Poor Boys Blimp Essays - Airships, Blimp, Trout Mask Replica

Poor Boys Blimp There once was a little boy that grew up in the Brooklyn projects. He was extremely poor. Some how he managed to have some of the better things of life like a treadmill and an obsolete computer from the 80's. His life long dream was to own a $650 Lead Zeppelin remote controlled blimp. He asked his parents every year for six years if he could have it and every time they would say no they couldn't afford it. So on the boys fourteenth birthday he went and applied for a job at the local Nathaniel's. After talking to the manager Steve and getting the job he ran home and told his parents that he started the job tomorrow. The next day the when he got to work he looked around and noticed Steve was gone. He asked another worker where Steve was. The worker responded he was fired for being too stupid. The boy laughed and returned back to work. After weeks of hard work he finally made $600 of the $650 he needed for the blimp. On his way home one day he noticed a new store. He read the stores name "Iraqi Pete Discount plutonium and models". So only being human he walked in to look around. The moment he walked in he was surrounded be a green glow that was so bright it would put a helicopter's searchlights to shame. After his eyes adjusted to the glow he saw the storeowner eating pineapples and watching TV in black and white. The owner of the store heard the door shut and went to the boy and said hello. The boy being polite said hello as well. The owner asked if there was a certain item he was looking for. The boy asked if he had a Led Zeppelin remote control blimp. The man said yes we do right there in the corner. So the boy thanked him and walked to the corner and his eyes lit up brighter than the radiation from the plutonium. It was the blimp for $600 tax-free. The boy asked if the blimp was really $600 the owner said yes why wouldn't it be. The boy grabbed it, bought it, and left the store. Quickly he ran home and saw his father. Daddy, daddy he said look what I bought. The father yelled shut up. I just worked double time triple time at the hospital I need coffee and sleep. Not affected by his father's routine yelling the boy went to his 5th story window and read the directions and then started the blimp. The sound of the engine thrilled the boy. Now the time had come for the first flight the boy flew it out the window and outside where everyone could see it. He was having the time of his life until it happened. The blimp for no apparent reason went putt, putt and started on its first and last decent. Crashing into the courtyard in a loud flaming mess the boy almost passed out. He ran down the stairs fast to see how bad the damage was. It was totaled the blimp would never fly again. He started to cry when he noticed something he didn't smell gas. He dipped his finger in the gas tank and tasted it. It was watered down desil he was swindled by Pete. Angry, sad and confused he ran back to the store he walked in screaming and crying. Then all of a sudden he noticed something there where ten INS agents in Pete's store. He also saw Pete in handcuffs. One of the agents saw him and quickly took him out of the store and drove him home. When he got home the boy walked slowly up the stairs like a lifeless zombie. When he finally got back to his apartment he sat in front of the window and watched the birds thinking to himself why couldn't I have just waited. The moral of the story is if it seems to good to be true it probably is.

Bag of Bones essays

Bag of Bones essays Bag of Bones is the best book Stephen King has written in years. As shocking as Carrie, as mysterious and menacing as The Shining, as funny and honest about writers as Misery, as evocative of place as his record-setting bestseller The Green Mile, this is a horror novel steeped in all the finest qualities of our favorite Stephen King stories. And yet it is also a bold step beyond, toward a more mature vision of marriage, sex, loss, family-and, especially, evil. Narrator Mike Noonan is a best-selling writer of romantic thrillers-"V.C. Andrews with a prick," as he ruefully puts it. Plagued by nightmares and writer's block following the sudden death of his wife, Mike escapes to their lakeside summer house, known as Sara Laughs. But this is King territory, and Mike's beloved Yankee town has its dark side. A century ago, a group of local men murdered a black blues singer and her family. The killers' heirs have paid the price ever since. But this is only one of the buried secrets Mike unearths. The community is held in the grip of Max Devore, a powerful millionaire with a wicked past. Devore is obsessed with taking away his granddaughter, Kyra, from her young widowed mother, Mattie. As Mike falls in love with Mattie and comes to adore Kyra, he has to decode the warnings that only he and the child are receiving-from ghosts. He must do all these things, or the killing won't stop. It would be unfair to reveal any more of King's story, a complex web of relationships, rivalries, and revenge. Refrigerator magnets that spell out warnings and a spooky trip back in time to a country fair are just the beginning of a long and scary ride. By the end, King has given you a larger sense of the interrelatedness of past and present-and of the wages of sin. Bag of Bones, then, is the author at his best, and something more. ...

Diversified workforce Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Diversified workforce - Essay Example anization because such a workforce helps in making better decisions, helps in satisfying customer needs and creates a positive image of the organization. A very important element in the success of an organization is the way decisions are made in the organization. A successful organization is one which is able to take creative decisions in order to compete in a highly competitive environment. Decision making is one area which helps in enhancing the creativity of the organization. In the process of decision making, it is essential for the organization to define an issue from different perspective and develop different solutions for a particular issue. Having a diversified workforce can enable the organization in broadly defining the issues it is facing and developing different solutions to a problem. For example: a workforce comprising of people having who have ample amount of experience and who have recently graduated can come up with solutions that have already been tested and solutions that are new. Another key element of organization is its customer and customers of the organization are considered as the heart of the customer. Customer satisfaction is considered very important in order to attract and retain old and new customers. To satisfy the needs of a diverse range of customers organizations require a diversified workforce. A diversified workforce can interact with customers and develop customer intimacy and identify the needs that they want to be fulfilled. This enables the organization in developing goods and services which caters to the needs of different customers which enables the organization in attracting and retaining customers. A third key element of the success of the organization is the image that it creates in the mind of its stakeholders. Organizations that do not have a diversified workforce are considered as organizations that practice discrimination by employing only individuals that belong to one particular group. Due to this they face

Conscientiousness Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Conscientiousness - Research Paper Example Leadership is the power to motivate people by words, actions and deeds using vision, belief and truthfulness (Northouse, 2009). Conscientious leadership, which becomes ethical leadership, means â€Å"ethically motivating others in ethical directions† consisting of both â€Å"procedural† and â€Å"substantive† (character-based) aspects (Chumir, 1992, para.1). The procedural dimension of conscientious leadership includes problem-solving and decision-making techniques within the circle of moral principles. For example, conscientious leadership demands that the leaders, before putting their decisions into action, inform and discuss them with the parties which are going to be affected by their decisions. This means that the concerned parties are being given due respect and importance. The substantive aspect of conscientious leadership includes knowledge, strong standards and courage to follow ethical directions despite strong opposition. Also, the values that a person inherits or learns later in his life play a very important role in constructing his inner self, and in developing conscientiousness. By understanding and polishing basic values, a leader develops a sense of moral obligation of enhancing the betterment of the company. A conscientious leader actually expresses transformational leadership (Brown & Travino, 2006), in which the leaders produce such an effect on their subordinates that they inflict a â€Å"transforming effect† on them, thus, producing â€Å"sweeping changes in organizations and societies† (Priyabhasini & Krishnan, 2005, p.1). A conscientious leader knows in what direction must the action go, and what the consequences of that action will be. He has a strong vision, and so, he is able to go in the depth of the problem to relate its solution with ethical values. It is the conscience of the inner self of the leader that leads him to do good decisions. The

Discuss Internet as a tool to International marketing Essay

Discuss Internet as a tool to International marketing research(implications, advantages & disadvantages) - Essay Example   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Market   research   is   a   systematic,   objective   collection   and   analysis   of   data   about   a   particular   target   market,   competition,   and/or   environment.   This   type   of   research   must   always   have   some   form   of   data   collection,   whether   it   be   secondary   research   or   primary   research,   which   is   collected   direct   from   a   respondent.   There   are   two   types   of   research:   quantitative   and   qualitative.   Quantitative   research   involves   numbers.   An   example,   a   fast   food   chain   might   ask   customers   to   rate   the   service   as   excellent,   good,   poor   or   very   poor.   Qualitative   research   tries   to   understand   how   or   why   things   are   the   way   they    are.   The   research   involves   more   Ã‚  face-to-face   contact.   An   example,   a   research   might   ask   a   consumers   why   they   have   decided   to   buy   a   certain   type   of   soft   drink.     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The   Internet   has   changed   how   marketing   research   has   changed   internationally.   Why,   percentage   wise,   half   the   homes   in   the   United   States   have   computers.   This   movement   came   about   for   four   reasons:   the   prices   of   personal   computers   are   decreasing,   current   home   connections,   slow,   but   are   now   becoming   more   rapid,   companies   are   spending   large   amounts   of   money   on   small   internet- only   computers,   and   the   introduction   of   web   television.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   All   these   factors   have,   and   will   continue   to   increase   the   number   of   people   with   access   to   the   internet.   What   will   also   increase   is   the   potential   to   gather   information   from   consumers,   access   secondary   data   sources,   advertise   and   sell   products.   This   is  

Impact of Lyndon B. Johnson

Impact of Lyndon B. Johnson Discuss the historical significance of Lyndon B. Johnson LBJ, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today? Was one of the principal protest chants of the 1960s in the United States. It was directed at President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was about the war in Vietnam that the American government under the Johnson administration had been steadily become more involved in each passing year after he came to office following Kennedys assassination in November 1963. One can only imagine how this must have hurt for a man of Johnsons pride and character. Being accused of killing children is not something that anyone takes lightly. His reputation as a connoisseur of Washington hid visionary leadership qualities. He knew how to get what he wanted and when. He realized that American society had to change as the first post-World War Two generation was clamouring for a greater voice in society. His election in 1964 was one of the biggest majorities ever. It is hard to find a historical figure that does not have more than one facet or side to their political legacy and life, and Lyndon Johnson was no exception, but in his case, it was so much more pronounced. Yes, he was historically significant. Itis impossible to argue that he was not. This significance is firstly in his ‘Great Society legislation and philosophy, and secondly in his prosecution of the war in Vietnam. Each of these will be discussed in turn. Part A) Visionary: Kennedys footsteps and Great Society. Any president who comes to office following the death, accidental or not, of another president finds himself or herself in that shadow of that person. The position of vice-president is not an easy one in American government and politics. It carries no power and limited stature. One constantly feels second to holder of the office of president. Naturally, the vice-president is part of the cabinet and provides advice, but the political ideals and program belong to the current president. Looking at Kennedy and Johnson, one can only see differences, but the political need of Kennedy for Southern votes in 1960 made him choose Johnson. His victory created the myth of Camelot, which still stands to this date. He believed in civil rights for all Americans and wanted a more peaceful relationship with the Soviet Union. He was young and handsome, which generated a huge amount of charisma. His death robbed the United States of a leader of great potential. On November 22, 1963, Lyndon Johnson step ped into his shoes following his assassination. He lacked Kennedys charisma, but soon showed confidence. His reputation as a master of the Senate was proof of competence and knowledge. These skills would be soon into great demand as he was immediately confronted with the need to resolve multiple societal problems, such as race relations in the South and health care; issues that Kennedy had started looking at in his brief tenure as president. Johnson felt he had to bring the solutions to fruition, both for the country and Kennedy, and lastly for himself, which meant putting his imprint on them. The United States of the 1960s was in the throes of racial tensions and economic retardation. Southern states were resisting and ignoring federal attempts to impose civil rights for blacks. The result of which was the low voting levels and harassment of blacks in the American Deep South. There were periodical racial riots requiring at times the intervention of federal National Guard to quell them. Unemployment was rising and many Americans had no kind of medical coverage. The American constitutional order placed checks and balances on every level of power, but as the source of the racial inequalities was being ignored for very many reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion, although one of them was that many presidents were reluctant to rock the boat fearing electoral and legislative setbacks. Such fears did not scare Johnson, as he had earned and cherished a Senate reputation of bending and cajoling other lawmakers to his way of thinking. He could be many things to many p eople. His birth in the Southern state of Texas gave him the image of a good olboy, which could be utilized to great effect. This appeal and experience would be highly beneficial as he was able to push through many legislative reforms by the end of 1965. Every January, the current American president gives a State of the Union address during which he or she proposes various ideas and programs for that year. At this point, Johnson declared a War on Poverty  and called for the passing of Kennedys tax cut and civil rights bill; the first easily passed its hurdles, while the second quickly got delayed. Part of his war on poverty involved creating jobs through massive government aid and intervention, very much on the scale of Roosevelts Great Deal in the 1930s, which served as his inspiration as he understood that the state could not stand by while the people suffered. This realization was in stark contrast to his view of the United States as the true representative of freedom in the world, which meant bringing violence and suffering to people around the world as everyone had their own There were two other major legislative elements of the Great Society, namely Medicare and Medicaid, and the Higher and Elementary and Secondary Education Acts in 1965;the former two set up health care funding for the elderly and the needy, while the latter two provided federal aid to schools. Some of his opponents argued that these reforms were federal involvement in state affairs and fought court cases to resist or delay them. A country of the stature of the United States could not claim to be torch bearer of democracy and freedom,  when a quarter of citizens were denied their rights and many governmental institutions either colluded in their denial or stood by while it occurred. Kennedy recognized this horror, although his predecessor Eisenhower had started redressing the ill when he ordered the National Guard to intervene during the Little Rock crisis in 1957. The Civil Rights Act was passed in July 1964, while the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The riots and violence soon became things of the past except when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968resulting in riots across 100 cities. A new Civil Rights Act was passed later that year. On a more personal level, he was the first American president to nominate a black person to the Supreme Court and the Cabinet, who were Thurgood Marshall previously having served as the solicitor-general of the United States in 1967 and Robert Weaver as secretary of housing and urban development in 1966. Both decisions opened some of the last bureaucratic rooms to racial integration despite the racist cringing of many Southern senators and governors. Part B) Ideologue: Cold War and the quicksand of Vietnam. The war in Vietnam would become Johnsons undoing. Like almost any other project or idea that he had, he wanted to fight and win it. His major pieces of legislation had been passed by early 1965 or were on their way. This freedom permitted him to increase the American presence in Vietnam. He ordered the first combat troops into Vietnam reversing a Kennedy policy of pulling out of Vietnam as he believed in the ‘Domino Theory whereby if one country fell to Communism, others would follow, so a stand had to be made and Vietnam fulfilled that role. This geo-political theory developed in the 1950s and soon became a guiding principle of many elements of American foreign policy, but sadly it was very blinkered way of thinking, because the theory soon became the reality as facts were manipulated, or even created, to fit into it. The inability to grow beyond it would hamper much of Johnsons thinking on Vietnam. The initial American involvement in Vietnam dated from 1955 after the French h ad been defeated atDien Bien Phu when the United States under Eisenhower felt it had to buttress non-Communist forces in South East Asia. The world of the 1960s was in the throes of a cooling-off period in the Cold War after having closely brushed with nuclear Armageddon in Cuba in October 1962, and the growing American involvement was perceived as a renewed hot period. Not everyone believed in this war, as they realized that it was a battle between two opposing ideologies, Capitalism and Communism; both of which had their supporters and critics, and the question was why did someone have to choose between them. Many counties did ignore the two superpowers and formed the Non-Aligned Movement. ‘Unsurprisingly, this act angered both superpowers. The nature of this war was that the United States and Soviet Union never actually fought each other, but used proxies to fulfil their ideological agendas. Ironically, the political nature of many of these proxies was that they were corrupt, repressive and dictatorial; for instance, in the case of Vietnam, the Diem government in the South supported by the Johnson administrati on was suppressing opposition to its rule, while Ho Chi Minh in the North was widely praised and respected. In atwist of irony, the repressive policies of the Diem government led the American government to overthrow him, but this only further destabilized the country and accelerated its slide into chaos. The basic Cold War philosophy meant that the legitimate democratic needs and hopes of millions were ignored, and it can be argued that this fact damaged the United States more than it did the Soviet Union as the United States claimed to be leader in world democracy and freedom. Johnson’s belief in the American mission to bring democracy to the world was one of his justifications to get involved in Vietnam. This argument begs belief. In the end, this contradiction could not be resolved, and it became the source of the American military and political loss. When Lyndon Johnson came to office, there were only about 16000 advisers in Vietnam, but he would raise the number of combat soldiers to almost 50000 by the late 1960s. He increased the number of bomber missions in the hope of crushing the spirit of the Vietnamese. Not only was the cost in lives was enormous, but also in infrastructure, as bridges, dams and building were destroyed. Such destruction put a stop to any development projects by the Vietnamese. One of the consequences of such a massive bombing was the scarring of the landscape whereby huge holes were made across the country creating impediments to agricultural development. One of the more tragic episodes of the Vietnam War was the authorization to use a weed killer to defoliate trees and shrubs in the hope of uncovering supply routes used by the Vietnamese. It was code-named Agent Orange and was sprayed from planes flying over jungles. It was a pesticide and was never thought of as being dangerous to the health of humans. Protests quickly grew as claims were raised that it was causing various forms of cancer in both Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers, and recently studies have slowly tended to support such views. The psychological success but military failure of the North Vietnameses Tet offensive in 1968started the American military withdrawal process. In a major reversal, Johnson stopped increasing troops and thought of ways to extricate himself and his country from Vietnam. The failure of Johnson to realize that the war was based on the desire of independence of a people at all costs meant that regardless of how many military victories were achieved, the war never ended. It has been a standing law in American politics to not bring back soldiers in body bags as it is politically damaging. Every death was a nail in Johnson’s political coffin. The chant How, Ho Chi Minh shouted by American protesters must have been devastating to Johnson as they cheered his opponent in a war that he su pported. In other areas of the gloomy world of the Cold War, Johnson was quite forward thinking and deserved credit. The close call of nuclear destruction during the Cuba Missile Crisis meant that a special red phone line was installed so that the leaders of the United States and Soviet Union could talk to each other quickly. To accelerate communication and travel, a new air route was installed between Moscow and New York City. His meeting with Premier Kosygin in June 1967 was another in a recent line of summits between American and Soviet leaders, and their discussions led to proposals to reduce the development of nuclear weapons, which later grew into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons ratified internationally in March 1970, but unfortunately as this was passed by the American Senate in 1969 after Johnson had left office, much of the credit went to his successor, Richard Nixon. This agreement was one of the first major limitations of nuclear use and was the father of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, otherwise known as SALT. Conclusion According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the soul of every person was weighed measuring his or her good and bad deeds to decide their place in the Afterword. This view has both negative and positive aspects as every action has a value, but one huge good or bad act can outweigh a lot of small bad or good ones. Depending on whom you ask, both the Vietnam War and the Great Society can be either, but prosecuting an unnecessary war is hard to defend, while programs designed to help the needy is so much easier to do so. The war in Vietnam failed to achieve any of its objectives of liberating people and extending American power in the region, while the Great Society opened American society to new levels and made more people feel part of it. In this regard, a very simple description of Lyndon Johnsons place in history is that he was a divisive figure. He was the author of two great things in American society; firstly the Great Society and secondly the Vietnam War, although the present use of the term great is in its sense of social grandeur and socially revolutionary. He is remembered affectionately and hated deeply for each of them, but not always in the way that some of us might think. It is a mark of this divisiveness, which he himself recognized, that he stepped aside from running again as president in March 1968. His successor as president was Richard Nixon. Bibliography Morris, Errol. The Fog of War. DVD. Columbia Tri Star, 2004. Johnson, Lyndon. The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969. Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1971. Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate: the years of Lyndon Johnson. Cape, 2002. Bernstein, Irving. Gunsor Butter: the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Oxford University Press, 1995. Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and his times, 1961-1973. Oxford University Press,1998.

Improving The Teaching of Physics :: Learning Education Papers

What this paper is all about I will attempt to provide answers to the question of how one can facilitate the acquisition of deep conceptual understanding of physical concepts and make learning more meaningful to students. I will do this by using the results of several physics education researches as anchored on some important difficulties physics educators have in teaching physics. The problems in physics teaching Over the years, physics education has been beset with a multitude of problems. The most compelling is how to teach physics to the students so that they will understand it, and appreciate it. An offshoot of this difficulty is the problem of retaining in the program those students who have initially decided to major in physics. Seymour and Hewitt’s (1997) study on why undergraduates leave the sciences revealed that students switch not because they lack the mental ability. The three main concerns for shifting are the lack or loss of interest, belief that a non-SME offers a better education, and poor teaching of SME faculty. Looking at these reasons, we realize that the situation is not at all hopeless. I believe that we could do something to address these issues. The scenario would have been pathetic if the primary reason for the switch is the students’ lack of mental ability. As I see it, the issue of lack/loss of interest and the belief that SME offers a better education is brought about or aggravated by the issue of poor teaching of SME faculty. If we can address the issue of poor teaching we will essentially be addressing the two other issues. If we can better teach physics then this can be a source of motivation for students to stay in physics. Another major problem in physics education is that students do not appear to gain as much knowledge out of their physics courses as desired. The most probable reason for this is the over-dependence of physics instructors on using the â€Å"traditional lecture†. Lectures in physics can be an incredibly passive experience for students, particularly dangerous for those who believe that if they can follow the professor, they’ve mastered the material (Tobias, 1990). In this paper I will be presenting ways in which we can improve large lecture classes in order to make learning more meaningful for students. The motivation for this is my belief that lecture halls will still continue to pervade physics departments. Reducing the number of student- teacher ratio is a far-fetched reality.