The Wiccan Religion free essay sample

The Wiccan Religion Rough Draft Mikki Dandreano September 3rd, 2010 Wicca is a common and older name for witchcraft; the term witchcraft has been defined in many different ways in past times it was mostly referred to as a human harnessing of supernatural powers for the purpose of practicing black magic. For this reason, magic, witchcraft and sorcery has been associated with Satanism. Not all withes worship Satan; in fact most of them do not have a belief in Satan nor is there a belief in hell, original sin or evil. During the Middle Ages, witchcraft experienced a huge revival. The supernatural world became very popular. If someone wanted to become a witch, there was an initiation process; the first would be that the witch must Join of their own free will and the second requirement was that the prospective witch must be willing to worship the devil Modern day witches are typically not Satan worshipers. We will write a custom essay sample on The Wiccan Religion or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Wicca is considered a New Age Movement, and with that Wiccans do not believe and accept that there is good or evil, they say that there are only forces that must be balanced. Most Wiccans support a neo-tolerance for politics, meaning that there is no absolute truth, what is true for one many not be true for nother, so everything is true Just pick one. They are also strong supporters of womens rights and matriarchy, sexual freedom; including polyandry, non-monogamy, homosexuality, and sexual activity among the teenage community. In the past few years there have been lawsuits filed by Pagans against things such as In God We Trust, student led prayer, Christian symbols (such as the Cross), The Ten Commandments in many cities. Many Wiccans are active in getting schools to teach Wiccan holidays, like the Winter Solstice and Halloween, to honor pagan elements such as Earth day and Pagan symbolism. The United Nations are trying to introduce pagan earth worship into the schools by promoting Earth Charter in education; this is a document that contains much pagan doctrine and tradition. The start of modern witchcraft began with Gerald Gardner (1884 1964); he was an archaeologist and had accumulated an extensive occult background. While Gardner was in Southeast Asia, he learned of secrets of the Malaysian magical knife and became a nudist and a Mason. In 1930, he returned to England as an avid occultist and became a member of the Corona Fellowship of Rosicrucians; this is where he met Dorothy Clutterbuck; Dorothy initiated Gardner into witchcraft. There seems to be a general agreement that Wicca first became a mass movement in recent times in England during the 1950s with the publishing of books by Gerald Gardner and has expanded at an extreme rate through Europe and North America. Wicca is one of the largest of the minority religions in the United States there are no real estimated numbers of the Wiccans in this country but the best estimate is over 750,000, which would make Wicca about the fifth largest organized religion in the United States; following Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. The Wiccan religion is almost unknown The few Wiccans that decide to let their religion be known are normally heavily persecuted; on a per-capita basis, they are thought to be victimized more often than members of any other religious groups. In 1999, there were several attacks on Wicca and other Neopagan religions by leading political fgures; including Rep. Bob Barr (R- GA) and Governor George W Bush (R_TX_ over the religious rights of Wiccan soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas they were Joined by over a dozen Fundamentalist Christian groups. After the known attacks in 1999 against the Wiccan community, the religion as somewhat come out of the closet to reveal their faith in a more open manner. To totally understand Wicca, you must first know the ways, laws, and powers of a witch; one who practices Wicca is called a witch, and this is referred to as a man or a woman. Wicca is actually a beautiful nature and goddess focused religion. The Wiccans have something known as the Wiccan Ways. They are basically saying that they will seek out wisdom in books, poems and texts but to also look at nature, as this is where all the old secrets are preserved. They feel that while books contain words, trees contain energy and wisdoms that books could never hold. They feel that one should be like a river willow tree; meaning that they should evolve so they can grow and shine; Wiccans will not mock rituals or spells of another, because they do not believe they are greater in wisdom or power. One should always make sure their actions are honorable because everything they do will return in thrice fold bad or good. Wiccans honor everything that is living life of all things should be saved to preserve your own life. The Wiccan power is not to be used to bring harm to anyone, to control or injure others; but if the need should arise, the power will be sed to protect their life or the lives of others. Their powers are used only as need dictates and can be used for ones own gain, as long as they harm no one in the process. Wiccans feel they should not accept money for the use of their power because by doing so it will take control and they will become like other religions. Most of all, they remember that their powers are a gift from the Goddess and God and shouldnt be misused and abused. WICCAN SABBATS The Wiccan, Pagan and Witchcraft year runs from October 31st through October 30th. Following the Wiccan year, they have many holidays they celebrate and pay ribute to. Samhain Lore, on October 31st, translates into End of Summer and is the final harvest of the year. This is a magical interval when laws of space and time are suspended and the thin veil between worlds is lifted. This is a great time for communication with departed loved ones; it is a time to study the Dark Mysteries and honor the Dark Mother and Father. In older times, the Feast of the Dead was celebrated by leaving food at altars and doorsteps for the dead. Many practioners of Wicca still follow this tradition candles are lit and left in windows so souls can be uided home, apples are buried along the roads and paths for spirits who are lost and have no one to provide for them, extra chairs are set at dining tables for unseen guests. In older days, traveling after the sunset was not advised at all because the wee folk became active, pulling pranks on people. To fool the spirits people dressed up as ghosts and dressed in clothing of the opposite gender. On February 2nd, Imbolc Lore is celebrated. At this point in the year, herd animals have either given birth to offspring or they are about to give birth. This is a time of blessing of the rrived. Imbolc is a festival for the Maiden, from February 2 to March 21; this is her season to prepare for renewal and growth. Straw Beidedgas (corn dolls) are created from wheat or oat straw and placed in baskets; young girls carry the dolls from door to door, gifts are given to the image of the doll from each house. Candles are lit and placed into each room of the house; this honors the rebirth of the Sun. April 30th or May 1st begins Beltane, also known as May Day or Roodmas. This holiday is celebrated with rituals and feasts and is one of the eight solar Sabbats. As summer egins and the plants start to bloom and blossom, the mood of the people start to lighten. In Celtic times, this was a time of unabashed sexuality and promiscuity where marriages of a year and a day could be undertaken; however this is not observed in this way in our times. (Celtic Connection, The, Herne) Lughnasadh begins on July 31st, and means the funeral games of Lugh. This day honors the Tailtean marriages and coincides with the first gathering of harvests. As autumn begins, the Sun God is entering his old age but is not yet dead. The God symbolically will lose strength as the Sun rises further in the south each day and the nights begin o be longer. The Christians adopted this theme and called it Lammas, which means loaf mass, a time when baked loaves of bread are placed on the altar. December 31st is Yule lore and is when the dark half of the year begins turning itself over to the light half. On January 1st, the Sun will start to climb a little higher in the sky and stay a little longer. This is known as Solstice Night, or the longest night of the year. Bonfires are lit and crops and trees were toasted with spiced cider. The Yule log is the highlight of this festival; the log must have been harvested from a householders land or given as a gift one cannot buy one. Once the log is brought into the home and placed in a fireplace, it is decorated with greenery, covered with a cider or ale, and dusted with flour before it is set on fire. The log then burns throughout the night and smolders for 12 days after before it is put out ceremonially. (YULE, Akasha) Ostrara begins on March 21st and is also known as the spring or Vernal Equinox, or Lady Day. Spring reaches its midpoint day and night are in perfect balance. A young Sun God celebrates a sacred marriage with the young Maiden Goddess who will conceive. In nine months, the young Maiden will become the Great Mother and at his time, there will be newborn animals and new plant growth. The next full moon is called the Ostara and is sacred to the Saxon Lunar Goddess of fertility. Christians adopted this as Easter, which is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon follows the vernal equinox. June 21st, begins the summer solstice or Litha. This holiday is the opposite of Yule. This is the longest day of the year; life and light are plenty. During mid-summer, the Sun God has reached the moment of his greatest strength; he is lord of the forests and his face is seen in church architecture peering from countless foliate masks. The Christian religion turned this day of Jack-in-the- Green to the Feast of St. John the Baptist; portraying St. John in a rustic attire, sometimes with cloven feet and horns. September 21st, is the Mabon, or the Autumn Equinox. This divides night and day equally; people take a moment to respect the darkness that is impending. There are thanks given to the sunlight as people begin to store their harvests of the years crops. Offerings of ciders, herbs, wines and fertilizers were appropriate. Wiccans celebrate the aging Goddess as she and a rebirth. There are many other names for this holiday because it is a lesser

How to Study for Fill in the Blank Tests

How to Study for Fill in the Blank Tests Of all the test question  types, fill-in questions may be the most feared. But this type of question doesnt have to give you an immediate brain drain. There is an effective strategy for preparing for this type of test question. In most cases, the best tool for test preparation is great class notes. When you take good notes from your teachers lecture, you usually have about 85% of the material youll need to prepare for any type of test,  right on hand. Most teachers create tests straight from their lecture notes. When preparing for a fill-in test, your class notes are even more important than ever. If you have been able to record your teachers notes word for word, you may have some fill-in phrases for the test right in front of you already. If youre preparing for a fill-in-the-blank test right now, pull out those class notes and try one of these two study strategies. Strategy 1: Leave Out a Word The great thing about this method is that it actually prepares you for all types of questions. Youll find that this method makes it easy to answer most any essay question, as well as the fill-ins. Read over your class notes and underline new terms, important dates, noteworthy phrases, and the names of key people.Put parentheses around the sentence that contains your key word or phrase.Copy each sentence onto a clean sheet of paper, leaving out the key word or phrase.Leave a blank space where they key word or phrase should go.At the bottom of the paper  containing your sentence (or on a separate page), make a list of the key words and phrases. This will serve as your key.Read over your sentences and attempt to fill in the blanks with correct answers in very light pencil. Consult your notes when necessary.Erase your work and continue this process until you can answer all your fill-in questions with ease.For insurance, read through the relevant chapters in your text to find any words or phrases you didnt find in your notes.Go through the same process of copying sentences and filling in the answers until they all come easily. Strategy 2: Dry Erase Practice Test You can create your own reusable practice test by using the following steps. Make a photocopy of your class notes or textbook pages.White out key words, dates, and definitions.Slip the new page with blank spaces into a plastic sheet protector.Use a dry erase pen to fill in answers. You can easily wipe away your answers to practice again and again.

Cleopatra Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Cleopatra - Essay Example To draw the comparison of Cleopatra’s portrait figured in films during 1963 and late twentieth and early twenty-first century, it is quite essential to draw the reference and go through a thorough analysis for the first appearance and portrayal of the image of the oriental queen on the silver screen. Cleopatra was first unveiled as a queen on the silver screen, in the year 1917. The first role of Cleopatra was played by Theda Bara where she was projected as an enchantress and iconic figure of mysterious orient with all her mystical aura which culminated into a figure that was sexually manipulative, threatening to be married and abandoned men with all her exotic appeal. The press clubbed this exotic predator as â€Å"the torpedo of domesticity† Here the intention and the objective for the portrayal of the oriental queen were transparent and evident. She was projected as the mistress of oriental extravaganza and empress of a mystic land with an aura half-veiled around her . This iconic portrayal of the queen became analogous with her name until in the year 1934, Cleopatra was reincarnated as a modern brand queen in the epic of Cecil B De Mille. Cleopatra revisited the minds of her audience as a flirtatious queen gazing at the hollow pomp of the Caesar and is less threatening.

Micro economics assignment Fuel Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Micro economics assignment Fuel - Essay Example The graph shown on the left shows the above mentioned change in demand of corn. Previously, the demand for corn stood at D1 because it was almost solely used for food consumption. However, the demand for bio-fuel has added to this demand and an addition of D2 has resulted in an overall demand of D1+D2 for corn. Along with showing the total demand for corn, the graph also shows the rise in price of the product which is corn in this case. The previous demand of D1 had a lower price but due to the increased demand, an upward pressure on price has forced the price to rise to PC*. In a market economy, if the increased demand is not addressed by added production and hence increased supply, then the prices rise because the market forces come into play and determine the market prices which are at a higher point (AmosWEB n.d.). The graph here shows that the supply has been unchanged due to which the increased demand has resulted in a rise in the prices of corn. ii) The price of a product usua lly tends to go up if the increase in demand is not met by an increase in the supply in the same ratio. However, when the demand rises and the prices start to go up, then it tempts others to invest in improving the production methods by introducing new technology or new producers enter into the market. When this happens, the supply of the industry rises and the supply curve of the industry shifts outwards which results in the fall in prices (AmosWEB, Supply and Demand Increase n.d.). The supply of product that is under consideration cannot be increased simply because it is an agricultural product and therefore numerous limitations such as the availability of agricultural land suitable for the growth of crops. In this case when the product is an agricultural product, then the options left to increase the yield of crops is to improve the agricultural and conversion technologies. During harvesting, the conversion process usually results in wastage of product. Therefore if there is an i mprovement in the conversion technology, then there will be less wastage and increased supply. Similarly, if the seed quality can be improved, then it will result in an improved yield. Both of these steps will lead to a rise in the supply of corn and as a result of an outward shift in the supply curve, the price will fall. Here in the graph on the right, the supply curve has shifted outwards as a result of increase in supply. In our context, the increased supply is the improved yield of corn. The increase in corn has resulted in the readjustment of the equilibrium point and the price at this point has gone down. Therefore, an increased demand can be handled by a simultaneous increase in supply to keep the price under control. iii) After raising the concerns that the earth is facing the possibility of environment and resource depletion, there were calls of innovating and moving towards environment friendly energy solutions. These calls were answered by the introduction of bio-fuels w hich are partly renewable and emit less dangerous gases. Due to this, many have shifted their consumption to the bio-fuels and it has emerged as a dominant and growing force in the oil industry throughout the world. (Analytica n.d.) The bio-fuels have added to the competition in the oil industry and manufacturer companies now face a greater challenge with

Understanding and applying motivation theories for achieving Essay

Understanding and applying motivation theories for achieving organization goals - Essay Example An organization comprises of human resources who have distinct feelings and emotions. These emotions and feelings play important role in determining the output and efficiency of work of the human factor while at job.In this paper we apply one or more of motivational theories to suggest improvement which the manager can apply in given work place scenario to improve employee response and motivation resulting in better output and achievement of organizational goals.Motivation theories provide ready and general constructs to analyze the behavior of human resources at work place. This analysis can distinctly exhibit the possible solutions to motivational problems at work place. Management of any organization has to work adequately to enthuse the human resources in order to ensure that they do work in consonance with organizational goals and objectives.Routine-requiring the 5 employees to attend to customer queries on mortgages, insurance and bank accounts themselves. This work is fairly s tructured task. The bank has standard question templates on terminals. Employees are required to query the customer and fill in the required data in these templates. Based on this data the answer to customer question(s) appears on terminal screen. This is then passed on to the customer to ensure satisfactory service. Such tasks form up to 90% of the total work load of these 5 employees.Non routine -These are customer queries which cannot be satisfied by the terminal based templates. They require additional knowledge about the banking products and often present such decision situations where creativity and correlation skills are required. It is an internal practice that such queries may be forwarded to the manager to deal. Normally such queries form about 10% of the total queries received by these 5 employees. 12 13 Problem has arisen as the manager has started receiving such forwarded queries much in excess of the 10% trend and she subsequently discovered that quite a few of them were in fact routine queries which could have been attended to by the 5 member line staff. 14 15 It is apparent that some line member is trying to pass on his/her work to the 'new unwary manager'. This is not only intruding upon the time and job responsibilities of the manager but also resulting in customer dissatisfaction as not only customer has to wait more to get routine answers but also several non routine queries wait longer as manager is busy in answering routine queries. There apparently is a major motivational problem amongst line staff which needs immediate resolution otherwise the situation may snowball with a multiplier effect. 16 Resolution 17 Manager has to realize that motivation comes from within. It is an inner drive that causes a person to do something or act in a certain way. It is a complex inspirational energy which is highly desirable in the workplace, equally desired by both managers and workers alike. However this inspirational energy is missing in portion or full in present situation. Motivated employees will put in extra effort when needed, without being asked. Instead here employees are trying to pass on the effort required of them to management layer. In order to resolve this manager can use any of the 8 popular motivation theories. These theories are Management by Objectives, Maslow's hierarchy, Quality Circles, Herzberg's Two-factor Theory, McGregor's Theory X and Y, "In Search of Excellence", theory of Peters and Waterman, Managerial Grid, and Likert

Role of Nursing Informatics in Health Care

Role of Nursing Informatics in Health Care The Role of Nursing Informatics at Cleveland Clinic Foundation The Informatics system at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) plays an essential role in supporting the delivery of quality patient care and to improve patient satisfaction, features that are very important to maintain the Magnet Status achieved by the Clinic. As the CCF mission statement highlights, the goal of the Clinic is to support nursing care and achieve good outcomes along with patient satisfaction. This goal was reached by creating an informatics system that allows an easy access to data information, ensures easy communication between health care providers and promotes nursing and patient education. The mission of CCF is to support evidence-based nursing practice and improved patient outcomes with technology solutions that enhance nursing communication, documentation and efficiency ( Nursing Informatics: Nursing past, present and future section, para. 1). Cleveland Clinics Nursing Informatics implemented an electronic medical record system, called Epic System that is using high technology and considers professional and clinical experience to manage the patients information, to improve work, and to deliver higher quality health care for its clients. Nurses and Physicians have easy access to the system, being able to view data and collect necessary information, provide quality client care and document the patients condition. health care professionals can document through the electronic medical record system the medical care that was provided to the patients and the patients responses to the care given. The Epic System is used not only by nursing professionals, but by a large variety of allied health care departments, too. For example respiratory therapists can document aerosol treatments administered to their patients, adjustments in ventilator settings and the patients response to these interventions. The pharmacy department uses the i nformation system to access patients data such as medical reconciliation, medications profile, including current and home medications , demographics, health history and medical diagnosis. In this way it will be reducing significantly medication errors. The physicians consider Epic System to be very useful for them, because allows them to easily find their patients file in the system, allowing access to the patients prior doctors visits and health information, laboratory results, radiology test results as well as interdisciplinary consult results and recommendations. The physicians orders for medications and treatments can be easily entered into the system through the computerized physician order entry feature of the system (CPOE). This has high significance in reducing medication errors and in delivering care in a timely manner. The CCF website presents a clear explanation about the Informatics systems role in obtaining and maintaining the high standard achieved by the clinic: Nursing Informatics, in collaboration with the Information Technology Division, is  Implementing an electronic medical records system from Epic Systems of Madison,  WI.   Electronic documentation of the patients medical record is transforming  clinical practice for nursing, allied health and medical practitioners at the Cleveland  Clinic. After using Epic Care successfully in ambulatory outpatient services for two  years, the Clinic is currently undergoing a phased implementation of the Epic  system in the inpatient setting-enabling health care providers to examine any  patient record across the entire continuum of care in all Cleveland Clinic facilities  (Nursing Informatics: More information about the Nursing Informatics specialty  section, para. 4). Another important aspect of the Informatics system in the nursing care provided at CCF is that it contributed significantly to the improvement of communication between medical professionals by improving the accuracy and the speed of communication. It comes very convenient for the physicians to access the computer system from any location, either inpatient or outpatient locations, or either from the comfort of his or her home or office or even while on the golf course or at the mall (Hebda, Czar Mascara, 2005, p.126), to enter orders for the patient. By doing so, the system alerts all departments to carry out physician orders. For example when ordering a chest X-ray for the patient, the radiology department will automatically place a transportation order for the patient, to be transported from the nursing floor to the radiology department. Through the nursing communication tool, the physician can communicate to the nursing staff about withholding diet or medications as preparation for specific tests or even surgery. The same way, the physician, can interpret radiological results in a timely manner, by checking the radiography evaluation report placed in the computer system, without the need to walk to the radiology department to read the film. In this way it could be saved precious time that could save another patients life. A different feature of the Informatics System used at the CCF is that provides a large variety of choices for patient and nursing education, offering multiple educational resources at different levels. For patient education purposes, the CCF intranet has a link called patient education that consists of information edited in a simple language, easily comprehensible for non-healthcare personal. This site provides information about specific medications, including their side effects, indications and contraindications; also gives information about diseases or home going discharge instructions, regarding activity, diet, signs and symptoms of complications and many other subjects. The CCF television channel has information about diabetes, advice for smoking cessation, anti-coagulation administration, or techniques to reduce and manage stress, etc. This way patients can be easily educated towards a better understanding of the healing process and can actively participate to their care. At the same time, the CCF Intranet provides valuable information for physicians and nurses that improve their knowledge related to medical diagnoses, policies and procedures as well as giving them the chance of updating themselves with the newest technologies used. The CCFs Alumni Library has commonly used medical sites like Up to Date, Medline that are handy to use when more information are needed about a healthcare related issue. The COMET helps nurses and nursing aids to maintain an updated level of nursing education, reinforcing policies and standards required by the clinic. According to its definition, the Nursing Informatics has a primary role in delivering high quality nursing care,  Nursing Informatics is a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science,  and information science to manage and communicate data, information, and  knowledge in nursing practice. Nursing informatics facilitates the integration of  data, information and knowledge to support patients, nurses and other providers in  their decision-making in all roles and settings. This support had been accomplished through  the use of information structures, information processes, and information  technology (ANA Scope and Standards of Nursing Informatics Practice, 2001, pg vii). The convenience of the Informatics system of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation is represented, by easy access to patient data, and resources for patient and nursing education. The valuable communication tool between health care providers, contributed tremendously in attaining high standards in patient care and their satisfaction. All these features are essential factors that helped the Cleveland Clinic to achieve the great award of Magnet Hospital.

How to Rule the Airways Essay -- Papers

How to Rule the Airways Scriptwriting for radio is considered to be harder than scriptwriting for film and TV as the writers cannot use sight and must portray the story through sound and dialogue. In this short discussion I will be talking about the linguistic conventions and syntax and vocabulary also I will be discussing style and structure purpose and genre. The first thing is linguistic conventions this is basically the different types of ways they structure their sentences to make them sound good to the audience. 1.0Linguistic conventions: There are a lot of linguistic conventions in radio scripts and I will identify some of these now: 1.1Alliteration: Alliteration is using words with the same starting letters in a row to slow down or speed up the speech of the words spoken an example of this is peter piper picked a peck of pickled pepper although there is some words in the middle of the sentence that do not start with the same letter, it does not matter as they are short and are joining words which are spoken so fast it does not matter that they are there. The example I have just written is the example of using alliteration to slow down speech if you can also use it to point out particular words and to make a point. 1.2Onomatopoeia: Onomatopoeia is used to replace sounds with words, where words are used instead of sounds like instead of a bee buzzing they would say buzz instead of a buzzing sound they use this in radio to either make a joke or to make you understand the sound that they are hearing. 1.3Oxymorons: Oxymoron’s are used in radio scripts sometimes to confuse or to amplify the meaning of words. ... ...es to conform to their target audience so like a news broadcast would appeal to old people or middle aged people its purpose is to entertain their audience and they do this many different ways using many types of linguistic conventions mentioned above. 5.0 Genre: There are many different genres for radio scripts two of these are comedy and drama you do get others. These two types of genre are commonly used as that is what most people like to listen to on the radio another one is music as that is what the audience is attracted to. The Genres are different as there are different types of people who like different sorts of things so they can change the genre during the show from a comedy then to a drama to keep a wide range of listeners. bibliography http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/vclass/terms.htm

Make decisions or solve problems Essay

What are heuristics? How do they help us make decisions or solve problems? How do they hinder decision making and problem solving? What does the study of heuristics tell us about how our mind works? Elvira Gubayeva In psychology, the term â€Å"heuristics† is used to describe cognitive shortcuts that our mind takes in order to save time and effort while solving problems and making decisions. Although this rule of thumb technique does not guarantee the solution, it is highly likely to solve the problem. These congnitive shortcuts differ from algorithms as algorithms will definitely solve the problem, although they would consume more time in the process. Thus, heuristics are shortcuts that eliminate the need to consider unlikely possibilities or irrelevant states to reach the final solution. From that perspective, heuristics are useful in making decisions or solving problems. One of the most important heuristic methods was explored by Newell & Simon. They called this method the means-ends analysis. This method implies that the problem solver will note the difference between the current state of the problem and the goal state, the solution. He would then create a subgoal to reduce the difference between the two states. A path, or an operator, would be selected to reach the subgoal. Egan & Greeno(1974) used the Tower of Hanoi problem to investigate this heuristic method. They found that subjects with prior experience with the problem who used the means-ends analysis solved more difficult versions of the problem faster than subjects who did not make appropriate subgoals. Subjects who changed their strategy to means-ends analysis produced better results than those who did not. Overall heuristics are useful in solving problems and making decisions as they reduce the complexity of different solutions that are possible. They do yield good results when they are used in the appropriate context. However, heuristics can also hinder decision making and problem solving. For example, Anzai & Simon(1979) found that many subjects used domain dependent strategies while solving the tower of Hanoi problem. This hindered their process to the solution as they avoided certain states in the puzzle that they believed would not help them, rather than move towards a definite goal/ subgoal state. Subjects were more interested in the goal state and focused on reaching that rather than reaching the subgoal state first. As Thomas(1974) found, this could actually hinder process. Thomas used the missionaries-cannibals puzzle and adapted J. R. R. Tolkien’s hobbits and orcs to replace missionaries and cannibals. To reach the solution quicker, subjects had to move away from the goal state. However, not many were willing to do that. This distraction to reach the goal state caused the subjects to take longer solving the problem. If the subjects found themselves moving away from the goal state, they typically thought they reached a back alley and backtracked. As a result, subjects took longer to solve the problem as they were using the domain dependent heuristic and avoided moving away from the goal. Another heuristic which could hinder correct decision making and problem solving is the availability heuristic. We use data that we can remember better or that which had a bigger impact on us rather than complete data. Thus subjects can make judgements based on what is easier remembered than an unbiased judgement. One availability heuristic that is commonly used is the media bias. The media presents such a great number of fatal accidents that most think that death is more likely to be caused by an accident rather than diabetes. This is not the case, yet because an accident is easier to remember and had a greater impact on the mind most would consider the statement above to be true.

Learn Mandarin Chinese with Pinyin Romanization

Learn Mandarin Chinese with Pinyin Romanization Pinyin is a Romanization system used to learn Mandarin. It transcribes the sounds of Mandarin using the Western (Roman) alphabet. Pinyin is most commonly used in Mainland China for teaching school children to read and it is also widely used in teaching materials designed for Westerners who wish to learn Mandarin. Pinyin was developed in the 1950’s in Mainland China and is now the official Romanization system of China, Singapore, the US Library of Congress, and the American Library Association. Library standards allow for easier access to documents by making it easier to locate Chinese language materials. A worldwide standard also facilitates the exchange of data between institutions in various countries. Learning Pinyin is important. It provides a way to read and write Chinese without using Chinese characters - a major hurdle for most people who want to learn Mandarin. Pinyin Perils Pinyin provides a comfortable base for anyone trying to learn Mandarin: it looks familiar. Be careful though! The individual sounds of Pinyin are not always the same as English. For example, ‘c’ in Pinyin is pronounced like the ‘ts’ in ‘bits’. Here’s an example of Pinyin: Ni hao. This means â€Å"hello† and is the sound of these two Chinese characters: ä ½  Ã¥ ¥ ½ It is essential to learn all the sounds of Pinyin. This will provide the foundation for proper Mandarin pronunciation and will allow you to learn Mandarin more easily. Tones The four Mandarin tones are used for clarifying the meaning of words. They are indicated in Pinyin with either numbers or tone marks: ma1 or mÄ  (high-level tone)ma2 or m (rising tone)ma3 or mÇŽ (falling-rising tone)ma4 or m (falling tone) Tones are important in Mandarin because there are many words with the same sound. Pinyin should be written with tone marks to make the meaning of the words clear. Unfortunately, when Pinyin is used in public places (like on street signs or store displays) it usually does not include the tone marks. Here is the Mandarin version of â€Å"hello† written with tons marks: nÇ  hÇŽo or ni3 hao3. Standard Romanization Pinyin is not perfect. It uses many letter combinations which are unknown in English and other Western languages. Anyone who has not studied Pinyin is likely to mispronounce the spellings. Despite its shortcomings, it’s best to have a single system of Romanization for the Mandarin language. Before the official adoption of Pinyin, the differing Romanization systems created confusion about the pronunciation of Chinese words.

How To Use Email Marketing For Lead Conversion

How To Use Email Marketing For Lead Conversion Besides social media, email marketing is the first thing that I tell anyone to do when it comes to online marketing. To succeed online, you absolutely must be using email effectively. The evidence doesnt lie. In a 2012 survey conducted by McKinsey Company, they found  that for e-commerce companies e-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media- nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined. Woah! E-mail is still a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media. While you may not be running an e-commerce company yourself, the implications seem to be well accepted across  the industry. Social media scientist Dan Zarrella of Hubspot came to a similar conclusion in research that he completed in 2012. Email converts well, and  is a key part of the customer acquisition process. Conversion rate scores as compiled by Hubspot. If youre not using email marketing, you could be missing out on huge potential for your company or blog. More than that, if you arent using email to convert readers into paying customers – YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. You might be leaving sales on the table! Here at , we have nearly 20,000  email subscribers that continually bring in new customers to our service. We like to think about it as a slow and steady drip. We keep sending out great content, and our readers  keep coming to us for help with their scheduling and social media needs. Its a great fit, and one that works because our email marketing is focused on building trust with our audience. So, how can you create an email program that converts for your own brand or business? Its actually not that hard if you are focused on the right things. Here are the top 5 ways that you can embrace email and turn your email marketing program into a lead conversion machine. Heres How To  Turn Your Email Marketing Into A Lead Conversion Machine #1. Designate A Clear Call To Action On Your Blog The first  lesson about creating an effective   email marketing program is getting good at collecting email addresses. There are many ways to go about this, and several plugins that you can start using right now to jump start your lead collection process, but the point is that you need to be making a concentrated effort on collecting emails or else your marketing list will never actually materialize. Mention.com offers a great call to action when you visit their blog. It is also important to make sure that your blog is properly configured to drive visitors to the lead collection option. This means reducing you sidebar clutter, and continuously driving your reader to a lead collection form. This is about creating a simpler blog layout. Email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than social media. For example, on the blog there are only three things you can do once visiting a page. You can read another blog post, learn about itself, or signup to recieve our email-based content. It is as simple as that. I always say that each page on your website should really be about having your readers complete one thing. At , we tend to make that one thing an email newsletter conversion. You will easily see that it is one of the  most prominent things on our page. #2. Keep Your Calls To Action Strong If youve ever worked in sales, youve heard the phrase always be closing. While it may be tacky, it certainly isnt wrong. Not only do you need to be creating opportunities for your customers to convert (by including lead collection points), but you also need to be positioning your copy in a way that specifically asks them to subscribe. While it technically does its job, its not quite a call to action. I cant tell you how many times Ive seen a bland call to action like this one above. Im sorry folks, but please join my email list just isnt going to do it for many people. Whats in it for them? Why should they? Take a look at a few examples of people doing it right. What do you see? They all identify a clear benefit that the reader will receive when they subscribe. They all offer a clear command or directive  such as subscribe now. This isnt a suggestion, it is a command. Many of them offer the reader social proof and provide good reasons for them to consider subscribing or at least taking the offer seriously. The point is that you cant  forget to be a pitch man  and downright ask for the sale on occasion. It may sound  tacky, but it certainly doesnt have to be implemented that way. #3. Send Email More Often Than You Think You Should Many marketers and bloggers like yourself instinctively shutter at the idea of sending more email, but  you  can probably send a whole lot more than you think. In a recent study, Hubspot found that there was essentially no correlation between both unsubscribes and click-through rates and the frequency of email being sent. There is almost no correlation between send frequency and click through rates. There is little correlation between the number of times you send your email and the number of unsubscribes you will receive. What they actually found was that if your email list is willing to put up with 5-10 emails per month, they are probably just as likely to put up with 15 or 20. From Hubspot: The more emails that were sent to the lists in my dataset, the fewer people unsubscribed. This is probably because if you’re sending very  infrequently, it can be easy to forget why I joined your list in the first place, but if  you’re sending regularly, I remember your newsletter.   #4. Make Your Email Something That People Actually Want To Read Never underestimate the importance of reader value. Everything that you do in marketing should offer your readers value. I like to think of it in terms of what you are trading them for their time. What you are  giving your readers in exchange for their time spent with your marketing. Social media consultant Jay Baer describes it another way as marketing so good that they would be willing to pay for it. Shoot for [Email] Marketing so good that your readers  would be willing to pay for it! #ContentNo matter how you describe it, you dont have an easy job ahead of you, your readers want it all. They want helpful content, they want it free, and they want it at a time when its convenient  for them. Who are you to let them down? One of the most common mistakes I see companies make is creating email-based content that is all about them. Wrong! What are your readers getting in exchange for their time? We always try to pack our emails with helpful information that our readers will appreciate. This is why at , we brand our email marketing around the theme of our Content Marketing Update. This weekly email includes helpful content from our blog and some of the best articles around the web. It is usually chock full of great tips and almost always worth the time and the price for admission. #5. Experiment With Your Email Template/Headline/Send Times One great way to continually improve your email marketing is to continually experiment with how and when you are sending it. At , there are a few ways that we do this. A/B  Test Your Subject Lines Honesty, this one is so easy that you should be doing it with every email that you send. Each time we send an email here at , we make sure to test our subject line using the automated A/B testing tool built into our email software (Campaign Monitor). This tool allows us to pre-send our email to a few hundred people with a couple different subject line options. Once a clear winner is found (and there almost always is one), our email tool will send the winning subject line to remaining portion of our list. After doing this for months, we were even able to pullout some key data points and define some email subject line best practices. Try  A New Design (Or None At All) Another great way to improve your email  marketing is to continually adjust your email template. Using the A/B testing tool build into Campaign Monitor and many other email marketing programs, you should be able to easily evaluate the effectiveness of one template over another. Many companies (including itself) have found that sometimes email is best sent without a design template at all. Each week we send thousands of emails using a variety of well-designed email templates and plain text versions. The results usually show us that plain-text emails (or emails that look like plain text) constantly drive higher click-through rates than those with more design. Of course, results may vary. Take this with a grain of salt, and always test your own results. Experiment With Different Send Times In his slide deck The Science of Email Marketing social media scientist Dan Zarrella  dug up a ton of fascinating data about when to send email. For example, he found that email click-through rates tended to be  almost twice as high  on Saturdays and Sundays – a slap in the face to  the traditional  idea that marketing only takes place on weekdays. Email sent on Saturday and Sunday get more clicks. He also found that emails sent  earlier in the morning tended to get more clicks as well. The results may not apply to everyone, but it is very good food for thought. 6a.m. just might be the best time to send an email if you want someone to actually read it. The point here is that you should never be satisfied with the status-quo, even if it is yours. Always be testing your marketing so that you can get the best results.

Intro to business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Intro to business - Essay Example The rationale behind this is that I also follow rules, guidelines and policies within a system and prefer not to deviate. I still do allow some creativity in decision making but I make sure I am within the given set of parameters. Perhaps, my personality type is beneficial to me since I stick to order and structure which gives me discipline. It is important for an employee to have self-discipline such as coming to work in time. Over-all, I believe the assessments are reliable and valid since they exhibited most of my personality attributes. The assessments clearly identified my characteristics which I found amusing at the same time informative. Because of the assessments, I learned more about myself and the result gives me an idea on how I could adopt to other personality types in a workplace setting. 2. Yes, I would use the assessment since it provides me a good background of the person. Personality tests are used nowadays by companies to ascertain of the person can fit into the right job. The Jung Typology Test gives the manager a good insight on how the prospective employee interacts with other people. If I were hiring for a customer-service oriented job, I might not prefer to hire introverts with a high score since they may not be able to handle complaints well. Their performance behavior may suffer since they get stressed out easily by interaction. Although, it actually depends on the industry when using these assessments. If I were to hire a programmer, then I need to have one who has a certain personality type. One who needs not much interaction but would rather be left alone doing his work. If I make a mistake in matching the personality type with the job, then counterproductive behaviors maybe exhibited by the employee since they get demotivated. 3. I am a Theory Y manager. I believe that people, when given a sense of responsibility that matches their skills and knowledge can be very productive. People are not inherently lazy,

Stanard v. Bolin, 88 Wash. 2d 614 (1977) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Stanard v. Bolin, 88 Wash. 2d 614 (1977) - Essay Example Similarly, she suffered socially from embarrassment and ridicule from friends and neighbors (Stanard v. Bolin, 1977). In this case the court found the law of tort as well as the law of contract to be the most applicable since the plaintiff was suing for damages arising from a breach of promise- marriage (Lettmaier, 2010). Many American states, a promise to marry is deliberated to be legally enforceable, if the promise or agreement satisfies all the basic requirements of a valid contract. Therefore, failure to satisfy a promise to marry is treated in a similar manner to breach of contract. Moreover, a breach of promise to marry is treated as tort since the plaintiff suffers injury and loss hence they have a right to sue for damages ( LaMance, 2011). In light of the presented facts and claims by the plaintiff, the court ruled that the defendant owed the plaintiff damages for mental distress, injury to health, and loss to reputation. In addition, the court ruled that a rejected fiancà © would no longer be compensated for damages for loss of anticipated financial and social position (Stanard TD v. Bolin,