Article Rebuttal Essay

The author stated that, â€Å"There is a difference between a married couple and a same-sex couple in a long-term relationship. The difference is between the duties that marriage imposes on married people–not rights, but rather onerous obligations–which do not apply to same-sex love. † This statement, in my opinion, is completely untrue. All relationships can be difficult and time consuming, the statement would have more truth if the author of was talking about all relationships or marriages. When reading the article, I took every word as people that are in a same sex relationship can’t have a normal marriage or a normal family and normal life and that is why same sex marriage will ultimately fail. The only thing that is different about same sex marriage is that the genders of both people are the same. This doesn’t mean that the two people can’t have children, it just means they can‘t have them in the traditional way. Homosexuals that are married can have a normal life; they just might have to face other judgmental people, which they face even without being married. This author had no credibility, no fact or anything to back up his argument. There were not any reliable sources in this argument which makes me believe that everything about this article was just the opinion of the author. While I believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, I believe one should have reliable sources and make valid points before writing an article and making it public especially on such a controversial topic. Reference; http://www. weeklystandard. com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/533narty. asp

Leadership In The Military

There is surely no more talent nor more hope for the future than right here in this room. I envy you and I wish I could trade places with you, but at the same time, looking at all of you I am supremely confident that here among you sit the future great captains of our military and that we can all be very confident about tomorrow. And I am convinced that if he were alive today, Gen. Marshall would be right here, for there is nothing that that great soldier loved more than to talk about service and to talk about leadership.As he himself once said on a similar occasion, looking across a room full of future leaders, â€Å"You're young,† he said, â€Å"and you're vigorous, and your service will be the foundation for peace and prosperity throughout the world. † Certainly as I look at you the same is true this morning. Truly you here in this room are our future. And it is most fitting for us to come together right here in these very halls where George Marshall once walked to h onor him and to reflect on his great contributions and to share some thoughts on leadership.If you were to think back over this century, you would realize very quickly that our Army has produced some truly remarkable military leaders. I am confident that if I were to ask all of you to take pen to paper and to write down the names of the great Army leaders of this century, you would be at it for a very long time, and when you were done, the lists that you produced would be very long. Just to name the most famous, there was, of course, Black Jack Pershing, Omar Bradley, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Lightning Joe Collins and most recently two of my former bosses, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell.Each of these officers was remarkably gifted. But if you study them closely, you realize that each was very different, that the fame they acquired had very different roots. Omar Bradley — simple, unadorned, humble, but of them all he was the soldier's soldier à ¢â‚¬â€ loved by his subordinates and considered by Eisenhower to be the boldest and most dogged of his Army group commanders. Or there was Eisenhower himself, a leader of incalculable depth, intricacy and complexity.Some say his outward appearance and reputation were those of an officer who compromised easily, and who others thought was only thinly grounded in the knowledge of war fighting, but one with a keen sense for what it took to maintain cohesion within our W[orld] W[ar] II coalition. But if you were to look closer, you would discover that these were the traits Eisenhower wanted others to believe, for he was surrounded by huge egos, both among the talented commanders in his theater and among the nations that comprised our alliance.Quite contrary to these assertions, he held deep convictions, and he never ceded or compromised any point that he felt important. Our campaign to seize Europe from the Nazis was the very campaign he visualized at the start of the war back in 1942, a plan for which at first there was only lukewarm support among American leaders and nearly total opposition from our British allies.Yet when it was done, it was Eisenhower's approach we executed, and it was militarily brilliant. And any study of our great generals must include that incredible warrior, George Patton, a tenacious and hard-bitten fighter who felt the pulse and flow of the battlefield in his veins, who had an innate knack for inspiring soldiers to fight beyond all limits of their endurance, but also a soldier with a renowned appetite for fame and approval.And we could talk about so many others, for our Army has produced such a rich abundance of talented leaders. But there is one giant who stands above them all. That officer was, of course, George Catlett Marshall. More than any soldier of this century, I'm convinced Marshall epitomized the qualities that we want in our leaders. He had MacArthur's brilliance and courtliness. He had Patton's tenacity and drive. He had Br adley's personal magnetism, the  ability to inspire confidence and deep affection from any who came into his presence.But more than that, Marshall had the organizational skills that in a few short years converted an Army of only several hundred thousand, with only a handful of modern weapons and no modern battlefield experience, into an Army of over 8 million — the best equipped, the best fighting army in the world, an army that defeated the two most powerful empires of its time.More than that, he had a rare intuition, a nearly flawless inner sense for other men's strengths that allowed him to see the spark of leadership in others, and when he saw that spark, to place such men into key assignments and then to fully support their efforts. He did that time and again, hundreds of times, with remarkable accuracy. And as we learned after the war, he was as well perhaps the greatest statesman and visionary of his age.All of us should remember that the occupations of Germany and J apan were commanded by military officers, but we should also remember that the architect of these occupations was Marshall. But even beyond this, in 1948, with a few words uttered in a speech at Harvard, Marshall put in motion the plan that would rebuild Western Europe, that would recover its people from enormous poverty, that would reweave the entire tapestry of nations from the conflict-addicted patterns of the past to what we see today: a Western Europe poised on the edge of becoming a cohesive union of nations.What an accomplishment! It is staggering to think of what this one officer accomplished in his career of service to his nation. But most humbling is to realize that to his death Marshall remained an entirely selfless man, a man who returned to service even from a well-deserved and long-sought retirement because a president requested him to do so, a man who never, ever exploited his reputation for any personal gain. If we were to ask a sculptor to produce a bust of a great leader and  described to that sculptor all of the traits and qualities that that bust should reflect, I have absolutely no doubt that that bust would look exactly like Gen. George C. Marshall.And so for those of us like you and I, who make soldiering our way of life, it is always instructive to take the time to reflect on Gen. Marshall's career, for by so doing we are reminded of much that we should try to emulate. But you are here for a different reason. You are here because I think you worry about these next steps for you, which will lead to a gold bar of a second lieutenant.I doubt very much that you are searching for answers about how to mobilize for war, how to free an enslaved Europe or how to rebuild a destroyed nation, although some day your country may ask just that from you. If you are like I was when I waited to pin on my lieutenant's bars, your thoughts are more about the challenges of a platoon leader than those of a general. The other week while a guest on Larry King 's show, Larry asked me when I first thought of becoming a general and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The answer was very simple.I told him that when I was a private my ambition was to become a good one so someday I could become a good corporal. And when 36 years ago, in 1959, the year that Gen. Marshall died, I was commissioned a second lieutenant and shipped off to Fairbanks, Alaska, and became a platoon leader in the mortar battery of the 1st Battle Group of the 9th Infantry, my thoughts were certainly not on becoming a general or colonel or major or even a captain!My thoughts were on becoming a good platoon leader, about being up to the challenge of leading my soldiers, about not making a fool of myself in front of Sgt.1st Class Grice, the platoon sergeant of that first platoon of mine. And I was right to concentrate on the job at hand, for the job of a lieutenant is a tough one — in many ways, perhaps, the toughest one — but it is without a doubt also the most important, and if you take to it, also the most rewarding. I was very fortunate, because I had Sergeant Grice to guide me and to teach me. And teach and guide me he did, without ever making me feel inadequate and without ever permitting me to be ill-prepared, because he was the best!And if there is one thing I wish for each and every one of you, it is a Sergeant Grice to teach you about soldiers, about leaders, and the responsibilities and joys of soldiering together. Not everyone is as blessed as I was; not everyone finds his Sergeant Grice, and many don't not because he isn't there, but because unknowingly and foolishly they push him away. Don't do that. Look for your Sergeant Grice; NCOs have so very much to teach us. Well, what did I learn from Sergeant Grice?Certainly more than I have time to tell you here, and also because many helpful hints have probably by now faded from my memory. But what I learned then and what has been reinforced in the 36 years since is that good leader ship, whether in the world of a lieutenant or in the world of a general, is based essentially on three pillars. These three pillars he taught me are character, love and care for soldiers, and professional competence. Oh, Sergeant Grice didn't exactly use these terms, but what he believed and what he taught me fit very neatly into these three pillars.He used to say that if the platoon ever sensed that I wasn't up front with them, if they ever believed I did something so I would look good at their expense, I would very quickly lose them. How right he was. Often he would say, â€Å"Look down. Worry about what your soldiers think. Don't worry about looking up, about what the captain thinks of you. † He never said it, that's not the kind of relationship that he and I had, but I knew that if I ever said something to the platoon or to him that wasn't the absolute truth, he would never trust me again and I would be finished as a platoon leader.I would be finished as a leader. Someone once said that men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied men of power are feared but only men of character are trusted. Without trust you cannot lead. I have never seen a good unit where the leaders weren't trusted. It's just that simple. And it isn't enough that you say the right things. What counts in a platoon is not so much what you say, but what they see you do. Gen. Powell, speaking here a few years ago, put it this way: â€Å"If you want them to work hard and endure hardship,† he observed, â€Å"you must work even harder and endure even greater hardship.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"They must see you sacrifice for them,† he said. They must see you do the hard things, they must see you giving credit to the platoon for something good you did, and they must see you take the blame for something they hadn't gotten just right. But Sergeant Grice also understood that hand in hand with character, with this inner strength that soldiers will want to see, they will also want to know and see that you really care for them, that you will sacrifice for them, that you simply enjoy being with them. Words won't get you through there, either.If you don't feel it in your heart, if you don't love your soldiers in your heart, they will know it. How often Sergeant Grice would prod me to spend the extra time to get to know the members of the platoon better, to know who needed extra training and coaching so he could fire expert on the rifle range the next time around; to talk to Pvt. Taylor, who just received a â€Å"Dear John† letter; to visit Cpl. Vencler and his wife, who had a sick child. Every day you will have soldiers who will need your care, your concern and your help.They expect and, I tell  you, they have the right to expect, 150 percent of your time and best effort. And how well I remember those evenings in the field when Sergeant Grice and I would stand in the cold, with a cup of coffee in our hands trying to warm our frozen fingers, watching the p latoon go through the chow line. Grice taught me that simple but long-standing tradition that officers go to the very end of the chow line, that the officer is the last one to eat, that the officer will take his or her first bite only after the last soldier has had a chance to eat.This tradition, as you so well know, is founded in the understanding that leaders place the welfare of their people above their own, that the officer is responsible for the welfare of the troops; that if mismanagement results in a shortage of food to feed the entire unit, that the officer will go without; that if the food gets cold while the unit is being served, that the officer will get the chilliest portion. It is a tradition that surprises many officers from other nations, but it goes to the core of the kind of leadership we provide our soldiers. But caring for our soldiers does not stop at the chow line.Nor, for that matter, does it stop with the soldiers themselves, for you know that our units are fa milies, and a soldier must have the trust that you will take care of his family, particularly when he's away from home. But caring for soldiers actually starts with making them the best possible soldiers they can be. Their satisfaction with themselves, their confidence in themselves and in the end, their lives will depend upon how well you do that part. And that perhaps is your greatest challenge as a lieutenant. It is hard work, and make no mistake about it, there are no shortcuts.But what a joy it is to watch or to talk to young men and women in uniform, who know that they are the best because a Sergeant Grice and his or her lieutenant cared to teach them and to work with them and to make them reach for the highest standards. Which brings me to the third pillar I spoke of, and that is your professional competence. As we look back on Marshall and on Patton and on MacArthur and all of the others, we realize that the skills and qualities and knowledge that made them great generals to ok decades of training, of experience and of evolution.For all of the differences between these leaders there is one thing that they had in common. Their careers were marked by a progression of difficult assignments and intense study. Always they were a snapshot of a masterpiece still in progress, still in motion. From the beginning of their careers to the end, each of them was continually applying new brushstrokes to their knowledge and to their skills. And Grice understood that very well, although he had different words for it.He knew that if our platoon was going to be good at occupying a position and firing our mortars, at hastily leaving our position should enemy artillery have found our location, at the countless things that would make us a finely honed war-fighting machine, then he had to show me, he had to teach me and to practice with me, so that when I walked that gun line the soldiers would know that I knew more than they; that if I asked them how to cut a mortar fuse, th ere was no doubt that I would know the answer, just as I would know if there was too much play in the sight mount on that mortar.And I had to feel confident that knew before they would feel confident with me. In every good leader I have met in my years of service there always was the evidence of these three qualities: character, love for soldiers and professional competence. And because they possessed these qualities, they managed to inspire their soldiers to have confidence in them. And you know, the truly great ones like George C. Marshall did not only inspire soldiers to have confidence in their leaders, but they also inspired their soldiers to have confidence in themselves.With that, let me close. As I told you in the beginning, I am deeply envious of each of you. Since the days when I first put on my uniform, I fell in love with soldiering and with soldiers, and it has been for me, by any measure, a great passion. If I could start all over today, I would not hesitate for a sing le second. I would go out and I would find old Sergeant Grice and we would be ready tomorrow morning! Good luck to you all. I envy you. Leadership in the Military There is surely no more talent nor more hope for the future than right here in this room. I envy you and I wish I could trade places with you, but at the same time, looking at all of you I am supremely confident that here among you sit the future great captains of our military and that we can all be very confident about tomorrow.And I am convinced that if he were alive today, Gen. Marshall would be right here, for there is nothing that that great soldier loved more than to talk about service and to talk about leadership.As he himself once said on a similar occasion, looking across a room full of future leaders, â€Å"You're young,† he said, â€Å"and you're vigorous, and your service will be the foundation for peace and prosperity throughout the world.† Certainly as I look at you the same is true this morning.Truly you here in this room are our future. And it is most fitting for us to come together right here in these very halls where George Marshall once walked to hono r him and to reflect on his great contributions and to share some thoughts on leadership.If you were to think back over this century, you would realize very quickly that our Army has produced some truly remarkable military leaders.I am confident that if I were to ask all of you to take pen to paper and to write down the names of the great Army leaders of this century, you would be at it for a very long time, and when you were done, the lists that you produced would be very long.Just to name the most famous, there was, of course, Black Jack Pershing, Omar Bradley, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Lightning Joe Collins and most recently two of my former bosses, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell.Each of these officers was remarkably gifted. But if you study them closely, you realize that each was very different, that the fame they acquired had  very different roots. Omar Bradley — simple, unadorned, humble, but of them all he was the soldier's soldier â⠂¬â€ loved by his subordinates and considered by Eisenhower to be the boldest and most dogged of his Army group commanders.Or there was Eisenhower himself, a leader of incalculable depth, intricacy and complexity. Some say his outward appearance and reputation were those of an officer who compromised easily, and who others thought was only thinly grounded in the knowledge of war fighting, but one with a keen sense for what it took to maintain cohesion within our W[orld] W[ar] II coalition.But if you were to look closer, you would discover that these were the traits Eisenhower wanted others to believe, for he was surrounded by huge egos, both among the talented commanders in his theater and among the nations that comprised our alliance. Quite contrary to these assertions, he held deep convictions, and he never ceded or compromised any point that he felt important.Our campaign to seize Europe from the Nazis was the very campaign he visualized at the start of the war back in 1942, a p lan for which at first there was only lukewarm support among American leaders and nearly total opposition from our British allies. Yet when it was done, it was Eisenhower's approach we executed, and it was militarily brilliant.And any study of our great generals must include that incredible warrior, George Patton, a tenacious and hard-bitten fighter who felt the pulse and flow of the battlefield in his veins, who had an innate knack for inspiring soldiers to fight beyond all limits of their endurance, but also a soldier with a renowned appetite for fame and approval.And we could talk about so many others, for our Army has produced such a rich abundance of talented leaders. But there is one giant who stands above them all. That officer was, of course, George Catlett Marshall. More than any soldier of this century, I'm convinced Marshall epitomized the qualities that we want in our leaders. He had MacArthur's brilliance and courtliness. He had Patton's tenacity and drive. He had Bradl ey's personal magnetism, the  ability to inspire confidence and deep affection from any who came into his presence.But more than that, Marshall had the organizational skills that in a few short years converted an Army of only several hundred thousand, with only a handful of modern weapons and no modern battlefield experience, into an Army of over 8 million — the best equipped, the best fighting army in the world, an army that defeated the two most powerful empires of its time.More than that, he had a rare intuition, a nearly flawless inner sense for other men's strengths that allowed him to see the spark of leadership in others, and when he saw that spark, to place such men into key assignments and then to fully support their efforts. He did that time and again, hundreds of times, with remarkable accuracy.And as we learned after the war, he was as well perhaps the greatest statesman and visionary of his age. All of us should remember that the occupations of Germany and Japa n were commanded by military officers, but we should also remember that the architect of these occupations was Marshall.But even beyond this, in 1948, with a few words uttered in a speech at Harvard, Marshall put in motion the plan that would rebuild Western Europe, that would recover its people from enormous poverty, that would reweave the entire tapestry of nations from the conflict-addicted patterns of the past to what we see today: a Western Europe poised on the edge of becoming a cohesive union of nations. What an accomplishment!It is staggering to think of what this one officer accomplished in his career of service to his nation. But most humbling is to realize that to his death Marshall remained an entirely selfless man, a man who returned to service even from a well-deserved and long-sought retirement because a president requested him to do so, a man who never, ever exploited his reputation for any personal gain.If we were to ask a sculptor to produce a bust of a great leade r and described to that sculptor all of the traits and qualities that that bust should reflect, I have absolutely no doubt that that bust would look exactly like Gen. George C. Marshall.And so for those of us like you and I, who make soldiering our way of life, it is always instructive to take the time to reflect on Gen. Marshall's career, for by so doing we are reminded of much that we should try to emulate.But you are here for a different reason. You are here because I think you worry about these next steps for you, which will lead to a gold bar of a second lieutenant. I doubt very much that you are searching for answers about how to mobilize for war, how to free an enslaved Europe or how to rebuild a destroyed nation, although some day your country may ask just that from you.If you are like I was when I waited to pin on my lieutenant's bars, your thoughts are more about the challenges of a platoon leader than those of a general.The other week while a guest on Larry King's show, L arry asked me when I first thought of becoming a general and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The answer was very simple. I told him that when I was a private my ambition was to become a good one so someday I could become a good corporal. And when 36 years ago, in 1959, the year that Gen. Marshall died, I was commissioned a second lieutenant and shipped off to Fairbanks, Alaska, and became a platoon leader in the mortar battery of the 1st Battle Group of the 9th Infantry, my thoughts were certainly not on becoming a general or colonel or major or even a captain!My thoughts were on becoming a good platoon leader, about being up to the challenge of leading my soldiers, about not making a fool of myself in front of Sgt. 1st Class Grice, the platoon sergeant of that first platoon of mine.And I was right to concentrate on the job at hand, for the job of a lieutenant is a tough one — in many ways, perhaps, the toughest one — but it is without a doubt also the most important , and if you take to it, also the most rewarding.I was very fortunate, because I had Sergeant Grice to guide me and to teach me. And teach and guide me he did, without ever making me feel inadequate and without ever permitting me to be ill-prepared, because he was the best!And if there is one thing I wish for each and every one of you, it is a Sergeant Grice to teach you about soldiers, about leaders, and the responsibilities and joys of soldiering together. Not everyone is as blessed as I was; not everyone finds his Sergeant Grice, and many don't not because he isn't there, but because unknowingly and foolishly they push him away. Don't do that. Look for your Sergeant Grice; NCOs have so very much to teach us.Well, what did I learn from Sergeant Grice? Certainly more than I have time to tell you here, and also because many helpful hints have probably by now faded from my memory.But what I learned then and what has been reinforced in the 36 years since is that good leadership, wheth er in the world of a lieutenant or in the world of a general, is based essentially on three pillars.These three pillars he taught me are character, love and care for soldiers, and professional competence.Oh, Sergeant Grice didn't exactly use these terms, but what he believed and what he taught me fit very neatly into these three pillars.He used to say that if the platoon ever sensed that I wasn't up front with them, if they ever believed I did something so I would look good at their expense, I would very quickly lose them. How right he was.Often he would say, â€Å"Look down. Worry about what your soldiers think. Don't worry about looking up, about what the captain thinks of you.†He never said it, that's not the kind of relationship that he and I had, but I knew that if I ever said something to the platoon or to him that wasn't the absolute truth, he would never trust me again and I would be finished as a platoon leader. I would be finished as a leader.Someone once said that men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied men of power are feared but only men of character are trusted. Without trust you cannot lead. I have never seen a good unit where the leaders weren't trusted. It's just that simple.And it isn't enough that you say the right things. What counts in a platoon is not so much what you say, but what they see you do.Gen. Powell, speaking here a few years ago, put it this way: â€Å"If you want them to work hard and endure hardship,† he observed, â€Å"you must work even harder and endure even greater hardship.† â€Å"They must see you sacrifice for them,† he said. They must see you do the hard things, they must see you giving credit to the platoon for something good you did, and they must see you take the blame for something they hadn't gotten just right.But Sergeant Grice also understood that hand in hand with character, with this inner strength that soldiers will want to see, they will also want to know and see that you really care for them, that you will sacrifice for them, that you simply enjoy being with them. Words won't get you through there, either. If you don't feel it in your heart, if you don't love your soldiers in your heart, they will know it.How often Sergeant Grice would prod me to spend the extra time to get to know the members of the platoon better, to know who needed extra training and coaching so he could fire expert on the rifle range the next time around; to talk to Pvt. Taylor, who just received a â€Å"Dear John† letter; to visit Cpl. Vencler and his wife, who had a sick child. Every day you will have soldiers who will need your care, your concern and your help. They expect and, I tell you, they have the right to expect, 150 percent of your time and best effort.And how well I remember those evenings in the field when Sergeant Grice and I would stand in the cold, with a cup of coffee in our hands trying to warm our frozen fingers, watching the platoon go through the chow line. Grice taught me that simple but long-standing tradition that officers go to the very end of the chow line, that the officer is the last one to eat, that the officer will take his or her first bite only after the last soldier has had a chance to eat.This tradition, as you so well know, is founded in the understanding that leaders place the welfare of their people above their own, that the officer is responsible for the welfare of the troops; that if mismanagement results in a shortage of food to feed the entire unit, that the officer will go without; that if the food gets cold while the unit is being served, that the officer will get the chilliest portion. It is a tradition that surprises many officers from other nations, but it goes to the core of the kind of leadership we provide our soldiers.But caring for our soldiers does not stop at the chow line. Nor, for that matter, does it stop with the soldiers themselves, for you know that our units are families, and a soldier must have the trust that you will take care of his family, particularly when he's away from home.But caring for soldiers actually starts with making them the best possible soldiers they can be. Their satisfaction with themselves, their confidence in themselves and in the end, their lives will depend upon how well you do that part. And that perhaps is your greatest challenge as a lieutenant. It is hard work, and make no mistake about it, there are no shortcuts.But what a joy it is to watch or to talk to young men and women in uniform, who know that they are the best because a Sergeant Grice and his or her lieutenant cared to teach them and to work with them and to make them reach for the highest standards.Which brings me to the third pillar I spoke of, and that is your professional competence. As we look back on Marshall and on Patton and on MacArthur and all of the others, we realize that the skills and qualities and knowledge that made them great generals took decades of training, of experience and of evolution. For all of the differences between these leaders there is one thing that they had in common. Their careers were marked by a progression of difficult assignments and intense study. Always they were a snapshot of a masterpiece still in progress, still in motion.From the beginning of their careers to the end, each of them was continually applying new brushstrokes to their knowledge and to their skills.And Grice understood that very well, although he had different words for it. He knew that if our platoon was going to be good at occupying a position and firing our mortars, at hastily leaving our position should enemy artillery have found our location, at the countless things that would make us a finely honed war-fighting machine, then he had to show me, he had to teach me and to practice with me, so that when I walked that gun line the soldiers would know that I knew more than they; that if I asked them how to cut a mortar fuse, there was no doubt that I would know the answer, just as I would know if there was too much play in the sight mount on that mortar. And I had to feel confident that knew before they would feel confident with me.In every good leader I have met in my years of service there always was the evidence of these three qualities: character, love for soldiers and professional competence. And because they possessed these qualities, they managed to inspire their soldiers to have confidence in them.And you know, the truly great ones like George C. Marshall did not only inspire soldiers to have confidence in their leaders, but they also inspired their soldiers to have confidence in themselves.With that, let me close. As I told you in the beginning, I am deeply envious of each of you. Since the days when I first put on my uniform, I fell in love with soldiering and with soldiers, and it has been for me, by any measure, a great passion.If I could start all over today, I would not hesitate for a single second. I would go out and I would find old Sergeant Grice and we would be ready tomorrow morning!Good luck to you all. I envy you.

Vaginal Delivery of Breech Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 7000 words

Vaginal Delivery of Breech - Dissertation Example The discussion will be based on the author’s perspective, available evidence and current practice. It shall discuss women’s options during births, especially where infants are in the breech position. This dissertation will further evaluate if the women’s choices with regards to delivery of the breech are significantly impacted by the deskilling of health professionals or by the actual risks of the procedure itself. Current practice, as supported by the NICE and RCOG Guidelines (2001) discourages women from having vaginal deliveries when their babies are presenting in a breech position. Many midwives have only ever experienced vaginal breech deliveries in a simulated environment. Since practice is now dominated by the opinion that the safest option for these babies is a caesarean section and the opportunities to gain experience in safe vaginal breech delivery are limited, the dominance of caesarean section is reinforced. This paper aims to highlight the evidence t hat underpins the current practice as well as investigate the emerging evidence that is the basis for certain midwives now considering breech vaginal birth to be a safe option. Historically vaginal deliveries were the chosen method for the delivery of babies with a cephalic or breech presentation. ... he current indications for caesarean births in developed countries include breech babies along with foetal distress, malposition, malpresentations, placenta previa, and other related complications (Fischer, 2012). Some of these complicated births have been delivered vaginally even though the risk for these births has been considered significant. At present, the training for Obstetricians has mostly related to the delivery of breech babies via caesarean Section. This development has been re-evaluated by midwives because some midwives believe that obstetricians must equally train in normal deliveries of breech babies, especially as women’s options have been limited by the risks involved in the birth as well as the decreased skill of midwives (Jadoon, 2008). Breech presentation deliveries are deliveries where the foetus is at a longitudinal position, with either the buttocks or the feet presenting at the cervical area during delivery. This presentation is seen at about 3-4% of al l term deliveries (Fischer, 2012). This type of presentation may be attributed to prematurity, uterine malformations, placenta praevia, multiple births, and sometimes foetal abnormalities (Fischer, 2012). Breech presentation is classified into: frank, complete, and footling. Frank breech is observed with hips flexed, knees extended; complete is seen with hips flexed and knees flexed; and footling or incomplete with one of both hips extended and foot presenting (Fischer, 2012). The issue of whether or not vaginal breech deliveries should be considered over Caesarean section is now also based on the skill of midwives. There are major concerns surrounding vaginal delivery of breech presentation and generally limited data on safe vaginal deliveries of a breech. There is also a lack of honesty on the

Implementation of a Performance Appraisal System Assignment

Implementation of a Performance Appraisal System - Assignment Example As this is a food serving company so the labor intensive workforce can be shown over here. Simultaneously management of human resource and performance appraisal are very much important aspect in such case. New performance appraisal system will improve the communication system within organization. Sometimes problems are raised for lack of communication between employees and managers. If this appraisal system is used to find out the opportunities to serve the work in a better and improved way then it will be useful for both employees and the managers. It will provide a career path to the employees of the organization. It generally gives the opportunity to be promoted in the company and employees feel valued and pleased towards the organization. They become loyal at their work as they get the stable position in the company. The new system is required to improve the quality level. As this business is related to the food industry so this can be stated that if the quality of performance or job will be increased then the amount of revenue will also be increased. From the employee’s point of view the system will also be cost effective because it will clarify the expectations, define clearly about the career path, job accountability, self assessment and job satisfaction. 360 degree feedback, peer assessment, self assessment, negotiated performance appraisal can be used for forming the new metrics of performance appraisal system. Team system model can be implemented in such case. In the restaurant business team performance is very much important to meet the primary objectives and special criteria. Proper inputs from team will improve the growth of the business. At the part of conclusion this can be stated that new performance appraisal system will control the mission, purpose, people, system, growth and quality performance of an organization which is very much essential for future

Current Issues for Strategic Information Systems Report Coursework

Current Issues for Strategic Information Systems Report - Coursework Example Thus, in the absence of a strategic information system an organization cannot imagine the proper working, superior performance and greater credibility. This report discusses some of the current issues for strategic information systems in the context of a specific organization. For this report, I have chosen Greens Lime Mouldings (GLM) business. This report will present an overview of their strategic information system, its operational performance and possible issues regarding better corporate support and will also specify an improved IS/IM based strategy for business management. 1. Introduction A Strategic Information System (SIS) is an information system that allows the organizations to alter or otherwise update their business structure and/or strategy. Basically, the strategic information systems are aimed at streamlining and increasing the response time to varying or changing environmental aspects and helping it in gaining a competitive edge over other business organizations. ... In addition, the strategic information systems also allow the business organizations to establish and implement the data collection policies to support the database in optimizing marketing opportunities. Finally, synchronized information systems that are aimed at maintaining a quick response and the quality indicators. The basic purpose of implementing an SIS is to gain a competitive edge over other business organization through its participation to the organization’s tactical objectives and offering a capability to considerably improve the efficiency and performance of an organization. In addition, many researchers believe that an SIS helps business organizations gain a competitive edge and to help very much at the cost of those that cause to undergo competitive drawback (Hemmatfar et al., 2010; Rogerson & Fidler, 1994). This report discusses the use of strategic information systems in the context of a specific organization ‘Greens Lime Mouldings (GLM)’ that is a manufacturing company which produces a wide variety of small plastic products. In addition, they produce both their own standard range of plastic products which they supply to retailers, and limited production of plastic items designed on the basis of a customer’s specification. At the present, the organization desires to improve its business structure in order to improve the business performance and efficiency. In this scenario their basic goal is to implement a strategic information and management system. Raynor Bow has recently joined the management team to run the warehouse and has introduced a warehouse system resulting in greater competence in this side of the business. Business Managing Director Bob Green desires to invest more in GLM for the foreseeable future of business. They have

Current Issues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Current Issues - Essay Example Every organization’s main concern is to create and maintain productive employment. While concerns have been stated over gender issues, actual change has not taken place. Organizational learning was supposed to help organizations respond better to the demands of the environment. Today organizations are expected to be more gender equitable and improve their capacity to undertake development or human rights work that is not gender-biased (Kelleher, n.d.). This essay will identify the link between gender and learning at work, and finally discuss how organizations, which fail to consider gender issues, cannot become effective learning organizations. According to Khandekar & Sharma (2005) companies realize that the way an organization learns is the key determinant for sustainable competitive advantage. According to Griego et al., (2000) today a learning organization reflects the aspirations of its leaders. A learning organizations focuses on the characteristics, principles and systems of an organization that produces and learns collectively. Learning organizations lead to turn-around success stories in major companies. Through learning all the members continuously transform themselves. It is better able to collect, manage and use knowledge. Such organizations allow their people to expand and explore their creativity, where new patterns of thinking are nurtured, and where people learn how to learn together (Griego et al., 2000). According to Griego et al., (2000) five HRD functions have been categorized as key aspects of a learning organization. These include training and education, rewards and recognition, information flow, vision and strategy and individual team development. Training and education is a tool for learning and learning facilitates performance improvement. Recognition boosts employees’ esteem and gives them a greater sense of ownership in the organization. This results is reduced turnover and absenteeism, greater employee interest and

Management decisions & control Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Management decisions & control - Research Paper Example The quest for growth which is majorly motivated by the company’s marketing design of maintaining retail stores as well its good business environment has come with a number of challenges. The company has in the recent years grappled the control problems ranging from quality control to management control and these issues have come with significant image considerations. Another very important problem the company has to and continues to face revolves around the supply chain owing to its vast network of stores which are located in very different locations. The company’s business proposition identified it as a home of solutions for athletic and sport apparel increasing sales considerably as well as growth but this may have misguided the growth strategy. The company recorded a very fast movement of products in some cases merchandise getting out of stock in stores within just three days. The rapid expansion also placed significant amounts of pressure on the supply chain; many stores were opened rapidly to increase presence and brand visibility and some of the stores were in total very bad locations with little sales are no demand for merchandise at all. Managing the inventory continued to be the most pressing problem that the company had to fix in a time when its stock price had started declining, sales had significantly gone down and competition was it its peak. Those stores located in the coastal regions for example frequently ran out of stock for smaller sizes of merchandise and this negatively impacted on sales, image and customer trust. At the same time those retail stores in other places for instance in Midwest recorded high sales in terms of large sizes of merchandise which also was fast going out of stock. This meant the company had a constant challenge with the management of its inventory and this inventory related had negative image on

Personal class Design Project Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Personal class Design Project - Assignment Example th many youth especially those from my class are continuing to fall victims of drug abuse, it will be necessary to have practical examples through group discussions in order to effectively communicate with the students. The class is composed of 20 students who have just joined the secondary education. The class is a mixed class with more boys than girls. The sessions are designed to be taught 2 hours one in the morning and the second one in the afternoon. The class will be made up of students from all walks of life. This is a good parameter through which students from different backgrounds would be subjected to discussions with students from other settings to have the issue of drug abuse addressed comprehensively. Experiences of people with relatives or students with drug addiction would be indispensable in making the learning more practical. The10 minutes of the class will entails students responding to the questions outlined in their journals and which will also be written for them on the blackboard. The first question will entail what drug abuse is. The second one will entail causes of drug abuse, and the third one will entail effects of drug abuse. This part of introductory in a new class is intended to bring to the speed on whether the students prior understanding on the issue of drug abuse (Dupper, 2002). This way, the following activities will be dependent on the understanding of what the students know about drug abuse. This session will entail taking the students through various readings on the definition of drug abuse and its causes. This is critical in that it will first make students understand the topic at hand even before detailing how to develop an ad for anti-drug campaign. For this lesson, the students will be required to give their own understanding of what drug abuse is and give practical examples of the same. This is essential in that it will help in bridging the gap between the materials the students read in class and what they belief drug

Business Proposal Outline Essay Example for Free

Business Proposal Outline Essay This is a summary that can answer the question: what kind or type of business am I in? You must be able to answer this with a one sentence answer that summarizes everything youll do. Youll use this as a tag line when meeting business people as you market your business or as an introductorily statement presented to a lender. Structure Define your business as a Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, C Corporation, S Corporation or Limited Liability Corporation. To accomplish this will require the skills and expense of a good attorney specializing in small business. Management See more: argument essay format Youll need bios and resumes on your principal team players, including details of their experience, education, noteworthy achievements and why youll think they will be an asset. Employees How many and how will you hire them? What qualifications are you looking for? Will you outsource? What about compensations, benefits, workmans comp insurance or health plans? Finances Accounting In house or subcontracted? Computerized? What software will you need? Youll need a proforma profit and loss statement with income and profit projections forecasted out three years. What kind of a balance sheet method will you use? Youll need three-year projections of assets and cash-flow. Will you outsource for expertise in this area? Who can you hire and who can recommend reliable professionals? How much will a qualified CPA cost you a year? What services will he/she provide? Technology What are your needs? How will you use your equipment and in what aspects of your business? What file databases are you going to maintain? How much power do you need to maintain these? Can you option for online vendors or do you have to install an in-house system,? What about IT? Outsourced or hired? What is you budget for upgrades of equipment and software? Will you be doing graphics and promotional materials design in-house or outsourced? What about spyware, malware and virus protections? More Than An Afterthought Writing a business plan that is comprehensive will require a lot of work and thought. But once its done, youll have a tool that can breathe and grow as your business grows. A successful business plan template will be divided into sections allowing the reader an easy interpretation of what your goals are and how you plan to achieve them. It should include the following: †¢Cover Sheet. Includes the name of the new business and the principals involved. †¢Table of Contents. Easily divides the plan into different sections and allows for easy navigating. †¢Executive Summary and Mission Statement. Introduces the business idea, summarizes the ideas and goals and what you intend to accomplish. †¢Start-Up Costs and Operations. Lists all the details of the items and costs required to get started as well as the operating costs once the business has opened its doors. This includes all expenses such as rent, supplies, administration, equipment and employees. †¢Marketing Plan. Your strategy for advertising and other methods of gaining clients. †¢Revenue Projection. Your financial forecast over a period of several years. †¢Appendix.

Importance Of Sound In Film Film Studies Essay

Importance Of Sound In Film Film Studies Essay Every individual who watches a film knows too well that the choice of music, sound track and any other voice that will be present in the film affect the viewers perception of that particular film. There are silent films and sound films. Silent films are those that are dominated by scenes and other contents in the film, where there is less dialogue between the film characters and even the choice of music is very specific, slow, moving almost playing mildly form the background. The sound in the film also dictates the viewers opinion of the film, how they feel considering the emotions that the music or the sound effect impact in them. Considering these two films, 2001 space odyssey by Stanley Kubrick and the birds by Alfred Hitchcock 1963, they totally contradicting. The birds are full of sound and music where every scene is accompanied by corresponding music while 2001 is full of silence. Although different viewers have different views on films depending on ones taste, preference and choice, most people find sound films more thrilling and interesting to watch while quite a majority claim to get bored by silent films. The opening sequence to The Birds serves as an entry to the non-musical, solely-sonic domain of its soundtrack. High contrast visual abstractions of birds move across the frame, half-photographed, half-animated. Concurrently, squeals and squawks attack the viewers ears. These sounds have a birdlike quality about them, but it soon becomes apparent that the sounds are more alien than avian, more artificial than natural. Produced by electronic music, the processing of the sounds utilizes many stylistic traits established in the field of musique concrete. In this case, taped sounds of birds are altered in pitch, tone, duration and shape, and then mixed into a multi-layered cacophony of screeches and flapping sounds in sync with the animated silhouettes of bird shapes. Having been cued to read a mimetic representation of birds with the title The Birds, we are jettisoned into experiencing a sensation of birdness. At points the sounds of birds will be the symbolic conveyance of invisible te rror; at moments their silence will mark their deathly presence. In short, all modes of audio-visual depiction exude dread as they carry the potential to be diametrically inverted. This is nothing short of a terror of illusion a specifically audio-visual illusion central to The Birds psychological horror. The psycho-acoustic manipulations which characterize the narrative purpose of The Birds come into play immediately. The first scene set in the bird shop is a remarkably long one where slight plot and character information is imparted. Melanie (Tippi Hedren) orders a bird; she meets and plays a game on Mitch (Rod Taylor); he uncovers her pose as a saleslady; after a heated exchange she decides to buy him the birds he was after. Throughout this scene one of many banal, domestic exchanges a wall of bird noise blankets all dialogue, forcing the audience to selectively mask out the high frequency information of bird noise from the mid-range tones of the actors voices. While one can readily perform this complex perceptual manoeuvre in reality, many films will selectively reduce the volume of background noise to privilege on-screen dialogue. The fact that The Birds refrains from this indicates that the noise level is deliberately maintained to build auditory stress within the viewer as a means of destabilization. You are subtly yet fundamentally being introduced to the unsettled psychological state which will eventually befall all the characters of the film as they are terrorized by bird noise. Just as bird noise has already been subliminally ear-marked to trigger anxiety whenever it recurs, so is extended silence now signposted as an aural appendage to telescoped viewpoints. A lack of sound will mean someone (or something) is watching. There is much that is pregnant in The Birds due to a distribution of radical imbalances between the audio and image tracks. The highest degree of this is to be found in the absence of music. Save for a piano, a radio and some children singing (all which occur within the visual diegesis) there is not a single note of orchestrated music sounded for the films duration. The soundtrack of The Birds is literally that: voices, sounds, atmospheres. No violins. It rejects all musical coding traditionally employed to inform us of how we should care/think/feel/project at any point in the film. The absence of music is a specific sound of silence which greatly enhances the Birds peculiarly perverse dramatic tone. Picture one of many silent Melanies: lock ed into a seductive gravitational sway with her birds as she navigates the winding road up to Bodega Bay. She resembles an entranced conductor orchestrating her droning car engine. No purpose. No reason. No emotion. No music. The birds themselves narratively thrive in non-musical silence. Rather than embodying or transmitting a superimposed musical logic which tags them as monstrous, malicious and maniacal, they speak in their own voice to their own kind. Their language is foreign, alien, avian, excluding us from the inner mechanisms of their motives and operations. In sync with a decultured slant on nature, these birds simply have no concept of the human. Accordingly, human musical codes do not stick. No JAWS-style orchestral throbbing salaciously trumpets their arrival. As in their attack of the children playing Blind Mans Bluff at a birthday party, the birds orchestrate and enact a cacophony upon their arrival. Balloons burst, children scream, feathers flutter and beaks peck, all played against a continual delivery of bird squawks. In the absence of music, all sound becomes terror; gulls and children scream alike (Schwam  ¶1). A peculiar type of silencing occurs when Melanie waits for Cathy: a silencing through music. Most of the following incidents are covered by an irritating cannon voiced by the lacksadasical tones of children singing in school. After the cacophonic climax of the Brenner attack, Melanie cautiously checks the attic. All is still and quiet until she unwittingly shines a torch on the massed birds roosted there like a cancer within the household. They swoop on her as she flails her arms desperately like a man trying to fly. Her cries for help slowly disintegrate into a field of whimpers and gasps. The birds terrorize us from above with sophistication and precision dreamed of in military aviation. They feed off our cadavers in disrespectful piecemeal fashion. And in a fitful triumph of the sonic, they peck out our eyes. As we die and fade to black, so does the films sun set, blurring the calm chattering of all those gathered birds into an agitated chorus that reverberates deep in the caves of the hollow sockets which were once our eyes ( ¶2-3). Stanley Kubricks 2001 space odyssey is a profound, visionary and astounding film (a mysterious Rorschach film-blot) and a tremendous visual experience. This epic film contained more spectacular imagery (about what space looked like) and special effects than verbal dialogue. Viewers are left to experience the non-verbal, mystical vastness of the film, and to subjectively reach into their own subconscious and into the films pure imagery to speculate about its meaning. Many consider the masterpiece bewildering, boring, slow-moving or annoying, but are still inspired by its story of how man is dwarfed by technology and space. The first spoken word is almost a half hour into the film, and theres less than 40 minutes of dialogue in the entire film. Much of the film is in dead silence (accurately depicting the absence of sound in space), or with the sound of human breathing within a spacesuit. Kubricks sci-fi experiment intended to present its story almost purely with visual imagery and auditory signals with very little communicative human dialogue (similar to what was attempted in the surreal, fragmented, non-narrative imagery of the Qatsi trilogy. All scenes in the film have either dialogue or music (or silence), but never both together. They hypnotically circle around the black object Floyd bashfully touches it with his thick glove. A photographer prepares a group of them to line up and pose before the totem-like monolith like typical tourists, recording the moment of their visit. Just as their picture is taken, a ray of sunlight strikes the monolith signalling the end of the dark, 14-day lunar night. It is the Dawn of the Moon. Again, the glowing Sun, Moon and Earth have formed a conjunctive orbital configuration. And then suddenly, the object emits an ear-piercing, electronic screeching noise. The group is stunned and staggers reeling helplessly backwards as their helmet headphones are filled with the blasted signal. Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal experience, one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. In this respect, 2001 harks back to the central power that music had in the era of silent film (Allison  ¶1-2). The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial records. Major feature films were (and still are) typically accompanied by elaborate film scores and/or songs written especially for them by professional composers. But although Kubrick started out by commissioning an original orchestral score from composer Alex North, he later abandoned this, opting instead for pre-recorded tracks sourced from existing recordings, becoming one of the first major movie directors to do so, and beginning a trend that has now become commonplace ( ¶3-4). On 2001 Kubrick did much of the filming and editing, using as his guides the classical recordings which eventually became the music track. In March of 1966 MGM became concerned about 2001s progress and Kubrick put together a show reel of footage to the ad hoc soundtrack of classical recordings. The studio bosses were delighted with the results and Kubrick decided to use these guide pieces as the final musical soundtrack, and he abandoned Norths score. Unfortunately Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used, and to his great dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie at the premià ¨re. Norths soundtrack has since been recorded commercially and was released shortly before his death. Similarly, Ligeti was unaware that his music was in the film until alerted by friends. He was at first unhappy about some of the music used, and threatened legal action over Kubricks use of an electronically treated recording of Aventures in the interstellar hotel scen e near the end of the film (Kolker  ¶5-7). HALs haunting version of the popular song Daisy Daisy (Daisy Bell) was inspired by a computer synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories Murray Hill facility when he was coincidentally visiting friend and colleague John Pierce. At that time, a remarkable speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr. who created one of the most famous moments in the history of Bell Labs by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kellys voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song Daisy Bell, with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later told Kubrick to use it in the film. When HAL disconnects the life support systems, we see a flashing warning sign, COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, shown full-screen and accompanied only by the sound of a shrill alarm beep; this is intercut with static shots of the hibernating astronauts, encased in their s arcophagus-like pods, and close-up full-screen shots of the life-signs monitor of each astronaut. As the astronauts begin to die, the warning changes to LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL and we see the vital signs on the monitors beginning to level out. Finally, when the three sleeping astronauts are dead, there is only silence and the ominously banal flashing sign, LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED (Fiona  ¶6-8). The film industry has made a tremendous progress when it comes to sound films. Film producers have modern and special gadgets that can incorporate any tripe of music or track any sound that the movie producer desires. It does not matter what the genre of the film is, there are all types of sounds and music to accompany the theme, environment and character traits of the actors and basically capture the desired setting of the film.