The Decision Model For An Acronym - 1284 Words

In the decide model each letter stands for an acronym that will make it easier for someone to make a decision. The D in the decision model stands for â€Å"define the decision,† this helps the individual realize what information they will need in order to make the decision. For example, what background information is needed and how will that information be used in making the decision. For my family, the decision that was made was to send my brother and me off to college; so we can help our parents out when they grow older, and cannot work any more. The E stands for â€Å"estimating the resources needed†. How much energy, time, money, and information will be used in making the decision. My parents had to estimate the amount of time and money that they would be spending in order to send my brother and me off to college. C stands for â€Å"consider the alternatives.† One wants to consider all of the alternatives they have, yet they have to consider the resources tha t are practical for them because of cost and time. My parents had to consider the alternatives about not sending us off to college. My brother and I did not a have to attend college. We could have found decent jobs instead that had benefits and could have help support my parents. However, finding a job like that now with out a college degree is hard to come by. The I in the model represents â€Å"imagine the consequences of alternative course of action.† This means that the person who is making the decision should think of himself orShow MoreRelatedSpanish National Health System Case Study878 Words   |  4 Pagesof the so-called Welfare State, the Spanish National Health System (SNS, in the Spanish acronym) was not reached until the end of the Franco dictatorship, emerging with a significant delay compared to other European countries. At the full swing of the Spanish transition, with the Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (PSOE) in government, Spain approved the Gener al Health Act 1986 (GHA) inspired in Beveridge’s models: universal access, free at the point of delivery and tax-financed health system. HoweverRead MoreMedical Acronyms Allow People In The Healthcare Industry1606 Words   |  7 PagesMedical acronyms allow people in the healthcare industry to communicate more efficiently by assigning â€Å"nicknames,† or abbreviations, to processes, procedures and organizations. Although there are hundreds of acronyms and medical terms used every day in medical care, these 24 are important to every modern practice, if you want to take advantage of incentives and resources available to your organization. 1. ACO An Accountable Care Organization is a practice or facility committed to improving patientRead MoreJohn Boyd And His Influence On Strategic Thinking1258 Words   |  6 Pagesleadership cycles, advancing vulnerability and turmoil, were all either imagined, re-found or motivated by Boyd. 2.3 John Boyd’s Discourse To succeed and grow in a diverse uncertain and constant changing world that surrounds us, we need to make decisive decisions ourselves those many practices we have to meet the exigencies of that world. The discourse thus consists of 5 sections:- 1. Pattern of Conflict consists of thoughts and actions for winning and losing in a very competitive environment. 2. TheRead MoreWhat Does The Acronym Stand For Each Of The Following Basic Types Of Cloud Services?840 Words   |  4 Pages INFO-1167 Cloud Lab Alexander Farquhar 1. What does the acronym stand for each of the following basic types of cloud services? 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Here are some of the most important ones: ï‚ · BPTO = Business Process, Technology, and Organization. It was created by Matulovic when he came to VWoA from VWAG. Which is a group that will help govern development processes and help clarify what the projects aim to achieveRead MoreSuccess On The Internet Is All About Successful Marketing1043 Words   |  5 Pagesday training session on the proper sequence theory. The AIDA model that was taught during that session was a simple process, however, in my business career, this program has been very effective and profitable for me personally. Wikipedia...the free encyclopedia states: AIDA is an acronym used in marketing that describes a common list of events that are very often undergone when a person is selling a product or service. 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Product Description 4 3. Business Context 4 4. Product Objectives 4 5. Financial Forecast 4 6. Constraints 4 Business Case 1. Introduction Accidents occur suddenly and unexpectedly. We cannot prevent the occurrence

A Little Bit Of Politics And A Whole Lot Of Race - 982 Words

A Little Bit of Politics and a Whole lot of Race Anna Deavere Smith is arguably the most talented docudrama performer of her time and has constructed many great plays such as House Arrest, Twilight: Los Angeles, and Fires in the Mirror. Her docudramas seek to speak the voices of the unheard in order for her audience to have a broad understanding of different perspectives on major events throughout history. She does this by interviewing a large number of people that come from different racial backgrounds and social classes who were involved in a stressful event, generally regarding racial or political unrest. Anna Deavere Smith’s work seeks to identify the reactions of citizens when placed in socially uncomfortable situations, express the disadvantages and hardships that minorities have to endure throughout the country, and question the roles of authority regarding political leaders and police officers. Americans have always struggled with expressing appropriate reactions when they feel uncomfortable or out of control of a situation. Smith expresses this idea in the interview titled â€Å"Lousy Language† beginning with the speaker, Robert Sherman, explaining in a very politically correct manner that â€Å"the Crown Heights conflict had been brewing on and off for twenty years† (73). He went on to provide statistics and define the concepts of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. He concluded with the statement â€Å"I think we [Americans] have sort of a lousy language on the subject andShow MoreRelatedCharacteristics Of Romantic Poetry By William Blake1051 Words   |  5 PagesThis brought on the change in how genders, races, and different classes were viewed. Less people participated in their culture s traditions and authority was not as important to follow as it was before. 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Banned books is a common topic that constantlyRead MoreIndia s National Language, Pakistan1452 Words   |  6 Pagesnonsensical phrase, â€Å"Uper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhayana the mung the dal of the laltain.† No one could understand what the gibberish meant but it may be the message Manto tries to display, that the partion is nonsense. From the story we learn a little bit about Bishan’s family and his background, we find that Bishan’s family had brought him to the asylum bound and fettered, and when he first came to the asylum he had left an infant daughter who had now turned into a beautiful girl, she would comeRead MoreThe Role Of Women During The Enlightenment And Transcendental Period1637 Words   |  7 Pageswrote during the Transcendental Era when women were told that they were needed in religious revivals just as much as the men were. They were also needed in the home, like before, but possibly needed in the movement to achieve peace and a bl issful human race. 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Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Free Essays

string(23) " Bricker place to Mrs\." I was walking north along The Street. Japanese lanterns lined it, but they were all dark because it was daylight bright daylight. The muggy, smutchy look of mid-July was gone; the sky was that deep sapphire shade which is the sole property of October. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE or any similar topic only for you Order Now The lake was deepest indigo beneath it, sparkling with sunpoints. The trees were just past the peak of their autumn colors, burning like torches. A wind out of the south blew the fallen leaves past me and between my legs in rattly, fragrant gusts. The Japanese lanterns nodded as if in approval of the season. Up ahead, faintly, I could hear music. Sara and the Red-Tops. Sara was belting it out, laughing her way through the lyric as she always had . . . only, how could laughter sound so much like a snarl? ‘White boy, I’d never kill a child of mine. That you’d even think it!’ I whirled, expecting to see her right behind me, but there was no one there. Well . . . The Green Lady was there, only she had changed her dress of leaves for autumn and become the Yellow Lady. The bare pine-branch behind her still pointed the way: go north, young man, go north. Not much farther down the path was another birch, the one I’d held onto when that terrible drowning sensation had come over me again. I waited for it to come again now for my mouth and throat to fill up with the iron taste of the lake but it didn’t happen. I looked back at the Yellow Lady, then beyond her to Sara Laughs. The house was there, but much reduced: no north wing, no south wing, no second story. No sign of Jo’s studio off to the side, either. None of those things had been built yet. The ladybirch had travelled back with me from 1998; so had the one hanging over the lake. Otherwise ‘Where am I?’ I asked the Yellow Lady and the nodding Japanese lanterns. Then a better question occurred to me. ‘When am I?’ No answer. ‘It’s a dream, isn’t it? I’m in bed and dreaming.’ Somewhere out in the brilliant, gold-sparkling net of the lake, a loon called. Twice. Hoot once for yes, twice for no, I thought. Not a dream, Michael. I don’t know exactly what it is spiritual time-travel, maybe but it’s not a dream. ‘Is this really happening?’ I asked the day, and from somewhere back in the trees, where a track which would eventually come to be known as Lane Forty-two ran toward a dirt road which would eventually come to be known as Route 68, a crow cawed. Just once. I went to the birch hanging over the lake, slipped an arm around it (doing it lit a trace memory of slipping my hands around Mattie’s waist, feeling her dress slide over her skin), and peered into the water, half-wanting to see the drowned boy, half-fearing to see him. There was no boy there, but something lay on the bottom where he had been, among the rocks and roots and waterweed. I squinted and just then the wind died a little, stilling the glints on the water. It was a cane, one with a gold head. A Boston Post cane. Wrapped around it in a rising spiral, their ends waving lazily, were what appeared to be a pair of ribbons white ones with bright red edges. Seeing Royce’s cane wrapped that way made me think of high-school graduations, and the baton the class marshal waves as he or she leads the gowned seniors to their seats. Now I understood why the old crock hadn’t answered the phone. Royce Merrill’s phone-answering days were all done. I knew that; I al so knew I had come to a time before Royce had even been born. Sara Tidwell was here, I could hear her singing, and when Royce had been born in 1903, Sara had already been gone for two years, she and her whole Red-Top family. ‘Go down, Moses,’ I told the ribbon-wrapped cane in the water. ‘You bound for the Promised Land.’ I walked on toward the sound of the music, invigorated by the cool air and rushing wind. Now I could hear voices as well, lots of them, talking and shouting and laughing. Rising above them and pumping like a piston was the hoarse cry of a sideshow barker: ‘Come on in, folks, hurr-ay, hurr-ay, hurr-ay! It’s all on the inside but you’ve got to hurr-ay, next show starts in ten minutes! See Angelina the Snake-Woman, she shimmies, she shakes, she’ll bewitch your eye and steal your heart, but don’t get too close for her bite is poy-son! See Hando the Dog-Faced Boy, terror of the South Seas! See the Human Skeleton! See the Human Gila Monster, relic of a time God forgot! See the Bearded Lady and all the Killer Martians! It’s on the inside, yessirree, so hurr-ay, hurr-ay, hurr-ay!’ I could hear the steam-driven calliope of a merry-go-round and the bang of the bell at the top of the post as some lumberjack won a stuffed toy for his sweetie. You could tell from the delighted feminine screams that he’d hit it almost hard enough to pop it off the post. There was the snap of. 22s from the shooting gallery, the snoring moo of someone’s prize cow . . . and now I began to smell the aromas I have associated with county fairs since I was a boy: sweet fried dough, grilled onions and peppers, cotton candy, manure, hay. I began to walk faster as the strum of guitars and thud of double basses grew louder. My heart kicked into a higher gear. I was going to see them perform, actually see Sara Laughs and the Red-Tops live and on stage. This was no crazy three-part fever-dream, either. This was happening right now, so hurr-ay, hurr-ay, hurr-ay. The Washburn place (the one that would always be the Bricker place to Mrs. You read "Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE" in category "Essay examples" M.) was gone. Beyond where it would eventually be, rising up the steep slope on the eastern side of The Street, was a flight of broad wooden stairs. They reminded me of the ones which lead down from the amusement park to the beach at Old Orchard. Here the Japanese lanterns were lit in spite of the brightness of the day, and the music was louder than ever. Sara was singing ‘Jimmy Crack Corn.’ I climbed the stairs toward the laughter and shouts, the sounds of the Red-Tops and the calliope, the smells of fried food and farm animals. Above the stairhead was a wooden arch with WELCOME TO FRYEBURG FAIR WELCOME TO THE 20TH CENTURY printed on it. As I watched, a little boy in short pants and a woman wearing a shirtwaist and an ankle-length linen skirt walked under the arch and toward me. They shimmered, grew gauzy. For a moment I could see their skeletons and the bone grins which lurked beneath their laughing faces. A moment later and they were gone. Two farmers one wearing a straw hat, the other gesturing expansively with a corncob pipe appeared on the Fair side of the arch in exactly the same fashion. In this way I understood that there was a barrier between The Street and the Fair. Yet I did not think it was a barrier which would affect me. I was an exception. ‘Is that right?’ I asked. ‘Can I go in?’ The bell at the top of the Test Your Strength pole banged loud and clear. Bong once for yes, twice for no. I continued on up the stairs. Now I could see the Ferris wheel turning against the brilliant sky, the wheel that had been in the background of the band photo in Osteen’s Dark Score Days. The framework was metal, but the brightly painted gondolas were made of wood. Leading up to it like an aisle leading up to an altar was a broad, sawdust-strewn midway. The sawdust was there for a purpose; almost every man I saw was chewing tobacco. I paused for a few seconds at the top of the stairs, still on the lake side of the arch. I was afraid of what might happen to me if I passed under. Afraid of dying or disappearing, yes, but mostly of never being able to return the way I had come, of being condemned to spend eternity as a visitor to the turn-of-the-century Fryeburg Fair. That was also like a Ray Bradbury story, now that I thought of it. In the end what drew me into that other world was Sara Tidwell. I had to see her with my own eyes. I had to watch her sing. Had to. I felt a tingling as I stepped beneath the arch, and there was a sighing in my ears, as of a million voices, very far away. Sighing in relief? Dismay? I couldn’t tell. All I knew for sure was that being on the other side was different the difference between looking at a thing through a window and actually being there; the difference between observing and participating. Colors jumped out like ambushers at the moment of attack. The smells which had been sweet and evocative and nostalgic on the lake side of the arch were now rough and sexy, prose instead of poetry. I could smell dense sausages and frying beef and the vast shadowy aroma of boiling chocolate. Two kids walked past me sharing a paper cone of cotton candy. Both of them were clutching knotted hankies with their little bits of change in them. ‘Hey kids!’ a barker in a dark blue shirt called to them. He was wearing sleeve-garters and his smile revealed one splendid gold tooth. ‘Knock over the milk-bottles and win a prize! I en’t had a loser all day!’ Up ahead, the Red-Tops swung into ‘Fishin Blues.’ I’d thought the kid on the common in Castle Rock was pretty good, but this version made the kid’s sound old and slow and clueless. It wasn’t cute, like an antique picture of ladies with their skirts held up to their knees, dancing a decorous version of the black bottom with the edges of their bloomers showing. It wasn’t something Alan Lomax had collected with his other folk songs, just one more dusty American butterfly in a glass case full of them; this was smut with just enough shine on it to keep the whole struttin bunch of them out of jail. Sara Tidwell was singing about the dirty boogie, and I guessed that every overalled, straw-hatted, plug-chewing, callus-handed, clod-hopper-wearing farmer standing in front of the stage was dreaming about doing it with her, getting right down to where the sweat forms in the crease and the heat gets hot and the pink comes glimmering through. I started walking in that direction, aware of cows mooing and sheep blatting from the exhibition barns the Fair’s version of my childhood Hi-Ho Dairy-O. I walked past the shooting gallery and the ringtoss and the penny-pitch; I walked past a stage where The Handmaidens of Angelina were weaving in a slow, snakelike dance with their hands pressed together as a guy with a turban on his head and shoepolish on his face tooted a flute. The picture painted on stretched canvas suggested that Angelina on view inside for just one tenth of a dollar, neighbor would make these two look like old boots. I walked past the entrance to Freak Alley, the corn-roasting pit, the Ghost House, where more stretched canvas depicted spooks coming out of broken windows and crumbling chimneys. Everything in there is death, I thought . . . but from inside I could hear children who were very much alive laughing and squealing as they bumped into things in the dark. The older among them were likely stealin g kisses. I passed the Test Your Strength pole, where the gradations leading to the brass bell at the top were marked BABY NEEDS HIS BOTTLE, SISSY, TRY AGAIN, BIG BOY, HE-MAN, and, just below the bell itself, in red: HERCULES! Standing at the center of a little crowd a young man with red hair was removing his shirt, revealing a heavily muscled upper torso. A cigar-smoking carny held a hammer out to him. I passed the quilting booth, a tent where people were sitting on benches and playing Bingo, the baseball pitch. I passed them all and hardly noticed. I was in the zone, tranced out. ‘You’ll have to call him back,’ Jo had sometimes told Harold when he phoned, ‘Michael is currently in the Land of Big Make-Believe.’ Only now nothing felt like pretend and the only thing that interested me was the stage at the base of the Ferris wheel. There were eight black folks up there on it, maybe ten. Standing at the front, wearing a guitar and whaling on it as she s ang, was Sara Tidwell. She was alive. She was in her prime. She threw back her head and laughed at the October sky. What brought me out of this daze was a cry from behind me: ‘Wait up, Mike! Wait up!’ I turned and saw Kyra running toward me, dodging around the strollers and gamesters and midway gawkers with her pudgy knees pumping. She was wearing a little white sailor dress with red piping and a straw hat with a navy-blue ribbon on it. In one hand she clutched Strickland, and when she got to me she threw herself confidently forward, knowing I would catch her and swing her up. I did, and when her hat started to fall offi caught it and jammed it back on her head. ‘I taggled my own quartermack,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Again.’ ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘You’re a regular Mean Joe Green.’ I was wearing overalls (the tail of a wash-faded blue bandanna stuck out of the bib pocket) and manure-stained workboots. I looked at Kyra’s white socks and saw they were homemade. I would find no discreet little label reading Made in Mexico or Made in China if I took off her straw hat and looked inside, either. This hat had been most likely Made in Motton, by some farmer’s wife with red hands and achy joints. ‘Ki, where’s Mattie?’ ‘Home, I guess. She couldn’t come.’ ‘How did you get here?’ ‘Up the stairs. It was a lot of stairs. You should have waited for me. You could have carrot me, like before. I want to hear the music.’ ‘Me too. Do you know who that is, Kyra?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Kito’s mom. Hurry up, slowpoke!’ I walked toward the stage, thinking we’d have to stand at the back of the crowd, but they parted for us as we came forward, me carrying Kyra in my arms the lovely sweet weight of her, a little Gibson Girl in her sailor dress and ribbon-accented straw hat. Her arm was curled around my neck and they parted for us like the Red Sea had parted for Moses. They didn’t turn to look at us, either. They were clapping and stomping and bellowing along with the music, totally involved. They stepped aside unconsciously, as if some kind of magnetism were at work here ours positive, theirs negative. The few women in the crowd were blushing but clearly enjoying themselves, one of them laughing so hard tears were streaming down her face. She looked no more than twenty-two or -three. Kyra pointed to her and said matter-of-factly: ‘You know Mattie’s boss at the liberry? That’s her nana.’ Lindy Briggs’s grandmother, and fresh as a daisy, I thought. Good Christ. The Red-Tops were spread across the stage and under swags of red, white, and blue bunting like some time-travelling rock band. I recognized all of them from the picture in Edward Osteen’s book. The men wore white shirts, arm-garters, dark vests, dark pants. Son Tidwell, at the far end of the stage, was wearing the derby he’d had on in the photo. Sara, though . . . ‘Why is the lady wearing Mattie’s dress?’ Kyra asked me, and she began to tremble. ‘I don’t know, honey. I can’t say.’ Nor could I argue it was the white sleeveless dress Mattie had been wearing on the common, all right. On stage, the band was smoking through an instrumental break. Reginald ‘Son’ Tidwell strolled over to Sara, feet ambling, hands a brown blur on the strings and frets of his guitar, and she turned to face him. They put their foreheads together, she laughing and he solemn; they looked into each other’s eyes and tried to play each other down, the crowd cheering and clapping, the rest of the Red-Tops laughing as they played. Seeing them together like that, I realized that I had been right: they were brother and sister. The resemblance was too strong to be missed or mistaken. But mostly what I looked at was the way her hips and butt switched in that white dress. Kyra and I might be dressed in turn-of-the-century country clothes, but Sara was thoroughly modern Millie. No bloomers for her, no petticoats, no cotton stockings. No one seemed to notice that she was wearing a dress that stopped above her knees that she was all but naked by the standards of this time. And und er Mattie’s dress she’d be wearing garments the like of which these people had never seen: a Lycra bra and hip-hugger nylon panties. If I put my hands on her waist, the dress would slip not against an unwet-coming corset but against soft bare skin. Brown skin, not white. What do you want, sugar? Sara backed away from Son, shaking her ungirdled, unbustled fanny and laughing. He strolled back to his spot and she turned to the crowd as the band played the turnaround. She sang the next verse looking directly at me. ‘Before you start in fishin you better check your line. Said before you start in fishin, honey, you better check on your line. I’ll pull on yours, darling, and you best tug on mine.’ The crowd roared happily. In my arms, Kyra was shaking harder than ever. ‘I’m scared, Mike,’ she said. ‘I don’t like that lady. She’s a scary lady. She stole Mattie’s dress. I want to go home.’ It was as if Sara heard her, even over the rip and ram of the music. Her head cocked back on her neck, her lips peeled open, and she laughed at the sky. Her teeth were big and yellow. They looked like the teeth of a hungry animal, and I decided I agreed with Kyra: she was a scary lady. ‘Okay, hon,’ I murmured in Ki’s ear. ‘We’re out of here.’ But before I could move, the sense of the woman I don’t know how else to say it fell upon me and held me. Now I understood what had shot past me in the kitchen to knock away the CARLADEAN letters; the chill was the same. It was almost like identifying a person by the sound of their walk. She led the band to the turnaround once more, then into another verse. Not one you’d find in any written version of the song, though: ‘I ain’t gonna hurt her, honey, not for all the treasure in the world’. Said I wouldn’t hurt your baby, not for diamonds or for pearls Only one black-hearted bastard dare to touch that little girl.’ The crowd roared as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard, but Kyra began to cry. Sara saw this and stuck out her breasts much bigger breasts than Mattie’s and shook them at her, laughing her trademark laugh as she did. There was a parodic coldness about this gesture . . . and an emptiness, too. A sadness. Yet I could feel no compassion for her. It was as if the heart had been burned out of her and the sadness which remained was just another ghost, the memory of love haunting the bones of hate. And how her laughing teeth leered. Sara raised her arms over her head and this time shook it all the way down, as if reading my thoughts and mocking them. Just like jelly on a plate, as some other old song of the time has it. Her shadow wavered on the canvas backdrop, which was a painting of Fryeburg, and as I looked at it I realized I had found the Shape from my Manderley dreams. It was Sara. Sara was the Shape and always had been. No, Mike. That’s close, but it’s not right. Right or wrong, I’d had enough. I turned, putting my hand on the back of Ki’s head and urging her face down against my chest. Both her arms were around my neck now, clutching with panicky tightness. I thought I’d have to bull my way back through the crowd they had let me in easily enough, but they might be a lot less amenable to letting me back out. Don’t fuck with me, boys, I thought. You don’t want to do that. And they didn’t. On stage Son Tidwell had taken the band from E to G, someone began to bang a tambourine, and Sara went from ‘Fishin Blues’ to ‘Dog My Cats’ without a single pause. Out here, in front of the stage and below it, the crowd once more drew back from me and my little girl without looking at us or missing a beat as they clapped their work-swollen hands together. One young man with a port-wine stain swimming across the side of his face opened his mouth at twenty he was already missing half his teeth and hollered ‘Yee-HAW!’ around a melting glob of tobacco. It was Buddy Jellison from the Village Cafe, I realized . . . Buddy Jellison magically rolled back in age from sixty-eight to eighteen. Then I realized the hair was the wrong shade light brown instead of black (although he was pushing seventy and looking it in every other way, Bud hadn’t a single white hair in his head). This was Buddy’s grandfather, maybe even his great-grandfather. I didn’t give a shit either way. I only wanted to get out of here. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, brushing by him. ‘There’s no town drunk here, you meddling son of a bitch,’ he said, never looking at me and never missing a beat as he clapped. ‘We all just take turns.’ It’s a dream after all, I thought. It’s a dream and that proves it. But the smell of tobacco on his breath wasn’t a dream, the smell of the crowd wasn’t a dream, and the weight of the frightened child in my arms wasn’t a dream, either. My shirt was hot and wet where her face was pressed. She was crying. ‘Hey, Irish!’ Sara called from the stage, and her voice was so like Jo’s that I could have screamed. She wanted me to turn back I could feel her will working on the sides of my face like fingers but I wouldn’t do it. I dodged around three farmers who were passing a ceramic bottle from hand to hand and then I was free of the crowd. The midway lay ahead, wide as Fifth Avenue, and at the end of it was the arch, the steps, The Street, the lake. Home. If I could get to The Street we’d be safe. I was sure of it. ‘Almost done, Irish!’ Sara shrieked after me. She sounded angry, but not too angry to laugh. ‘You gonna get what you want, sugar, all the comfort you need, but you want to let me finish my bi’ness. Do you hear me, boy? Just stand clear! Mind me, now!’ I began to hurry back the way I had come, stroking Ki’s head, still holding her face against my shirt. Her straw hat fell off and when I grabbed for it, I got nothing but the ribbon, which pulled free of the brim. No matter. We had to get out of here. On our left was the baseball pitch and some little boy shouting ‘Willy hit it over the fence, Ma! Willy hit it over the fence!’ with monotonous, brain-croggling regularity. We passed the Bingo, where some woman howled that she had won the turkey, by glory, every number was covered with a button and she had won the turkey. Overhead, the sun dove behind a cloud and the day went dull. Our shadows disappeared. The arch at the end of the midway drew closer with maddening slowness. ‘Are we home yet?’ Ki almost moaned. ‘I want to go home, Mike, please take me home to my mommy.’ ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ We were passing the Test Your Strength pole, where the young man with the red hair was putting his shirt back on. He looked at me with stolid dislike the instinctive mistrust of a native for an interloper, per-haps and I realized I knew him, too. He’d have a grandson named Dickie who would, toward the end of the century to which this fair had been dedicated, own the All-Purpose Garage on Route 68. A woman coming out of the quilting booth stopped and pointed at me. At the same moment her upper lip lifted in a dog’s snarl. I knew that face, too. From where? Somewhere around town. It didn’t matter, and I didn’t want to know even if it did. ‘We never should have come here,’ Ki moaned. ‘I know how you feel,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think we had any choice, hon. We ‘ They came out of Freak Alley, perhaps twenty yards ahead. I saw them and stopped. There were seven in all, long-striding men dressed in cutters’ clothes, but four didn’t matter those four looked faded and white and ghostly. They were sick fellows, maybe dead fellows, and no more dangerous than daguerreotypes. The other three, though, were real. As real as the rest of this place, anyway. The leader was an old man wearing a faded blue Union Army cap. He looked at me with eyes I knew. Eyes I had seen measuring me over the top of an oxygen mask. ‘Mike? Why we stoppin?’ ‘It’s all right, Ki. Just keep your head down. This is all a dream. You’ll wake up tomorrow morning in your own bed.’ †Kay.’ The jacks spread across the midway hand to hand and boot to boot, blocking our way back to the arch and The Street. Old Blue-Cap was in the middle. The ones on either side of him were much younger, some by maybe as much as half a century. Two of the pale ones, the almost-not-there ones, were standing side-by-side to the old man’s right, and I wondered if I could burst through that part of their line. I thought they were no more flesh than the thing which had thumped the insulation of the cellar wall . . . but what if I was wrong? ‘Give her over, son,’ the old man said. His voice was reedy and implacable. He held out his hands. It was Max Devore, he had come back, even in death he was seeking custody. Yet it wasn’t him. I knew it wasn’t. The planes of this man’s face were subtly different, the cheeks gaunter, the eyes a brighter blue. ‘Where am I?’ I called to him, accenting the last word heavily, and in front of Angelina’s booth, the man in the turban (a Hindu who perhaps hailed from Sandusky, Ohio) put down his flute and simply watched. The snake-girls stopped dancing and watched, too, slipping their arms around each other and drawing together for comfort. ‘Where am I, Devore? If our great-grandfathers shit in the same pit, then where am I?’ ‘Ain’t here to answer your questions. Give her over.’ ‘I’ll take her, Jared,’ one of the younger men-one of those who were really there said. He looked at Devore with a kind of fawning eagerness that sickened me, mostly because I knew who he was: Bill Dean’s father. A man who had grown up to be one of the most respected elders in Castle County was all but licking Devore’s boots. Don’t think too badly of him, Jo whispered. Don’t think too badly of any of them. They were very young. ‘You don’t need to do nothing,’ Devore said. His reedy voice was irritated; Fred Dean looked abashed. ‘He’s going to hand her over on his own. And if he don’t, we’ll take her together.’ I looked at the man on the far left, the third of those that seemed totally real, totally there. Was this me? It didn’t look like me. There was something in the face that seemed familiar but ‘Hand her over, Irish,’ Devore said. ‘Last chance.’ ‘No.’ Devore nodded as if this was exactly what he had expected. ‘Then we’ll take her. This has got to end. Come on, boys.’ They started toward me and as they did I realized who the one on the end the one in the caulked treewalker boots and flannel loggers’ pants reminded me of: Kenny Auster, whose wolfhound would eat cake ’til it busted. Kenny Auster, whose baby brother had been drowned under the pump by Kenny’s father. I looked behind me. The Red-Tops were still playing, Sara was still laughing, shaking her hips with her hands in the sky, and the crowd was still plugging the east end of the midway. That way was no good, anyway. if I went that way, I’d end up raising a little girl in the early years of the twentieth century, trying to make a living by writing penny dreadfuls and dime novels. That might not be so bad . . . but there was a lonely young woman miles and years from here who would miss her. Who might even miss us both. I turned back and saw the jackboys were almost on me. Some of them more here than others, more vital, but all of them dead. All of them damned. I looked at the towhead whose descendants would include Kenny Auster and asked him, ‘What did you do? What in Christ’s name did you men do?’ He held out his hands. ‘Give her over, Irish. That’s all you have to do. You and the woman can have more. All the more you want. She’s young, she’ll pop em out like watermelon seeds.’ I was hypnotized, and they would have taken us if not for Kyra. ‘What’s happening?’ she screamed against my shirt. ‘Something smells! Something smells so bad! Oh Mike, make it stop!’ And I realized I could smell it, too. Spoiled meat and swampgas. Burst tissue and simmering guts. Devore was the most alive of all of them, generating the same crude but powerful magnetism I had felt around his great-grandson, but he was as dead as the rest of them, too: as he neared I could see the tiny bugs which were feeding in his nostrils and the pink corners of his eyes. Everything down here is death, I thought. Didn’t my own wife tell me so? They reached out their tenebrous hands, first to touch Ki and then to take her. I backed up a step, looked to my right, and saw more ghosts some coming out of busted windows, some slipping from redbrick chimneys. Holding Kyra in my arms, I ran for the Ghost House. ‘Get him!’ Jared Devore yelled, startled. ‘Get him, boys! Get that punk! Goddamnit!’ I sprinted up the wooden steps, vaguely aware of something soft rubbing against my cheek Ki’s little stuffed dog, still clutched in one of her hands. I wanted to look back and see how close they were getting, but I didn’t dare. If I stumbled ‘Hey!’ the woman in the ticket booth cawed. She had clouds of gingery hair, makeup that appeared to have been applied with a garden-trowel, and mercifully resembled no one I knew. She was just a carny, just passing through this benighted place. Lucky her. ‘Hey, mister, you gotta buy a ticket!’ No time, lady, no time. ‘Stop him!’ Devore shouted. ‘He’s a goddam punk thief! That ain’t his young ‘un he’s got! Stop him!’ But no one did and I rushed into the darkness of the Ghost House with Ki in my arms. Beyond the entry was a passage so narrow I had to turn sideways to get down it. Phosphorescent eyes glared at us in the gloom. Up ahead was a growing wooden rumble, a loose sound with a clacking chain beneath it. Behind us came the clumsy thunder of caulk-equipped loggers’ boots rushing up the stairs outside. The ginger-haired carny was hollering at them now, she was telling them that if they broke anything inside they’d have to give up the goods. ‘You mind me, you damned rubes!’ she shouted. ‘That place is for kids, not the likes of you!’ The rumble was directly ahead of us. Something was turning. At first I couldn’t make out what it was. ‘Put me down, Mike!’ Kyra sounded excited. ‘I want to go through by myself!’ I set her on her feet, then looked nervously back over my shoulder. The bright light at the entryway was blocked out as they tried to cram in. ‘You asses!’ Devore yelled. ‘Not all at the same time! Sweet weeping Jesus!’ There was a smack and someone cried out. I faced front just in time to see Kyra dart through the rolling barrel, holding her hands out for balance. Incredibly, she was laughing. I followed, got halfway across, then went down with a thump. ‘Ooops!’ Kyra called from the far side, then giggled as I tried to get up, fell again, and was tumbled all the way over. The bandanna fell out of my bib pocket. A bag of horehound candy dropped from another pocket. I tried to look back, to see if they had got themselves sorted out and were coming. When I did, the barrel hurled me through another inadvertent somersault. Now I knew how clothes felt in a dryer. I crawled to the end of the barrel, got up, took Ki’s hand, and let her lead us deeper into the Ghost House. We got perhaps ten paces before white bloomed around her like a lily and she screamed. Some animal something that sounded like a huge cat hissed heavily. Adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream and I was about to jerk her backward into my arms again when the hiss came once more. I felt hot air on my ankles, and Ki’s dress made that bell-shape around her legs again. This time she laughed instead of screaming. ‘Go, Ki!’ I whispered. ‘Fast.’ We went on, leaving the steam-vent behind. There was a mirrored corridor where we were reflected first as squat dwarves and then as scrawny ectomorphs with long white vampire features. I had to urge Kyra on again; she wanted to make faces at herself. Behind us, I heard cursing lumberjacks trying to negotiate the barrel. I could hear Devore cursing, too, but he no longer seemed so . . . well, so eminent. There was a sliding-pole that landed us on a big canvas pillow. This made a loud farting noise when we hit it, and Ki laughed until fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, rolling around and kicking her feet in glee. I got my hands under her arms and yanked her up. ‘Don’t taggle yer own quartermack,’ she said, then laughed again. Her fear seemed to have entirely departed. We went down another narrow corridor. It smelled of the fragrant pine from which it had been constructed. Behind one of these walls, two ‘ghosts’ were clanking chains as mechanically as men working on a shoe-factory assembly line, talking about where they were going to take their girls tonight and who was going to bring some ‘red-eye engine,’ whatever that was. I could no longer hear anyone behind us. Kyra led the way confidently, one of her little hands holding one of my big ones, pulling me along. When we came to a door painted with glowing flames and marked THIS WAY TO HADES, she pushed through it with no hesitation at all. Here red isinglass topped the passage like a tinted skylight, imparting a rosy glow I thought far too pleasant for Hades. We went on for what felt like a very long time, and I realized I could no longer hear the calliope, the hearty bong! of the Test Your Strength bell, or Sara and the Red-Tops. Nor was that exactly surprising. We must have walked a quarter of a mile. How could any county fair Ghost House be so big? We came to three doors then, one on the left, one on the right, and one set into the end of the corridor. On one a little red tricycle was painted. On the door facing it was my green IBM typewriter. The picture on the door at the end looked older, somehow faded and dowdy. It showed a child’s sled. That’s Scooter Larribee’s, I thought. That’s the one Devore stole. A rash of gooseflesh broke out on my arms and back. ‘Well,’ Kyra said brightly, ‘here are our toys.’ She lifted Strickland, presumably so he could see the red trike. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I guess so.’ ‘Thank you for taking me away,’ she said. ‘Those were scary men but the spookyhouse was fun. Nighty-night. Stricken says nighty-night, too.’ It still came out sounding exotic tiu like the Vietnamese word for sublime happiness. Before I could say another word, she had pushed open the door with the trike on it and stepped through. It snapped shut behind her, and as it did I saw the ribbon from her hat. It was hanging out of the bib pocket of the overalls I was wearing. I looked at it a moment, then tried the knob of the door she had just gone through. It wouldn’t turn, and when I slapped my hand against the wood it was like slapping some hard and fabulously dense metal. I stepped back, then cocked my head in the direction from which we’d come. There was nothing. Total silence. This is the between-time, I thought. When people talk about ‘slipping through the cracks,’ this is what they really mean. This is the place where they really go. You better get going yourself, Jo told me. If you don’t want to find yourself trapped here, maybe forever, you better get going yourself. I tried the knob of the door with the typewriter painted on it. It turned easily. Behind it was another narrow corridor more wooden walls and the sweet smell of pine. I didn’t want to go in there, something about it made me think of a long coffin, but there was nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. I went, and the door slammed shut behind me. Christ, I thought. I’m in the dark, in a closed-in place . . . it’s time for one of Michael Noonan’ s world-famous panic attacks. But no bands clamped themselves over my chest, and although my heart-rate was high and my muscles were still jacked on adrenaline, I was under control. Also, I realized, it wasn’t entirely dark. I could only see a little, but enough to make out the walls and the plank floor. I wrapped the dark blue ribbon from Ki’s hat around my wrist, tucking one end underneath so it wouldn’t come loose. Then I began to move forward. I went on for a long time, the corridor turning this way and that, seemingly at random. I felt like a microbe slipping through an intestine. At last I came to a pair of wooden arched doorways. I stood before them, wondering which was the correct choice, and realized I could hear Bunter’s bell faintly through the one to my left. I went that way and as I walked, the bell grew steadily louder. At some point the sound of the bell was joined by the mutter of thunder. The autumn cool had left the air and it was hot again stifling. I looked down and saw that the biballs and clodhopper shoes were gone. I was wearing thermal underwear and itchy socks. Twice more I came to choices, and each time I picked the opening through which I could hear Bunter’s bell. As I stood before the second pair of doorways, I heard a voice somewhere in the dark say quite clearly: ‘No, the President’s wife wasn’t hit. That’s his blood on her stockings.’ I walked on, then stopped when I realized my feet and ankles no longer itched, that my thighs were no longer sweating into the longjohns. I was wearing the Jockey shorts I usually slept in. I looked up and saw I was in my own living room, threading my way carefully around the furniture as you do in the dark, trying like hell not to stub your stupid toe. I could see a little better; faint milky light was coming in through the windows. I reached the counter which separates the living room from the kitchen and looked over it at the waggy-cat clock. It was five past five. I went to the sink and turned on the water. When I reached for a glass I saw I was still wearing the ribbon from Ki’s straw hat on my wrist. I unwound it and put it on the counter between the coffee-maker and the kitchen TV. Then I drew myself some cold water, drank it down, and made my way cautiously along the north-wing corridor by the pallid yellow glow of the bathroom nightlight. I peed (you-rinated, I could hear Ki saying), then went into the bedroom. The sheets were rumpled, but the bed didn’t have the orgiastic look of the morning after my dream of Sara, Mattie, and Jo. Why would it? I’d gotten out of it and had myself a little sleepwalk. An extraordinarily vivid dream of the Fryeburg Fair. Except that was bullshit, and not just because I had the blue silk ribbon from Ki’s hat. None of it had the quality of dreams on waking, where what seemed plausible becomes immediately ridiculous and all the colors both those bright and those ominous fade at once. I raised my hands to my face, cupped them over my nose, and breathed deeply. Pine. When I looked, I even saw a little smear of sap on one pinky finger. I sat on the bed, thought about dictating what I’d just experienced into the Memo-Scriber, then flopped back on the pillows instead. I was too tired. Thunder rumbled. I closed my eyes, began to drift away, and then a scream ripped through the house. It was as sharp as the neck of a broken bottle. I sat up with a yell, clutching at my chest. It was Jo. I had never heard her scream like that in our life together, but I knew who it was, just the same. ‘Stop hurting her!’ I shouted into the darkness. ‘Whoever you are, stop hurting her!’ She screamed again, as if something with a knife, clamp, or hot poker took a malicious delight in disobeying me. It seemed to come from a distance this time, and her third scream, while just as agonized as the first two, was farther away still. They were diminishing as the little boy’s sobbing had diminished. A fourth scream floated out of the dark, then Sara was silent. Breathless, the house breathed around me. Alive in the heat, aware in the faint sound of dawn thunder. How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, Essay examples

Foils Of Hamlet Essay Example For Students

Foils Of Hamlet Essay the foils of hamlet In his plays, Shakespeare often puts the antagonists in circumstances similar to or resembling the problems of the main character or hero. He does this in order to give us a clear perception of what the characters are like, through contrast or similarity between them. These literary experiments are called foils. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gives us many foils for Hamlet, the main character. One major foil is Ophelia. Hamlet and Ophelia have both lost their fathers. In the beginning of the play it seems that Hamlet is mourning too much and over reacting, but when Ophelia loses her father it makes Hamlet’s mourning seem subtle. Ophelia is very affected by her father’s death and it eventually leads to a factor in her insanity and death. This changes the way we look at Hamlet and Ophelia. Another foil for Hamlet is Polonius, Laertes’ and Ophelia’s father. Hamlet and Polonius are both very quick to speak or and lash out in excitement. Both of them have made major mistakes because of this unwanted trait. Hamlet has, on many occasions, spoken too quickly or acted out of rage or ignorance and hurt himself and others. When Polonius spies on Hamlet and the Queen, Hamlet thinks that it is the king who is spying behind the curtain, and without knowing who it really is he stabs Polonius and kills him. Polonius also has the same problem, but with much tamer results. Polonius usually ends up just making himself sound like a babbling fool by not thinking things out first. He never really hurt anyone and his slaying by Hamlet’s sword makes Hamlet seem more the fool. This foil gives Hamlet the image of a violent person that doesn’t know how to control his emotions, and in this instance he almost becomes the antagonist. Hamlet also has foils that aren’t as close to him. Like the young Fortinbras, the nephew to the king of Norway. Fortinbras’ father, the king was killed, and his uncle, the king’s brother took over the crown. The exact same thing happened to Hamlet. Both countries also have a prince who feels that they were robbed from the crown. Fortinbras, in contrast to Hamlet, takes an active role in Norway’s leadership. In act IV scene 4, he leads an army on to Poland. He also does this because he want’s to avenge his father’s death by taking what he believes to be rightfully his. Hamlet spends most of his time sulking or complaining, and it makes him seem a little spoiled and cowardly, as if he doesn’t want to face the world. He keeps his plot for revenge a secret. In somewhat the same manner Laertes is a foil to Hamlet. He too seeks revenge for his father’s death, and does it very openly. He goes as far as getting a mob together supporting him to be king. It seems radical but it probably would have been better for Hamlet to go about things this way. If he hadn’t kept it in the castle a lot of bad things wouldn’t have happened. Hamlet could have saved a lot of trouble if he went about things the way Laertes did, but then we would have a boring play. Another thing for Hamlet and Laertes is their love for Ophelia. Obviously they are completely different kinds of love, but both are extremely strong. Laertes cares greatly for his sister and gives her strong advice concerning her and Hamlet. He warns her against keeping a relation with him, showing that he doesn’t like Hamlet. After Ophelia rejects Hamlet, his love dies off and he gets pale and sickly, showing how much he cared for her. It is strange that both these characters care so much for Ophelia but hate each other to death. When Ophelia dies, both are shocked and enraged. .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef , .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .postImageUrl , .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef , .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef:hover , .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef:visited , .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef:active { border:0!important; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef:active , .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u5ac325f229d06b4c4513f3cec0e81aef:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Child Abuse Essay In the end at her burial they both end up jumping into Ophelia’s grave and fighting each other over her dead body. Their extreme love for her and profound hate for each other is almost a mystery. Laertes also, like his father, has the same rashness and spontaneity as Hamlet. There are many, many foils throughout this play, some completely obvious, and some scarcely noticeable. In â€Å"Hamlet†, Hamlet has a foil with almost ever other character in it. Foils greatly enrich all literature and tell us much more than meets the eye about a specific character and the decisions they make. Literary Phenomena like this make great stories masterpieces.

Ordinary Life Paragraph free essay sample

Sometimes in life it is easy to take the small things for granted. The poem, ordinary life by Barbara cooker is subject to irony, starting from the first line to the last. The behavior of the children, the activities of the speaker, and the seasonal characteristics of the day, all prove to be more than ordinary: they are Like an unexpected gift for the speaker and her family. Ordinarily the children are reluctant to leave for school, but on this day they go without a murmur and remember to take their books, lunches, and gloves.At dinner, the usual bickering and poking ceases long enough for the parents to enjoy actual conversation which Is obviously rare. In addition to the childrens behavior, the mothers routine Is slightly different than usual. For Instance, the speaker does not have time to complete Jobs that never get done. However, on this day she Is able to clean. We will write a custom essay sample on Ordinary Life Paragraph or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page .. The kitchen cupboards Instead of the usual messes. Her usual kitchen routine also Includes preparing food, but today is different in that she has cut the vegetables without paring [her] thumbLastly, the scene outside the speakers home also reflects a difference from the ordinary. In the dead of win « the speaker is surprised to see pheasants, and other birds at the feeder. The sky has unwrapped a crescent moon which is a sliver of white on this day of grace. Despite the speakers opinion that this has been an ordinary day, we see that it has been anything but typical. Small pleasures can be overshadowed by routine, but are remarkable in their own way. The poem demonstrates that this particular day is anything but ordinary.

Disguise essays

Disguise essays Many characters in the Odyssey use the concept of disguise. The characters use the idea of disguise to help themselves and other characters. There are many examples of the theme of disguise in the Odyssey. Odysseus and his men disguise themselves in the body of the Trojan horse. They do this at the Trojan War to help win the war. ... I sacked the city, killed the men, but as for the wives and plunder, that rich haul we dragged away from the place we shared it round (28). Odysseus and his men disguise themselves as rams to escape the Cyclops. After the Cyclops was blinded the men and Odysseus needed a way to escape. [...] clutching him by the back, tucked up under his shaggy belly, there I hung face upward, both hands locked in his marvelous deep fleece, clinging for dear life, my spirit steeled, enduring... (224). Cyclopss one eye was blinded, by Odysseus; he could not tell that Odysseus and his men were holding on to the rams wool to escape the torturous cave of the Cyclops. Odysseus spends the last part of the poem as a beggar. He does this for two reasons. First he disguises himself to defeat the prisoners and to prove the loyalty of his wife Penelope. He uses a lie to get into the Palace. Look at the clothing on my back-all rags and tatters. Im afraid that the frost at down could do me in (355). When he returns to Ithaca, Odysseus overthrows the suitors and takes his rightful place as King of Ithaca. Athena is another character that uses the concept of disguise during the poem. She appears as a Mentor to aid Telemachas (83). Athena is there to tell Telemachas that his father is not dead. He lives and the gods will not grant him passage home. She goes to comfort Penelope is a disguise (381). The theme of disguise was important to The Odyssey. Most of the important characters used a disguise in one way shape or form. This helped them h ...

Mattel Inc. Addressing the Component of Cultural Identity Among Essay

Mattel Inc. Addressing the Component of Cultural Identity Among Consumers - Essay Example Barbie the first venture of Mattel into the field of dolls was launched in 1959. Barbie was designed keeping in mind that young girls like giving the role of adults to their dolls. Mattel has been very successful in many European countries and the United States, due to its strategy of incorporating the cultural specification of these countries into its products. Its strategy of bringing variation in their products according to the philosophy, and biological traits of their consumers has made them the brand they are today (Mattel, 2011). Barbie is a brand that acknowledges the importance of cultural identity in the toy market. Biological traits for cultural acceptability have incorporated very carefully. Barbie, Mattel’s biggest and most recognized brand is very detailed in its design. The original Barbie was created to target young American girls, who wanted to grow up to be independent, beautiful women. Many parents initially had objections against playing with Barbie as many thought her physical attributes gave young girls a wrong idea about beauty. The fear was that girls might take thinness as the indicator of beauty. Consumers were worried about the wrong idea Barbie might give their children regarding the definition of beauty in their culture. Consumers who had African, Asian and other ethnic origins were also not very pleased with the physical attributes Barbie was given. Mattel counteracted these notions by coming up with Barbies that represented the culture and traditions of these specific countries. Thus, Indian, Mexican, Japanese, and African Barbies were created. These Barbies have different skin tones than the original Barbie; they are several shades darker than the original shade. The Japanese Barbie has a yellow skin color similar to the oriental skin tone. Many might point out the fact that the features of these dolls have not been changed. Only the skin tone and the clothes have been altered. By diversification of their products, Mattel accessed growing markets. (Grassel, 2011) Barbie now represents a mass- spectrum of culture to gain acceptability into the Latin American, Afro American, and Asian cultures. Barbie’s imaginary friend-circle has been very carefully designed. It is designed in such a way that young girls from all different cultures will feel included in the world of Barbie. Kayla was introduced in 1990. Her ethnic vagueness was done intentionally. She represents the Latina-young friend of Barbie. Kayla can make any young Latin American girl relate herself to Kayla’s style. The Barbie line for girls near their teens also has characters that show the importance of Hispanic and African culture in Mattel’s market segmentation. Including these characters in their doll collection gives Mattel access to consumers who hail from these cultures (Barbie, 1991). ‘Independent women are next-generation women’ is the philosophy Mattel reinforces with its product, Barbie. Girls from a very young age value their independence and dreams. The clothes and accessories donned by Barbie make the statement of her independence. She is a doctor, a nurse, an astronaut, and anything and everything she wants to be professionally. The commercials of Barbie also emphasize the abilities of women. ‘Women can be whatever they want to be’ is what Barbie wants to encourage in young girls.

American Government Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

American Government - Essay Example The so called representatives of the peoples that are chosen only serve to represent themselves and their interests. Their aims are to make themselves popular in the world over and to create fear among nations (Roger, 2004). The people have no power to make decisions of national governance as it would be in true democracy. The system ensures important decisions to be made by few people who create inefficiency in the whole process of decision making and execution. There concentration of power on top level has seen stagnation of economy among other bad decisions that have continued to plague the tax payer. This form of the government represents their wealthy clients at best often ignoring the have-nots who are the people who have elected it. Therefore the party in power is not the problem facing American but the social contract structure whereby decision making process is left for the wealthy few instead of being distributed to the people. The only solution would be to redesign the Ame rican government and that would be through constitutional amendment to restore the power to run the country back to the people to ensure the system get efficient since the elected representatives will become directly responsible to their actions and answerable to the people. Furthermore, decision making will be decentralized. Social contract comprises the philosophical therories describing agreements between the ruled and the rulers among the members of an organized society and the philosophies defined the duties of each party, limitations, and rights (Stuart, 2007). A contract in normal cases comes with specific obligations and therefore in political scenario a contract between the citizens and the sovereign power grounds the nature of obligation on each party. Under the social contract the legitimate authority is drawn from the consent of the people. Members of the society are bound by the social contract to respect the ruling government

Analyse how students at the University of Gloucestershire can take Essay

Analyse how students at the University of Gloucestershire can take full advantage of the opportunities offered to develop their employability skills - Essay Example gathered that expectation of employers has shifted from academic result and degree to employability skills such as teamwork, leadership, positive attitude and motivation and relative work experience (Snowden, 2011; Mason, Williams and Cranmer, 2006). The UK job industry is evolving rapidly and drastic change has been observed in demand of skilled workforce in past few years. However, it was observed in surveys that UK universities are making very weak contribution in this regard. It was gathered that 50percent and above surveyed graduates alleged that their universities did not take sufficient measures to develop their employability skills (Weinstein, 2014). The UK universities make yearly contribution of  £59 billion towards the economy and are essentially responsible for generating high skilled workforce, imparting non-academic skills such as innovation and training and raising standard of education (Snowden, 2011). The paper assesses and critically examines the opportunities that are being presented to graduates by University of Gloucestershire for developing their employability skills and recommendations have been provided accordingly. Employability skills are referred to set of attributes that helps individuals to respond accurately to the changing environment of workplace and to make positive contribution towards organisational success and personal growth and development. Employability skills deliver benefits to employers as well as employees and include skills such as self-management, accountability, time management, team working, consumer awareness and awareness of business environment, problem solving, positive attitude, entrepreneurship, communication skill and analytical skill (CBI, 2009; Mason, Williams and Cranmer, 2006). Employers make heavy investment in developing skills among new recruits by means of training and development post joining. However, the level of basic expectations has increased over the years. Presently, they want individuals to

Weak Gravitational Lensing

Weak Gravitational Lensing Introduction Gravitational lensing is a very resourceful phenomenon that widely used in astronomy measurement. It contains many aspects of which the strong, weak, and microlensing are well established by observable evidence. The weak gravitational lensing is an active area. Weak gravitational lensing that we can observe is usually caused by large-scale cosmic bodies such as clusters and voids. Generally, gravitational lensing has the advantage of directly measuring or comparing the mass of the object. This is an advantage comparing with the conventional method such as dynamical methods and the diffuse X-ray emission. Those methods require strong assumptions of either dynamical state or composition (Bartelmann Schneider 2001). Thus, weak gravitational lensing has the prospect of leading us to understand more about the voids and clusters that other regular measurement could not achieve, which can further lead to verifying the existence and possible composition of dark matter. Method (How to measure calculate) Gravitational Lensing Effect Gravitational lensing is the phenomenon that the light bundles bent when traveling by massive cosmic bodies due to the effect of gravitational force. In astrophysics photos, strong gravitational lensing would result in prominent arc or arclets (smaller arcs). However, weak gravitational lensing is relatively less noticeable since that the phenomenon only slightly distort the background galaxies. This distortion can be divided into two: convergence and shear. The convergence would result in magnification of the background while the shear would change the ellipticity of the background galaxies we observe. We show a simplistic example for weak gravitational lensing as Fig.1 shows. One thing to mention is that we used thin lens approximation for the example. This means that we assume the lensing effect take place in a surface, which is usually a good approximation because the distance from the background to the foreground lens and from foreground lens to observer are much long comparing the size of a cluster or void. Considering a deflection caused by a point mass M. When a bundle of light pass through the weak gravitational field near it. The deflection angle predicted by general relativity is twice the amount of Newtonian prediction where impact factor (Schwarzschild radius), since the gravitational field is relatively small. Now considering that in Fig.1,, which is valid for most weak gravitational lensing application, it can be proven that Fig.1 An illustration of a typical gravitational lensing with S the source, O the observer and L the massive object The above can be defined as scaled deflection angle, which can also be represented by surface density where the denotes convergence and can be represented by surface mass density and critical surface density : with where the distance is angular diameter distance. The critical surface density depends on the redshift of source and lens (Bartelmann Schneider 2001), the convergence () represents the strength of the lensing. Generally, represents weak lensing. Eq. (3) indicates that the deflection angle can also be written as the gradient of the deflection potential As, it can be prove that The gravitational lensing doesnt change the frequency of the photons, the deflection angles are all the same for any frequency (i.e. no dispersion). Considering that no photon has been emitted or absorbed and omit the change of gravitational potential over time, Liouvilles theorem Since the lens map can be linearized in weak gravitational field, the distortion of images is then described by the Jacobian matrix where we need to introduced the shear components Magnification factor in respect to fluxes can be represented by In case of application, the reduced gravitational shear is more commonly used (Bartelmann Schneider 2001) Weak Lensing by Voids In Fig.1, if we assume L is the centre of a void, instead, then the figure can illustrate the example for weak lensing in a void. Note that weak lensing caused by clusters act like a convex lens, where it converge the light coming through, while those caused by voids are like concave lens, where the light is diverged. Though technically, they do not work the same as classical lensing since they do not have foci. This is because that the voids are and underdense and it is actually the mass outside the void that bend the light. Considering the fact that voids are also relatively large, the change of gravity potential along radius would not be as fast as in massive clusters. The weak lensing caused by voids are quite hard to detect (Amendola et al. 1999). Another essential thing is to have a general model for voids. Due to the mass distribution of void, we shall assume it is a uniform spherical underdensity surrounded by overdense shell. While this is mere an ideal assumption, this model can still capture the main features for the voids (Amendola et al. 1999). Implications Clowe (2006) has put a convincing result with the help of weak gravitational lensing to indicate the existence of dark matter. During the collision of two clusters, they compare the mass of the plasma and of the whole clusters. The plasma was the dominant baryonic component. However, when they compared plasma distribution in X-ray and the cluster gravitational potential by weak lensing, the ratio of plasma/whole cluster fitted better in the cluster model with the dark matter. More recent research have shown thatà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ As we have mentioned that void is harder to detect due to its size and underdensity. In practice, the size measurement of an individual void in galaxy redshift surveys will be very noisy due to sparse sampling in the underdense region. That is one of the reasons why we need to get the void stacked to determine the weak lensing. Theoretical calculations by Krause et al. (2012) and numerical simulations by Higuchi, Oguri Hamana (2013) suggest that stacking many voids will increase the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of the lensing observables, which may result in the detection of the effect with high significance, the lensing signals measured by stacking large numbers of voids with similar sizes will also constrain the radial profile of voids. It is worthwhile to mention that the stacked method was first used in detection of weak lensing caused by clusters. However, with the improvement of astronomical imaging, the weak lensing for an individual cluster is much easier to detect. Melchior et al. (2014) used the method to stack 901 voids detected in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SSDS) DR7. They combined the voids with the coordinate, where is the radius of individual void. Their research indicates that voids are generally self-similar and that large voids may does not fit compensated void model as smaller voids do. This means that the density around large void, even for a sufficient large radius beyond, may still be lower than the average density. Clampitt Jain (2015) further extend the stacking method. They used a special method to identify the voids and then filter to remain the ones with good quality. They estimated S/N to be 7, which is a relatively high rate for void lensing. They gave a model-independent statement of void properties. Limitations One intrinsic problem for weak lensing is ellipticity noise. It denotes the fact that each background galaxy has its own ellipticity and orientation. The ellipticity noise is often of the same level of the distortion or even larger (Bartelmann Schneider 2001). Another key limitation of the gravitational lensing methodology could be that it only produces a two-dimensional map of k and hence raises the possibility that structures seen in the map are caused by physically unrelated masses along the line of sight (Clowe et al. 2006). Reference Amendola, L., Frieman, J. A., Waga, I. (1999). Weak gravitational lensing by voids. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 309(2), 465-473. Bartelmann, M., Schneider, P. (2001). Weak gravitational lensing. Physics Reports, 340(4), 291-472. Clampitt, J., Jain, B. (2015). Lensing measurements of the mass distribution in SDSS voids. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 454(4), 3357-3365. Clowe, D., BradaÄ , M., Gonzalez, A. H., Markevitch, M., Randall, S. W., Jones, C., Zaritsky, D. (2006). A direct empirical proof of the existence of dark matter. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 648(2), L109. Higuchi, Y., Oguri, M., Hamana, T. (2013). Measuring the mass distribution of voids with stacked weak lensing. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 432(2), 1021-1031. Kaiser, N., Squires, G. (1993). Mapping the dark matter with weak gravitational lensing. The Astrophysical Journal, 404, 441-450. Krause, E., Chang, T. C., Dorà ©, O., Umetsu, K. (2012). The weight of emptiness: the gravitational lensing signal of stacked voids. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 762(2), L20. Melchior, P., Sutter, P. M., Sheldon, E. S., Krause, E., Wandelt, B. D. (2014). First measurement of gravitational lensing by cosmic voids in SDSS. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 440(4), 2922-2927.      

Importance of Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet Essay example -- Shake

Friar Laurence plays an important part in the narrative development of Romeo and Juliet. He is naà ¯ve and detached from society so doesn’t fully appreciate the bitterness of the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. The well intentioned advice that he gives to Romeo and Juliet is thus misguided and this develops a sense of foreboding. The advice that Friar Laurence gives sets the young lovers on a path which the audience senses will end in tragedy. With regard to his character, Friar Laurence is a contemplative and moral man yet he lacks real insight in human nature i.e. their passions and motivations. When we first meet Friar Laurence, he compares plants to human nature concluding that â€Å"Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied And vice sometime by action dignified† From our first meeting with Friar Laurence the audience sees how naive he is to believe so simply in the goodness of man. It is partly this characteristic that causes his schemes to end tragically. Friar Laurence is a man of self control who believes that â€Å"violent delights have violent ends.† In other words, people should be measured and not let passion overrule their good judgement. This is almost a premonition of what happens later on in the play when Romeo and Juliet’s short but passionate love ends in death. Shakespeare portrays the Friar as a prudent and modest man of God. Friar Laurence is trustworthy; we know this because both Juliet and Romeo trust him enough to confide their love for one another to him. They also seek his advice to find a way to be together. This trust is also based on Friar Laurence’s reputation as a highly respected member of Verona’s society, â€Å"the whole city is much bound to him.† Romeo refers to Friar Laurence as hi... ...eveal their innermost feelings to the audience. Shakespeare uses Friar Laurence as a device to achieve this. Friar Laurence also acts as the messenger in the play. In Shakespearean times, Romeo and Juliet would have been performed in theatres like The Globe. There would be a lot of noise and distraction for the audience and it was likely that they would miss out on important parts of the play. The actor playing Friar Laurence up dates the audience regularly. An example of this is when he gives the audience a synopsis of the story right at the end of the play â€Å"Is not so long as is a tedious tale. . .† This is helpful for the audience because it allows them to catch up with important parts that they might have missed. As the audience sees Friar Laurence’s plans fail one by one, a sense of foreboding develops which prepares the audience for the unfolding tragedy

Title of your paper

It feels like such a long time since I last saw you. I know I've only been away for only a few weeks, but so far my vacation here at Greece has been great! I'm currently staying at the Academy.I found a friend who shares the same passion with me in philosophy and he asked me to come with him to this place to meet other people. I'm very glad to stay here, I've learned a lot from various people.Anyways, yesterday I was walking along Agora or the city market and found some really great stuffs to buy and take home. In this place I found many people who are trading and talking about gossip (for women) and politics (for men). After hours of walking, I was able to get to the Hephaisteion.   I stayed for a while and witness the beauty of the temple.At noon, the heat at Athens   is topnotch so I stayed at the Stoa for cover. There are two kinds of Stoa, the one I stayed at was the Painted Stoa. It is a long covered hall that is open in one side and is decorated with many beautiful paintin gs.I spent almost an hour there and spent the whole time talking to people who get to engage in a conversation with me. It's really funny though for they will just come up to me and ask me something all of a sudden.I was so dumbstruck. At the right of Agora are the sacred places that can be found in the city like the Theatre of Dionysos, the Askelpieion, and most of all the Acropolis.After a while of wandering around, my attention got caught by a group of man loudly arguing among one another. I happened to ask someone about what's going on and he told me that the male citizen are debating about big decisions that affect the city.This place that I got into was called the Pnyx, the home of the assembly of people. However, I want to go to some quiet place instead and got interested in following young children each carrying small vases. I noticed I was back at the entrance of the city which was the Karameikos for I used the potteries as a landmark.By the end of the day, I decided to spe nd my time at the cemetery and stayed there till sunset. The cemetery was great for it really depicts the culture of the Athenians with their pottery and carvings.But what interests me most is the people's daily activities on the city. By what I've observed, they're almost routinary. Different kinds of people have specific type of jobs to finish each day. Even before the day starts people can be seen from all over the place.I came to ask a man why he was up so early and he said he had a trial and he have to prepare. Women get water from the fountains and traders are up for early trading. By mid-morning, servants are already working on their respective jobs. And by noon, the Agora and almost every plac ein Athens is so busy with people talking, doing business and many more.By mid afternoon, the place starts to quiet down and shops are preparing to close, this is my favorite part of the day in Athens for it is very peaceful and relaxing. And at last by midnight, servants start to rela x and even play games with their friends.I somehow got used to the busy and loud environment here at Greece. Though I'm not quite used to talking about politics all the time, or even some serious or religious topics like religion and life. Athens is a very economic centered city and almost all people has something to trade and has something to offer as livelihood. All over Greece, the people grew olives, grapes, and figs. They kept goats, for milk and cheese. In the plains, where the soil was more rich, they also grew wheat to make bread. Making it smell like a combination of vegetables and farm animals at the same time.I really liked it here so far. I wanted to explore the city more but I guess need to have more time. Nevertheless, today I was invited to go to a friend's house and spend the night there. I'm gonna have to take a look at a Greek house and be amazed once again.I'll write to you again very soon. Take care always. See you!

how can we explain the persistance of class structures in Britain essays

how can we explain the persistance of class structures in Britain essays HOW CAN WE EXPLAIN THE PERSISTANCE OF CLASS INEQUALITIES IN BRITAIN? Traditionally Britain has always been recognized as a class society, characterised by widespread awareness of social class membership, class inequality and the influence of class inequalities in employment prospects. However it has been argued that with growing affluence, levels of education, social mobility and post - industrial economic development, class identities are losing their salience. (4) Saying this there is still substantial amounts of evidence to suggest that class inequalities are still very much inherent in British society especially with regards to social mobility. One of the first factors in explaining class inequalities in Britain would have to be the differences in wealth and income. Carl Marxs theory on income and wealth in western societies can be used to help explain this. Marx believed that maturing of capitalism would bring about an increasing gap between the wealth of the minority and the poverty of the mass of the population. According the Marx the wages of the working class would never rise far above survival level, while wealth would pile up in the hands of those owning capital. Marx also believed that those in the low levels of society would suffer, accumulation of misery, agony o labour, slavery, ignorance, brutality, moral degradation.... (Marx 1970. p 645). From this quote we can see that to a certain extent Marx was right, especially about the persistence of class inequalities in industrialized societies such as the UK and in anticipating that great inequalities of wealth and income would continue. He was wrong however to assume that the income of most of the population would remain low. Most people in Britain today are much better off materially than comparable groups in Marxs day. To examine how far, and why, this is the case we have to look at changes in the distribution of ...

Conversation Analysis Definition and Examples

Conversation Analysis Definition and Examples In sociolinguistics, conversation analysis is the study of the talk produced in ordinary human interactions. Sociologist Harvey Sacks (1935-1975) is generally credited with founding the discipline. Also called talk-in-interaction  and  ethnomethodology. At its core, says Jack Sidnell, conversation analysis is a set of methods for working with audio and video recordings of talk and social interaction (Conversation Analysis: An Introduction, 2010). See Examples and Observations below. Also, see: Talking Together: Key Concepts in Conversation AnalysisAdjacency PairAsymmetry (Communication)Broken-Record ResponseConstructed DialogueConversationConversational GroundingConversational Implicature and ExplicatureConversationalizationCooperative OverlapCooperative PrincipleDialogueDirect SpeechDiscourse AnalysisDiscourse DomainDiscourse MarkerEcho UtteranceEditing TermIndexicalityInterlocutorMinor SentenceNonverbal CommunicationPausePhatic Communication and Solidarity TalkPoliteness StrategiesProfessional CommunicationPunctuation EffectRelevance TheoryRepairShort AnswerSpeech ActStyle-ShiftingTurn-Taking Examples and Observations [C]onversation analysis (CA) [is] an approach within the social sciences that aims to describe, analyze and understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life. CA is a well-developed tradition with a distinctive set of methods and analytic procedures as well as a large body of established findings. . . .At its core, conversation analysis is a set of methods for working with audio and video recordings of talk and social interaction. These methods were worked out in some of the earliest conversation-analytic studies and have remained remarkably consistent over the last 40 years. Their continued use has resulted in a large body of strongly interlocking and mutually supportive findings . . ..(Jack Sidnell, Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010The Aim of Conversation AnalysisCA is the study of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-interaction. But what is the aim of studying these interactions? Principally, it is to discover how participants u nderstand and respond to one another in their turns at talk, with a central focus on how sequences of action are generated. To put it another way, the objective of CA is to uncover the often tacit reasoning procedures and sociolinguistic competencies underlying the production and interpretation of talk in organized sequences of interaction.(Ian Hutchby and Robin Wooffitt, Conversation Analysis. Polity, 2008 Adjacency PairsOne very common structure that has been identified [through conversation analysis] is the adjacency pair. This is an ordered pair of adjacent utterances spoken by two different speakers. Once the first utterance is spoken, the second is required. A few of the many adjacency pairs that have been identified are shown.SummonsanswerCan I get some help here?On my way.Offer - refusalSales clerk: May I help you find something?Customer: No thank you, Im just looking.Compliment  - acceptanceYour hair looks very lovely today.Thank you. I just had it cut.​(William OGrady, et al. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford, 2001Response to Criticisms of Conversational AnalysisMany people who take a look at CA from the outside are amazed by a number of superficial features of CAs practice. It seems to them that CA refuses to use available theories of human conduct to ground or organize its arguments, or even to construct a theory of its own. Furthermore, it seems unwilling to explain the phenomena it studies by invoking obvious factors like basic properties of the participants or the institutional context of the interaction. And finally, it seems to be obsessed with the details of its materials. These impressions are not too far off the mark, but the issue is why CA refuses to use or construct theories, why it refuses interaction-external explanations, and why it is obsessed with details. The short answer is that these refusals and this obsession are necessary in order to get a clear picture of CAs core phenomenon, the in situ organization of conduct, and especially talk-in-interaction. So CA is not a-theoretical but it has a different conception of how to theorize about social life.(Paul ten Have, Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide, 2nd ed. SAGE, 2007)

Orphanage, comment on Orphange by Wendy Wilder Larsen and I met You in Essay

Orphanage, comment on Orphange by Wendy Wilder Larsen and I met You in the Orphanage yard by Thich Nhat Hanh - Essay Example The word orphanage is an ugly one. It has Dickensian overtones of cruelty to children who are already dealt the dreadful catastrophe of losing their parents. These days, there are few or no orphanages in the Western world: the economies of prosperous countries are such that their birth rates are dropping, with the result that any unparented children quickly find a home. The aftermath of war, anywhere, however, brings about a raft of children whose fate is to survive (Williams 2003) and to find themselves at the mercy of host countries after being herded into orphanages in the theatre of conflict itself. Because conflicts kill, and kill mostly adults. Global diasporas caused by wars carry many streams of people (Williams 2003) many of whom are children. The two poems in the spotlight show a surface similarity - they are both about children left parentless by war, but, since they are written by a woman and a man with a polarity of cultures, many differences - subtle and overt - are to be found. Larsen’s poem illustrates the well-meaning but wildly inconsiderate actions that take place after any catastrophe: how (generally) white Western people offer charity without thinking of the consequences, either immediate or long-term. ‘I went with balloons, hard candies, / old National Geographics’(Mahony 1998): it is bewildering to anyone who has worked with the homeless and parentless to see the perceptions of those who have never experienced a moment of having absolutely nothing, not even a Mom. Good intentions often blow up in the face of the giver, and that is what happens in Larsen’s poem: the narrator brings gifts to an orphanage, only to find herself face to face with her own misapprehensions and lack of sensitivity. This can be taken as an analogy for countries who intervene into conflicts among communities of whose culture they have little or no idea, and of