South America Is A Land Of Different Cultures And Has A History Essays

South America is a land of different cultures and has a history of as many different types of government, mostly dictatorships. Most of South America won independence from Spain and Portugal between 1810 and 1824. In 1823, President James Monroe enunciated the first US policy on Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine warned European nations against interfering in the affairs of independent nations in the Western Hemisphere. In 1904, Roosevelt's Corollary said the US would act as a "policeman", intervening militarily when US interests were at risk. After W.W.II, the independent countries of the Western Hemisphere formed the Organization of American States, a military alliance to prevent aggression against any American nation. South America is the fourth largest continent. It ranks fifth in population. The continent is divided into 12 independent countries and two political units. The countries consist of Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guinea. In the 12 countries of South America, democracy has slowly been on the rise since 1959. The rise started in Venezuela and ended in Surinam last year. One by one South America's countries have turned form dictatorships into democracies where the voters control the elections. Even with democracy taking control, the countries still have many problems. The largest problem is the tradition of corruption of the political leaders. The corruption has mainly been the use of bribe-taking and bribe-giving. "By definition, democracy presumes equal opportunity; bribery and corruption make the playing field uneven and weakens democracy's foundations." Recently, corruption has reached into high places in Venezuela and Brazil. President Carlos Perez (1993) and Fernando Collor de Mello (1992) were forced to resign when faced with corruption charges. The large drug trade has also caused problems for the rise of democracy in South America. Each year, hundreds of tons of Cocaine feed an illegal US drug market. It is worth an estimated $38 billion a year. This illegal money has found its way into the pockets of many people in high places. In Columbia, a major source of illegal drugs for the US, President Ernesto Samper was accused of taking a $6 million bribe to allow drug trafficking to continue as usual. Laundered drug money has financed development in many South American cities, but it has also brought bloodshed. The large gap between rich and poor of South America has presented another challenge for democracy. In South America, the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. But since the rise of democracy economic conditions have not worsened. Recently, the poor have been taking their demands for better economic conditions to the streets. In Argentina, workers have protested the privation policies of President Carlos Menem. They are demanding job security to go back to "the good old days" of the Peron era. The military also threatens democratic systems in South America. Today the soldiers are back in their barracks, "but in most nations, the possibility remains that the generals, heeding a real or imagined call to restore order, will impose military rule. This threat is illustrated by Chilean President Eduardo Frei's problems with Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet who still controls the military until the year 1998. Each country in South America has faced some action that has tried to return them to what they once were--dictatorships. In Venezuela, which has the oldest civilian regime in South America, suffered two coup attempts by army officers in 1992; both were unsuccessful and were put down. In Chile, Gen. Pinochet still commands the armed forces, but because of free elections he is no longer the head of state. With democracy having a hard time in South America, "only Chile seems to respect the rule of law." In Bolivia, which had 189 military coups in its first 168 years of independence, has become a country with stable democracy. Voters elected President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to be the head of state in their new democracy. Columbia, the most violent country in South America, has had the hardest time dealing with corruption in their democracy. This is due to their booming drug trade. It has 83 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, nine times the US murder rate. Someone gets killed in Bogota, the capital of Columbia, every hour. In Medillin it's every half hour. Columbia has a type of "narco-democracy" in which drug traffickers have achieved control over the top levels of government through bribery and intimidation. Brazil is another country where violent actions have played a part in the corruption of their democracy. Legislator Edmundo Galdino, paralyzed from the waist down by a hired gunman, said, "...its' easier, cheaper, and more certain of success

Dangerous jargon - Emphasis

Dangerous jargon Dangerous jargon Jargon can bring clarity for experts and irritation for laypeople, but could it sometimes be life threatening? Yes, according to the coroner heading up the inquest into the London terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005, Lady Justice Hallett. Simple impatience with unclear terms is a more serious problem when it comes to understanding the situation at the scene of an emergency, she asserted on the last day of evidence-giving at the 7/7 hearing. Is it really worth the time it takes to refer to a conference demountable unit from a management centre, rather than a portable incident room, for example? And obscure job titles could confuse and disguise peoples roles, she pointed out. I dont know whether a crew manager is somebody who is responsible for supplies or is used to fighting fires. I have no idea, she said. Jargon has a long history of naysayers, but Lady Justice Halletts criticism touched on the most fundamental practicality of appropriate language. This isnt just somebody being pedantic about the use of English when it comes to managing incidents, people dont understand what the other person is.

What Comes After Trillion Names of Large Numbers

What Comes After Trillion Names of Large Numbers SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Not sure what number comes after trillion? Interested in the names of other very large numbers? What is a Googol exactly? Read on to learn what comes after trillion, the name of every important number that’s larger than trillion, and some ways to help you conceptualize extremely large values. // What Comes After Trillion? What’s after trillion? Trillion is a 1 with 12 zeros after it, and it looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000. The next named number after trillion is quadrillion, which is a 1 with 15 zeros after it: 1,000,000,000,000,000. // There are, of course, many numbers between trillion and quadrillion, but it isn’t until quadrillion that that number value actually gets a new name. Numbers between the two would always include the word â€Å"trillion†: two trillion, a hundred trillion, etc. // As you can see from the chart in the next section, there is a new name every time the power of a large number increases by 3. // Names of Large Numbers While trillion is an incredibly large number, there are actually many numbers that are larger than it. Below is a chart of all the significant numbers that come after trillion. // The numbers are written with scientific notation to make them easier to read and understand. Name Number Million 1 x106 Billion 1 x109 Trillion 1 x1012 Quadrillion 1 x1015 Quintillion 1 x1018 Sextillion 1 x1021 Septillion 1 x1024 Octillion 1 x1027 Nonillion 1 x1030 Decillion 1 x1033 Undecillion 1 x1036 Duodecillion 1 x1039 Tredecillion 1 x1042 Quattuordecillion 1 x1045 Quindecillion 1 x1048 Sexdecillion 1 x1051 Septendecillion 1 x1054 Octodecillion 1 x1057 Novemdecillion 1 x1060 Vigintillion 1 x1063 Unvigintillion 1 x1066 Duovigintillion 1 x1069 Trevigintillion 1 x1072 Quattuorvigintillion 1 x1075 Quinvigintillion 1 x1078 Sexvigintillion 1 x1081 Septenvigintillion 1 x1084 Octovigintillion 1 x1087 Nonvigintillion 1 x1090 Trigintillion 1 x1093 Untrigintillion 1 x1096 Duotrigintillion 1 x1099 Ten-duotrigintillion (or Googol) 1 x10100 Skewer’s Number 1 x10130 Centillion 1 x10303 Googolplex 1 x 1010100 Skewes’ Number // As you can see, for most of the chart, the power of 10 increases by three for each new number, which means you add three extra zeros to the end of the number to get the next number.For example, a billion is a 1 with nine zeros after it or: 1,000,000,000. Trillion, the next number, is a 1 with twelve zeros after it, or: 1,000,000,000,000. // This pattern continues until you get to Ten-duotrigintillion, more commonly known as a Googol (yes, this is where search engine Google got their name from). There are no names for the numbers between Googol, Skewer’s Number, Centillion, or Googolplex. // You may have noticed that â€Å"zillion† is not on here. Zillion is not actually a real number; it’s simply a term used to refer to an undetermined but extremely large quantity. Understanding Large Numbers You can see all the key massive numbers by looking at the chart above, but what do those numbers actually mean, and how can you understand them?It can be difficult, or even impossible, to conceptualize extremely large numbers, but there are some tricks to getting a general idea of just how large they are.Trillion is one of the smallest numbers in the chart, but it’s still an incredibly large number. If you were to try to count to trillion, it’d take you roughly 31,709 years to do so! A googol, or a 1 with one hundred zeros after it, looks like this when written out: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Writing a large number out like that can sometimes give a better sense of how big it actually is compared to using scientific notation. And what about a googolplex, one of the massive numbers in the chart? A googolplex is 1 followed by a googol of zeros. A googolplex is such a large number that there really is no known use for it yet in math, and some mathematicians and astronomers hypothesize that a googolplex is even greater than the number of atoms in the universe. But, there are numbers even larger than a googolplex. Skewes’ number, developed by mathematician Stanley Skewes is 10 to the 10th to the 10th to the 34th. Skewes was particularly interested in prime numbers, and, when his number was introduced in 1933, it was described by a colleague as "largest number which has ever served any definite purpose in mathematics." However, Skewes’ number has since lost that distinction to Graham’s number, which is currently designated as the world’s largest number. Graham’s number, which cannot be written with conventional notation, was developed by mathematician R.L. Graham. It is so large that, even if all the matter in the universe was converted to pens and ink, it still wouldn’t be enough to write out the number in its entirety. Summary: What Comes After Trillion? What’s after trillion? The next number after trillion is quadrillion, or a 1 with 15 zeros after it: 1,000,000,000,000,000.Knowing the names of large numbers can be useful if you’re working with extremely large values or doing higher-level mathematics. Currently, the largest known number is Graham’s number, which is too large and complicated to either be written down or conceptualized. What's Next? Writing a research paper for school but not sure what to write about?Our guide to research paper topics has over 100 topics in ten categories so you can be sure to find the perfect topic for you. Learning about natural logs? Check out our guide on the 11 natural log rules you must know to ace this subject. What is dynamic equilibrium and what does it have to do with rusty cars? Find out by reading our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium.

Team Locomotive Charter Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Team Locomotive Charter - Assignment Example All of us have different skills and interests. But we decided to use our skills and interests in a fruitful manner so that each and every member of our team may benefit from the skills of others. As a group, we have created the shared goals of inspiring each member to pursue excellence inside and outside of the classroom. We also hope to improve our ability to communicate effectively as a diverse unit. Since we are from different parts of the world our effective communication might be obstructed by the language barriers. But we know that more than 80% of the ideas are communicated through nonverbal means. So language barrier may not affect us much. In addition, we hope to broaden our cultural horizons while learning how to effectively work as a unit. Globalization has brought many changes in the business world and most of the major companies are operating internationally now in order to exploit the business potentials in other countries. Even the biggest companies like Microsoft, Apple etc are looking for every expansion opportunities in other countries. Such internationalization of business has raised the importance of a multicultural workforce in organizations at present. It is difficult for Microsoft or Apple to operate in a country like India or China with the help of the Americans alone. They need a blend of the diverse workforce including the Americans, Indians, and Chinese in order to sustain their business successfully in these countries. Diversity in our group will definitely help us to learn more about how to work in a multicultural team environment and these learning may help us in our future endeavors also. Without establishing expectations, our goals would be nearly impossible to accomplish. We set our expectations high. We expect each member to attend each meeting unless an emergency arises. We also expect each member to put forth 100% at all times.

Strategic Marketing Planning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Strategic Marketing Planning - Essay Example This strategic marketing plan provides an outline for apt planning, management and marketing in Mandurah and the region for the next five years (Kelph 2010, p. 72). Besides, it is meant for all interested parties devoted to the coordinated expansion of the tourism, leisure and events sector in Mandurah and its environs. Basically, the strategic goal is to make certain that Mandurah and the surrounding establish a viable, vivacious and flourishing tourism industry. The plan is utterly based on sustainability and partnership as its key guiding policies. The management’s decision making takes into account the contribution of tourism to the vast society in terms of social welfare, economic progress, and distribution of resources along with environmental conservation. The strategy also embraces partnership with both the public and private sectors to capitalize on the existing wealth. Financial Summary The economic alarms, skyrocketing costs, intensifying competition as well as the unpredictable fluctuations in end user perception all depict the contemporarily progressing nature of the tourism, leisure, events and hospitality sector (Lumsdon 1997, p. 67). As a result, syndicates within the industry must uphold a well-founded grip on the fluctuating consumer wishes as well as taste inclinations to persistently create goods and services that ultimately satisfy consumer needs. In the present day, operational upheavals encompass consumer security, association, extension and customer allegiance along with labor recruitment and retention. Fundamentally, brand cognizance attracts vital concentration as the industry rummages around for fresh openings to establish dependable market share. Mandurah’s financial and economic position... The Tourism Strategic Marketing Plan 2013-2016 virtually provides a significant dream for the tourism, hospitality and service industry in the City of Mandurah. Mandurah’s direct role in the industry has progressively increased in recent times. As part of the recommendations, the city and the Australian government at large should embrace, provide and support the products and capabilities that complement the contemporary position of the destination while at the same time taking into account the prospective markets and existing tourism linkages. Besides, the management should establish a matching set of experiences that typify Mandurah and act as a magnet-card to draw target markets on top of exploiting both traditional and momentous resources in order to develop areas of specialization. The city is also projected to attract fresh venture to provide more housing elegances and marketing opportunities among other leisure nest eggs. In addition, it must also increase the quantity a nd quality of service sector experiences by facilitating access and infrastructure as well as working in partnership with the private sector to convey integrated tourism marketing posts.To maximize and uphold the expanse’s artistic powers and sporting experiences to vested interest tourists, the management must also address expertise and experience standards within the industry and the community at large besides engaging the vast industry to ensure they are utterly conversant, interested and compassionate.

Transportation And The National Economy Essay Example for Free

Transportation And The National Economy Essay We’ve come a long way when it comes to transportation. One need not look closely to notice the many changes that occur during the long period of time when our ancestors used the primitive way of transport by riding horses astride or making them carry their carts and the like. Surely, transportation played a large and important part in our lives. Nowadays we need not spend long voyage over seas when we want to visit our friends and relatives who happened to live on the other side of the world. However, the importance of transportation did not end from visiting one relative or another. Transportation plays a major part on our economy not only because some people make use of transportation for their business or whatever. In all the uses we get from transportation, transportation is also considered a necessity by our businessmen in delivering products for their customers. Due to these reasons among many others it seems to suffice to say that transportation does indeed contributes largely to how our economy operates.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   However, the way one values transportation differs from one person to another. Aside from the fact that the avoidance of traffic could cause us great travel time savings and also it could lessen gasoline cost there are also people who values time or rather, there are those who consider time as money, and thus a quick and efficient way of transportation for them is a must. The same thing however, does not apply for those who can live idly or even for those who have other things more important for them than time. For people of the latter sort, spending too much money on transportation would be a waste of important resources, for those kinds of people believes that there are other things more important than transportation which needs notice.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Countries with growing economy for one, appreciates forms of transportation that are quick and efficient. They believe that a reliable form of transportation is needed by companies for them to produce jobs for those who have none. Ex-president Clinton and his vice-president Bush are examples of people who give high credits on a good transportation. These two famous people formed an alliance with the world’s greatest auto manufacturers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. They both believe that such an approach would help greatly in terms of economy. Of course there are others like them who have got so much faith on transportation. It was due to this that many debates and arguments are happening on the national level because both sides can’t meet on the middle on how much resources should be spend on the development of transportations.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     I can see the benefits we could reap out of good transportations and the like however, I think that there should be a limit as to how much resources we should spend on transportation projects alone. There are other important things which contribute to our economy and I don’t believe that those things should be kept in the dark only because most of our politicians have so much faith on transportation benefits. I believe that a thorough examination of the pros and cons is needed before pursuing a project on transportation and other projects as well. If the benefits we could reap are greater than its cost then I think it’s only right for both our public and private sectors to go on with the project. Also, they should also put into account other things which are important such as education, better housing for those who are homeless and the like. Before they should spend our resources on transportations they should first weigh if transportation is really the one we need to improve and not other things which also plays a major factor on our lives. They should also weigh if the majority of the population would benefit for the project or not. If they could keep the majority of the population satisfied, the better. Such, I think is the proper approach in lessening the dispute between the two parties, those who believes in the great value of transportation and those who believes that there are more important things than transportation that the government should focus their eyes on. Thus, as a conclusion I think that the betterment of the many should catch they eyes of our public officials first and foremost. Reference: http://www.apta.com http://www.ibiblio.org

Palm Essay -- essays research papers

Hawkins is an inventor, and he walked away from PDA’s because he saw cell phones were everywhere and wanted to invent the best voice based application. He new there was a need for an application that could combine all the features of the mobile communication and organization tools in the market today. I believe he was not only creative, but very smart about the market place, because, he foresaw that PDA’s were becoming commodities. The price, at which PDA’s were being sold, would severely cramped margins of any company expecting large returns from these devices. Every person on the block could now knock off a version of a Palm Handheld, Hawkins found a complimentary market, and handspring was nimble enough to beat all the big players to that market. The Treo is the hottest device on the market because it was first to market, and has very little competition. It appears that the advance features of the Treo blows away the competition when it comes to providing a small convenient tool that replaces all the other gadgets. I believe the main competitive advantage is that the Treo wasn’t tied to one specific carrier by contract, so they were able to build a network of sales through their affiliation with different cellular carriers. Another competitive advantage of the Treo is the fact that it’s not a phone masquerading as a PDA or even a PDA trying to be a cell phone. The Treo was designed from the ground up to be more than a phone, while I believe the phone makers are trying to... Palm Essay -- essays research papers Hawkins is an inventor, and he walked away from PDA’s because he saw cell phones were everywhere and wanted to invent the best voice based application. He new there was a need for an application that could combine all the features of the mobile communication and organization tools in the market today. I believe he was not only creative, but very smart about the market place, because, he foresaw that PDA’s were becoming commodities. The price, at which PDA’s were being sold, would severely cramped margins of any company expecting large returns from these devices. Every person on the block could now knock off a version of a Palm Handheld, Hawkins found a complimentary market, and handspring was nimble enough to beat all the big players to that market. The Treo is the hottest device on the market because it was first to market, and has very little competition. It appears that the advance features of the Treo blows away the competition when it comes to providing a small convenient tool that replaces all the other gadgets. I believe the main competitive advantage is that the Treo wasn’t tied to one specific carrier by contract, so they were able to build a network of sales through their affiliation with different cellular carriers. Another competitive advantage of the Treo is the fact that it’s not a phone masquerading as a PDA or even a PDA trying to be a cell phone. The Treo was designed from the ground up to be more than a phone, while I believe the phone makers are trying to...

As completely as possible, sketch the supply chain for Zara from raw materials to consumer purchase Essay

Zara makes about 40% of their raw material (fabric). The remaining 60% is outsourced from within Spain, mostly from the La Curuna. Designing of clothes at Zara is done by creative teams of over 300 professionals at the headquarters in La Curuna, Spain. They act on the information fed to them from the stores managers. The first stage in Zara’s production system is cutting of fabric. The design is then sent for sewing by one of several hundred local cooperatives. After sewing, the clothes are returned to Zara’s facilities for ironing by an assembly line of workers. After this, the clothing items are wrapped in plastic and transported on conveyor belts to a group of giant warehouses. In the warehouse, the customised machines patterned after the equipment used by overnight parcel services, sorts, packs, labels, and allocates clothing items for shipment to Zara’s retail stores. For Zara’s retail stores within a 24-hour drive, goods are delivered by truck whereas goods meant for stores beyond 24-hour drive are delivered by cargo jets. Zara sells to customers at their own retail stores, each managed by a retail manager who gives feedback on fashion trends to the design team. 1. Discuss the concepts of horizontal and vertical conflict as they relate to Zara. Channel conflict is generated when one channel member’s action prevent the channel from achieving its goals. It can stem from difference between channel members goals and objectives, from disagreements over the domain of responsibility and from difference in perception of the market place. Channel conflict can be vertical or horizontal. Horizontal Conflict occurs among firms at the same level of the channel. Vertical Conflict, conflicts between different levels of the same channel, is even more common. 2. Which type of vertical marketing system does Zara employ? List all the benefits that Zra receives by having adopted this system. The type of vertical marketing system which Zara employ is the Corporate Vertical System which integrates successive stages of production and distribution under single ownership. Zara makes 40 percent of its own fabrics and produces more than half of its own clothes, rather than relying on a hodgepodge of slow-moving suppliers. New designs feed into Zara manufacturing centers, which ship finish products dirictly to 1,161 Zara stores in 68 countries, saving time, eliminating the need for warehouses, and keeping inventories low. Efective Vertical Integration makes Zara faster, more flexible, and more efficient than International competitors. 3. Does Zara experience disadvantages from its â€Å"fast-fashion† distribution system? Are these disadvantages offset by the advantages? 4. How does Zara add value for the customer through major logistic functions? Zara System One of the successful organizations that use the vertical marketing system (VMS) is Zara which have a distinctive feature of business model. With the aid of the vertical integration, the company is allowed to develop the strong merchandising strategy that continuously led the Zara to create the opportunities particularly in the fast-fashion system. Because of the lack of flexibility found in traditional retailing, the organization is obliged to produce the products in varieties, amount, and frequency of the new styles. This type of system begins in the corporate areas, wherein the leaders plan the changes that will create an impact in the organization. All the plans are administered to the stores that are mostly visited by the customers. In this way the regular customers will know that the new products are already available for merchandise (Craig, Jones, & Nieto, 2004). The quick response of Zara in the fast-fashion system places the emphasis on using the VMS to be very quick fashion follower than to achieve manufacturing efficiencies. The continuous product development in the retail environment enables the organization to facilitate the chain f competitive advantage.

Indian Cultural Ethics Values and Business Management

YUDHISHTIR AND DURYODHAN| Indian Cultural Ethics Values And Business Management | | 10/30/2012| Submitted by:-Au As we all are living in the 21ST century which in which their are plethora of all the men made gadgets to provide immense pleasure which some where increasing the endless desire of a mankind and in search of completing or fulfilling those desire with a fast pace men are turning materialistic, egoistic, stubborn, felineness and also diverging from the way of ethics and value which are thought by our parents and teachers also by the religious epics.We can also say that these endless desires giving birth to Duryodhana in each of us The epics, the Ramayana and t he Mahabharata contains many morals, from which we can learn how to live and conduct ourselves in various situations. The epic are meant for the laymen, people who are serious about their religious duties and salvation, but not able to make it the most important thing in their lives and pursue it steadfastly.Since they are in narrative form, their messages, morals and lessons are easy to understand and remember for the last several centuries, both the epics served people well by inculcating in them a deep sense of reverence, devotion, commitment to the path of righteousness and belief and interest in the live beyond.Usually this the first stage that ultimately leads to a more instance spiritual aspiration, culminating in one’s salvation by drawing a clear distinction between the good and evil , the right and the wrong, the appropriate and in appropriate, and by personifying these concepts in moral percepts clearly into appealing characters and personalities, these epics help men develop inside into our religion and cultivate budhi or discriminating intelligence , which would otherwise required years of dedicated study and religious practice.Truly speaking the epics are illustrative of the divine knowledge contend in the smriti text such as the Vedas and the Upanishads , in the language and idiom familiar to the masses . The eldest of the pandava brothers was dharma raja, who was known for his sense of justice and fair play , but with a weakness for gambling. He was clear in his conscience and soft in his heart and action, which was often misunderstood by his rivals and his weakness. The eldest of the kaurava brothers was duryodhana, known for his physical power, pride, arrogance, envy, greed, and lust for power.He personified unbridled ambition, aggression, egoism and complete disrespect for tradition in seniority in his own family. Both were cousins, but certain events in their lives made them become arch enemies. According to the laws of inheritance as prescribed in our dhramshashtra, dharamraj was supposed to be become the rural of the kuru Kingdome. But duryodhana was intent upon becoming the rural by whatever means. For him end justified the means. So he enticed his cousins to play a game of dice with him and used deceptive means to snatch the kingdom from him.B y falling in the trap laid out for him, dharamraj not only lost his kingdom, his self respect and his wife , but also head to force his brothers and himself into an ignominious exile for 12 long years as a part of his irresponsible wager. Finally after returning from the long exile, when they requested duryodhana to return their kingdom, they were flatly refused. In a desperate move, they requested him to at least grant them five villages. so arrogant and drunk with power duryodhana was that he close all doors of negotiation by telling them point blank that he would not grant them even that much land where they could pin a needle.With that it became clear to the pandavas that the only way they could settle the dispute was through a war. It was what exactly duryodhana wanted. His anger and jealousy towards his cousins was so intense that he wanted destroy all of them through a deadly war and settled the issue of succession once and for all. Lord Krishna who was related to both sides through many alliances, tried to reconcile both side. But when a person was drunk with power and blinded by egoism and ignorance, how could anyone put sense in to his mind?Duryodhana was not only stubborn, but dangerously destructive and egoistic. The sensible advice of his elders and lord Krishna fell upon his deaf ears. Once it clear to both side that their differences could be resolved only through a prolonged and destructive war they began making preparations for it. Emissaries and messengers were dispatched by both parties in all direction to muster support. It was a war in which almost every rural of the Indian sub-continent was destined to take part.It was also a war on whose outcome the effectiveness of dharma upon earth depended. Everything was at stake, our religion, tradition, family values and the very future of the land of the bharata. Hence the title, the great war of India or Mahabharata yuddham. Those who were sympathetic to the cause of the pandavas and came forward to lend their support and participate in their war on their side was actually less in number because it was a time during which evil was on the rise and dharma or righteousness was on the wane.Many rural agreed to support duroydhana either because they were impressed by him personally, for evil attracts evil or because they were afraid of incurring his wrath by refusing to support him. Some warriors supported him, though with great reluctance, because they were duty bound to their king who at that time was duryodhana. As a result of these developments, compared to dharamraja, duryodhana was succeeded in securing the support of great majority of the acclaimed warriors of his time. It seemed as if the fate of the war was already sealed and duryodhana was about to win.It was at this crucial juncture that duryodhana made one major blunder which cost him dearly in the end. What change the course of the war and its ultimate outcome was the participation of lord Krishna in it. At that tim e lord Krishna was the ruler of a powerful kingdom, with a formidable army of yadus who under his leadership, got the acclaimed as fearless and unstoppable warriors. He had no particular enmity with the kaurvas, although he was well aware of their evil nature and their unbiridled political ambition. Just as they approached other rulers, both sides decided to secure the support of Lord Krishna.So both Dharmaraja and duryodhana rushed to the city of dwarka to meet lord Krishna and present him with their respective proposals. Lord Krishna, knowing the nature of both, offered them a rather difficult choice. He told them they could either choose his moral and personal support or his material support in the form of his well trained army. They could choose only one of the two, but not oth. It was a clever ploy in which he put to test the buddhi (discriminating intelligence) of both his relations. True to his nature, duryodhana chose the army.Being ignorant and egoistic, who believed in his own prowess rather than that of god, he believed that lord Krishna’s power and stature stemmed from the yadu warriors and that they were more powerful than him. Wicked as he was in his thoughts and intentions, he thought that having them on his side would be a clever strategy in his plans for further aggression. By fighting against each other, the yadus and the pandavas would self destruct each other, resulting in the weakening of the political sway of lord Krishna and his yadu clan.Thus once the issue with the pandavas was settled, he could deal with lord Krishna appropriately from a point of strength rather than weakness. Dharmaraja on the other hand chose lord Krishna himself. He believed that lord Krishna was greater than all the armies put together and having him on their side would tilt the balance of power significantly. He had greater faith in the intelligence and wisdom of lord Krishna than the might of his army. Being spiritual in nature, he believed in the unlimit ed potentialities of spiritual power rather than in the limited capabilities of physical power.Besides, he knew lord Krishna was not an ordinary person. He saw him personally helping draupadi, after he lost his gamble, when the kauravas dragged her into the court in a show of strength and try to disrobe her in front of all people. Being a wise person himself, he was able to discern clearly the divinity in the person of lord Krishna. In doing so, dhrmarja changed the very character of war from a family war to a war between the good and the evil forces, with god actively participating on the side of the good.Most of us know what happened afterwards. The pandavas were greatly benefited by the presence of lord Krishna amidst them. The entire army of the kauravas consisting of millions of soldiers and legendary warriors was wiped out in the battle field and duryodhana himelf met with an ignonimous death. Lord Krishna stayed with the pandavas throughout the war and proved indispensable. H e gave them valuable advice and guidance on every challenging occasion and helped them deal with many formidable opponents like bhishma, karna, dronacharya,asvatthamaand so on.He personally served as the charioteer of arjuna and boosted his marole in the battlefield with his divine discourse (bhagavadgita), when the later lost his heart and refused to fight with his own kinsmen on the grounds of moral dilemma. Without him, arjuna would have probably lost either the battle or his nerve or both. The moral of the story is in whatever we do we should always seek the help and guidance of god and make him a partner in all our endeavours. It does not matter whether we are rich or poor or weak or powerful.What is important is whether we have god on our side or not. Of what use all power and riches in the world, if god is not with us and god is not part of our effort? Duryodhana had everything he wanted. But he lacked faith. He ignored the support of the god. He thought he had the necessary power and resources to deal with his enemies. He thought unwisely that he could do everything by himself. He did not care to stand against god in the battle field and fight with him. He believed in himself and that he was the master of his own fate. He would win, if necessary by fighting against god.He would take the help of god in securing the assets and the resources, but would not personally want him on his side. Such attitude and thinking proved his undoing. There is an important lesson in all this, which is very relevant today and which we can learn to save ourselves from the consequences of our selfish actions. If you look carefully you will see that in the present day world there are more duryodhanas amidst us than dharma rajas. We have people among us who would go to any length and resort to any means to achieve success and popularity in their lives.It does not matter to them whether god is with them or against them. They don’t care whether they are righteous or other wise. They have scant respect for relationships, family, tradition and moral values. What matters to them is material success in the form of money, power and wealth. They feed upon their own pride and revel in their own glory. They may use the name and power of god, but only with a selfish intent and for a selfish purpose, without ever acknowledging it. If necessary they don’t mind to defy him or his law to achieve their goals.Seeing but themselves and living or acting for themselves, they live under the illusion that their personal efforts are responsible for their achievements and they are masters of their own fate. Their obsession with power, name and fame is so strong that they make take credit for the work done by others, but rarely come forward to appreciate others. In a similar vein, they show no gratitude for the silent support rendered by god. This is unfortunate because in doing so they are exposing themselves to the consequences of thir own actions (kama) and also alienating themselves from their own inner divinity.

Seymour Cray and the Supercomputer

Seymour Cray and the Supercomputer Many of us are familiar with computers. You’re likely using one now to read this blog post as devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets are essentially the same underlying computing technology. Supercomputers, on the other hand, are somewhat esoteric as they’re often thought of as hulking, costly, energy-sucking machines developed, by and large, for government institutions, research centers, and large firms. Take for instance China’s Sunway TaihuLight, currently the world’s fastest supercomputer, according to Top500’s supercomputer rankings. It’s comprised of 41,000 chips (the processors alone weigh over 150 tons), cost about $270 million and has a power rating of 15,371 kW. On the plus side, however, it’s capable of performing quadrillions of calculations per second and can store up to 100 million books. And like other supercomputers, it’ll be used to tackle some of the most complex tasks in the fields of science such as weather forecasting and drug research. When Supercomputers Were Invented The notion of a supercomputer first arose in the 1960s when an electrical engineer named Seymour Cray, embarked on creating the world’s fastest computer. Cray, considered the â€Å"father of supercomputing,† had left his post at business computing giant Sperry-Rand to join the newly formed Control Data Corporation so that he can focus on developing scientific computers. The title of world’s fastest computer was held at the time by the IBM 7030 â€Å"Stretch,† one of the first to use transistors instead of vacuum tubes.   In 1964, Cray introduced the CDC 6600, which featured innovations such as switching out germanium transistors in favor of silicon and a Freon-based cooling system. More importantly, it ran at a speed of 40 MHz, executing roughly three million floating-point operations per second, which made it the fastest computer in the world. Often considered to be the world’s first supercomputer, the CDC 6600 was 10 times faster than most computers and three times faster than the IBM 7030 Stretch. The title was eventually relinquished in 1969 to its successor the CDC 7600.  Ã‚   Seymour Cray Goes Solo In 1972, Cray left Control Data Corporation to form his own company, Cray Research. After some time raising seed capital and financing from investors, Cray debuted the Cray 1, which again raised the bar for computer performance by a wide margin. The new system ran at a clock speed of 80 MHz and performed 136 million floating-point operations per second (136 megaflops). Other unique features include a newer type of processor (vector processing) and a speed-optimized horseshoe-shaped design that minimized the length of the circuits. The Cray 1 was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976. By the 1980s Cray had established himself as the preeminent name in supercomputing and any new release was widely expected to topple his previous efforts. So while Cray was busy working on a successor to the Cray 1, a separate team at the company put out the Cray X-MP, a model that was billed as a more â€Å"cleaned up† version of the Cray 1. It shared the same horseshoe-shape design, but boasted multiple processors, shared memory and is sometimes described as two Cray 1s linked together as one. The Cray X-MP (800 megaflops) was one of the first â€Å"multiprocessor† designs and helped open the door to parallel processing, wherein computing tasks are split into parts and executed simultaneously by different processors.   The Cray X-MP, which was continually updated, served as the standard bearer until the long-anticipated launch of the Cray 2 in 1985. Like its predecessors, Cray’s latest and greatest took on the same horseshoe-shaped design and basic layout with integrated circuits stacked together on logic boards. This time, however, the components were crammed so tightly that the computer had to be immersed in a liquid cooling system to dissipate the heat. The Cray 2 came equipped with eight processors, with a â€Å"foreground processor† in charge of handling storage, memory and giving instructions to the â€Å"background processors,† which were tasked with the actual computation. Altogether, it packed a processing speed of 1.9 billion floating point operations per second (1.9 Gigaflops), two times faster than the Cray X-MP. More Computer Designers Emerge Needless to say, Cray and his designs ruled the early era of the supercomputer. But he wasn’t the only one advancing the field. The early ’80s also saw the emergence of massively parallel computers, powered by thousands of processors all working in tandem to smash though performance barriers. Some of the first multiprocessor systems were created by W. Daniel Hillis, who came up with the idea as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The goal at the time was to overcome to the speed limitations of having a CPU direct computations among the other processors by developing a decentralized network of processors that functioned similarly to the brain’s neural network. His implemented solution, introduced in 1985 as the Connection Machine or CM-1, featured 65,536 interconnected single-bit processors. The early ’90s marked the beginning of the end for Cray’s stranglehold on supercomputing. By then, the supercomputing pioneer had split off from Cray Research to form Cray Computer Corporation. Things started to go south for the company when the Cray 3 project, the intended successor to the Cray 2, ran into a whole host of problems. One of Cray’s major mistakes was opting for gallium arsenide semiconductors – a newer technology as a way to achieve his stated goal of a twelvefold improvement in processing speed. Ultimately, the difficulty in producing them, along with other technical complications, ended up delaying the project for years and resulted in many of the company’s potential customers eventually losing interest. Before long, the company ran out of money and filed for bankruptcy in 1995. Cray’s struggles would give way to a changing of the guard of sorts as competing Japanese computing systems would come to dominate the field for much of the decade. Tokyo-based NEC Corporation first came onto the scene in 1989 with the SX-3 and a year later unveiled a four-processor version that took over as the world’s fastest computer, only to be eclipsed in 1993. That year, Fujitsu’s Numerical Wind Tunnel, with the brute force of 166 vector processors became the first supercomputer to surpass 100 gigaflops (Side note: To give you an idea of how rapidly the technology advances, the fastest consumer processors in 2016 can easily do more than 100 gigaflops, but at the time, it was particularly impressive). In 1996, the Hitachi SR2201 upped the ante with 2048 processors to reach a peak performance of 600 gigaflops. Intel Joins the Race Now, where was Intel? The company that had established itself as the consumer market’s leading chipmaker didn’t really make a splash in the realm of supercomputing until towards the end of the century. This was because the technologies were altogether very different animals. Supercomputers, for instance, were designed to jam in as much processing power as possible while personal computers were all about squeezing efficiency from minimal cooling capabilities and limited energy supply. So in 1993 Intel engineers finally took the plunge by taking the bold approach of going massively parallel with the 3,680 processor Intel XP/S 140 Paragon, which by June of 1994 had climbed to the summit of the supercomputer rankings. It was the first massively parallel processor supercomputer to be indisputably the fastest system in the world.   Up to this point, supercomputing has been mainly the domain of those with the kind of deep pockets to fund such ambitious projects. That all changed in 1994 when contractors at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, who didn’t have that kind of luxury, came up with a clever way to harness the power of parallel computing by linking and configuring a series of personal computers using an ethernet network. The â€Å"Beowulf cluster† system they developed was comprised of 16 486DX processors, capable of operating in the gigaflops range and cost less than $50,000 to build. It also had the distinction of running Linux rather than Unix before the Linux became the operating systems of choice for supercomputers. Pretty soon, do-it-yourselfers everywhere were followed similar blueprints to set up their own Beowulf clusters.  Ã‚   After relinquishing the title in 1996 to the Hitachi SR2201, Intel came back that year with a design based on the Paragon called ASCI Red, which was comprised of more than 6,000 200MHz Pentium Pro processors. Despite moving away from vector processors in favor of off-the-shelf components, the ASCI Red gained the distinction of being the first computer to break the one trillion flops barrier (1 teraflops). By 1999, upgrades enabled it to surpass three trillion flops (3 teraflops). The ASCI Red was installed at Sandia National Laboratories and was used primarily to simulate nuclear explosions and assist in the maintenance of the country’s nuclear arsenal. After Japan retook the supercomputing lead for a period with the 35.9 teraflops NEC Earth Simulator, IBM brought supercomputing to unprecedented heights starting in 2004 with the Blue Gene/L. That year, IBM debuted a prototype that just barely edged the Earth Simulator (36 teraflops). And by 2007, engineers would ramp up the hardware to push its processing capability to a peak of nearly 600 teraflops. Interestingly, the team was able to reach such speeds by going with the approach of using more chips that were relatively low power, but more energy efficient. In 2008, IBM broke ground again when it switched on the Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to exceed one quadrillion floating point operations per second (1 petaflops).

Attitude Formation And Stereotypes

Attitude Formation And Stereotypes ‘Stereotypes’, according to Hogg and Vaughan(2002:46), are impressions of people that are strongly influenced by widely shared assumptions of personality, behaviour and attitudes based on group membership for example, sex, race, ethnicity and nationality. These assumptions are a simplified evaluative image of someone or a social group and its members, mental representations influence impressions we form of a person or group and are seen as a social schema. As individuals stereotypes help us to deal with a large amount of social information we receive from a person or group of people. All this information helps us to simplify our social world to make it manageable, controllable and predictable. According to Pennington and McLoughlin (2008:184) Hogg and Vaughan (2002) have done many studies over the last 50 years and they summarise there research, the findings include; Stereotypes are quick to form and hard to change. Many stereotypes form in childhood and early teens. We show a tendency to rapidly stereotype others on the basis of a small number of traits and characteristics. Stereotypes are important as they influence impression formation, example when we first meet a person we assign them to a social group without finding any information out about them; from this we have formed a pre existing stereotype from our first impressions. Attitudes We cannot see or measure attitudes directly; the term attitude is used to represent a quite complex mental process. As individuals we continually seek to discover others attitudes, we tell others our views and try to change others opinions. According to Petty and Cacioppo (1986) say attitudes are a general evaluation we make about ourselves, others and issues, they go on to say ‘attitudes have a past, present and future; they were developed from past experience, they guide our current behaviour and can direct our development in the future’, (Pennington and McLoughlin, 2008:193). Through this defin ition it is thought attitudes strongly influence the way we behave. There are two different approaches to understanding attitudes; the structural approach and the functional approach. The structural approach (Katz 1960)- states that attitudes are an evaluation (positive or negative) of an attitude, i.e. It is expected for you to hold a positive attitude towards a close friend and you might hold a negative attitude towards a political issue, this approach is broken down into three components. (Pennington and McLoughlin 2008:193-194). Cognitive- our thoughts; Affective- our feelings and emotions; Behavioural- our behaviour The functional approach ties to understand and explains what the purpose of the attitude is for the individual; there are five different attitudes in this function. (Pennington and McLoughlin 2008:197). Adaptive function- helps achieve goal and avoids the undesirable. Self- expression- our opinion, attitudes and views. Ego- defensive function – protects self- esteem and promotes positive self image, Freudian theory. Knowledge function- helps with structure and organisation. Social adjustment function- helps manage social situation. Central traits – are pieces of information we latch onto whilst forming first impressions, these have disproportional influences over our final impressions. Primacy effect – information presented first has the strongest influence on impressions formed.

How similar are the experiences of minority ethnic groups in the UK Essay

How similar are the experiences of minority ethnic groups in the UK labour market Give evidence for your answer - Essay Example Whites always had good percentage of people having better jobs as compared to non-whites. To be more specific, the major professional and managerial based jobs were mainly held by the whites. Non-whites found to have been struggling in the labour markets of UK and thus majority of non-whites either remained unemployed or self-employed. However, in the last decade, the dynamics of UK labour market has experienced significant improvements. These improvements have emerged as a result of increasing employment rates of minority ethnic groups especially Black Africans, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis over a period of around 30 years (Cohen and Kennedy, 2007, p.16). The major reason behind this is the improvement in educational credentials and professional skills of these minority ethnic groups. Despite having such improvements, still the majority of jobs, attainments and occupational trainings are mainly provided to white British population and the other minority ethnic groups are found to hav e been obtaining jobs quite narrowly especially at managerial and professional level. With the increasing racial and discriminating practices prevailing in UK labour market, the gap between the whites and non-whites in labour market still exists effectively. Undoubtedly, tremendous amount of growth can be experienced in terms of non-white men getting closer to their white counterparts in getting jobs. However, this situation is quite disappointing in case of non-white women getting employed as compared to white women. For Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, the scenario of getting employment among women is worse than expected such that their employment rate is even blow 30%. Even though there are more bright prospects available for the minority ethnic groups in terms of achieving better jobs than before due to their higher educational professional background, yet their living conditions are unable to portray these bright prospects. As a result, the minority ethnic groups preferred to g et self employed rather than going after the managerial positions as the future prospects for the whites are readily available for them as compared to minority ethnic groups, most of them are Chinese and Indians. The other minority group comprising Pakistanis and Bangladeshis remained stick to their original preference of self employment such that they are mainly working under specific sectors which include small retail business, fast food restaurants and taxi driving occupations. The way these minority ethnic groups are viewed and perceived among UK social classes, is the major reason behind such discrimination that occurs with the minority ethnic groups in the labour market. Having non-British origin has created immense difficulties for those minority ethnic groups, due to which they are unable to reach at the higher executive level positions even though they are well equipped in terms of their educational background (Macionos and Plummer, 2008, p.22). Ethnicity itself has become a greater hurdle for the graduates belonging to minority ethnic groups to avail employment opportunities and getting higher positions in their jobs. Their efforts are declined even though they have tried to mitigate the impact of their ethnic background by acquire high quality education and training. Similarly, in terms of receiving salaries and earnings, minority ethnic g