Intelligence Failure and Politicization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Intelligence Failure and Politicization - Essay Example Intelligence failure in the US context is defined by Stephen Marrin as something that has a negative impact on the country’s national security as well as an unpredicted international incident that previously escaped intelligence gathering and came about as a surprise to the international community. An example of this, according to Marrin is the India nuclear weapon test. As can be gleaned, the concept of surprise is allied to the concept of intelligence failure because surprise can only occur as a result of the latter (2004 p. 657). Robert Gates, former CIA head, defined politicization in the context of intelligence operations as involving intentionally distorted analysis or judgment leaning and favouring a certain line of thinking despite insufficient evidence to support it (1992 p. 5). 2.0 Vietnam and the Tet OffensiveThe Vietnam War was a battle between the once French-ruled south and the Communist north. The US’ engagement in the Vietnam War was considered one of th e most controversial ever in its history marked by relentless protests at home and the mind-boggling defeat of its forces in the battlefield. Three of the articles examined by this paper dealt with, amongst others, the US engagement in the Vietnam War and the controversies surrounding the seeming failure of its intelligence units in predicting the extent of the strength of the North Vietnamese forces.James Wirtz’s article â€Å"Intelligence to Please? The Order of Battle Controversy during the War,† dealt with the issue of the controversy.... As can be gleaned, the concept of surprise is allied to the concept of intelligence failure because surprise can only occur as a result of the latter (2004 p. 657). Robert Gates, former CIA head, defined politicization in the context of intelligence operations as involving intentionally distorted analysis or judgment leaning and favouring a certain line of thinking despite insufficient evidence to support it (1992 p. 5). 2.0 Vietnam and the Tet Offensive The Vietnam War was a battle between the once French-ruled south and the Communist north. The US’ engagement in the Vietnam War was considered one of the most controversial ever in its history marked by relentless protests at home and the mind-boggling defeat of its forces in the battlefield. Three of the articles examined by this paper dealt with, amongst others, the US engagement in the Vietnam War and the controversies surrounding the seeming failure of its intelligence units in predicting the extent of the strength of the North Vietnamese forces. James Wirtz’s article â€Å"Intelligence to Please? The Order of Battle Controversy during the War,† dealt with the issue of the controversy of the disparity between the figures cited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in the Order of Battle and the ensuing clash between their respective analysts. The most controversial aspect of this controversy was the charge by Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst, of the existence of â€Å"a conspiracy at the highest levels of American military intelligence† (1991 p. 239), an allegation that became highly publicised and was featured in magazines, television and in a subsequent Senate hearing for that issue. This allegation stemmed

Literature of Knowledge Essay Example for Free

Literature of Knowledge Essay First printed in The North Briton Review, August, 1848, as part of a review of The Works of Alexander Pope, ed. W. Roscoe, 1847. What is it that we mean by literature? Popularly, and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include everything that is printed in a book. Little logic is required to disturb that definition. The most thoughtless person is easily made aware that in the idea of literature one essential element is, ? some relation to a general and common interest of man, so that what applies only to a local or professional or merely personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not belong to literature. So far the definition is easily narrowed; and it is as easily expanded. For not only is much that takes a station in books not literature, but, inversely, much that really is literature never reaches a station in books. The weekly sermons of Christendom, that vast pulpit literature which acts so extensively upon the popular mind? to warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarm? does not attain the sanctuary of libraries In the ten-thousandth part of its extent. The drama as for instance the finest of Shakespeares plays in England and all leading Athenian plays in the noontide of the Attic stage, operated as a literature on the public mind, and were (according to the strictest letter of that term) published through the audiences that witnessed their representation, some time before they were published as things to be read: and they were published in this scenical mode of publication with much more effect than they could have had as books during ages of costly copying or of costly printing. Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea co-extensive and interchangeable with the idea of literature, since much literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic (as from lectures and public orators), may never come into books, and much that does come into books may connect itself with no literary interest. But a far more important correction, applicable to the common vague idea of literature, is to be sought, not so much in a better definition of literature, as in a sharper distinction of the two functions which it fulfils. In that great social organ which, collectively, we call  literature, there may be distinguished two separate offices, that may blend and often do so, but capable, severally, of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move: the first is a rudder; the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding, or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy. Remotely it may travel towards an object seated in what Lord Bacon calls dry light; but proximately it does and must operate? else it ceases to be a literature of power-on and through that humid light which clothes itself in the mists and glittering iris of human passions, desires, and genial emotions. Men have so little reflected on the higher functions of literature as to find it a paradox if one should describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of books to give information. But this is a paradox only in the sense which makes it honorable to be paradoxical. Whenever we talk in ordinary language of seeking information or gaining knowledge, we understand the words as connected with something of absolute novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very high place in human interests that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds: it exists eternally, by way of germ or latent principle, in the lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed but never to be planted. To be capable of transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing than truth, namely, power, or deep sympathy with truth. What is the effect, for instance, upon society, of children? By the pity, by the tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, which connect themselves with the helplessness, with the innocence, and with the simplicity of children, not only are the primal affections strengthened and continually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest in the sight of heaven-the frailty, for instance, which appeals to forbearance, the innocence which symbolizes the heavenly, and the simplicity which is most alien from the worldly-are kept up in perpetual remembrance, and their ideals are continually refreshed. A purpose of the same nature is answered by the higher literature, viz. , the literature of power. What do you learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery-book? Something new, something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe is power, that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upwards, a step ascending as upon a Jacobs ladders from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you further on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas the very first step in power is a flight, is an ascending movement into another element where earth is forgotten. Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated and continually called out into exercise by the great phenomena of infancy, or of real life as it moves through chance and change, or of literature as it recombines these elements in the mimicries of poetry, romance, etc., it is certain that, like any animal power or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such sensibilities would gradually droop and dwindle. It is in relation to these great moral capacities of man that the literature of power, as contradistinguished from that of knowledge, lives and has its field of action. It is concerned with what is highest in man; for the Scriptures themselves never condescended to deal by suggestion or cooperation with the mere discursive understanding: when speaking of man in his intellectual capacity, the Scriptures speak not of the understanding, but of the understanding heart, ?  making the heart, i. e. , the great intuitive (or non-discursive) organ, to be the interchangeable formula for man in his highest state of capacity for the infinite. Tragedy, romance, fairy tale, or epopee, all alike restore to mans mind the ideals of justice, of hope, of truth, of mercy, of retribution, which else (left to the support of daily life in its realities) would languish for want of sufficient illustration. What is meant, for instance, by poetic justice? ?It does not mean a justice that differs by its object from the ordinary justice of human jurisprudence; for then it must be confessedly a very bad kind of justice; but it means a justice that differs, from common forensic justice by the degree in which it attains its object, a justice that is more omnipotent over its own ends, as dealing? not with the refractory elements of earthly life, but with the elements of its own creation, and with materials flexible to its own purest preconceptions. It is certain that, were it not for the Literature of Power, these ideals would often remain amongst us as mere arid notional forms; whereas, by the creative forces of man put forth in literature, they gain a vernal life of restoration, and germinate into vital activities. The commonest novel, by moving in alliance with human fears and hopes, with human instincts of wrong and right, sustains and quickens those affections. Calling them into action, it rescues them. from torpor. And hence the preeminency, over all authors that merely teach of the meanest that moves, or that teaches, if at all, indirectly by moving. The very highest work that has ever existed in the literature of Knowledge is but a provisional work: a book upon trial and sufferance, and quamdiu bene se gesserit. Let its teaching be even partially revised, let it be but expanded, ? nay, even let its teaching be but placed in a better order, ? and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest works in the Literature of Power, surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable amongst men. For instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton was a book militant on earth from the first. In all stages of its progress it would have to fight for its existence: 1st as regards absolute truth; idly, when that combat was over, as regards its form or mode of presenting the truth. And as soon as a La Place, or anybody else, builds higher upon the foundations laid by this book, effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay and darkness; by weapons won from this book he superannuates and destroys this book, so that soon the name of Newton remains as a mere nominis umbra, but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated into other forms. Now, on the contrary, the iliad, the Prometheus of Aeschylus, the Othello or King Lear, the Hamlet or Macbeth, and the Paradise Lost are not militant but triumphant forever as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms, or variations, even if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam engine is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo. These things are separated not by  imparity, but by disparity. They are not thought of as unequal under the same standard, but as different in kind, and, if otherwise equal, as equal under a different standard. Human works of immortal beauty and works of nature in one respect stand on the same footing: they never absolutely repeat each other, never approach so near as not to differ; and they differ not as better and worse, or simply by more and less: they differ by undecipherable and incommunicable differences, that cannot be caught by mimicries, that cannot be reflected in the mirror of copies, that cannot become ponderable in the scales of vulgar comparison.

Essay --

Colin Green HEALTH AND SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE IN THE INTERANTIONL LABOUR ORANIZATION (ILO): INDONESIA A. Given the poor working conditions in Indonesia and other countries around the world, health and safety in the workplace has always been an important issue for the International Labour Organization. Poor working conditions continue to threaten the lives of millions of people every year. Every day approximately 6,000 workers lose their lives as a result of accidents in the workplace (Safety and Health at work in Indonesia). A safe and positive work environment is essential for a productive work area or company. Despite efforts to increase safety in the work place, annually, over 430 million people suffer injuries or illness due to working conditions (Safety and Health at work in Indonesia). Human and gender equality rights activists hope to reduce the number of minorities and women working in unhealthy and unsafe workplaces as well as reduce the number of hazardous working environments. Many third world countries such as Indonesia are made up of a low skilled labor force an...

Bandura’s Experiments

In the early 1960s Bandura and other researchers conducted a classic set of experiments that demonstrated the power of observational learning. In one experiment, a preschool child worked on a drawing while a television set showed an adult behaving aggressively toward a large inflated Bobo doll (a clown doll that bounces back up when knocked down). The adult pummeled the doll with a mallet, kicked it, flung it in the air, sat on it, and beat it in the face, while yelling such remarks as â€Å"Sock him in the nose †¦ Kick him †¦ Pow! † The child was then left in another room filled with interesting toys, including a Bobo doll.The experimenters observed the child through one-way glass. Compared with children who witnessed a nonviolent adult model and those not exposed to any model, children who witnessed the aggressive display were much more likely to show aggressive behaviors toward the Bobo doll, and they often imitated the model's exact behaviors and hostile words. I n a variant of the original experiment, Bandura and colleagues examined the effect of observed consequences on learning. They showed four-year-old children one of three films of an adult acting violently toward a Bobo doll.In one version of the film, the adult was praised for his or her aggressive behavior and given soda and candies. In another version, the adult was scolded, spanked, and warned not to behave that way again. In a third version, the adult was neither rewarded nor punished. After viewing the film, each child was left alone in a room that contained a Bobo doll and other toys. Many children imitated the adult’s violent behaviors, but children who saw the adult punished imitated the behaviors less often than children who saw the other films.However, when the researchers promised the children a reward if they could copy the adult’s behavior, all three groups of children showed large and equal amounts of violent behavior toward the Bobo doll. Bandura conclude d that even those children who did not see the adult model receive a reward had learned through observation, but these children (especially those who saw the model being punished) would not display what they had learned until they expected a reward for doing so.The term latent learning describes cases in which an individual learns a new behavior but does not perform this behavior until there is the possibility of obtaining a reward. B Bandura’s Theory of Imitation According to Bandura’s influential theory of imitation, also called social learning theory, four factors are necessary for a person to learn through observation and then imitate a behavior: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. First, the learner must pay attention to the crucial details of the model’s behavior.A young girl watching her father bake a cake will not be able to imitate this behavior successfully unless she pays attention to many important details—ingredients, quantiti es, oven temperature, baking time, and so on. The second factor is retention—the learner must be able to retain all of this information in memory until it is time to use it. If the person forgets important details, he or she will not be able to successfully imitate the behavior. Third, the learner must have the physical skills and coordination needed for reproduction of the behavior.The young girl must have enough strength and dexterity to mix the ingredients, pour the batter, and so on, in order to bake a cake on her own. Finally, the learner must have the motivation to imitate the model. That is, learners are more likely to imitate a behavior if they expect it to lead to some type of reward or reinforcement. If learners expect that imitating the behavior will not lead to reward or might lead to punishment, they are less likely to imitate the behavior.C Theory of Generalized Imitation An alternative to Bandura’s theory is the theory of generalized imitation. This theo ry states that people will imitate the behaviors of others if the situation is similar to cases in which their imitation was reinforced in the past. For example, when a young child imitates the behavior of a parent or an older sibling, this imitation is often reinforced with smiles, praise, or other forms of approval.Similarly, when children imitate the behaviors of friends, sports stars, or celebrities, this imitation may be reinforced—by the approval of their peers, if not their parents. Through the process of generalization, the child will start to imitate these models in other situations. Whereas Bandura’s theory emphasizes the imitator’s thought processes and motivation, the theory of generalized imitation relies on two basic principles of operant conditioning—reinforcement and generalization. D Factors Affecting Imitation Many factors determine whether or not a person will imitate a model.As already shown, children are more likely to imitate a model when the model’s behavior has been reinforced than when it has been punished. More important, however, are the expected consequences to the learner. A person will imitate a punished behavior if he or she thinks that imitation will produce some type of reinforcement. The characteristics of the model also influence the likelihood of imitation. Studies have shown that children are more likely to imitate adults who are pleasant and attentive to them than those who are not.In addition, children more often imitate adults who have substantial influence over their lives, such as parents and teachers, and those who seem admired and successful, such as celebrities and athletes. Both children and adults are more likely to imitate models who are similar to them in sex, age, and background. For this reason, when behavior therapists use modeling to teach new behaviors or skills, they try to use models who are similar to the learners. Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2003.  © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Role of Industrial Manager

The modern industrial manager is largely responsible for overlooking management operations at the workplace along with the management of people and technology. The role of the industrial manager is mainly personnel management initiatives for the employees as well as operational management and technology management through HR principles and knowledge management involving technological advances. Some of the theories that could be discussed in the context would be McGregor’s theory X-Y, Taylor and Fayol theories of management and how leadership skills of the manager could affect output and general performance of employees and the company. Role of manager: The focus here is on the role of the industrial manager, what he does and the tasks he is expected to perform. McGregor has formulated his X-Y theory by examining theories of individual behavior at work and his assumptions for theory X and theory Y vary considerably (McGregor, 2006). The theory X assumptions are that employees inherently dislike work and the managers feel that workers are in the job mainly because of the money. This sort of management style has inherent flaws as tight controls could go against the freedom of employees and will finally make people unproductive and resentful. The theory Y shows the management style marked by open-mindedness allowing individuals to work with their own responsibility. In this case, the manager believes that employees commit to their organizations through imagination, and creativity (McGregor, 2006; Weisbord, 2004). If the job is satisfying, individuals will more often commit to their organization which is always good from any HR perspective. Theory Y is often considered a positive set of assumptions for workers and reflects higher order needs. The other theories of management that could be used in practice would be Taylor’s scientific management theory that suggests that man is a rational economic animal concerned with his own economic gain and people tend to respond individually. Taylor’s theory suggests that people could be treated like machines and these principles suggest that high wages could be linked to motivation. However, considering humans as standardized machines would be like overlooking several individual differences and this would not be advantageous for any organization. Fayol’s theory emphasized on team dynamics and employee efforts in an organization (Fayol, 1988). Division of labor, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command and direction, emphasis on general interest, remuneration, centralization, line of authority, order, equity, stability of tenure, initiative etc are some of the features in Fayol’s theory that points out to a successful management system within an organization. Conclusion: In conclusion the role of the industrial manager is associated with bringing out a balance between people’s sense of responsibility and economic and other gains of the company. The theories used here suggest that the industrial manager is responsible for understanding individual needs of employees as also their opinions and sense of responsibility. Bibliography Fayol, Henri. (1988) General and industrial management /Â  Henry Fayol. Pitman McGregor, Douglas. (2006) The human side of enterprise /Â  Douglas McGregor, updated and with new commentary by Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld. New York ;Â  London :Â  McGraw-Hill, Weisbord, Marvin Ross. (2004) Productive workplaces revisited :Â  dignity, meaning, and community in the 21st century /Â  Marvin R. Weisbord. [2nd ed.]. San Francisco, Calif. :Â  Jossey-Bass ;Â  Chichester :Â  John Wiley

Hitech Act. Crossword Puzzle Essays

Hitech Act. Crossword Puzzle Essays Hitech Act. Crossword Puzzle Essay Hitech Act. Crossword Puzzle Essay Across Answer key (not in order) A password should be at least 8 characters long Login to this type of portal secure Need special EHR software to ePrescribe A scanner is used to add older records A privacy-screen helps up with HIPAA server Data is stored off site here citrix The type of network we have A monitor is a visual display unit A printer produces a hard copy fired Fraud gets you this An operating-system tells the computer what to do Reboot before you call help desk A fax might become obsolete A network allows sharing between computers EHR Electronic health record HITECH Grant money that paid for this class Answer key (not in order) A password should be at least 8 characters long Login to this type of portal secure Need special EHR software to ePrescribe A scanner is used to add older records A privacy-screen helps up with HIPAA server Data is stored off site here citrix The type of network we have A monitor is a visual display unit A printer produces a hard copy fired Fraud gets you this An operating-system tells the computer what to do Reboot before you call help desk A fax might become obsolete A network allows sharing between computers EHR Electronic health record HITECH Grant money that paid for this class 3. Should be at least 8 characters long 6. Electronic health record 7. Visual display unit 8. Need special EHR___ to ePrescribe 10. Allows sharing between computers 11. Helps up with HIPAA 12. Login to this type of portal 14. A ____ is used to add older records 15. Before you call help desk Down 1. Fraud gets you this 2. Might become obsolete 4. Tells the computer what to do 5. Produces a hard copy 8. Data is stored off site here 9. The type of network we have 13. Grant money that paid for this class Created by Puzzlemaker at DiscoveryEducation. com

Heavens Gate essays

Heavens Gate essays Heavens Gate and the Branch Davidians are a good example of Stanley Milgrams theories. It shows how people respond and follow what authority says. Heavens Gate was a cult founded by Marshall Applewhite referred to as Do by his members. He convinced 39 people that he was dying of cancer and he persuaded them that if they followed him to death, a spaceship in the tail of the comet Hale-Bop would come and take them to the New World. To enter the ship they needed to leave their bodies. Applewhite made the thirty-nine members of the cult dress, talk, and look the same. He made them all wear the same clothes, he shaved everyones head, and made them refrain from using personal pronouns such as he and she. They were also not permitted to marry, have sex, drink, and had to give all their possessions to the cult. They packed their bags with clothes and each person carried $5 bills, quarters and their passport for their trip to the New World. On March 26, 1997, thirty-nine men and women affiliated with Heavens Gate committed suicide by ingesting a combination of Phenobarbitals mixed with applesauce and alcohol. Their obedience is evidence, of course, that they put faith into what Applewhite said. Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a study focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He was interested in how far people would go in following the orders of a person in authority. His experiment consisted of teachers who he recruited and learners who were students or actors. The teacher was asked to read a list of word pairs and to ask the learner to recite them back. If the learner got the correct answer, then they moved on to the next word. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher was supposed to shock the learner starting at 15 volts and going up to 450 volts, in 15 ...

Best Places to Find Gifts for Geologists

Best Places to Find Gifts for Geologists Stumped on what to get the geologist in your life for the upcoming holiday, birthday, or anniversary? Heres a short list of places to shop and gifts to get for that person who loves all things geological. The gift ideas in this geologic gift guide range from serious to wacky, plus a few items to make your jaw drop! Not on the list are all of our favorite books for geologists - for those, visit our  book reviews. Geological Tool Gifts   The Brunton Co. The Brunton Company is the maker of world-standard field tools for geologists, starting with their famous compasses many of us know simply as Bruntons. Forestry Suppliers For everything from hammers to sieves, Forestry Suppliers has a great inventory of tools your geologist will enjoy. Amateur Geologist Amateur Geologist boasts all sorts of gifts for geologists from the tools they’ll need in the field to books, geological maps, and even fun, educational items for kids. One can never have too many 10X magnifiers – at least a geologist can’t! Here are our picks for the best magnifiers on the market. Magazine and Guide Gifts for Geologists Bobs Rock ShopWhile Bob doesnt sell rocks at his rock shop (Bob’s Rock Shop is actually an online publication and community for rock enthusiasts), but this great Web destination has advertisers who do- or you can get a subscription to  Rock Gem  magazine here. Earth MagazineEarth Magazine is one of the best and most popular magazines for those who take geology seriously (the publication was formerly  titled Geotimes). You can buy gift subscriptions for your geologist on their site. Mountain Press PublishingMountain Press Publishing’s online bookstore is home to the highly regarded Roadside Guide and Geology Underfoot series of books. U.S. Geological Survey Maps and MoreYes, the USGS has a store, and it’s full of great gifts for geologists! Find maps, posters, passes, products and more from the worlds coolest government agency. Desert GuidesDesert Guides host an assortment of books about getting around, and even finding wealth, in the desert. Your geologist will get lost in the fascinating information and stories! Minerals, Rocks, and Collectibles Gifts Science Stuff Science Stuff, formerly known as Earth Stuff, has gifts for any young scientist. We especially like their Earth science section with rocks, minerals, tools, fossils, and books for smart kids interested in all things geology. The Mineral GalleryThere are hundreds of mineral shops on the Web, but the Mineral Gallery probably has the best selection of minerals for sale for your geology enthusiast. FulguritesWhen lightning strikes the ground, sediments are fused together by the energy creating beautiful and unique crystal-like structures. Various mineral dealers sell the melted results as collectibles, you can find them at the link above. Top Stone Rolling FountainsThese fountains feature large stone spheres spinning miraculously suspended on water. Uniquely beautiful, these gifts are perfect for the geologist or rock enthusiast who has everything. We love this site. Spheres To YouThey call themselves the biggest seller of stone spheres in the world, and we believe them. Their selection is incredible. The Soft EarthPottery artist, Joan Lederman, uses pedigreed seafloor mud from Woods Holes oceanographers to make wonderful objects and collectibles. U.S. Geological Survey Bench Mark ReplicasFull-size reproductions in pewter of those cool brass benchmarkers from all around the world from the most famous summits to the South Pole. They even make earrings, pins, pendants, and more.

H-D Strategic Audit Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

H-D Strategic Audit - Essay Example All along the report takes into account the numerical figures of various parties & entities involved with Harley Davidson. It is a matter of simplicity that the prime factor that would govern the success of any motor company such as Harley Davidson would be the quality of the bikes produced. Quality is a single determinant of a company, which is why most major and successful corporations spend so much money in research & development in order to improve the quality of the product. The results of the CAD system at HD (Harley Davidson) can be seen in this regard, with the breakeven achieved by the sales of just 35,000 units in 1986 from the earlier 53,000. This is a major factor for the company's survival during the 80s in that it has succeeded in reducing the number of defects in its products by stepping up development activities. One of the most important factors of any company is the financial assets & liabilities of the company. IF we look at the consolidated figures of HD (Exhibit 5 B), we will find that the while the net identifiable assets of HD have risen by 47%, the corresponding figures for the depreciation and the Capital expenditures has been 35% and 75% respectively within a gap of 2 years in the recent past (between 1999 and 2001). The major cause of concern in this regard is therefore, the rise in the net capital expenditures, which is a point that requires thought.The motorcycle market generally comprises four main segments: Standard Performance Touring Custom. In spite of having these four different types of markets, the company has focused its activities on just two areas namely- touring and custom. Generally, it is expected that a company would like to try its hand out in all possible domains, but what remains surprising is as to why HD has limited to these two sectors over all these years. Custom-built bikes are the dream of any individual- be it young or old. But in spite of this, most companies including HD continue to charge exorbitant amounts for building custom made bikes. The figures are much more significant for HD, which charges around 50% more than its nearest competitors in this sector. This has been the reason for the mere 15% share of the company in this area on a global basis.Though waiting times have reduced drastically, both for the customers as well as the dealers, it has not come to a zero level as of now. This according to industry gurus is one area of HD, where the company should shed its complacent mindset (assuming that the customer will never turn away). The company must therefore, devise strategies to reduce this time gap further, which could eventually lead to higher sales and will enable HD to capture a larger share in the market and enable it to tighten the noose on its competitors.But, in order for HD to be able to make any progress in this regard, it would have to revise and revamp its existing demand & supply chain, with respect to its suppliers of raw materials and components. We sincerely recommend HD not to resort to 'channel stuff' its dealers as the sales are dying sown, and must instead devise alternate strategies. The dealers in this regard concern another problem with the selling of bikes at a premium, with customers having to pay up to $4000-5000 in

Difference between IBM and CA Technologies in term of their Technology Research Paper

Difference between IBM and CA Technologies in term of their Technology Strategy - Research Paper Example The paper will also consider the company backgrounds, the company statements, the strategic business analysis with due consideration to the Porter’s Five Forces Framework as well as Technology S-curve of IBM and CA Technologies. The similarities and the differences along with the product matrix of these two IT companies have also been taken into consideration in this discussion. Company Background IBM International Business Machines (IBM) is one of the world’s leading information technology companies involving a broad range of products and services related to different technology driven industrial sectors such as, software, hardware, and research and development (R&D) among others. IBM is also involved with consulting services, hosting along with infrastructural assistance which engages a series of operations from mainframe computer to nanotechnology segments (IBM, 2011). Currently, IBM has its head quarter located in New York and is engaged with providing services to i ts huge number of customers all around the world. The organization currently employs more than 433,362 numbers of employees in all around its national and international locations. Notably, IBM recorded its revenue amounting to $107 billion in the fiscal year 2010-2011 which indicated a growth rate of 15% over the revenue earned on 2010 (IBM, 2011). CA Technologies Charles Wang and Russ Artzt, established CA Technologies in the year 1976. CA Technologies is also a well-known publicly owned company in the global Software Solution industry possessing a long term experience in the international IT environment. The company currently operates with due significance to the virtual and cloud computing technologies along with the mainframe and distributed computing service providers in the IT environment (CA, 2012). The company is presently identified as one of the largest software corporations which intend to put extensive significance to the process of innovation of software systems which a re used in the mainframe, along with the virtualized and cloud computing segments of technology industry (Cable News Network, 2012). The CA Technologies’ headquarter is located at New York. The annual turn-over attained by the company recorded revenue of $4.429 billion in the fiscal year 2011 operating with a total of 14,000 employees in its worldwide locations (CA, 2012). Vision and Mission Statements IBM The mission statement of IBM signifies its strive to lead in the global IT Industry enhancing the processes of manufacturing and developing the services rendered along with the products offered such as computer systems, storage systems, and software systems as well as the microelectronics segments of the industry. With this concern, the ultimate mission of the company is to maintain continuous development in its technology strategies through innovations and R&D initiatives. Based on its mission statement, the company depicts its vision statement as to be committed to transf orm the advanced technology services and products into value for the customers in the course of professional solutions and consulting business throughout the world (Company Statements & Slogans, 2008). CA Technologies The vision statement of CA Technologies concentrates on recognizing

Jazz Fusion Musicians Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Jazz Fusion Musicians - Term Paper Example or Kenny G brand by use of instrumentals. Therefore, the term jazz became distorted to accommodate rock and pop groups back in the 1960s by adding horns for flavoring (Sweat and Tears, Blood and Chicago). By old definition, fusion is, therefore, a mixture of improvisations made on Jazz combined with the rhythms, energy and timbers of rock music. Jazz fusion began to take hold in the wake of the Golden Era of rock in around the late 1960s. The essay discusses; Mile Davis, John Abercombie, Don Alias, Jeff Beck, Jack Bruce and Larry Carlton contributions to jazz fusion in their life time. A number of questions commonly get asked concerning the founder of jazz fusion. In accordance to some music analysts, some say fusion might have started with the guitarist, Larry Coryell. Speculations presume that Larry Coryell brought the rock oriented tune. In addition, he also brought attack raw, edgy tones in contrast to the smooth, rounded tones which guitarist employed in many jazz sessions at th at era. In addition, other analysts noted that blues and rock sensibilities which Jack DeJohnette, drummer, and Keith Jarrett, pianist, brought to the given Charles Lloyd Quartet also became wildly popular to rock audiences in 1967, despite, using acoustic instruments. Furthermore, from England, The Trinity and jazz organist Brian Auger also developed rock in the late 1960s through borrowing some pop influences plus clothing styles. The founders could even be traced way back to 1959 to the likes of Ray Charles. He pioneered the use of the given Wurlitzer electric piano in singing some of his blues, gospel and jazz hits. The same Wurlitzer electric piano became used later by Joe Zawinul and contributed in making a given gospel song a hit in 1966. In relation to some musical analysts, they claim that the first jazz and rock combination might have been truly a mixture of Dixieland Jazz plus the 50s rock. Therefore, regarding the founder of jazz fusion music, there is no impressive cons ensus to date on whom might have been the founder of the spectacular Jazz fusion music. Even if quite a lot of arguments exist on the true founder of the jazz fusion music, but musicians behind making it popular could be identified. These musicians played a prominent role in popularizing the jazz music and making it get a lot of audiences as years advanced. A good example of such a musician that contributed immensely to its popularity includes Miles Davis (Miles & Quincy 34). Miles Davis was an ever curious person that wished to experiment with any music. He managed to fuse rock and rhythm and blues (R&B) currents existing in the late 1960’s and created hits. Miles Davis managed to popularize jazz fusion to greater heights at that time thereby increasing the number of fans listening jazz fusion genre. Jazz itself became fused in the ‘20s, together with rock and even soul music around that time. In addition, other musicians that contributed to its popularity became the B eatles groups. From 1964, as the Beatles group invaded and rocked their music on air and other areas, they too managed to spread the jazz fusion music with them through the music they played. As the jazz scene continuously became a battle between angry avant-garde and hard boppers, many bored and alienated musicians looked to rock, which at that time had begun to develop into multifaceted imaginative art form (Miles & Quincy 36). Moreover, the introduction of the given electronic keyboards like the Wurlitzer plus the

ASSESSMENT 1 AND ASSESSMENT2 Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

ASSESSMENT 1 AND ASSESSMENT2 - Case Study Example These disorders are not officially identified in patients less than eighteen due to the continuing growth changes. But, if the disorder is persistent and if the criteria are completely and constantly fulfilled and are not restricted to a growth phase, detecting borderline personality disorder in teenagers and kids is proper. Historically, BPD has been perceived to be lying on the margin between neurosis and psychosis. It is typified through marked unsteadiness in functioning, mood, affect, interpersonal links and sometimes reality test. This disorder was conceptualized in 1975 by Kernberg to describe a collection of patients with specific prehistoric defense systems and pathologic object associations that are internalized. Case study The client is a forty four year old woman with a borderline personality disorder (BPD). She has a history of frequent presentation to the hospital. In addition, she has accommodation issues; legal Avo on her by her daughter, her legal status is involunta ry. She is well known to police, poor coping skills, has concrete thinking also deemed as OHS hazard, finances under the financial management order, her medications as listed sodium valproate 500mg BD, pantoprazole 20mg mane steraline 50 mg mane, PRN med TDS ibuprofen 400mg. She also has allied support issues. History of client’s diagnoses The client felt emotions often, more profoundly and for prolonged periods. In addition, she had a history of reinitiating and even lengthening her emotional responses for longer periods. As a result, this took her a long period to go back to a steady emotional baseline after going through a strong emotional experience. The client was exceptionally happy, idealistic, and affectionate. However, she at times felt besieged by negative feelings, going through deep anguish rather than sorrow, disgrace and humiliation rather gentle embarrassment, anger instead of displeasure, and fright instead of anxiety. The client was particularly responsive to emotions of isolation, rejection, and apparent failure (Boyd 459). The client as well demonstrated impulsive traits regularly. The diagnoses reported repeated threats of self-harm, where the client’s history revealed that she has attempted to commit suicide several times. She as well portrayed impulsive conduct especially excessive drinking of alcohol. The client has a history of getting involved in unsteady relations, which regularly resulted to emotional ruin. These included abuse of alcohol and having sexual relations with several partners, changing jobs regularly, shoplifting, quitting relationships and self-harm. Self-injury or suicidal conduct is among the basic diagnostic condition in the DSM IV-TR. Recovery and management of this behavior is difficult and demanding. The reasons reported by the client to self-harm and attempting suicide entails articulating anger, creating usual emotions, self-punishment and distracting herself from emotional anguish or hard situation s. The client had problems of concentrating often. The strong feelings of individuals with borderline personality can render it hard for them to regulate the focus of their concentration. She demonstrated dissociation in reaction to a painful episode and in cases where she remembered a painful experience. This involved directing complete or partial concentration away from the episode. Though this helps in relieving painful feelings, it repressed the usual experience of feelings, and reduces the potential of patients with borderline

Trap Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Trap - Essay Example Today's "consumer society" has further strengthened this trap. Since the industrial age, social bonds that were previously an essential part of everyday life have become only secondary concerns amidst the new forms of collective behavior espoused by large commercial institutions, where individuality is no longer valued. Individuals are now replaceable cogs in a wheel, not an essential part of anything deemed "important" in the grand scheme of things. It is true what Mills says: an increasing awareness of events in the wide world leads to an increasing awareness of one's powerlessness, with the seeming irrelevance of everyday life amidst the workings of contemporary society, "with its alienating methods of production, its enveloping techniques of political domination," so that individuals are not able to fully understand the greater sociological patterns related to their private troubles. Examples are everywhere. One is the women of today; feminism and related movements, while ensuring that women are no longer relegated to being "domestic goddesses," also throw them into ambivalence about their roles in the family.

ASSESSMENT 1 AND ASSESSMENT2 Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

ASSESSMENT 1 AND ASSESSMENT2 - Case Study Example These disorders are not officially identified in patients less than eighteen due to the continuing growth changes. But, if the disorder is persistent and if the criteria are completely and constantly fulfilled and are not restricted to a growth phase, detecting borderline personality disorder in teenagers and kids is proper. Historically, BPD has been perceived to be lying on the margin between neurosis and psychosis. It is typified through marked unsteadiness in functioning, mood, affect, interpersonal links and sometimes reality test. This disorder was conceptualized in 1975 by Kernberg to describe a collection of patients with specific prehistoric defense systems and pathologic object associations that are internalized. Case study The client is a forty four year old woman with a borderline personality disorder (BPD). She has a history of frequent presentation to the hospital. In addition, she has accommodation issues; legal Avo on her by her daughter, her legal status is involunta ry. She is well known to police, poor coping skills, has concrete thinking also deemed as OHS hazard, finances under the financial management order, her medications as listed sodium valproate 500mg BD, pantoprazole 20mg mane steraline 50 mg mane, PRN med TDS ibuprofen 400mg. She also has allied support issues. History of client’s diagnoses The client felt emotions often, more profoundly and for prolonged periods. In addition, she had a history of reinitiating and even lengthening her emotional responses for longer periods. As a result, this took her a long period to go back to a steady emotional baseline after going through a strong emotional experience. The client was exceptionally happy, idealistic, and affectionate. However, she at times felt besieged by negative feelings, going through deep anguish rather than sorrow, disgrace and humiliation rather gentle embarrassment, anger instead of displeasure, and fright instead of anxiety. The client was particularly responsive to emotions of isolation, rejection, and apparent failure (Boyd 459). The client as well demonstrated impulsive traits regularly. The diagnoses reported repeated threats of self-harm, where the client’s history revealed that she has attempted to commit suicide several times. She as well portrayed impulsive conduct especially excessive drinking of alcohol. The client has a history of getting involved in unsteady relations, which regularly resulted to emotional ruin. These included abuse of alcohol and having sexual relations with several partners, changing jobs regularly, shoplifting, quitting relationships and self-harm. Self-injury or suicidal conduct is among the basic diagnostic condition in the DSM IV-TR. Recovery and management of this behavior is difficult and demanding. The reasons reported by the client to self-harm and attempting suicide entails articulating anger, creating usual emotions, self-punishment and distracting herself from emotional anguish or hard situation s. The client had problems of concentrating often. The strong feelings of individuals with borderline personality can render it hard for them to regulate the focus of their concentration. She demonstrated dissociation in reaction to a painful episode and in cases where she remembered a painful experience. This involved directing complete or partial concentration away from the episode. Though this helps in relieving painful feelings, it repressed the usual experience of feelings, and reduces the potential of patients with borderline

Civil Law Rights Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Civil Law Rights - Case Study Example if date is not mentioned then it is considered that in 7 working days consumer be liable to make payments for specific advertisement and finished the transaction by the date you have agreed with the person providing the service, or within a logical time if you haven't fixed a specific date This case entitle to 'Consumer Sale law' that center on the legal and self regulatory controls on the advertising of consumer goods and services - the law of consumer advertising that is the major provisions of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968. It also entitles to 'Control of Misleading Advertising Regulations 1988', Part III Consumer Protection Act 1987. Liability of sellers and manufacturers if the products sold are not satisfactory or are unsafe - the implied terms in the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended) and related legislation, the manufacturers liability for defective products - Part I Consumer Protection Act 1987 and the general duty to supply safe products under both domestic and EC law with particular emphasis on the toy industry. Legal liability in respect of consumer services with particular emphasis on the travel industry. ... Legal liability in respect of consumer services with particular emphasis on the travel industry. The Consumer and the Internet - the course will examine the regulation of e-commerce in relation to business to consumer advertising and sale of goods and services on the Internet. http://www.law.cf.ac.uk/course/ug/modules.html According to these laws, all buyers are entitled to remedies under the legislation although consumers are entitled to a better range of remedies. Consumers are defined as people who are buying for rationales not linked to their trade, business or profession. A consumer's rights concerning the sale and supply of goods cannot be reduced in any means by a term in the agreement. Limitations might be probable in business- to-business contracts but any restriction is matter to the necessities of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. Throughout the United Kingdom, nevertheless, a trader and a customer can concur that these rights do not be valid to a particular transaction for the condition of a service or must only be appropriate to a limited extent. Any such exclusion or restraint will however be issue to the provision of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. Now we will discuss Rajeev's case. He requests a black leather jacket and accompanies his form with a cheque for 700 in payment of the price. As he received his jacket, he discovered from a label inside the jacket was made in Vietnam. Whereas, Pavarotti Fashions Ltd mail order catalogue in which it was mentioned that all Exclusive items of the highest quality using only natural fabrics hand-made in the European community. This is the pure case of consumer misleading

Woman Hollering Creek - Short story Essay Example for Free

Woman Hollering Creek Short story Essay Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a book of short stories published in 1991 by San Antonio-based Mexican-American writer Sandra Cisneros. The collection reflects Cisneross experience of being surrounded by American influences while still being familially bound to her Mexican heritage as she grew-up north of the Mexico-US border. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories These tales focus on the social role of women, and their relationships with the men and other women in their lives. The majority of the characters are stereotypes: men embody machismo while women are naà ¯ve and generally weak. Cisneros focuses on three feminine clichà ©s: the passive virgin, sinful seductress, and traitorous mother.[1] Not properly belonging to either Mexico or America, the Chicana protagonists earnestly search for their identity, only to discover abuse and shattered dreams. Apart from focusing on these issues of struggling females, Cisneros simultaneously develops the readers sensitivity towards the lives of immigrants. First edition cover Author The vignettes are quite short on average; the longest is 29 pages, while the shortest is fewer than five paragraphs. Despite such limited space, Cisneros experiments with daring poetic prose in her storytelling; for example, each story presents a new character with a distinct literary voice and style. Such writing has earned her the title of an accomplished Chicana poet, with the added credentials of her published books of poetry My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987) and Loose Woman (1994).[2]

Methodologies of data collection

Methodologies of data collection The standard and procedure of data collection and gathering can be done by formal and informal way and then, after collecting that data, you do analysis on this data and is called data collection or anthology. In this part of the research procedure, researcher uses different methods and procedures. These methods can include of interviews, surveys, Questionnaires and observation. The most difficult part after collecting the data is the analysis and presentation of this data. The data collection for this research work has been done by using Questionnaires, Interviews and observation of the self service checkout systems, customers and staffs etc. (Saunders et al 2009) Desk research or secondary data collection desk research or secondary data collection, the researcher uses already available data about the proposed research topic in the form of research paper, Books, Journals, Un-published research work, Newspapers, Government websites and research articles etc. this research has already been done by the researcher on the proposed research topic and the researcher is allowed to use these material in their research with proper references to the sources to elaborate more of their proposed research problem. These secondary resources help the researcher to find out more about the research topic and those researchers individual work and experiences to further explore or investigate about the research topic. And, finally, find those research gaps and further contribute to the body of knowledge. (Saunders et al, 2009) Field research or Primary data collection After doing the secondary research, researcher find out about the research gaps and need to explore it further about the proposed research problem. In this stage, researcher uses the Primary data collection methods for collecting the research data by using different methods such as Questionnaires, Observation, interviews, surveys and focus group etc. it is very important that data collected through primary data collection method should not be used by third parties and to reveal to anyone unless they have rights and permission from the authorities. As I mentioned in my previous section that the researcher uses different methods such as Questionnaires, Interviews and Observation to collect the necessary primary data. The researcher uses questionnaires to collect information from the customers about their feedback of the self service checkout system. (Saunders et al 2009) Qualitative data The qualitative data is utilized to get facts and figures about the customers feedback and quality of the system. Thorough this type of data collection, researcher search and collect the customers reaction to the respective product or services. E.g. do they like to use the self service checkout system? Do they like this new innovative product? What is their satisfaction level according to our 5 level reaction grid? In this dissertation, researcher has used data being collected from the supermarket customers feedback such as ASDA, Selborne Walk shopping centre and ASDA Supermarket, Bakers arms, London. In these supermarkets, researcher has conducted his research using different interviews techniques, Questionnaires and self observation etc. Quantitative data Numerical or quantitative data collection method is utilized to gauge and compute the scale of needed information. Quantitative data collection is very important step in any research work as researcher needs to find out about the average number of customers and their sampling method. This is the extremely important tool for collecting the required data in numerical form for the research work. This sort of data collection method has also been used to analyze the result and for data presentation. (Saunders et al, 2009) Customer survey and self service checkout system initiation In the supermarket environment, competitors are always looking for different ways of retaining the existing customers and attracting the rival supermarket customers by offering incentives and offers to lure them to their business. Different customers have different behavior and attitude towards product or services in the supermarket. Time has gone when customer can be satisfied and retained by offering cheap products or services, instead, now, they look for more in the terms of excellent customer services and good value for their money. Supermarket or retail is in boom period, and, it is very fast moving business. Customers like to have more value and better service for the money. Retailer after doing lots of research and analysis of the customers expectation and wants, they decided to use new innovative self service checkout system for faster, flexible, reliability, efficiency, privacy and improved checkout system for the ever changing customers requirements. Self service checkout system is a good technology for using the fast paced retail business to consumer (B2C) environment and it already has gained acceptance for the majority of the customers from around the world supermarket and especially, in the United Kingdom. As I find out about the possible future planning of ASDA supermarket in London, they intend to increase more self service checkout system than assisted checkout system in this year 2010. ASDA has already done the Survey form the customers about the possible expansion of self service checkout system in future. As I find out from the self service checkout supervisor about this possible future expansion. He has helped me observed the customers and asked questions to the customers about the liking of the self service checkout system. The survey I conducted among 10 customers at ASDA Supermarket and it was very obvious that they come to the big supermarket for the sack of getting good services as well as good price. The chart below shows how many percentage of the customer in the retail industry like Self Service Checkouts. In the chart different colors shows different opinions of the customers e.g. brown color represents strongly agreed, sky blue color represent agree, yellow color represents somewhat agree, red color represents disagree and light green color represents neutral. All the bars in the chart show the level in percentage. Q1: Do you prefer to use self service checkouts instead of Cashier? In this chart, the bars shows the participation of the customers e.g. in question 3, 25% customers were strongly agreed, 42% customers were agreed, 10% customers were somewhat agreed, 8% customers were disagreed and 15% customers were neutral. According the above we get conclusion that despite it is new system most people use self service check out as the manager at ASDA Supermarket pointed out that it will grow 10% every year in the next 20 year and we will change all our cashier in future. Q2: Self service check out reduces waiting time to checkouts? In this chart the bars shows the participation of the customers. 30% customers were strongly agreed, 45% customers were agreed, 8% customers were somewhat agreed, 5% customers were disagreed and 12% customers were neutral. The graph shows that most customers love to use the service, the first of all that is a new technology and it is natural that every ones wants to try the new technology such as if we look at computer usage. People love to use computer because user friendliness of the system. At the end, we get result that self service check system is really helpful to reduce the waiting time at self service checkout system. Q3:  Self service checkout creates a sense of privacy and anonymity? In this chart the bars shows the participation of the customers e.g. in question 7, 34% customers were strongly agreed, 41% customers were agreed, 12% customers were somewhat agreed, 5% customers were disagreed and 8% customers were neutral. The chart shows customer use it is more secure and keep their privacy intact. Q4: I appreciate the ability not to have to deal with anyone? In this chart the bars shows the participation of the customers e.g. in question 8, 51% customers were strongly agreed, 39% customers were agreed, 5% customers were somewhat agreed, 3% customers were disagreed and 2% customers were neutral. Q5: self-service checkouts (SSC) are easy to use? In this chart the bars shows the participation of the customers as; * 66% customers were strongly agreed * 27% customers were agreed, * 3% customers were somewhat agreed, * 2% customers were disagreed and * 2% customers were neutral Majority of the customer at ASDA Supermarket are said it is easy to use but According to the manager of ASDA Supermarket, it depends on the customer education that we dont have any problem with that customer who are familiar with self service checkout system. It is hard for those who never use this type of service, sometimes, they find difficult to use this system on their own without any assistance by the staff members. Q6: Please rate your impression of what according to the following scale? Strongly Dissatisfied Dissatisfied Average Very good Excellent Do you find our SSC system easy to use? Do you like to pay for shopping bags at SSC System? Do you find our staff at SSC System helpful? Our premises are clean and well lightened Products and food are well arranged in the supermarket Supermarket offers excellent value of money Our working hours are convenient for you Our staff are courteous and helpful to you while you are shopping with us This survey aim is to find out how the self service check out can increase efficiency, effectiveness in the retail industry beside that the industries putting their effort to satisfy their customers in different ways by implementing some strategy that could be useful to the companies as global competition is rising between industries customer satisfaction comes hot topic .self services check out has implemented in retail industry to reduce the time of the customers the survey I conducted from the manager in ASDA Supermarket that he pointed out the good thing is this service is very quick it does the transaction very fast that is a positive point to the ASDA Supermarket it reduces the customer complaint now days most customers are complaining the time that spend in the shopping in ASDA Supermarket for instance if a customer buy one item . they have to wait maximum 15 to 20 minutes in the queue it is a big challenge in our operational level how to decrease it we are trying to expand th e new service in all our store . it gives two positive impact to the company the first point it satisfies the customers the second point it saves the cost The new service is lost longer more efficiency that it helps too much in operational level it grows 10% every year like I could say 75% are satisfy like minority of the customers say it is not easy to use it is complicated even some of them dont trust on self service check the new service might do wrong transaction it might scan the items two times and he pointed out some inexperienced customer cause some delays they face for some problem how to do transaction but most educated people love to use the new service it gives empowerment to the customer . By long standing in queue every day as it happens in Tesco Supermarket. it is clear to understand that the new service could increase the customer satisfaction as well as it can save a lot of cost and reduce waiting time. The Research: My research is on the self service checkout system would involve doing some research work in the supermarket. I would like to use supermarket like as ASDA and TESCO that are very near to my residential area Walthamstow, London. Firstly, I decided to use the supermarket Morrison at Wood green, London, but, I did not get permission from management to conduct my research work by using my questionnaires to the customers and doing self observation at self service checkout system in the Morrison supermarket. I decided to go to my nearer supermarket â€Å"ASDA† to ask the manager to conduct my research work at the ASDA supermarket. Their accepted my proposal for academic research surprisingly. I convinced them that this information and data will be confidential and I will not disclose any information to anyone without their prior permission to do so. I observed customers at the ASDA supermarket by using the self service checkout system that how easy they can use the system without fa cing any problem and difficulty. In conclusion, I can say that older people were among the least that were reluctant to use the new self service checkout system. System performance was not as friendly as I anticipated because there were some technical loop holes in the system as customer scan the item and place into bagging area but instead of moving to next item scanning, system was asking the customer to place the item into bagging area. There was an Identification issue when customer wants to buy the Alcoholic drinks and other replacement of damaged items when there was a long queue of customer at the back of that serving customer. I observed the whole shopping time duration that vary in different mode of payment has been used. One item shopping time duration was approximately 45 seconds per minute and it vary as number of items in the shopping basket increases. Staff at the supermarket was not very friendly by the start of my research work as they were thinking me as a management man observing their working performance and pattern, but, Luckily, I did able to convince them as I am only doing this research work for the academic purposes and not for any other use. I enjoyed this research work as it gave me the insight of analysing and observing the customer behaviour and customer satisfaction shopping experience as stated by Prof. Phillip Kottler, â€Å"Customer satisfaction can lead to customer retention†

On the Entrapment and Incarceration of the Victorian Woman Essay

Thomas Blackburn describes the two Victorian poets, Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson as being great contemporaries (47). As such it is apt that their works should muse upon and explore similar topics and themes. Their connection is especially evident in Browning’s â€Å"My Last Duchess† and Tennyson’s â€Å"The Lady of Shalott†. The themes of entrapment and incarceration feature heavily in both of these works. Specifically, it is the entrapment and incarceration of women which pervade their respective compositions. When taking into consideration the way in which women were viewed at this juncture in history- being nothing more than â€Å"beautiful objects† (Gilbert and Gubar 54), it is quite easy to see how the literary representations of the nineteenth century woman would be responses to such confines. While â€Å"My Last Duchess† can be looked upon as an investigation of the captor, represented by the Duke; â€Å"The Lady of Shalo tt† can be considered an exploration into the captive, represented by the Lady that gives the poem its title. Both poems are an analysis into the Victorian woman as an incarcerated and entrapped sub-culture of a predominately patriarchal society. It is no surprise then that the methods of which these fictional women take to escape comes at the cost of their lives. The doomed Duchess of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue, â€Å"My Last Duchess† is the embodiment of the incarcerated woman taken to the eternal extreme. The setting for this poem is the Italy of the Middle Ages, a time when women had still less freedom than in the Victorian era. Women were regarded as possessions, a form of imprisonment within itself. As Johnson states the theme of â€Å"marriage as bondage† is consistently explored throughout Browning’s early wor... ...y 16.1 (1978): 70-87. Jospeh, Gerhard. "Tennyson's Optics: The Eagle's Gaze." PMLA 92.3 (1977): 420-428. Langbaum, Robert. The Poetry of Experience: The Dramatic Monologue in Modern Literary Tradition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1957. McGhee, Richard. Marriage, Duty, & Desire in Victorian Poetry and Drama. Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1980. Orr, Mrs. Sutherland. Handbook to Robert Browning's Works. 6th Edition. London: George Bell and Sons, 1899. Plasa, Carl. ""Cracked from Side to Side": Sexual Politics in "The Lady of Shalott"." Victorian Poetry 30.3 (1992): 247-263. Ricks, Christopher. Tennyson. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1972. Showalter, Elaine and English Showalter. "Victorian Women and Menstruation." Victorian Studies 14.1 (1970): 83-89. Showalter, Elaine. "Victorian Women and Insanity." Victorian Studies 23.2 (1980): 157-181.

In the Heart of the Sea

In the Heart of the Sea The novel â€Å"In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,† by Nathaniel Philbrick, successfully tells the story of the whale ship Essex that was attacked by a sperm whale 1,500 nautical miles west of the Galapagos, 40 miles south of the equator. Many people know this as the story of â€Å"Moby Dick†, which was based off this event. The novel highlights three themes: man versus nature, survival, and suffering. The novel starts out in the town of Nantucket, an island off the eastern coast of New England.Nantucket, at this time, is known as one of the most successful whaling ports. Docked on the port was the famous Essex, a 20 year whaling boat. The Essex is the pride of Nantucket. It is 87 feet long, 238 tons, equipped with 12 sails and carried several smaller whaling boats that were used when a whale was spotted. After lasting many years, the Essex developed a reputation for being a lucky ship. Many voyages lasted around two to three years in the Pacific Ocean. Many young boys, such as Thomas Nickerson, joined whaling crews at a young age.These crews were mixed of experienced whalers and â€Å"green hands,† men who have never sailed on a whaling ship. Usually, these new crew members would earn around $150 for two years work, so the experienced workers made the most of these â€Å"green hands. † Nantucket was known for its whale products, and was considered the whaling capital of the world. Whale oil was used to fuel lamps and making lamps (because there is no electricity, gas or kerosene). It is also used in margarine, shoe polish and soap. Baleen is a substance that comes from the mouths of the whale.They can be found in many women’s clothing. These two important goods come from whales and the only way to obtain the oil and baleen is to make a voyage out to see and find the whales. At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to the town of Nantucket and whaling business. His disc ussions of this set us up for the events following later in the book. Philbrick also talks about the relationship between the colonists in Nantucket. They are very close, drawn together by their Quaker religion, similar experiences, and their interests in whaling.In the town, there is a hierarchy within the people. Where a person lived in the town was based on what rank they are in their society. The captain’s home would usually have the best view of the harbor. The seven black crewmen who were brought over to the crew were out casted, and relied on each other. The novel highlights the dangers of being a whaler. Young crewmen, such as Nickerson, were there to gain experience for future journeys. Nantucket was brought together by the whaling industry, and the community would usually see ships off before they took off.The Essex sailed off from Nantucket on August 12, 1819 under the command of 28 year-old Captain George Pollard, Jr. He spent the last four years on the Essex, and knew it very well. However, Philbrick points out that Pollard was not ready for be a captain, and we see why later on in the book. Owen Chase is the captain’s first mate, and Matthew Joy was the second mate. The Essex was operated with a 21-man crew. In chapter 2, Philbrick describes the ship. Also, in this chapter, we get a feel for the isolation of the â€Å"outsiders. The captain and his mates would sleep in cabins that were in the back of the ship, next, the Nantucket colonists would stay in the steerage, and the blacks, separated by the blubber room, stayed in front of the boat. After they embark on their journey, the men begin to complain about their rations. Pollard, was able to talk them into settling for what they had, establishing his power and authority. In chapter 5, on November 20, the crew spots whales 40 miles south of the equator. Chase and his crew go after a whale, which destroys their boat with its tail.When they bring their boat back to the Essex, they s pot a huge sperm whale near the bow of the ship calmly and quietly floating along the surface of the water. The whale began to move quickly towards the ship. The men try to steer Essex away from the whale, but are unsuccessful. The whale rams the ship with its head, and the men are amazed. After the whale revives itself, it struck the ship again, causing the Essex to sink bow-first. The men board their whaleboats after a night of preparation of leaving the Essex. They stripped the sails of the ship and attached them to their boats.The waves splashed over the boat, causing the work to be more difficult. The next morning, the boats take off. Chase and Pollard talk of where to go now that their ship has sunk. They speak about going to the Galapagos Islands, but Pollard noticed the wind direction would not allow them to go there. Next, they speak about the Marquesas, in the west. The men had heard that the inhabitants of the island were cannibals. South of the Marquesas were the Tauamot u Archipelago Islands, but the men had also heard that the islands have a bad reputation.In this conversation, we notice the colonist’s outlook on the unknown. They share a sense of togetherness within each other and no one else. We see this in the attitude of the colonists towards the black crewmen. Pollard decides to sail towards the Society Islands. There, Pollard saw a safer environment with little threat. Chase and Joy argue that the Society Islands would not be a good place to sail towards, and they could sail towards Chile or Peru instead. Pollard conforms to this decision. Here we see that Pollard has become less authoritative after the Essex sinks.In their first three weeks in the boats, the men faced many hardships. They faced thirst and hunger. Their skin had been burnt, salt water burned their sores, and the men, being as weak as they were, were unable to row the boats. On top of all that, another whale attacks Pollard’s boat. The men spot an island in the distance and conclude that they have arrived at Henderson Island. There, they found fresh water and ate crabs and birds. They were able to revive themselves, and this gave them a fighting chance of survival. Three men chose to stay on the island while the others left.Pollard promised he would rescue them after he reached South America. They return back to the ocean, and the men face the same obstacles they faced before they found Henderson Island. The men faced hunger but were still hydrated from the water collected at Henderson Island. Many accepted they weren’t going to live, and gave up their rations. Joy dies in the voyage, and the men bury him at dead. Bad turns to worse when the men realize there is only enough hardtack to last a day or two. On January 20, Lawson Thomas, a black crew member, dies, and the crew contemplates turning to cannibalism.The men concluded that in order to survive, they must eat the dead crew members. It is ironic that the men turned to cannibali sm, because they feared the inhabitants of the Marquesas. Three months after the Essex sank; the remaining two whaleboats are rescued in different areas along the South American coast. Two men were left alive in Pollard’s boat and three men in Chase’s boat. Nickerson, Chase, and Lawrence arrive in Valparaiso, Chile on February 25, 1821, and are taken back to Nantucket aboard whale ship Hero.Both Nantucket and the survivors of the Essex changed after the ship’s sinking. The whaling industry quickly fell to other towns. A fire that burned nearly a third of the town added to the difficulties. The men of the Essex were haunted when recalling what happened. Even Chase was deemed insane. This event caused the town of Nantucket to separate. The townspeople were no longer bonded by whaling, because the industry made a fall. The surviving men of the Essex became hypocritical, turning to cannibalism, one thing they feared and frowned upon. This event helps us understand w hat these men had to do when they are stranded, and teaches us the meaning of nature, survival, and suffering.Bibliography â€Å"Alone in the Pacific. † Salariya Publishing. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. <http://www. salariya. com/web_books/whaling/alone/alone. html>. â€Å"Nantucket Island History. † Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. <http://www. nantucketchamber. org/visitor/trivia. html>. Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship. New York,NY: Penguin, 2000. Print. In the Heart of the Sea Nicole Hart HIST 2300- Christopher Trobridge Writing Assignment One October 16, 2010 â€Å"In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale ship Essex† In order to understand the ramifications of an event such as the sinking of the Essex one needs too understand the community that produces the crew. Nantucket was an island community much more than the literal sense of word. The islanders of Nantucket saw themselves differently than the rest of the word. They learned the skills of whaling from the original Wampanoag tribe. They were Quakers with a stoic sense of standards and community.The whale men from Nantucket saw themselves as superior to most other sailors of that time period. Hardship and perseverance were virtues held by the whale men and the women. The women ran the town while the whale men were at sea for years at a time. This type of work ethic and fortitude, and the worlds desire for oil, combined to make â€Å"the village of Nantucket one of the richest towns in America. † â€Å"In the Heart of the Sea† It also created a close-knit community with a few very successful and influential families that married with each other maintaining a strong central hierarchy.The sinking of the Essex directly affected the community of Nantucket but it was also far reaching to the rest of the country. America was growing as a Nation and its consumption of oil was expanding. The events of the Essex were not only interesting to sailors of the world but also to the mainlanders that consumed the oil. America in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century were considered â€Å"†¦a consumer revolution. † â€Å"Of the People† No one knew this fact better than the owners of the whale ships. They understood that whale oil was a commodity to be sold.In order to harvest it at a profit they had to balance their expenses. Every mate on a whale ship received a fraction of the profit that the whale ship would return with the oil it found. The more responsibility a sailor had on a whale ship, the larger his cut. Every expense, food, gear, clothing, water had to be factored in of doing business. For example the captain received the largest share, due to him having the most responsibility, while Thomas Nickerson’s share was the experience he received at a young age on a whale ship plus the room and board that he would receive for two to three years.A situation that occurred early in their journey was a foreboding of things to come. Weeks into there journey the Essex experienced a â€Å"Knockdown†, a knockdown is a severe weather event that led to damage of the Essex. Captain Pollard was slow to respond to the weather issue at hand. The result was damage to half of their whaleboats that they used to harpoon whales. After the damage was done Pollard felt it would be best to return to Nantucket to replenish the ship with a new compliment of whaleboats.First mate Owen Chase convinced the Captain to p roceed on with the whale boats they had with hope of getting more whaleboats of the coast of Africa. This dynamic exposed the type of sailor Captain Pollard was and the type of sailor first mate Chase was. Captain Pollard was proving to be â€Å"a Captain that had the skills of a first mate and first mate Owen was showing to have the skills of a Captain. † â€Å"In the Heart of the Sea. † These two personalities would continue to show themselves later in there journey after the Essex had sunk. When the Essex was rammed and destroyed by the sperm whale, the crews Nantucket heritage served them well.The officers of the Essex were able to maintain order and stifle any panic by the crewmen. They devised a strategy that first mate Chase had championed. Once again Captain Pollard’s initial plan was shelved for fist mate Chase’s plan. The remaining twenty-crew members of the Essex were split into three twenty-five foot whaling boats. Captain Pollard, First mate Chase, and Second officer Hendrix were in charge of the three boats. Even in this situation, a strong sense of the Nantucket community was resident in the division of each boat.The majority of the Nantucketers ended up in Captain Pollards boat. A few of the remaining Nantucketers ended up in First mate Chase’s boat and the majority of African American sailors ended up in second mate Hendrix’s boat. First mate Owen Chase proved to be a relentless advocate for hope. Thomas Nickerson saw another side of First mate Chase when their journey first began by seeing how curt Chase was to the crew. On the island of Nantucket Owen Chase was a gentlemen but at sea Chase took a role of being very demanding and wanting things done correctly.After the sinking of the Essex the crewmembers were struggling with the situation they were in and Chase changed his method of handling of the crew. When Chase saw the crew was losing spirit he showed a more â€Å"maternal† side. This chan ge in attitude was critical in the survival of the crewmembers that made it. The events that led to the cannibalism of crewmembers of the Essex were presented differently to Captain Pollard’s boat and first mate Chase’s boat. Captain Pollards and Hendrix boat became separated from Chases boat.The African American crewmembers having a low body fat content and a mineral deficient diet became prone to death before the Nantucket crewmembers. As the African American crewmembers died the living crewmembers consumed them. When there only living crew members left on Pollards boat they resorted to drawing lots to see who would give up their life as food and who would kill that sailor. On first mate Chase’s boat one of the sailors passes and the elect to consume his body. It appears that cannibalism was a common event that occurred in these situations.To this day human beings get presented with this dilemma, such as the plane crash in the Andes. As for me I would rather c hose death than the consuming of my mates. Spending months at a time with these men I would feel as though I was eating a family member and would rather wait for death than eat a fellow mate. Although I would have the pressure of supporting my family and wanting to return home, eating a human being I believe would be a lot easier said then done. In the grief that Captain Pollard experienced having to eat his nephew then facing his Aunt would be something I don’t think I could endure or ever live with.For Nantucket and the men involved in whale hunting it is more than just a hunt. It was a way of life, a way of survival, and the entire focus of a town. This novel contained more than just the story of the ramming of the Essex, it was more of a story of the hardships faced, the dedication that comes with the job of whaling, and the raw emotions of the men involved. This novel proved the importance of whaling in that time period to not only Nantucket but to the entire Nation, and how it foreshadowed how our economy would be today.Lastly to end with the mission of the Nantucket Quakers â€Å"†¦to maintain a peaceful life on land while raising bloody havoc at sea. † This was their life, their survival and it now is their history. Works Cited James Oakes, Michael Mcgerr, Jan Ellen Lewis, Nick Cullather, Jeanne Boydston. â€Å"Of the People: A history of the United States. † New York: Oxford University Press. Nathaniel Philbrick. â€Å"In the heart of the sea:The tradgedy of the Whaleship Essex† New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

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.