The Challenge of Starting Up A New Internet Venture

Lui and Wong had made a good choice in choosing music as there online start up business, because of the nature of music itself is information rich, easy to distribute, consumption experience are indifferent between digital or physical product, also, without the space limitation of a physical store, MusicJuice. net can provide a large amount of selection for user to choose. In addition, internet landscape empowers the business model of Crowd-Sourcing, where millions of vertical interest group can form their own communities, share and support each other on the internet.And such business model has proven to be very successful in Europe, theoretically, MusicJuice. net should also be successful in North America where the potential market size was approximately 240,000 musicians. However, the company has been losing money month after month since launched in April 2008, only 70 artistes has signed up in July 2008 and none of them had reached the fundraising goal, and of course, no premium m embers at all. The two co-founders have to decide what could be done to save MusicJuice. et or whether they should close the business for good. Before jumping into conclusion, let’s examine the situation with the 5 Forces analysis. First of all, the threats of new entrants are too high, just like their competitor – Slicethepie. com was launched one month after MusicJuice. net began its development. Forming such music portal requires relatively low capital investment, and there is no customer or brand loyalty at all, because the users will only loyalty to the musicians. The threats of substitute products for MusicJuice. et is also very high, as people will enjoy and obtain the music they like in many different sources, CD Store, radio, youtube, iTunes, sharing between friends, or even download from piracy websites! Not only facing the threats of new entrants and substitute, what really bothers MusicJuice. net is the high bargaining power of supplier, i. e. the musicians . The business of MusicJuice. net is bet on the quality of their signed musicians, but what musicians really cares is to expand their fans network, but not to build any relationship with a particular platform.Even though the bargaining power of customers is comparatively low when the user addicted into any single musician, but such advantage is not sustainable once the musician switch to other platform. And the biggest force affecting MusicJuice. net is the high intensity of competitive rivalry, many companies including those major music labels and big IT corporations e. g. Microsoft also attempted to use MySpace to slice the pie of the profitable music industry, not to mention those giants like iTunes and Amazon.Even thought in such unfavorable situation, MusicJuice. net can still do something to rescue their business, not just working on marketing campaign or functional enhancement, but to focus on building the pure music community by forming strategic partners with indie band and independent music labels, line up with quality musicians to build few showcases of successful stories, aforementioned, their business is bet on the quality of their suppliers, they should provide a reason for the musicians to sign up on their platform.After all, people are looking for music as an enjoyment, not an investment, MusicJuice. net should provide more interesting free content for the user to enjoy music, but not just invest on music. (end)

Black House Chapter Three

3 OUT TYLER'S WINDOW we go, away from Libertyville, flying southwest on a diagonal, not lingering now but really flapping those old wings, flying with a purpose. We're headed toward the heliograph flash of early-morning sun on the Father of Waters, also toward the world's largest six-pack. Between it and County Road Oo (we can call it Nail-house Row if we want; we're practically honorary citizens of French Landing now) is a radio tower, the warning beacon on top now invisible in the bright sunshine of this newborn July day. We smell grass and trees and warming earth, and as we draw closer to the tower, we also smell the yeasty, fecund aroma of beer. Next to the radio tower, in the industrial park on the east side of Peninsula Drive, is a little cinder-block building with a parking lot just big enough for half a dozen cars and the Coulee patrol van, an aging Ford Econoline painted candy-apple pink. As the day winds down and afternoon wears into evening, the cylindrical shadows of the six-pack will fall first over the sign on the balding lawn facing the drive, then the building, then the parking lot. KDCU-AM, this sign reads, YOUR TALK VOICE IN COULEE COUNTRY. Spray-painted across it, in a pink that almost matches the patrol van, is a fervent declaration: TROY LUVS MARYANN! YES! Later on, Howie Soule, the U-Crew engineer, will clean this off (probably during the Rush Limbaugh show, which is satellite fed and totally automated), but for now it stays, telling us all we need to know about small-town luv in middle America. Looks like we found something nice after all. Coming out of the station's side door as we arrive is a slender man dressed in pleated khaki Dockers, a tieless white shirt of Egyptian cotton buttoned all the way to the neck, and maroon braces (they are as slim as he is, those braces, and far too cool to be called suspenders; suspenders are vulgar things worn by such creatures as Chipper Maxton and Sonny Heartfield, down at the funeral home). This silver-haired fellow is also wearing a very sharp straw fedora, antique but beautifully kept. The maroon hatband matches his braces. Aviator-style sunglasses cover his eyes. He takes a position on the grass to the left of the door, beneath a battered speaker that is amping KDCU's current broadcast: the local news. This will be followed by the Chicago farm report, which gives him ten minutes before he has to settle in behind the mike again. We watch in growing puzzlement as he produces a pack of American Spirit cigarettes from his shirt pocket and fires one up with a gold lighter. Surely this elegant fellow in the braces, Dockers, and Bass Weejuns cannot be George Rathbun. In our minds we have already built up a picture of George, and it is one of a fellow very different from this. In our mind's eye we see a guy with a huge belly hanging over the white belt of his checked pants (all those ballpark bratwursts), a brick-red complexion (all those ballpark beers, not to mention all that bellowing at the dastardly umps), and a squat, broad neck (perfect for housing those asbestos vocal cords). The George Rathbun of our imagination and all of Coulee Country's, it almost goes without saying is a pop-eyed, broad-assed, wild-haired, leather-lunged, Rolaids-popping, Chevy-driving, Republican-voting heart attack waiting to happen, a churning urn of sports trivia, mad enthusiasms, crazy prejudices, and high cholesterol. This fellow is not that fellow. This fellow moves like a dancer. This fellow is iced tea on a hot day, cool as the king of spades. But say, that's the joke of it, isn't it? Uh-huh. The joke of the fat dee-jay with the skinny voice, only turned inside out. In a very real sense, George Rathbun does not exist at all. He is a hobby in action, a fiction in the flesh, and only one of the slim man's multiple personalities. The people at KDCU know his real name and think they're in on the joke (the punch line of course being George's trademark line, the even-a-blind-man thing), but they don't know the half of it. Nor is this a metaphorical statement. They know exactly one-third of it, because the man in the Dockers and the straw fedora is actually four people. In any case, George Rathbun has been the saving of KDCU, the last surviving AM station in a predatory FM market. For five mornings a week, week in and week out, he has been a drive-time bonanza. The U-Crew (as they call themselves) love him just about to death. Above him, the loudspeaker cackles on: † still no leads, according to Chief Dale Gilbertson, who has called Herald reporter Wendell Green ? ®an out-of-town fearmonger who is more interested in selling papers than in how we do things in French Landing.' â€Å"Meanwhile, in Arden, a house fire has taken the lives of an elderly farmer and his wife. Horst P. Lepplemier and his wife, Gertrude, both eighty-two . . .† â€Å"Horst P. Lepplemier,† says the slim man, drawing on his cigarette with what appears to be great enjoyment. â€Å"Try saying that one ten times fast, you moke.† Behind him and to his right, the door opens again, and although the smoker is still standing directly beneath the speaker, he hears the door perfectly well. The eyes behind the aviator shades have been dead his whole life, but his hearing is exquisite. The newcomer is pasty-faced and comes blinking into the morning sun like a baby mole that has just been turned out of its burrow by the blade of a passing plow. His head has been shaved except for the Mo-hawk strip up the center of his skull and the pigtail that starts just above the nape of his neck and hangs to his shoulder blades. The Mohawk has been dyed bright red; the ‘tail is electric blue. Dangling from one ear-lobe is a lightning-bolt earring that looks suspiciously like the Nazi S.S. insignia. He is wearing a torn black T-shirt with a logo that reads SNIVELLING SHITS '97: THE WE GET HARD FOR JESUS TOUR. In one hand this colorful fellow has a CD jewel box. â€Å"Hello, Morris,† says the slim man in the fedora, still without turning. Morris pulls in a little gasp, and in his surprise looks like the nice Jewish boy that he actually is. Morris Rosen is the U-Crew's summer intern from the Oshkosh branch of UW. â€Å"Man, I love that unpaid grunt labor!† station manager Tom Wiggins has been heard to say, usually while rubbing his hands together fiendishly. Never has a checkbook been guarded so righteously as the Wigger guards the KDCU check-book. He is like Smaug the Dragon reclining on his heaps of gold (not? that there are heaps of anything in the ‘DCU accounts; it bears repeating to say that, as an AM talker, the station is lucky just to be alive). Morris's look of surprise it might be fair to call it uneasy surprise dissolves into a smile. â€Å"Wow, Mr. Leyden! Good grab! What a pair of ears!† Then he frowns. Even if Mr. Leyden who's standing directly beneath the outside honker, can't forget that heard someone come out, how in God's name did he know which someone it was? â€Å"How'd you know it was me?† he asks. â€Å"Only two people around here smell like marijuana in the morning,† Henry Leyden says. â€Å"One of them follows his morning smoke with Scope; the other that's you, Morris just lets her rip.† â€Å"Wow,† Morris says respectfully. â€Å"That is totally bitchrod.† â€Å"I am totally bitchrod,† Henry agrees. He speaks softly and thoughtfully. â€Å"It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it. In regard to your morning rendezvous with the undeniably tasty Thai stick, may I offer an Appalachian aphorism?† â€Å"Go, dude.† This is Morris's first real discussion with Henry Leyden, who is every bit the head Morris has been told to expect. Every bit and more. It is no longer so hard to believe that he could have another identity . . . a secret identity, like Bruce Wayne. But still . . . this is just so pimp. â€Å"What we do in our childhood forms as a habit,† Henry says in the same soft, totally un?CGeorge Rathbun voice. â€Å"That is my advice to you, Morris.† â€Å"Yeah, totally,† Morris says. He has no clue what Mr. Leyden is talking about. But he slowly, shyly, extends the CD jewel box in his hand. For a moment, when Henry makes no move to take it, Morris feels crushed, all at once seven years old again and trying to wow his always-too-busy father with a picture he has spent all afternoon drawing in his room. Then he thinks, He's blind, dickweed. He may be able to smell pot on your breath and he may have ears like a bat, but how's he supposed to know you're holding out a fucking CD? Hesitantly, a bit frightened by his own temerity, Morris takes Henry's wrist. He feels the man start a little, but then Leyden allows his hand to be guided to the slender box. â€Å"Ah, a CD,† Henry says. â€Å"And what is it, pray tell?† â€Å"You gotta play the seventh track tonight on your show,† Morris says. â€Å"Please.† For the first time, Henry looks alarmed. He takes a drag on his cigarette, then drops it (without even looking of course, ha ha) into the sand-filled plastic bucket by the door. â€Å"What show could you possibly mean?† he asks. Instead of answering directly, Morris makes a rapid little smacking noise with his lips, the sound of a small but voracious carnivore eating something tasty. And, to make things worse, he follows it with the Wisconsin Rat's trademark line, as well known to the folks in Morris's age group as George Rathbun's hoarse â€Å"Even a blind man† cry is known to their elders: â€Å"Chew it up, eat it up, wash it down, it aaallll comes out the same place!† He doesn't do it very well, but there's no question who he's doing: the one and only Wisconsin Rat, whose evening drive-time program on KWLA-FM is famous in Coulee Country (except the word we probably want is â€Å"infamous†). KWLA is the tiny college FM station in La Riviere, hardly more than a smudge on the wallpaper of Wisconsin radio, but the Rat's audience is huge. And if anyone found out that the comfortable Brew Crew?Crooting, Republican-voting, AM-broadcasting George Rathbun was also the Rat who had once narrated a gleeful on-air evacuation of his bowels onto a Backstreet Boys CD there could be trouble. Quite serious, possibly, resounding well beyond the tight-knit little radio community. â€Å"What in God's name would ever make you think that I'm the Wisconsin Rat, Morris?† Henry asks. â€Å"I barely know who you're talking about. Who put such a weird idea in your head?† â€Å"An informed source,† Morris says craftily. He won't give Howie Soule up, not even if they pull out his fingernails with red-hot tongs. Besides, Howie only found out by accident: went into the station crapper one day after Henry left and discovered that Henry's wallet had fallen out of his back pocket while he was sitting on the throne. You'd have thought a fellow whose other senses were so obviously tightwired would have sensed the absence, but probably Henry's mind had been on other things he was obviously a heavy dude who undoubtedly spent his days getting through some heavy thoughts. In any case, there was a KWLA I.D. card in Henry's wallet (which Howie had thumbed through â€Å"in the spirit of friendly curiosity,† as he put it), and on the line marked NAME, someone had stamped a little inkpad drawing of a rat. Case closed, game over, zip up your fly. â€Å"I have never in my life so much as stepped through the door of KWLA,† Henry says, and this is the absolute truth. He makes the Wisconsin Rat tapes (among others) in his studio at home, then sends them in to the station from the downtown Mail Boxes Etc., where he rents under the name of Joe Strummer. The card with the rat stamped on it was more in the nature of an invitation from the KWLA staff than anything else, one he's never taken up . . . but he kept the card. â€Å"Have you become anyone else's informed source, Morris?† â€Å"Huh?† â€Å"Have you told anyone that you think I'm the Wisconsin Rat?† â€Å"No! Course not!† Which, as we all know, is what people always say. Luckily for Henry, in this case it happens to be true. So far, at least, but the day is still young. â€Å"And you won't, will you? Because rumors have a way of taking root. Just like certain bad habits.† Henry mimes puffing, pulling in smoke. â€Å"I know how to keep my mouth shut,† Morris declares, with perhaps misplaced pride. â€Å"I hope so. Because if you bruited this about, I'd have to kill you.† Bruited, Morris thinks. Oh man, this guy is complete. â€Å"Kill me, yeah,† Morris says, laughing. â€Å"And eat you,† Henry says. He is not laughing; not even smiling. â€Å"Yeah, right.† Morris laughs again, but this time the laugh sounds strangely forced to his own ears. â€Å"Like you're Hannibal Lecture.† â€Å"No, like I'm the Fisherman,† Henry says. He slowly turns his aviator sunglasses toward Morris. The sun reflects off them, for a moment turning them into rufous eyes of fire. Morris takes a step back without even realizing that he has done so. â€Å"Albert Fish liked to start with the ass, did you know that?† â€Å"N â€Å" â€Å"Yes indeed. He claimed that a good piece of young ass was as sweet as a veal cutlet. His exact words. Written in a letter to the mother of one of his victims.† â€Å"Far out,† Morris says. His voice sounds faint to his own ears, the voice of a plump little pig denying entrance to the big bad wolf. â€Å"But I'm not exactly, like, worried that you're the Fisherman.† â€Å"No? Why not?† â€Å"Man, you're blind, for one thing!† Henry says nothing, only stares at the now vastly uneasy Morris with his fiery glass eyes. And Morris thinks: But is he blind? He gets around pretty good for a blind guy . . . and the way he tabbed me as soon as I came out here, how weird was that? â€Å"I'll keep quiet,† he says. â€Å"Honest to God.† â€Å"That's all I want,† Henry says mildly. â€Å"Now that we've got that straight, what exactly have you brought me?† He holds up the CD but not as if he's looking at it, Morris observes with vast relief. â€Å"It's, um, this Racine group. Dirtysperm? And they've got this cover of ? ®Where Did Our Love Go'? The old Supremes thing? Only they do it at like a hundred and fifty beats a minute? It's fuckin' hilarious. I mean, it destroys the whole pop thing, man, blitzes it!† â€Å"Dirtysperm,† Henry says. â€Å"Didn't they used to be Jane Wyatt's Clit?† Morris looks at Henry with awe that could easily become love. â€Å"Dirtysperm's lead guitarist, like, formed JWC, man. Then him and the bass guy had this political falling-out, something about Dean Kissinger and Henry Acheson, and Ucky Ducky he's the guitarist went off to form Dirtysperm.† † ? ®Where Did Our Love Go'?† Henry muses, then hands the CD back. And, as if he sees the way Morris's face falls: â€Å"I can't be seen with something like that use your head. Stick it in my locker.† Morris's gloom disappears and he breaks into a sunny smile. â€Å"Yeah, okay! You got it, Mr. Leyden!† â€Å"And don't let anyone see you doing it. Especially not Howie Soule. Howie's a bit of a snoop. You'd do well not to emulate him.† â€Å"No way, baby!† Still smiling, delighted at how all this has gone, Morris reaches for the door handle. â€Å"And Morris?† â€Å"Yeah?† â€Å"Since you know my secret, perhaps you'd better call me Henry.† â€Å"Henry! Yeah!† Is this the best morning of the summer for Morris Rosen? You better believe it. â€Å"And something else.† â€Å"Yeah? Henry?† Morris dares imagine a day when they will progress to Hank and Morrie. â€Å"Keep your mouth shut about the Rat.† â€Å"I already told you â€Å" â€Å"Yes, and I believe you. But temptation comes creeping, Morris; temptation comes creeping like a thief in the night, or like a killer in search of prey. If you give in to temptation, I'll know. I'll smell it on your skin like bad cologne. Do you believe me?† â€Å"Uh . . . yeah.† And he does. Later, when he has time to kick back and reflect, Morris will think what a ridiculous idea that is, but yes, at the time, he believes it. Believes him. It's like being hypnotized. â€Å"Very good. Now off you go. I want Ace Hardware, Zaglat Chevy, and Mr. Tastee Ribs all cued up for the first seg.† â€Å"Gotcha.† â€Å"Also, last night's game â€Å" â€Å"Wickman striking out the side in the eighth? That was pimp. Totally, like, un-Brewers.† â€Å"No, I think we want the Mark Loretta home run in the fifth. Loretta doesn't hit many, and the fans like him. I can't think why. Even a blind man can see he has no range, especially from deep in the hole. Go on, son. Put the CD in my locker, and if I see the Rat, I'll give it to him. I'm sure he'll give it a spin.† â€Å"The track â€Å" â€Å"Seven, seven, rhymes with heaven. I won't forget and neither will he. Go on, now.† Morris gives him a final grateful look and goes back inside. Henry Leyden, alias George Rathbun, alias the Wisconsin Rat, also alias Henry Shake (we'll get to that one, but not now; the hour draweth late), lights another cigarette and drags deep. He won't have time to finish it; the farm report is already in full flight (hog bellies up, wheat futures down, and the corn as high as an elephant's eye), but he needs a couple of drags just now to steady himself. A long, long day stretches out ahead of him, ending with the Strawberry Fest Hop at Maxton Elder Care, that house of antiquarian horrors. God save him from the clutches of William â€Å"Chipper† Maxton, he has often thought. Given a choice between ending his days at MEC and burning his face off with a blowtorch, he would reach for the blowtorch every time. Later, if he's not totally exhausted, perhaps his friend from up the road will come over and they can begin the long-promised reading of Bleak House. That would be a trea t. How long, he wonders, can Morris Rosen hold on to his momentous secret? Well, Henry supposes he will find that out. He likes the Rat too much to give him up unless he absolutely has to; that much is an undeniable fact. â€Å"Dean Kissinger,† he murmurs. â€Å"Henry Acheson. Ucky Ducky. God save us.† He takes another drag on his cigarette, then drops it into the bucket of sand. It is time to go back inside, time to replay last night's Mark Loretta home run, time to start taking more calls from the Coulee Country's dedicated sports fans. And time for us to be off. Seven o'clock has rung from the Lutheran church steeple. In French Landing, things are getting into high gear. No one lies abed long in this part of the world, and we must speed along to the end of our tour. Things are going to start happening soon, and they may happen fast. Still, we have done well, and we have only one more stop to make before arriving at our final destination. We rise on the warm summer updrafts and hover for a moment by the KDCU tower (we are close enough to hear the tik-tik-tik of the beacon and the low, rather sinister hum of electricity), looking north and taking our bearings. Eight miles upriver is the town of Great Bluff, named for the limestone outcropping that rises there. The outcropping is reputed to be haunted, because in 1888 a chief of the Fox Indian tribe (Far Eyes was his name) assembled all his warriors, shamans, squaws, and children and told them to leap to their deaths, thereby escaping some hideous fate he had glimpsed in his dreams. Far Eyes's followers, like Jim Jones's, did as they were bidden. We won't go that far upriver, however; we have enough ghosts to deal with right here in French Landing. Let us instead fly over Nailhouse Row once more (the Harleys are gone; Beezer St. Pierre has led the Thunder Five off to their day's work at the brewery), over Queen Street and Maxton Elder Care (Burny's down there, still looking out his window ugh), to Bluff Street. This is almost the countryside again. Even now, in the twenty-first century, the towns in Coulee Country give up quickly to the woods and the fields. Herman Street is a left turn from Bluff Street, in an area that is not quite town and not quite city. Here, in a sturdy brick house sitting at the end of a half-mile meadow as yet undiscovered by the developers (even here there are a few developers, unknowing agents of slippage), lives Dale Gilbertson with his wife, Sarah, and his six-year-old son, David. We can't stay long, but let us at least drift in through the kitchen window for a moment. It's open, after all, and there is room for us to perch right here on the counter, between the Silex and the toaster. Sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and shoveling Special K into his mouth without tasting it (he has forgotten both the sugar and the sliced banana in his distress at seeing yet another Wendell Green byline on the front page of the Herald), is Chief Gilbertson himself. This morning he is without doubt the unhappiest man in French Landing. We will meet his only competition for that booby prize soon, but for the moment, let us stick with Dale. The Fisherman, he thinks mournfully, his reflections on this subject very similar to those of Bobby Dulac and Tom Lund. Why didn't you name him something a little more turn-of-the-century, you troublesome scribbling fuck? Something a little bit local? Dahmerboy, maybe, that'd be good. Ah, but Dale knows why. The similarities between Albert Fish, who did his work in New York, and their boy here in French Landing are just too good too tasty to be ignored. Fish strangled his victims, as both Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham were apparently strangled; Fish dined on his victims, as both the girl and the boy were apparently dined upon; both Fish and the current fellow showed an especial liking for the . . . well, for the posterior regions of the anatomy. Dale looks at his cereal, then drops his spoon into the mush and pushes the bowl away with the side of his hand. And the letters. Can't forget the letters. Dale glances down at his briefcase, crouched at the side of his chair like a faithful dog. The file is in there, and it draws him like a rotted, achy tooth draws the tongue. Maybe he can keep his hands off it, at least while he's here at home, where he plays toss with his son and makes love to his wife, but keeping his mind off it . . . that's a whole ‘nother thing, as they also say in these parts. Albert Fish wrote a long and horribly explicit letter to the mother of Grace Budd, the victim who finally earned the old cannibal a trip to the electric chair. (â€Å"What a thrill electrocution will be!† Fish reputedly told his jailers. â€Å"The only one I haven't tried!†) The current doer has written similar letters, one addressed to Helen Irkenham, the other to Amy's father, the awful (but genuinely grief-stricken, in Dale's estimation) Armand â€Å"Beezer† St. Pierre. It would be good if Dale could believe these letters were written by some troublemaker not otherwise connected to the murders, but both contain information that has been withheld from the press, information that presumably only the killer could know. Dale at last gives in to temptation (how well Henry Leyden would understand) and hauls up his briefcase. He opens it and puts a thick file where his cereal bowl lately rested. He returns the briefcase to its place by his chair, then opens the file (it is marked ST. PIERRE/IRKENHAM rather than FISHERMAN). He leafs past heartbreaking school photos of two smiling, gap-toothed children, past state medical examiner reports too horrible to read and crime-scene photos too horrible to look at (ah, but he must look at them, again and again he must look at them the blood-slicked chains, the flies, the open eyes). There are also various transcripts, the longest being the interview with Spencer Hovdahl, who found the Irkenham boy and who was, very briefly, considered a suspect. Next come Xerox copies of three letters. One had been sent to George and Helen Irkenham (addressed to Helen alone, if it made any difference). One went to Armand â€Å"Beezer† St. Pierre (addressed just that way, too, nickname and all). The third had been sent to the mother of Grace Budd, of New York City, following the murder of her daughter in the late spring of 1928. Dale lays the three of them out, side by side. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. So Fish had written to Mrs. Budd. Amy sat in my lap and hugged me. I made up my mind to eat her. So had Beezer St. Pierre's correspondent written, and was it any wonder the man had threatened to burn the French Landing police station to the ground? Dale doesn't like the son of a bitch, but has to admit he might feel the same way in Beezer's shoes. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. Fish, to Mrs. Budd. I went around back of the hen-house and stripped all my cloes off. New if I did not I would get his blood on them. Anonymous, to Helen Irkenham. And here was a question: How could a mother receive a letter like that and retain her sanity? Was that possible? Dale thought not. Helen answered questions coherently, had even offered him tea the last time he was out there, but she had a glassy, poleaxed look in her eye that suggested she was running entirely on instruments. Three letters, two new, one almost seventy-five years old. And yet all three are so similar. The St. Pierre letter and the Irkenham letter had been hand-printed by someone who was left-handed, according to the state experts. The paper was plain white Hammermill mimeo, available in every Office Depot and Staples in America. The pen used had probably been a Bic now, there was a lead. Fish to Mrs. Budd, back in '28: I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin. Anonymous to Beezer St. Pierre: I did NOT fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a VIRGIN. Anonymous to Helen Irkenham: This may comfort you I did NOT fuck him tho I could of had I wished. He died a VIRGIN. Dale's out of his depth here and knows it, but he hopes he isn't a complete fool. This doer, although he did not sign his letters with the old cannibal's name, clearly wanted the connection to be made. He had done everything but leave a few dead trout at the dumping sites. Sighing bitterly, Dale puts the letters back into the file, the file back into the briefcase. â€Å"Dale? Honey?† Sarah's sleepy voice, from the head of the stairs. Dale gives the guilty jump of a man who has almost been caught doing something nasty and latches his briefcase. â€Å"I'm in the kitchen,† he calls back. No need to worry about waking Davey; he sleeps like the dead until at least seven-thirty every morning. â€Å"Going in late?† â€Å"Uh-huh.† He often goes in late, then makes up for it by working until seven or eight or even nine in the evening. Wendell Green hasn't made a big deal of that . . . at least not so far, but give him time. Talk about your cannibals! â€Å"Give the flowers a drink before you go, would you? It's been so dry.† â€Å"You bet.† Watering Sarah's flowers is a chore Dale likes. He gets some of his best thinking done with the garden hose in his hand. A pause from upstairs . . . but he hasn't heard her slippers shuffling back toward the bedroom. He waits. And at last: â€Å"You okay, hon?† â€Å"Fine,† he calls back, pumping what he hopes will be the right degree of heartiness into his voice. â€Å"Because you were still tossing around when I dropped off.† â€Å"No, I'm fine.† â€Å"Do you know what Davey asked me last night while I was washing his hair?† Dale rolls his eyes. He hates these long-distance conversations. Sarah seems to love them. He gets up and pours himself another cup of coffee. â€Å"No, what?† â€Å"He asked, ? ®Is Daddy going to lose his job?' â€Å" † Dale pauses with the cup halfway to his lips. â€Å"What did you say?† â€Å"I said no. Of course.† â€Å"Then you said the right thing.† He waits, but there is no more. Having injected him with one more dram of poisonous worry David's fragile psyche, as well as what a certain party might do to the boy, should David be so unlucky as to run afoul of him Sarah shuffles back to their room and, presumably, to the shower beyond. Dale goes back to the table, sips his coffee, then puts his hand to his forehead and closes his eyes. In this moment we can see precisely how frightened and miserable he is. Dale is just forty-two and a man of abstemious habits, but in the cruel morning light coming through the window by which we entered, he looks, for the moment, anyway, a sickly sixty. He is concerned about his job, knows that if the fellow who killed Amy and Johnny keeps it up, he will almost certainly be turned out of office the following year. He is also concerned about Davey . . . although Davey isn't his chief concern, for, like Fred Marshall, he cannot actually conceive that the Fisherman could take his and Sarah's own child. No, it is the other children of French Landing he is more worried about, possibly the children of Centralia and Arden as well. His worst fear is that he is simply not good enough to catch the son of a bitch. That he will kill a third, a fourth, perhaps an eleventh and twelfth. God knows he has requested help. And gotten it . . . sort of. There are two State Police detectives assigned to the case, and the FBI guy from Madison keeps checking in (on an informal basis, though; the FBI is not officially part of the investigation). Even his outside help has a surreal quality for Dale, one that has been partially caused by an odd coincidence of their names. The FBI guy is Agent John P. Redding. The state detectives are Perry Brown and Jeffrey Black. So he has Brown, Black, and Redding on his team. The Color Posse, Sarah calls them. All three making it clear that they are strictly working support, at least for the time being. Making it clear that Dale Gilbertson is the man standing on ground zero. Christ, but I wish Jack would sign on to help me with this, Dale thinks. I'd deputize him in a second, just like in one of those corny old Western movies. Yes indeed. In a second. When Jack had first come to French Landing, almost four years ago, Dale hadn't known what to make of the man his officers immediately dubbed Hollywood. By the time the two of them had nailed Thornberg Kinderling yes, inoffensive little Thornberg Kinderling, hard to believe but absolutely true he knew exactly what to make of him. The guy was the finest natural detective Dale had ever met in his life. The only natural detective, that's what you mean. Yes, all right. The only one. And although they had shared the collar (at the L.A. newcomer's absolute insistence), it had been Jack's detective work that had turned the trick. He was almost like one of those story-book detectives . . . Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, one of those. Except that Jack didn't exactly deduct, nor did he go around tapping his temple and talking about his â€Å"little gray cells.† He . . . â€Å"He listens,† Dale mutters, and gets up. He heads for the back door, then returns for his briefcase. He'll put it in the back seat of his cruiser before he waters the flower beds. He doesn't want those awful pictures in his house any longer than strictly necessary. He listens. Like the way he'd listened to Janna Massengale, the bartender at the Taproom. Dale had had no idea why Jack was spending so much time with the little chippy; it had even crossed his mind that Mr. Los Angeles Linen Slacks was trying to hustle her into bed so he could go back home and tell all his friends on Rodeo Drive that he'd gotten himself a little piece of the cheese up there in Wisconsin, where the air was rare and the legs were long and strong. But that hadn't been it at all. He had been listening, and finally she had told him what he needed to hear. Yeah, shurr, people get funny ticks when they're drinking, Janna had said. There's this one guy who starts doing this after a couple of belts. She had pinched her nostrils together with the tips of her fingers . . . only with her hand turned around so the palm pointed out. Jack, still smiling easily, still sipping a club soda: Always with the palm out? Like this? And mimicked the gesture. Janna, smiling, half in love: That's it, doll you're a quick study. Jack: Sometimes, I guess. What's this fella's name, darlin'? Janna: Kinderling. Thornberg Kinderling. She giggled. Only, after a drink or two once he's started up with that pinchy thing he wants everyone to call him Thorny. Jack, still with his own smile: And does he drink Bombay gin, darlin'? One ice cube, little trace of bitters? Janna's smile starting to fade, now looking at him as if he might be some kind of wizard: How'd you know that? But how he knew it didn't matter, because that was really the whole package, done up in a neat bow. Case closed, game over, zip up your fly. Eventually, Jack had flown back to Los Angeles with Thornberg Kinderling in custody Thornberg Kinderling, just an inoffensive, bespectacled farm-insurance salesman from Centralia, wouldn't say boo to a goose, wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful, wouldn't dare ask your mamma for a drink of water on a hot day, but he had killed two prostitutes in the City of Angels. No strangulation for Thorny; he had done his work with a Buck knife, which Dale himself had eventually traced to Lapham Sporting Goods, the nasty little trading post a door down from the Sand Bar, Centralia's grungiest drinking establishment. By then DNA testing had nailed Kinderling's ass to the barn door, but Jack had been glad to have the provenance of the murder weapon anyway. He had called Dale personally to thank him, and Dale, who'd never been west of Denver in his life, had been almost absurdly touched by the courtesy. Jack had said several times during the course of the investigation that you could never have enough evidence when the doer was a genuine bad guy, and Thorny Kinderling had turned out to be about as bad as you could want. He'd gone the insanity route, of course, and Dale who had privately hoped he might be called upon to testify was delighted when the jury rejected the plea and sentenced him to consecutive life terms. And what made all that happen? What had been the first cause? Why, a man listening. That was all. Listening to a lady bartender who was used to having her breasts stared at while her words most commonly went in one ear of the man doing the staring and out the other. And who had Hollywood Jack listened to before he had listened to Janna Massengale? Some Sunset Strip hooker, it seemed . . . or more likely a whole bunch of them. (What would you call that, anyway? Dale wonders absently as he goes out to the garage to get his trusty hose. A shimmy of streetwalkers? A strut of hookers?) None of them could have picked Thornberg Kinderling out of a lineup, because the Thornberg who visited L.A. surely hadn't looked much like the Thornberg who traveled around to the farm-supply companies in the Coulee and over in Minnesota. L.A. Thorny had worn a wig, contacts instead of specs, and a little false mustache. â€Å"The most brilliant thing was the skin darkener,† Jack had said. â€Å"Just a little, just enough to make him look like a native.† â€Å"Dramatics all four years at French Landing High School,† Dale had replied grimly. â€Å"I looked it up. The little bastard played Don Juan his junior year, do you believe it?† A lot of sly little changes (too many for a jury to swallow an insanity plea, it seemed), but Thorny had forgotten that one revelatory little signature, that trick of pinching his nostrils together with the palm of his hand turned outward. Some prostitute had remembered it, though, and when she mentioned it only in passing, Dale has no doubt, just as Janna Massengale did Jack heard it. Because he listened. Called to thank me for tracing the knife, and again to tell me how the jury came back, Dale thinks, but that second time he wanted something, too. And I knew what it was. Even before he opened his mouth I knew. Because, while he is no genius detective like his friend from the Golden State, Dale had not missed the younger man's unexpected, immediate response to the landscape of western Wisconsin. Jack had fallen in love with the Coulee Country, and Dale would have wagered a good sum that it had been love at first look. It had been impossible to mistake the expression on his face as they drove from French Landing to Cen-tralia, from Centralia to Arden, from Arden to Miller: wonder, pleasure, almost a kind of rapture. To Dale, Jack had looked like a man who has come to a place he has never been before only to discover he is back home. â€Å"Man, I can't get over this,† he'd said once to Dale. The two of them had been riding in Dale's old Caprice cruiser, the one that just wouldn't stay aligned (and sometimes the horn stuck, which could be embarrassing). â€Å"Do you realize how lucky you are to live here, Dale? It must be one of the most beautiful places in the world.† Dale, who had lived in the Coulee his entire life, had not disagreed. Toward the end of their final conversation concerning Thornberg Kinderling, Jack had reminded Dale of how he'd once asked (not quite kidding, not quite serious, either) for Dale to let him know if a nice little place ever came on the market in Dale's part of the world, something out of town. And Dale had known at once from Jack's tone the almost anxious drop in his voice that the kidding was over. â€Å"So you owe me,† Dale murmurs, shouldering the hose. â€Å"You owe me, you bastard.† Of course he has asked Jack to lend an unofficial hand with the Fisherman investigation, but Jack has refused . . . almost with a kind of fear. I'm retired, he'd said brusquely. If you don't know what that word means, Dale, we can look it up in the dictionary together. But it's ridiculous, isn't it? Of course it is. How can a man not yet thirty-five be retired? Especially one who is so infernally good at the job? â€Å"You owe me, baby,† he says again, now walking along the side of the house toward the bib faucet. The sky above is cloudless; the well-watered lawn is green; there is nary a sign of slippage, not out here on Herman Street. Yet perhaps there is, and perhaps we feel it. A kind of discordant hum, like the sound of all those lethal volts coursing through the steel struts of the KDCU tower. But we have stayed here too long. We must take wing again and proceed to our final destination of this early morning. We don't know everything yet, but we know three important things: first, that French Landing is a town in terrible distress; second, that a few people ( Judy Marshall, for one; Charles Burnside, for another) understand on some deep level that the town's ills go far beyond the depredations of a single sick pedophile-murderer; third, that we have met no one capable of consciously recognizing the force the slippage that has now come to bear on this quiet town hard by Tom and Huck's river. Each person we've met is, in his own way, as blind as Henry Leyden. This is as true of the folks we haven't so far encountered Beezer St. Pierre, Wendell Green, the Color Posse as it is of those we have. Our hearts groan for a hero. And while we may not find one (this is the twenty-first century, after all, the days not of d'Artagnan and Jack Aubrey but of George W. Bush and Dirtysperm), we can perhaps find a man who was a hero once upon a time. Let us therefore search out an old friend, one we last glimpsed a thousand and more miles east of here, on the shore of the steady Atlantic. Years have passed and they have in some ways lessened the boy who was; he has forgotten much and has spent a good part of his adult life maintaining that state of amnesia. But he is French Landing's only hope, so let us take wing and fly almost due east, back over the woods and fields and gentle hills. Mostly, we see miles of unbroken farmland: regimental cornfields, luxuriant hay fields, fat yellow swaths of alfalfa. Dusty, narrow drives lead to white farmhouses and their arrays of tall barns, granaries, cylindrical cement-block silos, and long metal equipment sheds. Men in denim jackets are moving along the well-worn paths between the houses and the barns. We can already smell the sunlight. Its odor, richly compacted of butter, yeast, earth, growth, and decay, will intensify as the sun ascends and the light grows stronger. Below us, Highway 93 intersects Highway 35 at the center of tiny Centralia. The empty parking lot behind the Sand Bar awaits the noisy arrival of the Thunder Five, who customarily spend their Saturday afternoons, evenings, and nights in the enjoyment of the Sand Bar's pool tables, hamburgers, and pitchers of that ambrosia to the creation of which they have devoted their eccentric lives, Kingsland Brewing Company's finest product and a beer that can hold up its creamy head among anything made in a specialty microbrewery or a Belgian monastery, Kingsland Ale. If Beezer St. Pierre, Mouse, and company say it is the greatest beer in the world, why should we doubt them? Not only do they know much more about beer than we do, they called upon every bit of the knowledge, skill, expertise, and seat-of-the-pants inspiration at their disposal to make Kingsland Ale a benchmark of the brewer's art. In fact, they moved to French Landing because the brewery, which they had selected after careful del iberation, was willing to work with them. To invoke Kingsland Ale is to wish for a good-sized mouthful of the stuff, but we put temptation behind us; 7:30 A.M. is far too early for drinking anything but fruit juice, coffee, and milk (except for the likes of Wanda Kinderling, and Wanda thinks of beer, even Kingsland Ale, as a dietary supplement to Aristocrat vodka); and we are in search of our old friend and the closest we can come to a hero, whom we last saw as a boy on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. We are not about to waste time; we are on the move, right here and now. The miles fly past beneath us, and along Highway 93 the fields narrow as the hills rise up on both sides. For all our haste, we must take this in, we must see where we are.

HRM and the External Environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

HRM and the External Environment - Essay Example Markets have expanded rapidly, transcending all boundaries and going beyond a local and even a national scale, to a more global level. Furthermore, technological advances have also greatly influenced and shaped the socioeconomic sphere today. That is to say, market expansion and technological progress have made the economy a much more challenging one today. For example, now, it is much harder to keep track of the latest fashions and trends because the producer does not directly know the consumer, and hence cannot gauge the consumer’s latest tastes or feelings towards a product (Houseman, pp. 149-170, 2001). Moreover, since there are many indirect links in marketing today, the ‘loyalty’ factor that was characteristic of a buyer-seller relationship and that used to work heavily in favour of some suppliers is no longer there, and there is an increased pressure on the companies to do well to keep their consumers satisfied. Now, there is a much greater pressure on firm s than before to deliver, in that there is increased competition and to thrive – or even survive – in their fields, firms must not only perform well, but also perform better than their competitors perform. Furthermore, trends have also changed greatly as new tastes and fashions grip society, and consumers’ demands are constantly altering, forcing businesses to adapt to them and provide products and services that fit their latest needs and demands (Houseman, pp. 149-170, 2001). Overall, in an economic environment where competition is paramount, consumer satisfaction is of the utmost importance to a business’s returns and so, to keep up with this pace, businesses must cater to new demands, and adapt to cost-cutting and more productive strategies to maximize status and profit. Naturally, to keep abreast of this faster moving market, businesses have had to address their strategies and alter their policies. These changes include an assessment of the production process, evaluation of employees, research etc., but one of the biggest changes made to the structure of the businesses has been to promote and increase greater flexibility in the workplace (Houseman, pp. 149-170, 2001). Workforce flexibility refers to â€Å"an organisation’s ability to adapt its human resources in a manner appropriate to increasingly changing environmental conditions† (Houseman, pp. 149-170, 2001). This approach allows a business to allocate tasks based on which jobs on an agenda require the most attention, for example, deciding the product that requires more work forces at a certain time. In addition, more work forces can come under hiring if demand calls. This is a very efficient strategy as unforeseen human resources staffing needs can be met without any significant loss to the business, and at the same time, workers earn more in terms of skills and training in other areas of their work as well. Need for an organisational restructure may come abou t due to a sudden increase in demand, or a certain, unexpected problem in the production line. For example, during a slow hour, cashiers could be used to help stock shelves, this is efficient because no workers are left idle, and a faster way to marketing can be approached (Wood, pp. 367-413, 1999). At other times, for example, if the supermarket is very busy and has a massive in-flow of customers, workers that were,

A State Tax on Plastic Shopping Bags Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

A State Tax on Plastic Shopping Bags - Case Study Example These may take much longer than expected to decompose, approximately a thousand years since they are non-biodegradable materials. They also release harmful elements when burned. The waste then spreads to the major water sources posing serious danger to the marine life. What questions did you have while working on this case? When working on this case I had the following questions as a guideline. 1. How is the reception by the families and residents on the introduction of the 5 cents tax? 2. Will the 5 cents tax result to any difference in the polythene bags usage? 3. How will the revenue accrued from the new tax be used? 4. What are the opinions of the environmentalists on the issue of the use of plastic bags in California State? 5. What are the available plastic wastes management options that can be employed? What do you consider the most useful information provided with the case? Among the useful information provided in the case include the information that if the tax imposed is ver y little there will be no effect on the consumer behavior. The grocery checkouts also prefer plastic bags as compared to other bags. This is because they are cheaper and cost between $0.005 U.S. cents and $0.01 U.S. cents as compared with paper bags which cost between $0.05 and $0.15 U.S. cents. It is also documented that the number of plastic bags used in California stands at 500 billion. Environmental advocates also support that reusable bags should be used in place of plastic bags. What assumptions did you have while working on this case? I assumed that the state shall have a properly established channel for the tax collection. It will also handle the issue of litter pollution. I also assumed that once the tax is introduced, all the consumers will reduce the amounts of plastic polythene bags and instead opt for the reusable bags or paper bags. The groceries will also start charging for the packaging. Through these considerations I assumed that consumers will develop a habit of se eking an alternative method in carrying their shopping and reduce plastic bag usage. In the same manner, the disposal crisis that has been a major concern shall also be addressed. What tool(s) did you used in analyzing the information? I did a total analysis of the figures and data of the actual effects of the introduction of the five cent tax for every polythene bag usage on the producers. In addition to this, I compared the effect of this tax introduction with other mechanisms that can be employed in controlling polythene bag waste management in California State. I also analyzed the fiscal amount of revenue that may be accrued from the imposition of the tax. What are your findings? The introduction of the tax will greatly contribute to sanity in the marine environment which accounts for forty three billion dollars in proceeds and over four hundred thousand employment opportunities yearly. Though there was a mixed reaction from the introduction of the 5 cents tax, the general publi c really does support it. They cite that there will be a relief of about two million dollars on the locals from paying garbage collection fee yearly. The plastic manufacturers will however oppose it. They cite potential loss of income and fines in failure to comply with the tax policy. The findings indicate that the poor are concerned that from the imposed taxes will result into a higher cost for the polythene bags. This will have a greater impact on the low-income

Human Resource Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 5

Human Resource Management - Essay Example They have therefore devised innovative human resource management practices that empower workers to make decisions on matters that affect them. As a result, employee involvement and participation has become the central pillar of HRM. Employee participation and involvement (EIP) are often used interchangeably but as Hyman and Mason (1995) puts it; the two concepts have different meanings. Participation efforts are achieved through a legal framework designed by the government to enable employees to have a voice although at times they may exist in absence of such legislations like in Japan. On the other hand, involvement mechanisms are initiated by the management to enable them cope with the challenges of today’s economic climate. For the sake of this paper the two concepts will be used interchangeably since there is a very thin line between involvement and participation. The choice of the mechanism is determined by the political, social and economic conditions of the country and organization for which it is designed. Recently, there have been changes in the legal climate due to European Union initiatives aimed at improving working conditions and standards of living thereby initiating various participation mechanisms such as consultations (Knudsen, 1995). The paper will discuss the extent to which EIP initiatives have been a success. Definitions Employee involvement and participation can be defined as efforts geared towards empowering employees to influence decisions on matters that affect them by pushing responsibility for decisions down the organization hierarchy. The role of the employer in decision making process thus declines while that of the employee increases (Heathfield, 2011). This is done with the belief that by empowering employees, they will have a sense of ownership and hence gain morale, job satisfaction and commitment to organization goals. It is also believed that job satisfaction and commitment lead to improved retention as well attraction of the best talent in the labour market thereby achieving a sustained competitive advantage. Furthermore, the management requires to make quality decisions and this is enhanced by input from the workforce (Gennard & Judge, 2005). Participatory activities are also aimed at complying with legal requirements and in Europe it has led to increased role for trade unions. Historical Background Management efforts to improve productivity and efficiency began decades ago with the advent of scientific management systems advanced by Taylor and Ford. They believed that division of labour was the key to organization effectiveness and efficiency. Taylor thus concentrated on how to get most work done by analysing all tasks and designing jobs to eliminate wasted time. He ensured maximum job fragmentation and minimisation of skill requirements; employees were considered as stupid hence not able to make decisions (Bratton & Gold, 2001). Ford on the other hand, introduced assembly line method of produc tion which entailed short-cycles and standardization of commodities and processes. The division of labour led to monotony and boredom, job dissatisfaction, high absenteeism and turnover as well as increased costs in terms of monitoring and cooperation costs. This led to pressure for better methods of management by the human relations movement. The human

Compare Democrats to Republicans Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Compare Democrats to Republicans - Term Paper Example This question requires one to indicate the main similarities along with some of the key differences. The following are among the differences existing between the two parties. Unlike the democrats, the republicans encourage individuals in the society to work extremely hard in catering for themselves, their families, as well as the elderly and the disabled (Dempsey, 2009). The democrats conversely believe that the government ought to be answerable for the wellbeing of all its citizens. Moreover, the republicans champion the usage of the free enterprise, which they believe to possess a momentous economic gain. Alternatively, the democrats hold to the idea that conducting business is a strenuous undertaking thus permitting the government intervention (Dempsey, 2009). The republicans dedicate much of their effort in sinking the government spending through tax reduction. On the contrary, the democrats encourage taxation as they regard it a necessary tool in meeting their citizen’s needs. Despite the many differences, the two systems hold some similar notions such as illegalizing of abortion. Additionally, both practice the liberal governance although they possess an element of conservatism (Dempsey, 2009). They also champion for honesty in their leadership, and aim at enhancing peace. It deems necessary to focus on both the similarities, as well as differences. This is because of its significance making the interested entities understand how the two systems operate. After reading the essay, readers should clearly understand both the democrats, as well as the republicans. The different parallel points of contrast and comparison that the essay will address include each of the party’s ideology on taxation, education, national defense, and immigration. The topic chosen stands the chance of being the most suitable, and workable topic since it is of international interest. It is evident

Emotional intelligence and its role in leading Essay

Emotional intelligence and its role in leading - Essay Example The researcher states that the study conducted by Mayer and Salovey defined the term emotional intelligence under the category of social intelligence. They stated that Emotional Intelligence (EI) is defined as the process through which an individual is able to understand and manage emotions of others as well as themselves. It is believed that people having high emotional intelligence are aware of their feelings and how emotions can affect others. The authors have pointed out that the definition of emotional intelligence is centred on different aspects such as social intelligence and interpersonal skills. The author has classified different types of intelligence because it is a broad field. The ability of an individual to manage or understand others falls under the social aspects of intelligence. To a certain extent it also includes the ability to understand others. The authors have however excluded other types of intelligence such as mechanical and abstract intelligence to focus on t he main purpose of their research. Mayer and Salovey postulated in their theory that emotional intelligence can be defined as cognitive aptitude which is related to general intelligence but not the same. Their theory proposed a model that identifies four different abilities – emotional facilitation, understanding, perception and management. The first level or the basic level involves an individual’s ability to distinguish emotion. This stage involves skills that are based on successful interpretation of facial expressions.

Relaxing & Energizing Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Relaxing & Energizing - Case Study Example George has no idea why his energy level is so different from practices to races, but he sees this problem as a major obstacle to developing as a runner and performing to his potential. Cindy Frederickson, George’s coach thinks he needs to develop relaxation and energization skills needed to control his arousal during practice and competition. Based on your knowledge of both relaxation and energization, answer the following four questions that relate to developing and implementing these critical mental training tools. Explain the rationale for your answers thoroughly, citing important information from the book and lectures. Your rationale will count as much as your actual response. 1. What mental training tool should George use to lower his arousal level when he gets nervous? Relaxation is the ability to decrease unwanted muscular tension, reduce excessive activation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and calm the mind by eliminating unwanted thoughts. a. How about raising his psych level when he’s unmotivated for practice? Energization is the ability to arouse the body by increasing muscular strength and power, stimulate the activation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and invigorate the mind with energizing thoughts. 2. What is the difference between relaxation and energization? Relaxation is to help you lower your arousal. Energization is to help you increase arousal. Between Total Relaxation/ Energization and Rapid Relaxation? Total takes more time. How can George use each? When he is overly anxious he should use relaxation. When he is lethargic he should use

Reflections on Styles and Context of News Reporting Essay

Reflections on Styles and Context of News Reporting - Essay Example This meant that events happening would take several hours or even days before becoming public knowledge. Presently, great changes have occurred and this reflective essay reviews these changes and advances in my own eyes and experiences. Reflections My experiences in journalism, news, and event reporting include using multimedia like video, photos and recorded voice to capture news, which I then send to the editorial office from whichever location through the world wide web and sometimes live via satellite television. The news is quickly edited before being relayed to audiences as ‘breaking news’. I have experienced live events being simultaneously shown to audiences through different media including television, cable and on the internet while the events are happening as happened during the Soviet revolution in the early nineties. I can use my mobile phone or portable to capture, edit, and send news all over the world via social networking through the internet and relay l ive pictures and commentary, occasionally just a few seconds behind the real event as Zahid (2010) avers. This is unlike the earlier days of journalism when reporting involved using notebooks and a camera or a video recorder with tape which was followed by sometimes a long journey to the main office, upload pictures (or develop them if taken on film), edit video using a long cut and paste process before compiling a news feature. Events occurring yesterday are reported as today’s news. Technology has changed all this, as I am now able to post news articles online, have a quick electronic version of the print newspaper posted on the news company’s web page where people can read the news and even post their own comments and views. So while in the olden days news reporting used to be a one way communication system (at least in the short term) where people just read what was printed and comments would take from days to weeks, presently readers can comment on news through bl ogging and comments on the web 2.0 platform. Watching and following the Egyptian revolution, I not only saw and experienced people power but importantly, but at a personal level experienced a new way in relaying information and following events that have forever changed my journalism practices. I can integrate news and information using the internet, mobile phones as well as traditional telephone and print media to distribute information, cheaply confirms Krotoski (2011). Through the Egyptian revolution, I have come to discover that not just governments and editors have control over what news and the public consumes information; the cost of distributing and sharing news has been greatly reduced thanks in no small part to technology and web 2.0. I can capture and share news with the world using only a cell phone with a decent camera. I have discovered that consumers of news, be it through print or electronic media, want news as they are happening and want to be able to easily alert f riends and other people instantly on what is happening so they can also view what is happening. The advent of the internet makes this possible; I could be relaying breaking news from the news site using my cell phone onto the newspapers’ or TV stations’ Twitter, Facebook or You tube page, and a reader logged in gets the news and tweets or chats with their friends about what is happening, all in just a few seconds. The news is transmitted so fast and in real

Childhood Sexual Abuse Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Childhood Sexual Abuse - Essay Example The paper will seek to answer the question whether our client Marya, was sexually victimized as a child or adolescent in relation to her behavior in adulthood. To find out whether this thesis is true or false we have to analyze the book titled Madness, which describes Marya’s experience, and support our finding with knowledge from journal articles, as well as other literature containing information related to child sexual abuse. From the analysis of the book, it is clearly seen that Marya’s behavior is different from that of other children since her childhood. She had nightmares about a goat man coming to attack her at night and, in most cases, she asked her mother questions that expressed her fear (Hornbacher, 2008). This is believed to have been caused by a disorder she was born with. However, her condition in childhood is again very different from the conditions she is in as an adult. As an adult, she suffers both sex and drug addiction; she always have thoughts of c ommitting suicide. This is indicated by how she cuts herself and the way she is being frequently involved into having sex with boys due to lack of self-control (Hornbacher, 2008). Most of these effects are believed to have come out of post-traumatic stress disorder. This disorder is a result of sexual events that exposes a victim to great threats of injury or even death (Shiromani, LeDoux & Keane, 2009). As a result, she might be traumatized and thereafter might suffer from post-traumatic disorder. This kind of disorder can affect a person in different ways even in his/her adulthood. This trauma can affect a child in many ways, one of them being making the child unable to interact with other children regardless of gender and social status. This is an immediate effect where the difficulty in interaction is based on low self-esteem and self-confidence. Through this, a child’s social life gets affected negatively which can go to adulthood. Another immediate effect that this trau ma might have on a child is affecting his academic life. This trauma can make a child unable to concentrate in her academics and thus affecting her education negatively. The trauma can also affect the health and growth of the child. Research has shown that most children who have been sexually abused usually have nightmares that cause them lack of sleep and in most cases, lack of appetite (Warner, 2009). Various things trigger this kind of a disorder especially when it comes from childhood sexual abuse. One of the triggers of this disorder is loss of trust in the person that victimized the victim. The victim may also lack trust in other people of the same gender. Another trigger of this disorder is low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence that results from childhood sexual abuse. This disorder can also be triggered by self-denial that comes when one is continuously sexually abused. It is important to note that the magnitude of the disorder depend on its trigger, which can be one o r several of the mentioned in relation to the personality of the victim. Post-traumatic stress disorder developed from childhood sexual abuse, does not only affect children in their childhood, the effects are carried up to adulthood. The adult survivors of child sexual abuse exhibit behaviors that are not common in other individuals. This kind of people in most cases fails to be interactive and might fail to trust people of the opposite gender. Another

Victorian audience Essay Example for Free

Victorian audience Essay The concept of red herrings is to create a lead or breakthrough in a case for the detective. These have been cleverly devised into the hound of the Baskervilles as there is one clearly visible in London at the beginning. This is the suspecting of Barrymore, Sir Charles butler. The true criminal poses as Barrymore while in London leading Holmes and company to believe that Barrymore is the criminal. Barrymore is later proved to be not guilty. The effects red herrings have on the audience are devastating because it leaves the reader thinking the criminal is going to be harder to catch than the detectives think. We expect to read about a seemingly perfect crime in detective fiction because otherwise it wouldnt be as tension-building or suspense-filling. The seemingly perfect crime in along came a spider is the kidnap of two celebrity kids and the robbery of a million dollar ransom. In hound of the Baskervilles it would be the murder of Sir Henry and Sir Charles Baskerville and announcement that the criminal is an heir to the family fortune his father never received by using an old family curse. The detective genre is being challenged in this book by the gothic genre as the incorporation of a hellhound is less reminiscent of the detective genre. The description of the hell hound backs up a point that it is a more gothic idea as it says, Big, black beast. This refers to the gothic genre as black is heavily associated with the gothic genre and beasts are more reminiscent of darker genres such as the gothic genre. A mysterious atmosphere is essential in a detective novel because it adds tension and suspense. This is through the way it is portrayed as mysterious, very little known and secretive. Conan Doyle uses layer upon layer of description on the moor when Watson first sees it. A tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside. This quotation evidences his use of description for the moor. He also uses powerful adjectives to describe certain features of the moor such as, Jagged and sinister hills. This quotation conjures a sense of coldness and makes the reader feel unwelcome to the sudden change of scenery. The seemingly perfect crime sees Stapleton as the villain through out the story. However no one suspects him but Holmes and this is revealed when Holmes is found by Watson. Conan Doyle presents Stapleton as a poor yet clever man in the hound of the Baskervilles. The usage of certain words provokes this idea: dressed in a grey suit and a straw hat. He compares, to other villains of the detective genre, very secretive and as unsusceptible as can be. This is shown by the way he hides his past life to everyone, but he only tells them he lost money with the school he had. Other villains would either make themselves known but be hard to catch, or secret but leading the detective towards them and finally slipping up somewhere along the line. It links to the implication of justice always prevailing because in the end the criminal is nearly always caught. The role of miss. Stapleton as an accomplice would have been quite normal to a Victorian audience. This is because women were considered the weaker gender and men bossed around women. Conan Doyle is linking these ideas on the role of women through the use of miss. Stapleton in the book. Miss. Stapleton, when found at the end, is shown to have been beaten if not carrying out orders by Stapleton and left alone if obeying Stapleton. Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me! she shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. This is evidence that Stapleton beat his wife. Most detective fiction is expected to be formed around the idea of who dunnit? This is true in along came a spider as Alex Cross tries to find a villain after another villain. However in hound of the Baskervilles it isnt the case as Holmes and Watson are also saving Sir Henry from an untimely death. You would expect the idea of who dunnit? to be the centre theme around the story, creating tension and suspense fitting for it. This makes Holmes seem heroic, Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creatures flank. I think the hound of the Baskervilles is very sensational novels within the detective genre because it is where Holmes and Watson meet a foe worthy of there steel. I think the mysterious atmosphere is particularly effective because it creates the tension and suspense it needs to create and it holds secrets, leaving the question in your mind, Whats it hiding? also I think the mysterious atmosphere is effective because of its unique base for the whole of the story. No literary figure has a stronger hold on the public imagination than Sherlock Holmes. This is shown in the essay.

Gay Marriage Essay Example for Free

Gay Marriage Essay Marriage as defined by Chambers 21st Century Dictionary is one the state or relationship of being husband and wife, two the act or legal contract of becoming husband and wife and three the civil or religious ceremony during which this act is performed; a wedding. Gay marriage has been a topic that has been discussed in the United States for several years now. You have people that have different viewpoints on how they feel about gay marriage more so the big question everyone argues is whether it is right or wrong. We will be discussing gay marriage in this paper focusing on the ethical problems this issue faces. We will look at gay marriage from the deontology theory and then contract the theory from the relativism, emotivism and ethical egoism theory. Lastly I will discuss which of these views I discussed is closer to my view on gay marriage. Growing up I was always told marriage is between a man and a woman and that God wants us to be married and be fruitful and multiply, fruitful meaning having children. This is something that I was told by my parents, grandparents and the church. I chose to discuss gay marriage because it is really something that I have conflicting feelings about based on what I think is right and what I have been told is right, when I was growing up as a young child in a Christian environment. Many Christians quote that God found it unacceptable for same sex relations to take place, because it is wrong. Furthermore, God created woman for man and man for woman, not woman for woman or man for man, as stated in the book of Genesis. You have polls that have been conducted where people still think that gay marriage is wrong. Then religion may be one of the most controversial issues regarding gay marriage, many religions find gay marriage to be immoral and a sin. I think that same sex marriage should be allowed although many of my family and friends wouldn’t agree with my choice. I look at the issue like any other issue that our country has faced like women suffrage and slavery. I don’t think a couple should be discriminated or treated unfairly just because of their sexual preference. The United States of America Constitute states that all men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights. Thomas Jefferson offered as his examples of such rights â€Å"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness† (Mosser, 2010). So shouldn’t same sex couples be allowed to have those same rights, shouldn’t they be able to enjoy the life of an American dream that we all aim to achieve. By not being able to pursue these rights we could look at this as a violation of the Constitution. This can present an ethical problem for same sex marriage. Deontology ethics claims that the way to decide if an action is moral is to examine the intentions. Mosser writes that â€Å"deontology looks at the reason for which an act is done, and the rule according to which one chooses to act. Deontology doesn’t deny that acts have consequences; rather, it insists that those consequences should not play a role in our moral evaluation of such acts† (Mosser, 2010). Any time there is an ethical issue there is an ethical problem to follow that issue. First ethical problem we will look at is gay parenting. Many people believe that children being raised by gay parents will deprive them of normal development. Many Americans believe gay men and lesbians should not have or adopt children and that children would not develop correctly with homosexual parents, although research has shown that same-gender couples are as nurturing and capable of parental obligations as other couples. † (Avery, Chase, Johansson, Litvak, Montero, Wydra, 2007). In the article Children Raised, 2001 a â€Å"study of 55 children19 raised by lesbian couples , 10 by single mothers, and 26 by heterosexual couplesfound uniformity among the categories vis-a-vis social skills, well-being, and academic performance†. I feel as long as a child is being raise by people who love them whether they are male or female and if they are being raised by a same sex couple the love the child would get from both parents won’t deprive them of any development deprivation. Although many children may experience some form of negativity from other people like classmates or people who may be against gay marriage. You might hear sometimes how children don’t understand why their parents can’t be married or they treated indifferently or talked about because their parents are gay. Another problem we have is with control. Society deems that is okay for a heterosexual couple to be out in public hugging and kissing each other in public. You have some cities or states that may prohibit this action for homosexual couples. Society sees this as wrong and I think that is why you have a lot of people who are afraid to come out and say that they are gay. Nowadays people are just a little more open to discuss their sexuality as before they were not because they were afraid of the repercussion that they may face. It is even worst for those who are in high power position like celebrities, government officials or people who may be well known throughout the community, as soon as they reveal that they may be gay it is plastered all over the news media, social networking sites and various magazines. It is really bad when they say oh this person was out holding hands or seen kissing his partner out in public. It is easier if you leave in a state that is more receptive to this like California, New York and Massachusetts. You really won’t see this behavior being favored in the Bible belt (the south). My thing is leave them alone if they chose that lifestyle that is their choice, they should be allowed like any other person in this country to freely walk out in public and hold hands and share a kiss. Now another problem is that some people believe that a same-sex couple raising children could destroy the family and social background that our society currently accepts with an opposite-sex couple. I think a child could still develop normally when they are provided the same love and nurturing necessities of life when provided by either couple whether gay or straight. A child needs love and encouragement to grow and flourish as an individual and that can be provided by people whether gay or straight. The environment a person is raised in does contribute to the type of person that they become, if they are receiving love, support and being nurtured by a gay couple it’s no different than opposite couples. Couples whether gay or straight will have that influence to teach a child what is wrong and what is right in life. As a child spend time with family members whether, gay or straight this will be part of the development process to teach a child who they are. I think a child growing up in a same-sex marriage or relationship will allow a child to learn tolerance and acceptance. They will be more prone to accepting things that others may not and be able to tolerate things more than others, cause having a child in an opposite-sex marriage or relationship they may not learn those same values as much as the other person. Same sex marriage would benefit children by increasing the durability and stability of their parents’ relationship. This will also bring increased social acceptable of and support for same-sex families, although those communities that meet gay marriage with rejection or hostility might not materialize. There really is no evidence that heterosexual couples are any more effective than same-sex couples at raising children. Religion is another ethical problem that we must look at when it comes to gay marriage. Religion as defined by Collins English dictionary is â€Å"belief in, worship of, or obedience to a supernatural power or powers to be divine or to have control of human destiny. Two any formal or institutionalized expression of such belief: the Christian religion. Lastly the attitude and feeling of one who believes in a transcendent controlling power or powers. Religion teaches us to believe in god or God or whoever we may believe in, it also teaches us kindness towards others, patience, tolerance and many other things to help us in our daily lives. Religion also teaches us to be able to accept other that may not be the same as us. Some people, including Christians, Jews, Catholics, etic†¦believe that it is wrong for people of the same sex to have a loving relationship with each other. I think each religion might have different interpretation on the teachings that is in the Bible, once religion ay interpret a section of the Bible one why while another will interpret that same section a different way. Does it might either religion right or wrong? No, it doesn’t it is one person interpretation over another. Growing up in a Christian environment it was quoted from the Bible that God found it unacceptable for same-sex relations to take place, because it is lustful and wrong. Then it says that God created man for woman and woman for man not man for man or woman for woman. As a Christian many people say that the primary purpose of marriage is procreation to be fruitful and multiple and that cannot take place in a gay marriage. Equal protection is another problem. The federal government responsibility is to protect and keep all citizens safe, this includes protection under the law. Religion has played a factor in influencing the votes of government officials to ensure equal protection under the law for heterosexuals but not for homosexuals. Bickford states that religious views continuously look down on homosexuality and condemn it. These views continue to influence the American government and the choices made when voting on laws for equal protection. Our government was formed on the basis of separation of church and state but some people are not able to accept that. So why is our government so influenced by religious organization in dictating what action they should take when it comes to voting on these laws? I don’t know if they fear that they would be retaliated against or loose support or funding from religious organizations. I know everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs but to allow those beliefs to harm citizens in our country is unacceptable and it isn’t right. These actions cause hatred to spread throughout our country because of that. The government says that every citizen of the United States shall receive equal rights. Now why did the government pass out the defense of marriage act? The Defense of Marriage Act prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. I think this act is immoral and unfair because it restricts the rights of gay and lesbian citizens. This act should not have been passed because there really isn’t a reason to justify that act. Mosser states â€Å"The deontologist argues that we have a duty, or an obligation, to treat other people with respect; human beings have dignity, and we must take that dignity into consideration when dealing with them. (We also expect others to respect our dignity when they deal with us. ) As the most famous deontologist, Immanuel Kant (1724—1804), put the point, we should never treat another person only as a means to our ends, or goals, but should regard them as ends in themselves. In other words, I cant simply use a person to get what I want nor can someone use me to get what he or she wants. We have to consider that other persons needs and desires, respect them, and try to avoid violating them† (Mosser, 2010). The deontologist in this aspect would resolve gay marriage as stating that all human beings should be treated equally. They are human beings so they should be treated the same way that others are being treated. If a woman and a man is able to marry then a man and a man or a woman and a woman should have that same option. A deontologist would also argue that a person shouldn’t be treated differently just because of their sexual preferences. Deontology is like living your life by a set of rules. Now the rules can be used to push yourself into doing the right thing, even if youd rather not. Now this would help by saying gay marriage is right and it is the right thing to do for same-sex couples, however there will always be exceptions, and this is where the theory falls flat on its face. You will always have someone who will debate this theory. Relativism is the idea that ones beliefs and values are understood in terms of ones society, culture, or even ones own individual values. (Mosser, 2010). Now relativism on the other hand would say for gay marriage that what’s wrong for gay marriage is not necessarily wrong for someone else. Therefore, you have no right to tell two men or two women that they cannot marry, just because you feel personally that it is wrong. What you believe and hold as true is not necessary what someone else believes and holds as true. Relativism would argue that same-sex couples ould argue that marriage is right because this is what they believe in it is part of their values and beliefs. Relativism says that no matter how you argue a point even if every point is completely proven you cannot change someone’s beliefs. This will not work because it is their belief based on how they were raised, religion or even their social influences. I feel that at people whether heterosexual or homosexual should be afforded the same rights under the law of our Constitution. I just wish people would put their differences to the side when it comes to this topic about gay marriage. What really makes me upset is Christian people that I know in my family and at the church they are so quick to judge someone else and say it isn’t right but I am quick to remind them that we are all sinners. Even though you may not like the lifestyle someone chose to leave you can’t make that person change who they are. If they chose to be with another man or another woman that is their prerogative. Then they are so quick to get upset with the government when it comes to these issues. Everyone wants to bring church into politics. I really thing that is a sticky situation and it is so tough given the country that we live in because of the diversity that our country has experienced. I just feel that if someone choses and wants to marry someone from the opposite sex let them. I would say the theory that closely match my belief given the two that I discussed is relativism. I don’t see how gay marriage would bring harm to children that are being raised by gay parents. I don’t think same-sex couples should be deprived of certain benefits or rights because of their sexual orientation. In the article in USA today for gay marriage it states â€Å"But preventing gay parents from marrying hurts their kids, as does denying them equal rights to insurance and Social Security benefits, says Aimee Gelnaw, executive director of the Family Pride Coalition† (Elias, 2004). Why should we deny them these rights that they should be entitled to? If two people want to get married, neither society nor the government should be involved. Religion should stop having such a big influence of political policies and the deeper the donation the more they lean towards pleasing that particular religion. As stated earlier our Country’s constitution allows for the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing gives one person the right to decide what is wrong and what is right when it comes to same-sex couples. What would it be like if the Constitution only allowed certain types of people to be married like only people who tall and has blond hair or black hair. What if they put some stipulation that only whites can marry or only blacks. I am sure that would cause an outrage and scram discrimination. See this is what happens when our government puts limitations on its citizens. This papers has identified some of the ethical problems with gay marriage we have examined what gay marriage is like using the deontology and theory and contrasted it with the relativism theory. I am not gay but I think that a person should be able to choose who they want to be with. I don’t think they should be discriminated against, and at the end of the day it is their choice who they decide they want a relationship with, whether it be a person of the same or opposite sex. Society is so caught up in being in everyone business and who is doing what we want to tell people this is the right way to live or you should do things this way because it is right. Who is to say what that something might be better or right for someone else? Lets’ stop forcing our values and beliefs on others and allow people to be who there are. If they are Christian and they are gay or whatever religion they may be I say leave that between them and their god we should not be the ones judging or condemning them because of something that they believe in or desire. We are no better than the next person.

Case Study: Boeing Corporation

Case Study: Boeing Corporation Boeing Corporation is one of the largest aircraft companies in the world that supplies its products to customers globally. It supplies top of the line commercial aircraft as well as high technology military aeroplanes to various organisations. The products are the passenger, cargo and military aircraft which have strict safety and performance regulations binding them. The operations of the company are complex and at a huge scale which make management planning an absolute necessity for the company to carry out business in an efficient manner. Management planning comes into play at every level in the companys hierarchy and has a pivotal role in the success that the company has attained. Management Planning is the procedure of earmarking goals and objectives for an organisation to accomplish over a specified period of time. All actions and tasks requiring completion in order to attain the final goal are encompassed in a plan. Plans must have enough flexibility to cater for account variables and unexpected events and avoid the confusion that may arise in a case of unforeseen challenges or troubles. The Boeing Corporation has a number of departments; mechanical department, engineering department, quality checking department and sales department being the major ones. The aspect of planning is of paramount importance in all these departments. In each of these departments, efficiency is achieved by setting goals and outlining the methods to be followed to achieve the set goal. This includes explaining the steps that need to be followed by addressing issues of resources, management etc., finally aimed at achieving the best levels of efficiency The process of management planning undergoes five basic steps. Initially, a situational analysis is carried out. This involves deciding on the various factors and the manner in which they are likely to affect goal attainment and the manner in which these factors will affect the attainment of the goal. This assists the management to understand which steps are vital for goal accomplishment. In the next step alternative goals and plans for it are thought of. Formulation of multiple plans and then comparing them against one another is extremely beneficial, giving the management an insight into the pros and cons of each plan. Subsequently, all alternative plans and goals will be amalgamated into a single plan. The third step involves evaluation of the goals and plans created, and arrive at the benefits and drawbacks of each goal in the overall plan. Simultaneously, the most important steps in the plan can be prioritised, and roles assigned to the staff who the manager thinks are best suited for the job. In the fourth step, on the basis of the input of the first three steps, the management is required to shortlist the final plan to be used. This calls for acute judgment and analysis on the part of the manager to finally decide which plan is to be implemented. The actual implementation of the final plan by the manager is the last step. The manager has an important role in explaining the salient aspects of the plan to all staff involved in its execution, to ensure that all members are aware of the overall plan, and success is assured. In Boeing Corporation, since a large number of departments are involved, the plan of each department needs to be coordinated and synchronised with other departments. In this manner, the entire company is able to function as a well coordinated and oiled machine. Legal issues assume great importance in Boeing Corporation as the products can get the company involved in legal tangles, as human lives and safety aspects are involved. The company, therefore, has to ensure that all legislations and regulations are adhered to in the process of aircraft manufacture. For example, for every aircraft manufactured, an operating manual has to be created for both mechanics and pilots, so that safety aspects are taken care of. The requirement of the manuals has to be kept in mind during planning so that plans are made for dealing with any malfunction or repair issues that may arise in the future (Pritchard MacPherson, 2004). The management planning is influenced by many ethical issues also. When the company is bidding products to the United States Army, the company has the largest ethical issue concern, because they follow the guidelines (Pritchard MacPherson, 2004). The laws have been formulated and followed rigorously to avert the company authorities from unlawfully beguiling the concerned armed forces personnel with pecuniary offerings. So the responsibility lies with the sales and accounts department to consider theses factors while making their bidding plans and sales plans for the company. An individual or an organisations actions that benefit the society more than oneself or the organisation is known as social responsibility. As a corporation, Boeing is also concerned about its corporate social responsibility. As an airlines company, one of the major social responsibility that the company carries out is Research and Development to increase costumers choices and to be able to provide safe and effective service for its costumers. This can be seen in the high safety standards that the company has been maintained by constant research and improvement. Another example of corporate social responsibility was shown by Boeing when a national effort was made to raise finances for funding medical research to find cures for leukaemia affecting children under the leadership of the CEO of Boeing (Besser, 2002). Though this was under the overall stewardship of the CEO, the initiative of a member of the organisation does reflect on the entire organisation itself. Boeing being a large corporation is more focused on its strategic planning, which results in establishing the objectives broad enough for the operation of the company. The strategic planning devised by the company is used while doing business with the Airlines Industry, Community and the Military. An airline manufacturer is always concerned about the reliability and performance of his products (Prichard 2004). So when a company formulates its strategic planning, it helps him to look at the wider range of objects resulting in his production of products which are high in reliability as well as give peak performance. In recent years even the customers have started to demand more environment-friendly products, which could be because of the environment changes, one of the reasons being Globalization. For a large corporation as the Boeing, the main broad objective set by the organisation is the strategic planning. This is the tactical move; the company makes use of while doing business with the Airline Industry, Community or the Military. According to Prichard 2004, for an airline manufacturer, two aspects are the most important; they are the Reliability and the Performance. So to create products of high reliability and to achieve peak performance from it, the most helpful device is the strategic planning. This helps the company to have a broader vision of the environment while helping to formulate strategies. Recently, the customers are more inclined towards the products which are environment-friendly, which may be due to the changes affecting them due to Globalization. So the company had to rework on its strategic plans to satisfy the growing needs of its customers (Gonzalez 2007). Not only this, the company uses tactical planning in each of its departments. Through tactical planning, the company is able to achieve the highest order of efficiency in all its departments. For example, the manufacturing department formulates tactical planning of producing assembly stations within the plant, which facilitates the workers to assemble the aircraft parts efficiently and swiftly. The tactical planning is similar to the operational planning but only differs in dealing with managers at the lowest end of the hierarchical chain. These managers ensure that the non-managerial staff is performing their duties properly. These managers are also concerned with the quality control of the physical operations being done by the company.

Essay --

Danielle: First, efficient market theory implies that the market fully reflects the available information and react quickly to any new information. In fact, good or bad news related to reported net income is usually evaluated rationally by investors and directly reflected the market share price. Indeed, under an efficient market, this reflected market price will meet the price predicted by the investors and that why in some cases we notice no reactions to the earning performance whether it is good or bad. Second, sometimes there no considerable or even a reversed reaction to change in the stock price for the news related to reported net income and that is due to an other event rather internal or external taking place in the same period that affects the market behaviour towards the investors behaviour. To illustrate, if a company working in gas and petroleum industry can have a decrease in its stock price because of a new environmental low (future expenses) even with the release of a higher net income. Finally, there is also the fact that the investors have certain expectation toward the upcoming net income but in case that the reported net income doesn't overcome their expectations , even though the income is positive, investor won't react to these news . In fact, a company that posts a very impressive earnings performance, but its stock price barely moves because the investors had already expected these results and the reported net income just confirm these expectations. Robert: The inefficient market hypothesis consists on a market behaviour that sometimes drive asset prices above or below their true value. In fact, the existence and magnitude of certain stock price variations are sometimes incompatible with an eff... ...te earnings and in this situation, investors can have an idea about the level of accrual persistence so they can take the best decision towards that. Applying the Accounting principles framework would be an efficient way to increase the persistence of accruals.To illustrate, the timely recognition and mesurebility of accruals would decreae the anomalies especially if they are implemented and disclosed to the public using the right method. The non cash assets and the non cash liability such as goodwill and future tax obligation are more easily to manipulate than the cash flow. In fact, in order to increase the accruals persistence, these non cash flows items show follow a certain regulation. Indeed, Accounting provisions for impairment related to any decrease in value of these items or any possible loss but also posing a restrictive rule for any possible gain.