The role of risk perception

The Chinese Lake Murders

The Chinese Lake Murders were written by author, Robert Van Gulik and can be used to learn about pre-modern Chinese civilization. The book was set during the Ming Dynasty in the town of Han-yuan, which is about 60 miles north west of the imperial capital. The novel tells the tale of how Judge Dee, the magistrate (an official responsible for catching criminals as well as sentencing them) of Han-yuan solves crime cases while indulging himself in beautiful women, greed and political matters. Van Gulik uses this book and many of his others to describe the culture that of Imperial China. Imperial/Confucian culture lasted in China for about 2,100 years (from 200 BCE to 1900 CE and it) and it still keeps the image oh Chinese society strong. To many we are unable to know what Imperial/Confucian culture was like. In reading Robert Van Gulik's book The Chinese Lake Murders, it placed me within Chinese culture, explaining the aspects of Chinese culture better than reading some test books. In reading the book, I learned that each village or section of a town had a warden who was responsible for knowing who lived in his area and what they did. I also learned that districts were ruled over by judges who in turn reported to provincial magistrates, who in turn reported to the Imperial court. To keep things honest, imperial censors traveled throughout the empire incognito, with the authority of the Emperor himself to arrest or condemn officials deemed abusing their authority. Districts judges and provincial magistrates were rotated to different places throughout their career, to avoid the abuses of long rule in any one place. Lastly, ranks of nobility decayed from one generation to the nest. So if you were of one noble rank, your children would be of the next lower rank, and their children would just be commoners, but this rule did not apply for the emperors children. Yet, there are many positive aspects to Imperial/Con

Communication class Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Communication class - Movie Review Example This is very similar to the research conducted in which relationships develop when two individuals have similar interests or see each other on a regular basis. Clearly, the film illustrates that these two characters had much in common listening to the same music band, going to the same gym and frequenting the same bar. These similarities make building a relationship much easier as the relationship already has building blocks from which it can grow. However, there are several discrepancies in the film for relationship building as shown in the research. The largest discrepancy in the film for relationship development is the same ultimate plot conflict in which Janet was strategically placed in each environment she happened to meet up with Sam. With this happenstance, Sam grew the confidence to begin speaking with Janet repeatedly and eventually ask her on a date, which would last for over one year. However, this type of confidence is rarely found and conflicts with research for divorce es who typically find it difficult to make the first move. Relationship building does occur and is likely when individuals have similar interests, but Sam was not in a position to approach Janet due to his recent divorce. He was only dating women to try to deal with the pain and loneliness he was experiencing, but he legitimately had strong feelings for her from the first moment in the gymnasium.

Organizing Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Organizing Paper - Essay Example One of the organizations that have effectively accomplished the organization function is Dell Inc. The management has efficiently and effectively organized the physical assets, the human talent, knowledge, technology and financial resources in order to ensure competitive advantage in the market. The company is headquartered in Texas, United States but has operations across the globe. Dell Inc has utilized the industry’s most efficient organization model. Some core organization elements include just-in-time inventory management, employee training, delegated authority and efficient allocation of capital resources (Williams 7). Physical assets In 2000, Dell established computer assembly factories in Austin, Lebanon, Tennessee, Ireland, China and Malaysia. The company also acquired assembly factories in Brazil in order to extend the manufacturing of the computer products (Holzner 19). In 1998, Dell added about 1,600,000 square feet of office space to the Round Rock complex thus in creasing the demonstration center and visitor’s meeting rooms. Currently, Dell has full functional facilities in US and India that support all business functions such as manufacturing, research and development and customer service. Dell has enough assembly physical facilities in UK, China, India, Brazil, Poland, Malaysia, Philippines, Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, Illinois, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and New Hampshire. From 2002, Dell launched kiosk locations in various shopping malls in order to reach out to more potential customers. In 2005, the company expanded the kiosks to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore (Williams 5). Dell has ensured efficient utilization of all production facilities and production space in its operations. The company leases out excess space in order to ensure maximum utilization of the physical assets. The company is geared at replacing the outdated physical assets such as machinery (Holzner 60). Human resources Dell Inc has more than 109,40 0 employees spread in more than 30 countries in the globe. The employees are expected to serve customers in more than 170 countries. Dell has attained a leadership position as the preferred provider of computer and networking systems due to his talented workforce and excellent customer service. The Chief executive officer and chairman is Michael Dell who has been in the company since 1984. Dell board of directors consists of nine members and the Global Executive management committee is tasked with managing the daily operations and providing strategic direction to the company. Dell Inc has established efficient channels of communication within the organization. The company has effectively delegated authority and responsibility to teams and managing directors who are responsible for different market segments (Williams 6). Dell Company conducts a job analysis that identifies various roles in the organization, the duties performed in the position and skills required. The company through its human resource planning has been able to forecast the skills demand in the organization. Due to its reputation of excellent human resources policies, the company attracts and retained qualified professionals in all functional departments. The company offers sufficient training to its employees in order to enhance the productivity and creativity of employees. Dell employee reward policies

Immigration and Population Growth Essay Example for Free

Immigration and Population Growth Essay Immigration is when someone or people move to a country from another country. It can be due to various purposes like a student going for study, getting married to a national of another country or to take up an employment. Immigration has been known to cause population growth. Population growth is the quantifiable change of population in an area. Immigration can be defined into two that of high skilled personnel and that of low skilled personnel. Economic impacts of immigration depend on the skills of immigration. The impacts are felt by both the country from which the people are moving from and the country they are going to. Negative Impacts Immigration and population growth causes scarcity of resources. Economics standard definition is the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends. Immigration and population growth makes the task more difficult because it create more competing ends hence bad economic outcome. In other terms if there are more people living in the same land with the same amount of resources then there will be fewer resources and land available per person thus less wealth. There is also overburdening on the infrastructure talk of roads, social amenities like water, hospital beds and others. They existing facilities cannot cope with the increasing population growth before we put into consideration immigration (Holzer, 2005). Immigration and population growth cause wages decrease, this is due to increased labor supply. An increase in labor supply relative to capital supply and supply of natural resources will in a free labor market cause wages to fall. Unemployment is the other major impact of immigration; the local residents miss jobs to the immigrants who come to their country. These create more risk of unemployment. Shortage of affordable housing, this may lead to people living from hand to mouth due to increased cost of living. It in turn reduces chances of investments. Most of the income goes to up keep hence little savings and investment. Environmental degradation due to the huge population growth results to massive loss of biodiversity and wide spread degradation of the landscape. This leads to salinity of t he soil and topsoil erosion this have adverse effects on the productivity of the nation. All these have impacts on the economy in that no people can work while hungry and food is a key element of economic development. If reduced it causes a decline in the work output hence on income of a nation (Nilsson, 2005). Positive Impacts Immigration and population growth produce increased and cheap labor. Many business and public service make use of the skills and hard work of immigrants. Immigrants may never mind the amount of work they do and money they are being paid. This increases the productivity of a county in that they work for more hours and do the kind of jobs the normal civilians of a nation may not be willing to take. This increased productivity improves the income levels of a country hence the living standards are increased. The immigrants are paid declined wages due to saturation of laborers in the market hence the cost of production is low this leads to increased profit to the industries hence to the nation. Immigration increases the economy in terms of labor demand, thus creating new vacancies. Immigration improves the way of life of the residents of the country they move to; they carry out duties that are a bother to the residents like dish washing, cooking, laundry work and many more. Immigration of high skilled personnel fills the labor and skills shortages. These increase the productivity of a country. The skills also improve existing skills and train others hence labor force of a country and reduced threat of immigration (Rowthorn, 2004). Conclusion In conclusion immigration and population growth are interrelated and are beneficial though they also have negative impacts.The benefits depends on the type of skill immigrating. References: Holzer, H. J. , (2005): Economic Impacts of Immigration. Retrieved on 6th Jan, 2009 from: http://www. urban. org/UploadedPDF/900908_Holzer_111605. pdf Nilsson, T. , (2005): Negative economic impacts of immigration and population growth. Retrieved on 6th Jan, 2009 from: http://www. pc. gov. au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/9572/sub009. pdf Rowthorn, R. , (2004): The Economic Impact of Immigration. Retrieved on 6th Jan, 2009 from: http://www. civitas. org. uk/pdf/Rowthorn_Immigration. pdf

Essays --

The First Crusade was a holy war that occurred in the year 1096 in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is important to three main religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In all of these religions, Jerusalem is considered a Holy Place. To Jews, it is the site of the original temple of God built by King Solomon. To Christians, it was where Christ was crucified and rose again. To Muslims, it was where they believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven. The Turks, which had converted is Islam, began to deny the Christians access into the holy land. Since Jerusalem was and still is special to all of these religions, it brewed trouble between the Crusaders and the Muslims. The main leader of the First Crusade, also known as, the Pauper’s Crusade, was Pope Urban II. While preventing the Christians from going to the holy land, The Turks had also begun to attack Constantinople. The Emperor of Constantinople soon asked the Roman Catholic Church to aid them in their defense against Constantinople. After this, Pope Urban II saw that the Roman Catholic Church could gain more power if they helped ...

Mediterranean

The Mediterranean empires have been influential powers for most of the recorded history of humanity. They have inspired awe, fear and wonder, they were the first targets of Orientalism as a cultural phenomenon. The East was a constant threat and a constant lure to European civilization, capturing both lands and minds until the beginning of the 20th century. However, all things must come to an end, and so, too, did the rule of the East, when the Ottoman Empire disbanded. Empires rose and fell before, however, each previous time, a new conglomerate of nations took the place of the demised one. After the Ottoman Empire, no Mediterranean successor rose to power; instead, Europe took the empire’s place as hegemon, both in political power and in the power of ideas – in quite the logical succession. To understand why this is logical, we must examine the reasons for which imperialism had been so strong in the Mediterranean and why it finally fell. It is certainly more than mere political reasons, since there has been a succession of various empires. This is obviously a tendency that runs deeper, within the various Mediterranean cultures themselves. Empires fall when they grow too large, become too hard to control from one administrative center, become stagnant. What forces a culture or a number of cultures to spawn empires again and again? The Mediterranean, despite all of its regional conflicts among itself, has always been a very united region. This unity is based upon an equality of the people – however, this equality was the equality of units, not of people. An individual in the Mediterranean has always been nothing next to the greater cause, subject to exploitation to the point of destruction. Life was always nothing much important in the Mediterranean – much more important was the concept prevailing at the time and service to it. We can already see this concept in Rome, where a man was only as valuable as he was to civil society.   Indeed, even religion was in service of the state, as Seneca noted: â€Å"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.† The situation, however, reached its apogee after the emergence of Islam in the region, and the uniting of all consecutive empires under its banner. Islam – which means â€Å"submission† – is perhaps the most deterministic religion in existence. Its dogma is that a human is less than nothing before the glory of Allah, limited by the very fact of being a mere creation, absolutely powerless. Allah is a god that promises heaven for the Muslims, however, the Qur’an explicitly states, that Allah doesn’t care how many humans are Muslim. If the people submit to His rule, they will live, if they do not – they will perish.   Islamic theology is, naturally, much more complex and interesting, yet subordination lies at its core, with a lack of it punishable by death. This concept of an uncaring ruler with an iron first is absolutely amazing for the building of a despotic empire, where humans are resources to be harvested at best and obstacles to be removed at worst. The later politics, based on religion, thus used this concept extensively. A human of the region was totally powerless before the government, a piece of material and statistics at once. A particularly demonstrative example of this policy is Mehmed II Fatih’s decree to officially kill all the brothers of a sultan who has just ascended to the throne. The treatment of humans as resources allowed for the character of all Eastern empires: with the bureaucratic class and the military being the most important classes, and the approach to power and life being purely utilitarian and power-oriented. Thus the question is: why did the people of the region comply with this for so long? Why did they tolerate such an approach? First of all, living as a tool of an Empire is not quite so bad as it may sound. A prospering empire takes care of its people, though in a strange fashion and to a limited extent. One does not destroy one’s resources – one cultivates them. In an empire where everything is based on power and strength, the proper management of resources can be crucial to success, and thus, to survival. Also, such an empire is quite comfortable to live in for a certain kind of people. Those of the region have always been warriors: and for a soldier of fortune, no better form of organization can exist. There are always plenty of opportunists in every region, enough people who are willing to advance their own perspectives at the expense of other’s lives. However, if in Europe there is often reason for misunderstanding: the cultural differences between countries are great, and the linguistic barrier, too, plays a role. In the Islamic world, there is one culture and one set of customs, which allows for operation within a single paradigm, giving greater room for both cooperation and treason. This united culture did much for the predatory nature of these great empires. The people who stimulated this culture ultimately regarded everyone who was not a participant in it as a weakling. However, after the twentieth century, the disposition changed. The Europeans proved their strength, and proved that a union of independent nations is quite capable of not only effective warfare, but of political control. This approach, considered previously weaker, had defeated the eastern empires approach, and defeated it with such flair that the people of the Mediterranean doubted for the first time that their way was the more effective one. Power is proved in the consequences, and the consequences showed that Europe was stronger by far, not only in the military sense, but in the spirit as well. Not the Europe which had to buy its way to freedom, but the Europe which was able to aid or destroy the current empire, and after destruction, capture it quickly enough in all senses, impose its culture and way of life. Europe proved that cooperation of individuals can do more than a mass of underlings, and that the cultivation of allies can do more than the growing of resources. Always ready to employ an effective tactic and learn from their enemies, the people which were once under the empires now attempt to work the way Europe has shown, as it seems more promising. However, between wars, Europe seems all too polite and complacent. Its culture is not one to cater to the heart of a warrior. It seems only a matter of time before someone in the East decides that Europe’s approach is ineffective and reverts to the traditional ways of doing politics in the Mediterranean. It is my opinion that what we are seeing is not a true transformation, but rather, a transitional moment between empires. Granted, it has lasted almost a hundred years. Nonetheless, the situation even now seems to point to the possibility of the renewal of a new, improved by Western techniques, empire. It is not the end of Mediterranean history, but the beginning of a new era in it. References 1. All Empires – An   Online Community for World History, viewed Friday, May 06, 2005 at http://www.allempires.com/ 2.Islam Online, viewed Friday, May 06, 2005 at http://www.islamonline.net/english/index.shtml