...Two Cheers for Consumerism In the article called 2 cheers for consumerism, the writer Twitchell explains how people, the consumers, are consuming more and more items everyday. According to the author of the article “The really interesting question may be not why we are so materialistic, but why we are unwilling to acknowledge and explore what seems the central characteristics of life.”. Many people spend most of their time and energy consuming or producing items all the time and most of that happened in the 20th century, like for example in the 1960’s. Some people consider this as Commercialism, and others as consumerism, but either way, commercialism or consumerism will stay up high for many people that like to buy stuff. The U.S. is a nation of consumers. Consumerism affects people in many ways, like for example age and many other things. The main idea for consumerism is that many people can’t resist having a specific item, most of those items are objects that they don’t really need. According to the author “ it is simply impossible to consume objects without consuming meaning.”. This means that consumerism is all around us, currents of desire are flowing around us all the time, like if it were white smoke. Some people say that consumerism It’s pretty much a waste because it’s now a big concern. America is considered a nation of consumers, one that can never have enough things (Twitchell). Twitchell refers to American material culture as a mallcondo...
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...has been the forefront to the beginning of many children’s learning experience. I have chosen tying shoes and added two digit numbers because I believe these are two task these tasks are something all people end up learning sometime in life. Not all children are taught to jump rope, and not all children are taught to break down words, but somewhere along our way, we as children were taught to tie our shoes as well as adding two-digit numbers. These two tasks spark our brains and cause us to think differently and this begins a learning process that can transition child into many different lessons in life. I was fortunate enough to take my nephew who is five years old and teach him to tie his shoes. I gave my nephew a pair of his shoes and I told him he was going to be able to tie his own shoes when I was done teaching him to do so. I gave him his shoes, tied them for him and explained not only the importance of tying his shoes, but also how to do so. I showed him how to tighten the show for the bottom of the laces up, how to tie the first knot to keep the shoe tight, and also the last bunny ear knot the finish the job. After showing him a couple times how to tie his shoes, I asked him to tie them on his own. He was able to tighten the laces from bottom up, and even a couple times made it to the formation of the bunny ears, but for the most part he was unable to tie his own shoes. I again went back and showed him the steps of tying his shoes and took about fifteen minutes...
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...The saying “More Money More Problems” has many meanings to it but, it is absolutely true People tend to get greedier or, often act selfish when they receive a ton of money. More celebrities in this modern time as the celebrities say “Keep Up With The Jones” (this meaning is trying to say that people want to keep up on what’s new in life like for example, the latest technology and fashion sense.) As one of the celebrities said in the video interview we saw in class he said he purchased a Ferrari that was a stick shift and he did not have the capability to drive the car and he was questioning himself on why he bought the car in the first place. Gatsby in the time that he lived he lived in a horrible world in the book people would spend their money without putting any sense into it but when Gatsby’s area of time was around police did not really care or they really did not have many laws. source: (video we saw in class) and book The parallels in The Great Gatsby setting compared with the modern athletes they are both very, alike both talk about similar things like hard times also getting very successful and in the end, ending up in a tight spot like for example, on the online article “NFL players bankrupt” it talks about getting a huge amounts on their check and then getting bad invests then, talks about athletes getting divorces. Like Daisy and Tom they have been having...
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...here in college. Teachers no longer baby us, rather they expect us, as adults to be able to work without constant pressure or surveillance, which we were constantly under in high school. This means more newfound responsibilities for me as well as the other freshmen, and it also serve s as a means of increased freedom. I appreciate that professors are not coddling me, because this is teaching me responsibility and self-reliance, which will definitely be crucial in my future success. It of course is a huge adjustment, and was initially pretty difficult to keep up with all the new requirements and the various assignments I had been assigned. Yes, I did miss a few assignments, such as this essay, and an online math quiz, but both of those miscues have opened my eyes and are forcing me to play closer attention. This very much correlates with Bryan constantly falling, and getting up, and his attitude to learn from his mess ups that helped him push forward. With the increased responsibility, more freedom also comes about. In comparison to high school, I am currently in class for much less time, which gives me more time for extracurricular and campus involvement. Bryan did not allow his dilemma to prevent him from doing things, instead he started doing even more things with his so called dilemma. This relates to me, because yes I have more work and things to remain...
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...message from John; I am waiting? I totally forgot everything about meeting up with him before school! I quickly dumbed the rest of my stuff down the bag, and went outside. The stone filled yard was cracking under my white new shoes. At my way down the street, I received a new message; should I go without you? I choose to ignore it. I was only a few blocks away from him anyway. Just a moment after I got another one saying; Closet. I did not understand that one. Was this supposed to be some kind of bad joke? I arrived at John’s house about 7:30am. When the message copied itself. Closet. I did not know the number it came from. John helped me looking it up. However, no one owned that number. There was not even an IP-Address showed. The cold word was teasing me. John told me to ignore it, that it possibly only was some random 10 year old messing around with me. When we arrived at the school, it seemed to be a quite normal day. However, something did not feel right. Like that feeling, you get when someone is watching you all the time. I felt stalked. The goosebumps was slowly starting to catch up. We walked down the hallway. I was not paying attention to what John was saying. Nevertheless, his lips was moving. The crowd around me slowly started to kick in my nerves. All the voices. I was hearing it everywhere! Closet. It repeated itself in every conversation. I began to walk faster. John tried to keep up. I somehow outran him. I am all alone now… I did not know what to do. Therefore...
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...reform was effective in meeting the goals. Upon implementation of the welfare reform, the AFDC/TANF caseloads dropped by half. Though some believe that the decline was as a result of a sound economy, but without a previous economic boom; however, the majority believe that the decline in dependency was attributed to the welfare reform. Welfare reform's reliance on deterrence and punishment to reduce the rolls tipped the financial and emotional balance of already vulnerable families. Request for more aid went up, and the women whose motherhood and fertility targeted by public debates, policy mandates and reproductive legislation were the same women who were accused of being a burden to the economy and punished by means of programs funded by the government, thus becoming subjected to violence, and crime related activities. Most of the methods used to employ welfare reform worked or semi-worked for about a decade, but with the growing economy, it was no longer able to keep up with the demands of the future. A serious update is required to go along with the growing economical times. Ethically, one has to wonder if it is even possible to fix something that is clearly outdated or do we just start from scratch. If the intention is to decrease the deficit, this may be accomplished by not jumping first to cut the programs that helped the most at risk. The lowest 20 percent of the population is only getting approximately four percent of the entire revenue in the United States. To ask this...
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...Week 1 CheckPoint: Technology Trendy Communication The face of business communications is changing very quickly with new technology. The question of using the new technology effectively weighs heavier on the side of not being able to. New devices and new methods of communication being produced at such a fast pace, businesses have a hard time keeping up. Training and retraining employees across the board, not only takes up time, but also takes enormous amounts of capital investment. (Locker & Kienzler, 2008). The older employees may also become less productive when having to retrain on new systems continually. Changing technology too quickly can be detrimental to other areas of business, such as customer service. For example, the customers’ needs being set aside while employees are training is not good for business. When customers call with questions, they like to hear the voice of confidence, but instead get the voice of frustration of new equipment or software an agent is still trying to master. There seems to be a larger number of big companies that have been able to keep up with the new trends, but usually not without consequence somewhere along the line. Accidental security breaches being high on the list of technology problems these companies face. Another problem being information overload. Too much information to manage can be overwhelming for employees (Locker & Kienzler, 2008). Over loading employees make it harder to maintain or...
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...Nzingha TaHa February 22, 2016 Creative Nonfiction Dr. Monika Elbert The Killer Day The day started off like any other school day, I cried my heart out. I hated getting up in the morning to prepare for school. I cried brushing my teeth, washing my face, putting on my clothes, and while eating breakfast. I hated the idea of not being able to lay in bed until I was ready to get up. I guess I can blame that on my mom. When I was much smaller my mom used to work nights, when she would come home we would play, listen to music and laugh until we fell asleep. We would awaken when we got good and ready; I thought that was the life. Although some of that changed once she returned to school, my body could not adjust. No matter how early I would go to sleep I never want to get up early. The ride to school was nothing special, it was very quiet rides. Often times I would soak up the scenery. I was always amazed at the trees and the kids walking down Grove Street. I knew where they were going because most of us where in the same class but, I would just watch them as if it was new to me. As my mom pulled up I couldn’t wait to get out of the car, I had no time to give her my sweet goodbyes. I would run to my friends so we could catch up before we entered the building. Once we got to the big red doors, we knew it was time to get serious. So we laughed, gossiped, exchanged snacks and quickly entered the building. No one wanted to be late to class. If you were late to class you would...
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...After riding for ten hours, the crick in my upper back was bothering me more than usual, and my visor wouldn’t stop fogging up. It had rained nearly all day and even more consistently after dark. I hadn’t accounted for the change in climate on the Altiplano, and it had become much cooler than the night before. Now cold and wet, noticing the onset of hypothermia from my chattering teeth, I pulled into the Pemex gas station to fill up and, more importantly, warm up. My decision not to stop earlier and to press on had been torturing me for the last hour, but luckily my bodily discomfort was masking my anxiety about whether I would make it anywhere at all tonight. I stepped of my bike and felt the water squish through my boots, and I scrunched my toes a few times to make sure they were still there. I really should have bought those waterproof Alpinestars before I left. It was nearly one in the morning and I was fortunate to meet Omar and Leonel at the rest stop, returning from the weekend moto trip to the beach. They must have been as crazy as I was for riding in these conditions, although, they had the excuse of getting home before the work week. I didn’t really have one, other than to get to Mexico City. Being a foreigner, a bit bedraggled and out of place, I must have looked a bit desperate. The chilango bikers offered to guide me downtown to the zócalo where I could try to find a place to stay. I doubted my ability to navigate the unfamiliar city streets in the middle...
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...Growing Up Paper 3/31/2014 Parenting comes with a magnitude of struggles, from teaching your children right from wrong to helping them learning through experience, even if it’s through mistakes. Parents and grandparents have a lot in common starting with their love for the children in their lives. Unfortunately that doesn't always stop grandparents and parents from bickering about a variety of issues, especially about the guidelines of the child’s life. In the memoir Growing Up, by Russell Baker, Russell’s grandmother, Ida Rebecca, and his mother, Lucy Elizabeth disagreed on most everything due to a clash in ideals and generations. Russell Baker had a tough life, but succeeded, probably because of his mother’s constant hectoring. Lucy Elizabeth always wanted her children to be successful in life. To her, that meant that they needed to make a name for themselves through business. As a child, Russell constantly was told to make something of himself. From a young age, Lucy Elizabeth was very driven. She often speaks highly of her Papa and how he was “a good man.” He was her model of excellence. Although Papa failed at succeeding in life, he never gave up. She wanted her to brothers and her husband to turn out like the good man her father once was. When they failed to make some she turned to her children to make something of themselves. Russell talks about how his mother despised inactivity and was forced to start working at the age of eight so that he was able to keep up with...
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...Coach tries to pump everyone up for the big race tomorrow but all you can hear are the sniffles coming from all the the runners. Everyone shivers as a cool, fall breeze passes through the group. As coaches speech drags to an end we all thank him, and get our stuff to leave. Everyone jokes around per usual, though there is a dense fog of stress hanging in the air. Tomorrow is the biggest cross country race of the season. If the team does good then they get to stay running for another week and go to regionals, but if they have a bad race their season will end right there without states. As Sarah returns home from practice with her older brother Adam, she remembers her last race. She remembers how little water she drank and how much it affected...
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...of these people. In order for a human to survive it needs many certain resources. These resources include feeding, clothing, housing and many others such as medical care and education. Granite only the first three resources that I mentioned are absolutely necessary to survive but the others amongst many more is what we deemed necessary for a human to live a long successful life. Key word long, a lot of advancements have been made in medicine to not only prolong life, but by making it much easier for women to bear children. More people are being born and less people are dying leaving the population at a steady increase up. On a broad view this could be viewed as a good thing. More grandparents are living to see their great grandchildren and more mind are being shaped to better the world. However we run into problems because our resources can’t possible keep up with the growth of humans. There are 150 babies born each minute around the world that means each day the planet takes on the responsibility of 150 more people for an average of 85 years. The growth of crops and material is nowhere near that exponential meaning that sooner or later we will inevitable run out of resources. To compensate for that humans have engineered chemicals to make out resources grow better, faster and stronger. These chemicals are sprayed of our crops and fed to our cattle all with the goal of profit. As we use these chemicals to benefit the now we fail to see the consequences on the future. These...
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...Hard Ship Letter I am writing this letter to explain to you about my current situation that is going from bad to worse. This continued hardship has crippled my ability to pay for my mortgage on this house. Since the beginning of 2009, I had lost a career and regained a much lesser paying job and my income has been greatly reduced. In addition, there were 11 months of vacancy at this property which I tried desperately to fill up. Then, as of January 2009, we finally got a new tenant but the tenant was only able to pay two-thirds of the monthly rent, and I had to come up with the rest of the monthly mortgage amount. Besides that, I had other personal loans and debts which I am still paying off. I have tried to refinance this property but I was unable to do so because of the drastic market drop. I have been trying to keep up with the mortgage payments using my savings up to this point, hoping that the economy will recover soon. At this time, my savings are gone and I know that I am not able to pay the mortgage with this high rate of interest. I tried to pay the partial amount for this monthly mortgage but your bank did not accept my partial mortgage payments. I tried to do loan modification and was turned down by your bank. Now, I am requesting that you allow me to do short sale on this property and post pone the trustee sale date, scheduled to be effective on 10/05/2009, so that I can salvage this house value and make the short sale payments to your bank. I am...
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...Keith Within this portfolio I will be focusing on a nine year old boy called Keith, he lives with his 55 year old mother Michelle and her partner Billy who is 60, along with his two older brothers, Richard who is 14 and Robert who is 11. The school which he attends is specialised for children who suffer from physical disabilities. Keith suffers from cerebral palsy; this has resulted in spasticity in all four of his limbs along with high muscle and postural tone, resulting in him finding it difficult to participate in all of the activities which his peers usually carry out. In terms of his intellectual abilities, he is a bright young man who is motivated to do well in his education, however he is thought to have a mild learning disability. This can cause problems as whenever he has to exert more effort into tasks, his muscle tone tends to increase. At present his personal care routine could require some assistance, although he can dress himself independently, he requires assistance to manage the fastenings on his clothes, this also applies when he goes to the toilet. He can transfer himself independently providing the seat has two sturdy arms to guide him with. He currently uses a walking frame which is on wheels, however this is causing concern now as it is becoming much more unsteady, he attends physiotherapy in order to maintain joint range of movement and flexibility and to monitor his spine. In order to maintain his mobility, it will require an increased...
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...Week 10 Tute: Ethics of Consumption (Assessed) 1. Who is the ‘we’ in the question ‘Why do we consume so much?’ is Juliet Schor correct that ‘there is increasingly little that we do which is not a consumption experience’? And that we have become a culture of excessive consumption? Explain your answers. The ‘we’ in the text mean that most of the Americans who possess a basic normal life, stable income and the large middle classes whose standard of living has risen so dramatically over this century. The author is correct that there is gradually little that we do which is not a consumption experience. Material abundance has only intensified in recent years, with the booming economy of the 1990s and early 21st century. People nowadays had become a culture of excessive consumption. The amount of vehicles per person has increased, as has the size and luxuriousness of those vehicles. Americans use more on cosmetics product every year than the extra spending needed to bring worldwide access to basic education for all children in the developing world. 2. Explain why Schor believes that ‘more leisured, less consumerist lifestyles are structurally blocked’. Why can’t people simply choose to work less and enjoy more free time? Do you agree that working long hours encourages people to consume more? In the event that there is not an openly working business sector in hours and managers inhibits hours’ reductions, then there is no sense in which one can depict the amount of utilization...
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