To Kill a Mockingbird: An Analysis of Discrimination Essay -- Kill Moc

To Kill a Mockingbird: An Analysis of Discrimination The most important theme of the 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird is author Harper Lee’s tenacious exploration of the moral nature of people. Lee tenaciously explores the moral nature of human beings, especially the struggle in every human soul between discrimination and tolerance. The novel is very effective in not only revealing prejudice, but in examining the nature of prejudice, how it works, and its consequences. One of the ways it accomplishes this is by dramatizing the main characters’, Scout and Jem’s, maturing transition from a perspective of childhood innocence. Initially, because they have never seen or experienced evil themselves, they assume that all people are good by nature and tolerant of others. It is not until they see things from a more realistic adult perspective that they are able to confront evil, as well as prejudice, and incorporate it into their understanding of the world (Castleman). As a result of this skillful literary portrayal by Harper Lee of the psychological transition from innocence to experience to realization, To Kill a Mockingbird succeeds admirably in portraying the very real threat that hatred, prejudice, and ignorance have always posed to the innocent. Simple, trusting, good-hearted characters such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are tragically unprepared. They are ill-equipped emotionally and psychologically to deal with the unexpected depths of the prejudice they encounter -- and as a result, they are destroyed. Even Jem is victimized to a certain extent by his discovery of the evil of prejudice and its hidden power over so many people during and after the controversial trial (Bergman and ... ... to view the world from his perspective ensures that she will not become jaded as she loses her innocence. In conclusion, in To Kill a Mockingbird, author Harper Lee tenaciously explores the moral nature of human beings, especially the struggle in every human soul between discrimination and tolerance. The novel is very effective in not only revealing prejudice, but in examining the nature of prejudice, how it works, and its consequences. Bibliography Bergman, Paul, and Asimow, Michael. Reel Justice. New York: Andrews and McMeel, 1996. Castleman, Tamara. Cliffsnotes’ Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Cliffsnotes, 2000. Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Harper Collins, 1999. To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. Perf. Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Crahan Denton, Philip Alford. Universal-International, 1962.

Google’s Strategy in 2010 Essay

What is Google’s business model? The answer is complex because it makes up of lots of different factors. The top 10 principles of Google’s corporate philosophy is what keeps them doing what they do best. (Gamble, 2010, pg. C-175). 1.Focus on the user and all else will follow. 2.It’s best to do one thing really, really well. 3.Fast is better than slow. 4.Democracy on the web works. 5.You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer. 6.You can make money without doing evil. 7.There’s always more information out there. 8.The need for information crosses all borders. 9.You can be serious without a suit. 10.Great just isn’t good enough. Their mission statement is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. (www.google.com). These 10 principles have helped them achieve their goal within their mission statement. Google has kept it simple but efficient. These 10 principles have guided them from the beginning and it has work. They don’t need to fix something that is not broken. Examine the financial reports in the case to determine the company’s profitability, liquidity, leverage and activity ratios. Based on these ratios what is your assessment of the company’s performance? Justify your answer? Profitability ratios are measures of performance that indicate what the firm is earning on its sales or assets or equity. There are the operating profit margin, net profit margin, return on total assets, return on equity, and basic earning power ratios. (Mayo, 2007). Operating profit margin = Earnings before interest and taxes/Sales 8,381,189/23,650,563 = 35.4% Net profit margin = Earnings after interest and taxes/Sales 6,520,448/23,650,563 = 27.5% Return on total assets = Earnings after interest and taxes/Total assets 6,520,448/40,496,778 = 16.1% Return on equity = Earnings after interest and taxes/Equity 6,520,448/36,004,224 = 18.1% Basic earning power = earnings before interest and taxes/Total assets 8,381,189/40,496,778 = 20.6% Leverage ratios measure the firm’s use of debt financing. There are two ratios; debt/net worth ratio and debt ratio. (Mayo, 2007). Debt/net worth ratio = Debt/Equity 4,492,554/36,004,224 = 12.4% Debt ratio = Debt/Total assets 4,492,554/40,496,778 = 11.0% Activity ratios measure how rapidly the firm is turning its assets into cash. The two activity ratios are inventory turnover and receivables turnover. Google does not have any inventory so there is no inventory turnover. (Mayo, 2007). Receivables turnover = Annual sales/Accounts receivable 23,650,563/3,178,471 = 7.4% Liquidity ratios measure the ease of which assets may be converted into cash without loss. There are two liquidity ratios; quick and current ratio. (Mayo, 2007). Quick ratio = Current assets – Inventory/Current liabilities 29,166,958-0/2,747,467 = 10.6% Current ratio = Current assets/current liabilities 29,166,958/2,747,467 = 10.6% Since Google does not have any inventory, the quick ratio and current ratio is the same. This shows that Google does have more assets than current liabilities. Overall, Google is doing extremely well all over the board. Their debt ratio is low sitting at 11 percent. They paid their bills on time because their receivables turnover is sitting at 7 percent. Investors know that Google is a good company to buy stock into. Perform a SWOT analysis of Google. Strengths Number one search engine with established name Simple interface-user friendly Their interface has 88 different languages-Global usage Localized search results Infrastructure Weakness Contextual ads targeted by click fraud Can’t expand to offline products Opportunities Acquisitions of other business Increase online advertising Alliances/partnerships with other companies Launched their own operating system Google TV Threats Facebook Click fraud Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon Slow economy Describe Google’s value chain. What is the source of the company’s competitive advantage? Since Google does not have any â€Å"raw† materials to process into finished goods like a traditional company, their value chain is different. Ben Morrow (2009) their value chain is more nuanced. Google gathers all the web users it can (the raw material) by enticing them to use its stellar search product with highly relevant results delivered promptly. Then, through assorted â€Å"signs† (text advertisements) it directs these same web users in the form of traffic to its advertising partners who transform the traffic into â€Å"conversions† or sales on their sites (finished good). Their added value is that they know where to direct the users to their sites that they needed to go. The source of Google’s competitive advantage is learning by doing as stated by Hal R. Varian, Google’s chief economist (Lohr, 2008). Basically, they arelearning from their competitors. For example, with Microsoft antitrust problems, they are now making antitrust training is mandatory for Google managers (Lohr, 2008). Some of Google’s competitive advantages are their value, rarity, imitability, and substitutability. Value because it is part of their value chain. Rarity because their user interface is so simple and user friendly. Also, it is hard for competitors to imitate because of the large infrastructure requirements to serve the relevant pages quickly. Google has servers all over the world all synced up and all running on a very large quantity of RAM, fast computer memory. (Morrow, 2009). References Lohr, S. (July, 7, 2008). The New York Times. Google, Zen Master of the Market. Retrieved on April 11, 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07google.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1. Mayo, H. (2007). Basic Finance: An Introduction to Financial Institutions, Investments & Management: 9 Edition. Thomson: United States. Morrow, B. (Feb. 22. 2009). Internal Analysis of Google Inc. Retrieved on April 11, 2012 from http://www.benmorrow.info/research/internal-analysis-of-google-inc/. Thomson A., Peteraf, M., Gamble, J., & Strickland, A.J. ( 2012). Crafting & Executing Strategy. McGraw-Hill.

Trayvon Martin Essays

Trayvon Martin Essays Trayvon Martin Essay Trayvon Martin Essay Essay Topic: Turtle Island On Friday, March 11, Japan was rocked by an earthquake. People were displaced, a nuclear reactor was in trouble, and the world watched as a tsunami flooded Japan, threatened the islands of the Pacific, and ultimately hit the western coasts of North and South America. Very little of the devastation resulting from this earthquake was from the initial shaking. But mainly because any damage from the seismic waves that was dwarfed by the impact of the 10 metre tsunami that hit the Japanese coast less than an hour later. Most of the reporting (both good and bad) that has been done on the earthquake, the tsunami, and the resulting fallout from both has focused on their effects on humans. But humans are just one species affected by these sorts of disasters. Slowly, a bit of information about various scaley, furry, or feathered critters has begun to trickle out of the affected areas. Kazutoshi Takami, a veterinarian at the Osaka Municipal Tennoji Zoological Gardens, reported last week that several zoos and aquariums were suffering shortages of gas, heater fuel, and food and drinkable water for humans as well as for animals.Also, according to Takami, the Fukushima Aquarium made plans to move their sea mammals and birds to Kamogawa Sea World. On Saturday, March 12, Pete Leary, a wildlife biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service who is stationed at Midway, blogged extensively on the tsunami and subsequent animal rescue operations: We had all 67 island employees/visitors up here watching the news on BBC and watching our tide gauge data over the internet. We saw that we had about a 5 foot rise in the tide gauge level, but were glad that we couldn’t see any water when we looked out the windows.After looking at a bit of the washover on Sand Island, and setting a crew to work on digging albatross chicks and petrels out of the debris, Greg and I took the boat over to Eastern Island. On the way, we passed thousands of albatross adults and petrels that had been washed into the water and lost their ability to stay dry. Their feathers weelfuelte re messed up by being tumbled over the island and through the vegetation. We pulled some into the boat, but needed to get to Eastern Island, so we had to hope that most of them would paddle to shore. Eastern Island was mostly washed over, so 10? s of thousands of chicks were washed away.I’ll have to look at our count numbers from Dec. to figure out how many chicks were in the affected areas. There were dead fish by the hundreds up in t he middle of the island. The short-tailed albatross chick must really be wondering what kind of place it lives in because it was washed away from the nest for the second time this year already. This time, it was about 40 yards away from the original nest. It was easy to spot because all the other chicks were washed away in a previous storm. I didn’t want to pick the chick up, because it was already stressed and upset, but the parents may not have found it that far from the nest.I put out a sheet of plastic and when it stepped onto it, I gave it a sled ride the 40 yards back to its nest. I hope that’s all the excitement that it has for the rest of the season. There were a lot of chicks and adults buried in debris (mostly dead vegetation). Greg and I were digging out stuck birds all day. We took our volunteers and some people from the visitors group over yesterday and dug out another hundred or so birds. We also found 2 turtles that were washed quite a way up onto the is land, which were then carried back to the beach and seemed glad to get back in the water.At least we didn’t find any injured Hawaiian monk seals or Laysan ducks. The seals were back resting on the beaches on Friday. What Can We Expect? While some of the reports are heartening, and many are devasting, more in-depth research into the short- and long-term effects of the tsunami on marine and coastal ecosystems will take much longer. But the 2004 magnitude 9. 15 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, and the resulting tsunami that rippled across the Indian Ocean have been extensively studied, and allow us to speculate regarding possible outcomes of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.The Wildlife Trust of India, along with the International Fund for Animal Welfare initiated several investigations[-gt;0] following the earthquake and tsunami to assess their impact on wildlife. Overall, they found that damage to wildlife populations was generally limited on the mainland, and slightly worse on the islands. Particularly hard-hit, however, were coral reef systems. Several beaches were washed away, and freshwater habitats were inundated with saltwater. While most of these ecosystems were eventually able to rebound, problems did occur.For example, one mainland wildlife sanctuary became flooded with saltwater and covered with sand, making is impossible for the various plant-eating ungulates (hoofed animals) to graze. Even worse, with seawater comes toxic pollution. According to the Wildlife Trust report: Other grave problems stem from the onslaught of seawater laden with sediments and toxins. Aquifers, the primary source of drinking water, have been contaminated by saltwater, raw sewage, oil, and other pollutants. On the coasts of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, paddies and farm fields are smothered under a crust of salt and silt.Some areas may never recover, for others irrigation and one or more rainy seasons may be enough to flush out the soil. For now farmers are being en couraged to plant salt-tolerant crops, like pumpkins and kale. In other areas, rather than covering plants with saltwater, the tsunami simply washed all plants away, making it possible for invasive species to take root, quite literally. The change in plant life wasn’t problematic for some species, such as the fan-throated lizard (Sitana ponticeriana), which were able to survive in the new ecosystem.Other species, surely, were not so lucky, but little information is available. And there were probably other invaders, as well. Furry ones. Large dead trees from distant islands were found washed up on mainland beaches. While there was no danger to beach ecosystems from the trees themselves, since they were dead, they may have carried some critters with them that would eventually colonize mainland coasts. It is well-known that rodents, reptiles, and insects are quite capable of setting up camp in new environments after rafting across the sea. [-gt;0] wildlifetrustofindia. org/pub lications/reports. htm

Drilling Into Faults

Drilling Into Faults Geologists are daring to go where they once could only dream of going- right to the places where earthquakes actually happen. Three projects have taken us into the seismogenic zone. As one report put it, projects like these put us at the precipice of quantum advances in the science of earthquake hazards. Drilling the San Andreas Fault at Depth The first of these drilling projects made a borehole next to the San Andreas fault near Parkfield, California, at a depth of about 3 kilometers. The project is called the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth or SAFOD, and its part of the much larger research effort EarthScope. Drilling began in 2004 with a vertical hole going down 1500 meters then curving toward the fault zone. The 2005 work season extended this slanting hole all the way across the fault, and was followed by two years of monitoring. In 2007 drillers made four separate side holes, all on the near side of the fault, that are equipped with all kinds of sensors. The chemistry of fluids, microearthquakes, temperatures and more are being recorded for the next 20 years. While drilling these side holes, core samples of intact rock were taken that cross the active fault zone giving tantalizing evidence of the processes there. Scientists kept up a website with daily bulletins,  and if you read it youll see some of the difficulties of this kind of work. SAFOD was carefully placed at an underground location where regular sets of small earthquakes have been happening. Just like the last 20 years of earthquake research at Parkfield, SAFOD is aimed at a part of the San Andreas fault zone where the geology seems to be simpler and the faults behavior more manageable than elsewhere. Indeed, the whole fault is considered to be easier to study than most because it has a simple strike-slip structure with a shallow bottom, at about 20 km depth. As faults go, it is a rather straight and narrow ribbon of activity with well-mapped rocks on either side. Even so, detailed maps of the surface show a tangle of related faults. The mapped rocks include tectonic splinters that have been swapped back and forth across the fault during its hundreds of kilometers of offset. The patterns of earthquakes at Parkfield have not been as regular or simple as geologists had hoped, either; nevertheless SAFOD is our best look so far at the cradle of earthquakes. The Nankai Trough Subduction Zone In a global sense the San Andreas fault, even as long and active as it is, is not the most significant type of seismic zone. Subduction zones take that prize for three reasons:    They are responsible for all the largest, magnitude 8 and 9 earthquakes we have recorded, such as the Sumatra quake of December 2004 and the Japan earthquake of March 2011.Because they are always under the ocean, subduction-zone earthquakes tend to trigger tsunamis.Subduction zones are where lithospheric plates move toward and underneath other plates, on their way into the mantle where they give rise to most of the worlds volcanoes. So there are compelling reasons to learn more about these faults (plus many more scientific reasons), and drilling into one is just within the state of the art. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Project is doing that with a new state-of-the-art drillship off the coast of Japan. The Seismogenic Zone Experiment, or SEIZE, is a three-phase program that will measure the inputs and outputs of the subduction zone where the Philippine plate meets Japan in the Nankai Trough. This is a shallower trench than most subduction zones, making it easier for drilling. The Japanese have a long and accurate history of earthquakes on this subduction zone, and the site is only a days ship travel away from land. Even so, in the difficult conditions foreseen the drilling will require a riser- an outer pipe from the ship to the sea floor- to prevent blowouts and so that the effort can proceed using drilling mud instead of seawater, as previous drilling has used. The Japanese have built a brand-new drillship, Chikyu (Earth) that can do the job, reaching 6 kilometers below the sea floor. One question the project will seek to answer is what physical changes accompany the earthquake cycle on subduction faults. Another is what happens in the shallow region where soft sediment fades into brittle rock, the boundary between soft deformation and seismic disruption. There are places on land where this part of subduction zones is exposed to geologists, so results from the Nankai Trough will be very interesting. Drilling began in 2007.   Drilling New Zealands Alpine Fault The Alpine fault, on New Zealands South Island, is a large oblique-thrust fault that causes magnitude 7.9 earthquakes every few centuries. One interesting feature of the fault is that vigorous uplift and erosion have beautifully exposed a thick cross-section of the crust that provides fresh samples of the deep fault surface. The Deep Fault Drilling Project, a collaboration of New Zealand and European institutions, is punching cores across the Alpine fault by drilling straight down. The first part of the project succeeded in penetrating and coring the fault twice just 150 meters below the ground in January 2011 then instrumenting the holes. A deeper hole is planned near the Whataroa River in 2014 that will go down 1500 meters. A public wiki serves past and ongoing data from the project.

Prisoners of War POW essays

Prisoners of War POW essays There was much significance in the events of the Prisoners of War during the time of the Vietnam War. The POW events affected the way in which war was conducted, the outcome and experience to soldiers, and Americas future as well. The events that took place with the POWs were an important aspect of the way war was looked at during the war in Vietnam. Prisoners of war, or otherwise known as POW, are members of the armed forces of an enemy country who have been captured in the event of wartime. In one of the stories in the book, Everything We Had, Admiral William Lawrence describes the events that took place for the duration of and after the time that he was captured while he was at war and held in Hanoi as a Prisoner of War during the Vietnam War. Lawrence was a pilot who was shot down while flying and then was captured by Vietnamese troops after landing nearby the Red River Delta. He was then taken to Hanoi, where he would stay along with the other POWs for the next 7 years of his life. When they all first arrived there, the POW were blindfolded and tied up, and if they talked they would get hit with the butt of a gun or beaten even worse. The prisoners were kept in extremely small cells, usually separated with people from the same country. The prisoners werent allowed to talk so Lawrence explained how they had developed a tap code in order to communicate with each other without letting the guards surrounding them know what was going on. Since the Vietnamese were always attempting to try and have a prisoner write a propaganda letter, or any other way of interrogation towards the prisoners, communication was a must and the prisoners were very intelligent in finding methods of transporting messages back and forth to each othe r without talking. The prisoners also got a radio played to them everyday which was about the USs involvement in the war. ...

American Government and politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

American Government and politics - Essay Example Presidential speeches are dynamically recorded online in which individuals can discuss their opinions on. Furthermore, networks such as CNN and even white house are on twitter. Although this may seem risky, it allows the government to convey their message and benefit from these avenues of social networking. Law exists because it is critical for human existence. It is in human nature to engage in constant warfare. When law is implemented and citizens give up their rights to a sovereign ruler, things seem to be in harmonious manner. When someone violates the law, they are imprisoned for their actions. Prison and fines are the common ways punishing individuals who don’t abide with the law. Congress and the government makes the law to secure the freedom for the citizens of America. However, the process of laws being enacted is a long due process which can be often frustrating not to mention the rivalry that exists between Republicans and Democrats. Select ONE of the following scenarios  for the assigned chapters and complete the Critical Analysis questions.   Your written response must be at least 100 words in support of your position on the questions.   Be sure to note the chapter number and feature in your response. The concept of Shariah laws is complicated that are handled carefully with Islamic scholars. The shariah insists that a person must say the word â€Å"talaaq,† which means divorce in order to obtain that talaaq. If a person says this three times to a same person, he is not allowed to marry her every as the marriages becomes null. The problem is the fact that when men just write the word divorce instead of saying it. In essence, does it become valid if a person does it through texting or email? Indeed, Islamic jurists have pondered upon that issue. Recently though, the Saudi courts have upheld this issue and said that divorce through texting should be upheld. Freedom of expression is

Student press freedom Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Student press freedom - Assignment Example The freedom of the press is quite vast, such that a few politicians have referred to the public press as the fourth estate, essentially conferring on it the same degree of importance and significance as the other three branches of the government. It can conduct its own inquiries in search of truth, in the name of public interest, like investigative journalism in which certain anomalies involving public funds can be uncovered, as an example. Freedom of the press carries with it vast powers but imposes the strict standards of ethics and principles adopted by the members of the press who consider their job as a profession. As such, the press refers originally to previous regimes in which news and information are obtained from newspapers, but in todays digital world, press also refers to all types of media available, like print, radio, television, and Internet (e-mails, blogs, and social networking sites) where information can spread very quickly indeed on a worldwide basis. The right to exercise this freedom is synonymous with all the responsibilities to exercise it in a responsible manner, to prevent abuses, promote welfare, and maintain journalistic independence. This paper discusses some of the issues involving the laws on media, and in particular, the specific sub-topic of freedom of the student press. In this regard, students who work in their own student or school publications learn firsthand the basics of what responsible journalism is all about, gaining valuable experience in the exercise of this important basic constitutional right.