English class Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 3

English class - Essay Example Assassinations regularly feature in the game. Fire fighting and flying helicopters are simulated. In the later releases, especially after the grand theft auto 2, players are forced to overcome extreme and unfortunate events like being left for the dead and betrayal. This becomes a motivation for advancing through the criminal ladder in the game leading to the triumph of the character by the end of the story line (Bogenn 79). The game also involves driving taxis and carjacking. The grand theft auto III makes violence to be more realistic and practical to children. The players have opportunities to pay for prostitution services with the aim of recovering health. Then the players can kill to recover the money. The game is seen to be moving from the traditional heroic roles offered by the games to illegal activities. The players are forced to commit a wide variety of crimes (Kutner and Olson 41). The grand theft auto displays a notion where the player only faces short term consequences. In the game, the players end up killing policemen and soldiers. Grand theft auto is said to have controversial content especially with regard to children. The episodes of the game are said to have a grave impact of the children’s behavior. The video game is linked to aggression and addiction to vices and violence. A study in 2001 showed that contents of grand theft auto and similar games lead to increased aggression less pro-social behavior among children (Bogenn 79). The violence practiced in the games makes children be comfortable with antisocial behavior like ignoring the rights of others. Grand theft auto is also said to have positive impacts on children. It’s been argued that it trains children to be team players, competitive and that the video characters are not reflected in the real life situation. Grand theft auto leads to both long term and short term aggressive and violent behavior (Kutner and Olson 41). The video game depicts women as sex objects

Jury Nullification Paper Essay Example for Free

Jury Nullification Paper Essay Jury nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically criminals guilty, but who do not deserve punishment. It occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judges instructions as to the law. A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law does not belong only to the particular case before it. If a pattern of acquittals, however, develops in response to repeated attempts to prosecute a statutory offense, it can have the de facto effect of invalidating the statute. A pattern of jury nullification may indicate public opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment. In the past, it was feared that may unduly influence a judge alone or a panel of public officials to follow established legal practice, even if such practice had drifted from its origins. In most modern Western legal systems, however, often instruct juries only serve as finders of facts, whose role is to determine the veracity of the evidence, and the weight accorded to evidence, to implement these tests the law and reach a verdict, but not decide what the law is . Jury Nullification â€Å"It is not only the juror’s right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.† This is what John Adams said of jury nullification. John Jay, who was the first justice of the Supreme Court said, â€Å"The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.† So what is jury nullification and how does it influence courtroom proceedings and judicial practices? The definition of jury nullification according to thefreedictionary.com website jury nullification is defined as a sanctioned doctrine wherein members of a  jury disregard either the evidence presented or the instructions of the judge in order to reach a verdict based upon their own consciences. It espouses the concept that jurors should be the judges of both law and fact. The doctrine of jury nullification is based one important things, one that a juror can never be punished for the verdict they bring back to the judge, and second that a defendant cannot ever be retried once the jury has returned to the courtroom with a not guilty verdict. The first case of jury nullification in British law dates back to 1670 in trial of William Mead and William Penn, (William Penn would later go on to be the founder of the Province of Pennsylvania) these two men were charged in England for unlawful assembly, which was a law that was aimed at preventing different religious groups that were not noticed by the crown from worshipping. Both of these men were clearly guilty of breaking the law according to British law and the judge presiding over the case demanded that the jury find William Mean and William Penn guilty, but the jury refused to find these two men guilty because they felt that the law itself Jury Nullification was unjust. The judge continued to insist that the jury find these two men guilty, and the jury repeatedly refused, the judge became so infuriated with the jurors that he threw the jurors in prison. The highest court in England ordered that the jurors be released and established into common law the integrity of jurors in criminal cases. In America the Founding Fathers recognized the relevance of letting jurors determine not only the guilt or innocence of the person on trial, but the fairness of the law in which the person is charged with breaking. In more recent cases, in California a jury convicted Ed Rosenthal in two-thousand three of growing marijuana which was a violation of federal law. During the case the jury did not know and was never allowed to hear that not only was Ed Rosenthal growing medical marijuana for medical patients, but he was growing and harvesting the marijuana for the city of Oakland, California. When the trial ended and the jury found out the true facts of the case they were outraged and the foreman of the jury was quoted in the New York Times as saying â€Å"it is the most horrible mistake I have ever made in my entire life.† Should Ed Rosenthal b een convicted of growing marijuana? I feel that he should not have been convicted and the jury had a right to know the truth about who Ed Rosenthal was growing the marijuana for and for who it was being provided to. Another case would be that of Richard  Pen of Florida, who is serving a twenty-five year prison sentence in Florida for distribution of a controlled substance. Richard Pen was a forty-six year old paraplegic man who became a paraplegic after being involved in a very serious car accident that badly damaged his back, and after having back surgery that did not go as planned, Richard Pen was left in indescribable amounts of pain. Richard Pen realized that Jury Nullification. He could relieve his pain by taking large amounts of opiate painkillers, but the amount of medication his doctor had prescribed him was not enough, and they could not prescribe him anymore because it would exceed the amount of what his doctor could legally prescribe. Richard Paey felt that he had no choice but to obtain the medication illegally and he began photocopying the prescription and used them to get his medication from local pharmacies. Richard Paey was arrested and was charged with distribution of a controlled substance, but he never sold the medication, and never gave the medication away, he only used the medication for himself so that he could live somewhat of a normal existence and be free from the excruciating pain that he was in. But once again because of the way the laws are written the jury had no choice but to return to the court with a guilty verdict. In these two cases, I do feel that they did break the law, but should they have been found guilty of the charges against them? I do not feel that they should, and if the jurors were allowed to hear the truth about these cases these two men, Ed Rosenthal, and Richard Paey would not be serving time in prison, and since the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors on the federal level can continue to arrest and charge people who use medical marijuana, you should expect to see more and more cases like this crowding up our courtrooms. You will probably see more and more cases such as Richard Paey, and other patients like him who are just trying to manage their pain and try to live somewhat of a normal life crowding up our courtrooms as well. So what can us as citizens do to undo the injustice of the Richard Paey’s and the Ed Rosenthal’s? Well unless you are serving on a jury panel, nothing, but if you happen to get a jury Jury Nullification Summons in the mail, do not ignore it as I have done many, many times before although I did have valid reasons for not being able to serve as a juror, I had a disabled parent and I was his sole caregiver, instead send back the summons stating that you are available to serve as a juror, and who knows you might be able to undo some  of the injustices of the judicial system, and keep an innocent person from serving a lengthy prison sentence. References http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/jury+nullification http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163877,00.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/emal1.1.1.html

Management accounting information and criteria

Management accounting information and criteria Management accounting information should comply with a number of criteria including verifiability, timeliness, comparability, reliability, understandability and relevance if it is to be useful in planning, control, and decision-making. Management accounting information should comply with a various number of criteria including verifiability, objectivity, timeliness, comparability, reliability, understandability and relevance if it is to be useful in planning, control and decision-making. Shall discuss the criteria to serve its natural purposes, which is for planning, control and decision- making. The first criteria of management accounting information are verifiability .Verifiability means observable to outsiders, in the context of a model of information. It refers to the ability of accountants to ensure that accounting information is what it purports to be. It also means that the selected method of measurement has been used without error or bias. The outsiders cannot see them and so references to those variables in a contract between the two parties cannot be enforced by outside authorities. An example of verifiability is that of two accountants looking at the same information like inventory valuation and coming to similar conclusions. Objectivity is also one of the criteria that useful in planning and making decision. Accountant reliance on verifiable evidence such as delivery notes, invoice, orders, physical counts or paper in the measurement of financial result. Objectivity makes it possible to compare financial statements of different firms with an assurance of reliability and uniformity. For instance, management accountant should not alter or change when provide the information to top level managers so that the manager can make the accurate decision without being influenced. Besides that, timeliness is one of the important parts for management may need to balance the relative merits of timely reporting and the provision of reliable information. More accurate information may take longer to produce. Therefore, to provide information on a timely basis it may often be necessary to report before all aspects of ma transaction or other event are known thus impairing reliability. For example, a company may test-market a potential new product in a particular city. However, a long wait for the accurate marketing report may unduly delay managements decision to launch the new product nationally and the information will be of no avail to the decision making process. Thus, the managerial accountants primary role in the decision-making process which is decide what information is relevant to each decision problem and provide accurate and timely data, keeping in mind the proper balance these often-conflicting criteria. The next criteria will be comparability. Comparability helps to make compare the financial statements of an entity through time in order to identify trends in its financial position and performance. Besides that, it also helps to compare the financial statements of different entities in order to evaluate their relative financial position, performance and changes in financial position. Hence, the measurement and display of the financial effect of like transaction and other events must be carried out in a consistent way throughout an entity and over time for that entity and in a consistent way for different entities. By giving an example, management accountant prepare the accountant information is a consistent way for every year, it is much easier for company to make comparison with the past accounting information or related entities. Next, reliability is the quality of information that allows those who use it to depend on it with confidence. The reliability of an item is the probability that the item will perform a specified function under specified operational and environmental conditions, at and throughout a specified time.   The best way to specify the reliability of an item depends upon how the item is expected to function. Here, our focus among the above four demand times is on the interval and continuous time demand cases. In the interval case, we are concerned with mission reliability or simply reliability. This is defined as the probability that an item will operate without failure throughout a specified interval. For example, where we are scheduling the next weeks production, the equipment reliability or probability that the equipment will operate throughout the week is our concern. However, if we want to evaluate the performance of a piece of equipment with a continuous demand, for instance, within th e last two years, the focus should be on the expected mean time between the failures events that cause the equipment to go down. In this case we may also focus on the availability of the equipment, which can be defined as the fraction of time that the equipment was actually operating. The next criterion is understandability. Understandability is assumed users to have a reasonable knowledge of business and economic activities and accounting and a willingness to know more the information with reasonable diligence. Information about complex matters that should be included in the financial statements because of its relevance to the economic decision making needs of users should not be excluded merely on the grounds that it may be too difficult for certain users to understand. For the example, management accountant should prepare the accounting information or summarize of the report and analysis that easily understood to the decision maker in order to let them easy to make final decision. Lastly, relevance is also one of the important parts in planning, control and decision-making. To be useful, information must be relevant to the decision-making needs of users. Information has the quality of relevance when it influences the economic decision of users by helping them evaluate past, present or future events or confirming, or correcting there past evaluations. Different decisions typically will require different data. The primary theme of this chapter is how to decide what information is relevant to various common decision problems. For example, an analysis on a project should not have any information on indirect costs because it is not relevant for making decision of the project and should include any prime cost because it is relevant cast for the decision-making. Give a brief explanation of how the criteria detailed in (a) might be conflict with each other, giving example to illustrate where such conflict might arise. Each criteria of management accounting information is to satisfy the management needing for information useful for planning, controlling and decision making. However, these criteria also face conflict amongst one another. Conflict simply refers to the incompatibility or interference of ones idea, event, or activity with another. In this case, the conflict between criteria will happen when satisfying a criterion affects another criterion being difficult to fulfil as they are in collision with each other. Accounting information should be useful for decision-making, must have relevance and reliability of these two main qualitative characteristics. However, these qualities often can conflict, requiring a trade-off between various degrees of relevance and reliability. A forecast of a financial variable may possess a high degree of relevance to investors and creditors. However, a forecast necessarily contains subjectivity in the estimation of future events. Therefore, because of a low degree of reliability, generally accepted accounting principles do not require companies to provide forecasts of any financial variables. For examples, accounting information requirements associated with the timeliness, predictive value and feedback value, while the predictive value of accounting information may be due to a lack of verification, so that the reliability of damage; on the contrary, if always insisted truthfully, then wait until the conditions are ripe when the accounting information may have lost its predictive value. As the reliability and relevance cannot have both, one can only depending on the degree of emphasis by choosing one of the two, leading to a different accounting treatment. One of the most typical is the right choice of accounting measurement attributes. Besides that, another conflict can be a result of the criteria of Timeless and verifiability. Information is useful when it is timely. To be timely, the information must be available when needed to define problem or to be begin to identify possible solutions. Those criteria might conflict with verifiability. It is because when needed verifiability information, it may take time to calculate or to get it after production process is end. Verifiability is the useful information when it is accurate. Before relying on information to make decisions, it is important to ensure that the information is correct. For example, a production manager has to decide the actual amount of pineapple to be used in produce of 10000 units of pineapple juices. But, because of the time given is limited, he has to prepared the report to top management by forecast the amount of pineapple will be used. Although he is meet the criteria of timeliness, he is might not meet the criteria of verifiable. He do not used the actual amount of pineapple will be used. It is because there are some problems may occur during the production process: cost of pineapples is lower or others factors. When the production is end, he will able to know the actual amount of pineapple will be used. So, the criteria timeliness is conflict with the criteria verifiability. Another conflict is between timeliness and reliability of information. Information is said to be reliable when they incorporate all aspects of a transaction as well as other events in order to facilitate users in deciding on any issue regarding the latter. However, most of the times in providing timely reporting, those aforesaid transactions or events are never taken into account as it occurs after the report is prepared and thus impairing reliability. In interest of timeliness, the reliability of the information is sacrificed, every loss of reliability diminishes the usefulness of information and as time pass, and either the reliability of the information drops or increase accordingly. For example, the material supplier decides to supply only one of the Material A. Company Y is very interested and is capable to buy the Material A. The supplier is interested on selling the Material A to Company Y, but there is no contract signed between them. As time passes, the supplier received an offer from Company Zs, with a higher price and shorter time compared to Company Y. Therefore, Material A is selling to Company Z and Y loses the Material A. Company Y is reliable on material supplier to get the Material A yet the supplier needed to sell the Material A in a shorter time to get the profit. So, supplier decides to sell it to Company Z. Thus, the criterion of timeliness is conflict with criteria of reliability. Question: 2 (Information for decision-making) The overriding feature of information for decision-making is that it should be relevant for the decision being taken. However, decision-making varies considerably at different levels within an organization, thus posing particular difficulties for the management accountant. Describe the characteristics of decision-making at different levels within an organization. Decision making is intertwined with the other functions, such as planning, coordinating and controlling. Decisions are made in order to change the companys current status to a more desirable state of affairs. Therefore, relevant information needs to supply by the Management Accountant to top management to make decision. In an organization, different levels of management are making different types of decision. This can be showed at the figure below. Figure 1: Levels of decision making Top level managers, or strategic managers, are also called senior management and executives, are individuals at the top one or two levels in an organization. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operational Officer (COO), Chief Informational Officer (CIO), President, Vice President, Chairman and Board of Directors are examples of top level managers. They have the long-term vision for the company. They are not involved in day-to-day tasks need to possess conceptual skill so as to set the goals for the organization as a whole. For example, Jerry Yang, the former chief executive of YAHOO!, was criticized when a $44.6 billion acquisition bid from Microsoft failed under his watch. They frame the organizational policy. They are also responsible for mobilization of resources. They generally make large budgetary decisions for the company and are responsible to the shareholders and the general public. The success or failure of the organization rests on the s houlders of the top level management. Middle level managers, or middle managers, are those in the levels below top managers. Middle managers job titles include General Manager (GM), Plant Manager, Regional manager and Divisional manager. Middle level managers are responsible for carrying out the goals set out by top management with setting goals for their departments and other business units. Tactical decisions, the medium term decisions about how to implement strategy, are delegated to middle managers. Middle management decisions might include marketing a new product, communicating with and managing lower management and determining what issues need to be addressed with top level managers. Each individual middle management department develops a strategy to meet its inner departmental goals. Lastly, lower level management, which included office managers, shift supervisor, department manager, foreperson, crew leader and store manager, are responsible for the daily management of line workers the employees who actually produce the product or offer the service. Although first line manager typically do not set goals for the organization, they have a very strong influence on the company. These are the managers that most employees interact with on a daily basis. Operational decisions, short term decision or also called administrative decisions about how to implement the tactics affect daily tasks and generally handled by lower level managers. Supervisors or team leaders may decide employee related issues, such as pay rates, training, evaluations and disciplining or terminating employees. For example, supervisor may decide to reward the most productive employee with an employee of the month award, or offer incentives such as gift certificates. Explain how the management accountant must tailor the information provided for the various levels. Nowadays, management accountant is provides the information to users who are part of the organization in various level. But different level management has different information needed. Therefore, management accountant must tailor the information for them. First, before management accountant provide any information, he / she must clear with the company vision as the middle and bottom management of organization. Usually the top management is responsible for the long term strategic plans with the strategic decisions for the next 5 years to 10 years. Therefore, top management will create a mission, which is more specific goal that unifies company wide efforts. So, management accountant should prepare budgets for top management accountant to decide which projects have to undertaken to achieve the companys goals. Budget is a strategic plan that details the action that must be taken during the following year. It also pinpoint the responsibility of achieving the budgets to respective managers inline the company policies. For example, management accountant prepare the imposed budgets to top management before imposed to middle management to achieve targets. In middle management, they are responsible for developing and carrying the tactical plans to accomplish the organizations mission. Tactical plans specify how company will use resource, budgets and people to achieve company goals within its mission. In this level, management accountant will use various methods to decide the profit with minimum production costs. Profit volume analysis is one of the methods to calculate changes in cost and sales in determine the profit. Management accountant will calculate breakeven point where the level of sales of company needs to achieve at zero profit. After that, management accountant also prepared the report on scare resources which the supply of resources is limited by define the limit factor. Then, management accountant will produce the product that give higher contribution per limiting factor and take considerations of qualitative factors before final decisions is made. Final decisions is means whether to make or to buy the decision. It is situ ation where an organization is given a choice to produce by own resources or pay other organization to make the product. After management accountant prepare the information in form of cost volume profit, limiting factors analysis and decisions about activities either to buy or to make, middle management have to decide, carrying the tactical plans and delegating the responsibility of jobs to the operational management. Lower lever management is responsibility to carrying the operational plans where is related to day to day plans in producing products or services. For example, management accountant will determine the economic order quantity for lower management to know the amount of inventory they should reorder order to minimize ordering cost and holding costs. Therefore, lower level management will order the maximum order. There is the information that will be management accountant provided to various levels in order to suit various levels needs. (c)Give an example of a typical management decision, state at which level this would normally be taken and what specific information shoud be supplied to the decision maker. A typical management decision is that the pricing which to determine how much the customer need to pay and the seller receives in exchange for a product. To get the firms sales objective need to set for the prices. In determining the firms revenue is that the managers pricing decision is extremely important .The selling price times the number of units sold will know how much is the revenue gain. The pricing decision need to be determine by the manager, then provide a simple and useful pricing structure taking into consideration all of your business costs. Continue with choose one of the suitable pricing strategy so that can establish a market presence and last fine tune and adapt the general pricing policy in response to trends, in the market place the manager should also practices new innovative strategies to help solidify the competitive position. Companies that set prices to maximize the profits want to set the selling price to sell the number units that will generate the highest possible total profits. If a company sets prices too low, it will probably sell many units but may miss out additional profits on each unit (and even lose money on each exchange). If company sets prices too high , it will make a large profits but will sell fewer units. Again the companies will losses money, and it also will leave with excess inventory. If the managers decide to maximize the profit, Firstly, the middle managers who responsible to carry out the goals that set by the top management will held this tactical decision which how to held this pricing decision. They need to know the price setting tools to measure the potential impact which is to count out the cost and how much need to charge for the selling price .Before deciding on final prices, middle managers can use cost oriented pricing and breakeven analysis to determine how much sales volume the company needs to start making profit and to measure the potential impact. A music store manager would price the CDs by calculating the cost of making them available to shoppers. How much that the manager need to charge for the product is need to depends on how much the company pay for the inventory and the supplier. They also need to count for the operating cost , and how much is the company profits goal plus the company price will affect by the competitive pressures, industry standards and the perceived value of your product or the services in the eyes of the company customer. Thus, price would include the costs of store rent, employee wages, utilities, insurance, and the CD manufacturers price. If the manufacture price is RM 8 if the manager decided to sell it for RM 8 then will not get any profit. So, the manager need to decide to sell for higher then rm8 so that can earn profit. To be profitable, the manager must charge enough to cover the product and other cost. These factors determine the mark up. So, the manager should charge a reasonable markup of RM 7 over the purchase cost means at RM15 selling price. The markup percentage is 46.7 because RM 7 divided by RM15 times 100% equal 46.7%. If the markup is RM 8, so the selling price is RM16. The manager need to determine how much to sell to break even. Knowing that the variable cost is RM 8 means that the company is depending on how many CDs are sold. Say that fixed cost for keeping the company open for one year is RM 100000(no matter how many CDs are sold) The number that the managers need to sell is RM 15 each, the manager need to sell it in the breakeven point which is 14286 CDs. Breakeven point equal RM100, 000 divided by RM15 minus RM 8 equal 14286 CDs. If the company sells less then 14286 units then their company will lose money. If sell more then 14826 units then will earn profit. Assume that all the cost and variable cost is the same so the manager need to determine how much the price need to charge to the product and how much units they need to sell so that to maximize th e profit. As a conclusion, the decision of the manager is very important to the company because it will affect the whole company whether it will earn profit or loss in the short run or even in the long run.

The Spread of Television in 1950s, in America Essay -- Television

The ‘Golden Age of Television’ is what many refer to as the period between the 1950s and 60s when the television began to establish itself as a prevalent medium in the United States. In 1947, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and the Du Mont Network were the four main television networks that ran stations with regular programming taking place. (Television, 2003) While regular television programming was a new innovation, the television itself had been commercially available for over twenty years prior to the 50s. It was conceived by many worldly innovators and went through several testing stages before it was finally completed in the late twenties. The three main innovators were Niplow - who first developed a rotating disk with small holes arranged in a spiral pattern in 1884, Zworykin - who developed the Iconoscope which could scan pictures and break them into electronic signals (a primi tive form of the Cathode Ray Tube) in 1923, and lastly Fansworth - who demonstrated for the first time that it was possible to transmit an electrical image in 1927. (Rollo, 2011) However, one of the many reasons why this medium was successful in the 50s was due to the fact that it became more accessible to the public. Television sets were more affordable to middle class citizens which created further interest in the new technology. Through an historical account of the medium, the spread of television across America throughout this particular decade will be examined. Firstly, for the purposes of illustrating the cultural context of this decade, I will refer to Lynn Spigel’s writing entitled â€Å"Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburb†. After WWII... ...t has not stopped television from being one of the most successful mediums for the dissemination of information. Works Cited Paul S. Boyer. "Television." The Oxford Companion to United States History. 2001. Retrieved November 24, 2011 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-Television.html Bretz, Rudy , 1957 â€Å"Video Tape: A TV Revolution† The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television , Vol. 11, No. 4 pp. 399-415 Published by: University of California Press Article Stable URL: www.jstor.org/stable/1210000 Ganzel, Bill. (2007). Television during the 1950s and 60s. Retrieved from http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/life_17.html Rollo, Mike. 2011  ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å"Video History† Film/Video I Lecture Notes Spigel, Lynn. 2001 Welcome to the dreamhouse : popular media and postwar suburbs / Lynn Spigel Duke University Press, Durham, N.C. :

World War II :: World War 2 Two

World War 11 When the World War I broke out in 1914, with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. America’s first reaction was to stay out to conflict. President Wilson, in his speech to the Congress on August 19, 1914 said: "Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action." All American leaders favored neutrality. While the entire European continent was divided into two camps: Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey as Central Powers were pitted against the Allied powers: Serbia, Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and Russia. As the war progressed, American public sympathies veered to the Allied side. Under the leadership of J.P. Morgan and Company many banking firms gave huge loans to the Allied powers. By international rules the neutral country could trade with any other neutral nation and also with other ’belligerent’ countries not facing a blockade. The Americans wished to continue trade with both belligerent sides. In the initial stages of the war the British blockade of Germany created problems for the U.S. The British tried to stop all trade between Germany and the rest of the world. They extended their blockade by controlling imports to other neutral countries like Holland, Denmark and Sweden with are geographically close to Germany The Americans protested against the violation of neutral rights though Wilson never put undue pressure on England as no U.S. citizen lost his life due to the blockade. Moreover, all cargo seized was paid for at war. It was the German use of submarines in the war that brought the U.S. in direct confrontation with Germany. The German submarines fired indiscriminately at neutral ships too. The last straw was when the British passenger liner ’Lusitania’ was sunk by German submarines on May 7. It resulted in the loss of 1,200 lives which included 128 Americans. The American public was outraged. President Wilson immediately demanded compensation from Germany in a series of notes to Berlin. The tone of these notes was very crisp and harsh. Ten months after the incident, Germany apologized for the sinking and offered a compensation for the loss. But the U.S. was not satisfied. Wilson wanted to make Germany stop the use of submarines in the war.

Usefulness Of Different Sociological Approaches To Suicide

Durkheim wrote in the 1890s and was one of the first sociologists right at the forefront of establishing and defining sociology as a scientific discipline. Durkheim argued that it was not only possible to apply scientific principles to social phenomena but that it was essential to do so in order to produce useful sociology. His 1897 book suicide: a study in sociology uses his scientific methods to explore suicide. Durkheim chooses suicide deliberately, because as the most individual, private and psychologically driven act it was considered by most not to be a social phenomenon.If sociology could identify social factors and causes of suicide, this would demonstrate the power and impact of society on individual behaviour. So in Durkheim’s view he believes our behaviour is caused by social facts and they are said to be external from the individual, constrain individuals and be greater than the individuals. After Durkheim’s analysis of official statistics on suicide it reve aled some social groups are more likely to commit suicide than others. For Durkheim, the social patterns of suicide he discovered is not a random individual act but as stated by Luke’s social factors play a key role.Durkheim’s work showed a correlation between suicide and social facts like suicide rates were higher in predominantly protestant countries than in catholic ones, Jews were the religious group with the lowest suicide rate, married people were less likely to commit suicide and those with higher education had a higher suicide rate. Durkheim said different forms of suicide related to how much integration and regulation there was in society and this would provide us with a fourfold typology. The term social integration means socialisation into the norms, values and lifestyles of social groups and society.Regulation meaning the control that society and social groups has over an individual’s behaviour. With these two factors Durkheim brings upon egoistic su icide not enough integration. The individual isn’t successfully integrated into groups or society, anomic not enough regulation society has insufficient control over individuals, altruistic too much integration an over integrated individual sacrifices their life for the group and fatalistic too much regulation the individual is too highly controlled by society. Durkheim’s work can also be applied into type of society.As Durkheim states modern societies and traditional society differ from one and other in their levels of integration and regulation. Durkheim discovers that modern industrial societies have lower levels of integration due to lack of freedom this weakens bonds and give rise to egoistic suicide. Whilst, traditional pre-industrial societies have higher levels of integration as the group is more important than the individual and this gives rise to altruistic suicide. Durkheim has been criticised by other positivist sociologist.Halbwachs largely supported Durkh eim’s conclusion but pointed out that the impact of rural versus urban lifestyles on suicide rates hadn’t been considered. Also, Gibbs and Martin argued that Durkheim hadn’t used vigorous enough scientific methods even though he’d stressed how important they were. The key concepts of integration and regulation weren’t defined closely enough to be measured statistically. Gibbs and Martin query how anyone can know how anyone can know what â€Å"normal† levels of integration and regulation are.Interpretivist sociologists have devised alternative theories of suicide they say social reality is not a series of social facts for sociologists to discover, but a series of different meanings and interpretations that each person brings to and takes from each situation. Durkheim’s work is fatally flawed from this perspective because he relies on the unquestioning use of official statistics. According to interpretivists, statistics are not fact the y are a social construction based on the definition of the people who compile them.Douglas takes an Interactionist approach to suicide and he is interested in the meaning that suicide has for the deceased, and the way that coroners label death as suicides. He criticises Durkheim’s study of suicide on two main grounds. One of them being the use of suicide statistics because the decision to classify death as a suicide is taken by a coroner and this may produce bias in verdicts reached. So Douglas feels these are the patterns Durkheim found and that well integrated have friends and relatives who may deny death and this explains their low level of suicide.So Durkheim indicates that suicide verdicts and statistics are based on interactions and negotiations between those involved like friends, doctors and police as they may affect death being labelled as a suicide, rather than it actually being one. That’s why people feel integration plays no dividends. Douglas second point criticises Durkheim for ignoring the meanings of the act for those who kill themselves and for assuming that suicide has a fixed or constant meaning.Douglas backs this up as he notes the cultural differences by Japanese samurai warrior who kill themselves because they have been dishonoured by western society. Douglas also states that we need to categorise suicides according to their social meanings because the triggers and response to suicide are different in different cultures. These social meanings consist of transformation of the soul, transformation of the self, achieving sympathy and achieving revenge.Douglas can be criticised, as he is inconsistent, sometimes suggesting that official statistics are merely the product of coroner’s opinions. At other times, he claims we really can discover the cause of suicide-yet how can we, if we can never know whether a death was a suicide and all we have is coroners opinions? Douglas also produces a classification of suicide based on the supposed meanings for the actors. However, there is no reason to believe that sociologists are any better than coroners at interpreting dead person’s meanings.

Family: Television and Shooting Dad Essay

Family, they are there for you no matter what. They love you no matter what your views, but is there anything that is more important then family? In the two essays ; Shooting Dad and TV: The Plug-In Drug, both show what being a family is like for different people. Each essay shows pathos, ethos, and cause and effect in both different and similar ways. TV: The Plug-In Drug, by Marie Winn, is about televisions â€Å"taking over† quality family time. Winn uses pathos by talking to different types of people who come from different types of families; this way you get to hear from other people how the television is taking away from precious memory making. Trying to touch each of our emotional sides, although you might not start crying, Winn is able to talk to people and get information about families and the time they spend with each other versus the time in front of the television. Hear what this woman had to say about the television: â€Å"We were in the midst of a full-scale War. Every day was a new battle and every program was major skirmish†¦We have agreed on 2? hours of TV a day (with dinner gobbled up in between) and two half-hour shows between 7 and 8:30 which enables the grown-ups to eat in peace†¦Ã¢â‚¬  How many of us actually do this? Just like in Shooting Dad, by Sarah Vowell, average people try to use something else to cover up the feelings they have about something. Although Vowell shows a more clear side to pathos she does not get into as much detail, nor is her essay based on facts, which people tend to believe or rely on more then stories. Vowell uses a childhood story to explain to us how never giving interest to something can lead to being over-looked by the people you care about. One line in this essay that shows a lot of emotion is: â€Å"My dad says that when he dies he wants my mom, sister, and me to drag the cannon to the top of the Gravellies on opening day of hunting season. Looking off at Sphinx Mountain put his ashes in a little paper bag, then place the bag in the cannon. Aim the cannon high into the sky, making sure he does not take anyone else with him, just so he can take his last hunting trip on opening morning. Not only would this be hard for the family to hear their father say, it would also be hard to accomplish. This is very emotional and to some of us it is also quite personal. When it comes to being personal, Winn has an amazing way of sharing each comment with us. The one that touched me the most was from a woman who lived not far from here in Chicago, she said: â€Å"As a child I had millions of relatives around- my parents both come from relatively large families. My father had nine brothers and sister. And so every holiday there was this great swoop-down of aunts, uncles, and millions of cousins. I just remember how wonderful it used to be. The cousins would come and everyone would play and ultimately, after dinner, all the women would be in the front of the house, drinking coffee and talking, all the men would be in the back of the house, drinking and smoking, and all the kids would be all over the place, playing hide and seek. Christmas time was particularly nice because everyone always brought all their toys and games. Our house had a couple of rooms with go-through closets, so there were always kids running in a great circle route. I remember it was just wonderful. And then all the sudden one year I remember becoming suddenly aware of how different everything had become. The kids were no longer playing Monopoly or Clue or the other games we used to play together. It was because we had a television set which had been turned on for a football fame. All of that socializing that had gone on preciously had ended. Now everyone was sitting in front of the television set, on a holiday, at a family party! I remember being stunned by how awful that was. Somehow the television had become more attractive. † Do you remember those Christmases? Not until I read this essay did I clearly understand how the television is overpowering the family time we spend together now. The way Winn is able to use a story that anyone can relate to is so awesome and it makes the essay even more personal. Shooting Dad on the other hand is not people’s comments or stories, it is like the authors biography. Shooting Dad tells about Vowell and her father, how they fight all the time and rarely agree on anything. The reason I find this part so personal is my dad and I disagree on a lot and rarely agree on anything just like in the story. Sarah Vowell is able to take a personal story and easily make the reader feel like they are in her shoes. While both TV: The Plug-In Drug and Shooting Dad show pathos and ethos in similar and different ways, each one shows cause and effect the same. TV: The Plug-In Drug shows that is you watch television all the time you have no time for family. It also shows that television can take away from something or someone really special. Shooting Dad shows a similar scene although it has nothing to do with a television it still shows how something can â€Å"get in the way† of being a family. The father in this story is all about ammunition, but the daughter could care less; she would rather read a book or make a science project. When the daughter showed interest in her fathers completion of a cannon, she was amazed and they went out together to shoot it. Never would this have happened if the daughter did not try. Shooting Dad and TV: The Plug-In Drug both tell a story that liking something so unimportant so much that is takes away from what really matters. Shooting Dad and TV: The Plug-In Drug are two similar stories, told in different ways. Vowell, author of Shooting Dad, tries to use more of a personal story to help the reader better understand how average Americans let insignificant things get in the way of a family. TV: The Plug-In Drug on the other hand uses facts and opinion both to help the reader. In using other people’s opinions, the author, Marie Winn, is able to take different stories and create a story of her own that expresses everything and more about a television overpowering a families time spent together. So what matters to you? Is it your television, latest invention, new CD, what means so much to you that your family cannot come first? If you say â€Å"family means more to me than anything† or â€Å" my family always comes first,† remember the last time you were watching television or reading a book and someone called you name. Your response was probably, â€Å" Hang on just a minute, wait until the commercial comes on,† like the average American, we all tend to put something off and tell the person bugging us during our favorite television show to wait, like what they had to say was not important. Before you finish reading this essay, I am going to ask you one more time: Is there anything more important than family?