McDonald’s and the McCafe Coffee Initiative Essay

Looking at McDonald’s Canada from a resource-based view (please refer to the appendix), I believe that McCafà © will succeed in Canada. McDonald’s has a plethora of valuable resources in its disposal. Among them, arguably the most important is brand equity. The â€Å"Golden Arches† are instantly recognizable to just about everyone in the planet, and that level of brand awareness will play a big part in McCafà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s entry to Canada. Furthermore, McDonald’s, being a major player in the fast-food industry in Canada, has a considerable amount of cash and infrastructure. This ensures that McDonald’s will have the means to market and distribute McCafà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s products respectively. Another valuable resource that McDonald’s has access to is its large network of competent franchisees. A large percentage of the McCafà ©s in Canada will be add-ons to currently existing McDonald’s restaurants. Therefore, McDonald’s can be assured that the management of the McCafà © initiative in the individual restaurants will meet the high standards that the corporation already imposes on their franchisees. Finally, McDonald’s already has a solid reputation in Canada for their fast-food service. A sound marketing strategy can help transfer this positive reputation to the McCafà © brand. McDonald’s faces stiff competition from several firms in the Canadian retail coffee industry. However, the McCafà © concept will carve out a unique competitive advantage for McDonald’s, setting it apart from its competitors. McCafà © combines the speedy service of Tim Horton’s with the comfortable atmosphere and sophisticated image of Starbucks. McDonald’s blends the â€Å"best of both worlds† and has the potential to take market share from both types of competitors. It will be in a different league all by itself. The major factor detracting from McCafà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s success is McDonald’s poor reputation for coffee in Canada, as seen in the SWOT analysis (please refer to the  appendix). It is important to note that despite McDonald’s poor reputation for coffee, the coffee itself is made from premium ingredients (100% pure Arabica beans). For McDonald’s to succeed with the McCafà © initiative, reversing this negative image is absolutely crucial. Furthermore, coffee is a staple in modern Canadian breakfasts, so having a strong brand of coffee on the menu can help revitalize McDonald’s breakfast sales. McDonald’s poor reputation for coffee can very well be the reason for its recent loss of market share in the breakfast industry. Thankfully, the market for retail coffee in Canada is experiencing significant growth, so if McCafà © becomes popular, it can make a sizeable contribution to the company’s profits. McDonald’s must find a way to change the negative image of its coffee by using the resources available to the firm. In order to change the negative perception of its coffee in Canada, I recommend that McDonald’s give away free samples of the coffee for a limited time. Although McDonald’s will initially make no revenue from the coffee, it will give Canadian coffee consumers a convincing incentive to try it out and potentially â€Å"switch sides†. With the large number of store locations that McDonald’s has in Canada already, the free coffee will see wide-scale distribution, meaning that a large percentage of the nation’s population will be able to taste the coffee and judge it accordingly. Marketing this campaign is absolutely essential to its success. McDonald’s has used television advertisements to great effect in the past, and it should be no different for this campaign. Word-of-mouth communication will inevitably take place and more people will get a chance to taste the coffee. With all that being said, McDonald’s must implement measures to prevent customers from taking advantage of the free coffee. For example, it can limit the free coffee to the small cup size and implement a one-cup-per-customer rule. Furthermore, McDonald’s must set a precise time period for the campaign. Customers shouldn’t come into McDonald’s expecting free coffee after the campaign is over. Proper use of McDonald’s brand equity, cash and infrastructure is the key to the success of McCafà © in Canada. Although the McDonald’s brand is well known, it is important to note that the McCafà © brand is just beginning to grow in Canada. For this reason, I recommend that all McCafà © locations start off as extensions of existing McDonald’s restaurants rather than stand-alone restaurants. Once the McCafà © brand becomes popular enough in its own right  (likely after the free coffee campaign mentioned in the paragraph above), stand-alone McCafà ©s can be established. As of right now, taking the stand-alone route is much too risky. Finally, I recommend that all McDonald’s locations which will take on the McCafà © extension receive an upgrade to its interior design. Since McCafà © will be acting as a pseudo-competitor to sophisticated coffee retailers like Starbucks, design changes must be made to reflect the transformation. For example, bright colours like red and yellow must be replaced with warm, inviting colours like cream and mocha. Moreover, some of the standard four-seat tables should be replaced with sofas and loveseats. The addition of soft, contemporary music in the restaurant would also help in conveying the image of an upper-class coffeehouse. With my given recommendations, I strongly believe that McCafà © will be successful in Canada. If you have any questions regarding my report, please feel free to contact me. Regards, Sanger (Sung-Young) Yoo Appendices Resource Based View of McDonald’s Canada ResourceValuable?Rare?Inimitable?Substitutable? Tangible Assets CashXX Number of store locationsXX Strong managementX Strong franchiseesXX Existing product lineXX Global presence (121 countries)XX Intangible Assets Good reputation in fast-foodXX Depth of supply chainXX Brand equityXX Customer loyaltyXX Organizational Capacity Fast customer serviceX Product developmentXX Consistency of qualityX Appeal to all agesX SWOT Analysis of McDonald’s Canada (Regarding McCafà ©) StrengthsWeaknesses -Powerful supplier â€Å"partners† including Coca-Cola, Disney and Nestlà © -Good quality coffee (100% Arabica-brewed coffee) -Combines affordable coffee with sophisticated environment-Bad reputation for coffee -Declining market share in breakfast sales OpportunitiesThreats -Potential merger with another company (similar to Starbucks and Chapters) -Explosive growth in retail coffee consumption in Canada (Growing market for McCafà ©)-High levels of competition

Homework: Harmful or Helpful

Is Homework Harmful or Helpful to Students? The student body hates nothing more than finding out that, on top of the work assigned in class, there is an additional 10 questions to be completed at home. The big question that has arisen lately is: Is homework helpful to students, or does it create unnecessary stress? I personally have to say that homework is not helping us students learn anything more. First of all, homework causes students to become stressed out or even depressed. Second of all, it does not expand the student’s learning much. Third of all, too much of it can effect the student’s home life.Forth of all, doing too much homework can have negative effects on the body. As a student myself, I find that getting homework is somewhat helpful, but only to a certain degree. Many nights, students have pages upon pages of homework to complete and it’s difficult to get it all done within the specified timeframe. Having to deal with homework is very bad when you also have to complete important projects or assignments. This is because, if you don’t get your homework done, you get into trouble and could be penalized, but if you don’t get your assignments done, your grades will go down drastically.Getting both tasks done at the same time is troubling for most students and most of the time students will just bail on their work and give up because of the amount of stress. There have even been studies that prove that too much homework causes depression in children, especially from the ages of 14 – 19. Many people-especially teachers-will have you believe that homework is essential to a student’s success and helps to expand their learning skills and knowledge. However, this is not entirely true. I am going to use math as an example.If a student does all of his or her homework for math, writes the unit test, and passes, yes I suppose they have learned something. However, the information they have learned will only stay fresh in their mind for a short amount of time. Eventually they will completely forget about whatever they learned and will need to be retaught everything next year. So, in truth, they really haven’t learned anything, only memorized what they had to until they no longer needed it. Many topics learned throughout the school year are never even used in real life scenarios.For example, unless you have decided to take up biology as an occupation, many people will not use any kind of science in their lives. When a student comes home from school, most of the time they almost immediately start on their homework. If there is a great amount of work to be finished for the next day, they will work all through the evening and night trying to finish, usually skipping out on dinner or family time. When that student isn’t present very often and spends little time with the family, that cause problems between them and leads to fighting and weakened relationships. Read also  Homework Solutions – Chapter 3If the homework issue is consistent, parents may feel the need to speak to the teacher or even the principal, stating that their child has been neglecting to do much or anything except try to finish work. A few parents may even begin arguing with their child, wondering why they have so much homework and why they can’t spend time with their family for once. Arguing will create more stress for the student and will affect their performance in school. In extreme cases, too much homework can result in negative consequences on the body and mind.As well as stress, a heavy workload can cause everything from mild to strong body pains, to mental health issues, to physical inactivity, to sleep loss. If there is only a half hour or so of homework to be completed then it isn’t a huge concern. Although, oftentimes there is more than that and it has negative effects. Leaning over a desk for a long amount of time can cause back, neck, h and and joint pains that could last for days. If the subject being worked on involves a lot of thinking and brainwork, the student can suffer from headaches and dizziness.If the student is constantly sitting and doing work, they probably aren’t getting much physical activity and that could lead to obesity or sometimes malnutrition if they are skipping supper to finish. The most common negative effect of too much homework is mainly stress and lack of sleep. This happens because the child is worried that they need to complete everything or else the teacher will penalize them, so they stay up all night perfecting the assignment or task.There are an endless amount of reasons for why homework is bad for students, and there are many reasons to counter this argument. If you choose to believe the latter, then that is your choice; but think about this: Is homework really so important to the world that the health and wellbeing of students has to be put into jeopardy? Children donâ€⠄¢t need stress, family issues, and constant torment at this time. The issue really isn’t worth ruining our youth’s short amount of time to be carefree and have fun before they have to face the harsh reality of adulthood.

The Commodification of Human Organs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

The Commodification of Human Organs - Essay Example In short, these programmes have failed to make more organs available for transplantation. They are just unable to meet the requirements of the patients' needs for donated organs. On the face of this dearth of available organs that could have saved or qualitatively enhanced suffering human life, a more sympathetic attitude has long been entertained to create proposals for alternative procurement of organs. This includes provision of compensation to the organ donors. However, this has become an open secret in practice since there is an ongoing debate about the ethical pros and cons of this phenomenon and there are rigorous ethical norms exercised by the authority in this matter. The healthcare professionals who are involved in this area are actually in a dilemma, following ethics strictly leads almost to no practice, and hiding the truth is unethical. This work deals with this dilemma, and tries to critically examine this issue from this author's perspective. In the latter half of the 20th century, the possibility of transplanting organs became real. New advances in immunology and understanding of the mechanism of organ transplantation lead to development of new technologies for transplantation and support for the transplanted organ that, otherwise, would have been rejected by the recipient. Meanwhile, the medical profession accepted the concept of brain death that indicated a point at which death of an individual might officially be declared. Since organ transplantation has become feasible, many ethical issues and questions have arisen. The most important of them was the propriety of arbitrarily redefining death so as to make organ retrieval more easily possible. Gradually, as the science and technique advanced, more and more questions grounded on ethics started coming up. The history also indicates a future (Baker LR., 2000). The rate science is advancing, in the near future, the dream of growing organs from stem cells may materialize. In that case, naturally, the ethical issues encircling transplanting organs from newly dead or from living donors may become irrelevant. Regrettably, this is not the case at present. Ethical rigorousness in preventing financial exchanges around an available organ may, therefore, lead to a situation where some critically ill patients in need of an organ transplant would meet certain, agonizing, and perhaps unnecessary death (Dworkin R., 1993). At this point in time, some of the earlier ethical objections and quandaries, such as, whether organ or tissue donation is ethically permissible in the first place or whether selections made by groups of people were legitimate option, have become irrelevant largely, either because finding, advancement in science, or public consensus has resolved them. Despite this, some very critical ones remain still. These are not around the substantive question of the probity of transplantation in the first place. Ethics have accepted the legitimacy of transplantation very much, and now the probe is on the issues of allocation. In fact, among the most important of the issues that is to be dealt with in relation to the ethics of organ transplantation are the questions dealing with the mode, process, or rules of organ allocation, not to individual patients per se but allocation to centres which in turn allocate to individuals (English, V. and Sommerville, A., 2003). Death

The History of advertising and Brand Promotion Assignment

The History of advertising and Brand Promotion - Assignment Example The contribution of universal creative studios, Rowling and Warner Brothers have been successful in creating a brand in Harry Potter through branded entertainment (Thomas, Chris, & Semenik, 2012). Through various advertising and promotional channels, and partnerships the partners have made Harry Potter both a product and a brand. Potter’s marketers are continuing to keep the brand going through cross-promotional partnerships. Cross-promotional strategy and brand recognition sustain the success of the Potter brand. Coca Cola’s â€Å"Timely refreshment† ad fits in the designer era. This is because the ad appeals to the social class and conscious value for time management. Designer labels and social class-consciousness were some of the characteristics of the designer era ads. The calving Klein ad â€Å"fits in the e-revolution era because it includes a technological appeal of the current generation. The ad displays a woman wearing the latest design clothes. The diet coke ad was developed in 2002, so it is supposed to fit in the e-revolution era. However, it does not display the public consumption status of the designer era. A home improvement ad called â€Å"the perfect daughter† by Fahrenheit DDB in Lima Peru shows the problem a dad face on a trip to Promart. The ad is appealing to women because it tugs into viewers emotions. The family approach in the ad will attract female consumers. An automotive ad for Fiat 500L â€Å"The Motherhood† appeals to women because it explores the concept of motherhood, which, is core to women’s emotions. The ad will attract consumers because it targets the female niche. Budweiser â€Å"puppy love† ad was appealing to women as it shows a woman expressing moments of tenderness on a puppy. This would attract women consumers to these

The American Identity Crisis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The American Identity Crisis - Essay Example On the other hand, there were those who felt that American colonists had come to the New World to leave the world of monarchy and authoritarian decree behind, to found a home for democracy and for personal equality and freedom. The current debate in public opinion has to do with the American war in Iraq. There are many who believe that the United States, once an example for freedom and liberty, is acting like a colonial, or even an imperial power in its handling of Iraq. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the country has sunk into a brutal civil war, which neither the American military nor the Iraqi military can contain. These thinkers assert that, since there is no clear exit strategy for the American military, that President Bush has given his military forces an impossible task of restoring full order before returning home. Instead of leaving the troops there indefinitely, these people argue, preparations should begin immediately for troop withdrawals, since there is no clear rationale for their continued presence in the country. On the other side of the argument are those who believe that the American military has a duty to establish that order before it leaves, and that to leave any earlier would g ive terrorists a foothold in the Middle East and would leave a power vacuum that could end up being very dangerous to American interests. Paine, of course, was on the side of military action against the British government. He used highly incendiary language in his pamphlets: in The Crisis, he wrote that "[t]yranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." He explicitly compares the fight for American independence from Great Britain to a religious battle between forces of good and evil. He scorned the sensibilities of the Tory loyalists, who, in his opinion, were selling out their children's futures for their own short-term comfort: he quotes the Tory tavern owner who said, "Well! Give me peace in my day!" while playing with his young son. Paine argues that his concern should be more the future, and that he should think, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." Paine's argument was that a swift military action against the British would serve to lance the boil of American servitude that wo uld only continue to fester under the pressure of further British acts of taxation and other forms of official oppression. Paine's rhetoric is no tamer in his larger pamphlet known as Common Sense. He wrote, "Now is the seed-time of Continental union, faith and honour. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters." In other words, Paine felt his time period to be a crucial one in the direction of the fledgling colonies: they would either continue under British imperial rule, as would such areas as India and South Africa, or they could break free from their colonial ties and become a flagship for liberty in the New World. He uses the metaphor of writing on the tree to show how long-lasting the lessons of that historical moment would be. And just how permanent

Hindu veneration of statues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Hindu veneration of statues - Essay Example The arms of Lakshmi, for example, remind onlookers of her generosity in caring for her husband Siva. Another common form is the sacred cow who is associated with the goddess Shri, and reminds worshippers of the virtue of gentleness and non-violence. People acknowledge these statues as they pass with a gesture and there is evidence of offerings of gifts like colorful flowers or foodstuffs. The visual nature of Hindu belief can be explained with the concept of â€Å"darsan† which a special kind of reverent seeing: â€Å"the central act of Hindu worship, from the point of view of the lay person, is to stand in the presence of the deity and to behold the image with one’s own eyes, to see, and to be seen by the deity.†1 Eastern people greet each other by putting their hands together, and lowering their heads, as a gesture of respect, and they do this to their religious statues too. Even simple objects like rocks or caves can be revered in this way, and this reverence for natural objects and man-made statues reveals a great sensitivity to the presence of the divine in every person, animal or object in the created world. Hindu believers include ceremonies involving religious statues into all of their festivals and celebrations, some having a special relevance at certain times of year, for example Lakshmi in the Diwali festival. In some ways this is similar to Roman Catholic processions at Easter time, or special mass services in chapels devoted to particular saints or on special saints days or commemorative events. In the Roman Catholic faith the statues are an aid to focusing on God, who is invisible and hard to imagine. In Hinduism there is a very similar approach, whereby the representations of the divine give a concrete and local expression to very general truths: â€Å"The sacred image or symbol of the god represents a means of union with the divine, but is not usually identified with the deity – the god or goddess only temporarily re sides within the fabric of the image.†2 The second part of this observation can be interpreted as idolatry, and this has brought Hinduism into conflict with Christians in the past. Hindu gods are very flexible when it comes to the form that they take, and instead of one single incarnation of the divine into Jesus Christ, there is the possibility that statues can temporarily be an embodiment of the god. The modern usage of the word â€Å"avatar,† which people use across the world to signify a virtual persona on the internet, illuminates the relationship which people have with the statues: the avatars are obviously not divine in themselves, just as computer avatars in video games are not real people, but they are used by the being behind them to interact in a different dimension of experience. The god shows himself or herself through the statue, and in fact each god can take many forms, and sometimes a statue is made of wood, or stone, or any other material, especially to serve as a locus for the god to descend into for the duration of a particular festival in his or her honor: â€Å"†¦ on the full moon day at the beginning of the hot season in March/April, the Sri Vaisnavas of Madras carry the images of Visnu from their respective temples to the sea-shore, where all, including the deities, have a refreshing dip in the surf.†3 Because of the changeable nature of the outward form of their gods, Hindus see no contradiction in seeing different

Business strstegy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Business strstegy - Essay Example In such changing environment, it is must for the organizations and the institutions to have enough flexibility and adaptability within the policies and procedures of such bodies so that the changing terms can be easily inculcated. Such flexibility and adaptability has become the key for the sustainable growth and development of the organizations and institutions. Forestry Commission was established in England in the year of 1919 through the passing of the Forestry Act. The prime reason of the establishment of such Commission was aimed at supplying the much required timbers that were in scarcity in those years because of the industrial revolution and the First World War. The government of England speculated another war in the near future and thought it was necessary to have proper supply of timber. The secondary reason of the formation of such Commission was to ensure employment in the rural economy because of the changed political equations and also to provide employment to the soldiers those have just returned from the war. Therefore, to serve so many of the objectives the Forestry Commission was formulated which till recently was under the control of the ex-army men and more importantly followed the organizational structure similar to that of the military. The structure was essentially a top-down one with much emphasis on the features like chain of command and order from the top. With the changing times, the role of the Forestry Commission also experienced paradigm shift. The department of the government that came in to existence for the purpose of timber production and rural employment was pressed by the government in the 70s and 80s to inculcate organizational efficiency like other departments of the government. The Forestry Commission also had certain internal conflicts. There was a clear difference among the organizational hierarchy resulting in ‘them’ and ‘us’. Those who were the field

Evaluation of TV show or movie Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Evaluation of TV show or movie - Essay Example But as the new episodes are aired, the personalities which we have assigned to each characters seems to be invalid when different mishaps at the firm arisesand the characters are on an emotional roller coaster ride, revealing their true selves to the audience. Although on the surface, the serial outlines the show having uncaring and unemotional characters but involvement of one young and sympathetic associate attorney have them questioning their ways, bringing out their uncertainty and feelings and evoking their allegiance which makes all the ladies in the audience gush out â€Å"Oh my God, Harvey is such a darling!†. Hence, Suits depicts faithfulness, trust and loyalty as a medium to achieve a feat and not only competence. Played by a skilled actor Gabriel Macht, Harvey Specter is a self-centered and unemotional man whose main concern is winning for which he can do anything, but as we approach season two we see that to keep his associate, Mike Ross - who does not clear the eligibility of the job, in the firm he goes to great length by threatening to leave his job if the kid got fired, which illustrated the care he had for his associate. Moreover, in the mid of the same seasonin a critical situation where Harvey is to be disbarred on the accusation by his enemy for burying evidences, he teams up with the firm’s former managing director Daniel Hardman (who again gets involved in the firm after his wife died), whom he regard as an enemy, rather than voting for Jessica’s decision of going to a trial because that would jeopardize everyone in the firm, showing his loyalty and commitment to the organization. Similarly, in the same manner it is revealed in the upcoming season that being in compa ny of his associate; Harvey is starting to value those things, which initially were nuisance to him. Moving to the female leading character, Jessica Pearson is a hard woman who will go to any length to keep her surname on the wall of the firm

Reflection Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 17

Reflection - Assignment Example The feeling was great because participating in a worthy cause of raising funds to cater for children’s health concerns is good. My thought is that more funds need to be raised by conducting regular walks to cater for research activities by the children’s hospital. My reaction was positive since the event was a platform to get to touch a child’s heart especially those from poor backgrounds who cannot afford expensive medical bills (Voelker 12). The walk was quite a success; however, the experience from it is what is vital. I noticed that few families participated. Instead, it was only school children. Parents should be encouraged to participate more. The event is also supposed to be expanded to other areas in order to raise more funds. Most important is for accountability of these funds to ensure it benefits the children from poor backgrounds. The funds should go into projects that aim to ensure all children access affordable quality healthcare. Questions that need to be considered include: was the event a success? What improvements need to be done? What impact has the awareness created and how are the funds going to be used? A number of nurses participated in the event. The experience from a professional nurse’s perspective was a constructive one. Nurses need to envision becoming caring so as to improve the health of the children. They have to carry out their duties with high standards of dedication through nursing research, evidence objective practice and high quality of nursing care to the kids. The nurses must place the needs of the kids and their families fast by ensuring they are responsible, excellent, and innovative enough and practice with respect and dignity (Voelker

Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Essay Example for Free

Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Essay Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan Board: Hedging Foreign Currency Exposure Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan Board: Hedging Foreign Currency Exposure Issue Identification The Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan (OTPP) is a defined contribution plan that was created in 1917 to provide and administer a pension plan for Ontario school teachers. Sponsored by the Ontario Government and the Ontario Teacher’s Federation, the plan currently supports 343,000 teachers, former teachers and pensioners. The recent government decision to eliminate the 30% constraint on foreign investments and the increased volatility in the currency market has prompted the OTPP Investment Committee to address the following: 1. Whether to continue the International Equity Swap Program 2. Whether to administer changes to the Foreign Exchange Hedging Policy Goals and Objectives In order to come to a decision, it is necessary that any solution put forth must align with the goals and objectives of the fund. OTPP is a long-term fund determined to minimize risk, costs and the additional contributions required to fund the plan while maximizing its returns. OTPP Investment Strategy In the early 1990’s the OTPP board realized that it was essential to begin investing abroad to diversify risk and to capitalize on international opportunities to achieve greater returns, given the size of the fund. However, it was not until 1996 that the Foreign Exchange Hedge Program (FX Hedge Program) was implemented in response to a significant rise in currency exposure. As the fund faced increased foreign currency risk, risk management became essential and thus, a hedging policy of 50% of its foreign currency exposure was introduced. Due to the fact that OTPP has a continual commitment in supporting its pensioners, it must expose itself to limited risk and effectively hedge against any unexpected changes in its investments. Hence, a conservative policy of hedging 50% of foreign exchange exposure was enforced. Additionally, the International Equity Swap Program (IE Swap Program) was implemented as a solution to the government restriction of 30% ownership of foreign investments. Since most assets were tied up in non-marketable Ontario Debentures, a swap program enabled OTPP to reallocate its assets. OTPP Performance Evaluation The strategic decision to diversify beyond Canada and into global markets has proved to be beneficial to the OTPP investment portfolio. It has contributed substantial value to the fund over the 10 year period (1995-2005) by reducing potential losses, since five of the six foreign currencies appreciated against the Canadian dollar. For the past 15 years, OTPP investments have also consistently outperformed the benchmark rate of returns, generating a 10-year average rate of return of 11. 4% and a gross return of $15. billion over benchmark returns. Despite the portfolio’s negative rate of returns in 2001-2002, it has still produced considerable investment growth in relation to the benchmark, demonstrating the strength of OTPP’s investment policies in risk management. However, since interest rates have declined by approximately 3% (1990-2004), the value of the pension fund has increased. This has resulted in larger amount of payments made to pen sioners. Additionally, the demographics of the OTPP plan membership have changed significantly over the past 30 years. The ratio of active members per retiree has decreased from 10:1 in the 1970s to the present ratio of 1. 6:1. Moreover, the expected years retirees rely on the pension have also increased to 29 years. All these factors have exerted a great deal of pressure on the pension plan to sustain its funding with contributions from fewer working teachers. With the foreign currency market being increasingly volatile, OTPP is concerned regarding its future ability to support pension payments. Decision Criteria The Investment Committee must consider the following criteria when deciding whether to implement changes to the International Equity Swap Program and Foreign Exchange Hedging Policy: the fund’s exposure to foreign exchange risk, transaction costs, and an alignment of goals and objectives of the fund. Alternative: Although OTPP has performed well in the past, the future outlook of the pension plan remains uncertain. Therefore, OTPP has four alternatives to the future direction of the fund. OTPP can continue or discontinue the IE Swap Program and maintain or revise the current 50% FX Hedge Policy. Continue/Discontinue the Swap Program Previously, the swap program was used as a means to bypass the government restriction on foreign investment. With the regulation being lifted, OTPP has to now evaluate whether the swap program remains necessary. The program has allowed OTPP to reallocate their assets cost-effectively as it eliminates OTPP’s cost of transacting directly in foreign exchange market. Moreover, since OTPP does not gain ownership of the securities, it has reduced the amount of cash required and limited its risk by transferring the risk to counter-parties (UBS, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, etc. ).

Maslows Criteria of Self Actualization

Maslows Criteria of Self Actualization Abraham Maslow is known as the spiritual father of humanistic psychology. According to him, human being is a creature who always have desired. If their desired is satisfied, another will arises to take place. In the drives of fulfill ones potential, the individual will be gained happiness, growth and satisfaction. Maslow was distinguished in motivation. Motivation is the reduction of tension by satisfying lacks. D-needs or deficiency needs arise for the requirements of survival or safety, such as need for food or shelter. It motivates individual to engage in activities that reduce these drives. Maslow had proposed that human needs are arranged in hierarchy and there are five levels of basic human needs. It was listed from strongest to weakest which include basic physiological need , safety, belongingness and love , esteem and actualization. The self actualization is the weakest need which place on top of the hierarchy and physiological need is the strongest need which place on the bottom of hierarchy. Most of the people trying to fulfill physiological needs, safety , belongingness and love and esteem needs. Indeed, self actualization is a goal that less people can fully reached. Movement to self actualization is not easy and wont reached automatically. Abraham Maslow also said that self actualization as the full use and exploitation of talents, capacities and potentialities. This is because self actualization is the weakest needs and people are usually afraid of the self knowledge for self actualization that may change their self-concept. In self actualization, people comes to find out the meaning of their life and the importance of life to them. Therefore, self actualization requires freedom to express oneself and to explore. Thus, their act have to in the absence of any restriction and follow the moral value such as truth, honesty and others. Although all people have innate drive to be self actualized, but self actualized people are still very rare. Most of us not capable to achieved self actualization or only to certain degree of self actualizing, but theoretically we are able to self actualizing. Maslow identified that self actualized people have fifteen common characteristics. The characteristic includes problem centered but not self centered, spontaneous, accept themselves for what they are, highly creative, peak experience and others. Although people can achieve self actualization in their unique ways, they still tend to share certain same characteristics. The behaviors that leading to self actualization such as trying new things, being honest, taking responsibility and working hard and so on. CRITERIA TO SELF-ACTUALIZATION There are four criteria must have before a person achieves self-actualization. One of them were free or absence of psychopathology. Psychopathology is a term which refers to either the study of mental illness, mental distress or the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be showing out mental illness or psychological impairment. They were neither neurotic nor psychotic no partially toward psychological disturbances. This is an important point of negative criterion because some neurotic and psychotic individuals have some things in common with self-actualizing people and sharing the same characteristics such as heightened sense of reality, mystical experiences, creativity, and detachment from other people. Abraham H. Maslow will remove from the list of possible of self-actualizing people if that person showed clear signs of psychopathology. Maslow second criterion was acceptance of the B-values. Researchers have defined it formally in terms of positive and negative self-concepts. He states the person who achieved self actualization will felt comfortable with and even demanded truth, beauty, justice, simplicity, wholeness, perfection, completion, aliveness, richness, goodness, uniqueness, effortlessness, playfulness and the last one is self-sufficiency. This all values is also about B-values. We have to accept or have B-values in our own self to achieves self-actualization. Besides that, the criteria is satisfaction of each of the four lower level needs and therefore can lived above the subsistence level of existence. They would also experienced love and had a well-rooted sense of self-worth. This is because when they satisfied their lower needs, these people were better and be able to tolerate the frustration of these needs, even in the face of criticism. They are also be able of loving a wide variety of people yet love everyone with no obligated. Last but not least, the criterion for reaching self-actualization was fully accomplished of ones potentials for growth. In other words, his self-actualizing individuals have to fulfil their needs to grow, to develop, and to increasingly become what they were capable of becoming. With having all these criterions, the needs of self actualization only can fulfilled. VALUES OF SELF-ACTUALIZERS Maslow had state that self-actualizing people are motivated by the eternal verities what he called B-values. These are sign of psychological health and are opposed to deficiency needs, which motivate non-self-actualizers. B-values are not the needs in the same sense that food, shelter, or companionship are. Maslow termed B-values metaneeds to point out that they are the extreme level of needs. He differentiate between ordinary needs motivation and the motives of self-actualizing people, which known as metamotivation. Metamotivation is characterized by expressive rather than coping behavior and is connected with the B-values. It differentiates self-actualizer from those who are not. In other words, metamotivation was Maslows indecisive answer to the problem of why some people have their lower needs satisfied, they capable giving and receiving love, hold a great amount of confidence and self-esteem. The lives of these people are meaningless and lacking in B-values. Only people who lives among the B-values are self-actualizing, and they alone are capable of metamotivation. Maslow had identified 14 B-values. The values of self-actualizing people include truth, beauty, goodness, wholeness or the transcendence of dichotomies, aliveness or spontaneity, uniqueness, completion, justice and order, perfection, simplicity, richness or totally, effortlessness, playfulness or humor, and self-sufficiency or autonomy. These values differentiate self-actualizing people from those whose psychological growth is stop after they reach their esteem needs. Maslow hypothesized that when people did not met their metaneeds , they will experience illness, also known as existential illness. All people have different tendency to move toward completeness and when the movement was discouraged, they will start suffer from the feelings of inadequacy, disintegration, and lack of fulfilment. Absence of these B-values leads to pathology just same as lack of food results in malnutrition. When denied the truth, people suffer from paranoia, when they live in ugly surroundings, they become physically ill, lack of playfulness and humour. They become tired, rigid, and depressed. Deficiency of any of the B-values results in metapathology which means the lack of a meaningful philosophy of life. CHARACTERISTIC OF SELF ACTUALIZER Abraham Maslow described several characteristics of a self-actualizations peoples. Maslows theory conceptualizing behavioral define in term of a hierarchy, which the self-actualization needs is the highest of the human needs, involves the actively use of all our qualities and abilities, the development and fulfillment of our potential. Self-actualization people are those who have achieved this goal. They are characterized by their giving, calm and practical natures. Question, what are the characteristics of self-actualization? Self-actualization people share certain characteristics and Maslow concluded which is objective perception of reality. Self-actualizations people perceive their world and other people, clearly and logic, unbiased. The self-actualization people have comfortable relations with more efficient perception of reality. This is extended to all areas of life. Self-actualization people are not frightened, they will not frighten by the unknown and they have greater ability to reason, to see the truth. They able to detect the dishonest and the fake. Secondly, characteristic of self-actualization people is a full acceptance of their own nature. Self-actualization people accept their strengths and weaknesses. They do not try to distort or falsify their self-image and they do not feel guilty or shame about their failing. They enjoy themselves without regret or apology, they have no unnecessary inhibitions. They also accept the weaknesses of other people and of society in general. They accept natural events, even disasters, as a part of life. Thirdly, the self-actualization people is commit and dedicate to a kind of work. They focus on problems outside themselves and other centred. Self-actualization people have a sense of mission in life which they requiring their energy. Their mission is their reason for living in the world. This dedication to a cause or vocation is a requirement for self-actualization. They are serene, characterized by a lack of worry, and are devoted to duty. Self-actualization people find pleasure and excitement in their hard work. Forth, behavior of self-actualizer is simplicity, honest and being nature. The behaviour of self-actualization people is open, direct, and natural. They rarely hide their feelings, emotions or play a role to satisfy the society, they may do so only to avoid hurting other people. Self-actualization people are individualistic in their ideas and ideals but not necessarily standard in their behavior. They feel secure enough to be themselves without being aggressive. They are so spontaneous in their inner life, thoughts and impulses, they are not hampered by agreement. Their ethics is independent. They are individuals and motivated to keep growing. Besides that, the characteristic of self-actualization people is a need for autonomy, privacy, and independence. Self-actualizers can experience isolation without harmful effects and seem to need loneliness more than persons who are not self-actualizing. Alone but not lonely, unflappable, retain dignity amid confusion and personal misfortunes, objective. They do not go in for fads and they prefer to follow their self-determined interests. This independence may make them seem aloof or unfriendly, but that is not their intent. They are simply more autonomous than more people and do not crave social support. Furthermore, characteristic of self-actualizers is intense peak experience. A peak experience is a momentary feeling of extreme wonder, awe, and vision, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences. Self-actualization people know moments of intense ecstasy, not unlike deep religious experiences, that can occur with virtually any activity. They are special experiences that appear to be very meaningful to the person who has one. In addition, the characteristic of self-actualization people is empathy and affection for all humanity. All self-actualizers tend to have a deep and sincere caring for their fellow humans. Although often irritated by the behavior of other people, self-actualizers feel a kinship with an understanding of others as well as desire to help them. Identification, sympathy, and affection for mankind, kinship with the good, the bad and the ugly, older-brother attitude. Truth is clear to them, they can see things others cannot see. OBSTACLE TO SELF ACTUALIZATION Most of the people would like to describe the self actualization as positive in many ways , but Maslow wanted to make it clear that it was not easy to achieve self actualization. Although it was an natural potential of everyone, but it was not developed generally. This is because they had repeatedly stuck in the situation to choose between growth and safety. Safety is an attractive choice, but only growth can lead us to self actualization. If we choose play safe rather than dangerous of growth, it will not brings us more toward to self actualization. Parents are advised to not overprotection which orient the child toward safety, and extreme approval which means focus on the child others opinion rather than their own experience. When parents give a clear concept for children, the children will notice that growth choice offer joy and happiness, whereas choice of safety will only lead to boredom. Although growth choice seems dangerous and safety choice offers confirmation, but we have to clear that self actualization is a higher needs and also weakest needs. Therefore ,peoples must pay more effort to compete for it. Besides that, lower needs such as physiological needs, safety and others need higher needs which most of the people keep fighting for it can bring them more satisfaction. Therefore, self actualization is on top of the hierarchy, which is the highest and also the weakest needs. People have to make a clear vision and step to know what they want to achieve it. Maslow also state that human no longer have instincts in the human sense, powerful, unmistakable inner voices which tell them unequivocally what to do, when, where, how and with whom. All that we have left are instinct-remnants. And these are weak, subtle and delicate, very easily drowned out by learning, by cultural expectation, by fear ,by disapproval. (Maslow, 1968b,p191). Maslow added the diminutive ending and called them instinctoid. The weakness of higher instinctoid is they are sometimes insufficient to lead us fully to self actualization. Furthermore, Jonah complex which is the people are convinced that it is impossible to do anything very important and it will to dream to their highest potential, which means self actualization, it will leave them unhappy. STEPS TO SELF ACTUALIZATION Next, we should realize that self actualization plays an important role in our daily life as our age is increasing. Therefore, people might ask what to do can get into self actualization? Heres 11 steps that we can do to achieve self actualization in ourselves. First step is you need to assess your life. Assess statement which means that you should ask yourself are you living a life that you find deeply rewarding and meaningful ? This is not a once and only step. This is a question you have to ask yourself regularly. For example , what you were doing until nowadays to assess and make your life meaningful. If you work as a teacher, you must know that this job is a honored work as you are passing knowledge to the students. If you regularly asked yourself and you get to know the answer, your life will be more meaningful and tend to get into self actualization. Assess your motive is the second step. You have to keep ask yourself, are you holding yourself back because of fear? Everyone should make a choice that desire to grow, rather than reaction to fear. Dont think about what will happen after you made your life decision but keep motivate yourself and think what is the best for your life. Third step is willing to change. If you feel your life isnt a rewarding, youll need to change it, willing to make a move and change a new direction. You have to open yourself to possibility. If you keep closing yourself off to the world, you are going to miss a lot of amazing things in the world. Part of the process to achieved self actualization is allowing those pain at the past, old mindsets and prejudice idea go away. You need to create a sort of blank slate within yourself to begin reconstructing the view of point to see the world. Forth step is started to take the responsibility. You cant expect others to make changes for you. Its your life and its up to you to make the necessary changes that will lead to greater fulfillment. To do this, you may start from small. As with most other tasks, acting responsibility works best when you can get a bit of momentum going. If you feel crushed under a backlog of responsibilities, start with a few small or fast tasks. This can help you gain confidence to take bigger responsibility. Next, is cherish your uniqueness. Be prepared to break away from the herd and be different. Dont be afraid to follow your impulses and dont give into the negative self-talk. Choose to look at things in a different perspective. Then, give yourselves more option, wider your mind and make your dreams alive. When the negative discussion starts, make positive thought even stronger than negative thought. Sixth step is realize your dreams. Instead of lay on bed and dream about what you want, write down your goals and take the appropriate action to achieve them. If you are students and want to get an excellent result in the exam, take a piece of paper and list down the steps to achieve the goal. For example go for a tuition class and make study group with your friends. When you start to make the move, then you can only nearer and nearer to your dream. Seventh step is accept your fallibility. That means, be willing to says, I was wrong .Be honest with yourself and with others. Dont be afraid if you have done something wrong and brave to admit it. Most of the people dare not to admit what he was doing wrong and keep denied or blamed on others. This will not improve yourself but only will put yourselves backward. Besides that, is always learn from the good times. Try to repeat experiences that you find deeply meaningful or awe-inspiring or that lead to feelings of excitement, ecstasy, humility or personal fulfillment. For example, if you have involved in the charity program and you are really enjoyed with it, why not if you get more and more to involved into another charity program? This will bring such a inspiring in your life. Furthermore, is join in which means get involved in life. You have to become an active member of your community. For example ,form a neighborhood watch group. If your neighborhood doesnt already have one, learn how to be a neighborhood watch coordinator and get your neighbors involved. This is a great way to get to know the families living on your street, and you can help other neighborhoods get going once you have experience. Next, is look for the good in others. Every one of us has good points and bad. Usually we will overlook the good and only focus on the bad and mistake. Therefore, you have to make it a habit to find out the good part of someone. You should be also have to be more positive thinking .Positive thinking doesnt mean that you keep your head in the sand and ignore lifes less pleasant situations. Positive thinking just means that you approach the unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way. Positive thinking may lead to a good health. Health benefits in positive thinking include the increased of life span ,lower rates of depression, lower levels of distress and so much more. And here comes the last steps which is step eleventh is assess your progress. Take the time to reflect on all that youve accomplished as well as to honestly assess how you can do more to improve your life and the lives of those around you. For example, assess your progress at your work. This is the time to actually get to work. You need to note down your accomplishments of the last year. Then is the time to question what is different in the current year. Be aware of all the things you have accomplished as well. Your accomplishments give you a sense of confidence and help you achieve your goals in a better manner. They also give you a sense of focus. CONCLUSION Maslow had state out that human are much more than physical object and therefore the methods in physical science have no relevant to the study of humans. He also indicate that psychology have to attempt to understand humans who are in the process of finding out their full potential. Thats why we have to know how the people think and which way to use to motivate them. Therefore, Maslow used most of his times and energies trying to understand superior human. The hierarchy of needs which proposed by Abraham Maslow shows that the lower the needs in the hierarchy, more basic they are. However , everyone have to achieve the lowest needs before deal with the highest need. The highest need, which is self actualization, meant they reaching their full potential, figure out who they are and the meaning of their life. The self actualizing people shares some common characteristics. For example, they tend to be more independent. They less rely on others. Besides that, they are creative which always provide some new and brilliant ideas that special and never try before. Although most of us are creative, but self actualizing people are more nature, naive that would used their creativeness to makes the world better. To achieve self actualization, people may also meet some obstacle. Therefore, it is important to choose the correct ways and steps to reach self actualization. Last but not least, out there was thousand million people on the earth, but not much of them can achieved self actualization. This shows that to achieve this goal seems easy but it was hard. Most of the people stuck on physiological needs, safety, belonging and loves need and esteem needs. They spend most of their life to satisfy those lower needs and forget about the highest needs. The needs become more fragile when goes higher the hierarchy which means their satisfaction is easily been block. Therefore, humans have to be strong to themselves and their faith to drive their innate to the best. Human have to be true to themselves and their own nature. Peoples should also have a good planning of their life so that it can motivate them to achieve the goal step by step so that they can finally achieved self actualization.

Progressivism and Philosophy :: Teaching Teachers Education Essays

Progressivism and Philosophy It has often been said that it takes a whole village to educate a child. Children learn from watching others, working with others, and experiencing first hand the whole realm of learning. Most children are born inquisitive and eager to learn. Preschoolers and early childhood learners are in the discovery mode and must be allowed to experience the relevancy of learning. Public education is the joint effort of teachers and community to provide learning for children. Teachers must have a specific role with specific goals to accomplish the best results. These goals can be achieved by applying certain teaching methods and classroom management skills. Children learn better in a well-disciplined (controlled) environment that provides the appropriate curriculum for each grade level. Reading, writing, and arithmetic – the core classes – are essential to the foundation of a child’s education. Without these skills, children would not be able to excel in the â€Å"real† world or progress to each level of learning. Furthermore, education should address each students other needs and interests. Since children learn at a different rate or have different interests as to how they learn, it is important that I, as a teacher, be willing to use as many strategies as needed to reach each child. Teach them to read and write and do math computations, but also help them to learn in the areas of art, science, social sciences and music. It will be my job to recognize the needs of my students and teach them the not only basic skills but also creative ones so that they will have a well-rounded curriculum and develop a positive attitude towards learning. I want them to develop a â€Å"want to† desire for active participation in future learning. Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy that has children helping children to learn. It aids in developing leadership, cooperation, creativity, and teamwork – all essential elements in the real world. Using community resources and volunteers will provide variety in the daily routine of school and strengthen the â€Å"want to† attitude of children to get actively involved in learning. It is my opinion that the classroom has gotten to be too â€Å"technical†.

Caves to Knowledge or Knowledge to Aid Essays -- essays research paper

â€Å"Allegory of a Cave† by Plato is and interesting story that is meant to educate the reader. By presenting a fictional story Plato is able to symbolize many aspects of our lives that we do not often think about. This story is symbolic of many important periods in our lives like education, growing up from a child to an adult, and even visiting a foreign country. It is these important events in our lives that Plato wants us to think about and examine so that we better understand how we develop and view the world   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  While reading the story I thought about childhood and how the prisoners in the cave were like infants and small children. â€Å"their legs and necks chained so they cannot move†(line 6). The prisoners knowing only what they are shown is symbolic of how a parent chooses what a child sees and learns. During the childhood stage of a human life the parent is in control of what their child learns and interacts with, therefore the child’s knowledge is limited to what the parent is willing to teach. It seems that even thought the prisoners in the cave are of adult stature they still are controlled like children. However, when one of the prisoners is released into the light he comes to realize that the cave is only a small portion of the world that he now knows. The prisoner leaving the cave is like the child becoming old enough to understand the intricacies of the world without having that information first filtered by the parents. A vast wealth of kn...

Little Miss Sunshine Film Essay

Little Miss sunshine released in 2006, directed and produced by Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Farris represents many complicated family issues. The film establishes these in many situations by the use of film symbolic, written, audio and technical codes and convention an issue that arose was that the main character Olive’s brother is in an oath of silence. That the family have many complicated ambitions, and that Olive wants to participate in a young girls beauty pageant ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ which breaches many moral values through out the film, Throughout the film you can see the family draw closer together and begin to over come many of their issues as a family. The film Little Miss Sunshine focuses on a young girl whose life was altered by the changing nature of society whereby â€Å"Child Beauty contests† define physical attraction and personality at as young as 8 years old. The pressure of the â€Å"beauty myth† is an onset for young children to follow societal expectations whether it be through beauty contests, fashion aimed at pre-teens or young adult celebrities acting as role models. An example of low self-esteem is shown through the restaurant scene where Olive is self-conscience when ordering ice cream. This provides the audience with an understanding of the new-formed issues faced by young women in today’s society due to the expectations of the â€Å"beauty world.† Dayton and Faris use the visual techniques of costuming, whereby the children are spray tanned, lathered with makeup and expose their bodies to exaggerate the young children to physically look older. This has caused sudden dispute within modern day society as expectations for women have started to occur at much younger ages. All of the characters have an ambition that is highlighted throughout the movie, for instance Dwayne takes an oath of silence on behalf of a German philosopher Frederick Nietzche, Dayton and Faris chose not to explain what connection Dwayne had with this man but does show he is dedicated to this mans beliefs, having a poster of him, a shirt with Nietzches face on it and shows him reading a book titled after him. Dwaynes ambition is to be a test pilot for the u.s army which is cut short when they find out he is colourblind, through his sheer anger and rage he gets out of the car and breaks his vow of silence, later in the film Dwayne talks to Frank film conventions create an issue of dysfunctionality and happiness through the use of symbolic codes In the film the old yellow Volkswagen represents happiness represents happiness with an unappealing aspect which connects inextricablly with the family. The van symbolises the family very well as they

Psychology & Understanding Human Behavior: the Individual

Psychology & Understanding Human Behavior: The Individual PSYC120-1203B-06 Introduction to Psychology IP5 Psychology & Understanding Human Behavior: The Individual President Barak Obama is who I have chosen to do my research and analysis on for this class as he is one of the most controversial people that I can think of today. With him being the President of the United States he is known all over the world. After being the President for almost four years a lot of what he has done in office has really upset a lot of people by him going against what the Presidents before him had worked so hard to establish.This country was built on Christian principles by our founding fathers and it seems that this country in the last 4 years has strayed very far from where it was and should be. With that being said I chose him because I wanted to delve into his childhood and his upbringing to see what if anything may have caused him to become who is known to be today. Barack Hussein Obama, ll was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the older of two children. Barack is what you would consider bi-racial individual. His father’s name is Barack Obama, Sr. and he is African American. His mother’s name is Ann Dunham and she is from an English ancestry mixed with Scottish, German, Swiss, and Irish cultural backgrounds. His parents met when they were students at the University of Hawaii in 1960 in a Russian class. Barack’s father was a foreign student who was attending the college on a scholarship. His mother was originally from Wichita, Kansas. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor her father, Stanly enlisted in the service, and her mom got a job on the bomber assembly line.When the war ended her parents bought a house through the Federal Housing Program and finally after many moves the family ended up living in Hawaii. His parents got married on February 2, 1961 however they separated when his father went to Harvard University on scholarship and eventually the couple divorced in 1964 (Main article: Early Life and Career of Barack Obama). His mom later remarried an Indonesian man name Lolo Soetoro who was attending college in Hawaii as well. From the age of six until the age of ten Barack lived in a city called Jakarta where his younger sister Maya Soetoro Ng was born.In 1971 after being scared for her son’s life on several occasions and wanting him to get a good education, Ann decided to send her son to Hawaii to stay with his grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham. He gained a scholarship under his grandparents’ guidance and attended a private preparatory school where he was one of three blacks. He started there in the fifth grade excelling in basketball. It was at that school when he became attentive to racism and what it meant being a black man. However, that did not keep him from graduating with honors in 1979.His mother was there to see his progress until having to leave in 1977 to go back and work in Indon esia as an anthropological field worker. She did however return back to Hawaii in 1994, but in 1995 she passed away from ovarian cancer. He struggled though with the fact of his father being absent from his life who he saw only once after his parents divorced for a short visit. At the age of 22 he learned that his father who had lost his legs in a previous car accident had now lost his life due to a car accident in Nairobi.After finishing high school, Obama took classes at Occidential College in Los Angeles for two years, and then later transferred to Columbia University in New York. Receiving his degree in 1983 from Columbia in political science and working in the business sector for two years, he moved to Chicago. He was involved in the communities, and started working on the South Side as a community organizer for low-income residents in the Roseland and the Altgeld Gardens Community. He also during this time joined the Trinity United Church of Christ even though he admitted that he wasn’t raised in a religious home.He also visited his relatives in Kenya as well as the graves of his father and paternal grandfather. Obama said that during his visits to these graves, â€Å"I saw that my life in America—the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago—all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away. † (2012, Biography. com) Upon his return from Kenya he entered Harvard Law School in 1988. This would be the beginning of a great life for Barack.The very next year, he met Michelle Robinson who was an associate at Sidley & Austin law firm in Chicago. She was assigned to be his adviser during a summer internship at the firm, soon after that they began dating. After he completed law school he decided to return back to Chicago where he joined the law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland as civil rights lawyer. He also during this time taught at the University of Chicago Law School, and he also help organize the voter registration drives form Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.On October 3, 1992 he married Michelle and they moved to Kenwood on Chicago’s South Side. In 1998 their first daughter Malia was born followed by another daughter Sasha who was born in 2001. Obama’s work as an advocate is what actually helped him propel his start in politics. He ran for the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat and won the election in 1996. During his time there he worked with both Democrats and Republicans in putting together a legislature on ethics, as well as expanding health care services and early childhood education for the poor. He also created the state earned-income tax for poor people.In 2000 he had an unsuccessful run for Democratic seat of the U. S. House of Representatives. Though this failure did not stop him from putting together a campaign committee in 2002 to raise funds for the 2004 U. S Senate race which he won by 70% in November 2004. This was the largest electoral victory in Illinois history and made him only the third African American to be elected to the U. S. Senate since its reconstruction. February 2007 he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination which put him in competition with Hilary Clinton who was then the Senator for New York.However, on June 3, 2008 he succeeded her and she gave her full support to his campaign. November 4, 2008 he defeated Republican candidate John McCain for the position of the U. S. President. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold this office. The psychological perspective that I chose to discuss about Barack Obama was behavioristic. Reason being is because most people view behavioristic people as being controlled by their environment and think that they are the result of what they have learned from their environment.With that being said, Obama had what some would call a strike against him being that he was multiracial. With his mother being white and his father was being African American he was teased about his race and it was hard for him to fit in at times. Though he was considered a black man, he stayed with his grandparents and mother whom were Caucasian to the eye. Though being teased, he did his research and used it in his advantage. Both parents were smart, so he pretty much inherited their brains. His mother and father attended college, as well as his step-father.Barack excelled in school; he was a teacher, and a leader. Even though his environment was a tough one growing up Obama became a successful man who has accomplished more than most people in his 51 years. The Humanistic Psychology has its strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths is that it shifts the focus of the behavior to the individual or whole person rather than the unconscious mind, genes and observable behavior etc. It also s atisfied most people’s idea of what being human means because it values personal ideals and self-fulfillment (McLeod, S. A. 2007). Carl Rogers believed that people have one basic motive, and that is the tendency to self-actualization. He believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization that they must be in a state of congruence. In other words he felt that when a person feels that they have become who they want to become and it is congruent with their actual behavior then they have achieved self-actualization (McLeod, S. A. , 2007). Maslow on the other hand felt that most people would never achieve this level which was his 5th level on his hierarchy of needs pyramid.He felt that in order for people to progress from level to level certain things needed to be met. In order to reach that 5th level you would need to fulfill the 1st through the 4th. These levels are the biological and psychological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love need with the 4th level being t he esteem needs (McLeod, S. A. , 2007). This theory’s weakness would be that with the basic concept behind the theory of being free will, it is difficult to both develop a treatment technique and study the effectiveness of this technique.While this theory may work for a simple issue, you wouldn’t use this approach to treat someone for something like schizophrenia. In conclusion what I have learned from psychology is that everyone is unique and we all tend to have our quirks. Will we ever understand everyone completely? Most likely not because being the humans that we are we change constantly. Our environment and the people we associate with play a tremendous part in who we are and in whom we become. Just like in the workplace, people come from all various walks of life working together in a small office like I do may or may not always get along.Can we use psychology to try an understand them? Sure, I believe that is possible, but you can only learn why an individual ac ts the way they do by being able study them from the beginning of their life to now. To be honest I find psychology a little stressful so for me to actually want to pursue it outside of this class and maybe do it at my workplace is kind of out of the question at this present moment. For me I will leave it up to the professionals who have decided that they want to spend their time dissecting people and their strange minds.One thing that psychology has taught me is that never to make a snap judgment on the way someone is behaving because there is always an underlying cause for their behavior. This is one thing that I will do my best not to do anymore at my workplace or life in general. You never know what one has been through or may be going through, so until you have that understanding never make an assumption and categorize them. The following statement, â€Å"you can’t understand others unless you understand yourself† to me does carry a lot of truth.The feedback that I have received from both my peers and my professor in this class has caused me to take a deeper look inside myself as a person. To see what others think of me by what I say or write has definitely been an eye opener. To see myself through another person’s eyes is what all of us should try to do on a daily basis with the people we are surrounded by. I was always told, â€Å"you don’t need to worry about what other people think of you† but sometimes you just can’t help but wonder what goes through someone’s mind when you walk into a room or say something to them.Psychology in itself does allow you to put on different lenses to see things about yourself and others in a different light. It is just like putting on different lenses on camera allows you to adjust how far away or how close you see things, psychology does just the same. One man named Same Gosling states in his article Mixed Signals on psychologytoday. com, â€Å"we think we know ourselves better than others do but yet we are biased when it comes to seeing ourselves in a good light that we become strangers to ourselves. In other words we need to take the time to listen to people when they do give us feedback on ourselves as it will help us in the long run and not just take it as jealous criticism. Honestly, I will never again allow myself to think that someone is criticizing me because they are jealous. Instead I will take what they say and allow myself to re-examine what I have said or done to cause them to think that way about me. We are all human and none of us regardless of what we think are perfect. We make mistakes just like everyone else. We say and do things to cause harm to others just as they do to us.However, if we just take a minute to see our behavior through their eyes then we might can understand ourselves better and in turn understand them as well. There are all kinds of psychology resources that we can utilize to help understand ourselves and the wor ld around us if we will just take the time to search them out. There are numerous self-help books in bookstores today, and there are plenty of resources on the web such as articles, personality tests, and more. We should do all we can to explore these resources to get a better understanding of our world.If you take a look at the world today there are a lot of hurt, angry, and confused people out there who no one seems to notice or care about. We have become a society that is so driven on a me, me, me attitude that the rest of the world seems to have faded away from our view. If we use what psychology has taught us to explore why people are hurt, angry, confused and acting the way they are then we might be able to help them get to the root of their issues and deal with them. Psychology to me is all about getting to the heart of the matter, finding the root cause and dealing with it.I say let’s stop medicating people, or covering things up and pretending it is all okay when it isn’t. Let’s use what psychology has taught us to try to understand people and why they act the way they do. In order to do that though, we have to start with ourselves in this process because how can we effectively help anyone if we can’t even help ourselves? References 1. Edwards, Roberta (2008). Barack Obama: United States President 2. Gosling, Sam (2009). Mixed Signals Retrieved from http://www. psychologytoday. com/articles/200908/mixed-signals 3. McLeod, S. A. (2007).Simple Psychology; Carl Rogers Retrieved from http://www. simplepsychology. org/carl-rogers. html 4. McLeod, S. A. (2007). Simple Psychology; Maslow | Hierarchy of Needs Retrieved from http://www. simplepsychology. org/maslow. html 5. McLeod, S. A. (2007). Simple Psychology; Humanism Retrieved from http://www. simplepsychology. org/humanistic. html 6. Mendell, David (2002). Obama: From Promise to Power. New York: Amistad/HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-085820-6 7. Obama, Barack. (2012). Biography. co m. Retrieved 10:44, May 23, 20122 from http://biograpgy. com/people/baracl-obama-12782369

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Skype

INTRODUCTION I. 1 Background People rely on technology for every aspects of their lives and technology gives a significant impact to people’s lives. Technology is constantly changing, growing, and of course forcing the world to change as well. For people nowadays, it’s hard to imagine life without technology and all of its luxuries that are provided from it. Some technology exists and causes lives of people to change and improve. Up until now, internet is still arguably the best and most widely used piece of modern technology.We can do anything with internet, and almost every aspect of our everyday lives is relying on internet, such as work, school, social relationships, and especially, communication. As a human being, communication is important for our lives, human have social needs to interact with other people, and after all, human cannot live alone. There are many ways of communicating besides face-to-face communication. Thanks to technology, people now can communic ate in many ways, and internet really plays a big role on this aspect. With internet, we can communicate through e-mails, instant messages, chat groups, voice calls, and even video calls.Video call has made communicating and travelling through the years a lot simpler and easier. The most widely used video chatting software is Skype. Skype is software that can make free video calls and we can physically see our family, friends and relatives via videos. Skype is not only for making video calls, but with Skype, we can also make voice calls, instant messaging, and file sharing, all free of charge. It is obvious that with the invention of Skype, people now can communicate through the distances and Skype makes us easier to communicate with each other.Until September 2011, Skype has 663 million registered users around the world. I. 2 Problem 1. What is Skype and what are its features? 2. How to operate Skype? 3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Skype? I. 3 Purposes The pu rposes of writing this paper is to know more about Skype and its features, how to operate on this software, and to know more about the advantages and disadvantages of using Skype. II. BODY II. 1 History and Background of Skype Generally, Skype is a voice-over-Internet Protocol service that allows users to communicate with peers through voice, video, and instant messaging over the Internet.Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged through a debit-based user account system. Skype is also popular for its additional features, such as file transfer and videoconferencing. Unlike most VoIP services, Skype uses hybrid peer-to-peer and client–server system, and makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software.Originally, Skype was to be named â€Å"Peer-to-Peer†, but it was too long so it wa s shortened to â€Å"Skyper†. However, there were some domain names that named â€Å"Skyper† as well, so eventually the â€Å"r† was deleted and the founders took the name â€Å"Skype† for the software. Skype was discovered in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklas Zennstrom from Sweden. The software itself was developed by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, who together with Janus and Niklas were also behind the peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa.Finally, in August 2003, the first public beta version was released. Skype headquarters are located in Luxembourg, and most of Most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are situated in the offices of Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia. On 10 May 2011, Microsoft agreed to purchase Skype’s license for $8. 5 billion. The company was incorporated as a division of Microsoft, and on 13 October 2011, the purchase was finally completed. II. 2 Skype†™s Features II. 2. 1 Calls between Skype and Landline or Mobile Phone Numbers a. SkypeOutSkypeOut allows Skype users to call traditional phone numbers, including mobile phones, for a fee. However, SkypeOut doesn't support calls to toll-free or premium rate numbers, and SkypeOut in other countries. SkypeOut also doesn't support calling emergency numbers such as 1-1-2 in Europe or 911 in the United States. The quality of SkypeOut service is not guaranteed, broken connections, there are drop-outs and compression distortion are frequently observed by users. Since then, Support for the above toll free numbers in Canada has been effectively removed since January 2012. b. Caller ID for Outgoing CallsSkype has a feature that allows users to set the caller ID for outgoing calls to normal telephone numbers. There is a set-up verification that involves a SMS text messaging to a selected mobile phone number, then typing the verification code into a web form. It can only be used by owners of m obile phones, since most regular home and business cannot receive text messages. However, SMS messaging from Skype’s system has not been working correctly in various locals, and even though Skype maintains the problem and it has been corrected, it continues to be inoperative, recently in the United States and Canada. . Online Numbers A feature named Online Number (until 2010 named SkypeIn) allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialed from mobiles or landlines to a Skype-provided phone number. The number need not be in the same location as the user. Skype offers numbers in Australia, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.In Russia some third party companies, including SIP operators, provide direct numbers, redirecting calls to Skype. II. 2. 2 Subscriptio n Calling Calls Skype offers several monthly subscription calling plans that it calls unlimited. However, Skype limits these subscriptions to 10,000 minutes per month, 6 hours per day, and 50 telephone numbers per day. If one of these limits is exceeded, any additional calls are billed at regular rates and connection fees. II. 2. 3 Voicemail Skype Voicemail was released on March 10, 2005.This service allows callers to leave voicemail messages for Skype users who are offline. This is currently a service that users have to pay for, though several companies, provides a Skype voicemail service for free (However, these voicemail services only work when the program and the computer is online). Skype Voicemail had experienced numerous problems over the years and users complain that they never receive any voicemails. Moreover, the Online Number feature occasionally fails to record certain incoming calls on the program's history page II. 2. 4 Video Calling and Screen SharingSkype 2. 0 (and l ater) supports video calling for Skype-to-Skype calls between two parties on Microsoft Windows (DirectX 9. 0 or above required), Mac OS X, and Linux. Skype 3. 6 and later supports high definition video on Windows. Skype 3. 0. 0 on iOs allows iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users to call each other, as well as Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Later on Skype 5. 0 support video calls via third party hardware. Skype can also be installed through Facebook Video Chat with Skype (a Facebook product), and screen sharing in Skype will be available for Skype Premium.II. 2. 5 SMS text messaging Skype users can send SMS text messages to mobile phone numbers. In the United States, China, and Taiwan, Skype uses a â€Å"generic, pre-defined number† as the sender ID. In other countries, the message can be set to appear coming from a verified mobile number, allowing recipients to reply, or else show the first 11 characters of the Skype username. However, as of March 2011, Skype users cannot receive SMS, despite a continuing series of requests and complaints. II. 3 How to Operate and Use Skype II. 3. 1 How to Download SkypeBefore you can register on Skype, all you need is to download the application software. Since the user used Windows OS, then the user will show you how to download Skype on Windows. What you’ll need before downloading Skype are: 1. A computer with a broadband internet connection, you can’t use dial up connections since it’s too slow. 2. Speakers and a microphone. Many computers will have these built in (especially laptops), and many webcams (see below) also have microphones built in. If you don’t have speakers and a microphone, you can buy it separately. 3. A webcam.This is a small camera that connects to your computer through a USB port, if it isn’t already built into your screen. A webcam isn’t that necessary if you’re not using video calls, but if you want to use this feature, then you definitely need a webc am. Step-by-Step of Downloading Skype 1. Go to the Skype. com home page. 2. Click ‘Get Skype’ in the bar at the top. A list of computer platforms will appear. Click the one that matches your computer (most likely ‘Windows’). 3. You can choose by signing up for Skype Premium, which will cost you (but allows group video calls), or Skype Free.If you have decided your option, then click Download Skype. 4. A page will appear where you can either sign in (if you’ve registered already) or input your information to create an account. You can also register your Skype with your Facebook account if you have one. There are also a number of boxes to fill in to create an account. a. To begin, fill in your first name and last name and your email address (and repeat it). These are all required. No one will be able to see your email address. b. Profile information.All of this will be available for anyone to see on Skype, except for your mobile number, which will be r estricted to your own contacts. c. You can choose to tell Skype how you intend to use its service by clicking one of the options in the drop-down menu. d. Skype Name Enter the name that you want your Skype friends to see and which you’ll use to log in to Skype. None of the 650 million users of Skype can have the same Skype name, and the system will automatically check to see if your name has been claimed by anyone else and, if it has, will suggest alternatives. e. Password Enter (and repeat) the password you’d like to use.It must consist of 6 to 20 characters and contain both letters and numbers. f. If you don’t want promotional emails from Skype, you can uptick the two boxes towards the bottom. g. The ‘captcha’ box: This is designed to make sure that you are you and not a naughty computer. Look at the text in the first box and then type it into the box below – in this case, ‘’. If you can’t read the text, click the Refres h button and you’ll be given another bit of text to copy. h. And finally, read the terms of use and privacy statement and, if you have no objections, click I agree – Continue. . You’ll be taken to a page headed ‘Thanks for choosing Skype’. Depending on your web browser, your download should start automatically or a window should appear asking you to confirm the download. In this instance, you should click OK. 6. Your browser should have downloaded the Skype install file on to your computer – to your desktop, to your ‘Downloads’ folder or to wherever you have chosen to send downloaded files. Go to the relevant place and double-click the file labelled Skypesetup or simply Skype. 7. A window will pop up asking you which language you wish to proceed in.You can also check the end user licence agreement, privacy statement and some basic options. When you’re ready, click I agree – next to move on. 8. A new window will open . This contains a progress bar that will fill up while the Skype program downloads and installs. Once it’s done, Skype will automatically start. 9. Another window opens in which you should sign in. If you already have a Skype account, enter your Skype name and password here. If not, click Create a new account. 10. You’ve now reached your Skype home page, which gives you two options: Find friends on Skype and Dial a number.

Cell Phones Use Cause Accidents

â€Å"Cell phones†, a heavy gadget when it comes to use because it can do things just as computers can but this gadget is also heavy when it comes to pocket and worth of consequences. Discussing about using cell phones is important for the audiences to avoid the consequences of cell phone misuse and avoid the accident that cell phones might cause.com/cell-phone-problem-solution/">Cell phones are a useful gadget and thus it is considered as a primary need of those who are in the business industry and even ordinary people who tends to be away from their family, but these said gadgets also causes accident especially on the road. Body According to the NHTSA, the national highway accidents reported were caused by using cell phones while driving. In addition, the report says that numbers of car crashes were caused by cell phone dialing, listening, as well as talking which leads the drivers to be distracted on the road.Statistics also says that there are almost 80 percent of car cras hes which occur within the span of a short 3 seconds just because of driving distraction caused by cell phone use. People should know that distraction on car driving is worth a big consequence and we, as responsible beings, should know that cell phone use should not be allowed while driving because it will take our attention from the road (Benton). ConclusionCell phone use as well as receiving important calls or responding to important texts messages are considered as the number one distraction factor while driving a car which leads to car accidents. With this very important issue supported by evidences, cell phone use must therefore be restricted while driving a car. If a certain person receives a call while driving, he/she should stop the car on the roadside before he/she should receive the call to avoid the risk of accident. Works Cited Benton, Joe. â€Å"Cell Phone No. 1 Driver Distraction. † 2006.

Choosing Disability

Exceptionally: Disability and Giftedness Dry. Stuart Sameness's Parents all over the world have one great thing In common, wanting the best for their children and giving them great opportunities to pursue their dreams. Children are considered special blessings from God, especially for couples that were bestowed with this blessing after much patience. Furthermore, women who could not conceive were known to be cursed and inferior to other fertile women.Although, there are still any couples whose attempts to conceive a child naturally go vain, medical science has allowed these problems to be resolved through various interventions, such as; infertility treatments, intrauterine insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy or even sperm donor clinics. There are many things to be considered when it comes to family planning, before a couple decides to bring a child Into this world. For some, It may to Walt until they are financially well off, moving to a family friendlier neighborhood, or possibly visiting a fertility clan to weigh out their options.Fertility lining are also beneficial If the couple Is Interesting In knowing the probably of passing a disease with a family history or a disability off to their offspring. Moreover, possess preferential characteristics such as; eye color, hair color, height, race, and/or education. As one might say, conceiving through sperm donors is the safest alternative precisely because donors with congenital disabilities are screened out long before they would ever make the catalogue, as the sperm banks are aware that the probability of such a withdrawal is very low.But as strange as deliberately assign a disability to an unborn child may seem, there are many advocating for the allowance of such services. Some parents have taken steps to ensure that they have children with a desired disability. What is meant by ‘disability is subject for considerable debate, however. For many, disability is something undesirable, as it signif icantly reduces the individual's quality of life and social opportunities. This scenario is particularly relevant to the Deaf Culture who consider themselves a part of a minority group.This paper intends to explore the controversy regarding the ethics of deliberately choosing a disability and implementing it on the case study of James Kittle and wife and discussing why they should not be allowed to deliberately select an embryo with a disability via the use of pre-implantation diagnosis. James Kittle is a congenital deaf married to a wife of 5 years. James and wife are both belonging to the Deaf Culture and seem very content with their ‘disability.Their main mode of communication is American Sign Language and do not consider their condition as a defect or a disability, rather a different viewpoint of life that differs only slightly from the norm. Both James and his wife were raised in a typical nuclear family with hearing parents and siblings. Once they learned that they were expecting their first child, they were thrilled. This excitement, however was short-lived as they soon found out that he was born hearing with no signs of partial deafness.They were hoping for a deaf child like themselves so that he could easily be integrated into their culture and so they could set a new generation of the Deaf in the family. As Jimmy, their son, turned four, they started fearing that they would eventually lose their son, o the hearing world. They decided to consult their family doctor who referred them to an ideologist with whom they could discuss the possibility of surgically deafening their son by removing his cochleae from both of his ears.As this was illegal in America, James took it upon himself to take Jimmy to Brazil where this type of surgery is permissible. Jimmy refused once he learned of his parents' intention but was told that he would have no problem adjusting and was not given much of an option. The surgery was successful and James and his wife now co nsider Jimmy a ‘special blessing. They are now ready for their second child, but instead of simply hoping for that child to be deaf, they are considering the possibility of conceiving through pre- implantation diagnosis, since they do not want to take their chances as they did with Jimmy.This case study raises many ethical issues about deliberately choosing deafness over normality and why it should never be permissible to do so on the basis of fundamental human rights. The choice to seek deaf children cuts across the grain of virtually all discussion in bioethics about prenatal interventions involving the traits of children. It is not prenatal interventions regarding producing super kids, with superior qualities not commonly observed in their peers of the same age.These qualities usually exceed their peers and even parents in sight, hearing, intelligence, athletic skills, immunity to disease, strength and many more among the list of desirable traits. If options to select these enhanced traits were available, why would the parents not want these for their children? There seems to be no logical reasoning behind limiting their children of these beneficial traits. In addition, these traits should be equal to everyone and not Just the wealthy that already have the most advantages many people lack.From time to time, bioethics forums are flooded with such debatable issues and concerns when it comes to ‘designing' babies through the use of medical interventions. By contrast, however, parents going through the extra mile to ensure their children are born with a congenital disability, particularly deafness, take the debates and the controversies surrounding these issues in an entirely different direction. Two contrasting views of deafness exist in today's society.Most people insider deafness as a pathological condition resulting in profound hearing loss, followed by the viewpoint that deafness is a sensory deficit. People diagnosed with this condition are se en to be at a great disadvantage and strongly deviant from the norm. Moreover, the minority viewpoint regards deaf people as belonging to a culture paralleling themselves with racial groups such as Blacks, Hispanic and others who are bonded together by shared values, and a common language (Wagner, 2008).Those that belong to this culture consider the property of being deaf to be a highly ascribable characteristic and a unique cultural identity. The couple mentioned above takes great pride in being a part of such a culture and feel their motives of wanting deaf children through various means to be misunderstood. James and his wife wanted children like themselves and did not see their preferences as a moral offence. In addition, James felt so strongly connected with this culture that he wanted to see in his children the deafness that was so central to his identity.While the decision of this couple to want a deaf child grew out of their own moral intuition, Teresa Burke is amongst the m any commentators that as offered a defense of such a practice, as long as certain conditions are met. Teresa Burke (2005) argues that parents may be allowed to have deaf children only if they are deaf themselves and are able to work on offering language or some means of communication to their children. She argues that deafness is compatible with the ability to pursue a rewarding life.Furthermore, she feels that eliminating many environmental issues, such as stigma and discrimination can offset its disadvantages and a society where the deaf and the hearing live alongside one another, coexisting peacefully is not entirely unattainable (Burke, 2011). The counterparts of this argument, which is much more relatable to the norm suggest that parents have an obligation to enhance the capacities of their children to the extent that is within their power.Julian Cupules (2001) feels that there is a certain obligatory force to treat and prevent diseases and that we have an obligation to try to manipulate these characteristics to give an individual the best opportunity of the best life, not the other way around. To fail to treat our children's disease is to harm them. In general, he mental, and psychological capacities. Failing to do so is harming them, Just as it is to elaborately reduce these capacities and limiting them of a state of well being, regardless of how it is done (Cupules, 2001).From a perspective like this, it is evident that prevention of suffering is central to anyone's moral belief. James and his wife were definitely not selfless, as they disregarded Jimmy's refusal and went ahead with the surgery anyway. Despite the fact that deafness does not disable the possibility of a meaningful life, moral considerations suggest that parents should not be choosing this alternative intentionally. All in all, deafness is a disability in the ensue that it represents an inhibition in a major life function and James committed a strong moral transgression by making a choi ce for his son that cannot be undone.Typically, the search for genes that cause or contribute to an undesirable medical condition is followed by the hope of finding a cure for that condition, or eradicating it in general (Wagner, 2008). Deafness differs from most disabilities precisely because it is not universally viewed as an undesirable medical condition, and according to many advocating this point; there is no need to even find a cure, since it is not a problem. This is not to say that deaf people deny their tautological status but it illustrates their importance of culture over pathology.The current popularity of cochlear implant surgery today among hearing parents of deaf children with its post rehabilitation oral skills, has led to a reduction in the number of deaf children attending special residential school for the deaf at an early age. When the FDA announced its proposal in 1990 to provide children with cochlear implants, the members of the deaf community reacted negative ly and even referred to it as ‘cultural genocide' (Sculls, 2011).Now, many years later, the ethical issues of cochlear implant surgery seem to not be a problem anymore because of the advances in genetic engineering that has allowed people from this community to genetically ‘design' their babies to their preferences. Although this technology is meant to eradicate any form of disability altogether, it has recently been used to Just do the opposite. Many of these deaf community members have been shifting their focus to prenatal genetic diagnosis (PIG) in tandem with in vitro fertilization (IVY) for embryo screening.A study released in 2008 found that 3 percent of in vitro fertilization-PIG lining in the United States have provided PIG to select for a disability (Wagner, 2008). In addition to PIG, other technologies may soon be available to people wanting to have deaf children, such as gene replacement therapy. In other words, deafness could be ‘created' by deliberatel y inserting a deaf gene. This goes back to the topic discussed earlier regarding genetically creating a super kid, with extraordinary characteristics.PIG is an expensive procedure currently offered only to couples at risk of having a child suffering from a serious genetic disease, but there is nothing inherent in the technology that limits it to such uses. This means couples wealthy enough to afford such practices will be given full freedom to genetically create babies with preferable qualities whereas their less fortunate counterparts, who will not be able to afford these types of procedures, will always be at a disadvantage (Murphy, 2009). This leads to an entirely broad debate regarding eugenics and why it should not be practiced.Authors such as John Harris (2000) argue that intentionally selecting into this world who has a disability using technology in ways that it was not meant or, it significantly violates the child's right to an open future (Harris, 2000). It is a known fact , which neither the deaf community itself cannot deny, that people suffering from a hearing loss lead more difficult lives than hearing counterparts, partly because there will always be more hearing people in this world than deaf and there will never be enough accommodations.Loss of hearing, therefore, in such a linguistic society can become dangerous when a deaf person is unable to detect nearby hazards thereby affecting their sense of independence and security and limiting social opportunities. Alternative viewpoints proposed by Albany Lucas (2012) contend that selection for a particular disability is as problematic as selection against, since both are based on the assumption that a single genetic characteristic should be the determining factor in the decision to have a child (Lucas, 2012).Opponents of this point assert that although they value the existence of living disabled individuals and believe in giving these individuals equal respect and opportunities as any other human be ing, it is morally wrong to knowingly bring a disabled child into the world and limiting their opportunities. In addition, the harm of genetically harming children can be clearly seen when considering how the same harm without genetics involved would be viewed. Genetics, reproductive technologies and techniques such as PIG are simply tools.Tools are used to accomplish things; whether the use of the tool is ethical depends on what it is that we are trying to accomplish. If something is morally wrong, it does not matter what tools or what method is used to accomplish that, it still remains wrong. In the case of James, who deliberately deafened his first hearing child, by racially removing his cochlea so he could become a part of their culture, now wants to create a second deaf baby using genetic engineering techniques.Preventing a child from hearing harms the child; it limits and disadvantages the child and therefore should not be permissible for medical personnel to carry on with thi s kind of procedure, especially for Jimmy and his wife, who are evidently putting their own happiness ahead of their children's since they disregarded their son's refusal. Jimmy was 4 years old when he was forced into such an irrational decision, which means he ad experienced the hearing world and had therefore chosen to stay in it. All the facts are the same and lets say, via PIG with in vitro fertilization Jimmy and his wife have their congenital deaf child.But now a cure for this deafness is discovered, it is risk free with no side effects, which leads us to think, would the parents, in this case, be right to withhold this cure for deafness from their child? Would the child have any legitimate complaint if they did not cure his deafness? Could this child complain to his parents dismissing him the possibility of being able to listen to music, the sound f trees, the wind, the rain, the waves on the shore, or hearing a spoken word or even learning spoken language?There is no imagini ng to how the child would feel when it discovers that it lacked these experiences only because of his/her parent's deliberate denial. Furthermore, it is not plausible to say that all these things that the child could have had, but because of it's parents decision, are unimportant, so much so that their loss or absence of it is not even considered a disability to them. Different groups. Similarly, deaf community is bonded together via a signed language,American Sign Language (SSL). Although this characteristic is not the sole criterion, it is viewed as a strong distinction between them and the non-deaf community (Singleton & Title, 2000). Furthermore, the deaf community includes members with hearing losses at both levels of extreme, from those who are profoundly deaf to those normal hearing children of the deaf community. There are also people who are hard of hearing individuals that identify themselves as part of the deaf community.Therefore, acceptance and integration into the deaf community is depended upon he attitude and the use of SSL, which means that in order to belong to the deaf community, one does not need to be born deaf. Furthermore, hearing children born to deaf parents are considered bilingual and bicameral since they potentially share the language and culture of their deaf parents and they are inevitably members of the hearing community (Singleton & Title, 2000).Although there has been some concern regarding signs of spoken language delay observed in hearing children of non-hearing parents, there is not much evidence to support this claim. Therefore, elaborately removing Jimmy's cochleae was unnecessary since he did not need to be deaf to belong to the Deaf community. Many deaf parents, occasionally have the misguided notion that they should not sign with their child simply because the child is hearing. Signing with the hearing child, from its birth, not only teaches the hearing child to be fluent in SSL, but also it ensures stronger communicati on between the parents and the child.Moreover, turning normal hearing children to a deaf child overcomes the possibility of having hearing children that are bilingual and bicameral. Shift-Myers (2004) asserts that many hearing children of deaf parents evidently develop speech and language normally provided that they have some exposure to normal hearing speakers and if their family life is otherwise normal. In addition, Jimmy and his wife both belong to hearing families, which means there would be enough exposure to normal hearing from the grandparents, and the child would consequently not develop any language delay.In any case, if a hearing child of deaf parents does show signs of spoken language delay, then an appropriate practical Lana to enhance the child's spoken language input would be in order (Shift-Myers, 2004). James and his wife ought to use the best mode of communication to ensure effective parenting, and to promote natural language acquisition for the child, whether it i s spoken or signed language. â€Å"It is a simple fact that it is better to have five senses than four† Nanette Winters). Who can argue against that? Yet, what Winters calls, a ‘simple fact' may not be so simple for everyone as clearly illustrated in this paper.This is especially not a simple fact when it comes to the Deaf community. Many facts arise from those who live the oaf lives. One such fact is that they believe being Deaf should be viewed as parallel to being Black, or Hispanic. Another fact is that these Deaf community members feel no objection expanding their community by wanting deaf children, whether it may be through prenatal medical interventions or postnatal surgical procedures. This paper explored the question of whether it is morally Justifiable to use genetic technology to here is not about being supportive of people who are deaf or otherwise disabled.The basic issue is whether or not there are ethical limits to what parents can impose on a hill. Pro-c hoice campaigners and reproductive freedom supports argue that it should be the couple's choice or wish on how they want to raise their child, but through negative enhancement and achieving outcomes that are socially not preferred affects everyone in the community in general (Carping, 2008). Morally speaking, parents have a duty to use assisted technology to give their children the best opportunity of the best life, not deliberately reducing the child's welfare.