Critical Thinking - Academically Adrift Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Critical Thinking - Academically Adrift - Essay Example Students must be critical. Critical thinking is about questioning the conventional system of doing things especially when it is dysfunctional. Students must concentrate on solution finding academic procedures that are born through innovation (Padget, 2012). Critical thinking leads to increased concentration and outright improvement. Educators are duty bound to provoke students to be solution oriented. Students must look at innovation as the only way of survival (Sullivan, & Rosin, 2008). Methods of learning should be modeled to allow flexibility and educational engagement that is firmly committed to purposeful living as opposed to presentation of credentials. Lack of rigor has been cited as a major reason for declining educational standards. Many graduates are said to be living below the poverty line. The syllabuses have to be criticized. Students must take units that encourage them to be part of the solutions. The education system should be both preparatory and solution based. The intensity of successful education model should be in bent on answering the present day challenges (Sullivan, & Rosin, 2008). The culture of socially responsible education system must be entrenched in the future education systems. Units that enhance creativity and social engagement with an aim to get solutions must be given preference. This calls for funded research and innovation centers. The syllabuses should be regularly reviewed to counter the emerging challenges with cheap and sustainable

Disrupting the Recruitment Process to Exploit Weaknesses in Terrorist Research Paper

Disrupting the Recruitment Process to Exploit Weaknesses in Terrorist Organizations - Research Paper Example This paper explores recruitment practices in the global Jihad as they play out in America and Europe. Whereas the focal point of the discussion is terrorism, the paper explores a distinct form of contemporary terrorism, Global Jihad, which embodies religiously inspired conflicts with a global vision. Nevertheless, the paper does not necessarily centre on terror groups with nationalistic or secular motives. The global Jihad is entangled with individuals, organizations, and ideologies from the Middle East, South East Asia, Central Asia, and North Africa. There are four distinct levels of commitment within terrorist organizations. These include passive supporters, active supporters, cadre, and leaders. Although all play a critical part in the running of the terrorist organizations, the cadre can be singled out to be the level that has a phenomenal influence in the recruitment process. Cadre encompasses the nucleus of active members engaged in the overall running of the terrorist operations inclusive of recruiting new members. Terrorist organizations employ both hierarchical and networked structures of organization. Islamic radicalization can be considered as the lynchpin to homegrown terrorism, especially in the West. Delegitimizing radicalization is arguably an effective way of disrupting recruitment process. ... Most recruitment processes into terrorist organization feature aspects such as targeting of the alienated and marginalized, spiritual quest, radicalization, gradual seclusion and cell formation, adoption of violence as a legitimate political means, linkage with a gatekeeper, and eventual operation of the cell. Terrorist recruitment cells can be delimited into four separate cells; management cell, information gathering cell, preparation cell, and execution cell. Disrupting Recruitment Process Most international terrorist organizations are actively engaged in recruitment of Westerners into terrorist organization via facilitation of travel to foreign training camps and mounting grounds. Foreign terrorist organizations have shifted their strategy from passive influence of western radicals into directly motivating, inspiring, and training, especially through internet-based propaganda. Recruitment of Western radicals has worked for foreign terrorist organizations as they can conceal the id entity as the recruits hold â€Å"clean† citizenship. The employment of homegrown terrorist cells has complicated the ability to infiltrate terrorism recruitment rings (Cortright & Lopez, 2007). The four principal ingredients to a thriving terrorist’s organization include recruitment, motivation, funding, and haven. Terrorism is affected by interplay of factors such as a haven, leadership, and the underlying conditions within the society. Terrorist organizations leaders avail motivation, mobilization, and organization functions within the organizations. In addition, leaders within terrorist organizations act as principal sources of propaganda besides acting as symbolic figureheads

Economics and Global Business Essay Example for Free

Economics and Global Business Essay A) Elasticity of demand is describes as the degree of percentage change in demand for a good or service due to variation in price. Elasticity measurements can be expressed by three types of demand; inelastic demand, unit elastic demand, or relatively elastic demand. To determine the percentage of change in demand for a product or service the price elasticity equation and coefficient are used. The coefficient Ed is defined as â€Å"the percentage change in quantity demanded of product divided by the percentage change in price of product X† (McConnell, Brue, Flynn, 2012, pg. 76) The three expressions of Ed are Elastic, Inelastic, and Unit Elasticity. Elastic demand occurs â€Å"if a specific percentage change in price results in a larger percentage change in quantity demanded† (McConnell, Brue, Flynn, 2012, pg. 77). For a product with inelastic demand Ed 1. An example of elastic demand is when there is a 2% decrease in the price of chocolate that results in a 6% increase in quantity. Ed= .06/.02 = 3 Inelastic demand occurs â€Å"if a specific percentage change in price produces a smaller percentage change in quantity demanded.†(McConnell, Brue, Flynn, 2012, pg. 77) For products with inelastic demand Ed 0 .Inferior goods are goods that yield a negative income elasticity, Ei 0. As consumer incomes increase, demand and purchases of these foods decrease. Examples of inferior goods are bus tickets, consignment clothing, and retreaded tires to list a few. D) Demand of a product will be elastic when there is a higher number of substitute available. This happens because consumers can easily swap one product for the other based on price. An example can be the purchase of soda. A consumer can go to the store to buy Pepsi but arrive and find a sale on Coke and buy Coke instead. The variety of soda a consumer can chose, makes the demand for Pepsi highly elastic. The same rule applies for inelastic demand of a product. If there is a limited number of substitute goods available the product or service is highly inelastic. An example would  be medical procedures or surgery. The alternative to surgery are very few, making medical procedures or surgery inelastic. E) The proportion of Income devoted to a good or service effects the elasticity of demand for that good or service. For goods that are of a higher proportion of income, a 15% increase in price would make the good highly elastic. But for goods that are of a lower proportion of income, a 15% increase in price would only slightly change the demand, making them lower in elasticity. An example would be a car priced at $13,000. If there is an increase by 15% the car now costs $14,950. This increase in price requires more of the consumer’s income making them highly elastic. Another example of how proportion of income devoted to a good effects elasticity of demand, is a pair shoes that cost $20.00. If there is a 15% price increase on the shoes, they now cost $23.00. The increase in the price of the shoes requires about the same proportion of income that the original price required. The lack of major proportional change to income makes the shoes elastic. F) Time is a factor that effects consumers demand elasticity of a product. â€Å"Short-run† demand for a product is often more inelastic than â€Å"long-run† demand since consumer have less time to find an alternative and normally don’t feel the effects of a price increase until â€Å"long-run.† An example would be an increase in the price of salmon. â€Å"Short-run† demand of Salmon is more inelastic since the effect if the price increase hasn’t been felt drastically by consumers. But, in the â€Å"long-run† demand for salmon will decrease making it more elastic as consumers find alternative to salmon. G) 1) Elastic demand range occurs when total revenue can be increased by decreasing price. The range for elastic demand on the graph is between $80 and $50. Total revenue increases as the price decrease. 2). Inelastic demand range occurs when total revenue can be increased by increasing price. The range for inelastic demand on the graph is between $40 and $0. Total revenue is decreasing as the price decreases. 3). Unit elastic range occurs when a  percentage change in price results in the exact same percentage change in quantity. When the price changes it does not affect total revenue on the graph. The unit elastic range for the given graph is $50-$40. References McConnell, Campbell R., Stanley L. Brue, and Sean Masaki Flynn. Elasticity. Economics: principles, problems, and policies. 19th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2012. 76-77. Print.

Doubt Is The Key To Knowledge Discuss.

Doubt Is The Key To Knowledge Discuss. People created proverbs and used to apply them when experiences similar to the one which resulted in the construction of the proverb reoccurred. The Persians had one of the most famous proverbs that are still used in our time; they used to say doubt is the key to knowledge, but to what extent is this phrase true? Through the areas and ways of knowledge, this proverb will be further studied to determine to which extent it is true. In this essay, I will be using the natural sciences and religion as areas of knowledge and linking them to the ways of knowledge; perception and reason or logic. Doubt is one of the earliest ways the human beings started gaining knowledge from the world around them. It is known that doubt is when a person starts questioning a subject that confused him or has been on his mind for a time. It is then that this person starts asking questions in order to gain further knowledge about the subject he wishes to acquire. We can generally say that doubt is the origin of obtaining knowledge as human beings started questioning the world and everything in it; they were able to get the answers they wanted and increased their knowledge. The world famous French philosopher, writer, physicist and mathematician Renà © Descartes believed that doubt could never be the key to knowledge and information from the world. He was considered one of the first thinkers ever to introduce philosophy to natural sciences. Descartes believed that one can gain truth without doubt; he introduced his method called methodological skepticism in which he rejects any ideas that can b e doubted, then reestablishes them so that he can get genuine knowledge from these ideas. One of Descartes books is one called Meditations on First Philosophy. The book has six meditations in it in which Descartes banishes any belief that contains, even if in small quantities, any kind of uncertainty, but then reestablishes the things that are known for sure. Each one of the six meditations were written as if in one day Descartes speculated and came up with the meditation; so the book was authored as if he meditated for six days and developed his meditations. Three of Descartes meditations are discussed. His first meditation is called Meditation I: Concerning Those Things That Can Be Called into Doubt. In this meditation, Descartes remembers that he was once deceived by his senses and since that happened before, it can happen again. So he tells himself, if I am being deceived, then my beliefs are treacherous and uncertain. The second meditation called Meditation II: Concerning the Nature of the Human Mind: That It Is Better Known Than the Body is an acknowledgment to the first meditation. Descartes believed that since he is a thinking thing, then he must exist. Since he is a thing that can deceived and have thoughts and beliefs, he must exist. His third meditation Meditation III: Concerning God, That He Exists argues that God is present and he rejects the idea of God being invented. He proposed three types of ideas; Innate, Factitious and Adventitious. The innate ideas are the ones that are and always have been with us, whereas factitious ideas are from our imagination and lastly the adventitious ones come from our experiences from the world. Descartes believed that God is an innate idea and that he is not improvised. That was Descartes beliefs when it comes to doubt, as he does not believe that doubt is the key knowledge. Let us discuss the natural sciences at first. Ever since the break of dawn, the human being has been trying to know the truth about his origins and the world around him; have we truly evolved from apes or were we simply created by God? These questions have always been present in the humans mind and this is the reason behind his doubt concerning this topic. This issue has raised many conflicts among people, but most importantly, created the Darwin theory of evolution. Darwin believed that all living organisms evolved from much simpler single-celled organisms. His doubt in the belief that God created us from nothing made him seek after the answers he wanted to get. He did not believe in what he was told and sought after the truth after questioning this topic, evidently coming up with his widely accepted theory from different people all over the world. One too many facts from the sciences such as physics and biology were found based on doubt. Take the Arabic Muslim optical scientist, Ibn Al-Haitham. The people who lived in his era thought that the eye itself emitted light rays and causing our sight. Ibn Al-Haitham, on the other hand, did not believe in what these people used to say and doubted this fact, and so he started his own experiments to prove them wrong, and he was able to show that light was reflected off surfaces and became incident on the eye resulting in our sight. People use the logic they have to reason with the things that go around them. And through the logic, they are able to realize that some things do not add up; and this leads them to questioning and trying to find answers if they are unsatisfied with the results in front of them. Through their journey of seeking the answers, these people can find them only by observing or experimenting and then find logical answers. Human beings find answers when in doubt by experimenting and when the results show up they use reason and logic to interpret them, leading them to knowledge based on doubt. However, a different area of knowledge that can be studied to show to what extent the doubt is the key to knowledge statement is true is religion. Let us take the religion for instance. Not all the people of the world believe in religion, but why is that? Why have the non-believers become what they are now? This is all because we, as human beings, doubt the things around us. We are curious beings and want to know more of everything. As time progresses, people doubt what had been told to them by God. Some do not believe that he created Adam and Eve and rather wanted to accept the evolution theories as true such as Darwins. Others do not believe that there is a judgment day, and therefore wish to explain what is happening to our world nowadays from a scientific point of view. As for religion itself, talking about Christianity for example, doubt is not an option. You either believe in God or you do not. It is said in the Holy Bible that Blessed are those who did not see and believe. Through this, it is like God is telling us that there is no need for doubt, and that we only have to follow what our hearts tell us and how our soul guides into believing that there is a God even though we cannot see him. Religion is telling us that doubt has no place in Gods will and he is our source of knowledge on him not doubt. He is the one who will explain everything to believers and guide them through their lives and provide them with answers when they need them; therefore he is a persons supply of knowledge and that person should gain it without having to doubt what God says. All in all, the statement doubt is the key to knowledge is true to an extent as proven earlier by the areas and ways of knowledge. But it is to a certain extent true, not fully true because other areas of knowledge such as the ethics contradict what the Persian proverb says. Doubt can reveal the response of unanswered questions, but on other times, it can blind us from seeing the truth. Word count: 1315 words

Wall Street Essay -- essays research papers

In 1938, and in the teeth of the longest and fiercest depression that the United States had ever known, capital spending hit an all time high. That’s right! In 1938 the men who owned America began to pour millions of Dollars into new plant and equipment as if there was no tomorrow. We don’t think much about it today, because it has been a long time since the United States has experienced a real bone jolting economic slowdown. The fact is, however, that the very best time for the industrialist to invest in new technologies is in the middle of a depression. This is because it is at such times that labor, raw materials, and new equipment can be purchased at rock bottom prices. Henry Ford may have jumped the gun a bit. He shut down his River Rouge plant for two years starting in 1932 so that it could be completely rebuilt. Being a bit of a genius, Ford used his time and money to redesign the plant to create one of the most powerful little engines ever built: the Ford V8. Th is engine was so good that it was modified only slightly to equip certain aircraft for use in World War II. It also powered a series of red hot Ford cars all the way through the 1950s. At the same time that Ford was rebuilding his River Rouge plant, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, an Austrian economist who had migrated to Harvard University, was hard at work on a book that would explain the paradox suggested above, namely the timing of business cycles and technological change. In this all but forgotten work one of our most famous economists spelled out the secrets of the business cycle, that is the same old pattern of boom and bust that may be coming back to haunt us now. Many, if not most, American college students know Schumpeter's name because of his work in defense of free enterprise called Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. This was not, however, the book that Schumpeter was working on as America slogged through the mean and hungry 1930s. The book published by Schumpeter in 1939 is called " Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process. " Not only is Schumpeter's definitive two volume study of the business cycle not on college reading lists today, but, indeed, it continues to languish in its first edition. The embarrassing truth is that Schumpeter's real masterpiece remains almost unread. The present writer checked out this forgo... ...sions , as Schumpeter explains in Business Cycles, is the long term movement of prices generated by long waves of technological change. What goes up has to come back down. There are those who believe that Greenspan would bring down this bull market gently if he could. Certainly he has tried. It is unlikely that Greenspan’s gentle jawboning will do this, however, since, as Kindleberger points out, when investors are going hog wild in an inflationary stock market they are simply not willing to listen to reason from the lips of central bankers and their like. From Schumpeter's point of view, the underlying cause of the next market crash, would simply be that the long wave of prosperity that began in 1938 is now over. According to Kindleberger's careful history mentioned above the speculative bubble in many past economic crises has often burst as the result of some purely exogenous event. If an army somewhere loses a battle, for example, markets crash as investors run for the exits. The IBD closes its' provocative article mentioned above by suggesting that the infamous Y2K bug might just play the role of the required exogenous force here. Letâ€℠¢s hope that they are wrong for once!

Control in Crewss Body and Cheevers Five-Forty-Eight Essay -- Crews

Control in Crews's Body and Cheever's Five-Forty-Eight Harry Crews's Body and John Cheever's "Five-Forty-Eight" offer characters whose lives lack control. Although Crews's Bateman is a perfecting, attractive, and popular body builder, his life does not satisfy him. However, from the outside Bateman appears happy and content. On the other hand, Cheever's Ms. Dent is skinny, shy, emotional, and disheveld. Her description reflects the unsteadiness and the insecurity in her life. Although Bateman's personality contrast with Ms. Dent's, they have a similar need for control. Bateman and Ms. Dent search for control in the form of love objects. Bateman finds Earline Turnipseed an obese, virginal, simple and complacent "redneck." Ms. Dent finds Blake an unpopular, self-centered, abusive, and chauvinistic womanizer. Both character finds control; however, only Bateman does so through his love object. Bill Bateman and Ms. Dent feel a lack of control and completion evident in their illnesses. Bateman suffers form bulimia: "[he] could not hold to the rigid diet of a champion, never had been able to, but he was a secret and accomplished puker"(105). His rigid diet does not contribute to his bulimia; rather, his intense obsession with control leads to his sickness. Displaying his own neurosis, Bateman uncontrollably fears failure. By punishing his body through weight lifting, bingeing, and purging he artificially feels successful and in control. Although Ms. Dent does not directly define his illness, she too suffers from a neurosis, plus clinical depression. Struggling with her illness, Ms. Dent "had been in the hospital for eight months"(81). While her obsession with Blake, her paranoia, her stalking, her uncontrollable emot... ...on in Earline's far from perfect body. Perhaps now that his life satisfies, he will not feel so out of control, thus eliminating his need to binge and purge. Blake does in fact help Ms. Dent take control of her life, just not as she intended. Instead of gaining control through his life, she achieves control by tearing his life down. Ms. Dent tells Blake, "Oh, I'm better than you, I'm better than you, and I shouldn't waste my time or spoil my life like this. Put your face in the dirt"(89)! She finally realizes her own self-worth, and by literally lowering Blake beneath her in the dirt she cures herself. She realizes she may not have friends, family, love, and money, but she has dreams ;therefore, a reason to live. Through their love objects, whether a correct match or not, Bateman and Ms. Dent overcome the obstacles that are impeding their happiness.

Legs by Post Essay

1.Who are the protagonists of this case? For what are they trying to solve / what decision are they trying to make? The protagonists of this case are Elizabeth Preis and Dickon Addis. Together they started a London-based mail-order business called Beautiful Legs by POST. They are trying to raise  £110,000 within the next month in order to mail out 20,000 catalogs each in January and February. In order to solve this, Preis and Dickon must find investors to fund the next phase of growth for their company. They need to know what the response rate would be, what the average size per order would be, and what percent of initial customers would reorder. Would they be able to rise the financing that they needed in order to stay on track? How could they get more free publicity? (Page2 of case) Answering these questions could help determine if Beautiful Legs by POST could be a feasible business. 2.Use the People-Opportunity-Context framework to evaluate this opportunity. People like Elizabeth Preis, Director of Marketing, and Dicken Addis, Director of Finance and Operations are worth being invested in. They both have experience The opportunity involved in Beautiful Legs by POST is the advantage of finding a gap in the marketplace for mail order in Europe. After market research they found that the gap was specifically in the U.K. Starting their business in this location gives them a competitive advantage of being one of the first companies in mail order. Another opportunity involved with tights is that they are a replenishment item that requires regular purchases. The analysis from Market research indicates clearly that there is a customer segment who wants to buy through mail-order, so business opportunity exists. People like Dicken Addis, Director of Finance and Elizabeth Preis, Director of Marketing are worth enough to be invested. They have valuable experience in their respective fields and also business plan shows that they understood the product. Competitive advantage being the 1st one in mail-order Break-even analysis and cash flows are convincing