Any controversial subject of choice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Any controversial subject of choice - Essay Example The Surgeon General’s Report of 2006 categorically states that â€Å"breathing secondhand smoke for even a short time can have immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and interferes with the normal functioning of the heart, blood, and vascular systems in ways that increase the risk of a heart attack† (â€Å"The Health Consequences†). The second reason to ban smoking in public places is because ETS contains known carcinogens. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists ETS as a Group A carcinogen which causes about 3,000 deaths from lung cancer among non-smokers in the USA, and contains seventy toxic, cancer-causing chemicals. (â€Å"Health Effects of Exposure†). The third reason to ban smoking in public places is because ETS is particularly harmful to children. Children exposed to second hand smoke are very susceptible to lung diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia and wheezing. They suffer from frequent middle ear infections. ETS is the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, in which infants die unexpectedly because of nicotine in their lungs and interference with the breathing regulation mechanism of the brain. (â€Å"Health Effects of Exposure†). Protecting the lives of innocent children alone is reason enough to ban smoking in public

African American Essay Essay Example for Free

African American Essay Essay My name is Michelle Williams-Agwagu and my ethnicity group is African American. African Americans came here by forced immigration. They were not invited here to America, and they certainly did not come here by choice. They were forced and taken on ships that brought them to America just to become slaves to the white people. Upon arrival to America, African Americans were treated poorly. Many of them were torn apart from their family members and some were infants that had no knowledge of whom they were as they became older. The group faced many challenges such as prejudice, segregation, and racism. A set of codes were implemented that all African Americans had to adhere to, or they would be punished by either getting beat by their master or possibly killed. African Americans were not allowed to have any education; therefore, no one was allowed to learn to read or write. The slave owners made sure of that and if any slave did learn to read or write, he or she would be punished by their owner. They were separated from the other people because of the color of their skin and was not allowed to eat, play, drink or have any interaction with the masters or the master’s family members unless it was to do household chores as their servant. They did not have many opinions when it came to making decisions. Unfortunately, African Americans were affected by dual labor market and red lining. In the early stages of African American emancipation, not many of them had education or access to quality higher education. Even if they had this education, they were forced into the lower labor market and regardless of the quality of their education they would start in much lower positions than that of their white counterparts. African Americans were affected by this because they were not given any meaningful jobs with any type of significant pay structure and benefits. The jobs were more short-term than long-term. Red lining is a reality in African American communities across the United States. Red lining is a practice which discriminates against Blacks of all economic sectors when they apply for home and business loans and consumer credit. Blacks, more than any other racial or ethnic group (with the possible exception of Native Americans), receive less credit. Through all the bad treatment that African Americans received from â€Å"white† Americans, they (AA) still participated in reverse discrimination. Reverse discrimination is still a problem here in the United States because it is racism; and racism is racism, no matter how we try to spin it. â€Å"Society classes an African American discriminating against a Caucasian as reverse discrimination because for most of American history, it was the African Americans who were persecuted for something that they could not control their ethnicity. † (Libra, n. d. ) African Americans have also been affected by the glass ceilings form of discrimination, and that is still an ongoing problem also. â€Å"The glass ceiling refers to the barriers that often confront Ethnic Americans and women in trying to reach the upper ladders of corporate America. African Americans do not earn the same pay for comparable positions† (The Glass Ceiling for African, Hispanic (Latino), and Asian Americans, 2008. ) as that of their white counterparts in the same job. Environmental justice issues have plagued African Americans in the past and continue to do so today. In the past century, factories emitting toxic fumes and hazardous waste were positioned near large African American sections of major cities as well as small towns inhabited by mostly African Americans. Today, in areas of Louisiana along the Mississippi River known as â€Å"Cancer Alley†, petroleum and chemical manufacturing plans spew fumes and release carcinogenic chemicals near the water supplies of African Americans. There has long been controversy over this modern issue however no other ethnic or racial group has the desire to have these companies relocate factories near their living areas. African Americans have participated in affirmative action since the very beginning, in fact, affirmative action was implemented in the United States largely for the benefit of this group. Affirmative action makes a valiant attempt to make up for past and current discrimination against a certain group and makes jobs and opportunities that members of this group would not have access to ordinarily. Some African Americans agree with Affirmative Action, while some others disagree with it because they perceive it to be a handout and not being able to get jobs or opportunities on one’s own merit. We, as African Americans have and still face many forms of discrimination. Will it ever end, I do not think so. There have been attempts to close the gap and bring us into that circle of equality but I do not see that ever happening in its entirety, all though we know that all men are â€Å"supposedly† created equal. I culturally identify more with African Americans because it is who I am. However, it is evident that racism with any prefix is a problem in America it is a problem in the entire world, and I hope people will start accepting people as people rather than accepting that they must hate people because of the color of their skin. Reference Page Libra, Themis. (n. d. ). Is reverse discrimination a problem in the United States?. Helium The Glass Ceiling for African, Hispanic (Latino), and Asian Americans (2008). Ethnic Majority.

Budgeting Slack Kills All Benefits Of Budgeting Accounting Essay

Budgeting Slack Kills All Benefits Of Budgeting Accounting Essay In an organization when a manager is responsible for planning incomes and expenses for the a future period, they can plan income very low and expenses very high so that this amounts gets approved by senior management. The Manager basically does this thing to be sure of meeting the budget with a very low income goal, the manager should be able to achieve it and go over it. With a very high expense Budget the manager should be able to easily keep actual expenses within the Budget. If this happens the managers performance in the coming year will look very good, as it doesnt really give management any idea of what the coming year will actually look like because its not realistic. And it doesnt show the actual evaluation of the managers performance. So this is known as the Budgetary Slack. In other words the surplus that arises when managers preparing a Budget overestimates costs or underestimates revenues. Most organizations would want to eliminate budget slack but some managers may be motivated to create it to improve their performance evaluations. After realising the meaning and concept of budgetary slack then it points out the key questions like why, for what etc. for the occurrence of this concept. First of all coming to the reality check of why this phenomena is happening, it is evident that it happens due to the fraud action of the concerned manager, that is misrepresentation of the facts and figures in the budgetary report. With a budgetary slack the manager is capable enough to achieve if its showing a very low income target and by exaggerating a high expense budget he is able to hide the actual expense within the budget. thus even though a managers performance in the coming year may look good, the truth is the budget is not showing the original forecasts upon which major decisions should be taken. Mostly companies major decisions and strategies are based on their budgets to a great extent, even factors like firms growth,development,etc. Causes Of Budgetary Slack :- Budgetary Participation :- Agency theory had been used to explain budgetary participation. Magee (1980) explained that the anticipated payoff to principals was increased with access to information held by agents before preparing the budget. By participating in the budget preparation process, the agent gives the principals an opportunity to access information which allows agent to communicate or reveal some of their private information that may be incorporated into the standards or budgets, against which their performance would be evaluated (Magee, 1980;Baiman, 1982; Baiman Evans, 1983).The agents sometimes doesn,t reveal all the information which would lead to budgets with incorporated. Budgetary participation was the means by which subordinate managers influence plans and share in the decision making process with their superiors on matters that affect their areas of responsibility (Milani, 1975;Brownell, 1982a, 1982b). Budget Emphasis :- As Managers are under pressure to achieve there budgeted goals ,in this case there is a chance they would create budgeting slack. This pressure, applied from supervisors was budget emphasis. When the achievements of budgeted goals were emphasized, the normal tendency was to incorporate slack into the firms budgets. The main reason for subordinate managers efforts to build slack in their budgets was to increase their payoff chances. If subordinate managers perceived their rewards as dependent on budget attainment, they would tend to build slack into their budgets through the participation process. Therefore, budget emphasis in performance evaluation may encourage budgetary slack. Information Asymmetry :- Another factor that influences the budgetary slack building behaviour r is the degree of information asymmetry. Information asymmetry arises when the subordinate managers possess private information regarding divisions productivity, effort level, and resource requirements that is not available to the central management. This private information can be used by the subordinates to maximize their self-interest especially when the central management cannot observe the subordinate actions. Subordinates have incentives to misrepresent their private information in order to set easy to achieve budget targets . NEGATIVE SIDE OF BUDGETARY SLACK :- Even though there are positives and negatives for budgetary slack, the negative effects outweigh positive effects .Some of the negative effects are the following:- 1)During good years managers tend to depend on budgetary slack and at bad years these managers tend to convert budgetary slack to profit. That is if a manager behind the profit for the year, the manager will rely on the budgetary slack built into the budget to make the profit goal anyway. But if manager is ahead of profit for the year then the manager will use up the additional money left in the budget because of the budgetary slack built into at the beginning of the year. Thus the managers will rarely, if ever exceed the goals although they will almost always meet their goals but the meeting of the goals will not be real since the goals are not real due to budgetary slack. 2) A deliberately understated sales budget might have serious consequences in planning other activities. For instance, production might be too low; the advertising program and distribution expense budgets may be planned incorrectly; the cash flow plans might be inaccurate. WAYS TO PREVENT BUDGETARY SLACK:- Evaluation system:- Organizations can reduce budgetary slack when they stop using budget as a negative evaluative tool. For instance, instead of criticizing subordinates every time a budgeted target is not achieved, if the subordinates are allowed some discretion to exceed costs when unavoidable, there will be a lesser tendency to create budgetary slack (Smith et al, 2008, p. 460). Truth- inducing pay scheme:- A problem occurs in participative budgeting when a subordinate has private information about factors that influence his or her performance and the pay scheme is budget or standard- based. The employee has an advantage to keep away this information from superiors so that a relatively easy standard is set, thereby creating slack. To eliminate this problem, research proposes a truth- inducing pay scheme to motivate subordinates to accurately communicate private information and maximize performance, thereby reducing budgetary slack (Waller, 2002). Budgetary Participation :-Is an ideal budgetary process. Most companies deviate from this ideal budgetary process. Typically top managers initiate the budget process by issuing broad guidelines in terms of overall target profits or sales. Lower level managers are desired to prepare budgets that meet those targets. The difficulty is that the target set by top managers may be unrealistically high or may allow too much slack. If the budgets are too high and employees know they are unrealistic, motivation will suffer. If the targets allow too much slack, waste will occur. And unfortunately top management is often not in a position to know whether the targets they have set are appropriate. Admittedly, however, a pure self imposed budgeting system is not without limitations. It may lack sufficient strategic direction and lower level managers may be tempted to build into their budgets a great deal of budgetary slack. Nevertheless, because of the motivational advantages of self imposed budgets, top managers should be cautious about setting inflexible budgets. Zero-Based Budgeting:- The problem of budgetary slack is particularly acute when the prior years budget is used as the starting point for preparing the current budget.   This is called incremental budgeting. It is presumed that established levels from previous budgets are an acceptable baseline, and changes are made based on new information.   This usually means that budgeted amounts are incrementally increased.   The alternative to incremental budgeting is called zero-based budgeting. With zero-based budgeting, each expenditure taxes and fees.   This gives rise to considerable frustration in trying to control spending.   Some governmental leaders push for zero-based budgeting concepts in an attempt to filter necessary services from those that simply evolve under the incremental budgeting process. CONCLUSION:- Sometimes the slack creation increases if a tight budget is applied and the manager is expected to incur budget overruns .In othercase if managers are permitted to participate actively in the budgeting process then the chances of slack is to reduce in further stages. Truth inducing schemes also play an important role in reducing budgetary slack. Individuals are assumed to be motivated by their self-interest; therefore, managers will not always act in the best interest of the management. Because the actions that may benefit the management might not be beneficial for mangers self interest. The main issue here is how to align the managers interest with the managements interests. Some actions that the management can take in this case are, firstly to pay the manager a fixed salary if he takes the right action and impose a penalty if he contravenes. Another step could be to induce a compensation plan that links compensation with the mangers performance. These actions are expected to provide subordinate/managers with an incentive to communicate truthfully, thereby reduce budgetary slack.

C ++ Language :: essays research papers

C++ Programming Language C++ is a universal programming language, which considerably eases and comforts the work of a professional programmer. Roundly, C++ is an enhancement of C programming language: C++ offers flexible and effective tools of determination of new data types, which help programmer to split up his work into a number of easily controlled parts. Custom data types can be composed into some objects (called classes), specified by the programmer. Such objects are simple and reliable to be used in the situations, when data types are hard to be defined on the stage of compiling. Programming by using such objects is called Object Oriented Programming, and C++ is one of the most popular OOP languages. Origin of C++ takes source from programming languages of â€Å"C with Classes†, which have been developing during early 80th at the AT&T Bell Labs. â€Å"C with Classes† has been used for big projects of modeling and testing of opportunities in programming, which required minimum of process memory and time. But â€Å"C with Classes† was not satisfying with its lack of virtual functions and links, and that is why the specialists borrowed some features and tools (like classes) from another programming language, Simula. The name â€Å"C++† has been invented by Rick Mascitti in autumn 1983; it indicates an evolutional transformation from C to C++, because â€Å"++† symbolizes the function of increment in C. Since C++ must be classified as an extension of C programming language, it did not receive a name of a higher level group of languages, â€Å"D†. Early versions of C++ proved to be efficient for solving of growing complexity of the programming problems. Standard version of C++, released in 1998, includes the Core of the language and Standard Template Library, a modified version of C Library. C++ presented a lot of new functions and opportunities for a programmer. First of all, those are features of managing with the classes, like constructors, virtual functions, or implementation of encapsulation, abstraction, polymorphism, and inheritance. Besides, C++ offers some improvements in the very programming operations, like using declarations, namespaces, function overloading, default arguments, function-like casts, run-time type identification, inline functions, and many others. Design of C++ is modern and convenient, besides, C++ supports various programming styles (like OOP, data abstraction, etc.). The main advantage of C++ is its object orientation. Strategy of OOP helps to develop a great variety of software and to satisfy growing needs of modern programming.

Farley, Mowat’s “Never cry wolf” Essay

Farley, Mowat’s â€Å"Never cry wolf,† is a book based on the research of the lifestyle of wolves in the Arctic Circle. Mowat uses his experience to educate the society of the social ills conducted by the hunters towards the wolves. The book displays the risk that the wolf pack families face due to the human activities in the area. The title of the book acts as a symbol in reference to the story of the boy who cried wolf. The book thus enables the reader to think beyond the tile so as to form an opinion of the author’s message. The book challenges the human communities who are in charge of the nature around them. Humans tend to overstep their authority by infringing on the rights of the wolves. The analysis of the book educates the society of the inhumane activities that humans are inflicting on the animals. Different passages from the book Interpretation of the passage and meaning I was born and grew up in the farm and never knew what it was to have all I wanted or needed as a teenager in the late 20s The author talks of his life as a child. He was exposed to animals at an early stage in life due to his parent’s lifestyle. This is a contributing factor to his love for animals. That night the inevitable happened. We were awakened by the most frightful uproar. It seemed to consist of furious barking of a dozen dogs mingled with the roaring of the menagerie of lions The passage elaborates the intensity of the nature that surrounds him. The conflict between the dogs and the lions displays the fight for power amongst the animals. Then there were the birds. That spring Angus had bought me a field guide and with its help, I identified forty species that were new to me. The author’s exposure to different bird species enabled him to identify with the different lifestyles that they had. Angus developed a love for all forms of wildlife which in turn made him aware of the plight that the animals had. My most cherished images of the mountain country were not of the forbidding peaks but of the animals The author admits that he has a special place for the animals. The country has a number of natural resources that are fascinating to any visitor. Amongst all these features, he places priority on animals making them his favorite pastime. Although I would now commit such atrocities against some of the most beautiful creatures extant, I cannot honestly censor the boy who was for what he did then The author admits that his actions are reflective to that of other men. His treatment of the animals is not desirable initially. He learns how to appreciate all sorts of animals making him an advocate for their livelihood. â€Å"The wolf is a savage, powerful killer. It is one of the most feared and hated animals known to man and with excellent reason† Chapter 6, pg. 60. The passage showcases the dangers that the wolf portrays. Human beings often misinterpret the actions of the wolf due to its dangerous nature. Despite the fact that the wolf continues to become extinct, it poses a threat to the human beings who live next to the packs. This makes the world undesirable by man. â€Å"Evidence obtained by various Government agencies from hunters, trappers and traders seemed to prove that the plunge of the caribou toward extinction was primarily†¦ The intervention by the government saw the danger that the wolves are exposed to. Human activities were mostly responsible for these dynamics making them the number on culprits. This also displayed possible extinction of the breed of wolves if authorities continued to ignore the circumstances. â€Å"I had made my decision that, from this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and lean to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually are† Chapter 7, pg. 77. Morwat made a personal decision to protect the wildlife from the outside environment. One of the steps he takes is orienting himself with the lives of the wolves. This involves learning about the exact nature of the wolves instead of forming an assumption about them. This in turn will help remove the ignorance that he had so as to improve society’s awareness of the wolves. In conclusion, human beings are responsible for the surrounding environment. This involves observing the safety of all animals in and outside the wild. This is however, not the case in that the number of wild animals continues to diminish due to the human activity. The wolves are one of the animals that continue to face the wrath of human beings. The analysis of the book is thus ideal for the education of the public. This in turn will improve the existing relationship between man and nature.

Goldbergers War essays

Goldbergers War essays Early 20th century saw the outbreak of a deadly mysterious disease, pellagra that could cause anything from fever to dementia to death. The disease that had killed over 100,000 people by the end of 1914 was shrouded in deep mystery because of the fact that the epidemic was largely limited to the South and was exclusively affecting the peasant class. It was indeed a poor man's disease and conventional wisdom suggested it had something to "Pellagra, a classic dietary deficiency disease caused by insufficient niacin, was noted in the South after the Civil War. Then considered infectious, it was known as the disease of the four Ds: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. The first outbreak was reported in 1907. In 1909, more than 1000 cases were estimated based on reports from 13 states. One year later, approximately 3000 cases were suspected nationwide based on estimates from 30 states and the District of Columbia. By the end of 1911, pellagra had been reported in all but nine states, and prevalence estimates had increased nearly ninefold. During 1906- 1940, approximately 3 million cases and approximately 100,000 deaths were attributed to pellagra." (5) At that time, physicians attributed massive impact of the disease on its contagious and infectious nature, something that had hitherto been unexamined by the medical circles or research groups. The worst hit area was Mississippi where it appeared that the incidence of pellagra increased every time cotton prices went down and every time flood hit the Mississippi "In 1915, the Mississippi State Board of Health captured the nature of the medical crisis by reporting that during the previous year, pellagra had "caused more deaths than typhoid fever, smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, influenza, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, and acute poliomyelitis combined."...