Fracking The Gas And Gas Industry - 940 Words

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, is the process in which oil and gas deposits are extracted by pumping a tremendous amount of water and extremely hazardous chemicals into wells at very great depths. The biggest concern about this process is the contamination of aquifers. And different sources of potable water due to the poor control over toxic wastes. In addition, fracturing requires millions of gallons of water per well. And, only in the U.S, fracking has been used more than one million times. Bringing catastrophic consequences such as carcinogenic effects on different communities, malformations, diseases on pregnant woman and all of this, due to the negligence of the oil and gas industry. Now, the state of Florida has to decide whether to authorize the use of fracking or just regulate it. However, a more intelligent decision would be to ban hydraulic fracturing and, invest in renewable sources of energy. The state of Florida should implement a bill prohibiting de u se of fracking because it will prevent problems with aquifers contamination, it will encourage companies to develop sources of energy that people can actually use, and it will reduce harm done to the environment. Aquifers are defined as saturated rock trough which water can easily move. There are permeable and porous aquifers. They are natural filters that trap sediments and different type of bacteria which provide natural purification of the ground water and therefore it cleans up the flowingShow MoreRelatedFracking And The Gas Industry1573 Words   |  7 Pageshydraulic fracturing - a process for extracting natural gas- has spread rapidly across the United States. High volume hydraulic fracturing, or â€Å"fracking,† is a process in which water and chemicals are injected into shale formations underground in order to release trapped natural gas. As fracking spreads throughout the United States, there are more and more reported cases of contaminated drinking water and illness among citizens living near fracking sites. Even with these cases, it is still difficultRead MoreThe Effects Of Fracking On The And Gas Industry1431 Words   |  6 PagesThe Ethicacy of Fracking Changes with the process of fracking often called slick water high pressure horizontal drilling have become common in recent years are having devastating effects on people, their livestock as well as on communities as a whole. The toxic and often carcinogenic chemicals used in the process and as a result of the methods used are often contaminating water supplies. Air quality is also being greatly affected due to side effects from this method of resource extraction and greenhouseRead MoreThe Effect Of Hydraulic Fracking On The Oil And Gas Industry1044 Words   |  5 PagesIntroduction Hydraulic Fracking is an oil and gas extraction process used in the past 60 years. The process consists of drilling the underground until reach a shale layer, and them a high-pressure fracking fluid is injecting in this hole to fracture the rock underground, which will provide oil and gas to be extracted. As a huge extraction process it requires large quantities of water, sand and chemicals, which are to produce the fracking fluid, and in most of the cases all this water and chemicalsRead MoreA Brief Look at Fracking1383 Words   |  6 PagesAmerica’s constant need for gas. Most of that production increase has come about to the growing need of hydraulic fracturing, also known as â€Å"fracking†, which is a process used to release oil or gas from underground formations that are otherwise too hard to mine with other tools. Over the past few years, advances in fracking technology have made huge reserves of natural gas in America economically recoverable. According to the Energy Information Administration, shale gas plays, or fields, in the UnitedRead MoreThe Economic Report On Fracking, Is It Worth It?1465 Words   |  6 PagesEconomic Report Fracking, is it Worth it? Ron Withall Business 630, Dr. Lynn Reaser SUBJECT Our dependence on foreign oil and natural gas has created a vulnerability affecting our national security and economic stability. Up until this past decade there was an appreciable decline in our oil and natural gas production in the US and we were tied to world market price fluctuations. Oil prices and natural gas prices rose and fell based on OPEC’s and other large oil and natural gas producers’ productionRead MoreFracking And Its Effects On The Economy1589 Words   |  7 PagesThe fracking industry in its entirety, although surrounded by a shroud of controversy, is an economic stimulator that many do not acknowledge. The potential replacement of coal for efficient and clean energy would not be possible if it weren’t for the utilization of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, and horizontal drilling. To consider fracking as only a danger to the environment would be an overstatement while saying fracking only provides natural gas and nothing else is a n understatementRead MoreEffects Of Fracking On The Environment And Human Health1208 Words   |  5 Pagesforms of energy the demand for gas has grown rapidly worldwide in recent years. This significant increase in demand has led to a boom in world gas prices. In Australia, there are large reserves of unconventional natural gas compared to conventional natural gas. However, according to the Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics (BREE) there is enough conventional natural gas in Australia to supply all of Australia at current levels for more than 6130 years. Fracking extracts hydrocarbons from previouslyRead MoreThe Importance of a Secure Energy Supply for the Future826 Words   |  3 Pagesform or anther. Petroleum, coal and natural gas are the most produced and used energy sources. Mining technologies are required to obtain the raw materials of these energy sources from nature. The energy crisis is due to the limited amount of the natural storages of the energy resources. A higher production rate of the raw materials is desired so that more resources can be extracted to meet the demand. There have been conventional technologies for gas drilling for over 100 years. However the conventionalRead MoreNatural Gas : A Sustainable And Environmentally Friendly Gases1247 Words   |  5 PagesNatural gas is known as one of the most sustainable and environmentally friendly gases. The gas is extremely useful and efficient in daily activities to more important activities like heating, cooling, electricity, fuel, and other materials. The natural g as industry has created thousands of jobs and has gained millions in profit. According to Ecana, a natural gas company, natural gas creates up to seventy percent fewer emissions than coal and twenty percent fewer emissions than oil . Natural gas wouldRead MoreFracking, The Splitting Decision : An Analysis1726 Words   |  7 PagesFracking, The Splitting Decision: An Analysis of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Fracking Abstract Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of drilling into the Earth and subsequently directly a high-pressure water, sand, and chemical mixture at shale rock to release the gas inside, out through the head of the well. Fracking allows firms to access previously inaccessible resources of oil and gas buried underneath the earth and hidden in the rocks. In the U.S., fracking has boosted

The Influences Of Mahler s Work As A Conductor And Composer

How does one codify the influences of Mahler’s work as a conductor and composer? As Gustav Mahler is well known for his conducting, he is best known for his skills as a composer. â€Å"Mahler s interpretative style enabled him, undistracted by the army of gossipers who in all walks of life gather round the success-seekers, to develop, to grow, to mature, to live his works and to create, as Schubert created his songs, Bruckner his symphonies and Masses, and Wagner his music dramas† (Grange). However, Leonard Bernstein sometimes felt (according to PBS American Masters video on Bernstein) like he had become Mahler in his performances. Gustav Mahler has become an iconic figure in the eyes of other conductors/composers, because it helped them become masters of their own works with the influential ideas of Mahler. Born on July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia, Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. However, Mahler also was a Jew, and Jews in the region were associated by ethnic Czechs with Germans. Mahler’s famous quote is: â€Å"I am thrice homeless, as a native ofShow MoreRelatedThe Concert Hall, Raleigh, Concert, By Paul Randall And Composed By Bill Evans1721 Words   |  7 Pages and it turned out to be a wonderful start to the jazz concert in that it was not unfamiliar to the crowd. â€Å"Waltz for Debby’ got me question why someone would write this kind o f old and whom Debby was -sounding tune for someone he or she loved. It s really difficult for me to advocate this song to anybody, for I lacked the depth of the other tunes through the entire evening and believed it was boring. â€Å"Ancient Memories† was a piece that is wonderful. The tune was enjoyment and I loved listeningRead MoreEssay on Leonard Bernstien: A Legendary Composer1377 Words   |  6 PagesLeonard Bernstein is seen as one of the greatest composers in America. Bernstein composed great music, conducted great music, and also preformed great music as a pianist. Bernstein is probably most known for his film score in the production West Side Story. According to The New York Times, he was one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.† Being born and educated in the United States, Bernstein was the first American to obtain worldwide acclaim. He is alsoRead MoreSymphony No.58248 Words   |  33 PagesBeethoven s Fifth Sym phony ) (Dialihkan dari Beethoven s Fifth Symphony ) Jump to: navigation , search Langsung ke: navigasi , cari Beethoven s Fifth redirects here. Beethoven Kelima beralih ke halaman ini. For the movie, see Beethoven s 5th (film) . Untuk film, lihat s 5th Beethoven (film) . For Beethoven s 5th piano concerto, see Piano Concerto No. 5 (Beethoven) . Untuk piano concerto Beethoven ke-5, lihat Piano Concerto No 5 (Beethoven) . [pic] The coversheet to Beethoven s 5th

Radical Policies of President Franklin D Roosevelt Free Essays

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal program to attack the Great Depression that was plummeting the nation into a financial crisis; his plan can be said to have been a radical departure from Roosevelt†s predecessors. Roosevelt was brought to power with the expectation that he would initiate a major shift in the nature of government, and his actions following his campaign can rightfully be dubbed Roosevelt†s predecessors can be said to have been more conservatives than radicals. We will write a custom essay sample on Radical Policies of President Franklin D Roosevelt or any similar topic only for you Order Now President Coolidge†s objective was to reduce the significance of the presidency and to limit the powers of the overnment. He was content to let all of the nation†s problems work themselves out. He twice vetoed the McNary-Haugen bill, which would have drastically helped farmers by buying crop surpluses. President Hoover believed that the role of the gov†t. was not to solve the problems, but to help the problems disappear. He stated that â€Å"if gov†t solved society†s problems directly, people would give up their freedom and gov†t. would become the problem. † From public pressure, however, Hoover began to promote more direct fed. volvement, initiating such programs as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Agric. Marketing Act, which helped farmers by buying their crop surpluses. His actions had little effect on the economy, but FDR made sure that his actions did. Roosevelt took a much larger step in using fed. involvement, more then any other President had done before. Roosevelt†s philosophy differed in that he promoted direct relief for the â€Å"forgotten man† in financial trouble. He saw nothing wrong with gov†t. activism, and he chose to use the fed. gov†t. to try to regenerate economic growth. Some programs, including the Agric. Adjustment Act and the National Reconstruction Administration, even allowed gov†t to become too involved, resulting in Supreme Court legislation declaring them illegal and unconstitutional. His instituted loan and price-support programs which farmers became dependent upon, the Wagner Act as the overseer of labor-management relations, and a program to regulate the banking system and financial systems. In other words, he significantly changed the role of gov†t in the ecomony and in society by granting gov†t more control over them. After the New Deal and the Second Hundred Days were over, society held the expectation that the Pres. and the gov†t. were responsible for correcting any or all problems that they had. Even so, Roosevelt†s radical actions had stabilized the economy and prevented economic collapse. Conservatives argue that Roosevelt undermined individualism and free enterprise, but really he simply saved the nation with his ideas and reforms. Roosevelt may have used the fed. gov†t. intensely in society, but he saved thousands of unemployed workers and helped his fellow man. How to cite Radical Policies of President Franklin D Roosevelt, Essay examples

BMG entertainment Music Industry Essay Example For Students

BMG entertainment Music Industry Essay These sites inked fans to the artists websites, where they could download or purchase Cads. (Another innovative move from BMW) Weaknesses: * Through sites like Coded and Amazon. Com customers had the option of having Cads or cassettes mailed to them. Consumers may not want to deal with downloading music from the net. They may Just stick with what they have. Many sites had illegal downloads, so the conventional consumer may not want to bother with this new type of technology. Although BMW was the first company to create branded websites for specific music inner, they only focused on promotional aspects here, rather than focusing on selling music and in turn making money. Opportunities: * The innovativeness and newness of the digital era could spark a surge of consumer interest in the music industry. For instance, the CD had a big impact on industry revenue; owners of tapes simply replaced their collections with Cads. ;BMW is arguably the leader in the music industry, and consequently has the influence to take its existing customers with them into the digital MPH era. * BMW had close relationships with all the players involved in setting tech standards ND an advantage for market entry. * If BMW begins to sell music on the internet, they can reduce their costs greatly by doing away with distribution and manufacturing expenses. Threats: * -In 1929 the new technology of radio posed a serious threat to the music industry. Could a similar event take place with Digital music, where BMW loses a lot of money due to a decrease in CD and cassette sales? * -Time Warner had one of the most advanced cable systems in the US. They were experimenting with services such as video on demand and HAD TV so the possibility of chital music was definitely there for TWO, and they had the internet resources to distribute it too. * -Would conventional music buyers want to go through the hassle of Joining a website, installing a media player, and then buying additional software to play the music at their convenience? -With a K modem (one that many still used 7 years ago), a song took roughly 7 minutes to download. Ten songs can take 70 minutes, and that is not appealing or convincing enough for conventional consumers to switch over to amps usage. * -Sonnys Kiosks in retail music stores posed a threat for BMW. These kiosks allowed customers to choose from a variety of over 4,000 songs, and create their own CD within 15 minute s. Attacking Piracy at the Source- the Cads In order to attack piracy, record labels must start at the source. Nearly all of the music traded on the Internet originally comes from CDC, which can be easily copied, or ripped, onto any computer as MPH digital audio files. Most analysts point to CDC as the biggest hole in the music industrys strategy for aiding online piracy. The recording industry wants to make it harder for consumers to directly copy CDC, but it faces enormous hurdles. First, any barriers to copying must be backwards compatiblemeaning the new technologies would have to work on old CD players that dont screen for pirated material, and vice versa. Eventually, the group SADISM was formed, consisting of all the major players involved in setting the technological standards for downloading music. (AT, Microsoft, Liquid Audio, MM, etc) Sedums efforts have focused on installing digital watermarks on CD tracks that would enable copyright holders to trace illegal copies and to create devices that would refuse to play copied tracks. In its first phase, SADISM selected a Future record releases for BMW- Copy Management. It is the Record labels responsibility to protect the work of their artists. .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 , .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .postImageUrl , .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 , .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8:hover , .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8:visited , .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8:active { border:0!important; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8:active , .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8 .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u68550b641eb00b1e09bcdee9360244a8:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: My Favorite Music Is R EssayCopy management technology is one of several responses to illegal file sharing and mass copying, which has had a detrimental effect on the music industry (unit shipments have fallen 26% from 1. 16 billion units in 1999 to 860 million units last year). There are a few features that are new to this type of technology: Device playability- These discs play Just like an enhanced CD. Certain products recently tested had playability issues with DVD players, car stereos and game insoles, yet these discs play on nearly all DVD players, car stereos, etc. Anywhere an enhanced CD will play, these discs will play. Mac playability The discs can now be played on a Mac like any other CD. Voluntary Collective Licensing- Music Industry and the Internet Many Record Labels have spent countless amounts of time evaluating alternatives that would pay artists while making file sharing legal. One solution that has emerged as the favorite is voluntary collective licensing. The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to get legit in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, for example $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anywayshare the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they preferwithout fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music. In exchange, file-sharing music fans would be free to download whatever they like using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders.

AIDS The Politics Policy of Disease ( SZ Theodoulou ) free essay sample

Critical review of work on role of bias (sexual, racial, classist) in treatment of social attitude toward AIDS. AIDS Introduction AIDS by Theodoulou (1996) is a book about the politics and policy of the disease. The author is a teacher at California State University, Northridge. He states that his purpose in writing the book was to offer key contemporary research on the epidemic from a broad variety of policy and political perspectives and share a common understanding of AIDS as a fundamentally challenging issue that calls for a highly political response (p. vii). Political dimensions covered included ethical considerations, constitutional issues, bureaucracy, and services within a capitalist economy. Policy dimensions dealt with governmental responses. Comparisons were made between the United States and other nations regarding the handling of AIDS.

The IMF and the Bretton Woods Agreements essays

The IMF and the Bretton Woods Agreements essays The international financial system has been radically altered since the worldwide depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s. This change is due in large part to the inception of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its subsequent control over the international financial system. In this paper I will examine the extensive role of the Bretton Woods system of exchange rates and the gold standard. Additionally, I will examine the role that the IMF has taken on since the demise of the gold standard. To begin, we must examine the circumstances that surround the creation of the IMF, who the actors are and what each of their roles are as member countries. The IMF was created as a result of the worldwide market collapse that took place initially in October of 1929. The domino effect that took place when the first market crashed was seen to be a situation so severe that world powers felt that drastic measures needed to be taken to ensure that this was the last global financial crisis that the world would face. Its creation in 1944 was the beginning of a new era for the international financial system. The creation of the IMF occurred at Bretton Woods along with the World Bank and the system of fixed exchange rates and the gold standard for currency. Under this system, the US dollar was tied to gold by a United States government commitment to buy it at $35.00 and ounce and sell to central banks at the same price (excluding handling and other charges). Other participating countries maintained the exchange values of their currencies at prices which were almost fixed in terms of the dollar (the values fluctuate normally not more than one percent on either side of their parities), with the result that exchange rates were almost universally fixed. Other governments carried out their commitments by selling internationally acceptable liquid resources when there was an excess demand for foreign currencies in terms of their own curr...

Journals reading Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Journals reading - Essay Example Additionally, these guidelines are necessary for guiding the decision-making the process of the writer. Just like the writing process demands the writer to come up with everything before writing, artists also look for ideas and inspiration before beginning their artwork. They brainstorm and come up with various ideas they feel suitable to their topic or intention. Equally important, the artist also plans and structure before painting (Armstrong 24). The article uses direct speech quoted from various speakers. Use of direct speech is important in sentence construction since it makes the message look authentic and real to the reader and different audience. Furthermore, it also limits distortion of the message because it is quoted. According to the chapter Planning, the cool down is the reduction in intensity of writers’ frustration and temper. Various authors when faced with difficult writing tasks always develop frustration and anger that leads to random thinking. Through random thoughts, writers get the ideal and perfect opportunity to cool down and rationally think. As a result, they manage to solve the problems and eventually start writing. Moreover, free writing is the best and most useful writing strategy. According to Stafford, free writing is useful since it allows the writer to write various articles or material quickly (32). It also helps writers to enhance their speed, creativity, and memory. Equally, free writing provokes critical thinking since a writer is expected to write what he/she can recall. Moreover, it ensures construction of relevant and detailed work because writers are expected to proofread. Through proofreading, writers can remove irrelevant and unusual points or sentence from their work. They also correct grammar and spelling mistakes in their work. Besides, Speculation is to conceive or try to figure out an idea without knowing the exact meaning or purpose of it. Speculation of ideas is important to

Impact of the Communism Collapse on Countries` Economic Systems Essay

Impact of the Communism Collapse on Countries` Economic Systems - Essay Example Economic factors were linked to political and psychological factors. 1 Aerospace Power Journal - spring 2001.pp 100-113 As the Soviet economist Latsis said at the time, "the gloomy background of the worsening market situation ... has a depressing effect on people." Now that the Soviet Union, with its centralized political and economic system, has ceased to exist, the fifteen newly formed independent countries which emerged in its aftermath are faced with an overwhelming task. They must develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes. A number of wars have developed on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union. Additionally, the entire region is suffering a period of severe economic hardship. Democracy is a political model and communism is an economic one. By the beginning of the 21st cent. traditional Communist party dictatorships held power only in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Although economic reform has been allowed in these countries, their Communist parties have proved unwilling to submit to popular democratic movements. The policies of most Communist Parties in both Eastern and Western Europe had been governed by the example of the Soviet Union. Communist economic system is associated with an authoritarian government system, which means that a government elite enhances its economic, judicial and political freedoms and suppresses those who are led by them. There is no theoretical reason for communism to be associated with... This essay aims to establish all gamut of impacts of the communistic ideology on the economic systems of democratic countries. In theory communism should create a classless society and freedom, in which all people would enjoy equal economic status. That may be a theory of what communism should be like but in practice the government cared little for the working class citizens and only wanted to preserve their own power. The immediate cause of the Soviet collapse was economic, as the Soviet Union lost the arms race and international competition with the West. The US was able to profit from its imperialist exploitation of other countries, while socialism could only lose economically in that competition. Economic factors were linked to political and psychological factors. Nowadays traditional Communist party dictatorships held power only in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Although economic reform has been allowed in these countries, their Communist parties have proved unwilling to submit to popular democratic movements. With the Cold War over, politicians, economists and others promoted unfettered free trade and free market ideology. Various factors such as political decisions, military might, wars, imperial processes and social changes throughout last few decades and centuries have pulled the world system in various directions. Today's world is based on 'Global Politics and Economics.'

Managing and leading people Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words - 1

Managing and leading people - Essay Example Failure to examine the wellbeing of the employees impacts directly on the profitability and profitability of the organisation. Also, failure by the management to support the wellbeing of the employees has various effects on the business such as increased operation costs and poor public relations (Rees and French, 2013). There are different descriptions of well being of employees in various employment contexts. According to research, the workers’ wellbeing should balance their needs with those of the company. In this case, the concept of wellbeing refers to the creation of an environment for the promotion of a state of satisfaction among the workers as well as achieves their maximum potential for personal and organization’s benefit (Anjum, 2010). The wellbeing of the workers entails more than the aspect of preventing sickness at the workplace. It involves a wider bio-psycho-social structure that includes mental, physical and social health. Normally, employees are mentally and physically capable of contributing at the workplace and become more engaged to their work under good working conditions. Well-being at the workplace, therefore, does not involve the management of the cultural and physical environment with the aim of safeguarding workers from harm. However, it requires corporations to assist individuals to maximise their mental and physical health. The approach for wellbeing benefits individuals both inside and outside the work environment (Jibeen, 2013). In addition, it promotes various aspects of the workplace such as productivity, morale and commitment. Positive wellbeing at the workplace can also benefit the community that is essential for enhancing the public relations of the organisation. It is important for the ma nagement and leadership of various organisations to support the wellbeing of the employees because of various reasons such as promotion of employees’ morale, commitment, transparency, productivity, public relations and efficiency

International Marketing Strategy for Tesco

International Marketing Strategy for Tesco Executive Summary This report outlines international marketing strategy for Tesco for its market entry into Sweden with a range of baby wear. The SWOT and PESTAL analysis show that Tesco currently has the resource capabilities to successfully enter the market and implement a market development strategy. The report recommends that Tesco target the high-end market segment with a differentiation strategy. This report will assist in understanding and the formulation of an international marketing strategy for Tesco Plc. The report will use PESTLE and SWOT analysis to provide an insight into Tesco’s current market situation. This will help management in making the correct strategic choices in terms of corporate and international strategy in terms of lunching a range of baby wear (infant toddler clothes) into Eastern Europe (Namely, Sweden). The report will outline how Tesco will make such market diversity and also managing corporate portfolio. We will use the Ansoff Matrix to consider market entry models. The final part of this report will provide an activity plan for Tesco along with a profit and loss account. Measurements and control with contingency plans will also be discussed. Company Profile Tesco runs more than 2,300 supermarkets, hypermarkets, and convenience stores in the UK (where it is the market leader in food retail), Ireland, Central Europe, and Asia. Its operations include convenience and gasoline retailing (Tesco Express), small urban stores (Tesco Metro), hypermarkets (Tesco Extra), and financial services through Tesco Personal Finance. A global leader in online grocery sales, it owns a 35% stake in US grocery chain Safeways GroceryWorks. It is the leading online grocery store and it is now expanding its business with a TV channel and a retail based education institution†. SWOT and PESTLE Analysis of Tesco Plc A PEST analysis of the industry will examine the local, national and global influences of political, economic, social and technological factors to understand opportunities and threats well. All of those (political, economic, social, technical, legal and environmental) factors will to some extent apply to the retail industry in Sweden. POLITICAL – Following the European Integration and Free Trade Agreements, the market has opened up for British Companies to invest in Eastern Europe. Tesco already has 60 Hypermarket store in Hungary. Lidl is uncompromisingly fighting to maintain its market share with an aggressive pricing strategy. ECONOMIC the Retail sector is fairly recession prawn and also very sensitive to changes in interest rates. Since the events of September 11th the world economies have suffered heavily, stocks plummeted and prices are at all time lows. The world economy is however, now on the up post September 11th. Consumers are optimistic and the retail industry is once again booming. SOCIAL – changes in consumer taste and lifestyle represent both opportunities and threats for the industry. Opportunities in terms of new market and consumers, however, there are added threats in terms of alternative established Swedish national retailers (foreign company bias). TECHNICAL – Changes in retailing methods as such clothes sales via the Internet is now a common place in retailing. Paperless operation, the management and administration of the company are undertaken on IT systems, which are accessed through secure servers; provide flexibility in the running of the business. As Sweden is at the forefront of technological advancement with national companies like Ericsson, Tesco would enjoy the comprehensive logistic and distribution channels already in place. LEGAL – National legislation for health and safety both in terms of consumer rights and also in terms of production of own natural renewable resources for making clothes. ENVIRONMENTAL – The renewable source of resources used in production, namely cotton and wool are environmentally friendly. The threats are in terms of legal consequences for livestock’s in terms of health and safety. Market Entry Strategy We can use Ansoff’s product/market matrix to identify directions for Tesco’s strategic development. This matrix offers directions for strategic option available to Tesco in terms of products and market coverage, taking into account its strategic capability and also expectation of stakeholders Source: Johnson, G., Scholes, K., Whittington, R., (2005) We can see from the Ansoff Matrix that Tesco’s lunch of Baby wear in Sweden will involve a market development strategy. As Tesco already sells kid’s clothing (existing product) but Sweden will be a new market. Both capability and market consideration has driven Tesco to into development into new markets. Kid’s clothing is a product that can be exploited in other market segments and also geographical spread internationally. Tesco may encounter some difficulties around creditability and expectations as they attempt to enter the new market. Tesco may not be seen as a credible ‘mainstream’ supplier. Tesco Plc Target Customers Tesco must decide which market segment in Sweden it wants to target; this will subsequently determine its generic strategy. If it wishes to with the low cost retailers then it must adopt a cost leadership strategy. Otherwise it will have to look for differentiation so that it can charge premium prices at the high-end market. As the competitive rivalry in the low cost market is intense, Tesco should enter the high-end market with a differentiation strategy. However, before Tesco decides on its target customers, we need to conduct a market analysis, in terms of size of the baby clothing market in Sweden, market shares of all the existing firms in the market and finally segments within the market, to identify particular segments, so that Tesco can target these and adjust its marketing. Marketing Objective Tesco could have the following objectives: Profitability, in terms of operating margin (a 10% target) Swedish Market share (a 20% target) Customer advocacy (the number of customers who recommend Tesco branded clothing, repeat business) Respected company (the number of community stakeholders who respect Tesco) Employee motivation (the number of employees who feel motivated to deliver Tesco’s goals) Tesco must ensure that it sets ‘SMART’ marketing objectives that are measurable, time limited, attainable and relevant. Marketing Strategy Tesco’ strategy is clear, with growth being pursued from four areas – the core UK grocery business, non-food, international expansion and retailing services such as financial services, the dotcom business and telecommunication packages. Basically, Tesco is using its strong stable core to keep the business ticking over while it forges new riskier areas of growth. Pushing further into non-food in the next phase (Johnson, G., Scholes, K., Whittington, R., (2005)). Lidl is currently destroying the market by selling the products below cost price. Therefore, Tesco’s generic strategy will have to be cost leadership, unless we can successfully differentiate our line of clothing so that we can charge a premium price. A marketing strategy will involve analysing the markets, and which products to offer. The strategy is implemented through marketing tactics, which involve detailed decisions about factors such as the price and the way the product is distributed. So Tesco must decide on its model of entry in terms of, own stores, Internet selling or joint venture with an existing national retailer. Activity Plan Market Research Market Analysis (including demand for baby wear) Mode of Entry Marketing Mix Decisions (Place, Price, Product, Promotion) decisions Methods of promotion – advertising, public relations, direct mail, sales promotion and personal selling Profit Loss account Measurement Controls Tesco must also have in place both financial and strategic controls. Financial controls are in terms of profit targets, capital bids and performance appraisal. Strategic controls in terms of overall strategic balance, agreed business plan, optional services and infrastructure and any short-term constraints such as human resources. Contingency Plan The contingency plan must be in place to ensure that if the product fails having made large capital investments in new store, Tesco must have other products within its portfolio, which it can launch. References and bibliography http://www.forbes.com Johnson, G., Scholes, K., Whittington, R., (2005) Exploring Corporate Strategy Text and Cases, 7th Edition, FT Prentice Hall http://www.hoovers.com/nike/ID__14254/free-co-factsheet.xhtml ACCA Paper 3.5 Strategic Business Planning and Development (2001) The Financial Training Company M.E. Porter, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Free Press, 1985 Jeannet, J., Hennessey, D.H, Global Marketing Strategies, 6th Edition, Houghton Mifflin

The True Tragic Hero of Creon in Sophocles Antigone Essay -- Papers S

The True Tragic Hero of Creon in Sophocles' Antigone There has always been a great debate over who is the true tragic hero in Sophocles' Antigone. Many scholars would stake claim to Antigone possessing all the necessary characteristics of a true tragic hero, but many others would argue that Creon holds many qualities as well. It is hard to discount Antigone as a tragic hero, because in fact, the play bears her name, but from careful reading, Creon meets Aristotle's criteria exactly and fits perfectly into the role. In order to determine whether or not Creon is the true tragic hero, one must answer the question: 'What is a Tragic Hero?' In Aristotle's Poetics, he discusses the basic criteria regarding a tragic hero. Aristotle states that tragic heroes must have a 'high' status or social position; characters must not be perfect, although, the character is pre-eminently good; they must have a single flaw that brings about their own demise and that of the others around them. Aristotle also mentions another quality of a tragic hero , which is that the character arouses pity in the audience usually because the punishment exceeds the crime and the hero is alive to face his suffering in order to achieve some self-recognition. After reviewing all these critera, it should be clear that Creon is the true tragic hero. First, Aristotle suggests that a tragic hero must occupy a ?high? status position, but must also possess nobility and virtue as part of the hero's character. Creon fits this description quite accurately. At the beginning of the play; in the Time and Scene section, it says that, ?Creon, is now king of Thebes.? This quote shows that he occupies a strong status position and stature of nobility. Creon also pro... ...h ruler and should be punished in the same matter that he ruled. Creon made a choice, a choice he thought was the right one. It turned out that this choice warranted an unjustly punishment. Creon?s punishment exceeds the crime; is one who has excessive pride and arrogance, like many of us, to suffer a lonely and hated life? Should we pity him? Creon fits all of Aristotle?s criteria to perfection. He is a good king with a high stature, although he is not perfect in his actions. The excessive pride sets the stage for his major flaw. This pride leads to his downfall and that of his family. Creon reaches a period of recognition for his actions. Lastly, his punishment was overly harsh compared to his crime. According to Aristotle, Creon is a striking match to fit the role of a tragic hero. Works Cited: Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. D. W. Myatt. 1994.

President’s Narrative Report (Infinite Minds Club)

Under the supervision of the club moderator, Mr. Fhelmar I. Rondillas, the club has indulged herself to many activities that allow development and collaboration among the members and the officers. Infinite Minds Club eventually became a wholesome environment for everyone with the help of the different activities. The club has engaged into series of activities/programs. First, it was held last June __ 2012. Students were obliged to have different clubs with their own choice. As expected of what the club has to offer, a number of students outgrew as they gathered to the club’s assigned place. Our club organization included the elections of officers. Last June __ 2012, we had the induction of officers together with the officers of the different organizations. Second, July __ 2012, we had our club meeting. Third, August __ 2012, we had our Environmental Rehabilitation/Mangrove Planting and revisit at Valderama, Sta. Felomina, Iligan City. The said event was participated by some other clubs. The annual MASCI quiz bee also commenced at this month. Fourth, we had witnessed the launching of the Math and Science month. As one of the sponsors of the month, we had been into series of activities. We also had the 3rd Mother Ignacia Invitational Quiz Show together with the (sir, katung science club gali? Hahaha), Math teachers, and Science teachers and with the support of the administration. We also had the annual MASCI fair that was held at the Old chapel. A lot math related and science related were exhibited and posted. Works from the different students of the different year levels were presented. Lastly, October 2012, we had a club meeting. The meeting opened its way for the possibilities of the upcoming Indigay. This school year, we did sponsored masses. Those were the activities that my club underwent and accomplished. With everybody’s support and cooperation, everything was made possible.

Verb Agreement

7 Classes of Noun/Verb Agreement 7 Classes of Noun/Verb Agreement 7 Classes of Noun/Verb Agreement By Mark Nichol Below youll find seven classes of noun/verb agreement you need to understand. 1. Indefinite Pronouns Most indefinite pronouns correspond to singular verbs: â€Å"Someone has left her plate on the table.† â€Å"Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion.† â€Å"Each boy is responsible for his actions.† To confirm, test for the proper verb form by writing a simple sentence in which is follows the pertinent pronoun: â€Å"Someone is missing† (not â€Å"Someone are missing†). The proper verb form for some indefinite pronouns depends on the reference: â€Å"All of the soup is gone. (Soup is a single entity.) â€Å"Some of the comments are favorable. (The comments are counted as separate entities.) The indefinite pronoun none can be singular or plural depending on the context: â€Å"None of the jewels are missing.† (None of the components of the whole entity in question are missing.) â€Å"None of the jewelry is missing.† (Not one part of the whole entity is missing.) 2. Conjunctive Phrases The simple conjunction and cannot necessarily be replaced by such phrases as â€Å"along with,† â€Å"as well as,† and â€Å"together with†: â€Å"The doe along with its fawns is resting in the meadow.† (This sentence is correct, however, if â€Å"along with its fawns† is inserted into the sentence â€Å"The doe is resting in the meadow,† which requires bracketing commas. The same is true of the other phrases.) 3. â€Å"Either/Or† and â€Å"Neither/Nor† Neither and either refer to two compared or associated objects as individual entities and are therefore usually employed with singular verbs: â€Å"Neither she nor I are ready for that.† â€Å"Either option will work for me.† Informally, however, an exception is made in such constructions as â€Å"Are either of you ready?† In â€Å"either/or† and â€Å"neither/nor† constructions with a mixture of singular and plural nouns, the verb form is determined by whether the closest noun is singular or plural: â€Å"Either the captain or one of the lieutenants are leading the patrol.† â€Å"Neither the students nor the teacher remembers hearing anything.† However, because the plural noun and the singular verb still clash in the second sentence despite their lack of proximity, it is advisable to construct the sentence so that the singular pronoun precedes the plural one: â€Å"Neither the teacher nor the students remember hearing anything.† 4. Positive and Negative Subjects in Combination A subject consisting of positive and negative sentiments that differ in singular and plural form should be followed by a verb that corresponds with the positive element: â€Å"The delivery of the speech, not its contents, is the issue.† As with â€Å"either/or† and â€Å"neither/nor† constructions, perhaps it is best to rearrange the sentence so that the singular noun is in proximity with the verb: â€Å"It is not the contents of the speech, but its delivery, that is at issue.† 5. Expletives In sentences beginning with such expletives as here and there, the actual subject, which follows the verb, determines the verb form: â€Å"There is a word for that.† â€Å"Here are several choices.† 6. Plural Nouns for Single Objects Plural nouns that name single objects, such as scissors and pants, are matched with plural verbs unless the phrase â€Å"pair of† precedes the noun; in that case, pair is the subject: â€Å"Scissors are dangerous.† â€Å"A pair of scissors is required for this activity.† Some other nouns ending in s are also singular in meaning: â€Å"The mumps is a disease you don’t hear much about anymore.† Meanwhile, others stand for a single thing but call for a plural verb: â€Å"Thanks are in order.† 7. Fractional Phrases Phrases referring to a mathematical portion may, depending on the context, be singular or plural: â€Å"A small percentage of the employees are opposed.† â€Å"A large percentage of the cargo was damaged.† â€Å"Three-fourths of the land is forested.† â€Å"One-third of the trees are oaks.† Numbers expressed as part of a mathematical operation are linked with a plural verb, but the outcome of a computation is expressed as a single entity: â€Å"Ten and six are added together to equal sixteen.† â€Å"Ten minus six is four.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:The Letter "Z" Will Be Removed from the English AlphabetWhen Is a Question Not a Question?

5 of the Best Plays by Tennessee Williams

5 of the Best Plays by Tennessee Williams From the 1930s until his death in 1982, Tennessee Williams crafted some of America’s most beloved dramas. His lyrical dialogue drips with his special brand of Southern Gothic a style found in fiction writers such as Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner (but not seen too often upon the stage). During his lifetime, he created over thirty full-length plays, in addition to short stories, memoirs, and poetry. His golden age, however, took place between 1945 and 1961. During this time, he created his most powerful plays. Among those are five that will forever remain among the best dramas for the  stage. These classics were instrumental in making Tennesee Williams one of the best playwrights of modern times and they continue to be audience favorites. #5 – The Rose Tattoo Many consider this Williams’ most comedic play. Originally on Broadway in 1951, The Rose Tattoo tells the story of Serafina Delle Rose, a passionate Sicilian widow who lives with her daughter in Louisiana. The play explores the theme of newfound romance after a long period of loneliness. The author described The Rose Tattoo as â€Å"the Dionysian element in human life.† For those of you who don’t wish to run to your Greek mythology book, Dionysus, the God of Wine, represented pleasure, sexuality, and rebirth. Tennessee Williams’ comedy/drama exemplifies all of the above. Interesting Tidbits: The Rose Tattoo was dedicated to his lover, Frank Merlo.In 1951, The Rose Tattoo won Tony Awards for Best Actor, Actress, and Play.Italian actress Anna Magnani won an Oscar for her portrayal of Serafina in the 1955 film adaptation of The Rose Tattoo . #4 – Night of the Iguana When I was 12 years old, I stayed up late to watch what I thought was going to be a midnight monster movie about a Radioactive Iguana who destroys Japanese cities. Instead, I ended up watching an adaptation of Tennessee Williams play Night of the Iguana . There are no oversized lizard creatures, but there is the compelling main character, ex-Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon. Expelled from his church community, he has turned from a respected minister into an alcoholic tour guide who leads his disgruntled group to a small Mexican resort town. Shannon is tempted by the lustful widow, Maxine, who owns a seedy hotel. However, it seems his true calling is to emotionally connect with an impoverished, gentle-hearted painter, Miss Hannah Jelkes. They form a bond more complex and fulfilling than Maxine could ever offer. Interesting Tidbits: The original 1961 Broadway production featured Betty Davis in the role of the seductive and lonely Maxine.The 1964 film adaptation was directed by the prolific and versatile John Huston.Like the main character, Tennessee Williams struggled with depression and alcoholism. #3 – The Glass Menagerie Many argue that Williams’ first major success is his strongest play. To be sure, The Glass Menagerie exhibits the playwright at his most personal. The play is ripe with autobiographical revelations: The absent father in The Glass Menagerie is a traveling salesman – like Williams’ father.The fictional Wingfield family lived in St. Louis, as did Williams and his real-life family.Tom Wingfield and Tennessee Williams share the same first name. The playwrights real name is Thomas Lanier Williams III. The fragile Laura Wingfield was modeled after Tennessee Williams’ sister, Rose. In real life, she suffered from schizophrenia and was eventually given a partial lobotomy, a destructive operation from which she never recovered. It was a constant source of heartache for Williams. Considering the biographical connections, the regretful monologue at the play’s end feels like a personal confession. Tom: Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes... Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger anything to blow your candles out! For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow your candles out, Laura and so good-bye... Interesting Tidbits: Paul Newman directed the 1980s film adaptation which starred his wife Joanne Woodward.The film contains an interesting moment not found in the original play: Amanda Wingfield actually succeeds in selling a magazine subscription over the phone. It sounds trivial, but it’s actually presented as a heartwarming triumph for the character – a rare beam of light in an otherwise gray and weary world. #2 – A Streetcar Named Desire   Of the major plays by Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire contains the most explosive moments. This is perhaps his most popular play. Thanks to director Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, and Vivian Leigh, it became a motion picture classic. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you have probably seen the iconic clip in which Brando screams for his wife, â€Å"Stella!!!!† Blanche Du Bois serves as the delusional, often vexing but ultimately sympathetic protagonist. Leaving behind her sordid past, she moves into the dilapidated New Orleans apartment of her co-dependent sister and brother-in-law, Stanley – the dangerously virile and brutish antagonist. Many academic and armchair debates have involved Stanley Kowalski. Some have argued that the character is nothing more than an apelike villain/rapist. Others believe that he represents the harsh reality in contrast to Du Bois’ impractical romanticism. Still, some scholars have interpreted the two characters as being violently and erotically drawn to one another.   From an actor’s viewpoint,  Streetcar  might be Williams best work. After all, the character of Blanche Du Bois delivers some of the most rewarding  monologues  in modern theater. Case in point, in this provocative scene, Blanche recounts the tragic death of her late husband: Blanche: He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, thats how it struck the world for me. But I was unlucky. Deluded. There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and tenderness which wasnt like a mans, although he wasnt the least bit effeminate looking still that thing was there ... He came to me for help. I didnt know that. I didnt find out anything till after our marriage when wed run away and come back and all I knew was Id failed him in some mysterious way and wasnt able to give the help he needed but couldnt speak of! He was in the quicksands and clutching at me but I wasnt holding him out, I was slipping in with him! I didnt know that. I didnt know anything except I loved him unendurably but without being able to help him or help myself. Then I foun d out. In the worst of all possible ways. By coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty which wasnt empty, but had two people in it ... the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for years ...Afterward we pretended that nothing had been discovered. Yes, the three of us drove out to Moon Lake Casino, very drunk and laughing all the way.We danced the Varsouviana! Suddenly, in the middle of the dance the boy I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino. A few moments later a shot!I ran out all did! all ran and gathered about the terrible thing at the edge of the lake! I couldnt get near for the crowding. Then somebody caught my arm. Dont go any closer! Come back! You dont want to see! See? See what! Then I heard voices say Allan! Allan! The Grey boy! Hed stuck the revolver into his mouth, and fired so that the back of his head had been blown away!It was because on the dance floor unable to stop myself Id suddenly said I saw! I know ! You disgust me ... And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light thats stronger than this kitchen candle ... Interesting Tidbits: After debuting the role of Blanche on Broadway, Jessica Tandy was originally supposed to play the role in the film. It seems that she didnt have the star power to attract movie goers. Olivia de Havilland turned down the role and it was given to Vivien Leigh.Vivien Leigh won an Oscar for Best Actress in the film, as did supporting actors Karl Malden and Kim Hunter. Marlon Brando, however, did not win Best Actor though he was nominated. That title went to Humphrey Bogart for The African Queen in 1952. #1 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof This play blends elements of tragedy and hope, earning its place as the most powerful work of Tennessee Williams’ collection. The taciturn protagonist Brick Pollitt struggles with alcoholism, the loss of his youth, the death of a loved one, and several other inner demons, not the least of which might be his repressed  sexual identity.   Brick is devastated over the suicide of his friend Skipper who killed himself after he tried to discuss his feelings. When Brick and his father finally determine the source of his angst, the protagonist learns about self-forgiveness and acceptance. Cat represents the most headstrong of the playwright’s female characters. Like other women in Williams’ plays, she experiences adversity. But instead of verging on insanity or wallowing in nostalgia, she â€Å"claws and scratches† her way out of obscurity and poverty. She conveys unbridled sexuality, yet we learn that she is ultimately a faithful wife who lures her husband back to the marriage bed by the play’s end. The third major character in  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is Big Daddy, the wealthy and powerful patriarch of the Pollitt family. He exhibits many negative traits. He is gruff, callous, and verbally abusive. Yet, when Brick and the audience learn that Big Daddy is on the brink of death, he gains out sympathy. More than this, when he overcomes despair and bravely embraces the little remainder of his life, he earns our solemn respect. The inevitable death of the father awakens a long-overdue sense of purpose with the son. Brick decides to return to the bedroom with the ambition of starting a family. Hence Tennessee Williams shows us that despite the unavoidable losses throughout our lives, loving relationships can endure and a meaningful life can be attained. Interesting Tidbits: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955.The play was adapted into a 1958 film which starred Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, and Burl Ives, who originated the role of Big Daddy on Broadway.

Strategic Management mobile communication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Strategic Management mobile communication - Essay Example In these countries, O2 has developed a strong presence in high value markets and in the provision of mobile data and Internet services. As their company strategy, O2 take seriously their responsibility to the communities in which we operate. They believe that companies, who respond to the needs of the communities in which they work, and of the wider world, are more likely to succeed on a sustainable basis. O2 was the top scoring mobile phone operator in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and they were included in the FTSE4Good, the Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility (CR) Index and the Top 100 Global Sustainability Reporters list. Under their "Can Do in the Community" programme, they have successfully developed a number of community projects across their territories, while measures to support employee fund-raising and giving to charity through payroll have been launched. In total, O2 contributed 1.7 million in charitable donations across the Group, of which over 600, 000 came from UK-based companies and a further 500,000 to the Tsunami appeal. Most importantly, they see their employees to give their time and imagination to a wide range of fund-raising schemes (O2 Annual Report, 2006). At O2, they are sensitive to public concerns over issues such as

Revolutionaries and Self Martyrs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Revolutionaries and Self Martyrs - Essay Example Revolutionary movements in the 1960s also included Palestinian groups like the Al Fatah and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Inspired by communism and supported by the USSR, they advocated a strategy of guerilla warfare and terrorism to liberate Palestine. The concept of people’s war was developed as Palestinian leaders understood that Muslim states were incapable of mounting any serious military opposition to Israel. Urban terrorist warfare was the goal of these movements as they learned about it from revolutionary movements in Palestine, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, China, Cuba and Algeria. The Palestinian network in the 1970s was the main financier and supporter of European, African and Latin American revolutionary movements. The late 1970s was a turning point as the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Many Arab and Western governments began to recruit young people to wage a holy war against the Soviets. Another phenomenon was the rise of the Islamic revolution in Iran which b egan to view not only the US and Israel as enemies of Islam but also the Arab regimes. The 1980s saw the rise of Afghan groups who were bolstered by an influx of volunteers from the Muslim world and weapons from the West. Iran began to export its own revolution especially in Lebanon where it trained and armed Hezbollah. This group was responsible for the first suicide bombings and kidnappings against Western targets. Both Islamic fundamentalist and secular revolutionary movements have shared many similar goals.

1.Analyse reasons why managers are interested in having motivated Essay

1.Analyse reasons why managers are interested in having motivated workers - Essay Example Salary raises are acceptable but are not the motivating factor for employees to do their best to their duties. Thus, most managers prefer dealing with motivated workers rather than employees who need to be motivated before they can handle their duties effectively. The essay critically analyzes the reasons why most managers are interested in having motivated workers. Motivation describes the forces that act on an employee and initiate a certain behavior in the workplace. The type and intensity of motivators vary widely among employees since each brings different goals and needs to the workplace (Singla, 2004). Thus, managers prefer working with motivated employees since they strive to find the best way to perform their roles and responsibilities in the workplace. Motivated employees come to work early, can stay late, and have the ability to take on additional work whenever there is the need. They have individual characteristics that touch on their values, personality, abilities, needs, and interests in providing a wonderful work environment for the other co-workers. In contrast, the average worker considers handling the minimum amount of work outlined in order to get their daily pay. The ability and willingness to work effectively affects the efficiency of a worker. Also, the ability to work is obtained with the help of training and education while the willingness to deliver quality services is influenced by one’s motivation (Trehan & Trehan, 2006). Willingness to work is more important than ability since it improves the performance level within the organisation. Even though a worker is educated and recruited on this basis, it is not essential that he will do outstanding work in improving the performance of the organisation. One has to be motivated to do outstanding work. Thus, motivation improves one’s efficiency, which is reflected in decreased costs and

Practical Business Analysis Essay Example for Free

Practical Business Analysis Essay 1. Re-do all problems in Practice Problem Set 1. 2. Dollar Car Rental Co. was originally named Dollar a Day Car Rental because they charged $1.00 per day to rent a car, plus a charge per mile driven. Many customers complained that the odometers on Dollar’s cars recorded more miles than were actually driven. To evaluate these complaints you take a random sample of 6 Dollar’s cars, drive them on a carefully measured 100-mile course, and record the miles driven as registered by the odometers. The results are 100, 105, 109, 102, 107, and 101, with the sample standard deviation around 3.578. a. Using these sample results, construct a 95% confidence interval for the population mean miles recorded by all Dollar cars for a 100-mile trip. b. As a legal consultant hired by the group of the customers who complained about the odometers, do you have enough evidence to support your clients’ claim? State your hypotheses (H0 vs. Ha), rejection region and both statistical and substantive conclusions. 3. The grades on the final examination given in a large organic chemistry class are normally distributed with a mean of 72 and a standard deviation of 8. The instructor of this class wants to assign an â€Å"A† grade to the top 10% of the scores, a â€Å"B† grade to the next 10% of the scores, a â€Å"C† grade to the next 10% of the scores, a â€Å"D† grade to the next 10% of the scores, and an â€Å"F† grade to all scores below the 60th percentile of this distribution. For each possible letter grade, find the lowest acceptable score within the established range. 4. The weekly demand for General Motors car sales follows a normal distribution with a mean of 40,000 cars and a standard deviation of 12,000 cars. a. There is a 5% chance that GM will sell more than what number of cars during the next week? b. What is the probability that GM will sell between 20 and 23 thousand cars during the next week? 5. A department store is interested in the average balance that is carried on its store’s credit card. A sample of 40 accounts reveals an average balance of $1,250 and a standard deviation of $350. a. Find a 95% confidence interval for the mean account balance on this store’s credit card. b. What sample size would be needed to ensure that we could estimate the true mean account balance and have only 5 chances in 100 of being off by more than $100? 6. A marketing research consultant hired by Coca-Cola is interested in determining the proportion of customers who favor Coke over other soft drinks. A random sample of 400 consumers was selected from the market under investigation and showed that 53% favored Coca-Cola over other brands. a. Compute a 95% confidence interval for the true proportion of people who favor Coke. Do the results of this poll convince you that a majority of people favor Coke? b. Suppose 2,000 (not 400) people were polled and 53% favored Coke. Would you now be convinced that a majority of people favor Coke? 7. BatCo (The Battery Company) produces your typical consumer battery. The company claims that their batteries last at least 100 hours, on average. Your experience with the BatCo battery has been somewhat different, so you decide to conduct a test to see if the companies claim is true. You believe that the mean life is actually less than the 100 hours BatCo claims. You decide to collect data on the average battery life (in hours) of a random sample and the information related to the hypothesis test is presented below. Use this information to answer the following questions. a. You believe that the mean life is actually less than 100 hours, should you conduct a one-tailed or a two-tailed hypothesis test? State your alternative hypothesis. b. If you use a 5% significance level, would you conclude that the mean life of the batteries is typically more than 100 hours? State the rejection region and calculate the test statistic. c. If you were to use a 1% significance level in this case, would you conclude that the mean life of the batteries is typically more than 100 hours? Explain your answer. 8. Q-Mart is interested in comparing customer who used it own charge card with those who use other types of credit cards. Q-Mart would like to know if customers who use the Q-Mart card spend more money per visit, on average, than customers who use some other type of credit card. They have collected information on a random sample of 38 charge customers and the data is presented below. On average, the person using a Q-Mart card spends $192.81 per visit and customers using another type of card spend $104.47 per visit. Use the information below to answer the following questions. a. Given the information above, what is [pic] and [pic] for this comparison? Also, does this represent a one-tailed or a two-tailed test? Explain your answer. b. Using a 1% level of significance, is there sufficient evidence for Q-Mart to conclude that customers who use the Q-Mart card charge, on average, more than those who use another charge card? Explain your answer. 9. Suppose that you were asked to test H0: ÃŽ ¼ = 10 versus Ha: ÃŽ ¼ 10 at the [pic] = 0.05 significance level and with a sample of size n = 10. Furthermore, suppose that you observed values of the sample mean and sample standard deviation and concluded that H0 be rejected. Is it true that you might fail to reject H0 if you were to observe the same values of the sample mean and standard deviation from a sample with n 10? Why or why not? 10. Stock-market analysts are keenly interested in determining what factors influence the price of a stock. After some examination, a statistician hypothesized that a stock price (Y in $) would be affected by its quarterly dividends (X1 in $), its price/earnings ratio (X2), and the interest rate of treasury bills (X3 in %). The values of the relevant variables were observed for a period of 40 quarters. When the data were run on STATGRAPHICS PLUS, the accompanying printout was created.

Post War Cultural Revolution in the UK

Post War Cultural Revolution in the UK The Emergence of the Teenager Consumer in the 1950’s A turning point in history the post-war cultural revolution gave rise to one of the most interesting and powerful phenomenon of that time: the youth subculture. Supported by an uprising economic and cultural change, the teenagers of the 1950’s, left their mark in history by being the ones that turned away from tradition and started their own culture. Influenced by American style, film and music, British youngsters created a world where they could do anything they wanted because they had everything: they had the money, they had the time, and everything around them was built to fit their desires and pleasures. Nothing was going to stop them having the time of their lives. The Youthquake Osgerby explains that â€Å"youthquake is a phrase charged with connotations of deep-seated generational upheaval†. It is a term coined by cultural commentators like Richard Neville, Kenneth Leech or Peter Lewis in the 1970’s. Apparently, the term â€Å"youthquake† was used to describe â€Å"the seismic transformations (†¦) occurring in young people lives during the 1950’s and 1960’s† (Osgerby, 2004: 16). Since the World War Two ended, cultural changed divided the world into â€Å"two generational armed camps† (Neville, 1970: 13, cited in Osgerby 2004: 16) and Leech (1973:1) believed that the 1950’s had been â€Å"supremely the decade of the teenager† since youth culture became such an international phenomenon through the rise in â€Å"commercial interest in both the textile and recording industries†. However, rather than being a total shock and break with the past, the youthquake had some early signs. The mass entertainment industry emerged in the Victorian Era, ready for the urban working class which had been gradually extending their income and leisure time (Osgerby, 2004: 17). A visible consumer group of this period were the working youngsters, who, with their spending power, laid the base â€Å"for an embryonic youth leisure market† (Osgerby, 2004: 17). Young people had a healthy income and no family responsibilities therefore there were â€Å"better off than at almost any other age and could afford to go out and enjoy themselves† (Springhall 1980: 89 cited in Osgerby, 2004: 17) An estimative study by David Fowler shows that between the wars youth’s money wages rose between 300% and 500%. Because of their lack of responsibilities, youngsters could retain almost 50% of their earnings which means that they enjoyed a higher standard of living than the rest of the family. â€Å"A commentator in Manchester described how a nineteen year old semi-skilled youth employed in a an iron factory could earn a pound a week and, after surrendering twelve shillings to his parents for board, was free to spend the remainder on clothes, gambling and the music halls† (Osgerby, 1998: 6) Of course, these things increasingly attracted the attention of entrepreneurs and manufacturers who were planning of creating a youth market (Osgerby, 2004: 18). During the early 1920’s and 1930s â€Å"a hard-sell youth market† arose and cinemas, magazine publishers, dance halls and commercial music halls all started to make a profit from the spending power of the young workers (Fowler, 1995: 170 in Osgerby, 2004: 18). The rise of the commercial youth market has occurred well before the 1950’s and 1960’s. Osgerby explains that â€Å"by the end of the Victorian Era, on both sides of the Atlantic, manufacturers, advertisers and media industries were already tapping into young people’s spending power, the trend picking up momentum during the 1920’s and 1930’s† (2004: 19). Mort (1997, cited in Osgerby, 2004) states that Britain’s development as a modern consumer economy was slower compared to the US. If America has an economic growth during the war, Britain’s economy was â€Å"brought to its knees† after the Second World War which meant consumer spending had a hesitant development. Consequently, compared to the US, teenage consumerism developed slower in Britain. Nevertheless, the British youth market gradually came into its own (Osgerby, 2004: 26). During the 1950’s and 1960’s standards of living were boosted by full employment and a sustained rise in money wages. That is when everything started to come into shape. Teenagers as a consumer group – â€Å"SELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT† Osgerby (1998) states that â€Å"the characteristics that seemed to set youth apart as a distinct group were not their bio-psychological attributes, but their distinctive patterns of media use and practices of commodity consumption†. But how did these young people become such an important consumer group? Firstly, the post war era saw the so called â€Å"baby boom† which ensured a growth in the young population. The number of people aged under twenty increased from around three million in 1951 to just over 4 million in 1966 (Department of Employment, 1971: 206-207, cited in Osgerby, 2004). Just like in the United States, education expansion also helped youth in becoming a distinct social group. Secondly, throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, during the economic boost, with the expansion of the consumer industries and reconfiguration of the traditional labour markets the levels of youth employment increased immensely. Consequently, with the growth of the teenagers spending power came the development of the youth market: cinemas, record companies, music halls, magazines, fashion houses and so on, all saw a huge expansion. Assisted by a new army of advertisers and marketers, the market started to sel l products geared to the teenagers’ pleasures and desires. (Osgerby, 2004: 9, 10) En entire entertainment industry emerged, interested only in catering for the urban working youth with expanding disposable income and leisure time. Everyday habits and tastes became simply consumer goods, and markets started to exploit them as much as they could. New products and services, new fashion styles, new consumer patterns emerged, â€Å"suggesting† the British new identities, desires and pleasure and how to live their metropolitan lives. By the late 1950’s, youth became known for and associated with spending per se. Mark Abrams’ market research shows that â€Å"young people, more than any other social group, has materially prospered since the war† (cited in Osgerby, 1998: 26) Youth subcultures adapted their styles from consumer objects, which was very shocking for critics of all political persuasions, since their cultural insubordination was â€Å"allied to a consumerism that touched a very un-British hedonism as it squandered its money on extravagant clothing, pop records, scooters, over-priced frothy coffee, motor bikes, drugs, clubs and attempts to create a perpetual weekend† (Chambers, 1986: 42) The American influence Post War reconstruction of Britain, was influenced by the expansive image of America and its industrial and cultural power. Since America was the most capitalist society in the world, it became the summation of all Britain’s fears of foreign, urban and commercial forces that would destroy the English â€Å"way of life† (Chambers, 1986: 36). The American way of life became an inspiration for the Brits, both culturally and in terms of material goods. The increased availability of cheap colour magazines â€Å"brought a proliferation of advertising for luxury commodities, much of it originating in America† (Jackson, online resource). Despite all the protests coming from cultural intellectuals such as Richard Hoggart (The uses of literacy, 1957) and Raymond Williams (Culture and Society, 1958) who feared that Americanization would be the end of British culture, Hollywood films, commercial television, glossy magazines and consumer goods was everything the British consumers could have ever wished for. Films portrayed the life that most British people just dreamed of. One of the most known and cited films of that time was â€Å"Rebel without a cause† (1955, directed by Nicholas Ray) starring James Dean. He played the role of a bored teenager with an affluent middle class life style. Even if he had his own car and a home filled with luxury consumer goods, â€Å"Jim Stark† the character of James Dean, was full of distress, anger and resentment. He quickly became a role model for most of the British teenagers. The unique position of post-war teenagers, physically almost adult yet excluded from adult roles and responsibilities, with considerable disposable cash, and familiar from early childhood with the products of modern mass media healthy, well-fed, and energetic, yet involved in less hard physical work than many of their ancestors this privileged, new position seemed merely to throw into sharp relief for them the limitation of their existence and to give them the opportunity to respond in new ways to these conditions. Music-use became one of the main chosen instruments of their response. (Dick, 1992) Young Brits started to turn away from their parents and the British tradition, creating their own cultural expression. Inspired by the early American rock’ n’ roll, and Hollywood films, they created a series of spectacular and distinctive British subcultures such as: The Teds –working class Londoners, around 1953 with distinguishable characteristics as – quiffs, Elvis, flick-knives, crepe soles, alcohol; The Mods –working class Londoners, around 1963 Jamaican – rudeboy / Italian style, US soul, purple hearts, The Small faces, scooters, amphetamines; Youth culture was full of contradictions: they had a strong desire to express their individuality but they were wearing the same clothes as their mates and they were rebelling against the capitalism that they were already slaves to. (Milestone, 1999) Conclusion British history and all its changes and turns was massively influenced by the two World Wars, but mostly by the Second World War which was, according to Osgerby (1998) â€Å"a decisive turning point in the nation’s social, economic and political life†. At the beginning of the 1950’s Britain was still exhausted, both financially and morally after years of war and its cities were still bombsites. However, it was in the 1950’s that Britain started to rise again, entering a period of increased wealth and freedom, and many of the old traditional structures began to be challenged, particularly by the young (online resources). The essay shows how the phenomenon of youth subculture and consumerism started quite early but peaked around the 1950’s, when economic, social and cultural developments provided the perfect environment. Influenced by American culture, the British teenagers created their own world, a world of music and motorcycles, of freedom and entertainment, where nothing was more important than being stylish and cool, and having things to show it. Bibliography Chambers, Iain (1986) Popular Culture, The Metropolitan Experience, London: Routledge Osgerby, Bill (1998) Youth in Britain since 1945, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Osgerby, Bill (2004) Youth Media, Abingdon: Routledge Online resources Katie Milestone ,The Guardian, Saturday 18 December 1999 http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/dec/18/weekend7.weekend5 as accessed on 4th Jan 2015 Andrew Jackson, Designing Britain 1945-1985 http://www.vads.ac.uk/learning/designingbritain/html/crd_cultrev.html as accessed on the 20th Dec 2014 http://britishrock.weebly.com/1-birth-of-teenage-culture-1950s-britian.html as accessed on the 20th Dec 2014 All the photos were saved from https://images.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl

Hard Times - The Theme of Education Essay -- English Literature

Hard Times - The Theme of Education In this piece I intend to explain how Dickens is trying to represent education in the Victorian era and how he feels about the style of teaching that is widely used during his times. I also intend to make references to how the representation of Victorian schools by Dickens compares, historically to the actual conditions in a school from the Victorian era. As soon as the book begins we are introduced to a style of teaching that is dependent only on facts. One of the main characters of the novel is Thomas Gradgrind and he is the enforcer of this utilitarian style of education and is described as a man who is very strict. Dickens introduces us to this character with a description of his most central feature: his monotone appearance and attitude. â€Å"Stick to facts, sir!† This exclamation suggests that the character likes to shout and sound firm. The short, punchy sentence suggests an assertive and strong character. Dickens also makes Gradgrind seem boring and grating by the gravelly and rough sound of his name and how it is pronounced. â€Å"Grind†, in particular suggests the grindstone, and flogging away at work constantly and is associated with the mechanical, repetitive drudgery of the factory system. Dickens also employs the outer appearance of Gradgrind to parallel the inner personality of Gradgrind, â€Å"Square coat, square shoulders and square legs†. This seems to highlight Gradgrind’s nature of unrelenting rigidity. Dickens also uses tricolons to really exaggerate the impression of this character being dull, boring and old fashioned. As a result, his educational ideas are seen to be dull and boring too. We get the overall impression from Dickens that he doesn’t ... ...stressed by the ‘factory’ style approach to the children and their education. He exaggerates this to show the ‘production line’ attitude to education is wrong and does not help the child. He believes that the school in Hard Times treats all children the same and there is no exception to the rule. He sees it as a rather utilitarian style approach, a ‘one size fits all’ kind of regime and believes that this system has obviously failed. His distress seem to turn to the kind of anger a activist would show in a protest and in a way his writing of the book is his form of a protest which is made through humour. He strongly believes that children at such an early stage in their childhood are too young to be exposed to such a formal and rigorous style of education and should instead be allowed to express their emotions and have their youthful imaginations nurtured.

Literary Terms Modern Essay Essay

The aim of this glossary is not to set in concrete words that are constantly changing and evolving, but rather to help students develop the critical tools and vocabulary with which to understand and talk about poetry. Since poets themselves often disagree about the meaning and importance of terms such as free verse, rhythm, lyric, structure, and the prose poem, and since control of literary discourse is part of each new generation’s struggle for poetic ascendancy, it seems only reasonable and appropriate for the student to view all efforts to define critical terminology in a historical perspective and with a healthy degree of scepticism. This mini-glossary reflects the continuing debate between traditional metrics and free verse, and between differing conceptions of the poet’s craft and role in society. A fuller and more lively debate may often be found in the notes on the poets and in the poetics section. In a number of instances, I have been less concerned to offer hard-andfast definitions than to alert readers to the controversy that surrounds certain critical terms. The following list is by no means complete, but is intended to aid and provoke, to stimulate discussion and debate and send the curious reader on to more comprehensive sources. I have made use of and recommend highly A Glossary of Literary Terms (1957), by M. H. Abrams; the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1974), edited by Alex Preminger, Frank, J. Warnke, and O. B. Hardison, Jr; and The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices (1989), by William Packard. G. G. ccent The emphasis, or stress, placed on a syllable, reflecting pitch, duration, and the pressures of grammar and syntax. While all syllables are accented or stressed in speech and in poetry, we tend to describe the less dominant as unstressed or unaccented syllables. In metrical verse, accented and unaccented (stressed and unstressed) syllables are easily identified. Robert Burns’s famous line â€Å"My love is like a red, red rose† might be described as an iambic tetrameter line, with four feet each consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. However, it can be argued that such a reading trivializes and effectively undercuts the emotional power of the poetic utterance, and that the sense of the line dictates a slightly different reading, which locates three strong stresses or accents in the second half of the line: â€Å"My love is like a red, red rose†. See also FEET and METER. 2 20 -Century Poetry & Poetics th alexandrine A twelve-syllable line, usually consisting of six iambic feet. alliteration A common poetic device that involves the repetition of the same sound or sounds in words or lines in close proximity. Alliteration was most pronounced in Anglo-Saxon poems such as â€Å"The Wanderer† and â€Å"The Seafarer†, which Earle Birney imitates in his satire of Toronto, â€Å"Anglo-Saxon Street†: Dawndrizzle ended dampness steams from Blotching brick and blank plasterwaste Faded house patterns hoary and finicky unfold stuttering stick like a phonograph While such intense piling up of consonants was once a common mnemonic device (an aid to memory), changing literary fashions have, to a large extent, rendered such self-conscious exhibitions too blunt and obvious for the contemporary ear, except when used for comic purposes. Exceptions include rap poetry and spoken word, both of which make extensive use of alliteration and rhyme. Nevertheless, the repetition, or rhyming, of vowels, consonants, and consonant clusters (nt, th, st, etcetera) remains a still a central component in constructing the soundscape of the poem, just as the repetition and variation of image and idea enrich the intellectual and sensory fabric. The most talented practitioners will be listening backwards and forwards as they compose, picking up and repeating both images and sounds that give the poem a rich and interlocking texture. See ASSONANCE, CONSONANCE, RHYME, and PROSODY. allusion Personal, topical, historical, or literary references are common in poetry, though, to be successful, they require an audience with shared experience and values. Biblical or classical allusions, for example, or Canadian political allusions, might be totally unrecognizable to an Asian Muslim reader. Although readers soon tire of verbal exhibitionism, they still expect a degree of allusion to challenge them and to stimulate curiosity. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s â€Å"Junkman’s Obgligato† assumes the reader’s familiarity with both T. S. Eliot’s â€Å"Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† and W. B. Yeats’s â€Å"Lake Isle of Innisfree† for a full appreciation of the ironic counterpointing of down-and-out urban images and those of an idealized pastoral landscape. At the same time, the poem also overflows with topical and literary allusions from the junkyard of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American culture. ambiguity Words and the texts they inhabit are susceptible of a variety of interpetations. While a word may denote one thing, usage and context often bring various connotations to bear on the meaning, or meanings, of that word in the poem. As the American poet Randall Jarrell explains in his essay â€Å"The Obscurity of the Poet† (in Poetry and the Age, 1953), what we speak of as literature ranges from Dante’s Divine Comedy, with its seven levels of meaning, to Reader’s Digest, which, Glossary of Poetic Terms 3 like pulp fiction and greeting-card verse, barely manages half a level of meaning. Sophisticated readers not only enjoy, but also demand a certain level of ambiguity, or mystery, in poems. They find such ambiguity in Shakespeare, who loved puns, double-entendre, and various kinds of wordplay; they find it also in such early Moderns as T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens, who were influenced by seventeenth-century Metaphysical poets and French Symbolist poets, for both of whom the poem retains something of the quality of a riddle. As a result of declining audiences, a general trend towards a democratization of the arts, and the pressure of new kinds of psychological and political content, the pendulum of taste since mid-century swung towards less ambiguity. While puns and worldplay still add to our sense of the fecundity and depth of poetic expression, contemporary poets admit that a rose may, at times, be intended only as a rose; and they tend to avoid the use of obscure and esoteric references. See Robert Graves’ Poetic Unreason (1925) and William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). anapest A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one: / ? ? ? /. See METRE. anaphora The rhetorical device of using the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines to obtain the effect of incantation. See Ginsberg’s â€Å"Howl† and Cohen’s â€Å"You Have the Lovers† and â€Å"style†. apostrophe A literary device of â€Å"turning away†, usually to address a famous person or idea. In the classical Greek plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, the chorus would march across the stage in one direction chanting various stanzas, or strophes, and then reverse their motion in an anti-strophe, or verbal about-face. In twentiethcentury poetry, the apostrophe is just as likely to be used ironically, or for romantic or satirical purposes. rchetype When you sense that a literary character, situation, or idea has significance far beyond its specific, or particular, occasion in the poem, you are probably in the presence of an archetype. In an essay called â€Å"Blake’s Treatment of the Archetype† (English Institute Essays, 1950), Northrop Frye says: â€Å"By archetype I mean an element in a work of literature, whether a character, an image, a nar rative formula, or an idea, which can be assimilated into a larger unifying pattern. † Psychologist C. G. Jung, in an essay called â€Å"The Problem of Types in Poetry† (1923), gives another dimension to the matter: â€Å"The primordial image or archetype is a figure, whether it be a daemon, man, or process, that repeats itself in the course of history wherever creative fantasy is freely manifested. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. If we subject these images to a closer examination, we discover them to be the formulated resultants of countless typical experiences of our ancestors. They are, as it were, the psychic residue of numberless experiences of the same type. 4 20 -Century Poetry & Poetics th Sibling rivalry, the betrayed or rejected lover, the innocent abroad, the rebel, the fool, the seasonal cycles of rebirth, fertility, and death, the enchanter or enchantress—all are common characters or situations in literature that can deepen our appreciation of a work of art. However, the search for universal symbols can be reductive in the reading of a poe m; so, too, can excessive efforts to make a work symbolic or archetypal reduce a poem into a sociology text or an essay on psychology. ssonance Also called vocalic rhyme, assonance is the repetition or recurrence of vowel sounds within a line (or lines), a stanza, or the overall poem. Listen to the long vowels conjure expiration and death in Wilfred Owen’s â€Å"Greater Love†: â€Å"As theirs whom none now hear, / Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed. † Assonance is most obvious among words beginning with an open, or initial, vowel (open / eyes / eat / autumn), but equally powerful as an internal rhyming device (tears / mean, thine / divine). allad A popular short narrative folk song, usually transmitted orally, and making use of various forms of shorthand, including truncated action, psychological and historical sketchiness, and a chorus or refrain for heightened impact and easy memorizing. A direct link can be drawn between such early folk s ongs as â€Å"Barbara Ellen† and â€Å"The Skye Boat Song†, country western music, and such contemporary ballads such as â€Å"Frankie and Johnny†, Leonard Cohen’s â€Å"Suzanne†, and Stan Rogers’ â€Å"The Lockkeeper†. lank verse Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse has been a staple since it was introduced by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, around 1540 in his translations of Virgil’s Aeneid. Shakepeare and Christopher Marlowe both used blank verse in their plays; in poetry, Milton used it for Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Wordsworth for The Prelude, and T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. Eliot claimed in Poetry in the Eighteenth Century (1930) that the decasyllabic (or ten-syllable) line was â€Å"intractably poetic† yet had many of the capacities of prose. As such, blank verse could be said to be a precursor of the prose poem, which seems more aligned with ordinary speech and the counting of syllables than with poetic meter. broken rhyme The dividing of a word between two lines to fulfill the requirements of rhyme: Madame had learned to waltz before the charge of falsehood had been laid . . . cadence When poet John Ciardi describes the poem as â€Å"a countermotion across a silence†, he comes close to defining cadence, which refers to the pattern of melody established from line to line that creates in the reader a sense of time slowed down Glossary of Poetic Terms 5 and palpable. While cadence originally referred to regular traditional poetic measures, in which syllables and feet could be counted and identified, the term has come to be used more in relation to irregular patterning, where stress and accent are much looser and determined primarily by phrasing and syntax. Cadence is what Ezra Pound was referring to when he spoke of composing with the musical phrase instead of the metronome. Also worth reading is Dennis Lee’s essay â€Å"Cadence, Country, Silence†, in which he employs the term broadly and with greater cultural import. See also MEASURE, MUSIC, RHYTHM, and SONG. caesura This term is used to refer to any substantial break or pause within the line, though it is most often found in lines of five or more feet. The caesura was a regular feature in Anglo-Saxon poetry, dividing the two alliterating units within the line, bluntly drawn in Earle Birney’s â€Å"Anglo-Saxon Street† or more subtly in Wilfred Owen’s â€Å"Arms and the Boy†: Let the boy try along this bayonet blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. anto While in the twentieth century the term is often used to mean, simply, a song or a ballad, the canto was originally a subdivision of epic or narrative, which provided both a simpler organizing principle for the creator of the long poem and a muchneeded respite for the singer during delivery. Ezra Pound draws on both meanings of the word when he calls his great epic-length series of meditations The Cantos. conceit When a METAPHOR or other FIGURE OF SPEECH is extended over many lines, it is called a conceit. oncreteness Concrete nouns referring to objects, such as lip, flint, hubcap, gunbarrel, wheel, smoke, sugar, and fingernail, seem capable of making their appeal through the senses. So, too, verbs, such as run, scream, chop, and lick. Concrete words activate the imagination and anchor poetry in the world of particulars. A gifted poet such as Samuel Johnson can use abstract words in such as way as to make them feel concrete, as in the line â€Å"stern famine guards the solitary coast†, where the abstract idea is given the quality of ternness, the action of guarding, and a spatial location. e. e. cummings concretized abstractions in much the same way: â€Å"love is more thicker than forget, / more thinner than recall / more seldom than a wave is wet / more frequent than to fail†. concrete poetry This name was first applied in the twentieth century to works that exploit the visual and auditory limits of poetry, ranging from contemporary â€Å"visual puns† back to a seventeenth-century â€Å"shape-poem† whose typography was de- 6 20 -Century Poetry & Poetics th ployed to create the image of an altar. Since so much of the power of poetry is derived from sound—from rhythmical patterns, the residue of recurring vowels and consonants—it’s hardly surprising to find poets who break words into component syllables and letters, downplaying the intellectual dimension of poetry and emphasizing, instead, the psychic energy to be found in the acoustic dimension of language. See the notes on, and poems and poetics by, bpNichol, as well as An Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967), edited by Emmett Williams, ed. consonance Consonance is the repetition of consonants in words or syllables with differing vowels: winter / water / went / waiter. See, for example, Wilfred Owen’s â€Å"Strange Meeting†, which proceeds with a series of consonantal half rhymes: escaped / scooped, groined / groaned, moan / mourn. content The substance or subject matter of a poem, as opposed to its style or manner, is what we usually refer to when we speak of content. But content cannot, properly, be discussed apart from form. A poet may begin to write a poem, broadly speaking, about war, love, or beach-combing; however, as soon as his or her thought begins to take shape as poetic language, as form, it is so transformed by the process that it bears little or no relation to the original impulse. Ideas or anecdotes that find their way into a poem are not the poem’s content, though they are certainly germaine to its overall impact. In fact, everything in the poem contributes to what we might call its content. Poets have reacted strongly to attempts to oversimplify their work or reduce it to a generalization or two. Archibald MacLeish argued that â€Å"A poem should not mean, but be. † Most poets believe that the poem is its own meaning. Robert Creeley insisted that content and form are indivisible, and rejected â€Å"any descriptive act . . . which leaves the attention outside the poem†. It’s probably most useful to stop asking what a poem means and begin to consider, as John Ciardi suggests in his book title, How Does A Poem Mean? If you begin to examine the formal and technical elements in a poem, the ways in which certain effects are achieved, you are more likely to arrive at a point of understanding and appreciation of the poem far beyond any simple statement about its content. See also DICTION, FORM, PROSODY. couplet The couplet—two lines of verse, usually rhymed—is one of the most common and useful verse forms in English and Chinese poetry. The couplet’s brevity encourages a pithy, epigrammatic quality; its two-line split provides a fulcrum which lends itself to argumentative summary and generalization, as in Alexander Pope’s â€Å"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of mankind is man†. Closed couplets such as Pope’s or Dryden’s, which use mostly iambic pentameter lines and complete their thought with the final end-rhyme, are also called heroic couplets, a form that dominated the eighteenth-century English neoclassical period. Glossary of Poetic Terms 7 The couplet has many uses, as a concentrating unit within the poem or as a separate stanza form. Shakespeare used the couplet to conclude his sonnets forcefully. See also GHAZAL. dactyl A metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables: / ? ? ? /. See FOOT and METER. diction Word choice. The French poet Verlaine felt the need to remind us that poems are made of words, not ideas. This is useful to think about, since poems are often spoken and written of as if they were chunks of autobiography, representations of nature, or little treatises on how to conduct, or not to conduct, our lives. Words are magical. When nature, experience, or ideas—any of which may give rise to a poem—pass through the rucible of language, they are transformed, as surely as white light is split into a spectrum of colour when it passes through a prism. Words, similarly, slow and alter those non-linguistic elements that endeavour to use or pass through them; that’s one reason poems, stories, and other verbal texts give us the impression of time slowe d down, of felt time. Words and the ideas they carry fly rather quickly through the brain, but when you speak or hear them you become aware of being immersed in another element, like a diver suddenly encountering water. These considerations are central to postmodern poetics, which seeks to remind us that the poem is not a mirror of nature or a window through which we see the natural world, or so-called reality, but rather a verbal reality in its own right. When the word, or language in general, is foregrounded, poetry ceases to be simply a vehicle for conveying pictures of, and passing on information about, quotidian reality; it aspires, instead, to the condition of other arts such as music and painting, where representation and referentiality are not the only, or even the primary, concern. In a sense, words are the poet’s paint, his or her primary medium. Coleridge once spoke of poetry as â€Å"the best words in the best order†. He was using the word best in the sense of most appropriate in a specific context, not with the idea that certain kinds of words are forbidden or inherently better or worse than others, though the choice would have its own moral significance. Words are dirty with meaning and can never be washed clean; we use them for ordinary discourse, to sell lawnmowers, to deliver sermons, and to make political speeches. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, using the Archimedean metaphor: Give me the right word or phrase and I will move the world. M. H. Abrams reminds us that diction can be described as â€Å"abstract or concrete, Latinate or Anglo-Saxon, colloquial or formal, technical or common, literal or figurative†, to which we might add archaic, plain, elevated. See CONCRETENESS and WORD, and also Owen Barfield’s Poetic Diction (1952) and Winnifred Nowottny’s The Language Poets Use (1962). 8 20 -Century Poetry & Poetics th idactic While classical and neo-classical poetics argue that poetry should both teach and delight, in didactic poems the teaching function tends to override the imaginative. Such works, often dismissed as propaganda, recall Yeats’s distinction, that his argument with the world produced only rhetoric, whereas his argument with himself resulted in poetry. And yet all great works are overtly or covertly didactic, whether they teach us indirectly and sublimina lly through the senses (by way of imagery and patterns of sound) or by arguing transparently. And, of course, all art, while it may not be a blatant call to arms, is an effort to persuade us to view the world differently. dimetre A line of verse consisting of two feet. dissonance An effect of harshness or discordance in a poem, often achieved by combining rhythmical irregularity and a jarring concentration of consonants. distich A COUPLET. dramatic monologue Unlike the soliloquy, in which a character on stage reveals his or her inner thoughts by â€Å"thinking aloud†, the dramatic monologue assumes and addresses an audience of one or more people. In the process of addresing this audience, the speaker of the dramatic monologue manages to confess, or simply reveal, a character flaw, a dread deed, or an impending crisis. Robert Browning pioneered the form in poems such as â€Å"My Last Duchess†, â€Å"Andrea del Sarto†, and â€Å"Fra Lippo Lippi†, but it has been used by Tennyson in â€Å"Ulysses†, by Eliot in â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock†, and by many contemporary writers. duration The length of acoustic or phonetic phenomena such as syllables. According to linguists, the sounds we produce when we speak have pitch, loudness, quality, and duration. Aside from grammatical and syntactical considerations, the pacing in, or the speed at which we read, a poem is largely determined by the length of time it takes to enunciate syllables, lines, and stanzas. Short vowels speed up the poem; long vowels slow it down. See also MEASURE, MUSIC, PROSODY, RHYTHM, and SONG. elegy Originally a specifically metered Greek or Roman form, the elegy has come to refer generally to a sustained meditation on mutability or a formal lament on the death of a specific person. The conventional pastoral elegy included a rural setting, with shepherds and flowers (all nature mourning), an invocation to the muse, a procession, and a final consolation. Classics such as Milton’s â€Å"Lycidas†, Thomas Gray’s â€Å"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard†, and Shelley’s â€Å"Adonais† are clearly the chief source and influence on such contemporary elegies as W. H. Auden’s â€Å"In Memory of W. B. Yeats†, Michael Ondaatje’s â€Å"Letters & Other Worlds†, Seamus Heaney’s â€Å"Requiem for the Croppies†, and so many of the poems of Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Lorna Crozier and Michael Longley. In fact, one Glossary of Poetic Terms 9 might safely say that the elegiac tone is dominant in English poetry from Beowulf to the present. enjambment A means of escaping the limitations and rigidity of the end-stopped line or closed couplet, enjambment occurs when a sentence or thought carries over from one line to the next. The enjambed line, with its greater freedom and flexibility, has served to focus a great deal of attention on the position of line-breaks in twentiethcentury poetry. See LINE-BREAKS and also Al Purdy’s poem â€Å"The Cariboo Horses†. pic While the epic, or heroic, poem such as Homer’s Iliad and Odsyssey or the AngloSaxon classic Beowulf—each with its elevated style, tribal or national struggles, invocations to the muse, occasional use of the supernatural, and cast of important, or exalted, figures—belongs to an earlier age, it has not lost its appeal to poets of later ages. From Dante’s Divine Comedy, Spenser’s F? r ie Queene, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Dryden’s and Pope’s mock epic satires to such contemporary long poems as Pound’s The Cantos, W. C. Williams’s Paterson, Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie, and Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, the long, or extended, poem has provided an alternative to the limited scope, self-directedness and, perhaps, too intense heat of the lyric. See LONG POEM and NARRATIVE. epigram A short, witty poem or statement, seldom more than four lines long, whose form dates back to Roman epigrammatist Martial. Alexander Pope’s poems are full of condensed witticisms that might be displayed as separate epigrams: â€Å"To err is human; to forgive, divine†. ye-rhyme An eye-rhyme features words or syllables that look alike but are pronounced differently: come / home; give / contrive. feminine ending While it may no longer be politically correct, this term is still used in criticism to refer to a line that ends with one or more unstressed syllables. Far from suggesting weakness or passivity, feminine endings are more flexible and colloquial, and their in formality and irregularity have been especially useful in dramatic blank verse. feminine rhyme A two-syllable (or disyllabic) rhyme, usually a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable: witness / fitness. igurative language When language is heightened so that it moves beyond ordinary, or literal, usage, it is said to be figurative. These figures, figures of speech, or tropes (â€Å"turns†), as they are sometimes called, include simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, paradox, and pun. An extended figure of speech is called a CONCEIT. 10 20 -Century Poetry & Poetics th figure A group of words that evoke the senses by transcending ordinary usage. Consider, for example, Gloucester’s comment in Richard III: â€Å"Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by the sun of York†. oot In A Poet’s Dictionary: Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices (1989), William Packard provides an interesting account of the origin of the metrical foot: When the Greeks described poetry as â€Å"numbers†, they were alluding to certain conspicuous elements of verse that could be counted off: â€Å"feet† were strong dance steps that could be measured out in separate beats of a choral ode or strophe or refrain. These â€Å"feet† could then be scanned for repeating patter ns of syllable quantities, either long or short, within strophes and antistrophes of a chorus. Greek metrics, then, did not derive from accent or stress but rather from the elongation required in the pronunciation of certain vowels and syllable lengths. Instead of the quantitative designation of long and short syllables, we now use the terms stressed and unstressed, or accented and unaccented to describe the components of the poetic foot, which is essentially a group of two or more syllables that form a metrical unit in a line of verse. The most common feet are the iambic (/ ? ? /), an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable (delight); the trochaic (/ ? /), a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable (action); the anapestic (/ ? ? ? /), two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one (interrupt); the dactylic (/ ? ? ? /), a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones (comforting); and the spondaic (/ ? ? /), two stressed syllables (handbook). Other feet include the pyrrhic (/ ? ? /), one or more unstressed syllables; the amphibrachic (/ ? ? ? /), one unstressed, one stressed, one unstressed; the bacchic (/ ? ? ? /), one unstressed followed by two stressed; and the chorimabic (/ ? ? ? /), a stressed, two unstressed, and a stressed. See METER. form Form in poetry is no less intriguing and no less difficult to define and describe than form in the other arts. We can easily identify obvious elements of form, such as rhyme schemes, metrical patterns, stanza-lengths, and traditional modes like the sonnet and sestina; but the intricacies of language, timing, syntax, counterpoint, verbal play—those elements that contribute to the formal beauty and power of a poem—require some training and considerable attention. However, in an essay called â€Å"Admiration of Form: Reflections on Poetry and the Novel† (Brick / 34), poet and critic C. K. Williams offers some useful thoughts, reminding us that, among other things, form and content are inextricably allied: The important thing about form, though, is its artificiality. In English poetry, the historically dominant iambic foot is closely related to the actual movement of the voice in our language between stressed and unstressed syllables, but the regularity of the iambic line, and the five beats of the pentameter, for instance, are purely conventional. In irregular, or â€Å"free†, verse, where the Glossary of Poetic Terms 11 cadences are not regular, and not counted, it is what Galway Kinnell has called the â€Å"rhythmic surge†, which defies and controls the movement of language across its grid of artifice; the line in free verse becomes a much more defining factor of formal organization than in more arithmetical versetraditions. The crucial thing about form is that its necessities, though they are conventions, precede in importance the expressive or analytical demands of the work. Although a poem may to a greater or less degree seem to be driven by its content, in fact all the decisions a poet makes about a work finally have to be made in reference to the conventions which have been accepted as defining the formal nature of that work. If a ompelling experience is conveyed in a verse drama, if an interesting philosophical speculation occurs in a lyric poem, if a poem involves itself in an intricate and apparently entirely engrossing narrative adventure, these are secondary, although simultaneous with, the formal commitments of the work, and they must be embodied within the terms of those commitments, although in the end these almost playful divisions of an experienitial continuum, whether in the structures of a musical mode, or the pulse and surge of a poetic line, will mysteriously serve to intensify the emo tion and the meaning which the work evokes. I should mention, perhaps, that the dour and puritanical and ferociously self-serving â€Å"new formalism† has nothing to do with the notion of form I am elaborating here: the new formalism is rather a kind of conceptual primitivism which seems to gather most of its propulsive force from a distorted and jealous vision of the literary marketplace; it calls for a return to the good old safe and easily accounted-for systems of verse, with counted meters, rhyme, and so forth. All despite the generation over the last few centuries, from Smart to Blake through Whitman and countless others, of an enormous amount of significant poetry in non-traditional forms; and despite the fact that many verse-systems in the world require neither rhyme nor strictly counted meter, and despite the practice of many modern poets, who have been quite content to use whatever verse-form fitted the poem they were composing. One would not want to sacrifice either Rilke’s â€Å"Duino Elegies† or Lowell’s â€Å"Life Studies†, just to mention two poets who worked in both systems. In his essay â€Å"Rebellion and Art† (in The Rebel, 1956), Albert Camus argues that â€Å"A work in which the content overflows the form, or in which form drowns the content, only bespeaks an unconvinced and unconvincing unity. . . . Great style is invisible stylization, or rather stylization incarnate. † See PROSODY, STRUCTURE, and STYLE, and also Denise Levertovâ⠂¬â„¢s â€Å"Notes on Organic Form† in the Poetics section. free verse Poetry written with a persistently irregular meter (which is not to say without rhythm) and often in irregular line-lengths. The King James translations of 12 20 -Century Poetry & Poetics th the Psalms and Song of Songs are often held up as models of how dynamic nonmetrical poetry can be. Ezra Pound advised composing with the rhythms of the speaking-voice sounding in your ear, rather than the regular beat of the metronome; Robert Frost insisted that writing free verse was like playing tennis without a net; and T. S. Eliot claimed that no verse is free for the poet who wants to do a good job. All three were concerned to emphasize that, whether regular or irregular, the music of poetry bears close scrutiny, for it accounts for much of our pleasure as readers and, far from being incidental or decorative, is fundamental to our total experience of the poem. See LINES-BREAKS, METER, MUSIC, RHYTHM, PROSODY, and SONG. ghazal A Middle Eastern lyric, most commonly associated with the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz. The ghazal consists of five to twelve closed couplets, often using the same rhyme. These seemingly disconnected couplets about love and wine are held together not by a narrative or rhetorical thread, but by a heightened tone or emotional intensity. Not surprisingly, the apparently random or non-rational structuring of the ghazal has proven attractive to twentieth-century poets as diverse as as John Thompson (Stilt Jack), Phyllis Webb (Water & Light), and Adrienne Rich. hexameter A line of verse consisting of six feet. hyperbole A figure of speech that involves extremes of exaggeration: big as a house, dumb as a doornail. ambic pentameter A line consisting of five iambic feet. Iambic pentameter is considered the poetic rhythm most basic to English speech. See FOOT and METER. image Ezra Pound described the image as â€Å"that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time†. Other poets have spoken of images as concentrations of linguistic energy directed at the senses. The image is a controversial term, which has often been used to mean, simply, a verbal picture; however, the poetic image may also conjure things, events, and people in our minds by appealing to senses other than sight. Images are so central to language that, in the line a brown cow leapt over the fence, which constitutes a composite image, we also find four discrete images: a cow, a fence, the act of leaping, and brownness. Imagery, along with prosody, is one of the two central ingredients of poetry; and its evocative power cannot be divorced from the texture of sounds through which it is delivered. Specific images seem more likely to stimulate the senses than images that are generic (tree, animal, machine). The difference between a line such as â€Å"I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree† and the following—â€Å"Don’t hang your bones from the branch / of that gnarled oak, exuding elegies. / The chihuahua’s waiting in the Daimler†Ã¢â‚¬â€has as much to do with diction and specificity of image as with the difference between metrical and non-metrical verse. Glossary of Poetic Terms 13 Imagism A poetic movement in England and the US between 1909 and 1917, which reacted against the discursiveness, sentimentality, and philosophizing of late nineteenth-century poetry by trying to focus on the single image.