Outliers by Malcom Gladwell Essay Example for Free

Outliers by Malcom Gladwell Essay In Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers, his goal is to convince the reader that â€Å"people don’t rise from nothing† and that â€Å" we do owe something to parentage and patronage. † Although certain people’s success requires prerequisites of talent and knowledge. I agree with Gladwell that it is not solely because of these talents that these people are successful. However, their success most often is dependant on one’s past good fortune. For example, when or where one was born and raised, one’s cultural background and family legacies, one’s schooling, and many other factors, create opportunities for success where these talents can be utilized. Although some people are thought to have risen from nothing or to have gone from rags to riches, the fact is no one is capable of creating their own success without the help of others and good fortunes along the way. In this passage, a point that Gladwell points out is that success can be created by parentage and patronage, hidden advantages and opportunities, cultural backgrounds and family legacies. An example of the importance of one’s cultural backgrounds and family influence is the way we are raised. Our parents, as our first teachers have a big role in who will become in our lives; they teach us how to interact with other people, how to act in certain situations and how to present ourselves to others. The different religious and cultural backgrounds of our parents, and also the way our parents were raised have an enormous impact on the way our parents raise us. As a parent, the balancing of strictness, pressure, giving, loving, helping, and withholding, among other factors can be difficult, with the question being what balance is the best to raise a child. Because we are all raised in different ways everyone has different views on how to raise a child based on their knowledge of how they were raised. This proves that the way we are raised can make the difference in our success. An example of how parentage and patronage play a role in one’s success is sometimes evident in schooling. Everyday people acquire things they may not deserve because of their family and who they may know. A very common example of this is the use of legacies for admission into a university. Students use their parental legacies at schools all the time and depending on the school this can have an impact on the student’s admission to the school. Another strategy applicants use to help their admission into a school is to search for someone to write their recommendation letter that will have the most amount of influence on the admissions office. Another example of how â€Å"whom you know† can make the difference in one’s success is when looking for jobs. If your aunt, father, grandfather or friend owns or works at a successful business and they help you get a job, sometimes right out of college even if you aren’t as qualified as someone else who wants the job. This way, you are getting an opportunity that you wouldn’t have had otherwise that could make the difference of your success. Therefore, everyday instances like using legacies to get into college, inquiring jobs because of nepitism, or even getting moved up to an honors class because your mom called the school can create success for our futures. In this excerpt from Malcom Gladwell’s The Outliers, Gladwell makes the point that success requires help from others and good fortune to get ahead and become successful. I think whether we realize it or not we are always using advantages we have to get ahead in our own lives, in order to set us up for a more successful future.

Proposal for a Sustainable Forestry Management Policy Essay -- Proposa

Proposal for a Sustainable Forestry Management Policy Forests are an invaluable natural resource with multiple conflicting uses. When left to stand, forests help conserve biodiversity, stabilize the environment and control erosion; when logged, they provide building materials, fuel and agricultural land for human use. The challenge is to find an equilibrium between these uses: in other words, to make the transition toward sustainable forestry management. Unfortunately, poverty has driven people in developing countries to clear-cut large tracts of land, while instability and corruption have rendered developing country governments powerless to stop illegal logging and trade in illegal forest products. The results have been staggering. The World Resources Institute recently reported that tropical regions have been deforested at an alarming rate of 1% annually since 1985; in some countries, the rate has spiraled to over 7% per year (1). Much of this deforestation is linked to the illegal trade in forest products. Greenpeace estimates that up to 80% of all logs cut in the Brazilian Amazon are extracted illegally; the estimate is 70% for Indonesia (2). In order to fight the problem of illegal logging and trade, I propose the following package of policy actions. First, to change US government procurement policy to prefer timber from sustainably managed forests; second, to provide technical assistance to help developing countries with forestry management; and third, to promote a national eco-certification system for sustainably managed forestry products. FIRST, the US government shall adapt its timber procurement policy to give preferential treatment to forest products certified to meet sustainable management criteria. In t... ...rg (6) ISO 14001, 14061: http://www.iso.ch (7) "ISF Smartwood Certification," http://www.isf-sw.org/cert.htm (8) Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Protection Division. "The Power to Make a Difference." 1999 Annual Report on EnergyStar. http://www.epa.gov/appdstar/pdf/cpd99brief.pdf (9) American Forest and Paper Association. "U.S. Forest Products Industry Competitive Challenges in a Global Marketplace." http://www.afandpa.org/legislation/legislation.html (10) Rotherham, Tom. "Selling Sustainable Development: Environmental Labeling and Certification Programs." In "Environmentally Sound Trade Expansion in the Americas," University of Miami, 2000. (11) WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (12) Dawkins, Kristen. "Eco-Labelling: Consumers' Right to Know or Restrictive Business Practice?" Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 1996.

Consumerisuim

Consumerism describes the effects of connecting personal happiness with purchasing material properties and consumption. Today people buy more stuff to feel happy and pleased with themselves. Teenagers and kids go out wearing bags from well-known brands which are more than a thousand dollars for a bag and their only ten years old. Consumerist society views people as numbers rather than people, it encourages direct satisfaction, it leads to debt, and it lowers obvious costs.These are some negative effects of consumerism. In the consumer's society, they see other people as numbers. All they think about is how to let them spend their money. This is a negative thing because some poor people would like to be in this society but due to their level they can't reach it. They would love to have a lot of money to buy whatever they want but they can't offer the money. In this society all their families should wear stuff that shows the price of It so people can see their wealthy and they are In the right place.Consumerist Society people, it encourages direct satisfaction, It leads to debt, and It lowers obvious costs. Is how to let them spend their money. This Is a negative thing because some poor people would Like to be In this society but due to their level they can't reach It. They would love to have a lot of money to buy whatever they want but they can't offer the money. In this society all their females should wear stuff that shows the price of It so people can see their wealthy and they are In the right place.

Peace Written by Aristophanes in 421 BCE - 1538 Words

In Aristophanes’ Peace written in 421 BCE, the automatist utopian trope of food is used to satirize 5th century Athens, particularly the aristocracy. In the opening scene of the play, two Athenian slaves are kneading cakes made of dung for the pet dung beetle of their master Trygaeus (Peace 1-2). Cakes are generally viewed as a decadent treats. However, theses cakes are not made out of appetizing ingredients but dung. These dung cakes are meant to parody Athenian obsession with food. After all, scholars agree that Aristophanes lived in a â€Å"food obsessed comic world† (Compton-Engle 326). The dung beetle also appears to serve a role in satirizing the aristocracy, â€Å"this beast†¦no food is good enough unless I first waste a whole day handling it†¦Go on, eat the lot, you big shit beast†¦ the gluttonous beast! Look at him† (Peace 35-38). In this instance, the beetle will only eat the dung after it has been kneaded into a cake for one day. It is p ossible that the dung beetle represents members of the Athenian aristocracy, of which would be most selective with the preparation of their food. In Peace, the automatist utopian trope of food is used to satirize war. In an early scene, the comic hero, Trygaeus is overlooking the god, War, tossing different types of food into his mortar. In this passage, the food that War tosses into his mortar are meant to be representative of different Greek city-states, â€Å"War:(Takes a bunch of leeks and drops them into the mortar)†¨In you go, Leek City,