Debate Between the Needs of Homeland Security and Individual-Privacy Term Paper

Debate Between the Needs of Homeland Security and Individual-Privacy Expectations - Term Paper Example More specifically, the paper will examine the arguments concerning how needs of homeland security conflict with individual privacy expectations. Discussion According to Haulley (2005), the devastating September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks significantly impacted on nations around the world. Following the attacks, the United States government made the safety of the public and nation’s security a top priority. Consequently, the government passed legislation that allowed the police and security forces to have more surveillance powers. Linden (2007) asserts that this saw the introduction of new controls on the verification of identity and physical movements, which monitored movements along borders and airports. For instance, biometrics technology came into being; the introduction of such technology has given rise to debates concerning the need to balance individual liberties and protect the nation against threats from terrorists. As the department of homeland security works hard to ensure that it maintains security within the United States, it faces challenges in addressing issues of privacy. The department has not succeeded in ensuring that the issues concerning privacy are addressed comprehensively and assessed when making programmatic changes (Sauter & Carafano, 2005). Federal agencies working under the department of homeland security have engaged in data mining, which entails analyzing a lot of data to make known hidden relationships. The issue of data mining has faced uncertainty and controversy as it interferes with individual privacy. Department of homeland security does not assess the privacy risks posed by the tools used in data mining (Rabkin, 2005). According to Rabkin (2005), with the inception of the department of homeland security, issues of national security and privacy have become core in the war against terror. Whenever privacy comes in during a debate for national security, issues of whether one should keep their information private and be sa fe from attacks dominate the debate. As such, antiterrorism has set up an unreasonable equation, where people have to choose between the need for security and keep their personal information private. Both issues can be regarded as crucial as the constitution protects against the interference with personal privacy. Therefore, the government should determine the value of privacy and how it ought to be protected. In its efforts to preserve national security, the department of homeland security should not undermine the rights of individuals to keep personal information private. Debates ensue over the privacy challenges, which the department of homeland security faces, especially in reassessing the risks of privacy when changes came into being in developing a prescreening program in airlines (Sauter & Carafano, 2005). The computer-assisted system for prescreening of passengers, also known as Secure Flight, aims at assessing passengers before they board airlines in domestic flights. In su ch an instance, homeland security does not fully disclose how it will use private information. This is contrary to the privacy act of 1974, which states that the use of private information should be fully disclosed (Thaler, 2005). The Department of Homeland Security also faces the issue of making sure that considerations on privacy remain confidential in an environment where the sharing of information has become a norm. The enactment of the Intelligence

What is the Difference Between Biosphere and Ecosphere?

What is the Difference Between Biosphere and Ecosphere? Explain the difference between Biosphere, Ecosphere and Gaia and argue a case for adopting one of these descriptors for discussions of the earth Biosphere, Ecosphere and Gaia are used names of the global ecosystem. But each global ecosystem has its own or more meaning individually. The global ecosystem is natural cycles of interdependent organisms which shares and functions together in the same habitat. Ecosystems usually form a number of food webs. (Robert W. Christopherson 1996). Ecosystems relate to soil, plants, animals, chemicals and rocks amongst others of the planet. For example when we think of nature we think of living things such as planets and animals, the biotic components of an ecosystem include all the living things in an area. Biosphere â€Å"the place on earths surface where life dwells†. (Seuss E. 1875) Biosphere is a biological global sum of all ecosystems and life on earth which integrates all living things together from the beginning of time on earth evolving over billions of years. Estimated 3.5 billion years ago. (Campbell, Neil A. Brad Williamson, Robin J. Heyden 2006). The Biosphere originated from a geologist called Eduard Suess in 1875 but the concept wasnt really adapted until Vladimir Vernadsky in 1926 wrote the book the biosphere redefining biosphere as a current earth system this is a main core of ecology. The biosphere exchanges matter and energy with the other spheres, helping the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and along with other elements. This could be or is the reason why the biosphere is known as the global ecosystem, comprising the earth and performing all manner of biological functions, including photosynthesis, respiration, decomposition, nitrogen fixation and gentrification. Gaia â€Å"The earth is more than just a home, its a living system and we are part of it.† (James Lovelock) is simply the core of James Lovelocks Gaia theory, also known as the Gaia hypothesis. It was originally proposed in 1963 by James Lovelock. While the name Gaia comes from a Greek goddess of earth it is mainly a similar take on the biosphere with the same components but proposed as viewing the earth as a single organism. James Lovelock said that Gaia was â€Å"a complex entity involving the Earths biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet† (James Lovelock 1979). The Gaia hypothesis states that the earth is alive, the search for life on mars led to lovelocks belief in the existence of Gaia. While we know theres no life on mars or Venus, lovelock compared it with the earths atmosphere which is a mixture of gases making life presen t, while earths gas is not the same but is contained in a constant state suggesting a regulation of the whole system on earth for example the climate, ocean and air are a self regulated process. While James Lovelocks theory wasnt totally accepted it is one looked over by scientists with mixed questioning critically whilst criticize by others. While Biosphere is known to serve at high levels of scientific research and being a core factor in within biology and ecology using remote sensing systems to scan the entire earths surface. Future of Healthcare Technology: PACS Future of Healthcare Technology: PACS PACS is the healthcare technology of the future. â€Å"A picture archiving and communication system (PACS) is a computerized means of replacing the role of conventional radiological film: images are acquired, stored, transmitted, and displayed digitally.† PACS is not just used in the radiology department it can be used all over the hospital in any location, anytime, anywhere and even be used with other hospitals, between different physicians. There are advantages and disadvantages to choosing to use the PACS system. There are other technologies that have a dramatic impact on the delivery of patient care as well these technology along with the PACS system make healthcare better. One of the biggest advantages to using the PACS system is the fact that everything is done digitally. In my research I have found several reasons that hospitals should chose PACS to operate there radiology department as well as all the other areas in the hospital. In several articles it has stated that the use of PACS main advantage is â€Å"the improvement in efficiency.† PACS has been proven to decrease medical errors due to the fact â€Å"once an image has been acquired onto PACS it cannot be lost, stolen, or misfiled.† The PACS system also allows images to be available anywhere in the hospital whereas conventional film can only physically exist in one place at any one time. With the PACS system the physician can compare images at the same time. If an image is too dark or too light before you would have to retake the x-ray but with the PACS system you can adjust these things on the computer. Physician can also take an image from ten years ago and put it into the PACS system and compare it with the most recent image. Things like this can really help with diagnosis and treatment of patients. PACS also helps patient care be quicker because the physician can view the images anytime and anywhere in the hospital. For example if a patient is have trouble in the ICU the physician can view any images necessary to help treat the patient without leaving the ICU area therefore if the physician is needed he/she is right there. These images are available to all the members of the care team not just the physician. PACS system has been proven to save lives as well as lower medical errors. I read an article that stated â€Å"when the PACS system is fully utilized, the technology can play a significant role in reducing the potential for error by eliminating steps in the distribution and management of images and associated patient information across the enterprise. PACS system also allows hospital staff and physicians can schedule and order exams, update patient information across an enterprise, provide information and images to physicians at the point of care, and provide diagnostic tools, features, and functionality to ensure the highest quality of interpretation and diagnosis. Currently 20% of films are missing when needed. This wouldnt happen if they were using the PACS system. â€Å"All images in the PACS database are automatically grouped into the correct examination, are Chronologically ordered, correctly oriented and labeled, and can be easily retrieved which is not necessarily the case without the PACS system.† The pediatrics and neonatal unit were among the first clinical specialties to start using the PACS system. Radiographic images play a big role in these departments. Time is very crucial in these units so it is a great advantage that you dont have to go to the radiology department to retrieve these images. This is one good example how the PACS system can save lives and why the hospital should be using this system. There are some disadvantages to the PACS system as well as with any system that you may choose to use. One disadvantage to the PACS system is cost of installing the PACS system in the hospital setting. In the year 1999 the cost of intalling the PACS system was one to two million dollars with a six percent annual maintenance. Studies have shown that PACS would pay for itself in five years. Another disadvantage is once you have gone filmless there is risk that the PACS system could have a system failure with this in mind as long as the data is backed up daily. One other potential problem of PACS is that the staff may not have the knowledge to be able to use the PACS system. In my research I found that when the PACS system is used along with the EMR and the CPOE there is a dramatic impact on patient care. The EMR is where all medical records, including all of patient images, pathology, surgical results and history are done and stored electronically. The CPOE is where the physicians use computers to due order entry. â€Å"Each of these things in isolation helps somewhat with patient care but when the three are used together the results are much greater. In Conclusion, healthcare technology is going to computerization and there is no stopping it. We are in an era where computers are an important part of daily life not just in the healthcare field. Learning how to use computers and there software is crucial for survival. In this paper I talked about one of the most rapidly growing systems in healthcare the PACS system. PACS is the healthcare technology of the future. â€Å"A picture archiving and communication system (PACS) is a computerized means of replacing the role of conventional radiological film: images are acquired, stored, transmitted, and displayed digitally.† PACS is not just used in the radiology department it can be used all over the hospital in any location, anytime, anywhere and even be used with other hospitals, between different physicians. I also talked about the advantages and disadvantages of the PACS system as well as other systems that work along with the PACS System. References: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1718393/pdf/v083p00082.pdf http://www.psqh.com/janfeb05/pacs.html http://www.medicexchange.com/PACS/going-filmless-intro-to-pacs-pa..

SATIRE ESSAY -- English Literature

SATIRE ESSAY Good evening and welcome to another edition of the BBC satire documentary series. Today we will be analyzing the battleground of satirical poetry, examining two well-known satirical poems called 'Life-Cycle' by Bruce Dawe and 'Hymn Of The Scientific Farmer' by Clive Sansom. But first, lets look at what a satire is and how the victorious poet annihilates the foe of a satire. According to the ancient Macquarie Dictionary, a satire is a 'term applied to any work of literature or art whose objective is to ridicule.' Using ridicule or mockery in the battleground, a satire has the avowed objective of correcting human faults, while arousing laughter or scorn in its intended audience or bystanders of the victorious side. General targets or foe of satires' include individuals, social groups, institutions, and human nature. Like other genres, a satire is often a mode of writing introduced into various literal forms. A poetic satirist or the victorious poet sometimes uses scorn, sarcasm, innuendo or irony along with humor to expose the enemy's human faults or foolishness. Throughout the history of literature, satirical poems have obliterated many varieties of antagonist, ranging from religious figures to political and social failings in society. Since the ancient Roman and Greek period, satirical poems have earned their respect by, to some degree, shaping the humans we have become today. They aim to show us our fault and persuade us to modify and advance our behaviour and nature. One major poem, which highlights this concept, is the 'Hymn Of The Scientific Farmer' by Clive Sansom. Clive Samson, in his poem called the 'Hymn Of The Scientific Farmer,' demonstrates to us his knowledge and awarenes... ...ho could resurrect their team back to victory. This demonstrates how pointless and futile their lives are and the extent to which football is the basis of their existence. Bruce Dawe has victoriously ridden the foe of any dignity. He has ridiculed the supporters circuitously and shown the reader how we can become so involved in something that we no longer recognize the beauties of nature and life. This in turn encourages the reader to change his or her life and to try and reach a balanced lifestyle. Overall, both poets have been victorious over their foe. They have managed to successfully create a satirized poem using some if not all weapons against the foe. They have also been triumphant in leaving a message for the bystanders of the battle, whether it is change in attitude and life or avoidance of certain characteristics that may overtake our lives.

Compare and Contrast the Classical Societies Essay

The most conspicuous of the Classical Societies developed in Persia, China, India, and the Mediterranean basin. The Classical Societies were known mainly as an enduring legacies. They were known for their influential ways that affected the way people led their lives. Each of the Classical Societies achieved skillful accomplishments. They had their similarity and differences. Although the Classical Societies were similar in ways that they endured for a long period of time and extended authority over large regions, they differed when it came to beliefs and values. One particular way the societies differed with each other was the different materials they used corresponding to their unique lifestyles. Each society raised agricultural crops, established buildings with different materials, observed different laws, and worshipped different gods. China and India heavily depended on the cultivation of rice, millet, and wheat. In China, peached earth and wood was the capital construction material for large public buildings, and in India, wood was the most common construction material. Unlike China and India, wheat was the staple food crop in Persia and the Mediterranean, and Persia and Mediterranean buildings were designed of brick and stone. More difference that the Classical Societies had were the different gods, beliefs, and values that they strictly lived by. Each society formed a broad spectrum of ideas of family organization, what was acceptable in proper public and private behavior, the relationship between the immortals and human beings, the natural world and the gods. The difference that stood out specifically was the difference in the religion and the god or gods each society worshiped. The variety of different religions solely relied on the rulers’ tolerance of religious freedom. Specifically, Cyrus the Great was tolerant and allowed different religions throughout his kingdom mainly to save his enormous empire from religious conflicts and disagreements, but when Xerxes took over generations later, he was not merciful of different religions, he wanted to be worshipped and recognized as a god, which gradually began to tear the kingdom down. In addition, the societies contrasted in sophisticated cultural and religious traditions each groups generated. Different societies held different beliefs and values, but all Classical Societies offered guidance on moral, religious, political, and social issues. The traditions were the fundamental foundations that would prepare people for a career in a government system. Also, the values would shape people who made the laws and policies which would result in a fair and just society. Despite the differences, the societies faced similar problems. They all extended authority over large regions. Cyrus the great conquered the region from the Indus River to Egypt and the Southeastern Europe. The classical societies all faced military challenges as well, and they raised powerful armies for both defensive and offensive purposes. The military challenges arose from within the classical societies because of rebellious reasons, civil war, or problems between powerful bands. Alternatively, the societies faced the challenge of trying to maintain an equitable distribution of land and wealth. Each rulers were greedy to expand the kingdom for wealth, power, and land. More land meant more resources, more resources meant wealth. The race to expansion of kingdoms driven by their greed came crashing when the empires became too enormous to handle and the rules could not be adjusted to everyone’s lifestyle, values, and religion. The Classical Societies influenced the way billions of people have led their lives, and still to this day. They achieved high degrees of internal organization, extended their authority over vastly large regions, and elaborated especially influential cultural traditions. The classical societies began the development of advanced technology because of the great rulers and ideas of the different societies.

More Machine Now Than Man

Laura Frost, in her essay â€Å"Huxley's Feelies: The Cinema of Sensation in Brave New World,† states that â€Å"Brave New World has typically been read as â€Å"the classic denunciation of mass culture in the interwar years†Ã¢â‚¬  (Frost 448). This is true to an extent, as Frost points out. The novel explores the effects of mass culture and the implementation of eugenics and mass education to serve an industrialized society of consumption. Aspects of culture, such as the arts, have been reduced to pleasure seeking, and the population as a whole is kept within the machine of culture by means of pharmaceuticals.Much of this vision is drawn from Huxley’s experiences during the interwar period and for that reason, an exploration of his reactions to mass culture and his philosophy of culture prove useful in understanding the novel. This essay will be exploring Brave New World according to Huxley’s reactions to the culture of the 1920s and the early 1930s, es pecially to aspects of mass culture, consumerism and scientific and technological approaches to human growth and reproduction.Huxley wrote a number of essays in the late 1920s and early 1930s that deal with these issues and several of these serve as the primary focus of this essay. â€Å"Prophecies of the future,† writes Huxley in a 1927 essay, â€Å"if they are to be intelligent, not merely fantastic, must be based on a study of the present. The future is the present projected† (â€Å"The Outlook for American Culture† 187). This sentiment must be taken to heart if one is then to read a prophetic book by the author of the quote.Aldous Huxley was living and writing during the so-called â€Å"Jazz Age,† an age of increasing commercialism, consumerism and mechanization. The age saw a massive boost in the production of consumer goods and technologies, idealized in the streamlined assembly lines of Henry Ford, which provided goods for consumption, but demanded a larger worker class to fuel the boom. The further development of mass culture, thanks to the growth of music and film industries, was spurned by this growth in the working classes. Aldous Huxley’s novel is, at least to a degree, a product of this present.Consumerism and materialism are central to Brave New World; any work that features Henry Ford as a god figure would surely have to be. Huxley writes in 1931: The God of Industry supplies his worshipers with objects and can only exist on condition that his gifts are gratefully accepted. In the eyes of an Industriolater, the first duty of man is to collect as many objects as he can (â€Å"On the Charms of History† 131). Huxley acknowledges that capitalists and industrialists need people to want the stuff produced.He argues that Ford, to whom Huxley refers rather sarcastically as â€Å"the saint of the new dispensation,† and other industrialists have no choice but to hate history, literature, the arts and others because all these â€Å"mental activities†¦ distract mankind from an acquisitive interest in objects† (131-132). The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning in the opening section of the novel speaks of how mental activities in the lower classes, in this case a Romantic notion of nature, are discouraged in the hyper-consumerist society in Brave New World: A love of Nature keeps no factories busy.It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature but not the tendency to consume transport†¦ We condition the masses to hate the country†¦ but simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport (23). The goal in the society of the novel is to adhere to what Huxley argues is the first duty of man to industrialists, owning and using the g oods produced by industry.Every aspect of the World State is crafted to maintain production and/or to encourage consumption. Those aspects of culture that occupy surplus time, the time spent not producing, have two functions: the consumption of material or the sedation or comforting of the producer so that he or she will continue to produce. The latter function is expressed by the Twentieth-Century theorist, Theodore Adorno. Shane Gunster, in his book Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory  for Cultural Studies, summarizes Adorno’s theory involving this idea of â€Å"free-time† Bored by the endless repetition of the assembly line or sales counter, people want novelty in their leisure time†¦ While leisure masquerades as ‘free-time,’ it is an open secret that its true purpose is to replenish one’s working energies†¦Work and leisure are bound together in an unholy alliance: the culture industry openly celebrates its independence from prod uction, selling its products as ‘freedom’ from the drudgery of the everyday, all the while secretly delivering its consumers ever-deeper into the clutches of a world from which they so anxiously desire to escape (Gunster 42-43). This theory of the â€Å"culture industry,† feeding the consumer with entertainment during free-time so that the work will not suffer, is the driving force behind the Fordian culture that Huxley writes about in the 1920s and 30s and satirizes in Brave New World .Adorno, whose major works were not written until the Second World War, is analyzing a reality of mechanized society and mass culture that Huxley wrote of years before. As a writer during the â€Å"Jazz Age,† Huxley would bear witness to the rise of commercial music as the record industry created a popular music that Huxley viewed in a negative light.In a 1925 essay on music, Huxley describes a piece of popular music: There is a certain jovial, bouncing, hoppety little tune with which any one who has spent even a few weeks in Germany†¦ must be familiar. Its name is â€Å"Ach, du lieber Augustin. † It is a merry little affair in three-four time; in rhythm and melody so simple, that the village idiot could sing it after a first hearing; in sentiment so innocent that the heart of the most susceptible maiden would not quicken by a beat a minute at the sound of it. Rum-tiddle, Um tum tum, Um tum tum†¦ By the very frankness of its cheerful imbecility the thing disarms all criticism. (Collected Essays 173) Huxley finds this example of popular music simplistic and moronic, not even worth a real critique.He continues on the subject by comparing the tune to an eighteenth-century waltz of the same name and to all music prior to the mid-Nineteenth century: The difference between â€Å"Ach, du lieber Augustin† and any waltz composed at any date from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, is the difference between one piece of music al most completely empty of emotional content and another, densely saturated with amorous sentiment, languor and voluptuousness. (173) Huxley then expands his critique to criticize all contemporary popular music as lacking the meaningful emotional content that was, he feels, characteristic of all pre-mid-nineteenth-century popular music.In his essay â€Å"The Music Industry,† published in 1933, the year after Brave New World’s publication, Huxley writes about the short life-span of popular music and declares his era as â€Å"an age of rapid technical progress, and the desire for incessant novelty is a natural product of environmental change† and adds that the tendency for novelty increases consumption and is therefore, â€Å"encouraged by manufacturers† (â€Å"The Music Industry† 101). The music show that Lenina and Henry attend towards the beginning of the novel echoes Huxley’s fears from â€Å"The Music Industry† regarding the need for novelty in popular culture. The advertisements for the show â€Å"invitingly† declare it, in all-capital letters, â€Å"LONDON’S FINEST SCENT AND COLOR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC† (BNW 76).There is an emphasis placed on the â€Å"latest,† favoring that novelty which fuels consumption. Again there is an echo in Adorno.Gunster looks at an essay Adorno published titled â€Å"On Popular Music†: On the one hand, he argues, the ‘fundamental’ property of popular music is that it is unremittingly standardized: ‘every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine’†¦ On the other hand, marketability demands that repetition be hidden beneath the illusion of individuality, difference, and novelty (Gunster 24). Adorno’s â€Å"culture industry† is again reflected in the popular music. His descriptions of popular music are very similar to way Huxley describes popular music as si mplistic and standardized. Likewise, both acknowledge that the culture industry markets its goods to consumers based on supposed novelty.Within Brave New World, Huxley’s critique of popular music comes through in his descriptions of the music of the World State. The music, like the example song Huxley described from Germany in 1925, is cheerful, with simple, formulaic, verses and chorus reeling with meaningless phrases and clichà ©. An excellent example of this is the Solidarity Hymn of â€Å"Orgy-porgy† Orgy porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at one with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives release. (BNW 84) This song not only contains little real meaning, a critique that Huxley aims at all popular music, but also contains, as most music in the novel does, strong sexuality.In that same essay on popular music, Huxley is critical of what he calls a â€Å"certain vibrant sexuality† of popular music describing it as â€Å"vulgar,† †Å"savage† and â€Å"barbaric† (Collected Essays 174-175) and maintains that the sexuality and barbarism are pervasive: Whether, having grown inured to such violent and purely physiological stimuli as the clashing and drumming, the rhythmic throbbing and wailing glissandos of modern jazz music can supply, the world will ever revert to something less crudely direct, is a matter about which one cannot prophesy. (175)This description of the clashing drums and glissandos certainly is echoed in the scene wherein Lenina and Henry watch â€Å"Calvin Stopes and His Sixteen Sexaphonists† with the sexaphones (clearly a play on one of staples of jazz music, the saxophone) â€Å"wail[ing] like melodious cats† with moaning tenors and altos â€Å"as though the little death were upon them. † (BNW 76). The implication is that of sex and orgasm in music form: Aldous Huxley’s vision of jazz music taken to the extreme of â€Å"purely physiological. † This critique of mass music is also repeated in a supposed alternative to mass culture, the â€Å"Savage Reservation.†Huxley, at the time of writing the novel, had never been to New Mexico, in spite of the fact that his friend D. H. Lawrence owned a ranch there beginning in 1924. Peter Firchow, in his essay â€Å"Wells and Lawrence in Brave New World† writes that the fact troubled Huxley, but quotes the author as having done â€Å"’an enormous [amount] of reading up on New Mexico’† since he had not yet been there (Firchow 272). Huxley relied on Lawrence’s writings about the Pueblo Indians as well as Smithsonian reports of the place (Firchow 272-273). In spite of of his relative inexperience with historical New Mexican native cultures, Huxley creates a culture for the Pueblo and, in doing so, creates one that is at times incredibly similar to World State.Lenina draws comparison between the drums of the Pueblo religious dancing to the music of the Solidarity Service hymns in the World States â€Å"religion† of Fordism. Lenina liked the drums. Shutting her eyes she abandoned herself to their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invade her consciousness more and more completely, till at last there was nothing left in the world but that one deep pulse of sound. It reminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Ford’s Day celebrations. â€Å"Orgy-porgy,† she whispered to herself. The drums beat out just the same rhythms (BNW 113). Here we have a sexual response to music as Lenina abandons herself and allows the music to take her, in spite of it coming from a foreign place and culture.The drums here are strikingly reminiscent of the way that Huxley describes the Jazz and popular music of the 1920s. He talks about how popular culture has â€Å"grown inured to such violent and purely physiological stimuli as the clashing and drumming† and this he attributes to the influ ence of â€Å"barbarous people† (Collected Essays 175). By supplying the Indians and the mass culture of the world state with similar music, music that Huxley himself finds void of real emotion, he is equating the two cultures intellectually. The Reservation within Huxley’s novel becomes a mirror to the World State culture, an echo of Huxley’s fear of growing barbarism in popular culture. There are some points of contrast between the two.For instance, materials in the reservation are made by the individuals and are valued enough to be repaired rather than replaced as is the expectation in the World State when, say, an article of clothing becomes worn out. There is a passage on labor wherein John is working clay and through this action he becomes â€Å"filled with an intense, absorbing happiness† (BNW 134). However, these differences are superficial. There is still a value placed on productivity just as in the World State.John is made happier and feels mor e a part of his culture when he is allowed to work the clay. Just as the World State has the Community sings to promote â€Å"Community, Identity and Stability†, religion of the pueblo serves a function for productivity. John explains the whippings that Lenina and Bernard witness as being â€Å"For the sake of the pueblo – to make rain come and corn grow.†Adherence to religion provides Stability and Community for the Indians. To further the comparison between the Savage culture and the World State, Huxley gives the Indians their own drug, mescal, to help cope with life just as soma does the job for the World State citizens. Similarly, John’s position within, or rather without, the Pueblo society is similar to Bernard’s position within the World State culture. Both are outcasts for their appearances and therefore both seem more alone than the others; â€Å"If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely. They’re beastly to oneâ₠¬  (137). This mentality mirrors the values of Community and Identity contained within the World State’s motto.Identify as an individual and you are hurting the community; â€Å"when the individual feels, the community reels† is what Lenina recites, which is most likely some hypnopaedic verse (94). These characteristics, exemplified most clearly by the music of the two cultures, show that the reservation society is not a true alternative to the degradation of culture prevalent in the World State; it is just many of the same processes in a different form and to a different extent. A second form of mass culture within the World State is the â€Å"feelies. † Laura asserts that â€Å"[t]he ‘feelies’, a cinema of titillating, pansensual stimulation, are clearly a response to the ‘talkies,’† and that Huxley is extending the inclusion of sound in film to the rest of the senses (Frost 447).Huxley’s reaction to the â€Å"talkies, † specifically to the first â€Å"talkie† The Jazz Singer, expressed in an essay titled â€Å"Silence is Golden† is, as Frost points out, one of â€Å"scorn and fury† (Frost 443). He is absolutely disgusted by the film as he writes: Oh, those mammy-songs, those love-longings, those loud hilarities! How was it possible that human emotions intrinsically decent could be so ignobly parodied? I felt like a man who, having asked for wine, is offered a brimming bowl of hog wash. And not even fresh hog wash. Rancid hog wash, decaying hog wash. (â€Å"Silence is Golden† 21) He sees in film the same degeneration of human emotion and integrity that he sees in popular music.That the first â€Å"talkie† he saw was about a singer of popular music only solidified his dislike and in the end he feels â€Å"ashamed for [himself] for listening to such things, for even being a member of the species to which these things are addressed† (â€Å"Silence is G olden 23). The feelies in Brave New World are described in similar fashion as Huxley’s description of The Jazz Singer. The film that John and Lenina see, â€Å"Three Weeks in a Helicopter,† is described as having an â€Å"extremely simple† plot, with the real focus placed on the effects of the movie, as with the â€Å"famous bearskin†¦ every hair of which could be separately and distinctly felt† (168).The images and effects come off as â€Å"more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality† just as Huxley, whose vision had worsened following an eye infection during his teenage years, described the images in the â€Å"talkie† A beneficent providence has dimmed my powers of sight, so that, at a distance of more than four or five yards, I am blissfully unaware of the average human countenance. At the cinema, however, there is no escape†¦ Nothing short of total blindness can preserve one from the spectacle. The jazzers were forced on me; I regarded them with fascinated horror. (â€Å"Silence is Golden† 21) â€Å"More solid-looking† than real life is exactly the reaction Huxley had to seeing the film, since the real world was not that solid to him because of his impaired vision.Frost accepts that Huxley is at least â€Å"half feigning† his reactions to the films (Frost 443) but she points to a moment in Huxley’s â€Å"Silence is Golden† when he condemns film as â€Å"the latest and most frightful creation-saving device for the production of standardized amusement† (â€Å"Silence† 20). The standardization of amusement is what frightens Huxley, be it in music or film or in literature. In his fictionalized culture, these devices for amusement standardization are taken to the extremes. They are â€Å"more than human,† more real than reality at the same time that they are void of substance. The subject of substan ce within art is brought to the foreground in the conversation between John and Mustafa Mond in the later parts of Brave New World. The Controller argues, â€Å"You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art,† and he concludes â€Å"We’ve sacrificed the high arts.We have the feelies and the scent organ instead† (BNW 220). There is a hierarchy wherein pleasure replaces the need for aesthetics. John responds by stating that the â€Å"feelies† and the other elements of mass culture in the World State do not mean anything. Mond then replies that these things â€Å"mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience† (221). The feelies are horrifying to John because the end result is not knowledge of the human condition, but rather pleasure seeking. And in the world of hyper-pleasure, it is difficult to find anything on which to base meaningful art. That is the problem Helmholtz Watson struggles with: â€Å"writing w hen there’s nothing to say† (221).In an essay from 1923, Huxley writes â€Å"The poetry of pure sensation, of sounds and bright colors, is common enough nowadays; but amusing as we may find it for the moment, it cannot hold the interest for long† (Collected Essays 93). One can easily draw comparison to the â€Å"feelies† and the music of the World State here as something that amuses but that fails to, as John or even Mustafa Mond might say, mean anything beyond itself. The inclusion of Helmholtz Watson brings up another issue of mass culture, namely the place, if there is one, for the intellectual or the artist within mass culture.Towards the end of the novel, Bernard and Helmholtz are to be sent to an island. Mustafa Mond speaks of Bernard’s fate He’s being sent to an island. That’s to say, he’s being sent to a place where he’ll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world.All the peop le who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who’s any one (BNW 227). This is a clear separation between the intellectual free-thinkers and the mass population. As Mond points out, there is no room in the World State for individuality and the search for truth and meaning since â€Å"truth’s a menace. † He concludes by adding that Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t (228).In the movement towards mass culture, artists and intellectuals, like the aspiring poet Helmholtz Watson, and individualists have no place. In a 1929 essay Huxley raises this question of the possibility for the individual in a mechanized state Is it possible for a human being to be both a man and a citizen of a mechanized state? Is it possible to combine the material advantages which accrue to those living in a mechanized world with the psychological advantages enjoyed by those who live in pre-mechanical surroundings? Such are the questions which future politicians will have to ask and effectively answer in terms of laws and regulations. What sort of answers will they give? Who knows? Not I at any rate.I am even a little doubtful whether the questions are answerable (â€Å"Machinery, Psychology, and Politics† 221). Huxley sees the war between individual and the industrialized state but provides no solutions to this issue and even has doubts whether the issue will ever be resolved. In his novel he has the rulers simply separate those that become too individualistic from the mass-minded because they are dangerous to the sedated, pleasure-driven masses. Furthermore, Huxley fears that through mass educ ation, those intellectuals might be eliminated. In a 1927 essay titled â€Å"Education† Huxley writes on the defects of Mass education Under the present system of mass education by classes too much stress is laid on the teaching and too little on active learning.The child is not encouraged to discover things on his own account. He learns to rely on outside help, not on his own powers, thus losing intellectual independence and all the capacity to judge for himself. The over-taught child is the father of newspaper-reading, advertisement-believing, propaganda-swallowing, demagogue-led man†¦ (â€Å"Education† 205-206) This analysis of mass education makes the learner dependent upon the system, which Huxley sees as fueling advertising and propaganda. Huxley wrote in 1929 on the effects of mass education on society We have had universal education for about fifty years; the supply of [Isaac] Newtons, however, has not perceptibly increased.Everybody, it is true, can now r ead – with the result that newspapers of an unbelievable stupidity and baseness have circulations of millions. Everybody can read – so it pays rich men to print lies wholesale. Everybody can read so men make fortunes by inventing specious reasons why people should buy things they don’t really want (â€Å"The New Salvation† 212-213). Huxley’s view on mass education is that it does not better society. No more geniuses are to be found in a wholly educated society as in a partially educated one. The effect in his mind is that capitalists have more means through which they can influence people into desiring and buying the goods they produce.His obvious prejudices and elitism aside, the note about separate newspapers that target certain intellectual class levels of society is reflected in the various periodicals aimed at the classes of the World State like The Delta Mirror or The Gamma Gazette. The process is taken one step further in Brave New World by having the education system emphasize the value of consumption of goods, rather than that consumption value being pushed by the writers of the newspapers as Huxley wrote about in 1929. Consumerism is more standardized. Education is not the only means of control of the masses employed to maintain production, the population itself is in the management of the state.The populous is bred systematically in a process much like that of a Fordian assembly line: using bottles and genetic manipulation instead of the natural process of human reproduction. With the bottling, the creation of the sterile â€Å"free-martins† and the rigid implementation of contraceptives like the â€Å"Malthusian belts,† the population of the world is entirely in control of the industrialized state. This culture also employs scientific methods such as â€Å"Bokanovsky’s Process† and Pavlovian conditioning to carefully craft a society of rigid castes. The function of education is to teach the members of those castes their respective roles and the roles of others and the necessity of these roles in the greater context.This process of industrialized reproduction makes raising and educating citizens much easier for the World State since they can begin that conditioning during the embryonic stage of production. Additionally, the levels of society, the castes alpha through gamma, can be predetermined and separated strictly. Education is begun at the fetal level, thanks to hypnopaedia, saving time. Since reproduction is standardized and contained wholly within a factory, the leaders of the mechanized society do not have to wait until a semblance of character starts to show in people to condition them towards a certain way of life; the genetics do that for them. This process reflects Huxley’s views of the potential of science from his 1930 predictive essay â€Å"Babies – State Property.†He writes Psychologists having shown the enormous importance in ev ery human existence of the first years of childhood, the state will obviously try to get hold of its victims as soon as possible. The process of standardization will begin at the very moment of birth – that is to say, if it does not begin before birth! (231). He goes on to predict that this process of standardization at or before birth will be destructive to the family. But, unlike in his novel, he predicts that the family â€Å"will emerge again when the danger is past† (231). This careful selection of genetic material is the idea of eugenics, a term that is hard to separate from the fascists of the 1930s and 1940s, especially the National Socialists in Germany. Prior to that period though, Huxley often expounded on the ideas of eugenics.In a 1927 essay called â€Å"A Note on Eugenics† Huxley expresses a common fear of the time period that scientific and technological processes were preserving â€Å"physically and mentally defective individuals† and that the quality of human reproduction was diminishing (â€Å"A Note on Eugenics† 281) In her essay â€Å"Designing a Brave New World: Eugenics, Politics and Fiction,† Joanne Woiak addresses this subject by writing â€Å"[Huxley’s] ongoing support for so-called race betterment was typical of left-leaning British intellectuals in the inter-war period† (Woiak 106).Huxley’s own feelings on the subject seem mixed. Also in 1927, Huxley wrote an essay dealing with the subject of equality and democracy We no longer believe in equality and perfectibility. We know that nurture cannot alter nature and that no amount of education or good government will make men completely virtuous and reasonable, or abolish their animal instincts. In the Future that we envisage, eugenics will be practiced in order to improve the human breed and the instincts will not be ruthlessly repressed but, as far as possible, sublimated so as to express themselves in socially harmless ways (â€Å"The Future of the Past† 93).He continues to predict that education will not be the same for everyone and that this education system will teach â€Å"the members of the lower castes only that which is profitable for the members of the upper castes that they should know† (93). Huxley is arguing that the nineteenth-century ideals of democracy and universal equality are not a reality and predicts a future of selective reproduction and a defined caste system based on genetic stock. Brave New World certainly reflects this prediction; eugenics policies have been implemented but there are certainly instinctual processes, like violent passions, that have to be expressed in â€Å"socially harmless ways† – the Violent Passion Surrogates.But that sort of hope-filled view of the possible benefits of eugenics is not wholly what is at work in Huxley’s Brave New World. In that 1927 prediction, the intellectuals control the selective processes for determini ng the caste system. However, in 1932, the year of Brave New World’s publication, Huxley returns to the issue of eugenics by writing that â€Å"The humanist would see in eugenics an instrument for giving to an ever-widening circle of men and women those heritable qualities of mind and body which are, by his highest standards, the most desirable† (â€Å"Science and Civilization† 153). This is in line with his earlier views on the possible benefits of eugenics.But Huxley acknowledges that it might not be the humanist that is in charge of the process. But what of the economist-ruler? Would he necessarily be anxious to improve the race? By no means necessarily. He might actually wish to deteriorate it. His ideal, we must remember, is not the perfect all-around human being, but the perfect mass-producer and mass-consumer. Now perfect human beings probably make very bad mass-producers. It is quite in the cards that industrialists will find, as machinery is made more f oolproof, that the great majority of jobs can be better performed by stupid people than by intelligent ones (154). This is the society of Brave New World.As Mustafa Mond puts it, â€Å"The optimum population†¦ is modelled [sic] on the iceberg – eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above† (BNW 223). The population, as mentioned earlier, is conditioned to consume and to produce, and the eugenics policy helps create the society can perform the necessary tasks. Taken that way, the novel seems to be a satire and condemnation not of eugenics, but of eugenics run by the industrialist to create masses of dumber humans to buy and consume stuff. This then returns the mind to Huxley’s 1927 prediction of eugenics and those instincts that have to be expressed in â€Å"socially harmless ways† (â€Å"The Future of the Past† 93).Realizing the necessity for emotion, they employ â€Å"Violent Passion Surrogates† to â€Å"flood the whole system w ith adrenin† in order to satisfy what Mustapha Mond calls â€Å"one of the conditions of perfect health† (Brave New World 239). In short they are simulating the dangers of life in a safe and systematic way. Freedom of sex covers the sexual instincts and has the benefit also of providing pleasure during free-time. One of the greatest forces of keeping the workers producing is through the drug soma. â€Å"The perfect drug†¦ Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant†¦ All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of the defects† (BNW 53-54). Soma is the release and the reward for the obedient mechanized worker of the world state.Combined with the â€Å"feelies† and all the other aspects of mass culture in the World State, soma helps keep the society in order by keeping the workers pleased. â€Å"Industrial civilization,† as Mustafa Mond puts it, â€Å"is only possible when there’s no self-denial. Self indulgence up to the very limits of imposed hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning. † (BNW 237). As with eugenics, Huxley’s writings on drug use varied, especially following the Second World War with his explorations into psychedelic drugs in The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. But even around the time of Brave New World’s publication he often was writing on drug use.In 1931 he addressed the issue of drug as an escape in a brief essay titled â€Å"Treatise on Drugs† Everywhere and at all times, men and women have sought, and duly found, the means of taking a holiday from the reality of their dull and often acutely unpleasant existence. A holiday out of space, out of time, in the eternity of sleep or ecstasy (â€Å"A Treatise on Drugs† 304). For Huxley, drug use seems inevitable. This holiday is certainly mirrored in Brave New World. â€Å"The cause of drunkenness and drug-taking is to be found in the general dissatisfaction with reality,† h e writes in a 1932 essay titled â€Å"Poppy Juice,† an essay talking about the effects of drug policing. But Huxley continues by including the sort of people that might not be dissatisfied with life and the possibility of drug use among them.Alcohol and drugs offer means of escape from the prison of the world and the personality. Better and securer conditions of life, better health, better upbringing, resulting in more harmoniously balanced character, would do much to make reality seem generally tolerable and even delightful. But it may be doubted whether, even in Utopia, reality would be universally satisfying all the time. Even in Utopia people would pine for an occasional escape, if only from the radiant monotony of happiness (â€Å"Poppy juice† 317). This idea of people using drugs to escape monotonous Utopia seems one of the probable reasons for soma’s pervasiveness in the World State.The hypnopaedic chorus â€Å"A gramme is better than a damn† refle cts those moments when reality might not wholly satisfy; rather than cursing the situation, just take soma to escape on holiday. But escapism is not the only use of soma. Or rather, the effect of escapism soma has is not just beneficial for the individual. John Hickman, in his essay â€Å"When Science Fiction Writers Used Fictional Drugs: Rise and Fall of the Twentieth-Century Drug Dystopia,† writes that â€Å"[The] use of the recreational drug soma is one of several aspects of dehumanization made possible by the scientific expertise wielded by amoral elites† (Hickman 144). Whether or not the industrialists of Brave New World are â€Å"amoral† is beyond the scope of this essay.Nonetheless, Hickman’s point about the dehumanizing effects of soma remains true. The drug is used by the World State to keep the masses in check. One of the hypnopaedic lessons Lenina recites is â€Å"Was and will make me ill†¦ I take a gramme and only am† (BNW 104). Th e sentiment here is that thinking of past occurrences or having ambitions or fear does not help, and that soma can help keep you in the present. There is no need for rebellion or trying to better one’s position if soma can take the individual out of the negative moments. The lack of downside and the steady stream of governmental supply of soma ensure that the citizens are kept in a pleasure-filled world so that they might continue to produce and consume more.Hickman concludes, based on those later novels by Huxley and on the comparison with the mescal used in Pueblo society, that Huxley is not against drug use â€Å"as a more direct route to spiritual development, but was instead opposed to recreational drug taking that would render a population docile† (Hickman 145). In the 1931 â€Å"Treatise on Drugs†, Huxley was dreaming of a super soma-like drug when writing about the history of drugs and how all of the drugs present in the world are â€Å"treacherous and harmful†: The way to prevent people from drinking too much alcohol, or to becoming addicts to morphia or cocaine, is to give them an efficient but wholesome substitute for these delicious and (in the present imperfect world) necessary poisons†¦ The man who invents such a substance will be counted among the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity (â€Å"Treatise on Drugs† 304-305).Huxley’s perfect drug was achieved in the fictional soma. But as was the case with eugenics policies, this too fell into the hands of the industrialists who used it to benefit the mechanized society by keeping the mass culture satiated with pleasure and escapist trappings. The drug, as Hickman points out, is used to keep the masses producing and consuming, just as all other aspects of the culture had those goals in mind. Brave New World is a vision of a future that is based on Huxley’s reactions and interpretations of the 1920s. His strong favoring of an intellectual cultu re over a mass-produced comfort driven culture is abundantly made clear in the novel.In a different 1931 essay titled â€Å"To The Puritan,† Huxley pushes the idea that Fordism as a philosophy could prove destructive to humanity if pursued fully. There is no place in the factory, or in that larger factory which is the modern industrialized world, for animals on the one hand, or for artists, mystics, or even, finally, individuals on the other. Of all the ascetic religions Fordism is that which demands the cruellest [sic] mutilations of the human psyche – demands the cruellest [sic] mutilations and offers the smallest spiritual returns. Rigorously practiced for a few generations, this dreadful religion of the machine will end by destroying the human race (â€Å"To the Puritan† 238-239).

Writing a Historical Novel

Writing a Historical Novel Historical novels are becoming more popular in recent years and that has got many writers wanting in on the action. It is not for the faint of heart, though. It typically takes three times as long to write a historical novel as it does to write a novel set in modern times, because of the amount of research that is involved.Having said that, there has been so much written about how difficult it is to author a historical novel that you can easily discourage yourself from writing one altogether if you arent careful. My hope is that you will stop reading articles about writing a historical novel (after you read this one, of course) and get to work on writing yours.A few weeks ago, I watched the Nova documentary  entitled The Ghosts of Machu Picchu. It was not until I sat down to write this article, however, that I realized its relevance to writing historical fiction.Machu Picchu is an ancient Incan city in Peru. It was built in the 15th century, high on a mountain. The fact that the mo untain is prone to frequent avalanches, sits on not one but two fault lines, and receives torrential rains of approximately 76 inches per year only added to the wonder of how the city has survived the centuries.As one discovers upon closer observation, the Incan builders took special care to ensure the citys longevity. They started at the base of the mountain, and built terraces all the way to the top to sure up the mountain. Then, as excavations have shown, they created a foundation for the city some 9 feet deep below the surface, with over 100 drains installed to control rain runoff. It is estimated that 60% of the work that went into building Machu Picchu is underground and concealed from the naked eye.Writing historical fiction is much like building Machu Picchu. You want your novel to stand the test of time and that means doing the historical research to sure it up. But you dont want your research to be flaunted before your readers any more than the builders of the city wanted us to stand in awe of their foundation. The research has to be there but it is your creative work, your story, that you want the reader to stand in awe of; not your research.To write a good historical novel, you will need the same skills that any good novelist would need:you need to be able to tell a good story.You need to know how to build a good plot.You will need to have the final chapter in your mind and write toward that end.Some say you need to capture the readers attention in the first 5 pages, but modern readers are even more flippant than readers of past decades. If you dont have their attention in the first 5 paragraphs, you may have lost them.What sets historical writing apart from novels with a modern environment is that the writer cannot rely on his or her common knowledge to describe sights, smells, tastes, or even the motives of their characters. Like any novelist, you need to understand people well enough to guess at their motives and logic. But unlike a modern novel ist, you have to divorce yourself from modern ideals of what is socially acceptable and entertain motives and logic that may not be acceptable in our time. When you write about polar explorers, for example, you will have to accept that they killed and ate their sled dogs and fed the scraps to their remaining dogs, without judging them for it, or painting your hero with modern sensibilities that are ahead of their times. After all, it is the faults of heroes and heroines, and it is your ability to make the reader sympathize, despite them, that makes memorable characters for your story.I cannot leave this point without sounding a word of caution, however, that there are social paradigms you may wish to overlook in order to make your characters more palatable, while remaining honest with the historicity of the character. If Thomas Jefferson is a character you want your readers to sympathize with, for example, you may not want to over-emphasize the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves, unless it is relevant to your plot. I say this because you have to be honest with that truth if you address it. You cannot then have him telling his slaves to have a glass of lemonade while he finishes their duties.This leads me to another important point. It requires more skill for you to avoid things that you dont know about or are unimportant to the development of your story than it does to flaunt your knowledge of the time period. Again, if your readers wanted a history lesson, they would have picked up a textbook and not a novel. They want to escape into another time and, for a moment, get lost in the person of that period that you have created for them.There is a trust that a reader gives the author when they pick up the book to read; a trust that you know the period about which you are writing. They have not picked up the book to judge that knowledge, but if you betray that trust through poor research, they can be most unforgiving. If you use terms that were not in use in th e time, or refer to technology that did not exist at the time, a knowledgeable reader will likely be through with you.One may presume that candles were in use in the time of King David, because translations refer to candlesticks but readers well versed in the time will know that it means lamp-stand and that candles had not been invented yet.One would assume that the builders of Machu Picchu used carts to move their stones, but they had not yet discovered the wheel.One would assume the climate of England in the 1600s if they did not take into consideration the little ice age. In other words, you are traveling into another world and can take nothing for granted.Historical novelist, Elizabeth Crook, has written on her website about her creative process. She advises that you be willing to do many revisions and Dump the Ballast or cut out those interesting factoids that dont support your plot. She also warns against succumbing to the temptation to write in first person. When readers here someone speak on and on, describing themselves and their actions in minute detail, it makes the narrator sound self-absorbed and less likable.When it comes to research, the foundation of your Machu Picchu, Elizabeth Crook notes, writing historical fiction is like trying to get to San Marcos when you have no car, you dont know where the road is, and you have never in your life harnessed a half-lame mule to a flatbed wagon. Assume it is going to be a while before you arrive.By now you are probably thinking, I thought this article was going to encourage me to get writing. If so, here is the good news:You dont need a university education to write historical fiction. You just have to love research. Digging into past times and cultures can be very exciting. If you dont think so, stick to writing in modern settings. In fact, getting caught up in overdoing the research is often the greatest problem with those who write in this genre (I know I am guilty).Doing the research has never been ea sier. You can travel to your location for inspiration; use the Internet, local libraries and museums; or even pick up the phone and call an expert in the culture or time with an intelligent list of questions to get them talking.More good news: your storyline is already there in history. This is a huge part of the novelists creative process that has already been done for you by Father Time. All you have to do is look at the history, create a timeline for your story, and use your creativity to fill in the gaps.In summary, your readers trust you enough to step into your time machine and have you as their tour guide.  You need to know your world – how it smells, looks, feels, tastes – better than they do without touting it. But dont let the research bog you down. Write. You may include facts that may later prove irrelevant to your story. You may skip over relevant technology until you can research it more. That is what revision is for.Eventually, you have to stop using r esearch as an excuse and get writing. Use Machu Picchu as your guide: 60% foundation and 40% city; 60% research and 40% you.

Mental Health Essay

Mental Health Essay Mental Health Essay Alessandra, who was a senior in college and just finishing up her final year at her university. The hustle of being a senior was overwhelming. The last 2 weeks of college is the most laborious for anyone graduating with finals, graduation, the goodbyes and the tedious preparation of packing up all four years of belongings to take home. Much like her peers, Alessandra was ready. Ready to see her family, begin looking for her career and finally reuniting with her boyfriend, Mike, from back home. It was during her strenuous week of final exams when she noticed that she wasn’t feeling her best. It started with a tickle in her throat and a stuffy nose. â€Å"The inevitable is happening. I’m getting sick† she thought, but quickly realized that there was just no time to worry about a cold. Finally after finals, she found some time to go to the doctor and get something for her cold. The doctor prescribed her a common antibiotic that she would have to take for ten days. â€Å"This is great news,† she thought, â€Å"the antibiotic will fight off whatever I have, so I can finally start my life and move in with Mike.† Everything was falling into place for the bright young graduate. Graduation came and went and finally, after two days of packing, she was ready to head home. It was a long three hour drive, but felt like an eternity since she wasn’t well. Why hadn’t the antibiotics kicked in yet? It was the fourth day of taking the medication when she realized she wasn’t feeling any better. In fact, the medication she was taking was making her feel really nauseous. After completing the antibiotics, she realized she felt worse. She looked awful. She had lost weight, had rashes on her body and had developed difficulty swallowing. After multiple doctor visits, it was diagnosed that she had developed thrush from the antibiotics and had a severe reaction to it. More medication was given but once she started feeling physically better, she started feeling anxious. Anxious that she would get so sick again and eventually die. She didn’t leave the house for days. She felt safe only at home with her parents. â€Å"I can only depend on themà ¢â‚¬  she thought. When the time came for her to see Mike, she started to feel anxious and afraid because she knew he wanted to live together. She wanted to stay at home where her parents could take care of her. Her parents didn’t understand how their independent successful daughter with a bright future had changed so drastically. It was like anxiety had taken over her whole body. She started wondering if she would ever feel normal again. After about a month of feeling anxious, and reading that medication was the solution to her problem, she decided medication was not for her. She decided to tackle her anxiety head on with a method called Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. This method is based on 3 key facts to reduce anxiety. The first is the Relaxation technique. Learning how to relax can be a helpful part of therapy. Whenever our bodies react to anxiety, our muscles tense and our breathing gets shallow. This is where the panic usually sets in for people like Alessandra suffering with anxiety. Calm breathing which involves slowing down the breath helps regulate your

Excellent paper writing is real with us!

Excellent paper writing is real with us! Writing an Excellent Paper – You Need a Blueprint Constructing a bridge without a blueprint would constitute stupidity, because it would result in a faulty structure that would probably fail. And making an attempt at writing a paper without a blueprint that outlines the steps is just as ridiculous. Just as a blueprint guides a construction crew through a step-by-step process, so does one for construction of a scholarly research paper. You can’t skip any of the steps and still expect an excellent result. Step One: Pick your topic. While this may seem like an easy step, you may actually end up feeling like Goldilocks in the home of the three bears. One will be too broad and another will be too narrow. You will have to find one that is â€Å"just fight† for the length parameters your instructor has given. One way to do this is to take a look at sample papers on the internet, in your broader content area, that meet the breadth and depth of what you need and that interests you. And do pick a topic you like – the entire production process will be drudgery if you don’t. Step Two: The research. Your search for appropriate resources can begin on the Internet, using specific keywords related to our topic.  Now here is the thing about resources. Your instructor or professor will want a variety – one or two books, two-three journal articles, and the perhaps one or two sources solely available on the Internet. You will not have a problem finding resource titles, but you do have to sort the â€Å"junk† from the respected sources. Check out the authors of any source you are considering, so that you know they have credentials to be considered authorities on the topic. Since most campus libraries are online, a lot of current resources are accessible from your home or dorm room, but you may have to actually enter the structure and check out a book or two! Be careful as you take notes, so that you have your resource information included for citation later on. And, if you have a good app for doing so, you can organize your notes by sub-topic, and the combining of different resources on one sub-topic is done for you. If you are unsure about sub-topics to include again, look at a sample paper or two online, and see what sub-topics others have used. Step Three: Get a thesis. What is the purpose for you writing this paper? If your writing paper assignment is to persuade, then you probably already have a thesis – your opinion. But, once the research is done, what do you see as important for a reader to learn about this topic? If you are writing about artificial intelligence, for example, what are the great benefits and what are the potential dangers? If you are writing about the Vietnam War, was it worth the cost in lives and money? You need to make a point with your paper, and your thesis statement comes from your response and your reaction to what you have researched. Step Four: Paper writing cannot begin until you have the most important part of your blueprint in place – your outline. Now, this does not have to be a formal one. In fact, remember how your organized those subtopics? They really are the basis for your organizational structure, so look at them and determine the sequence in which they should be presented. Now, take each sub-topic and read through the information and/or data from your research. Combine pieces of information that are related, and these â€Å"sub-sub topics† will be your paragraphs for that section of your paper. Step Five: The writing. You’re now ready to write the rough draft of the body of your paper. Be considerate of your reader, and use headings for each sub-topic – it keeps his/her thoughts organized (and your professor will be impressed). If you have not yet bought a style-check app, you should do so. It does much more than just a simple Word grammar check, and it will help you â€Å"clean-up† all those poorly structured sentences as you write. Here’s a few other tips for your writing: Don’t use a vocabulary that is â€Å"beyond your years,† and don’t try to impress with lengthy and highly complex sentences. Pretend that you are writing this paper for a fellow student. So, if there are terms that are not commonly known, define them. Don’t use slang and jargon unless it is in a quote. Don’t use contractions as I am using here! They are not appropriate in formal writing. Limit the direct quotes you use to those that are really impactful. Step Six: The Final Draft. Editing and proofreading is a task best accomplished in two ways. If you are doing your own proofreading, put the paper aside for at least 12 hours and do something else (like sleep). This will allow you to be more objective when you do review it. The other and better option is to have someone else review it – you can trade-off with another student and edit each other’s papers, if you are both pretty good writers. The paper has to flow logically, and someone else will pick up issues with coherence that you will not. Step Seven: The Style Format. Your in-text and end-of-text citations must be according to the required style, so do not get sloppy with this. And be certain that your title page, pagination, font, margins, etc. are in compliance. It’s those little things that keep a professor happy! A paper that is worthy of a good grade can only be produced by using all of these steps. You really cannot â€Å"cut corners,† and that is why paper writing consumes so much time. If you don’t have the time or if you really dislike your topic, you will not prepare a scholarly piece of writing. In these instances, you are probably better served contacting a custom paper writing service and getting some help.

Case Analysis (Legal Methods) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Case Analysis (Legal Methods) - Essay Example The plaintiff sustained injuries as a result of the crash and attempted o claim compensation from the defendants on the grounds that they owed him a duty to ensure that the animals could not escape and get onto the highway where they might cause an accident. The area where the horses were kept did have a fence around them and it was not possible to reach a conclusion how the horses has managed to escape from the field. The fence had been flattened by the exiting horses and the judge came to the conclusion that the horses must have become frightened by someone or something and had bolted through the fence. The judge came to this decision despite lack of any concrete proof that this might be the case on the basis that the horses had never attempted to escape previously. Initially the plaintiff asserted a claim in negligence and under the Animals Act 1971. The negligence claim failed on the grounds that the animals were usually docile and the fence under such circumstances was adequate for its purpose. Judge O’Malley felt that the defendants had maintained an adequate state of repair to the enclosure and that the fencing was not below the standard required of a ‘reasonably careful and prudent owner’. It was therefore necessary for the plaintiff to rely on the strict liability for the damage under the Animals Act. Given that the defendants had been found not guilty of negligence the plaintiff had to rely on proving the horses were dangerous. The difficulty with this was that the horses were generally docile and had never previously escaped nor injured anyone. As the Act does not list horses as a dangerous species then the reliance was on Act which states "(2) Where damage is caused by an animal which does not belong to a dangerous species, a keeper of the animal is liable for the damage, except as otherwise provided by this Act, if-(a) the damage is of a kind which the animal,

The Effect of Sildenafil on Embryo Development Literature review

The Effect of Sildenafil on Embryo Development - Literature review Example To increase the success rate of IVF, the clinical and laboratory procedures were enhanced in order to reduce the risk of side-effects on the part of patients (Gupta and Agarwa, 2010). Despite the effort to improve the use of IVF, Diedrich et al. (2007) revealed that successful pregnancy rates remain low. The common problems encountered with the use of the IVF procedure includes: (1) inadequate supply of nutrients and oxygen necessary to make the embryo implant itself in the endometrium lining (Forbes and Westwood, 2010; Raine-Fenning et al., 2004a; Kennedy, 1997); (2) lack of endometrial receptivity (Forbes and Westwood, 2010; Kennedy, 1997); (3) failed ovarian responses to the IVF protocols (Oudendijk et al., 2012; Tarlatzis et al., 2003); and (4) uterine blood flow abnormalities caused by poor angiogenesis or vasculogenesis (Satterfield et al., 2010; Huppertz et al., 2006). Due to the failure of the embryo implant itself in the endometrium lining, women can either experience a misc arriage, a recurrent miscarriage, implantation failure, or a recurrent implantation failure (Christiansen et al., 2006; Margalioth et al., 2006; Tomassetti et al., 2006). Based on the study of Achache and Revel (2006), approximately 2/3 of failed IVF is caused by the inability of the embryo implant itself in the endometrium lining. One of the pharmacological drugs that are being considered in treating problems related to the endometrium lining is the sildenafil citrate (Hattori and Tabata, 2006). Through the use of this particular drug, the presence of nitric oxide can will not only create a positive effect on the endometrium lining during the implantation stage but also help in preventing the presence of intrauterine adhesions during menstruation and maintain normal blood pressure during pregnancy (Nakatsuka et al., 2002; Sher et al., 2000; Norman and Cameron, 1996). Based on the study of Sher et al. (2000), the use of 25 mg of sildenafil citrate vaginal suppository for at least four (4) times each day for a period of one week prior to ovarian stimulation will not only increase the endometrium thickness by more than 8 mm but also improve the uterine blood flow. In a similar study, Paulus et al. (2002) examined the effects of 25 mg of sildenafil citrate vaginal suppository on ten (10) women with poor endometria l response to IVF. After administering the vaginal suppository for at least four (4) times each day, the authors noted a 9 mm increase in the endometrium thickness of nine (9) patients but no such improvements in the patients’ uterine blood flow (Paulus et al., 2002). Aside from having a trilaminar pattern during the ovulation period, Chanona et al. (2004) found that it is possible to increase the endometrium thickness up to more than 10 mm after administering 50 mg of sildenafil citrate vaginal suppository each day between the 9th to 12th day of menstruation cycle.  

Evolution Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Evolution - Essay Example The effects of evolution, while difficult to prove, have left an archeological record that gives us a picture of how and why evolution occurs. One of the most basic and fundamental forms of evolution occurs when a virus or bacterial agent mutates to become immune to the drugs that are developed to treat them. HIV is a particularly challenging agent to overcome through drug therapy. According to Luskin, "HIV is particularly prone to "evolution" (i.e. change) because of its high replication and mutation rate--nearly one mutation per replication". The physical characteristics of the HIV virus adapt to the agents designed to kill it. While we can measure and observe this in HIV, "The amount of genetic informational change between rapidly mutating virus strains, such as HIV, is miniscule compared to the type of informational changes required in the wild to create new body plans or biochemical pathways" (Luskin). This is evolution being accomplished at the most basic level. Just as HIV evolves as a group, higher life forms also experience change over time to adapt to their environment. Ancient environmental events forced animals to adapt to a new environment and nature accentuated the differences.

Stock Investment Analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Stock Investment Analysis - Research Paper Example in mid-1995, it has experienced a number of achievement and challenges based on its overall performance which have made it get where it is today (Fidelity, 2014). FLCSX and S&P 500 are companies that offer the similar services to its clients in the United States of America. FLCSX has a portfolio that consists of eleven equities section which include health care, financials, energy, consumer staples, industrials, telecommunication services and utilities. Others include materials and customer discretion. These equities made it possible for the company to be ranked position seven after more than five hundred large companies that perform this kind of duty were evaluated by the United States News organization in 2013 and FLCSX appeared at number seven. This means that the year-to-date performance for this company is promising despite it registered an overall return of 16.24%. There are a number of drivers that made it possible for this company to perform well in the market. The greatest contributor to FLCSX success is the financial equity section because of the of the various portfolio mixtures that it has offers to its clients. These mixtures include Charles Schwab that has offered a return of 55%, JPMorgan Chase that had 29.35% and MetLife that had 48%. Charles Schwab and MetLife from the historical perspective have been performing well, thus resulting to the ever increasing interest rates (Fidelity, 2014). Therefore, both companies (FLCSX and S&P 500) registered a 20% share price increment after thus, taking advantage on speculations that the market’s economy was gradually recovering from the recession. Basing on the evaluation done by US News, S&P 500 is also among the companies that registered an excellent year-to-date return of more than 13.80%. In the first quarter of 2013, both S&P 500 and FLCSX gained more than ten points but during the s econd quarter of the same year, their returns decreased thus the former recording a return of 2.90%while the latter

Gaslan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Gaslan - Essay Example Therefore, I see that Gasland will continue to bring more profits and jobs in the economy of China. I know the department is wondering about the safety of using coal in China. In regards to safety when using coal, am aware of migration of methane when coal is used for long as seen in places like Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Methane is a natural gas which migrates to aquifers when there is a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Therefore, there is a need to avoid driving down natural gas costs and pollution of environment by coal plants. The department should understand about the hydraulic fracturing or fracking. It is a method whereby the chemical fluid is added to earth to free natural gas trapped far underground. The fracking change is actually good news, because it helps in national security and boost the economy of the government. This is achieved since it reduces imports and creates more jobs in the economy and brings about new investment in China. Th e department confirmed that the critics given can be solved it the people take their time to understand that pollution is actually reduced because the amount of coal used in plants is reduced. This clearly shows that boost in fracking increases productivity. Any economist know that without energy China cannot grow economically, therefore, energy is a fundamental service for each and every day living. We know companies like Sinopec and Recon technology which boost the economy of China. Without fuel in the economy, it leads to poverty, although it has effect to the environment, the need of fuel is more important. Meeting the increasing requirements for energy in the entire world is hard to achieve. Therefore, there is a need for fracking even if it has environmental effects. Our choices have to weigh between environmental effects against the economic and social benefits of current supply availability. When fracking is adopted in China, the economy is transformed, it become self-suffic ient than when natural gas is used and could become the biggest exporter this will automatically boost the economy of China. Economists know that a big investment is made through fracking than renewable energy. Therefore, fracking should be encouraged. The shutdown of all fracking will drastically affect the domestic and international markets. In short the oil industry should increase its plans to increase oil production with hydraulic fracturing to increase oil recovery even if it’s threatening the communities’ air and drinking water. Economists should know that the process of hydrofracking is controversial gas and oil extraction methods develop in late 1940s to have access to fossil energy deposits which are inaccessible by drilling machines. The methods actually involve smashing of the rock with a lot of water with sand and a lot of chemicals so that to bring the gas into the surface. The process involve drilling of vertical well bores into the earth, via sediment l ayers, the water table and other rocks to reach oil and gas. (Ralph & Peter 2012) Drilling is done in a horizontally angled and smashed with a lot of water and fracking fluid, chemicals and sand to break the rock and shale. Small explosives are used to open up the bedrock and allow the gas and oil to be removed from the rock formations. Fracking has been there for decades and the process of doing it has been varying from deep fracking to other methods. In conclusion, economists should use fracking approach but try

Intermodal Transportation Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Intermodal Transportation - Research Paper Example However, recent findings and literature regarding intermodal transportation ports review a contradictory outcome of these measures. The following paper investigates and discusses the effects of actions taken to up security at ports. Actions taken to improve the security at ports has negatively affected throughput, increasing costs and reducing the quality of operations. In 2005, a research by Ronald W. Tarr, Vicki McGurk, and Carol Jones made the realization that there are dangers facing intermodal transport ports after 9/11 are volatile (Tarr, et al., 2005). This unpredictability arises from the likelihood that terrorists may use intermodal transport to deliver weapons and explosive material. Oversized significance of stepping up security measures in these ports. The article explores the effects of training through collaboration and decision-making and its support of the response of transit organizations in the course of the 9/11 attacks (Tarr, et al., 2005). These effects revealed the substandard quality of intermodal transportation during the attacks and the ways the harmed output during the implementation of the already established security measures. A recent research by Nil Kula Degirmenci and Gul Denktas Sakar recognized number of security-linked challenges the intermodal transportation sector has been dealing with for the past several years (Degirmenci and Sakar, 2012). Among these challenges are piracy and terrorism. The researchers noted that security measures alone could not address the many low-quality operations, equipment, and industry players. Degirmenci and Sakar proceed to propose a system for gaining a general insight of the current security concept in intermodal transportation ports. This system takes into account the legal, innovative, and economic aspects. Consequently, system identifies key elements of security in intermodal transport by concentrating on requirement

Gaslan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Gaslan - Essay Example Therefore, I see that Gasland will continue to bring more profits and jobs in the economy of China. I know the department is wondering about the safety of using coal in China. In regards to safety when using coal, am aware of migration of methane when coal is used for long as seen in places like Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Methane is a natural gas which migrates to aquifers when there is a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Therefore, there is a need to avoid driving down natural gas costs and pollution of environment by coal plants. The department should understand about the hydraulic fracturing or fracking. It is a method whereby the chemical fluid is added to earth to free natural gas trapped far underground. The fracking change is actually good news, because it helps in national security and boost the economy of the government. This is achieved since it reduces imports and creates more jobs in the economy and brings about new investment in China. Th e department confirmed that the critics given can be solved it the people take their time to understand that pollution is actually reduced because the amount of coal used in plants is reduced. This clearly shows that boost in fracking increases productivity. Any economist know that without energy China cannot grow economically, therefore, energy is a fundamental service for each and every day living. We know companies like Sinopec and Recon technology which boost the economy of China. Without fuel in the economy, it leads to poverty, although it has effect to the environment, the need of fuel is more important. Meeting the increasing requirements for energy in the entire world is hard to achieve. Therefore, there is a need for fracking even if it has environmental effects. Our choices have to weigh between environmental effects against the economic and social benefits of current supply availability. When fracking is adopted in China, the economy is transformed, it become self-suffic ient than when natural gas is used and could become the biggest exporter this will automatically boost the economy of China. Economists know that a big investment is made through fracking than renewable energy. Therefore, fracking should be encouraged. The shutdown of all fracking will drastically affect the domestic and international markets. In short the oil industry should increase its plans to increase oil production with hydraulic fracturing to increase oil recovery even if it’s threatening the communities’ air and drinking water. Economists should know that the process of hydrofracking is controversial gas and oil extraction methods develop in late 1940s to have access to fossil energy deposits which are inaccessible by drilling machines. The methods actually involve smashing of the rock with a lot of water with sand and a lot of chemicals so that to bring the gas into the surface. The process involve drilling of vertical well bores into the earth, via sediment l ayers, the water table and other rocks to reach oil and gas. (Ralph & Peter 2012) Drilling is done in a horizontally angled and smashed with a lot of water and fracking fluid, chemicals and sand to break the rock and shale. Small explosives are used to open up the bedrock and allow the gas and oil to be removed from the rock formations. Fracking has been there for decades and the process of doing it has been varying from deep fracking to other methods. In conclusion, economists should use fracking approach but try

Rhetorical analysis of Obama's speech Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Rhetorical analysis of Obama's speech - Essay Example In this speech, Obama seeks to inform the audience on the 23 Executive Orders that he designed to address gun control and gun violence in America. Obama equally seeks to convince the audience on the need to address gun control and gun violence in America as well as persuade them to comply with the 23 Executive Orders that he designed. To achieve this, Obama relies on various rhetorical strategies. Notably, Obama uses different ethos, logos, and pathos to persuade the audience to address gun control and gun violence in America and comply with the 23 Executive Orders that he designed. Obama uses repetition where he replicates words and phrases to make a point. He uses the phrases â€Å"Let’s do the right thing† and â€Å"We will† to associate the audience with the idea of address gun control and gun violence in America (Paulson 1). He uses repetition to confirm the need for collaborative effort in controlling gun control and gun violence that persuades the audience to own the control measures. Obama uses an ethical appeal by convincing the audience on the credibility of various people addressing gun control and gun violence in America. As the President of America, Obama has authority to address this issue. He equally starts the speech by thanking and recognizing the efforts of Joe Biden who is the vice president of America in addressing gun control and gun violence in America (Paulson 1). This convinces the audience to adopt the recommended findings. Obama informs the audience that he tasked Joe Biden and his cabinet to propose mechanisms of controlling the effects of gun violence. Obama persuades the audience by asserting that he will rely and use the presidency powers to implement the proposals of Joe’s task force (Paulson 1). He also presents the credibility of Todd Jones to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms by confirming that he has been acting on this

Strategics for Strategic Decision Making

Strategics for Strategic Decision Making What key lessons may be learned from any comparison of these two quite different accounts of the same strategic decision? Strategic decision Chosen alternative that affects key factors which determine the success of an organizations strategy. In comparison, a tactical decision affects the day-to-day implementation of steps required to reach the goals of a strategy.  [1]   From these two accounts there are key lessons which can be learnt as far as strategic decision is concerned. Strategy flexibility. Since strategy is not written on stones, sometimes it has to undergo some changes so as to be able to match with the real market environment at particular entry moment. Sometimes one strategy only fails unless a combination of both i.e. emergent strategy as well as deliberate strategy.  [2]   Ability to turn-on customer loyalty and tastes toward a product whose image is totally spoiled. While most motorcyclists were no doubt decent people, groups of rowdies who went around on motorcycles and called themselves by such names as Hells Angels, Satans Slaves, gave motorcycling a bad image. Some steps Hondas took were re-designing of their product to match with the market needs i.e. from larger machines to smaller lightweight motorcycles. The inevitability of proper and efficient market scanning. Its possible to enter the market with a very wrong strategy due to many reasons including failure to effectively scan the market needs. At start Hondas failed to know what US market needed and unfortunately they brought a wrong product of bigger machines while Americans needed smaller ones. Difficulties in the first entry to the market are not the end of business .Difficulties can be used as crucial mirrors for re-defining the strategy to a successful one. References: CASE STUDY 2: LAURA ASHLEY Question 1: Map Laura Ashleys stakeholders using a power/interest matrix. Stakeholders are those individuals or groups who depend on the organisation to fulfil their own goals and on whom, in turn, the organisation depends.  [3]  (Johnson et al, pp.132) Laura Ashley power-interest matrix is as follows: LOW POWER HIGH LOW INTERST HIGH Harmless stakeholders: THE 11 CEOs, Media Group Business Analysts Laura Ashley Customers Chief executive of Pearson Laura Ashley and the husband Bernard Ann Iverson a new CEO in 1995 Richard Pennycook a new FD in 1997 Shareholders like Malayan United Industries (MUI) LOW INTEREST LOW POWER: This is a harmless stakeholder group which requires less attention. This group is represented by the retired CEOs e.g. The 11 CEOs over the last 14 years. Id really rather focus on driving the business forward, he says. LOW INTEREST HIGH POWER: This group is not always bad but needs to be watched because when not satisfied it turns out to be harmful to the business. Laura Ashleys Customers; Customers have very high power to the business because without customers there is no business at all. HIGH INTEREST LOW POWER: This group is crucial to the business because it contains stakeholders with interest with what is done by the business including core customers of the business products and/or services. This group is represented by Media groups: likes to know about the operations but has got less power. Business Analysts: likes to get information for analysis although they have less power. HIGH INTEREST HIGH POWER: Here you can find all key business stakeholders whose expectations and interests are always in the higher side. This group is represented by Chief executive of Pearson Laura Ashley and the husband Bernard Ann Iverson a new CEO in 1995 Richard Pennycook a new FD in 1997 Shareholders like Malayan United Industries (MUI) its chairman Dr Khoo Kay Peng, David Cook, Lauras Finance director CASE STUDY 3: THE BALANCED SCORE CARD QESTION 1: Why do you think organizations often find the Balanced Scorecard difficult to implement in practice? Definition: The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization.  [4]   Among various methods for measuring business performance, scorecard seems to be superior due to its advantages over other traditional financial methods. Balanced Scorecard incorporates future variables as well as multiple measures of performance compared to other methods. There are about four perspectives under this method which are financial perspective, Customer Perspective, Internal perspective and innovation Learning perspective. The following are reasons for organizations difficulties toward implementation of a balanced score card; The main problem facing organizations on implementing a balanced scorecard is the architecture and assumptions applied especially on selecting appropriate measures and number of measures to incorporate toward improving corporate performance as can be seen in the Shell crisis concerning overstatement of its oil reserves. Research from the Hackett Group shows a very small percentage of companies with mature and good mix of financial and operational metrics in their scorecards. There are processes in setting and implementing the scorecards known as translating the vision, communication and linkage, setting targets through planning and finally getting the feedback. Failing to follow this process organization faces the difficulty of failing to translate the strategic objectives to fit with measurements incorporated in the balanced scorecard which causes confusion than serving the purpose. The persuasion I would use to convince the organization to adopt balanced scorecard is to talk about its advantages over other methods which are as follows: Multiple measures of performance: incorporates a range of variables that measure performance against a multiple set of goals. Forward Looking: incorporates variables that are indicators of future performance including profitability. References: CASE STUDY 4-FIAT Question: Post at least 4 factors, ie a Strength, a Weakness, an Opportunity and a Threat, from one or both of your SWOTs (2004 or 2008). Briefly explain your analysis. SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve that objective.  [5]   The following is the analysis using SWOT tool of a FIAT Company showing its different milestones in business within two periods of 2004 and 2008. SWOT 2004 2008 STRENGTHS Strong management team, e.g. CEO Mr. Marchione. Young and energetic personnel with strong experience. The kids are truly devoted to the cause. They are the heart of the success. Having cars with relatively lower average emissions Product innovation Fiat is the market leader in Brazilian market. WEAKNESSES Unappealing models or Odd cars which Mr. Marchione refers it as an arrogance of thinking. Limited resources. Licensing innovation to other manufacturers. A truck-making joint venture between Iveco and SAIC in China, it is weak in China, India and Russia. OPPORTUNITIES New products -Alfas immediate future i.e. the new MiTo, which is based on the Punto and has been designed to match the driving dynamics of BMWs Mini, and the 149, successor to the compact 147 hatchback. Divorce from a 5-years GM partnership and becoming an independent player. Partnership with other strong manufacturers like TATA and SAIC. THREATS Immergence of new Innovative brands in the car market by new rivals. Its five-year partnership with GM. It had not worked, for several reasons. Sharing platforms, engines and purchasing had not produced the expected economies of scale and Fiats ability to act independently. When new European Union rules on carbon-dioxide emissions come into force At the time when Marchione chipped in Fiat witnessed a clear future as can be shown through re-shuffle of very old workforce. CASE STUDY 6: THE NOVOTEL VALUE CHAIN Question 1: What are Novotels competitive advantages? competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or by providing greater benefits and service that justifies higher prices.  [6]   Novotel Competitive advantages: Multi skilling: Multi-skilling is to develop staff as a team able to perform tasks and work as needed in a flexible manner, this would have many advantages for hotel management, especially in smoothing the need for certain types of staff at peak bottleneck periods of the day or evening. Standardized levels of its services: A system to monitor standard procedures was introduced in 1987 which became known as the 95 Bolts. This system was intended to be a template for learning whose standards was carried out by an internal team of inspectors who visited each hotel approximately twice each year. They worked as mystery shoppers in that they made reservations, arrived, stayed and departed unnoticed. Sophisticated marketing and distribution systems: Novotel operates within both the individual and corporate business and leisure markets. Novotel usually have special promotions and advertising themes done in different locations and in different countries with tailored promotions to local holidays and lifestyles. Partnership programs: Novotel linked programs strengthening relationship marketing; especially the supplier partnership programmes, linked with purchasing and learning efficiencies delivering both scale and scope economies. Staff exchanges: There was Exchange between countries, locations and type of customer mix which contributed to multi-culture is essential to getting customers. The exchange provides means for staff motivation especially in the industry whose labor turnover is critical. References: CASE STUDY 8: THE VIRGIN GROUP QUESTION 3: Does the Virgin Group, as a corporate parent, add value to its businesses? If so how? Corporate parent: Is a business which owns and controls the operations of other businesses by either possessing outright ownership or controlling a majority of the voting stock.  [7]   Virgin was founded in 1970 as a mail-order record business and developed as a private company in music publishing and retailing. However, by 2002, the group included over 200 businesses spanning three continents and including financial services, planes, trains, cinemas and music stores. The group succeeded on adding values to its businesses regardless of decentralization of decision making. How does Virgin group add values to its businesses? Standards: The group had standards which enabled the businesses to perform toward the same goals. There were performance reviews which made employees being held accountable for their performance as well as promotions from within. For example by using stock options, bonuses and profit sharing. Support services: This involves centralised support services. For example, providing HRM, marketing, financial, etc support services and human resource management systems were in place to keep people committed. Corporate development: Branson adopted his own personal style of management within units, boosting himself on effectively adding value to customers through employee involvement and taking their ideas. Managing linkages: In the early 1970s Branson spent his good time soliciting funds for the company to become solvent. References: CASE STUDY 11: RESTRUCTURING SONY Question 1: How many times did Sony restructure itself during the period covered by the case study? Restructuring is the corporate management term for the act of reorganizing the legal, ownership, operational, or other structures of a company for the purpose of making it more profitable, or better organized for its present needs.  [8]   Introduction: On 7 May 1946, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita (4) co-founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) with an initial capital of  ¥190, OOOin the city of Nagoya, Japan. By the 1960s, the company had established itself in Japan and changed its name to Sony Corporation. In its milestones Sony underwent several business restructuring aiming at improving the companys focus on high potential products and expediting the decision making process to make the company more responsive to changing market conditions. Restructuring of electronics business (1994): In this new structure, the regrouping of electronic businesses were adopted getting into eight divisional companies. These eight companies are the Consumer Audio Video Products Company, the Recording Media : Energy Company, the Broadcast Products Company, the Business Industrial Systems Company, the InfoCom Products Company, the Mobile Electronics Company, the Components Company, and the Semiconductor Company. Leadership by team of executives: Here the new framework required Sony to be led by a team of executives at the top management level. The Ten-Company Structure (1996): In January 1996, a new ten-company structure was announced, replacing the previous eight-company structure whereby the previous Consumer Audio Video (AV) company was split into three new companies the Display Company, the Home AV Company and the Personal AV Company. The Unified-Dispersed Management Model: In April 1999 another change was announced aiming at changes in its organizational structure. The new framework required the company to streamline its business operations to be able to exploit the internet technology opportunities. Restructuring Efforts in 2001: Once more in March 2001 Sony provided announcement about another round of organizational restructuring. This was about transforming itself into a Personal Broadband Network Solutions company by launching a wide range of broadband products and services for its customers across the world. References: CASE STUDY 12: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS Qustion 2 : How significant was Jong-Yong Yuns role in the change process? Change process It is an organizational process aimed at empowering employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment.  [9]   INTRODUCTION: Samsung is an Asian Electronic Company based in Suwon South Korea. The firm has experienced stiff competition from rivals such as Sony, Nokia, and Motorola on the basis of its revolutionary products. Jong-Yong Yuns role in the change process: Reorientation: This helped the firm to develop new capabilities. He recruited new capable employees such as managers and engineers, many of whom had developed considerable experience in the United States. Retrenchment: There was a layoff of a number of employees amounting 30,000, representing well over a third of its entire workforce. Reduction of number of factories. Discarding a Failing Strategy: Although the firm was making profits, Yun was concerned about the future prospects of a firm that was relying on a strategy of competing on price with products that were based .The success of this strategy was tied to the Samsungs ability to continually scout for locations that would allow it to keep its manufacturing costs down. Developing a Premium Brand: Having managed to cut down the losses, Yun planned to shift Samsung away from its strategy of competition which based mainly on the lower priced products. Consequently, he began to push the firm to develop its own products rather than to copy those that other firms had developed. Pushing for New Products: Through its new product development processes Yun struggled a lot to make it happen ensuring higher margins as compared to its rivals. Designing for the Digital Home: Yuns long term plan is to ensure Samsungs dominance in digital home technologies. He believes that his firm is in a better position to benefit from the day when all home appliances, from handheld computers to intelligent refrigerators, will be linked to each other and adapt to the personal needs of consumers. References: Case Study 10: Mantero Seta Spa: a strategy for China Question 1: Would you recommend Mantero Seta Spas entry into the Chinese market? Market growth An increase in the demand for a particular product or service over time. Market growth can be slow if consumers do not adopt a high demand or rapid if consumers find the product or service useful for the price level.  [10]   YES I would recommend Montero Seta Spas entry into the Chinese market due to the following scenarios: Market Growth: Chinese market promises for the stable growth of the fashion business as you can see In the mid 2000s, stable economic growth had brought substantial income to many groups of people, and with it a growing demand for the satisfaction of higher level needs. Also Upper-class and middle-class people became increasingly interested in their social life, and chose to spend money to better enjoy their spare time. There was a huge potential to sell luxury goods to these groups: 2 per cent of the 1.3 billion people living in China. Identifiable retail Distribution: The government of China had adopted a series of policies to propel the retail industry through a process of fundamental transformation. The move had sparked dramatic changes in Chinese retailing, with market growth reshaping purchasing habits. As a result in the mid 2000s there were many different types of retailing methods, based on different products and market strategy. Geographical Differences: The reasons for the differences were various. In northern China consumers made choices based on seasonal factors. Values and beliefs of people in north China were based on their imperial history and social traditions, with clear distinctions between different social groups and classes. The distinction was underlined in many ways, including clothing. People in the north were aware of their appearance, and wanted others to recognise their wealth and ability. In the south the climate was temperate; therefore consumers chose lighter, more comfortable and durable material for everyday wear. Marketing Communications: Communication processes in the fashion business focused on the brand image and the values embodied in the product, rather than on the product itself. Processes included photographs, shows, showrooms, models, displays, videos and sample collections. References: CASE STUDY 5: THE PROFITABILITY OF UK RETAILERS Question: Are British supermarkets more profitable than their European and US counterparts? Profitability is the ability to gain profit Profit is the positive gain from an investment or business operation after subtracting for all expenses.  [11]   Profitability = TR-TC ( TR = Total Revenue, TC = Total cost) Return on capital employed ( ROCE ) is the ratio that indicates the efficiency and profitability of company capital investments.  [12]   British supermarkets are profitable compared to US and other European countries because of the following reasons:- Cost of labor: Labor costs are lower in the UK due to lower social cost borne by employers. This reduces operation cost and makes the British firms to be more profitable. Technology: British companies have a lead in applying IT in their distributions systems with deliveries in small number of companies warehouses, the use of technology in distribution system reduce the cost of operation contributing to higher profits. Buying power: The British supermarkets have high buying power and tend to be more centralizing than some of the US and other European countries. This help them in reducing cost and also the British firm are more experienced and skillful in using their buying power to negotiate better terms or price from their supplier. Because they have dominated the market the British supermarkets impose the higher than a normal price to consumers (oligopoly power). Because the British supermarkets have high buying power and the use of oligopoly make them more profitable compared to the US and other European counterparts.