Stephen Colbert on American Jobs Essay Example for Free

Stephen Colbert on American Jobs Essay They range from jobs to energy to healthcare, and of course, they are all written in a satirical sense. In the second chapter, Colbert and his writers talk about jobs in America. They discuss the problem of jobs being shipped overseas to countries like India and China and Colbert puts forth his â€Å"solutions† to the problems, which mostly include setting up sweatshops in America. He also talks about job interviews and how to be successful at them. Colbert and his staff of writers use a wide range of comic techniques in the book as a whole and in the chapter on jobs to satirize the American culture and government. One comic technique Colbert uses in the jobs chapter is reduction. Reduction is essentially belittling or degrading someone. Near the beginning of the chapter, there is a picture of Barack Obama being captioned as Jimmy Carter. While Jimmy Carter was a decent president and many historians agree that he didn’t do anything bad, he is widely remembered for not doing much of anything during his one term as president except failing to get the Americans that were being held hostage in Iran out safely. Barack Obama has a similar record of inactivity in his first term, so the book captions Obama as Carter to essentially say that Obama didn’t do much in his first term as president. Throughout the chapter and the whole book, Colbert and his writers use pictures to their advantage. This is a common technique in satire because it’s easy to get your message across using pictures. They are usually fairly simple, quick to look at, and easy to understand the meaning of. Colbert also uses caricatures to his advantage in the chapter on jobs. A caricature is usually some sort of picture of the person or group being satirized with their more unsightly features being greatly exaggerated. It is a common technique used by satirists. Near the beginning of the chapter, there is a picture of an Indian woman going through the Kama Sutra exercises, a very old series of exercises used to strengthen the body and mind, while working at a call center. Through this picture, Colbert is talking about the problem of American jobs being shipped overseas. He also has a picture of a howler monkey named Bobo running a human resources department at a company. There is a common stereotype against human resources departments for not doing much work and making the employees’ lives difficult. The howler monkey is supposed to represent the HR department because it would be impossible to work with a monkey. Bobo even goes so far as to eat an employee’s paperwork, the equivalent of an HR department losing your paperwork. While pictures are of great use in satire, words can be just as effective if used properly. One technique Colbert and his writers use is burlesque, or the treating of a serious matter in a joking or flippant way. Burlesque is used throughout the chapter, but is used the most in the part about job interviews. Job interviews are extremely important, for they can make the difference between being hired for a job and not getting a job. In our current economy, interviews have become even more important because people are often in dire need of employment. Colbert devotes several pages to telling readers how to conduct a good interview. He tells the reader how many handshakes they should give, proper dress, and even how to appeal to the interviewer. Colbert also says to repeat the interviewer’s name many times. He says â€Å"Make a point of repeating your interviewer’s name as many times as possible as soon as you hear it† (Colbert 44). Colbert is essentially saying that by repeating the interviewer’s name, you’re flattering them, a common technique used by job seekers in interviews. Colbert satirizes the interview process as whole because he sees it as a joke and formality. He believes, and many will agree with him, that getting a job depends on flattery and connections with the interviewer. A fourth technique used by Colbert in the jobs chapter is reductio ad absurdum. This technique involves the satirist pretending to take the side of the person or group he or she is mocking in an attempt to further humiliate their subject. In the chapter, Colbert pretends to support sweatshops and shipping jobs overseas. He even goes so far as to suggest putting sweatshops in America and disbanding unions. In one of Colbert’s â€Å"truth punches† he says â€Å"The minimum wage ruined the proud American tradition of the sweatshop. You start paying American workers a minimum wage, the next thing you know they’re demanding air-conditioning and less flammable shirtwaist materials† (Colbert 30). The conditions he describes are very common in sweatshops around the world and are obviously a huge health and safety hazard. However, they make manufacturing cheaper and the lack of labor laws allows them to force their employees to work in the aforementioned conditions. Colbert pretends to support these views because by doing so he can make fun of them more effectively. Also, he highlights the extreme working conditions because by doing so, he can show the absurdity of both sweatshops and the argument for them. He can pretend to support horrible working conditions and still be viewed as humorous because everyone knows that those conditions are inhumane. One characteristic of satire that Colbert and his writers use in the jobs chapter is obscenity. At the beginning, he makes fun of the Rosie the Riveter, a common figure for female empowerment during World War II. He describes Rosie as â€Å"History’s most thinly veiled lesbian-I have worked hard to remain ignorant of whatever depraved act ‘riveting’ is† (Colbert 21). He also talks about Alan Greenspan’s scrotum and puts in a picture of it. The obscenity does not really have any purpose in satirizing Americans and their jobs. It’s there mostly for the sake of making the reader laugh and want to continue. Exaggeration is easily one of the most common, if not the most common, characteristics of satire. The chapter and the book as a whole are filled with exaggerations of varying amounts. He uses a â€Å"quote† of Ayn Rand’s, which says â€Å"Any man using the words of another is an unthinkable parasite worthy of contempt and death† (Colbert 25). Obviously Ayn Rand never said this; it’s a rather extreme thing to say and would have damaged her credibility. Colbert uses exaggeration in this instance to satirize Rand’s views of the working American. She is widely known for being a conservative and scorning Americans who don’t work and live off of the benefits of society. Colbert also uses this quote as an opportunity to take another swing at the Republicans. By making fun of a popular conservative, he is, by association, making fun of conservatives as a whole. The style of satire that Colbert and his writers use is a monologue. In a monologue, the satirist speaks from behind a mask. In America Again, Colbert is the narrator, and he uses this position to satirize more freely. By staying as himself, he can use the persona he has on his tv show, and he doesn’t need to spend time creating a character to speak through. This is also advantageous when using the reductio ad absurdum technique because most readers will already know that he doesn’t really support the side he’s pretending to be on, and they can appreciate the comedy more. The chapter on jobs was very amusing and did a good job of satirizing American jobs and American’s views on jobs. He satirizes how Americans preach the need to bring jobs back to America from countries like India and China, but no one is willing to lose money by investing in more expensive American workers.

Waiting for Godot, Hollow Men and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock :: comparison compare contrast essays

Compare Waiting for Godot, Hollow Men and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Life is occupied by waiting.   In Waiting for Godot, Samuel Becket presents the suffering of the human condition.   Godot is about two beings who talk about nothing, experience the drudgery of life, complain that they do not do anything, meet a few people, think about hanging themselves, and then do it all over again.   The existentialist style by Godot is comparable to T.S. Eliot's works.   Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Hollow Men are about the tormenting cycle of life and death.   The connection among these three works is that people want to and should do so much, but they do not.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Waiting for Godot takes place in a rural area, with just a tree in the background.   The two friends Vladimir and Estragon talk aimlessly and complain about life.   They consider hanging themselves, but realize before they do that they should consult with Godot.   Who or what Godot symbolizes remains a mystery, but their whole existence seems to be to wait for Godot. They meet a couple of fellows: Pozzo, an upper-class man, mistaken by Vladimir and Estragon as Godot, and Pozzo's slave, Lucky.   After they leave, a messenger from Godot arrives and states simply that Godot will arrive tomorrow, same place, same time.   They consider leaving, but do not.   The second act is almost an exact repeat of the first, but Lucky and Pozzo have fallen upon hard times.   Pozzo has become blind and pathetic, and Lucky has become dumb.   This change in events is a direct point of life being terrific one moment, and worthless the next.   Godot never shows up.   The play ends with the two considering to go somewhere, but they do not.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The similarity of this play to Eliot's poem is remarkable.   Eliot's Love Song is in the first person point of view, and this person refers to " you," who is probably a woman.   It is about a man who want to do so much - be with pretty woman, make something of his life.   His flaws are many, though.   He realizes he is getting balder and more wrinkled.   His prowess with women is deteriorating and this disturbs him.

Clustering Techniques in Oodbms (Using Objectstore)

Introduction Performance of a database can be greatly impacted by the manner in which data is loaded. This fact is true regardless of when the data is loaded; whether loaded before the application(s) begin accessing the data, or concurrently while the application(s) are accessing the data. This paper will present various strategies for locating data as it is loaded into the database and detail the performance implications of those strategies. Data Clustering, Working Sets, and Performance With ObejctStore access to persistent data can perform at in-memory speeds.In order to achieve in-memory speeds, one needs cache affinity. Cache affinity is the generic term that describes the degree to which data accessed within a program overlaps with data already retrieved on behalf of a previous request. Effective data clustering allows for better, if not optimal, cache affinity. Data density is defined as the proportion of objects within a given storage block that are accessed by a client durin g some scope of activation. Clustering is a technique to achieve high data density. The working set is defined as the set of database pages a client needs at a given time.ObjectStore is a page-based architecture which performs best when the following goals are met: †¢ Minimize the number of pages transferred between the client and server †¢ Maximize the use of pages already in the cache In order to achieve these goals, the working set of the application should be optimal. The way to achieve an optimal working set is via data clustering. With good data clustering more data can be accessed in fewer pages; thus a high data density rate is obtained. A higher data density results in a smaller working set as well as a better chance of cache affinity. A smaller working set results in fewer page transfers.The following sections in this paper will explain several clustering patterns/techniques for achieving better performance via cache affinity, higher data density and a smaller wo rking set. NOTE: clustering is used in this paper as a concept of locality of reference. The term is not being used to refer to the physical storage unit available in ObjectStore. ObjectStore does present the user with a choice for location of allocations: with the database, within a particular segment, within a particular cluster. For the remainder of this paper, the discussion of cluster is a conceptual one, not the ObjectStore physical one.Database Design Process Database design is one of the most important steps in designing and implementing an ObjectStore application. The following steps are pre-requisites for a database design: 1) Identify key use cases (ones which need to be fast and/or are run frequently) 2) Identify the object(s) used by the use cases called out in step 1 3) Identify the object(s) that are read or updated during the use cases called out in step 1 The focus of clustering efforts should be on the database objects which are used in the high priority use cases identified above.Begin to cluster based on one use case, and then validate with others. The database design strategies which lend themselves to achieving the optimal working set are: †¢ Clustering †¢ Partitioning There are several different types of techniques which result in data being well clustered: †¢ Isolate Index †¢ Pooling †¢ Object Modeling Data Clustering Clustering is a technique used to achieve high data density. Another definition of clustering is a grouping of objects together. If a use case requires objects A, B and C to operate, then those objects should be co-located for optimal data density.If upon loading the database, those objects are physically allocated close to one another, then we say we have clustered those objects. Assume that the size of the three objects combined is less than the size of a physical database page. The clustering leads to high data density because when we fetch the page with object A, we will also get objects B and C. In this particular case, we need just one page transfer to get all objects required for our use case. To accomplish good clustering, one must know the use cases and the objects involved in those use cases.Given that knowledge, the goals of clustering are: †¢ Cluster objects together which are accessed together †¢ Separate (de-cluster, or partition – we will discuss partitioning in detail later in this paper) objects which are never accessed together. This includes separating frequently accessed data from rarely accessed data. Partitioning Partitioning is a strategy to isolate subsets of objects in different physical storage units. By definition, if two objects are in different partitions, they are de-clustered. The two goals of partitioning are to gain isolation and to increase data density.Isolation is desirable when concurrent access is required. The scope of this paper is not intended to cover concurrency. For that reason our discussion of partitioning will be rather brief. Although partitioning is intended for isolating objects, its use can improve data density. This may seem, by definition, to be counter intuitive. Let us use an example to illustrate. Imagine a grocery store. If you were in need of a box of cereal, you would go down the cereal aisle. If the grocer has done his job correctly, the aisle (or some number of shelves in the aisle) will be populated ONLY with boxes of cereal.Because other items have been located in their respective aisles/shelves, the entire cereal aisle is dense with cereal. If the grocer had not done the job correctly, a given section of a shelf might have (for instance) boxes of noodles, cans of vegetables, and bags of chips. In this scenario, the shelf does not have good data density for the goal of obtaining a box of cereal. Recall the definition of data density: the proportion of objects within a given storage block that are accessed by a client during some scope. Our scope is to obtain a box of cereal. Our storage block is the aisle or a shelf. If the shelf in question contains many items other than cereal, then we have poor data density. If, on the other hand, we partition the non-cereal items to be in different aisles, then the cereal aisle would contain only cereal and thus a high data density would Conclusion The way in which data is loaded into the database can have significant impact on the performance of an application. Careful analysis of the use cases for an application should allow key objects to be identified. Once key objects are identified, a clustering strategy can be planned.Several of the techniques presented here can allow for a clustering strategy that will boost performance far beyond any tuning that might be done after the database is loaded and the application delivered. It is often the case that several techniques can be combined; an application need not restrict itself to the use of just one technique. The goal of clustering is to reduce your working set siz e; yield higher data density; and reduce the number of pages which need to be transferred between the application and the ObjectStore server.

The United States Of America - 1407 Words

America or rather the Unites States of America bears a richly diverse history that cannot be summarized even in a million books, slides or videos. The reason supporting this argument range from the broad diversity in culture encompassing so many tribes and ethnic groups to the variation in skin formations guiding the country. The story started when Columbus sailed to virgin territories and activated a massive migration schedule from European countries. What happened next was a scramble of the fertile lands that make the entire American continent from the Mexican south to the Canadian North. Migration is a functional term synonymous with the American tag since the process is taking place, up to date. The American Republic found shape in the†¦show more content†¦The Indians were the very first communities to settle in America about 40,000 years ago. The initial infrastructure found in America by the likes of Columbus was laid and build by these communities. Chapter 1 of this t ext describes the communities as living on the southern side with some occupying the land on the river valleys of Mississippi. The cities in the south were more organized than those in the north. Thus, the most primary American cultural pattern was extracted from the original Indians of the south. Foners proceeds on to showcase how America, as presently constituted acquired its identity. The English came and subdued the native Americans. Colonization would follow. Such activities as slave trade became a reality and identities drawn along color lines were cultivated. The Europeans brought education and with it a sense of civilization. The natives were acquiring this knowledge power, slowly awakening the shame on important matters such as freedom and fundamental human rights. Thus, the thirst for sovereignty was gaining tract. Along with it was a fight to acquire similar status as the Englishmen. The settlers sought to play a game of treaties transfer grounds hoping that the natives w ould gain comfort and halt the agitation for equality. However, resilience on the side of the citizens charts a path that led to freedom. This came at a cost including such unfortunate incidences as the Boston massacre. At this point, it should be noted that it is theShow MoreRelatedThe United States Of America1536 Words   |  7 PagesThe United States of America is well known throughout the world for tis democracy ant the freedoms of its citizens. Since declaring its Independence from Great Britain rule in 1776, the United States of America has undergone a continuous effort to maintain law and order. In order to create a strong federal government with a system of check and balances the Constitution was proposed and ratified. The Constitution of the United States became the Supreme law of the land. 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