Cinema of India and Irish Pages

Irish Pages LTD Glorious Particularity Author(s): Mira Nair Reviewed work(s): Source: Irish Pages, Vol. 3, No. 2, The Home Place (2006), pp. 103-108 Published by: Irish Pages LTD Stable URL: http://www. jstor. org/stable/30057428 . Accessed: 09/11/2012 06:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www. jstor. org/page/info/about/policies/terms. jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive.We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email  protected] org. . Irish Pages LTD is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Pages. http://www. jstor. org GLORIOUS PARTICULARITY MiraNalr Illumining the actual. I make images in my work. I don't pen words, esp ecially not words to be delivered from church pulpits.So I experienced great agony writing this essay, particularlysince it was also meant for publication, until I began to see it as an opportunity to think aloud with you on what has been possessing my mind of late, in this tumultuous past year since the watershed of 9/11/01. I have been reflecting on the torrent of ceaseless images flooding our lives: in the print media, TV and of course, in our popular cinema, ultimately asking myself the age-old questionsTer Braakraises in his still-radicalessay:what is the role of an artist in any society? What is the place and future of cinema in the world today?In the new â€Å"globalvillage†of incessant images, increasinglyI see the failure of mass media to impart actual understanding. This overactive pluralism gives one the illusion of knowing a lot about a lot when actually you know a smattering about nothing at all, leaving in its wake an audience so thoroughly bludgeoned by little bits of information that one is left confused and consequently apathetic politically. Perhapsthat is its intention. The fact is that while images have become more and more international, people's lives have remained astonishingly parochial.This ironic truth of contemporary life is especially troubling in today's war-mongering times, when so much depends on understanding worlds so different, and consequently totally divided, from one's own. In this post-9/11 world, where the schisms of the globe are being cemented into huge walls between one belief and way of life and another, now more than ever we need cinema to reveal our tiny local worlds in all their glorious particularity. In my limited experience, it's when I've made a film that's done full-blown justice to the truths and idiosyncraciesof the specifically local, that it crosses over to become surprisinglyuniversal. Take Monsoon edding,or instance. I wanted to make an intimate family W out of nothing, a love song to the city of Delhi where I come flick, something from, to return to my old habits of guerilla film-making. Except this time, fired m by the recent empowering of the Dogme ethod, I wanted to make a film in just 30 days. That was the original premise: to prove to myself that I didn't need the juggernaut of millions of dollars, studios, special effects and plenty of men in suits to make a good story in the most interesting visual way possible. I wanted 103 IRISH PAGES o capture, first and foremost, the spirit of masti(meaning an intoxication with life) inherent in the full-bodied Punjabi community from where I come, and then, to capture the Indiathat I know and love, an India which lives in several centuries at the same time. As Arundhati Roy put it, â€Å"as Indian citizens we subsist on a regular diet of caste massacresand nuclear tests, mosque breakings and fashion shows, church burnings and expanding cell phone networks, bonded labour and the digital revolution, female infanticide and the Nasd aq crash, husbandswho continue to burn their wives for dowry and our delectable pile of MissWorlds. It couldn't be said better. Such were the fluid pillars of the India I wanted to put on film – 68 actors, 148 scenes, and one hot monsoon season later, using paintings,jewellery, saris and furniture taken from relatives on the screen, with each member of my family acting in it, after shooting exactly 30 days, a film was born that then had a journey so different from any expectation (more correctly, non-expectation) that we might have had for it during its making.People from New Delhi to Iceland to Hungary to Brazil to America believed it was their wedding, their family,themselves on that screen – and if they didn't have a family,they yearned to belong to one like the people they saw on screen. I didn't make the film to educate anybody about â€Å"my culture and my people†- I believe that to be simply a cultural ambassadorof one's country is boring – rather, if it was made for anybody beyond myself, it was made for the people of Delhi to feel and laugh and cry at our own flawed Punjabi(a. k. a the PartyAnimals of India) selves. Uniquely for me, Monsoon edding as the first of seven films I'd made that W was completely embraced by the mainstreamBollywood film industryin India; producers, directors, movie stars, choreographers, musicians alike embraced the film, and for the first time in my 20-odd years as an independent film maker – independent really from both the Indianand the Americanmainstream – I felt the possibility of my work belonging somewhere. Although the style and form of Monsoon edding as radical for the Indianpublic (the entire film was w W hot with a hand-held camera,was reality-based, with a host of completely unknown faces mixed in with legendary actors, live singing, no studio shooting, using a mixture of old Indianpop songs with new original music, and dialogue simultaneouslyin Hindi, English and Punjabi) ,it continues to play in Indiaalmost a year after its release. Perhapsthis was because we took a familiar premise – that of an Indian wedding, and of the family drama that surrounds such an event anywhere – and made a â€Å"realitycheck†version of it so different from the normal Bollywood film.Bollywood, a term for the enormous commercial film industryin Bombay, refers to those grand, epic and over-the-top extravaganzas eplete with musical r 104 IRISH PAGES numbers and lavish production values, designed as escapist entertainment for the masses. It is what Ter Braak hilariously describes in his discussion of low cinema – â€Å"born among cigarette-chewing youths and giggling maid-servants, received with wild enthusiasm and the honest romanticism of a proletariat yearning for deliverance. â€Å"Despite its inimitable, distinctive style and its current arty-exotic cache, Bollywood is nothing like cinema of the art-house, New Wave variety, nothing like expr essionism – it does not have pretensions of purity. It is defiantly popular, made for the masses and for profit. Therefore, Bollywood as a cinematic form is necessarily adaptive and composite – a genre welcoming outside influences, not fearing them. In the first place, the filmmakers always aiming for the broadest possible audience – have had to accommodate the multiple interests of an extremely regional and diverse country.Certain unifying elements – Mahabharata and Ramayana, the foundational epic texts from which many stories derive, and the emphasis in all films on family tradition and local setting – give Bollywood films a broad resonance within Furthermore, Bollywood was born under colonialism and brilliantly survives in a post-colonial world. The Bollywood style is famously adaptive and absorbent, a sponge that had to respond to imperialist influences to survive pre-Independence, and willingly imitated them for profit in more recent years. A common phenomenon in Bombay are the so-called DVD India. irectors who pitch their stories to moviestars using cued scenes from wellknown Hollywood movies (e. g. , â€Å"it is basically a combination of Godfather meets Love Story meets When Harry Met Sally†). Western stories from Jane E re to Dead Poets'Societyare retold with Indian characters and production design that very often – ingeniously – play into both Westerners' and Indians' idealization of India. This suggests a border around India that is both porous and protective, flagrantly absorbing and copying all sorts of influences yet twisting them to make it finally seem inimitably Indian – or, to put it more accurately, inimitably Bollywood.There is much debate on the survival of local cinemas in a global age, and much consternation about the unstoppable wave of American culture, often accused of alternately dulling and diluting art and aesthetic sensibilities around the world. The French have been r ailing about cultural protectionism from Hollywood for years now. In this context of trying to preserve and cultivate local voices, it is fabulous to see the unflagging energy of Bollywood cinema. Bollywood's vigor, its staying power and its improbable, flexible hybridity, are all results of its huge internal market.Commercially and artistically – much like Indian culture itself. Bollywood is supple and muscular 105 IRISH PAGES The mass Indian audience for whom Bollywood films are made is evergrowing and makes the industry hugely profitable, even without taking into account the global reach it has attained. The first Indian film, Rala w Harishchandra, as produced in 1913. Thirty thousand films have been made since. Today,800 films per year are made throughout India, and 12 million people within the country's borders go to see a Hindi film daily.The booming Bollywood market is self-sustainingand runs parallel to – and undisturbedby – American film exhibition in I ndia. This is before taking into account Bollywood's huge market abroad, both as an export to other lands (such as Russia, the Middle East, Africa) and to the far-reachingIndian Diaspora. Growing up in India in the sixties and seventies in the fairly remote state of Orissa, I was not an aficionadoof Bollywood pictures. I did swoon over many of the popular love songs from the movies, but the films themselves did little for me. I was much more interested in stories of real people, the extraordinarinessof ordinary life.Initiallyinspired by jatra which is the form of traditionaltravellingmythological theatre in the countryside, I later became involved with political protest theatre in Calcutta. Then, with eyes focused beyond my own country, I became preoccupied with the Beatles and the antiVietnam War movement, the Western avant-garde, guerilla theater, etc. It wasn't until I went to America for college and began studying film that the â€Å"other†Indian movies first reached me: SatyajitRay, Ritwik Ghatakand Guru Dutt, whose emotionalism and visual stylization were actually pure independent film-making, but made from within Bollywood.The immediacy and grandeurof these films is a pillar for me now – I rely on seeing one of Guru Dutt's movies every six months before I make another one of my own. However, I was the last person to ever imagine that the commercial cinema of the Indian mainstream would have anything whatsoever to do with my own work. Yet the opportunity to give this lecture has given me a chance to reflect on my own trajectory, and I am surprised to find that my home cinema has had a strong influence on my body of work indeed, regardlessof my exploration of increasingly motley and disparatecultures.And in reflecting, I've seen that the influence of Indian films – specifically that unabashed emotional directness, the freewheeling use of music, that emphasis on elemental motivations and values – is a thread running consistently through every one of my films; even when exploring foreign worlds, I have taken the bones and flesh of those societies and tried to infuse them with the spirit of where I'm from. Much of post-imperial scholarship focuses on the Western gaze – and Bollywood itself, as I've said, had to adapt to and be constantly aware of the colonialist point of view. I find myself applying an Eastern gaze 06 IRISH PAGES to Western contexts now, and enjoying the reversal. Historically,Hollywood has alwaysbeen open to foreign directors, so long as we have the competence, craft and flair needed to make money. From Erich von Stroheim to BillyWilder to Ang Lee to PaulVerhoevento ShekharKapur, the doors have opened for us, so long as we understand the bottom line. In my most recent film, Hysterical lindness, working-class drama set in a B New Jersey in the eighties, I found that even in the drab and loveless confines of these bar-hopping girls' world, the Bollywood approachwas just as useful.Half- jokingly,I refer to the style of the film as â€Å"AmericanBleak, Bollywoodstyle†. Within the frame of â€Å"American Bleak,†understatement and mundane circumstances notwithstanding, the full-blown emotion was there, waiting to be made overt. People are people, after all, and no matter if we're trying to portray a loveless reality where desperate women comb neighbourhood bars looking for love, only to find heartbreak,audiences must feel their neuroses as if they are their own.And now, looking at pre-Victorian London to adapt Thackeray's gloriously entertaining saga, VanityFair, I find an enormous panorama of themes familiar to those of us steeped in Bollywood: a woman who defies her poverty-stricken background to clamber up the social ladder, unrequited love, seduction through song, a mother's sacrifice for her child, a true gentleman in a corrupt world . .. the catalog of human stories remains the same. Moreover, it is a story that comes down to basic human ambition, asking a spiritual, even yogic question:Which of us is happy in this orld? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied? The bold strokes of Indian cinema are ideal for this canvas,too. Culture-combining does not have to yield the soulless â€Å"Euro-gateau† lamented by Istvan Szabo in Zanussi's 1993 lecture here. Because, as Zanussi explained, those are films without a center, stories that take place in nameless, unrecognizable cities with a host of European actors desperately attempting a neutralAmerican/English accent, afraidof any eccentricities or distinctiveness that would distract from the mongrelization of the piece.The Bollywood form, itself an ever-growing collage of culturalinfluences, is making its way around the world, but retaining its soul. In fact, my only fear as Bollywood seems to cross over into Western commercial screens is that it waters itself down to suit the Western palate. Lately,Western culture has taken Bollywood styles and incorporated t hem into the mainstream Hollywood vocabulary:smash-hit movies and plays imitate Bollywood's musical form and ultra-theatricalstyle, adaptingthem to Western contexts (MoulinRouge, ombay B Dreams). Think of Thora Birch in GhostWorld, atching a 1950s Hindi dance w umber and dancing around her room gleefully. She sees a freshness and 107 IRISH PAGES lustiness totally absent from her Anytown, USA existence. The crazy dance number is delightfullyforeign to her, yet throughit we also see her small world with new, sharp clarity. Bollywood's pure emotional thrust and distinctive vocabulary has authenticity in itself, however manufactured and molded the form has been over the years. In this era of internationalmisunderstanding,as the threat of a global divide – culturally and politically – is more dire than ever, this distinctiveness is to be celebrated.I have always repeated to myself and to my students that â€Å"if we don't tell our stories, no one else will. â€Å"The â₠¬Å"we†and â€Å"our† in the best films is both local and universal. Cinema can mirror an individual's tiny world, yet reveal infinite other worlds in all their particularity. Film should not behave. It cannot. Cinema is too democratic to be lobotomized into a single way or style. I always say,There are no rules in making cinema – there is only good cinema or soulless cinema.And as long as there are films made like In the Mood or Love,Angel at My Table,Pyaasa,Battle of Algiers,Dekalog, Timeof the f Gypsies,we're doing all right. What is happening to the world lies, at the moment, just outside the realm of common understanding. The only revenge is to work, to make cinema that illuminates this common understanding,that destabilizes the dull competence of most of what is produced, that infuses life with idiosyncracy, whimsy, brutality, and like life, that captures the rare but fabulous energy that sometimes emerges from the juxtaposition of the tragic and comic. a F M L U Thisessaywasdelivered s the Cinema 2i1tans ecture t the Netherlands ilmFestival, trecht, in September002 It is published ereor the irst time. 2 hf f One of the world'sleadingfilmakers,Mira Nair has directedeightfeaturefilms since her celebrated ebutwith SalaamBombay! in 1988. Bornin 1957, shegrew up in Orissa, ndia d I and attendedHavardUniversity. Her mostrecentilms are Vanity Fair (2004), Hysterical f Blindness (2002) and Monsoon Wedding (2001) Hernextfilm, he Namesake, basedon a T i novelbyjhumpa Lahiri,will be releasedn the springof 2007 108

New Public Health Measures

THE NEW PUBLIC HEALTH Stephen R Leeder 7 March 2005 James Cook University, Townsville Introduction All of us here today are public health enthusiasts. If we weren’t we would be somehwere else, maybe helping sick people to get better. That is a worthy calling and thank goodness for all the people who do it. But so too is prevention, so too is keeping society healthy, so too is protecting the environment, so too is keeping food and water safe, so too is attending to immunization and child health.When we talk about public health these latter things, that focus on the whole community, or groups within society and the things that determine their health, are what we are talking about. This is big picture stuff. This is about asking why some communities are healthy and some are ill. Why do some communities have such high rates of diabetes, like the Pacific Islands, while other countries have no diabetes but lots of HIV and TB? These are the kind of interests and enthusiasms that have led people into public health as a career for as long as it has been around.These are the kind of questions that were asked ages ago and which are still appropriate to be asked now. So what is this thing called the ‘new’ public health? How has it come about and does it have added value? In brief, the new public health has come about because of growing interest in the subtle interaction of the environment with people living in affluent societies. The old public health remains the public health that most of the world needs, quite frankly, because communicable disease, malnutrition and other scourges are still the major killers worldwide.These are more or less the same as those that led people in the fifteenth century to look at how things such as the plague and cholera could be controlled through sanitation, clean water and quarantine. The new public health But the new public health is much more concerned with the interplay between affluence, social well being, education and health, social capital and health. These are not hard and fast things, like having no system for waste water disposal or using contaminated drinking water. They are more subtle, but in societies like ours where the basic public health engineering and mmunization and food safety are well in place and require surveillance but not reinvention, these new factors – the social, economic and community quality factors – are rising in importance as determinants of health and causes of illness. 1 For example, Michael Marmot has done studies with Geoffrey Rose and others in the UK examining coronary disease rates among civil servants, known as the Whitehall studies. They found that things like a sense of social control and cohesiveness were important determinants of whether people develop coronary disease.Money wasn’t everything. In the Whitehall II study, Marmot (Director of the International Centre for Health and Society at the University College London) and his col leagues examined the psychological characteristic of work termed â€Å"low control† – meaning that an individual worker had little control over his or her daily activities in the workplace. The results showed that it was an important predictor of the risk of cardiovascular disease and that it had an important role in accounting for the social gradient in coronary disease. 1 The origins of the new public healthThe Canadians have been very active over many years in promoting our understanding about the interplay between society and social environmental factors and health. This started in 1974 when Marc Lalonde, who was then the Canadian health minister, commissioned a report on the health of Canadians which proposed four sets of factors that were important to keep in mind when thinking about the health of the public. The Lalonde Report2 refers to these four factors collectively as â€Å"The Health Field Concept†. The four elements are human biology, environment, l ifestyle and health care organization.The human biology element includes all those aspects of health, both physical and mental, which are developed within the human body as a consequence of the basic biology of man and the organic make-up of the individual. The environment category includes all those matters related to health which are external to the human body and over which the individual has little or no control (for example, foods, water supply, etc). The lifestyle category consists of the aggregation of decisions by individuals which affect their health and over which they more or less have control.The fourth category in the concept is health care organisation, which consists of the quantity, quality, arrangement, nature and relationships of people and resources in the provision of health care – the health care system. The Lalonde Report was ground breaking in its day and provoked widespread international interest. Implementation proved to be far harder than was expecte d and the resilience of the health-care system to drain resources away from the first three fields was spectacular.Nevertheless, Canada has had a more lively interest in the contribution of the first three fields to health and has preserved a degree of control over health care, including rigid enforcement of a restriction on numbers of doctors trained and practicing, ever since. Although perhaps not a direct consequence of the Lalonde Report, Canada has also 2 played a leading role in the evolution of health promotion as a discipline. Several of the leaders in the field, now nearly 30 years on from the Report, are Canadians.They have had a special sensitivity to the potential for health gain by examining not only what can be done to encourage and sustain changes in individual human behaviour that will contribute to better health, but also those changes that can be effected in the natural and built environment that can assist in achieving this goal. Health promotion and the new publi c health In Australia, the new public health has been reflected in the steady rise of health promotion, expressed such ways as the formation of the Australian Health Promotion Association.The Association’s major objectives include providing opportunities for members’ professional development, increasing public and professional awareness of the roles and functions of health promotion practitioners, and contributing to discussion, debate and decision making on health promotion policy and programs. Since its incorporation in 1990, the Health Promotion Association has grown and developed such that it now has an established function and a central place in Australia’s health promotion landscape.Health promotion is an active form of public health in which an agenda is set with communities and individuals to affirm positively the value of health and push towards high levels of health, seeing it rather as the WHO does as a positive state of well being and not simply the absence of illness. Health promotion uses a range of tactics and methods to achieve its ends, including community participation, development and skill strengthening, advocacy (where health professionals and others lobby for health to be taken seriously at political and commercial levels), and education.Something of a contrast has come to be drawn between the activist promotion end and the formal epidemiological end of the public health spectrum, the former hoeing in boots and all to effect change and the latter taking careful steps, using rigorous studies and statistics, to establish cause and effect relationships before acting. Both groups tend to drive one another nuts. This is a lively tension and not one that is likely to go away.Professor Fran Baum who is head of the Department of Public Health at Flinders University in Adelaide has written a book entitled The new public health: an Australian perspective, that I commend to you. In it the idea of the new public health is given e xtensive coverage. 3 Source: Baume, F (1988) The new public health: an Australian perspective The new public health overlaps and interacts with other health movements of the past decade – particularly health promotion, primary health care, community health, women’s health, Aboriginal health, workers’ health and health education. History of the new public health The new public health started to develop in the 1980s. It was in the mid-1980s that there was a significant shift in public health when the WHO’s first international conference on health promotion was held in Ottawa, Canada. There were two driving forces behind the Ottawa Charter. It was clear that the Health for All by the Year 2000 strategy was not being adopted by industrialised countries, and the limitations of the lifestyle and behavioural approaches were increasingly being seen as requiring a new conceptualization for health promotion.Also the time was opportune for a more health promotion st atement. The Ottawa Charter managed to integrate many of the different perspectives of health promotion. While being seen as the foundation of the new public health, it did not reject behavioural and lifestyle approaches, but saw them as part of the acquisition of personal skills for health. The Charter is based on the belief that health requires peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, social justice and equity as prerequisites. 4 Box 3. 1: The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986 The Development of healthy public policy, which recognises that most of the private and public sector policies that affect health lie outside the conventional concerns of health agencies. Rather they are in policies such as environmental protection legislation, progressive taxation, welfare, occupational health and safety legislation and enforcement, land rights legislation and control of the sale and distribution of substances such as alcohol and tobacco. Health becomes, therefor e, a concern and responsibility of each sector of government. The creation of supportive environments in which people can realise their full potential as healthy individuals. The Charter recognises the importance of social, economic and physical environmental factors in shaping people’s experiences of health. †¢ Strengthening community action refers to those activities that increase the ability of communities to achieve change in their physical environmental factors in shaping people’s experience of health. †¢ The development of personal skills acknowledges the role that behaviour and lifestyles plays in promoting health.The skills called for are those that enable people to make healthy choices. It also extends the skills base for health to those associated with community organisation, lobbying and advocacy, and the ability to analyse individual problems within a structural framework. †¢ Reorientation of health services is a call for health systems to sh ift their emphasis from (in most industrialised countries) an almost total concentration on hospital-based care and extensive technological diagnostic and intervention to a system that is community-based, more user-friendly and controlled, which focuses on health.The Ottawa Charter stresses the importance of, and recommends: †¢ Advocacy for health †¢ Enabling people to achieve their full health potential †¢ Mediation between different interests in society for the pursuit of health Source: Baume, F (1988) The new public health: an Australian perspective Following in the spirit of the Ottawa Charter, in 1986 the Better Health Commission (BHC), a group established by the then Commonwealth Minister for Health, Neal Blewett, published Looking Forward to Better Health. Its brief was to recommend ways in which health in Australia might be promoted, especially though ways that were 5 nconventional for the medical and public health professions. It was part of Australia’ s response to the World Health Organization’s commitment to achieve equitable levels of health for all people, according tot the political and economic possibilities of each country, by 2000. This report contained proposals for achieving greater equity in health in Australia together with strategies to address several major preventable contributors to death and disease. Task forces established goals and targets for three priority health topics: cardiovascular disease, nutrition and injury. In making these choices the Commission was concerned to identify not only big problems, but also problems potentially amenable to prevention. Heart disease, the principal cause of death, was also chosen because of its multiple modifiable causes (e. g. diet, smoking an sedentary living), nutrition because of its multiple consequences (e. g. diabetes, heart disease and cancer) and injury because it cannot be dealt with preventively by efforts confined to health care but must involve industry, transport, law enforcement and industrial relations.These three major health problems in contemporary Australian society are priorities for health promotion by virtually any criterion. The work of the BHC was taken further in the National Better Health Program and led to the formulation of national health goals and then national health priorities which remain in place today. By the end of the 1980s, despite success, there was some Australian scepticism about the new directions in public health. Some questioned whether the new public health was really ‘new’ or simply old ideas in new clothing.This criticism is somewhat harsh as one of the features of the Ottawa Charter is that it does not ignore public health history but rather builds on it. The Ottawa Charter reflected numerous social and health movements of the previous 120 or so years. Its claims to be ‘new’ derives from how it pulled together numerous and diverse movements to present a package which gav e public health a more radical and cohesive direction than had been the case for some time.Today, public health is alive and well and confronting in this country the challenges that it can assist ameliorate. We are an astonishingly healthy nation – on average. We have the second longest healthy life expectancy of all nations, a fraction behind Japan. But within our country we have communities including those of some of our Indigenous people where these privileged are far from being available. It is here that a combination of old and new public health measures is required.Good work is being done and more is needed. This is the mission of public health. 6 References 1. Marmot, M ‘Inequalities in Health’, The New England Journal of Medicine 2001;345(2):134-136 2. Lalonde, M (1974) A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians. Ottawa: National Ministry of Health and Welfare 3. Baume, F (1998) The new public health: an Australian perspective Publisher: Oxford Universi ty Press 4. Leeder S R (1999) Healthy Medicine, Challenges facing Australia’s health services Publisher: Allen & Unwin 7

Contemporary Ethical Issues in Criminal Justice and Private Security Essay

Since the events of the Newtown School Shooting and the Boston Marathon Bombing both cities have rebuilt themselves after suffering attacks in 2012 and 2013 that shook the cities and took the lives of many. As the responsible party of any facility or public event security planning and practice plays a vital part in a city subject to future acts of selfless acts of crimes or acts of terrorism. Societal structures, such as schools, malls and churches, are key elements of American lifestyles. Public events such as concerts, marathons, or parades, host millions of people at any given time making them subjective to mass terrorist attacks. Terrorist groups focus on creating organized chaos and inflicting major damage on areas and people. Like the events of September 11th, terrorist events are not always in a particular area at a particular time. This was shown to be true with past events such as the Newton School Shootings and the Boston Marathon Shooting. Eli Saslow, author of â€Å"After Newtown shootings, Pennsylvania county hires armed school guards† explores previous school shootings and security. The Washington Post discusses how security measures have changed from that of Columbine. It talks about the use of metal detectors, intercoms, surveillance systems, and now gun toting teachers. Education systems in Pennsylvania, Utah, and Tennessee are now training teachers to carry firearms, or hiring â€Å"security specialists† at a rate of $11.50 per hour (2013, para. 1). Frank Cichra, one of the paid officers protecting schools, ponders,† Was he protecting kids’ environment or changing it?† (2013). The basis of the article was to find additional ways to ensure that beyond placing schools on â€Å"threat alert† that the schools would be safe. In an article from The Examiner, titled â€Å"The Boston Marathon terrorist and immigration reform† author Hugh Hewitt discusses the issues of immigration reform and national security issues. This most recent incident has brought about discussions on open discussions and support for amendments. The issue compares these debates to those that will take place in reference to the Newtown school shootings and the gun laws debate. The article focuses on the importance of background checks and entry-and-exit procedures. Although the article states that both of the bombers were legal immigrants it goes on to say that there is speculation that one of them may have left and returned in later years. Hewitt states that â€Å"Immigration reform is crucial for national security. But it has to be done the right way, and unless it is done that way this effort will collapse even as the misguided push for gun control collapsed† (2013, para. 14). Recommendations Conclusion The Newton school shootings and the Boston Marathon bombing both had a profound effect on the way policies and procedures are carried out and by whom. These events were made significant because it brought back to the table important issues such as security at a national level, which includes the topics of gun control and immigration. Security planning at the national level has a direct emphasis on homeland security. A prime example of combining all levels of security, the vision of homeland security simply states: â€Å"The United States, through a concerted national effort that galvanizes the strengths and capabilities of Federal, State, local; the private and non-profit sectors; communities, and individual citizens — along with our partners in the international community — will work to achieve a secure Homeland that sustains our way of life† (Bellavita, 2008, para. 1). National level security planning connects all sectors of security to provide protection for the United States against terrorism, different hazards, and catastrophic events. These changes have created a liaison that extends beyond United States territory and forces the updating of older policies. Bellvita quotes a definition from National Strategy For Homeland Security as â€Å"a concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do occur† (2008). Nationally, security planning will involve familiarity with foreign policies, key groups, and national terrorist warnings. One way the emphasis on homeland security affects security planning is the price tag on security. The events discussed in this paper has spawned have changes in our criminal justice system and private security practices. Through these events communication with law makers, foreign influences, and United States citizens has increased awareness and accountability. Updating current systems, technologies, vehicles, and trainings have all brought a new structure to the emergency security protocol. A commonality of safety has carried the nation through its grief while enhancing security protocols and procedures.

The Impact of Changes on Safety and Cost of SABIC Dissertation

The Impact of Changes on Safety and Cost of SABIC - Dissertation Example According to Kumar. R. ( 1999 ) , the basic purpose of any research work is to understand and analyze the chosen research phenomenon . There are many methods of communication research methodologies like qualitative research , quantitative research , case studies and many more . These communication research methodologies try to acquire the actual scenario of the research phenomenon by methods of interviews and surveys . The qualitative methodology happens to be based on the interpretative paradigm , while the quantitative methodology follows the positivist paradigm of knowledge . This research has chosen the quantitative research methodology as one of the research approach . Another research methodology chosen for this research includes the case study method . According to McMurray et al. ( 2004 ) , when these two methods are used together , provides triangulation , which is expected to increase the validity and reliability of the research data collected . The strategy chosen for this research work comes under the two approaches , they are the quantitative method of data collection followed by statistical analysis and the case study approach which follows an empirical inquiry of a research phenomenon in real life situations . The quantitative method of data collection seems to follow the positivist paradigm that assumes that the participants are aware of the research concept and thus they intend to answer a defined set of questions in a predetermined scale . Here , the questions and the answers are defined by the researcher and the participant just chooses a specific option that suits his opinion . Thus the opinion of the participant in the research is generally limited to the set of answers and any other relative opinion of the participant seem to be suppressed . Â  

Hominins Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Hominins - Assignment Example The original airing of the film was on March 27, 2003. It reveals the events that occurred nearly three million years ago (Turner 67). Professor Winston achieves to trace the history of humankind from the ape-man to the upright man. The film also captures the main points such as stone tool manufacture, meat eating, extended childhood, and bipedalism. The development stages start with an Afarensis, Lucy, also called the â€Å"First Ancestor.† The ape was the first primate to walk on two legs. Lucy’s societies engage in leadership conflict. The film focuses on the bipedality of the species. The second species is â€Å"Blood Bothers† that mainly dominates East Africa. The species consists of Homo habilis, Paranthropus boisei, and Homo rudolfensis. The third species in the tree is â€Å"Savage Family† which consists of Homo erectus and Homo ergaster (Barry, Robert, and Lynn 56). The setting of the species is Kenya and China. The last species in the species is â€Å"The Survivor† that includes Homo sapiens idaltu, Homo sapiens, Neanderthal and Homo heidelbergensis. The film has the strengths of enabling the audience to understand the evolution of human beings successfully. It presents the species as they occur in n orderly manner. It does well in covering the main these and events in human evolution. It gives detailed explanations on the environmental factors that could have influenced the species to acquire their distinct characteristics (Turner 79). The films use special effects from the latest scientific theories to enable the audience understand t easily. The film uses good visual effects that appeal to the audience. Though the film achieves to provide a comprehensive explanation about the evolution of human beings, it has some flaws. It uses a weak theory. For instance, it does not analyze the factors that the species were responding to when acquiring specific features. Strong theories should

Humen Resource Managment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Humen Resource Managment - Essay Example It is not uncommon to find views that are categorically different from the ones that were made and what we believe in could be belied by taking up a different perception. For every view, there is always a string of arguments to support the cause and there by reinforce the thought process. Similarly the case under question, namely, the union issue with the Universities for a rise in the salary levels may be taken up and studied. Differing actors and stakeholders in the issue would only be offering different perception to the same story or rather same history. When this incident is revisited, it is found that the earliest newspaper reports bank on the issue that the students' assessments are affected and the students are going to have hard time because of the staffs of the university and their 'unilateral' strike decisions. It is also found that the villains of the show, were asking for a rise in the salary when everybody 'thought' that they always were better paid and enjoyed a more stable and 'no pressure' life style. The strike and the pay rise were both looked at as the ones caused because of their inherent 'greediness' that went with the people's aim to make more money and live like their business counterparts. Secondly, the university is a service and it cannot be viewed as a profit making exercise for the universities! While so, how can the staff of the university expect a rise that is not commensurate with the rate of change in the living conditions of the community (BBC News 21 Apr 2006) Thirdly, the university staffs already had a higher and more comfortable pay scale. Therefore, they found that the rate of rise in the following years was not in line with the inflation rates in the country. The radical view Once the views of a multitude of stake holders are included in the perception, the views of the staffs are also included (Simon Felton 10 Apr 2006). This view would throw open the following: The villains The Vice Chancellors The Problem Unknown reasons of the employers Motive Only to reduce the cost to the Universities. Credit To the employers. In this case, all the credit for holding on to the salary levels of the staff went to the vice chancellors and the employers. Fixed qualities Complacency, indifference and recklessness Emotions Suffering of the students and delayed assessments. The radical view on the other hand, specifies that the vice chancellors of the universities had acted as villains. They had not responded to numerous requests in the last twenty years to improve the salary levels

Professional Ethics And Governance Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Professional Ethics And Governance - Assignment Example The creativity and the risk taking will provide the decision makers in securing and protecting the risky partnership with the stock of Enron and ensuring that the stock will not fall (Healey and Isles, 2002). The values of Enron that is included in the corporate culture is not balanced and maintained by proper and appropriate attention that is required for increasing the corporate integrity and also acquiring of the customers and not only providing value to its shareholders. The corporate culture of Enron mainly embraces its value which is of large size which is not only considered as the value but also as a strategy in order to attain big mission or objective. Enron has faced a severe failure partly because of the existence of complexity and partly because of its size and the auditors failed , the bankers and the creditors failed, the management of the company failed and even the regulators also failed to safeguard and control the integrity of the capital market (Erwin, 2011). The c ombination of the various failures has resulted in the structural problem of the company. Arthur Andersen has been considered as the most influential, high earning and the most ethical accounting firm of the world. In spite of the rise in the consulting services, the relationship of the firms with its clients the company faced several threats from the investors of its regulators, clients and courts. Andersen failure in maintaining proper audit has both legally and ethically disrupted the various aspects that are related to the development of the ethical standards and accounting theory. The maintenance of quality control which is termed and regarded as the most important element and factor in the accounting profession has also been violated by Andersen (Stevens, 2013). The corporate culture of Lehman brother can be analyzed by the fact that it failed to face the severe and aggressive recession that prevailed in the year 2008 and it went bankrupt. Lehman

It has to be an international topic related to crime. ex prostitution Research Proposal

It has to be an international topic related to crime. ex prostitution in Thailand - Research Proposal Example In this research, I choose to focus on this specific aspect, with the intentions of finding a solution for the prevailing crime. Introduction The prostitution industry has been growing in Thailand for many years. The concentration for the industry has been on the city centers and in particular, the Bangkok and Pattaya (Van et al, 1993). The girls who have been directly involved in prostitution has been innumerable, and it is estimated that prostitution accounts for more than 3% of the total GDP in Thailand. A survey done in 2007and 2008 indicated that at least the industry yields in an annuals basis is 5 billion dollars (Elizabeth and Charlie, 2009). Another survey indicated that at least four thousand prostitutes are concentrated in Bangkok area alone. Clearly, the industry is huge, earning the country a lot of income. The girls have also benefited d from the business, which explains why they have continually increased in number every year. It is important to note that prostitution is illegal in Thailand. According to Bales, (1999) the criminalization of the act has been known to exist since 1960. It sis therefore puzzling to see the numbers growing every year, suggesting that the law is not being effected as it ought. Prostitution is always packaged with other related crimes, something that raises concerns in the global front. Many girls have been known to engage in human trafficking and child prostitution. Further, there are so many people within the population that have been recorded to be affected with HIV and AIDS. Whenever crime occurs, it is natural to turn to the policy makers for a solution. Therefore, it is possible that the issue of prostitution and related problems can be dealt with through effective policy by the government and its related bodies. The law making process and the people charged with the role of its implementation must concentrate on the subject of prostitution (Chambliss & Schutt, 2007). The law in Thailand bans prostitution but lea ves certain gaps that lead to serious consequences amongst its citizens. Further, the implementation process tends to be overlooked, which has led to more problems surrounding the issue This research concentrates on the gaps that have been left during the policy making process as pertains to the subject. The study further suggests change in policy by the concerned bodies to deal with the problem Literature review According to Hantrakul, (1984) prostitution does not occur in places where the government has made a lot of effort to develop the correct policy against the acts and the related crimes. However, in Thailand, n implementation of those policies has been ineffective. While prostitution is on hand said to be illegal, the government has passed bills that have left big gaps for it to thrive. The law implementation process is hindered mainly because of viewing the act as a national resource. Since the year 1960, the government has continued to pass bills that have been indicative that prostitution is illegal (Rhodes, 1999) However, many other bills have left big gaps for the business to continue being practiced in the region. For example, in the year 1966, a law was passed to allow for service provision to the American servicemen. The rest and recreation facilities were provided for the soldiers. This was a period when the Vietnamese war called for soldiers to be deployed in the region for protection and peace keeping. In 1996, a law was passe

Module 2 Case Assignment Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Module 2 Case Assignment - Coursework Example This paper examines the strategic analysis of Kraft Foods Group using Porter’s five forces and PEST to examine the company’s external environment. Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE:KFT) corporation specializes in marketing and manufacturing of food products such as the snacks, cheese, beverages, convenient meals and among various types of the packaged grocery products. The company has its branches in approximately more than 155 countries worldwide. Its three main segments include; Kraft Foods Europe, Kraft Foods North America, and Kraft Foods Developing Markets. Kraft Foods Inc. is the second largest foods and Beverages Company in the globe after Nestle. Its brands includes: Nabisco, Oreo, and LU biscuits; Cadbury and Milka chocolates; Jacob and Maxwell house coffees, Trident gum; Philadelphia cream cheese; Oscar Meyer meats; Kraft cheeses. The PESTEL analysis is a sort of analysis that looks at the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal environments of the country with particular reference to a certain company (â€Å"PEST Analysis†, 2009). PESTEL analysis is presented below: The political environment favors the development and growth of the Kraft Foods Inc. This is due to the fact that the company has long been involved in the various community based and political initiatives. Some of this includes: supporting of the candidates that comprehends and appreciates the public policies that greatly impacts on the business, brands and the employees (Carnegie Research Inc., 2009). Additionally, the company Kraft Foods has started the political action committee called the Kraftpac that is aimed at making funding to the U.S. Federal, candidates, committees, and the state political parties. In strengthening its political base, the company also takes reasonable steps in making corporate contributions to the political parties, committees, and among others. Its key consideration for the

The effectiveness of ( Career Development Plan) in an organization Essay - 1

The effectiveness of ( Career Development Plan) in an organization - Essay Example When they are able to do this, they accomplish two things: 1) they add their talent to the organization and help it move forward and 2) they stay with the organization over the long-term. Central to this discussion is that the organization stands to profit from the work of the leaders in their organizations. "They are the ones who will involve themselves in the making of the organization and they will work towards their won goals at the same time. Career development seems to be important to an organization but how important it is will be the topic of this research. Specifically, this research will explore wither the career development plan is an effective training method to use in an organization to affect the performance of the company. A secondary aspect of this research is to define how career development planning can help the organization. For the purpose of this research, a qualitative study will be conducted. The research will use telephone interviews and online questionnaires. The questionnaires will be designed to begin at the awareness level that trainees may have regarding a career development plan. From this information, the researcher wants to understand the level of satisfaction that the trainees have with their organizations career development plan. Also, trainees will be asked for feedback as to their suggestions for improvement of the plan. Trainees will receive online questionnaires. Telephone interviews will be conducted with managers and trainees. These questionnaires will focus on the areas that need improvement following the online questionnaire. The target group for the research is trainees at the company. They are trainees who have come to the company within the last three years. The sample size is 30, which keeps the sample small and allows the researcher to examine the responses in a more manageable way. The researcher is particularly interested in understanding how the trainees feel that are involved in this particular

Women Essay Example for Free

Women Essay In the persuasive paper, the issue of abortion through a Feminist perspective and ethical lens will be looked into. Much controversy surrounds the issue but looking at feminist theory, more specifically, radical feminist theory, the decision for a woman to abort should be available if needed. Not only that, but the decision should be left up to the pregnant woman and the pregnant woman only, as this is seen as a form of escaping male dominance in society. The main arguments that will be used within the paper are: most importantly the feminist perspective of abortion, a feminist perspective of a woman’s control over her sexuality and how this relates to abortion, birth control, and lastly the reasoning behind why women may choose to abort. The writing style the persuasive paper will follow is APA style, and the following are a list of scholarly sources that will be used: 1.Himmelweit, S. (1980). Abortion: Individual choice and social control. Feminist Review, 5(1), 65-68. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/fr.1980.13 is one of the sources that will be used in the persuasive paper. The journal informs and a report on original research, as well as it provides an analysis of issues specific to the discipline. These two reasons demonstrate a purpose of publication which clearly indicates that this is indeed a scholarly source. 2. Zampas, C., Gher, J. M. (2008). Abortion as a human right—international and regional standards. Oxford Journals, 8(2), 269-294. doi: 10.1093/hrlr/ngn008 is another source chosen to be used within the paper. Frequency of publication is often a good indication that a source is in fact scholarly. Often quarterly is a good forewarning of a scholarly source, which Oxford Journals is credible for. 3. Bridgeman, J. (2011). Wise women in community: building on everyday radical feminism for social change. Interface, 3(2), 288-293. Retrieved from http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Interfac

Internal External Balance Essay Example for Free

Internal External Balance Essay When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Bernard Baruch In review of trade policy best suited for our Nation it is time for an overhaul and start developing a more complete toolbox. As Kevin Kaiser so poignantly stated in his article in CNN Money: â€Å"The economists that make the worlds crucial monetary policy decisions are the same economists who authored most textbooks in use. While superficially appealing, their theories lack empirical evidence, are riddled with internal inconsistencies, and are based upon tenuous assumptions. Specifically, their models are built on downward sloping demand curves, upward sloping supply curves, perfect competition, rational consumers, benevolent dictators, and general equilibrium; there is no dynamic analysis, no consideration of disequilibrium, and no role of private sector debt† (Kaiser, 2011). The policy cross as shown to the left indicates that as e increases m decreases, and current account improves. To offset this, an increase in g is required. The EE curve is positively sloped in the (e,g) space. An internal equilibrium is attained when the output is at the full employment level thereby raising the interest rate. Moreover, because the economy is fully employed, real output cannot increased beyond a point. Thus, an increase in inflationary pressure occurs, thereby raising domestic price, which shifts the LM curve to the left. Thus, along the IE curve, government spending and interest rate are directly related. As a Post Keynes-Industrialist, the tendency to lean towards comprehensive human market behaviors and interdependent structural issues makes developing a one-size-fits-all policy, such as the policy cross, for internal and external balance a challenge. This is particularly true when evidence for any one theory to-date has not proven to be exact and reliable. Capitalism is fickle, and doesn’t follow slopes as neatly as theorists would like and the global shocks being felt around the world are keeping the economic status of all countries anything but predictable. Paul Krugman wrote an article for The New York Times that explained, â€Å"at the heart of the profession of economics’ failure has been its emphasis on rigor, rather than relevance—that is, economics had been weakened by the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess. He offered two recommendations in addition to again making the case for renewed attention to Keynes: scholarship that questions the efficient-market view of the financial sector, and research that incorporates the realities of finance into macroeconomics† (Krugman, 2009). For the purposes of this paper however, it would be recommended that a floating exchange rate be proposed for the following reason: The challenge of fiscal and monetary policies to keep equilibrium could be comparative to eyeballing mass versus weight of internal and external spending and determining which is more relevant at any given time. While a cleanly floating exchange rate assures external balance, it does not assure internal balance and changes in the rate to achieve external balance may exacerbate and internal imbalance. Government monetary and fiscal policies may be used to address internal imbalances at this point with a floating rate structure. â€Å"The following graph can assist in understanding the impacts of booms and recessions on internal and external balances.†(Johnston, M. 2011). For example, the bottom left-hand shows the effects of exports being less competitive, which reduces the number of exports and induces a current account deficit and lower aggregate demand. Currently, the US has a well-known financial problem with a large trade deficit every year. â€Å"It seems many ignore this issue since our debts tend to be denominated in our domestic currency, the dollar.† (Kling, A. para 6). The most recent news release for second quarter 2012 on the Bureau of Economic Analysis states, â€Å"the US current-account deficit decreased to $117.4 billion (preliminary) in the second quarter from $133.6 billion (revised) in the first quarter. The decrease in the current-account deficit was accounted for by a decrease in the deficit on goods and an increase in the surplus on income.†(Bea.gov, Sept 18, 2012 ). This would indicate a small shift in the left lower quadrant just slightly contracting, but very little overall. However damning the current financial situation is, the floating exchange rate remains the better choice as argued in Global Business Today, â€Å"Under a fixed system, a country’s ability to expand or contract its money supply as it sees fit is limited by the need to maintain exchange rate parity, leading to high interest rates† (Hill, 2011). â€Å"Another reason is the because the real exchange rate fundamentals including terms of trade, import tariffs, technology progress, composition of government expenditures and revenues, real interest rate and capital controls are always in flux† (Wong, C. p. 7). When the exchange rate is flexible, in fiscal expansion either government expenditure increases or tax cuts raises output, but worsens current account balances. Conversely, fiscal contraction improves current account balances, but lowers output. If the economy attempts to attain both internal and external balance it could consider expenditure switching, but alone this will be inadequate. â€Å"For example, if an economy is at the full employment level, i.e., internal balance is already attained, but if it is running current account deficits, policy makers in the economy could devalue its currency so that net exports rise. However, the improvement of current account balances would lead the economy to experience over-heating so that internal balance would disappear. If an economy is experiencing an inflationary gap, or over-heating, while maintaining balanced current account, a revaluation policy may reduce total expenditure back to the full employment level, but lead to current account deficits† (web.pdx.edu, para 5). Therefore, changing how we currently think may be necessary to achieve both internal and external balances. Economics has been referred to the dismal science but as Kaiser states, â€Å"True sciences expand and evolve: genetics, psychology, quantum mechanics, astronomy. Economics defends itself – it is an ideology. What we need is an economic theory that is more relevant to a modern capitalist economy – one that embraces uncertainty and disequilibrium, is grounded upon realistic assumptions, is judged by the accuracy of its predictions, and where debt and money are implicit, important factors.† (CNN Money, 2011). References Hill, H. (2011). Global Business Today. New York: New York McGraw-Hill Kaiser, K. (December 16, 2011) Its time for economic theory to evolve. CNN Money. Retrieved on December 14, 2012 from http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/12/16/its-time-for-economic-theory-to-evolve/ Johnston, M (October 8, 2011). AS and A2 Macroeconomics: Internal and External Balances. Econofix. Retrieved on December 12, 2012 from http://econfix.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/as-and-a2-macroeconomics-internal-and-external-balances/ Kling, A. (2004). The trade balance. Retrieved on December 13, 2012 from http://arnoldkling.com/econ/macro/trade.html Krugman, P (2009). â€Å"How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?† The New York Times, September 2. Retrieved on December 14, 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html News Release: US International Transactions. Retrieved on December 14, 2012 from http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/transactions/transnewsrelease.htm Wong, C-H. Adjustment and the Internal-External Balance. Retrieved on December 14, 2012 from http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/pdfs/L-1b.pdf World Economy Expenditure Changing Retrieved on December 14, 2012 from http://web.pdx.edu/~ito/Expenditure_changing_switching_RE_-HI.pdf

Bolman And Deals Four Framework Approach

Bolman And Deals Four Framework Approach Leadership was once about hard skills such as planning, finance and business analysis. When command and control ruled the corporate world, the leaders were heroic rationalists who moved people around like pawns and fought like stags. When they spoke, the company employees jumped. The entire career system in some organizations is based on using hard functional skills to progress. But when executives reach the top of the organization, many different skills are required. Corporate leaders may find that although they can do the financial analysis and the strategic planning, they are poor at communicating ideas to employees or colleagues, or have little insight into how to motivate people. The modern CEO requires an array of skills. Some suggest that people expect too much of leaders. Indeed, renaissance men and women are rare. Leadership in a modern organization is highly complex and it is increasingly difficult. It is sometimes impossible for finding all the necessary traits in a single person. Among the most crucial skills is the ability to capture audiences. Richard Branson, the funder of Virgin Group and Virgin Atlantic Airline could be one of best leader in the industry. Biography According to Virgin group website, Richard Branson was born in July 18, 1950 in Surrey, England. He is the son of a lawyer and an airline stewardess. He was educated at the exclusive Stowe School, but did not excel, possibly due to his nearsightedness and dyslexia. In his teens he developed a national magazine, Student at the Age of Sixteen. At seventeen he began a student advisory service. After leaving school, Branson entered the music industry. Considering that he could sell records cheaper than the existing average, he started a mail-order catalogue with friends. It was a success, and they opened a record discount shop. They named the business Virgin, because it was their first venture. Virgin Airlines is one of Bransons main businesses. Formed in 1984, it is part owned by Singapore Airlines, and it is the second largest British long haul international airline, and has won many awards. During the 1990s the fleet and the air route network expanded and a Premium Economy service was introduced. In 2003 Virgin Atlantic launched the innovative Upper Class Suite with a flat bed and seat, and in 2006 the Virgin Clubhouse opened at Heathrow with a spa, brasserie, cocktail bar, hair salon and games room. Branson is also well known for his personal adventures by Virgin Atlantic Flyer. In 2010, and less than 40 years after the original conception of the Branson Virgin businesses, Branson boasted over 200 Virgin Megastores worldwide. All told, Branson employed 24,000 employees in 150 companies, with revenues totaling an estimated five billion dollars each year from the entire Virgin Group including the music stores and airline. The Virgin empire was is the largest privately owned business in England (Virgin Atlantic Airways, 2010). Bolman and Deals Four Framework Approach to Richard Branson Leadership models can also help us to understand a leaders organizational influence. Bolman and Deal, in Four Framework Approach, suggest that leaders display behaviors in one of four frameworks: Structural, Human Resource, Political, or Symbolic. Each requires a specific organizational setting to be successful. The Structural Framework From the rational perspective, organizations are instruments designed to achieve specified goals. Organizations are purposeful in the sense that the activities and interactions of participants are centrally coordinated to achieve common objectives; behaviors in organizations are rational in the sense that roles and role relations are prescribed independently of the personal attributes of the individuals in the structure (Richard, 1992). In the rational domain, organizations are driven by strategies, and the role of management is to align strategies and structure with the external environment. Strategy development includes two kinds of approaches mainly. The first one is prescriptive approach which is the firm defined the objective and/or the main elements before brainstorm the strategy; vice versa, another one is have no clear objective and/or elements, all the strategy will be developing during the process, which call emergent approach. Finally, what people and task performed base on above approaches that will generate the strategic change by formal or informal organizational structure from the managers, because of environment, business relationship, technology, people, life cycle, political power, etc (Tichy, 1983). The importance of strategic change is that may occur considerable disruption, but this practice is also useful to analysis the specific causes for planning the best direction on Bransons management change. Bransons Corporate Level Strategy Diversification: The core business of Virgin Group is travel, but since early 1990, it has begun to involve in many other different businesses, such businesses are no directly or substantial relationships between each other. Such businesses include mass media, entertainment, beverage, finance, weight industries and more, all these small business units (SBUs) enriched the Virgins portfolio. Brand Extension: Branson built its red brand to represent value for money, quality, fun, innovation, success and trust. This idea is developed and applied on its whole range of businesses. Joint-Venture: In the flight service, each airline have to get the permission for access paths by during with local governments, this process is very complicated and consume a lot of resources in terms of human, money and time. Joint-venture is the method that can be easy to get this permission, also could be easy to meet the economic of scale to reduce cost, and share or lower the risk. Bransons SBUs Level Strategy Differentiation: Branson provides the offer which other firms no. The very common example is, Virgin Atlantics souvenirs are always different and united. Another one example is Virgin Atlantic keeps its safety record is zero accident, to increase the confidence to its passengers, or customers though its air ticket is expensive then others in generally. The Human Resource Framework Although people are intentionally rational, not all human behavior is the result of rationality. People do not leave their emotions and feelings at home when they come to work in the morning, and noneconomic objectives are pursued alongside economic objectives (Powell, 1999). In the human domain, the central issue is how to integrate human needs with organizational rationality. Virgin Group considers peoples as the important assets, so it pays attention on peoples motivation, culture and even the individual desires to manage and maintain peoples work well and comfortable. Branson also thinks staff first, then customers and shareholders, therefore the chairperson, staff, customers and shareholders could be considered as the key stakeholders. Chairperson Shareholders: Branson is as a leader in Virgin which has used the corporate brand name across its entire product, the whole Virgin Group is influenced by him, and he is the greater single asset in the group (Ensor Drummond, 2001). Meanwhile, Branson is one of the shareholder of Virgin Group companies, so as same as other shareholder, his values will be added into the group and will be implemented in running the business. Bransons values are innocence, innovation, quality, fun and irreverence of authority, all of such values could be found in his choices of new ventures. Investor: The investors mainly focus on the profit and the return of investment (ROI). This issue makes the conflict between investor and customers, because customers want to have better services that will increase the cost and decrease the maximization level of the profit Staff: The skills, knowledge and suggestions of the staff are important to the company, Branson also understand this point so that he wants his best people will stay in his company for venturing (Grant, 2003). Example: Julie Bower, Virgin Atlantic Project Manager, response to source alternative customer relations management (CRM) software, then experienced partially customized system with Virgin Atlantics own data. Finally, Saratoga System has been chosen as the provider of CRM system (Thomson Corporation Company, 2005). This example shows the valuable staff will affect the strategic development. Customers: The best products or services are always seeking by customer, in order words, firms are required to provide best product or service for maintaining current customers and exploring new customers. Companies that survive profitably in a competitive environment must be providing value for money (Johnson et al, 2005). Therefore, customers also influence the strategies of the company. Our first time with Virgin Atlantic, and out last! Chaotic queue at LHR took three hours to reach check in desk. The cabin crews were arrogant and more interested in putting on more make up than serving passengers. Virgin relies on their reputation from the eighties, but they have lost it big time. Want to travel and enjoy the experience avoid Virgin at all costs (Skytrax, 2008). This example not only explains how customers influence the strategy development, also explains to provide the certain products to customer can reduce the probability of finical loss. The Political Framework From the political perspective, organizations are coalitions of diverse individuals and groups with enduring differences in values and preferences. They are governed not by a single center, as is assumed in the rational perspective, but by a dominant coalition of interest groups. As such, organizations often operate with unresolved conflicts in goals (March Shapiro, 1992). From the human domain perspective, malfunctions arise from structural misalignment or from personal deficiency; while from the political perspective, divergent interests and resource scarcity inevitably turn organizations political. Government: The core business of Virgin Group is transport service, and this business is highly regulated by the government. In the result, government policy is very import to the Branson and company as well, like policy on safety, route, franchise etc. These factors are about the change in government or government policy. The airline industry in UK has been privatized already, this action is initiated by UK Government. Branson got the opportunity to run the airline services from this political change to be a franchisee. Branson entered the markets or industries that have large, well established competitors, for instance, David is one of his favorite roles who against Goliaths, it is the example that the corporate against a big business. Now, the airline industry is run by two parts, Virgin Atlantic and British airways, provide flight and airline services respectively. Moreover, British Airways is the main competitor for Virgin Atlantic that leaded Virgin Atlantic always played the underdog role in competing with British Airways. Though Virgin Atlantic and British Airways had been role as underdog and bully respectively, in 1992, Virgin Atlantic had been success to claim one and half million dollars from British Airways (Aker, 2005 Grant, 2003). The Symbolic Framework Symbolism plays a critical role in human experience. In the rational domain, the point of life is choice. However, organizational life is only partly concerned with making decisions (March Shapiro 1992). Decision making is often an arena for symbolic actions. Many events and processes are more important for what is expressed than for what is produced (Bolman Deal, 2008). The leaders use symbols to capture attention; they try to frame experience by providing plausible interpretations of experiences; they discover and communicate a vision. Innovation: Branson understands the new matters could attack the new customers and maintain the current customers, but its competitors also understand this simple theory. Therefore Virgin Atlantic based on the existed offers with new concepts or packages as a new products or services to get the competitive advantage in the industry. These factors are about the application of new inventors or ideas. The technology in air applies to the development of safe airplane, or reliable engine. Virgin Atlantic is the pioneer in this area, Branson introduced the Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines to power its new Airbus fleet of 10 A330-300s has triggered a big switch from polution to green eco-friendly travel on the route. The Trent 700 is the first engine in the highly successful Trent family. The 72,000lb thrust engine has lower maintenance costs, lower weight and better performance retention. With the lowest lifecycle fuel burn, lowest cumulative emissions and lowest noise levels the Trent 700 has the lowest environmental impact of any engine on the A330 (TravelDailyNews, 2009). Branson reduces the time taken for long distance travel and efficiency in helping to customers. Except the improvement on speed, Branson also increased number of channels for passenger to buy tickets by web and machine. The software was designed to link customer details, flight information and limo service details together and provides Virgin Atlantic staff with accurate information and tools to efficiently and effectively manage the Upper Class Wing operation (Journalism UK, 2008). Virgin Atlantic has got the opportunity to operate the UK and World air service by the government policy. The inflection perhaps people will be willing to expand more on the travelling. The change of working place also affects the demand on all the modes of transport. The new channels have been developed through the web and new machine system. The market still has space to operate obviously, but the most important consideration of a transport services provider is safety. So the most strength of Branson and Virgin Atlantic has been improving its reputation especially in safety and on-time to get confidence of passengers. Comparison of Richard Bransons corporate strategy decision In the stage of setting up the strategies, Branson definitely understand the strategies of which are the ways in which strategy develops in organization. Bransons Virgin Atlantic Airline Strategic Development Command View and Culture View are highlighted by Virgin Atlantic The culture view is that it occurs as the outcome of the taken-for-granted assumptions and behaviors in organizations. (Johnson et al, 2005) Branson founded Virgin Atlantic in 1984; in fact, Virgin Atlantics success highly depends on the founders principles to provide the highest quality innovative service at excellent value for money for all classes of air travelers. This principle created and established the culture of Virgin Atlantic, because all Virgin companies also maintain an entrepreneurial culture based on Bransons principle. There are four strategic developments have been found out and will be further described in following: Strategy One: Differentiation Branson also has another philosophy in his principle which is to be a pioneer rather then a follower of the leader. In order to reach this point, Virgin Atlantic must offer highest quality innovative service for its air travelers. Its innovative actions include: 1986, the 1st airline provided sleeper seats in upper class 1990, the 1st airline brought in the automatic defibrillators, trained the staff to help in-flight cardiac arrest victims The 1st airline installed individual TVs to all classes of passenger on the wide-bodied aircraft 2005, won the RFID Breakthrough Integration Award since it is as a leader in RFID 2005 Virgin Atlantic applied RFID tag on the important parts that used in aircraft maintenance and repairs at Heathrow Airport warehouse, UK. The technological advancement is always the advantage taking for Virgin and the customers, said by Mark Butler, System Implementation Manager, Engineering Department, Virgin Atlantic (Tata Consultancy Services Limited, 2007). Strategy Two: Jointing Alliance Virgin Atlantic has jointed an alliance with many airlines until 2006 that providing better choice on where and when for its customers flights, the member of that alliance includes Singapore Airline, Bmi British Midland, Continental Airline, South African Airways, US Airways, Virgin Blue and Air China. All above airlines also signed Codeshare Agreement, so the connections between partners services become closer, customers could enjoy better service and value, such as checking customers and their luggage over to their final destination and synchronizing their schedules with Virgin Atlantics partners. Turn out the customers of Virgin Atlantic could enjoy the shortest possible connections between their services (Virgin Atlantic Airways, 2010). The crises of 11th September, 2001 that affected the worldwide economy, Virgin Atlantic also got heavy losses in financial aspect. The alliance strategy was significantly assisted the recovery, because it reduced the investment and the accompanying inflexibility and risk during the uncertainties of operating in other countries (Aaker, 2005). Strategy Three: Partnership In 1999, Singapore Airline acquired 49% Virgin Atlantic stake that can reinforce to provide the highest quality innovative service at excellent value for money for all classes of air travellers. Singapore Airline is a unique global partner, this is a perfect collaboration since both two airlines have an incomparable reputation for quality and innovation, and have own numerous awards from the travel industry. According to the terms of the dealing, both two airlines routes will not overlap each other and are uniquely complementary, also they keep independent managements, and the rights to develop their own products. This partnership action generated greater benefits to both companies passengers, such as fare, access to lounges world-wide and an increasingly seamless travel experience across their airlines network (Virgin Atlantic Airways, 2010). Japan Airline Strategic Development In terms of strategic management, the major contrast between Virgin Atlantic and Japan Airline is, Japan Airline is the one managed by traditional state-run or government hierarchy, so its companies strategy was established by country leader and the board, as same as or followed by the strategy of government, often the goal or the result is extremely unrealistic to the commercial. The gap occurs in between the top management board and the tactical managers which more strengthen the difficulties in implementation and lessen the competitiveness in international airline market. Moreover, Virgin Atlantic emphasizes on command view and culture view; in this session, Japan Airline emphasizes on planning view to develop its strategies. In the planning view, strategic planning is to use a formal planning system for the development and implementation of the strategies related to mission and objectives of the organization. (Lynch, 2000) Japan Airlines Background Japan Airline is a joint-venture company which was founded by one governmental company and two private companies, Japan Airline Company, Philippine Airlines and Northwest Airlines in 1951. Japanese Government bought the share from Northwest Airlines that leaded to Japan Airline totally transfer to Japanese Government. Nowadays, all decisions are made by the Board of Directors and their strategic development is mainly focused on strategic planning (Fundinguniverse, 2010). Japan Airlines Planning Procedure One of the Japan Airlines department, Corporate Planning Information Technology Services is established in Japan Airline for responsible to suggest strategies for Japan Airline. After the seminar in 1987, this department suggested five corporate strategies for planning strategies and implementation, one of the strategies is about operational. The Board of Directors and the management group suggest that it (the operational strategy) is now a matter of urgency that Japan Airline must speed up the development of the airlines state enterprise plan in compliance with the policy and guidelines., Minister Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo Conference, Nov 6, 1987. Then, Minister Ishihara grouped Japan Airlines problems for Japan Airlines management group to take actions (Sanchanta Takahashi,2010). Although this company is now privatized, but used to be country-owned and running by Government long time, the country leaders provide comments and policies on commercial-based company. This manner had been intervened the flexibility of Japan Airline. In 2006, Japan Airlines Chairperson, Haruka Nishimatsu established three committees, Strategic Steering Committee, Project Management Committee and Task Force Committee to increase competitiveness and the value of shareholder (Sanchanta Takahashi,2010). Today, Japan Airline failed to be effectively competing with other airlines because of such time-consuming and not really flexible to implement in Japan Airlines planning. Conclusion Leaders establish goals, assumptions, policies, strategies, and accepted norms of behavior. They usually recruit and promote managers who conform to their own values and expectations. While a leaders influence is evident in all organizations, it will apply more to small, highly centralized firms, or young, owner run businesses, and can increase with tenure. In the addition, the most relevant contrasts between Virgin Atlantic and Japan Airline are: Virgin Atlantic emphasizes on culture and command view because of following the principle that provided by Branson that it is controlled by the company. Japan Airline emphasizes on planning view which is controlled by Government so almost every strategies development is produced follow the planning procedure to lead the company more systematic. In theory it should not only focus on single view, but these two companies are only focused one or two views, that led some limitations in Virgin Atlantic and Japan Airline. For Virgin Atlantic, it is highly depends on the principles of Branson, he almost becomes the only one and unique person that can decide the future of Virgin Atlantic, includes stay in the market or shut down the business. Another side, for Japan Airline, it involves more procedures for making decision that could be enhances and smoothen the running for a company. As mentioned, there is only Branson is the key person for Virgin Atlantic or the whole Virgin Group, for the future, Virgin Group is suggested to established a number of rules or methods to maintain and investigate the current saturation of its businesses or the new ventures. After that, Branson is the most key person that affects all the things in Virgin Group, then is the staff, last is the customers. Last but not least, whether success to run a business depends on the policy, economy, society and technology in the place where located or plan to locate the business. In the result, the leader should aware all Structural, Human Resource, Political, and Symbolic framework in mind for coping the political, social, economic and technology factors positively. So, the finial suggestion is Richard Branson have to establish a committee to share and continue his great work.

The Destructive Power of the Media Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive T

The Destructive Power of the Media      Ã‚  Ã‚   I have the most adorable little cousin named Alexandra, whom I love with all my heart. One day I was very disturbed when she told me that she was fat. She was 4 years old at the time. I was stunned and had no idea what to say to her, so I just told her that she is a healthy little girl and that she needs to not to worry about that. I tried to think of where she would come up with this thought, and after a while I remembered a conversation that her mother and I had. We were talking about how nice it was when we were younger and we did not have to work at being thin. Her mother said something about being fat and Alexandra must have been listening. This got me thinking about how I came to be self conscious about my body. I came to the conclusion that it is just something that every woman has to go through at least one time in her life. But why, what is it that makes every woman want "the perfect body?" I pondered this question for a while, but I was baffled. Later that day I began to read the "Cosmopolitan" and I began paying attention to the advertisements in this very popular woman's magazine; I was amused at the angle the advertisers use to try to get women to buy their product. One advertisement was for an alcoholic drink called Tequiza. The advertisement compared the calories and the fat content of that drink to the calories and fat content in another popular alcoholic beverage. I am under age, but I am a college student so I will not lie and say that I do not drink on occasion, but when I do drink I do not worry about how much fat or how many calories I am taking in. To me this advertisement was completely ridiculous and instead of making me want to buy the product I have now vowed... ... by showing us how happy it will make us. They shape our culture by telling us that we want to be married because the people advertisements are and they are incredibly happy. They also shape our culture by setting the standard for the way we look. All women at one point in their life are self-conscious because they do not look like the models in advertisements. Advertisements are the reason why women obsess about their weight and the way they look. I do not know about most people, but I do know that I do not want to live in a world where advertisements tell me what I want or how I should look.      Works Cited    "Super Bowl Clutter." Editor & Publisher. Vol. 127, Issue 6 (1994): 6. Signorielli, Nancy and Douglas McLeod. "Gender Stereotypes in MTV Commercials: The Beat Goes On." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Vol. 38, Issue 1 (1994): 91.

NSAID’s In Competition Equines Essay -- horses, law

Presently in the United States there is a law against consumption of NSAID’s (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) in horses during competition. The Federation Equstre International (FEI) wants to propose a new law allowing the consumption of these NSAID’s in competition horses. Therefore, with every new law passed some are for and some are against it. Each side has a knowledgeable reason behind their choice to be for or against the change. The FEI wants to look at all sides equally and make their educated assessment for the new rule inclined. Inflammation is a normal response to tissue damage. There are five signs of inflammation called cardinal signs. Theses signs include: heat, pain, swelling, redness, and loss of function. Inflammation can be considered one of the leading origins of discomfort in an injured or ill equine animal. When an NSAID is given to horses the cardinal signs are controlled, and damage to the inflamed tissue is reduced (Crabbe). NSAID’s in equine’s can be useful, but they can also cause negative side effects that, in a long-term use, can cause more negative effects on the horse and possibly decimate them. Barb Crabbe, veterinarian, says; â€Å"When NSAID’s block the damaging effects of prostaglandin, they also block these protective mechanisms, putting your horse at risk for ulcers throughout his GI tract† (Crabbe). Although Crabbe feels there are several negative side effects Davis feels there are only two negative side effects cox 1 and cox 2. These two negative influences cause the bad side effects in NSAID’s. Cox 1 gets in the way of the body’s natural reaction to inflammation. Cox 2 controls the pain and helps to control the remaining inflammation (Davis). Nevertheless this does not mean NSAID’s ar... ...ecture. Cuckson Pippa, â€Å"FEI NSAID Congress Addresses Science and Ethics of Drug Use†, www.chronofhorse.com, The Chronicle Of The Horse, August 24, 2010. Pierre Louis, â€Å"How To Use Irrelevant Plasma and Urine Drug Concentrations in Doping Control in the FEI† , FEI NSAID Congress , Switzerland, 2010, address lecture. Princess Haya, â€Å"Opening Address†, FEI NSAID Congress, Switzerland, 2010, address lecture. Roly Owers, â€Å"What Are The Ethical and Welfare Implications of Permitting the Use of NSAIDs During Competitions?† FEI NSAID Congress, Switzerland, 2010, address lecture. Willis Grania, â€Å"FEI president welcomes long overdue congress on NSAID’s†, www.Dressagensw.com, Equestrian Australia, n.d, February 6, 2014. Tim Ober, â€Å"The Pros and Cons of Reintroducing NSAIDs to FEI Sport†, FEI NSAID congress, Switzerland, 2010, address lecture

Julius Caesar Essay: Decision Making in Julius Caesar -- Julius Caesar

Decision Making in Julius Caesar Making the right decisions is an ongoing struggle for man, because making decisions is never easy, and the wrong decision can lead to endless perils. Decisions must be made when dealing with power, loyalty, and trust. Yet, unlike other decisions, ones that are about these three fields are the most important, due to the risk involved, and because of the consequences that might follow. Power- power is the complete domination of others, and since all men want to dominate those around them, power is valued as one of the most important possessions. Power is highly sought after, thus the correct decisions must be made to obtain it, and this is clearly proven by Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar". Power is obtained much easier than it is kept. "Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!" The conspirators celebrate the death of Caesar, because they believe that they make the right decision in killing him, and so far they have, but the decision to spare Mark Antony is one that will haunt them in the end. Power is not always beneficial, it can be a very dangerous possession. "You shall not stir out of your house today." Calphurnia makes the decision to persuade Caesar to stay home, and not go to the Senate meeting. When one has power, there are those who want it, like Brutus and the other conspirators. Calphurnia makes the right decision, yet Caesar makes the wrong one by deciding ... ...imminent. In the course of man's life he will have to make many decisions, and some will decide his future. Power, loyalty, and trust, are essential, yet obtaining them is only the beginning, managing them is a much harder task. For one to succeed he must realize how much power is beneficial and how much is dangerous. Loyalty helps one's cause immensely, yet one must not take the loyalty of his followers to the extreme. Trust is one of the most important assets a man can have, he must be careful, and not take it for granted. Man must always be prepared for these times when a decision must be made, because, as seen in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", one irrational decision can be man's last.

Explication on “Living in Sin” by Adrienne Rich Essay

The poem tells the story of the lovers that starts just after the fairytale of their lives has ended. Actually, it reveals the continuation of relationship where fairytale usually cuts the story at the kisses and declaration of love followed by â€Å"The End† (a story of a Princess which has to wash dishes on a day after a romantic ball). It is important to point out that the speaker is not actually the woman spoken of in the poem. The narrator here depicts the events in this couple’s daily life. Yet, it is obviously a woman, due to the tone of the poem: how she sees the careless husband and notices household disorder. Being in variance with many modern text analysts, I must say that the poem ‘Living in Sin’ is completely autobiographic. It has been written by Adrienne Rich during the first months of her own marriage and conveys her own disappointment in what is left after the romantic prelude.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   To understand the poem one must notice that it is wholly built on the contrasts the author uses from sentence to sentence. The most evident contrast resides in the mood of the heroes: the indifferent, careless husband (‘he, with a yawn†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢) who seems not to notice the miserable surroundings and only shrugs his shoulders at the mirror admitting the piano out of tune, and the pensive and sad wife who is distressed   with the routine circle of everyday cleaning and watching the back of her lover leaving each morning for the trivial   cigarettes: â€Å" [he] rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; while she, jeered by the minor demons, pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found a towel to dust the table-top†¦Ã¢â‚¬  . Adrienne Rich has been influenced by the popular image contrast of artist and his woman (generally, a family). Their married life goes in the studio, a huge room without walls or borders, without anything to confirm one’s privacy. Here we obviously see a family of artists where the woman has to play the subordinate role imposed by the society. As means to manipulate women into submitting to housekeeping roles, society promotes a male-dominant view. Most traditional societies expect all women to feign fulfillment in this biological role of a domestic apparatus. Therefore, like the woman in the poem, many women in society accept (although, quite reluctantly) this role of a home caretaker.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The images of dusted furniture, dried cheese and empty bottles, overboiled pot etc. produce low, pessimistic tones of the poem – all these trifle seems to be powerful enough to spoil woman’s life and even to kill love: â€Å"By evening she was back in love again, though not so wholly but throughout the night she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming like a relentless milkman up the stairs†. Here appears another pair of contrasting images: Day and Night that are parallel to Reality and Dream. This woman actually lives double life, enjoying night demonstrations of love and being not able to change the obtrusive tedium of the day which comes like the â€Å"relentless milkman† upon the creaking stair and ruins the fragile dreams of the romantic supper. The piano (summoned by him) seems to be out of tune just like their love. The grime at their window panes is as hard to remove as to bring back the brightness and romantics to the life. Comparatively, each of the household items is dingy. Everything illuminated by the day is out of this light in a paradoxical way – on the contrary, it strives for the night unconsciousness and inempiricalness.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   So, now it is possible to explain the name of the poem. â€Å"Living in Sin† means to face the day and not to do anything about it, just to see the things go on and to be afraid to make any changes. The woman submits to this role of absolute responsibility without resistance, keeping her resentment and anger to herself. Her constant expenditure of energy with no satisfactory results leads to disappointment. The heroine of the poem is completely unsatisfied but what with she is not quite sure†¦ We, as a reader, can only guess what exactly bothers her: a bunch of disappointing details or the whole picture of their relationship. I think that the last thing does. Everyday dusting, which she has to take around the studio, symolizes the ‘dusting’ of the relationship that is also needed to keep the love alive. Undoubtedly, family life needs refreshment not to be sepulchered by the lay of ‘dust’ and similar days. The woman’s futile efforts result in her â€Å"living in sin†. She sinfully accepts what society dictates and does not try to escape and improve her circumstances. By lettig this miserable life to continue, she denies herself and her individuality. And such self-sacrifice is the biggest sin for an artistic and thoughtful woman.