Ashley Lenhard Essays - Dental Hygienist, , Term Papers

Ashley Lenhard Ashley Lenhard English Final Draft I am Ashley Marie Lenhard. I was born on September 27, 1983 at Holy Family Hospital. As an only child of Scot and Ronda Lenhard, planning my future came very early in life. My plans are to further my education after High School by attending a four year University to become a Dental Hygienist. Both of my parents, Scot and Ronda, over the years have become my best friends. My mom, Ronda, works on the start team for THE BONMARCHE. My mommy is my best friend. We are close like two sisters that share everything. I'm known as quite the Daddy's Girl. I'm daddy's sunshine. I give him the puppy dog look that he can't say no too! My dad, Scot, is the Sale Manager of Foothills Lincoln Mercury Mazda. Ever since I was five years old I have been taking dance classes. My ten years of dance experience has led me to two successful years as a Lancer Cheerleader. When I'm not dancing or cheering I'm hitting the sales at the mall. One of my better hobbies! Otherwise my time is spent with my man, on the phone, hanging with my buddies, or just kicking back with my family. Everyone always wonders when and if they'll ever find the love of their life. At a young age I have found the love of my life. The one I want to spend eternity with. He is my best friend. Ryan Steven Gese has changed my meaning of life. I look at life in a whole new way. He has made me one of the luckiest and happiest girls alive. He was born October 5th, 1981 at Sacred Heart Hospital. He is currently attending Eastern Washington University as a freshmen. He's a graduate of Gonzaga Prep. He recently graduated boot camp in San Diego for the United States Marine Corps. His plan is to study engineering to become a Civil Engineer. I have a great guy who loves me and is heading towards a bright future. I might only be a junior in High School, but I'm working hard towards my future. With a loving boyfriend, and my plans to have a successful career as a Dental Hygienist, I believe my life is heading in the right direction. I'm not going to let anything get in my way. Speech and Communication Essays

How Write What You Know Helps You Find a Target Market

How Write What You Know Helps You Find a Target Market How "Write What You Know" Helps You Find a Target Market When she was 26, Fiona MacBain  moved to Tunisia and  ran a watersports base near Sousse with her local husband (more about that at fionamacbain.com). She returned to the UK with her 6-month old daughter in 1999 and eventually settled in Inverness, where she lives with her husband and children. In this article, she talks about  turning her memoir into fiction and how "write what you know" can be a sales tool  when marketing your book.When I was twenty-nine I wrote a memoir. It was about the events that led to me returning to the UK a penniless single mother after spending two years running a watersports base on a beach in Tunisia.I sent it to agents and although a couple showed initial interest, nothing came of it; they did not think there was a sufficient market for the book or enough popular interest in Tunisia. It was my first taste of literary agent rejection.The other Facebook ad was targeted at women across the UK with an interest in Tunisia. The results were phenomenal ; I was astonished at how Facebook managed to track people so specifically. I was inundated with comments and messages from women who, like me, had been married to Tunisian partners, and many other regular holiday makers with a love of the country. Several people commented that they had been drawn to the book because of their experiences of Tunisia - and in this respect, having a blog which covered my own personal experiences of the country was helpful. It gave readers an insight into my life, which generated a personal connection and added interest in my book. It also enabled to me to sell my novel on the back of articles that chronicled my life in Tunisia.The importance of connecting with readers as an indie authorA word of caution is that managing the ads was time-consuming. I replied to every comment, every message,   and managing the ads became a full-time job for the two months they ran. My phone was permanently a few inches from my face; I was walking into lamp-posts, burn ing dinner, and neglecting my children as I replied and chatted with readers. I also didn’t do a shred of writing during that period.Still, the boosted Facebook posts highlight one of the advantages for an indie author: with the help of specific targeting on social media you can connect with readers who have a specific interest that your book meets - books that people wouldn’t typically find in a bookshop. Through Facebook, niche markets are directly available and many readers seem to enjoy the personal contact with the author that social media can provide.Writing fiction based on the old â€Å"write what you know† adage has been a successful and enjoyable experience. My time living in Tunisia gave me first-hand knowledge with which to create setting, places, and characters in a way that was unique and authentic. Most of the research for my novel came from trips down memory lane - and using Facebook, I managed to find a host of readers who seemed to enjoy take that trip with me.Fiona will be doing a reading of "Daughter, Disappeared" on February 3rd at Waterstones, Covent Garden as part of their "Novel London: An Evening of Contemporary Fiction Event"! More information here."Daughter, Disappeared" is available on Amazon in paperback and on Amazon Kindle!Have you lived an experience that made you uniquely qualified to write a book? Have you gone through the process of turning a memoir into a work of fiction? Share any thoughts or questions for Fiona in the comments below!

Question Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 13

Question - Essay Example The event in which U.S. destroyer Maddox (conducting electronic espionage nearby) was fired on by North Vietnamese torpedo boats was just a good opportunity and reason on which United State could boldly declare war in the name of retaliation. Reports indicates that during the spring of 1964, military planners had developed a detailed design for major attacks on the North, but at that time President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers feared that the public would not support an expansion of the war (Dare 54-8). This explains two critical aspects of the war. First is that United States had prior plans to attack North Vietnam. The fear of President Nixon over possible public opposition indicates that significant taxpayers’ money had been spent on the war without any economic gain. These are clear evidence that United States had prior arrangement to strike North Vietnam under the shadow of supporting South Vietnam. Their actual challenge was whether the public would approve the military action and the undefined reaction of the international

Writing as Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Writing as Art - Essay Example According to Mills (1), a writer develops words, makes them true, emphasize, and illuminate the words through images. He further argues that there are characteristics that identify writing as an art, and they have a significant impact on the readers and the writers; these features include world, story, image, and voice. Writing campaigns is one of methods through which writers, activists, and lobbyists protest social problems. Writing campaigns have been in use for many years. Some have been effective while others have not. However, they serve the same purpose of educating and spreading the message, they want done. The paper will discuss writing as art, and the way writing campaign has used to protest social problems. Writing as Art Writers develop words, make them true, emphasize, and illuminate the words through images. Through the voices, they hold the reader’s attention and remind them of the changing tones of speech. Through the stories heard and told, they indicate the w ay the writer’s thoughts are molded by the narrative, how the writer shapes the lives and thoughts of others and their lives. There are features that are used to identify writing as a form of art, and they have a strong impact on the readers and writers. ... Writing as art assists us to determine the images, stories, worlds, and voices individuals inhibit and which inhabit writers, in other words, the acquired culture (Mills 2). Writing in its creative form is not limited to the voice of one principal authority, or to a type of address by a single speaker, for instance, a middle-class white educated British-American. Currently, individuals from various ethnic and racial backgrounds, representing differences of sexuality, gender, and age, practice writing as an art. The readers and the audiences actively look for all these voices whose numbers indicate the same range of experience and culture (Mills 4). The idea of the writer’s voice finding a voice indicates the writer’s position towards all the creative characteristics of writing as art including those of the voice. The voice is generated by the recurrent places, qualities and aspects of the world being represented, images chosen to highlight, what the writer writes about, and the story-like events or story that hold a special fascination to the writer. The choice of words relies more on what the writer thinks on the undercurrents and currents of speech. Creative language entails what individuals say, and the manner they speak with themselves and to each other, and this creates a rich supply of spoken rhythms. From each single voice are many voices, some are calm and angry, some perverse and moral, others overheard and native. An important skill to the writer is learning the virtue of listening to the voices, those within them and those that surround them, and those of the characters in the play or the story (Mills 7). It is important to note that all the writing is affected by the

How did the French Revolution influence the development of nationalism Essay

How did the French Revolution influence the development of nationalism in 19th century Europe - Essay Example The paper tells that the idea of nationalism is said to have emerged from the French Revolution in 1789. It is reported that, during this time, France was already a fully-fledge territorial nation under the rule of a powerful monarch. The French Revolution that took place during this time brought a lot of changes both political and constitutional that led to a shift of sovereignty from the monarch to the citizens of France. The French Revolution clamoured for the introduction of a system in which power is to be vested on the people who would henceforth be mandated to constitute the nation and determine its destiny. It is also noted that, right from the start, the French revolutionaries brought in place practices and measures aimed at creating a sense of collectivity among the people of France. For instance, the la patrie (the fatherland) idea and Ie citoyen (the citizen) advocated for a united community where people are free and enjoy equal rights as enshrined in the constitution. As a result, the French people chose a national flag, the tricolour, in replacement of its royal standard. This was followed by the election of Estates General by citizens and later on renamed as the National Assembly. After the formation of the National Assembly, the French people then composed hymns, took oaths and commemorated martyrs all in the name of their country. The French also formed a centralized system of government accompanied by the formulation of laws that were to govern the country.

Indias Rise in Economics and the Challenges it Faces

Indias Rise in Economics and the Challenges it Faces India is not, by a long way a regional power, let alone a global power. That it is necessary to state this obvious fact is a testament to the power of public indoctrination. There is a huge gap between India and the developed world. According to the World Bank, Indias Gross National Income (GNI) in 2009 was $793 billion, compared to the USs $12.95 trillion. India, with 17 per cent of the worlds population, accounts for less than 1.7 per cent of the worlds income. Thus Indias per capita GNI was $1180, compared to the USs nearly $47,240. Even South Koreas per capita GNI was over $19,880. Indias situation is slightly better in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) but even Indias PPP per capita income is ranked 154th in the world  [1]  . For all the rosy projections of rapid growth by India and other Asian countries by 2020, the USs National Intelligence Council admits that per capita income in most (Asian) countries will not compare to those of Western nations. Human Development The situation is far worse in terms of human development. In the UNs Human Development Index, this claims to be a composite of various factors, such as health, education and income, India ranks 119th among 175 countries. Indias under-five mortality rate per 1,000 live births is 69, that is, one in fourteen children die before the age of five. Its maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births is 230, compared to 38 for China  [2]  . We are constantly told that poverty in India is declining, and a great industry has sprung up of academic treatises to show how fast poverty is declining. However, these treatises have reduced poverty by defining the term so that it no longer relates to whether or not people get their minimum requirements of calories. The official National Sample Survey of 2005 revealed that three-fourths of Indias rural population and half the urban population did not get the minimum recommended calories. This is confirmed by nutritional and health surveys, which reveal the following: more than two-fifths of the adult population suffer from chronic energy deficiency, and a large percentage are at the border of this condition; half Indias women are anaemic; half its children can be clinically defined as malnourished (stunted, wasting, or both). Within India half of our rural population or over 350 million people are below the average food energy intake of SSA (Sub-Saharan Africa) countries.  [3]   Poverty as such is not directly observed: the National Sample Survey (NSS) gathers responses to a questionnaire regarding consumption, and the poverty estimates are then derived (after making various assumptions) from this data. But the same NSS directly observes that employment growth plummeted between the last two surveys (1993-94 and 1999-2000). Now, it is virtually impossible for poverty to have declined if unemployment grew sharply, and the methodology of any study that claims poverty has fallen should be questioned. The sector of the countrys economy has seen breakneck growth in the past decade: the provision of software services and business process outsourcing services to foreign (principally US) firms. However, that sector accounts for 0.25 per cent of the labour force. Where are the rest? Nearly half of Indias total working-age population (15-59 years of age) is unemployed, most of it not even counted as part of the labour force. While agriculture continues to employ the majority of those considered employed, it accounts for less than a quarter of the national income, and that share continues to shrink. No Industrial Transformation National income is conventionally divided into three sectors- agriculture, industry and services. All the countries in the developed world passed from being predominantly agricultural economies to being predominantly industrial economies. It was only after industry had brought these entire economies (including their agriculture) under its sway, commodities became vastly more plentiful than in the past, and the economic surplus grew massively, that these economies could sustain growth in the share of services. Today, industry accounts for the largest share of GDP in the economies of China, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, as much as 56 per cent in the case of China. In Indias case, however, the share of industry is low just 28.2 per cent in 2009  [4]  . Industry has never been the dominant sector of the Indian economy. Moreover, its share of GDP has not been increasing, but is stagnant or shrinking. And Indian industrys share of employment is just 17.6 per cent. Indeed, in the two commodity-producing sectors agriculture and industry one cannot find any miraculous takeoff in growth during the period of reform. But one should beware of drawing sweeping conclusions on the basis of two or even three years figures. And while the services sector has led growth over the past two decades, so that it now accounts for 54.6 per cent of GDP, much of the services sector (e.g. growth of police and armed forces, the explosion of financial sector and real estate activity) has no tangible benefit for the people at large. It is true that certain Indian firms (or Indian units of foreign firms) have attained world standards in quality of output, and with their lower labour costs may become highly competitive exporters. Glowing press reports of such units convey the sense that the Indian economy has undergone a take-off. However, these firms are generally dependent on imported capital goods and are strongly linked to export markets; they have few linkages to the rest of the Indian economy. They remain islands in the large sea of underdeveloped India. Contrast this with the transformation of the economy that would take place with the rapid development of industries catering to domestic demand for items of mass consumption. That would create demand for raw materials and indigenous capital goods, in the entire process generating huge employment and promoting indigenous technological know-how.  At any rate, India accounts for less than one per cent of world exports. High technology goods constitute ju st five per cent of its exports. Indias rapid increase in oil imports (and Indias high-profile efforts to secure long-term oil and gas supplies from abroad) is being held up as a sign of its rapid economic growth. It actually is a sign of the absence of national planning. Much of the growth in oil consumption is on account of the great boom in private automobiles. This is in turn the result of the failure of public transport, growing income inequalities, and the massive expansion of cheap credit for car purchases. Moreover, rapid growth of oil imports signifies not the growing strength but the growing vulnerability of the Indian economy. Genuine national planning would have ensured instead (i) restraint on consumption (through the expansion of railways for goods and passenger transport, expansion of public transport in cities, and a variety of energy conservation investments), and (ii) a programme of investment to develop and use the countrys oil, gas and plentiful coal resources effectively and economically. A comb ination of such measures could have greatly reduced the countrys dependence on oil imports. Instead, the share of oil in Indias energy is growing, and the share of imports in its total oil consumption is on course to reach 90 per cent or more in some years. In the last few years, large foreign capital inflows and the booming foreign exchange earnings of the IT sector have resulted in the rapid growth of the countrys foreign exchange reserves. As a result, the Government has liberalised foreign investment by Indian firms. Thus a number of Indian firms have been investing abroad, in many cases acquiring foreign firms. This phenomenon has generated considerable excitement in the business press, which point to it as further evidence of Indias new global status: now, they claim, Indian firms too are multinational corporations. Indeed, for two years, 2003-04 and 2004-05, India ran a current account surplus, which means that it was a net capital exporter. However, much as this may be good business sense for the firms which are making them; but in general they run contrary to the requirements of national economic development. India is not a capital-surplus economy, but an underdeveloped, capital-starved one, with large resources lying idle for lack of investment. It makes no economic sense to export capital from such a country. Indian capitalists may earn financial returns from their investments abroad, but such returns will give paltry stimulus to the Indian economy, whereas investment in manufacturing within the country stimulates demand, productive activity and employment in a number of sectors, with far-reaching benefits for the whole economy. India- A Knowledge Economy As part of the propaganda about Indias emerging as a global power, we are told ad nauseam that India is a knowledge economy, an information technology (IT) superpower, and the like. The truth is that adult literacy in India is just 61 per cent; on this score, it ranks 146th out of 177 countries in the UNs Human Development Index   (that is, many countries with much lower per capita income had much higher literacy levels than India for example, much of desperately poor sub-Saharan Africa). In recent years, on the recommendation of the World Bank, the Indian government has focussed its meagre education expenditures increasingly on primary education, largely abandoning secondary and higher education (as if they were a luxury). Yet official data tell us that 42 per cent of children enrolled drop out before completing primary education (I-V). Another 19 per cent, according to official data, drop out  before completing upper primary education (VI-VIII). And according to Cens us data, 43.5 per cent of the children between the ages of five and nine are not in school. More perturbing is the quality of education that is being imparted in government schools. It is so dismal that half the children in Class IV in government schools in Mumbai cannot do the arithmetic calculations required of a Class I student. When put to the test, 18 per cent of students attending Classes II to V in Andhra Pradesh couldnt do single-digit additions while only 12 per cent managed single-digit subtractions. Higher education, which the Government has increasingly abandoned to a rapacious private sector, is out of the reach of all but a small section. At any rate, the infrastructure and staff of many of the new private institutions are appalling, and thus the degrees imparted to a large percentage of graduates may not be worth the paper they are printed on. Research And Development According to the official publication Research and Development Statistics (2004-05, the latest edition), Indias expenditure on R D has been falling as a share of GDP, from 0.87 per cent in 2000 to 0.77 per cent in 2005. Let us look more closely at this R D expenditure. First, the Indian private sector does not account for much of it. According to official figures, eighty per cent of R D expenditure was carried out by the Government. This was largely not for productive purposes, but for military purposes: 32 per cent on direct military research, 21 per cent on space research (much of which actually serves the missile programme) and 12 per cent on atomic energy (much of which actually serves the nuclear weapons programme). Even allowing for some genuine space and atomic energy expenditures, at least half of R D expenditure in India appears to be for military purposes. To be able to project power, we bought Admiral Gorshkov from Russia and named her Vikramaditya. But where is the sh ip? Where is that power on high seas? Our horizon does not even show the outline of a carrier. The Arihant (the lead ship of Indias Arihant class of nuclear-powered submarines) has not been armed as yet, and we do not have an indigenously manufactured fighter/bomber. Nor do we have the Missile regime that makes the military might of a Regional Power credible. The showpieces of defence R D the Main Battle Tank project (started in 1974) and the Light Combat Aircraft project (started in 1983) have yet not been completed, and, after the expenditure of billions of rupees each, the chances of their actually being inducted into the armed forces are dwindling. For example, the air force is now in the international market for a mammoth order of 126 fighter planes, at a cost of over $6 billion. How then can we call ourselves a Regional Power? To absorb foreign technology properly (in such a fashion that one can further develop it), R D expenditures need to be multiples of technology payments. And finally, much of what passes under the name of R D in Indian industry is merely classified so for tax saving purposes, and actually consists of adaptation of products to local conditions, or even merely quality control. By conventional measures of scientific output, Indias performance is dismal. The standard database in this regard is the US-based Science Citation Index (SCI). In 1980, around 40 Indian journals were indexed in the SCI; this figure has fallen to 10, or just 0.3 per cent of all SCI-indexed journals. In 1980, nearly 15,000 scientific papers from India were indexed in the SCI; this figure fell over the next two decades to just over 12,000 (Chinas figure grew from under 1,000 to over 22,000 during the same period). Indias share of the worlds total research papers published in SCI-indexed journals was just 1.79 per cent in 2002. Finally, Indias world ranking in the SCIs citation impact (the number of times a paper is cited by others) has fallen to an abysmal 119 out of 149 countries listed. The IT sector Indias much-vaunted Information Technology (IT) sector is composed of two parts: the software sector, and the IT-enabled sector (ITES). In both cases, work that was earlier done in the developed world, particularly the US, has been outsourced, or contracted out, to locations in India. In the case of the ITES, the activities outsourced include call centres, medical transcription, data entry, ticket-reconciliation, claims processing, credit card administration, and such other routine office work as can be performed at remote locations. While this work requires knowledge of English, it does not require superior education or skills. Indeed, some of it is so mechanical and repetitive that it is in danger of being eliminated: Optical-character-recognition software is automating the work of Indian data-entry workers. Electronic airline tickets are eliminating some of the ticket-reconciliation work airlines carry out in India. Eventually, natural-language speech recognition is likely to automate some of the call-centre work that is currently going to India. Other countries too are entering the same business, particularly those once colonised by an English-speaking country: the call-centre business is booming in the Philippines.   This is obviously not high-technology or knowledge-based work; new information-and-communications technology has merely made it possible to carry out such work at remote locations. The sole reason for outsourcing such work is that wages for it in India are a fraction of those in the developed world (according to Deloitte Research, one-tenth), yielding massive savings to US and UK corporations. The jobs threatened in those countries are primarily ones that already pay low wages because they require low skills; by outsourcing to India, firms are able to drive their costs even lower. The same applies for the software sector. It is true that Indias annual production of IT engineers is larger than that of the US. However, Indian engineers are employed in relatively low-value work: the less-creative software jobs are the ones being moved offshore: bug-fixing, updating antiquated code, and routine programming tasks that require many hands. The software pyramid, shows a structure with a few thousand architects at the top, followed at successive levels of skill and pay by researchers, consultants, project managers, business analysts, and finally basic programmers. The last categories are the foot soldiers in the information economy, who write codes for applications and update and test them. It is a part of this lowest category that has been off shored, much of it to India. Indian software firms manage applications of programmes owned by multinational software giants; but Indian firms produce virtually no copyrighted programmes which are sold to a large number of customers, and earn a continuing stream of revenue. Rather, both the hardware and the software they use are imported. American investments in India, especially in new technology areas, will help American companies to reduce costs and become more competitive globally. Equally, Indias earnings from these investments will lead to increased purchases from the US. The information technology revolution is built primarily on US computer-related technology and hardware. India is thus not a knowledge economy but a low-wage economy, distinguished from other such by its colonial heritage, English. It does not command increased international status by virtue of its economic strength; rather, the publicity about its emergence as a power is an outcome of conscious US policy.

Affirmative Action and Discrimination :: Free Essays Online

Affirmative Action and Discrimination 1. Race relations in general and affirmative action in particular have arguably been the most divisive and hotly contested issues in contemporary American politics. Many people feel that affirmative action is necessary to either counteract injustices or ensure the advancement of certain minorities. Affirmative action proponents generally point to four justifications. These are racism, poverty, diversity, and the problem of underrepresentation. Proponents point out that many blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans live in substandard housing, go to substandard schools, and live in neighborhoods where crime is rampant. They claim that they are victims of daily racism and that this hurts their chances for advancement. Proponents point to small numbers of these minorities in certain desirable jobs (i.e. CEOs of corporations and high elected office) as evidence of underrepresentation of minorities and a need for diversity both in the workplace and in higher education. 2. There are several different levels of affirmative action. They include: quotas, preferences, and outreach, in lessening order of severity. Quotas, also called â€Å"set asides†, deal with having a certain amount of jobs or college spots reserved for a particular group. For example, if a University admits 1000 students every year and sets aside 150 seats that are open to blacks only, this is an example of a quota. In the Supreme Court case Bakke v Regents of the University of California , the court ruled that these quotas could not be used by the system but that race could be considered a plus in admissions to the medical school. This brings us to preferences. Preferences are when persons from certain groups (usually groups that have been underrepresented or disadvantaged) are given a ‘boost' in admissions. An example of this would be the practice at the University of Michigan, which was recently overruled by a U.S. District Court. At the University of Michigan, appli cants are graded on a 150-point scale. Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians get 20 points for their race, equal to raising their grade-point average a full point on a 4 -point scale (Focus on Affirmative†¦). This case has recently been appealed to the Supreme Court, casing new light on this decades old question. The third and least severe form of affirmative action occurs when no preferences are given, but when special efforts are made to recruit members of certain groups. This is called outreach. An example of this would be when a Hispanic student receives a letter from the minority recruitment office at a prestigious university urging him to apply (Ezorsky, 34).