Fast Food Nation Synthesis

Sarah Whitaker Mrs. Kurtz A. P. Language and Composition 6 February 2013 The Meatpacking Industry: One of the Most Dangerous Jobs in the U. S. A report from the American Meat Institute shows that the U. S. is home to about 6,000 meatpacking plants. Millions of jobs all over the country are made through meatpacking plants. These low paying, risky jobs are swept up by men and women, these people unknowing of what exactly they have gotten themselves into. The meatpacking, today, has become one of the most dangerous jobs in America.As found by Steven Greenhouse of the New York times, â€Å"†¦the nation’s meat packing industry has such bad working conditions that it violates basic human and worker rights. † Ever since the publication of the famous book by Upton Sainclair–The Jungle— people all over the world have found it necessary for inspections to be considered and for changes to be done with little success. Workers in today’s plants seem to have the same problems that were faced almost 100 years ago.The Appleseed Center For Law found an estimated â€Å"total of 62 percent of those interviewed said they had been injured on the job in the past year, a rate seven times higher than the government’s official statistic for slaughterhouse workers†¦. †, as found in Reprt:Line Speed, Injuries Increase for Slaughterhouse Workers. So what happened to the much needed safety laws? It’s simple really, they just aren’t being followed. Many workers today, who live in horrible working conditions day by day to make their living for them and their families, are not being treated as they are meant to be and this has only made the industry bigger.One person quits or gets hurt and another is there, easily filling the new open position. Complaints don’t help either, as found by Gail Eisnitz, also cited in Reprt:Line Speed, Injuries Increase for Slaughterhouse Workers, â€Å"Slaughterhouse workers talk of a production system that moves to fast†¦despite numerous complaints to management—as well as countless injuries—the companies refuse to make changes because slowing the process would mean not making as much money. † As found in Eric Schlosser’s ook Fast Food Nation the underlying fact is that with power and money there comes damaged morals. The big business owners just don’t care! Now that the secrets are out and the industry is â€Å"naked† to the public now, the people are not calling the industry â€Å"The Jungle of the 2000s†, an article put out by the Associated Press States. Martin Cotez as interviewed by the Associated Press says, â€Å"You know what I like to say to the newcomers? They don’t kill cows. They kill people. † This, a response to his own story description, just puts a whole new label on the industry; murderers!Sinclair’s book published so long ago still seems to have barely effected the ind ustry of today. As discussed in Fast Food Nation, Schlosser also speaks of the injury of workers throughout chapter 8, effectively titled â€Å"The Most Dangerous Job. † One example of the horrible working conditions also comes from Fast Food Nation, Jesus â€Å"A soft spoken employee of DCS Sanitation Managerment, Inc† Talks of an experience he had on one of his cleaning duties, â€Å"One night while Jesus was cleaning, a coworker forgot to turn off a machine, lost two fingers, and went into shock.An ambulance came and took him away, as everyone else continued to clean. He was back at work the following week. ‘if one hand is no good,’ the supervisor told him,’use the other. ’† Not only did the supervisor not care, a person was injured and still returned to the job he obviously needed. So what needs to be done? Obviously whatever it is, its not happening. So even though the demand for food is high in this nation, what’s more imp ortant, our food or our citizens? increased demand at slaughterhouses has caused a rise in work related injuries† according to a report by a Nebraska-based non-profit. People in these plants are getting hurt not only because it’s what the job demands but because the more we as consumers want, the more the big industry owners will demand more work. So what will we as American citizens do? Work Cited â€Å"American Meat Institute. †Ã‚  American Meat Institute. Web. 8 Mar. 2013. â€Å"Report: Line Speeds, Injuries Increase for Slaughterhouse Workers. † Digging Through the Dirt, 8 Oct. 2009. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. Greenhouse, Steven. † Meat Packing Industry Criticized on Human Rights Grounds. † The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 25 Jan. 2005. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. â€Å"Dangers, tensions lurk in meatpacking industry†. Associated Press. Breaking News & Top Stories World News, US & Local: NBC News, 24 Apr. 2006. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. â€Å" Safety and Health Guide for the Meatpacking Industry. † Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. Schlosser,Eric. Fast Food Nation. New York: Harper And Perennial,2005. Print.

Anne Fleche – the Space of Madness and Desire

Tennessee Williams exploits the expressionistic uses of space in the drama, attempting to represent desire from the outside, that is, in its formal challenge to realistic stability and closure, and in its exposure to risk. Loosening both stage and verbal languages from their implicit desire for closure and containment, Streetcar exposes the danger and the violence of this desire, which is always the desire for the end of desire. Writing in a period when U. S. rama was becoming disillusioned with realism, Williams achieves a critical distance from realistic technique through his use of allegory. In Blanche's line about the streetcar, the fact that she is describing real places, cars, and transfers has the surprising effect of enhancing rather than diminishing the metaphorical parallels in her language. Indeed, Streetcar's â€Å"duplicities of expression†(3) are even more striking in the light of criticism's recent renewal of interest in allegory. 4) For allegory establishes the distance â€Å"between the representative and the semantic function of language† (I89), the desire that is in language to unify (with) experience. Streetcar demonstrates the ways in which distance in the drama can be expanded and contracted, and what spatial relativism reveals about the economy of dramatic representation. Tennessee Williams' plays, filled with allegorical language, seem also to have a tentative, unfinished character. The metalanguage of desire seems to preclude development, to deny progress. And yet it seems â€Å"natural† to read A Streetcar Named Desire as an allegorical journey toward Blanche's apocalyptic destruction at the hands of her â€Å"executioner,† Stanley. The play's violence, its baroque images of decadence and lawlessness, promise its audience the thrilling destruction of the aristocratic Southern Poe-esque moth-like neuraesthenic female â€Å"Blanche† by the ape-like brutish male from the American melting-pot. The play is full in fact of realism's developmental language of evolution, â€Å"degeneration,† eugenics. Before deciding that Stanley is merely an â€Å"ape,† Blanche sees him as an asset: â€Å"Oh, I guess he's just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he's what we need to mix with our blood now that we've lost Belle Reve† (285). The surprising thing about this play is that the allegorical reading also seems to be the most â€Å"realistic† one, the reading that imposes a unity of language and experience to make structural sense of the play, that is, to make its events organic, natural, inevitable. And yet this feels false, because allegorical language resists being pinned down by realistic analysis — it is always only half a story. But it is possible to close the gap between the language and the stage image, between the stage image and its â€Å"double† reality, by a double forgetting: first we have to forget that realism is literature, and thus already a metaphor, and then we have to forget the distance between allegory and reality. To say that realism's empiricism is indistinguishable from metaphor is to make it one with a moral, natural ordering of events. Stanley is wrong and Blanche is right, the moralists agree. But the hypocrisy of the â€Å"priggish† reading is soon revealed in its ambivalence toward Blanche/Stanley: to order events sequentially requires a reading that finds Blanche's rape inevitable, a condition of the formal structure: she is the erring woman who gets what she â€Å"asks† for (her realistic antecedents are clear). For the prigs this outcome might not be unthinkable, though it might be — what is worse — distasteful. But Williams seems deliberately to be making interpretation a problem: he doesn't exclude the prigs' reading, he invites it. What makes Streetcar different from Williams' earlier play The Glass Menagerie (I944)(5) is its constant self-betrayal into and out of analytical norms. The realistic set-ups in this play really feel like set-ups, a magician's tricks, inviting readings that leave you hanging from your own schematic noose. Analytically, this play is a trap; it is brilliantly confused; yet without following its leads there is no way to get anywhere at all. Streetcar has a map, but it has changed the street signs, relying on the impulse of desire to take the play past its plots. In a way it is wrong to say Williams does not write endings. He writes elaborate strings of them. Williams has given Streetcar strong ties to the reassuring rhetoric of realism. Several references to Stanley's career as â€Å"A Master Sergeant in the Engineers' Corps† (258) set the action in the â€Å"present,† immediately after the war. The geographical location, as with The Glass Menagerie, is specific, the neighborhood life represented with a greater naturalistic fidelity: â€Å"Above he music of the ‘Blue Piano' the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping† (243). Lighting and sound effects may give the scene â€Å"a kind of lyricism† (243), but this seems itself a realistic touch for â€Å"The Quarter† (4I2). Even the interior set, when it appears (after a similar wipe-out of the fourth wall), resembles The Glass Menagerie in lay-out and configuration: a ground-floor apartment, with two rooms separated by portieres, occupied by three characters, one of them male. Yet there are also troubling â€Å"realistic† details, to which the play seems to point. The mise en scene seems to be providing too much enclosure to provide for closure: there is no place for anyone to go. There is no fire escape, even though in this play someone does yell â€Å"Fire] Fire] Fire]† (390). In fact, heat and fire and escape are prominent verbal and visual themes. And the flat does not, as it seems to in The Glass Menagerie, extend to other rooms beyond the wings, but ends in a cul-de-sac — a doorway to the bathroom which becomes Blanche's significant place for escape and â€Å"privacy. † Most disturbing, however, is not the increased sense of confinement but this absence of privacy, of analytical, territorial space. No gentleman caller invited for supper invades this time, but an anarchic wilderness of French Quarter hoi polloi who spill onto the set and into the flat as negligently as the piano music from the bar around the corner. There does not seem to be anywhere to go to evade the intrusiveness and the violence: when the flat erupts, as it does on the poker night, Stanley's tirade sends Stella and Blanche upstairs to Steve and Eunice, the landlords with, of course, an unlimited run of the house (â€Å"We own this place so I can let you in† 48 ), whose goings-on are equally violent and uncontained. Stella jokes, â€Å"You know that one upstairs? more laughter One time laughing the plaster — laughing cracked — † (294). The violence is not an isolated climax, but a repetitive pattern of the action, a state of being – it does not resolve anything: BLANCHE I'm not used to such MITCH Naw, it's a shame this had to happen when you just got here. But don't take it serious. BLANCHE Violence] Is so MITCH Set down on the steps and have a cigarette with e. (308) Anxiety and conflict have become permanent and unresolvable, inconclusive. It is not clear what, if anything, they mean. Unlike realistic drama, which produces clashes in order to push the action forward, Streetcar disallows its events a clarity of function, an orderliness. The ordering of events, which constitutes the temporality of realism, is thus no less arbitrary in Streetcar than the ordering of spade: the outside keeps becoming the inside, and vice versa. Williams has done more to relativize space in Streetcar than he did in The Glass Menagerie, where he visualized the fourth wall: here the outer wall appears and disappears more than a half-dozen times, often in the middle of a â€Å"scene,† drawing attention to the spatial illusion rather than making its boundaries absolute. The effect on spatial metaphor is that we are not allowed to forget that it is metaphor and consequently capable of infinite extensions and retractions. As we might expect, then, struggle over territory between Stanley and Blanche (â€Å"Hey, canary bird] Toots] Get OUT of the BATHROOM]† 367 ) — which indeed results in Stanley's reasserting the male as â€Å"King† (37I6 and pushing Blanche offstage, punished and defeated — is utterly unanalytical and unsubtle: â€Å"She'll go] Period. P. S. She'll go Tuesday]† (367). While the expressionistic sequence beginning in Scene Six with Blanche's recollection of â€Å"The Grey oy† (355) relativizes space and time, evoking Blanche's memories, it also seems to drain her expressive power. By the time Stanley is about to rape her she mouths the kinds of things Williams put on screens in The Glass Menagerie: â€Å"In desperate, desperate circumstances] Help me] Caught in a trap† (400). She is establishing her emotions like sign-posts: â€Å"Stay back] †¦ I warn you, don't, I'm in danger]† (40I). What had seemed a way into Blanche's char acter has had the effect of externalizing her feelings so much that they become impersonal. In Streetcar, space does not provide, as it does in realistic drama, an objective mooring for a character's psychology: it keeps turning inside out, obliterating the spatial distinctions that had helped to define the realistic character as someone whose inner life drove the action. Now the driving force of emotion replaces the subtlety of expectation, leaving character out in space, dangling: â€Å"There isn't time to be — † Blanche explains into the phone (399); faced with a threatening proximity, she phones long-distance, and forgets to hang up. The expressionistic techniques of the latter half of he play abstract the individual from the milieu, and emotion begins to dominate the representation of events. In Scene Ten, where Blanche and Stanley have their most violent and erotic confrontation, the play loses all sense of boundary. The front of the house is already transparent; but now Williams also dissolves the rear wall, so that beyond the scene with Blanche and Sta nley we can see what is happening on the next street: A prostitute has rolled a drunkard. He pursues her along the walk, overtakes her and then is a struggle. A policeman's whistle breaks it up. The figures disappear. Some moments later the Negro Woman appears around the corner with a sequined bag which the prostitute had dropped on the walk. She is rooting excitedly through it. (399) The mise en scene exposes more of the realistic world than before, since now we see the outside as well as the inside of the house at once, and yet the effect is one of intense general paranoia: the threat of violence is â€Å"real,† not â€Å"remembered† and it is everywhere. The walls have become â€Å"spaces† along which frightening, â€Å"sinuous† shadows weave — â€Å"lurid,† â€Å"grotesque and menacing† (398-99). The parameters of Blanche's presence are unstable images of threatening â€Å"flames† of desire, and this sense of sexual danger seems to draw the action toward itself. So it is as though Blanche somehow â€Å"suggests† rape to Stanley — it is already in the air, we can see it being given to him as if it were a thought: â€Å"You think I'll interfere with you? Ha-ha] †¦ Come to think of it — maybe you wouldn't be bad to — interfere with†¦ † (40I). The â€Å"inner-outer† distinctions of both realistic and expressionistic representation are shown coming together here. Williams makes no effort to suggest that the â€Å"lurid† expressionistic images in Scene Ten are all in Blanche's mind, as cinematic point-of-view would: the world outside the house is the realistic world of urban poverty and violence. But it is also the domain of the brutes, whose â€Å"inhuman jungle voices rise up† (40I) as Stanley, snakelike, tongue between his teeth, closes in. The play seems to swivel on this moment, when the logic of appearance and essence, the individual and the abstract, turns inside-out, like the set, seeming to occupy for once the same space. It is either the demolition of realistic objectivity or the transition-point at which realism takes over some new territory. At this juncture â€Å"objective† vision becomes an â€Å"outside† seen from inside; for the abstraction that allows realism to represent truth objectively cannot itself be explained as objectivity. The surface in Scene Ten seems to be disclosing, without our having to look too deeply, a static primal moment beneath the immediacy of the action — the sexual taboo underneath realistic discourse: BLANCHE Stay back] Don't you come toward me another tep or I'll STANLEY What? BLANCHE Some awful thing will happen] It will] STANLEY What are you putting on now? They are now both inside the bedroom BLANCHE I warn you, don't, I'm in danger] (40I) What â€Å"will happen† in the bedroom does not have a name, or even an agency. The incestuous relation lies beyond the moral and social order of marriage and the family, adaptation and eugenics, not t o mention (as Williams minds us here) the fact that it is unmentionable. Whatever words Blanche uses to describe it scarcely matter. As Stella says, â€Å"I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley† (405). The rape in Streetcar thus seems familiar and inevitable, even to its â€Å"characters,† who lose the shape of characters and become violent antagonists as if on cue: â€Å"Oh] So you want some roughhouse] All right, let's have some roughhouse]† (402). When Blanche sinks to her knees, it is as if the action is an acknowledgment. Stanley holds Blanche, who has become â€Å"inert†; he carries her to the bed. She is not only silent but crumpled, immobile, while he takes over control and agency. He literally places her on the set. But Williams does not suggest that Stanley is conscious and autonomous; on the contrary the scene is constructed so as to make him as unindividuated as Blanche: they seem, at this crucial point, more than ever part of an allegorical landscape. In a way, it is the impersonality of the rape that is most telling: the loss of individuality and the spatial distinctions that allow for â€Å"character† are effected in a scene that expressionistically dissolves character into an overwhelming mise en scene that, itself, seems to make things happen. The â€Å"meaning† of the rape is assigned by the play, denying â€Å"Stanley† and â€Å"Blanche† any emotion. Thus, the rape scene ends without words and without conflict: the scene has become the conflict, and its image the emotion. Perhaps Streetcar — and Williams — present problems for those interested in Pirandellian metatheatre. Metatheatre assumes a self-consciousness of the form; but Williams makes the â€Å"form† everything. It is not arbitrary, or stifling. Stanley and Blanche cannot be reimagined; or, put another way, they cannot be imagined to reimagine themselves as other people, in other circumstances entirely. Character is the expression of the form; it is not accidental, or originary. Like Brecht, Williams does not see character as a humanist impulse raging against fatal abstractions. (In a play like The Good Person of Setzuan, for example, Brecht makes a kind of comedy of this â€Å"tragic† notion — which is of course the notion of â€Å"tragedy. â€Å") Plays are about things other than people: they are about what people think, and feel, and yet they remove these things to a distance, towards the representation of thoughts and feelings, which is something else again. If this seems to suggest that the rape in Streetcar is something other than a rape, and so not a rape, it also suggests that it is as much a rape as it is possible for it to be; it includes the understanding that comes from exposing the essence of appearances, as Williams says, seeing from outside what we cannot see from within. At the same time, and with the same motion, the scene exposes its own scenic limitations for dramatizing that which must inevitably remain outside the scene — namely, the act it represents. Both the surface â€Å"street scene† and the jungle antecedents of social order are visible in the rape scene, thoroughly violating the norms of realism's analytical space. When Stanley â€Å"springs† at Blanche, overturning he table, it is clear that a last barrier has been broken down, and now there is no space outside the jungle. â€Å"We've had this date with each other from the beginning]† We have regressed to some awful zero-point (or hour) of our beginning. (A â€Å"fetid swamp,† Time critic Louis Kronenberger said of Williams' plays, by way of description. (7) We are also back at the heart of civilization, at its root, the incest taboo, and the center of sexuality, which is oddly enough also the center of realism — the family, where â€Å"sexuality is ‘incestuous' from the start. â€Å"(8) At the border of civilization and the swamp is the sexual transgression whose suppression is the source of all coercive order. Through allegory, W illiams makes explicit what realistic discourse obscures, forcing the sexuality that propels discourse into the content of the scene. The destruction of spatial oundaries visualizes the restless discourse of desire, that uncontainable movement between inside and outside. â€Å"Desire,† Williams writes in his short story â€Å"Desire and the Black Masseur† (I942-46), â€Å"is something that is made to occupy a larger space than that which is afforded by the individual being. â€Å"(9) The individual being is only the measure of a measurelessness that goes far out into space. â€Å"Desire† derives from the Latin sidus, â€Å"star† (â€Å"Stella for Star]† 250, 25I ); an archaic sense is â€Å"to feel the loss of†: the ndividual is a sign of incompleteness, not self-sufficiency, whose defining gesture is an indication of the void beyond the visible, not its closure. The consciousness of desire as a void without satisfaction is the rejection o f realism's â€Å"virtual space,† which tried to suggest that its fractured space implied an unseen totality. Realism's objectivity covered up its literariness, as if the play were not created from nothing, but evolved out of a ready-made logic, a reality one had but to look to see. But literature answers the desire for a fullness that remains unfulfilled — it never intersects reality, never completes a trajectory, it remains in orbit. The nothing from which literature springs, whole, cannot be penetrated by a vision, even a hypothetical one, and no time can be found for its beginning. As Paul de Man reasons in his discussion of Levi-Strauss' metaphor of â€Å"virtual focus,† logical sight-lines may be imaginary, but they are not â€Å"fiction,† any more than â€Å"fiction† can be explained as logic: The virtual focus is a quasi-objective structure osited to give rational integrity to a process that exists independently of the self. The subject merely fills in, with the dotted line of geometrical construction, what natural reason had not bothered to make explicit; it has a passive and unproblematic role. The â€Å"virtual focus† is, strictly speaking, a nothing, but its nothingness concerns us very little, since a mere act of r eason suffices to give it a mode of being that leaves the rational order unchallenged. The same is not true of the imaginary source of fiction. Here the human self has experienced the void within itself and the invented fiction, far from tilling the void, asserts itself as pure nothingness, our nothingness stated and restated by a subject that is the agent of its own instability. (I9) Nothingness, then, the impulse of â€Å"fiction,† is not the result of a supposed originary act of transgression, a mere historical lapse at the origin of history that can be traced or filled in by a language of logic and analysis; on the contrary fiction is the liberation of a pure consciousness of desire as unsatisfied yearning, a space without boundaries. Yet we come back to Blanche's rape by her brother-in-law, which seems visibly to re-seal the laws of constraint, to justify that Freudian logic of lost beginnings. Reenacting the traumatic incestuous moment enables history to begin over again, while the suppression of inordinate desire resumes the order of sanity: Stella is silenced; Blanche is incarcerated. And if there is some ambivalence about her madness and her exclusion it is subsumed in an argument for order and a healthy re-direction of desire. In the last stage direction, Stanley's groping fingers discover the opening of Stella's blouse. The final set-up feels inevitable; after all, the game is still â€Å"Seven-card stud,† and aren't we going to have to â€Å"go on† by playing it? The play's turn to realistic logic seems assured, and Williams is still renouncing worlds. He points to the closure of the analytical reading with deft disingenuousness. Closure was always just next door to entrapment: Williams seems to be erasing their boundary-lines. Madness, the brand of exclusion, objectifies Blanche and enables her to be analyzed and confined as the embodiment of non-being, an expression of something beyond us and so structured in language. As Stanley puts it, â€Å"There isn't a goddam thing but imagination] †¦ And lies and conceit and tricks]† (398). Foucault has argued, in Madness and Civilization, that the containment of desire's excess through the exclusion of madness creates a conscience on the perimeters of society, setting up a boundary between inside and outside: â€Å"The madman is put into the interior of the exterior, and inversely† (II). (I0) Blanche is allegorically a reminder that liberty if taken too far can also be captivity, just as her libertinage coincides with her desire for death (her satin robe is a passionate red, she calls Stanley her â€Å"executioner,† etc. . And Blanche senses early on the threat of confinement; she keeps trying perversely) to end the play: â€Å"I have to plan for us both, to get us both — out]† she tells Stella, after the fight with Stanley that seems, to Blanche, so final (320). But in the end the play itself seems to have some troub le letting go of Blanche. Having created its moving boundary line, it no longer knows where to put her: what â€Å"space† does her â€Å"madness† occupy? As the dialogue suggests, she has to go – somewhere; she has become excessive. Yet she keeps coming back: â€Å"I'm not quite ready. â€Å"Yes] Yes, I forgot something]† (4I2 4I4). Again, as in the rape scene, she is chased around the bedroom, this time by the Matron, while â€Å"The ‘Varsouviana' is filtered into a weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle,† the â€Å"lurid,† â€Å"sinuous† reflections on the walls (4I4). The Matron's lines are echoed by â€Å"other mysterious voices† (4I5) somewhere beyond the scene; she sounds like a â€Å"firebell† (4I5). â€Å"Matron† and â€Å"Doctor† enter the play expressionistically, as functional agents, and Blanche's paranoia is now hers alone: the street is not visible. The walls do not disintegrate, they come alive. Blanche is inside her own madness, self-imprisoned: her madness is precisely her enclosure within the image. (II) In her paranoid state, Blanche really cannot â€Å"get out,† because there no longer is an outside: madness transgresses and transforms boundaries, as Foucault notes, â€Å"forming an act of undetermined content† (94). It thus negates the image while imprisoned within it; the boundaries of the scene are not helping to define Blanche but reflecting her back to herself. Blanche's power is not easy to suppress; she is a eminder that beneath the appearance of order something nameless has been lost: â€Å"What's happened here? I want an explanation of what's happened here. † she says, â€Å"with sudden hysteria† (407-8). It is a reasonable request that cannot be reasonably answered. This was also Williams' problem at the end of The Glass Menagerie: how to escape from the image when it seems to have bee n given too much control, when its reason is absolute? Expressionism threatens the reason of realistic mise en scene by taking it perhaps too far, stretching the imagination beyond limits toward an absoluteness of the image, a desire of desire. The â€Å"mimetic† mirror now becomes the symbol of madness: the image no longer simply reflects desire (desire of, desire for), but subsumes the mirror itself into the language of desire. When Blanche shatters her mirror (39I) she (like Richard II) shows that her identity has already been fractured; what she sees in the mirror is not an image, it is indistinguishable from herself. And she cries out when the lantern is torn off the lightbulb, because there is no longer a space between the violence she experiences and the image of that violence. The inner and the outer worlds fuse, the reflecting power of the image is destroyed as it becomes fully self-reflective. The passion of madness exists somewhere in between determinism and expression, which at this point â€Å"actually form only one and the same movement which cannot be dissociated except after the fact. â€Å"(I2) But realism, that omnivorous discourse, can subsume even the loss of the subjective-objective distinction — when determinism equals expression — and return to some quasi-objective perspective. Thus at the very moment when all space seems to have been conquered, filled in and opened up, there is a need to parcel it out again into clearly distinguishable territories. Analysis imprisons desire. At the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, there is a little drama. Blanche's wild expressionistic images are patronized and pacified by theatricality: â€Å"I — just told her that — we'd made arrangements for her to rest in the country. She's got it mixed in her mind with Shep Huntleigh† (404-5). Her family plays along with Blanche's delusions, even to costuming her in her turquoise seahorse pin and her artificial violets. The Matron tries to subdue her with physical violence, but Blanche is only really overcome by the Doctor's politeness. Formerly an expressionistic â€Å"type,† having â€Å"the unmistakable aura of the state institution with its cynical detachment† (4II), the Doctor †¦ takes off his hat and now he becomes personalized. The unhuman quality goes. His voice is gentle and reassuring s he crosses to Blanche and crouches in front of her. As he speaks her name, her terror subsides a little. The lurid reflections fade from the walls, the inhuman cries and noises die our and her own hoarse crying is calmed. 4I7) Blanche's expressionistic fit is contained by the Doctor's realistic transformation: he is particularized, he can play the role of gentleman caller. â€Å"Jacket, Doctor? † the Matron asks him. † He smiles †¦ It won't be necessary† (4I7-I8). As they exit, Blanche's visionary excesses have clearly been surrendered to him: â€Å"She allows him to lead her as if she were blind. † Stylistically, he, realism replaces expressionism at the exact moment when expressionism's â€Å"pure subjectivity† seems ready to annihilate the subject, to result in her violent subjugation. At this point the intersubjective dialogue returns, clearly masking indeed blinding — the subjective disorder with a assuring form. If madness is perceived as a kind of â€Å"social failure,†(I3) social success is to be its antidote. Of course theater is a cure for madness: by dramatizing or literalizing the image one destroys it. Such theatricality might risk its own confinement in the image, and for an instant there may be a real struggle in the drama between the image and the effort to contain it. But the power of realism over expressionism makes this a rare occasion. For the â€Å"ruse,† Foucault writes, â€Å"†¦ ceaselessly confirming the delirium , does not bind it to its own truth without at the same time linking it to the necessity for its own suppression† (I89). Using illusion to destroy illusion requires a forgetting of the leap of reason and of the trick it plays on optics. To establish order, the theatrical device repeats the ordering principle it learns from theater, the representational gap between nature and language, a gap it has to deny: â€Å"The artificial reconstitution of delirium constitutes the real distance in which the sufferer recovers his liberty† (I90). In fact there is no return to â€Å"intersubjectivity,† just a kind of formal recognition of it: â€Å"Whoever you are — I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. † Streetcar makes the return to normality gentle and theatrical, while â€Å"revealing† much more explicitly than The Glass Menagerie the violence that is thereby suppressed. This violence is not â€Å"reality,† but yet another theater underneath the theater of ruse; the cure of illusion is ironically â€Å"effected by the suppression of theater† (I9I). The realistic containment at the end of Streetcar hus does not quite make it back all the way to realism's seamlessly objective â€Å"historical† truth. History, structured as it is by â€Å"relations of power, not relations of meaning,†(I4) sometimes assumes the power of reality itself, the platonic Form behind realism, so to speak, When it becomes the language of authority, history also assumes the authorit y of language, rather naively trusting language to be the reality it represents. The bloody wars and strategic battles are soon forgotten into language, the past tense, the fait accompli. Useless to struggle against the truth that is past: history is the waste of time and the corresponding conquest of space, and realism is the already conquered territory, the belated time with the unmistakable stamp of authenticity. It gets applause simply by being plausible; it forgets that it is literature. To read literature, de Man says, we ought to remember what we have learned from it — that the expression and the expressed can never entirely coincide, that no single observation point is trustworthy (I0-II). Streetcar's powerful explosion of allegorical language and expressionistic images keeps its vantage point on the move, at a remove. Every plot is untied. Realism rewards analysis, and Williams invites it, perversely, but any analysis results in dissection. To provide Streetcar with an exegesis seems like gratuitous destruction, â€Å"deliberate cruelty. † Perhaps no other American writer since Dickinson has seemed so easy to crush. And this consideration ought to give the writer who has defined Blanche's â€Å"madness† some pause. Even the critical awareness of her tidy incarceration makes for too tidy a criticism. In Derrida's analysis of Foucault's Madness and Civilization, he questions the possibility of â€Å"historicizing† something that does not exist outside of the imprisonment of history, of speech — madness â€Å"simply says the other of each determined form of the logos. â€Å"(I5) Madness, Derrida proposes, is a â€Å"hyperbole† out of which â€Å"finite-thought, that is to say, history† establishes its â€Å"reign† by the â€Å"disguised internment, humiliation, fettering and mockery of the madman within us, of the madman who can only be a fool of a logos which is father, master and king† (60-6I). Philosophy arises from the â€Å"confessed terror of going mad† (62); it is the â€Å"economic† embrace of madness (6I-62) To me then Williams' play seems to end quite reasonably with a struggle, at the point in the play at which structure and coherence must assert themselves (by seeming to) — that is, the end of the play. The end must look back, regress, so as to sum up and define. It has no other choice. The theatrical ending always becomes, in fact, the real ending. It cannot remain metaphorically an â€Å"end† And what is visible at the end is Blanche in trouble, trapped, mad. She is acting as though she believed in a set of events — Shep Huntleigh's rescue of her — that the other characters, by their very encouragement, show to be unreal. There is a fine but perhaps important line here: Blanche's acting is no more convincing than theirs; but — and this is a point Derrida makes about madness — she is thinking things before they can be historicized, that is, before they have happened or even have been shown to be likely or possible (reasonable). Is not what is called finitude possibility as crisis? † Derrida asks (62). The other characters, who behave as if what Blanche is saying were real, underline her absurdity precisely by invoking reality. Blanche's relations to history and to structural authority are laid bare by this â€Å"forced† ending, in which she repeatedly questions the meaning of meaning: â€Å"What has happened here? † This question implies the relativity of space and moment, and so of â€Å"ev ents† and their meanings, which are at-this point impossible to separate. That is why it is important that the rape suggest an overthrow of meaning, not only through a stylized emphasis on its own representation, but also through its strongly relativized temporality. (Blanche warns against what â€Å"will happen,† while Stanley says the event is the future, the fulfillment of a â€Å"date† or culmination in time promised â€Å"from the beginning. â€Å") Indeed, the problem of madness lies precisely in this gap between past and future, in the structural slippage between the temporal and the ontological. For if madness, as Derrida suggests, can exist at all outside of opposition (to reason), it must exist in â€Å"hyperbole,† in the excess prior to its incarceration in structure, meaning, time, and coherence. A truly â€Å"mad† person would not objectify madness — would not, that is, define and locate it. That is why all discussions of â€Å"madness† tend to essentialize it, by insisting, like Blanche's fellow characters at the end of Streetcar, that it is real, that it exists. And the final stroke of logic, the final absurdity, is that in order to insist that madness exists, to objectify and define and relate to it, it is necessary to deny it any history. Of course â€Å"madness† is not at all amenable to history, to structure, causality, rationality, recognizable â€Å"though† But this denial of the history of madness has to come from within history itself, from within the language of structure and â€Å"meaning. † Blanche's demand to know â€Å"what has happened here† — her insistence that something â€Å"has happened,† however one takes it — has to be unanswerable. It cannot go any further. In theatrical terms, the â€Å"belief† that would make that adventure of meaning possible has to be denied, shut down. But this theatrical release is not purifying; on the contrary, it has got up close to the plague, to the point at which reason and belief contaminate each other: the: possibility of thinking madly. Reason and madness can cohabitate with nothing but a thin curtain between. And curtains are not walls, they do not provide solid protection. (I6) Submitting Williams' allegorical language to ealistic analysis, then, brings you to conclusions: the imprisonment of madness, the loss of desire. The moral meaning smooths things over. Planning to â€Å"open up† Streetcar for the film version with outside scenes and flashbacks, Elia Kazan found it would not work — he ended up making the walls movable so they could actually close in more with every scene. (I7) The sense of entrapment was fundamental: Williams' dramatic language is its elf too free, too wanton, it is a trap, it is asking to be analyzed, it lies down on the couch. Kazan saw this perverse desire in the play — he thought Streetcar was about Williams' cruising for tough customers: The reference to the kind of life Tennessee was leading rear the time was clear. Williams was aware of the dangers he was inviting when he cruised; he knew that sooner or later he'd be beaten up. And he was. (35I) But Kazan undervalues the risk Williams is willing to take. It is not just violence that cruising invites, but death. And that is a desire that cannot be realized. Since there is really no way to get what you want, you have to put yourself in a position where you do not always want what you get. Pursuing desire requires a heroic vulnerability. At the end of â€Å"Desire and the Black Masseur† the little masochistic artist/saint, Anthony Burns, is cannibalized by the masseur, who has already beaten him to a pulp. Burns, who is thus consumed by his desire, makes up for what Williams calls his â€Å"incompletion. † Violence, or submission to violence, is analogous to art, for Williams: both mask the inadequacies of form. Yes, it is perfect,† thinks the masseur, whose manipulations have tortured Bums to death. â€Å"It is now completed]†(I8) NOTBS I Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. I (New York, I97I), 246. Subsequent references are to this edition and rear nod by page number in the text. 2 See Conversations with Tennessee Williams, ed. Albert J. Devlin (Jackson, Miss . , I986). 3 Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed. , revised (Minneapolis, I983), I2. See de Man, Blindness and Insight, I87ff, where he outlines the critical movements in Western Europe and the U. S. that have thus â€Å"openly raise d the question of the intentionality of rhetorical figures† (I88). Among the critics he cites are Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault (to whose work I will turn later in this essay). Subsequent references to Blindness and Insight are noted by page number in the text. 5 Tennessee Williams, The Gloss Menagerie (New York, I97I). 6 Stanley is quoting Huey Long. 7 See Gore Vidal's â€Å"Introduction† to Tennessee Williams' Collected Short Stories (New York, I985) xxv. 8 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, I978), I08-9. 9. Tennessee Williams, â€Å"Desire and the Black Masseur,† in Collected Stories (New York, I985), 2I7. I0 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York, I965). II. Ibid. , 94. I2 Ibid. , 88. I3 Ibid. , 259-60. Subsequent references are noted by page number in the text. I4 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected

Organizational Tax Research and Planning - Transfers to a Corporation Paper

Organizational Tax and Planning - Transfers to a Corporation - Research Paper Example For an individual or group to have entire control of the business after the exchange, they must own a minimum of 80% of all shares of every class of shares that is allowed to vote. The transferor must also own 80 percent of the existing shares of every category of company’s nonvoting stock. The number of shares determines the voting power, and this implies that the transferor or group of transferors must have the majority control. Having less than 80 percent control thus triggers taxation. Client, jean and john purchase property for $ 1million. They both arrange for a corporation with $20 million fair market value. Client and jean reassign the assets to the company for its entire authorized stock that has a book value of $20m. No transaction party; that is Client, jean, john or the corporation recognizes gain. Client, jean and john transfer property worth $8M to a company in substitution for stock whose fair market value is $24M. This represents a 60% of every stock class in the corporation. Supposing the other 40% of the company’s stock was sold off to someone else, then the taxable gain that Client, jean and john recognize is $16M from the exchange as they do not have the majority control. With regards to substitution of assets for stock, service is not considered as property. Therefore, the value of stock to be received as a result of rendering a service will be considered as income to the stock recipient. Therefore, rendering service in exchange for stock will trigger a taxable event as illustrated below. Client, jean and john transfer property worth $0.9M and offer services worth $0.1M to a company in exchange for stock worth $1M. Supposing that Client, jean and john have the majority ownership in that corporation, no gain on earnings will be included in the property exchange. Nevertheless, the Client, jean and john recognize 0.1M income from the services they provided to the company and this will be taxable income. Property

American Heritage Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

American Heritage - Essay Example There is need to have zoning regulations based on major morals population. Seldom, ethnics use zoning provision to blockade bars, pornography, strip clubs, distilleries, and dislikes of other things for moral grounds. The laws of United States basis on morals should not be persuasive. The sentiments contravening laws based on uprightness are misleading because moral judgments stand for legitimate laws (Viroli 31). Recognizing that regulations in general are based on moral judgments has vital consequences. Hence, the meaning those objections to a law for reason of being inclined on morality do not make any sense on the mind of non-anarchist. The same have different meaning on experts in public policy, law, and economics that they are not necessarily experts based on legitimacy of regulations; professionals on the legitimacy of regulations are those with an evident, deep comprehension of moral fact (Viroli 40). Perhaps most momentous, recognizing that regulations are finally inclined to moral judgments put upright and immoral people on an equal ground when explaining politics. Patriotism is the love of someone’s birthplace, country and childhood’s place of recollections and dreams, aspirations and, hopes, it is a place where, a childlike timidity, we would view the fleeting. Indeed, egotism, arrogance, and conceit are the fundamentals of patriotism. Patriotism assumes that our planet is divided into small spots, each one enclosed with Iron Gate. Those fortune ate to be born certain spot, consider themselves grander, nobler, better, more intelligent than others inhabiting the other spot. Therefore, it is the responsibility of everyone residing on that chosen part to kill, die, and fight in trying to impose his sovereignty upon others (Viroli 39). Patriotism is though a costly institution considering the statistics, no one ever doubts it. The progressive enhanced

Agency by ratification Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Agency by ratification - Assignment Example Agency is the association that exist when one party known as agent decide to represents another party known as principal in a business transaction and has power to alter the legal situation of the party they represent in an agreement with a third party Agency by ratification comes into existence if one party acted as an agent for a non existing principal, and the party claimed to be the principal actually accept to be bound by the term of the agreement as if they had actually authorized the agent to act on their behalf (Stone, 2011). Under such circumstance, the alleged principal can never disown the agreement and they indeed become the principal and agent in all legal perspectives. The agencies by ratification become legal only if the alleged principal met legal requirements of a principal at the time of acceptance of the contract (Gordley, 2001). However, under such a situation, both the principal and the other party have the right to sue the agent for the loss suffered as a result of the conducts of the agent. In order for this agreement to become effective, the alleged principal must have been in a potential to form such a relationship. For the contract to be ratified, the agent must disclose to the other party that they are actually acting as agent for the certain principal though not disclosed to that other party (Stone, 2011). Therefore, if the agent fails to state that they are acting as agent, this agreement cannot be effective. For example, in Keighley Maxted & C v Durant [1901], Keighley authorised the other business partner R to purchase weight at a specified price for their business. However, R could did not get weight at the specified price and instead decided to purchase it from Durant at a greater price. Keighley promised to accept the agreement, but later declined it. Durant challenged the decision in the court, but the House of Lords issued a verdict Keighley was no bound by the agreement due to the reason of it imposed unnecessary cost. The r egulation requires that at the time of creation of agreement, the alleged principal who will approve the agreement must be in surviving at the time the accord was being made (Gordley, 2001). This requirement aims to protect third party from entering into unlawful treaty. This is because the law has set definite terms which a person should meet before they can sign abiding agreement. Therefore, if a person alleged to be the principal could not be determined at the time of signing the agreement, then the person cannot be able to approve and adopt the contract later. For example, in Kelner v Baxter (1866) LR 2 CP 174, advertisers of a nonexistent company entered into an agreement with buyers before the company was established. After the formation of the company, those buyers purchased the wine on credit, which they never paid until the company went on liquidation. The promoters were sued, but they argued that they had acted on behalf of the company hence were not responsible (Stone, 20 11). However, CJ Erle claimed that the marketer were liable for the debt since the company was nonexistence at the time they signed the agreement with the buyers. The alleged principal must have contractual capacity to form a binding agreement at the time the treaty was being made (Gordley, 2001). For example, the person must be of sound mind at the time the contract was signed on their behalf. In Dibbins v Dibbins (1896), the solicitor applied to the court with intention of acquiring partnership property since the only surviving partner was insane (Stone, 2011). The solicitor notified the court about the state of the agent and intention o effect the agreement on their behalf. However, the notice was beyond the agreed time

The Concept of the Core Executive Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Concept of the Core Executive - Essay Example Prime ministerial dominance is facilitated by the predominance of leadership and leadership and prime ministerial dominance seem to be interdependent and mutually facilitatory. Hefferman claims that the dominance of the prime minister arises from the fact that the prime minister has access to many institutional and personal resources and power tools that give him a dominant role within the polity. The resources available to a minister and especially the prime minister define his power thus greater resources signify more power and fewer resources would indicate less power. Thus resources given to the core executive and the prime minister within a polity, for instance in the British polity would grant the prime minister and his cabinet with intra executive authority and influence and also help them with an opportunity to be stringer through exercising greater power. James (2004) highlights the challenges faced by the members of the core executive for steering and coordinating public activity and in undertaking strategic function of political governance in keeping with social demands. Considering the core executive within the UK government, especially the Treasury, the tools of governance could be delineated. In this case Public Service agreements or PSAs are used as unique tools of governance focused on improvement of public services. Thus core executives use specific tools to provide quality services to the public and these tools of governance are focused on information about performance, improved setting and incentive effects focused on ministers and officials through a system of performance targets in which if targets are achieved, proper performance rewards are given. The core executive thus helps in determining the level of performance as also the quality of services. The powers and priorities are now considerably focused on Prime Minister 's office and the cabinet office suggesting some sort of centralization of power within the British polity. Governance monitoring and assessment have improved considerably although there may be misleading reports on progress towards government goals. The relationship between governance, assessment of performance and expenditure concerns have opened up discussion between departments that focus on priorities although ministerial responsibility for performance has been limited. The core executive sets the target yet targets are seen as minimum pledges of performance rather than tools for improving performance. James highlights the importance of core executives suggesting that the PSA system is in danger as there are frequent changes to principles of governance and also inadequate representation of performance in certain areas of governance. Marsh et al (2003) emphasise further the concept of the core executive using the asymmetric power model to explain the British political system. They point out that the Differentiate Polity Model or DPM by Rhodes has it own flaws as it seems to overstress the diffuse nature of power. Marsh et al contend that the balance of power in the British

LEADERSHIP Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

LEADERSHIP - Term Paper Example In this context, it can be said that having open heart requires leaders to stimulate and encourage others for taking a chance to foster desired changes. On the other hand, having open determination necessitates leaders to take risks and brave steps. Essentially, making a positive difference in the professional context requires executing the unconventional aspects. Every challenge includes confrontation of status quo. This denotes that in order to make positive differences, leaders will need to experiment the unconfirmed aspects, dug deep in the implicit aspects and challenge the unrestrained parts (Wren, Hicks and Price 3-47). THESIS STATEMENT Focusing on this aspect, the paper discusses how a leader in a professional context can challenge the status quo and make a positive difference. The objective of the paper is to identify the challenges which can be faced by a leader while making the difference. Furthermore, the paper also intends to develop a plan for changing the present profe ssional context. In line with this aspect, the paper further provides examples of two exceptional leaders in the field of politics who had made positive differences in their field namely Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington. PLANNING FOR CHANGE AND IMPROVEMENT IN PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT In the professional field, change has become a common mode of operations for most of the organizations. The change initiatives are intended to improve the performance of organizations. One of the key skills required for a leader to commence such changes is ‘context thoughtfulness’, i.e. the capability to understand the context and accordingly plan methods for change which would be effective for such a context. Successful change necessitates context-based approach. In the professional context, there are several approaches which require the consideration of a leader such as change type and management style. A common way of describing the type of change is to syndicate speed related to cha nge with the level of change. In accordance with speed, change can be reactive or proactive. Reactive context is a type of context where organizations require undertaking certain changes instantly due to a crisis situation. On the other hand, proactive context is a context which is related with long-run strategic development. In this aspect, the planned change is based on proactive context, i.e. the planning would be made for developing the context on a long run basis. This type of change in the professional context is referred as system change i.e. implementing more sophisticated technology in the workplace. This change will definitely lead to changes in policies, processes and job roles of people in the organizations. The key reason for change is to enhance the benefits of an organization with respect to more productivity and effectiveness (Hailey and Balogun 153-178). Successful change requires changes from status quo to future state. Following is the plan for changing status quo in professional context: Demonstrating the Change: This is a phase in which a leader requires demonstrating various ways to change ‘status quo’. In order to shape the behavior of people effectively towards change, values of change will be expressed to everyone within the organization. The value will comprise both individual

Finance in the Hospitality Indusry Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Finance in the Hospitality Indusry - Assignment Example Suppliers offer credit by supplying goods that do not require an immediate payment. However, a good number of suppliers provide a credit to individuals that have developed an established track record. A majority of retailers are presently offering various products on credit, such as equipments, via a financial institution. In addition, an individual can obtain a loan and other financial products such as an overdraft facility and asset financing via various financial institutions. Financial institutions range from banks to credit unions. In relation to an internal equity, an individual can finance a firm by the help of saved funds or ploughed back profits. An internal equity is majorly employed by various individuals that are seeking to start a business or running an established business. An internal equity is cheap since an individual is not expected to pay fees for borrowing money (Robinson, 2009). The other method of financing a firm is via an external equity, which includes friend s, government, venture capitalist, stock market and private investors among others. A government may provide financing to a new or existing business. Venture capitalists are large institutions that provide a large amount of money for a potential or existing firm. However, venture capitalists are characterized by the need to have a large share of a firm to effect management about the firm’s operations. ... However, this approach is associated with a number of flaws given that a majority of markets are characterized by various inefficiencies. As a result, an individual can easily fall short of raising a required level of capital. Given that the William’s family is required to raise more than sterling pounds 62,000 to take over The Enchanted Valley B&B, the family should consider approaching the London Stock Exchange since it is more efficient than other stock markets in the world. This would give the family a chance to raise an adequate capital due to favorable qualities of the firms, such as a strategic location and executive finishing. The family should also approach various private investors. The family should, however, ensure that the investors do not seek more than 50% of the company’s share. These methods are appropriate for the Williams family to raise the required level of capital without risking transferring the power of making the firm’s management decisio ns. Sources of the Firm’s Generating Income The firm generates an income from a number of services and products. The key products that offer an income include food and beverages which amounted to $135,000 (selling revenues). Having resulted in a cost of $45,000 and allowance of $5,000, the firm experienced a gross profit of $85,000. The other income was generated by rooms’ rental which amounted to $600. Other services such as parking contributed to a significant profit of $3100. This means that beverages and food contributed to 95.83% (85,000/88,700*100%) of the total gross profit. On the other hand, rooms’ rental contributed to 0.068% of the gross income (600/88,500*100%).

Decision Making Case Study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Decision Making Case Study - Essay Example This has led to the training of all officers with regards to the new policy. In addition, the department has also introduced another policy that prohibits officers from firing warning shots unless the situation warrants. The case explains a scenario in which, an officer Raymond Ripley on his usual daily patrols, spots a packed car, which he believes is not supposed to be packed in that area because it looked like a private car, and had its brake lights on and flashing its lights on and off. Officer Ripley tries to approach and stop the car, but when he fails, fires warning shots and decides to pursue the vehicle while calling for back up. It worth noting that, Officer Ripley was 6 months fresh from college and engages in foot and vehicle pursuit, uses his own German shepherd dog and a Taser stun devices; all of which, he has never been trained in, nor has he been authorized to use. Neither his supervisor nor the Sherriff is aware of his actions. The central issues in this case are, ( 1) Pineville County Sherriff Department and individuals involved in a car chase that resulted in the death of a juvenile has a pending case in court, (2) Pineville County Sherriff Department has been criticized by the public (3) Pineville County Sherriff Department has changed its policies regarding car pursuits and firing of warning shots, (4) the unknown use of shepherd dog and a Taser stun device without the departments training and knowledge of neither his supervisor nor the Sherriff, and (5) Involved of officer Ripley in unsanctioned or authorized car pursuits. Deputy officer Ripley is not in compliance with the use-of-force policy. This is because, according to the policy, supervisors are required to cancel any pursuits that do not involve any violent felony or situations that are worth the potential liability and danger (Peak, 2010). The situation in which Deputy Officer Ripley is faced with, does not seem to be a violent felony or crime, as such, it is not worth the potentia l liability or danger, thus, not worth a pursuit. The lieutenant should end Deputy Officer Ripley’s pursuit because in all senses, it is in violation with the new enacted pursuit police that requires supervisors to cancel any pursuits that do not involve any violent felony or situations that are worth the potential liability and danger. The situation Ripley is facing is neither a violent crime nor a felony, and definitely not worth the potential risks or dangers involved. In addition, Deputy Officer Ripley is just 6 months old in the job and is considered a rooky, as such; his inexperience can render the pursuit dangerous and risky. Under the circumstances described in the case, Deputy Ripley should have not fired the warning shots. This is because there were no reasons for firing the shots; the situation did not warrant. Firing the warning shots then meant that the Deputy was breaking the law. This is to say; the people in the car that he was firing warning shots at had not shown in sign of violence or intent to cause harm. Normally, Ripley’s actions in relation to the warning shot, Taser and the dog are covered by polices such as the one that prohibits firing warning shots unless necessary and the policy for use of force (excessive). The Internal Affairs at Pineville County Sherriff Department would find out that, Ripley was at fault with the policy regarding firing of warning

Marketing assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Marketing - Assignment Example for this car therefore needs to target the middle class in the society, as they are the people most concerned about the environment and prices of fuel (Becker, 2010). To reach this target group, the advertisement for the hybrid cars needs to be in television at prime times. The middle class are working people and are not available to watch television during the days. However, most of them are keen followers of the evening news. Placing the advertisement at such a time is there fore likely to catch their attention. The middle class are also keen followers of sports in the weekend. In the United States, the follow American football and baseball, in Europe, the most popular sport is football. Therefore, it would be productive to advertise the car during sports or by sponsoring team kits such that a popular team plays in labeled kits (for instance Juventus is a big soccer club in Europe and play in kits marked ‘jeep’) (Becker, 2010). Such advertisements may work wonders, as the audience is relaxed when watching the game and more likely to notice the advert (Becker, 2010). Inclusion of impressive statistics about the car is also helpful as the target group is interested in a car that offers them comfort as well as power on the road. This target group is also knowledgeable and is bound to know the limitations of a ‘green car’. These limitations include short refueling mileage (electric cars should recharge after between 100 and 160 miles) (Fort Bend Toyota in Richmond, par 3). This distance is too small a hybrid car covers more distance, more than 300 miles. Inclusion of this kind of information in the adverts is likely to persuade potential buyers with reservations about the refueling mileage to change their minds. The advertisements should also show the amount of money that the user would save on fuel by using the hybrid cars. The main advantages of use of television and sports endorsements are a wide area of coverage as well as the discounts related to

Ethics approaches Essay Example for Free

Ethics approaches Essay Ethics approaches BY tealx021 Ethics in Communication After reading about the ethical considerations considering interpersonal and group communication, there are many similarities. The two differ in the sense of size. This leads to more considerations in the larger of the two, group communication, where there may be many different interpersonal relationships within the small group. However, for this analysis, like the book, I will focus on ethical considerations of the small group as a whole. Interpersonal relationships are unique in themselves, as each one is different han the next. One major ethical consideration in this context is fairness. When people are interdependent, or share mutuality, there are almost always issues of fairness or Justice that arise. These two issues are most commonly based off of individuals feelings and relational satisfaction. In our culture, this sense of Justice or fairness can be attributed to the distribution of rewards in proportion to each partners contributions. Relationships are often times weighed on costs and rewards. When this cost-reward system is unbalanced in relationships, we often see issues rise. Another major consideration in interpersonal relationships is privacy and autonomy, or openness and closeness. In communication, this comes down to self- disclosure. Issues can arise if one partner in the relationship is disclosing too much or too little about themselves, and there is an unbalance between the two relational partners. One major issue in relationships is Jealousy, which can stem from any of these ethical considerations. In small-group communication, there are a few unique ethical considerations that arise. One major issue in small groups is groupthink. Groupthink is the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility. Another unique ethical consideration is issues that involve symbolic convergence within in-groups and out- groups. Symbolic convergence can create or develop stereotypes or exclusion within and outside a small group setting. Small-group and interpersonal relationships do also share ethical issues in communication. One of these is the issue of responsibility, which can be constituted as individual responsibility or the other affects responsibility of the whole relationship, and each one. In small-groups, individual responsibility can be hampered by groupthink or Symbolic convergence. In interpersonal relationships, individual responsibility can be hampered by lack of fairness, or lack of interdependence based on self-disclosure. Much or this is based on context, but interpersonal and small group communication share these same ethical considerations. Many of these ethical issues surrounding interpersonal communication can be channeled well through dialogical ethics. Dialogical ethics involves approaching decisions by considering attitudes and behaviors, and illingness or ability of each participant to surrender ones self-interest. This involves having an open mind, and viewing you and the relational partner as equals, almost putting yourself in the other persons shoes, setting aside your perceptual interpersonal relationships. I can attribute this to my own experience, as I feel many of the arguments I have with friends or family members would be solved if we each put ourselves in each others shoes. A good approach to small-group communication is the virtue ethics approach. This approach puts a lot of emphasis on character, and oesnt put a set of rules in place that could potentially cause ethical issues involved in groupthink or stereotypes. This approach would hold people accountable based on character, and would promote creativity and good ideas within a small group. In my own experience in small-groups, everything comes down to virtue, including responsibility, prudence, etc. Many issues could be solved with this approach in a small group context. Both mentioned approaches would fit well in both interpersonal and group relationships, but I feel that I have placed them in their best-fit places.

Ethical Treatment of Prisoners Essay Example for Free

Ethical Treatment of Prisoners Essay Ethical Treatment of Prisoners BY MeltssaoT People in society today have rules, regulations, and guidelines to follow in order to maintain freedom, safety, structure, and self-discipline. If any of these rules are broken, there are consequences to follow. It depends on the severity of the crime on what type of punishment or consequence is given to an individual. If the crime is severe enough the individual may be deprived of their rights, freedom of movement, and sent to prison for a duration of time. If one is sent to prison then the ethical treatment of prisoners rights must be taking into consideration and analyzed. A prisoner/inmate is a person that has committed a criminal offence and depending on their criminal history he or she may be put on probation or confined to a county Jail or state penitentiary. Once an individual gets behind those block walls their lives then tend to belong to the deputies, correctional officer or warden that is employed by that facility. Within the prison system there is a division of power that exists. This power can leave feelings of powerlessness and dependency in the prisoners. We all have heard stories of correction officers using their power of authority to abuse and psychologically harm the prisoner. For example a couple of months ago in the state that I live in there was an inmate who was locked up for a minor charge of failure to appear. He was waiting for his dinner this particular evening, and the deputy almost slammed the inmate finger in the door. Of course this escalade into a verbal altercation between the two, and from there a physical fight broke out. The deputy which outweighed the inmate by over 100 pounds picked up the inmate and slammed him on his head onto a concrete floor multiple times until the inmate was unconscious. The Jailhouse officials rush this inmate to the ospital in which he went into a coma, and eventually was placed on life support. The family of this inmate was faced with a difficult situation which was either remove him from life support or leave him there to waste a away. In the end the family made the decision to remove their love one from life support, and the deputy was behind a minor criminal matter the question is did he deserve to be treated less than a human being? Did he really deserve to die? Some people might argue the fact that because he was locked up then he deserved the treatment that he got and others might voice the difference. I personally say no, because this is still a life and even though he made a mistake there should have been a correct way to go about punishment for this inmate if he really had got out of order. When law abiding citizens and correctional officers look at prisoners, it does not matter what the crime was or how severe the punishment, a prisoner is a nobody. In the United States there are many people that may agree and have strong feelings when it comes to this statement. In ethics a utilitarian may say that human beings should focus on the potential rules of an action and determine what would happen if e or she follows the rules. Utilitarian theory states the moral worth of an action should be determined specifically by its usefulness in maximizing utility and minimizing negative utility. The world as a whole has a moral code on how people should conduct themselves, on what is right and wrong. The belief of the utilitarian theory can be used in prisons to help those that really want to be rehabilitated. I am not saying that this theory will work for all, but there are some men and women that deserve another chance in life. We have to realize that everyone makes mistakes n their life, some are worse than others, but in the end everyone still deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, no matter what they may have done. I have heard stories about men that may have raped or killed a little child is sent to prison the correctional officers tend to sometime turn their heads and let the other inmates beat him or rape him until he is almost dead. I dont agree with the fact that he hurt a child but at the same time I dont think that its morally right that they allow the other inmates to Jeopardize what little bit of freedom that they may have behind hose prison walls either. The ethical solution to this is when you do have a child rapist sent to prison put those type of people in a area amongst themselves and maybe have counselors around where they can get a better understanding of this person sick mind because sometimes these people that do these type of things have had some type of trauma when they were a child. It is unethical to confine an individual to a correctional facility and expose this individual to danger. When you talk about ethics in prison, in the eyes of some that is either driving by hat facility yard every day or has never really been behind those thick masculine bars then one may say that these people are animals and they deserve to be behind those bars. Once behind those bars their life changes because they have to be told when to eat, when to sleep, when to walk and talk. If an inmate is not like by a correctional officer or if one does not follow order then they may be deprived of food or even yard time. Torture and beatings will not correct their behavior but will make them more aggressive so that choice is not the best. If any of these things should appen then this may lead to riots and in serious scenarios, killing of security guards. It is best to provide the basic needs such as food to the prisoners so that there is a harmonious reaction between the prisoner and the correction officer. The utilitarian would say that inmates should follow a morally right rule that would result in happiness in which once they are return to society they can determine what rules citizens. Learning positive rules will result to good behavior and a change of mind that life without freedom is something that one may not want to return to. In contrast..

A Critical Appraisal Of A Qualitative Journal Article Nursing Essay

A Critical Appraisal Of A Qualitative Journal Article Nursing Essay Research is a significant element in all professions, but perhaps more so in healthcare. It forms the basis of development and adaptation in the healthcare world, and allows professions to merely observe change (Griffiths, 2009). This essay critically appraises a research article, Using CASP (critical appraisal skills programme, 2006) and individual sections of Bellini Rumrill: guidelines for critiquing research articles (Bellini Rumrill, 1999). The title of this article is; Clinical handover in the trauma setting: A qualitative study of paramedics and trauma team members. (Evans, Murray, Patrick, Fitzgerald, Smith, Cameron, 2010). Many research articles are appraised due to the sheer degree of information obtainable in health care settings. Critically appraising articles allows one to filter out the low quality studies and distinguish misleading information (Cormack, Gerrish Lacey, 2010). The article title clearly explains the research, without being too extensive, using extraneous words or explaining the results found. It is able to inform the reader of the research aim without becoming uninteresting. The basic concept of a title should provide a summary of the content. A good title should be straight forward; a poorly written title will defer readers (Centre for research writing resources, 2012). Key words serve as key elements in the article, including handover, trauma and paramedics. Again allowing the reader to know precisely what the article consists of. The abstract of this article elucidates the purpose of the research, its results and reasonings. It also briefly articulates the method, highlighting key factors necessary. Everything declared in the article is present in the central text; all statistics and findings are indistinguishable. The abstract enables the reader to decipher if the article is of interest. This article clearly identifies the aims of the research in the abstract and main text. By using aims, the results and discussion are simply interpreted and flow effortlessly. Aims should be written plainly, in non-technical language and state the concepts the research is addressing (Stommel Wills, 2004). By using comprehensible and concise aims, the reader can simply understand what the researcher is setting out to obtain, giving the research a focus. In the background of the article, the researcher clearly identifies the relevance of the research aims and why the research is required, including medical mishaps and misinterpretation of trauma handovers. This allows one to understand the concepts behind the research, give the aims credibility and support incorporation into the results. Background information suggests that the topic has been thoroughly researched and aids construction of research methods and aims (Blaxter, Hughes Tight, 2006). This research uses qualitative methods, which deem appropriate for this type of research, as the researcher is trying to highlight the attitudes, experiences and emotions of participants concerning handovers. The research does not use statistics, rather participants responses and their subjective experiences around the topic. Qualitative research looks at the essence of social phenomena, giving people the opportunity to understand what people do and why (Williams, 2010). In the abstract, the researcher articulates using grounded theory and thematic analysis. Grounded theory is used to develop theories that can be used in practice (Oktay, 2012), suggesting this is a desired method for this research. The article is well set out, permitting the research design to be effortlessly recognisable and easily read. Although the researcher states that grounded theory was used, one may say that it was used incorrectly. Grounded theory is used to create theories that can be applied in real life situations (Oktay, 2012) and although this study does create a theory, (effective and ineffective handovers) it is building on an already established theory (MIST Mechanism-Injuries-Signs-treatment). The use of grounded theory is very ambiguous in this research; it could be argued that is has been applied correctly, due to using current research to guide the study. Whether it was applied accurately or not, the researcher has not explained how they used grounded theory or i ntegrated the theories into the research. The researcher does not disclose how they determined the exact method used. This would be beneficial as the research question, method of data collection and data analysis all depend on each other, and therefore these paramount decisions need to be made continually throughout the research process (Willig, 2008). The participants were selected through purposive convenience sampling, with no incentives. Although this is convenient for the researchers, it may mean the respondents are not the most appropriate to the task itself (Burnard Newell, 2011). In this case, all the participants were Paramedics or part of a trauma team and all had understanding with trauma cases. As the researcher states in the limitations, the conclusion may be different for less experienced participants or those who were trained differently. There is no explanation as to why the participants chose to take part in the study, nor why others chose to decline the opportunity. This would be valuable information as there may be a specific group of people that decide to volunteer for research studies, therefore the research may not be applicable for all paramedics and trauma staff. One may find it difficult to consider how all of the volunteers happened to be experienced, this may lead to the suggestion that the researchers f iltered through the respondents and chose the most suitable, still using convenience sampling. The article is also unclear about how the volunteers came to know about the research and what they were told before the research commenced. Convenience sampling is most commonly used in larger- scale studies (Sim Wright, 2000) and therefore seems an outlandish method to use, as only 27 participants were used in this study. In this article, the researcher does not disclose the setting in which data was collected. This may well have an impact on the results, as it could influence the participants emotions, how comfortable they feel and how much information they are willing to provide (Shi, 2008). Also, they do not specify which researcher conducted the interviews. By the interviewer being a Paramedic, part of a trauma team or neither may have an interviewer affect (Alder Clark, 2011). This in turn may change the results of the study, make it bias or unreliable. There is an obvious section in the article relating to how the data was collected. All participants were interviewed face to face, but the researcher does not specify if these were in groups or individual. By interviewing as a group some people may conform to others responses. Using a semi-structured face to face interview allows the interviewer to observe non-verbal communication techniques, as well as how the participants give their responses ( Flick, 2009). The interview consisted of pre-determined questions, using a topic guide. It is not discussed who wrote the topic guide, this again could have an effect on the results or the way in which certain questions are worded. The paramedics were given a somewhat different question format to those of the trauma team, allowing the researchers to gain full potential of questions given. The topic guide was integrated into the article, so readers are fully aware of questions asked. The participants were given a copy of MIST and asked to comment on how it could be enhanced. This was modified and presented at the specialties clinical meetings and opinions were given to the researchers by email or telephone. The researcher does not specify who was present at the clinical meetings, and whether the Paramedics were given the opportunity to see the modified version. It also does not disclose how long participants were given to respond and if they were given a chance to confer with any oth er people. If the participants were able to discuss the modified MIST before replying, the results may be inaccurate; some responses may be influenced by other professions with different experiences. The article is very vague about who was interviewed on the minimum dataset for handovers, as only the speciality groups were declared. This could cause a bias result, if only one profession was interviewed on specific aim. The researcher has not commented on their rationale for using any of these methods; supplying a rationale can help ensure validity in the research process and results (Piekkari Welch, 2004).There is no mention of any changes made throughout the study, therefore one can assume the original plan was followed through the majority of the study. The researcher has not mentioned how the data was recorded; this could have a detrimental effect on the results, because if they are noted from the researchers memory, mistakes could be made. Grounded theory usually records data u sing audio and video tapes, allowing the researcher to carefully examine responses given (Schreiber Stern, 2001). At no stage in the article does the researcher comment on their own role and any bias they may cause in the study. Researchers are said to be bias when they do not take an objective approach to research (Powers Knapp, 2006). From the article itself one can see that the research team consists of 1 Ambulance service employee, 1 trauma team member and 4 people from the research centre of excellence, suggesting there is minimal bias from researchers, but this is not documented. One may say bias was reduced as the participants were not given MIST until after they had been asked some of the questions; therefore it had no influence on previous responses. There is no research question used in this study, but there are four clear aims that were derived from the extensive background and initial research. Ethical issues have been considered by the research team as the study was approved by an ethics committee, but there is no justification of ethical issues taken into consideration concerning the participants. Although there are no ethical issues relating to the welfare of the participants, the researchers do not explain confidentiality and informed consent. One can presume that informed consent was gained from each respondent as they volunteered for the research. Informed consent requires the participants to have adequate information regarding the research (Surrena,2011). During this study, the data was sufficiently analysed, using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis uses coding to identify the recurrent or main themes in research results. It is most often used in qualitative research as it emphasises recurrent ideas and feelings (Mays, Popay Pope, 2007). By using a coding programme to categorise responses from participants, the researchers were able to find recurrent themes and were capable of placing responses into three nodes that were directed by the initial aims. This was independently checked for consistency and in some cases a third researcher was used to decipher any discrepancies, again reducing bias. In the main text, the researcher does not mention the use of thematic analysis, only the coding process, although it is mentioned in the abstract; one can assume this method was used throughout. It is not explained why the responses shown in the article were chosen to be published, but there is a descriptive table shown that entails several re sponses. It is exceedingly supportive to the results given, as it concurs with the results and highlights how the paramedics and trauma team share equivalent experiences with trauma handovers. The data analysis materialized no contradictory responses; there was a general consensus between all participants, emphasizing the need for further research and handover training and frameworks. There is a clear consensus that countless handovers are ineffective and several participants agreed on reasons for this. This was evidently stated by the researcher, along with the need for paramedics to obtain training in effective, concise handovers. There is no evidence for argument as all participants agreed that handovers needed to be enhanced in order to improve patient outcome and quick treatment. The researchers were not trying to settle argument, merely emphasise the experiences of professionals in the emergency setting. The researcher considers triangulation, but declares it should be used with caution in other hospitals, not mentioning the studys use in other ambulance services. Triangulation refers to approaching data from various perspectives (Flick, Kardorff Steinke, 2004).The discussion is flawlessly set out as the aims the researcher set out to justify. This makes it easier to alternate between the method, results and discussion with ease. The researcher discusses how the study can be the basis to further development with trauma handovers and illuminates the need for further research and application. It does mention the need for further paramedic training, but as a lone piece of research, it is unable to act upon this. The research has not highlighted any new areas that need investigation or further research, but has merely emphasised the awareness of poor trauma handovers. There is also no mention of transferability in this study, other than using it cautiously in other hospitals. Transferability refers to the probability that the study has meaning or use in other situations (Surrena, H 2011). In addition, there is a short time period between the article being written and it being published; meaning the information in this study is relevant and up to date. In conclusion, this research study is well designed with meaningful and useful results. The aims and background information are impeccable, giving the researcher ample reasons to conduct the study. The results are well analysed and supported by the discussion. The only downfall to this article is the minimal justification of choices made throughout the study. There are various limitations, that the researchers have identified themselves, allowing further researchers to replicate the study, modifying the limitations noted in this article. Due to the researcher identifying the need for further research, the reader may not consider changing their current practice based on this article alone. However it would be exceptionally useful in further research.

Historical development of the atom :: essays research papers fc

The notion of the atom all stared about 450 BC when a Greek scholar starting think when can something break on more, when are the pieces at their smallest, this mans name was Leucippus. Leucippus also had pupil who also thought the same way as Leucippus, his name was Democritus. They developed there ideas and when Democritus died his theory summed up briefly was that everything in the world was made of tiny pieced that could not be broken up any more. That how the word atom was derived from the Greek work â€Å"atomos† meaning â€Å"unbreakable†. This was the start of the theory of atoms. The first time this theory was taught at a school was by Epicurus 306 BC which he established himself.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The theory laid dormant for about 2 millenniums this was basically because it was all but forgotten, this was because it had no evidence, and it was only logic. One of the first people to show some evidence was Robert Boyle, an English chemist. In 1662 he conducted ‘Boyle’s experiment and compressed air in a ‘J’ tube with mercury, this opened up a whole new window.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This lead to new and old thought about different types of atoms, elements. The Greeks thought simular to this but only divided it up into four groups. Their theory was close to Boyle’s but Boyle had a more concise idea of these elements and by the end of the 1700’s they had discovered about 30 elements.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1972 Frenchman Antoine Laurent Lavoisier discover the no mater what happens a substance always has the same weight. In the late 1700’s another Frenchman, Proust, discovert that elements can be combined to make different compounds, and that certain proportions had to be used. This became know as â€Å"law of definite proportions†.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A few years later an English chemist, John Dalton, a fan of Boyle worked on Proust’s theory and came up with â€Å"the law of multiple proportions†. Dalton soon came up with ‘weight’ theories of the atom a discovered that hydrogen was the lightest.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1813 Jons Jakob Berzelius created a system using the Latin words for the element to represent that element.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1860 the chemist of Europe had their first international Chemical Congress to discuss the matter. They theory that prevailed was Cannizzaro theory. John Thomson was born in 1856, and is recognised as the British scientist who discovered and identified the electron.

Comparing Morality in The Prince, Second Treatise of Government, and Ut

Comparing Morality  in  The Prince, Second Treatise of Government, and Utilitarianism Niccolo Machiavelli, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill present three distinct models of government in their works The Prince, Second Treatise of Government, and Utilitarianism. From an examination of these models it is possible to infer their views about human nature and its connection to the purpose of government. A key to comparing these views can be found in an examination of their ideas of morality as an intermediary between government and human nature. Whether this morality must be inferred from their writings or whether it is explicitly mentioned, it differs among the three in its definition, source, and purpose. Approximately three hundred years separate the earliest of these works, The Prince, from the most recent, Utilitarianism, and a progression is discernible in the concept of morality over this span. Machiavelli does not mention the word "morality," but his description of the trends and ideals of human political interaction allow for a reasonable deduction of the concept. Locke, too, does not use the word, but he does write of "the standard of right and wrong." In contrast, Mill writes explicitly and extensively of morality in its forms, sources, and obligations. A logical starting point in this examination is a look at their relative views of human nature. To Machiavelli, people are children that need order. They are childlike, not in their innocence, but in their passions. They are ungrateful, greedy, deceptive, and fickle. However, they are also rational and interested in avoiding danger. In calculating their interests they can perceive the need to join together to pursue common goals, such as conquest for acquisition, p... ...e driven into civil society by their contentious natures. As such, all three have the need for an organizing and directing influence in society to ensure that it accomplishes the ends for which it exists. For Machiavelli and for Locke, this influence comes directly from the government. For Mill, this influence comes from within society, the associations one forms with other people; however it requires a certain minimal support from the government to keep it on the proper track. This influence is morality, and it is an extension of human nature. Works Cited Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government, ed. Thomas Peardon, New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1952. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Trans. Hill Thompson. Norwalk: The Easton Press, 1980. Mill, John Stuart. † Utilitarianism Resources. BLTC. 19 January 2003.

Graduation Speech: Is County High the Best School in America? :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

Good evening students, faculty, staff, family, and friends. I was NOT surprised to see County High School missing from Newsweek's list of the Top 100 High Schools in America for 2012. The magazine based their ranking on Advanced Placement scores and Ivy League acceptances. In the accompanying article on high school life, the journalist attempted to find the real worth of a high school education. Certainly, the excruciatingly painful 3-hour-long tests cannot sum up an entire four years of experience as a high school student. Speaking from personal knowledge, I can tell you those tests are in no shape, manner, or form fun. The journalist posed a most interesting question regarding modern education, asking, "What happened to time for fun, football games, and memories of life in high school?" Surely if national rankings were based on the overall academic, athletic, and social experience of young adults, County High would find its name at the TOP of the list. In my mind, the perfect kind of high school experience takes place here at County High. Looking back on the past four years, I have done my fair share of complaining, but I wouldn't have wanted to complain about anything else with anyone else. We've pleaded with teachers and staff to let us into football games, basketball games, and school dances without our school ID's, simply because we didn't feel like carrying them. We've managed to sneak water bottles, milk shakes, and French fries out of the cafeteria, while also managing to get caught every now and then. We've argued that our pink and tan polos actually resemble shades of orange and white, and when it came to a senior class trip, we simply couldn't bear 180 more days without one. Over the past four years, I hope you have tried to find the best in every situation and look for the best in every person. To me, County High has been the greatest place to experience high school, and you, my classmates, my friends, my best friends, you have made the past four years enjoyable and survivable. I honestly couldn't have asked for a more intelligent, more talented, and more promising group of people to spend four entire years of my life with. Where else can you sign out of school early with 30 classmates simply to spend a sunny afternoon on the beach? Where else is there a basketball-player who refers to himself as "Big Mac" and a Prom Queen who answers to "Fatty McFat-Fat? Graduation Speech: Is County High the Best School in America? :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address Good evening students, faculty, staff, family, and friends. I was NOT surprised to see County High School missing from Newsweek's list of the Top 100 High Schools in America for 2012. The magazine based their ranking on Advanced Placement scores and Ivy League acceptances. In the accompanying article on high school life, the journalist attempted to find the real worth of a high school education. Certainly, the excruciatingly painful 3-hour-long tests cannot sum up an entire four years of experience as a high school student. Speaking from personal knowledge, I can tell you those tests are in no shape, manner, or form fun. The journalist posed a most interesting question regarding modern education, asking, "What happened to time for fun, football games, and memories of life in high school?" Surely if national rankings were based on the overall academic, athletic, and social experience of young adults, County High would find its name at the TOP of the list. In my mind, the perfect kind of high school experience takes place here at County High. Looking back on the past four years, I have done my fair share of complaining, but I wouldn't have wanted to complain about anything else with anyone else. We've pleaded with teachers and staff to let us into football games, basketball games, and school dances without our school ID's, simply because we didn't feel like carrying them. We've managed to sneak water bottles, milk shakes, and French fries out of the cafeteria, while also managing to get caught every now and then. We've argued that our pink and tan polos actually resemble shades of orange and white, and when it came to a senior class trip, we simply couldn't bear 180 more days without one. Over the past four years, I hope you have tried to find the best in every situation and look for the best in every person. To me, County High has been the greatest place to experience high school, and you, my classmates, my friends, my best friends, you have made the past four years enjoyable and survivable. I honestly couldn't have asked for a more intelligent, more talented, and more promising group of people to spend four entire years of my life with. Where else can you sign out of school early with 30 classmates simply to spend a sunny afternoon on the beach? Where else is there a basketball-player who refers to himself as "Big Mac" and a Prom Queen who answers to "Fatty McFat-Fat?