The Pit and the Pendulum :: Pit and the Pendulum Essays

The Pit and the Pendulum "The place where you die is where you become young again." The accused in "The Pit and the Pendulum" is obviously being persecuted. For what religion or practice we do not know. For what crime it is not said. The prisoner does not even question his guilt or innocence. The accused in this story, to whom Poe does not give a name, is subjected to three life threatening situations. Poe, along with other English Romantics believed that being born was actually coming to the end of another existence. With this in consideration could the tomb in which the prisoner was confined be thought of as a womb? Could then the pit be considered a tunnel that leads to a New World? Poe utilizes one of the most common and universal phobias in "The Pit and the Pendulum," which is the darkness. Imagine you are condemned to death and wake to find that you cannot see your hand two inches from your face. Darkness commonly evokes feelings of anxiety, but under these circumstances I would think absolute terror. The tomb is dark, and only by an accident does the accused escape the pit and certain death. The victim searched for a rock in order to estimate the depths, which he just avoided. As the masonry hit the water far below, a light burst into his vault and a door swiftly shut. The slamming door was his first awareness that he was being monitored constantly; his torturers were adjusting his torments to his abilities at avoiding disaster. The prisoner wakes only to realize that he is strapped onto a board and bound by a "surcingle". The word he uses is significant; it can apply to the binding of saddle on a horse, or to the binding of a priest's cassock. He perceived himself as bound like an animal by the belt of a priest, symbolically bound to the demented will of his prison-masters. Far above his bound body, on the ceiling of the chamber, was the figure of Time holding what appeared to be a scythe. Upon closer examination what appeared to be a scythe was a giant, razor sharp pendulum making a slow and deadly descent. One could interpret the figure of Time as the character's realization that his time is running out. I think Poe's introduction of the figure of Time suggests to all of us that we have only the time that is given us.

A Good Death :: essays research papers

A Good Death   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Death is final. Some die naturally in a peaceful manner while others suffer through tremendous pain in order to get there. Euthanasia is the only way for some people to leave all their pain behind. Euthanasia is the act of killing another person in a merciful way. Of course, euthanasia has many more meaning to it than that. A person that is suffering from a terminal illness decides that life is not worth living because there is too much pain involved and ends his own life, would that be wrong of him? That is the question that is at hand.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many supporters of the â€Å"right to die movement† can justify euthanasia. First, because terminal illness is causing pain that is unbearable for that individual. That is the main reason why people seek self-induced death. Second, the thought of a restricted life and depending on others, even for the simplest task, does not appeal to them. Aristotle wrote, â€Å"happiness is the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.† These people will never find happiness because they cannot live their lives out to the fullest extent that was given to them.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Nancy was only four years old when her grandmother died. Her grandmother had a big lump on the lower right hand side of her back. The doctors removed it, but it was too late. The tumor had already spread throughout her body. Instead of having a lump on her back, she had a long stitched up incision there. She couldn’t move around; Nancy’s parents had to help her go to the bathroom and do all the simple things that she use to do all by herself. Nancy would ask her grandmother to get up to take her younger sister, Linh, and herself outside so they could play. She never got up. A couple of months later, an ambulance came by their house and took their grandmother away. That was the last time Nancy ever saw her alive. She was in the hospital for about a week and a half. Nancy’s parents never took them to see her. One day, Nancy saw her parents crying and she have never seen them cry before. They dropped Linh and her off at one of their friendâ€℠¢s house. Nancy got mad because she thought they were going shopping and didn’t take her with them.

Raising a genderless baby: The Case of Storm Stocker Essay

Raising a family of three children is no easy feat to begin with, and the Stocker family of Toronto, Ontario has made one decision regarding their new baby that will hardly make it any easier. Mrs. Stocker gave birth to her third child on new years day of 2011, and accompanying the proud new parents e-mail to friends and families announcing the baby’s birth, was a rather controversial statement; â€Å"We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? †¦).† (CTV 1) Mr. & Mrs. Stocker had decided to raise their new baby boy or girl, with out the socially constructed pre-text of masculine or feminine gender traits, regardless of what the physical sex of the baby was. It is important to point this baby is neither a hermaphrodite nor born as a transsexual, but is completely anatomically healthy or â⠂¬Ëœnormal’ so to speak. The parents are simply keeping the sex of the baby secrete as to deprive society, and in the future its peers, teachers, coaches etc. of influencing it’s formation of gender and self. This highly controversial decision is however, fulfilling Freud’s notion of removing gender from the realm of biology, thus overcoming biological essentialism, and moving it into society, which he believed was the dominant force influencing how gender develops. In the modern era, however, the decision to keep baby Storms sex a secrete was met with significant controversy from American media, ABC news stating; â€Å"While child development experts applaud the family’s efforts to raise their child free of the constraints of gender stereotypes, they say the parents have embarked on a psychological experiment that could be potentially disastrous.† (ABC 1) while in Canada and internationally, especially in European countries such as Sweden and Finland where this is not unheard of, its been more readily accepted. Finnish people often choose specific diction to speak about themselves and others in a very neutral way which includes gender neutrality; â€Å"This rhetoric is based on a kind of moral code: it is highly valued to be seen and treated without particularities, without bodies, as a  person in your own right, without gender, without class, without ethnicity, without locality† (Lahelma 8) and in Sweden the government has actually updated the national Encyclopedia to account for the rising trend of parents raising their children genderless, adding the genderless pronoun â€Å"hen† to accompany the masculine â€Å"han† and feminine â€Å"hon†. And the trend isn’t just limited to linguistics. Recently â€Å"†¦the World Economic Forum declared Sweden the most gender-neutral country in the world, and gender neutrality is changing Swedish culture in profound ways. A children’s department store has dissolved its â€Å"girls† and â€Å"bo ys† sections†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Tietal 36). Freud would, however, have to agree with ABC news’ declaration that the results could be â€Å"potentially disastrous† as he viewed gender intringently linked to self-identity as well as sexual orientation. It is safe to assume Dr. Freud would view this decision to shelter the child as a psychological experiment destined to end in failure, resulting in a man or women not properly assimilated into society and bound for a miserable existence. However, as Sandra Harding said â€Å"What you see, what you find important, and how you understand the world depends on your ‘standpoint’† and as more recent feminist research has uncovered Freud’s beliefs in a binary set of man or woman is not necessarily true. Feminist Epistemology of society and science exposes how the commonly accept binary couple of male/female or masculine/feminine influences our conception of knowledge and how we come to conclusions, and even in American media it is quite pronounced the male/female roles have began to blend or at least have come to have changed since Freud’s time; â€Å"The stereotypes of boys were that they were self-sufficient, non-empathic, tough and good at war, and Girls were trained to be empathic and caring and more nurturing, are all falling apart. You even see tough football players bawling nowadays† (ABC 1). It would not necessarily be harmful for the baby to grow up in-between or with-out th e masculine/feminine binary because it is socially constructed anyway and growing up with-out it, or perhaps better put, on the outside of it, simply creates a new paradigm for baby Storm. Because men have held such a dominant role influencing research and education it has skewed history and research to man’s own advantage, resulting in a unidimensional view of gender and power almost always at the women’s expense  (Luecke 138). As Kimmel said in our textbooks, the phenomenon of biasing knowledge is always more pronounced when one group homogeneously controls political and ideological systems, which have up until very recent times been controlled strictly by males, giving them the conceptual power over gender, sexual orientation and almost every other field of research known to man. Though in recent decades much progress has been made on this issue, there is still much bias on part of male dominated research resisting the inclusion of minorities and feminist epistemology which needs to change in order for better research methods and more accurate out comes, especially from a constructionists approach to gender. As Sharlene Hesse-Biber put it; â€Å"If present science is distorted by the predominance of male perspectives, would not science become more objective by the deliberate inclusion of views from women, minorities etc.† The Social Constructionist Approach diverges from Freud’s belief in masculine/feminine binaries in that it acknowledges the contextual importance of gender and sexuality. The time, place, power and culture all play a part in defining what is considered masculine and what is feminine, concluding that gender and sexuality are not constants, but variables in a perpetual flux, resulting from the ebb and flow of societal norms and what social groups are in power influencing those norms. Storms identity as he grows up will certainty be influenced by his interactions with media, society and his parents but that influence will be minimized because of his immunity to the power of gender and sex stereotypes, living in, presumably, blissful ambiguity. And in many ways this gives him a certain power over us, or at least a power to change or blur the gender norms as he grows up; â€Å"It is impossible to explain gender without adequately understanding power – not because power is the consequence of gender difference. But rather because power is what produces those gender differences in the first place† (Kimmel 116). The case of Storm Stocker, while highly controversial, cannot be declined the notion of fascinating and perhaps highly influential on this centuries gender and sexual norms – thus society itself. This case as analyzed through intersectionality is perfect to highlight the many ways in which race, class, gender and sexuality all come to act as social forces on us as we develop in our given environment (Kennedy & Hellen 36). As we watch Storm  mature into whatever Storm aspires to be, Storm will be simultaneously turning back millennia of stereotypes, biases, roles and assumptions that have been entrenched in our global society. The potential for real social change stems from the point where other individuals who have been raised and socialized similarly to storm, organize and create social movements to further awareness and understanding of neo-gendered individuals (Madison & Shaw 435). In this way Storm and their contemporaries will show us how the binary concepts of man/women have been one of the most pervasive forces locking us within a certain realm of action and understanding dictated strictly by the reproductive organs we were born with. Who we love, how we love are all subject to change as â€Å"Our identities are a fluid assemblage of the meanings and behaviors that we construct from values, images and prescriptions we find in the world around us† (Kimmel 112). Works Cited â€Å"Baby raised without ‘gender’ sets off debate | CTV News .† CTV News | Top Stories – Breaking News – Top News Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2012. . â€Å"Baby Storm Raised Genderless, or Without a Gender, a Dangerous Experiment, Say Child Development Experts – ABC News.† ABCNews.com – Breaking News, Latest News & Top Video News – ABC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2012. . Biber, Sharlene Nagy. Handbook of feminist research: theory and praxis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2007. Print. Harding, Sandra. â€Å"Feminist Standpoints.† Handbook of feminist research: theory and praxis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2007. 46-64. Print. Kennedy, Natacha, and Mark Hellen. â€Å"Transgender children: more than a theoretical challenge.† Graduate Journal of Social Science 7 (2010): 25-42. Print. Kimmel, Michael S.. The gendered society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print. Lahelma, Elina. â€Å"Female Paths To Adulthood In A Country Of ‘Genderless Gender’.† Gender & Education 24.1 (2012): 1-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. Luecke, Julie. â€Å"Working with Transgender Children and Their Classmates in Pre-Adolescence: Just Be Supportive.†Journal of LGBT Youth 8.2 (2011): 116-156. Print. Maddison, Sarah, and Frances Shaw. â€Å"Feminist Perspectives on Social Movement Research.† Handbook of feminist research: theory and praxis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2007. 434-454. Print. Teitel, Emma. â€Å"Neither He Nor She.† Maclean’s 125.16 (2012): 36. Academic Search Complete. Web.

Information Technology Outsourcing Management

What is IT outsourcing? IT outsourcing is an arrangement in which a company subcontracts its information technology related activities to be executed by a different company. In the past several decades, as the role of information technology grew in the performance of a company, the fixed cost of maintaining up and running IT facilities and staffs was increasing as well.Therefore outsourcing solution was derived from companies’ need to achieve superior performance of IT functions with minimum amount of cost. Major classifications of IT functions that companies outsource are infrastructure and applications. Infrastructure outsourcing refers to a company resolving its entire IT activities handled by a contracted vendor company on the company’s behalf.Application outsourcing stands for a company subcontracting only its core IT applications such as ERP systems, document management systems or Business intelligence applications with service provider. Benefits and Risks Althoug h it is obvious that primary cause of increasing trend of outsourcing is a cost factor, many other benefits come along with outsourcing. Outsourcing allows companies to shift their whole attention on the quality of their core activities without facing the vulnerability of poor level of IT performance.Because no matter what industry a company is in, cost and pressure of having in-house IT solutions require the company to be an expert in IT industry which is difficult to achieve for any size organizations especially for entrepreneurs and small businesses, slowing down their productivity as well as slowing down the economy. Subcontracting IT activities to a specialized vendor company is indeed a win-win situation for the both end, enabling the organization to upgrade its IT performance and providing business to the vendor company.Moreover, with outsourcing, organizations can get access to variable IT skills and knowledge which potentially can improve their efficiency, and outsourcing m akes accommodating any new IT innovations or changes in any industry easier to handle for organizations. Needless to mention the benefits of savings on investments in IT related infrastructure which can be spent towards organizations’ business expansion or something equally important. The benefits mentioned above can be substantial only if outsourcing is practiced arefully with good management. Otherwise, oversights of important issues can bring significant complications to the organizations. Based on the stories of unsuccessful outsourcing practices, the most considerable problems the organizations encounter are the lack of integration between vendor and client, hidden costs of training, miscalculation of proficiency of the vendor company, and sometimes differentiation of the client company can be compromised since the vendor company could be serving the competitor company as well.In terms of a company outsourcing its entire IT department from a service provider company, imp lementation of good collaboration and communication with each other often requires some time and patience from both sides due to the differences of cultural, geographical and preferred business practices. The fact that knowledge transfer is the most important term in IT outsourcing implies the integration process of vendor and client companies is more virtual than physical.That is why the people problems such as different interpretations of the contract, conflicts of two cultures and lack of preparation for integrated operation occur very often and if ignored, they could result negative impacts on both companies. Legal, economic, geographical and political environments of the country in which the client company outsources its IT activities are the most important but often ignored factors. When the host countries face civil war or natural disaster happens, the recovery costs the companies encounter are usually incalculable. IT outsourcing best practicesThrough weighting the positive and negative impacts of outsourcing carefully and planning the shifting process step by step, companies can successfully implement outsourcing to its daily business practices and convert it to one of its competitive advantages easily. Recommended best practices of IT outsourcing usually focus on good management and good assessment of choosing the partner. Maintaining good communication with your service provider before and after signing on the contract is also an essential part of setting up a sustainable IT solution for any company.Every company and every project has its own uniqueness therefore the service provider understands the detailed requirement is necessary. And the difficulties both side face due to the cultural and geographical differences can be resolved by committing to good communication. For example leaders of both sides should agree on set, clear objectives and stay committed to them when circumstances change. Although the cost reduction is the primary motive of outs ourcing, overdoing it can compromise the organizations’ core activities.In today’s globalizing world, importance of maintaining good IT performance is greater than ever to the organizations’ wellbeing so that pursuing the lowest cost can have its own price. The reason why is that the vendor companies are also business institutions depending on their profits therefore in order to meet the client’s cost requirement they sometimes cut corners such as hiring under qualified staffs which consequently affect the quality of the client companies’ operation.In order to make the integration process easier, the outsourcers should put effort into finding compatible service providers. It is important to make sure that your service provider has organization cultures and preferred business practices similar to yours since they will become a part of the organization. Another essential outsourcing practice is to consider the service providers’ experience and capacities to assess whether they are skilled enough to maintain your company’s operation at all times.In terms of choosing their partner, organizations also should consider any expected future changes in the market and their future expansion plans as well as their competitors’ IT performance level. Political and social environments of the countries in which the vendor companies operate, should not be out of concern. Outsourcers should always be aware of the political situation of their host countries as well as social factors that could influence the quality of employees’ job performance.It is recommended to outsourcers to keep presence of representative on-site as a middle man so that they can have some kind of coordination over the execution of the IT activities. Representatives also work as a communication bridge between partners making sure each side understand their roles and responsibilities. Legal aspects Legal aspects of IT outsourcing might be the mos t complicated issues the enterprises encounter since it involves various types of laws such as international and domestic.International common laws such as Intellectual Property, Copyrights, Patent, Trade Secret, Privacy and Information security all need to be considered when a company makes an outsourcing related decision. Any outsourcing contract addresses the tangible and intangible issues and their legal implications as well as procedures in order to avoid lack of clarity. For example pricing is very important aspect of IT outsourcing contract and any possible uncertainty related to the pricing of service should be stated on the contract.Inflation, delays, manpower and material shortages and insolvency all must be concerned and put on the contract to regulate when situations mentioned above happens. Also outsourcing contract should be flexible to adjust any changes in performance, quality, and suitable to host country’s tax law, pension laws to solve staff related matters . Intangible issues on the other hand should be carefully thought through because they pose the highest risks on the organizations’ domestic and international operation.When companies outsource their entire or partial IT function, the risk of their customers’ valuable information such as social security numbers, medical history, credit card information to be exposed gets higher as well as their own internal secret information. A company must do risk assessment of the host country’s security environment by measuring how effective the laws referred to intellectual property, copyright, digital hacking and violation of privacy are. Unfortunately laws pertaining to privacy protection are not so effective in today’s most popular IT service provider countries such as China, India and Philippine.Therefore offshore IT centers and outsourcing companies must establish strong system together to protect themselves as well as their customers. Intellectual Property and Patent laws have strong presence in USA and European countries but they differ in host countries. Illegal use of one’s IT innovation such as software, source and know-how are not the front line concerns of governments of foreign countries right now, so outsourcers usually face tremendous risk of their intellectual property stolen and used against their products in the market.US companies’ trade secrets are also totally dependent on mutual trust and written agreements between two parts. There is no law enforcement system in the host countries to back up such written agreements. Basically, US companies pursuing offshore outsourcing as an IT strategy must consider domestic and international laws extremely and craft their outsourcing contracts focused on to minimize any risks they may encounter in unfamiliar legal environment. Sources: http://www. infoworld. com/d/adventures-in-it/13-best-practices-it-outsourcing-034? age=0,0 http://blog. everythingcu. com/2006/02/12/the-m any-downsides-of-outsourcing/ http://www. cio. com/article/40380/Outsourcing_Definition_and_Solutions A Legal Perspective on Outsourcing and Offshoring, Sam Ramanujan; Sandhya Jane Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge; Mar 2006; 8, 2; ABI/INFORM Global Outsourcing best practices Outsourcing and Offshoring: The New IS Paradigm? , William R King Journal of Global Information Technology Management; 2005; 8, 2; ABI/INFORM Global www. wikipedia. com Information Technology Outsourcing Management What is IT outsourcing? IT outsourcing is an arrangement in which a company subcontracts its information technology related activities to be executed by a different company. In the past several decades, as the role of information technology grew in the performance of a company, the fixed cost of maintaining up and running IT facilities and staffs was increasing as well.Therefore outsourcing solution was derived from companies’ need to achieve superior performance of IT functions with minimum amount of cost. Major classifications of IT functions that companies outsource are infrastructure and applications. Infrastructure outsourcing refers to a company resolving its entire IT activities handled by a contracted vendor company on the company’s behalf.Application outsourcing stands for a company subcontracting only its core IT applications such as ERP systems, document management systems or Business intelligence applications with service provider. Benefits and Risks Althoug h it is obvious that primary cause of increasing trend of outsourcing is a cost factor, many other benefits come along with outsourcing. Outsourcing allows companies to shift their whole attention on the quality of their core activities without facing the vulnerability of poor level of IT performance.Because no matter what industry a company is in, cost and pressure of having in-house IT solutions require the company to be an expert in IT industry which is difficult to achieve for any size organizations especially for entrepreneurs and small businesses, slowing down their productivity as well as slowing down the economy. Subcontracting IT activities to a specialized vendor company is indeed a win-win situation for the both end, enabling the organization to upgrade its IT performance and providing business to the vendor company.Moreover, with outsourcing, organizations can get access to variable IT skills and knowledge which potentially can improve their efficiency, and outsourcing m akes accommodating any new IT innovations or changes in any industry easier to handle for organizations. Needless to mention the benefits of savings on investments in IT related infrastructure which can be spent towards organizations’ business expansion or something equally important. The benefits mentioned above can be substantial only if outsourcing is practiced arefully with good management. Otherwise, oversights of important issues can bring significant complications to the organizations. Based on the stories of unsuccessful outsourcing practices, the most considerable problems the organizations encounter are the lack of integration between vendor and client, hidden costs of training, miscalculation of proficiency of the vendor company, and sometimes differentiation of the client company can be compromised since the vendor company could be serving the competitor company as well.In terms of a company outsourcing its entire IT department from a service provider company, imp lementation of good collaboration and communication with each other often requires some time and patience from both sides due to the differences of cultural, geographical and preferred business practices. The fact that knowledge transfer is the most important term in IT outsourcing implies the integration process of vendor and client companies is more virtual than physical.That is why the people problems such as different interpretations of the contract, conflicts of two cultures and lack of preparation for integrated operation occur very often and if ignored, they could result negative impacts on both companies. Legal, economic, geographical and political environments of the country in which the client company outsources its IT activities are the most important but often ignored factors. When the host countries face civil war or natural disaster happens, the recovery costs the companies encounter are usually incalculable. IT outsourcing best practicesThrough weighting the positive and negative impacts of outsourcing carefully and planning the shifting process step by step, companies can successfully implement outsourcing to its daily business practices and convert it to one of its competitive advantages easily. Recommended best practices of IT outsourcing usually focus on good management and good assessment of choosing the partner. Maintaining good communication with your service provider before and after signing on the contract is also an essential part of setting up a sustainable IT solution for any company.Every company and every project has its own uniqueness therefore the service provider understands the detailed requirement is necessary. And the difficulties both side face due to the cultural and geographical differences can be resolved by committing to good communication. For example leaders of both sides should agree on set, clear objectives and stay committed to them when circumstances change. Although the cost reduction is the primary motive of outs ourcing, overdoing it can compromise the organizations’ core activities.In today’s globalizing world, importance of maintaining good IT performance is greater than ever to the organizations’ wellbeing so that pursuing the lowest cost can have its own price. The reason why is that the vendor companies are also business institutions depending on their profits therefore in order to meet the client’s cost requirement they sometimes cut corners such as hiring under qualified staffs which consequently affect the quality of the client companies’ operation.In order to make the integration process easier, the outsourcers should put effort into finding compatible service providers. It is important to make sure that your service provider has organization cultures and preferred business practices similar to yours since they will become a part of the organization. Another essential outsourcing practice is to consider the service providers’ experience and capacities to assess whether they are skilled enough to maintain your company’s operation at all times.In terms of choosing their partner, organizations also should consider any expected future changes in the market and their future expansion plans as well as their competitors’ IT performance level. Political and social environments of the countries in which the vendor companies operate, should not be out of concern. Outsourcers should always be aware of the political situation of their host countries as well as social factors that could influence the quality of employees’ job performance.It is recommended to outsourcers to keep presence of representative on-site as a middle man so that they can have some kind of coordination over the execution of the IT activities. Representatives also work as a communication bridge between partners making sure each side understand their roles and responsibilities. Legal aspects Legal aspects of IT outsourcing might be the mos t complicated issues the enterprises encounter since it involves various types of laws such as international and domestic.International common laws such as Intellectual Property, Copyrights, Patent, Trade Secret, Privacy and Information security all need to be considered when a company makes an outsourcing related decision. Any outsourcing contract addresses the tangible and intangible issues and their legal implications as well as procedures in order to avoid lack of clarity. For example pricing is very important aspect of IT outsourcing contract and any possible uncertainty related to the pricing of service should be stated on the contract.Inflation, delays, manpower and material shortages and insolvency all must be concerned and put on the contract to regulate when situations mentioned above happens. Also outsourcing contract should be flexible to adjust any changes in performance, quality, and suitable to host country’s tax law, pension laws to solve staff related matters . Intangible issues on the other hand should be carefully thought through because they pose the highest risks on the organizations’ domestic and international operation.When companies outsource their entire or partial IT function, the risk of their customers’ valuable information such as social security numbers, medical history, credit card information to be exposed gets higher as well as their own internal secret information. A company must do risk assessment of the host country’s security environment by measuring how effective the laws referred to intellectual property, copyright, digital hacking and violation of privacy are. Unfortunately laws pertaining to privacy protection are not so effective in today’s most popular IT service provider countries such as China, India and Philippine.Therefore offshore IT centers and outsourcing companies must establish strong system together to protect themselves as well as their customers. Intellectual Property and Patent laws have strong presence in USA and European countries but they differ in host countries. Illegal use of one’s IT innovation such as software, source and know-how are not the front line concerns of governments of foreign countries right now, so outsourcers usually face tremendous risk of their intellectual property stolen and used against their products in the market.US companies’ trade secrets are also totally dependent on mutual trust and written agreements between two parts. There is no law enforcement system in the host countries to back up such written agreements. Basically, US companies pursuing offshore outsourcing as an IT strategy must consider domestic and international laws extremely and craft their outsourcing contracts focused on to minimize any risks they may encounter in unfamiliar legal environment. Sources: http://www. infoworld. com/d/adventures-in-it/13-best-practices-it-outsourcing-034? age=0,0 http://blog. everythingcu. com/2006/02/12/the-m any-downsides-of-outsourcing/ http://www. cio. com/article/40380/Outsourcing_Definition_and_Solutions A Legal Perspective on Outsourcing and Offshoring, Sam Ramanujan; Sandhya Jane Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge; Mar 2006; 8, 2; ABI/INFORM Global Outsourcing best practices Outsourcing and Offshoring: The New IS Paradigm? , William R King Journal of Global Information Technology Management; 2005; 8, 2; ABI/INFORM Global www. wikipedia. com

Police Cis Essay

This is known as predictive policing. Predictive policing has led to a drop in burglaries, automobile thefts, and other crimes in some cities. From the 1800’s until about the 1980’s the strategy of many agencies was to have uniformed police randomly patrol the streets, the outcome of these patrols were to hopefully deter crimes with the police presence, interrupt crimes in progress and to apprehend criminals. Since then the random police patrol has in fact lessened with the use of IT to optimize the patrolling. IT is a very important part of law enforcement since we live in a world where talking to the police is shunned upon, so if we can use a software to track and deter crime then it will be vey beneficial. The goal of this was to reestablish relationships between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve. With the use of IT together the two parties would implement strategies that would examine and resolve many of the issues or concerns in the community, but most importantly the trust between the two groups would be rebuilt. Random patrolling is still necessary to let the community see the police presence. Without the community physically seeing police their opinions of them would be negative. It’s very important to know that IT is used in addition to the normal patrolling method not as a replacement. The four key components of COMPSTAT are time and accurate intelligence, effective tactics, rapid deployment, and relentless follow-up and assessment. Accurate information on crime should be entered daily rather than waiting a long period of time. Time and accurate intelligence usually consists of inputting the following information in the system: the type of crimes taking place, the locations the crimes that are occurring, how the crime is committed and who is committing the crime. Effective Tactics or Processing are tactics that law enforcement officials use to examine the accuracy of the data inputted in the system input. Effective Tactics will examine the data compiled both old and new, develop new strategies, implement tactics that will have a positive effect on social and situational changes, develop tactics for the correlating crime trends. Rapid deployment or Output is the act of effective strategies’ put in place. Rapid deployment normally encourages law enforcement agencies to work together as a joint task force to achieve the goal of the agency as a whole. Relentless Follow-up and Assessment to me is the most important part of COMPSTAT because you see the achievements and failures of policies put in place. Relentless Follow-up and Assessment also called Feedback is reviewing strategies implemented, confirming the outcomes of the implements strategy, identifying if the outcome was positive or negative and confirming the strategy resolved issues that it was intended to. Because COMPSTAT utilizes Geographic Information System (GIS) to display the vicinities where crime is taking place, identifies high crime rate areas known as â€Å"hot spots† and potential problematic areas as well. COMPSTAT gathers an immense amount of old crime data which it converts into algorithms that cross reference old crime data which foreshadow crime in the future to law enforcement agencies. The evolution of technology has enabled law officials to determine the high crime areas and staff them appropriately, which leads to a faster response time, and successful crime deterrence. The program is cost effective to large agencies but available to all. Like all new technology proper training is required to learn how to efficiently and properly utilize this system. Many would say, the greatest advantage of this system is that police presence is continuously felt and criminals tend to think twice before acting, as response time will be immediate. With the existence of this presence community relationships have shown to grow stronger and the citizens feel safer and more compelled to share information about criminal activity, which can help solidify nformation that is inputted into the system. Since many police agencies intend to implement predictive-policing in their departments they should know the advantages and disadvantages of it. The most popular advantage is the reduction in cost to the agency, this is popular presently because there are so many cuts happening due to the economy this helps out a lot. The budgets of many police agencies are getting smaller and smaller year-by-year, so by being able to pinpoint the exact location of crimes and to put your offices in the â€Å"hotspots† can potentially be a big money saver for the force. Another advantage is the software is very user friendly and easy to use, the amount of training for the officers would not be as much as with other software’s have proven to be and it is also less expensive for larger agencies. However, like everything there are also some disadvantages. The biggest one is the software is not compatible with other software’s that are currently used by most agencies, which will keep agencies from effectively communicating with outside agencies.

The experiences of family members who provide care for their relatives with Alzheimer’s disease

Taking care of an elderly relative can be quite challenging. When this relative is diagnosed with a terminal condition, with no known opportunity for recovery additional challenges are added. Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating condition which paralyzes the patient’s ability to function normally and thus require personal care from either a nursing professional or an at-home care provider in the form of a family member.Since the survival rate with the disease could reach to as much as 15 to 20 years (Coen et al. , 1999), caring for an AD patient is a long-term commitment. The experiences encountered by these caregivers must be quite unique and would of course vary among families. It is useful therefore to discover some of the commonly challenges faced by caregivers in order to obtain a better understanding of the issue and to develop appropriate strategies to address the issues.2. 0 Literature Review Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia among ol der people (Coen, O’Boyle, Swanwick & Coakley, 1999).Dementia is a slow-onset neurodegenerative disorder marked by a severe decline of cognitive abilities (Ward, 2007) with obvious effects on daily life, mostly memory, which seriously affects a person's ability to carry out daily activities. AD begins slowly. It first involves the parts of the brain that control thought, memory and language. People with AD may have trouble remembering things that happened recently or names of people they know.According to Carradice, Beail & Shankland (2003) this disease is more common among those persons older than eighty years. Given that there is a noted increase in life expectancy where more and more persons are living longer it is quite understandable that the incidents of dementia are also increasing (Zarit & Edwards, 1996). The prognosis for elderly patients with AD is quite dismal. While there are treatment options available that may improve some of the behavioural and cognitive ill ef fectives of the disease.No treatment current exists that will halt the progression of the disease of lead to full recovery (Mittelman, 2002). In order to ensure that the condition is controlled as far as possible and that AD patients are well cared for long-term care options have to be sought. While there are countless long-term care institutions, many with qualified nursing and other medical personnel to cater to the needs of the AD patient, most AD patients are given this long-term care within the domestic situation, primarily by family members (Coen et al., 1999). Research indicates that family members are the ones who are more often than not responsible for providing care for their relatives with Alzheimer’s disease (Mittelman, 2002; Tettelman & Watts, 2004 and Caregiving & Alzheimer’s Disease, 2004). In fact health professions usually feel it best that the elderly continue living at home for as long as possible (Teeri, Leino-Kilpi & Valimaki, 2006), and the elderl y themselves also desire to be home (Aggarwal, 2003).Additionally researchers have often criticized institutions on the basis that often many elderly are registered in these institutions against their wishes and are also often unhappy in these non-private situations (Teeri et al. , 2006). However for those relatives who opt to provide care for AD patients there are considerable day to day strains and difficulties that they face. The financial burden is one of the most apparent. Grahm (2001) highlights that the costs of taking care of an elderly relative are very overwhelming, particularly one who has suffered a stroke or who has AD.Statistics suggest that the usual cost of taking care of an elderly relative ranges between $148 and $158 billion dollars (Caregiving & Alzheimer’s, 2004). Most research has, however, discovered that the greatest challenges for at home caregivers to elderly AD patients is not so much the financial burden, but the psychosocial and emotional difficul ties faced by these caregivers. Thus considerable attention has been paid not only to the dismal prognosis of those suffering from the disease but also those who have to provide at-home care for Alzheimer’s patients.Various researchers have attempted to isolate the various challenges faced by caregivers of AD patients. Grahm (2001) contends that the pressures faced by caregivers are of both an emotional and physical nature. Gwyther (as cited in Caregiving & Alzheimer’s Disease, 2004) mentions chronic stress and decrease health as one of the ill effects of caring for the elderly. Tettleman and Watts (2004) also allude to stress in additional to mental strain as issues of concern faced by these caregivers.Anxiety (Caregiving & Alzheimer’s Disease, 2004), fatigue and depression (Mittelman, 2002) and psychological distress (Carradice et al. , 2003) are other issues commonly noted in the literature. The preoccupation of researchers examining this disease is, therefor e, not only on the debilitating effects that it has on the patient but also the demands that are placed on caregivers who are required to take care of these patients. Evidently caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease at home is not without its challenges as significant strains are put on the caregivers.Each individual situation where a family member is responsible for taking care of a relative with Alzheimer’s disease comes with its own challenges and it is very difficult to generalize specifically about the experiences of these caregivers. This study will seek to identify and categorize some of the more common experiences shared by them. This research will be of considerable importance to medical practitioners who have to interact with patients and their families as well as to the individual family members/caregivers.The findings from this research will be useful to current caregivers in helping them realize that other persons face the same challenges as they do and therefore a network of caregivers facing similar problems could be formed where they formulate strategies to deal with problems together. Medical professional would also have this information and could share this with new caregivers that enter their offices in order to prepare them for the challenges ahead. 3. 0 Research design and justificationConsiderable research has been conducted on the problems associated with Alzheimer’s and challenges that have been associated with caring for a patient with Alzheimer’s disease. Previous research has highlighted the challenges faced by caregivers of ill relative but not much research has focused specifically on the condition of Alzheimer’s disease (Teeri et al. , 2006). Where research was specific to Alzheimer’s disease, the focus on caregivers was not specific to family members providing this kind of care, but generalized on the various categories of caregivers including compensated professionals (Ellor, 20 05; Teeri et al., 2006). Further, research has failed to classify the problems faced by these family caregivers and place them into meaningful categories (Mittelman, 2002; Caregiving & Alzheimer’s Disease, 2004). This will be a qualitative study explaining the common experiences of family members who are caring for elderly relatives at home. Where other researchers were not specific to Alzheimer’s disease this research will be exclusive to this category of caregivers. The experiences of a cross-section of such caregivers will be compared and analyzed for common themes.Unlike previous researchers this study will conduct a comprehensive categorization of the most common experiences based on the information garnered from the caregivers. The information gathering instrument will be primarily interviews. The use of interviews to gather information has long been lauded by researchers. Interviews may either be structured where the researcher directs the line of the conversati on with specific questions requiring direct responses. Unstructured interviews allow the researcher to approach the interviewee with a general objective and allowing the conversation to flow in whatever direction it will.Both of these interview tactics have their benefits. The first forces the respondent to focus specifically on the information that is required for the purposes of the research. The second type allows the research to gather a vast amount of information, even information that was unanticipated when the research was being prepared. For the purposes of this research the unstructured interview would be quite useful as the research does not wish to restrict the extent of the responses given by the interviewees.This research will therefore add to the wealth of knowledge about the nature of Alzheimer’s disease and the direct and indirect effects it has on patient and family. This research will also help to improve understanding of the role that caregivers fulfil and the challenges they face in dealing with ill and elderly relatives, specifically those who have Alzheimer’s disease. Respondents will not be restricted in the type of responses they produce thereby allowing the researcher to get a comprehensive and true picture of the real lived situation of caring for an AD patient.

Marriage and Family Therapy Essay

Marriage and Family Therapy Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the field of marriage and family counseling beginning with the history and development of the profession and its importance in the field of counseling. This paper will also evaluate five major themes relevant to Marriage and Family Therapy which include: roles of Marriage and Family Therapists; licensure requirements and examinations; methods of supervision; client advocacy; multiculturalism and diversity. The author will discuss significant aspects to the field of Marriage and Family Therapy such as MFT identity, function, and ethics of the profession. This paper will assess biblical values in relation to Marriage and Family Therapists and to the field itself. In conclusion, the author will provide reflections on Marriage and Family Therapy and the personal commitment to provide counseling that is ethical, biblically grounded, and empirically based. Marriage and Family Therapy This paper is an examination of the history and development of the field of Marriage and Family Therapy. Education, licensure requirements, methods of supervision, client advocacy, and cultural sensitivity are the focus of the evaluation with specific attention given to counselor identity, function, and ethics. History and Development The field of Marriage and Family Therapy is an emerging profession with roots dating back to the late 1940’s. In 2009 licensure for Marriage and Family Therapists was attained for all 50 states and the District of Columbia but this dream began in 1949 when the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (originally called the American Association of Marriage Counselors) joined forces with the National Council on Family Relations to form a committee to create the standards that would one day regulate the practice of marriage and family counseling (Northey, 2009). Marriage and family counseling was once thought of as a subset of other helping professions but now Marriage and Family Therapy is one of the major mental health professions in the United States with over 50,000 licensed therapists (Northey, 2009). The profession has its own accrediting body, COAMFTE, for accrediting graduate and doctorate programs in Marriage and Family Therapy. To further strengthen the profession, 128 core competencies have been identified with six primary domains and five subdomains (Miller, 2010). The six domains include: admission to treatment; clinical assessment and diagnosis; treatment planning and case management; therapeutic intervention; legal issues, ethics, and standards; and research and program evaluation. The subdomains relate to types of skills and are comprised of: conceptual, perceptual, executive, evaluative, and professional (Miller, 2010). According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy website, a marriage and family therapist is a highly trained professional working in the mental health field that brings a family-oriented perspective to health care (http://www. aamft. org). In order to help families and married partners accomplish this, marriage and family therapists assess what kinds of emotional and mental disorders, behavioral and health problems, and relationship issues are encountered and then a treatment plan is devised. Treatment of the problems that families and couples face often results in greater understanding as well as more effective communication between members and couples which can ultimately aid in the prevention of crises for the individual and family. A main aspect of marriage and family therapy is the focus on the here and now and what can be done to remedy these current situations.