Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Children’s Hospital Initiatives

* Children’s Hospital and Clinics HBR Case 9-302-050, Does Children’s Hospital offer a safe environment for patients? Children’s Hospital and Clinics, established in 1994 is a 270 bed hospital providing medical services in 6 facilities Provides medical services in 6 facilities throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Starting from May, 1999 since Julie Morath joined Children’s Hospital, the hospital had implemented multiple safety initiatives. Under leadership of Julie Morath, the Chief Operating Officer at Children and other executives had assembled a core team of influential people to lead the safety movement. It crafted patient safety culture, in form of patient safety dialogs to educate staff, blameless reporting system, and disclosure policy. Developed infrastructure in form of patient safety steering committee to oversee safety initiatives and focused event studies. For example, the hospital implemented a medication administration project with safety action teams and good catch logs. Children’s followed systematic approach to patient safety under strong leadership, gained support throughout the organization, actively involved employees at different level by creating focus groups, improved communication within the organization and got involved in efforts to increase patient-physician trust. But do all of these efforts make Children’s Hospital a safe environment for patients? The answer to that is not clear at this point. There is no clear way to measure effectiveness of these programs. It does reflect that Children’s Hospital has an attitude towards learning from errors; not hiding them and that eventually may lead to decrease in such errors. More commonly, errors are caused by faulty systems, processes, and conditions that lead people to make mistakes or fail to prevent them. Children’s by addressing the issue at its core may have a better chance to fix it. By having such system in place, they can improve patient-hospital trust that makes patients comfortable knowing that they will be communicated regarding any such errors. No hospital can ever become error free as† to err is human† but it is of paramount importance how those errors are being communicated to the patients and what hospital is learning from these errors and taking action to prevent them from happening again. Those cumulative efforts may lead to a safer place in which the patients will find comfort, trust and safety.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Literary Analysis: Sonny’s Blues

In â€Å"Sonny’s Blues,† by James Baldwin, the two main characters, Sonny and the narrator, face many conflicts with each other. These conflicts all contribute and lead to the climax of the story, the scene in the narrator’s apartment. The first conflict between these two characters occurs after their mother dies when the narrator discovers Sonny’s dream to become a jazz piano player, which the narrator believes is a waste of his life. Their inability to see eye-to-eye on this matter is what causes so much tension in their relationship throughout the rest of their lives. The narrator feels that it was his job to steer Sonny in the right direction after remembering the promise he made to his mother, a promise he made before she died. To help his brother, the narrator decides Sonny should live with his wife’s family, Sonny reluctantly agrees, which leads to the next conflict. The narrator believes that it is in Sonny’s best interest for him to live with his wife’s family while he is finishing college. Sonny is not thrilled with the idea but reluctantly agrees in order to avoid another argument. While living with his sister-in-law’s family, Sonny spends all of his spare time practicing the piano, which his hosts do not care for. Then, despite Sonny’s efforts to hide it, his sister-in-law’s mother discovers Sonny’s truancy. The two fight and Sonny understands the burden he has put onto the family, causing him to join the navy. When Sonny finally comes back from the war, the two brothers finally see each other weeks after Sonny returned home, leading to the climax of the story. When Sonny returned from the war to New York, the two brothers did not see each other for quite some time. When they finally did see each other they get into a huge fight about Sonny’s decisions in life. The narrator is upset about Sonny’s drug abuse and decision to waste his life and become a jazz pianist. Sonny is angered at his brother for abandoning him when he needed his brother most and for his brother’s inability to see him as a musician. The narrator learns about Sonny’s frustration but still cannot see his brother’s point of view and ends up walking away commenting on how Sonny will need him one day. This brutally honest argument serves as the climax between these brothers in the story. The two conflicts at the beginning of the story pave the way to the major argument towards the end of the story. The reoccurring problem between these two is the narrator’s inability to understand and be there for his brother. Each of the conflict between the two never gets resolved, just brushed off to the side, building up tensions between the two and end up boiling over. The narrator believes that his brother is below him because of his drug abuse and life choices. Most of his life he wants nothing to do with him because he cannot understand him. He ends up pushing Sonny away for most of the story after each conflict, not caring where Sonny is or whether he is alive or not. Unfortunately this is a reoccurring problem with sibling, especially with the older sibling. Like the narrator, many older siblings believe that they know best for their younger sibling, and when their brother/sister goes against what they say the two begin to become distant. Luckily for Sonny and the narrator, they were able to put aside their differences and the narrator was there for Sonny when he performed, and watching him on stage allows the narrator to finally understand Sonny and realize what he is made of. Due to their upbringing and the differences between Sonny and the narrator, they went through many conflicts in the story which all led up to the climax of the story. Their arguments all consisted of the narrator’s misunderstanding of Sonny and who he really is, and trying to change who he wanted to be. Also, each of their arguments never were really solved, just brushed of to the side causing more tension between the two. All these arguments eventually add up to the final big argument between the two. Surprisingly enough, this argument is what brings them together and allows the narrator to get to know Sonny and learn that he never really knew who his brother was.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Being a Health Professional for Global Environment

The modern professional world has changed the recent years forcing many professions to embrace the notion of a global environment. The International Council of Nurses exists to ensure global uniformity in standards applied by all nurses. Nurses can find themselves working in any environment. Such changes in the system call for embracing global issues in nursing through preparing nurses who can work in a global context. This essay discusses the health professional in a global environment and literacies that inform working in such an environment. Working in a global environment calls for global nurses who are culturally sensitive, collaborative and understand the conditions that affect patients around the globe. (Thomas & Galla, 2012, p. 5). Nurses understand that the global health environment is diverse and presents different opportunities and challenges that they have to deal with. These practitioners work in different settings like government agencies, hospitals, educational and research institutions or even non-profit organizations. Mary is a 78-year-old widow indigenous Australian from Old Town Road 8035, she is a retired school support officer who is respected in her munity as a leading elder (City of Horizon 2018, p.4). Having worked in a school she, speaks good English, which makes it easy to municate with her. Before admission she had lately been experiencing health problems over recent months like increased lethargy, dizziness, and increased headache. She has a history of chronic otitis media, tonsillectomy, and measles in childhood (City of Horizon 2018, p.5). She also suffers from a poorly managed osteoporosis, hypercoletroemia and cardiovascular disease. She has been admitted in the hospital and diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 2, she is also suffering from ischemic stroke and penicillin allergy. Due to her condition, Mary has been admitted for therapeutic care until her condition stabilizes. The role of healthcare practitioners is to develop care strategies that will assist the patient condition t o improve. This means that developing a therapeutic relationship with the patient is important in healing process. Further, good munication skills are relevant in ensuring the success of all therapeutic processes that are put in place for healing.   Kornhaber, Walsh & Duff (2016) suggest that therapeutic relationships are defined from the perspective of the patient whee the patients see them as e passing caring and supportive behaviours that create a safe environment for the practitioner and the patient to engage in the healing process. Global health practitioners work with a range of patients who require different relationships to cement the healing process. For example, demographic factors like locality, age, race and social factors like gender shape the strategies that the practitioner applies. The quality of therapeutic care is measure Through the relationship that the practitioner developes with the patient. This forms the alpha and the omega of any form of therapy (Watson 2005, p. 11). This relationship is based on both emotional and informational ponents; since nurses are not trained as counsellors, they have basic counselling skills that can be applied to establish proactive relationships with the patient. Therapeutic relationships are termed as a working alliance between the patient and the practitioner. in the relationship nurse acts as the facilitator for change and the patient acts as the material for change.   Through forming such alliances, the nurse can understand the inner anxieties and disturbances that patients face which may hinder the overall healing process of the patient.   According to Jung, the therapist needs to see the client as an equal, thus there is need to abandon the preconceived opinions that exist in healthcare setting and approach each situation independently (Wilde McCormick & Wellings, 2000, p. 16). The relationship allows the nurse to creates a fortable and non-judgemental environment Through demonstrated congruence and unconditional positive regard towards patients thus improving the healing process. In this scenario patients like Mary will feel that the nurse is on their side Through showing respect for her inner and outer life. Further, Through proper munication skills the nurse can develop trust and build rapport with the patient which allows them to open up on issues affecting them. In the therapeutic process, the nurse and the patient municate where the patient is supposed to report progress and any changes in the body system or new symptoms that are felt. Once the nurse has established such relationships, it b es easy for the patient to open up making it easy for the practitioner to track the changes in medication of the patient (Kilduff, 2010, p. 241). This process therefore, decreases anxiety and enhance patient pliance with the therapeutic process which in turn leads to improved healthcare ou es. The nurse can easily achieve clinical goals like awareness of the problem since the patient easily opens up allowing the practitioner to identify most concerns needed by the patient. Since background history is an important element in the clinical process, some patients can exhibit barriers if they are not f ortable with the practitioner around them (Castledine, 2013, p. 15). Through munication, the nurse creates an environment that allows the patient to open up and allow collection of relevant information that guides the progress of therapeutic processes. Lastly, therapeutic relationships are not only designed for increased patient ou e but for rather professional satisfaction that results from satisfied patients. Every professional seeks for success in their field by ensuring that they have greater scores of satisfaction (Kelley, et al. 2014, p. 23). Such relationships can assist in appraisal of the nurse since they increase patient satisfaction and reduce plaints. There have been situations where patients have strongly bonded with some nurses to the extend that they asked to be served by a specific individual since they believe such an individual understands and meets their needs more. Patient backgrounds vary and some e from the introvert background   where information is disclosed to select people only (Kleinman 2013, p. 137). Therefore, the relationship boosts the professional profile of the nurse by creating personal career satisfaction. Good interpersonal and munication skills are critical in the survival of a global health practitioner. munication is an important element of healthcare that connects practitioners with their clients. It serves many purposes within the organization like assisting patients to make choices that affect the ou e of their health. Global practitioners have to municate professionally to connect with their fellow practitioners and people who need assistance (Sugg, 2016, p. 4).   The profession calls for specific behaviour expectations that increase the expected ou e from the patient. Lee & Doran (2017, p. 77) suggests that medical errors can be reduced to increase health ou es if practitioners can establish good interpersonal and munications skills. Since human factors play a role in satisfaction levels of patients, then professionals have to perfect in this area to boost their petencies. Bingham, et al. (2011, p. 251) add that good interpersonal skills assist in elimination of social and c ultural barriers that inhibit access to health. Such skills can assist the practitioner to integrate with these munities and establish rapport to be used in improving healthcare ou es. Further, the skills can assist in ensuring that people open up as they engage with the practitioner. In therapeutic care, munication is done between the nurse and the patient in away that creates a conducive atmosphere for dialogue, openness, curiosity and sharing. One strategy that will be applied to the case of Mary is the use of reflection   Through repeating her verbal and non-verbal messages to show her that you understand her feelings. Being old and from a hard disadvantaged background, Mary requires content validation from the nurse to show that her message has been heard.   This process creates a cognitive focus between the patient and the practitioner and works well in the process of beginning to know each other(Kim & Kate 2008, P. 221). This may work better in the initial information gathering process. The role of reflection in munication is to create feelings of empathy, interest and respect for patients. On the other hand, patients reciprocated Through inmproved munication and increased level of trust that is seen in high level of involvement in the therapeutic proce ss. Exploring munication strategy can also be applied in the therapeutic process when gathering personal information. Since information is the basis of clinical decision making, the nurse has to ensure that Mary opens up as much as possible. Diedrick, et al. (2011, p. 461) suggests that this technique encourages the patient to provide more information since they feel that the professional is following what they are saying. For example, the nurse will use phrases like â€Å"tell me more about what happened before†. This strategy can be helpful in tracing personal life issues that contribute to the health challenges that Mary is undergoing. The practitioner needs to place events in time or sequence to gather the right information. From the background of the patient, the sequence of events is important in tracing the health challenges Mary is facing (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou 2014, p. 65). She has had a   background and has been diagnosed with diabetes which requires her conditioned to be traced back using time sequence of events. This process will inform, decisions on the allergies that she faces during therapy. Clarifying can also be used in munication with Mary Through attempting to understand the basic nature of the statements said by the patient. When Mary responds to certain questions the practitioner is supposed to seek clarification rather than conclude their clinical experience (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou 2014, p. 66). Being an indigenous patient, she presents unique situations that require   analysis and clarification of every statement she makes. Clarification can be done Through paraphrasing where the nurse rephrases Mary’s ment or answer in a manner that is similar to what they understood. This process allows the client to confirm if indeed the statement is true. Further, providing leads to the patient can be used to encourage further discussion of the the feelings of the patient.   It also works well in the process of beginning a new discussion since it opens up   the discussion allowing the patient to talk more (Laskowski-Jones 2014, p. 5). Leading allows Mary to follow the discussion and play along as the discussion b es personal. This method works well when the practitioner wants to move from a genearl to a personal level. As the patient follows the discussion, she gets engaged and eventually opens up without leads. Once the nurse has established trust with Mary, the confronting skill can be applied to get information that has been   to get Through other munication strategies (Boykins 2014, p. 47).   Since the therapeutic process has not began, Mary can present challenges like arguing and challenging assumption drawn by the nurse based on the fact that she has an attitude for nurses. In such case, the nurse will be forced to confront her to get relevant information for the therapeutic process. Lastly offering hope and humour is one of the strategies that the nurse must use (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou 2014, p. 65). From the background of Mary, she seems to easily give medical attention because of her childhood history. The practitioner has to give hope and encourager her to persevere Through the current situation   and lighten her mood with humour that can enable establishing of rapport. Global health professionals operate in an ever-changing environment that requires the ability of the practitioner to work in a context characterized with different settings. Such situations require adequate skills and petencies that the practitioner needs to have to understand the environment that they are working in. The skills are useful in enabling the individual to operate better and survives the tides a panied with the job. Global health is a new storm that is taking the healthcare sector by storm where most institutions are revising their training programs to a modate these changes. Therefore, practitioners need to be prepared with the relevant skills that enable them to work in the environment. Bingham, A. et al., 2011. The Role of Interpersonal munication in Preventing Unsafe Abortion in munities: The Dialogues for Life Project in Nepal. Journal of Health munication, 16(3), pp. 245-263. Boykins, A., 2014. Core munication petencies in patient- centered care.. ABNF Journal, 25(2), pp. 40-45. Castledine, G., 2013. The importance of the nurse-patient relationship. British Journal of Nursing, 13(4), pp. 11-25. City of Horizon 2018. City of Horizon 2018 ver.1.1, puter Program, city of Horizon, Novus Res, Adelaide.. [Online]. Diedrick, L., Schaffer, M. & Sandau, K., 2011. A practical munication strategy to improve implementation of evidence-based practice.. Journal of Nursing Administration, 41(11), pp. 459-465. Kelley, J. M. et al., 2014. The Influence of the Patient-Clinician Relationship on Healthcare Ou es: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. PLoS One, 9(4). Kilduff M, T. W., 2010. Social Networks and Organizations. Sage ed. s.l.: Thousand Oaks,. Kim, B. & Kate, W., 2008. How can health professionals enhance interpersonal munication with adolescents and young adults to improve health care ou es?: systematic literature review. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 4(3), pp. 211-231. Kleinman, A., 2013. From illness as culture to caregiving as moral experience. New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 368, p. 1376–1377. Kornhaber, R., Walsh, K., Duff, J. & Walker, K., 2016. Enhancing adult therapeutic interpersonal relationships in the acute health care setting: an integrative review. Journal of Multidisciplinary Health, 9(4), pp. 537-546. Kourkouta, L. & Papathanasiou, I. V., 2014. munication in Nursing Practice. Journal of The Academy of Medical Science of Bosnia and Herzegovinia, 26(1), pp. 65-67. Laskowski-Jones, L., 2014. munication: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Nursing, 44(6), pp. 1-10. Lee, C. T.-S. & Doran, D. M., 2017. The Role of Interpersonal Relations in Healthcare Team munication and Patient Safety; A Proposed Model of Interpersonal Process in Teamwork. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 49(2), pp. 75-93. .Sugg, C., 2016. ing of age: munication’s role in powering global health. BBC Media action, Issue 18. Thomas, L. & Galla, C., 2012. Building a culture of safety through team training and engagement. BioMedical Journal of Quality Safety, 5(1), pp. 1-15. Watson, J., 2005. Caring Science as Sacred Science. Philadelphia,: FA Davis pany. Wilde McCormick, E. & Wellings, N., 2000. Transpersonal Psychotherapy – Theory and Practice. New York: Continuum.

Lean Implementation at Oak Hill Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Lean Implementation at Oak Hill - Case Study Example Their current lead-time of domestic order for the testing equipment lies in between one to two weeks, with international orders yielding up to three months. Urgent requirement lies within the high costs associated with keeping the exploration idle – costing an average of $50,000 to $100,000 per day. In intending to reduce their lead-time to one week, as well as to increase operational efficiency, Oak Hills also plans to enhance customer service with the help of lean manufacturing techniques. Oak Hills level of inventory is much higher than necessary because of the high demand volatility and lack of vendor management. The main issues that Oak Hills facility is facing are, employee related concerns, worn out machines, workload on quality department, the lack of quality checkpoints, and process inefficiency. All of which need to be solved before implanting the lean system. The lean system will help improve the processes and quality of the facility as well as lessen the wastage. However, employees are the key to this change; we need to change the current work environment to help boost the employee morale. Furthermore, machines and systems need to be updated in order to reduce waste of raw material and to save time and manpower. The management and employees at Oak Hills need to work together and communicate with one another in order to implement lean system successfully. Employee related fears: There is a lack of communication from management to employees regarding current lay-off’s due to the economy issues, which has diminished the employee morale. Additionally, issues of unfair bonuses pools are awarded on team basis, which employees are cross functionally trained, and are sometimes forced to assist other employees to complete the rush jobs. Damaged machines: Oak Hills has been utilizing old worn-out machines for years in which are not up to par with current levels. This results in waste of raw materials and employee turmoil at work

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Situation Analysis (Marketing Reserch) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Situation Analysis (Marketing Reserch) - Essay Example Like any large American company, GM has also diversified its operations to include strategic partnerships with other companies and has a part in making electronic components for aircraft as well as various parts for other equipment. GM’s core product is the manufacturing of automobiles. These products are divided into several divisions that have different brand names, each designed to appeal to a different demographic part of the market. For example, the company produces both the Chevrolet and Cadillac lines. Chevrolet vehicles are designed for the market segment that wants basic and affordable transportation. The Cadillac line, however, is made for the high-end consumer who wants performance or prestige and doesn’t mind paying much higher prices for a vehicle. The company also has products in many different countries that are specifically designed for the customers who live there. Industry Trends. The automotive industry is highly competitive, and requires GM to constantly consider what the customers want and how to efficiently provide for the demands in the market. One of the major trends in the automotive industry is the fragmentation of the market, due to competition from other manufacturers outside the country. This has required a change in the location of production plants. GM and other automakers used to follow production concept called the â€Å"regional branch concept† where, because automobiles are â€Å"bulky products fabricated from thousands of parts, automobiles were assembled as close as possible to consumers in order to minimize aggregate freight costs† (Rubenstein 137). Now, given the changes in the market, they employ a more centralized procedure that considers the primary consumer of that particular brand and build production plants in places that allow easy delivery to several markets. Another major trend in the industry is the move to hybrid vehicles. As

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 64

Journal - Essay Example The club hopes that the player will add to the best players they have such as Lionel Messi and Neymar Jr. Suarez may have felt dissatisfaction with his former club that could not even win a single trophy. Although Suarez helped his former club, Liverpool to get into top four position in the Premier League, Liverpool manager believes that his team can still be strong even without his talisman. Liverpool has since made several signings that are likely to strengthen his team such as signing of Rickie Lambert and Adam Lallana from Southampton. Suarez’s issue relate to the concept that risk requires compensation and huge rewards. This was the third biting case involving Suarez but Barcelona felt that his benefits as an attacker is much more important than biting. Barcelona paid the high amount of transfer fees because of the player’s quality as a player but not his rare character of biting his opponents. Barcelona did not consider the fact that he has done the act of biting thrice and that they may risk losing him to the FIFA bans such as the one he is currently serving. Being a top player, Suarez will hugely help the club and perhaps Barcelona will be looking forward to transforming his already tarnished name. â€Å"Skysports.com†. Transfer news: Luis Suarez completes Barcelona move. BSkyB, 16 Jul. 2014. Web. 19 Aug. 2014.

Friday, July 26, 2019

Paper about self deception Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Paper about self deception - Essay Example For instance, there is a tendency to believe that African Americans are generally good basketball players. Although this is a positive stereotyping, this also indicates that people will also indulge in negative stereotypes (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 220). One important influence is the media as often news articles are biased towards certain communities like the blacks, Hispanics or the Jewish. In order to gain viewership from the majority groups, media often focuses on crime committed by the minorities as viewers would better respond to this. Thus, media perpetuates racial stereotyping by indicating blacks are more crime prone than the whites. It is not always true that people consider all the factors before making judgmental decisions in a rational way. Robert B. Cialdini suggests that people are often restricted by time or distance and so they tend to make their decisions based on cognitive shortcuts known as judgmental heuristics. According to Cialdini, â€Å"we must very often use our sterotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key features and then to respond without thinking when one or another of these trigger features is present† (Triche, 18). Racial stereotyping occurs not from judging one individual but by attributing certain characteristics to a group of people. It is based on irrational knowledge collected from various sources. Therefore, although stereotyping can lead to cognitive shortcuts they often lead to false results. Stereotyping hinders development of human thought and social progress. Stereotyping involves cognitive component, i.e. ideas that people connect with a certain group or community based on their culture and society. This process of stereotyping includes â€Å"encoding and storage of stereotype concepts, the selection and activation of these concepts into working memory and their

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Theories argue Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Theories argue - Essay Example Three most important and frequently addressed theories related to the aging process are Theory of disengagement, Activity Theory and Continuity Theory (Bengtson, Silverstein, & Putney, 2009). This researcher finds that Activity Theory has defined the process of aging more effectively as compared to other two theories. The theory was developed in 1953 by an American sociologist Havighurst (Schulz, 2006). This theory holds that to remain lively and participate in societal activities are key factors of satisfaction for aging people. Physical and intellectual activities are important for successful aging. The theory proposes that in order to maintain a positive self-image, older members need to develop new interests, roles, hobbies, and relationships (Schulz-Aellen, 1997). This theory would explain adequately why aging people feel encouraged continue with their middle-age lifestyles by denying the limitations of old age and why they make attempts to sustain that lifestyle over a longer duration. According Havighurst activity is always preferable to inactivity since it increases the chances of the well-being of personality on a number of levels. This theory also explains why post-industrial society allowed its older members to participate in meaningful activities. The theory incorporates an improvement in the general health and prosperity of older people. In contrast to the Activity Theory, the Disengagement theory comes across as a more controversial theory. According to this theory aging is process of regular withdrawal between society and the subject aging individual. The theory holds that in growing older, withdrawal or disengagement can be considered to be a natural or universal process. In all cultures and societies this process is acceptable to elders. According to this theory there should be a social equilibrium that will promote self-reflection for elders. Old members of the society should be free from societal

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Holmgren Engineering Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Holmgren Engineering - Case Study Example The company manufactures water storage products with pressure heating systems. The product range of the firms comprises of five models that has low variation in design such as the storage capacity and dimensions. The company employs a current process of batching production orders in a layout that is jumbled and disarranged. The production engineering head has made a proposal to the top management to change the process into a one-piece flow approach, redesign the facilities layout into a U-shaped assembly line, and transform the orientation into a make-to-order process. The benefits of the proposed changes will make the company achieve its goal of cost advantage, process simplification and inventory management. Also, the implementation of the changes will free up space in the shop floor which would create an opportunity for the company to extend the product line or expand the capacity of the production. Holmgren Engineering is a manufacturing company with core competencies in developing, manufacturing, and selling of water storage systems that include main pressure heating system. The products are marketed and sold under Hetvatten Plus trademark. The product range includes five models with different storage capacities, dimensions and dwelling type usage. Holmgren Engineering has evolved from a humble heating engineering firm, started by its founder Benny Holmgren, into a full service manufacturing company under the umbrella of Karlsson Invest conglomerate. The current CEO is John Svensson. Peter Wiklund is the production engineering head who made proposals and recommendations for changes in the current operations process. This report will initially examine the current operations process used by Holmgren Engineering. The key features of the current process will be discussed and evaluated according to their advantages and disadvantages. It will then examine the key changes of the proposal made by Wiklund. His proposal is the re-engineering of the process which would create a U-shaped production layout employing a one-piece flow orientation. Introduction of make-to-order approach was recommended by Wiklund alongside the new process. The costs on new investments and benefits that the company will gain from the proposal will be analysed. Several factors are identified that would be carefully managed in order to successfully implement the changes and will be discussed in the latter part of the report. Conclusions and recommendations in the last part will summarise the report in a nutshell. Discussion/Analysis of Case Questions 1. Examine the current operations process used by Holmgren Engineering. Explain the key features of this way of making products. The current process of producing boilers in Holmgren Engineering is called batch process. Batching is the approach of producing goods in groups or lots of similar products made on the same equipment. Batching method is efficient for medium volume products with medium variability. The method utilises specialised equipment and skilled people. Holmgren Engineering's products, which have small deviation in designs of five models and medium amount of demand, more fit the requirements of the batching process. The operations process involves four principal sub-assemblies of copper body, top tank, galvanised casing and the electrical unit. These sub-assemblies are produced in various tasks, systems and equipments.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Analysis of IBM Organisation Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Analysis of IBM Organisation - Assignment Example Compared to any other organization in the USA, IBM is the Information Technology Company with the highest number of patents. The company has also established nine research laboratories in different places of the world (Emerson, 76). Moreover, the company has an excellent team of an employee with a high degree of qualifications, and which highly values teamwork. These factors have seen the company have a competitive edge over the other US-based IT companies. It keeps its customers supplied with the most recent discoveries in IT through its commitment to research. A well qualified and teamwork based team of employee ensures the success of the company through the collaboration of the teams to give the company’s customers the best products and services. The high level of patenting has served to ensure that other IT companies are prohibited from specializing in some areas that the company has patented as its empire. The organizations' principle level strategy is differentiation, wh ere the company has specialized in computer hardware and software production, as well as IT consultancy services for its customers. The company produces specialized products for its customers, depending on the organizational demand of the organization in question. The company produces its products and services based on customer’s centricity (Emerson, 18). This strategy has worked well for the company, allowing it to cultivate more customer loyalty and goodwill. The organization structure is an all-inclusive one, where the opinions and the suggestions of each of their management and employee team counts. It has a culture of collaboration, through which its innovation objective is realized. Both the structure and cultures of the organization are blended well to enhance teamwork and collaborated achievement. The match can be improved through leadership training for all, to ensure that all of the company employees serve as leaders in their different capacities. The organization s tructure is functional without any problems being experienced.

Black Feminism in Britain Essay Example for Free

Black Feminism in Britain Essay Black feminism in Britain is a very strong issue. This topic could be addressed in so many ways, so I decided to address the issue through others writings. Black women have been pressing the issue of equality for a very long time now, and being black women presents a two -fold issue on equality. Being Black automatically make you a minority and being a woman takes away from your standpoint even more. This is why Hazel Carby feels that being just a feminist is nit enough; there are more issues than those that are addressed by whit feminist for the black woman. Hazel Cardy’s article White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood, examines the way in which feminist revisionist history has reconstructed itself by appropriating the power of privilege of the historiography in order to marginalize black women in their absences and misrepresent them in their presence. In my view, it is precisely the incorporation of feminism in the worlds system and power. The concern is not one with the feminist theory and more with the misuse and abuse of black women in Britain. Black women in Britain have had a lot of battles to fight to get to where they are today, and even today they are still not equal with men in society. The black women of Britain had to not only endure migration, but hey had to also endure loosing high education positions for lower paying jobs and many had to leave their families and come to Britain alone. They did come to Britain for the fast cars and big cities; these women came over to make a living so that their families could survive. They thought that they were coming to the land of opportunity, but when they arrived in Britain they were in for a rude awakening. There the push and pull factor that is present in this situation. In the Caribbean there were little to no jobs available and that is the push factor, the pull factor is tha t in Britain there were many jobs opening up for the people. The thing that many did not know, who made this journey, was that these jobs were the jobs that the British thought that they did not want to do. This entire process alone put the Black peoples on a lower level. Being that these people were also women they were even lower than so men were. In recent reassessments of Caribbean women’s political roles both during and after slavery suggest that their leadership was crucial to popular collective action throughout Britain. Many of these women were characterized as feisty females who were used as a joke to the public. This satire reduced women’s acts of resistance to individual willfulness. The historical record to the contrary indicates that the black woman of Britain emerged in the contest of the supportive networks of families, communities, and collective work groups. This resistance soon became known as black feminism. The history of women leader in Jamaica begins under slavery, and here we are introduced to the particular spokeswoman the petticoat rebellion, which was a name from a Jamaican slave owner to show just what he thought about the Black women rising up together. Assertions of special female prerogatives and criticisms of the abuse of women had extra resonance in the British Victorian setting, with its sharp delineation of boundary between the masculine and the feminine. A crucial aspect of laying foundation for subsequent oppositional cultures in Jamaica was black women’s promotion of a popular ‘voice’ both within the missionary churches and, more radically, by forming their won Afro-Christian religious association. Thus there became a third realm of opposition other than violence and hidden resistance. There became a movement. An early public challenge to black women’s subordination is the dissenting churches occurred in the Baptist congregation. Many women of color, including those who were illiterate, participated in activities of a public and political nature through their churches, including but not limited to elections and petitions. Even the relatively conservative Presbyterian Church required ever communica nt to vote for the elders, bringing non-white men into leadership. Popular democratic procedures, and participation meetings. By literate women were perceived as a threat to the English Missionaries control over the society. Young concluded his attack on democratic procedure by noting that the Kingston petitions were a kind of test case, part of a larger agitation for popular independent control of the churches, and the society must clarify its stance on the privilege of petitioning conference ‘. By making a formal distinction between home and foreign stations, the society sought to contain not only dangerous democratic currents, but also the women who exercised the role of leadership within their churches; a major difference between home and Jamaica, after all was the degree to which women as a matter of course ‘ discussed and decided all questions brought forward. Many examples of violent language recorded in the British records were spoken by women, whether during slavery and apprenticeship, or later courthouse riots, or scuffles, whe n violence occurred, working class women were often at the forefront using insults and provocations, and weapons as well. Many of those women were black. In an earlier reference I gave the example of a slave caricature that was use to mock slaves, the urban women carried on her hard-hitting tradition of political protest. Swithin begun to trace women’s participation not only back to the plantation labor but also urban riots. Even when riots rose in religious or cultural issues, the following example show that they were always political in so far as the demonstrated black physical power and numerical strength against representatives of the state. A new urban political culture was emerging on the streets of Kingston. The Family ties have been one important aspect of some women’s participation in the Morant Bay Rebellion. Many women were accused of throwing stones at the volunteers and burning down the courthouse. Black feminist were looked at very negatively in he eye of the British from white Jamaican joke to Quasheba jokes, that ridiculed strong black women, their speech, families, and working class culture. It rest on the ideology of white women as ‘angels in he house’, whose domestic life is heaven rather than the hell that the black woman had to endure, this parody arises a question, if they have black women on record cursing, where do we find the recorded ‘voices’ of these working-class black women in the historical record? Contrary to this fake ‘voice’ the actual records of protest that have been considered in this paper suggest that black family solidarity, and community self protection with the understanding of violence against black women came most often form the wider white society. The few preserved accounts of Afro-Jamaican women’s leadership and political protest exist precisely because of the contradictory position they occupied in the colonial symbolic mapping of social order and disorder. Their words speak for themselves, while their troubled embedding in government archives, and newspapers suggest their powerful impact.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Art After Philosophy (1969) Joseph Kosuth Essay Example for Free

Art After Philosophy (1969) Joseph Kosuth Essay The fact that it has recently become fashionable for physicists themselves to be sympathetic toward religion . . . marks the physicists’ own lack of confidence in the validity of their hypotheses, which is a reaction on their part from the antireligious dogmatism of nineteenth-century scientists, and a natural outcome of the crisis through which physics has just passed. –A. J. Ayer. . . . once one has understood the Tractatus there will be no temptation to concern oneself anymore with philosophy, which is neither empirical like science nor tautological like mathematics; one will, like Wittgenstein in 1918, abandon philosophy, which, as traditionally understood, is rooted in confusion. –J. O. Urmson. Traditional philosophy, almost by definition, has concerned itself with the unsaid. The nearly exclusive focus on the said by twentieth-century analytical linguistic philosophers is the shared contention that the unsaid is unsaid because it is unsayable. Hegelian philosophy made sense in the nineteenth century and must have been soothing to a century that was barely getting over Hume, the Enlightenment, and Kant.1 Hegel’s philosophy was also capable of giving cover for a defense of religious beliefs, supplying an alternative to Newtonian mechanics, and fitting in with the growth of history as a discipline, as well as accepting Darwinian biology.2 He appeared to give an acceptable resolution to the conflict between theology and science, as well. The result of Hegel’s influence has been that a great majority of contemporary philosophers are really little more than historians of philosophy, Librarians of the Truth, so to speak. One begins to get the impression that there â€Å"is nothing more to be said.† And certainly if one realizes the implications of Wittgenstein’s thinking, and the thinking influenced by him and after him, â€Å"Continental† philosophy need not seriously be considered here.3 Is there a reason for the â€Å"unreality† of philosophy in our time? Perhaps this can be answered by looking into the difference between our time and the centuries preceding us. In the past man’s conclusions about the world were based on the information he had about it – if not specifically like the empiricists, then generally like the rationalists. Often in fact, the closeness between science and philosophy was so great that scientists and philosophers were one and the same person. In fact, from the times of Thales, Epicurus, Heraclitus, and Aristotle to Descartes and Leibnitz, â€Å"the great names in philosophy were often great names in science as well.†4 That the world as perceived by twentieth-century science is a vastly different one than the one of its preceding century, need not be proved here. Is it possible, then, that in effect man has learned so much, and his â€Å"intelligence† is such, that he cannot believe the reasoning of traditional philosophy? That perhaps he knows too much about the world to make those kinds of conclusions? As Sir James Jeans has stated: . . . When philosophy has availed itself of the results of science, it has not been by borrowing the abstract mathematical description of the pattern of events, but by borrowing the then current pictorial description of this pattern; thus it has not appropriated certain knowledge but conjectures. These conjectures were often good enough for the man-sized world, but not, as we now know, for those ultimate processes of nature which control the happenings of the man-sized world, and bring us nearest to the true nature of reality.5 He continues: One consequence of this is that the standard philosophical discussions of many problems, such as those of causality and free will orof materialism or mentalism, are based on an interpretation of the pattern of events which is no longer tenable. The scientific basis of these older discussions has been washed away, and with their disappearance have gone all the arguments . . .6 The twentieth century brought in a time that could be called â€Å"the end of philosophy and the beginning of art.† I do not mean that, of course, strictly speaking, but rather as the â€Å"tendency† of the situation. Certainly linguistic philosophy can be considered the heir to empiricism, but it’s a philosophy in one gear.7 And there is certainly an â€Å"art condition† to art preceding Duchamp, but its other functions or reasons-to-be are so pronounced that its ability to function clearly as art limits its art condition so drastically that it’s only minimally art.8 In no mechanistic sense is there a connection between philosophy’s â€Å"ending† and art’s â€Å"beginning,† but I don’t find this occurrence entirely coincidental. Though the same reasons may be responsible for both occurrences, the connection is made by me. I bring this all up to analyze art’s function and subsequently its viability. And I do so to enable others to understand the reasoning of my – and, by extension, other artists’ – art, as well to provide a clearer understanding of the term â€Å"Conceptual art.†9 THE FUNCTION OF ART The main qualifications to the lesser position of painting is that advances in art are certainly not always formal ones. –Donald Judd (1963). Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture. – Donald Judd (1965). Everything sculpture has, my work doesn’t. –Donald Judd (1967). The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. –Sol LeWitt (1965) The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art as art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art. –Ad Reinhardt (1963). The meaning is the use. –Wittgenstein. A more functional approach to the study of concepts has tended to replace the method of introspection. Instead of attempting to grasp or describe concepts bare, so to speak, the psychologist investigates the way in which they function as ingredients in beliefs and in judgments. –Irving M. Copi. Meaning is always a presupposition of function. –T. Segerstedt. . . . the subject matter of conceptual investigations is the meaning of certain words and expressions – and not the things and states of affairs themselves about which we talk, when using those words and expressions. –G. H. Von Wright. Thinking is radically metaphoric. Linkage by analogy is its constituent law or principle, its causal nexus, since meaning only arises through the causal contexts by which a sign stands for (takes the place of) an instance of a sort. To think of anything is to take it as of a sort (as a such and such) and that â€Å"as† brings in (openly or in disguise) the analogy, the parallel, the metaphoric grapple or ground or grasp or draw by which alone the mind takes hold. It takes no hold if there is nothing for it to haul from, for its thinking is the haul, the attraction of likes –I. A. Richards. In this section I will discuss the separation between aesthetics and art; consider briefly formalist art (because it is a leading proponent of the idea of aesthetics as art), and assert that art is analogous to an analytic proposition, and that it is art’s existence as a tautology that enables art to remain â€Å"aloof† from philosophical presumptions. It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with opinions on perception of the world in general. In the past one of the two prongs of art’s function was its value as decoration. So any branch of philosophy that dealt with â€Å"beauty† and thus, taste, was inevitably duty bound to discuss art as well. Out of this â€Å"habit† grew the notion that there was a conceptual connection between art and aesthetics, which is not true. This idea never drastically conflicted with artistic considerations before recent times, not only because the morphological characteristics of art perpetuated the continuity of this error, but as well, because the apparent other â€Å"functions† of art (depiction of religious themes, portraiture of aristocrats, detailing of architecture, etc.) used art to cover up art. When objects are presented within the context of art (and until recently objects always have been used) they are as eligible for aesthetic consideration as are any objects in the world, and an aesthetic consideration of an object existing in the realm of art means that the object’s existence or functioning in an art context is irrelevant to the aesthetic judgment. The relation of aesthetics to art is not unlike that of aesthetics to architecture, in that architecture has a very specific function and how â€Å"good† its design is is primarily related to how well it performs its function. Thus, judgments on what it looks like correspond to taste, and we can see that throughout history different examples of architecture are praised at different times depending on the aesthetics of particular epochs. Aesthetic thinking has even gone so far as to make examples of architecture not related to â€Å"art† at all, works of art in themselves (e.g., the pyramids of Egypt). Aesthetic considerations are indeed always extraneous to an object’s function or â€Å"reason-tobe.† Unless of course, that object’s reason-to-be is strictly aesthetic. An example of a purely aesthetic object is a decorative object, for decoration’s primary function is â€Å"to add something to, so as to make more attractive; adorn; ornament,†10 and this relates directly to taste. And this leads us directly to â€Å"formalist† art and criticism.11 Formalist art (painting and sculpture) is the vanguard of decoration, and, strictly speaking, one could reasonably assert that its art condition is so minimal that for all functional purposes it is not art at all, but pure exercises in aesthetics. Above all things Clement Greenberg is the critic of taste. Behind every one of his decisions is an aesthetic judgment, with those judgments reflecting his taste. And what does his taste reflect? The period he grew up in as a critic, the period â€Å"real† for him: the fifties.12 How else can one account for, given his theories – if they have any logic to them at all – his disinterest in Frank Stella, Ad Reinhardt, and others applicable to his historical scheme? Is it because he is â€Å". . . basically unsympathetic on personally experiential grounds†?13 Or, in other words, â€Å"their work doesn’t suit his taste?† But in the philosophic tabula rasa of art, â€Å"if someone calls it art,† as Don Judd has said, â€Å"it’s art.† Given this, formalist painting and sculpture can be granted an â€Å"art condition,† but only by virtue of their presentation in terms of their art idea (e.g., a rectangular-shaped canvas stretched over wooden supports and stained with such and such colors, using such and such forms, giving such and such a visual experience, etc.). If one looks at contemporary art in this light one realizes the minimal creative effort taken on the part of formalist artists specifically, an d all painters and sculptors (working as such today) generally. This brings us to the realization that formalist art and criticism accepts as a definition of art one that exists solely on morphological grounds. While a vast quantity of similar looking objects or images (or visually related objects or images) may seem to be related (or connected) because of a similarity of visual/experiential â€Å"readings,† one cannot claim from this an artistic or conceptual relationship. It is obvious then that formalist criticism’s reliance on morphology leads necessarily with a bias toward the morphology of traditional art. And in this sense their criticism is not related to a â€Å"scientific method† or any sort of empiricism (as Michael Fried, with his detailed descriptions of paintings and other â€Å"scholarly† paraphernalia would want us to believe). Formalist criticism is no more than an analysis of the physical attributes of particular objects that happen to exist in a morphological context. But this doesn’t add any knowledge (or facts) to our understanding of the nature or function of art. And neither does it comment on whether or not the objects analyzed are even works of art, in that formalist critics always bypass the conceptual element in works of art. Exactly why they don’t comment on the conceptual element in works of art is precisely because formalist art is only art by virtue of its resemblance to earlier works of art. It’s a mindless art. Or, as Lucy Lippard so succinctly described Jules Olitski’s paintings: â€Å"they’re visual Muzak.† 14 Formalist critics and artists alike do not question the nature of art, but as I have said elsewhere: Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.15 The strongest objection one can raise against a morphological justification for traditional art is that morphological notions of art embody an implied a priori concept of art’s possibilities. And such an a priori concept of the nature of art (as separate from analytically framed art propositions or â€Å"work,† which I will discuss later) makes it, indeed, a priori: impossible to question the nature of art. And this questioning of the nature of art is a very important concept in understanding the function of art. The function of art, as a question, was first raised by Marcel Duchamp. In fact it is Marcel Duchamp whom we can credit with giving art its own identity. (One can certainly see a tendency toward this self-identification of art beginning with Manet and Cà ©zanne through to Cubism,16 but their works are timid and ambiguous by comparison with Duchamp’s.) â€Å"Modern† art and the work before seemed connected by virtue of their morphology. Another way of putting it would be that art’s â€Å"language† remained the same, but it was saying new things. The event that made conceivable the realization that it was possible to â€Å"speak another language† and still make sense in art was Marcel Duchamp’s first unassisted Ready-made. With the unassisted Ready-made, art changed its focus from the form of the language to what was being said. Which means that it changed the nature of art from a question of morphology to a question of function. This change – one from â€Å"appearance† to â€Å"conception† – was the beginning of â€Å"modern† art and the beginning of conceptual art. All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually. The â€Å"value† of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art; which is another way of saying â€Å"what they added to the conception of art† or what wasn’t there before they started. Artists question the nature of art by presenting new propositions as to art’s nature. And to do this one cannot concern oneself with the handed-down â€Å"language† of traditional art, as this activity is based on the assumption that there is only one way of framing art propositions. But the very stuff of art is indeed greatly related to â€Å"creating† new propositions. The case is often made – particularly in reference to Duchamp – that objects of art (such as the Ready-mades, of course, but all art is implied in this) are judged as objets d’art in later years and the artists’ intentions become irrelevant. Such an argument is the case of a preconceived notion ordering together not necessarily related facts. The point is this: aesthetics, as we have pointed out, are conceptually irrelevant to art. Thus, any physical thing can become objet d’art, that is to say, can be considered tasteful, aesthetically pleasing, etc. But this has no bearing on the object’s application to an art context; that is, its functioning in an art context. (E.g., if a collector takes a painting, attaches legs, and uses it as a dining table it’s an act unrelated to art or the artist because, as art, that wasn’t the artist’s intention.) And what holds true for Duchamp’s work applies as well to most of the art after him. In other words, the value of Cubism – for instance – is its idea in the realm of art, not the physical or visual qualities seen in a specific painting, or the particularization of certain colors or shapes. For these colors and shapes are the art’s â€Å"language,† not its meaning conceptually as art. To look upon a Cubist â€Å"masterwork† now as art is nonsensical, conceptually speaking, as far as art is concerned. (That visual information that was unique in Cubism’s language has now been generally absorbed and has a lot to do with the way in which one deals with painting â€Å"linguistically.† [E.g., what a Cubist painting meant experimentally and conceptually to, say, Gertrude Stein, is beyond our speculation because the same painting then â€Å"meant† something different than it does now.]) The â€Å"value† now of an original Cubist painting is not unlike, in most respects, an original manuscript by Lord Byron, or The Spirit of St. Louis as it is seen in the Smithsonian Institution. (Indeed, museums fill the very same function as the Smithsonian Institution – why else would the Jeu de Paume wing of the Louvre exhibit Cà ©zanne’s and Van Gogh’s palettes as proudly as they do their paintings?) Actual works of art are little more than historical curiosities. As far as art is concerned Van Gogh’s paintings aren’t worth any more than his palette is. They are both â€Å"collectors items.†17 Art â€Å"lives† through influencing other art, not by existing as the physical residue of an artist’s ideas. The reason that different artists from the past are â€Å"brought alive† again is because some aspect of their work becomes â€Å"usable† by living artists. That there is no â€Å"truth† as to what art is seems quite unrealized. What is the function of art, or the nature of art? If we continue our analogy of the forms art takes as being art’s language one can realize then that a work of art is a kind of proposition presented within the context of art as a comment on art. We can then go further and analyze the types of â€Å"propo sitions.† A. J. Ayer’s evaluation of Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic is useful to us here: â€Å"A proposition is analytic when its validity depends solely on the definitions of the symbols it contains, and synthetic when its validity is determined by the facts of experience.†18 The analogy I will attempt to make is one between the art condition and the condition of the analytic proposition. In that they don’t appear to be believable as anything else, or be about anything (other than art) the forms of art most clearly finally referable only to art have been forms closest to analytical propositions. Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information whatsoever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art. Thus, that it is art is true a priori (which is what Judd means when he states that â€Å"if someone calls it art, it’s art†). Indeed, it is nearly impossible to discuss art in general terms without talking in tautologies – for to attempt to â€Å"grasp† art by any other â€Å"handle† is merely to focus on another aspect or quality of the proposition, which is usually irrelevant to the artwork’s â€Å"art condition.† One begins to realize that art’s â€Å"art condition† is a conceptual state. That the language forms that the artist frames his propositions in are often â€Å"private† codes or languages is an inevitable outcome of art’s freedom from morphological constrictions; and it follows from this that one has to be familiar with contemporary art to appreciate it and understand it. Likewise one understands why the â€Å"man in the street† is intolerant to artistic art and always demands art in a tr aditional â€Å"language.† (And one understands why formalist art sells â€Å"like hot cakes.†) Only in painting and sculpture did the artists all speak the same language. What is called â€Å"Novelty Art† by the formalists is often the attempt to find new languages, although a new language doesn’t necessarily mean the framing of new propositions: e.g., most kinetic and electronic art. Another way of stating, in relation to art, what Ayer asserted about the analytic method in the context of language would be the following: The validity of artistic propositions is not dependent on any empirical, much less any aesthetic, presupposition about the nature of things. For the artist, as an analyst, is not directly concerned with the physical properties of things. He is concerned only with the way (1) in which art is capable of conceptual growth and (2) how his propositions are capable of logically following that growth.19 In other words, the propositions of art are not factual, but linguistic in character – that is, they do not describe the behavior of physical, o r even mental objects; they express definitions of art, or the formal consequences of definitions of art. Accordingly, we can say that art operates on a logic. For we shall see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions (of art) and not with questions of empirical fact.20 To repeat, what art has in common with logic and mathematics is that it is a tautology; i.e., the â€Å"art idea† (or â€Å"work†) and art are the same and can be appreciated as art without going outside the context of art for verification. On the other hand, let us consider why art cannot be (or has difficulty when it attempts to be) a synthetic proposition. Or, that is to say, when the truth or falsity of its assertion is verifiable on empirical grounds. Ayer states: . . . The criterion by which we determine the validity of an a priori or analytical proposition is not sufficient to determine the validity of an empirical or synthetic proposition. For it is characteristic of empirical propositions that their validity is not purely formal. To say that a geometrical proposition, or a system of geometrical propositions, is false, is to say that it is self-contradictory. But an empirical proposition, or a system of empirical propositions, may be free from contradiction and still be false. It is said to be false, not because it is formally defective, but because it fails to satisfy some material criterion.21 The unreality of â€Å"realistic† art is due to its framing as an art proposition in synthetic terms: one is always tempted to â€Å"verify† the proposition empirically. Realism’s synthetic state does not bring one to a circular swing back into a dialogue with the larger framework of questions about the nature of art (as does the work of Malevich, Mondrian, Pollock, Reinhardt, early Rauschenberg, Johns, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Andre, Judd, Flavin, LeWitt, Morris, and others), but rather, one is flung out of art’s â€Å"orbit† into the â€Å"infinite space† of the human condition. Pure Expressionism, continuing with Ayer’s terms, could be considered as such: â€Å"A sentence which consisted of demonstrative symbols would not express a genuine proposition. It would be a mere ejaculation, in no way characterizing that to which it was supposed to refer.† Expressionist works are usually such â€Å"ejaculations† presented in the morphological language of traditional art. If Pollock is important it is because he painted on loose canvas horizontally to the floor. What isn’t important is that he later put those drippings over stretchers and hung them parallel to the wall. (In other words what is important in art is what one brings to it, not one’s adoption of what was previously existing.) What is even less important to art is Pollock’s notions of â€Å"self-expression† because those kinds of subjective meanings are useless to anyone other than those involved with him personally. And their â€Å"specific† quality puts them outside of art’s context. â€Å"I do not make art,† Richard Serra says, â€Å"I am engaged in an activity; if someone wants to call it art, that’s his business, but it’s not up to me to decide that. That’s all figured out later.† Serra, then, is very much aware of the implications of his work. If Serra is indeed just â€Å"figuring out what lead does† (gravitationally, molecularly, etc.), why should anyone think of it as art? If he doesn’t take the responsibility of it being art, who can, or should? His work certainly appears to be empirically verifiable: lead can do, and be used for, many physical activities. In itself this does anything but lead us into a dialogue about the nature of art. In a sense then he is a primitive. He has no idea about art. How is it then that we know about â€Å"his activity†? Because he has told us it is art by his actions after â€Å"his activity† has taken place. That is, by the fact that he is with several galleries, puts the physical residue of his activity in museums (and sells them to art collectors – but as we have pointed out, collectors are irrelevant to the â€Å"condition of art† of a work). That he denies his work is art but plays the artist is more than just a paradox. Serra secretly feels that â€Å"arthood† is arrived at empirically. Thus, as Ayer has stated: There are no absolutely certain empirical propositions. It is only tautologies that are certain. Empirical questions are one and all hypotheses, which may be confirmed or discredited in actual sense experience. And the propositions in which we record the observations that verify these hypotheses are themselves hypotheses which are subject to the test of further sense experience. Thus there is no final proposition.22 What one finds all throughout the writings of Ad Reinhardt is this very similar thesis of â€Å"artas-art,† and that â€Å"art is always dead, and a ‘living’ art is a deception.†23 Reinhardt had a very clear idea about the nature of art, and his importance is far from recognized. Because forms of art that can be considered synthetic propositions are verifiable by the world, that is to say, to understand these propositions one must leave the tautological-like framework of art and consider â€Å"outside† information. But to consider it as art it is necessary to ignore this same outside information, because outside information (experiential qualities, to note) has its own intrinsic worth. And to comprehend this worth one does not need a state of â€Å"art condition.† From this it is easy to realize that art’s viability is not connected to the presentation of visual (or other) kinds of experience. That that may have been one of art’s extraneous functions in the preceding centuries is not unlikely. After all, man in even the nineteenth century lived in a fairly standardized visual environment. That is, it was ordinarily predictable as to what he would be coming into contact with day after day. His visual environment in the part of the world in which he lived was fairly consistent. In our time we have an experientially drastically richer environment. One can fly all over the earth in a matter of hours and days, not months. We have the cinema, and color television, as well as the man-made spectacle of the lights of Las Vegas or the skyscrapers of New York City. The whole world is there to be seen, and the whole world can watch man walk on the moon from their living rooms. Certainly art or objects of painting and sculpture cannot be expected to compete experientially with this? The notion of â€Å"use† is relevant to art and its â€Å"language.† Recently the box or cube form has been used a great deal within the context of art. (Take for instance its use by Judd, Morris, LeWitt, Bladen, Smith, Bell, and McCracken – not even mentioning the quantity of boxes and cubes that came after.) The difference between all the various uses of the box or cube form is directly related to the differences in the intentions of the artists. Further, as is particularly seen in Judd’s work, the use of the box or cube form illustrates very well our earlier claim that an object is only art when placed in the context of art. A few examples will point this out. One could say that if one of Judd’s box forms was seen filled with debris, seen placed in an industrial setting, or even merely seen sitting on a street corner, it would not be identified with art. It follows then that understanding and consideration of it as an artwork is necessary a priori to viewing it in order to â€Å"see† it as a work of art. Advance information about the concept of art and about an artist’s concepts is necessary to the appreciation and understanding of contemporary art. Any and all of the physical attributes (qualities) of contemporary works, if considered separately and/or specifically, are irrelevant to the art concept. The art concept (as Judd said, though he didn’t mean it this way) must be considered in its whole. To consider a concept’s parts is invariably to consider aspects that are irrelevant to its art condition – or like reading parts of a definition. It comes as no surprise that the art with the least fixed morphology is the example from which we decipher the nature of the general term â€Å"art.† For where there is a context existing separately of its morphology and consisting of its function one is more likely to find results less conforming and predictable. It is in modern art’s possession of a â€Å"language† with the shortest history that the plausibility of the abandonment of that â€Å"language† becomes most possible. It is understandable then that the art that came out of Western painting and sculpture is the most energetic, questioning (of its nature), and the least assuming of all the general â€Å"art† concerns. In the final analysis, however, all of the arts have but (in Wittgenstein’s terms) a â€Å"family† resemblance. Yet the various qualities relatable to an â€Å"art condition† possessed by poetry, the novel, the cinema, the theatre, and various forms of mus ic, etc., is that aspect of them most reliable to the function of art as asserted here. Is not the decline of poetry relatable to the implied metaphysics from poetry’s use of â€Å"common† language as an art language?24 In New York the last decadent stages of poetry can be seen in the move by â€Å"Concrete† poets recently toward the use of actual objects and theatre.25 Can it be that they feel the unreality of their art form? We see now that the axioms of a geometry are simply definitions, and that the theorems of a geometry are simply the logical consequences of these definitions. A geometry is not in itself about physical space; in itself it cannot be said to be â€Å"about† anything. But we can use a geometry to reason about physical space. That is to say, once we have given the axioms a physical interpretation, we can proceed to apply the theorems to the objects which satisfy the axioms. Whether a geometry can be applied to the actual physical world or not, is an empirical question which falls outside the scope of geometry itself. There is no sense, therefore, in asking which of the various geometries known to us are false and which are true. Insofar as they are all free from contradiction, they are all true. The proposition which states that a certain application of a geometry is possible is not itself a proposition of that geometry. All that the geometry itself tells us is that if anything can be brought under the definitions, it will also satisfy the theorems. It is therefore a purely logical system, and its propositions are purely analytic propositions. –A. J. Ayer26 Here then I propose rests the viability of art. In an age when traditional philosophy is unreal because of its assumptions, art’s ability to exist will depend not only on its not performing a service – as entertainment, visual (or other) experience, or decoration – which is something easily replaced by kitsch culture, and technology, but, rather, it will remain viable by not assuming a philosophical stance; for in art’s unique character is the capacity to remain aloof from philosophical judgments. It is in this context that art shares similarities with logic, mathematics, and, as well, science. But whereas the other endeavors are useful, art is not. Art indeed exists for its own sake. In this period of man, after philosophy and religion, art may possibly be one endeavor that fulfills what another age might have called â€Å"man’s spiritual needs.† Or, another way of putting it might be that art deals analogously with the state of things â€Å"beyond physics† where philosophy had to make assertions. And art’s strength is that even the preceding sentence is an assertion, and cannot be verified by art. Art’s only claim is for art. Art is the definition of art. NOTES * Reprinted from Studio International (October, 1969). 1 Morton White, The Age of Analysis (New York: Mentor Books), p. 14. 2 Ibid., p. 15. 3 I mean by this Existentialism and Phenomenology. Even Merleau-Ponty, with his middle-of-the-road position between empiricism and rationalism, cannot express his philosophy without the use of words (thus using concepts); and following this, how can one discuss experience without sharp distinctions between ourselves and the world? 4 Sir James Jeans, Physics and Philosophy (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press), p. 17. 5 Ibid., p. 190. 6 Ibid., p. 190. 7 The task such philosophy has taken upon itself is the only â€Å"function† it could perform without making philosophic assertions. 8 This is dealt with in the following section. 9 I would like to make it clear, however, that I intend to speak for no one else. I arrived at these conclusions alone, and indeed, it is from this thinking that my art since 1966 (if not before) evo lved. Only recently did I realize after meeting Terry Atkinson that he and Michael Baldwin share similar, though certainly not identical, opinions to mine. 10 Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language. 11 The conceptual level of the work of Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, Ron Davis, Anthony Caro, John Hoyland, Dan Christensen, et al., is so dismally low, that any that is there is supplied by the critics promoting it. This is seen later. 12 Michael Fried’s reasons for using Greenberg’s rationale reflect his background (and most of the other formalist critics) as a â€Å"scholar,† but more of it is due to his desire, I suspect, to bring his scholarly studies into the modern world. One can easily sympathize with his desire to connect, say, Tiepolo with Jules Olitski. One should never forget, however, that a historian loves history more than anything, even art. 13 Lucy Lippard uses this quotation in a footnote to Ad Reinhardt’s retrospective catalogue, January, 1967, p. 28. 14 Lucy Lippard, â€Å"Constellation by Harsh Daylight: The Whitney Annual,† Hudson Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1968). 15 Arthur R. Rose, â€Å"Four Interviews,† Arts Magazine (February, 1969). 16 As Terry Atkinson pointed out in his introduction to Art-Language (Vol. 1, No. 1), the Cubists never questioned if art had morphological characteristics, but which ones in painting were acceptable. 17 When someone â€Å"buys† a Flavin he isn’t buying a light show, for if he was he could just go to a hardware store and get the goods for considerably less. He isn’t â€Å"buying† anything. He is subsidizing Flavin’s activity as an artist. 18 A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover Publications), p. 78. 19 Ibid., p. 57. 20 Ibid., p. 57. 21 Ibid., p.90. 22 Ibid., p. 94. 23 Ad Reinhardt’s retrospective catalogue (Jewish Museum, January, 1967) written by Lucy Lippard, p. 12. 24 It is poetry’s use of common language to attempt to say the unsayable that is problematic, not any inherent problem in the use of language within the context of art. 25 Ironically, many of them call themselves â€Å"Conceptual Poets.† Much of this work is very similar to Walter de Maria’s work and this is not coincidental; de Maria’s work functions as a kind of â€Å"object† poetry, and his intentions are very poetic: he really wants his work to change men’s lives. 26 Op. cit., p. 82.

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Systematisation of Catalogue Integration

Systematisation of Catalogue Integration ABSTRACT: Catalogue integration is a very essential and difficult job which needs to be carried out by various commercial portals and commerce search engines to built and consolidate the products gathered from various data providers. In this paper we discuss about an automated mechanism for integrating products from various providers and thus the process is considered from both the views of portal catalogue and the vendor providing catalogue. This commercial portal has its own taxonomy for all the products which is named as the master taxonomy and the data provider organizes its products in a different taxonomy called as the taxonomy provider. This methodology is based on the taxonomy-aware processing step that adjusts the results of a text based classification so that the products that are similar to the provider’s catalogue will appear closer in the master catalogue. To the best of our knowledge , this is the first unique approach that uses structure of taxonomies in order to upgrade the catalogue integration. The  proposed algorithm is scalable and can be applied to large data-sets in web. The algorithm is implemented on real- world data and has greater accuracy as it takes into account that the relationships between the product categories. INTRODUCTION: The internet is no longer an academic and research oriented network but it is an open book with endless commercial opportunities. Online shopping has increased in recent times. These shopping websites have separate portals which can manage the sellers of the site where products arrive from multiple sellers. This includes e-commerce search engines such as Flipkart,Amazon , Sanpdeal and many common commercial search engines such as google product search and Bing shopping. Each seller will have a separate catalogue for the product available. Internet marketplace are now faced with new challenges that arises from the need to shamelessly integrate enormous number of product catalogue from different sources. Product categorization is the main task that needs to be carried out in here. Hence, we need some mechanism which combines both the approaches, provides accurate classification of products and also scalable to large volume of dataset that is typical on the web. EXISTING SYSTEM: In the existing system there is a difficulty for the customer or the provider to update the details of a product. The ecommerce website has a master catalogue according to which the provider has to upload his/her catalogue of a product. If this catalogue does not match with the master catalogue, then the product will not be accepted by the e-commerce website. This will create a problem for the providers who are un aware of the master catalogue. Not all the providers are aware of these technological details and restrictions. The existing system has imposed more restrictions for the upload of products, which can create a backlog in the business of that shopping website. PROBLEM DEFINITION: Given a source catalogue Ks=(Ps, S,s) that corresponds to some provider’s catalogue defined over the source taxonomy S=(Cs, Es), and a target (or master) catalogue taxonomy Kt = (Pt,T, t) that corresponds to the catalogue of the commercial portal defined over the target (master) taxonomy T = (Ct, Et). The goal is to learn a cross-catalogue labelling function function l: Ps -> Ct that maps products of the source catalogue to the categories of the target catalogue taxonomy. PROJECT SCOPE: Here it makes use of provider taxonomy information to categorize products coming from data providers to the master taxonomy. This approach is based on taxonomy-aware processing step that adjusts the results of a text-based classifier so that the products that are in near-by categories in the provider taxonomy will be assigned near-by categories in the master taxonomy. TACI is scalable to large volume of datasets and it has linear running time with respect to number of input products. It exploits the full structure of the taxonomy, defining relationships between items that belong to different categories, based on the relationship of the categories in the taxonomy tree. TACI provides accurate results when compared other existing approaches SYSTEM DESIGN: This chapter describes the features and modular design of the proposed algorithm. Unlike existing approaches the proposed algorithm explores the entire taxonomy of the provider and master catalogs to find out a classification of products from providers catalog in master taxonomy. The formulation of the taxonomy-aware catalog integration problem is based on structured prediction problem. The optimized classification of products is achieved by designing the algorithm using metric labelling approach. Thus the proposed algorithm involves calculating two measures: Cost indicating assignment of products to categories Cost indicating strength of relationships among product categories Since the existing approaches considered categories as flat collection of classes, pair-wise relationships are considered and hence suffered scalability issues. The proposed algorithm exploits the taxonomy structure to find out the relationship among the categories and uses them to prune the search space thus making the algorithm scalable. Thus the algorithm has linear running time with respect to the input data and is applicable to larger datasets. FUNCTIONAL STEPS: The Taxonomy Aware Catalog Integration is a 2 step process. Base Classification Step: This step does not consider taxonomy structure and utilizes general text classifier. Finds Assignment Cost. Taxonomy-Aware Processing Step: This step involves exploiting the taxonomy structure of both source and target catalogs. Finds Separation Cost. MODULAR DESIGN: PSEUDO CODE: Input: Source catalog Ks, Target taxonomy T, base classifier b, and parameters à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ±,k, and ÃŽ ³ Output: A labeling vector à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã¢â‚¬Å" Fs for all x ц Ps do Ï„*Ï„ ц Ct PÏ„b[Ï„|x] if PÏ„b[Ï„*|x] >= à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ± then à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã¢â‚¬Å"x Fà ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ±Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ± U {x} else Oà ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ± à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ± U {x} Compute TOPk{x} Compute candidate pairs H à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ±,k Initialize hash table ÃŽ ¨ to empty for all (ÏÆ', Ï„) â‚ ¬ H à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ±,k do ÃŽ ¨[(ÏÆ', Ï„)]=h (ÏÆ', Ï„) for all x ц O à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ± do à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã¢â‚¬Å"x Ï„ ц TOP k ( x ) { (1- ÃŽ ³) A COST(x,Ï„)+ ÃŽ ³ ÃŽ ¨[ (sx, Ï„)] } BASE CLASSIFICATION STEPS This step does not consider the structure of both provider and master taxonomies. It uses Naive Bayes text classification result and à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ± value to distinguish between fixed and open products. The fixed products are the set of products in the provider catalog with probability of categories greater than the threshold value and thus, Naive Bayes result is taken as the correct category. TAXONOMY AWARE PROCESSING STEP This step involves exploiting the taxonomy structure to find out the relationships among the categories.This needs to find the similarity measure between two categories in both source and target taxonomies. Pair of products (x,y) assigned to category pair having greater similarity measure in provider taxonomy should be assigned to category pair having greater similarity measure in master taxonomy which is ensured by the penalty function (ÃŽ ´). Absolute difference gives the difference between similarity values obtained for a category pair in both source and target taxonomies. Thus this helps in finding out the cost of separating a pair of products which is given by the separation cost. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS: With the proliferation of data sharing applications that involve multiple data providers the development of automated techniques for catalog integration will be crucial to their success. In this paper, we presented an efficient and scalable automated approach to catalog integration that is based on the use of source category and taxonomy structure information. TACI is a pioneer to catalog integration which exploits the structure of taxonomies to enhance catalog integration with greater accuracy. Here, we have explained with product integration in shopping portals. However, this technique can also be applied to many other important domains which deploy the concept of multiple data sources which contains several categories to be integrated to a single place in a unique way. This includes important verticals such as Local, Travel, Entertainment, etc. This technique was carried out as a supervised learning technique. For future work, we would like to explore semisupervised learning techniques to incrementally retrain the base classifier with elements chosen during the taxonomy-aware calibration step.

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Drive a Car, Not a Cell Phone Essay -- Driving Mobile Phone Use

â€Å"When a driver ‘talks and drives’ they are not only putting themselves at risk, they are also putting everyone around them in a dangerous situation† (ComparisonMarket.com). A study conducted last year by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, had cameras placed inside one hundred cars and trucks to track drivers' activities before a dangerous event occurred. Research shows users of cell phones while driving caused far more crashes and near misses than non-users. These statistics do not change even if the hand held device becomes hands free by means of a blue tooth or speaker phone. Hands-free cell phones may allow the driver to keep both hands on the wheel however, devices such as headsets or voice activated dialing led to longer dialing times causing the same level of driver distraction. Even though a study released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety claims bans on handheld cell phones in many states seem to have had no impact on accident ra tes, drivers still should not use a hand held phone while driving in the car because car accidents associated with hand held phone use account for nearly three hundred deaths per year showing cell phone users are four times as likely to get into an automobile accident serious enough to cause injury. University of Utah psychologists have published a study which highlights drivers talking on handheld or hands-free cellular phones as being impaired on the same level as drunken drivers. In this study each of the tests subjects drove in a driving simulator four times; once each while completely undistracted, using a handheld device, using a hands-free device, and intoxicated with vodka and orange juice up to the legal limit of .08. The simulation had the participants following a ... ...icleid=43812. Jaffe, Eric. "Driving While Texting: As Bad as Drunk Driving, Says Study." The Infrastucturist. The Infrastructurist, 05 Oct 2010. Web. 22 Nov 2010. http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/10/05/driving-while-texting-as-bad-as-drunk-driving-says-study/ Langer, Gary. "Hands Off! Public Backs Ban on Hand-Held Cell Phones in Cars." abcnews. ABCNEWS Internet Ventures, 22 May 2010. Web. 20 Nov 2010. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/poll_cellphone010522.html LeBeau, Phil. "Want to Stop Texting and Driving? Why Not Jam Cell Phones?" cnbc. CNBC, Inc, 30 Sep 2009. Web. 22 Nov 2010. http://www.cnbc.com/id/33090526/Want_to_Stop_Texting_and_Driving_Why_Not_Jam_Cell_Phones. Sedgwick, David. "Study Shows Banning Cell Phones In Cars Doesn't Work." AOL Autos. AOL Inc, 29 Jan 2010. Web. 20 Nov 2010. http://autos.aol.com/article/cell-phone-ban-study/.

Fear of Flying and Classical Conditioning Theory Essays -- Classical C

How Lauren may have learned of her Fear of Flying? How Lauren learned she had a fear in flying? Using the Classical Conditioning theory the possibilities could be endless. Classical conditioning in simple terms is the method in which one determines why and the cause of a condition as well as what has brought it about. There are many stimulus both conditioned and unconditioned that can cause fear or other problems, but the major reason for causes regarding the fear of flying has been mentioned in several articles regarding anxiety disorders. Fear of flying is created by the unconscious mind as a protective mechanism. When using the neutral stimulus explanation, Lauren may not have had a relevant response of interest. Lauren may have learned something or heard someone from her past that caused the continuous fear. Due to the facts in this case, there’s little information to provide us regarding Lauren. First we know she’s afraid to fly, but we have no further information regarding the condition that caused the fear or the circumstances to what led to this fear. The first step in Pavlov’s theory is trying to discover how Lauren’s fear came about, but without more information one can only speculate or guess how Lauren’s condition developed. Pavlov’s theory states several actions and read actions that could have caused Lauren’s Condition. The conditioning of the plane could be neutral stimulus, and the activities on the plane is the unconditioned stimulus. During condit...

Friday, July 19, 2019

Symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams Essay

During the late nineteen-forties, it was common for playwrights such as Tennessee Williams to use symbolism as an approach to convey personal thoughts, through the attitudes of the characters and the setting. Williams' actors have used symbolism to disguise the actuality of their thoughts and to accommodate the needs of their conservative audience. A Streetcar Named 'Desire' has a few complicated character traits and themes. Therefore, they have to be symbolised using figures or images to express abstract and mystical ideas, so that the viewers can remain clueless. Williams not only depicts a clear personality of the actors but he also includes real-life public opinions from the past (some of which are contemporary.) These opinions were likely to raise controversies on issues such as prejudice, social gender expectations and men and women's roles in society. There have been numerous occasions when symbolism has taken place in A Streetcar Named 'Desire.' Firstly, Stanley is insulted several times by Blanche (his sister-in-law) Stella (his beloved wife) and other residents of the 'Quarter'. For example, the term 'animal' has been constantly spoken of, to define Stanley's malicious and ill-natured conduct. In scene four, Blanche tries to persuade her younger sister to go elsewhere and leave her husband. On page 163, she complains: Blanche: He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, talks like one! There's even something - sub-human - something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something - ape-like about him there he is - Stanley Kowalski - Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! Furthermore, when the play begins, Stanley enters the ground-floor apartm... ... of the play, Williams may be hinting that Blanche is gradually being ruined. Perhaps her 'white radio' being tossed 'out of the window' tells us that Stanley is already against Blanche and does not like the sound of her being around. I shall conclude this essay with a brief understanding of symbolism. It is a very useful concept and often needed to give the audience a few suggestions. Symbolism makes people think and broadens their mind with varieties and ideas. In A Streetcar Named 'Desire', symbolism has been significantly used to show the roles of men and women in society and how they expect each other to be treated. It has disguised many possible sexual scenes; therefore, Williams has succeeded in transmitting some of his themes or ideas. Some of these are sexuality, madness, jealousy, racism, cruelty, loyalty, gender relationships and conflict.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Ancient history Essay

Lebanon   French: Republique libanaise), is a country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east, and Israel to the south. Lebanon’s location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland has dictated its rich history, and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity. [8] The earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than 7,000 years—predating recorded history. [9] Lebanon was the home of the Phoenicians, a maritime culture that flourished for nearly 2,500 years (3000–539 BC). Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the five provinces that comprise modern Lebanon were mandated to France. The French expanded the borders of Mount Lebanon, which was mostly populated by Maronite Catholics and Druze, to include more Muslims. Lebanon gained independence in 1943, and established a unique political system, known as confessionalism, a power-sharing mechanism based on religious communities. French troops withdrew in 1946. Before the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the country experienced a period of relative calm and prosperity, driven by tourism, agriculture, and banking. [10] Because of its financial power and diversity, Lebanon was known in its heyday as the â€Å"Switzerland of the East†. [11] It attracted large numbers of tourists,[12] such that the capital Beirut was referred to as â€Å"Paris of the Middle East. † At the end of the war, there were extensive efforts to revive the economy and rebuild national infrastructure. [13] Until July 2006, Lebanon enjoyed considerable stability, Beirut’s reconstruction was almost complete,[14] and increasing numbers of tourists poured into the nation’s resorts. [12] Then, the month-long 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah caused significant civilian death and heavy damage to Lebanon’s civil infrastructure. However, due to its tightly regulated financial system, Lebanese banks have largely avoided the financial crisis of 2007–2010. In 2009, despite a global recession, Lebanon enjoyed 9% economic growth and hosted the largest number of tourists in its history. Etymology The name Lebanon comes from the Semitic root lbn, meaning â€Å"white†, likely a reference to the snow-capped Mount Lebanon. [15] Occurrences of the name have been found in texts from the library of Ebla,[16] which date to the third millennium BC, nearly 70 times in the Hebrew Bible, and three of the twelve tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh (perhaps as early as 2100 BC)[17]. The name is recorded in Ancient Egyptian as Rmnn, where R stood for Canaanite L. [18] Ancient history Main article: History of ancient Lebanon Evidence of the earliest known settlements in Lebanon was found in Byblos, which is considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world,[9] and date back to earlier than 5000 BC. Archaeologists discovered remnants of prehistoric huts with crushed limestone floors, primitive weapons, and burial jars left by the Neolithic and Chalcolithic fishing communities who lived on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea over 7,000 years ago. [19] Lebanon was the homeland of the Phoenicians, a seafaring people that spread across the Mediterranean before the rise of Cyrus the Great. [20] After two centuries of Persian rule, Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great attacked and burned Tyre, the most prominent Phoenician city. Throughout the subsequent centuries leading up to recent times, the country became part of numerous succeeding empires, among them Persian, Assyrian, Hellenistic, Roman, Eastern Roman, Arab, Seljuk, Mamluk, Crusader, and the Ottoman Empire.