Do Freshmen Students need RAs at Miami University Term Paper

Do Freshmen Students need RAs at Miami University - Term Paper Example The decision by Miami University to have RAs on campus is very important. A wide range of services provided by RAs help in creating a supportive environment for freshmen, many of whom are away from home for the first time Office of Residence Life ( Office of Residence Life, 2015). The RAs have been helpful in serving the residents as well as granting them a certain level of independence at the same time. It is evident that RAs have been great sources of advice and campus resources to new students that may otherwise be unable to acquire the same resources. RAs serve this purpose most importantly by being friendly and relatable as well as by serving as peer advisors for fellow students. They have organized and transformed halls of residence thereby eliminating confusion and surprise among new students, and instead increased comfort and satisfaction of campus life among residents. The effectiveness of RAs at the University is evident through their ability to deal with conflicting situat ions in halls of residence as well as helping green freshmen to understand university activities. Therefore, the decision of having RAs in halls of residence should be embraced across all higher learning institutions to promote smooth and friendly transition process among freshmen students. The following interviews with two freshmen at the university confirmed the role and importance of RAs in helping freshmen students attain smooth transition process to college life. Kayla: E-mail Address: Lawsonk2@miamioh.edu

Capital Markets Midterm Questions and Solutions Essay Example for Free

Capital Markets Midterm Questions and Solutions Essay 2 percent for each question 1. Liquidity is the ease with which an asset can be exchanged for money 2. The concept of adverse selection helps to explain why the ï ¬ nancial system is heavily regulated 3. The Fed can inï ¬â€šuence the fed fund interest rate by selling T-bills, which ____reserves, thereby ____the federal fund rate. removes, raising 4. Standard Repos are very low risk loans 5. A 4-year bond pays an annual coupon of 3.5%. If the interest rate equals 2.75% per year, how much do you have to pay to buy the equivalent of a $1,000,000 bond face value? $10 0280 000 6. Unanticipated deï ¬â€šation implies a a decline in net worth, as price levels fall while debt burden remains unchanged. 7. What is the annualized discount rate on a Treasury bill that you purchase for $9,900 and that will mature in 91 days for $10,000? 3.96% 8. Moral hazard is a problem arising from only A and B of the above 9. A discount loan by the Fed to a bank causes a(n) ____ in reserves in the banking system and a(n) ____ in the monetary base. increase; increase 10. The standard deï ¬ nition of the shadow banking systemt includes money market funds, hedge funds, and pools of securitized assets Comprehensive Questions (30 percent) 6 percent for each question 1) The ï ¬ nancial system is important because it channels funds, reduces asymmetric information problems, provides an eï ¬Æ'cient payment system, and helps to manage risk. Explain the remaining functions that the ï ¬ nancial system performs. Besides these functions, the ï ¬ nancial system provides ways for invididuals to pool their resources. For instance, some investment projects generate a positive NPV, but require a large initial down payment. Dividing ownership into many individual shares provides an eï ¬Æ'cient way to pool individual resources in order to ï ¬ nance these investment projects. The ï ¬ nancial system also provides liquidity to market participants. This is important because corporations and individuals do not have the same time-horizon. Therefore, it would be very diï ¬Æ'cult for corporations to get long-term sources of funding without these liquidity services. Finally, the ï ¬ nancial system provides important information to ï ¬ nancial investors, corporate managers, and political leaders. This information is critical to improve the decision-making process. For instance, managers may use the information observed in the ï ¬ nancial system to compute the NPV of investment projects. 2) One of your friend tells you: The main function of the ï ¬ nancial system is to channel funds from lenders to borrowers. This function can be performed interchangeably by capital markets or ï ¬ nancial institutions. Do you agree? Why? It is true that both capital markets and ï ¬ nancial institutions are useful in channeling funds from lenders to borrowers. However, they diï ¬â‚¬er in a fundamental way. Contrary to capital markets, ï ¬ nancial institutions are extremely good at dealing with asymmetric information problems. This is due to the private nature of their activities. By avoiding free-riding, banks can bare the substantial costs of screening and monitoring borrowers. Therefore, corporations for which asymmetric information problems are substantial (e.g., small corporations), rely heavily on banks’ funding. If banks cut lending, as it was the case during the recent crisis, these companies do not have the option of receiving funding from capital makets, and must reduce their activities. Therefore, some of the functions performed by banks cannot be performed interchangeably by capital markets. 3) What is Quantitative Easing and how does it diï ¬â‚¬er from the standard tool used by the Fed to expand the monetary base? What was the stated purpose of Quantitative Easing? Quantitative Easing refers to the central bank’s policy of buying long-term securities, speciï ¬ cally mortgage-backed securities and 10—year Treasury bonds. This is diï ¬â‚¬erent from the standard approach used by the Fed. Traditionally, the Fed expands the monetary base by implementing an open-market purchase of T-bills. The stated purpose of Quantitative Easing was to decrease the yield of these long-term securities. From the viewpoint of borrowers, this decrease would help them get lower reï ¬ nancing conditions, thus easing pressure in these markets. From the viewpoint of lenders, this decrease in yield may render these securities less attractive. Therefore, lenders may be willing to start buying risky assets again, thus improving economic conditions. 4) One student argues: If more customers want to borrow funds at the prevailing interest rate, a ï ¬ nancial institution can easily increase its proï ¬ ts by raising interest rates on its loan. Is this statement true, false, uncertain? Explain your answer. The situation faced by the bank is the following: it has limited resources and sees a lot of clients willing to borrow money, creating excess demand. The statement above is uncertain. A priori, we might believe that if the bank increases the interest rate, it is able to eliminate this excess demand and generate additional proï ¬ ts (there would be an increase in both the proï ¬ t per loan and the quantity of loans). However, this reasoning assumes that the credit quality of the borrowers stays constant. This may not be true because raising the interest rate also increases adverse selection. To illustrate, consider the used-car market. If buyers observe an increase in the number of people interested in selling their cars, they may want to oï ¬â‚¬er a lower price. But a lower price gives incentive to the sellers of good cars to leave the market, leaving only sellers of lemons. As a result, the average quality of the cars purchased by buyers will decrease. A large part of the excess demand observed by the bank is driven by poor credit ï ¬ rms. After increasing the interest rate, the bank observes that these ï ¬ rms still agree to borrow, i.e., their poor credit quality should be charged an even higher interest rate. On the contrary, this higer interest rate may discourage good ï ¬ rms from borrowing from this bank because the loan becomes too expensive. As a result, the relative importance of bad ï ¬ rms over good ones increases, leading to a decrease in the average ï ¬ rm quality. This decrease in quality may lead to higher default rates and to a decrease in the bank’s proï ¬ t. 5) What is meant by a ï ¬â€šight to safety/liquidity? When does it occur? How can it trigger these negative spirals on the value of the banks’ balance sheet? A ï ¬â€šight to safety/liquidity commonly describes the behaviour of investors when they attempt to sell the risky/illiquid assets they hold in their portfolio and move towards safe/liquid assets. This ï ¬â€šight typically occurs in times of crisis when the investors’ willingness to take risks decreases signiï ¬ cantly. Since banks mostly hold risky and illiquid assets, these ï ¬â€šights to safety have a strong impact on their asset value. As their capital gets curtailed, their risk proï ¬ le increases, making investors and depositors more worried about the potential losses they may incur. Because these lenders give money on a short-term basis, they can quickly go to the bank and ask for their money back. Then, banks have to scramble for liquidity and sell their risky/illiquid assets. When many banks try to sell simultaneously, the price of these assets will go further down. For instance, suppose that in normal times, the bank would have to sell 15% of its assets to reimburse lenders. As many institutions sell simultaneously, the bank has to sell more than 15%. Observing these additional losses, investors and depositors may want to further reduce the amount they are willing to lend, aggravating the liquidity issues face by banks. Overall, these eï ¬â‚¬ects reinforce each other, creating a spiraling eï ¬â‚¬ect. Understanding Interest Rates (30 percent) 15 percent for question 1, 10 for question 2, and 5 for question 3 1) In February 2010, a column in the Wall Street Journal warns: Be wary of long-term bonds The risk of higher expected inï ¬â€šation is in due course. Longer-term bonds are the most at risk. Using the supply and demand analysis studied in class, plot a graph that clearly explains the eï ¬â‚¬ect of an increase in expected inï ¬â€šation on the bond price. Why are longer-term bonds more at risk? Explain whether your analysis would be diï ¬â‚¬erent if you were to examine the impact on the price of TIPS. Since the coupon rate paid by US government bonds is ï ¬ xed in nominal terms, news of higher expected inï ¬â€šation leads to a decrease in the real rate of return oï ¬â‚¬ered by these bonds. As a result, the demand curve moves to the left as investors want to invest their money in securities with better return prospects. In addition, the supply curve moves to the right as corporations can borrow at lower costs in real terms. Because of these two shifts, we observe a large excess supply of bonds at the initial interest level. This excess supply will lead to a decrease in the bond price and a increase in the interest rate until the new equilibrium is reached. This eï ¬â‚¬ect, called the Fisher eï ¬â‚¬ect, is shown in the graph below: The eï ¬â‚¬ect is likely to be stronger for long-term bonds because investors are stuck with ï ¬ xed nominal payments for a long-time period. As a result, the only way to be compensated for higher inï ¬â€šation during many years is to buy the bond at a suï ¬Æ'ciently low price today. Intuitively, we can capture this price sensitivity using duration, as we know that the duration of a long-term bond is above that of a short-term bond. The analysis would be completely diï ¬â‚¬erent for TIPS because their coupon payments adjust for changes in inï ¬â€šation. As a result, any news of future inï ¬â€šation simply means that the future coupon payments in nominal terms will be higher. As a result, the price is not sensitive to changes in expected inï ¬â€šation. 2) In the Financial Times in February 2011, Professor Siegel from the Wharton School talks about the decline in the real yield of TIPS: Recently, the yields on these bonds have collapsed to levels that would have been uninimaginable just a few years ago. Last October, the real yield on the US 10-year TIPS plunged to 36 basis points. Professor Siegel argues that an important factor driving this result is the increase in inï ¬â€šation risk. Why do US investors currently perceive that inï ¬â€šation risk is higher than usual? Explain why this increase in inï ¬â€šation risk can lead to (i) an increase in the demand for TIPS relative to bonds; and (ii) a decrease in the TIPS interest rate. There are two sources of concerns regarding future inï ¬â€šation. First, the central bank has greatly expanded its monetary base during the recent ï ¬ nancial crisis—at the end of 2009, its value was close to $2 trillion. For the moment, banks are not aggressively lending, implying that the growth rate of the monetary base is somewhat disconnected from that of the money supply. But failure from the Fed to reduce the monetary base as lending activity resumes may lead to higher inï ¬â€šation. Second, the ï ¬ scal position of the US government has deteriorated substantially over the past few years, leading to a downgrade of the credit rating attached to its bonds. If the future growth rate in the economy is not suï ¬Æ'ciently high and if the US government is not able to reduce deï ¬ cits, it may have no option but inï ¬â€šate the debt away. This will of course lead to higher inï ¬â€šation. Overall, these two issues create important uncertainty about the future path of inï ¬â€šation. Contrary to bonds, TIPS are protected against inï ¬â€šation. If there is higher inï ¬â€šation risk, bonds become riskier relative to TIPS. Using our supply and demand framework, the demand for bonds moves to the left, while the demand for TIPS moves to the right. At the initial price, there is an excess demand for TIPS, driving the TIPS price up and its interest rate down, consistent with Professor Siegel’s arguments. 3) Professor Siegel also argues that: As economic growth recovers and real rates rise, the price of TIPS will fall. Can you ï ¬ nd a simple explanation of this statement based on our supply and demand framework? Economic growth means that the business cycle is in an expanding phase. In this case, we can rely on the relation between business cycle expansions and the interest rate seen in class. First, the demand curve for bonds move to the right because of the wealth eï ¬â‚¬ect, as people have more money to invest in the capital market (bonds, stocks,). On the supply side, business cycle expansions are related to an increase in the ï ¬ rms’ expected proï ¬ tability. As a result, the supply curve moves to the right. Based on empirical evidence, the move of the supply curve tends to be more important than the one observed for the demand. At the initial level of interest rate, there is an excess supply, leading to an decrease in bond price, and an increase in the interest rate. This is consistent with the yield reaction discussed by Professor Siegel. Bond Market (20 percent) 5 percent for each question Consider the following bonds: Annual interest rate Maturity Annual coupon Price Duration Bond X 5% 8 years 3% 87.1 7.2 Bond Y 8% 3 years 3% 87.1 ? 1) One of your friends tells you: the fact that the price of these two bonds is the same is not consistent with theory. Without making any computation, explain whether you agree with your friend. Your friend is not right. These two bonds are both quoted below par value, because their respective yield to maturity is lower than the coupon rate. If these two bonds had the same maturity, the price of bond Y should be lower than the price of bond X because investors require a higher interest rate to hold bond Y. However, the maturity of bond Y is lower. Although the annual diï ¬â‚¬erential between the interest rate and the coupon rate is higher for bond Y, this diï ¬â‚¬erential has to be given during 3 years only. For bond X, the annual diï ¬â‚¬erential between the interest rate and the coupon rate is lower, but it has to be given during 8 years. In our case, these two eï ¬â‚¬ects (diï ¬â‚¬erent ratings and diï ¬â‚¬erent maturities) oï ¬â‚¬set each other and the two prices are exactly the same. The information shown in the table is therefore perfectly consistent with theory. 2) Compute the duration of bond Y and compare it with that of bond X. Is the diï ¬â‚¬erence consistent with theory?

Should the U.S. build a National Missile Defense System? Essay

Should the U.S. build a National Missile Defense System? â€Å"What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security didn’t depend upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter an enemy attack?† Ronald Reagan; 1983 In his speech of March 23, 1983, President Reagan presented his vision of a future where a Nation’s security did not rest upon the threat of nuclear retaliation, but on the ability to protect and defend against such attacks. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) research program was designed to tell whether, and how, advanced defense technologies could contribute to the feasibility of this vision. What is a national missile defense (NMD)? A NMD is in theory â€Å"a technological shield that could destroy all incoming missiles† (Cirincione and Von Hippel 1). A NMD would most likely employ ground-based missiles that would intercept and destroy incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). ICBMs are missiles that are capable of hitting targets thousands of miles away from their launch site. The National Missile Defense Act â€Å"calls for developing a missile-defense system that could protect the United States from an attack by a handful of nuclear armed ballistic missiles† (Ballistic Missile Defenses). It is important to realize the proposed NMD would not be designed to protect against an all out nuclear attack featuring hundreds of missiles. Is a NMD a good thing for the United States? I believe the United States should not develop and deploy a NMD system. How does the NMD work? According to the Federation of American Scientists at fas.org, there are five elements involved in the missile defense system. The first rudiment is the Ground Based Interceptors (GBI). These are the weapons of the system. Their job is to intercept ballistic missile warheads and through the force of impact, destroy them. The GBI includes the interceptor, its launch and support equipment, missile silos, and personnel. The missile is make of an EKV and boosters, and the GBI sites would be capable of holding 20 missiles with eventual upgrade to 100. The next part of the system is called the Battle Management Command and Control (BMC2). This is the brains of the system and it controls and operates the missile defense system. It provides decisive support systems, battle management systems and displays, and also situation awareness information. Satellites... ...iew: Desirability and Feasibility of Ballistic Missile Defenses.† The Last Fifteen Minutes: Ballistic Missile Defense in Perspective. Ed. Joseph Cirincione and Frank Von Hippel. N.p.: Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, 1999. 6-15. Gordon, Michael R. â€Å"Russians Firmly Reject U.S. Plan to Reopen ABM Treaty.† New York Times. 21 Oct. 1999: A3. Hulme, Dr. Derrick. â€Å"Arms Control.† World Problems and Conflict. Alma College, Alma, MI. 17 Nov. 1999. Krepon, Michael. â€Å"Missile Defense: Not Such a Bad Idea.† The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. May-June. 1999: 31-33. Mendelsohn, Jack. â€Å"Missile Defense: And It Still Won’t Work.† The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. May-June. 1999: 29-31. National Academy of Sciences. The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997. Ray, James Lee. Global Politics. 7th ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. â€Å"Selling Russia on Missile Defense.† New York Times. 21 Oct. 1999: A24. â€Å"What Proponents of Missile Defense Argue and Rebuttals.† Council for a Livable World. n. pag. Online. Internet. 2 Nov. 1999. Available WWW: http://www.clw/org/ef/bmdrebuts.html. Federation of American Scientists – www.fas.org

Analysis of A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift :: essays research papers

This essay by Jonathan Swift is a brutal satire in which he suggests that the poor Irish families should kill their young children and eat them in order to eliminate the growing number of starving citizens. At this time is Ireland, there was extreme poverty and wide gap between the poor and the rich, the tenements and the landlords, respectively. Throughout the essay Swift uses satire and irony as a way to attack the indifference between classes. Swift is not seriously suggesting cannibalism, he is trying to make known the desperate state of the lower class and the need for a social and moral reform in Ireland. Jonathan Smith goes to extreme measures to explain his new plan to raise the economic wellbeing of his country. He explains what age is too young and what age is too old, in order to eat the tenants children when they are at their prime juiciness. He also gives a list of suggestions on how to cook them, ?A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.? All of this talk about eating children comes as a surprise because previous to this disturbing suggestion, Swift is ironically discussing the plight of starving beggars in Ireland. The reader is unprepared for the solution that he suggests. The idea of eating all the youth in the country is obviously self-defeating and is not being seriously suggested by the writer. He is simply trying to show how desperate the lower class is in Ireland. Swift introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting, taxing absentee landlords, of encouraging the domestic economy by buying Irish goods, of discouraging pride, vanity, idleness, by dismissing them in his essay by saying that they are impractical. However, these reforms greatly differ from his ?modest proposal? because instead of the poor sacrificing their children, it would involve the rich sacrificing some of their luxuries. He is trying to point out the fact that reforms that would be practical and beneficial to the people of Ireland are being overlooked for the convenience of the rich.

Modern english literature Essay

The purpose of this course is to encourage students to gain an awareness of, and insight into, the evolution of modern English literature. Students will become acquainted with writers, poets and playwrights such as Thomas Hardy, William Somerset Maugham, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Henry Williamson, John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, Charles Causley, Samuel Beckett, Laurie Lee, Agatha Christie and John Le Carrà ©. Connexions with socio-political factors will also be explored. The course takes the form of lectures, to which students may contribute their research. Evaluation is by written unseen examination, in the form of short essays. The lectures form but the tip of the iceberg, providing you with a door to your own research and study. You are encouraged to share the results of your studies, helping not only your fellow students, but me. We are, after all, in the same boat, even if I am at the helm. I do not so much teach, as try to help you to learn. I shall provide some examples of examination questions at the end of this hopefully helpful guide. English literature is a huge field, and I can obviously only try to open a few windows for you, or at least loosen the locks, with apologies to the many superb writers who have been omitted. You will hopefully have had a grounding, by attending my other course. If you have not, talk to other students. So here we go! We kick off with two superb dramatists and writers, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). Wilde was quintessentially Irish in wit, humour, verbal prowess, blood, and origin, yet, having studied at Trinity College Dublin and then Oxford, was very ‘English’ in a pleasantly louche, supercilious and upperclassish way. In contrast, Shaw was an Anglo-Irish Protestant, morally, socially and politically conscious, even being a founder member of the Fabian Society. He was also self-taught, having left school at the age of fourteen. Their differences are reflected  in their work, although their pithiness unites them. Wilde is perhaps best known for ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’. Grey leads a life of debauchery, while remaining handsome and in good shape. But his portrait becomes increasingly corrupt and horrid: it represents his soul. The ending is pretty horrific. There is of course more to the book than just that, and although it is a superb work, I wouldn’t recommend it to adolescents! In the preface Wilde writes; ‘There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.’ In other words, he seems to be saying that art is for art’s sake. Another of his well-known works is the play, ‘The Importance of being Earnest’, from which we have the gem: ‘Really, if the low orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?’ Shaw found the work hateful and sinister, exhibiting ’real degeneracy’. In this connexion, on the other hand, Wilde said of Shaw: ‘He hasn’t an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.’ Other witty Wilde sayings are: ‘Modern journalism justifies its own existence by the greatest Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.â€⠄¢; ‘A cynic: a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’; ‘I can resist anything except temptation.’; and ‘When good Americans die, they go to Paris.’. Wilde’s wild life seems to have led to a tragically early demise, not as early as Mozart, but still premature: he sued the father of a poet friend of his, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel, for accusing him of performing sodomy with his son (the poet). Wilde lost the case, was arrested, and sent to Reading Gaol for two years, for sodomy. He then left for Paris, changing his name to Sebastian Melmoth, dying two years later. Was he Dorian Gray? Was he a homosexual? Having read ‘De Profundis’ (which he wrote in prison) I can find no forensic evidence of his admitting to having actually practiced pillow-biting and shirt-lifting, but then perhaps he was a teaser. Well, perhaps he had certain tendencies towards young men, but the question is whether it was right to send him to gaol. I leave this to your judgment. It is not an easy question, since one needs to look at the morality of the Victorian Age, which some say had an element of hypocrisy: sometimes, those who persecute people manically and morally for something, are trying to hide their own tendencies, even from themselves†¦. At any event, having run out of cash, and written ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, this former witty wordsmith par excellence said not long before he died: ‘I  shall have to die beyond my means.’ He left a wife and two children, for whom he had written a lovely, but slightly frightening book of tales. How great would he be today, had he lived to Shaw’s age? He is great enough, as it is. Shaw, perhaps somewhat more mature emotionally than Wilde, and surely a decent enough chap, was, like Wilde, healthily critical of people, but more as members of what we term ‘society’. Thus, in his plays, he criticized, inter alia, slum landlords and private doctors. In the preface to ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’, he writes: ‘Thus everything is on the side of the doctor. When men die of disease, they are said to die from natural causes. When they recover (and they usually do), the doctor gets the credit of curing them.’ His play applies very much to today. Shaw was also an expert on class. If you wish to gain some insight into class and accent in England, you should red ‘Pygmalion’. If you wish to understand something about the England-Ireland problem, you can read ‘John Bull’s other Island.’ Some memorable sayings from Shaw are: ‘We have no right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without possessing it’; ‘He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career.’; and ‘ He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.’ I escape this definition, since I do not teach, but try to help students to learn. He comments on the English were cutting; for example: ‘A person who thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.’ Our course then rushes through John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad (not even British-born) and T.S. Eliot. This highly educated chap is known, inter alia, for ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’. He wrote the play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, a very good theatrical adaptation of the dastardly murder of Archbishop Thomas à   Becket. One of my favourite quotes of his, from ‘The Rock’, is: ‘Where is the wisdom lost to knowledge, where is the knowledge lost to information and where is the word we lost in words?’ After a brief glimpse of the amazing American Ezra Pound, who found Europe and Italy in particular, more to his liking intellectually than the USA, we come to William Yeats (1865-1939). He is the quintessential Celtic Irishman,  a friend of Shaw and Wilde, and a good dramatist and poet. ‘The Celtic Twilight’, a collection of traditional Irish stories, is a good pointer to Yeats’ thinking. Jumping now to Henry James (1843-1916), an American who, unlike many, preferred to settle in London rather than Paris, we see a man who could pick up the apposite word with the point of his pen, in a meticulous fashion. I find his style too precise for my liking, the very antithesis of ‘stream of consciousness’ writing. Nevertheless, he was a competent writer. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is a good ghost story. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), a giant in English literature, is worth chubby paragraph. A poet who wrote novels, he was born to a modest family (his father was a stonemason), trained as an architect, but returned to his beloved Wessex to write. Beautifully written, his novels can be quite pessimistic: ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ ends with the heroine’s execution for stabbing her husband to death, a husband whom she was emotionally pressurised into marrying, although she loved another. ‘Jude the Obscure’ ends with three children hanging dead behind a door, on clothes hooks. His stories often bring out what he saw as the injustice of the divorce laws, especially for women who had married the wrong man, and were then trapped in their marriage, and how they and their lovers were then ostracized by society. His writing was sensitive, and some of his descriptions of nature in his beloved Wessex are touching. We now look at three childrens’ writers, Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician, non-practising Anglican deacon, and photographer, 1832-1898), Kenneth Graham (1859-1932), and Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). Few have not heard of Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there’, both of which are intriguing fantasies, almost making imagination real. From the latter, we have the memorable quote: ‘The question is’, said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things.’ The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master, that’s all.’ It was rumoured that he had a not wholly healthy interest in young girls, although there is not a jot of evidence that he ever did anything untoward. From Alice’s fantasy world, the Scotsman Kenneth Graham takes us to the fantasy world of little animals,  with ‘The Wind in the Willows’, written to his son. We see the daily lives of the toad, the badger, rat and mole in a typical English country setting. Beatrix Potter also wrote short books about animals, illustrating them herself. Of note are ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ and the ‘Tale of Mrs.Tittlemouse. She spent most of her later life in the Lake District, the most beautiful part of England. This had a kind effect on her writing. Moving now to more social and even sexual themes, we come to D.H. (David Herbert Richard) Lawrence (1885-1930). This man got through the bone to the marrow of passion, love and sex. His quintessential book is ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, a story of illicit love, passion and unadulterated sex between the upper-class wife of an impotent aristocrat and the gamekeeper. Lawrence left England, and the book was published in Florence, not appearing in England until 1961, following a sensational obscenity trial. Lawrence wrote other books, such as ‘Women in Love’ and ‘Sons and Lovers’. He is very perceptive, revealing the real, rather than the politically correct and sanitised nonsense of hypocrisy. We can connect this to the English people’s dislike of being obvious, particularly when it comes to sex, and their embarrassment of sexual matters, often expressed in crude jokes. Now back to the Irish: James Joyce (1882-1942) was another of those linguists who chose Paris. His most well-known work is ‘Ulyses’, an example of his so-called ‘stream of consciousness’ writing, which tries to catch one’s deepest thoughts and imagination on paper, a kind of interior monologue. As such, it is naturally unstructured. ‘Ulyses’ deals with a day in Dublin, and a whole gaggle of characters. ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ is another example, and has been linked to Giambattista Vico’s ‘New Science’, which contains a good deal about the origins of language. Joyce certainly pushes written language to its limits. In contrast, his ‘Dubliners’, a series of short stories about life in Dublin, is surprisingly prosaic in style. He influenced another Irishman, the playwright Samuel Becket (1906-1989), another linguist residing in Paris, best known for ‘ En attendant Godot’, written ori ginally in French. The gripping play ends without Godot arriving. Let us now spare some thought for the wonderful and tragic Virginia Woolf,  known in particular for ‘To the Lighthouse’, ‘The Waves’, ‘Orlando’ and ‘Mrs. Dalloway’. As with Joyce, we see a certain amount of internal dialogue. Woolf was a leading light of the ‘Bloomsbury Group’, named after the area of London in which it met. She has also been seen as a feminist, having written : ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. But does this not also apply to men? It is up to you to decide, by reading some of her work, whether or not she was a feminist. She is said to have had mental problems. At any rate, she drowned herself in the Thames. Back now to the men. Aldous Huxley (1894) is best known for ‘Brave New World’ (1934), a particularly negative critique of the future, where Britain is a wasteland of human ‘robots’ and scientific breeding (he virtually predicted test-tube babies), with subordination the ideal of happiness. He developed the theme in 1959, with ‘Brave New World Revisited’. At any rate, he is relevant today, as is the inimitable literary giant George Orwell (1903-50), whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. His ‘1984’, published in 1948, predicts a future where the world is divided into huge power blocks, and where people are run on government propaganda. Wherever you live, ‘Big Brother’ watches you from a television screen, and so help you if you say anything against the government, or even try to have a loving relationship with someone. As for the Ministry of Truth, it is based on lying. ‘Animal Farm’ is an attack on communist totalitarianism. After Eton, Blair became a colonial policeman in Burma (he was born in Bengal), an experience which made him critical of the British Empire. ‘Burmese Days’ is a novel which brings out the hypocrisy of empire, and how social class mattered, in a story of unrequited love. Orwell was also a good short story writer. ‘Shooting an Elephant’ brings out the relationship between rulers and ruled, while ‘A Hanging’ is horrific in its detail. Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war, and wrote a very perceptive – if occasionally pedantic – book about the details of the conflict. He also spent several months living as a casual worker in London and Paris, working mainly as a dishwasher. He then produced a highly entertaining book, ‘Down and out in London and Paris’. Here is an example of his writing, from ‘E ngland, your England’: ‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only â€Å"doing their duty†, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.’ Like several writers, Orwell was also a journalist. We cannot end without mentioning his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, a highly entertaining but effective lambasting of the influence of political ideology on the English language, and very relevant today, with the erosion of clear English through computer language, sloppy education and political correctness. From Orwell, we turn now to two children’s writers, although their books are also appropriate for adults. The South African J.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, is most well known for ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’, adventure stories laden with fantasy and drawing on Tolkien’s knowledge of the Celts. If I compare Tolkien to Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter’, the latter catapults itself out of existence. Roald Dahl (1916-1990) is also a wonderful writer, primarily but not exclusively for children. Born in Wales of Norwegian parents, his daughter was once one of the girlfriends of a cousin of mine. He wrote a series of short stories, ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, so gripping that they were serialised on television. Each story ends with a twist. Although they are for adults and older children, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ is defi nitely for young people. ‘My Uncle Oswald’ is also an amusing book. So we come to a mammoth of English literature, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). Born in Paris, where his father was a legal adviser, hiss mother died when he was eight years of age, and his father two years later. He was sent to live with an uncle, the Vicar of Whitstable, apparently a cold character, and then attended King’s School, Canterbury, left early, and studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg, ending up studying medicine at St.Thomas’ Hospital in Lambeth, London, where he qualified as a doctor. His second book, ‘Lisa of Lambeth’ (1897), a story about working-class adultery, sold so well that Maugham became a full-time writer, moving to the south of France in 1928, around the time of his divorce (it is said that he had rather special relationships with various  males). We cannot of course mention all his books (he even wrote some popular plays), but of note are: ‘Of Human Bondage’, autobiographical in nature, †˜Ashenden’, about a secret agent, and four volumes of very entertaining short stories, of which my favourite is ‘Salvatore’. Maugham was certainly a pretty rum character, and was good at irritating people, in particularly those whom he almost libeled in some of his books. For even if he did not mention real names, it was sometimes fairly obvious whom he meant. The following quote reveals some of Maugham’s sometimes bitter-sweet powers of describing people: ‘When she reddened, her pasty skin acquired a curiously mottled look, like strawberries and cream gone bad.’ Wending our way towards the writers of thrillers, I shall touch on only four, although there is a whole bevy of them. Graham Greene (1904-91), who converted to Rome in 1926, was educated at Oxford, and worked for British Intelligence for a while. His thrillers are gripping, and delve deep into morality. One of his best thrillers, the ‘Human Factor’, is based on espionage, as is ‘Our Man In Havanna’. Other superb books are books are ‘The End of the Affair’, ‘The Honorary Consul’ and ‘Ministry of Fear’. John Le Carrà © (1931- ), whose real name is David Cornwell, is still going strong. After Oxford, he taught at Eton for two years, and then worked for MI5 (which handles, along with the Police’s Special Branch, internal security, but often has rows with MI6 about responsibility for Northern Ireland, because of the connexions with the Republic of Ireland). His espionage thriller ‘The Spy who came in from the Cold’, won him worldwide fame, and was made into a very good film. It brought out the reality of intelligence work, the drudgery and the mutual suspicions that abound in the incestuous world of institutionalised spying. Some of his other books are ‘Smiley’s Circus’, ‘A Small town in Germany’, ‘A Perfect Spy’ and ‘The Constant Gardener’ which, despite the alleged end of the Cold War, is as thrilling as ever, questioning the morality of big business. To get a sense of his style, here is the beginning of ‘A Small Town in Germany’: ‘Ten minutes to midnight: a pious Friday in May and a fine river mist lying in the market square. Bonn was a Balkan city, stained and secret [†¦].’ In juxtaposition, Ian Fleming (1908-1964), author of the extremely well-known Bond novels, emphasises, perhaps a mite too much, the more glamorous aspects of the job,  but nevertheless remains plausible. He was in British Naval Intelligence for a while. Then we should mention Len Deighton (1929- ), who may have caught the writing bug when doing his National Service as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch. ‘The Ipcress File’ made him an instant success, and was made into a good film, with Michael Caine as the hero. Some of his other books are ‘Horse under Water’, ‘Bomber’ and ‘Berlin Game’ (part of a series). We cannot leave these chaps without mention of a lady writer, who, although not an espionage expert, is one of the best crime novelists: Agatha Christie (1890-1978), wrote sixty six detective novels, using her experience as a hospital dispenser in the Great War to learn a good deal about poisons. Although her writing style is surprisingly simple, she manages to keep the reader hooked by misdirecting him. Who has not heard of Mrs. Marples and Hercule Poirot? ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, ‘Ten Little Niggers’ and ‘The Mousetrap’ are just a few of her works. P.D.James was also an extremely good crime writer. Before now moving to a small selection of British poets and their poetry, we shall look at Henry Williamson, since he connects well to our first poet, Ted Hughes, who knew him, and spoke at his funeral. Williamson was a writer, journalist and farmer, who was in love with nature. He fought in the Great War, becoming disgusted with the greed and bigotry that had caused it, and determined that Britain and Germany should never go to war again. Because he had supported Oswald Mosley and his Fascists, and had admired Hitler before the next world war, a few small-minded individuals tried to damage his reputation. It is silly that the ‘Norton Anthology of English Literature’ does not include him, while including many lesser writers. After all, Oscar Wilde believed that art is for art’s sake, and should not be polluted by politics. Writers should be able to express their views without being sent to Coventry. The greatness of his books, however, saw him through. His masterpiece is ‘Tarka the Otter’, essentially about an otter being hunted to death. The reader actually becomes an otter. Williamson spent many months studying and watching otters before and while he wrote the book. So good was it, that Walt Disney twice approached him for the film rights, and was  roundly rejected. It was eventually made into a proper film, and Williamson died on the same day that the filming of a dying Tarka was taking place. Uncanny or merely coincidental? ‘Salar the Salmon’ is another masterpiece, as is his series of books on the life of Willie Maddison. The ‘Beautiful Years’ and ‘Dandelion Days’, partly autobiographical, describe beautifully a boy growing into adolescence and adulthood. And so to our poetic interlude: Laurie Lee was the quintessential Englishman: ‘Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways, My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant, I set my face into a filial smile To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent. [†¦] The hedges choke with roses fat as cream.’ (from ‘Home from Abroad’). John Betjeman (a poet laureate), and lover of old England, loved Victoriana, the smell of old churches and musty books. But he is also perceptive about people: the following are extracts about an English lady at a service in Westminster Abbey, during the world war: ‘Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans. Spare their women for Thy Sake, And if that is not too easy We will pardon Thy mistake. But gracious Lord, what’er shall be, Don’t let anyone bomb me. Keep our Empire undismembered Guide our forces by Thy hand, Gallant blacks from far Jamaica, Honduras and Togoland; Protect them Lord in all their fights, And, even more, protect the whites. [†¦] Now I feel a little better, What a treat to hear thy word, Where the bones of leading statesmen, Have so often been interr’d. And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait Because I have a luncheon date.’ (from ‘In Westminster Abbey’). Unlike Betjeman, Charles Causley tends to look more at individual people and events, and is not as nostalgic. As regards his views on poetry, he writes in his introduction to a selection of his poems: ‘What a poem â€Å"means† is something that the writer as well as the reader each must decide alone. Only one thing is certain: that, unlike arithmetic, the correct answers may all be right, yet all be different.’ His imagery grips you hard: ‘Bank holiday, a sky of guns, the river Slopping black silver on the level stair. A war-memorial that aims for ever Its stopped, stone barrel on the enormous air.’ (from ‘At Grantchester’) or ‘Oh mother my mouth is full of stars As cartridges in the tray My blood is a twin-branched scarlet tree And it runs all runs away.’ (From ‘Song of the Dying Gunner A.A.1’). or ‘Charlotte she was gentle But they found her in the flood Her Sunday beads among the reeds Beaming with her blood.’ (from ‘The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond’). From poor Charlotte Dymond, we move to Clifford Dyment’s ‘Fox’, which begins: ‘Exploiter of the shadows He moved among the fences, A strip of action coiling Around his farmyard fancies.’ And so we come to another mammoth, a poet laureate into the bargain, Ted Hughes, who (see above) admired Henry Williamson. Cambridge-educated Yorkshireman Hughes was fascinated by the natural violence of nature – in particular as regards the behaviour of animals – , in power and in death: ‘I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in a sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.’ (from ‘Hawk Roosting’). or ‘Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn, More coiled steel than living – a poised Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs Triggered to stirrings beyond sense – with a start, a bounce, a stab Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing. No indolent procrastinations and no yawning stares, No sighs or head-scrathings. Nothing but bounce and stab And a ravening second.’ (from ‘Thrushes’). or ‘The pig lay on a barrow dead. It weighed, they said, as much as three men. Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes. Its trotters stuck straight out.’ (‘View of a Pig’). Hughes, who superbly described November as ‘the month of the drowned dog’, had a somewhat intense yet sad relationship with his wife, the American poetess, Silvia Plath, who committed suicide, allegedly because of Hughes relationship(s?) with another woman or more. Pity about the children: and Sylvia’s son committed suicide forty six years after his mother did. Nature, power and death. Our last two poems are by me, and I feel constrained to tell you that if a poem is to be unadulterated, and above the shackles of convention and/or self-interest, whether good or bad, it must come directly from the heart. The only question is how pure is your heart. ‘WILD RIVER TROUT Dark shadow lies beneath, no movement; Not even a twitch of the delicate tail While it seeks its food. More than hidden, it is part of the river. It darts, too quick for eye to follow, You see it in its new position. The upward stab, the plucking bite, The munching seconds, invisible to you. You see only spreading ripples, Then the golden glint, the creamy belly, In the evening sun. You cast, the sudden tug shocks you, Despite your expectation. It pulls and judders at your soul; Such beauty, as you take him out, Designed for hunting fly, To feed its perfect muscles. Body sculpted to living perfection; Colours glisten, yet as deep as the river. The hazel eye stares you out Long after the death. It hunts your soul. Thank God for procreation.’ or REMEMBER To your beauty-hunting body, Oh grant some time to feeling. To your love-thirsting heart, Oh grant some time to harmony. To your self-seeking soul, Please accord some time to thought. To your success-hungry ego, Just grant some time to others. To your power-seeking eyes, Oh grant some time to introspection. To your adventure-seeking feet, Oh grant some time to knowledge. To your God-seeking soul, Please give some time to prayer. Let us now talk quickly about John Fowles, who loved Greece. Indeed, one of his most famous novels, ‘The Magus’, is set on the island of Spetse, a story of intrigue, passion, obsession and sex, with an orchestrator, ‘Conchis’. ‘The Collector’ is also a rather frightening little story of a girl trapped by an obsessive collector, ending nastily. Returning to America, John Steinbeck is of considerable note for his novels about life during the Great Depression, in particular ‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. Let us finish, as we began, with a couple of playwrights. Harold Pinter, famous for his skilful repartee, wrote, inter alia, ‘The Birthday Party’ and ‘The Caretaker’. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, and, although part-Jewish, led a group of Jews who campaigned for justice for the Palestinians, embarrassing fanatic Israeli Zionists. To obtain a flavour of his political views, you can look at his ‘A New world Order’, published in 1991. He was awarded an honorary professorship by the University of Thessaloniki. Another well-known playwright is Tom Stoppard, also a master of repartee, who escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1938, at the age of one. He wrote, inter alia, ‘Arcadia’. He also wrote and spoke on political matters. Now we really must stop, and move on to a few typical examination questions: ‘Compare George Bernard Shaw’s and Oscar Wilde’s works.’ ‘Do you think that Maugham was more imaginative in his writing than Orwell?’ ‘It is said that Ted Hughes was obsessed with nature, power and death. What do you think?’ ‘Compare the works of Agatha Christie to those of John Le Carrà ©.’ It goes without saying, almost, that merely learning the above few pages, parrot-fashion, will not be sufficient to pass the examination: they represent only a skeletal outline. Also, you need to be succinct. No linguistic bulimia or irrelevant sentences, please! I shall immediately see through any examination paper that appears to rely only on this brief guide. Most marks will be awarded for evidence of originality and thinking, as well  as of knowledge.

German Culture essays

German Culture essays During spring break of my senior year in high school two of my closest friends and I went to Austria and Germany, for a ski trip. It was probably the most cathartic time of my life. My high school experience was the most stressful time of my life, but my two friends and I left all of that in the states. I had been taking German for four years, but it was on this trip that I realized that this was where I wanted to live. The German culture and I are completely harmonious. Just thinking about the Germans mixture of calm collective efficiency and socializing brings me out of the worst day. When I first stepped off the plane in the Munich airport the entire place was silent. The Germans people are quiet, even when in public. When I went there and did not get a single headache, I realized how loud Americans are. I am a very quiet person, and Americans in general are loud and questioning. One of the reasons Americans are disliked by most Europeans is because they are always asking questions and want to know what is going on. Europeans are very quiet and collective. They only talk to people they know. Most of the time in larger cities, they wont even say hello when you pass them on the street. If a European has an acquaintance, they generally will only say hello. Americans will ask them about their day, and their extended familys. Europeans think this is rude, and so do I. Germans are the most efficient people on the planet. When the Germans built the Autobahns in the 1930s they made them perfect so that their citizens could travel with complete efficiency. They made it wind slowly so that people would not fall asleep at the wheel. They made rules so that it would be completely safe. They are to drive on the right side of the road unless passing. They cannot eat, drink, talk on the phone, or even rest one of their hands. They must have both hands on the wheel at all times unless shifting or working other necessary c...

Here are 10 Good Trees Gone Bad

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Teachers as influential individuals essays

Teachers as influential individuals essays Teaching is a way to train the young, in a selected environment (such as Miriam College), to help them adjust to the world in which they live. The researchers accept as true that teaching is passed on by people around, particularly the teachers. As a teacher, one must acknowledge the value and skill of each individual. Given that teaching is considered to be a dynamic art, a successful teacher should be very artistic, innovative and resourceful in order to meet the changing needs of the students. In addition, teachers are viewed as greatly influential individuals. Therefore, it is understood that one should be skillful in using strategies as well as having a full grasp of the basic teaching strategies present. They can somehow make or break the academic performance of the students. Often times we hear students complaining about one or more subject/s. Possible failure of students has been a reality, because of so many reasons, and lack of interest may be one of these. Lively teachers who creatively think of different activities for lessons may successfully grasp the attention of the students. While teachers who are too strict may encourage students to strive harder or it can also happen that the students will be too tensed to completely understand the lesson. We usually hear teachers saying, You are the ones who make your grades. We only record it. There is truth in the statement, and it is in the hands of the students, indeed, on how they will attain good grades, but have teachers ever thought that they are partly a factor of how students perceive, and accept the subject? Also, do teachers consider the fact that they are responsible for encouraging students to improve on their academic performance? There is a tendency for students to be lazy in coming to class religiously, giving their best in school works, and even being attentive during class discussions. It is noticeable that it becomes harder to...

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Marketing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

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Restraints and seclusion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

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War, Politics, and Culture in Modern Mass Society - Assignment Example Culture in modern mass society is the distinct ways which people who live in the post-medieval Europe or at a global level differently classify and represent their acts and experiences creatively. Therefore, primary sources about Europe from 1871-1939 on war, politics, and culture are the original materials, artifacts, or documents. In this case, the primary sources that lead or related to the first-word war and how this has influenced the culture of the mass society to date (Teich and Porter, pp, 307-315). Europe from 1871-1939 experienced numerous revolutionary events, conflicts, and wars and at the peak of it was the First World War between 1914 and 1918. They are several primary sources that relate or lead to this particular war and they are into four categories. The four sources include printed sources, micro format; Personal reminiscences that are letters and diaries and eyewitness statements (Luebke, pp, 92-97). Printed sources are printed documents, newspapers articles, magazines, and journals. In the year 1914, the war was declared on Serbia by the government of Austro- Hungarian. In their statements, they stated that the whole Europe should prepare for war. The Ogden Standard in the same year also reported that Austria had chosen war. The Washington times seconded the report in the same year. It did not take long after the reports when war between these countries started. Microformat sources were also used to report the war in Europe. Microformat sources are types of open source data format that is upon existing and widely adopted frameworks. These micro format records consist of documents from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry that concerned with German involvement in Irish affairs during World War Impersonal reminiscences, on the other hand, give first-hand information on the happenings of the event.  

Wheel Works Cycling Company Business. Case Study Essay

Wheel Works Cycling Company Business. Case Study - Essay Example Some other researchers (e.g., Friedlander, (1964) refers to motivation as, â€Å"the amount of effort people are willing to put in their work depends on the degree to which they feel their motivational needs will be satisfied. On the other hand, individuals become de-motivated if they feel something in the organisation prevents them from attaining good outcomes (Friedlander 1964). It can be observed from the above definitions that, motivation in general, is more or less basically concern with factors or events that moves, leads, and drives certain human action or inaction over a given period of time given the prevailing conditions. Further more the definitions suggest that there need to be an† invisible force† to push people to do something in return. It could also be deduced from the definition that having a motivated work force or an environment in which high levels of motivation are maintained remains a challenge for today’s management. This challenge may emanate from the simple fact that motivation is not a fixed trait –as it could change with changes in personal, psychological, financial or social factors. 1.1 Maslow's Hierarchy of Need Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a five-level hierarchical need theory of motivation that specifies that the lowest-level unsatisfied need has the greatest motivating potential (Greenberg & Baron 2003):. The needs include: Physiological needs Safety needs Belongingness needs Esteem needs Self-actualization needs According to Maslow, the lowest-level unsatisfied need category has the greatest motivating potential. When needs at a particular level of the hierarchy are satisfied, the individual turns his or her attention to the next higher level. A satisfied need is no longer an effective motivator. Self-actualization needs, however, become stronger as they are gratified (Greenberg and Baron 2000). At Wheelworks, to satisfy employee's needs following Maslow's doctrine, the Male Speaker does all personnel selection on personnel encouragement. At the same time lot of

War, Politics, and Culture in Modern Mass Society Assignment

War, Politics, and Culture in Modern Mass Society - Assignment Example Culture in modern mass society is the distinct ways which people who live in the post-medieval Europe or at a global level differently classify and represent their acts and experiences creatively. Therefore, primary sources about Europe from 1871-1939 on war, politics, and culture are the original materials, artifacts, or documents. In this case, the primary sources that lead or related to the first-word war and how this has influenced the culture of the mass society to date (Teich and Porter, pp, 307-315). Europe from 1871-1939 experienced numerous revolutionary events, conflicts, and wars and at the peak of it was the First World War between 1914 and 1918. They are several primary sources that relate or lead to this particular war and they are into four categories. The four sources include printed sources, micro format; Personal reminiscences that are letters and diaries and eyewitness statements (Luebke, pp, 92-97). Printed sources are printed documents, newspapers articles, magazines, and journals. In the year 1914, the war was declared on Serbia by the government of Austro- Hungarian. In their statements, they stated that the whole Europe should prepare for war. The Ogden Standard in the same year also reported that Austria had chosen war. The Washington times seconded the report in the same year. It did not take long after the reports when war between these countries started. Microformat sources were also used to report the war in Europe. Microformat sources are types of open source data format that is upon existing and widely adopted frameworks. These micro format records consist of documents from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry that concerned with German involvement in Irish affairs during World War Impersonal reminiscences, on the other hand, give first-hand information on the happenings of the event.  

Take home assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Take home assignment - Essay Example The selection of the contrasting colours for the statue of liberty and the background alows for the best visibility feature of the statue. The same fetaure applies to the fountain and the background (front of the plaza). The selection of the colors is highly relevant in enhancing the visibility of the features and assurance of excellent appreciation by audience. The statue of liberty has compounded demerits on visibility at various times of the day. In the morning while the sun is rising and seting , the background would typically be shiny and therefore the featur is not well visible. The selection of the white colour for the statue of librty is properly suited for skyblue days which perhaps is expected for most of the days. On contrary, the plaza front visibility was designed to suit both day and night as there is artificial lighting at night. The painting appear highly imposing to most viewers from CPA. I had not noticed it before and msot people most do not appear to notice it. I think the painting is designed to be seen from far place so as to appreciate the essence of art and entailed painting. My ansewers to the previous questioners would encourage the painter to hang his paintings on this point due to excellent selelction of colours for backgrround and highlighted feature. I have noted and observed clear linking of architecture and enhanced aesthetics achievenment through entailing of proper colors for the building and proper visibility for movemnet of the people. The visibility of the painting changes at various times of the day. It is highly visible at night from outside. The designer wanted the painter to be highly appreciated by audience at night and also help in enancing of visibility for moving

Writing a Critique Essay Example for Free

Writing a Critique Essay ‘To critique’ in the academic world means ‘to look into a certain work and state the strengths and weaknesses and then provide suggestions on improving the work in a manner that is constructive’ (Critiquing Tips, n.d.). Methods in Effectively Critiquing a Work Effectively critiquing a work entails the following: First of all, it is very important to be very honest (Critiquing Tips, n.d.). Second is to look for something optimistic or encouraging to speak about (Critiquing Tips, n.d.). Third is to speak about the weaknesses but at the same time â€Å"providing suggestions on how it may be developed and improved† (Critiquing Tips, n.d.). Last but not least, it is essential do be diplomatic no matter what weaknesses are to be stated and keep in mind that the goal of critiquing is to â€Å"provide assistance to the author of the work† and not attack or insult the individual (Critiquing Tips, n.d.). Aspects to Look for in Critiquing It is essential to look into the references utilized by the author, check for validity and reliability (Chesapeake College, n.d.). Scrutinize how the ideas were supported, check if the stated ideas are facts, or simply opinions to verify if there was no bias and both sides (or opposing perspectives) were evenly taken into consideration (Chesapeake College, n.d.). Also, the â€Å"appropriateness of the vocabulary and logic of the argument should be looked into as well† (Chesapeake College, n.d.). Noting the Findings/ Writing and Presenting the Critique The findings may be noted by: 1) â€Å"introducing the work including the author, title, as well as, the references and their dates of publication†; 2) â€Å"providing a one- to two- sentence summary†; and 3) â€Å"producing a thesis statement† (UHWO Writing Center, n.d.). It is also highly recommended to state â€Å"three to five points to support the thesis statement† (Chesapeake College, n.d.).

Street Children in Egypt

Street Children in Egypt Street Children Phenomena in Egypt The street children phenomenon in Egypt as known for most people is one of Egypts serious problems. Egypt is one of the countries with the highest number of street children. I decided to research this topic because it is one of the long lasting problems Egypt is facing. There are a lot of misunderstandings regarding the meaning of the word street children, according to the UNICEF; children must fall under one of these two definitions in order to be called street children. First, Children who are engaged in some kind of economic activity ranging from begging to stealing. Most go home at the end of the day and contribute their earnings to their family. They may be attending school and retain a sense of belonging to a family. Because of the economic fragility of the family, these children may eventually opt for a permanent life on the streets. Second, Children of the street actually live on the street (or outside of a normal family environment). Family ties may exist but are tenuous and are maintained only casually or occasionally.†I aim by this research to evaluate the situation of street children in Egypt and to know their priorities, activities and problems. Also, identify the actions done by the governmental and non-governmental organizations regarding the problem of street children. Finally, raise awareness to the street children problem in Egypt. In Egypt, government legislation and rules relating to street children remains primarily disciplinary to the street children who are viewed as criminals and a threat to the society. Generally, the society looks at delinquents and street children as a disease that should be treated by isolation. Despite the lack of conclusive information about street children, many socio-economic indicators show that the phenomenon of street children is growing, especially in large cities. â€Å"The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducted a Rapid Situation Assessment of street children in the two biggest cities in Egypt: Greater Cairo and Alexandria. According to this study, Poverty, family breakdown, and child abuse and neglect, seem to be the leading causes of the problem of street children. â€Å"Eighty percent of the children are exposed to real or constant threat of violence from employers, hostile-abusive community members, and their peers. Ignorant about health, hygiene, a nd nutrition and deprived of services to protect them, street children are a malnourished sub-population subsisting on an inadequate diet. Functionally illiterate (70 percent of the sample were school drop-outs, 30 percent had never attended schools in the first place), economic survival means working at the most menial tasks, or worse, begging, or thieving†. A lot of efforts have been made to try and estimate the number of street children in Egypt, but it is said that they all lack accuracy and reliability. Sedik (1995), based on the records of Al-Amal Village in Cairo, estimated that the number of street children in Egypt, both males and females, is 93,000. Data show that the reasons for the lack of valid and dependable information on the magnitude of the problem of street children are because it is hard to carry out surveys on the number of street children because of they dont live in one place. Another reason is because the police records dont keep record except on the children who are caught and sent to the corrective institutions by a court order. Through my research I found out a lot of causes for the street children phenomena. Children run away from their homes in Egypt because of child abuse, sensation seeking, neglect, existence of other brothers and sisters on the street and peer pressure. Children say that they were kicked out of their homes and forced to live in the streets and abused by their family or the people they work for. There are a lot of ways for abuse. Abuse usually takes the form of severe beating and insults for small mistakes. A lot of children choose to live on the streets because they feel they are free from any boundaries. A huge number of children said that one of the main reasons for moving to the street life is neglect. It could happen due to the illness of one of the parents, or the presence of a large family, or neglect because of divorce. The existence of other brothers and sisters especially older ones affect their younger siblings to follow their lead and move to live on the streets if their fa mily is facing the problems that they cant handle. Sometimes they move together and look for one another on the streets. Peer pressure acts as one of the most effective methods to increase the street children phenomena. Children explain that peers help them adjust to the life on the streets during their early days on the streets by providing food, entertainment, shelter and protection. Street children are usually there for each other. They help each other cope with the street life by explaining where to live, how to earn money and what should be done in case a problem happens. Street children usually do work that doesnt require any technical skills but they do marginal jobs that could provide them with money to survive only. Some of the work done by street children according to UN reports include â€Å"Begging, washing cars or shop windows, selling paper tissues on the streets, working temporarily in shops or factories informally, collecting plastic from wastes to sell to recycling factories, fishing and selling the catch, shining shoes, carrying luggage in the markets for people for money, selling newspapers and finally prostitution. Street children usually carry out their work every day, working in a range of â€Å"4 to 18 hours a day whether in doing one activity or a number of activities consecutively. They usually earn from 3 to 20 Egyptian pounds per day.à ¢â‚¬  Street children are exposed to problems everyday because of the life on the street with no elder supervision or protection. One of the problems is violence. Street children could face violence in many ways. For example, violence inside the children groups where older street children abuse younger children violence from the surrounding community which dont approve of their presence, Violence in the environment where employers exploit street children. Violence is often associated with sexual abuse which younger street children and street females are exposed to. Another problem that street children face is the community disapproval. Street children are rejected by society. They are not accepted due to their appearance and behavior. People generally tend to drive street children away as a result of fear and disgust. A third problem is the police arrests. Street children are always exposed to being arrested by police and returned to their families or committed to correction institutions. This process does not involve any efforts to change the original reason for escape from homes leading to the escape again to the street and the repetition of the vicious circle. The final problem is substance abuse. Street children are facing a serious problem which is free usage of drugs and substances that lead them to lose consciousness, suffer from continuous disorientation and spending all their daily earnings. Absence of good model and refusal of society lead to prevailing frustration of the street children and losing of hope in any good future. Government used to completely ignore the problem of street children who represented to the government a source of shame and embarrassment. The reaction was to ignore and hide the problem rather than face it and try to find solutions to the causes that lead to the spread of this problem. Sometimes the government may use law enforcement forces (police) to gather street children and put them into juvenile correctional institutes where they mingle with criminals and eventually the children escapes back to the streets with criminal background. NGOs, on the other hand, have dealt with the problem in a more consciences way. Programs have been developed and funded to admit the street children to houses and orphanages and try to fit them in the society and enroll them in schools. NGOs have several angles to approach the problem. They use the media to advocate the rights of street children and to promote their fight to protect these children and to treat them as victims rather than criminals who must be locked up. NGOs try to partner with the Government to conduct studies to establish laws to protect the rights of these children. NGOs also have programs that help street children in their own environment which is the streets. NGOs provide food medical care and financial assistance to the street children. NGOs also try to reunite as many street children as possible with their families and provide psychological therapy and social consultations to the children and their families to reach to the bottom of the problem and find a solution to the problems that drive children away from their homes. To conclude, everyone would agree on the magnitude of the problem of street children. The government and the NGOs have exerted many efforts to face the phenomena of street children but more work is needed if they want to achieve their target which is eliminating or at least reducing this problem in Egypt. Laws and legislations should be made to protect street children and help them fit in the society. As to the society I think that more awareness campaigns are needed to get people involved in this problem. We interact with the street children everyday but we always unintentially neglect them. Sometimes people treat street children as if they are something disgusting. Other times people treat street children as if they dont exist. Thats the reason why awareness campaigns should take place to explain to people that nearly all these children were forced to live on the streets and they didnt choose this themselves. Every person should feel that they have an obligation towards these chil dren and want to help them and provide them with a better life. Works cited: â€Å"Street children in Egypt: from the home to the street to inappropriate corrective institutions† by Iman Bibars- Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 10, No. 1, 201-216 (1998) DOI: 10.1177/095624789801000108 Article: â€Å"EGYPT: Street children worst hit by violence, experts say†19 Nov 2006 Source: IRIN SPAAC (1993), Street Children in Egypt, UNICEF, Cairo. Street Children in Egypt: Group Dynamics and Subculture Constituents.by Nashaat Hussein Article: Uncountable Figures Of Street Children Create New Worries By Michaela Singer First Published: February 24, 2008, Daily News EGYPT Mehdi, Ali. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 17th of November, 2009 . Sedik, A. Experiences with Street Children in Egypt. Center for Child Rights and Protection, Cairo, 1995. Abu El-Nasr, A., 1992; Abdel Nabi, A., 1994; Sedik, A., 1995; and Koraim, A., 1998. Hussein, N. 1998; Azer, A. The Problem of Child Labor in Egypt, 1996.

Minors and the Death Penalty Essay -- essays research papers

A.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Should the death penalty be given to minors? The two groups against this issue, are the religious and medical groups. They believe they are too young to know what they have done. The medical groups believe adolescents are less developed than adults and should not be held to the same standards. . The opposing side, held mostly by state officials, feel if they are old enough to commit the crime they, old enough to get the punishment, including death.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  B.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The very first execution of a minor was in1642 with Thomas Graunger in Plymouth Colony, Massachesetts. In the three-hundred years since that time, a total of approximately 365 persons have been executed for juvenile crimes, constituting 1.8 percent of roughly twenty-thousand confirmed American executions since 1608. Twenty-two of these executions for juvenile crimes have been imposed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. These twenty-two recent executions of juvenile offenders make up about 2 percent of the total executions since 1976. The death penalty for juvenile offenders has uniquely become an American practice, in that, it appears to have been abandoned by nations everywhere else in large part due to the express provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and of several other international treaties and agreements   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  C.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The reason this is a moral issue because the death of a human being is a moral issue, and if that human being is not even an adult, than it makes it an atrocity that he/she was put to death by are legal system that in all aspects is placed there for our protection. The punishment is for the criminal, but in reality the only people being punished is the family of the juvenile in question.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  D.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Capital punishment is more expensive than a life imprisonment sentence without the opportunity of parole. Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve eighteen executions, that is an average of $3.2 million per execution. It costs six times more to execute a person in Florida than to incarcerate a prisoner for life with no parole. The average cost of a capital trial in Florida is ... ...y between the law breaker and society. Just punishment is binding and not to be mitigated by any utilitarian consideration. Kant also believes in â€Å"blood guilt† and the necessity for cleansing criminal actions.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   H.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This issue is pretty touchy to me, because i could support both side of minor being put to death. I agree with if they do the crime, they can do the time, but at the same time they are just little kids and they do not know better. The way I see how this situation can change is that instead of holding the child responsible for the crime hold the parents in contempt. The reason I say this is because a study shown shows that most juvenile convicts come from a broken home. The old saying goes â€Å"monkey see, monkey do.† I believe if these children would have had the chance of growing up in a stable family upbringing, there is a good chance that they would have been upstanding citizens. So my belief may be torn apart on the subject, I'm am going to have to say that I am against the death penalty for minors, because i believe they don not know what they do, because of a lack of immaturity and lack of experience in life.

Business Intelligence Software Essay -- Business Software Essays

Business Intelligence Software As we discuss the possibility of emerging into business intelligence software we must keep in mind the overall purpose of using any type of software is to reach strategic goals in order to increase market shares. I will discuss how business intelligence software will allow us to meet those strategic goals. We will establish what type of information and analysis capabilities will be available once this business intelligence software is implemented. We will discuss hardware and system software that will be required to run specific business intelligence software. Lastly, I will give a brief synopsis on three vendors (IBM, Microsoft Microsoft and Oracle) that are dominating the business information software industry today. The goal to any company succeeding in today?s fast paced high tech world is to establish aggressive strategic goals and a means to meet those goals. The end state of strategic goals is the capturing of your industry market share. Business intelligence software is a means or method to meet the goals. Business Intelligence Software brings together established software into a single working suite that will allow personnel from across the corporation to observe the same information in real time on a day-to-day basis. By implementing business intelligence software into our company, it will allow for a consolidated data collection point. This software will also allow us to tap into this consolidated data using multiple methods and display it in various forms or in real time using different web applications. The information that can be extracted from the business information software is endless. In the article written by Alison Dragoon, Business Intelligence Get Smart(er), she states the following about data usage; ? ?[Unused data] is still a great source of untapped productivity and competitive advantage for most companies," he says. Just how much data is going unused? Downes guesses companies are extracting value from only about 20 percent of their data.? With this stated by placing all pertinent information into one database allows personnel throughout the company to pull data that will assist in their daily duties. This data can be arranged to track the life cycle of any product from birth to grave. By tracking an item in this fashion allows us to alleviate faulty products in this process or to allevia... ... analysis with Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL), online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining capabilities built into the data server. Additionally, we can add Oracles E-Business Suite Corporate Performance Management system that includes pre-packaged applications for measuring and monitoring business performance. Oracle brings to the table exactly what we are looking for, a proven business information tool that is capable of delivering the information that is required to give us time and accurate information. Bibliography Cindi Howson, The Best BI Tool [WWW document] URL http://www.intelligententerprise.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=21400422 Alice Dragoon, Business Intelligence Gets Smart(er) [WWW document] URL http://www.cio.com/archive/091503/smart.html Unknown, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing in SQL Server 2005 [WWW document] URL http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/evaluate/dwsqlsy.mspx Unknown, Introducing SQL Server 2005 [WWW document] URL http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/default.asp Unknown, IBM, [WWW document] URL http://www.ibm.com/us/ Unknown, Oracle, [WWW document] URL http://www.oracle.com/index.html

Aurora Shooting Response Paper

The article published in the New York Times July 22, 2012 by Jack Healy entitled â€Å"Suspect Bought Large Stockpile of Rounds online†, addresses an absence of laws regulating the sale of ammunition. Jack Healy is a rocky mountain correspondent for the New York Times, and has reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad. Healy's article elicits good emotional engagement with the reader, but it is fundamentally lacking sound logical arguments and ethical credibility. Aurora shooting suspect James Holmes purchased a 6,000 rounds of ammunition prior to the shooting in Aurora Colorado. Holmes purchased bullet ¬Ã‚ ¬proof vests and a high capacity 100 round drum magazine. Holmes was a college graduate with a clean criminal background. Holmes was legally able to purchase firearms and ammunition in Colorado and nationwide. States such as Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, and several cities have laws regarding the sales of ammunition. These laws include licensing, permits and requiring gun stores to keep records of ammunition purchased. According to Healy, Holmes used a black commando style outfit as well as other tactical gear during shooting. Police apprehended him outside the theater still wearing the bulletproof vest, and carrying four handguns. Healy argued how Gun-control groups said the purchases of the ammunition demonstrated how easily anyone could build a veritable arsenal without attracting attention from law-enforcement officials. Healy quotes Tom Mauser, a gun-control advocate, to exemplify this point, â€Å"it’s a wide open marketplace† Healy states that ammunition and arms websites are prolific online, and buyers can purchase almost anything firearm related including ammunition. Healy quotes Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Democrat, â€Å"that the killer might have built a bomb or found some other lethal device if no assault weapons had been around. Healy concludes the article with a quote from Dudley Brown, the executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners saying â€Å"I call 6,000 round of ammunition running low. † I think that the article by Jack Healy was reasonably well written, and it was emotionally engaging for the reader. The logos of the article is fundamentally flawed due to the lack of logically sound and accurate conclusions. Finally the article loses its’ ethical integrity when the authors bias becomes apparent to the reader. Healy's article contains bias for the regulation of ammunition sales, as well as confusing terminology. The article contains contradictory and inaccurate facts, and quotes selected for emotional impact rather than relevance and purpose. First I will address some of the logical contradictions in the article. Healy said â€Å"Unhindered by federal background checks or government oversight, the 24-year-old man†¦ was able to build †¦ a 6,000-round arsenal legally and easily over the Internet, exploiting what critics call a virtual absence of any laws regulating ammunition sales† In this quote Healy leads the reader to believe that there are no laws, and no regulation regarding ammunition sales. Later in the article Healy admits there are laws restricting ammunition sales in Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey as well as cities like Los Angeles and Sacramento. Healy contradicts his earlier point by highlighting the states that do have laws regarding the sales of ammunition. This contradiction leaves the reader not knowing which conclusion is valid. The second flaw in the articles logic is the argument that the sale of ammunition is unregulated, and without government oversight. This main theme that is present throughout the article is technically inaccurate. According to smartgunlaws. org, a nonprofit gun law education website, thirty-two states have laws regulating unreasonably dangerous ammunition, this is over half of the states. Sixteen states have laws regarding age restrictions and the purchase of ammunition. According to Smartgunslaws. org the majority of states have laws concerning ammunition purchases, laws concerning purchase of dangerous ammunition, (such as armor piercing), laws concerning minimum age of purchase, or laws concerning the ability of convicted felons to purchase ammunition. One of the other major flaws of this article is Healy's illogical use of quotes. Here is one of instances where Healy uses a quote and does not acknowledge or clarify the quote: â€Å"It is a war tool,† Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, said of the 100-round drum that the police say Mr. Holmes purchased online. â€Å"They’re meant to kill. They’re meant to kill as many people in as short a period of time. † Ms. McCarthy’s husband was among six people killed in 1993 by a gunman on a commuter train Before this quote Healy was talking about a failed 1999 gun control bill. After the quote Healy continued to talk about the legislation. Healy stated both republicans and democrats had doubts about the effectiveness of the proposed legislation. The technical execution of the quote interrupted the flow of the paragraph. The quote did not fit in the paragraph in a logical manor. Healy’s quote was deliberately spliced into the article to provide sensationalism needed to make it newsworthy. Healy used the quote to provide a more interesting article, and to appeal to the emotion of the reader. The ethical appeal of the article is compromised by Healy predominately presenting evidence supporting increased gun and ammunition regulation. The article is twenty-seven paragraphs long; twenty ¬Ã‚ ¬-five of them are either neutral or support increased regulation of guns and ammunition. Two of the paragraphs expressed opinions opposing an increase in gun and ammunition regulation. By not equally addressing both sides of the issue equally, Healy loses credibility with readers who oppose increasing the regulation of guns and ammunition. Healy does acknowledge the opinion of gun groups with a vague quote, â€Å"To gun groups, such an unfettered marketplace stands as a bulwark of their Second Amendment rights† This is the only place in the article that Healy acknowledges this viewpoint. This quote is not substantial enough to gain the ethical appeal lost earlier in the article. One of the positive attributes of Healy’s article is his emotional appeal to the reader. Healy uses graphic quotes and vivid imagery to provoke emotional response, and connection to the reader. Healy takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster throughout the article encompassing all types of emotions. Consider the following quote by Healy: Three weeks after the purchase, stunned and bleeding witnesses outside the century 16 multiplex in aurora would describe how a man dressed in a black commando-style outfit and a gas mask strode into the where they were watching a midnight screening of â€Å"The Dark Knight rises,† tossed some gas-spewing grenades into the packed auditorium and opened fire. In this sentence by Healy uses extremely graphic imagery to create an appeal to pathos in the article. Sentences like the one above are mixed in throughout the article along with facts about ammunition laws, and quotes. Healy uses emotion to keep the audience reading, throughout the article. Healy’s appeal to pathos is strong and well-constructed throughout the article.