Economic growth is one of the macroeconomic objectives of the Essay

Economic growth is one of the macroeconomic objectives of the Australian government . Outline the problems that arise in measuring economic growth - Essay Example It also fails to consider the externalities that may be negative like those caused by pollution as well as depletion of resources. (tradingeconomics.com, 2011) Globally, the process by which the wealth of a nation is determined or poverty is a complex task since there lies a predicament while trying to obtain compatible type of data. Different nations may be having different data types and thus, comparison in performance fails to be objective at the end. GDP as mentioned earlier is the method that is mostly used in the world to measure a country’s growth and Australia has followed this method as utilized by United Nations. This GDP method does not consider the incomes that come from corporations and individuals. This is especially if these incomes come from foreign sources and this approach further shows the weakness of measuring the growth of a nation. The alternative method, (just to mention), that was usually used to measure an economy’s growth and that was applied universally in the world was GNI. The difference arises where GNI considers income from outside the country while GDP does not. (Kendall, 2010

Zeigarnik Effect Essay Example for Free

Zeigarnik Effect Essay The Zeigarnik Effect is named after the Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik (1926), who noticed an odd thing while sitting in a restaurant in Vienna. The waiters seemed only to remember orders which were in the process of being served, but little recollection of the completed orders. Zeigarnik went back to her lab to test out a theory about what was going on with the waiter. More than fifty years after the Bluma Zeigarnik study, Kenneth McGraw and his team returned to conduct the same study. The conclusion in both studies was that once people start something, they are more inclined to finish it. There is, however, one exception to the Zeigarnik Effect; it won’t work unless you are actually motivated to complete the task or achieve the goal. The Zeigarnik Effect says our brains hold-on to unfinished tasks; in other words, we like to finish what we start. The Zeigarnik Effect is about the human tendency to remember uncompleted tasks more than the tasks already completed. When people manage to start something they’re more inclined to finish it. What the Zeigarnik Effect teaches is that one weapon for beating procrastination is starting– something, sometime, somewhere†¦ anything. Don’t start with the hard task, try something easy first. Once you’ve made a start, however trivial, there’s something drawing you on to complete the task. Zeigarnik ascribed their results to a ‘state of tension’, akin to a cliffhanger ending: Your mind wants to know what comes next. It wants to finish. In conclusion, memory is a good indicator as to whether people continue to be interrupted by thoughts of incomplete tasks. Constant thoughts of incomplete task components cause it to be retained in memory better. Interruptions that cause a person to fall behind in their objective also cause anxiety that brings about constant thoughts of unfinished business.

The World Trade Organization Demonstrations Essay -- Economics Economy

The World Trade Organization Demonstrations Introduction The emerging trend of liberalizing international trade regulations, also known as globalization, has lead to vast changes in distribution of wealth and power throughout the world. As a result, many groups and population segments feel pressured or disadvantaged by the evolving structure of world markets and their effects on labor standards, job availability, environmental standards, etc. Many of these groups, both in the United States and abroad, are leftist-centered groups seeking to peacefully influence or altogether stop the rush to trade liberalization and privatization that is occurring worldwide. Naomi Klein writes: In fact, remarkably few of globalization's fenced-out people turn to violence. Most simply move: from countryside to city, from country to country. And that's when they come face to face with distinctly unvirtual fences, ones made of chain link and razor wire, reinforced with concrete and guarded with machine guns (xxi-xxii). In the United States, such confrontations are usually between a wide variety of anti-globalization activists and agents of social control on the streets of major cities. Perhaps the largest and most important of such clashes occurred between protestors and riot police in downtown Seattle between November 30 and December 3, 1999. At the time, the city was playing host to a major summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a corporate-controlled intergovernmental organization "formed in 1995 as a means of developing a worldwide free-market economy" (Verhovek and Kahn 1). In an effort to prevent what they saw as destructive and potentially dangerous developments from taking place, thousands of activists in Seattle succ... ... We Really Shut Down the WTO?" Voices from the WTO. Olympia, WA: E Freidberg, Jill, and Rick Rowley. This is What Democracy Looks Like. Ed. Independent Media Center. Video vols. Seattle, WA: Big Noise Films, 2000. Klein, Naomi. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. New York: Picador USA, 2002. Nichols, John. "Raising a Ruckus." The Nation. Vol. 269, no. 19 (6 Dec. 1999): 18-19. Sunde, Scott. "Second Straight Night of Confrontations Rocks Capitol Hill." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 2 Dec. 1999, sec A:1. Thomas, Janet. The Battle in Seattle. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 2000. Verhovek, Sam Howe and Joseph Kahn. "The Battle in Seattle." New York Times Upfront. Vol. 132 no. 9 (3 Jan. 2000): 7. Weissman, Robert. "Democracy is in the Streets." Multinational Monitor Vol. 20, Issue 12 (Dec. 1999): 24-30.

Surrogates the Movie

Surrogates: â€Å"Look at yourselves, unplug from your chairs, get up, and look in the mirror what you see is how God made you we’re not meant to experience life through a machine. † This seems to be the moral of this movie in the year 2017 and takes place in Boston, MA. Bruce Willis plays an FBI detective named Tom Greer working on a very mysterious murder of a young man who is the son of a prominent inventor. A news style montage opens the movie and provides you with the fundamental basis for the movie. The viewer learns that the technology of Surrogates took 14 years to develop into the everyday application as it would be depicted in the film. The surrogate project started as a way to help the disabled experience life in a way that would not be possible and soon was taken over by military application to use these surrogates and warriors in the battlefield to preserve human life. It was the Military application that set up mass production of surrogates and this made surrogates affordable to the average consumer. Near the end of the 14 year montage it is established that 98% of the entire world has a surrogate and is using them for their everyday life so the user can remain at home in safety and never needs to risk the danger or inconvenience of leaving home. There is a group of people however that are in strict opposition to the new surrogate way of life. This group is called the Human Coalition and they live in Dread Reservations which are located within major cities all over the world. These reservations are considered surrogate free zones and are completely sovereign. This group of people does not tolerate any type of surrogate technology and preach the experience of the human condition as the truth. This seems to be a cut and dry good vs. vil movie at first and the two sides clearly established but as the movie moves along the lines become blurred and the twists are pronounced. Tom Greer and his partner are called to the scene of a seemingly normal vehicle accident late in the evening only to discover fairly quickly that this is not just an accident scene it’s a murder. While at the scene of the accident only surrogates are present and it is assumed the operators of the surrogates remain at their homes unharmed, but after furt her investigation by Tom the operators are dead in their operator chairs. Highly unusual because there haven’t been any murders in Boston for so long the Agents do not remember the last one. And this starts the investigation into the would be conspiracy that is the plot of the movie. The inventor of surrogates is a man named Dr. Lionel Canter, who was the target of the murder but instead of killing him the murder a Human Coalition member Miles Strickland killed his son who was borrowing his father’s surrogate. Tom is convinced that the Human Coalition is responsible for the murder and takes his surrogate into the sovereign territory in Boston where his surrogate is destroyed. Tom is now forced to abandon the surrogate and continue the investigation in the flesh. This is a shocking experience for him but eventually causes him to remember the human condition and experience. No matter the difficulty he experiences as a result of the sensory overload he continues the investigation. Next Tom discovers that the military had developed the weapon that would overload many surrogates with a single shot but an accidental byproduct of this weapon was that it actually killed the operator. The Military officials ordered that all if the weapons be destroyed and somehow one slipped through the cracks and was not destroyed and fell into the hands of manufacturer of the surrogates. The manufacturer VCI is proclaimed as one of the largest companies in the world and is a very powerful corporation. It was originally founded by Dr. Canter but due to differences in philosophy he was removed as President of the company but remained a beneficiary of the profits from the sale of surrogates. The excitement builds as Tom pursues the investigation and gets closer to figuring out the conspiracy. So far he has learned that a Human Coalition member murdered the son of a Dr Canter and that the target was actually Dr Canter himself but because his son used a surrogate belonging to Dr Canter the murderer thought that he was killing him but accidentally killed his son. The military in cooperation with VCI developed a weapon that would overload surrogates and shut them down in an effort to quickly win battles without casualties. A major problem was discovered with the weapon during its initial tests and it had unintentionally killed the operators of the surrogates. The weapon was ordered to be destroyed and of the 5 that were created only 4 were actually destroyed and one remained. The military did not know who had the remaining weapon but an assumption must be made that VCI had the weapon and somehow it had fallen in to the hands of the Human Coalition who were bent on the murder of Dr Canter for creating this new society that is an abomination. Tom reveals to the military that when he was in the Human Coalitions Boston reservation he knew the weapon was there and in the hands of their leader Zaire Powell. His attempt to convince the world that the surrogates are evil seems to be failing up to now. He now has the power to shut down every single surrogate all over the world but this action would result in the death of billions of people. The Military tells Tom to stand down and that they would take over the recovery of the weapon. Tom is drawn back in when his partner is killed and her surrogate is being used to gain access to the FBI surrogate control center. He discovers that Zaire Powell is actually a surrogate being controlled by Dr. Canter. This discovery takes Tom to Dr Canters home that is protected by surrogate guards that he must take down to reach Dr Canter in time. Canter had taken control of his partners surrogate and was in the headquarters of the FBI where he can access every surrogate at one time and use the weapon to download the overload virus killing every operator connected to their surrogate. When Tom reaches Dr Canter has already begun downloading the virus. Tom confronts Dr Canter and tries to convince him that killing this many people is not the way to accomplish his goal but it’s too late and in order to prevent Tom from stopping him Dr Canter takes a cyanide pill killing himself. Tom has no choice but to take over the surrogate of his partner and try to stop the virus from taking hold and killing billions of people. With the help of the programmer at the FBI surrogate control center he is able to isolate the operators from the virus. He then has to stop the isolate the surrogates themselves from the virus but in a last minute decision decides to allow the virus to shut down all the surrogates. He had saved the lives of many people but after having experiencing the human condition again decided that everyone should have that same experience again. This movie is full of twists and changes that are hard to follow. Overall, I don’t find this movie to be a great movie. The concepts could have been developed better and the twists should have been made with more information. The twists came without warning which is good for a twist but there was no information used to explain the twists in a way that would make it believable. I have learned that this movie was first a book and it is common that the themes in a book are not completely developed when it is turned in to a movie, however the concepts could have been portrayed and explained better. I did enjoy the idea of unplugging sometimes and to experience life outside of our home and disconnect from the internet and television. There are experiences our modern technology allows us to not have and in some cases this is not always a good thing. As a child I took a vacation to Yellowstone National Park and my children have not been able to experience this yet except for on the internet. They are not excited about making this trip because they believe they have experienced this park on the internet but as many adults know it is just not the same. I am concerned that as our children develop with more access to technology they will lose touch with the human experience so any movie, book, music, or other medium that express or shows the importance of the actual physical human experience is a great thing. I would recommend this movie to anyone for this purpose and I might also suggest that in order to fully understand this movie itself that it be watched two or three times. Watch it, enjoy it but most of all experience it.

George Reid Andrews Afro Latin America

GEORGE REID ANDREWS: AFRO-LATIN AMERICA In this paper, I would arguer that the history of USA is intertwined with the issue of Blacks – their enslavement and freedom but it has not as yet been focused that this subject has far greater impact in Central and Latin America, thus the greater impact of blacks in Central and Latin America would be the main theme or argument of this paper. This book, Afro-Latin America by George Reid, is the first attempt to focus on this side of the African Diaspora. With remarkable skill George Reid Andrews has woven the history of people who came from Africa to South America – broadly speaking. He traces their path from slavery to freedom and how this in turn left its stamp on the politics, economics and culture of this region. As individuals and as groups they pursued the path towards freedom, equality and acquirement of citizenship by being part of the military, political movements, civic bodies, unions, religious activities and in various cultural streams. The book travels through two centuries and should be of interest in all interested in the past, present and future of Latin America. It is one of the best anthropological accounts of this region. The style is gripping with detailed statement of experiences, of the people of African origin in the former colonies of Spain and Portugal and the stamp of their influence on these parts on all walks of life – society, economics and culture. While the history of the Blacks is well researched and ably presented in USA, it is not so with Latin America where there is still an air of mystery and vacuum. It is ironical that it should be so considering the fact that it has the highest number of Africans residing here outside the African continent (Fagundes 68-78). The book starts with the stunning statement – â€Å"New Census Shows Hispanics now Even with Blacks, the headline proclaimed. Documenting a profound shift in the racial and ethnic composition of American Society, the 2000 census of the United States showed that, as a result of the continuing immigration from Latin America during the 1990s the national Hispanic population had grown by more than 60%. For the first time ever the country’s 35. 3 million Hispanic residents slightly exceeded the black population of 34. million† (Andrews 3). The Blacks and Hispanics are not always distinct groups as is generally thought of. In Latin America blacks comprise a quarter of the population. The â€Å"heart of the New World African Diaspora† (Andrews 3) lies not in the north of the border in USA but in South America. During the slave period ten times more Africans came to Spanish and Portuguese America than to USA. By the close of 1900 the former outnumbered the latter by 3:1 – 22% of the population in Latin America while it was 12% in USA. With immigration, commerce and tourism ties are getting stronger and hence it is necessary to sketch a history of the Latin American African Diaspora as distinct from USA African Diaspora. In this book such an attempt has been made. The term Afro-Latin-American made its debut sometime during the 70s. Hitherto it was Afro-Venezuelans, Afro-Cubans etc. Latin America is the cluster of American countries under the rule of Spain or Portugal from 1500 to 1800 (Madrigal 99-108). There are many other people living in this region – not only those who have come from Africa; there are Indians, Whites, Asians etc. But whether as a minority or majority the Black presence is strong in the field of agriculture and slavery. Blackness has become synonymous with a lower social status leading to a popular mass culture. The proportion of Blacks fell because of neglect disease and death. Also there was more mobility and mixing in the south unlike the rigidity of the north. Black tended to become whiter with material success; the Black became the Pardo or Mulatto. The idea was to bar them from European ancestry privileges (Aguiar 299-308). The book is not about the race as defined scientifically but as used socially. It looks at the issue from two angles – it delves on the multi racial society of Afro-Latin-America and also as the single largest group of Africans who had been uprooted from their original homeland. Whatever the shade of black the author uses the term to refer to that group whose African ancestry is known and recognized. The previous plantation regions of Latin America were shaped irrevocably â€Å"by the presence of Africans and their descendants† (Andrews 284). Hence to understand what it is like today one has to know about the people who carved it to be what it is now. In reacting to the constraints of slavery on the one hand there were the obvious violent actions like running away, revolt, theft and attack while on the other there was a slower but more lasting response like negotiating with the masters, taking into hand speed of work, appealing to courts, forming families and keeping alive African practices (Aguiar 299). Runaway slaves formed communities, black militias and mutual aid societies were formed and the people expressed their feeling through formation of athletic, social and cultural clubs. Soon civic organizations, political parties and newspapers made their debut. It all rolled into the formation of civil rights movement. By the end of 1800 slavery had been abolished in Latin America (Halperin 489-495). Chapter one covers the first years of slavery while in chapters four and five the author tries to explain how the colored communities tried to whiten and blacken themselves in trying to find their identity that would be acceptable to their own community as well as to the Whites against the background of a growing mixed population. Here, there arose a problem. In USA there was a clear cut line dividing the Blacks and Whites. But in Latin America the Afro-Latin people penetrated different layers of society and economy with politics having an influence. Many of the Blacks were free and could not be bracketed with the salves. Europeans, Native Americans and people from the Asia added to the cocktail to make a mixing of blood rarely seen elsewhere. Thus the concept of race no longer remained a scientific issue but related to socio-economic factors (Bizumic 871-899). The biggest influence was felt in the sphere of culture – in dancing, music and religion. Andrew goes into detail saying how initially they were termed as barbaric by the Europeans and then in the 20th century there began a change of attitude when the idea of nationhood took roots. Capoeira, Cndomble and Carnaval are three of the significant cultural expressions that have their roots in the tradition of Africa. There is an underlying belief that Africa is very much throbbing and alive in these modern cultural renditions. Ironically the Europeans have also taken these on and absorbed them in their psyche. The book focuses on these aspects and at the end the reader is left with a feeling that more could have been said. Instead of devoting separate chapters on these themes he has scattered these all through the book. He has focused more on economics and politics. After reading the book there is the feeling that the problems of race are going to be more complex in Latin America than what is going on in USA (Shrestha 113-139). In this sense this book is a good introduction to understand the present to gauge the future. The book however would be rather heavy for the casual reader but it is great for serious thinkers and scholars. The author details the relationship and effect of the coming of the people of Africa to Latin America. There are detailed notes and bibliography to guide the students. It is ideal for all interested in the race factor and the trans-Atlantic slave trade that happened in this part of the world as distinct from USA. Slavery is stressed in USA but the fact is that it existed much earlier in places like Brazil. The book reveals new facts that have so far remained unknown. It will enlighten the reader about the birth of the countries of the western world and the large part the people of African descent had played for it to become what we see today. This book introduces the reader to the history of the Blacks connected with Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rica etc. and supports the thesis that the influence of blacks in the South America is far more greater than that of mainland United States. Works cited Aguiar, Gilberto. Effects of demographic and ethnohistorical factors on average heterozygosities of South Amerindians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 88. 3, (2000): 299-308. Andrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. NY: Oxford University PressUS, 2004. Bizumic, Boris. A cross-cultural investigation into a reconceptualization of ethnocentrism. European Journal of Social Psychology 39. 6, (2009): 871-899. Fagundes, Nelson. Genetic, geographic, and linguistic variation among South American Indians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 117. 1, (2002): 68-78. Halperin, Edward. The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers. Clinical Anatomy, 20. 5, (2007): 489-495. Madrigal, Leo. Ethnicity, gene flow, and population subdivision in Limon, Costa Rica. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 114. 2, (2001): 99-108. Shrestha, Nanda. Black migration at the margin of freedom. International Journal of Population Geography, 9. 2, (2003): 113-139.