Gangs Are A Violent Reality That People Have To Deal With Essays

Gangs are a violent reality that people have to deal with in today's cities. What has made these groups come about? Why do kids feel that being in a gang is both an acceptable and prestigious way to live? The long range answer to these questions can only be speculated upon, but in the short term the answers are much easier to find. On the surface, gangs are a direct result of human beings' personal wants and peer pressure. To determine how to effectively end gang violence we must find the way that these morals are given to the individual. Unfortunately, these can only be hypothesized. However, by looking at the way humans are influenced in society, I believe there is good evidence to point the blame at several institutions. These include the forces of the media, the government, theatre, drugs and our economic system. On the surface, gangs are caused by peer pressure and greed. Many teens in gangs will pressure peers into becoming part of a gang by making it all sound glamorous. Money is also an crucial factor. A kid (a 6-10 year old, who is not yet a member) is shown that s/he could make $200 to $400 for small part time gang jobs. Although these are important factors they are not strong enough to make kids do things that are strongly against their morals. One of the ways that kids morals are bent so that gang violence becomes more acceptable is the influence of television and movies. The average child spends more time at a TV than she/he spends in a classroom. Since nobody can completely turn off their minds, kids must be learning something while watching the TV. Very few hours of television watched by children are educational, so other ideas are being absorbed during this period of time. Many shows on television today are extremely violent and are often shown this from a gang's perspective. A normal adult can see that this is showing how foully that gangs are living. However, to a child this portrays a violent gang existance as acceptable. 'The Ends Justifies the Means' mentality is also taught through many shows where the "goody guy" captures the "bad guy" through violence and is then being commended. A young child sees this a perfectly acceptable because he knows that the "bad guy" was wrong but has no idea of what acceptable apprehension techniques are. Gore in television also takes a big part in influencing young minds. Children see gory scenes and are fascinated by these things that they have not seen before. Older viewers see gore and are not concerned with the blood but rather with the pain the victim must feel. A younger mind doesn't make this connection. Thus a gore fascination is formed, and has been seen in several of my peers. Unfortunately kids raised with this sort of television end up growing up with a stronger propensity to becoming a violent gang member or 'violent- acceptant' person. "Gangs bring the delinquent norms of society into intimate contact with the individual."1, (Marshall B Clinard, 1963). So, as you can see if TV leads a child to believe that violence is the norm this will manifest itself in the actions of the child quite, often in a gang situation. This is especially the case when parents don't spend a lot of time with their kids at the TV explaining what is right and what is wrong. Quite often newer books and some types of music will enforce this type of thought and ideas. Once this mentality is installed in youngsters they become increasingly prone to being easily pushed into a gang situation by any problem at home or elsewhere. For instance, in poor families with many children or upper-middle class families where parents are always working, the children will often feel deprived of love. Parents can often feel that putting food on the table is enough love. Children of these families may often go to the gang firstly out of boredom and to belong somewhere. As time goes on, a form of love or kinship develops between the gang members and the child. It is then that the bond between the kid and the gang is completed because the gang has effectively taken the place of the family. The new anti social structure of cities also effects the ease in which a boy/girl can join a gang. " The formation of gangs in cities, and most recently in suburbs, is facilitated by the same lack of community among parents. The parents do not know what their children are doing for two reasons: First, much of the

African and Native American Slavery essays

African and Native American Slavery essays The 1500's, a time of discovery, was when the Europeans came to dominate most of the New World. The Europeans traveled to Africa and captured Africans to help develop their land and satisfy their need for power. I feel that the treatment of the Indians and Africans by the Europeans was completely unjustifiable. While the Indians and Africans were less technologically advanced and the Europeans were uneducated, in this particular field, nothing can compensate for the actions of the Europeans. As Europeans began to settle new lands they began their exploration of the foreign worlds. What they found was the opposite of what they expected. They found what they thought was a new breed of humans. In reality they were just Native Americans. These Indians were less technologically advanced than the Europeans. They also worshipped different and multiple gods and ate different foods. Europeans saw this as barbaric, so they treated them as In the beginning Native Americans hadn't the faintest idea of what the Europeans had in mind when they said trade. They figured that when the White Man came and showed all that hospitality they meant it. Of course, they didn't, the Europeans captured the Indians to be used as slaves. They were also slaughtered and raped because of resistance to leave their land. If any Indians refused to leave their land they would be killed. The women were raped for sick and disgusting reasons. Europeans didn't feel that the women, or men for that matter, were worth anything as humans so they were beat and raped without any thought about what they might be doing. As we watched the movie Roots, I noticed a part in the movie where they were on a ship and a man brings in a black woman, who was a slave. The man offered her to the ship's captain and referred to her as a belly warmer. That got me to thinking what could be going on in that man's head as he said that...

Katherine Philips and her Works Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Katherine Philips and her Works - Essay Example Philips detached herself from Presbyterian traditions and admired the king and his church policy. Katherine’s mother married a Welshman called Hector Philips after the death of his father John Fowler. When Katherine was sixteen years old, she married James Philips a Welsh parliamentarian in 1647. James Philips was said to be fifty-four years old. However, there was little conflict between Katherine and her husband on political issues in that Katherine was a royalist and James was a supporter of Oliver Cromwell. This division is recorded in her poetry works. Katherine spent most of her time in London through her husband continued to reside in Wales. Her husband encouraged her literary creativity. Katherine had two children a daughter a son. Katherine founded the society of friends, which originated from the cult in Neoplatonic love imported by Henrietta Maria in 1630 where members acquired pseudonyms from French romances of cavalier dramas. Katherine Philips borrowed these ideas and dramatized it in her society of friendship. The society of friendship existed between 1651 and 166. This society helped Katherine to establish a standard in literary skills for generations as she managed to establish herself as a model for female writers after her death. She was regarded as the apostle of female friendship and this attached great respect to her name. Katherine Philip’s home became the center of the group. Actually, she wrote one hundred and sixteen poems, completed five verse translations, and translated two plays by Pierre Corneille from the French between 1606 and 1684. Her plays were produced in public theaters in both London and Dublin becoming the first female dramatists to have her works produced in public. Phillips did not receive any payment for her work, unlike Alpha Behn who is the first woman to write for the English stage as a professional. Anne Owen was the most important female member of the circle of friendship. She was known as Lucasia in  Philips’s poems.

Organizational strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Organizational strategy - Essay Example The assessment herein discusses three strategic aspects of GE with application of the academic valuation models. The areas discussed include: Core competencies and capabilities assessment Real options to improve business performance assessment Strategic Options Available For GE Each section will be developed including critical analysis of GE with respect to the assessment tools followed by conclusion. CORE COMPETENCY ASSESSMENT Assessment f business on road of success with competitive advantage from 1980s to 1990s has moved in from capability to empower business layers to developing, exploiting and strengthening core competency of business. De Saa?-Pe?rez and Garca-Falco?n, (2002) established that only resources and capabilities transformed into core competency can develop business competitive advantage (De Wit, & Meyer, 2004). Hence, in line with importance stated for core competency, the section develops assessment for the core competency of General Electric. CORE COMPETENCY Selzni ck (1957) first introduced the concept of core competency as competence with distinction for depicting corporate advantage in various activities (Barney, & Hesterly, 2008). The strategic perspective of core competency was put forward by Hamal and Prahalad (1990). ... xpertise with newer areas in a manner more interestingly than routine framework (Cravens, and Piercy, 2008) TESTS FOR CORE COMPETENCY Firms to retain their competitive advantage must possess distinctive competency that provides business separate positions as against competitors. The simplest test for competency to be core as well as distinctive one is core competency does not finish like physical assets (Grant, 2009). Instead core competencies increase their strength to bind the businesses together. Hamal and Prahalad (1990) core competence as competencies that must following three tests: Core competency must provide business capability to reach wide variety of markets. Competency must pass the litmus test to add value to the perceived benefits by customer through product. Organization to rely on the competency as core competency must enable business to retain their distinctive position in a way that cannot be imitated by competitors (Hamel, 1991; Prahalad, & Hamel, 1994). Resource b ased view also provide a litmus test for strategic capabilities to be regarded as core competency. Barney’s (1991)Â  VRIN model is also taken test for competency of an organization to be regarded as core competency (Gamble, and Thompson, 2010). VRIN model, an acronym, states that core competency must be Valuable, Rare, In-imitable, Non- Substitutability to benefit firm with competitive advantage over competitors (Fleischer, & Benoussan, 2003). GENERAL ELECTRIC’S CORE COMPETENCY General Electric (GE) under Jeff Immelt to position GE for stronger growth planned to reposition business with resources transferred to areas that have stronger growth prospects from business that have already undergone heavy juice extraction. To strengthen value based system, Jeff Immet defined Growth Platforms.

Sonia Sanchez Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Sonia Sanchez - Essay Example She started with Homecoming in 1969 and with the passage of time, created a wonderful collection of child books, dramas and essays. In her sixties, Sanchez, together with her colleagues, actively participated in the black studies movement after black studies were banned in the San Francisco State College. She served as the head of the Afro-American Studies Program in the Amherst College. Sanchez did not ever try to be just an essayist or a dramatist or a poet. She has served as an excellent teacher in addition to these. She made several trips to China, Cuba and Scandinavia. Sanchez is known for a dazzling performative manner. Instead of reading her works like a slow-paced British professor, Sanchez would inculcate the African and African American cadence into the performance. In 1984, her volume, homegirls & handgrenades emerged (Gates, 2004). One year later, Sanchez’s literary skills were appreciated with the American Book Award. She has written 16 books in her lifetime (soni asanchez.net, n.d.). The topics of Sanchez’s poems originated in the societal worries and her articulate manner made them a fundamental source of instigation and tenderization of the Black Arts movement. References: AALBC.com (2011). When one reads Sonia Sanchez, one knows the state of black America. Retrieved from http://aalbc.com/authors/sonia.htm. Gates, H. (2004).

The scope and limitations of Reiss text typology

The scope and limitations of Reiss text typology Reiss translation-oriented text-typology provides a systematic approach to translation. More interestingly, it approaches translation at the text level. This essay will examine Reiss typology with focus on Parting the Waters, published in National Geographic, a monthly magazine that borders on science, geography, history and culture. REISS TEXT-TYPOLOGY Reiss sees translation as an act of communication whereby the translator acts as a medium (secondary sender). This presupposes that a message has to be passed across, from a primary source to a target receiver. The major media are the source language and the target language. The aim here is to produce a target language text that is functionally equivalent to the source language text (Reiss 2000:160). This means the source text should be the consultative point for the translator. In order to achieve this functional equivalence, Reiss proposes a functional approach of text-typology. This approach takes into account the major communicative function of a source text as a basis for translating into the target text. In other words, a target text that does not have the same function as the source text is not entirely a translation, but what Reiss calls transfer. Reiss text-typology includes a two-phase approach in translating a text: Phase of analysis and phase of reverbalization. The analy sis phase basically involves establishing the text type, genre and style (linguistic form).The phase of analysis is the most important as that is what would inform the translation method to employ. Text-type of Parting the Waters Reiss identifies three text-types according to their communicative function namely: the informative type (communication of content), the expressive type (communication of artistically organised content) and the operative type (communication of content with a persuasive character). There is another hyper-type which she calls the audio-medial text type. This is more of a super-ordinate term for the other three and does not concern the text in question since it is a written text. Parting the Waters can be seen chiefly as an informative text type; first given the context of the text: magazine and second because it gives factual information about a place: Korea, and the geographical events that take place there. The translation strategy recommended in this case by Reiss should thus focus on conveying content. Text variety of Parting the Waters This stage has to do with the conventions of structure and language adopted by the text. However, Reiss explains that they may differ according to different cultures. The importance of this is to be able to find a functionally equivalent convention in the target text culture. In this light, Parting the Waters is a kind of popular scientific text. This suggests also that it seeks a wider audience other than scientists. This leads to the final stage of analysis: style. Style in Parting the Waters The final stage of analysis has to do with detailed semantic, syntactic and pragmatic analysis of the language use (Reiss, 2000:166). Ordinarily, one would expect that when a text is an informative type, even the language used should be such that it is aimed only at giving facts. But that is often not the case, as Reiss herself admits, not in one single language do form and function show a 1:1 relation (2000:166). Hence, looking at the text, one would find a similar occurrence. The text has expressive language such as the internal rhymes: tides, divine, divide; of 15 feet. There is also an allusion to a biblical story: not divine interventions, an expression that answers the presupposition in the title itself Parting the Waters. Reiss thus considers this stage of analysis the most important, as the translator is faced with a decisive battle on what would inform the translation: the language or the function of the text. At this point, Reiss posits that if using an equivalent language style may weigh on the content of the text, then the translator should stick to the predominant function of the text. Translating Parting the Waters to Yorà ¹bà ¡: limitations Taking into consideration the content-focused function of the text, the translator is expected to employ a method that would achieve the same function as that of the target text by translating according to the sense and meaning (Reiss 2000:167). This suggests that the meaning conveyed by the target text should be equivalent to the meaning in the source text. Being a popular science text, and specifically about geography, Parting the Waters has terms such as peninsula, southwestern, mile, width, feet, and spring. While some of them might have some kind of equivalence (i.e. peninsula, mile width), a climatic description like spring poses a problem because Yorà ¹bà ¡ neither has a word nor group of words for it. This is basically due to the different weather conditions. The question is: what should the translator convey here? This is important because spring as used in the text plays a major role in the content; by telling us when an event takes place. The only alternative here would be to replace the word with the time of the year this season occurs in Korea. The problem with this is that it might change the meaning, as the sense of season is different from the calendar year. To solve this translation problem, the translator could adopt Nidas gloss translation of formal equivalence, that is, the use of footnotes in order to make the text fully comprehensible (Nida 2000:129). What this means is that Reiss method is not sufficient to solve this translation problem. The expression divine interventions in the text makes allusion to a biblical story about the Red Sea. This could be because the author had a target audience in mind and presumes they know about the story in the Bible. Although this can also be linked to the use of expressive language, it is however difficult to ignore the fact that this type of language use plays a role in the text- to maintain the interest of the reader. If the original audience for the source text were specialists, there is doubt as to whether expressive language would have been used at all, since all that would be needed are facts. The question is whether or not to include it in the translation. The answer to this is dependent on another question: who are the audience? Sacrificing the expressive form might change the text to an entirely scientific or historic one. This means a different readership, as it may not appeal to a common reader. The problem here is that Reiss method overlooks the fact there is an address ee for even an informative text type. She acknowledges this only in the text variety stage. However, communication itself is not complete without a receiver, in this case the readers. The title, Parting the Waters, also draws attention. It first makes the reader think of the biblical story of the Red Sea, and then makes a reader assume that is what the text is about. But this effect can only be achieved based on a shared knowledge between the author and the reader about the biblical story of the Red Sea. This assumption too must have been informed by the fact that the author had an audience in mind. However, the author quickly attends to this curiosity and possible misconception by the following opening sentence Tides, not divine interventions, divide Unfortunately, the target language (Yorà ¹bà ¡) audience is a mixture of different religions. In this text the title performs an expressive function, but that is not to say its predominant function is expressive. Since it is an informative text, one would expect again that the title would be informed by the major content being conveyed. But this is not the case. Moreover, attractive titles seem to be a common featu re of this genre. This is also a common feature of Yorà ¹bà ¡ magazines (Salawu 2004:100). The question here is: since content is the aim, should the target title be informed by the content alone and leave the use of expressive language? This of course is possible, as Reiss already advises on ignoring such language use especially if it will weigh on the content. Thus the translation can simply have à pa-Õnà   Ã’kun Korea which means The Path between Korean Waters. The consequence of this however is that it might not appeal to the wider audience except a few, specialists. This brings up again the question: who are the audience? Reiss considers this an appropriate factor only when the function of the target text is different from the source text (Reiss 2000:170). What her typology fails to recognise is that both source and target texts can have the same function (as in the case of Parting the Waters) but different addressees. CONCLUSION While Reiss translation-oriented text-typology provides a systematic method of approaching a translation task, it does not provide a complete solution to some problems in English to Yorà ¹bà ¡ translation of Parting the Waters. This suggests that it is not absolute that a text function will provide a translation strategy. Fawcett (1997: 107) makes this same point: There is simply no necessary link between text function and translation strategy. Just because we have identified a text functiondoes not mean that we are led inexorably to any logical or translation-scientific imperative to take this function as an overriding parameter to which we subordinate our translation decisions. (Fawcett 1997, p.107) This further suggests that other translation theories are valid and useful to the extent to which they proffer a solution to a translation problem.

Roman Women and Their Mythology :: Ancient Rome Roman History

Roman Women and Their Mythology Throughout the ages myths, legends and fairytales have been used to teach people basic moral and educational lessons. For example, mothers and fathers use the childhood story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" to teach their children that stealing and snooping is wrong. In the end, Goldilocks was either eaten or she ran away, depending on your bloodthirsty nature. By using this comparison between myths and reality the Romans were able to "control" their women, and to discourage them from vain, romantic and adulterous actions. Women themselves had a very low place in Roman society, and could be bought and sold like cattle or slaves. Despite their low legal status, women had immense power and influence over their fathers, brothers and husbands. These myths and legends were society's guidebook, which provided women with a manual about correct conduct. Despite being a guidebook for all women to use, the Romans couldn't simply say, "Look what happened to that mythical person. You shouldn't do what she did." This would have led to a very depressing and boring set of myths, so the Romans spruced them up a bit. They portrayed both good and bad pictures of women, including the Goddesses. Some of these stories were funny and some sad, but every single one had a lesson which could be learnt and acted upon. For example, the Amazons were a legendary race of warrior women who despised all men. They killed all the male babies that were born, and kept the female ones. In fact, it was said that the Amazons used the men from a nearby village as sex slaves, so that they wouldn't die out. One day, Hercules came along, and wanted to borrow the Queen's belt. Hippolyte, being a woman and all, fell madly in love with Hercules and readily agreed. But the other Amazons weren't impressed, and thinking that Hercules was trying to kill their Queen, charged towards him. Hercules seized Hippolyte and slew her, then ran away with the belt. Needless to say nothing much else was said about the Amazons. This story was used to teach the folly of women who thought they could survive without men. They were dependant on the nearby village, and weren't very well organized. They were much better off sticking to their own place in society. But as I said not all depictions were bad. Some were quite nice.