Serious Reflection and Critical Thinking Through Understanding the Use Essay - 1

Serious Reflection and Critical Thinking Through Understanding the Use of Social Media - Essay Example Initially, students used to meet and discuss issues in an attempt to come up with a conclusion. Personal interactions encouraged students to tackle challenging issues through intensive research. In addition, through one-on-one interactions, it was easy to divide the roles and support each other in a specific task. This encouraged the students to think critically in order to support the rest of the group members. However, this is not the case. The students are currently using social media and other instant communication methods to communicate with each other while completing a task. This has made it very hard for them to think critically as a group and reflect on the issues at hand. College students can practice serious reflection in our always connected and instantaneous world through regulating their own time. Time management has become a major issue with the modern communication methods. Therefore, in order to ensure that there no frequent interruptions which affect the studentâ₠¬â„¢s reflection and critical thinking, they need to come up with a strict plan on when and how to use the social media and other instantaneous communication methods (Biagi 2012). For instance, they need to switch off some of the gadgets they use in communication while in group discussions or conducting research. This would make it possible for them to reflect and re-imagine the issue at hand. The students should embrace group work rather than individual assignments. Group discussions are very significant in enabling the students to brainstorm ideas.

The Bet Essay Example for Free

The Bet Essay In the story â€Å"The Bet† by Anton Chekhov, the lawyer and the banker make a bet, which is better solution capital punishment or life imprisonment. The banker then bet two million dollars that the lawyer would not stand five years in a room alone with no means of communication except through a small hole, but the lawyer said he would stay in the room for fifteen years and with that, they closed the bet. For fifteen years, the lawyer stayed in the room reading and learning new things and on the last night before the day he retakes his freedom and his two million dollars, the banker tries to sabotage the lawyer by trying to kill him. However, after reading the letter that the lawyer wrote he stopped and cried. The next morning, five minutes before the bet was over the lawyer ran away and lost the bet and the banker kept the letter that the lawyer wrote and locked it in his safe. The author Anton Chekhov talked about the moral value of human life and the consequences it bears, such as capital punishment and life imprisonment. When the banker and the lawyer argued about what punishment is better, it showed how they do not take the value of human life seriously. This led them to make the bet. The author then presents a form of foreshadowing. When he wrote life imprisonment, it showed what happens to one of them and it did. The bet was that the lawyer should stay confined in room for fifteen years and it similar to life imprisonment because the lawyer would feel the same way a prisoner would feel living his life in prison. The story gives you unexpected ending because of what the lawyer decided to do in the end. The banker who can be described as an over-excited, arrogant man started to put up the bet against the lawyer. The author shows that the banker is conceited that he was sure that he could get the better of the lawyer, however the story does not end that way. Anton Chekhov showed the weak side of the banker, which is that he, would not be able to accept if the lawyer won the bet. This quote, The only escape from bankruptcy and disgrace is that the man should die, clearly shows the cowardly trait of the banker because with his desperation of winning, he would go in so much trouble to kill the lawyer just so he would not lose his money. In addition, this concludes that his self-value of the moral value of human life have reached their all time low.

Process Of Processing :: essays research papers

The Process of Processing   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   How do you process film? Well you're about to find out. The three main steps in processing film are rolling, developing, and fixing. Not many people know exactly how black and white thirty five millimeter film is processed. So if you don't, read this.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  First you start by rolling the film. You do this by turning out all the lights so it is completely dark in the room. Then you carefully smash the end of the film canister to release the actual film. Taking a spool from the counter, you gently thread the base of the spool with the end of your roll of film. Squeezing the film to give it a convex shape, you rotate the spool till all the film is on metal. That's the end of the first step.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Second, you go get a liquid canister and place your roll in it closing the lid tightly. This must all be done without turning on the lights. If any light is released by anything in the room your film will be blurred. The main part of the next step is the first actual step of processing. Without removing the top of the can, fill the can with D-76, your processing chemical. The timer will be set for the correct length of time depending on the temperature of the room. Agitate for the first thirty seconds and then five seconds for every thirty seconds until the set time is up. Pour the D-76 into the sink. Do not pour it back into the original container.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Third, grab the fixer your second and final processing chemical. Fill the canister with it and repeat the agitation method in step number two for four minutes. Fixer is a chemical which coats film to give it a resistance to light. Without this there would be no point in steps one and two. After each agitation slam the canister on the counter to remove all bubbles from the film. Bubbles will cause your film to be splotchy. This would be bad. After your four minutes, pour fixer back into the container it came from.

The Missing Evening :: essays papers

The Missing Evening He was always punctual, at least for his own agenda. Each evening Jim would run through the forest just for fun. This summer night was no exception. The night had grown dark but he was not worried, for he knew the woods well. He sped across an old beaten path and glided over rotten old fallen trees. The damp air was wonderful, he thought, because he could run and never get too hot, and if he kept running he’d never get too cold. This forest was made mostly of pine trees, and the needles put a bounce in the young boy’s step and kept him cheerful. At the clearing he stopped, as he always did, and rested upon a large rock and observed the inky-black sky. This was his favorite spot, his secret spot. Stars shined far brighter here then they did in town, and Jim always felt like he could stay forever. He sighed, and pulled his arms behind his head and stretched out his legs. For some reason this night he was especially relaxed. Either school letting out last week or just one of those giddy days, he didn’t know. It is a wonderful day to be alive. After looking into the sky for a few minutes he saw a falling star. It shimmered for merely a moment and went out. Then another came, and another, and after a dozen or so he sat up and beamed, awed by the glowing sky. It seemed that just above him there was a whole meteor shower, purely for his delight. They fell straight down and glowed longer then Jim had ever seen before. Soon the whole clearing was shining a bright white, like on Forth of July. The dozens became hundreds until finally a large radiant circle seemed to be coming straight down above Jim. He let out a sharp little scream of excitement and sprang from the rock, twirling around and around singing to himself as he always did when he was really cheerful. It was another minute before he realized that they weren’t meteors anymore, but actually the colorful bottom of a spaceship. He stepped back slowly, alert but unafraid. Slowly the craft hovered toward the widest part of the clearing and fell to the earth.

Emotional, Behavioral, and Physical Disabilities Essay

The education of students who have emotional and behavioral disorders, physical disabilities, health impairments, or traumatic brain injuries can be a difficult and challenging task if proper teaching strategies are not put in place. It is also important to for these students to gain self-advocacy skills and for teachers to teach the other students understanding, respect, and how to respond appropriately to the students with disabilities in their class. Another important aspect of the education of special needs students is an individual education plan (IEP). It is important to understand each individual disability before a teacher can properly determine the best teaching strategies. The education of students with emotional behavioral disorders is interfered because of an inability to build and maintain relationships with peers or teachers, an inability to learn, exhibiting inappropriate behavior and feelings, constant unhappiness or depression, and unreasonable fears about school (Clayton County Schools Special Education Department, 2012). Emotional behavior disorders in children are caused by environment, heredity, or both (Anjeh, D. , 2007). The education of students with physical disabilities is also more difficult. Physical disabilities are broad categories that include many conditions such as muscular dystrophy, missing limbs, spina-bifida, and cerebral palsy. There are many different causes of physical disabilities. Physical disabilities make it hard for children to more around and to control their voluntary motor movements (Anjeh, D. , 2007). Health impairments also cause issues related to a student’s education. Health impairments can limit a student’s alertness, vitality, and strength. Often health impairments cause a student to have extended absences, inability to attend a full academic schedule and/or inability to attend to tasks for the same length of time as peers (Clayton County Schools Special Education Department, 2012) A traumatic brain injury can also affect a student’s educational performance. A traumatic brain injury is an injury to the brain caused by an external physical force. These types of injuries can cause impairments of judgment, problem solving, sensory, motor ability, memory, cognition, thinking, physical functions, and speech (National Association of Special Education Teachers, 2006/2007). The most common cause of traumatic brain injuries are caused by motor vehicle or bicycle accidents. Other causes include being shaken, falling, sports related injuries, and gunshots. Traumatic brain injuries can cause physical, cognitive, and/or psychosocial-behavioral/emotional impairments (Anjeh, D. , 2007). Teachers can try many different strategies to help students with the above disabilities. These strategies are often beneficial for the regular student as well. Lash (2000) suggests that to help a student to concentrate better or pay attention a teacher can reduce distractions in the work area of a student, divide the student’s work into smaller sections, having students summarize the teacher’s instruction, and using verbal or non-verbal cues. Because short term memory is often affected by a traumatic brain injury a teacher can repeat or summarize the information needed frequently. The teacher can also encourage the student to use note cards, calendars, or planners. The use of mnemonics may also be helpful to the student. A teacher could provide students with traumatic brain injuries additional time, checklists, schedules, outlines, and other organizational materials. When teaching students with emotional and behavioral disorders the teacher must remain sensitive to these student’s issues. First the teacher must identify the behavior and its cause. Lewis, Heflin, & DiGangi (1991) found that the best approach is to pinpoint the specific behavioral problem and apply data-based instruction for remediation. Remediation should include encouraging new behavior in place of the bad behavior and using positive reinforcement (Algozine, Ruhl, & Ramsey, 1991). Extra training in social skills is also important. Teaching strategies for the physically impairment deal with the provision of certain accommodations and making learning as well as the learning environment accessible. Some strategies include giving the student extra time, reducing the amount of furniture in a classroom, and training staff on the health care needs of the student. The removal of physical barriers, elimination of social barriers, participation in extracurricular activities, inclusion in sports and leisure time activities are all strategies teachers can use with students with disabilities. Some students may require many visuals while other may require added audio. To improve a disabled students self-esteem and self-advocacy the student should be allowed to assume responsibility for their own learning which will improve their self-concept, feeling of belonging to the school, and success at school. A focus should be placed on teaching the student the skills necessary for taking responsibility and showing initiative in making decisions about their own instruction. It is also important for the teacher to help the disabled student’s peers to understand, accept, and include their peers with disabilities (CSWD, 2002). Inclusive classrooms can be helpful because they enable disabled and nondisabled students to discover the similarities they share and to accept each other’s unique traits that they have (Kliff & Kunc, 1994). As school communities become increasingly diverse, it is more important than ever that teachers, administrators, parents, and students work together to create a tolerant school climate where each student feels safe and valued. IEP meetings are an important part of a disabled student’s educational process. Present at the meeting were the student’s father, the special educational teacher, and a member of the staff that is responsible for any financial related issues that may come into play. The meeting began with a brief introduction and signing of an intake sheet. The special education teacher reviewed the child’s present academic levels and discussed reading comprehension and fluency improvements. A copy of all testing scores was provided to those present. The father discussed worries that his child is shy and the need for social skill training. Moving the child to an inclusive classroom was discussed but it was decided to wait for this transition for the beginning of the next school year due to the child’s need for routines. Lastly it was determined there would be a short meeting scheduled for the end of the school year to determine classroom placement for the following school year.

The Moral Dilemma of Euthanasia essays

The Moral Dilemma of Euthanasia essays Every day we face countless choices that involve doing the right thing; however, the right thing to do isn't always the easiest thing to do. Each of these choices involves thousands of messages whirling inside our brain. In a split second our minds review the facts, explore our feelings, study consequences, compare the options against our beliefs and priorities, consider what others may think, and give the cue for action. Decisions happen so quickly but the consequences can last a lifetime and may affect others. That's why careful consideration is vital, but sometimes we do not have the time to consider the answers. A code of ethics/morals can help in determining right from wrong under these circumstances. They can determine the direction our lives will take as a result of such decisions, as my life was swept up in this moral/ethical dilemma. I made a choice as a young girl and the daughter of my mother, to take care of my mother when my father left, moreover because of my sense o f duty, than of my sense of moral or ethics as at this point I am not sure I had a code of ethics, but I have found out since that I had a strong code of ethics. I this choice never imagining it would be an obligation that would last for over 3 decades, a choice of insurmountable proportion, I made this choice when I was only responsible my myself, not realizing one day I would have a family. A choice which led me to the biggest moralethical decision that would ever effect my life and the life of my family. In the end I wanted to be as moral and as responsible for my decisions not only for myself, but also my children, I wanted to be a good strong moral example which would impact their lives as much as mine had been my children so if ever faced with a similar dilemma their choices would be just as morally right as mine. My dilemma in the end was whether or not to euthanize my mother. After 12 years of catholic school I was taught to believe in God...

How to Write a Creative Assignment

How to Write a Creative Assignment Writing Effective Assignments Research has shown that the more detailed a writing assignment is, the better the student papers are in response to that assignment. Often it is necessary to make explicit for students the process or steps necessary to complete the assignment because many students tend to treat assignments as though they were step-by-step instructions. Instructors can use that tendency to help students write more effective papers. For example, explicit descriptions of assignments on the syllabus or on an assignment sheet tend to produce the best results. Such assignment sheets should detail the kind of writing expected, the scope of acceptable subject matter, the length requirements, formatting requirements, documentation format, the amount and type of research expected (if any), the writers role, and deadlines for the first draft and its revision. Providing questions or needed data in the assignment helps students get started. For instance, some questions can suggest a mode of organization to the students. Other questions might suggest a procedure to follow. The questions posed should require that students assert a thesis. The following areas should help you create effective writing assignments. Examining Your Goals for the Assignment How exactly does this assignment fit with the objectives of your course? Should this assignment relate only to the class and the texts for the class, or should it also relate to the real world? What do you want the students to learn or experience from this writing assignment? Should this assignment be an individual or a collaborative effort? What do you want students to show you in this assignment? To demonstrate mastery of concepts or texts? To demonstrate logical and critical thinking? To develop an original idea? To learn and demonstrate the procedures, practices, and tools of your field of study? Defining the Writing Task Is the assignment sequenced so that students write a draft, receive feedback (from you, fellow students, or staff members at the Writing and Communication Center), and then revise it? Does the assignment include so many sub-questions that students will be confused about the major issue they should examine? Can you give more guidance about what the papers main focus should be? Can you reduce the number of sub-questions? What is the purpose of the assignment (e.g., review knowledge already learned, find additional information, synthesize research, examine a new hypothesis)? What is the required form (e.g., expository essay, lab report, memo, business report)? What mode is required for the assignment (e.g., description, narration, analysis, persuasion)? Defining the Audience for the Paper Can you define a hypothetical audience to help students determine which concepts to define and explain? When students write only to the instructor, they may assume that little, if anything, requires explanation. Defining the whole class as the intended audience will clarify this issue for students. What is the probable attitude of the intended readers toward the topic itself? toward the student writers thesis? toward the student writer? What is the probable educational and economic background of the intended readers? Defining the Writers Role Can you make explicit what persona you wish the students to assume? For example, a very effective role for student writers is that of a professional in training who uses the assumptions, the perspective, and the conceptual tools of the discipline. Defining Your Evaluative Criteria If possible, explain the relative weight in grading assigned to the quality of writing and the assignments content: organization focus critical thinking original thinking use of research logic appropriate mode of structure and analysis (e.g., comparison, argument) format correct use of sources grammar and mechanics professional tone correct use of course-specific concepts and terms the depth of coverage professionals are ready to help you at any stage of the writing process. Feel free to place your request here!

Clovis, Black Mats, and Extra-Terrestrials

Clovis, Black Mats, and Extra-Terrestrials Black mat is the common name for an organic-rich layer of soil also called sapropelic silt, peaty muds, and paleo-aquolls. Its content is variable, and its appearance is variable, and it is at the heart of a controversial theory known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH). The YDIH argues that black mats, or at least some of them, represent the remains of a cometary impact thought by its proponents to have kicked off the Younger Dryas. What is the Younger Dryas? The Younger Dryas (abbreviated YD), or Younger Dryas Chronozone (YDC), is the name of a brief geological period which occurred roughly between 13,000 and 11,700 calendar years ago (cal BP). It was the last episode of a series of fast-developing climatic changes that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. The YD came after the Last Glacial Maximum (30,000–14,000 cal BP), which is what scientists call the last time glacial ice covered much of the Northern Hemisphere as well as higher elevations in the south. Immediately after the LGM, there was a warming trend, known as the Bà ¸lling-Ã…llerà ¸d period, during which time the glacial ice retreated. That warming period lasted about 1,000 years, and today we know that it marks the start of the Holocene, the geological period which we are still experiencing today. During the warmth of the Bà ¸lling-Ã…llerà ¸d, all kinds of human exploration and innovation developed, from the domestications of plants and animals to the colonization of the American continents. The Younger Dryas was an abrupt, 1,300-year return to the tundra-like cold, and it must have been a nasty shock to the Clovis hunter-gatherers in North America as well as Europes Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Cultural Impact of the YD Along with a substantial drop in temperature, the sharp challenges of the YD include the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions. The large-bodied animals that disappeared between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago include mastodons, horses, camels, sloths, dire wolves, tapir, and short-faced bear. The North American colonists at the time called Clovis were primarily- but not exclusively- dependent on hunting that game, and the loss of the megafauna led them to reorganize their lifeways into a broader Archaic hunting-and-gathering lifestyle. In Eurasia, the descendants of  hunters and gatherers began domesticating plants and animals- but thats another story. YD Climate Shift in North America The following is a summary of the cultural changes that are documented in North America around the time of the Younger Dryas, from most recent to oldest. It is based on a summary compiled by an early proponent of the YDIH, C. Vance Haynes, and it is a reflection of current understanding of the cultural changes. Haynes was never fully convinced that the YDIH was a reality, but he was intrigued by the possibility. Archaic. 9,000–10,000 RCYBP. Drought conditions prevailed, during which Archaic mosaic hunter-gatherer lifestyles predominate.Post-Clovis. (black mat layer) 10,000–10,900 RCYBP (or 12,900 calibrated years BP). Wet conditions are in evidence at the sites of springs and lakes. No megafauna except for bison. Post-Clovis cultures include Folsom, Plainview, Agate Basin hunter-gatherers.Clovis stratum. 10,850–11,200 RCYBP. Drought conditions prevalent. Clovis sites found with now-extinct mammoth, mastodon, horses, camels, and other megafauna at springs and lake margins.Pre-Clovis stratum. 11,200–13,000 RCYBP. By 13,000 years ago, water tables had fallen to their lowest levels since the Last Glacial Maximum. Pre-Clovis is rare, stable uplands, eroded valley sides. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis The YDIH suggests that the climatic devastations of the Younger Dryas were the result of a major cosmic episode of multiple airbursts/impacts about 12,800 /-300 cal bp. There is no impact crater known for such an event, but proponents argued that it could have occurred over the North American ice shield. That cometary impact would have created wildfires and that and the climate impact are proposed to have produced the black mat, triggered the YD, contributed to the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and initiated human population reorganization across the Northern Hemisphere. The YDIH adherents have argued that black mats hold the key evidence for their cometary impact theory. What is a Black Mat? Black mats are organic-rich sediments and soils that form in wet environments associated with spring discharge. They are found throughout the world in these conditions, and they are abundant in Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene stratigraphic sequences throughout central and western North America. They form in a wide variety of soils and sediment types, including organic-rich grassland soils, wet-meadow soils, pond sediments, algal mats, diatomites, and marls. Black mats also contain a variable assemblage of magnetic and glassy spherules, high-temperature minerals and melt glass, nano-diamonds, carbon spherules, aciniform carbon, platinum, and osmium. The presence of this last set is what the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis adherents have used to back up their Black Mat theory. Conflicting Evidence The problem is: there is no evidence for a continent-wide wildfire and devastation event. There definitely is a dramatic increase in the number and frequency of black mats throughout the Younger Dryas, but thats not the only time in our geological history when black mats have occurred. Megafaunal extinctions were abrupt, but not that abrupt- the extinction period lasted several thousands of years. And it turns out the black mats are variable in content: some have charcoal, some have none. By and large, they seem to be naturally-formed wetland deposits, found full of the organic remains of rotted, not burned, plants. Microspherules, nano-diamonds, and fullerenes are all part of the cosmic dust that falls to earth every day. Finally, what we now know is that the Younger Dryas cold event is not unique. In fact, there were as many as 24 abrupt switches in climate, called Dansgaard-Oeschger cold spells. Those happened during the end of the Pleistocene as the glacial ice melted back, thought to be the results of changes in the Atlantic Oceans current as it, in turn, adapted to changes in the volume of ice present and water temperature. Summary The black mats are not likely evidence of a cometary impact, and the YD was one of several colder and warmer periods during the end of the last Ice Age that resulted from shifting conditions. What seemed at first like a brilliant and succinct explanation for a devastating climate change turned out on further investigation to be not nearly as succinct as we thought. Thats a lesson scientists learn all the time- that science doesnt come as neat and tidy as we can think it to be. The unfortunate thing is that neat and tidy explanations are so satisfying that we all- scientists and the public alike- fall for them every time. Science is a slow process, but even though some theories dont pan out, we still must pay attention when a preponderance of evidence points us in the same direction. Sources Ardelean, Ciprian F., et al. The Younger Dryas Black Mat from Ojo De Agua, a Geoarchaeological Site in Northeastern Zacatecas, Mexico. Quaternary International 463.Part A (2018): 140–52. Print.Bereiter, Bernhard, et al. Mean Global Ocean Temperatures During the Last Glacial Transition. Nature 553 (2018): 39. Print.Broecker, Wallace S., et al. Putting the Younger Dryas Cold Event into Context. Quaternary Science Reviews 29.9 (2010): 1078–81. Print.Firestone, R. B., et al. Evidence for an Extraterrestrial Impact 12,900 Years Ago That Contributed to the Megafaunal Extinctions and the Younger Dryas Cooling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.41 (2007): 16016–21. Print.Harris-Parks, Erin. The Micromorphology of Younger Dryas-Aged Black Mats from Nevada, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. Quaternary Research 85.1 (2016): 94–106. Print.Haynes Jr., C. Vance. Younger Dryas Black Mats and the Rancholabrean Termination in North America. Proceedings of th e National Academy of Sciences 105.18 (2008): 6520–25. Print. Holliday, Vance, Todd Surovell, and Eileen Johnson. A Blind Test of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. PLOS ONE 11.7 (2016): e0155470. Print.Kennett, D. J., et al. Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas Boundary Sediment Layer. Science 323 (2009): 94. Print.Kennett, James P., et al. Bayesian Chronological Analyses Consistent with Synchronous Age of 12,835–12,735 Cal B.P. For Younger Dryas Boundary on Four Continents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.32 (2015): E4344–E53. Print.Mahaney, W. C., et al. Evidence from the Northwestern Venezuelan Andes for Extraterrestrial Impact: The Black Mat Enigma. Geomorphology 116.1 (2010): 48–57. Print.Meltzer, David J., et al. Chronological Evidence Fails to Support Claim of an Isochronous Widespread Layer of Cosmic Impact Indicators Dated to 12,800 Years Ago. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.21 (2014): E2162–71. Print.Pinter, Nicholas, et al. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: A Requ iem. Earth-Science Reviews 106.3 (2011): 247–64. Print. van Hoesel, Annelies, et al. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: A Critical Review. Quaternary Science Reviews 83.Supplement C (2014): 95–114. Print.

Case Study - Employment Law - Employment Discrimination Case Essay - 1

Case Study - Employment Law - Employment Discrimination Case - Essay Example They had both commented negatively towards him and it was evident that they were out to terminate his job and contract. Staub had earlier been made to check with his employer any time he left the job premises after false allegation that he had left the place of work. After some months, one of the supervisors maliciously reported Staub to the vice president for leaving the work area. This was followed by a discontinuation from his work by the vice president. The evidence given made the jury to rule in the favor of the complainant but some time later the federal court reversed the ruling. In the ruling, the judges claimed that the decision made by the vice president was not solely dependent on the information given by the supervisors. This therefore ruled him out of the discrimination case. Therefore, the Court of Appeal concluded that the company was not liable. This ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court on the basis that the employer remains liable if the decision made is motivated by a discrimination bias. According to Guerin (2011), this ruling was therefore in favor of Staub and that served as a great motivation to employees going through the same. This Act is therefore important in safeguarding the rights of employees against discriminatory supervisors. Guerin, L. (2011). Supreme Court victory for employees in discrimination case. Nolo’s Employment Law Blog. Retrieved from

Video Critique on the play Oklahoma Movie Review

Video Critique on the play Oklahoma - Movie Review Example Herein lies one of the first of several problems with the 1999 production: the stage space did not allow for the robust participation of the supporting cast as is seen in the 1955 film production. In the production’s premiere theme song, Oklahoma, the on-stage cast, except Jackman and his bride, played by Josephina Gabrielle, remain seated at the wedding dinner table, smiling, but otherwise uninvolved physically and emotionally, until the end of the number. Not much can be said for the cast’s emotional expression while they are chair singing, raising cups without much enthusiasm. When they finally rise and join in, it is a flat effect on the viewer because there continues to be a lack of physical interaction with the song. Jackman’s voice is flawless when he sings this theme song, and he radiates in his performance. Unfortunately, his radiance was not contagious among his partner, Gabrielle, or the rest of the cast. This is a failure in Nunn’s direction. O ther song scenes, like I Can’t Say No, have the same brilliance of voice, but not in the performance of the actors. It is as if the cast was unaware of the sense of pride-in-state, and without a sense of the American west in their performance. There were dialogue scenes that were of a high caliber, but this is a musical, and the musical scenes are vital to the overall production, and the performances were sorely lacking.

Stock Market Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Stock Market - Essay Example I chose these stocks as a foundation for a diversified portfolio and would like to build positions in each company for long-term holdings targeting 5-10 years. With the exception of Yongye, these stocks are all industry leaders and corporate entities with large asset bases and established business/consumer products. I chose these stocks because I believe that they should not only outperform the market but also limit downside risk to preserve capital. Due to the requirements of the assignment, I chose my entry points for the stock purchases late in order to capitalize on building my position through purchasing at a lower initial price. Over the course of the investment cycle, from 5/27/2011 to 6/2/2011, the rate of return of each of these stocks can be seen charted in comparison to the S&P 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the TSX Index. As can be seen in the chart above (from Yahoo Finance), YONG outperformed all stocks including the index over this period by a wide ma rgin, up over 30% on the period. Unfortunately, due to the weight of YONG in my portfolio vs. the other equities, this gain was not enough to offset losses, particularly in OMX which underperformed the Indexes by around 10% in this same period. AAPL outperformed the Indexes by a small margin, around 2% during this period. GOLD tracked the DJIA with very little deviation from the Indexes during this timeframe. I attempted a second purchase of OMX during this period to average down my entry price per share after the decline. Table 1: Buy and Sell Orders executed over the course of the project. Table 2: Buy and Sell Orders executed over the course of the project. Table 3: Portfolio – trading performance over the course of the project. Investment Analysis: In building my portfolio for the trading project, I wanted to implement the basics of a balanced portfolio by building positions in different sectors for the purpose of diversification. My interest in YONG was for rapid growth and in expectation of press release activity favorable to the company, and the stock was able to produce 30% gains over the course of trading which I locked in by selling a portion of my initial investment. The GOLD position can be considered as a hedge and also as a long-term investment in the future of the mining industry. My analysis of Randgold indicated that by owning the actual real estate in which the gold and other precious mineral reserves were located, this was a significant and appreciable asset of the company that indicated an undervalued state in the appreciating precious metals market. Furthermore, the company has the facilities for R&D in the precious metals mining sector which few other companies possess. In similar motivation, I chose Apple (AAPL) because of the leading effect of the iPhone, iPad, and other products in reflecting consumer lifestyle innovation through technology. I am impressed with Apple’s minimal debt load as a company, their international e xpansion prospects for product sales, and the financial position of the company as reflected in cash on the books, growing sales, expanding markets, etc. This company is the largest in the world by market capitalization and the benchmark of the NASDAQ index, outperforming on the ability

Outlined based on the questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Outlined based on the questions - Essay Example Experience Design According to Norman (2004) human beings develops psychological attraction to different things depending on the way they interact with them in everyday life. Different items play different roles and influence the way their owners perceive them. Norman further argues that those who possess such items are envious of them and respect for the purpose they serve. Therefore, the ways in which different things are useful influence the individuals’ emotional attraction to those items. Such items should be designed in such a way that they will be able to serve their intended purpose. Norman further suggest that greater efficiency of different items to serve the purpose they were meant to serve will attract greater affection from those who posses them. Some items also reveal social and economic status of individuals. These items becomes valuable to such individuals by the virtue of personal memories they generate to people who posses them (Norman, 2004). These items may be kept for remembrance of previous occurrences though they may serve any other purpose in the human life. They may appear useless to other people, but they are very essential to those who possess them. Therefore, such people feel intensely attached to those items which invoke their feelings about some past encounters. According to Norman (2004), the functionality of objects according to human outlook influences their psychological affection towards those objects. Norman argues that individual insight determines how they interact with different things. For example, a person expects a machine to function in a certain way and incase it fails to do so, this may result to emotional detachment. It is for this reason that Norman states those machines such as computers and others which people interact with on a day to day life should be designed with emotions to echo the human feelings. However, since these machines are used for specific purposes only, they will have a limit on extent to which they can forge human feelings. They will only influence human emotions to the extent in which they anticipated to perform a certain job. In essence, the author is implying that human feelings should be reflected in the kind of items they possess and in the way they handle and display those possessions (Norman, 2004). These activities will manifest human emotional attraction to those items they own. Similarly, the efficiency of performance of the things we use will influence the psychological attraction of the user towards them. When objects are functioning effectively, they appeal to their users who then develop close intimacy with those items. However, if those items fail to perform as expected, they will cause annoyance to the user who loses emotional feelings for them and may even smash them. The Philosopher's Tool Kit When people listen to the others talking or other sources of sounds, they definitely hear what they would like to hear. Though there are many sounds emanatin g from various sources at the same time, individuals become so discerning with what they want to listen to and will filter out things of less concern to them. The sense of hearing becomes an instrument which enables individuals to figure themselves in the public domain. Through hearing, individuals appreciate the beauty of different things and are able to like or dislike various things from

Justification Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Justification Report - Essay Example From among the host of publications and journals reviewed, the following three were actually evaluated: Logistics Management, Transportation Journal and Journal of Business Logistics. However, since our organization would only require one journal, I recommend the Logistics Management since it complies with the criteria set for the most appropriate journal in our profession. As a brief overview of the journal, the Logistics Management boasts of keeping â€Å"logistics and supply chain professionals up-to-date on the latest news and trends in transportation services, equipment and technologies† (EH Publishing Network, 2011). By subscribing to it, our organization would be abreast with the current news, trends and offers that are crucial in the services we offer. The detailed information that makes this journal preferential among the others are as follows: 1. Cost and frequency of publication. Its detailed subscription offer for new subscribers is detailed herein: Cover Price: $9 9.00; Sale Price: $0.00; Savings: 100% (12 issues free delivery within US and Canada). Offered and delivered once a month, new subscribers are given an introductory promotion of receiving free 12 subscribed copies for the first year to enable us to try and avail of their journal. 2. Content.

Outlined based on the questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Outlined based on the questions - Essay Example Experience Design According to Norman (2004) human beings develops psychological attraction to different things depending on the way they interact with them in everyday life. Different items play different roles and influence the way their owners perceive them. Norman further argues that those who possess such items are envious of them and respect for the purpose they serve. Therefore, the ways in which different things are useful influence the individuals’ emotional attraction to those items. Such items should be designed in such a way that they will be able to serve their intended purpose. Norman further suggest that greater efficiency of different items to serve the purpose they were meant to serve will attract greater affection from those who posses them. Some items also reveal social and economic status of individuals. These items becomes valuable to such individuals by the virtue of personal memories they generate to people who posses them (Norman, 2004). These items may be kept for remembrance of previous occurrences though they may serve any other purpose in the human life. They may appear useless to other people, but they are very essential to those who possess them. Therefore, such people feel intensely attached to those items which invoke their feelings about some past encounters. According to Norman (2004), the functionality of objects according to human outlook influences their psychological affection towards those objects. Norman argues that individual insight determines how they interact with different things. For example, a person expects a machine to function in a certain way and incase it fails to do so, this may result to emotional detachment. It is for this reason that Norman states those machines such as computers and others which people interact with on a day to day life should be designed with emotions to echo the human feelings. However, since these machines are used for specific purposes only, they will have a limit on extent to which they can forge human feelings. They will only influence human emotions to the extent in which they anticipated to perform a certain job. In essence, the author is implying that human feelings should be reflected in the kind of items they possess and in the way they handle and display those possessions (Norman, 2004). These activities will manifest human emotional attraction to those items they own. Similarly, the efficiency of performance of the things we use will influence the psychological attraction of the user towards them. When objects are functioning effectively, they appeal to their users who then develop close intimacy with those items. However, if those items fail to perform as expected, they will cause annoyance to the user who loses emotional feelings for them and may even smash them. The Philosopher's Tool Kit When people listen to the others talking or other sources of sounds, they definitely hear what they would like to hear. Though there are many sounds emanatin g from various sources at the same time, individuals become so discerning with what they want to listen to and will filter out things of less concern to them. The sense of hearing becomes an instrument which enables individuals to figure themselves in the public domain. Through hearing, individuals appreciate the beauty of different things and are able to like or dislike various things from

An Analysis-Synthesis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

An Analysis-Synthesis - Essay Example This paper will address the question, how can the Indian government best tackle the problem of parents selling their kids organs? Trafficking and selling of children or their organs is an issue that requires an urgent attention in India. This shocking trade still goes on up to date despite the barbaric nature it reflects. It is a more disturbing fact to establish that most of the children sold are sold at a price much lower than the cost of most animals. In India, children are treated like a commodity or good in a black market where the value is not much important as long as they are sold for a price. It is clear that these children are either relocated to certain parts of the country or moved across borders after they are sold. The children are solved for different purposes that include prostitution, forced labor, child soldiers or for organ removal (Nair, et.al, 2005). It is sickening to note that children are sold for organ removal to support the lives of other people, yet their own lives are considered useless. It is not sensible to support the life of one person by killing another person. The selling of the children is done through persuasion or coercion. In certain instances, children are gently persuaded by the members of their families or friends to comply and be sold by promising them a better life unlike the one they lead. In other cases, the children are coerced or forced into submission. In either case, children never have a bigger bargaining ground because in most cases they cannot make a decision on whether to be sold or not whether it is through persuasion or coercion (Nair, et.al, 2005). Rough estimates show that approximately 40 to 50 percent of human trafficking victims are children. More disheartening is the fact that that both the children and their families are mostly unaware of the danger because they honestly believe that they do this for children to have better lives in other countries where they will

Management accounting and decision making Essay Example for Free

Management accounting and decision making Essay According to Burger (2008) â€Å"Accounting is the language of business. A lot of people think its just numbers, but its really a lot more than that. There are a lot of areas outside of numbers that need to be looked at, processes and procedures, what the tone of the company is. Accounting will take you in just about any direction in a company. ~ Wade Becker, CPA, Beard, Miller Co. The job description of many professions is changing nowadays. The skills to perform a certain job require more skills to perform a particular job. If an example of Information Technology is to be taken then it is realized that once they were left to do IT related jobs or make computers work however, in today’s world IT professionals are now moving into higher level management positions which require them to perform many other tasks which may not be directly related to the their profession. Therefore, a stereotypical role of an accountant was once considered a â€Å"number person† but today’s era demands accounting professional to own and use interactive and communication skills to help with the decision making process across all areas of a business. In a managerial accounting world all professionals must communicate their ideas to other companies using ways which are tactful and effective. Siegel (2000) states that â€Å"Management accountants should be great communicators.† Durry C (1992) believes that management accounting is â€Å"concerned with providing information to managers –that is people inside an organization who direct and control the operations.† In the 19th Century financial accounting was considered to be the need of a society which later evolved to Management accounting. Management accounting became a prerequisite for more detailed information for stock control, product costing and decisions affecting the future. Accou nting is facing numerous challenges, as Elkington (1998) states â€Å"business people must increasingly recognise that the challenge now is to help to deliver simultaneously economic prosperity, environmental quality and social equity.† All this is making business managers to re-examine the practices that are currently led. Cokins G and Hicks D believe that Managerial accounting is part of an organisations management information system. To follow any business or an organisation aim managers engage in activities which involve an effective cost model as it can be a great asset to an organisation. A business or projects to be a success or failure three things need to be considered, for  example, cost, schedule and performance. A project should be continued within the means provided otherwise stakeholders struggle to finance the project and its abandoned. A success of a manager is when appropriate tools are employed and sound safe decisions are made and follow on with applying substantial level of expertise to have effective cost management. The world today is surrounded by increasingly advanced technology such as computer assisted manufacturing and flexible manufacturing systems. According to Cokins and Hicks organizations to compete effectively need to understand the cost of each product or element of their value chain from product design and purchase of material therefore internal cost is very important as mentioned in Cokins and Hicks article because it becomes critical for competitive action and increasing shareholders wealth in the current globally competitive economy. Management accounting systems are the benefactors of the precarious internal cost information. There has been few criticisms leading to the literature of Management accounting system and it has been labeled outdated and there has been criticisms linked to its consistency as it has been thought that it does not provide consistent information with the current strategic management paradigm. Cokins and Hicks believe that systems designs elements should capture the fundamental technology, promote a business based on effective cost model, quality and lead time. Precise and appropriate cost information is critical to management’s decision making procedures (Cokins and Hicks) and the literature being studied reveals Management accounting system reflects the organizational complications of the current world however traditional Management accounting systems do not replicate current organizational era as all costing procedures were designed around late nineteenth century. In traditional era product line diversity was not very common and cost of materials and direct labour were the main components of production cost but the environment today is surrounded around advanced technology and automation and that has led the prime cost to be the overhead component. The overhead costs are altering product cost because of the old management accounting system techniques. Management accounting needs a unique set of skills and behaviour. According to Cokins and Hicks Accounting Management framework gives business a planned approach to address all factors that will manage accounts interface and todays reality. Cooper and Kaplan believe there are six critical factors which play a crucial role  in Accounting Management framework which also backs Cokins and Hicks journal being studied for this assignment. The first one is organizational structure. It includes factors such as whom and how you manage accounts, why and how you organize around them. The second account management success factor is people as they need the appropriate skills, knowledge and skills to experience and perform the role. The third factor is tools and technology as it must support the account management processes and must balance â€Å"help† as â€Å"control.† The fourth one is compensations structures as they can inhibit change or accelerate adoption. The fifth account management success factors are processes and methodologies as they should align with the customer, drive growth and opportunity plan and the last factor channels and alliances must be managed effectively through the account manager interface.it is up to an organization to structure their useful employees around their key customers and that can create a deep impact on their performance. First few deliberate decisions need to be taken in terms of placement of accounts management resources such as market and territory. Cokins and Hicks believe management team need to plan using methodology a number of factors to create a ranking based on the business goal for the affiliation and ability to deliver. Once these methodologies are selected they can play a vital role in team structure and it will help to deal with issues such as ownership or shareholders Cokins and Hicks discuss the difference between cost accounting and managerial accounting and the strength of their article is that managerial accounting is tied with GAAP whereas cost accounting is used within a business to manage that particular business. Accounting standards of a country provide guidelines to an accountant so they can be used while reporting economic transactions of a business. United Kingdom accounting has improved a lot as mentioned in the journal being studied for this particular assignment. Managers have immense pressure to improve financial management practices to improve service to the community and it is not only done on national level. Managerial accountants have to keep accountant standards fair globally and that is mainly done through Accounting Standards Committee. â€Å"What gets measured gets managed, What needs managed gets measured† (Peter Drucker) famous quotes has cause many criticisms but if the practices and development mentioned in Cokins and Hicks journal are to be analyzed, one can conclude this quote has some truth. Managers of a business  often use this quote indicates that active management of businesses should be given importance instead of accountability to gain desired goals. It w ill lead to survive in today’s world of information age competition therefore businesses should ensure they are using management systems resulting from their strengths. Any business main task is to develop an active measurement system as it is main part of the management process. Good management practices lead to using certain measures to plan, implement and improve certain aspects of an organization. According to Kaplan, (1994) measurement is a difficult task because it is not related to science so there are no facts and does not have rules between variables. Furthermore, systems which are used by management accountants will make sure that actions are taken according to the strategies and objectives developed. There has been an immense amount of research on management accountants and the research evidence has proved that businesses which are using a developed measurement system are developing and gaining profits therefore, Gates (1991) states â€Å"an organizations objectives and severity of measures, varies, depending on people, culture and past experiences of the organization.† The management accountant was developed after 1980s and it was seen a golden era in management accounting research as it saw new techniques and practices beneficial to the management accounting. One of the techniques developed in 80s was strategic management accounting and some of the processes which fall under the category of strategic management accounting are activity based costing and balance scorecard. The balance scorecard emerged after it was realized that there is a need of an integrated system which can be used to measure both financial and non-financial performances. It helps companies to view their performances on a regular basis and it gave a clear view of what should be measured in order to balance a particular business financial perspectives. The balance score card consists of four functions known as learning and growth perspective. It means how to achieve a certain organizations goals and how will a business will sustain its ability to change and improve. the second perspective is financial and its aim is to succeed financially and is mainly concerned with making a good impression to shareholders. Another perspective is based on customers as they can determine sales and to achieve business goals a good impression is to be made upon customers. The last perspective is known as internal business  processes. It mainly deals with how to satisfy customers and shareholders and what business processes must a certain business excel as. (Kaplan and Norton:1996) Balance scorecard is one of the necessities for any organization and it is used by the management to accomplish vision and strategies of an organization and it has few other benefits too such as, making sure managers are managing every single variable within an organization and are not working upon favoritism. If more developments are to be discussed and strength of Cokins and Hicks journal than one must not forget one of the major development in an accounting field known as Activity-based costing. Kaplan and Cooper gave this idea a new beginning as it was not very well known in previous years. According to Kaplan (1996) manufacturing costs are determined by amount of â€Å"activities† and the key to effective cost control is maintaining the effectiveness of the act ivities ABC recognizes better cost pools for indirect costs and then implies cost drivers to relate the expenses in the cost pools to activities of an organization. ABC has become more popular in recent years but faces a lot of criticisms too due to the fact that sometimes businesses face difficulties in implementing this technique. ABC is enhanced further by Activity-based management as they believe in planning and measurement and class them as key factors in a competitive business environment. To conclude, If an organization has accounts managers or not a success can only be achieved if a successful profile is valued. It can be done through an industry as it will help determine to what extent an account manager is an industry expert and the second is through customers as it is vital for an accountant to understand the businesses being worked upon. The profession Accountancy has seen many developments and criticisms however, since 1980s there has been many changes in management accountancy. The new changes are focusing on measurement tools within a business to manage its aims and objectives. Management techniques are discussed briefly in this essay and they emphasize on Cokins and Hicks journal that management decisions can be made better by using effective management measurement tools and it leads to improving the management of an organization. There can be problem with new measurement techniques as nothing in life comes with a guarantee however, new ideas can be used on the basis of guess work and the new contributions could be a way forward.

Women in Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary

Women in Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary The presentation of women in Charlotte Brontà «Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Jane Eyre (1847) and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) is one of the principal informatives of the novels. Clearly, the presentation of women in each case is influenced by the authorial directive which drove the novels and certainly the gender related issues can be seen to be connected to this. In addition, the structural imperative of the narrative voice invites a specific perception of the women which is only essentially revealed when the text is examined closely, particularly in terms of contrast and comparison. In both the novels to be discussed here, the central protagonist is female and events are arranged around a woman’s life and struggles in a society designed by men for the convenience of men. Also, the books each have an eponymous heroine which invites the initial perception that the entire narrative is to be fundamentally built upon a female centre of consciousness (though Flaubert, in common with many critics, thought the novel guilty of ‘faulty perspective’[1], partly because of this, perhaps). However, this must be qualified by the interaction with other female characters which each novelist uses both to develop the plot and intensify the reader’s understanding of the titular heroine’s actions in each case. Both novels also present images of women who in different ways either reflect or challenge perceived notions of how women should behave in contemporary society. Indeed, it might be said that each of these books question the basis upon which fundamental mores of the era were based and deviated from accepted moral standards. Perhaps because the chief agents of this in both novels are women, the books were thought even more outrageous than might otherwise have been the case though ‘stereotypes and prejudices have at least some positive aspects’[2] even if only in their repudiation. However, though Brontà «Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s novel opens by establishing a deeply disturbing matriarchal environment which does little to challenge the idea of the stereotypical ‘wicked-stepmother’, in the person of Jane’s reluctant guardian, her aunt, Mrs Reed, by whom she is degraded in a home where the child is ‘less than a servant’[3], it nevertheless gives the author, through Jane, the opportunity to intimate that the roots of an inner-strength and self-reliance which are to be so important to her in the future are imbedded in her childhood trials. The inevitable inference, perpetuated by the fact that a considerable amount of Jane’s suffering is inflicted by women, is that cruelty in some sense straitens the character. Moreover, the embryonic woman may be perceived in Jane’s acceptance of this treatment: This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible.[4] Jane’s subsequent subjugation, both as a pupil at Lowood School and in her position as a governess, the ultimate ‘non-persona’ of nineteenth century female existence and one of which the author had personal experience, may be seen to be endured with extraordinary patience because of these early insults. Indeed, Brontà « wrote the character of Jane to be ‘plain, small, and unattractive, in defiance of the accepted canon’[5] and like herself, in fact, so her women are inevitably influenced by this directive: ‘Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please?’[6] This desire to ‘please’ is quite definitely connected here with the female stereotype which to some extent Jane’s later behaviour negates. Thus, Brontà «Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s portrayal of the female child is, to invert Wordsworth, ‘mother of the woman’ for the injustice of her treatment is forcibly emp hasised, as it is later at Lowood (the cruelty of which was autobiographical as two of Brontà «Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s sisters died at a school very similar to it). It is crucial that Jane’s sufferings should be seen to be inflicted by women, for as Jane says, ‘I doubted not-never doubted—that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly’[7]. Clearly, the author’s directive is to display how very different is the cruelty of women inflicted upon their own sex from that of men who, like Rochester, involve a sexually charged sadistic element in their cruelty towards women. Flaubert’s novel creates rather a different consciousness, however, and the directive for this is possibly created by the passion of the novel, which was for a time banned in France on the grounds of obscenity. Emma Bovary, unlike Jane Eyre, is driven less by the sense of injustice brought about by her familial circumstances than her desire for a more passionate existence than her husband, the mediocre doctor Bovary, can provide. In a sense, she is the antithesis of Jane, since she longs not for a simple existence with a loving husband, that she has, but for a life of which she has read in romantic fiction, symbolised by her desire for ‘a marriage at midnight by the light of torches’[8] (though this has been shown to be also a custom rather than an idiosyncratic whim[9]). Emma is, from the first, presented sensually: ‘she shivered as she ate, thereby causing her rather full lips, which, in moments of silence, she was in the habit of biting, to fall slightly apart.’[10] Anticipating Hardy’s description of Tess eating a strawberry offered by her seducer, Flaubert focuses the attention of the reader immediately upon Emma’s mouth, slightly open, in an unconsciously provocative attitude. In this, she is very different from Jane, who is presented as demure to the point of austerity, perpetually dressed in dark clothes, partly due to her situation but also, the reader might infer, due to a repressed self-image. (Interestingly, Flaubert often dresses Emma in blue, with varying numbers of flounces; this would be recognisable in the Catholic France as the colour traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary.) Nowhere is this more evident than when she is compelled by Rochester to attend an evening party at Thornfield and we see her juxtaposed with the flirtatious Blanche Ingram and the party who, dressed in white ‘flock’[11] into the drawing room like ‘white plumy birds’[12] in stark contrast to the soberly dressed Jane, all in grey. The women speak in an ‘habitual’[13] way, indicating that it is both natural and practised: a register of opposite inflection which suggests the elaborately artificial, indicative of their representation, via Jane’s perspective, at least, and since Jane’s voice is that of the book, that is the view we are invited to share. As she says, ‘Miss Ingram [†¦] was self-conscious— remarkably self-conscious indeed’[14]. Brontà «Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s employment of the term ‘self-conscious’ is interesting since it encapsulates, in the two meanings of the term, the difference between Blanche and Jane. Blanche is conscious of herself as a vain exposition but Jane is self-conscious in terms of abnegation. Significantly, at this point, the narrative register switches, to present the scene as if Jane is watching it: ‘I sit in the shade—if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the window-curtain half hides me’[15]. (Apparently Charlotte was also self-effacing at parties, where she would hide behind the curtains in order to be both present and not so.) The author thus employs a dual vicariousness of experience, since she is speaking autobiographically behind the veil of Jane who is now watching herself in a recalled reactive, ‘I might gaze without being observed’[16] as she remarks. The women’s conversation is at best indiscreet and at worst cruel, as they discourse on the nature of governesses, ‘the whole tribe’[17], almost as one might of a separate and inferior species of being which they undoubtedly beli eve to be true, in common with most of the aristocracy of the time. Moreover, they speak of an ‘immoral tendency’[18] which they believe to be present in the governess and the entire lack of privacy which attaches to the position. Charlotte had experienced this herself, no doubt, in her life as a governess, belonging neither upstairs nor downstairs and loathed by servants and masters alike. The Ingram party are representative of women who subjugate others of their sex within the class conscious society in which the novel operates, and by showing them as vain and shallow as well as unkind, Brontà « invites the reader to infer that their judgements are likewise via an intimate distancing. It is interesting to compare this behaviour of Jane’s with that of Emma Bovary at a ball. Far from wishing to hide herself, Emma longs both to see and be seen on a larger stage than that of the ‘country town’ of the title: Emmas heart gave a faint flutter as she stood in the line of dancers, her partners fingers lightly laid upon her arm, waiting for the first stroke of the fiddlers bow to give the signal for starting. But very soon her emotion vanished. Moving to the rhythm of the orchestra, she swam forward with a gentle undulation of the neck. A smile showed upon her lips at certain tender passages on the violin, when, now and again, it played alone and the other instruments were hushed. The sound of gold coins chinking on the baize surfaces of card-tables was clearly audible. Then, with a crash of brass, the music would once more strike up loudly. Feet took up the measure, skirts swelled, swishing as they touched one another, hands were given and withdrawn, eyes, downcast a moment before, were raised again in silent colloquy.[19] This intense sensuousness follows Emma’s mockery of her husband’s desire to dance and it is clear that she wishes to enjoy this experience in solitude though not of course in isolation. She desires her husband’s absence and thus Flaubert separates the passionate Emma from the practical one. There is a danger and excitement here for which Emma longs and which is represented not only in the ‘silent colloqu[ies]’ but also in the ‘chinking’ of the ‘gold coins’ at the card tables. Flaubert foreshadows Emma’s own risk-taking here as she is thrilled by the intensity of the atmosphere in a way that Jane most decidedly is not. Further, Emma’s feelings are present in the way in which the author describes Emma’s points d’apuis involving the reader in her sensuality as ‘she swam forward with a gentle undulation of the neck’. How different is this subliminal image of the swan from that rendered by Jane? Moreover, Flaubert’s intense desire for verisimilitude will not allow for the shadowy and duplicitous register of the faux autobiographical first person narrative which Brontà « adopts, and which was imitated by such notable authors as Dickens in David Copperfield (1850) and therefore attempts to present Emma as both fragile and strong, flippant and serious, a fully rounded woman, in fact, having her feet firmly on the ground in some areas but hopelessly romantic in others: Sometimes she sketched, and Charles found much delight in standing at her side, watching her bend above her drawing-board, half closing her eyes the better to judge the effect of her work, or rolling little pellets of bread between finger and thumb. The quicker her hands moved when she played the piano, the greater his surprise. She struck the notes with a sure touch, and could run down the keyboard from treble to bass without a moments pause. [†¦] But there was another side to Emma. She knew how to run her house. [†¦] Because of all this the consideration shown to Bovary increased. [20] It is important that Bovary ‘came to value himself the more highly for possessing such a wife’[21] as he thus inverts the received notion that a woman’s status derived from her husband, not the reverse. ’The difference within writing is then coextensive with the difference between the sexes’[22] and for the essence of mediocrity, Charles Bovary, the gifted, artistic yet apparently level-headed Emma, is the equivalent of a modern day trophy wife. Therefore, when he is betrayed by her infidelities the pain is all the greater. Marriage was the principle duty of both men and women in the centuries up to and including the nineteenth and after, and the marital state, as well as deviations from it, drives the narrative throughout both novels. Emma is highly regarded not just because she is beautiful and artistic but because she can adequately fulfil what society expects of a wife. Further, it is reasonable to assume that the latter approbation would be prin cipally granted by the provincial matrons who will later disapprove so strongly of her behaviour. Thus, Flaubert exposes both the inherent hypocrisy of the society and the restrictive expectations of the role of a wife. Both parties to such a union are ultimately unhappy and Flaubert at least offers a reason for Emma’s behaviour by means of emphasising her husband’s mediocrity: Had Charles but shown the will to listen, had he but suspected the movement of her thoughts, or seen but once into her mind, her heart would, she felt, suddenly have released all its wealth of feeling, as apples fall in profusion from a shaken tree. But as their lives took on a greater intimacy, so did detachment grow within her mind and loose the bonds which bound them.[23] Analysis of a translated text is always problematic but the semantic field is so apparent here that it is possible to comment on the text with some degree of accuracy. Clearly, what drives this damning description of Charles is the fact that he manifestly has a choice; it is as if he makes no effort towards understanding his wife and thus the ‘intimacy’ which might have been is displaced by ‘detachment’. Moreover, the idea that they are ‘bound’ by their respective postures impacts upon the metaphorical rendering of the passion contained within Emma. Similarly, the repressed passion of Jane cannot be released until Rochester has in a sense been emasculated so that he needs Jane and understands her need to have an existence of her own without entrapment. This picture of woman as imprisoned within both body and soul by the propriety of a fundamentally hypocritical society is literally true of Rochester’s ‘mad’ wife, Bertha Mason. Perhaps because of the tendency to focus upon Jane and Rochester’s romance, the plight of Bertha is rarely examined and she is confined to a Gothic stereotype which reflects Charlotte’s reading, as does the Byronic Rochester, but leaves little room for a sympathetic reading of the woman’s existence. She is simply presented as an impediment derived from an entrapment in Rochester’s youth: Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big woman, in statue almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. [†¦]That is my wife, said he. â€Å"Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And this is what wished to have† (laying his hand on my shoulder): â€Å"this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder—this face with that mask—this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and remember, with what judgment ye judg e ye shall be judged!†[24] Mrs. Rochester is accorded no dignity either by her husband or Jane, indeed the terms of address attached to her are those of ‘lunatic’, ‘demon’ and the entirely divorced from human delineation of the ‘fierce ragout’. Brontà « betrays her own lack of compassion here, as she distances the reader from any possibility of empathy by making Bertha appears as a monster, ‘big’ and ‘corpulent’, inhuman, in fact. She intriguingly applies the adjective ‘virile’ to the woman, too, and thereby invites an animalistic sexuality which has, in fact, the reader is led to believe caused Rochester to marry her in the first place, unaware of her family’s genetic tendency towards insanity. Moreover, by using a direct comparative with Jane, Brontà « subliminally and possibly unconsciously, suggests a debasement of the female sex in Rochester’s terminology. Both women are referred to as objects, ‘thisâ€℠¢ and ‘that’, and their comparative merits highlighted in a detached and oddly disconcerting way. In addition, his language is unpleasantly possessive, ‘that is what I wished to have’. Finally, he appeals the justice of his case to God, suggesting that his attitude is correct, even under Divine examination, disparagingly referring to both the ‘priest of the gospel and man of the law’. So effective is the author’s manipulation of this that the reader, as is undoubtedly the intent, forgets the inherent immorality and cruelty which all those present display. In this sense, the novel is guilty of corrupting the reader’s moral sensibility since it invites a faulty and amoral judgement based upon the romantic imperative the novelist pursues. The fact that Bertha is a woman, not an alien being, does not appear to enter the collective consciousness, here. Sexuality is inextricably bound up with the image of ‘the lunatic’, her e, as Rochester speaks of the ‘conjugal embrace’ to which he is tied. It is clear to see, then, that for this author, the sexual drive has within it a link to a kind of wildness which sits uneasily with the image of the ‘grave and quiet’ Miss Eyre, especially since Bertha tears Jane’s wedding veil on the eve of the proposed bigamous marriage, a Freudian symbol, perhaps, of the virginal bride’s impending sexual ‘violation’. Even Bertha’s imprisonment may be likened to the earlier entrapment of Jane in ‘the red room’, itself a Gothic interlude and teeming with female sexual symbolism. It is no accident that when she leaves Thornfield, Jane recovers, after an indeterminate and somewhat wayward and directionless journey in the abode of the seemingly asexual St. John Rivers and his sisters, Diana and Mary. It is later revealed that these women are related to Jane and they are like her, even to the extent of both being governesses. They are, of course, delivered to the reader as positive images, as was Miss Temple her role-model at Lowood, and the antithesis of the artificiality of Blanche and the animalistic Bertha. The fact that Jane is literally removed from her previous existence with all its inherent passion to the quietude of a parsonage says much about the didactic split in the presentation of women within Jane Eyre. Certainly, the author is keen to connect love with a kind of sanctity and passion is somewhat marginalised into areas which have significantly dark connectives. The well-read and steadily sympathetic sisters have little in common with the women Jan e has encountered at Thornfield and indeed, even St. John himself seems insipid when compared to Rochester, thus the author’s ambivalence towards female sexuality is fundamentally present in the juxtaposition of the images of the female which are the inverse connectives between the world of Thornfield and that of the Rivers family. It may be remarked, in fact, that Jane disapproves even of the affectations of Adele, the child of a woman with whom Rochester has had a sexual relationship though he is not Adele’s father. Thus, even the innocence of the child appears to be tainted, in the author’s mind (since Jane is her centre of consciousness), by her mother’s sexually promiscuous past. This idea of female sexuality identifies much of the imperative behind Flaubert’s novel, with his central character suffering a restricted life which we infer to be as unfulfilling sexually as it is temperamentally. Emma and Charles Bovary form an ill-matched couple but their respective discontentment stems from an intrinsic disparity that relates to more than their different aims and desires. In fact, the novel has been called ‘the tragedy of dreams’[25] and this is indeed an apt description. Flaubert created in Emma the tragedy of a woman both awakened and doomed by passion: Pleasure and pain metamorphose into each other. Innocence is unmasked and altered by corruption. In Madame Bovary, following the disappointment of her marriage, these changes occur in Emma because of Rodolphe. Flaubert’s corrosive irony in the narrative treatment of his characters does not lessen the pain of love or the lyrical power of Emma’s erotic awakening.[26] Emma is, then, an inverse of Jane, since her life is thwarted by marriage whereas Jane’s is fulfilled by it. In part, this is due to the nature of the narrative because Emma is not in love with Charles as Jane undoubtedly is with Rochester. There is an interesting irony, though, in that Brontà «Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s novel is born of her reading whereas Flaubert depicts his heroine as in part destroyed by the romantic dreams which have emanated from hers: In the days before her marriage she had fancied that she was in love. But the happiness love should have brought her did not come. She must, she thought, have been mistaken, and set herself to discover what it was that people in real life meant by such words as ‘bliss’, ‘passion’ and ‘intoxication’words, all of them, which she had thought so fine when she read them in books.[27] Flaubert was of the ‘realist’ school and by producing a heroine corrupted by the romances with which she had been indoctrinated, he emphasises the difference between a woman’s life in reality and as lived vicariously in the projected images of female enchantment to which Emma here refers. Moreover, Flaubert foreshadows Emma’s ultimate tragedy by the ominous words, ‘[she] set herself to discover what it was that people in real life meant by such words as ‘bliss’, ‘passion’ and ‘intoxication’’. Emma’s innate passion for romantic love is revealed as a childhood sensibility and therefore basic to her. She has been educated in a convent (which Charlotte with her anti-Catholic prejudices would have found appalling in itself) but even there she sees the ‘metaphors of affianced lover, husband, divine wooer and eternal marriage, which were for ever recurring in the sermons that she heard, [and that] mo ved her heart with an unexpected sweetness’[28]. By juxtaposing love, marriage and religion, Flaubert again invites a religious connective with Emma herself. As was noted earlier, he often dresses her in the blue of the ‘Blessed Virgin’ and here he is quite provocatively bringing together, in Emma, the twin images of woman in the nineteenth century collective consciousness as either ‘Madonna’ or ‘whore’. In addition to her fictionalised pictures of love drawn from books and religion, Emma is influenced by the stories of an ‘old maid’[29] who visits the convent and because she belongs ‘to an old family of gentlefolk ruined by the Revolution’[30] she ‘enjoyed the special favour of the archbishop’[31] and was almost part of the convent, privileged to eat with the nuns. This reveals much about the class-consciousness of nineteenth century France as well as the perception of women, since the archbishop controls not only the nuns but also who may be thought worthy to consort with them. Ironically, this old lady sings to the girls ‘love songs of the previous century’[32] and: [†¦] told stories, brought news of the outside world, executed small commissions in the town, and secretly lent to the older girls one or other of the novels that she carried in the pockets of her apron, and that she herself devoured in the intervals of labour. They were concerned only with affairs of the heart, with lovers and their lasses, with persecuted damsels for ever swooning in solitary pavilions, with outriders meeting a violent death on every journey, and horses foundering on every page, with dark forests and agonies of sentiment, with vows, sobs, tears and kisses, with moonlit gondolas, with groves and nightingales, with cavaliers who were always brave as lions, gentle as lambs, and virtuous as real men never are, always elegantly dressed and given to weeping with the copious fluency of stone fountains.[33] Again, Flaubert the realist presents a tongue in cheek picture of the ‘positive’ images for girls selected by the church, since the old maid of whom the archbishop thinks so highly is potentially dangerous. She also enters into secret negotiations with the girls and bridges the protective gap between the convent and the outside world and fills their heads, as she does her own, with images straight out of Gothic Romance. Flaubert also emphasises that the heroes in these stories are ‘virtuous as real men never are’, which foreshadows Emma’s later tragic romances with men as they actually are. Thus, Flaubert brilliantly involves the reader in a broad sweep of society’s image of women and the external influences which encroach upon them despite the best efforts of enclosure perpetrated by the patriarchal society in which the novel operates. In many ways, Emma’s future self is determined by her childhood as much as is that of Jane. When Emma is eventually ‘in love’ she is betrayed and because of this she is doomed since she has so inveterately been schooled in the expectations of the romantic novel. Through Emma, then, Flaubert is able to develop the theme of a reactive against a genre of which he powerfully disapproved. A further, deeply Freudian, image of women is produced via Charles’ relationship with his mother. This controlling woman has arranged her son’s first marriage, by which she never feels threatened, but is much less secure as ‘her sons favourite’[34] now that he has Emma in his life: Charless love for Emma seemed to her like an act of treachery to her affection, a trespassing on ground which was hers by right.[35] This bizarre connective of displacement, with all its psychoanalytical implications, has resonance later when Emma, uninterested in her daughter, Berthe, for a long time suddenly becomes maternal following rejection by her lover. In this way, Flaubert once again examines the nature of the connective between the images of womanhood commonly represented in contemporary society. In addition, he examines the corrupting influence of the over-bearing mother, who ‘remind[s] him of her pains and sacrifices on his behalf’[36] and Charles is caught in the all too familiar trap, even today, of wanting both to honour his mother and please his wife: Charles did not know how to answer these outbursts. He respected his mother but was deeply in love with his wife. He held the formers judgement to be impeccable, yet found the latter beyond reproach.[37] The extraordinary contemporaneousness of this dilemma emphasises the fact that perhaps Flaubert’s novel holds up better than the more popular Jane Eyre with its outdated mores and Gothic imagery. Perhaps this preference is, in fact, an enduring symbol of a generic resistance to the ‘real’ in the novel and the fact that women remain largely the readers of such fiction as Charlotte’s rather than Flaubert’s is indicative of an inherent, if politically incorrect, desire in the female to seek romance. The women in both of these novels stand against what society expects of them but the very different nature of their stance is represented powerfully by their contrasting endings: Jane Eyre becomes the happy wife whilst Emma Bovary commits suicide. Tracing these endings gives an indicator of society’s perceived apprehensions of a woman’s role and the individual author’s widely different directives. However, there is no simplicity to this as Jane’s resolution is gained only by means of the ‘diminishment’ of Rochester; she has to become his nurse, as she was once his comfort and refuge, before she can become his wife: The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson. And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?—if you do, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet.[38] Rochester is portrayed here as the Byronic hero sufficiently reduced in status as to make it possible that Jane can be his ‘equal’, it is almost as if Brontà « somehow feels that the dynamic presence of Rochester would itself be reduced if he were not in some way diminished in order to marry her. Thus, the novelist’s own perceptions come under scrutiny since there is a clear ambivalence in a woman who seems throughout her semi-autobiographical and intensely personal novel to promote an image of a woman who can stand alone but who subliminally, perhaps, becomes a reductive image in her marriage. Addressing the reader directly, as she does when she famously declares that she married Rochester, Jane suggests that the reader does not, perhaps, ‘know’ her after all. Emma’s suicide is handled much more directly in keeping with the woman Flaubert has sought to reveal, even in death seeming both passionate and beautiful: Emma was lying with her head on her right shoulder. The corner of her open mouth formed, as it were, a black hole in the lower part of her face. Her two thumbs were flexed inwards towards the palms of the hands. There was a powdering of what looked like white dust on her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in a viscous pallor which gave the impression that spiders had been spinning a delicate web over their surface. The sheet sagged between her breast and her knees, rising, further down, to a peak above her toes. It seemed to Charles as though some great weight, some mass of infinity, were lying upon her.[39] The overwhelming impression here, especially in Charles’ perspective, is that Emma is a woman crushed by her passions and surrendering to guilt, ‘a mass of infinity’, which is perhaps appropriate given the mores of the time. However, Emma is as the reader first saw her, with her mouth parted, albeit here transmuted to the ‘black hole’ which forms the ‘lower part of her face’. Is this then the inversion of her passionate nature or merely the novelist’s naturalistic rendering of a corpse? The delicacy of the description suggests a sympathetic

Poly Canyon Essay -- Descriptive Nature Essays Observation

It is a sunless morning shrouded in mist. The clouds look ominous with the threat of rain. It is quiet, for no creatures are awake yet, not even the hikers. The air is crisp and smells fresh after a night covered in the ocean fog. A Eucalyptus grove stands at the trail entrance with a deliciously pungent greeting that carries through the air. Along the trail as the foliage gets thicker, it is evident that Mother Nature knows the autumn season has arrived. Leaves have begun to turn the fall colors and drop to the trail floor. Even the poison oak has participated in autumn and looks colorful and festive. Golden Eucalyptus leaves litter the trail like sparkling, perfume-infused flecks of gold. The effect is magical. It is the perfect atmosphere to begin our ascent of Poly Mountain. Turning off the beaten path, we made our way single file and marching like army troops, up the steep trail leading to a sloping canyon filled with wonders. There, upon the bluff, stood a pair of deer staring blankly at us as we snapped furiously with our cameras to hold this moment forever. Just as soon as the deer had appeared through the mist, they vanished. As the trail weaved higher and further away from civilization, birds, squirrels and deer emerged from their warm nests, burrows and dens. Bird songs fluttered through the air and more deer scampered down the trail heading to isolated meadows to fill their bellies with the delicious vegetation that Poly Canyon has to offer. Poly Canyon, located directly behind Poly Mountain, is filled with flora. Some is abundant like the Yucca Plant and poison oak. There are also some less abundant species that cover the hills. The Coastal Live Oak trees are gentle gi... ...e. It was the perfect moment; serene and natural. Nobody wanted to leave. After being in such a high state, going back down the mountain into the real world was deflating. As we descended down to the â€Å"Poly P† and to the campus below, reminders of civilization became more evident. Plastic bottles littered the trail. Pillow cases from the â€Å"P† were strewn all through the Yucca. Corroded barbed wire lined the gate back to the real world. We came across a water tank embedded in the hill, surrounded by fences and warning signs. Patches of Star Thistle littered the path and grabbed at our feet. The asphalt of the parking lot was ugly and covered the ground like a blanket of death for all the plant life on the hills. This â€Å"welcome† back to civilization made us yearn to climb back up the stairs to our heavenly view and escape civilization once again. Poly Canyon Essay -- Descriptive Nature Essays Observation It is a sunless morning shrouded in mist. The clouds look ominous with the threat of rain. It is quiet, for no creatures are awake yet, not even the hikers. The air is crisp and smells fresh after a night covered in the ocean fog. A Eucalyptus grove stands at the trail entrance with a deliciously pungent greeting that carries through the air. Along the trail as the foliage gets thicker, it is evident that Mother Nature knows the autumn season has arrived. Leaves have begun to turn the fall colors and drop to the trail floor. Even the poison oak has participated in autumn and looks colorful and festive. Golden Eucalyptus leaves litter the trail like sparkling, perfume-infused flecks of gold. The effect is magical. It is the perfect atmosphere to begin our ascent of Poly Mountain. Turning off the beaten path, we made our way single file and marching like army troops, up the steep trail leading to a sloping canyon filled with wonders. There, upon the bluff, stood a pair of deer staring blankly at us as we snapped furiously with our cameras to hold this moment forever. Just as soon as the deer had appeared through the mist, they vanished. As the trail weaved higher and further away from civilization, birds, squirrels and deer emerged from their warm nests, burrows and dens. Bird songs fluttered through the air and more deer scampered down the trail heading to isolated meadows to fill their bellies with the delicious vegetation that Poly Canyon has to offer. Poly Canyon, located directly behind Poly Mountain, is filled with flora. Some is abundant like the Yucca Plant and poison oak. There are also some less abundant species that cover the hills. The Coastal Live Oak trees are gentle gi... ...e. It was the perfect moment; serene and natural. Nobody wanted to leave. After being in such a high state, going back down the mountain into the real world was deflating. As we descended down to the â€Å"Poly P† and to the campus below, reminders of civilization became more evident. Plastic bottles littered the trail. Pillow cases from the â€Å"P† were strewn all through the Yucca. Corroded barbed wire lined the gate back to the real world. We came across a water tank embedded in the hill, surrounded by fences and warning signs. Patches of Star Thistle littered the path and grabbed at our feet. The asphalt of the parking lot was ugly and covered the ground like a blanket of death for all the plant life on the hills. This â€Å"welcome† back to civilization made us yearn to climb back up the stairs to our heavenly view and escape civilization once again.

Long Live The Infoperneur Essay

In the wildly popular 1960’s American television series Star Trek, Captain James T. Kirk would often turn to his engineer, Officer ‘Scotty’ Montgomery and direct him to take the spaceship into a fascinating new realm called ‘warp speed’. With commanding confidence he would turn to Scotty and say â€Å"Warp speed ahead†. â€Å"Aye Aye Captain† the Scottish officer would reply, at which point millions of ‘Trekie’ fans around the world would simply gasp with unparalleled excitement as the international crew was suddenly thrown back against their seats, as the spacecraft instantly hurled itself at an unprecedented speed through an unknown galaxy. Over just the last few years, we have witnessed a moment when art in a sense, has shown itself to imitate life, as tomorrow’s future has been rapidly hurled into the lap of our present; so to speak. The entrepreneurial spirit of old has been overtaken by a new spirit of innovative ‘inforperneural’ dynamism. At the very same time the â€Å"technology of yesterday†, as the Black Eye Pea’s will. i. am says, has been replaced by the â€Å"technology of tomorrow† (Huffington, 2008). The actual technology favoring this dynamic â€Å"exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth† (Williams 2008) has been casually lounging on the desktops of tech savvy innovators for years now. However, over just the last few years we have seen how the motive forces of Globalism have actually worked to push this insipient new reality into the forefront of technological advance. In just the past year alone, the exponential growth of social networking and SMS technology with websites like Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and a host of others, which have seen an amazing growth in popularity, has simply leveled the playing field between the mulit-national corporation and the individual; in the delivery of news and information. For the first time, in a large way the internet, has trumped the corporate media in determining just what the content of the new 24 hour news cycle should contain. Often throughout this process of evolution we have seen independent internet news sites that have gathered first hand information well before the networks were ever aware its existence. Then, all of a sudden, there emerged a whole new group of independent reporters; information consultants if you will: â€Å"[The] [T]echie-types †¦ began to discover the power of the power of the Internet to amplify a single voice †¦ suddenly [they] gave this voice substance †¦ authority †¦ reach †¦ and influence like never before. In fact †¦ we have witnessed the rise of a whole new class of video journalists †¦ armed only with mobile phones †¦ who are changing the way we see the world †¦ from the violence in Tibet †¦ to gaffs on the [American] campaign trail †¦ Seemingly overnight †¦ [BBC] †¦ CNN †¦ Fox News and others †¦ have hundreds †¦ if not thousands †¦ of would-be colleagues and competitors across the globe. † (Sansalone, 2008) Completely independent of political tradition, it has suddenly become the internet that has often had the last word. The Beijing Olympics and the Presidential campaign overseas can now be seen as significant milestones that have helped to bridge the gap from the old to the new. Gone is the old school entrepreneur, pushing their way into the forefront of innovation, begging for a seat at table, the Infoperneur had come of age. If ever there was a time when you were not quite sure that you were actually living in The Information Age, today there should be little doubt in your mind. Make no mistake about it; this is the mega high-speed information world that they were telling us about. Thirty eight years after anthropologist Alvin Toffler prophesized the rapid insurgency of what was ultimately to become, a kind of post / super-industrial world, that was sure to leave most Western nations disconnected and suffering from a kind of â€Å"shattering stress and disorientation†, namely from something he called â€Å"future shock†, his vision of the world is now somewhat front and center and once again on full blast (Toffler, 1970). Toffler feared that we would not be able to adapt to the enormous mega-trends that were coming in the wake of an entirely New Age. He seemed to think that we would all somehow break down under the pressure of a kind of dystopian totalitarian rule, just like the characters in the James McTeigue political thriller V for Vendetta. Unable to reconcile the fascinating pace of the New Age, while we all wandered about Westminster Abbey in a daze, shuttering simply at the thought of having those dammed black bags thrown over our faces if we did not behave as the government wanted us to; this was a world that he believed was rapidly coming towards us. It was to present us with far too many choices than the average individual or family could ever withstand. Although he may have missed the mark a little on just how well the West would adapt, one thing is sure to have a potentially damaging effect upon us in the not too distant future. The foods that we are now consuming are not as fresh as they were back when Toffler wrote Future Shock nearly forty years ago. As a consequence, at some point, with the ever-increasing corporatization of the British diet, and with food standards growing more and more lax everyday, we are sure to pay a heavy price. Perhaps the time is at hand when the masses will seek out qualified ‘Infoperneurs’ online to help provide them with the knowledge of how to maintain a healthy diet; while living in an increasingly unhealthy environment. Nevertheless, Toffler was aware way back then that computers would have an enormous, if not ubiquitous impact upon shaping all of our lives. Even as he watched these trends develop, still he maintained an uncanny awareness that we had only touched upon what was the tip of a nearly unfathomable iceberg, â€Å"We have scarcely touche the computer revolu-tion and the far-ramifying changes that must follow churning in its wake† (Toffler, 1970). It is almost impossible to believe that anyone would have thought way back then that the number one currency for more than one billion people currently wired to the internet everyday, would simply be ‘information’. Twelve years after Toffler, another futurist published a book called Mega-Trends. This book by John Naisbitt remained on the Best Seller list for more than two years. Naisbitt was able to point his vision sharply into the future, and what he saw was a world of great transformation. He displayed a far greater sense than Toffler that the Western world would not only be able to weather the winds of change; but that we would for the most part welcome and embrace them. In 1982, Naisbitt predicted Ten Mega-Trends that he saw looming on the horizon. You tell me just how accurate he was. 1) He believed that we were becoming an information society after having been largely an industrial one. Looking at where we are today, it’s hard to believe that anybody could dispute that. 2) He believed that we were moving from technology being forced into use, to technology being pulled into use where it is appealing to people. Back then one could only imagine that the burden of having to use a computer at all was indeed challenging to some people; as I am sure it still is today. 3) Nesbitt predicted that globalization was quickly coming upon the horizon more than ten years before the word even came in vogue. He believed in 1982, that nations would evolve from predominantly national economies into a global marketplace. All of these changes would indeed develop shortly thereafter, and we must remember still, that this was relatively a short time ago. 4) He believed that we would move from short term to long term perspectives, and 5) from centralization in business and governance to decentralization. 6) Now this is where Nesbit predicted the emergence of Infopreneurship. He believed back then, that we would move away from getting help through institutions like government to self-help; and actually, 7) From representative to participative democracies. 8) Nesbit said that we would move from hierarchies to networking. He obviously saw the enormous trend towards social networking long before anyone seems to have thought about its full potential. 9) He said that our biases would dissipate. 10) Lastly, he predicted that we would evolve from seeing things as â€Å"either / or† to having a variety of choices. Now, who would have thought as much? The decade of the eighties would become a rich fertile ground for the emergence of a new intrapreneural boom that would begin to take shape by the mid 1990’s. However, the roots of many of the trends that both Toffler and Naisbitt wrote about actually began to take shape during the waning years of the Cold War. As Japan quietly began to re-emerge as a burgeoning economic powerhouse coming back upon the world scene more than 35years ago, they would carry with them a model of workplace innovation. It was common back then for Americans to comment that the Cold War was indeed over, and that it was actually the Japanese who had won it. In 1980, one out of every four cars in the U. S. market was Japanese. Japan started making better and cheaper cars than their American counterparts. They broke the back of the great American export leviathan and suddenly American businesses were forced to take a long hard look eastward at Japan. The world would take notice. This was to become an era that would give rise to a new emphasis upon developing a spirit of creative innovation within the workplace. Intrapreneurship was all of a sudden being greatly encouraged in the workplace. Gone was the marshal attitude of strict unquestionable control. The creative spirit was let loose to the point that a man named Art Fry at the 3M Company could gain inspiration from a co-worker, who invented an adhesive, yet could not find a thing to do with it. Fry had an epiphany after noticing that the book marks kept falling out of his church hymnals during choir practice. Lo and behold, Post-its stickers were born (Business Strategy 1988). During the same year that John Naisbitt was predicting the trends of the future, Norman Macrae was also speculating upon corporations discovering stimulating ways to develop creative ‘intrapreneurs’ within their firms. He believed that intrapreneural competition should be aggressively encouraged. Suddenly, in the face of declining sales in manufacturing, automobiles and electronics, due to the great efficiently of the burgeoning Japanese market (Japan is now the second largest economy in the world); other Western nations began to loosen their ties in the workplace. It was during that period as well that Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot would first begin to coin the term ‘intra-peneur. ’ Together they wrote passionately about the workplace and their concept of the emerging future of Infopreneurship would become a prominent aspect of the lexicon of their work for years to come. [â€Å"We will begin facing the challenges caused by expanding technological power and growing population when we change what we are striving for. We need a new definition of success† (Pinchot, 1995)]. Together they took pains to give full credit for their ideas to the earlier work of Norman Macrae. In 1985 after developing their methods in Sweden, they actually started a school for Intrapreneurship. One year later, John Naisbitt was speaking of Intrapreneurship and a means for American firms to find new markets. The development of the Macintosh computer was described by Steve Jobs as an ‘intrapreneural’ venture. India would also re-emerge upon the world stage over just the last decade and a half largely as a result of their embrace of the concept of intrapreneurship. Later, in 1990, Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School spoke of ‘intrapreneurship’ in her book â€Å"When Giants Learn to Dance. â€Å" [â€Å"†¦. coaching to stimulate and guide the creation of new ventures from within. These strategies [that] [come] from the core of the post-entrepreneurial take entrepreneurial to the next step. †] (Kanter, 1990) While the concept of intrapreneurship was helping to develop the leaders of the near future internet technology boom in Silicon Valley; this would become yet another golden age of entrepreneurialship around the world. Within a relatively short period of time, Desktop Publishing had come into its own. In time, the home office, tele-commuting, Fed X Kinko’s Business Services, and private mailboxes would help to transform the face of small businesses all across the globe; making it more cost effective for ambitious individuals to strike out on their own as independent entrepreneurs. This era of innovation and enterprise roughly from the mid 1980’s to the turn of the New Century, would in turn help to plant the fertile seedlings for the Inforperneural Age of today. However first, the foundation of one great industry would appear on its way to becoming unhinged. While governments act to bail out banks during the economic downturn, and public sector funds are siphoned away from the till for the 2012 Olympics, Google is reporting a more than 25% third quarter jump in profit. Why, because the average Brit now gets their news at least three times a day from the internet. Those who are now taking advantage of the Web 2. 0 infrastructure, even while Web 3. 0 is on the launching pad, have become the new Infoperneurs. One might easily doubt that it could have been foreseen that the internet would actually force the worldwide restructuring of the newspaper industry. Job cuts are now being reported at the Cambridge News and The Independent, and overseas in just the last few years, a number of the most popular newspapers have been forced to cut their staffs, and many have eliminated whole sections from their papers altogether. In the wake of massive job cuts, the New York Times recently announced that its circulation was down 3. 9%. If that was not bad enough, on the heels of a deepening economic recession its advertising market has recently reported precipitous decline. Many other newspapers throughout the world are currently in the midst of perilous financial times. (The Economist, September 20, 2008) In March of this year the Newspaper Association of America admitted that the decline of newspapers across the country was actually happening more rapidly than it had been previously reported. At the same time online revenues for some papers were beginning to skyrocket. Total print revenues plummeted in 2007 down 9. 4% to $42 billion compared to the previous year. This reflects the single biggest drop in revenue since the year 1950, when the organization first started tracking quarterly revenue (Riley 2008). At the same time, we discover that: â€Å"Online [ traffic] [offered] some solace for the dead-tree business, with internet ad revenue growing 18. 8% to $3. 2 billion compared to 2006, but a rate significantly lower than the 31. 4% growth the year before, and not even close to replacing the losses from print. Online revenue now represents 7. 5% of total newspaper ad revenues† (Riley 2008). What is actually hidden behind the numbers is a totally new reality in the way that we view our world. The internet is now the single greatest marketplace for information. It is where people go the plug into any thought, concept, or idea that they may wish to learn more about. They press a button, and ‘poof’ there it is! Someone has to do all that research, post and retrieve all of those articles, and simply broker the non-stop flow of billions and billions of tiny little bits of information traveling across a seemingly endless world wide web. Gone are the days when a trusted source is a viable information consultant simply because he has graying hair (notice I said he! ) and sits behind a large oak desk. The internet is history’s greatest experiment in democratization; and that became evermore evident during the previous year than ever before. Recently, Google came out with a new browser named Chrome, which acts in direct competition with Microsoft’s internet browser, allowing for more individual manipulation and input of what amounts to an open source operating system (The Economist, September 6, 2008). The Universe is starting to bend towards individual will more and more each and everyday. No, the entrepreneur is not dead, nor will that great spirit of British ingenuity and drive ever disappear upon this planet as long as this nation survives. It is something that has always been ingrained within the spirit of the U. K. We could have never survived for so many centuries without it. Infoperneurs are just the latest breed of pioneers that’s all. They are not suffering during this economic downturn; you can believe that! They provide an invaluable service, because they are able to make use of the databases that make up the internet, as a way to actually leverage information by surveying and manipulating it in order to repackage and deliver it tailor-made towards the specificity of a variety of clients and or situations (Bouchard, 2000). This is what they do. It is the wave of the future. As the internet grows, the job of an Infoperneur promises to become evermore valuable; and oddly enough they will not even have to walk beyond their front door. Bibliography Author (s) Journal of Business Strategy (1988) Lessons From a Successful Intrapreneur: An Interview With Post-it Notes Inventor Art Fry:. MCB UP Ltd. Volume 9: Issue 2 Page: 20-24. Retrieved from: http://www. emeraldinsight. com/10. 1108/eb039208 Du Toit, Adeline (2000). Teaching Infopreneurship: Students’ Perspectives. Aslib Proceedings. Bradford: Feb 2000, vol. 52, Issue 2; pp. 83-91. The Economist. (September 20, 2008) Slim Hopes: Newspapers in America. A Billionaire Makes A Surprising Investment In the New York Times. Volume 388 Number 8598 78-79 The Economist. (September 6, 2008) Google’s New Web browser: The Second Browser War: Google’s New Web Browser is its most direct attack on Microsoft yet. Volume 388 Number 8596 72-73