often teaching is regarded as an art, an uqualifiable expertise, to be practiced and understood by each new generation of teachers. By familiarizing new concepts and practices the doors are exposed to tangible advancement to permit us to learn new and more effective ways of using classroom time, so that the succeeding generation of teachers can be sincerely better and more effective in teaching then even we are today in the world of modernisms and increased use of technology. I don’t always know the greatest ways to teach but I am willing to try different approaches until I reach a place where I know what I am doing will effect upcoming generations of students and educators. Lastly, and most selfishly I want to have an exciting journey and make the classroom a fun and exciting place to learn. I delight in the opportunity of getting to know my students and their families and develop strong lasting relationships that can be seen years down the road. There are great joys of becoming a teacher and knowing that you impact lives each and every day. Our students learn when they are energetically figuring things out, trying to teach themselves, not inactively wandering through busy work and handouts, expecting to be taught. I design my lesson plans and classroom material not around what I do but what the students will do. I let them take command of their own education and to teach them as much as imaginable about the realm around us.

Muse or Method? :: Personal Narrative Teaching Education Essays

Muse or Method? My eyes cast a casual glance towards the clock across the room as I sit back down at my desk. With caffeine reinforcements at hand, namely the signature red, white, and blue can of Diet Pepsi I just pulled from the fridge, I quickly put away the mound of books that has grown since I came in the room at 4:00. After making a hasty mental check to reassure myself I am prepared for the next day of class, I review my lesson plans one last time, sit back, relax, and ponder just exactly how I plan to go about grading the thirty essays tucked away neatly in my folder. Despite the method's classes and all of the other education courses I had taken at college, I felt ill-prepared for what lie ahead. "What's worse than writing a paper," I asked myself, only to answer quite obviously, "Grading one." I must admit that it took me quite a while to realize why this concept was such a difficult one for me. Not only was I working with a group of thirty creative young minds, I was also working with a group of rather insecure young minds, especially when it came to writing. How could I effectively evaluate each individual paper and constructively provide advice without dictating what I expected my papers to contain? Still, this was only part of the difficulty. The other is something I am just starting to understand now. In trying to formulate a basis from which I could evaluate these student papers, I was also struggling to unsurface the components of successful writing. Unbeknownst to me, I was wrestling with the same ideas that we have been discussing in class during the last couple of weeks. Interestingly enough, I found that my approach toward the subject was similar to our approach as a class. How did I begin? I started by determining which elements of writing I considered to be the most important and basic: creativity and technique. Through the centuries, many writers have attributed their success to the adoring eye and gracious blessings of the muses. The nine muses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, were recognized as the Goddesses of learning. As a result of their titles, these muses were often credited with spontaneously generating a frenzy of creativity within a writer which resulted in a monumental piece of literature. Although reference and credit to the muses is not often made within contemporary literature, the idea remains.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Modern Warfare :: essays research papers

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Modern Warfare It is well known that throughout history man's favourite past time has been to make war. It has always been recognised that the opponent with the better weapons usually came out victorious. Nowadays, there is an increasing dependency, by the more developed nations, on what are called smart weapons and on the development of these weapons. The social impact of AI on warfare is something which needs to be considered very carefully for it raises many ethical and moral issues and arguments. The use of smart weapons raises many questions on the price paid to develop these weapons; money which could be used to solve most of the world's social problems such as poverty, hunger, etc. Another issue is the safety involved in the use of these weapons. Can we really make a weapon that does everything on its own without human help and are these weapons a threat to civilians? The main goal of this essay is to discuss whether it is justifiable to use AI in warfare and to what extent. The old time dream of making war bloodless by science is finally becoming a reality. The strongest man will not win, but the one with the best machines will. Modernising the weapons used in war has been an issue since the beginning. Nowadays, the military has spent billions of dollars perfecting stealth technology to allow planes to slip past enemy lines undetected. The technology involved in a complicated system such as these fighter planes is immense. The older planes are packed with high tech gear such as micro processors, laser guiding devices, electromagnetic jammers and infrared sensors. With newer planes, the airforce is experimenting with a virtual reality helmet that projects a cartoon like image of the battlefield for the pilot, with flashing symbols for enemy planes. What is more, if a pilot passes out for various reasons such as the "G" force from a tight turn, then a computer system can automatically take over while the pilot is disabled. A recent example of the use of Al in warfare is the Gulf War. In operation Desert Storm, many weapons such as 'smart' Bombs were used. These were highly complex systems which used superior guidance capabilities but they did not contain any expert systems or neural networks. The development of weapons which use highly complex systems has drastically reduced the number of human casualties in wartime. The bloodshed is minimised because of the accuracy of the computer systems used. This has been an advantage that has brought a lot of praise to the development of such sophisticated (not

Knowledge and bias

Today in history and science there is a lot of different bias that can be seen through everyday life. The question that I am trying to answer is if we can obtain knowledge despite bias and selection in history and science. There are three mall types of bias that we can see In today's world, firstly there Is cultural bias which has to do with blabs relating to culture, religion and personal practices and then there Is confirmation bias which is when someone is trying to prove a point and ignores all evidence which old contradict him.Both these types of bias can be found in history, however also in science there is the second type of bias when a scientist has an hypothesis and does experiments, selecting data which proves his idea. Despite what people say about selection, it is proven that selection helps us cut down all the knowledge that we obtained, otherwise there would be too much to analyze and Interpret at the same time. If all the huge amounts of knowledge were to be used there would be too much and it would defer us from the truth. Body:Both history and science since the beginning of time have contributed to help us a lot to develop both socially, economically and politically. History has taught us about the past and what must not be repeated in the future. Science on the other hand has managed to explain the way the world works and show us new technologies that have helped us for many years. However in both Science and history there will still always be someone that will contradict another person's point of view. It is for these many reasons that bias and selection are constantly present in our world today.In story there Is bias through deferent interpretations of documents and sources and In Science there Is selection when a scientist follows one specific method and doesn't History today, as I said before, is often based on cultural bias which can mostly be seen through political, religious and moral views that may contradict each other. When Historian s write new interpretations on history they do not all have the same cultural background or the same sources, so in general they all have different points of views that will obviously not be agreed on.In science we may question some experiments as we do not know if the scientist used the best possible method nor do we know if he used the best materials and variables to conduct his experiment and find the best possible result in the end. History is the study of evidence we have of the past and it is based on human affairs. However history has always been passed on from generation to generation by documents and recording.But when we think about this idea we may feel that the information that is passed from generation to generation cannot be totally reliable as we do not know for certain if the truth is ally stated in the documents or if the person who wrote the account Just wanted to censor the information to hide personal facts about certain events. History without bias and selection is hard to find as sources are already based on a certain point of view and we can only observe what that particular person believes.It is for this reason that so many books have been written in history as if there was no bias or selection we could Just write one big book with the same point of view. The bias in history can be double because we have the point of view of the witness and then the as of the historian. The worst about this idea is that it can really distort the facts so that we don't know what to believe. When referring to selection in history, it all depends on the historians analyzing different sources, he may have national or cultural bias that influenced his understanding.Some historians might believe one point of view whereas another one may believe the opposite. Selection is history is inevitable and a lot depends on what the historian has learnt in his life before he chooses the best possible sources. As for example if a historian learnt since the ginning of his life that communism was the best economic system, he will base his knowledge on what he has known for his whole life and be very critical of capitalism. How can we trust sources that we are not sure they are giving us real facts?In history there have always been hidden documents and hidden agendas in order to keep a country under control. On the other hand there is an argument that states that knowledge in history can be obtain despite bias and selection because history is about people and so if we know about their point of view, we know more about why wings happened and hoe people felt at that time. This is important but we have to be careful and try our best to find sources that show both sides of the information researched, it also important to know the cultural bias of a historian before we believe totally what he says.If we look at science today it has helped us a lot in the world as it has developed technology which has made our lives a lot easier. When referring to selection in science we notice that each time a new experiment is conducted the results may change a little. It is for that reason that scientist use specific methods, variables and materials in order to get almost the same results each time. It is in this idea that we see selection as scientists are forced to choose specific methods, variables and materials.But how can the scientist know that the methods he is using are the most efficient ones? In science topic bias can be seen as money from research. For example in Science the holes in the ozone layer have been a trend for many years in which scientists have told the people of the world to use more renewable energy. But how can we be sure that using renewable energy will really help us? Science is constantly changing due to new technologies that make experiments less selective and give a less biased point of view.It is in this idea that we can say that technology is the key to developing science and being more sure of the knowledge we get from it. For example a scientist from European background may have different interpretations of results in comparison with the scientist from Saudi Arabia due to their religious beliefs and cultural background. Conclusion: In conclusion I believe that science and history are both very important in human development and I believe that even with bias and selection we are able to attain knowledge..I believe that in history bias and selection cannot be ignored, and that they are a very important part of understanding the human and emotional side of what happened. However in science bias and selection will decrease when more technologies are developed in order to decrease this bias and selection, which will let scientists, conduct their experiments, and repeat them systematically to show they are free of bias.

Astronomy Homework †Question and Answers

Astronomy Homework – Question and Answers Free Online Research Papers Astronomy Homework Question and Answers #1.What is comparative planetology? What is its basic premise? What are its basic primary goals? Comparative planetology is an approach to the study of different worlds in a solar system. The basic premise of it is that all bodies in our solar system are formed at about the same time from the same cloud of interstellar gas and dust, and in accord with the same physical laws. Therefore, we can study the word by comparing them with one another. By studying comparative planetology, we can begin to understand much more about the modern theory of formation that explains much of what we see. #8. Distinguish between metals, rocks, hydrogen compounds, and light gases in terms of condensation temperatures and relative abundances in the solar nebula. Metals include iron, nickel, aluminium, and other metals that are found on Earth. They are the least commen material, making up about .2%, and the typical condensation is between 1000-1600 K. Rocks are the materials usually found on the surface of the Earth, mostly silicon based minerals. Rocks typically melt and vaporize between 500-1300 K, and make up about .4% of the nebula’s mass. Hydrogen compounds are molecules including methane, ammonia, and water that are solidified into ices below 150 K. Hydrogen compounds make up a considerably larger mass of the nebula, about 1.4%. Light gases such as Hydrogen and Helium never condense under solar temperatures, and make up the remaining 98% of the nebula’s mass. #15. What clues suggest that a planetary satellite was captured instead of forming with its planet? Several unusual moon’s including Phobos and Deimos, are said to be captured asteroids instead of moons that formed when the planet did. Several reasons why is because they have ‘unusual’ orbits- they orbit opposite the rotation of their planet. Also, they do resemble asteroids, and are darker and lower in density then Mars. Problems #4. A solar system has 12 planets that all orbit the star in the same direction and in nearly the same plane. The 15 largest moons in this solar system orbit their planets in nearly the same plane as well. However, several smaller moons have highly inclined orbits around their planets. This would not be an uncommon solar system to find except for one fact. Most planets and moons do indeed lie in the same plane, and orbit in the same direction. However, It would be highly unusual to find moons with a high inclination of their orbits- all moons always lie on the same plane as the other moons. #9. Explain in terms a friend or roommate would understandable why the jovian planets are lower in density then the terrestrial planets even though they all formed from the same cloud. The reason that the Jovian planets are less dense is that they are made from less dense materials- the light gases and hydrogen compounds that make up the nebula. The other materials, Rocks and metals, make up the smaller terran planets, and because solids are denser then gases, the terrestrial planets are more dense. All planets are formed from the same cloud, but the four different materials in it do not have to be present in all the same amounts. Research Papers on Astronomy Homework - Question and AnswersRiordan Manufacturing Production PlanStandardized TestingAnalysis Of A Cosmetics AdvertisementResearch Process Part OneDefinition of Export QuotasBionic Assembly System: A New Concept of SelfMind TravelComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoThe Fifth HorsemanEffects of Television Violence on Children

Careers in Therapy - Beyond the Clinical Psychology PhD

Careers in Therapy - Beyond the Clinical Psychology PhD Many undergraduate psychology majors at least briefly consider careers as therapists, often citing their desire to work with people and help others. Television and other forms of media most commonly portray clinical psychologists as therapists. Therefore many aspiring therapists wonder whether a doctoral degree in clinical psychology is for them. Perhaps but there are there are several masters degrees that offer the opportunity to work with others and conduct therapy. Here are a few. PhD in Clinical Psychology and Counseling PsychologyThe PhD is the most common doctoral degree among psychologists. The label psychologist is a protected term. A doctoral degree in psychology is required to call oneself a psychologist. Clinical and counseling psychology are the two traditional areas of practice in psychology. Clinical psychology studies pathology and disease whereas counseling psychology emphasize normative processes and aiding in adjustment issues. PhD programs in clinical and counseling psychology fall into two basic training models. The scientist model trains graduates to be research scientists and have careers in academic and research settings. Graduate programs that adopt the scientist practitioner model train students in both science and practice. Students learn how to design and conduct research, but they also learn how to apply research findings and practice as psychologists. Graduates obtain careers in academia and practice, including colleges, hospitals, mental health settings, and private practice. PhD degrees in clinical psychology and counseling psychology require a dissertation in addition to practice hours and an internship. Additional practice hours and licensure is required to practice. Clinical and counseling PhD programs are among the most competitive graduate programs in all fields for both admission and for internship sites. A PhD in clinical or counseling psychology, however, is not the only path to a career as a therapist. If your desire is to practice and have no intention of conducting research, you might consider a PsyD degree instead of a PhD. Alternative: PsyD in Clinical or Counseling PsychologyThe PsyD is a doctoral degree, developed in the early 1970s. As a doctoral degree, the PsyD permits graduates to use the title of psychologist. In contrast to the scientist and scientist practitioner models of PhD programs, the PsyD is a professional doctoral degree that trains students for clinical practice. Students learn how to understand and apply scholarly findings to practice. They are trained to be consumers of research. Graduates work in practice settings in hospitals, mental health facilities, and private practice. Given that PsyD students are not trained to conduct research, their dissertations tend to consist of lengthy literature reviews and to be applied in nature. Usually this requires less time than completing a PhD. PsyD students complete pre and post degree mandatory practice hours and are eligible for licensure. Generally speaking, PsyD degrees are more expensive than PhD degrees. Graduates generally have a significant amount of debt. There are other degree alternatives that permit entry to a career as a therapist that are less time consuming and expensive. Masters Degree in Counseling (MA)A masters degree in a counseling field, such as community counseling or mental health counseling, entails completing both academic and practice requirements. students complete 2 years (on average) of academic coursework including theories of therapy, assessment and diagnosis, and therapeutic techniques. In addition students complete supervised practice hours as part of their degree. After completing their degree they complete several hundred additional hours of supervised therapy in order to be eligible to seek certification to practice therapy independently. Every state has a different set of requirements for practice with regard to supervised hours and whether an exam is required Masters degree holders who are certified to practice may work in traditional therapeutic settings such as hospitals and mental health centers or may practice independently. Masters in Family Therapy (MFT)Similar to the MA in counseling, the masters in family therapy consists of about 2 years of academic coursework and practice. MFT students specialize in marital therapy, child therapy, and strengthening the family. After graduation they seek additional supervised practice hours and licensure as a marriage and family therapist with the ability to practice independently Masters in Social Work (MSW) Like the MA in counseling and the MFT, the master of social work degree is a 2-3 year degree that includes both academic and practice requirements. MSW students are trained in assessment, therapeutic techniques, and assisting families functioning. After completing a specified number of supervised practice graduates can seek certification to practice social work independently. As you can see there are several opportunities for students whoa re interested in careers as therapists. If you are considering such a career, do your homework and learn about each of these degrees to determine what is right for you.

How to Boost Engagement with Micro-Influencers the Right Way

How to Boost Engagement with Micro-Influencers the Right Way Every brand strives to drive engagement because without engagement, there may be no conversions. This makes your engagement rates an important metric for determining your brand’s performance. But if you’re having some trouble engaging your target audience, you could get micro-influencers involved. That’s because micro-influencers tend to generate high engagement rates, and may even be more engaging  than top influencers. In this post, you’re going to learn all about these micro-influencers, and how you can work with them to drive engagement. Download Your Free Micro-influencer Outreach Templates Successful marketing with micro-influencers requires smart preparartion and outreach. Use these three free templates to simplify the process: 10 free influencer email outreach templates: Save time writing while keeping your outreach personalized and effective. Micro-influencer marketing checklist: Make sure you dont miss any steps in your process. Micro-influencer outreach tracking template: Keep track of who youve contacted and monitor your success rate. How to Boost Engagement with Micro-Influencers the Right WayWhat are Micro-Influencers? As their name suggests, micro-influencers are individuals who are influential, but not on a macro level. Their influence is often concentrated within a specific niche – be it beauty, fitness, tech, fashion, or lifestyle. The common definition of micro-influencers is influencers with a smaller number of followers than regular influencers. But there is no exact definition of what that number is. Mavrck  considers individuals with somewhere between 500 and 5,000 followers as micro-influencers. And CNBC  reports that micro-influencers are those influencers who have fewer than 10,000 followers. But according to TapInfluence, micro-influencers have anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 followers. Despite these variations, what remains true is that micro-influencers have the ability to engage an audience. Micro-influencers have the ability to engage an audience.In fact, a Takumi  study found that engagement rate decreases as following size increases. People with 1,000 followers or fewer have an engagement rate of 9.7%. And the engagement rate of people with 1,000-4,000 followers is about 4.5%. And as the following size increases to 100,000 and over, the engagement rate drops to 1.7%. These findings are consistent with the findings in a Markerly  study. This study found that people with 1,000 followers or fewer have an average like rate of 8%, while those with 10 million followers or more generate only have about a 1.6% like rate. As for comment rate, those with 1,000 followers or fewer drive 13 times more comments than people with 10 million or more followers. How to Find Micro-Influencers in Your Industry or Niche As mentioned earlier, micro-influencers often have influence in a specific niche. So the right choice of relevant keywords could help you discover potential micro-influencers to work with. On Instagram, you can choose a relevant keyword, and use it as a hashtag to discover relevant posts made by potential micro-influencers. For example, let’s say you want to promote a line of skincare products made using all-natural ingredients. The right keywords here would be something like â€Å"organic skincare,† â€Å"organic beauty,† â€Å"organic makeup,† etc. Let’s try searching for the hashtag #organicskincare. You’ll get results of top posts that use the hashtag, as shown in the following screenshot. Then  click on each of the posts, and check out the users who have posted the photos or videos. You just need to look at the number of followers they have to see if they have less than 100,000 followers (based on the TapInfluence definition of micro-influencers). Also check if they usually post content related to what you’re selling. Let’s click on one of the posts in the search results above. As you can see in the screenshot below, the post was from a user named The Beauty Bloss. If the post has any other relevant hashtags like in the following post, make a note of them to find more micro-influencers. If you check out this user’s profile, you can see that she has around 21,900 followers, qualifying her as a micro-influencer. And her posts are all related to makeup and beauty, which is perfect for the product you’re promoting. So you can consider reaching out to this influencer. As for searches on Facebook and Twitter, manual search using a relevant keyword isn’t going to cut it. The search results will prioritize the top influencers and celebrities relevant to the keyword, making it difficult and time-consuming to identify micro-influencers. So your best bet is to use tools like: BuzzSumo Insightpool Little Bird To search for micro-influencers on these platforms, you can pick several relevant keywords. Your search will bring up results of influential figures related to those topics. For example, BuzzSumo in the screenshot below, shows a list of influencers and bloggers related to beauty and skincare. You can make a selection based on their following size, page authority, etc. Recommended Reading: How Will Outreach Marketing Make Your Blog More Successful? How to Convince a Micro-Influencer to Work with You Micro-influencer outreach is no different from regular influencer outreach. But in the case of micro-influencers, it’s likely that they will be more receptive of your outreach efforts. Here’s what you need to do to convince a micro-influencer to work with you: Begin with small interactions.  Before you start sending out emails and messages to micro-influencers, it’s better to start off with small interactions. The idea is to get them to notice you, and remember your name. Try sharing their content, commenting on their posts, or asking them relevant questions on social media. You can also try commenting on their latest blog posts. Develop a suitable compensation model.  Make sure you’re offering micro-influencers what they deserve in exchange for a promotion. Some micro-influencers may be more than happy to promote the free products you’ve sent them without any extra charge. But you shouldn’t take that for granted.Try to develop a compensation model depending on what’s most beneficial for your business. Maybe you could pay them a percentage of, or a fixed sum for every conversion. Or you could pay them for engagements and click-throughs. Some brands even pay micro-influencers a fixed sum for every post. Send them an email. Once you’ve established an initial connection through social media or the influencer’s blog, you can begin your email outreach. Your email should get straight to the point, and talk about why you wish to work with the influencer. For example, maybe their values align with yours, or you find their content intriguing. The email should also contain details like what you’re offering in return for the promotion. In other words, it should provide micro-influencers with a compelling reason why they should work with you. To make your influencer outreach easier and more effective, there are a few tools you can use: Hunter  can help you discover the email addresses of influencers. BuzzStream  can help you keep track of and manage your conversations with the influencers. Pitchbox  can help you create personalized outreach emails as well as automate your follow-ups. Recommended Reading: How to Write a Pitch Email That Will Get Your Guest Post Accepted How to Boost Engagement With Micro-Influencers Based on the Markerly and Takumi studies mentioned earlier, you already know that micro-influencers can generate a lot of engagement. You can harness their ability to engage to boost your own engagement rates. And here are some tips to help you out: #1: Honest Reviews Micro-influencers don’t beat around the bush when interacting with their followers. They get straight to the point, and are honest when expressing their opinions about something. As a result of this honesty, people trust their opinion about a product or a service. In fact, Experticity  found that 82% of consumers would follow a micro-influencer’s recommendation. You can take advantage of this established trust by getting micro-influencers to share honest reviews about your product or service. Depending on which influencers you choose to work with, you can either have them write a blog post reviewing the product, or create a review video. Or you can even get them to create a social media post reviewing the product. Regardless of the medium, the review needs to be honest. Reviews from micro-influencers need to be honest.In order to get an honest review from a micro-influencer you need to: Choose micro-influencers who often create review content, and who aren’t afraid to mention the negatives. Be very clear when communicating your expectations in your outreach email. Propose to send them free samples or exclusive previews of your product. And stress on the fact that they shouldn’t feel obligated to give a beaming review. Make sure you mention that all you expect in return for the free products is their honest opinion from an expert like them. Here’s an example of an honest review of 100% PURE serum by beauty influencer Adri (@sortofobsessed). As you can see in the caption, she talks about how she loves the feel of the product on her skin but she doesn’t like the texture. She also talks about some of the issues she faces when using the product. #2: Giveaways Giveaway campaigns are an excellent way to engage an audience. This is likely because of the possibility of them winning something. And to leverage your engagement efforts, you can get a micro-influencer to host the campaign. Here’s what you need to do to work with micro-influencers for a giveaway campaign: Determine the prize of the contest.  It should be something that would appeal to the influencer’s followers while helping promote your brand. The prize should help compel the target audience to take action. Come up with the rules for participation.  Maybe you can require them to like the influencer’s post, follow them and your brand, and tag their friends in the comments. Or maybe they simply have to submit an online form through a link promoted in the influencer’s blog. Pitch the giveaway concept to a micro-influencer in your email.  The email should highlight what’s in it for the influencer in addition to the compensation. For instance, you could talk about how this could help them boost engagement among their followers or even grow their following. Recommended Reading: How to Get More Followers on Social Media With 30 Awesome Tips You can talk to them about the rules for participation after they’ve agreed to work with you. And make sure you let them know about any important information you want them to highlight in the post promoting the contest. Based on how the influencer responds, you may have to negotiate the compensation. Food blogger Jessica, of Savory Experiments,  hosted a contest sponsored by the Mussel Industry Council of Prince Edward Island. All participants had to do was to choose their favorite recipes created using Prince Edward Island mussels. The recipes were created by various micro-influential food bloggers including Jessica. And by voting, participants got a chance to win a free trip to the island. This contest involved a giveaway of an experience as opposed to an actual product, but it’s still an effective engagement tactic nonetheless. Jessica also mentioned at the beginning of the post that she was compensated to write the post, but all opinions expressed were her own. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Instagram Engagement With 15 Tips How to Improve Your Pinterest Engagement With These 15 Tactics 12 Effective Ways to Expand Your Facebook Engagement #3: Tutorials and How-Tos The previously-cited Experticity study also found that people considered micro-influencers to be better than everyday consumers at explaining how products work, or how they can be used. It is for this reason that you should consider getting micro-influencers to create tutorial content around your product. If it’s a product that doesn’t require much explaining, they could still offer creative tips and ideas on what consumers can do with it. For this tactic to be more effective here’s what you need to do: Look for micro-influencers who often create tutorial content – videos, blog posts, or social media posts. You’ll basically need to check out the various pieces of content created by influencers you’ve shortlisted for your campaign. Analyze their tutorial content and determine if the quality lives up to your expectations. In other words, see if the content is both intriguing and educational. And try to look at the comments, shares, and/or likes in the content to understand how well their tutorials engage the audience. Reach out to them by email and pitch your idea. Like before, your email should highlight the benefits of working with your brand and what’s in it for the influencer. You could offer them exclusive access to the product along with a competitive compensation. Makeup and beauty influencer Tamira Jarrel  created a sponsored video for True Botanicals. In the video, she talked about some of the various products that worked for her. And she explained how to use them and what works for what. She even provided her fans with a unique discount code so they can purchase the products for less. #4: Original and Authentic Sponsored Content Every now and then you may have come across influencer content in which they promote a product. But unlike their regular content, this one seems uninteresting and maybe even too promotional. This is hardly going to do anything for brand engagement. Usually, this kind of bland and overly-promotional content happens because the brand is trying to control everything about the production. You chose micro-influencers because they can engage their audience with original and creative content. If you want your brand sponsored content too to engage the same audience, you need to provide them with something equally interesting. This means you need to trust the content creation in the hands of the influencer. Encourage them to come up with something original that blends in with their usual content. Encourage micro-influencers to come up with original content that blends with their usual content.A survey conducted by Crowdtap  found that creative freedom is highly valuable to influencers. In fact, 58% of those surveyed said that their favorite projects were those in which the brand gives them creative freedom. And 77% said that they’d be willing to work with a brand more than once if said brand provides them with creative freedom. 77% of influencers are more likely to work with brands more than once if they have creative freedom.These findings suggest that being too restrictive with your content guidelines could negatively impact your relationship with the influencer as well. So, here’s what you need to do if you plan on letting the influencer be in control of content creation: Provide them with basic guidelines such as the kind of vibe you want to give out, the important points you need them to cover, etc. This will ensure that the influencer content delivers exactly what you need. Make sure the micro-influencer understands your goals from the campaign and trust them to deliver. You need to communicate your expectations without trying to control the content creation. Be transparent about what you don’t want so the influencer knows what to exclude in the content. For instance, maybe you don’t want the content to have swear words in case you want to share it on your site. When communicating these guidelines and expectations, make sure you do so in a respectable manner. Remember the saying â€Å"it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it†. You don’t want to come off as rude or bossy when communicating with the influencer. Instead, talk to them as friends and let them know that you trust them to create something new and intriguing.

Employment training Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Employment training - Essay Example The main objective of the human resource requirement would be to coordinate their activities with others and also the accomplishment of the goals and objectives of the organization. The human resource professional spend a considerable time in improvement in area such as recruitments, selection, training and development. The main objective of the HR management would be the attainment of the specific goals and objectives. The major objective of the study would be to focus on several components of the employment training in strategic human resource management and its related activities. The author of the study would also be highlighting the various components of the formal and training imparted to the employees of the organization. Finally, the study will conclude with recommendations which can improve the various managerial situations by imparting knowledge through training and development programs. Training & Development Most of the employees look for learning and grab eventful opport unities as they seek for employment (Cabrera, 2009). To facilitate for employment opportunities and progression most of the companies spend a considerable amount of time and money on training and development programs. The main objective of the training and development program would be to improve the existing job and development processes. ... Effective training would helps in considering the work options which can improve the effectiveness in the work procedure. Training is also referred to skill development programs which help in the presentation of specific and commitments that develop the skills and behaviour that can be transferred to the workplace. It is also referred to the skill development options, which help in the presentation of specific actions and commitments and enhancement of the skills of the employees. Organizational development can be referred to building the capacity of the organization and sustain a few desired process that benefits the entire organization on the whole. This helps in the examination of the present environment and also identification of various strategies that will helps in the rectification of the errors and also improvement in the existing managerial process. Employment training helps the management to run the managerial functions in different manner and provides a structured format a nd how they can help in contribution to the organizational success. Traditional concepts of HR related to the training and developmental are not related to modern day techniques and concepts and are not always applicable to changing market dynamics. Training and development has not only enhanced the knowledge and skills of the employees but also has improved the thinking ability of the individual and lays emphasis on the reinvention and reengineering process of the organization. The contemporary HR techniques are highly sophisticated and allow the employees to imbibe the innovativeness which can bring about the dramatic changes in the marketing environment. It also helps in deciding upon the future of the organization by stemming

Consumer Law Degree Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Consumer Law Degree - Essay Example Their Consumer Products Directive, issued in 1986, was designed to make it much simpler for consumers to sue manufacturers for damages resulting from defective products.1 The contrast between the principles of European Community legislation and British law became a point of contention. And so the Consumer Protection Act was written in 1987 to switch the burden from the consumer to the manufacturer. Written to bring English law into closer compliance with the laws of the European Community, this act only requires that the consumer prove that the product was defective, and that the defect in the product caused some sort of harm, either to the person or to the property of the consumer. Subsection 7 of Part I expressly forbids the sort of consent forms that had earlier absolved the manufacturers of any responsibility. Subsection 2 of Part I creates a whole crowd of possible defendants - the consumer may sue the "producer of the product" as well as any person who imported the product, or who put his/her own brand on the product (to make it seem that s/he had produced the product), or even a supplier somewhere along the supply chain, if that supplier does not reveal the source of the product in a sufficient amount of time. The act's definition of a "defect" also calls to mind the sound of plaintiff's attorneys salivating over possible settlements. According to the act, a defect exists if "the safety of the product is not as such as persons generally are entitled to expect." The use of the word "generally" could take many forms in the mind of a socially conscious judge, or in the minds of jurors who had had negative experiences at the hands of defective products. These expectations come from a variety of sources: the marketing, packaging, instruction manuals, and consumer warnings2. Much comedy has arisen from the pedestrian directions and warnings that adorn the packaging of many consumer appliances - who wouldn't know, for example, to remove a hair dryer from the package before attempting use It may well be, however, that each silly instruction comes from a lawsuit brought by someone who did not know what to do. There are several defences available to the manufacturer. Any defect that is a result of compliance with European Community regulations; any defect that did not exist in the product at the time when the consumer used it; and any defect that was not discernible to the manufacturer, because technology at that time did not reveal the defect, would not cause the manufacturer to be liable3. Given that the European Community wanted to foster a climate of geniality toward consumer protection, it is unlikely that it would produce regulations that create defective products. Other than the fact that the consumer has to demonstrate that the product defect led to harm of person or property, the Consumer Protection Act of 1987 appears to do just that. The British government has undertaken a significant public relations effort to ensure that the public is aware of its rights under the CPA. (This effort would come to be self-defeating in the case of the Hepatitis C litigation, as will later come under discussion). The Consumer Affairs Directorate created a consumer guide4 that gives a thorough explanation of consumer

Executive Compensation Schemes in Corporate Governance Research Paper

Executive Compensation Schemes in Corporate Governance - Research Paper Example The HR specialist has a difficult task of fixing wages and wage differentials acceptable to an employee and their leaders. Executive remuneration has assumed considerable importance in recent years. Salaries and perks paid to highest decision-makers in organizations are skyrocketing, and this sudden spurt in managerial remuneration was the result of economic deregulation and the consequent entry of MNC's into the various regions. The expectancy model has its roots in the cognitive, concept of pioneer psychologists Kurt Lenin and Edward Tolman. However, the first to formulate an expectancy theory, directly aimed at work motivation, was Victor H. Vroom. Expectancy theory is based on the idea that work effort is directed towards behaviors that people believe will lead to desired outcomes. Despite its general appeal, the expectancy model has some problems. It is important to discover what kinds of behavior the model explains and to which situation it does not very well apply. Contrary to the assumption of the expectancy theory the individuals make decisions consciously; there are numerous instances, where decisions are made with no conscious thought. It is complex, and thus its validity is difficult to test in its entirety. Limitations apart the expectancy model is useful in as much as it serves as a heuristics decision tool to guide managers in dealing with the complexity of motivation in organizations. Motivat ion principles such as encouraging employees' performance and matching rewards to performance can be drawn from the theory. These principles can be used to guide managers in designing organizational rewards, work systems, Management by objectives, and goal setting.

Psychiatric rehabilitation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Psychiatric rehabilitation - Essay Example Case management, outreach, and assertive community treatment are methods of adult mental health services. This extensive spectrum is the unlimited power of community mental health in that it delivers choices and permits persons to have access the variety and type of services and care that they wish to have. The main determinant of dissimilarities between assertive Community Treatment (ACT) and Community Treatment (CM) studies is the confined bed administration procedures and occupancy exercises. The organizational features of ACT that are commonly shared by CM crews are linked with decreased hospital care; nonetheless the severe staffing projected for ACT does not have any impact on it. ACT is thus a dedicated form of CM, not a definitely different method. The advantage of introducing it usually depends on the state of existing local practice. Significant lessons on the need to lay emphasis on treatments instead of structures appear not to have been studies. This is because Psychiatrys current excessive emphasis on service structures might have had involuntary results for the professional

Why cant pioneering innovative companies sustain their first mover Essay

Why cant pioneering innovative companies sustain their first mover advantages A case analysis of Research in Motion - Essay Example Since the introduction on the market of the Blackberry 850, recurrent product evolutions and new innovation developments such as the Blackberry Pearl continued to find market favour with mass market consumers and corporate buyers alike. The Blackberry was the first device of its kind on the market, thus giving Research in Motion significant competitive and profit advantages. Porter (2011) identifies that a business’ position can be weakened when there are substitute products on the market. However, being a true innovator in wireless handheld devices, until 2007 there were virtually no comparable products in the mobile market, thus giving RIM significant market power. However, in 2007, Apple Inc. launched its own wireless device innovation, the iPhone, which was comparable if not superior to Blackberry products. This led to the development of the Blackberry Storm, a competitive product offering designed to outperform Apple’s first innovative smartphone launch. The Storm, though, received considerable negative publicity with dissatisfied consumers stemming from problems connecting to AT&T’s 3G network (Phone Arena 2009). ... Being the innovator in providing smartphone technologies, Research in Motion was able to establish barriers to new market entry by building a loyalty to the company and the Blackberry brand. Such loyalty, however, does not occur overnight or within a vacuum without publicity and promotion. As such, it was not until approximately 2006 that the share price exploded, which would be an appropriate time period by which to establish loyalty, especially with the corporate markets. It was not until 2007 with the release of the Apple iPhone that any notable competitors maintained ability to move against the market share of Blackberry, thus investors believed until 2008 that RIM would always dominate the market. This is evident in the interactive stock chart (below) showing the growth and sudden declines of stock valuation for RIM. Furthermore, as there was not the technological prowess with competitors (Blackberry was supported by substantial venture capitalist investment for development), RI M maintained dominance until 2007 in this industry. It was not until major players began changing their operational strategies to develop similar products; which RIM was not prepared to combat with an appropriate contingency plan in the event of new competitive entrants. Associated with loyalty, Blackberry was able to develop a powerful reputation for quality by having a superior product on the market. Research in Motion experienced advantages in this capacity as there is a consumer propensity to judge pioneers more favourably to late movers. Without having to invest much capital and other investment into concentrated and focused advertising, as the Blackberry was quite unique to other mobile technologies on the market, it imposed late entrant costs

Psychiatric rehabilitation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Psychiatric rehabilitation - Essay Example Case management, outreach, and assertive community treatment are methods of adult mental health services. This extensive spectrum is the unlimited power of community mental health in that it delivers choices and permits persons to have access the variety and type of services and care that they wish to have. The main determinant of dissimilarities between assertive Community Treatment (ACT) and Community Treatment (CM) studies is the confined bed administration procedures and occupancy exercises. The organizational features of ACT that are commonly shared by CM crews are linked with decreased hospital care; nonetheless the severe staffing projected for ACT does not have any impact on it. ACT is thus a dedicated form of CM, not a definitely different method. The advantage of introducing it usually depends on the state of existing local practice. Significant lessons on the need to lay emphasis on treatments instead of structures appear not to have been studies. This is because Psychiatrys current excessive emphasis on service structures might have had involuntary results for the professional

How And Why Do NGOs Attempt to Scale up Their Development Efforts Essay

How And Why Do NGOs Attempt to Scale up Their Development Efforts - Essay Example This report stresses that twentieth century globalization gave NGO’s a whole new lease because many problems arose that could not be solved within a nation. International treaties and organizations such as World Trade Organization were considered biased towards capitalist interests. NGOs lay emphasis on humanitarian issues, developmental aid and sustainable development which helped in counterbalancing the capitalist trend. A prominent example of this is the World Social Forum, a rival convention to the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland. The fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alagre, Brazil, in January 2005 was attended by representatives from more than 1,000 NGOs. This article makes a conclusion that in the era of information technology, individuals and organizations serving community interests are challenged to incorporate new skills and strategies to scale-up their impact in response to social challenges. In an increasingly interconnected and information-intensive environment, strategically managing information and value systems is rapidly becoming as important as sound financial management to an organization's effectiveness and sustainability. A firm value system helps Visioning and valuation-facilitating the development of organization-wide commitment to enhanced communications and Communications planning to construct innovative and appropriate organizational strategies which aids in Fostering internal and external networking.

Ethnography on Middle Class American Male Essay Example for Free

Ethnography on Middle Class American Male Essay Two centuries ago leading white, middle-class families in the newly united American states spearheaded a family revolution that replaced the premodern gender order with a modern family system. But modern family was an oxymoronic label for this peculiar institution, which dispensed modernity to white, middle-class men only by withholding it from women. The former could enter the public sphere as breadwinners and citizens, because their wives were confirmed to the newly privatized family realm. Ruled by an increasingly absent patriarchal landlord, the modern, middle-class family, a woman’s domain, soon was sentimentalized as traditional. It took most of the subsequent two centuries for substantial numbers of white working-class men to achieve the rudimentary economic pass book to modern family life a male family wage. By the time they had done so, however, a second family revolution was well underway. Once again middle-class, white families appeared to be in the vanguard. This time women were claiming the benefits and burdens of modernity, a status they could achieve only at the expense of the modern family itself. Reviving a long-dormant feminist movement, frustrated middle class homemakers and their more militant daughters subjected modern domesticity to a sustained critique. At times this critique displayed scant sensitivity to the effects our antimodern family ideology might have on women for whom full-time domesticity had rarely been feasible. Thus, feminist family reform came to be regarded widely as a white, middle-class agenda, and white, working-class families it’s most resistant adversaries. African-American women and white, working-class women have been the genuine postmodern family pioneers, even though they also suffer most from its most negative effects. Long denied the mixed benefits that the modern family order offered middle-class women, less privileged women quietly forged alternative child rearing. Struggling creatively, often heroically, to sustain oppressed families and to escape the most oppressive ones, they drew on traditional premodern kinship resources and crafted untraditional ones, lurching backward and forward into the postmodern family. Rising divorce and cohabitation rates, working mothers, two-earner households, single and unwed parenthood, and matrilineal, extended, and fictive kin support networks appeared earlier and more extensively among poor and working-class people. Economic pressures more than political principles governed these departures from domesticity, but working women like Martha Porter and Dotty Lewison soon found additional reasons to appreciate paid employment. Popular images of working-class family life, like the Archie Bunker, rest on the iconography of unionized, blue-collar, male, industrial breadwinners and the history of their lengthy struggle for the family wage (Stacey 30). But the male family wage was a late and ephemeral achievement of only the most fortunate sections of the modern industrial working class. Most working-class men never secured its patriarchal domestic privileges. Postmodern conditions expose the gendered character of this social-class category, and they render it atavistic. As feminist have argued, only by disregarding women’s labor and learning was it ever plausible to designate a family unit as working class. In an era when most married mothers are employed, when women perform most working-class job, when most productive labor is unorganized and fails to pay a family wage, when marriage links are tenuous and transitory, and when more single women than married homemakers are rearing children, conventional notions of a normative working-class family fracture into incoherence. The life circumstances and mobility patterns of the members of Pamela’s kin set and of the Lewisons, for example, are so diverse and fluid that no single social-class category can adequately describe any of the family units among them. If the white, working-class family stereotype is inaccurate, it is also consequential. Stereotype is moral stories people tell to organize the complexity of social experience. Narrating the working class as profamily reactionaries suppresses the diversity and the innovative character of many working-class kin relationships. The Archie Bunker stereotype may have helped to contain feminism by estranging middle-class from working-class women. Barbara Ehrenreich argues that caricatures which portray the working-class as racist and reactionary are recent (Handel 655), self-serving inventions of professional, middleclass people eager to seek legitimating for their own more conservative impulses. In the early 1970s, ignoring rising labor militancy as well as racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among working-class people, the media effectively imaged them as the new conservative bedrock of middle America. Thus, All in the Family, the 1970s television sitcom series that immortalized racist, chauvinist, working-class hero-buffoon Archie Bunker, can best be read, Ehrenreich suggests, as the longest-running Polish joke, a projection of middle-class bad faith. Yet, if this bad faith served professional middle-class interest, it did so at the expense of feminism. The inverse logic of class prejudice construed the constituency of that enormously popular social movement as exclusively middleclass. By convincing middle-class feminists of our isolation, perhaps the last laugh of that Polish joke was on us. Even Ehrenreich, who sensitively debunks the Bunker myth, labels starting the findings of a 1986 Gallup poll that 56 percent of American women considered themselves to be feminists, and the degree of feminist identification, was, if anything, slightly higher as one descended the socioeconomic scale. Feminist must be attuned to the polyphony of family stories authored by working-class as well as middle-class people if they are ever to transform data like these into effective political alliances. While the ethnographic narratives in this research demonstrate the demise of the working-class family, in no way do they document the emergence of the classless society postindustrial theorists once anticipated. On the contrary, recent studies indicate that the middle classes are shrinking and the economic circumstances of Americans polarizing. African-American has borne the most devastating impact of economic restructuring and the subsequent decline of industrial and unionized occupations. But formerly privileged access to the American Dream in the 1960s and 1970s, now find their gains threatened and not easy to pass on to their children. While high-wage, blue-collar jobs decline, the window of postindustrial opportunity that admitted undereducated men and women, like Lou and Kristina Lewison and Don Frankin, to middle-class status is slamming shut. Young white families earned 20 percent less in 1986 than did comparable families in 1980, and their homeownership prospects plummeted. Real earnings for young men between the ages of twenty and twenty four dropped by 26 percent between 1980 and 1986, while the military route to upward mobility that many of their fathers traveled constricted. In the 1950s men like Lou Lewison, equipped with VA loans, could buy homes with token down payments and budget just 14 percent of their monthly wages for housing costs. By 1984, however, carrying a median-priced home would cost 44 percent of an average male’s monthly earnings. Few could manage this, and in 1986 the U. S government reported the first sustained drop in home ownership since the modern collection of data began in 1940. Thus, the proportion of American families in the middle-income range fell from 46 percent in 1970 to 39 percent in 1985. Two earners in a household now are necessary just to keep from losing ground. Data like these led social analysts to anxiously track the disappearing middle class, a phrase that Barbara Ehrenreich now believes in some ways missed the least from the middle range of comfort. Conclusion The major arena to which expert turned in their examination of postwar masculinity was the American family, placing a spotlight upon men’s roles as husbands, fathers, and family heads. It was commonly noted by social scientist and delineators of American character that men had lost much of their former authority within the family. Indeed, the typical American male, as described by the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, was seen as having so completely given up any claim to authority that the family would constantly risk disintegration and disaster if not for the efforts of his wife (Reumann 66). On the other hand, commentators diagnosed an assault on middle-class manliness and warned of its effects on the nation and its culture. Obsessively rehearsing a narrative of nationwide decline, social disarray, and familial and gender collapse, they pictured a country in which masculinity had become a besieged and precious resource. Works Cited Handel, Gerald. and Gail, Whtchurch, The Psychosocial Interior of the Family, Aldine, Transaction, 1994 Reumann, Miriam. American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity, Berkeley, California: London University of California Press, 2005 Stacey, Judith, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age; U. S, Beacon Press, 1996

Can Torture Of Terrorist Suspects Be Justified?

Can Torture Of Terrorist Suspects Be Justified? In advancing into this essay, I shall discuss the history of prohibition of torture, the Utilitarian approach to torture which would include arguments and debates in favour of justification of torture by taking account of the ticking bomb hypothetical, a case study of Guantanamo Bay and the result of torturing terrorist suspects in recent times. This essay would also examine the deontology approach to torture and make recommendations on other means of getting information and truths from terrorist suspects. BACKGROUND TO PROHIBITION ON TORTURE Torture and other cruel or inhumane treatment has been internationally outlawed since the end of the Second World War and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that No one shall be subjected torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It allows for no exceptions under any circumstances. This prohibition can also be found in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights, Article 5 (2) of the American Convention on Human Rights which are both binding on the United States. In addition, Geneva Conventions III, IV and Optional Protocol I in Articles 17, 32 and 75(2) respectively prohibits physical or mental torture and any forms of coercion against a prisoner of war, they also prohibits an occupying power from torturing any protected persons and torture of all kinds and any other outrages on personal dignity, against anyone under any situation. Also the 1984 Convention against Torture takes these general duties and conventions and codifies them into a more specific rule. It criminalizes torture and tries to prevent any exemptions for torturers by disallowing his access to every possible refuge. The convention states categorically that there will be no circumstances peace time, war time, or even war against terror where torture would be permissible. Importantly even before September 11, the International Convention Against Torture (Art 2.2) states that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. The word torture is clearly a subject matter in which International Law is clear about. It does not matter who the person or persons involved are whether criminals, combatants, members of the Taliban or terrorist suspects, the rule is torture is not permissible for any reason. Anyone who threatens or participates in torture would be treated as a criminal before the law. Sands (2004: 208) furthermore explained that absolute prohibition is related to a second set of rules that deals with the status of the terrorists- whether they are to be treated as combatants or criminals. If he is a member of a regular armed force then he is a combatant and must be treated as such and is entitled to protection under International Humanitarian Law. But if he is a member of an Insurgency group such as Al- Qaeda, who is thought to have planned or is planning a suicide attack, International Law regards such people as criminals. The United States, Britain and over a hundred states support this approach. The 1997 International Convention for the suppression of Terrorist Bombings followed that analysis and made it a criminal offence to attack a government structure or facility, a public place or a state with the aim of causing death or damage. State parties to the 1997 Convention have consented to subject anyone who is thought to have been involved in terrorist activities to criminal procedure, by either prosecuting them or extraditing them to another state that will eventually prosecute them. The convention explicitly guarantees fair treatment to anyone who is taken into custody under its provisions which includes rights provided both under the International Humanitarian Law and the International Human Rights Law. Unfortunately, Lawyers in the Department of Justice and in the administration of President Bush had provided detailed legal advice to the US government on International Torture Rules. According to Sands (2005:205) they suggested that interrogation practices could be defined without mentioning the constraints placed on the United States as a result of its international obligations and that so long the practice was in accordance with the US law, it would be fine. This advice categorically ignored the 1984 Convention against Torture and all other international treaties and rules in which the US was bound. It plainly ignored the prohibition against torture in all circumstances, definition of torture, the classification of detainees either to be combatants entitled to prisoner of war status or criminals. Sands (2005: 222)notes the following: Over time a great deal more information will emerge. But even at this stage it seems pretty clear that the legal minds which created Bushs doctrine of preemption in the use of force and established the procedures at the Guantanamo detention camp led directly to an environment in which the monstrous images from Abu Ghraib could be created. Disdain for global rules underpins the whole enterprise. The deontologist-utilitarian debate over torture provides a useful background and reflects common reasoning when faced with this dilemma. Our immediate focus is on the inhumanity of torture (emphasized by deontologists) and the numerically greater threat to innocent people (emphasized by utilitarianism). However, the situation is presented deceptively simply; the next section will examine its flaws. THE DEONTOLOGY APPROACH AND ARGUEMENTS AGAINST TORTURE Deontology would appear to prohibit torture in all cases. This approach invoking Kant as the traditional torchbearer of this approach, Kay (1997:1) describes Kants theory as an example of a deontological or duty-based ethics: it judges morality by exploring the nature of actions and the will of agents rather than goals achieved. Roughly, a deontological theory looks at input rather than result. Kay (1997:1) noted that this is not to say that Kant did not care about the outcomes of our actionswe all wish for good things. Rather Kant insisted that as far as the moral evaluation of our actions was concerned, consequences did not matter. Deontologism is an approach which seeks to create universal rules for the morality of human action; its ideas of common humanity and fundamental human rights were very influential in the banning of torture. (Turner, 2005: 7, 15) Kants deontological approach creates two universal rules by which moral questions can be addressed: Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature, and Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only. (in Turner, 2005: 14) Under the first rule, the act of torture cannot be justified as we would not accept it being universalized and potentially used against ourselves. Under the second, torture is wrong because torturing a person for information is to use them as a means only. (Turner, 2005: 15) Thus Kants logic leads to the conclusion that torture cannot be justified under any circumstances. The individual who chooses not to torture makes the correct moral decision regarding their actions despite the terrible consequences that might result. By torturing a captive, we are treating him as a means only (towards the acquisition of information) as he is definitely not being treated in a way to which he would consent. Torture fails to respect him and treat him inhumanely. Kershnar (1999; 47) believes in some cases utilitarianism would support torture and that because Kantian deontologists would, in all cases, reject it, torture has the position of being a very interesting concept for ethical inquiry. People no doubt have their commitments to utilitarianism or deontology but, given the conflict, there is at least something to talk about and some debate within which to advance opinion to maintain one conclusion or the other. Posner (2004:296) clearly states that if legal regulations are propagated authorizing torture in definite situations, officials are bound to want to explore the outer limits of the rules and practise, once it were thus regularized, it would likely become a norm, in other words, taking an extra step outside the approved situation which would result in abuse of the system. THE UTILITARIAN APPROACH AND DEBATES JUSTIFYING TORTURE The utilitarian approach to torture according to Fritz (2005: 107) argues that the right action is the one, out of those available to the agent, that makes the best use of total aggregate happiness. We might to a certain extent simply imagine a situation in which the disutility of torturing a captive (his pain, the discomfort of the torturer, expense, permanent effects to both, chance of negative events causally connected to torture, etc.) is outweighed, or even dramatically outweighed, by the utility of torture (information is provided that saves many lives and therefore acquires all of the associative utilities). This utilitarian approach is exemplified by one of the most controversial debates on torture which is the ticking time-bomb scenario. This scenario has been thoroughly discussed by Michael Levin and Alan Dershowitz (2002:150) where they have both argued that torture is obviously justified when it is the only way to prevent a serious and impending threat and must regulated by a judicial warrant requirement. The ticking bomb hypothetical tries as much as possible to depict torture as an exception in an emergency. This scenario arises where law enforcement officials have detained a person who supposedly knows the location of a bomb set to explode, but who refuses to disclose this information. Officials could apply to a judge for a torture warrant based on the absolute need to immediately obtain information which will save lives. In other words to avert a greater evil, a lesser evil needs to be done. Another school of thought under the utilitarian approach proposes retaining absolute ban on torture while executing off book torture (ex post). Gross (2004:238) argues that in exceptional situations officials must step outside the legal structure and act extra-legally and be ready to accept the legal implication of their acts, with the likelihood that extra-legal acts may be legally (if not morally) excused ex post. Elshtain(200: 77) in the same way advised that in conditions where we suppose that a suspect might have crucial information, it is usually better to act with harsh inevitability. To condemn torture is to lapse into pietistic rigour in which moral torture of terrorist suspects purity is ranked over all other goods. The primary justification for the torture warrant proposal is that it is compulsory to protect the public. On this view Saul (2004:657) notes that violating the human rights of the individual is essential to safeguard the human rights of the many. Without considering if the information extracted from a tortured terrorist suspect is relevant or not, evidence obtained under torture is inadmissible in court under Article 15 of the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984). Article 15 reads: Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made. Dershowitz is of the opinion that there should be an exception to torture which would justify the actions of interrogators as essential to avert greater evil to world. To him, it made no difference whether cases are real or imagined; all that matters is the theorys commitment to the moral obligation to torture in cases of imminent evil. Perhaps the general adherence to the rule torture is wrong is more likely than its negation to maximize happiness. Dershowitzs proposal was fortified by Fritz Allhoff in his article Terrorism and Torture Fritz (2005:17) concluded that: The conditions necessary to justify torture are: the use of torture aims at acquisition of information, the captive is reasonably thought to have the relevant information, the information corresponds to a significant and imminent threat, and the information could likely lead to the prevention of the threat. If all four of these conditions are satisfied, then torture would be morally permissible. Efforts to justify torture are often accompanied by rejection of any adverse physical condition effects of the selected torture methods used by interrogators. The ticking bomb scenario makes for great philosophical dialogue, but it rarely arises in real life, at least not in a way that avoids opening the door to persistent torture. In fact, interrogators hardly ever learn that a suspect in custody knows of a particular, impending terrorist bombing. Intelligence and information is rarely if ever good enough to display a particular suspects knowledge of an imminent attack. Instead, interrogators tend to use inferred evidence to show such knowledge, such as someones relationship with or apparent membership in a terrorist group. Moreover, the ticking bomb scenario is a dangerously expansive metaphor capable of embracing anyone who might have knowledge not just of imminent attacks but also of attacks at undetermined future times. After all, why are the victims of only an imminent terrorist attack deserving of protection by torture and mistreatment? Why not also use such coercion to prevent a terrorist attack tomorrow or next week or next year? And once the taboo against torture and mistreatment is broken, why stop with the alleged terrorists themselves? Why not also torture and abuse their families or associates or anyone who might provide lifesaving information? Dershowitzs arguments were faulted by Saul (2004:659) for various reasons which include the threshold of suspicion whereby it is unfeasible for law enforcement officials or judges to know with any legally acceptable height of conviction that the suspect actually possesses the intelligence and information, or whether the suspect is in anyway involved with a terrorist activity. Dershowitzs standard of probable cause is much lesser than the benchmark of evidence essential in a criminal case which requires that you can proof beyond reasonable doubt and more relaxed than the civil benchmark that is based on the balance of possibility. This means that a person may be tortured because of unproven evidence which still poses a risk that countless innocent people will be tortured. Saul (2004:659) notes that the uncomfortable probability of collateral damage is poorly dealt with by Dershowitz. Officials are faced with multiple unknown variables, including the existence of a bomb, interval of bomb explosions, the chances of neutralizing it, the identity of the terrorist suspect, the probability of the suspect being knowledgeable about the explosion, and the truthfulness intelligence gathered from the suspect. Speculation, guesswork, and supposition will unavoidably play a part in law enforcement judgments at every level due to the fact that accuracy of the information is not certain. The Geneva Convention IV (art3 (1)(a), for example, require that a person be definitely suspected of threatening State security before exceptional powers can be implemented. Saul (2004:1) believes that the border for error drastically multiplies in the pre-trial phase, where any available evidence is imperfect and unproven. The atmosphere of tragedy and emergency surrounding the incident may encourage errors, inaccuracy or dependence on weak evidence, by law enforcement agencies and courts under pressure which may eventually produce false results. Another major fault noted by Saul(2004:1) is the threshold of anticipated harm in which he seeks to question how many lives justify torture. Dershowitz limits his torture warrant proposal to the much-fantasized ticking bomb scenario. But he still acknowledges that very rare cases of actual ticking bomb scenarios have ever taken place. Benvenist(1997) try to give a concrete Israeli example, but the harm averted was the prevention of the killing of a single kidnapped Israeli soldier which is not even close to the exemplary ticking bomb case hyperbolically referred to by Dershowitz as involving the prevention of thousands civilian deaths. Apart from trying to prevent thousands of deaths, Dershowitz provides few parameters for the ticking bomb scenario. How dangerous must a bomb be before torture is justifiable? Does it only refer to weapons of mass destruction, or also conventional weapons? Is the danger supposed to be quantified by the number of lives threatened as Dershowitz appears to suggest? If so, how many thousands must be at risk before torture should proceed, and why is it thousands rather than hundreds of people, or less? What if the bomb causes major economic loss, but does not actually kill people? It is certainly very difficult to identify a ticking bomb scenario or to place limits on the utilitarian calculation necessarily involved in torturing one to save many. The Isreali Supreme Court (1999) noted that the so called necessity defence could not be justified and prohibition of Torture is absolute and there is no room for balancing. Dershowitzs argument is built largely on faith that forcing torture into the open would reduce its use. Furthermore, given the decentralized nature of modern terrorism, it might be possible for law enforcement agents to dispute or conclude that every suspected terrorist act can be likened to ticking bomb, thereby justifying widespread preventive torture. A terrorist is likely to target any location, within an unknown time interval, causing an indefinite number of casualties. There has not been any particular set of rules guarding issue of torture warrants to immediate ticking bomb scenarios. Torture warrants is open to flexible interpretation of the probable and expected harm to be done by the strike of terrorist suspects. Dershowitz also appears to emphasize that the consent of a democratic public are relevant to the justifiability of torture in a particular case and that torture should not be ruled out universally. In reality, we can say that torture has not been seen to give excellent intelligence and results. This would be discussed in the next section. RESULT OF TORTURING TERRORISTS IN RECENT TIMES The issue of the efficiency of torture is complicated to conclude, since there are minute consistent and trustworthy facts accessible on the number of terrorists that have been tortured and of this number, how many offered information or intelligence that was subsequently useful in preventing deaths and a greater evil or gratifying the reason for conducting the interrogation. As a result of this we can say that torture has done more harm than good and its outcome over time has not been tangible enough to justify it. Payes and Mazzetti (2004:A1) reported that in July 2004, an Army investigation of detainee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed ninety-four cases of alleged abuse, as well as thirty-nine deaths in U.S. detention. Twenty of the deaths were suspected homicides. The military was reported to have probed into, fifty-eight deaths in Iraq, which comprising nine cases of justifiable homicide, seven homicides, and twenty-one deaths from natural or undecided causes. In one case of a detainee death, several soldiers have been charged with abuse rather than homicide due to inadequate evidence. In a different case, two soldiers were charged with intended murder. (Eric Schmitt, 2004:A7). He also reports that a Navy SEAL, whose identity has not been released, is being court-marshalled in connection with the beating of Manadel Jamadi, who was later killed, allegedly by CIA interrogators, in Abu Ghraib (and who was photo-graphed there, packed in ice). Realistically, the abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Baghram, and Guantanamo pale by comparison with the death, maiming, and suffering in collateral damage during the Afghan and Iraq wars. Bombs crush limbs and burn peoples faces off; nothing even remotely as horrifying has been reported in American prisoner abuse cases. Yet as much as we may regret or in some cases decry the wartime suffering of innocents, we do not seem to regard it with the special abhorrence that we do torture (Luban 2005:5) Accounts have been given according to Wall Street Journal (2005: A16) which accuses United States interrogators to have used various interrogative techniques ranging from water boarding which was agreed to be most coercive technique ever actually authorised by U.S officials involves the submerging of victims face in water or wrapping it in a wet towel stirring up drowning feelings. Luban (2005:12) sees the principal scenery for torture to always be military triumph. In which the conqueror captures the enemy and tortures him. Torture to an illiberal state as he is noted is not only to get and an extract information and intelligence but also to humiliate the loser, to terrorize the victim to submission and to punish the suspect. Whereas Torture to a liberal state is a tool used to gather or extract information and intelligence from a suspect who has refused to disclose information. This may seem to be the same with torture used by an illiberal state to extract confession but the fundamental variation lies in the reality that confession is retrospective as it concentrates on acts of the past while intelligence gathering is futuristic as it aims to gain information to avert prospect evils. Moreover, coercive interrogation creates a less safe environment by effectively preventing criminal prosecution of the detainees. Once a confession is gotten forcefully, it becomes extremely difficult to prove, as due process requires, that a subsequent prosecution of the suspect is free of coercion. As a result, Jehl(2005) believes that the Bush administration finds itself holding some suspects who clearly have joined terrorist conspiracies and might have been criminally convicted and subjected to long prison terms, but against whom prosecution has become unfeasible. In February 2005, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to worry openly about the problem. What happens, it worried, when continuing to detain suspects without trial becomes politically untenable, but prosecuting them is legally impossible because of taint from coercive interrogation? Slippery slope arguments also address the wider implications of justifying torture. They are concerned with the gap between theory and practice; arguing that the theoretical limits imposed upon the use of torture would never work in practice. It is well documented that torture spreads from one class of prisoner to others, from one type of treatment to harsher types, and from one emergency situation to routine use. (Shue, 1978: 141; Saul, 2005: 3; Pfiffner, 2005: 21) The Israeli experience demonstrates these dangers. In 1987, the Landau Commission advised that coercive interrogation of Palestinian terror suspects should be legalised in extreme cases. For moderate physical pressure to be used the interrogators would have to demonstrate a necessity such as a ticking bomb situation. (BTselem, 2006) However, by 1999, the evidence that this ruling was being abused had become so overwhelming that the practice was outlawed by the Supreme Court. (Bowden, 2003) It was estimated that during this period 66% to 85% of all Palestinian suspects were ill-treated and that in many cases this amounted to torture. Supposed ticking bomb cases were pursued on weekdays but were not severe enough to warrant weekend interrogation; torture had become routine, systematic, and institutionalized (BTselem, 2006). Though returning to a complete ban, the legal repercussions for potential torturers are able to act as a deterrent. Another consequence that is little considered is the impact that becoming a torturer would have on the individual responsible. Torture is not possible without the brutalisation of the torturer; you must lose your soul if you are to save the victims. (Pfiffner, 2005: 20; Meyer, 2005) To torture requires us to overcome our socially conditioned abhorrence of violence and to accept the psychological repercussions. Shue argues that torture carries a much greater moral stigma (and therefore requires greater brutalisation) than killing in war, for example, as it constitutes an act of violence against an entirely defenceless being. (Shue, 1978: 130) The argument for legally sanctioned torture in some situations overlooks the secondary source of suffering it requires; the harmful psychological and social consequences endured by people who must train in and practice torture. To require this of someone is morally very problematic. A further adverse consequence of allowing torture in some cases is the impact it would have upon the judicial system. The US has experienced this problem in relation to its practice of extraordinary rendition. Secretly sending suspects for interrogation in countries known to use torture may occasionally provide useful information but torture evidence cannot be used in any reputable court. US government refusal to allow some of its prisoners to testify in criminal trials has led many to believe that the US is hiding the evidence of torture. As a result, the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in relation to the 9/11 attacks was stalled for four years and, in 2004, Mounir Motassadeq, the first person to be convicted of planning the attacks, had his sentence overturned because the allowable evidence against him was too weak. (Meyer, 2005) CONCLUSION Dorfman(2004: 17) expressed his opinion by saying I can only pray that humanity will have the courage to say no, no to torture, no to torture under any circumstance, no to torture no matter who the enemy, what the accusation what sort of fear we habor, no to torture, no matter what kind of threat is posed to our safety, no to torture anytime, anywhere, no to torturing anyone- no to torture. Torturing terrorists is a cruelty in which many prefer not to be faced with in the media. Some will counter it, some will openly justify it, and others will secretly go along with it providing that it is not sadistic and serves a useful, although unheralded, early-warning function in the war on terrorism. Those arguing for the justification of torture on terrorist suspects say it has helped prevent attacks. This cannot be asserted as evidence is unreliable and subjectively sketchy In all likelihood, Dershowitzs proposals will remain only proposals and Allhoffs arguments, as convincing as they seem, will not change existing laws. If Deshowitzs proposal works, then judges would oversee the permission to torture while politicians pick judges. If politicians accept torture, judges would accept as well. Though we cannot be sure of the accurate motivation of the terrorists, one thing we know for sure is that violations of human rights and gathering of information through torture will not extinguish the threat they pose. Justifying torture is just replacing a respect for human dignity with an accommodating, excusatory retort to abuse. The ticking bomb case provides perhaps the most convincing justification for torture that we have, the erosion of the torture prohibition that could be caused by justifying and legalising the practice, and the slippery slope from exceptional to routine use of torture, would have very wide implications and could lead to the torture of many individuals across the world. There would undoubtedly be innocent victims faced with long-term suffering as a result, and these victims would include those required to carry out torture. Further, the use of torture makes it impossible to use any evidence collected in a criminal trial and the US has already begun to see key suspects being acquitted as a result. These arguments lead me to believe that torture is unjustifiable, even in extreme cases. However, because the immediate choice is so difficult and because the person making it is possesses human emotions and instincts, I would not absolutely condemn the decision to torture provided it was made in an emergency situation and with the correct intention. To make prior judgment that torture is justified in some circumstances is dangerous and wrong torture must be prosecuted as a crime wherever it occurs. However, it is also important to recognize the mitigating circumstances when it occurs.

Gulliver’s Travels Essay -- Satire Satirical Essays

Gulliver’s Travels Gulliver’s Travels has set a standard for satirical writing for a long time, and Swift’s imaginative ability and talent can explain a lot of the text’s continued popularity. People can approach Gulliver’s Travels like a children’s book, and not search for deeper meaning. They read the story as a fantasy, and seek only to be entertained. Gulliver’s Travels is valuable and enjoyable for its plot and surface elements alone, but a deeper level of meaning and significance can be achieved if we take note of the satirical elements in the novel. Although to gain a full appreciation of the satire, the reader needs to be somewhat familiar with the events of Swift’s time. Taking the historical period in which Swift was writing into consideration, one of the major changes that was occurring was the shift to a more scientific, empirically-informed worldview (being advanced by the Royal Society of England and Francis Bacon). However, Swift and others were concerned that if this new scientific outlook could lead to disaster if it continued unchecked. Swift and other â€Å"nonconformists† argued that science without context could have widespread harmful consequences, and this position profoundly reveals itself in his satirical treatment of science and knowledge in Gulliver’s Travels. This paper will discuss Swift’s satirical treatment of these subjects in the novel. Several critics have pointed out that evidence exists that suggests that Swift was not uniformly opposed to all science (Phiddian 52). Therefore, it would seem unfair to read Swift’s satirical approach to science in Gulliver’s Travels as a full rejection of the science of his day-it would be overly simplistic and reductive. Swift was not an anti-Luddite. In fact, Swift was a proponent of science in some ways, but he reacted strongly against what he perceived as its abuse or exploitation. The satirical treatment of science in Gulliver’s Travels is more complex than an all-or-nothing rejection of the scientific mindset that was becoming increasingly popular in Swift’s time. Instead of objecting to the use of science in general, Swift seems to have had problems with a particular form of scientific research, and it is with this type of science/scientist that Swift is primarily concerned in Gulliver’s Travels. The type of science that Swift attacks is inapplicable science, or â€Å"pure... ...ss of the scientific worldview that was becoming more widespread during his lifetime. Swift himself was not opposed to all scientific endeavors, but Gulliver’s Travels provided a platform for him to explore the potential negative effects/affects of the â€Å"new science,† engaging in the exaggeration and absurdity that are essential to satire. Although Swift’s characterization of the Laputan scientists is distorted, it does successfully call into question the ultimate goal of science. Should scientific research be pursued because society has achieved the technology to perform them? My opinion is that Swift, through Gulliver’s Travels, argued that it should not automatically and necessarily be pursued. Works Cited Fitzgerald, Robert P. â€Å"Science and Politics in Swift’s Voyage to Laputa.† Journal of English and Germanic Philology 87: 213-29. Patey, Douglas Lane. â€Å"Swift’s Satire on ‘Science’ and the Structure of Gulliver’s Travels.† ELH 58.4: 809-39. Phiddian, Robert. â€Å"A Hopeless Project: Gulliver inside the Language of Science in Book III.† Eighteenth Century Life 22.1: 50-62. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Ed. Greenberg, Robert A. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1970.