Quality Transformation of the Veterans Healthcare System Essay

Quality Transformation of the Veterans Healthcare System - Essay Example In the 1990s the VHA had a series of problems that prompted a need for reform. The challenges were with substandard care for older veterans and many of the hospitals were run down and poorly managed. Many doctors lacked the experience to run the hospitals properly and patient needs were not being satisfied (Cannon, 2006). The problem was so great that Congress considered shutting down the hospitals and giving veterans a voucher to go to outside private hospitals (Waller, 2006, p. 1). A restructuring took place in the mid-1990s to focus on taking care of outpatients rather than in keeping them in lengthy hospital stays. Larger hospitals that were not effective were closed in favor of clinics that would concentrate on meeting the needs of the aging veterans. After this time many newspaper reported that the VHA was particularly good for a variety of conditions. The greatest part of the reform was to update their technology and create better systems for managed care. As an example, they created software that would track their patients so they would have access to them as needed instead of having to scramble to find patients information. These measures gave doctors the ability to improve patient care because their records were easily accessible on a laptop computer. The reason this is easy is because the VHA has a system wide database where they keep a total history of each veteran. Within this reform a barcode system was also adopted for prescriptions so that when f illing them a nurse can scan the barcode on the patient and then scan it on the prescription to make sure that there is a match. These changes prompted many veterans to leave private insurance and go back to the VHA which also created more problems for the VHA because the influx of patients created challenges financially that Congress did not provide for in the revamping (Waller, p. 2). In order to deal with the influx they had to limit the amount of people who could take

Proposed Capstone Project Essay Example for Free

Proposed Capstone Project Essay To implement the system in an online environment. To design a database that will organize blotter related information and records. To provide a search facility for finding and filtering of records. To include a module that will facilitate updating of reported blotters. To generate statistical reports pertinent for decision making. Project Description Police officers are assigned at the police stations to encode the complaints, police reports, and crime incidents reported in their areas of responsibilities (AOS) directly into their computers connected online. All police precinct blotter records are visible in the web server anytime of the day. At the end of the day, each police station prints their day’s journal using the system. System Platform: Web Application utilizing HTML5, PHP, MySQL, and CSS. System Functionalities [Include your HIPO in this part. Make sure all functionalities are stated here. I suggest, you divide your features in terms of Client and Server Side. Client Side may still be divided in terms of your users. These features are still based on the SE Project which is PC-Based, you have not specified features when it will be implemented online.] Management of blotter cases. (inc: Creating blotter and archiving blotter case) Viewing of records. (by case number, name, date) Generating statistical reports in graphical models. Generate and queue reports. The system will generate reports such as the following: Number of blotter incidents per barangay Most common cases per barangay Monthly/Quarterly/Annually report of blotter cases Individual Blotter Report The individual reports are collated into single reports which can be accessed by City of Santa Rosa Police Headquarters Superintendent for his information and use. Statistical Report Graphical representation of most common cases annually for comparative purpose. Chart for areas with frequent cases reported. The purpose of this report is to monitor and isolate areas with the most number of incidents. And also use for decision making and for development of solutions. Read This: http://books.google.com.ph/books?id=9XcWAAAAQBAJpg=PA93dq=Computerized+Blotter+Systemhl=ensa=Xei=QfQzVKXqJ8-coQS07IHYDAved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepageq=Computerized%20Blotter%20Systemf=false http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/118908/news/nation/qc-police-to-have-computerized-blotter-system-in-2-months https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.444684698888025.97968.160481633975001type=3 http://www.slideshare.net/jobitonio/pnp-infromation-communication-management-eblotter-program http://www.studymode.com/essays/Blotter-System-1312101.html http://www.studymode.com/essays/Capstone-Project-1178085.html

IT and the Business Cycle :: essays research papers

IT and the Business Cycle There is a regular business cycle, which lasts for about 9 years. The cycle is characterised by a period of growth, then strong growth and then recession. Unfortunately, the cycle isn't exact and it isn't dependable, or else you could make money out of it, by gambling on it. Sometimes it lasts 7 years, sometimes 10 or 11. In the later stages of the last business cycle some odd things were happening. Growth in the US economy was much higher than anyone expected and unemployment much lower. Productivity statistics from the US Government suggested that from 1996 productivity was improving at an average 2.2 percent per year, which was a dramatic improvement on the 1 percent average for the previous 25 years. The point at which productivity turned up coincided with the point at which the Internet started to become visible. That may have been a coincidence, but there was another strange quirk in the figures. Investment by US companies since 1990 has been static in every area except in IT, where it rose dramatically by a factor of 14 over the decade. And to cap it all, the bulk of the productivity improvement in the US economy was confined to the IT industry itself. In theory, IT should be counter-cyclical and it usually is. The benefit that IT is supposed to deliver is automation. It either cuts costs and/or improves productivity, accordingly. The figures from the US suggest that it was doing the latter in the glorious 90s and particularly in the later years. In the current part of the business cycle it will be cost cutting that matters. The heady days of optimism are over and the era of cautious IT investment has arrived. So what are the information technologies that will do well in this era? Here's one thought. Consider the anomaly of Moore's Law. This suggests that CPU power will double every 18 months and it has done just that for over 30 years. Actually Moore's law doesn't just apply to CPUs, but also memory, disk, buses and just about every aspect of a computer or network. One would think then, that it would have brought down the cost of computing as a matter of course. However, it didn't have that effect until recently, because most of the accelerated capability was delivered to the PC where its contribution to productivity was minimal.

Glee Essay

Topic 2. ‘There is nothing ironic about show choir! ’ – Rachel Cohen Is Rachel’s assessment of the musical performances on Glee correct? Discuss the interplay of melodrama, irony and intertextuality in Glee. Your essay should contain detailed analysis of at least two scenes from Glee’s 1st season. Your essay should also make reference to your core course readings on television and postmodernism. Due 14 September heir true voice; and this one was, to me, ultimately about the series demonstrating its own voice and its space within the world of contemporary musicals. I don’t know what exactly I expected when I heard Joss Whedon would be directing, although it did send me diving for my Buffy The Vampire Slayer sing-along DVD. What I didn’t expect was an episode that didn’t feel like Whedon at all but felt intensely like Glee, more specifically the Glee that endeared itself to me in the first half of the season.What has always appeale d to me about Glee, and apparently to Joss Whedon based on this episode and his interview on Fox’s website , was the show’s delicate balance of tongue-in-cheek bitter cynicism, which keeps Glee blessedly away from High School Musical territory, and a sometimes heartbreakingly authentic sentimentality that draws me into a deeply emotional engagement with the characters and a desire to see them triumph.As others on this blog have mentioned, the stunt shows, focusing around a musical theme or dance conceit, are fun but can bring the show away from its narrative engagement and this mix of sincerity and cynicism that musical numbers have often been harnessed in service of. â€Å"Dream On† brought back this dynamic and foregrounded it in contrast to some of the more music-themed recent episodes. Neil Patrick Harris is the king of bitter(sweet) cynicism, and his performance as Bryan Ryan maintained the comedy in what otherwise was in danger of becoming a maudlin episod e.Rachel and Artie’s storylines gave both characters an opportunity for growth. Artie’s triumphantly joyful flash mob scene (fangirl moment – thank you Glee, for a flash mob! ) in particular made his final moments of aching vulnerability that much more poignant. There has been reflection on this blog about the way that Glee sometimes uses, one might even say exploits, disabled characters for emotional endings and to humanize its more difficult characters (Sue and Rachel), and Artie’s storyline comes dangerously close to becoming part of this trend.There are certainly issues with how Artie’s storyline is presented in this episode, and I leave those issues for other commentators more knowledgeable in these areas. Problematic though this is, it is consistent with the series’ ethos from the beginning. The show has always undermined its own after-school special themes, or at least made them less saccharine, by unabashedly drawing on stereotypes a nd refusing after-school special endings: Artie cannot dance, Tina doesn’t do the â€Å"right† thing. All is not well in McKinley High.If it were, it wouldn’t be Glee. That this episode spoke most clearly with what I feel is Glee’s unique voice is made even more important through its intertextuality, which evoked a self-awareness on the part of the series about its place amongst contemporary musicals. Here again we return to Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris. Both figures have had important roles in bringing contemporary uses of the musical to television and the web. They worked together on the web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.Neil Patrick Harris has performed in musical episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and Whedon’s musical episode of Buffy often makes lists of the best musical television episodes of all time. In this same episode that the guest director and guest star positioned Glee within th e contemporary use of the musical on television, we discover that Shelby Corcoran is Rachel’s mother. Shelby is played by Idina Menzel, who originated Maureen in Rent and Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway, with Glee guest star Kristin Chenoweth.Menzel and Chenoweth further link Glee to the tradition of the contemporary musical that may be a much more appropriate reference here than for the more obvious, but deceptive, High School Musical. Contemporary musicals have become increasingly mature, cynical, parodic and subversive, trends that Glee falls squarely within. In an episode so drenched in references to the contemporary musical context, it was all the more important that Glee followed the examples of its characters in the last episode and emphasized its own unique voice.Whedon showed himself to be a true Gleek by emphasizing the voice of the show over his own. egardless of whether you are a Gleek (if you don’t know this term, read on), you may have noticed the buzz surr ounding FOX’s musical comedy, which returned Tuesday to the second-best ratings of the night after a â€Å"Gleek Week† of promotional appearances and news coverage. Created by Ian Brennan, Brad Falchuk, and Ryan Murphy, Glee focuses on a diverse group of teenagers participating in a high school show choir, treating the participants in â€Å"New Directions† with alternating doses of warmth and snark.It also is one of the first series in the last few decades to successfully incorporate musical numbers; its music has become a lucrative cross-promotional element of the Glee phenomenon. The series has garnered ardent fans, or Gleeks, around the world — evident in the many websites dedicated to it, such as Gleeks United, Glee Club Online, Forum Francais de Glee, Glee Brazil, and my favorite, What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear? , inspired by the fashions worn by the eponymous guidance counselor with a penchant for all things sterile and for sexy-librarian sweaters.J ust as notable, it appears to have been embraced as particularly American. The cast was invited by First Lady Michelle Obama to sing at the White House’s annual Easter egg roll last weekend, and they followed that up with a Glee-themed episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show (she praised them as the â€Å"hardest working cast on television†). News coverage on the return of Glee and spoilers have followed in most major news outlets—including two dueling reviews in The New York Times—and in scholarly forums (a shout out to In Media Res, which recently hosted a Glee-themed week).What is it about Glee that has inspired this phenomenon? Based on my own experience, as a Gleek and as a scholar focusing on the series in my research, I find the show’s play with diversity equally satisfying and frustrating, and always compelling (arguably, it is â€Å"post-racial† and reinforcing of traditional racial stereotypes). And it seems that for many fans, the showà ¢â‚¬â„¢s focus on underdogs overcoming challenge, sly satire, and feel-good musical numbers are clear pulls.With respect to these and other appeals, Glee is a prime illustration of what Valerie Wee has described as hyper-postmodern media culture. A mash-up of generic influences, intertextual references, music, and ideological content that is both eerily nostalgic and forward-thinking, the series can be read and enjoyed by fans in multiple and diverging ways. This week’s episode, â€Å"Hell-o,† provided a full helping of these and other pleasures.We witnessed cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch)’s return to the high school and renewed mission of obliterating the glee club and the long-awaited blossoming of two romantic relationships, Mr. Shuester and Emma and Rachel and Finn, although difficulties naturally arise for both couples. In these and other entanglements as New Directions looks toward regionals, the timing and humor are spot on, not the least of which was the limiting of the musical numbers to songs with the word â€Å"hell† in the title.The hilarious mix that ensues includes â€Å"Hello, I Love You,† â€Å"Highway to Hell,† and â€Å"Hello, Goodbye. † And the narrative may not be important as the sum of Glee’s parts; they include the hyper-postmodern mash-up described above, exciting and talented performers, upbeat music that can be enjoyed in other arenas, sweetly geeky fandom, and the overall ethos of embracing the loveable loser in all of us. Are you a Gleek, and if so, what do you think encourages its appeal? What do you make of the series as a contemporary television, music, or theatrical text?In response to this complicated series we plan to follow Glee, its paratexts, and its fandom on a weekly basis as it continues to air this season. We hope you’ll take part in the discussion Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic. com, the leading online journa l of Catholic faith, culture, and politics. The musical comedy-drama Glee debuted on Fox just over a year ago. The story of a high school Spanish teacher's attempts to resurrect the Lima, Ohio, high school glee club surprised critics by ending its first season ranked at 33 in the Nielsen ratings.Now in its second season, the show's ratings have only gone up, as it climbed to the #15 spot last week. On May 23, the plans for a third season of Glee were announced. While there's no reason its popularity won't continue to climb, the challenge of producing a primetime musical series to appeal to a generation not brought up on the traditional musicals like Camelot, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music is obvious: How do you combine a contemporary story and characters with music and dance in a way that does not send viewers, especially younger ones, groaning in the direction of their PS3s and iPhones?The producers of Glee found their solution in the example of Chicago, the Broadway show where the musical numbers were always performed in the context of a cabaret. The characters of Glee don't burst into song in the manner of, say, Rodgers and Hammerstein; rather, the strongly choreographed musical numbers – five to eight each episode – are usually staged as the glee club's performances or rehearsals. Thus, Glee retains enough of a realistic feel to appeal to a younger audience. The music, a combination of pop and Broadway standards newly rranged by Adam Anders, appeals to all ages and has been a phenomenal success on CD and downloads, with over $2 million in digital sales. The cast of Glee had 25 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2009, more than any artist since the Beatles in 1964. Their performance of â€Å"Don't Stop Believin'† went gold last November, with over half a million dollars in sales. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Glee's achievement its ability to keep three generations of viewers – children, parents, and grandparent s – in front of the TV together.The choreography of Zachary Woodlee, sexy without being sleazy, evokes Broadway's Jerome Robbins rather than Bob Fosse, much less the crotch-grabbing antics of tuneless rappers. Viewers with memories of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, or even the June Taylor Dancers on The Jackie Gleason Show, find themselves smiling once again. The producers and cast members also maintain tasteful control over material chosen – from older classics like â€Å"Over the Rainbow,† â€Å"One Less Bell to Answer,† â€Å"Smile,† and â€Å"I Could Have Danced All Night,† with newer ones such as â€Å"Proud Mary,† â€Å"Piano Man,† â€Å"Jump,† â€Å"Bootylicious,† and Josh Groban's â€Å"You Raise Me Up. When a Rolling Stone critic snidely chides Glee's leading actor, Matthew Morrison, saying he â€Å"couldn't rap his way out of 98 ° rehearsal,† he seems oblivious to the fact that more than an occas ional nod to rap would immediately begin thinning its audience (starting with me). The choice to offset the Disney-like innocence of Will Schuester, played by Morrison, with the cynical cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), works perfectly. The conflict between Schuester and Sylvester becomes nothing less than the perennial clash of ars gratia artis (arts for arts sake) with the cultural philistines.The writing for Sylvester's character is so good it has spawned its own wiki thread. Take, for example, her attitude toward intimacy in marriage: â€Å"I, for one, think intimacy has no place in a marriage. Walked in on my parents once, and it was like seeing two walruses wrestling. † But beyond the Schuester and Sylvester rivalry, Glee fails to achieve the generational integration of taste in its characters and storyline that it has attained with its music and dancing. Will's wife, Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig), seems like a refugee from John Sayles' Serial Mom, where the ent irety of middle-class family life is cynically, and hilariously, parodied.The viewer is left constantly questioning how Will, whose fundamental decency and kindness are repeatedly evoked, could have married such a demented twit as Terri. Such jarring contrasts of character abound in Glee. Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), the lead singer of the glee club and quarterback of the football team, doesn't seem to know a hot tub cannot serve as a medium for impregnating his cheerleader girlfriend, Quinn Fabray; meanwhile, his best friend, Puck Puckerman (Mark Salling), who did get Quinn pregnant, is rampaging though the neighborhood sleeping with the â€Å"cougar† mothers of his classmates.There are also politically correct touches. Kurt Hummel (Chris Kolfer), the member of the glee club who likes to dress in black lace, not only â€Å"comes out† in the course of the first season but also leads the winless football team to their first victory by teaching them all how to dance. Yet Kurt's character is not made into a complete caricature: While his achievement on the gridiron is simply silly, the scene where he admits to his blue-collar father his same-sex attraction is quite affecting – and, I might add, realistic.Not to be outdone, Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), who has the best voice in the cast, is also the most neurotic, having been raised by two homosexual fathers. Rachel eventually discovers that her birth mother is the coach of the rival glee club. Such is the search for postmodern innocence in Glee – there is too much water under the cultural bridge to directly revive the musical idiom and heritage of the 1940s and 1950s that became second nature to so many baby-boomers.Before Glee, of course, there was Stephen Sondheim, who throughout his career as a composer and lyricist struggled with the same question of how to extend the musical to an audience that no longer believed in the univocal meaning of â€Å"I love you. † We can be grate ful to the creators of Glee for making an effort to bring us a popular entertainment with such a high level of singing and dancing. The temptation will be to lose sight of the initial choices that have led to its success and, particularly, the generational breadth of its audience.Just as American Idol has found out the hard way from its plunging ratings, once you start trying to please only the teenagers, the whole enterprise will quickly collapse Mid-April, with its tax deadline, is a time that many people dread; this year, however, millions looked forward to it with great eagerness, because April 13th brought the first episode of â€Å"Glee† after a four-month hiatus. The Fox show, set in the fictional William McKinley High School, inLima, Ohio, is part satirical comedy, part musical, and—since its setting is high school—a bit of a drama. It’s not exactly a high-school musical, and it’s not exactly â€Å"High School Musical,† the Disney so ng-and-dance franchise, although, like that TV movie and its brand extensions, it has a long tail of tie-in merchandise and live performances. It also has over-the-moon fans—â€Å"gleeks,† they happily call themselves—which is a notable thing for a mainstream, non-niche network show that began only last fall.The first post-hiatus episode had more than thirteen million viewers; the second, which featured the songs of Madonna, was close behind. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the show follows â€Å"American Idol† on Tuesday nights—though the pairing did pain many people a couple of weeks ago, when a live edition of â€Å"Idol† ran long, causing DVRs across the land to cut off the last minutes of â€Å"Glee. † And â€Å"Glee,† although a work of fiction, is â€Å"Idol† ’s spawn, part of the current craze for watching star-making (and dream-crushing) machinery at work. Glee† was created and is written by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan. Of the three, Murphy is the best known, having created the just ended FX psychomelodrama â€Å"Nip/Tuck† (for which Falchuk was a writer and a producer) and the 1999 WB comedy â€Å"Popular,† which was also a sendup of teen-age archetypes—as in â€Å"Glee,† there was a star football player who was torn between sports and the stage—but involved much more extracurricular activity among parents and families.Except for the teachers and the administrators at McKinley High, few adults appear in â€Å"Glee,† which gives the series a cartoonish feel that’s reinforced by the fact that the grownups we do see, well meaning though they may be, are as cluelessly wrapped up in themselves as the young people are. (Oddly, or not, of the group of about ten students we hang out with two have lost a parent.It seems like a lot. ) The success of â€Å"Glee† depends on the energy and the obvious talent of its young (but way beyond high-school age) performers, and on Jane Lynch, who plays Sue Sylvester, the acid-tongued, sneaky, and completely loony cheerleading coach, whose every line of dialogue is quotable (and is duly quoted, minutes after being delivered, on Facebook pages and in Twitter feeds).Sue’s counterbalance, and nemesis, is Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison, who has a solid Broadway background and Leyendecker good looks, including thick, wavy hair that Sue mocks, in elegant variations, pretty much every time she sees Will), a youngish Spanish teacher and a graduate of McKinley High in the days when it had a top-notch show choir. Will makes it his project to bring back that glory, and he starts by tricking the captain of the football team (Cory Monteith), whom he hears singing in the shower after practice one day, into joining his ragtag crew.If Will gets funding for his group, the economy being tough—Sue’s cheerleading crew will lose theirs. Will also wants some of Sue’s girls—the Cheerios—for his group. She tells him that he doesn’t get it—that he can’t blur the lines in the rigid caste system that is high school: â€Å"Your jocks and your popular kids—up in the penthouse. Your invisibles and the kids playing live-action druids and trolls out in the forest—bottom floor. † What about the Glee kids? Will asks. What category are they in? â€Å"Sub-basement,† she says. from the issue * cartoon bank * e-mail this The real engine of the show isn’t the machinations of its characters or its unfolding plot but its basic structure. Because â€Å"Glee† is actually about a group of singers, it doesn’t seem artificial when the cast breaks into song; the music fits into the proceedings organically. The songs—which Murphy chooses—range from oldies to newies, so that there is, theoretically, something for everybody, from â€Å"Sing Sing Sin g† and â€Å"Sweet Caroline† to â€Å"Gives You Hell† and â€Å"Single Ladies. Still, it must be said, even people who love these songs may find something to hate in the style of singing sometimes showcased in â€Å"Glee†Ã¢â‚¬â€the earsplitting, maniacally melismatic car-alarm whine that Whitney Houston popularized—but, thankfully, there are quiet ballads to balance things out. Rachel, one of the choir members, has a bit of that pleading quality in her voice, but it suits her desperate ambition. She’s played by Lea Michele, who, at twenty-three, is a fifteen-year Broadway veteran.Yet her large talent doesn’t extend to the non-singing parts of her performance. I give it up for her gifts, but I don’t feel soul there. Rachel takes herself very seriously, and things very literally; one of the other kids, Artie (Kevin McHale), is wheelchair-bound, and Rachel complains to Will that Artie shouldn’t be singing â€Å"Sit Down Y ou’re Rockin’ the Boat† because he’s already sitting down. Artie’s take is that Will’s choice was meant to be ironic, and Rachel responds, â€Å"There’s nothing ironic about show choir! Of course there is, but there’s more, too—there’s also real glee, when things come together and when the characters get as much fleshing out as the stereotyping and the time constraints allow. With several production numbers per episode, almost all of which have remarkably weak choreography and poorly synched lip-synching, the writers haven’t been able to go very deep into anyone’s lif Read more http://www. newyorker. com/arts/critics/television/2010/05/10/100510crte_television_franklin#ixzz25UpjRdrc And then there’s Glee.Because there are no original songs, they’ve got to reference other works multiple times in every episode. When the show is at its best it takes cultural referents such as the video for Beyonce’s â€Å"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)† and turns it into something else by putting it in the context of trying to win a football game. It’s an utterly ridiculous and goofy scene that belies the reality of the way football works, but it’s also enormously satisfying and pretty funny to boot.The show’s musical numbers are to me more successful when they transport their sources to locales away from the stage or the classroom. And even when a musical number starts within the walls of William McKinley High School, if there are sequences that take us to other places and/or elsewhere in time, such as when Kurt recently sang â€Å"I Want to Hold Your Hand† for his classmates, that can also work incredibly well.But when their numbers are stagebound things often become stagnant, sucking the life out of the song and leaving a strong distaste in the mouths of many viewers, or at least those who know the original. Kurt poses for photos when he ’s not transporting us through time via the power of song. The apotheoses of these occurrences take place in the episode titled â€Å"The Substitute,† which features renditions of classic numbers from Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly 1952), which were themselves new takes on old songs.I’m not saying some texts are untouchable, but if you’re going to cover something so culturally iconic, you might want to do something totally new with it. So Gus Van Sant’s shot for shot remake of Psycho (1998)? Probably not a good idea. Conversely, Martin Scorsese’s reimagining of Ford’s The Searchers (1956) as an urban western in Taxi Driver (1976)? That works. If you don’t approach homage in this way it becomes nothing more than imitation, which might be the highest form of flattery but doesn’t make for good TV or cinema.So Glee’s rendition of Singin’ in the Rain’s title song incorporates a mash-up with Rihan na’s â€Å"Umbrella† and takes place on a stage full of water featuring the cast re-enacting moves from Gene Kelly’s classic sequence while also incorporating new moves into their set-piece number. There’s revision, and there’s imitation, and then there’s shitting on sanctity. I’m no purist and I’m not saying they shouldn’t have done it, but I would argue that despite the attempt at innovation, it doesn’t go far enough in its departure from either original.And the one thing that it’s missing that makes the movie’s original so great is passion you can feel. Kelly’s rendition takes place within the context of his falling in love with Kathy (Debbie Reynolds) and it results in Dionysian abandon, bringing to Technicolor life the giddy exhilaration that comes with new love, whereas Glee’s version is akin to watching craftsmen make shoes: there’s artistry in their production and the fin ished product is expertly made, but it lacks the soul that still makes Kelly’s sequence so resonant.Worse still is their take on â€Å"Make ‘Em Laugh,† which features Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr. ) in a duet that is at times a near step for step imitation of Donald O’Connor’s version. Again, failing to revise the setting and context in an interesting way leaves their rendition flat. It lacks the visceral joy of O’Connor’s sequence, the best part of which is that it makes the audience do what the title suggests, which is laugh.Will and Chang are great dancers, but as there’s no real reason for the scene other than to show that they can do a rote imitation of the steps, their version is totally devoid of life and spontaneity, making it seem as though it’s performed by technically proficient but non-sentient automatons. There’s no reason you can’t do a scene that’s al most identical to the original, so long as you update it in such a way so as to give the audience a new way to interpret it. Take Spike Lee’s incorporation of the Love/Hate tattoo sequence from Night of the Hunter (Laughton 1955) into Do the Right Thing (1989).Robert Mitchum’s iconic scene is as seemingly inviolable as anything from Singin’ in the Rain, but by transposing it from a depression era white psychopathic murdering preacher in the deep south to Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), a socially aware young African-American male living in what was at the time contemporary Bedford-Stuyvesant, Lee both pays homage and avoids pastiche, creating something new in the process, a model of artistic quotation that I’m afraid might be falling out of favor in our current media landscape, as evidenced on Glee and elsewhere * Why a blog and not a website? TUESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2011 Project: Art History. † Evolution of musical film genre†. â€Å"Williams and Hall both have argued that culture is not so much a set of things (television shows or paintings, for example) as a set of processes or practices through which individuals and groups come to make sense of things, including their own identities within and even against or outside the group† Stunken ; Cartwright (2009) The intention of the essay is to link evolution in cinema genres with the changes in the structure of popular culture.The quotation expresses the approach to culture as a process in which individuals interact, and this is the way the essay would like culture to be seen. Cinema is the perfect method to analyse popular culture from this point of view. Since its invention, it has given human beings a new and different opportunity of enjoying simulated worlds. Musical genre is particularly interesting because it has been present since the beginnings of cinema as one of the main Hollywood genres, and it has needed to introduce new strategies to survive. There are periods whe n it nearly disappeared before coming back in a new form (Hayward 2000).This essay is structured in such a way that it describes the periods of the genre and how its codes and conventions have been applied in each, and then analyses the main ideas from a social and theoretical point of view. But first, it may prove useful to discuss genre theory. Genre can be considered a strategy created by the cinema industry to identify a category of film. But it also can be described as a cognitive mechanism to help the viewer and filmmaker to know the expectations and hypothesis of the viewers when sitting in front of a screen to watch a film.Any genre is formed by a set of codes and conventions that the spectator has learned and can decode automatically and unconsciously. He or she feels pleasure in identification. This last point of view agrees with the one of the essay, as its aim is to connect the research on genre with what spectators experience when watching a film (Nelmes 2007) (Hayward 2000). It is also interesting to analyse what makes the spectator enjoy watching a film. Hayward (2000) identifies three stages in spectatorship theory. The first stage in the 70's treats the spectator as a passive subject.It is inspired on Freud's idea of the Oedipal complex and on Lacan's idea of the â€Å"mirror stage† that says that our identity is not coming from within, but from the way we see ourselves for the first time from the outside. In our adulthood we are in a constant state of desire that cannot be fulfilled because our unconscious mind cannot be influenced by the world around us. Freud's ideas associate the mirror stage with the relationship between the child and his mother. The male character sees his mother as an object and identifies with the father to try to meet the child's feeling of â€Å"castration† of not having access to the mother (Ward 2003).The spectator identifies the cinema screen with this â€Å"mirror†. The second stage, from the middle of the 70’s, is influenced by Laura Mulvey. She introduces the idea of sexual difference in identification with personalities and criticises the masculine point of view in cinema narrative that fetishizes women. The option for the female spectator is to identify with the passive female or with a masculine third character. In the third stage, from the 80's, we find investigations derived from the debate started by Mulvey. Some ideas talk about the bisexual position of the female child after her mirror stage.She first has the mother as her object of desire and then she has to change to the father as her object of desire. And the male spectator can also position himself bisexually, when identifying with the active and passive modes of the male character. The spectator is treated as an active subject, he or she does not occupy just one position in relation to the characters. Dyer considers that there are three periods in a genre: primitive, mature and decadent (Hayward 20 00). On the experimental primitive period, before the 30's, musical is generated as a hybrid from European operetta and American vaudeville and music hall (Hayward 2000).On the mature period, from the 30's to the 60's, first we find a director such as Busby Berkeley. His films do not pay attention to the plot, but rather, are vehicles for song and dance that are introduced in an artificial way. It is pure spectacle and sensuality. Sex is offered through the gaze (Hayward 2000). Later, songs and dances move with the narrative and are introduced on a more natural way. Fred Astaire develops an elegant, stylised style and Gene Kelly develops a more energetic one. The music was often composed by talented authors brought from Broadway.In the 50's, it is the first time the studio system pay special attention to the youth audience, linked to the rise in the music record industry. Singers as Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard became actors (Hayward 2000). For Altman musicals of the mature perio d are an â€Å"ode to marriage†. The narrative is based on the principle of pairing and mirroring. Male and female are paired, maturity is paired to immaturity. The main characters are mirrored in other couples; settings are mirrored in other settings (Hayward 2000). This conclusion was made following a synchronic analysis, i. . , just focusing in a moment in the film, specifically in the final scene. Recently, this same author has reflected about that approach and has analysed musical films diachronically. He proposes two hypotheses. Following the first one, in musicals main characters are first paired with a â€Å"wrong† partner to be finally paired to the â€Å"right† one. Films such as â€Å"An American in Paris† (Minnelli, 1951) follow this structure. The second hypothesis is more speculative. It is based in the idea that the relationships of the characters turn from homosocial to heterosexual.This structure is found in many films, from â€Å"An Ame rican in Paris† (Minnelli, 1951), to â€Å"Grease† (Kleiser, 1978). In â€Å"Grease†, the main actress and actor belong to a group where all members are women or all men, respectively, and eventually left these groups to become a couple. This can be seen as an evolution from childhood to adulthood. The author also speculates on whether this structure tries to avoid the character moving from a homosocial relationship to a homosexual relationship (Altman 2010). Cohan (2010) considers that the dual register between narrative and performance is one of the distinctive conventions of the genre.It breaks the dominant codes of realism in cinema, whose aim is to guide the audience through the story, so the codes and conventions become â€Å"transparent† to avoid distracting them (Nelmes 2007). The concept of diegesis refers to the fictional world described inside the story. In musicals, filmmakers can add extra-diegetic shots that have no logical reason for being t here. And they can add a diegetic to call public attention to the star, to show that they are amazed when they see and hear the main characters dancing or singing, and to create the illusion that the real non-diegetic audience is part of that public (Hayward 2000).Dyer (2002) distinguishes three tendencies of musicals: one that keeps narrative and number separate, another that identifies narrative with problems and numbers with scape, but trying to integrate the number through signals, and a last one that dissolves this distinction between narrative and number, which makes this narrative also utopian. Richard Dyer writes that the strategy of the genre is to â€Å"provide the spectator with an utopia through the form of entertainment†.Any film reflects these categories: abundance, energy, intensity, transparency and community in opposition to the real society, where we can find: scarcity, exhaustion, dreariness, manipulation and fragmentation. Abundance is shown through the lu xurious costumes and huge settings. Energy is shown through the dance and also the camera work. Intensity refers to experiencing emotions directly. Transparency refers to spontaneity. Community refers to the sense of belonging. This utopia is associated with the specific mainstream ideology of this period: capitalism, economic and social stability (Hayward 2000), (Stacey 1994).Of the decadent period, from the 60's, codes and conventions are questioned. Musicals are more realistic; subjects such as racism and delinquency are treated. Examples are â€Å"West Side Story† (Wise, 1961), â€Å"Saturday Night Fever† (Badham, 1977) and â€Å"Grease† (Kleiser, 1978). We also find Julie Andrew's films such as â€Å"The Sound of Music† (Wise, 1965). This is identified as a family film that follows traditional conventions. But its structure differs from the classical one. There is no more a duality, instead, there is a female main character and the male character has a secondary role.She represents liberated femininity. In Barbra Streisand's films – â€Å"The Way We Were† (Pollack, 1973) – the girl needs a partner but does not always achieve it. When she fails to do it, the film shows her drive for freedom and female independence (Farmer 2010), (Robertsib Wojcik 2010). This reflects how conventions in cinema have changed with changes in society; in the 70's women rebelled against the traditional patriarchal society. It has been almost 50 years since the period of decline of the musical genre begun. It looked as if it was going to disappear. But lately, we are seeing a revival of the genre.Sometimes it is successful, such as â€Å"Moulin Rouge! † (Luhrman, 2001), â€Å"Chicago† (Marshall, 2002) and â€Å"Mamma Mia† (Lloyd, 2008), sometimes it is not, such as â€Å"Nine† (Marshall, 2009). At this point, we can ask ourselves about the reasons for bringing back musicals. Cohan (2010) mentions David R ooney and Jonathan Bing describing them. They mention how development of new technology can help with the task of shooting and editing, and reducing costs. Also, the after-market of the fans of musical can be economically attractive, as they are repeating viewers, so DVDs and soundtracks would sell well – as well as merchandising would do.Another interesting fact is that the youth audience has grown up watching music videos and Disney's animated films. Finally, another reason can be that the golden period of musicals happened during the 30's Big Depression. Maybe it is not a coincidence that in the actual moment of economic recession, the public is going back to watch films that supply escapism (Burgess-Alllen 2010). Feuer (2010) argues that in the decline period, there are reconstructive musicals and deconstructive musicals. Reconstructive musicals can be â€Å"Moulin Rouge† (Luhrman, 2001), â€Å"Chicago† (Marshall, 2002), â€Å"Nine† (Marshall, 2009). Cabaret† (Fosse) in 1972 already has influences of art cinema (Hayward 2000). They are targeted at art-house audiences, while keep the classical conventions, and show an interest in aesthetic and nostalgia for the past. Following the these, â€Å"Moulin Rouge† (Luhrman, 2001) mixes cinematic references, historical intertexts and cultural allusions, this makes it difficult to define which genre it belongs to as it can be considered a musical, a melodrama, and author film, or even a music video (Nelmes 2007).Deconstructive Musicals are oriented towards the teenage public and create new conventions, they do not represent lead performers but amateurs that love singing and dancing, they â€Å"take up the position of spectators of Old Hollywood musicals in a world where it is no longer possible to be Fred Astaire† (Daldry, 2000). Following these, there are productions for TV, such as â€Å"High School Musical† (Ortega, 2006) and, more recently, â€Å"Glee† (Murphy, 2009). Conventions in â€Å"High School Musical† (Ortega, 2006) follow the traditional ones. It follows the principle of duality with two main characters.What it adds new to the genre is a contrast between authenticity, represented by the main couple, and manipulated artistry, represented by another couple. It also adds a reflection of a rigidly hierarchical world, where the characters move between conformism and rebellion. The characters are stereotypes: jocks, cheerleaders, and brainiacs. â€Å"Glee† (Murphy, 2009) takes the idea of â€Å"High School Musical† and exaggerates it. We again find the same stereotypes but they are taken to the extreme of satire. All the characters know that to be someone at the school they have to belong to a group: cheerleaders, football team†¦Wearing a distinctive uniform is important for them. â€Å"Glee† also adds being playful with reality. It highlights being a simulation of reality and reminds us often about it, advising us not to take it too seriously. The narrative is an utopia in the same way as the performances. And this utopia again follows a specific ideology. Subjects that affect teenagers are treated: pregnancy, alcohol, sexuality, family relationships, †¦ (Cohan 2010), (Payne 2010). Another thing these films have changed from classic films is that musical soundtracks are not created specifically for the film, now it appropriates pop music or music from other films.The concept of film genre is directly related to the concept of intertextuality. The film is always going to be framed by the genre as each film belonging to it uses conventions previously used by other members of it (Nelmes 2007). But this can be a contradiction, because intertextuality is also associated with taking the text beyond the boundaries of the genre. This semiotic term was first used by Julia Kristeva, who understands that the text connects in two ways, first the author to the reader and then t he text to other texts (Chandler 2009). The growing preponderance of visuals in ads has enhanced the ambiguity of meaning embedded in message structures. Earlier advertising usually states its message quite explicitly through the medium of written text†¦ , but starting in the mid-1920s visual representation became more common, and the relationship between text and visual image became complementary – that is, the text explained the visual. In the post-war period, and especially since the early 1960s, the function of text moved away from explaining the visual and towards a more cryptic form, in which text appeared as a kind of ‘key' to the visual.In all, the effect was to make the commercial message more ambiguous; a ‘reading' of it depended on relating elements in the ad's internal structure to each other, as well as drawing in references from the external world. † Leiss (1997) This paragraph talks specifically about the use of intertextuality in adverti sing, which is not the subject of the essay, but it is included here because it expresses that the way creatives communicate messages has evolved from being explicit to being ambiguous. Leiss talks about how the â€Å"receiver's brain is an indispensable component of the total communication system†.Explaining it clearly, the spectator is no longer considered stupid. Viewers have a wider visual knowledge that make them able to understand messages transmitted on ambiguous ways. We have grown with the rapid association of images in film, TV, and advertisement (Kolker 2002). The visual knowledge of the spectator has helped to make it more sophisticated. The basis of the plot remains simple but the filmmaker can and must introduce mechanisms to appeal a target audience that has become highly media literate.As a result of the the research can be taken the most interesting ideas about the way contemporaneous filmmakers apply the codes and conventions of the genre. They follow some o f the conventions of films from the classical era: keeping a simple plot, selling an ideology. And they add to the genre: using soundtracks from pop music or other films instead of creating it specifically for the film, the creation of fictional worlds that make reference to another fictional world, playing with reality and stereotypes, playing with the dual register between narrative and performance.It can be found in several essays and articles that talk about contemporaneous musical films being postmodern, as the following one written by Edwards (Cohan 2010): â€Å"The charm and artistic merit of the original High School Musical movie lies in its ability to consider a sophisticated theatrical and musical heritage and consequently revise it for a modern audience †¦ it simultaneously conforms to genre expectations and pays homage to its textual influences while taking a postmodern delight in exposing its own limitations and playing with some gentle pastiche of literary and ci nematic predecessors†.Flanagan (2002) wrote about the features of a film that can be identified as postmodern. The first ones are playfulness and self reference. It reminds us that it is a construction, that is not real, and that we must not take it seriously. The musical film's creators play with the way they integrate the performances in the narrative, with the stereotypes. It follows the tendency of dissolving the distinction between narrative and number, meaning that this narrative is also utopian. The second ones are generic blurring and intertextuality.The use of references to other texts is very usual in musicals. The third ones are popular and commercial media mixed with high culture. Current musical films do not have a soundtrack created for them, but they appropriate music. The fourth ones are fragmentation and death of representation. This refers to the way audience make sense of things through representations of reality instead of doing it through the reality itsel f. And finally uncertainty and the loss of context as consequence of the previous ones. According to this, films such as â€Å"Glee† (Murphy, 2009) can be considered postmodern.But probably to label a film as postmodern is not going to influence the audience as to whether to be interested on it or not, what probably can be considered more important is the â€Å"sophisticated hyperconsciousness† in contemporaneous popular entertainment, i. e. , the high degree of media literacy in the audience that allows playing with the conventions (Collins 1993), (Nelmes 2007). Why is Glee Postmodern In this blog and our discussion of postmodern television, the TV showGlee  has come up as an example.. One of the theories we’ve learned about postmodernism is that it rejects the idea of metanarratives (stories about stories).In postmodernism there is not black and white, good vs. evil, etc. In the show  Glee  there is the character Puck, a football player who seems to be y our typical tough-guy bully. However, even though Puck is a bully and even shoves around some of the other characters that we like, we still do not dislike him. We don’t see him as the villain even though typically the jock/bully is seen as the â€Å"bad guy. † Plurality is another term we learned regarding postmodernism, and this is when there are multiple stories and multiple identities.This show has so many characters, each with their own personal story and all of their stories get told in one way or another. Within Season 2 episode 8 the character ‘David’ is focused on and he is being questioned about whether he is gay or not. The glee club is a dance singing club but within this is another story. This gives the program room to expand and here for example the program deals with modern day issues that are publicised in the media. Grand narratives are clearly contradicted in this episode as homosexuality is put in the limelight and is praised.One of the male characters shows very feminine attributes and in their rehearsal wears a top which says â€Å"Likes Boys. † This is done to try to numb the shock of homosexuals coming out and normalise it so that the program can move forward. There are different races, different personalities, different handicaps; different cliques, all represented in this show and all of their stories are being told. Nostalgia is another postmodern term represented in  Glee. Many of the songs performed on this show are songs from the past for example Les Miserables – Kareoke and Born this Way.The teacher in charge of Glee Club, Mr. Schuester, loves doing songs from when he was younger and this really brings nostalgia to the show. Convergence, the flow of media content across a range of different platforms is also part of this show. You can download the songs performed on the show, many viewers discuss the show online, and many people attempt to win parts on the show by creating videos of thems elves singing and performing and posting them online. There are many forms of media involved with this show other than simply watching the show.Not to mention the fact that you can also watch the show online, just one more form of media regarding this show Glee draws people in by creating stereotypical situations and characters, each with their own flaws that the audience can easily identify with. This identification process allows viewers to become more intimate with the show, especially when the actors begin to sing songs that modern viewers already know and love. Fox originally took a chance on the new musical project, but hedged their bets with innovative marketing strategies and with a huge lead in audience from American Idol.The use of cultural classics and songs that recently premiered on the top 40, drew in the American Idol audience members specifically, and music lovers generally. This target audience was strong in the 18-49 demographic, and particularly strong with women. The strength in these demographics enabled Glee to become the 3rd most expensive show to buy advertisements on. This advertising revenue is supplemented with a steady stream of money made from selling singles on ITunes. This model has been so successful that Glee has now become a tent-pole of its own and anchors the entire comedy lineup on Tuesdays. contrast, in recent years American television has brought us Scrubs, Ugly Betty and now Glee, shows that combine boldly imaginative approaches to narrative with a humour and humanity that is often exhilarating to behold. While we seem to be mired in an endless debate about platforms, content, news values and the multimedia revolution, the Americans have managed to retain an enthusiasm for the dramatic possibilities of television. And what's clear is that those possibilities are founded upon an enduring belief in sharp, savvy writing and deeply committed performances.At first sight, Glee (C4) follows a stupefyingly familiar path. It's se t in a midwest high school, amid the over-fictionalised world of geeks and jocks. And in a nod to the High School Musical fad, it focuses on a glee club, or singing society. However, Glee takes these tropes and cliches and stretches them in surprising directions to create a whole new form, as different to its original source as a butterfly is to a caterpillar. Last week, teen pregnancy, the difficulty of coming out in high school, and sexual attraction between teacher and pupil were plot themes but, unlike many American shows, not moral â€Å"issues†.Glee is possessed of a liberal heart but its balls, as well as some of its most memorable lines, belong to the politically incorrect coach, Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch). Like two opposing grammarians, kitsch sentiment and killer sarcasm wrestle over every line. Yet, at the point where conventional drama plunges into pathos, Glee slips into song. At one moment the school quarterback was singing â€Å"I'll Stand by Youâ₠¬  to the ultrasound of his unwanted child (which isn't his), the next his friends were rallying round in a stirring rendition of â€Å"Lean on Me†.A lot of the humour stems from snappy social observation, but the show also boasts the kind of verbal extravagance that, in the wrong hands, can sound written rather than said. Typical was the scene in which a former schoolgirl stalker, who once responded to rejection by eating a lethally hot pepper, advised her equally deluded successor: â€Å"Let me tell you a few things I learned from two years of intense psychotherapy and an oesophagus transplant. The reason that line worked is the same reason the songs and outrageous storylines work: because the characters are immersed in their own reality. They never act as if they've said something funny. There's no pause for laughter, no nods or winks, as Glee shows the same faith in its audience as it does in its characterisations. Laughter isn't forced, so isn't false. In common with U gly Betty and Scrubs, there is plenty of cultural commentary and knowing asides but failure to spot the reference doesn't undermine the scene. The action just moves swiftly on.If Glee is postmodern, it doesn't bother knocking twice. The show has attracted a lot of plaudits, particularly in America, so it's probably soon due for a backlash. This might be an opportune moment, then, to say that the hype is deserved. It's a rare and heartening pleasure to watch so much energy and emotion expended in the unfashionable cause of family entertainment. Some of its fans might say Doctor Who performs a similar feat, though really the nearest British television comes, or attempts to come, to Glee is in shows like Strictly Come Dancing.Where US networks can be persuaded to invest in good writing and acting, our TV executives prefer to back the all-dancing duo of celebrity and reality. Only in an atmosphere in which originality is viewed as marginal or suspect could a series like Life of Riley (B BC1) be produced. It may seem unfair to pick out this harmless sitcom as an illustration of the failings of British comedy drama, but perhaps not quite as unfair as the decision to recommission another series. Why is Glee Postmodern?Glee is an American musical-comedy drama series. It started in 2009 and is produced by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, who originally wanted Glee to be a film, but decided to make it more interesting as a series. The episode I have chosen to focus on is the ‘Britney/Brittany’ episode, which pays tribute to Britney Spears when a member of the club Brittany Pierce experiences an anesthesia-induced hallucination in which she recreates iconic Spears moments, and comes to self-realization.I believe that this episode shows examples of being postmodern, as for a start the songs are in the past, and therefore have been created from an idea that’s already happened, Postmodernism postulates that many, if not all, apparent realities a re only social constructs and are therefore subject to change so Glee supports this view, it highlights that it is taking the original idea (song) that we all know from Britney Spears, and constructing it into their own, like the ‘Toxic’ version they performed on stage, straight away it’s obvious that this episode is showing pastiche, as the hole episode is making tributes to classic pop culture, and it gives us as audience ( or those who are old enough) a nostalgic feeling. One of the theories learned about postmodernism is that it rejects the idea of metanarratives (stories about stories). In postmodernism there is not black and white, good vs. evil, etc. There is the character Puck, a football player who seems to be your typical tough-guy bully.However, even though Puck is a bully and even shoves around some of the other characters that we like, we still do not dislike him. We don’t see him as the villain even though typically the jock/bully is seen as the â€Å"bad guy,† and in this episode, he shows examples of this by fitting in with the rest of the club and wanting to perform the Britney songs, when typically you’d expect the ‘jock’ to go against this idea as it wasn’t ‘cool enough’.Plurality is another term regarding postmodernism, and this is when there are multiple stories and multiple identities, and this is shown in this particular episode when although the focus is on Britney, there are several storylines going ahead with each individual character like with Will coming to terms that the girl he loves if with someone else, and then the high school problems the glee club members are all facing.The characters are also known for having multiple identities, this episode especially shows the members like Brittany and Rachel dressed up mimicking Britney Spears, and Santana also comes across as being tough, but in this episode she performs with Brittany in ‘Me Against the Musi c’ and we find out she is also in love with Brittany. Many of the songs performed on this show are songs from the past. The teacher in charge of Glee Club, Mr.Schuster, loves doing songs from when he was younger and this really brings nostalgia to the show, but in this episode he rejects the idea of doing Britney week, as he believes she gives out the wrong messages, but eventually he comes around and performs with them, which causes outrage to the school, which is also very postmodern, although Glee is a fun, light-hearted comedy series, it can also have many adult references in, especially in this episode, which I believe to be very postmodern as it ignores the typical conventions of a ‘high school drama’ and actually takes the stereotypes to an extreme but twists them.Glee has also been quoted to be described as hyper-postmodern media culture. A mash-up of generic influences, intertextual references, music, and ideological content that is both eerily nostalgic and forward-thinking, and this episode is a prime example showing all these things, the fact that the students go to the dentist to get their teeth fixed which is an ‘underlying’ important message, influencing the audience to take care of their selves, its then twisted when they get put under an anesthesia, and hallucinate Britney Spears fantasies, Glee is known for taking simple, conventional ideas and turning them to almost inappropriate. Like two opposing grammarians, kitsch sentiment and killer sarcasm wrestle over every line. Yet, at the point where conventional drama plunges into pathos, Glee slips into song† was quoted by a news article, showing how Glee takes a completely different take on high school drama. Convergence, the flow of media content across a range of different platforms is also part of this show.You can download the songs performed on the show, many viewers discuss the show online, and many people attempt to win parts on the show by creating videos of themselves singing and performing and posting them online. There are many forms of media involved with this show other than simply watching the show. Not to mention the fact that you can also watch the show online, just one more form of media regarding this show. In conclusion, I believe that Glee is postmodern because it uses examples of hyperreality, pastiche, intertextuality and is not your ordinary high school drama.

Elio Engineering. Inc Essay

Question 1: Describe Elio Engineering? How would you characterize its position in the Industry? Elio Engineering is a private company, founded by Paul Elio and Hari Sankara, categorized under engineering services and manufactured automotive vehicle bodies car seats. It designs the new technology of the seats for the automobile industries called No Compromise seats. Question 2: What is Elio Engineering Vision? Elio Engineering’s vision per the case study is to design and manufacture new advanced, low-cost, high-tech and safe ABTS called No Compromise seats for the entire automotive industry and potentially saving millions of lives around the world. Question 3: Describe the strategic options as of February 1999? What issues should the company consider in evaluating its strategic options? Elio Engineering had achieved a great distinction by February 1999 because their prototype test had been proven very promising and OEM customer’s response had also been favorable. Based on the prototype performance, Bostrom made a licensing deal with Elio Engineering in mid-February. At this point, Elio Engineering had to consider if Bostrom was the right partner for their vision. Also how much royalty fees should they charge for their services? Question 4: What is the structure of the automotive seat industry in 1998? How attractive was the industry? The Structure of the automotive seat industry in 1998 looked like the following: Two Tier-one companies – JCI and Lear Corp with almost equally split about 60% of the market and dominant share worldwide. The number-three player, Magna, has about a 10% share in the U.S. Many of the competitors already had an ABTS seat in their product portfolio or were currently working on the technology. So it was already a  mature industry with stagnant technology. The industry was not attractive because competition would be fierce with the 70% of the market controlled by three companies. Only way Company could stand a chance is if new company had new technology and cost reducing product. Question 5: What are the potential sources of competitive advantage that Elio Engineering has? How Sustainable ae they? Why/ Why not? Elio Engineering has many competitive advantages. First of all, Elio Engineering has their ideas well patented. Along with it, they have insider knowledge of the seating industry. Secondly, they have the product that can penetrate whole automotive market and not just one supplier tied to the one automotive company. Finally, Elio Engineering is highly motivated and has ability to find to find new resources to expand. As far as sustainability goes, Elio Engineering will certainly fail if they enter the market alone because they don’t have enough resources to compete with other competitors own their own at the moment. As they lack the capital requirement, lack of competence in manufacturing, distribution, lack of access to OEMs and able to implement of JIT delivery. They can be at risk of takeover by the bigger company or the competitor. Question 6: What are Elio Engineering’s strategic options in entering the automotive market? Please evaluate these options and reach a conclusion on the most attractive one. The Challenge for the Elio Engineering is to enter all segments of the automotive seat market within next 12 months, protecting its intellectual property which is implemented in the special class of ABTS technology seat design achieving at least 5% of the U.S automotive market within next 5 years. But it is very hard for Elio Engineering to achieve by its own due to lack of resources. They can also consider the following alternatives Alternative 1: Elio Engineering could collaborate with tier-one seat supplier Company. This will provide the following advantages: Founder members have previous experience dealing with tier-one seat Company. The tier-one suppliers have High volume manufacturing and distribution Experience in product design & development and manufacturing power, Easier to get us federal safety standards Strong relationship with OEMs Disadvantages are: Have less control over the core ABTS technology with lower profit margin. Alternative 2: Elio Engineering could collaborate with multiple OEMs. Advantages for doing it will be: High market share Sufficient resources, matured strategies Secured market, less financial stress. Disadvantages: Less control over ABTS technology and limited market exposure and lower margins. Alternative 3: Elio Engineering can establish as a tier-two supplier. Advantages: Supply product to all tier supplier and more control over ABTS technology. Disadvantages: Product delay due to large capital requirement, lack of competence in manufacturing, distribution, lack of access to OEMs and able to implement of JIT delivery. Low product value added. After considering all the above presented alternatives, I think Alternative 1 would the best suit for Elio Engineering. Also Elio Engineering started up by partnering up with Bostrom Seating, which supplied seats for heavy trucks and bus industry in 1999. Question 7: How well is Elio Engineering’s Tech strategy aligned with the requirements for a successful entry into the automotive seat market? What if anything, should they change? According to the article, Elio Engineering has taken all the right steps to ensure they are aligned with the requirements for the successful entry into the automotive seat market so far. They have obtained and registered a strong patent which would prevent other companies from copying their designs. They have the product that meets all the safety standards, low-cost and is durable. In order to successfully enter the automotive seat market, they need to have a system integration approach to ensure automotive market for their designs. Moreover, they need to partner up with the company with strong market influence otherwise they would most likely fail on their own.

Atlantis essays

Atlantis essays Setting: The book had four time periods in it. It started in the Cambodian jungles in the year 800 A.D. Then it goes to the Bermuda Triangle in the year 1945. After that, we go ahead in time back to Cambodia in 1968. Finally, to the present, where most of the story takes place. Protagonist: He is Eric Dane, an ex-special ops during the Vietnam War. He has a special power where he can "feel" certain things like upcoming danger and communicating telepathically. Antagonist: This is a mysterious green mist. It is located at three main spots: the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil's Sea in Japan, and in the jungles of Cambodia. Major Characters: Eric Dane, Forman, Flaherty, Lawrence Freed, Beastly, Sin Fen, Ariana Michelete, Paul Michelet, and Patricia Conners. Describe the plot: A strange mist has been in the Cambodian jungles for many years and nobody knows what it is. All they know is if something goes in, it never comes out. In present day, a plane of a corporation's wealthy owner goes down, with his daughter onboard. He assembles a team led by the one man that has made it out alive, Eric Dane, and they head into it. Meanwhile, the mist is growing rapidly. They have to rescue the daughter and try to stop the mist from expanding all over the world. Describe the plot in detail: The story starts in the ancient city of Angkor Kol Ker. The water around the city has evaporated because of a drought and everybody is evacuating because the mist is coming. Fifty warriors have stayed behind but they don't last long. Then it goes to 1945. The US is setting up an experiment with the Bermuda Triangle and the mist in the Cambodian jungles with a man named Forman in control. Something goes wrong and the plane in Cambodia and the submarine named the Scorpion in the Triangle disappear. Later, in 1968, Eric Dane leads a squad of commandos into The Cambodian jungles. They find the ruins of Angkor Kol Ker and the mist...

The Social Theory of Decentering

The Social Theory of Decentering Decentering is a way of understanding the world in its social and psychological aspects that holds that there is no single way to read an event, or institution, or text. Gathering varied experiences from many individuals produces greater fidelity, such that an explanation of an event based on a decentered approach will acknowledge many different interpretations from many different individuals. In Relation to Technology The explosion in social media in the second decade of the 21st Century has been a boom to the theory of decentering. For example, the events of the so-called Arab Spring following the popular revolution in Egypt in 2011 played out vividly on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites. The multiplicity of voices and viewpoints created a wide field of data for understanding not just the facts of the events, but their underlying meaning to a cross-section of Middle Eastern people. Other examples of decentering could be seen in popular movements in Europe and the Americas. Groups like 15-M in Spain, Occupy Wall Street in the United States, and Yo soy 132 in Mexico organized similarly to the Arab Spring on social media. Activists in these groups called for greater transparency of their governments and teamed up with movements in different countries to address common problems all over the world, including the environment, health, immigration, and other important issues. In Relation to Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing, the process coined in 2005, is another aspect of decentering as it relates to production. Instead of outsourcing work to a determined group of laborers, crowdsourcing relies on the talents and perspectives of an undefined group of contributors who often donate their time or expertise. Crowdsourced journalism, with its multiplicity of viewpoints, has advantages over traditional writing and reporting because of its decentered approach. Decentering Power One effect of social decentering is the opportunity it presents to expose aspects of power dynamics that remained previously hidden. The exposure of thousands of classified documents on WikiLeaks in 2010 had the effect of decentering official government positions on various events and personages, as the secret diplomatic cables about them were made available for all to analyze.

My Old Publisher Made Mistakes I Wouldnt Tolerate

My Old Publisher Made Mistakes I Wouldnt Tolerate "My old publisher made mistakes I wouldn't tolerate"  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ The story of Greg White's The Pink Marine Digital formats have opened countless new ways to publication for authors,  and if you aren't afraid of taking advantage of those, you can pretty much turn any situation in your favour. Greg White, author of The Pink Marine, came to Reedsy a month ago and told us he had left his publisher shortly after his first book's publication. Immediately, we thought "that's an interesting story for our blog!" So here's Greg sharing his experience with us, and his advice for newer authors.Hi Greg, thanks for being with us today! Let's jump into it: can you tell us a bit about your book and what made you leave your publisher?Thank you for having me, and helping with my book. Although I’ve been a TV writer for a while, The Pink Marine is my first memoir. Yet I always remember that I’m a United States Marine first –  and we strive for excellence. My book is important to me and I’m proud of it. My old publisher made mistakes that I wouldn’t tolerate – so I cancelled the contract. It was difficult; but as I write about in my book, nothing is easy but everything is possible.What were the main challenges from the point when you decided to leave your publisher?Reviews. He failed to get reviews in advance of publication, so it will be a struggle for me to convince media outlets to see the book as fresh meat. But we Marines†¦ love a good challenge. I’m getting good media response already.The book is new and I am tireless. I have every confidence that influential bloggers and other reviewers will find it story-worthy. Kirkus reviewed it (non-paid) and they call The Pink Marine â€Å"a heartwarming coming of age, inspiring memoir.† There’s a lot to discuss in the book. Not only do I write about my lifelong best friend (that I enlisted with) but also seventy other boys that I served with. I bet you find yourself in one of those characters. It has themes with global relevance and I wrote it with humor.You have actua lly set up your own imprint and are working with Ingram for the distribution. How did that happen?Yes, my imprint is AboutFace Books! Norman Lear writes my book’s foreword. He gave me my first job writing television. He taught me, among other things, to be nice to everyone. Ingram asked to meet me last year based on the Food Network show I host – food brings us all together, right? The day I left my publisher, I called Ingram to set up the imprint. They were enthusiastic and continue to be incredibly supportive. Ingram led me to Reedsy.Now, you came to Reedsy looking for a typesetter to create a print-ready file for Ingram. How did you choose your typesetter, and how did the collaboration go?I judged a book by its cover. I studied not only the experience and genre of each designer; but also their graphics. My designer  Jason Storey clearly was the best decision – his art blew me away. That he, and my book, turned out to be fantastic, is no surprise.Jason is fa st, thorough and precise. He’s smart and communicative. Those qualities are very important to me and he represents them all in the outstanding work he did on my book.What are your plans now for The Pink Marine in terms of promotion and marketing? And how is the book selling?Being a publisher helps when I reach out to TV and radio shows, magazines, newspapers, bloggers and reviewers. In my pitches, I’m able to speak about the book more in the third person. My pitch is: â€Å"How about a story on a guy that served six years as a U.S. Marine now serving up pie on Food Network?†I travel a lot and schedule bookstore appearances and local media well in advance.I’m as excited as I am grateful to report that the book is selling well, particularly the e-book. Everyone, and especially every veteran of the armed forces, has a story. This is mine. From my sales reports I notice British readers are snapping it up, proving the themes are universal. Facing challenges, b oth emotional and physical during our teenage years everyone in the world goes through that. In my case they shaved my head and gave me a rifle†¦. And humor always helps.I maintain a strong social media presence and built a fun and informative website www.thepinkmarine.com. I joined the affiliate program for every bookseller, so when buyers purchase the book from clicking the retailers via my site, I earn a fee (and it costs the buyer nothing extra).Next week I go in the studio to record the book for Audible. Having something new to promote helps. I want the book to exist in every format. Look, if it were possible, I’d bake it into a pie and serve it up personally.If you had to do it all over again, for a second book, would you look for an agent/publisher or would you go straight to â€Å"self-publishing†, using your imprint?I still have an agent, but unless I’m presented with a powerful marketing plan and generous profit participation from a traditional pu blisher, I’ll continue to publish under my imprint. Any prejudice or apprehension I had about driving down the self-publishing avenue was swept away in the first week of The Pink Marine’s sales reports.As you’ve experienced both â€Å"worlds†, what would be your main piece of advice for a debut author who is just finishing up their first manuscript?Ask for help; take advantage of the vast resources for authors. Through those, build your marketing platform with equal energy (and at the same time) that you’re writing your book. Adopt a U.S. Marine attitude and conquer both the creative and business sides. Relish in the support and camaraderie of other authors we are a community. And buy my book.You can find The Pink Marine on Amazon here, and Greg White's website here.Would you be ready to leave your publisher to self-publish? Or maybe you've done so already? Tell us about your experience, or ask Greg any question in the comments below!

Cyberbullying Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Cyberbullying - Assignment Example It will also gather information on the students experiences with the vice and the extent of damage it caused. It will then gather their opinions on how well to address the issue. The modern day freshman is a victim of the new and insidious form of bulling that also involves social media. This research will focus on a quantitative study as the basis of the assessment of the prevalence of the problem. It will be informed by the actual opinions of the students based on the constructivist paradigm. The research will adopt a mixed methods approach to analyse the hypothesis that cyber bulling is a controllable concern among high schools in the United Kingdom. The mixed methods approach will allow the study to develop a complete picture of the research question. The triangular design will merge the qualitative and quantitative data as a means to understanding the research question. The embedded design in its part will create the auxiliary role of interpreting the quantitative data. The explanatory design will help in developing relationships and formulating solutions (Creswell, 2008). The students will be selected randomly from high schools across the nation and issued with open ended questionnaires and involved in interviews that will allow the researcher to document observations and also make content analysis. The sample size will be large to offer a more comprehensive result. This approach presents certain ethical limitations such as the relation between the personal opinions and the actual experiences of the students. The possibility of the students affecting their narration of the experiences with their personal opinion puts the research at the danger of being an analysis of opinion rather than experience. The approach requires the researcher to play the role of a moderator to the free flow of information. This, however, runs the risk of a bias by the researcher who may offer cues or leading information which acts to affect the

Emergence of Modern Europe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Emergence of Modern Europe - Essay Example The age of enlightenment, also known as age of reason refers to the period of intellectual awakening known as enlightenment (Lindberg 2008 p. 18). It was a time of scientific awakening largely dominant in Europe. From the viewpoint of socio-political phenomena, enlightenment period is believed to have started close with the thirty years of wars and came to an end after the French revolution. This period called for use of reason as a means of developing and establishing an authoritative system of ethic, government, religion, and aesthetics, which will give human beings an opportunity to attain objective truth about reality of this world. The enlightenment thinkers believed that reason would salvage man from religious authoritarianism and superstition that had brought suffering, misery, and death to many people in religious wars. In addition, knowledge was made available to the masses through encyclopedias, which led to enlightenment cause of educating human beings. The age of enlighte nment just like the renaissance and protestant reformation, had a profound impact on society. The European States turned towards science between 1700s, which led to focus of life as experience of human being. By doing so, the enlightenment period influenced greatly on modern western European States. There were developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, and anatomy during that time that were successfully applied to medicine, astronomy, and mechanics. The usage of these ideas motivated a sense of western emergence into contemporary or modern time that had real and precise technological knowledge of this world. The philosophers at that time argued that science provided scientific method as general view of life. Popularization of science During enlightenment period, popularization of science led to growth and change in society in that individuals in the 18th century adhered to new codes of sociability and enjoyed equitability in society. Women who took part in the enlightenment de bate were seen as enhancing and promoting enlightenment ideas in the public arena. In addition, they were viewed as civilizing force determined to overthrow the old totalitarian regime (Bowler 2009, p. 89). The spread of enlightenment ideas across Europe was enhanced by production of cheap books by renowned philosophers such as Diderot and Voltaire. Scientific inventions like works of Isaac Newton and Copernicus changed mathematical philosophy of Europe in that people realized the need of creating new and orderly world and the need for integrating philosophy of science that would help in transformation of secular and religious life. People argued that if Newton was able to order the cosmos using his natural philosophy, it would also be possible to order the politics using political philosophy. During this, time people adopted new ways of ordering things based on divine right and natural law. Using divine rights, it led to creation of absolutist ideas while natural law would enhance liberty to human race. Some people argued that the universe was ordered by rational God and therefore, his representatives on this world had powers of God. This according to such thinking meant that Gods’ power translated to the powers of the monarchy. Natural law rose to react against such thinking of divinity with the aim of creating new order in society. They argued that God did not govern

Economics of Organisations TAKE HOME EXAM (Third Writer) Essay

Economics of Organisations TAKE HOME EXAM (Third Writer) - Essay Example The profits rolled in, and Ford's workers shared in the wealth: an ironic beginning for an auto company that would go on to be a notorious enemy of labor in the 1930s and 1940s." At that time, $5 per day was an extremely high wage to pay manual workers in factories such as the Ford facilities. It was hard enough to even have a job in the first place at the time Ford made this major move, so it was indeed a shock. The economy was really in a shaky situation, as it is today. Having a job at all at that time was considered to be very good luck. People who did have jobs worked very hard-much harder than many manual laborers do today. They did not expect handouts from the government, as many of the unemployed in today's world find themselves doing, whether they are in a situation where they can help it or not. Workers back then were tough, and they certainly weren't freeloaders. Back in ancient Rome, welfare ruined the city and actually led to its failure. The government handed out money to a few greedy companies, those companies went under, and the rest of the city went under with them. This is definitely not a scenario one wants to see happen again. It is also possible that, at that time, Ford had a monopoly on the automobile industry and his altruistic nature guided him to share his excess profits with his employees. The root of the $5-a-day Workday was the success of the moving as... According to the work at History.com (2009 p. 1), "After the success of the moving assembly line, Henry Ford had another transformative idea: in January 1914, he startled the world by announcing that Ford Motor Company would pay $5 a day to its workers. The pay increase would also be accompanied by a shorter workday (from nine to eight hours). While this rate didn't automatically apply to every worker, it more than doubled the average autoworker's wage. While Henry's primary objective was to reduce worker attrition-labor turnover from monotonous assembly line work was high-newspapers from all over the world reported the story as an extraordinary gesture of goodwill." The new wage made thousands of manual laborers flock to Ford's manufacturing facilities. People came all the way from all over the United States to Ford's Detroit plant, and they even came from Europe. Employee turnover, of course, practically vanished. According to History (2009, p. 1), "Henry Ford had reasoned that since it was now possible to build inexpensive cars in volume, more of them could be sold if employees could afford to buy them. The $5 day helped better the lot of all American workers and contributed to the emergence of the American middle class. In the process, Henry Ford had changed manufacturing forever." The following shows an announcement of Ford's plans to raise their wages to $5-a-day: Figure 1: Announcement Source: Ford.com References Henry Ford's $5-a-Day Revolution 2009. Ford. Available at http://www.ford.com/about-ford/heritage/milestones/5dollaraday/677-5-dollar-a-day Ford Sets Record Wages 2009. History. Available at

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - Assignment Example In the beginning of film Butch Cassidy is the friendly, smart, talkative leader of the criminals - Hole in the Wall Gang. Sundance Kid, his closest friend is terse. The two return to their den at Hole-in-the-Wall to learn that the rest of the team, displeased by Cassidy’s long absences; have chosen Logan as their new gang leader. Logan challenges Cassidy to a knife fight over the gangs headship. Using deception Cassidy defeats him, however he agrees to Logan’s idea to rob train on both its eastward and westward trips, claiming that the westward raid would be unpredicted and likely reap more money than the eastward raid. From the above, the beginning of movie occurs with a scene which is fundamentally familiar and traditional. It is the setting for countless gun fights. What many fails to see is that it is not a shoot outs. Butch talks to Kid out of a fierce fight. This is a clear departure from the western protagonist. First the protagonist becomes convinced not to fight by a person outside himself. Butch and Sundance are not the convectional protagonists in that they ought to depend on one another rather than be the loner that typifies the western protagonist. Second, we see the protagonists walking away from a battle without having destroyed anything. This is just one instance in a style of moving from conflict rather than meeting it. This clearly opposes the protagonists seen in classical western, the examples of western masculine hero, who never ran from a fight, but ran towards it. The vital revelation that Butch Cassidy has never killed a man exposes the flaws in the western myth more than any other feature of the movie. The notion that these criminals had murdered scores of men was largely not true. The director addresses the myth head on, by exposing its deceit in Butch. He humanizes the western myth, and

Implications of Partisanship in the Congress Essay

Implications of Partisanship in the Congress - Essay Example The role of the Congress in legislation has been affected by some elements particularly the issue of partisanship. The contemporary Congress is now polarized as inspired by such aspects as party loyalty, and policies established by individual parties. As such, there is a heated debate on the possible implications of partisanship on the overall effectiveness of the Congress. In fact, the members have noble responsibilities of passing vital bills into right on behalf of all Americans. Their tendency to engage in a tug of war before a bill is passed into law has been found to affect the timing of the consent of the president. Partisanship has led to the polarization in the Congress as attributed to unique causes, and this had a direct impact on the legislation process calling for improvised models to enhance cooperation among members. Possible Causes of Polarization in the Congress Partisanship has seen polarization in the Congress turn multiplicative in the recent past as attributed to demographic uniformity in congressional districts (Victor, 2012). In our contemporary societies, individuals tend to flock with those who share similar values and perspectives. It turns to birds of the same weather affair. This has been the case in the Senate and the House of the Representatives. This has fueled division among members based on party affiliation. A second element that has seen a rise in polarization in the Congress is the protocol and rules observed during the nomination of congressional candidates.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - Assignment Example In the beginning of film Butch Cassidy is the friendly, smart, talkative leader of the criminals - Hole in the Wall Gang. Sundance Kid, his closest friend is terse. The two return to their den at Hole-in-the-Wall to learn that the rest of the team, displeased by Cassidy’s long absences; have chosen Logan as their new gang leader. Logan challenges Cassidy to a knife fight over the gangs headship. Using deception Cassidy defeats him, however he agrees to Logan’s idea to rob train on both its eastward and westward trips, claiming that the westward raid would be unpredicted and likely reap more money than the eastward raid. From the above, the beginning of movie occurs with a scene which is fundamentally familiar and traditional. It is the setting for countless gun fights. What many fails to see is that it is not a shoot outs. Butch talks to Kid out of a fierce fight. This is a clear departure from the western protagonist. First the protagonist becomes convinced not to fight by a person outside himself. Butch and Sundance are not the convectional protagonists in that they ought to depend on one another rather than be the loner that typifies the western protagonist. Second, we see the protagonists walking away from a battle without having destroyed anything. This is just one instance in a style of moving from conflict rather than meeting it. This clearly opposes the protagonists seen in classical western, the examples of western masculine hero, who never ran from a fight, but ran towards it. The vital revelation that Butch Cassidy has never killed a man exposes the flaws in the western myth more than any other feature of the movie. The notion that these criminals had murdered scores of men was largely not true. The director addresses the myth head on, by exposing its deceit in Butch. He humanizes the western myth, and

Annotated Bibliography Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 4

Annotated Bibliography Example This post is about core training. In exercising, core means the part of one’s body which includes the pelvis, hips, spine and rib cage. The 29 muscles found in the core region are divided into two categories: stabilization and movement. The article shares that the core region is important because the efficient performance of our daily activities depends on the muscles found in this area. Compared to the other sources, this article is more concise and easier to understand. It provides important information. I think this article is useful and the writer is credible because the site is affiliated with the National Academy of Sports Medicine and Sharecare and the writers are certified trainers. The book contains a lot of information about nutritious foods around the world. The items are grouped into categories such as vegetables and salads, fruits, grains, beans and legumes, etc. There is also a frequently asked questions page, recipes and nutritional information about the 100 food items. I think this book is very helpful. It same with the other sources I found because it talks about healthy foods for the body. The information is easy to understand. I think the author is credible because he is the founder of Health Valley Foods. Raisanen, Ulla. â€Å"What health professionals should know about eating disorders.† The Guardian- Healthcare Professionals Network. Guardian News and Media Limited. 12 February 2013. Web. 11 February 2013. The article is about people with eating disorders and how medical professionals should relate to these patients. The author says medical professionals should know that anyone can have an eating disorder and first contact is important. Also, early intervention is the key and emotions and behaviors influence the condition. The health professional should also focus on the person and respect the individual, taking time to find out about the condition from the person

Why we need to call out casual racism Essay Example for Free

Why we need to call out casual racism Essay For the last couple of centuries, the United States of America has been known to be a country where racism exists. Since the United States of America was founded, racism started to grow in this country. The root of the problem started when landowners started to use black slaves to do their work. Since then white people believed they were the superior race. They treated black people as if they were animals. Yes, the U.S. is a racist country, and, we, as human beings need to unite and work together to eliminate this behavior. What is racism? Racism is not knowing anything about someone when you look at them, but disliking them anyway, not because of who they are, but because of how they look or because of the color of their skin. Racism is cowardly, and more importantly, racism is a weakness and an obvious sign of ignorance. So, what is it that makes us racist? More than likely it is fear of the unknown. In other words, it is lack of education. The only way to overcome this ignorance is to educate each other. Since racism is taught and not passed on by genetics from one generation to another, it is something that needs to be made aware of. Parents have the responsibility of teaching their children about this followed by the school where their children go. Back then if a black person was accused of any wrongdoing by a white person, the black person couldn’t testify against a jury and would always be found guilty without a just trial. Even worse, it was very common in the 19th century and early in the 20th century for black people to be lynched or hung if they were accused of any wrongdoing. How can any country allow such cruel acts to be done to any of its citizens? These acts would remind us of something that was done in ancient times when uncivilized people lived and were barbarians. Racism still exists today as there are many examples that show it. The latest example of this happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, where torch-bearing white supremacists shouting racist and anti-Semitic slogans marched in protest for a Southern monument that was going to be removed. Protesters and counter-protesters collided with each other that resulted in  violence  and chaos. A car driven by a known Nazi sympathizer mowed down a crowd of activists and then fled. The president of the United States is also an example of the racist person. He said that both white supremacists and the people against them were to be blamed for what happened. How can a president try to split the blame for what happened at Charlottesville when clearly there was only one side to blame. He also accused Mexicans of being rapist and criminals during his campaign. The only logical thing to think is that he is a racist person. A plan to eliminate, or at least reduce this behavior needs to be implemented. There needs to be a punishment for people who act in a racist manner in the public. For the first offense, a financial fine has to be given to the person who acted in a racist manner. For the second offense, a higher fine should be given to the person. For the third offense, the person should go to prison for a few days or weeks. During his time in prison, the person should receive classes to help eliminate his way of thinking. There need to be classes in schools that teach students to be friendly with people of different race, and show them why being racist is wrong.