Wednesday, October 30, 2019
The Sikh Temple Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words
The Sikh Temple - Case Study Example Those who believe in that philosophy join together and a religion is born. Those believers congregate in one place to reinforce their faith and thus places of worship come into existence. It is a long drawn progression whence a religion becomes a reality. It is an ongoing and continuous process that never has an end. The problem starts when places of worship become displays of religious supremacy. The imposing constructions and their special signature are nothing new at places of worship. History is replete with many such edifices to honor conquests and subjugation of their subjects. Many victories have been dedicated to some gods and impressive temples built to commemorate the victories. What is a Gurdwara The word "Guru" is made up of two words- "GU" meaning DARK and "RU" meaning LIGHT. The word Guru means from darkness to light or from ignorance to enlightenment. The one who enlightens is called "GURU". Among the Sikhs the title "guru" was given to the 10 leaders of the community from Nanak (1469-1539), the founder to Govind Singh (1666-1708) the tenth and last Guru. During the times of the early Gurus, Sikh places of worship were referred to as dharamsalas. They were places where Sikhs could gather to hear the Guru speak or sing hymns. As the Sikh population grew, Guru Hargobind the sixth Guru introduced the word Gurdwara, meaning the gateway through which the Guru could be reached. Thereafter all Sikh places of worship came to be known as Gurdwaras. Govind Singh, in 1708, ended the succession line of personal Gurus and installed the sacred book of "Guru Granth Sahib" as his eternal successor. Guru Granth Sahib was compiled by Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Sikh Guru in 1604. It is a compilation of the actual words spoken by the Sikh Gurus and various other Saints from other religions including Hinduism and Islam. The Background of San Jose Gurdwara Sikh Gurdwara - San Jose, was founded in the Evergreen district of San Jose, California, USA in 1985 by leaders of the then-rapidly growing Santa Clara Valley Sikh community. Initially they congregated in a rented East Bay Community Center. In 1986 they bought a small building on White Road in East San Jose and later added some nearby land. Soon they realized that it would be too expensive to build a Gurdwara of their requirements in the city limits, so they sold that land and in 1996 the Gurdwara Committee under the tutelage of Bob (Bhupinder) Singh Dhillon bought 40 Acres of land near East San Jose Foothills in Evergreen District. The first phase of the project of approximately 20,000 square feet built-up area was completed in August 2004 at a cost of 10 million dollars. With an estimated investment of another 10 million dollars in the second phase the completed Gurdwara will have over 90,000 square feet built-up area, housing all the essential features of a Gurdwara. The Fremont's temple in the Bay area, built in 1991 at a cost of 1.8 million dollars is, at present, the nation's largest. With its completion San Jose Gurdwara will overtake the Fremont temple in size. The Controversy The 90,000 square feet structure sparked controversy when Sikhs first unveiled their aspiration. Ironically, beauty of the site is the chief cause for concern among Evergreen residents; many of them believe the temple may become a tourist's attraction, causing traffic problems
Monday, October 28, 2019
The Five Management Functions Essay Example for Free
The Five Management Functions Essay The subject of this reflective paper is regarding the most critical organizational management functions. Critical management functions sit at the core of any organization and steer its leaders, managers, and employees toward success by utilizing the people and resources in the most effective manner. My intent is for the reader to be enlightened of how I helped manage a Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) company by implementing some of the same leadership and management methods from our Management 330 college course. Though many of the Theories from the text book are very valuable, I believe some the information is very vague and somewhat common sense in nature. In my opinion, I don’t believe Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, Lee Iacocca, Mark Cuban, or Donald Trump used these EXACT theories of management to become successful owners of businesses and organizations. Think of how the main points and sub-headings pertain to your current job or another job you have held in the past. My personal examples provide a simplistic version that proves with the right planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling, a tiny HVAC company could become an even larger success than what the owner had initially hoped for. Enjoy! The Planning Function Upon retirement from the USAF and a short term of employment at Sandia National Laboratories, I was hired to manage a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) company. I was not very familiar with HVAC systems, but as a home owner I knew enough about them that I was comfortable in that type of environment. The owner of the company seldom communicated with the HVAC technicians because he wanted them out of the shop and either on their way to the job site or at the job site no later than 8:00 a. m. The company had seven HVAC technicians, an accountant and me, the company manager. A few of my daily tasks were to maintain the weekly service call, maintenance, and installation schedules. This required extensive planning and communication with the technicians. As the manager, I was responsible for enforcing the owner’s company goals then motivate the employees to reach those goals via several courses of action. I used a variety of planning activities to include bi-weekly staff meetings, reviewing internal and external factors such as employee’s scheduled vacations, budget statuses, job site locations, and the weekly weather forecast. I also had to take into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of our employees. Some technicians had more experience and education than others, so I had to match jobs with installers or service technicians. There were some jobs our company was not qualified to do, such as electrical installation and hook up. None of our technicians were licensed electricians, which was a handicap for the organization. If a job required electrical installation or upgrade, I would coordinate with one of our electrical sub-contractors to ensure they could be on the job site when the equipment was ready for electrical hook up and start up. Our accountant was responsible for all aspects of receiving and distributing monetary resources to complete the company’s goals. One of the many challenges we faced was keeping informed of the government incentives for households to install more efficient heating and cooling systems. We were in constant communication with our system vendors to get the latest and greatest government rebates and installation incentives and deadlines. Economic and technological changes were another challenge because we had to stay abreast of new and emerging heating and cooling systems to stay competitive in the HVAC industry. Planning for an organization occurs with some degree of uncertainty because the end result is somewhat unknown. As the manager, I sometimes had to take certain risks with company resources to succeed in a job completion strategy. The Five Functions of Effective Management; Introduction to Management: Achieving Form through Function, Chapter 1, Page 15). Even though this company was relatively small with less than 10 employees, the same planning fundamentals applied to that of a major employer or organization. The Organizing Function When the owner of the company had new tasks or company goals, I was always his go-to person to ensure the visions and processes he demanded were successful. Our task and authority relationship (The Five Functions of Effective Management; Introduction to Management: Achieving Form through Function, Chapter 1, Page 15). as always very professional because we worked together to achieve the organization’s goals. Another important responsibility I was delegated was to decide the best way to organize the company’s resources. The owner usually determined the actual job requirements, what specifically needed to be done, and who he wanted doing the job(s). My role was to inform him of each employee’s status, who was available, who was qualified, etc. , The Staffing Function As an Information Technology geek by trade, my experience with the human resources and staffing functions was limited. During my Air Force career, I was not able to choose who I wanted in my work center. It was my decision as to who would supervise who, but the hiring/firing and interviewing functions were pretty much non-existent in the military; you get who is allocated toward a specific vacancy, get the person trained, press on with the mission, and mold your troops to become leaders in their own right. If they mess up along the way, you reprimand them and hope they learn from their mistakes. As the HVAC company manager, staffing was also delegated to me. Even with my lack of human resource experience, the owner wanted his manager to do the recruiting, selecting, evaluating, and hiring of employees. (The Five Functions of Effective Management; Introduction to Management: Achieving Form through Function, Chapter 1, Page 16). The Leading Function I was taught that to become a truly effective leader you must first be an effective follower and subordinate. I have been on both sides of the leading/following roles and know what it is like to be the low person on the totem pole or the â€Å"boss†making the tough decisions. A key element when trying to motivate individuals to accomplish goals is to present clear tasks to those completing the organizations actual goals. The owner and I would constantly encourage our technicians to be great at what they do, not just be good at what they do, and that if they needed anything from us we were always available for support and mentoring. My boss had a tendency to get a bit excited and raise his voice when something didn’t go as planned. Once he calmed down, he and I were able to sit at the conference table to sort out the events that led to an unsatisfied customer or a derogatory employee internal issue. I would open up the conversation with an open mind and allow the employee(s) to take their time to explain what went wrong or why a customer was dissatisfied. After listening to what had actually occurred, the situation was discussed thoroughly, and a plan of action to remedy the issue was agreed upon by all parties, I could always sense an increase of personal commitment to the organization. The Control Function After a few weeks as manager of the company, I noticed the technicians did not provide customer satisfaction/feedback forms to our customers. I asked the boss about how he receives feedback from our customers and he told me that if there is a problem someone will call you and then you can report the problem to me. I asked how he received positive feedback from a job well done or when an employee goes above and beyond the norm to satisfy a customer. He told me that the employee would just tell him that their customers were very pleased with their service. That didn’t seem like a very accurate customer service measuring tool so I suggested we implement an easy, effective, and yet â€Å"voluntary†customer feedback system. My idea was the next time we needed to order our company invoices, to have the printing contractor add a portion to the customer’s copy where the customer could fill in the survey/feedback form and mail it, fax it or e-mail their comments to me and the owner. Then, we would hold a monthly drawing from our customer feedback file, and one of our customers would receive free merchandise, such as a pocket knife with our company name and logo, a free HVAC inspection, free furnace filters, or a free spring or fall start-up of heating or cooling services. After 30 days, the feedback forms, e-mails, and phone calls increased our customer relations by over 80 percent and business increased by over 25%! Within a matter of 90 days we had established an excellent customer service standard, and an employee performance metric that was created by external factors, not biased internal performance ratings. The owner was impressed with the new system and began to reward employees with free lunches, new tools, use of company vehicles (which helped with advertising), paid time off, and other tokens of his appreciation for a job well done.
Saturday, October 26, 2019
The Character of Brutus in Julius Caesar Essay -- Julius Caesar Essays
The Character of Brutus in Julius Caesar       Brutus was a very important character in the play Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare. He helped plan a plot against one of the most powerful people in Rome and killed the king to be. Brutus was well renowned for his deep thinking, his honor, and most importantly, his belief in stoicism.       Brutus's stoic qualities played a major role in his character. He trusted his wife Portia very much. In fact, he trusted her so much that he was even going to tell her about the plot against Caesar.           "You are my true and honorable wife,          As dear to me as are the ruddy drops          That visit my sad heart"          ( II, i, 289-290)  She cared very much for him. She was willing to slice her thigh open just to prove her loyalty and trustworthiness to her noble husband. He also cared very deeply about his wife and he loved her very dearly.           "O ye gods,          render me worthy of this noble wife!"          ( II, i, 303-304)  Because of his profound stoicism, Brutus did not seem to show his graditude much when Portia killed her self. He simply drank wine to get ride of the pain and told Cassius to never speak of his wife again.           "Lucius a bowl of wine!          I did not think you could have been so angry,          O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.          Of your philosophy you make no use          If you give place to accidental evils.          No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.          Ha! Portia!          She is dead.          How 'scaped I killing whe... ...          ( I, ii, 79-90)  Brutus had thought very deeply about joining the conspiracy. He had stayed up all night brooding about it. He feared that Caesar was gaining too much power and that soon Caesar would become king. If Caesar became king Brutus's dreams of Rome's Democracy would be shattered.       In conclusion Brutus was a very well respected man in Rome. He helped restore Rome to its original Democratic system. He ended up killing himself at the end of the play because of all the pressure. He had said at the end when he killed himself that           "....Caesar, now be still.          I killed not thee with half so good a will."          ( V, v, 50-51)  Work Cited: Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. Ed. Alan Durband. London: Hutchinson & Co. Publishers Ltd., 1984. Â
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Sam Sheppard
Sam Sheppard trials On July 4, 1954, the wife of a handsome young doctor, Sam Sheppard, was brutally murdered in the bedroom of their home in Bay Village, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. Sheppard denied any involvement in the murder and described his own battle with the killer he described as â€Å"bushy-haired. †Starting on the day of the murder, the media began to attack Sheppard on any occasion they could. Stories were obtained in unethical, and nearly unlawful ways. Even though they were permitted to do so by the courts, going into Sheppard's house and looking through his belongings was not the most ethical practice.Also, though the courts also allowed them to witness the testimony of Sheppard about his wife's death, they really shouldn't have agreed. Stories were written in an unscrupulous manner. The â€Å"trial before the trial†was a meeting between the coroner, Samuel Gerber, and Sheppard, in which Gerber fired questions at Sheppard in front of the entire com munity – without Sheppard’s lawyer present. The media was allowed to sit in on this hearing and wrote stories about Sheppard being unfairly given too much leeway as a murder suspect (law2).Finally, the amount of stories written about the trial and murder was higher than had been printed in Cleveland about a single murder. Cleveland newspapers printed stories almost every single day for the duration of the situation. Most of these were speculation only, however, or editorials that were run on the front page and believed to be actual articles. Because of the way these stories were run, the jury and most of Cleveland believed that Sheppard was, in fact, guilty (384 U. S. 333, 363). The stories written through the duration of the murder case were one of the main things that were detrimental to Sheppard’s case.The jury’s view of Sheppard was adversely affected by the news stories such as the most famous one of all: â€Å"Somebody Is Getting Away With Murderâ € . They printed biased stories that the jury members were allowed to read, which gave them a negative view of Sheppard even before he testified. News articles run by local papers also distorted the evidence in the case. An important piece of information that was published dealt with the blood evidence. Dr. Mohammed Tahir, a renowned forensic scientist in Indianapolis, will compare DNA from the samples with a blood stain recovered from a closet door of the Sheppard edroom. Tahir will use a process known as DNA amplification, often used to study decomposed samples. Sir Alec Jeffreys, the British forensic scientist who invented DNA fingerprinting in the mid-1980s, describes the procedure as â€Å"taking a small amount of material and making copies and recopies in a test tube until you've got enough to type. †Out of four blood samples tested, all have matched Eberling's. â€Å"It gets very complicated scientifically, but essentially we have a match on the porch of Eberling, which cuts down to 0. 5 percent, or even less, that it could be anybody else,†he said (Affleck, A3).One of the detectives investigating the case was quoted by a newspaper stating that â€Å"scientific tests at the Sheppard home have definitely established that the killer washed off a trail of blood from the murder bedroom to the downstairs section†. This led the public to believe that Sheppard was lying during his testimony, and believe it, they did. However, over ten years later, the Supreme Court ruled that Sheppard’s trial had been unfair due to the Fourteenth Amendment – that everyone shall have the right to a fair trial with an impartial jury.This, of course, was something that Sheppard had not gotten, due to the media. The court saw that, and believed it was true. So, because of the media’s influence over the jury before and during the trial, Sheppard was released from prison. Sam Sheppard was attacked by the media’s unethical practic es so much during his trial that journalism had set new boundaries to limit the power of the press following the final verdict. Because of the way that the media went about getting stories for their papers and the way stories were written, Sheppard was released from prison.Journalism then set up new boundaries to assure that every person accused of a crime got a fair and just trial. Even though he set precedent for new practices that the media still follows, it is a shame that it took something as horrific as his wife’s murder to allow the media to see just how much power they had over justice. Work cited Affleck, John. â€Å"Doctors Exhume Sam Sheppard's Body as Son Seeks to Clear Fathers Name†. Associated Press. 18 September 1997: A3. . Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U. S. 333 (United States Supreme Court 1966). http://law2. umkc. edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/sheppard/Sheppard. htm
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Miracle of the Crib at Greccio
Name: Marco Yu Ming Chan Date: 6 September, 2012 Professor Kate Dimitrova The Work of Art. The Miracle of the Crib at Greccio (Legend of St. Francis- 13. Institution of the Crib at Greccio), Portrait by Giotto Di Bondone, 1297-1300, church of St. Francis, Assisi, Italy. Book Resources Cynthia Ho, Beth A. Mulvaney, and John K. Downey. Finding Saint Francis in literature and art. New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. The three authors created and edited this book a big collection of essays, which they are about St.Francis, and some art works and texts about him, with the knowledge, tools and technics now-a-days, to study his life in a different view. William R. Cook. The art of the Franciscan Order in Italy. Leiden ; Boston : Brill 2005. Though the book is not directly about â€Å"The Miracle of the Crib at Greecio†, It’s about all the works related to St Francis. There are also some article that talks about this piece of work, and the different background of it. It’ s combined by essays from The United States and The Great Britain, studying franciscan art in late medieval and early Renaissance Italy.Essays Rosenthal Erwin, â€Å"The Crib of Greccio and Franciscan Realism†The Art Bulletin (Mar 1954): 57-60. This article begins with a research in 1926, explaining the differences of the view of the relationships between St. Francis, Nature and Art before and after the first quarter of the twentieth century. It talks about the old idea of how St. Francis respected and instructed nature (animals) and thinks it’s all connected with God, and how some art works like â€Å"The Cribs of Greecio†are so different and a new interpretation of his influence on arts.Ursula Schlegel, â€Å"The Christchild as Devotional Image in Medieval Italian Sculpture: A Contribution to Ambrogio Lorenzetti Studies†The Art Bulletin (March 1970): 1-10. This article introduces and compare some pieces of art works that are related to St. Francis it self and the Christ. Some of them made St Francis to be the â€Å"second Christ†and some of them are showing the picture that he’s holding the Christ (the miracle in Greecio).It talks a lot about what the relationship between those art works and the piece â€Å"Christchild†, but still, there are some informations and background about â€Å"The Miracle of the crib at Greecio†. Web Sites N/A. â€Å"Saint Francis cycle in the Upper Church of San Francesco at Assisi†wikimedia commons, March 2012.
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