Commit a Fraud

Introduction Asset misappropriation methods include frauds in which executors use tricks and deceits to acquire ownership of an institution’s resources. In these methods, employees use assets of the organizations that they work in for their personal gains. In many cases, people who commit asset misappropriation crimes are employees of organizations, clients or suppliers. Asset misappropriation differs from other crimes in that trickery is applied.Advertising We will write a custom case study sample on Commit a Fraud specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Force is never applied in execution of asset misappropriation crimes. Two categories of asset misappropriation crimes exist. These include deceitful acquisition of money and non-cash assets. In addition, asset misappropriation crimes can take place at any point in an organization. The circumstances that promote the occurrence of asset misappropriation differ. The crime can take p lace before records are made or after reports have been prepared. Asset misappropriation can also take place when purchases are being made, during preparation of payroll or in delivery of reimbursement. However, in many cases, asset misappropriation involves the theft of money. This paper describes how an employee plans to commit skimming successfully. It also describes the impact of weak controls and the prevention of the crime in a company. Execution of Skimming Asset misappropriation is divided into various types namely skimming, misuse of funds and cash larceny. Skimming is a type of cash theft by an employee. It involves the theft of money before records are entered in an organization’s accounts. Hence, skimming is popularly referred to as off the records fraud. John works as a teller at Thomson Home Hardware store where he plans to skim money successfully. He plans to commit the act on several occasions. He will ensure that a record has not been made before he commits t he crime. Absence of a record will make audit trace impossible. Stealing the money before it is recorded will ensure that the company does not know of its receipt. Consequently, it will be difficult for the company to know that John has stolen the money. John decided to position himself appropriately within the organization to succeed in stealing money. He realized that it is essential to be in a department in which funds are received. In such departments, he will receive and record payments and money. This will give him access to cash.Advertising Looking for case study on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More He plans to slip checks or cash out of the receivables. That is why he chose to be a teller at the hardware store. John plans to post a large quantity of the money received in the appropriate returns or clients’ accounts. However, he will keep a smaller quantity of the received payments in his priva te account. Skimming is usually straightforward. A customer comes and makes payment for goods and services. Customers leave the store after they pay for goods bought or services received. The employee then places the received amounts in the cash register. However, since John plans to steal money, he will put part of the money in his pocket and not record the transaction. The process will be simplified since there is no supervisor who will monitor his activities at the store. However, in case there will be a supervisor around, John plans to make a no-sale record in the registers even if he has received money for cash sale. John plans to use these two strategies. These will assist him to avoid easy detection. Additionally, he will target donations made by donors instead of receivables. He will do so since it will be difficult to conceal receivable skimming. John realized that customers are likely to make complaints if they detect that their deposits do not reflect in their accounts. I n the execution of skimming, John will ensure that there are no observers. He will sit or stand in a position in which nobody will detect that he hides some of the checks or money. John is aware of the cameras that the hardware’s proprietor has placed in the cash receivable office. Therefore, John plans to conceal both his identity and the crime. Detection of the crime can result into his imprisonment and loss of employment. Hence, John has carefully planned the execution of the crime. This has taken him a long time, and the crime will begin with concealment of small amounts. John has planned not to change his lifestyle after he steals the money successfully. He noted that change in lifestyle could result into early detection. In addition, it will be essential that he destroy all physical evidences that can result into detection. Therefore, John has planned to ensure that there is no paper trail. Any document that will link him to the crime will be destroyed.Advertising We will write a custom case study sample on Commit a Fraud specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Furthermore, he will destroy all video evidences that will capture the execution of the crime. In addition, all forgeries that he will use to execute the crime will be perfect. He has planned to forge the signature of the manager. The signature is used in authorization of receipts. Finally, John plans not to act suspiciously at work. He argued that lack of confidence during execution of skimming could result into detection. Weak Internal Controls Studies have suggested that asset misappropriation is prevalent in institutions and businesses that have weak controls. Poor isolation of duties and authorization, inadequate supervision and weak accounting systems are some of the internal controls that enable the existence of crimes like skimming. An appropriate internal system can assist an organization deter the occurrence of skimming. A framework t hat can assist in the elimination of skimming has to include appropriate environment, activities and accounting strategies, continuous monitoring and effective communication system. The lack of these conditions in an organization enables an employee to succeed in execution of skimming. Internal controls as separation of duties make it difficult for an employee to succeed in skimming. In the cash receivable room, John can record receipt of mails and the second worker can enter the funds into a register. The third employee can take the money to the bank. This makes skimming impossible. Investigation of no-sale transactions can also assist an organization reduce skimming. Finally, it is appropriate for an organization to conduct thorough background checks before they employ workers. Prevention of Asset Misappropriation The occurrence of asset misappropriation results into great loss for any organization. The prevention of asset misappropriation is a strategy that an organization can us e to reduce losses. Hence, numerous organizations have implemented fraud preventive measures. However, the implementation of these strategies does not necessarily result into a reduction of asset misappropriation practices. According to the triangle shown below, all employees can commit asset misappropriation even if preventive measures are in place. Advertising Looking for case study on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Employees have pressures, opportunities to commit crime and can rationalize the practice. Therefore, it is appropriate for organizations to introduce other strategies to complement internal controls. These other strategies include the creation of a culture of honesty within the organization, provision of assistance to employees, and the elimination of opportunities for crime. In creating an honesty culture, an organization should hire and train workers on fraud awareness. In addition, an organization should create a good work environment and establish an aid program for employees. The elimination of asset misappropriation includes maintenance of appropriate internal controls, implementation of crime deterrence strategies and inclusion of clients in management of the problem. It can also include the creation of a whistle blower method and performance of audits. Fraud Detection Organizations must implement fraud detection methods to avoid losses. The basic technique is to identify and monitor symptoms of fraud. Asset misappropriation is normally accompanied by accounting anomalies like inaccuracies in ledger books. In addition, overrides in the internal control systems may indicate the existence of asset misappropriation practices within an organization. Changes in lifestyles of employees and suspicious behaviours can also be indicators of fraud within an organization. An employee who steals money from his employer is likely to increase in his lifestyle. He is also likely to act suspiciously when he is at work. Analytical systems can also be used to detect fraud in an organization. Analytical systems can include investigation of unusual activities. For example, activities and transactions that take place at odd times can be indicators of fraud. Finally, organization can introduce the use of modern technology in detection of crime. Conclusions Asset mismanagement includes frauds in which employees use trickery to acquire ownership of a company’s property. One of such method of asset mismanagement is skimming. This paper aimed to describe a method through which an employee could execute skimming. It provided methods through which an employee will successfully execute skimming in a company. Secondly, it examined some of the internal controls that a company can employ to reduce the occurrence of asset mismanagement. Thirdly, the paper discussed prevention and detection of asset mismanagement in an organization. In the discussions, it provided recommendations that can be used to reduce the crime. This case study on Commit a Fraud was written and submitted by user Jamal Shepherd to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Amazon versus Webvan

Amazon versus Webvan AbstractBoth Amazon and Webvan were well-funded Internet startups in the 1990's. Both focused on a business model that allowed consumers to order products online that would be delivered to the consumers home. In the article, we discuss why Amazon succeeded while Webvan failed.The Two Companies' BackgroundAmazon: Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, Inc. is a Website where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon .com in 1990and in July 1995, Amazon.com, Inc. the Fortune 500 Company commenced its operations becoming one of the world most customer-centric company, and selling Worlds Biggest Selection. They offer their customers the lowest possible prices and highest quality. They sell millions of unique, new, used and collectible items in categories such as apparel and accessories, electronics, computers, kitchen and house wares, books, music, DVDs, videos, cameras and photo items, office products, toys, baby items and baby registry, softw are, computer and video games, cell phones and service, tools and hardware, travel services, magazine subscriptions and outdoor living items.Webvan Delivery VanThe Company organized its operations into four principal segments. 1. North America Books, Music and DVD/Video (BMVD); 2. North America Electronics, Tools and Kitchen (ETK); 3. International, 4. ServicesWebvan: Webvan was started in 1996 by Louis Borders and was established to sell groceries over the World Wide Web. George Shaheen resigned as CEO of Anderson Consulting to take advantage of the opportunity to become CEO of Webvan. Webvan, which originated as an online grocery service, delivers food (including its BestYet label, a co-brand with food distributor Fleming Companies) and non-prescription drugs to their customers' doors. Webvan's vision was to provide grocery-shopping solutions that would save consumers both time and effort, without sacrificing the quality, selection, and low prices of traditional brick-and-mortar s tores.Why Amazon...

Concept of Strategy in Public Relations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Concept of Strategy in Public Relations - Essay Example According to ( Rembrandt 2011) â€Å"A sustainable public relations strategy is a long-term endeavor. It can take months to capture the attention of targeted media venues†. Public relation strategy is an active part of the marketing strategy of an organization. A strategy is a process or means by which an organization achieves its goals or objectives. Public relation strategy is directly connected to the concept of integrated communication. A public relation strategy has to integrate the communication throughout the organization by keeping in base the audience and stake holders of an organization. A good strategy must balance internal and external factors of an organization to achieve the corporate mission. As per (Caywood 1997 ,87)â€Å"When a strategy has been developed and the public relation plan is implemented, research plays an important role in monitoring its effectiveness and making adjustments†. Strategy formulating is an important aspect of public relation and its rest with the corporate heads of a firm. Public relation strategy is about the action that an organization can take to accomplish its goals and objectives. On the strategic side, four public relation dimensions reflect organizational approaches to problem solving or organizational world views about the management of relationships with stakeholders. These dimensions may be considered strategic in the sense that they lay foundation for the manners in which an organization might try to achieve a public relation objective. The strategy in public relation enables the corporate heads to judge the effectiveness of their media relation ahead of the implementation of marketing strategy. Strategy is essentially a longer term planning while bottom line sales tactics demand short term results. In her book(Olive 2010, 14) writes that â€Å"Strategic public relation is concerned with managing the relationships between an organization and much

Costa Coffee and the Coffee Industry in the UK Assignment

Costa Coffee and the Coffee Industry in the UK - Assignment Example The coffee industry in the UK is going through a period of growth and change. While Starbucks is one of the most familiar names in the industry, it is not the biggest or the most successful because Costa Coffee performs better. On a global scale, coffee remains the most popular beverage with approximately two billion cups consumed daily. The U.K alone consumes around 70 million cups of coffee daily (British Coffee Association, 2015). In comparison with several other European nations, the United Kingdom still stands out as one of the few countries that have favored instant coffee at the expense of other fresh coffee beans or fresh ground coffee considered of better quality. Even though consumers remain devoted to their preferred brands, the most important thing is the taste and quality of the instant coffee. Placing premiums on coffees brands is currently motivating instant coffee customers to consider the quality of taste as their preference before buying. In the year 2014, the intro duction of private labels for premium coffee had a positive influence on the status of micro-ground coffee, with customers of low-priced options switching to this brand due to its improved quality (Ukers, 2012). Costa Coffee has taken over the UK coffee industry, and with their unchanging traditional method of roasting their coffee beans slowly, the Bruno & Sergio brothers have served their customers with authentic blends of six Arabica beans to one Robusta in more than five hundred coffee shops globally.

Discover different ways of approaching nutrition, how it impacts our Research Paper

Discover different ways of approaching nutrition, how it impacts our daily lives and what choices we can make to improve our health and our world - Research Paper Example ing, various health related predicaments such as high cholesterol levels that is responsible for unhealthy heart condition which may lead to high blood pressure and stroke, cancers of various tissues and organs, deformity of bones due to excessive body weight, osteoporosis, hypoglycemia even after consuming the food, anemia, diabetes, stones in kidney or gallbladder, ulcers in various parts of body, multiple sclerosis and asthma could be prevented. The reader is bound to change the eating habit from non-vegetarian diet to healthy vegetarian diet. The book highlights the importance of vegetarian diet intake by focusing on issues that arise due to social, economical and personal quandary due to ill-health. Human beings must care for other inhabitants of the planet by avoiding non-vegetarian diet, this is a step towards healthy life. The author gave utmost importance to the vegetarian diet to lead a happy and contented life and grow to be healthy grandparents free from health dilemmas. The author wrote that it is the prime responsibility of every individual to create an environment that is healthy for coming generations too which is possible by consuming eatables that initiate good health. The book selected is "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins. The book is selected as it provides a new insight to the Americans about their diet and diet style and generates concern about the environment and its conservation; animals and their protection for ethical and moral reasons. The book is carefully and methodologically written and American diet is well researched. The author took efforts to understand the imperative issue as non-vegetarian diet generates health hazards , non-vegetarian nutrition is poorly appreciated in actual sense. People eat what is pleasing to tongue and do not realize to eat what is good to keep them fit and healthy in all senses. John Robbins (D.O.B= 26/10/1947), author from America. He is a son of Irma and Baskin Robbins who run an ice-cream

The Effective Communication For Investor Relations Commerce Essay

The Effective Communication For Investor Relations Commerce Essay Corporations worldwide work daily to increase the value of their stock for the investing public. In order to exploit this value, businesses must constantly make every effort to extensively communicate to their investors and potential investors. In view of this, investor relations are a vital part of business strategy, principally in the area of communication. Argenti (2009) says, While explaining financial results and giving guidance on future earnings are critical investor relations activities, companies today need to go beyond the numbers' (p. 203). Corporate departments involved with investor directions must make a necessary connection between efficient communication and company goals. Since communication is starting to play such an important role in investor relations, corporate communication programs are being created not only to participate in financial areas, but also to take part in media relations and other public communication. Ultimately, the best way for corporations to u nderstand communications for investor relations is to look at an overview of the investor relations function, know how to organize investor relations, learn about investor relations programs and be informed on investor relations advancements. Investor Relations Synopsis In the United States, the Boston Manufacturing Company, established in 1814, is foretold to be the first public company. As business increased and growth was desired, the owner chose to sale shares of the company stock to other businessmen (Laskin, 2009). Laskin (2009) states, The separation of management and ownership became the key pre-determining factor in the development of investor relations (p. 1). However, as long as the stock market and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) have been a part of the business world, investor relations and communication have not been in effect. Argenti (2009) explains how communications to and from investors in the 1930s and 1940s were barely existent and unnecessary. Corporations were mainly concerned with disclosures required by the SEC, which left little reason for a corporate investor relations representative or department (Argenti, 2009). Midway through the 1900s modern-day investor relations began to surface in the corporate world. Poten tial investors and stockholders became more of a priority to businesses around 1960, which brought forth the creation of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) (Hockerts and Moir, 2004). Hockert and Moir (2004) go on to say, The National Investor Relations Institute {NIRI), founded in the U.S. in 1969, was the first recognized professional [investor relations] body (p. 1). With the creation of the NIRI to communicate with management, investors and potential investors, corporations began to utilize modern technology and bring the investor relations function to the forefront of corporate communications. By the 1990s and the turn of the century, investor relations took-on a highly technological-based approach to investor communications. According to Jameson (2000), visual discourse became a major element in investor interactions. Visual discourse was effective for stimulating the response to good news for investors, and reducing the brunt of bad news. Jameson (2000) says, The most powerful forces that do this are the use of symbolism, the photographic depiction of the narrators, and the highlighting of key pieces of information (p. 1). Visual discourse through the use of the internet brought investor relations to an even greater height after the turn of the century; investor relations can now be found on a variety of platforms, locally and globally. Press ure from investors will always continue to mold the investor relations function. Many companies have already put into place a shareholder relations department. These departments will become even more common in the future as financial advisors and other professionals will influence and have high expectations for firms (Martson, 2008). Organizing Investor Relations Communications The significance of a business structure that effectively implements investor relations communication is vital, especially when handling worldwide operations. Goodman (1999) says that communication, especially external communication with investors, is imperative for corporate growth in an economy that is evidently based on information, instead of industrialization. Investors expect a high level of communication and candor from the companies that operate in their community (Goodman, 1999, p. 1). In order to fully employ the investor relations function through communications, entities must strive to adequately establish and organize interactions within an effective corporate communications department. Objectives Argenti (2009) emphasizes that the most important goal for a business seeking to implement successful communication should be to place the entity in a position to efficiently work for investors capital. According to Almazan, Banajeri and Motta (2008), management may be hesitant to fully reveal information, especially in situations where management decisions could be to blame for inadequate performance. However, businesses must seek to communicate information fully and honestly. Initially, companies should relay as much information as possible to investors and potential investors. Conger (2004) says The more you tell, the more you sell. The more a company makes investors aware of its existence, business and strategies, the more likely it is to increase sales of its stock. Making investors aware doesnt mean a spin campaign, but a program to communicate and educate investors about the companys market, its strengths and potential as an investment (p. 1). Next, Argenti (2009) stresses the need for publicly held companies to understand the appropriate expectations for the companys stock in the scope of earnings, trade and the market. These companies must also strive to lessen stock price instability (Argenti, 2009). The objective is for the investor relations department to fulfill the need for communications guidance in managements decision-making methods. To understand appropriate expectations for company stock and to decrease stock unpredictability, integration [of departments] is a more respected approach, with public relations leading the mix. Public relations drive strategy and execution (Capozzi, 2005, p. 1). In general, communication within investor affairs should seek to honestly maintain the publics view of an organization. Prasad and Mir (2002) underline four general objectives of shareholder relations: accurately present a corporations attitude, mold the identity of the corporation, justifying the established identity of the entity and keep safe the legitimacy of the company. These objectives should seek to provide transparent facts for investors. Kedem (2006) emphasizes the importance of presenting facts in context, instead of in a segregated manner. Kedem (2006) further clarifies that communication must fulfill the investors immediate need to become informed and take action (p. 1), as well as answer interpretation and what if? suppositions [that] may follow (p. 1). Investor relations officers should also be able to answer questions of Whats next? or What does this mean for me?' (Kedem, 2006, p. 1). Communication with Investor Types In such a broad business world, corporations are required to communicate with investors on every level. A wide range of investors need to be taken into consideration by firms so that the proper information is communicated to the correct investor or group of investors (Dolphin, 2003). The role of the investor relations function is to communicate effectively to both institutions shareholders and individual shareholders. A firm that is not dynamic in this aspect will unsuccessfully communicate with some current and potential investors. Marston (2008) explains how shareholder interactions from an institutional standpoint require more boundary spanning (p. 1) interactions by allowing greater efficiencies in message delivery and market impact (Argenti, 2009, p. 208). Conversely, individual investors ranked one-on-one meetings with investees and professionals as the most crucial way of communicating (Marston, 2008). In order to accomplish a well-rounded investor relations department, suffic ient communications to both individual and institutional investors will create closer links with investors, and can help a company in developing strategies that will be welcomed by shareholders; it is that strategic element of the role [of communication] that is at the core of [investor relations] (Dolphin, 2003, p. 1). Institutional investors. Communication with institutional investors is a critical part of any investor relations program. Institutions, such as insurance companies, are available to contribute much larger amounts of capital than a single person. Dolphin (2003) says there is great ease in moving large quantities of capital from market to market. Due to this ease of moving capital, and institutional investors holding more than 60% of Unites States equities in the 21st Century, firms have realized and acted on the significance of communicating with institutional investors. Also, institutional investors are often candidates for mergers and acquisitions. Investees must maintain investor relations departments in order to identify and target potential openings for big investors, mergers or acquisitions. Sirower and Lipin (2003) stress the necessity of excellent communication with institutional investors because of the potential risk of losing a major shareholder. Sirower and Lipin (2003) said Slick press releases and conference calls cannot save a bad deal, but a poorly conceived communications strategy can-and usually will-kill one that may make good strategic sense. Many of the biggest unsuccessful deals, as measured by post-announcement return to shareholders, have performed poorly in large part because the acquirers did not tell their story adequately (p. 1). Furthermore, interaction with institutional investors can be handled best by researching, then organizing institutions into groups or target audiences based on the characteristics of the entity (Argenti, 2009). Argenti (2009) notes: This kind of research will prevent the company from spending too much time communicating with uninterested investors (p. 209). An entity that spends time wisely on interested institutional investors is more likely to obtain more committed, corporate patrons. The responsibility of management is to bring in a qualified investor relations officer who can market shares of the company to these types of organizational investors (ADX Urges Listed Companies, 2009). Individual investors. Individual investors require a different type of communication than an institution typically requires. Many individual investors will be employees of the investee. These employees are investors through 401(k) plans or other company stock. Individual investors are many times directly communicated to through personal messages or one-on-one meetings (Tate, 2000). Tate (2000) explains that this personal communication is executed through one of two types of situations: prepared and interactive. Hanley (2008) says, Long gone are the days when [companies] should take an ad hoc approach to [investor relations], setting their chief financial officer in front of a microphone to read aloud from a quarterly earnings report (p. 1). Entities must carefully analyze whether communications will only be prepared and delivered, or if investors or the public will be given the chance to respond. Written statements or oral speeches are usually considered prepared situations where individuals are presented with information through memos, online forums or speeches (Tate, 2000). Tate (2000) also describes interactive situations: unique situations where problems or questions can be addressed live to a speaker. Interactive situations must be handled by a well-qualified and experienced executive or investor relations officer. Next, investor relations communications with individuals must be more of a hand-holding experience for the investor. Corporate backers invest on a different capital playing field than individuals, and therefore do call for identical treatment. Individuals identify a firm as legitimate if the investee to investor communication meets the entitys social responsibility of providing information (Cowden and Sellnow, 2002). Research has shown that individual investors look for similar or familiar communication functions seen of other renowned organizations. Before personally establishing an entity as legitimate, an individual shareholder also seeks justifiable management actions and necessary social standards of professional communication (Cowden and Sellnow, 2002). Ultimately, corporate relations with individual investors require adequate, available and honest information. Intermediaries Communication directly to institutional and individuals shareholders is only one method by which businesses pass information, updates and news. Argenti (2009) says that corporations also communicate indirectly through intermediaries such as sell-side agents and rating agencies. Sell-side agents cover stocks with certain industries and generate detailed research reports that offer recommendations (Argenti, 2009, p. 212). Rating agencies play a similar role to sell-side agents, but rating agencies place special emphasize on whether an investee is creditworthy (Argenti, 2009). Rating agencies will rate an entity on their ability to obtain, maintain and use debt. Virtually all firms depend on a constant flow of credit to carry them smoothly through the ups and downs of business fluctuations. It is entirely typical for lenders to get more cautious in a downturn, but freezing of credit is [a problem] (Colvin, Gray, Tkaczyk and Yi-Wyn, 2009, p. 1). Investors will look to intermediaries such as rating agencies to indirectly determine if an investee and investment is beneficial or detrimental. The media is also a commonly used intermediary by investees and investors. Investor relations departments may utilize the media especially when going through a crisis. One of the most important actions taken by a company going through a crisis is to use the media as an intermediary to satisfactorily relay information to a curious, concerned or affected public. Hasenfuss (2009) explains the frustration that occurs for investors or potential investors when information is delayed or never presented. Investor relations departments must use the media to communicate detailed explanations during important situations. A failure to do this will bring no closure to a companys current business-life. Denying the use of a media intermediary during an important situation may very well bring an organization to its final days (Hasenfuss, 2009). Communication through Investor Relations Programs Communication within investor affairs is most effective when implemented through investor relations programs. Depending on the size and the activities of the corporation, the investor relations program may be in-house and consist of only a few officers, or it may be entirely outsourced to public or financial relations firms (Argenti, 2009). Communication programs are necessary for the majority of businesses; they help to place market status of corporate stock in the hands of investors, as well as limit control of stock price by management (Coyle, n.d.). Furthermore, Coyle (n.d.) states that CEOs and their individual corporate investor relations programs must recognize that the market followings themselves are tiered; thus corporate advertising, direct mail and even telemarketing strategies can be beneficial (p. 1). These investor relations responsibilities are carried out through the establishment of investor relations programs. These programs help to connect the entity to society, a s well as build a line of proactive and reactive relationships with investors. Proactive Communication Proactive communication is necessary for companies seeking to add value to their stock. Proactively pursuing investors, especially valuable investors, is a key role of the investor relations program. A hands-on attitude is positive for increasing productivity of a firm, as well as constructively driving the decision-making process for management and investors (Hughes and Demetrious, 2006). Conger, 2004 explains If a company isnt proactive at all with its [investor relations] efforts, some investors are still bound to find it. But [many] investorsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦have a limited amount of time at their disposal. They will, therefore, invest in those companies they have heard of, are familiar with and can trust. When a company is willing to communicate, it decreases investors uncertainty and risk (p. 1). Argenti (2009) also adds that communication strategies should be intact for both expected and unexpected situation, such as mergers and crisis situations. A company that takes on a proactive communication role with investor relations is likely heading towards investee success. Reactive Communication Another important aspect of investor relations programs is reactive communication, which focuses on making use of investor responses, concerns, suggestions and preferences. One large petroleum company, Voyager Petroleum (2010), made a special effort to acquire Marmel Communications LLC, a well-equipped communications corporation. This business decision supported Voyagers desire to reach out for investor input. Voyager Petroleum (2010) announced, Our team is inviting all shareholders to [an] exclusive investor controlled forum. Our staff and members have requested that all Voyager Petroleum shareholders join our community and share their thoughts on the company, its development and future outlook (p. 1). The main benefit of a company choosing to practice this type of reactive communication is to understand the mindset of their investors in order to know where the company can change and improve. The corporate forum method used by Voyager for reactive communication is beneficial by prov iding an area for a wide variety of feedback on all aspects of the entity. Ettredge and Gerdes (2005) also support reactive communication through venues like website forums because investor and investee information is able to be presented in numerous forms, such as video, audio, pictures and text. Website forums also support multiple languages (Ettredge and Gerdes, 2005). Corporations that require their investor relations programs to use reactive communication will more quickly know the key to success. Investor Relations Advancement As technology advances, all aspects of the business world advance; this includes investor relations and communications. As manufacturing, information storage and many other areas of the corporate world advance, communications to investors also advance. Some companies seek to only become more efficient with familiar methods. Vahouny (2004) describes how companies can use modern-day automation to develop more effective communication through typical actions: using advertising, employee letters, collateral, client letters and press releases (p. 1). Also, Boyd and Boyd (2008) explain how advancements can be made by effectively carrying out other general practice such as shareholder votes, calls and letters. Some firms still advance in the area of presenting, recording and reposting speeches to investors (Boyd and Boyd, 2008). However, many modern-day businesses are advancing in investor communications directly by way of technology and the internet. Boyd and Boyd (2008) admit that communication such as speeches is becoming outdated, and that most similar methods of communication provide information or form, but rarely both. In general, the internet is taking over the investor relations function by offering convenient form and necessary information. Companies such as Chevron are combining investor relations, communications and marketing through the use of emails, blogs and social networking websites. Thompson (2009) says Chevron is among the many companies that not only hosts an official [investor relations] Twitter feed, but promotes it on the companys Media Resources page online. Chief Twitterer is Chevron media adviser Justin Higgs. Cisco is another company that hosts an [investor relations] presence on Twitter; the company has multiple Twitter sites, including ones such as CiscoGeeks and CiscoEvents (p. 1). Twitter is a social networking website where information is quickly and easily released live to the internet for millions to see on mobile phones, computers and other electronic devices. These companies also communicate to the public through Facebook, a social networking website available to anyone with an active email address (Thompson, 2009). Firms that are jumping on the technological bandwagon are advancing investor relations communications exponentially. For a corporate department that thrives on providing timely and accurate information, the internet has revolutionized, and will continue to revolutionize, the investor relations function. Conclusion In conclusion, publicly traded businesses make a great effort to add value to their entities in order to maximize the benefits received by the investing community. By taking every possible step to have the best communication with investors, corporations are increasing the value of their business and stock. In consideration of this, investor relations are understandably a major function of doing business, and a major function of corporate communication. Argenti (2009) states: As companies strive to maximize shareholder value, they must continually communicate their progress toward that goal to the investing public (p. 203). As companies strive in this direction, the relationship between meeting corporate objectives and communication must be comprehended. This understanding by some corporations has brought communications for investor relations to a stage where programs are being established to take-on the role of entire departments, such as public relations. In the end, businesses will best identify with communications in the context of investor relations by: looking at an overview of the investor relations function, knowing how to organize investor relations, learning about investor relations programs and being informed on investor relations advancements. Above all, Companies need to follow a communication strategy that includes a clear understanding of the companys objectives and a thorough analysis of all its constituencies so that appropriate messages can be crafted and delivered (Argenti, 2009, p. 222).

Butterfly Effect in Bone :: essays research papers

Directed and written by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, the movie â€Å"Butterfly Effect† is about a young man (Kutcher) who blacks out harmfull memories of significant events of his life. As he grows up he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life. This movie teaches a simple lesson about life: one little thing in the past can change the whole outcome of life later. The book Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan, also has something to do with past, as it is narrated by two people, mother and daughter, who talk about themselves, constantly referring back to the memories of their childhood. They regret the mistakes they have made as a little girl. If only they didn’t make the mistake in the past, they would have a totally different fate then.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ruth’s life is much affected by her childhood memories with her mother LuLing. Whenever Ruth doesn’t obey her, LuLing threatens by saying, â€Å"Maybe I die soon!† (54), and â€Å"LuLing’s threats to die were like earthquakes† (54). Ruth’s childhood earthquakes caused Ruth to â€Å"think about death every day† (121). If one’s mother threatens to kill herself, nothing would be worse than that for a child. Ruth had to go through all those in her sensitive years, and as a result death became an overwhelming figure in her life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ruth also remembers how LuLing would embarrass her by seeming too Chinese at a time when she was so anxious to consider herself American. Tan skillfully portrays the growing pains of Ruth humiliated by her mother’s inability to accept the Western culture: â€Å"Her mother couldn't even say Ruth's name right. It used to mortify Ruth when she shouted for her up and down the block. ‘Lootie! Lootie!’ Why had her mother chosen a name with sounds she couldn't pronounce?† (49).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Both LuLing and Ruth are unable to connect with their mothers, who have hidden their past. The secrecy has deprived mother and daughter from the shared fate and emotions that are necessary for understanding each other. Art tells her, â€Å"In all these years we've been together... I don’t think I know an important part of you. You keep secrets inside you. You hide. It’s as though I’ve never seen you naked† (360). Though she has nothing to hide, Ruth has unknowingly adopted this attitude of secrecy and remains distant from those she loves.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As a girl, Ruth could only express herself freely in a diary, which her mother repeatedly found and read.

Animals of Wonderland

TITLE: | The Animals of Wonderland: Tenniel as Carroll's Reader| SOURCE: | Criticism 45 no4 383-415 Fall 2003| The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://wsupress. wayne. edu/ ROSE LOVELL-SMITH WHEN JOHN TENNIEL was providing 42 illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1864 he was in his mid-forties, an established illustrator and a Punch cartoonist.At that time C. L. Dodgson and Lewis Carroll were equally unknown as authors, for adults or children. Tenniel, on the other hand, already had a professional understanding of the visual codes and illustrative techniques of his day, and already had an audience–an adult rather than a child audience–who would expect from him a certain level of technical proficiency, humor, and social nous.Tenniel's illustrations should therefore interest us today not just for their remarkable and continuing success as a felicitous adjunct to Carroll's text, but also as the first–arguably, the best–Victorian reading or interpretation of Carroll's text. After all, as a reader Tenniel enjoyed considerable advantages, including his personal position and experience, his access to the author's own illustrations to the manuscript version of the story, and access to the author himself.In his study of illustration in children's literature, Words about Pictures, Perry Nodelman has argued that â€Å"the pictures in a sequence act as schemata for each other†Ã¢â‚¬â€œthat is, all the expectations, understanding, and information we bring to reading an illustrated book, and all the information we accumulate as our reading proceeds, â€Å"becomes a schema for each new page of words and each new picture as we continue throughout a book. (FN1) If this is so, all Tenniel's choices relating to subject matter, size, position, and style of i llustration must come to operate, as we proceed through Alice in Wonderland, as a kind of guide to reading Carroll's text. An examination of Tenniel's opening sequence of illustrations as they appeared on the page in the 1866 edition of Alice in Wonderland(FN2) will therefore begin to reveal Tenniel's preoccupations, the kind of interpretation of Carroll's text he is nterested in making. As William Empson pointed out in 1935, two aspects of Alice are traditional in children's stories: the idea of characters of unusual size (miniatures and giants) and the idea of the talking beast. (FN3) Tenniel's opening drawing, the White Rabbit at the head of chapter 1, draws on both these traditions. The rabbit occupies a point between animal and human, simultaneously both these things and neither of them, an implication hardly made so firmly by Carroll's text.The rabbitness of the rabbit is emphasized by the meadow setting, the absence of trousers, and the careful attention paid to anatomy and p roportion. But the rabbit is slightly distorted towards the human by his upright posture, his clothing and accessories, his pose, and his human eye and hand. Less obviously, Tenniel also extends Carroll's text by offering information about the size of the rabbit. From the grass and dandelion clock (a visual joke) in the background the reader grasps the rabbit as rather larger than normal bunny size: about the size of a toddler or small child, perhaps.As this illustration was invented by Tenniel (Carroll's headpiece illustration shows Alice, her sister, and the book), the contrast is clear between Carroll, whose picture draws attention to the frame of the story, to the affectionate relationship of sisters, and thereby to Alice's membership of the human family, and Tenniel, who selects a traditional story idea that shifts the focus another way, toward a mediation between different kinds familiar from those many forms of art in which animal behavior is used to represent human behavior. In further illustrations, Tenniel offers more images suggestive of unusual relative size. The second picture, page 8, shows Alice too large to go through the little door. On page 10 she holds the bottle labeled â€Å"DRINK ME† which will shrink her; on page 15 she is growing taller, with the text elongated to match. Then comes page 18, where the frame and larger size suggest that here is an important picture. In it the human/animal rabbit and the idea of Alice's unusual size occur together.Alice looks gigantic in relation to the hallway, and the White Rabbit, normal size for the hallway (it appears) but perhaps (in that case) outsize for a rabbit, is much reduced from the importance he assumed in the first illustration and is shown fleeing from her terrifying figure. The pool of tears illustration on page 26 also relates to these themes. Here a fully clad human, Alice, is depicted much the same size as the unclothed mouse with which she swims.Note, too, that in the text, Alic e frightens the mouse away as she had previously frightened the rabbit, although this time it is by talking about her pet, her cat Dinah. The reader who ponders this opening sequence of illustrations might reflect that Alice would also be frightened of Dinah if she met her while still mouse-sized. The schemata, then, direct the reader towards a cluster of ideas in which animal fears and anxieties about survival are connected with images of lesser or greater relative size. FN4) Tenniel appears to have arrived at this interpretation independently: while he does frequently follow Carroll's designs closely in the subject and overall approach to an illustration (Michael Hancher provides some useful opportunities to make comparisons),(FN5) of the pictures just discussed only the one of Alice growing taller at the head of chapter 2 very much resembles a parallel drawing in Carroll's manuscript.Moreover, when Tenniel does follow Carroll in choice of subject he usually makes significant chan ges in treatment: Tenniel's Alice, for instance, having slipped into the pool of tears, is very much more alarmed than Carroll's Alice. (FN6) Edward Hodnett, who reviewed Tenniel's work for the Alice books picture by picture, makes rather slighting remarks about several of the designs in this opening sequence: those on pages 8 and 10 are â€Å"too matter-of-fact to be necessary,† the â€Å"elongated Alice stands merely looking round-eyed,† and the second vignette of Alice swimming with the mouse â€Å"makes the first superfluous. (FN7) Hodnett seems to me to have missed the point. These designs are in my view extremely consistent in seeking and developing a particular nexus of ideas. Despite the evident connection between many Tenniel illustrations and Carroll's own illustrations, then, this is clearly Tenniel's own interpretation. But if this is so, what is to be made of it?My thesis in this paper is that through his animal drawings, Tenniel offers a visual angle on the text of Alice in Wonderland that evokes the life sciences, natural history, and Darwinian ideas about evolution, ideas closely related by Tenniel to Alice's size changes, and to how these affect the animals she meets. (FN8) As I will show, this is partly a matter of Tenniel's â€Å"drawing out† an underlying field of reference in Carroll's text. I will also argue, however, that when Tenniel's approach to his animal subjects is compared to that in earlier and contemporary illustrated natural istory books, the viewer is conscious of resemblances which indicate that Tenniel's pictures are best situated and read in that context. The effect of the initial sequence described above, for instance, is that as chapter 3 unfolds Alice's encounters with various different creatures, the illustrations begin to re-create Alice itself as a kind of zany natural history for children. Our post-Freudian view of Alice in Wonderland tends to be of a private, heavily encoded, inward exploration or adventure.But Tenniel's reading, I would argue, offers us an outward-looking text, a public adventure, a jocular reflection on the natural history craze, on reading about natural history, and on Darwin's controversial new theory of natural selection. I will return to Tenniel as reader later, but in order to establish that this interpretation is no mere add-on but a genuine response to the text, I must first deal with science, natural history, and evolutionary ideas as themes that Carroll himself originates.Interest in contemporary ideas about the animal kingdom is signaled early on in Alice in Wonderland, in chapter 2, when Alice finds that the well-known children's recitation piece â€Å"How doth the little busy bee† has been mysteriously ousted from her mind by new verses that celebrate a predator, the crocodile. Carroll's parody of Isaac Watts's pious poem for children(FN9) thereby establishes his book's reference to a newer, more scientific view of nature–appro aching a controversially Darwinist view.It does this by mocking and displacing the worldview often called natural theology. According to natural theology, a set of convictions much touted in children's reading, God's existence can be deduced from the wondrous design of his creation. The universe is benign and meaningful, a book of signs (like the industrious bee) of God's benevolent and educative intentions just waiting to be read by humans. Carroll's crocodile, all tooth and claw, signifies other things: amorality, the struggle for existence, predation of the weaker by the stronger.Readers of Alice in Wonderland are also likely to notice that the animal characters do not behave or talk much like animals in traditional fairy tales or fables. They are neither helpers nor donors nor monsters nor prophetic truth-tellers, the main narrative functions of animals in traditional fairy tales,(FN10) but nor are they the exemplary figures illustrative of human fallibilities and moralities fam iliar from fables. They do not teach lessons about kindness to animals, as animals in children's stories often did, and they do not much resemble the creatures in nursery rhymes or jingles or Edward Lear's nonsensical poems either.Instead, they talk, chopping logic, competing with Alice and each other, and often mentioning things â€Å"natural† animals might be imagined to talk about, like fear, death, and being eaten. I think Denis Crutch is also roughly right when he points out that there is in Alice a hierarchy of animals equivalent to the Victorian class system but also suggesting a competitive model of nature: the white rabbit, caterpillar, and March Hare seem to be gentlemen, frog and fish are footmen, Bill the lizard is bullied by everybody, hedgehogs and flamingos are made use of, and the dormouse and the guinea pigs are victimized by larger animals and by humans. FN11) William Empson's 1935 essay notes how Carroll's ideas and manuscript illustrations associate evolut ionary theories with Alice in Wonderland. (FN12) This is a crucial point and, I believe, the best explanation for the presence of so many animals in Wonderland. It was after all Carroll who put a dodo, best known for being extinct, into the text,(FN13) and Carroll who first included an ape, that key symbol of evolutionary debate, in his drawing of the motley crowd of beasts in the pool of tears.But Carroll's evolutionary reference is much more extensive than Empson found it, for a Darwinist view of life as competitive struggle is also promoted by Alice, who–apparently unconsciously, as if she really cannot help it–repeatedly reminds us that in life one must either eat or be eaten. Alice will keep talking about Dinah to the little creatures she meets who are the natural victims of cats (26-27), she has to admit to the pigeon that she herself has eaten eggs (73), and in the Mock Turtle scene she has to check herself rather than reveal that she has eaten lobster and whiti ng (148, 152).The Mock Turtle, of course, is a very creature of the table, while Dinah the predator, the aboveground cat, has a place maintained for her in Wonderland by the Cheshire Cat, a friendly but slightly sinister appearing and disappearing cat whose most significant body part is his grinning, tooth-filled mouth (he grins like the crocodile, as Nina Auerbach has noted). (FN14) The â€Å"little bright-eyed terrier† of which the aboveground Alice is so fond (27) also has other-selves in Wonderland, Fury in the Mouse's Tale, the puppy in chapter 4.Moreover, the Mouse's Tale–the next poem in the book after the crocodile poem–talks about predation as if it were a legal process. The reader should therefore take the hint and connect the animal â€Å"eat or be eaten† motif elsewhere in the story with the trial scene in the last stage of the book. Carroll has the White Rabbit make this association of ideas when he mutters â€Å"The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws!Oh my fur and whiskers! She'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets! † (41). This is one of those moments when Alice reveals its ferocious undercurrent. The White Rabbit here anticipates legal execution as simultaneous with the process of being prepared for table: that is, these â€Å"civilized† human behaviors are proffered by Carroll as analogous to predation by a â€Å"natural† enemy, ferrets.Alice herself, by kicking Bill the Lizard up the chimney (an incident memorably illustrated by Tenniel in a very funny picture) and by looking on approvingly while the guinea pigs are so unkindly treated in court, inverts the theme of kindness to animals established in more orthodox children's literature like Maria Edgeworth's tale of â€Å"Simple Susan,† where a girl's pet lamb is saved from the slaughterer's knife. FN15) In Alice in Wonderland there is humorous delight in the misappropriation of the creatures in the croquet scene, and the re are many other versions of a cruel carnival in the book: for instance, Alice imagines herself being set to watch a mousehole by her own cat. She also resents â€Å"being ordered about by mice and rabbits† (46)–a phrase that suggests the â€Å"world upside down† of carnival but which might also be taken as summing up the new evolutionary predicament of humanity.Fallen down the rabbit hole from her lordly position at the top of the Great Chain of Being, Alice instead finds herself, through a series of size changes, continually being repositioned in the food chain. The importance of the theme of predation, â€Å"the motif of eating and being eaten,† is such that it has attracted a number of commentaries. It is fully described by Margaret Boe Birns in â€Å"Solving the Mad Hatter's Riddle† and by Nina Auerbach in â€Å"Alice and Wonderland: A Curious Child. (FN16) Birns remarks in opening her essay that â€Å"Most of the creatures in Wonderland ar e relentless carnivores, and they eat creatures who, save for some outer physical differences, are very like themselves, united, in fact, by a common ‘humanity. ‘† Birns therefore even cites a crocodile-eating fish as a case of â€Å"cannibalism,†(FN17) quoting in support of this idea Alice's â€Å"Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena and you're a bone! (Looking-Glass, 8). She also remarks that Wonderland contains creatures whose only degree of self-definition is expressing a desire to be eaten or drunk, and offers other comments on scenes in Through the Looking-Glass where, as she puts it, â€Å"food can become human, human beings can become food. â€Å"(FN18) I do not always find â€Å"cannibal† readings supported by the parts of the text in question.Auerbach also makes claims about cannibalism, but a little differently, referring the idea of â€Å"eat or be eaten† back to Alice, her â€Å"subtly cannibalistic hunger,†(F N19) the â€Å"unconscious cannibalism involved in the very fact of eating and the desire to eat. â€Å"(FN20) Auerbach associates this interpretation with Dodgson's own attitude to food. But textual support for the quality Auerbach calls Alice's cannibalism seems lacking. Alice does not really eye the other animals in her pool of tears with â€Å"a strange hunger† as Auerbach suggests,(FN21) nor do the Hatter and the Duchess â€Å"sing savage songs about eating† as Auerbach claims. FN22) To describe a panther eating an owl as cannibalism, Auerbach(FN23) must assume (like Birns) that the creatures in Alice are definitely to be read as humans in fur and feathers. My argument is that they need not be so read: the point might be their and Alice's animal nature. Nor does the food at Queen Alice's dinner party at the end of Through the Looking-Glass â€Å"begin to eat the guests†(FN24) as Auerbach claims, although food does misbehave in Looking-Glass and the Puddin g might have this in mind (Looking-Glass, 206).Overall, however, in my view the preoccupation of Alice in Wonderland with creatures eating other creatures is much better accounted for by the â€Å"more sinister and Darwinian aspects of nature†(FN25) which Auerbach and Birns(FN26) also recognize as a part of the Alice books. I now return to my main argument, that Tenniel's illustrations pick up on but also extend this Darwinist and natural history field of reference in Carroll's text.As already noted, Tenniel's drawings of animals do not stylistically suggest a â€Å"children's fairy tale†(FN27) but rather produce Alice as a kind of natural history by resembling those in the plentiful and lavishly illustrated popular natural histories of the day (see figs. 1 and 2). My argument therefore differs from Michael Hancher's, which emphasizes social and satirical contexts by comparing pictures of various Wonderland and Looking-Glass creatures to those in Tenniel's and others' Punch cartoons. FN28) While Hancher establishes the relationship with Punch as an important one, however, the most convincing animal resemblances he reproduces from Alice in Wonderland (I am not here concerned with Through the Looking-Glass) amount to only two pictures, the Cheshire Cat in a tree resembling the â€Å"Up a Tree† cartoon of a raccoon,(FN29) and the ape on page 35 of Alice resembling the ape in â€Å"Bomba's Big Brother,†(FN30) Tenniel's frog footman and fish footman are Grandvillian figures with animal heads but human bodies, and also evidently suggest social commentary.But they stand apart from the argument I am presenting here because no effort is made by Tenniel to present them as animals. The satiric side of Tenniel's animal illustrations in Alice, hinted at by echoes of Punch, is never very dominant, then, and should not be seen as precluding another field of reference in natural history reading.The scope, persistence, eccentricity, and variety of t he natural history craze–or rather, series of crazes–that swept Britain between 1820 and 1870 are described for the general reader by Lynn Barber in The Heyday of Natural History and by others in more specialized publications, and need not be redescribed here. (FN31) The importance of illustration in contemporary natural history publishing, however, is central to my argument and must be touched on briefly.Even in the midcentury climate of Victorian self-improvement and self-education, the volume of this well-established branch of publishing is impressive: the standard of illustration in popular periodicals and books was high, and sales were also impressively high in Victorian terms. Rev. John George Wood, according to his son and biographer Theodore Wood, a pioneer in writing natural history in nontechnical language, had reasonable sales for his one-volume The Illustrated Natural History in 1851 and very good sales for Common Objects of the Sea Shore in 1857.But when R outledge brought out his lavishly illustrated Common Objects of the Country in 1858 it sold 100,000 copies within a week of publication, and the first edition was followed by many others, a figure worth comparing with Darwin's more modest first-edition sell-out of 1,250 copies–or, indeed, with Dickens's sales of Bleak House (1852), which were 35,000 in the first two years.The result of Wood's success was a much grander publishing venture by Routledge, Wain and Routledge, a three-volume The Illustrated Natural History with new drawings including some by Joseph Wolf: volume 1 (1859) was on mammals, volume 2 (1862) on birds–the frontispiece is reproduced in figure 2–and volume 3 (1863) on reptiles, fish, and mollusks. FN32) Wood's astonishingly prolific career as a popularizer, however, of which I have described only a tiny fraction (he was dashing off such productions as Anecdotes of Animal Life, Every Boy's Book, and Feathered Friends in this decade as well), is in line with much other more or less theologically inclined and intellectually respectable natural history publishing in the 1850s and 1860s, often by clergymen.Children were important consumers of such books and periodicals and sometimes are obviously their main market, and a number of fictional works, such as Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1863) and Margaret Gatty's Parables from Nature, of which the first four series appeared between 1855 and 1864 (that is, in the decade prior to Carroll's publication of Alice in Wonderland), capitalize on the contemporary conviction that natural history was a subject especially appropriate for children. (FN33)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Tenniel connects his Alice and natural history illustration by a number of stylistic allusions.He borrows the conventional techniques of realism, such as the cross-hatching and fine lines used to suggest light, shade, and solidity of form in the Mock Turtle's shell and flippers, or the crabs' and lobster's claws. Accu racy in proportion and a high level of anatomical detail are equally important. As can be seen by comparing figures 1 and 2, too, the grouping of subjects may also be suggestive–a point first noted by Narda Schwartz, who also drew attention to the resemblance between the etching of the dodo in Wood's three-volume natural history and Tenniel's dodo. FN34) Also significant is the way Tenniel's design showing the creatures recently emerged from the pool of tears includes a rather furry-haired Alice among, and on a level with, the beasts and birds. Carroll's own pictures for the pool of tears sequence have the quite different effect of separating Alice from the animal world, a point 1 will return to. Another Tenniel habit that suggests natural history illustration is his provision of sketchy but realistic and appropriate backgrounds.Here Tenniel's viewpoint sometimes miniaturizes the reader, setting the viewpoint low and thus letting us in on the ground level of a woodland world magnified for our information (compare figs. 3 and 4). When Alice stands on tiptoe to peep over the edge of a mushroom, when she carries the pig baby in the woods or talks to the Cheshire Cat, Tenniel uses a typical natural history technique, placing a familiar woodland flower–a foxglove–in the background in such away as to remind the reader of Alice's size at that time.Similarly, Tenniel makes use of the difference between vignettes for simple or single subjects, and framed illustrations, including full-page illustrations, for larger-scale and more important and complex subjects, in a way that very closely resembles a similar distinction in natural history illustration–popular natural histories like Wood's tend to use large, framed illustrations to make generalized statements, showing, for instance, a group of different kinds of rodent, while vignettes present an individual of one species.And above all, although Tenniel certainly endows his creatures with perso nality and facial expressions, his animals, unlike his humans, are never grotesques. In fact, nineteenth-century natural history illustration also delights in endowing the most solidly â€Å"realistic† creatures with near-human personality or expressiveness, a quality that Tenniel builds on to good effect, for instance, in his depiction of the lawyer-parrots, which remind one of Edward Lear's magnificent macaws (see figs. 5, 6, and 7).Thus while Tenniel's animal portraits reflect the Victorians' pleasure in their expanding knowledge of the variety of creatures in the world, they also faithfully reproduce the contemporary assimilation of this variety to familiar human social types, a sleight of hand of which Audubon, for example, is a master: his Great Blue Heron manages also to subtly suggest a sly old gentleman, probably shortsighted, and with side-whiskers. In the visual world inhabited by Tenniel, then, the differing works of Audubon and Grandville (the latter could depict a heron as a priest merely by giving the bird spectacles) slide together.Where few of Tenniel's successors have been able to resist the temptation to turn the animals in Alice in Wonderland into cartoon or humorous creations, though, it is Tenniel's triumph that he drew his creatures straight, or almost straight: the Times review of Alice in Wonderland (December 26, 1865) particularly noted for praise Tenniel's â€Å"truthfulness †¦ in the delineation of animal forms. â€Å"(FN35) It was, indeed, his skill in drawing animals that first established his reputation as an illustrator, when he provided illustrations for Rev. Thomas James's Aesop's Fables in 1848. FN36)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Can sources for Tenniel's remarkable animal drawings be more precisely identified? An early biographer of Tenniel records his acknowledgment that he liked to spend time observing the animals at the Zoo. (FN37) However, comparisons between pictures reveal that in addition Tenniel almost certainly con sulted scientific illustrations or recalled them for his Alice in Wonderland drawings. For example, in the mid-eighteenth century George Edwards produced a hand-colored engraving of a dodo which, he wrote, he had copied from a painting of a live dodo brought from Mauritius to Holland.The original painting was acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, passed on to Edwards, and given by him to the British Museum. (FN38) In 1847 C. A. Marlborough painted a picture of a dodo, which is now in the Ashmolean Museum (it was reproduced on the cover of the magazine Oxford Today in 1999). And in 1862 the second volume of J. G. Wood's The Illustrated Natural History includes a picture of a dodo. (FN39) Compare all these with Tenniel's dodo (figs. 8, 9, 10, and 11): they surely either have a common ancestor or are copies one from the other. The dodo is a special case in that Tenniel could hardly have studied one at the London zoo.But I wish to put forward a claim that Wood's 1851 one-volume and, later, expan ded three-volume Illustrated Natural History were very probably familiar to Carroll and the small Liddells and also to Tenniel, not only because Wood's dodo illustration is a possible source for Tenniel's but because these volumes also display smiling crocodiles, baby eagles in their nest, and the lory,(FN40) as well as illustrations of numerous more familiar animals that appear in the words and/or pictures of Alice, including the edible crab, the lobster, the frog, the dormouse, guinea pigs, flamingos, varieties of fancy pigeon, and so forth.Given the compendious nature of Wood's works, this is hardly surprising, of course. But Wood must be favored as the source of animal drawings most probably known to Tenniel for the further reason that Wood illustrations often quite strongly resemble Tenniel illustrations, as readers may judge by comparing figures 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, to the toucan, eagle, and crab from Alice (see fig. 1) and the lobster and dormouse (see Alice in Wonderland, 157 and 97). (FN41)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  No matter how good Tenniel's famous visual memory, he is unlikely to have drawn such a menagerie without some research.Hancher noted the strong resemblance between a Bewick hedgehog (from the General History of Quadrupeds, 1790, often reprinted) and the evasive croquet-ball hedgehog at Alice's feet on page 121. (FN42) Bewick's hedgehog, however, had already been recycled by William Harvey for Wood's one-volume Illustrated Natural History where Tenniel is equally likely to have seen and remembered it: all three hedgehogs have the same dragging rear foot (see figs. 17, 18, and 19). This is another case, like that of the dodo, where scientific natural history illustrations have been copied, recopied, or reworked for reprinting.A similar argument could be presented about the large number of depictions of sinuous flamingos that Tenniel might have consulted. The volume of contemporary natural history publishing for children and adults, the evident cont emporary interest in illustrations of animals, and the resemblance between Tenniel's and contemporary natural history drawings have important implications: the resemblance indicates that Tenniel is here creating the context within which he wants his pictures to be read.He shows us that he saw (and wanted the viewer to be able to see) Carroll's animals as â€Å"real† animals, like those that were the objects of current scientific study and theories, at least as much as he saw them as Grandville or Punch-type instruments of social satire, or fairy-tale or fable talking beasts. (FN43)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In line with his scientific interpretation, then, Tenniel in illustrating Alice in Wonderland intensifies Carroll's reference to Darwin's theory of evolution by carrying out his own visual editing of the Carroll illustrations in the manuscript.Tenniel makes the ape appear in two consecutive illustrations: in the second, it stares thoughtfully into the eyes of the reader–appea ring to claim kinship. Tenniel includes among the creatures in these illustrations on pages 29 and 35 a fancy pigeon, perhaps a fantail or a pouter, which should in my view be taken as a direct reference to Darwin's argument from the selective breeding of fancy pigeon varieties in chapter 1 of The Origin of Species. FN44) A visual detail that Tenniel introduced into the book, the glass dome in the background to the royal garden scene on page 117, looks like the dome at the old Surrey Zoological Gardens(FN45) and therefore constitutes another reference to the study of animals. And as already noted, Tenniel does not reproduce Carroll's rather lonely image of Alice abandoned by the animals, which would have had the effect of separating her human figure from the animal ones and thus emphasizing Alice's difference from them.Instead, Tenniel provides two images of Alice among, and almost of, the animal world, developing a radical implication of Carroll's text of which Carroll himself was possibly unaware. On the other hand, Carroll's interest in predation, in the motif of â€Å"eat or be eaten,† is not one on which Tenniel expands. No doubt it would have been thought too frightening for children: one must recall the care taken by Carroll over the positioning of the Jabberwocky illustration in Through the Looking-Glass. FN46) But while Carroll's text here develops emphatically–albeit peripherally–some ideas that Tenniel could only leave aside, Tenniel's recognition of the importance of such themes is strongly demonstrated by the puppy picture. This illustration is a particularly large one, dominating the page (55) on which it appears. It is framed, and therefore gives an impression of completion and independent significance, very different from that given by the more common vignette with its intimate and fluid relationship to the text.These things make it probable that the puppy scene and its illustration were especially important in Tenniel's re ading of Alice in Wonderland. Yet commentaries on Alice in Wonderland tend to ignore the puppy scene, perhaps because critics are often most interested by Carroll's verbal nonsense, and the puppy is speechless. Indeed, Denis Crutch disapproves of the puppy as â€Å"an intruder from the ‘real' world† and Goldthwaite takes up this point, commenting that the puppy was Carroll's â€Å"most glaring aesthetic mistake in †¦Alice†Ã¢â‚¬â€œneither seems to have noticed that the hedgehogs and flamingos are also not talking beasts. (FN47) Another reader of Tenniel's illustrations, Isabelle Nieres, takes a similar line, remarking that â€Å"the full-page illustration is perhaps placing too much emphasis on Alice's encounter with the puppy. â€Å"(FN48) But what Tenniel's puppy illustration encapsulates, in my view, is the theme of the importance of relative size. Here is Alice's fearful moment of uncertainty about whether she is meeting a predator or a pet. As reader a nd Alice will discover, the puppy only wants to play.But Alice is â€Å"terribly frightened all the time at the thought it might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her coaxing† (54), and Tenniel's illustration with the thistle in the foreground towering over the tiny Alice, like many of his memorable illustrations, primarily signifies her anxiety. Later, too, Tenniel's choice of the lobster as the subject of a drawing is a visual reminder of the transformation of animals into meat: it brings the viewer uncomfortably close to recognition of kinship with the devoured, so human is the lobster and so warily is his eye fixed on the viewer's.The lobster is another illustration that Hodnett found an inexplicable presence in the text: the song in the text â€Å"provides insufficient excuse for an illustration,† he remarks. (FN49) My analysis of Tenniel's composite verbal/visual Alice in Wonderland is very different. Possibly going we ll beyond Carroll's conscious intentions, Tenniel offers a Wonderland that concurs with the evolutionist view of creation by showing animals and humans as a continuum within which the stronger or larger prey upon the smaller or weaker.The implication–one many readers of Darwin were most reluctant to accept–is that if animals are semihuman, humans may conversely be nothing but evolved animals. Alice's extraordinary size changes–in which Tenniel is so interested–therefore play a significant role in this new world, for as I already pointed out, it is through her series of size changes that Alice finds herself continually being repositioned in the food chain.Wonderland is truly the place of reversals: its theme of a world upside down is traditional, as Ronald Reichertz has reminded us in an illuminating study that positions Alice in Wonderland in relation to earlier children's reading. (FN50) Size changes can represent the topsy-turvy, of course. But while Al ice has some recognizably Jack-in-Giant-land experiences–like struggling to climb up the leg of a table–and some Tom Thumb experiences–like hiding behind a thistle–what is so weird or Wonderlandish about her story is not her sudden growth spurts but that she transforms rapidly from the small to the large and vice versa. FN51) Alice's body changes at times suggest being outsize and aggressive–for example, when she is trapped in the White Rabbit's house and terrifies the little creatures outside, or when she is accused of being an egg-stealing serpent or predator by the pigeon. But she is undersized and therefore vulnerable when she slips into the pool of tears or when she meets the puppy. (FN52) The size changes connect back to â€Å"eat or be eaten† where the dangers of large and small size, a theme especially horrifying to children, is a traditional one, found in tales of giants and ogres, Hop-o' my Thumb or Mally Whuppie. FN53) But as we h ave seen, the Tenniel/Carroll Alice in Wonderland links forward to ideas of predator and prey, eat or be eaten, and the â€Å"animal† nature of humanity, all recently given new urgency by Darwin. A contemporary illustration worth pondering that deals with these important ideas (it appeared at almost exactly the time of the publication of Alice in Wonderland) is the cover of Hardwicke's Science-Gossip: A Monthly Medium of Interchange & Gossip for Students and Lovers of Nature (January 1866).This cover represents (see fig. 20) the scientific technology that interested Carroll, as well as, more sentimentally, the small creatures and plants of woodland and seashore that are a part of the â€Å"natural history† background. These subjects, however, make a mere frame to the central illustration, both grisly and amusing, which is a depiction of the chain of predation, eat or be eaten, in action. One could hardly ask for a more succinct visual summary of this important element in the contemporary contexts of Alice.Recognition of this theme will, as well as accounting for lobster and puppy illustrations, also account for the otherwise somewhat puzzling centrality of Dinah and the Cheshire Cat in Carroll's text. Nina Auerbach quotes Florence Becker Lennon's insight that the Cheshire Cat is â€Å"Dinah's dream-self,† and certainly one or the other is more or less ever-where in Wonderland. (FN54) I think the reason for this must be that this familiar household pet best emphasizes the paradoxical difference between being large, in which state the cat is a delightful little furry companion, and being small, in which state the cat might kill you and eat you.In the Darwinian world, size can be the key to survival. And yet, Carroll selected a smiling crocodile to stand for the new view of creation. The cruelty of the Darwinian world is, in his view, somehow inseparable from delight. To suggest a context for this unexpected but quintessentially nineteenth-ce ntury state of mind,(FN55) a comparison may be made here between Carroll's poetic vision of his particular predator and Henry de la Beche's 1830 cartoon of life in A More Ancient Dorset; or, Durior Antiquior (see fig. 1). De la Beche was English despite his name, and was the first director of the British Geological Survey. According to Stephen Jay Gould, who includes it in his preface to The Book of Life, de la Beche's spirited cartoon, simultaneously grim and humorous, was â€Å"reproduced endlessly (in both legitimate and pirated editions)† and is an important model, becoming â€Å"the canonical figure of ancient life at the inception of this genre. â€Å"(FN56) In short, this is the first dinosaur picture.Victorian paintings of nature (showing a similar pleasure to Carroll's in his crocodile) do tend to center on hunting and predation–see The Stag at Bay–and de la Beche's influential image, Gould explains, became a thoroughly conventional depiction of prehi story, first, in showing a pond unnaturally crowded with wildlife (rather like Carroll's pool of tears), and second, in depicting virtually every creature in it as â€Å"either a feaster or a meal†(FN57)–something one may also feel about Carroll's characters.Particularly striking is the gusto, the pleasurably half-horrified enjoyment of bloody prehistory, in de la Beche's cartoon, which in my view is very comparable to the enjoyment of the image of the devouring crocodile in Lewis's brilliant little parody. A slightly unpleasant gusto also animates Alice in Wonderland, a book that fairly crackles with energy although the energy has always been rather hard to account for.While on the official levels of his consciousness Carroll â€Å"stood apart from the theological storms of the time,†(FN58) is it possible that the news of evolution through natural selection was, on another level of his mind, good news to him as to many other Victorians, coming as a kind of ment al liberation? Humanity might well have found crushing, at times, the requirements of moral responsibility and constant self-improvement imposed by mid-Victorian ideals of Christian duty.Alice, for one, young as she is, has already thoroughly internalized many rules of conduct, and Alice's creator, equipped as he was with what Donald Rackin has called a â€Å"rage for standards and order,†(FN59) revels in the oversetting of order (as well as disowning this oversetting thoroughly when Alice awakens from her dream). The exhilaration of an amoral anti-society in Alice in Wonderland may be, therefore, in part the exhilaration of a Darwinist dream, of selfishness without restraint.As we all know, Alice's route out of Wonderland is to grow out of it. In closing this essay a final suggestion may be made about Carroll and his self-depiction in Wonderland. If the book is full of expressions of anxiety about relative size–and the dangers of largeness and smallness–this ma y not merely be because a new theory of evolution by natural selection had enlivened this ancient theme. Possibly Carroll had adapted this theory as a private way of symbolizing for himself the anxieties and dangers of his relationship withAlice and the other Liddell children. In Morton N. Cohen's biography Lewis Carroll, a table numbers the occurrences of guilty self-reproach and resolves to amend in Carroll's diaries and shows how these peaked at the time of his deepest involvement with the Liddell family. (FN60) Is it possible that Carroll, far from suffering a repressed interest in little girls, consciously acknowledged and wrestled in private prayer with his own impossible desires?It seems to become ever more difficult, rather than easier, to read this aspect of Carroll's life. In a recent Times Literary Supplement (February 8, 2002), Karoline Leach argues that Carroll's friendships with children were emphasized in his nephew Stuart Collingwood's biography to distract attention from the potentially more scandalous fact of the older Carroll's friendships with mature women.A letter in response by Jenny Woolf, on February 15, points out that Carroll's sisters continued to recognize Carroll's women friends, so obviously perceived these friendships as chaste, but reminds us of the possibility that Dodgson may have cultivated girl children as friends because of their innocence, because they were sexually â€Å"safe† to him, rather than because they were dangerously enticing.A response to this position, of course, would be that the assiduity with which Carroll cultivated friendships with small girls seems out of proportion to such a purpose. Whatever the truth of these matters, it appears to me that Carroll, distressed by the emotional battles documented in his diary, might well have developd a set of imaginative scenarios in which a little girl's growing up or down is reversible according to her own desire: this offers one kind of explanation of some of the more mysterious events of Wonderland.The dangerous but exhilarating aspects of Carroll's relationship with his little friends seems to fit neatly into a â€Å"tooth and claw† model of society, too, for each party to such a friendship, although acting in innocence and affection, has a kind of reserve capacity to destroy, to switch from pet to predator. Carroll might even have dramatized himself as a beast in a Darwinian world in relation to these little girls who are never the right size for him.At times he is only the pet–a romping, anxious-to-please, but oversized puppy. But there are other times when he might fear becoming the predator, a crocodile whose welcoming smile masks the potential to devour. And conversely, of course, Carroll's beloved little friends had the monstrous capacity to destroy him, morally and socially, if he should ever overstep the boundaries of decency and trust.Tenniel, presumably unaware of any secret underside to Carroll's life, was anyw ay debarred by Victorian regard for children as viewers from depicting the savage underside of Alice. But by referring the reader outward to current controversies and current interests in the natural sciences, he has succeeded wonderfully in rendering in art both Carroll's, and his own, grasp of the importance of a new worldview, and of the explosive anxiety and exhilaration to which it gave birth. ADDED MATERIAL ROSE LOVELL-SMITH

Free Essays on Paul Sperry

For my first concert report, I opted to attend Paul Sperry’s guest appearance at the Staples Family Concert Hall on February 15th. I chose this date mainly because I had never heard of him and I’m always open to exposing myself to new artists. Also, he’s a tenor and so am I. My expectations were few seeing as how I had never heard of Paul Sperry prior to this concert. I suppose I would say that I expected a quaint evening of serenades; perhaps some Beethoven or even a piece by Stroope. What I experienced instead, was an unentertaining evening of very strange and whimsical selections that I later learned are referred to as â€Å"American Folksongs†. He performed Robert Beaser’s, â€Å"The Seven Deadly Sins†-a suite with one movement for every deadly sin. To me, this piece was fairly redundant and uninteresting. There was very little melodic variation and (to borrow a word from the mainstream music arena) it wasn’t â€Å"catchy†. I don’t know if I’m just shallow or unintelligent, but the lyrical content made little to no sense to me. It vaguely described consequences and actions concerning the particular â€Å"sin†. But they really didn’t follow much of a pattern. Mr. Sperry, however, performed the pieces well. His voice is well-trained and very powerful. I have no criticism for his execution of this piece. The next piece I’ll discuss is Tom Cipullo’s â€Å"Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House†. This is suite written from the perspective of a middle-class neighborhood resident lamenting about household quirks and neighboring dogs that remind them of why they don’t own firearms. This piece was amusing at times; particularly the final movement that whines about the common neighborhood complaint of a barking dog. While I was able to relate to many of the quirks that Cipullo pointed out in this piece, I was less than entertained by it. It struck me as fairly shallow and poorly written. The music was plain and... Free Essays on Paul Sperry Free Essays on Paul Sperry For my first concert report, I opted to attend Paul Sperry’s guest appearance at the Staples Family Concert Hall on February 15th. I chose this date mainly because I had never heard of him and I’m always open to exposing myself to new artists. Also, he’s a tenor and so am I. My expectations were few seeing as how I had never heard of Paul Sperry prior to this concert. I suppose I would say that I expected a quaint evening of serenades; perhaps some Beethoven or even a piece by Stroope. What I experienced instead, was an unentertaining evening of very strange and whimsical selections that I later learned are referred to as â€Å"American Folksongs†. He performed Robert Beaser’s, â€Å"The Seven Deadly Sins†-a suite with one movement for every deadly sin. To me, this piece was fairly redundant and uninteresting. There was very little melodic variation and (to borrow a word from the mainstream music arena) it wasn’t â€Å"catchy†. I don’t know if I’m just shallow or unintelligent, but the lyrical content made little to no sense to me. It vaguely described consequences and actions concerning the particular â€Å"sin†. But they really didn’t follow much of a pattern. Mr. Sperry, however, performed the pieces well. His voice is well-trained and very powerful. I have no criticism for his execution of this piece. The next piece I’ll discuss is Tom Cipullo’s â€Å"Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House†. This is suite written from the perspective of a middle-class neighborhood resident lamenting about household quirks and neighboring dogs that remind them of why they don’t own firearms. This piece was amusing at times; particularly the final movement that whines about the common neighborhood complaint of a barking dog. While I was able to relate to many of the quirks that Cipullo pointed out in this piece, I was less than entertained by it. It struck me as fairly shallow and poorly written. The music was plain and...

Technical Writing Career

Technical Writing Career A technical writing career is a great if you’re the type of person who enjoys writing and if you have a good command of your grammar. However, the ability to write isn’t the only thing one needs to break into this field. One needs to understand how to take complex information on many different topics and be able to organize and translate them in such a way that the general public can understand it. As our society moves forward into the technological era, the demand for technical writes will grow, making a technical writing career a very viable career option for years to come. There are many opportunities in the realm of technical writing careers for one to choose from. There are opportunities from being a freelance technical writer or working as part of a writing team within an organization. The technical writing field is growing so rapidly that if you have the skills, you’ll find yourself in demand. Some things to keep in mind when considering a technical writing career are what type of writer you want to be. If you choose to be a freelance writer that takes on an entire project then your skills need to be quite considerable as opposed to being part of a team. When choosing a technical writing career, it may be advisable to begin as part of a team so that you can develop individual skills as needed while learning about the whole aspect from other experienced writers. Working on a team in a technical writing career offers one the opportunity to learn under experienced technical writers who can support and advise you in your work. Typically one would start off working under someone that would monitor your work closely. In most cases as part of a team, you would be responsible for a few documents in the beginning. Then as you begin to gain experience, you can expect to be given more challenging assignments. A good writer who wants to break in to a technical writing career will obse rve all the processes carefully and learn all that’s needed. If you ever hope to become a freelance technical writer, you’ll need to know all aspects of technical writing in order to truly impress a company into hiring you and keeping your services. As a lone, freelance writer, you would be expected to be responsible for an entire technical writing project, which can be quite formidable. A technical writing career means having the skills to evaluate the topic while analyzing outside requirements in order to come up with the information needed. Templates would be needed for the documentation books and you would have to possess the skills to design these. As a lone writer, you’d be the one writing all the books, guides, online information, etc. In order to have a successful freelance technical writing career, one must make sure the whole package is accurate and well developed before releasing it for public viewing. Many times if you are hired as the only technical writer, you’ll be working with people who have no experience in technical writing and you do not want criticism to come back into the company about your writing. This indicates to your employers that you’ve put out sloppy work and it could adversely affect the product you just wrote about. In a technical writing career, one needs to spend time building up the necessary skills in order to establish yourself in the field as a reputable, professional technical writer. A technical writing career is an area that offers great growth but one needs to be prepared with the necessary knowledge and skills to truly impress not only your employers but the public that you are putting the information out to as well. The better your skills, the more this will set you above the rest and you’ll be in demand. If you are one who not only enjoys writing but also has a good command of the English language and grammar and possess excellent research and organizational skills then check out a technical writing career.

Pleaes .Requires.Overview.Paraphrase..Correct grammar Essay

Pleaes .Requires.Overview.Paraphrase..Correct grammar - Essay Example (Pauline and Young 1984, 30) Research methodology is crucial to this research, since it assists the researcher to identify the issues and variables that are supposed to determine and the result as well as the conclusion of this study. Meanwhile it also helps the researcher to envisage how the issues and variables may bring about changes in the impacts (Weinberger 2007). In this research paper, the researcher has attempted to employ a mixed method –a term that refers to the use of both the quantitative and qualitative research tools and measures in order to draw consequential conclusions depending on the findings. Indeed a qualitative-quantitative research method focuses on an integrated data collection and analyzing system that inquires into both questionnaire and interview data and analyzes them in a single study or in multiple studies. (Cresswell et al 2002, 3) In this paper an integrated research method will be employed to collect data, through both questionnaires and inter views, which are related to maintenance and design factor and to combine, compare and analyze those data using the qualitative-quantitative research tools in the analysis chapter of this paper. ... tial since it enables both the researcher and the readers to focus on the aim of the paper, to guide themselves to the end of the paper and at the same time, to provide the readers with the scope to think on the declared aims on their own alongside the progress of the research. (Phillips and Phillips 2008) This research paper primarily focused on collecting data that are related to design and maintenance defects as well as their impacts on the maintenance and management of hospital buildings in Saudi Arabia. Secondarily, it explores the concerning roles, responsibilities, obligations, and liabilities of the agents who are involved in the design and maintenance performance. Last but not the least, the project’s humanistic aim was to make the people related to the Hospital building’s design and maintenance aware of the drawbacks and defects and to enable them to play significant roles in the economic and social well-being of Saudi Arabia through encouraging reform and imp rovement in the design and maintenance protocols associated with hospital buildings in the region. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY PLAN The areas that this research projected had targeted to focus on were of two different qualities. The maintenance area of this research project involves people’s, perception of the convenience of the building, who used the buildings more or less frequently. Therefore data for this area were collected and analyzed through the qualitative research method. Again due to the technical nature of the design defects, the data in this area will be collected and analyzed through quantitative method. Indeed both of the two research methods have merits and demerits. In the following discussion, the research methods’ advantages, reliability, validity and limitations will be discussed

Explication of Shakespeare Passage Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Explication of Shakespeare Passage - Essay Example By â€Å"Powder† Friar refers to gunpowder and triumph of fire and gunpowder is the bright show of fireworks that happen when the two come into contact. Consume means consume each other. Once the fireworks is over, theres nothing left. Just observe the smoke! Friar explains that the ecstasy of love is not an everlasting feature; the experience of such pleasures is impermanent and fleeting. This is Friars metaphor. "The sweetest honey / Is loathsome in his own deliciousness / And in the taste confounds the appetite" (2.6.11-13). Even the sweetest honey consumed in quantity over and over again, will lead to vomiting-sensation. Even the best of things, need to be appreciated moderately. The Friar, in conclusion, advises Romeo to "love moderately; long love doth so; / Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow" (2.6.14-15). He wants him to tread the path of love with utmost caution, and think properly about the consequences of his actions. This is s story engulfed in bitter conflicts related to love. This love-hate situations develop in strange circumstances and all of a sudden! The play is set in Verona, Italy. In a street brawl between the two feuding families, Montagues and Capulets, The Prince of Verona intervenes and cautions them that further breach of peace will be punishable by death. Later, Count Paris takes up the issue with Lord Capulet about marrying his daughter but Capulet doesnt agree as Juliet is only thirteen. He asks Paris to wait for two more years and requests him to attend a preplanned Capulet ball. Lady Capulet and the nurse of Juliet persuade Juliet to accept courtship of Paris. In a scene at the house of Montague, Benvolio has a talk with his cousin Romeo, Lord Montagues son, about his recent depression. The root cause is Romeos infatuation for a girl named Rosaline, one of Capulets nieces. On being persuaded by