The London Bombings of 2005

Introduction The London bombings of 2005 occurred on Seventh July in the morning hours commonly referred to as the rush hour where four bombs were detonated killing more than fifty people and injuring more than seven hundred. The attacks targeted the British civilians particularly those using underground trains.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on The London Bombings of 2005 specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Three out of the four explosions took place in underground trains and they occurred in quick succession leading to panic through out the public transport system in London and other major towns in the European region. The United States of America also became alert as there were fears its transport system would also be targeted. The fourth bomb detonated an hour later in a double-decker bus and this made the public panic even more due to the sensitivity of the issue and it almost brought business to a stand still due to fear (Frost, par 3, 2008). However, with time the public regained their confidence on public means though caution was still high. Circumstances and Responses to the London Bombings of 2005 As a result of the London bomb attacks; there were high alert responses from disaster preparedness management departments and also massive response from other emergency services through out the city of London. In the weeks that followed, people almost shunned the use of London’s public transport system especially after another attack targeting the public was experienced few days later. It was only after some weeks later that the public started showing back some confidence in the public transport system by defying all the odds and the days that followed, the city started regaining its life again though with more security alerts and less underground rail services. To the rest of the cities in Britain and other major cities in the world, especially in the European region and the U nited States, there were numerous security alerts over the issue with the public being advised to be on the look out both by the governments where they were residing and their home governments. Apart from the public response that resulted in the reduced number of public transport users, the security response became alert both in London and other countries.Advertising Looking for research paper on political sciences? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More For example, in the United States of America, the Homeland Security raised threat level for mass transit systems such as the use of trains and buses. In all major cities (particularly in Washington and New York) equipped police force and explosives detecting dogs were positioned (Frost, 2008, par 8). European countries also responded to the attacks by raising their alert levels. For example, France responded to the terror attacks by raising the level of terror alert to red which was the second highest leveling response to the London bombings. In Germany, the levels were a bit low placing their alert levels to yellow level which showed that the likelihood of the country being attacked was minimal while in Spain, the level was raised to level three which is the highest in the country. At that level, it entailed that the security personnel were to patrol the (public) transport systems (Frost, 2008 p.6). In nations like Singapore, security measures were immediately enforced on the sector (public transport) where the equipped officers were positioned in every area. Plans for installation of CCTV cameras in all trains and buses and the public was also put into place and updates on the status of the security alerts and the expectations were communicated to the public to avoid confusion and other ugly scenes from occurring. These among others were the security alerts issues all over major cities in Europe and America. The response (by the London emergency and transport ation systems) were portrayed as the most broad and multifaceted response ever to a terrorist molest (Strom Eveman, 2008, par2) On the other hand, there were also media responses. In the UK, TV and radio networks dropped their programming schedules in order to cover the news and the same was experienced in other major news organizations such as the Cable News Network.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on The London Bombings of 2005 specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The media houses also responded by removing some of the programs which were to be viewed that night or the days that followed especially if they were to cover terrorism or bombing attacks. This among other media houses postponed some of their programs which involved suicide bombers due to the sensitivity of the matter (Frost, 2008 par. 21). There were also legislative reactions where in the UK, parliament began by fast tracking the enactment of an ti terror bill which could criminalize all acts as preparatory to terrorism, training and incitement activities. There was the legislation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2006 (Sim, 2010, par. 7). The community on the other hand answered by launching websites which stated they were not afraid and they could not be cowed by any terrorism act. Compare and contrast the London bombings with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1996 Olympics bombing. During the preparations for the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, the federal authorities feared there would be terror attacks before or during the event in order to instill fear among the crowds and participants. There were preparations to reduce the vulnerability with the organizers engaging the US custom services to provide flying radar platforms and also place secret service snipers on helicopters to warn off or take out planes threatening the games. However, despite the preparations, caution and regulations, they failed to stop a lone bomber from striking. A single person armed with a small bomb was able to detonate it in a public square killing two people and injuring over a hundred others (Selliaas, 2005 p.).Advertising Looking for research paper on political sciences? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Before the September 11 attacks, the Oklahoma City building had been described as the most destructive act of terrorism in the United States of America. The blast claimed more than 160 lives and injured more than 650 people. The bombs destroyed many buildings within a sixteen block radius, razed cars and shuttered glasses in the buildings around. As a result of the bombings, the US government enacted laws in a bid to control and stop terrorism as well as boosting protection around state buildings and to the American populace in order to stop any attacks from occurring in the future. The similarities of the three attacks were the fact that they involved use of bombs which were detonated by Islamic extremists. All the attacks were aimed at the public and were in retaliation to the government activities against the Muslim world. They were used as a means of venting anger by the bombers to the governments which to them were oppressive. For example, the London attacks which were conducte d by four Muslims were in retaliation against the British government for participating in the war against terror in Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya among other countries. According to the tapes of the bombers, some of the bombers targeted the British civilians because they were the electorate that had voted in the government which was committing atrocities on the people (Muslim). For the Oklahoma attacks, the bombers were in retaliation to the victims of Waco siege and ruby Ridge attacks (Kushner, 2003 p.8). The Olympics attacks on the other hand were in retaliation to abortion. Another similarity was that the bombings in the two countries (Britain and USA) led to legislation of new laws which would deter any future bomb attacks in Britain. We had the anti terror bill by Clarke while in the USA we had the federal legislation which protected all the federal buildings from attacks. The difference between the three bombings was the materials used to make the bombs differed. The sizes of the bombs and their destructive capabilities were also different due to the fact that there were different number of casualties in the incidences with the bombing of Oklahoma being the most destructive while the Olympics bombing was the least destructive with minimal losses of lives. The three bombings also targeted different locations. While the Oklahoma bombings targeted civilians in buildings, the Olympics bombing targeted people in the stadium while the London bombings targeted people using public means of transport especially the underground train system. The motivations behind the bombings were also different though all the attacks were directed towards the governments reducing their presence in the Muslim world as wanted by the terrorists. Conclusion Security problems and threats from terrorists remain a major problem to every human being but it is positive to note that there has been willingness to invest more in security and access controls. We can conclude that measures carrie d by the relevant authorities were sufficient in handling the situation and the law enforcing agents enacted and implemented extra precautionary measures such as the anti-terrorism act to prevent future occurrences of terror attacks in their lands. Recommendations Given the urgencies reflected by the relevant authorities to deter the bombings, in the case of Oklahoma, Atlanta Olympics bombings there was nothing I could have done better than what was done. But concerning the London bombings a second attempt would not have succeeded if the authorities had remained alert through out but to prevent the occurrence of the situations. With all the intelligence the United States of America and the Britain possesses, the two countries should have implemented precautionary measures ensuring that in all points of entry, people are frisked and the reasons of their visits be noted and where surveillance on certain individuals is needed certain measures should be taken. Measures to track down all those individuals affiliated to terror groups such as the Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups must be enhanced. If these measures had been implemented earlier, the detection of attempts to bombing would have been on time, saving lives that were lost and properties which were destroyed. Reference List Frost, M. (2008). Response to the 2005 London Bombings. Web. Kushner, W. H. (2003). Encyclopedia of Terrorism. New York: Sage Publishers. Selliaas, A. (2005). From Internationalization of Terrorism to the Internationalization: The Role of the Summer Olympic Games of Anti-terrorism. Web. Sim, P. (2010). Counter-Terrorism Legislation in the UK: How the War on Terror has Affected British Policy-Making. Web. Strom, K, J., Eyeman, J. (2008). Interagency Coordination: A Case Study of the 2005 London Train Bombings. National Institute Justice Journal No.260. Web. This research paper on The London Bombings of 2005 was written and submitted by user Zeke Beasley to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Overpopulation Essays - Population Ecology, Human Overpopulation

Overpopulation Essays - Population Ecology, Human Overpopulation Overpopulation By: Eric Krause Do you feel that all humans have the right to enjoy natural beauty? The right to decent, uncrowded shelter? The right to eat healthy food and drink pure water? To breathe clean air and avoid pesticide poisoning? Most people would say every human has a right to all of these things, but in some areas of the world these rights are not being met. Most species have a sideways "S" shaped graph reflecting growth rate, meaning the species will go up in total population but will eventually start to go down again. The human population graph resembles more of a "J", starting out low and then skyrocketing straight up. At our current growth rate the world's population of 5.8 billion would double in only about 45 years. The United States population would double in less than 100 years. Today the birth rate is about three times the death rate world wide (The Population Explosion). The closer these two rates are, the slower population growth will be. Because of all of these reasons, efforts by the government should be made to slow down the world population growth. Overpopulation is becoming a bigger concern as the growth rate continues to skyrocket. Overpopulation is sometimes mis understood or mistaken with other issues. Overpopulation does not deal with crowding, but in fact, density is irrelevant to questions of overpopulation (Adams J.A. Crusade Against Overpopulation). What is relevant is carrying capacity. Carrying capacity refers to how much an area can hold having all things at equilibrium, including all plants and animals. An area is overpopulated when its long-term carrying capacity is being degraded by its current human occupants. David Pimentel at the Carrying Capacity Network stated, "By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated." Some people say the earth is not overpopulated since the United States can produce more food and products than are used. That is true in the U.S. Now if you look at it world-wide the products we have are often from other countries. These other countries a re often not as well off. These other countries are either in severe poverty or their cities are becoming overcrowded (STOP: Everyone must be educated about the realities of overpopulation). Although the U.S. is not in trouble at this time, when you look at the whole world you may see a different picture. Eventually the rest of the world will also have an effect on us. The impact of humans on their environment has to do with three factors. The first is the number of people. The more people there are the more resources are used. If too many resources begin to be used they will run out before they get a chance to be replaced. Leaving all plant and animal life with nothing and everything will eventually die off. The rainforests are a good example of this. The second is the amount of resources consumed by the average person. If people become wasteful and don't conserve resources now, the resources that were wasted will not be able to be used in the future. The United States is one of the most wasteful countries there is. We are more wasteful than necessary. Recycling has helped quite a bit, but the problem has not yet been fixed. The third is the environmental damage caused in the manufacturing of the goods consumed. Manufacturing grows as people demand more manufactured goods. If too much manufacturing takes place many plants and animals begin to suf fer. It may not have an impact on us for a while, but after many years pass, the availability of food, water, and shelter will begin to decrease. Another problem caused by the rapid growth rate is to the environment. Bio diversity plays an important part in the survival of all species. It is the multiplicity of plants, insects, and animals on Earth that makes the survival of all species possible. A planet without a suitable habitat for non-human creatures will soon not be suitable for humans either. Once humans expand enough and kill off a lot of plant and animal life, what are we going to eat? As human numbers grow, we demand more space and resources from

Mergers and Acquisition Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Mergers and Acquisition - Essay Example The paper here studies the effectiveness of the mergers and acquisitions and also the limitations of the overall process in gaining the profitability of the newly formed company. The role of Merger and acquisition: Most organization incorporates the strategy of the mergers and acquisition only in time of crisis faced by them. As a result the organization entering in to the process fails to critically look in to several issues like the strategic fit, and the risk involved with such strategies. The shareholders value in the firm takes a major setback due to such hasty decision making, from the companies’ behalf. The organizations should critically analyze the role play of such strategies. Generally there are various roles which are carried out by the undertaking of an effective merger and acquisition strategy. (The Boston consulting group, n. d) Mergers and acquisitions can create opportunities for the organizations to lower the respective cost of various expenses incurred. The incorporation of the merger strategies by the organization helps them to establish a new set of business model which can result in gain of productivity of both the organizations concerned. The overall market position can also be improved by the successful implementation of the strategy. Overall the mergers can create opportunities for an organization to gain new capabilities or simply add to their existing skill set. (The Boston consulting group, n. d) The success factor of the mergers and acquisition can lead to a gain of the scale both in measures of scale and scope. A successful merger can lead to the elimination of various risks associated with the execution of the business. The option of leveraging the asset of the acquired organization with that of the other organization provides huge financial benefit for the organizations. A successful merger can also lead to tremendous growth and diversification of the organizations. (Hunt, 2009, p.212,) It has been noted that the recent tr end suggests that the organizations are failing to apply the strategy of the mergers and acquisitions in a proper fashion which has contributed to the overall failure. The fine line between the success and the failure of the mergers can be based on significant factors. As the mergers and acquisitions of the organizations leads to a complete restructure of the companies, proper effort form the management is needed to be careful after the implementation. Other than the financial and market factors organizations also needs to be careful regarding the human resource planning. . (Mergers integration, n. d)The failure of the mergers can significantly hamper all levels of the organization. Due to the non achievement of the expected gains of the organization the shareholders are affected at the beginning and it leads to their discontent. The most severe implication of the failure of the mergers can result in the accumulation of more amounts of losses for the organization than the gains whic h leads to the decline of the value of the shareholders. The failure can lead to a complete business tragedy for the organizations by factors like decrease of productivity, and customer satisfaction and loss of reputations of the brand name. (Mergers integration, n. d) Reasons for failure: The reasons for the failure of the

The Capital Appellate Process and the Unkept Promise of the Essay

The Capital Appellate Process and the Unkept Promise of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act - Essay Example All victims are entitled to appeals and should they apply for one, the state gives them an alternative for representation through a state sponsored attorney. While other convicted offenders begin their jail terms soon after the verdict is passed, death row culprits stay for long before facing justice. In Oklahoma, the duration between the judgment and the actual execution gets to up to ten years. This is contrary is normally contrary to the provision of justice, the society expects justice from the legal system, the justice in such a case is the execution of a victim, by delaying this, the society is deprived of the justice. To ensure the smooth and effective execution of criminals in time, the congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). This Act aimed at speeding the execution process of the indicted criminals (Nicole 9). The act was informed by the fact that prisoners often suffered from death row phenomenon. The anxiety brought about by the lengthy waiting slowly seeps sanity out of such inmates. They therefore suffer mental breakdowns and become burdens to the state and risks to their fellow inmates. Th is threatened the safety of other inmates besides being an inhumane treatment. The paper is written in an official report format implying that it serves an official purpose. Its potential target is law scholar interested in understanding the operations of the judicial system and the coordination between the justice department and the department of correction. The paper provides the details of this relationship clearly outline the weaknesses that exist and the possible consequences of the weaknesses. The headline is bold and written in a font clearly larger than the rest of the text, this is a writing method employed by newspapers and magazines, its sole objective is to draw as much attention to the article from a browsing reader. Scholarly

Performance Assessment and Management Research Paper

Performance Assessment and Management - Research Paper Example The paper therefore recommends that McDonalds develop better strategies to enhance its human resource management in recruitment, management, and appraisal. Introduction Organizational operations, in both profit making and ‘non-profit’ making enterprises, require evaluation for reconciliation with set objectives as well as for comparison with operations with other enterprises in a similar industry. Assessment is defined as the process of evaluating a subject, which can be a process, in order to ascertain its potential or quality. Management on the other hand refers to the act or responsibility of controlling people or activities. Assessment and management are therefore critical elements in the life of an organization. This paper seeks to discuss performance assessment and management of McDonalds Company. The paper will explore the established culture of employee selection and appraisal criteria that McDonalds applies in its human resource management. The paper will, with this respect, offer an overview of McDonalds human resource practices in employee selection and appraisal initiatives and then analyze the processes. Review of employee selection and appraisal processes in McDonalds Company McDonalds is a multinational company that operates in a number of cultures across the world. Its human resource management is however converged to a uniform culture. With an overall workforce of more than thirty thousand employees, McDonalds has its personnel management strategies incorporated in its core objectives. In order to achieve its goal of being the best service provider in the food industry, the company’s ensures that it has a diversified cultural base with excellent employee management. Employee selection McDonalds has a broad based approach to selecting its employees. This includes a special consideration to disabled people who may have some specialized capacity to service delivery. Similarly, the company has a universal program for handling ol der employees, older than 55 years. Its selection criteria have also been identified to be fair and ‘non-discriminatory’. It has therefore been open to different categories of cultured workforce. In recruiting its employees, the company relies on the theory that customer utility relies on the efficiency and effectiveness of the company’s employees. As a result, initiatives are always put in place to ensure that the best employees with respect to every job description are identified. Different approaches to recruiting employees have always been adopted with advertising for positions being the most preferred. Other approaches such as local job centers and professional exhibitions have also been occasionally used. Applicants are then subjected to an interview after which a selected committee reviews the applicant’s responses before identification of most suitable candidates for the job. Orientation Once employees have been selected and approved, they are welc omed to the company through a ‘well-defined’ orientation process. They are introduced to their expected roles in the organization as well as the organization’s safety procedures. Similarly, the new employees are taken through the organizations policies, structure, and the human resource system that includes training and reward criteria. Based on its employee retention objective, the company ensures thorough training of its employees to equip them with necessary skills in

Film Research Study: Enchanted (2007)

Film Research Study: Enchanted (2007) Introduction The topic that we chose to do a research on is a film named Enchanted. The film was released in 2007. Enchanted is a romance comedy film which contains live-action and animated fantasy. The film tells a story about a girl named Giselle. She was pushed into a magical well by her prince’s stepmother which brought her to the reality world, the modern New York City. She tried to coop with the new surroundings instead of living happily ever after in her fairytale castle with her prince. Giselle met Robert who helped her to face the reality of the world. Giselle learnt that true love is much more complicated that sharing only a â€Å"true love’s kiss† with her prince. Our targeted audience are students studying in Tunku Abdul Rahman College, Penang Campus. We decided to target 25 males and 25 females which sums up to 50 students. The age of our targeted audience are mostly from 17 till 25. The students we targeted are studying in different faculty such as faculty of accountancy, finance and business. The main reason we carry out this research is to find out if college student perceive Enchanted as children based movie or adult based movie. Literature Review Selection perceptive theory is the process where individuals perceive on what they want to see in the media while dismissing any negative viewpoints. In a broader term, it is where people tend to view things based on the concept of favoritism and their prefer frame of references. It is describe as categorize sensory information that favors one over the other, meaning selective perception is bias because we interpret message that goes against our beliefs and thoughts. Of course, this is only true when our perceive perception is counted as accurate. But if selective perception caused us to dismiss important points and information, this type of perception is highly detrimental. This theory based on human judgment and decision making that is distorted by an array of cognitive, perceptual and motivational biases. There are evidences that suggests that people tend to recognize and even overestimate the operation of bias in human judgment except when that bias is their own. Aside from the general motive to self-enhance, two primary sources of this ‘bias blind spot’ have been identified. One involves peoples heavy weighting of introspective evidence when assessing their own bias, despite the tendency for bias to occur unconsciously. The other involves peoples conviction that their perceptions directly reflect reality, and that those who see things differently are therefore biased. (Emily Pronina, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Green Hall, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA). Another source of the bias blind spot involves the fact that others see things differently from ours. People are particularly likely to deny bias in themselves, whereas they will impute it to others, when those others have a different point of view and when they for example rebelled against their government policies and governance are then tend to imputed more self-interest biases than the government supporters. (48 G.D. Reeder et al., On attributing negative motives to others who disagree with our opinions, Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 11 (2005), pp. 1498–1510.) Of course, there are least some evidence that that people are more likely to acknowledge their susceptibility to biases that are less undesirable. (E. Pronin et al., The bias blind spot: perceptions of bias in self versus others, Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 28 (2002).) Research Research is the first management process to define the problem. The first step involves probing and monitoring knowledge, opinions, attitudes, effected by the acts and policies of an organization. In essence, this is an organizations intelligence function. It provides the foundation for all the other steps in the problem-solving process by determining, what is happening now? In this research, we used questionnaire method as our research. We chose this method because we think that it is easier to get feedback from the students. We have prepare 8 questions for the students to answer. Some examples of the questions are have you watch the Enchanted movie before, where do you watch the Enchanted movie and do you like the Enchanted movie. We then printed 50 copies to let the students answer it. We carried out the surveys in the canteen, new library and foyer in Tunku Abdul Rahman University College. FINDINGS We created a questionnaire for mass media research in order to collect data about what TARC College students think about the movie Enchanted whether it is suitable for children. 50 of students completed the questionnaire between 12 November2014 and 19 November 2014.The results are recorded as below. In this research, we asked a variety of questions in which I think would be helpful when produce a children based movie. As can be seen from the diagram above, majority of the TARUC students (100%) reported that they have watched Enchanted movie before. I was surprised that most of the TARUC students have watched Enchanted movie before. This helped us to find out more details about how do college students think about Enchanted whether it is a children based movie or adult based movie. The survey shows that the highest percentage of students (38%) who watch the Enchanted movie through DVD. 32 % of students watched the Enchanted movie through cinema. The lowest percentage is 30% of students watched the Enchanted movie through Internet. With this question, it shows that majority of TARUC students would prefer buying a DVD to watch movie. I think that watching movie through DVD are clearer and can be a collection. From the diagram above, A large proportion of students (86%) reported that they like the Enchanted movie. Minority of the students (14%) reported that they do not like the Enchanted movie. It shows that TARUC students are mostly interested in this movie. Some of the respondents said that they like the movie because they like the idea that there is an animation world that comes together with a realistic world. Some of the respondents said that they do not like the movie because it is a twisted fairytale and it is a boring movie. From the questionnaire, this pie chart shows that an overpowering percentage of TARUC students (46%) watched this movie on once, it is a disappointing finding. 32% of TARUC students watched this movie on twice. Only minority of students (22%) watched this movie more than twice. It shows that TARUC students do not like to re-watch the Enchanted movie. As is can be seen from the pie chart above, the survey shows that 64% of students think that the Enchanted movie is a children based movie. Only 36% of students think that the Enchanted movie is an adult based movie. It strongly shows that most of the TARUC students perceive Enchanted movie as a children based movie. The following answer is based on targeted audience’s choice of answers, whether they think it is children based movie or adult based movie. If their answer is children based movie, it will proceed to question 6. If the answer is adult based movie, it will proceed to question 7. As it can be seen in pie chart above, it shows that the reason why our target audiences think Enchanted movie is a children based movie. Majority of TARUC students (73%) said that the storyline is like fairytale which is the most popular answer. The next popular answer is ‘it contains traditional animation and computer-generated imagery’ from TARUC students. There is no student who choose the answer, ‘because of the stepmother’. Only 1 student chooses ‘other’, she said that the dialogue of movie is easy to understand so it is quite suitable for children. This is a surprisingly finding considering the reason why TARUC students think Enchanted movie is an adult based movie, there is two equal answer of percentage (33%) which is ‘it contains live-action filmmaking’ and ‘it contains adult contents’. 28% of TARUC students think that it is an adult based movie because it is a romance movie. The minority of students (6%) was choosing others. According to one of the student, he said that he think this movie is an adult based movie because the idea of the movie may mislead the children growth and development. According to the bar chart above, it shows that the review of the students to the Enchanted movie. 0% of student vote for 1. There is 2% of students vote for 2. 4% of students vote for 3. 8% of students vote for 4, 6 and 10 respectively. 6% of students vote for 9. 14% of students vote for 5 and 22% of students voted for 7. The highest voting is 8 which achieve 28% of students vote. Conclusion With the help of the research, we found of that students of Tunku Abdul Rahman College perceive Enchanted as a children based movie. They strongly believe that it is suitable for children. From the college students’ point of view, they believe that it is a children based movie because they think that the storyline of the movie is like a fairytale where there will always be a happily ever after ending. In our opinion, we think that both answers chosen by the college students has its different perception. According to the theory that we used, selective perception theory, it is where people tend to view things based on the concept of favoritism and their prefer frame of references. Most of the time we will never get a 100% answer as different people have different views. Some people may choose to believe it is an adult based movie and some people might choose to believe it is a children based movie. It proves to us that people view things based on their own concept and thoughts.

Aristotle and the Techne of Rhetoric Essay -- History Aristotle Essays

Aristotle and the Techne of Rhetoric Between the third and fifth centuries B.C. there existed a â€Å"golden and classical age† of thought in the ancient world, with the majority of this activity centered in the polis of Athens, Greece. Although the city is historically recognized for its legendary conflict with rival polis Sparta, Athens is perhaps best known for the creation of democracy—that noble political experiment that laid the preliminary structure for most of the rights we Americans enjoy today. First among these rights was the freedom of speech. Each Athenian citizen (meaning male land owners numbering around five thousand) met regularly in public forums (in an open-air auditorium called the Pnyx) to discuss laws and issues. Each man had a voice in the matter, and his success in dissuading or persuading his audience meant the action Athens would potentially take. So outstanding rhetoric, and the study, teaching, and delivery of it, became the center of attention among the Athenians; democracy meant individual empowerment, and good rhetoric meant the power to make change. The first notable scholars to take on the challenge of analyzing and teaching the art of rhetoric were Isocrates, Socrates, and later, Plato. Plato soon created an academy in Athens, appropriately called the Plato Academy that attracted men who were interested in the art. One of the first students was Aristotle, who like Plato, had a lasting effect not only on the study of rhetoric, but the discipline itself. Aristotle was born in 384 BC at Stagirus, a Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace. His father, Nichomachus, was a respected physician to the King Amyntas of Macedonia. This connection with the royal family served Aristotle we... ...tain an audience in an effort to create change. So no, technology is not always simply a machine spitting out rivets or a computer humming away in some lab somewhere. It can be, as Aristotle argues, found in the logic of the human mind; for the mind is, and will always be, humankind’s greatest techne. Works Cited Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Ed. G. A. Kennedy. Oxford: New York, 1991. â€Å"Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE.) Overview† The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available Online: www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aristotl.htm. Accessed: 12 Feb. 2003. Foss, S.K. Rhetorical Criticism; Exploration and Practice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1996. Newbold, Dr. Webster. â€Å"Review of ‘Understanding technology’ Unit: Writing and Technology.† Available online: www.bsu.edu/web/00wwnewbold /213/213unit1review.htm. Accessed: 11 Feb. 2003.