Robinson Crusoe Questions for Study and Discussion

Robinson Crusoe is the famous first novel by Daniel Defoe. A young man is shipwrecked and stranded on a deserted island. Its the stuff dreams are made of, but theres more to it than that. Here are a few questions for study and discussion. Discussion Questions What is important about the title?What are the conflicts in Robinson Crusoe? What types of conflict (physical, moral, intellectual, or emotional) did you notice in this novel?How does Daniel Defoe reveal character in Robinson Crusoe?What are some themes in the story? How do they relate to the ​plot and characters?What are some symbols in Robinson Crusoe? How do they relate to the plot and characters?Are the ​characters consistent in their actions? Which of the characters are fully developed? How? Why?Do you find the characters likable? Are the characters persons you would want to meet?How do loneliness, fear, and isolation affect (and shape) the characters?Does the novel end the way you expected? How? Why?What is the central/primary purpose of Robinson Crusoe? Is the purpose important or meaningful?How essential is the setting to the story? Could the story have taken place anywhere else?How important is friendship and/or camaraderie to Robinson Crusoe?Compare/contrast R obinson Crusoe with other works by Daniel Defoe? How does Robinson Crusoe fit into Defoes body of works?Would you recommend Robinson Crusoe to a friend?

Civil Disobedience And The Civil Rights Movement - 867 Words

During the Civil Rights Movement, King and many of his followers and fellow activists deeply followed the path of non-violent protest, otherwise known as civil disobedience. After being arrested during the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, King received a series of critiques from fellow clergymen stating their disapproval of his actions. Of course, King addressed a letter, now more commonly known as â€Å"Letter from Birmingham Jail†, to his critics as well as the nation in order to defend his ideology. Though King does a great job at explaining to his audience the essence of his ideology, he fails to address the practicality or universality of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience may have been a powerful tool for the Civil Rights Movement but it seems the political atmosphere of the United States was able to make its success possible. The United States is considered a modern democratic state and its constitution limits the power of the government to a degree. In this political atmo sphere, civil disobedience and other forms of protest would be the ideal. At most, the government would only be able to imprison an individual and with reasonable punishment, the most probable sentence would be only a few months to a year or two. Now, suppose a person living during the early era of the Tokugawa Shogunate wanted a change and does so through civil disobedience. Let us say that this person is a daimyo or lord who disagrees with the Shogun and directly disobeys an order. FirstShow MoreRelatedCivil Disobedience And The Civil Rights Movement881 Words   |  4 PagesIn Thoreau s essay Civil Disobedience he makes the point that bystanders are just as bad as criminals and that people should stand against unjust crimes even if it means going against the law. And to some extent I do agree because in the past people have broken unjust laws and have created change. A well-known example would be when Rosa Parks sat on the bus in the White-only seating area, which lead to importa nt events that helped push the Civil Rights movement forward. But I think that it dependsRead MoreCivil Disobedience And The Civil Rights Movement1099 Words   |  5 PagesWhat does it mean to be civil disobedient people have many different interpretations of it? To be civil disobedient is to refuse to follow certain laws or to not pay any taxes or fines. It is a form of peaceful political protest you are trying to get someone s attention, in this case, the government. You are trying to make them listen to you and when they do not listen you do not do what they say. That’s what Thoreau did he grabbed their attention the only way he knows how he criticized their policiesRead MoreThe Role Of Civil Disobedience And The Civil Rights Movement1503 Words   |  7 PagesRanging from peaceful marches to powerful acts of civil disobedience, not only in the United States but in Central American countries such as Nicaragua. This being said, civil protests and peaceful demonstrations we re not necessarily more successful in exuding change than pieces of legislation but moreso acted as a catalyst for social change, leading towards legislation that would positively impact those who protested. The concept of civil disobedience and peaceful demonstration acting as a catalystRead MoreWhat Makes A Breach Of Law An Act Of Civil Disobedience?1383 Words   |  6 Pagesact of civil disobedience? When is civil disobedience morally justified?† These are the basic questions that are asked when dealing with civil disobedience. According to John Rawls, civil disobedience is a nonviolent breach of laws by the public in order to reform or change laws or government policies. But Rawls’ concept of civil disobedience is too narrow. This raises many questions. Why should civil disobedience be non-violent? Why does the public play a large role in civil disobedience? This paperRead MoreThe Need For Civil Disobedience Essay1287 Words   |  6 PagesTo grasp the meaning of Civil Disobedience one would have to say that it means the refusal to obey the civil laws so that the government can change the policy or legislation, characterized by the use of. I have read Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience and the obligation that your conscience mind follows and in reading this it states that people should not let the governments overrule or atrophy their consciences and that we as people are obligated to not allow the government to make them agentsRead MoreAffirmative Case : Civil Disobedience1328 Words   |  6 PagesAffirmative Case: Civil Disobedience Mahatma Gandhi once stated, â€Å"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.† Because I agree I must affirm the resolution that reads, â€Å"Resolved: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified.† Affirming achieves the value of ‘morality,’ defined from Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary as,† The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct† My value criterion is a legitimate government for all. A democraticRead MoreEssay on Civil Disobedience1532 Words   |  7 PagesAbstract Civil disobedience is the term assigned to actions taken by individuals to sway public opinion about laws that individuals deem unfair or unjust. Actions taken are usually nonviolent, and can include sit-ins, mass demonstrations, picket lines, and marches. Citizens are acting on their consciences, demonstrating highly advanced moral reasoning skills. Generally, these advanced skills fall into Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Development, Stage Five and Six in particular. Characteristics ofRead MoreCivil Disobedience And The Apartheid1428 Words   |  6 Pages Throughout history, civil disobedience has been used to bring about change across a wide variety of civil rights issues. In India, Mahatma Gandhi used civil disobedience to nonviolently protest against the British Raj and, after a thirty-year struggle, earn independence both for himself and his people. In the United States, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. employed civil disobedience to overcome both the Jim Crow laws that had oppressed the African-American minority and the systemic racism that wasRead MoreCivil Disobedience: Cost of Change1469 Words   |  6 Pages2013 Civil Disobedience: The cost of change More than 40,000 strong activists from the Sierra Club protested at the White House to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. They protested because they the extraction of tar sand oil and moving it from Canada to Texas will pollute the groundwater in the surface (Hammel). Civil disobedience is â€Å"the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power† (Civil Disobedience). ThroughoutRead MoreBreaking the Law or Civil Desobedience Essay example1642 Words   |  7 Pagescreate a just, moral change. Whenever a law is deemed unjust, there is good reason for breaking it to achieve justice. Civil Disobedience will never be legal and those who employ it should be willing to accept the penalty that comes with breaking a law. It has been shown through historic cases, modern examples, and the core values of a democratic society that show Civil Disobedience not only works, but should be used as a tool to demonstrate the moral objectives that are being sought. Considering some

Danone free essay sample

From Zong’s perspective, there was, because he thought that the Wahaha Group had not received any technological or managerial expertise from Danone, whereas Danone did get a its place in the Chinese market, which they hoped for.  From Danone’s view, however, there was managerial expertise offered to the Wahaha Group personnel in RD and marketing for the Joint ventures, but Zong kicked them out. Because of this, there might have been a learning asymmetry when taking Danone’s perspective into account. Has Danone been able to access the location-bound FSAs of the Wahaha Group? Should Danone have rejected the joint venture entry mode in the first place?  In order to answer this question, one should first look at what Wahaha Group’s FSAs are. The number one reason for Danone to cooperate with the Wahaha Group was that the Wahaha Group was already a strong firm, with a good position in a fast-growing market. Overall knowledge management is a significant component of the organization to keep a competitive advantage. Introduction As globalization is leading more and more companies into the international business context, a much greater importance is being placed on knowledge management. The most basic resource, and also the most important, will always be knowledge (Drucker 1993, p8). It allows the company to be able to sense any changes, and to adapt and respond. In the end, this determines the success of the company (Gates 1999, p23). Danone is an organisation that does not believe the traditional technological methods of knowledge management are appropriate for the organization (Edmondson, et al. 2008). The company has taken a strong informal networking attitude to create a sharing culture within the organisation and its employees. The company prides itself on its spontaneous nature within networking and its ability to develop new ideas quickly and implement them efficiently (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). While this has worked for them a greater use of structure and formality may be beneficial in allowing a more systematic flow of knowledge within the Networking Attitude. However, Danone may need to consider extending its concept deeper, richer or wider to determine whether the benefits may be higher than they currently are (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). Background Danone’s success is largely attributed to the knowledge and abilities of its employees. The sharing and retaining of this knowledge is extremely important in ensuring the long-term effectiveness of Danone. The Networking attitude initiative was launched at a Danone conference in the fall of 2002 as a means of circulating good practices and enabling the sharing of knowledge across groups in the geographically dispersed company (Edmonson et l, 2008, p. 1-8). Several tools have been developed as part of the initiative, most notably knowledge â€Å"marketplaces†, a â€Å"who’s who† internal directory system and sharing networks (Edmonson et al, 2008, p. 1). From 2004 to 2007, Danone employees shared almost 640 good practices with colleagues and overall, the Networking a ttitude initiative has made practical information accessible to about 5000 of the more than 9000 Danone managers around the world. The initiative has incurred very little cost and was seen highly successful by 86% of general managers according to an internal survey (Edmonson et al, 2008, p. ). Problems Issue 1 – Lack of formal IT systems The knowledge that is shared amongst employees at these networking activities needs to be recorded so that it can be accessed at all times by both the employees that attended the activities as well as those who didn’t. While individual knowledge is shared at the activities it is only to those who are present in the room and some employees may go into information overload and forget much of what they have learnt over the course of the activity. Another major risk of networking is that when an employee quits they take all of the attained knowledge with them and if it isn’t recorded the knowledge will be lost and unable to be transferred on to new staff. While networking is embedded in Danone’s culture, the need for formal systems is evident in the size of the company and the fact that it is a multi-national enterprise. Danone does not have adequate library-type system in which information about products, practices and challenges is recorded and shared amongst employees  (Edmondson, et al. 2008). Many issues can arise from the lack of such a system in such a big company. For example, Danone Brazil helped Danone France in launching a new dessert to complete with a Nestle product in less than three months (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). In this situation Danone employees managed to share their knowledge across continents, this would be made a lot easier if a database with all of the company’s products, produc tion techniques, difficulties during production and success stories were all listed. Issue 2 – Lack of incentives and rewards A major issue facing Danone’s knowledge management is the lack of incentives and rewards for participation. Although the networking practices have been quite successful for Danone, the employees are not being acknowledged and rewarded for their contributions (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). A reward system needs to be put in place to ensure that the employees are encouraged to make full use of the networking system. Unless this is carried out, learning within the organisation will suffer, as the employees will be less likely to want to contribute to the organisation and the learning culture. Many of the employees are already very loaded with work as it is, and the networking practices are adding more weight onto their schedules (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). The employees are not being recognised for their jobs well done. If the networking system has been such a success for Danone, management needs to show their appreciation to the employees (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). As it is, Danone are not displaying their gratitude towards the employees and their awareness of their contributions. Networking is taking top priority within the organisation, and is therefore a lot of work to maintain and continue (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). By rewarding or recognising the employees’ contributions and efforts, a greater awareness about the importance of a learning culture and its impact on the knowledge sharing benefits for the organisation will be created. It will also influence the employees into wanting to further the learning attitude. The front-line managers are highly critical for the networking and knowledge sharing mission, so therefore it is crucial that they be recognised and rewarded accordingly. The advantages of knowledge sharing are not being clearly displayed to the employees, such as the increase in performance and talent effectiveness (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). This is counter-productive to the learning if they cannot see the potential and importance of the learning attitudes and their impact on the organisation. Motivating the employees to learn would be more beneficial than teaching them how to network. It is not a part of the culture within the organisation to want to share knowledge and learn from other employees within the Danone network. Sharing has never been a natural part of the culture and this has created clashes and inefficiencies (Edmondson, et al. , 2008). Also, the lack of formalisation within the networking processes has created an issue for structure and feedback on the successes of the projects. This has been problematic as the employees may be becoming too relaxed with their knowledge sharing attitudes. Employees involved were refusing follow-ups as they believed they were being policed and monitored (Edmondson, et al. , 2008).

The Platypus Essays - Monotremes, Sleep, Dream, Neurophysiology

The Platypus The platypus, apparently, is a surprisingly deep sleeper. What's more, it spends more of its time in so-called 'REM' sleep than any other mammal. These are the conclusions of a study on sleep in the platypus by Jerry M. Siegel of the Sepulveda Veterans' Affairs Medical Center, North Hills, California and colleagues. Their report appears in a special number of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society devoted to the biology of the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), celebrating the bicentenary of the discovery, in Australia, of this remarkable animal. 'REM' stands for 'rapid eye-movement' and is the kind of sleep in which the brain can be more active than in it is while awake, the animal twitches, and the eyelids flicker ? hence the name. In humans, REM sleep is associated with dreaming. But does the platypus have an extraordinarily rich dream life? Possibly not, say the researchers: cats, opossums, armadillos and other mammals not known for their intellectual achievements have far more REM sleep, whether calculated in hours per day or as a percentage of total sleep time, than humans. And why study sleep in the platypus anyway? After all, the platypus is an obscure and extremely primitive creature, distantly related to humans. The answer lies in that primitive state: studying the physiology of the platypus could yield clues about the life and behaviour of the very earliest mammals. The platypus belongs to a group of mammals with very ancient roots. Apart from the platypus itself, the group ? the monotremes ? includes two species of echidna, or 'spiny anteater'. All three species are confined to Australasia. Monotremes lay eggs, like birds and reptiles, but unlike all other mammals. They also have a range of other reptile-like anatomical features, features that have been lost in more 'advanced' mammals. Researchers think that monotremes have been distinct as a group for at least 80 million years, long before the dinosaurs became extinct. Monotremes have taken a cameo role in studies on the evolution of mammalian brain function. A study in 1972 suggested that the echidna Tachyglossus had no REM sleep. This was important, because it implied that REM sleep must have evolved in higher mammals. Subsequent research made this result look anomalous, as REM-like sleep phenomena have since been observed in birds and some reptiles: in which case, the echidna may have lost the capacity somewhere in its evolution. This is the conundrum that Siegel and colleagues have been investigating. First, it turns out that the term 'REM' is a misnomer: animals may show REM sleep even though their eyes don't move, and their bodies don't twitch. REM is properly defined as a characteristic pattern of activity in the brain, generated by specific neuronal pathways in the brainstem ? whether or not this activity is carried forwards into the 'higher' centres of the brain (where it is manifested as dreaming). Recordings from discreetly implanted electrodes show that the echidna does, after all, show a kind of REM sleep generated by the brainstem, even though it is rather muted and the animal shows no outward signs. Young animals show more REM sleep than older ones, and it could be that very young echidnas have a more active sleeping life (including twitching) than older ones. The platypus, though, shows all the classic outward signs of REM sleep. Indeed, an account from as long ago as 1860, before REM sleep was discovered, reported that young platypus showed 'swimming' movements of their forepaws while asleep. Despite these differences, the REM sleep of the platypus and the echidna is confined to the brainstem: the forebrain shows the regular, steady patterns of neuronal activity associated with deep, dreamless sleep. This suggests that for all their REM sleep, monotremes do not dream. These findings set our understanding of the evolution of sleep on a firmer footing. It now seems that the 'core' brainstem activity manifested as REM sleep has extremely ancient roots, going back to the reptilian acnestors of mammals as well as birds. The elaboration of REM sleep into the forebrain is a later innovation: but whether it evolved once and monotremes have since lost it, or if it evolved more than once, is something that only more work on birds and reptiles can establish. The platypus, apparently, is a surprisingly deep sleeper. What's more, it spends more of its time in so-called 'REM' sleep than any other mammal. These are the conclusions of a study on sleep in the platypus by Jerry M. Siegel of the Sepulveda Veterans' Affairs Medical Center, North