ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Introduction Change is of great necessity if life is to be better than it is. Change involves three fundamental aspects, Modeling, Supporting and Rewarding. For change to take place efforts are needed so as to make it come true. The aim of this paper is to look at change and the processes involved in bringing a cultural change. Focus will be given to the events I observed about cultural change. Change and Culture Change is a significant parameter in any society, organization or community. As such it is normal for people to recognize the need for change and participate in the process of bringing it to accomplishment. There are several events that have taken place world over with the aim of bringing change to reality. One event that I have critically observed and examined was the cultural change that was brought about in America (Posner & Kouzes, 2003). This began with the American civil rights movement which was pioneered by none other than Martin Luther king. The process of ushering change in America was not easy and of course involved a lot of troubles here and there (Rowland & Higgs, 2005). Under normal circumstances, change involves three distinct aspects, modeling, supporting and rewarding. It is an established fact that for change to take place there must be people behind it. The role of these people normally is to come up with the change they want to see. Mahatma Gandhi once said that, “You must be the change you wish to see.” Therefore the first step of change is modeling; The American civil rights movement began with a clear vision of what change they wanted to see. In other words Martin Luther and his comrades modeled the change which they wanted in America. Their vision entailed a racial free America where people of all ethnic backgrounds enjoyed the same rights (Spears & Greenleaf
In this article, Appy and Bloom present a discussion with regard to the Vietnam War. In this discussion, there are arguments alluding to the fact that there were several myths presented by policy makers regarding the Vietnam War. There is convincing evidence that is presented to support the fact the information presented by the policy makers was mythological rather than factual. This evidence is revealed through concrete historical realities that have been used by Appy and Bloom to counter these misleading facts dubbed myths. The first myth is that the intervention of the US in the Vietnam War was devoid of any political interests and colonial based ambition contrary to that of the French. This is a myth because the conquest of Vietnam by France was supported by America. The US had also refused to recognize Vietnamese independence. The second claim is that regarding South Vietnamese nationhood. The US leadership maintained that Vietnam had been partitioned into two different nations by the Geneva accords and that the US was protecting South Vietnamese from being attacked by the North. Appy and Bloom refute this claim by asserting that Vietnam was not divided by the Geneva accord but rather by Viet Minh (communist-led). Also, the US opposed the ability of the two parts to be reunited. The third claim that the two authors refute as a myth is that by American officials that they were guarding South Vietnam’s democracy and freedom. On the contrary, all South Vietnamese regimes supported by America exercised oppression, gross corruption and dictatorship. Fourth, there’s the myth that portrayed South Vietnam to Americans as independent. Appy and Bloom argue that this cannot be true since the US supported South Vietnam in the military sense and in other aspects without which South Vietnam could have failed. The fifth fact presented by Appy and Bloom as a myth is the one portraying the US military support to South Vietnam as mere assistance when the truth is that the American soldiers fought most of the battle and where the South Vietnam troops were used, they were fully funded and equipped by the US. Therefore, to say that the US was merely ‘assisting’ in the combat would be a lie since they were actively involved. Sixth, Appy and Bloom also provide strong evidence to oppose the myth that there was economic modernization during the Vietnam War. Although South Vietnam was full of American aid, the truth is that it did not promote economic stability but rather led to inequalities and encouraged economic dependence. The creation of refugees and devastation of farmland encouraged rural – urban migration which resulted to prostitution, drug use and the black market (p. 57-58). On the other hand, some aspects of the evidence presented by Appy and Bloom is not fully convincing. For example, in the myth of progress, there are two points that are not convincing enough. First, the authors are opposed to the myth that there was progress in the war and as such, the evidence given
Introduction Utilitarianism is the belief that the worth of moral action is determined only by its outcome. In general, utility is determined as happiness. Bentham, the follower of Hume, proposed the quantification of morality with reference to utility (the result of the action). His theory was founded on the belief that the result of human action counts for their happiness and each action results either in the achievement of happiness or in avoidance of suffering. He offered the following quantification of utility: the intensity with which the happiness is felt (how long it lasts, how quickly it appears after the action, and how likely it contributes to pain avoidance). Main body Bentham assumed that the pleasure of community is the total pleasure of individuals. In other words, his theory of utility is based on the principle of moral obligation: the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people who are involved or affected by the action performed by one individual. Social policies, for example, are evaluated using Bentham’s definition of utility. Thus, punishing the criminals is one of the ways to reduce crime because criminals are punished for the outcome of their actions (punishment is attached to emotional pain as the result of criminal activity) (Copleston, 1993). John Mill was raised on the principles of Bentham and devoted his life to the promotion of welfare for all. In his book Utilitarianism published in 1861, he noted that it is commonly agreed that the results of human actions contribute to the moral value attached to them. Mill totally agreed with Bentham and considered the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people as the basic value of utilitarianism. Thus, actions can be considered right only if they contribute to happiness, and they are wrong if they lead to the reverse effect. Nevertheless, he did not agree with the quantification offered by Bentham. He believed that the differences among pleasure cannot be quantified. For example, he wrote that pleasure experienced by different people can be different from each other, however, all people are capable of attributing the relative quality to the same pleasures. Furthermore, Mill promoted the idea that it is difficult to achieve happiness positively, and humans, in the first place, seek to reduce pain (the sacrifice of pleasure) (Copleston, 1993). Bentham, as the founder of utility theory, and Mill, as his follower, both viewed utility as seeking the greatest happiness or welfare for the greatest number of people involved or affected by the action. Mill has contributed many ideas to Bentham’s theory. In particular, he noted that humans are motivated to do the right things because of the universal agreement on moral rules and sanctions. Unlike Bentham, he did not limit his theory to social sanction punishment for the wrong actions, he added that people are also motivated by inner feelings of guilt, self-esteem, and conscience, for example. If the person knows that other people will not punish him for doing
Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) were introduced to supervise and assist Medicare and Medicaid programs. More than 900 ACO have established 1300 contracts with private and public hospitals across the country since 2010 to manage payments of Medicare patients (Kaufman et al., 2018). This model holds healthcare organizations accountable for the cost and quality of care by creating a system of value-based payment, meaning that hospitals are paid for the outcome, not per service (Kaufman et al., 2018). Furthermore, “ACO contract components include financial accountability, quality measurement, and population health data sharing,” resulting in improved care and cost reduction (Kaufman et al., 2018, p. 257). For example, the nominal savings were $700 per fiscal year per cancer patient (Kaufman et al., 2018). However, there was no significant cost reduction for surgical procedures with the ACO model (Nathan et al., 2019). It appears that the benefit of this program is not evident for all specialties yet. Still, I believe that the principle of value payment is fair for patients because it ensures that high-quality care is provided to maximize favorable outcomes. Reliance Healthcare is an example of a successful ACO that partnered with emergency departments (ED) in Michigan to coordinate care for Medicare patients. This organization consists of three groups: clinicians, an information technology (IT) team, and managers (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMMS], 2020). The primary goal of Reliance Healthcare in this partnership with EDs was to minimize healthcare costs by preventing unnecessary hospitalizations through an organized work of reliance nurses, managers, and IT departments (CMMS, 2020). The recent report stated that this program could prevent, on average, two avoidable admissions per day from 2014 to 2020, leading to significant cost reduction of care (CMMS, 2020). I think that Reliance Healthcare should continue working with healthcare providers, and forming more contracts because unnecessary hospitalization is a big issue in our hospitals; thus, an ACO control can prevent needless expenditures.
James Grimmelmann was the author of The Google Dilemma. James was an associate law professor at New York Law School, and also an associate of the institution’s Institute for Information Law and Policy. He completed his Journalism Degree from Yale Law School, where he got employed as LawMeme Chief Editor. He was also a Yale Law Journal registered associate. Prior to attending the law school, James obtained a Harvard College Bachelor of Arts Degree in computer science, and, thereafter, joined Microsoft as a programmer. He had the opportunity to secure an attachment as a legal clerk at both the Creative Commons and Electronic Frontier Foundation, and later, as a resident member, James got offered a position at Yale’s Information Society Program. Given his vast experiences in different capacities, James Grimmelman was credible. His stints as a journalist, editor, programmer, law clerk, and technologist made him a credible source of information. He wrote many articles on diverse topics. Some of the topics he wrote on included social media, intellectual copyrights, and internet security. Academic Search Premier listed several works of James Grimmelman. This included; Dr. Generative Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the iPhone, the Internet is a Semicommons, The ethical Visions of Copyright Law, and Regulations by Software, among others. The article targeted the general public and not the experts. This was evident in the author’s choice of words and the explanations made. In order to let the general public comprehend, Grimmelman chose to apply five examples. In case the experts were his target audience, he would not use examples to explain his points as they would easily understand him. The Google Dilemma was a review. It critically evaluated some of the dilemmas that Google faced in recent times. A good example of the evaluation was when the author critically analyzed why governments were powerless when it came to controlling search engines. The information used in the review was factual. This was because the sources used were authentic and confirmation by the research team on 28 th November 2008 revealed the same. All the sources used by the author were available online, and research was carried out prior to publication. The author was objective. He intended to educate the general public on the search engines, their biases, and how they controlled and affected the lives of users. The author’s purpose in The Google Dilemma was to enlighten the general public on what goes on in the search engines. He expressed how the regulators of search engines possessed great authority over all internet subscribers, and to a given extent, the internet. He applied five distinct cases in the history of Google to demonstrate the disagreements over the search and the immense authority that Google had in determining whose opinions trended the internet. In search Mongolian Gerbils, the author noted tha
In analyzing the current position of JVA Corporation and its future performance projections, the best strategy to employ so as to save and preserve the overall net profitability of the company is reviewing the corporation’s performance and revenue after every six months. Under this strategy, the corporation will either increase or reduce the employee pay and review their performance after six months (Noe et al 2010). The corporation’s employees will get a pay increase twice a year depending on individual performance, if the strategy is adopted, unlike the current strategy where employees with satisfactory performance are compensated once in a year. Employees who do not perform will have their compensation package subsequently reduced twice within a year. This will encourage the employees to work hard and improve their performance since; none of them will wish to have their individual pay reduced (Noe et al 2010). The strategy should be in place for a period not exceeding a year given the expected improvement in the performance of the JVA Corporation. It is expected that after this duration, each employee will have improved their performance and thus leading to an upward compensation during the package review. After attaining the required performance standards, it will be wise for the corporation to switch back to annual pay review (Noe et al 2010). The half- year pay and performance review strategy will be applied to both employees within and outside the United States. This is because a very small fraction of the international employees are the managers, who are entitled to a full time salary. Out of the 185,000 corporation employees, 3,500 are management staff employees. This shows that they take a very small percentage of the wage bill to achieve the overall objectives of JVA Corporation. However, the review should be based on the location of the employee since the product market trends differ from one geographic region to another. Proper implementation of the strategy will benefit the corporation in several ways as the corporation will be in a position to evaluate its performance half way through the year. Therefore, it will be able to adopt new performance approaches or continue with the existing ones. The corporation, will also save the cost incurred in compensating employees whose performance are unevenly distributed within a year; those that perform highly either in the first half of the year or the second (Noe et al 2010). The result will be a motivated and improved performance by employees throughout the whole year since each employee will target a double upward pay review. As mentioned earlier, the corporation should swiftly switch over to annual review once the required set standards are attained. In this regard, JVA will be in a position to save a lot from downward pay review on underperforming employees during the initial implementation of the strategy (Noe et al 2010). On switching over to the annual review, again substantial savings will be made since the compensation packages; earlier paid
Where Do You See Yourself in the Process of Change? In the era of postmodernism, people tend to be less committed to God, which is caused by a focus on material benefits and comfort. A human being is much more complicated than it may seem at first glance. The visions with which God and people view the world differ (Brick, 2014). While the latter pays attention to appearance and superficial characteristics of each other, God considers humanity as a whole. In other words, He knows how one event may affect the other one and what consequences may one or another action promote. The Bible includes various stories that depict the integrity and omniscience of God. When God rejected Saul because of his pride and self-will, He appealed to Samuel and stated that He found a new king among Jesse’s sons. Samuel did as the Lord commanded: he came to Bethlehem and was met by anxious elders at the entrance to the city (Samuel 16: 6, NIV). They asked about the prophet’s intentions for coming there, and he replied that he should sacrifice to the Lord and perform a rite of consecration. After that, Samuel consecrated Jesse and his sons, inviting them to the sacrifice. When they arrived, he saw Eliab, the eldest son of Jesse, and believed that he was to be anointed one before God (Samuel 16: 6, NIV). At this moment, the Lord said to Samuel that it is not correct to look at his beauty and height only and that he did not choose him. God emphasized that He does not consider the way a person looks, while people do stress their appearance. The described Bible excerpt illustrates that the vision of people may be rather limited, and there is an urgent need to take action to extend it. Today, more and more young persons become not aware of their lives and what happens around them in the world. Their level of consciousness seems to be restricted by their affairs that are driven by postmodernist features such as maximalism, fragmentation, hyperreality, and pastiche (Susan, 1998). In this connection, a minister should understand the behaviors of young people to formulate the ideas of attracting them to the church. By knowing how consistent and regular attendance looks like, it is possible to engage the community members and empower them to volunteer more. The worship style that will be appealing to the identified population should be selected properly. The pivotal goal of implementing change processes concerning the church is to achieve the convergence in how God and people view others. The church does not have to compete with entertainment organizations and places. Probably, the most appropriate way to attract a person is to tell a little about oneself, personal thoughts, feelings, and why one is Christian. The church is a collection of believers, which is composed of people with various preferences and characters, yet they are integrated by a common goal and concern (Susan, 1998). The church ensures that a young person grows to be able to accept and love others, be patie
2187 A summary of a critical review on the empirical evidence This study was carried out to explore the relationship between IT and economic performance. Initial surveys showed no connection between IT and economic performance at the three levels: firm, industry and the whole economy (Roach, 1991, p. 86). Following those results, the research led to a productivity paradox that pushed many researchers to carry out further investigation on the relationship between the two aspects. The subsequent research indicated a positive relationship between the Information Technology and economic performance at level of firms and the whole economy (Jorgenson, 2001, p. 23). From an overview, the review of this literature is divided into three parts for easy conceptualization of the whole study. This is at firm, industry and aggregate economy levels. The three levels are further subdivided into subtopics in order to capture a wider area of the review (Dedrick, Vijay & Kraemer, 2003, p. 7). The review also indicated variance on the amount of payoffs resulting from IT investment among several firms. Firms that used their IT productively reported high returns in relation to IT investment. It also indicated that management practices have an impact on the variance of payoffs among several companies. A company that effectively integrated IT with its business strategy, human resource management strategy and relocation of resources experienced high return. Conversely, the research failed to provide a clear relationship between profitability and IT investment partly due to inability to quantify most of unobservable aspects that create value in a firm. The use of IT has substituted the use of labor. This particularly has led to decrease of low skilled labor while demanding high skilled labor in organizations (Dewan, 1997, p. 1666). The review further depicted a positive relati
Introduction The play, The Glass Menagerie depicts life struggle of the main characters and their desire to enter high society and become prosperous. The uniqueness of the pay is that it depicts real life situations and prototypes of characters typical for the 1940s. There are strains of both tenderness and toughness in The Glass Menagerie . The article related to the play discusses the concept of modern hero and its interpretations by critics. The importance of the article is that it allows to understand the main events and story development concentrating of the hero and its actions. Main body I agree with the author of the article that the concept of a modem hero is difficult to define and explain because of changing cultural traditions and values. Moral values and virtues are the main characteristics of the modern hero like Tom and Amanda. To Tom, her son, Amanda assigns the task of producing a Gentleman Caller. Tom is an aspiring poet forced to work in a shoe factory, but because of the pressures of his job and his mother’s persistence he has ideas of following in his father’s footsteps. His father, the play informs us, was a telephone man who “fell in love with long distance and skipped the light fantastic out of town.” Before Tom goes, he produces a Gentleman Caller who has a scene with Laura–where she is built up to hope for love only to be suddenly let down. It is one of the most poignant scenes of the modern stage, But there is another kind of music in The Glass Menagerie, as there is in most successful drama, and that is the underground rhythm of the scenes. Action in drama does not proceed at an even pace or at the same peak of excitement. Scenes move slowly, then swiftly; an argument becomes heated, then levels off. Also, there is the way one scene blends into the next. I would like to add to the article that a modern hero is not a hero in mythological sense. He/she is a person influenced by social and economic changes and fighting with harsh reality of life. Amanda does not see herself as ridiculous. Readers take the same ironical view of Amanda as Tom does in his memory. These much maligned screen legends are not, as some critics seem to suppose, ponderously serious captions for each scene. The play has a humorous deflating function allowing an audience to see the pathetically romantic pretentiousness of Amanda as Tom remembers her. “Où sont les neiges d’antan?” (Williams 695) is a cliché is intentionally “over-the-top.” Williams underlines Amanda’s slightly ridiculous behavior in her later speech reminded readers of the histrionic significance of the play. In the play, some aspects are as fragile as the tiny glass animals which Laura, the crippled young woman of the play, loves and protects, while other elements have the strength of Amanda Wingfield, the mother who claims to be bewildered by life but who manages nevertheless to badger her children night and day and to survive whatever life throws in her path. As most people know, the play is a tale of a former Southern belle, now livin