Thursday, October 31, 2019

Bullies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Bullies - Essay Example However, bullying has not been constrained to the learning environment since the problem has also spread to workplaces and cyber bullying. This essay will cover the causes and possible solutions of bullying in details. The causes of bullying vary depending on the age, environment, and the background upbringing of an individual. This implies that the reasons that would influence one to be a bully in the workplace differ from the reasons that influence bullying at school. However, the most cited reason for bullying is personal inadequacy (Booth, Robson & Welham, 2004). In order to fight the inner feeling of emptiness, a bully usually harasses people of weak physical nature in order to achieve high self-esteem. Since the causes of bullying differ depending on the environment, the essay will examine the sources of bullying both in school and at the workplace, separately. Since students are raised in different backgrounds, psychologists have stated that the family background of a child can influence his/her character in their lifetime (Booth, Robson & Welham, 2004). The environment in which a child is brought up will affect how he/she relates with others as well as himself/herself. The best performing students in academics are usually brought up in stable religious families. Therefore, the parent-child relationship influences the child’s personality. Strained parental relationship has been identified as one of the main causes of bullying (Hurley, 2012). Most bullies lack a warm, affectionate, and caring bondage with their parents. Most of these parents subject their children to high academic expectations, which exert pressure on the students. In order to cope up with the pressure, the students turn to weak students and bully them. Moreover, children whose parents are illiterate, or drug addicts are more likely to become bullies due

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Gerlinger Hall Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Gerlinger Hall - Assignment Example There has is surrounded by the university street, pioneer cemetery and Gerlinger Annex. The hall was constructed within the university grounds. There is a wide open lawn on the sides of the hall. The topography of the green is fairly flat which makes it an alternative outdoor classroom. The topography is fairly flat and it features a slight crown which is used to allow for sufficient drainage to take place. The Green is set at an estimated four to five feet above the Street Sidewalk of the university. The field’s interior lawn is completely mowed. At the Northeastern edge there are a row of cypress trees. There is a grouping of native conifers at the Southeastern corner of the interior of the field. Other vegetation include wildflowers, bulbs, madrones, and California Incense cedar and Douglas firs. The southeastern edge and Northeastern edge of the field has trees which are met to provide shade to the building. This prevents entry of a lot of heat and cold. During hot weather, the shade blocks the heat from entering the building while it allows warm air to enter the Hall during cold weather. Sun exposure to the Hall is reduced due to the orientation of the building which prevents direct sunlight form the Hall. The Northeastern edge and Southeastern corner have planted trees to provide shade since those areas are prone to sunlight. The materials used in the construction of the Hall reduces the reflected glare and heat from direct sunlight. Furthermore, the Hall has incorporated enough shade into the space. Scalar adjustment mark the significant adjustment linkage between the spaces beyond and the perimeter of the Hall. The edge of the Green was adjusted in the 1969 when the Gymnasium was demolished and replaced with the Gerlinger Annex. There is a concrete path that separates Gerlinger Annex from the lane. The eastern edge is marked by the University Street defined by large conifers. The southern edge has a steep embankment with

Sunday, October 27, 2019

The Concept Of Film Authorship

The Concept Of Film Authorship Arising in France in the late 1940s, the auteur was a cinematic theory created by Andre Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, and introduced in the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema. Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were the first to coined the phrase la politique des Auteurs, suggesting the theory of the director as author. The idea was to advance the cause of cinema as a legitimate art form by awarding the director with the status of an artist. Both Truffaut and Godard believed that directors should use the commercial device of film making the way a painter uses a brush, or writer uses a pen, and, through the mise en scà ¨ne, impress his or her vision apon the work. The idea was that a film is most valuable when it is the product of the director, and his personal style. Thus in film authorship, the influences of the director can be seen through all of his works, often at times exhibiting aspects of their personal life portrayed through out each film. Ideally, one could watch a film without previously knowing who directed it and then be able to identify who was responsible for its creation. Simply put, the auteur theory acts to describe the mark of a film director on his films and a style that he distinctly owns. Much like one can look at a painting and tell if it is a Picasso, if a film director is an auteur, one can look at his film and tell by its style and recurring themes that a certain director made it. According to the authorship theory, it does not matter whether or not the director writes his own films, the cinematographer, actors, and others involved in its creation are of secondary if any consideration. The film is said to reflect the vision and the mind of the director through the choices he makes in his film, including his casting of crew and actors. Naturally, a great deal of criticism surrounds such a suggestion. As Philip Halsall (2002) points out film is clearly a collaborative process, even in the smallest of productions, and to elevate the status of the director is to belittle the contributions of other creative personnel such as the cinematographer, the editor, the sound man, and the actors. For a director to be considered a true auteur, Andrew Sarris declared, (HYPERLINK http://www.britishfilm.org.uk/lynch/biblio.html#sarrisNotes on the Auteur Theory in 1962HYPERLINK http://www.britishfilm.org.uk/lynch/biblio.html#sarris) a premise must exist whereby the distinguishable personality of the director is a criterion of value. Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurring characteristics of style, which serve as his signature. One notable auteur, whose filmography has expanded over three decades, is David Lynch. A David Lynch film produces distinctly notable traits readily observed by the amateur, and commanded by the aficionado. His individual surrealist style has defied description thus necessitating the creation of a new term of classification, aptly titled Lynchian. Lynchs films are aesthetically progressive with inherently conservative subject matter hidden behind a postmodern veneer. Thematically repetitive, a David Lynch film involves parallel worlds both literally and the metaphorically contrasted elements of evil and innocence, weirdness and normality, the absurd and the macabre. The use of duplicity, extensive use of dreams and dream like nightmarish sequences, an obsession with the clandestine, extreme graphic violence and sadistic masochistic sexuality are all fixtures in some form. Lynchian created protagonists are tortured souls constructing illusions to escape their reality, when these fantasies unravel, in the case of Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, The Elephant Man and Eraserhead, the only alternative is death. For those characters that manage to survive a Lynch film, the idea of a happy conclusion is parodied in a contrived manner, the image of the mechanical robin in Blue Velvet mocking such an improbable end. Lynchs juxtaposition of the homely and the eccentric is re-occurring fixation. Nothing is ever as it seems, there is always a more ominous existence lying beneath the surface or hidden behind the curtains. In Blue Velvet, Lynch created an idyllic suburbia drawing on conventions from teenage movies of the 50s, he presents a Happy Days/American Graffiti nostalgia to the point of parody, to give a contrast to the dark other world that is inevitably co-existent. (Philip Halsall (2002) The idealised picturesque world is contrasted with a more sinister dystopian one by employing Lynchs continuing engagement of conventional noir aesthetics. The picture perfect Grease type dynamic in Blue Velvet including the demure blonde debutante Sandy, is balanced by an exceedingly disturbing and menacing underbelly, centred on a dangerous and fairly unstable femme fatale. The femme fatale and its iconography can be scene in almost all Lynchian films. The portrayal of a highly sexualised woman, she is the figure of danger and unattainable desire. She is often filmed in a distinctly voyeuristic manner as scene in Blue Velvet when Jeremy hides in a cupboard and watches Dorothy undress, and in Lost Highway when Alice is forced to strip for Mr Eddy. Lynch utilizes duplicity of characters and motifs as a tactic to reinforce the parallel and to suggest alternative realities. The use of doubles is a traditional convention of dream like realities that can be seen as far back as characters from the Wizard of Oz, a film that Lynch is a self-proclaimed admirer of. Lynch also engages in acts of cinematic self-referentiality. The Black Lodge in Twin Peaks is resurrected in different forms in both Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. The magical box is Hellraiser, a central ingredient to the narrative returns as the blue box in Mulholland Drive, symbolic of a portal between two worlds. Curtains are an interconnected motif and similar form of self-referntiality. They can be seen in the Elephant Man as he is revealed on stage, draped heavily almost engulfing Fred as he wanders down the dark hallway in Lost Highway and consuming the opening sequence of Blue Velvet the use of curtains points to looming darkness, the sinister undertone of whats hidden behind them. Lynchs films offer an artistic form to the contemporary efforts of post-classical Hollywood. Lynch has developed a signatory approach of unconventional narrative, consistent thematic expressions and a distinctly visual style recognizable to both audiences and critics worldwide. However, this cannot be proclaimed so evidently for all of Lynchs films. Dune (1984) was both a critical and commercial disaster and perceived as the least lynchian of his films. Shunned even by Lynch himself, Dune epitomises the constraints and compromises of artistic expression by the commercial demands of auteurism. I didnt really feel I really had permission to make it [Dune] my own. That was the downfall for me. It was a problem. Dune was like a kind of studio film. I didnt have final cut. And, little by little, I was subconsciously making compromises knowing I couldnt go here and not wanting to go there. (Rodley 1997, 119-120). David Lynch quote For David Lynch and many other auteurs, the focus on a films potential for box office returns, by the studios and the financial backers, becomes the catalyst for tremendous artistic limitation. There is a contradiction in cinema between the commercial need to maintain the ideology of the creative artists and a simultaneous need to redefine ownership in terms of capital, rather than creative investment. (Theories of authorship, Caughie, pg 2. Brecht and the film industry, Screen 16, Ben Brewster, pg 16-33). The auteur as a commercial oddity coincides with the contemporary status of the auteur as a celebrity. Contemporary auteurs are for the most part, labelled by their commercial status and their ability to promote a film. The idea of the auteur-star alternates the director in place of the actor as the main drawcard. As much as an actors acclaimed performance can carry or redeem a script, the auteur-star has the ability to carry and redeem any sort of textual material. (The Commerce of Auteurism, A Cinema Without Walls: Movie and Culture After Vietnam. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991, pg.104) The auteur as a business entity is less a matter of artistic accomplishments and more about attaining a status that sells both the film to the audience, and the director to a studio. (New Hollywood cinema: an introduction, By Geoff King pg.115) The idea of the auteur-star is seen commercially as a means of publicity and advertisement. Meaghan Morris noted that today the primary modes of film and auteurs packaging are advertising, review snippeting, trailers, magazine profiles always ready in appropriation as the precondition, and not the postproduction of meaning. (pg 91 Film theory: critical concepts in media and cultural studies, By Philip Simpson, Andrew Utterson, Karen J. Shepherdson Taylor Francis, 2004) Our primary access to the auteur is not seen directly through his/her films but through controlled media mediums such as television, websites, and award ceremonies. (An introduction to film studies, By Jill Nelmes, pg.139) Before David Lynchs Twin Peaks hit mainstream America it was backed by an explosion of teaser advertising, it was hailed as the show that would change the face of network television forever on the September 1989 cover of Connoisseur magazine, long before the pilot had gone to air. Overnight, it seemed, there were board games, guidebooks and even Bart Simpson Killed Laura Palmer T-shirts. The constant marketing and promotion of an auteur film communicates information to a large number of audiences who may know the makers reputation but have never seen the films. The auteur is then seen as commercial tactic for promoting associations and controlling audience reception. By listing a director in the films title, as some kind of brand, guarantees a relationship between the audience and the film and conditions the way it will be viewed and received. (The Commerce of Auteurism, A Cinema Without Walls: Movie and Culture After Vietnam. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991, pg.102) To react to a movie as primarily a Lynch film, for example, is the refusal to form any evaluative response. For the audience, much of the enjoyment lies in already being able to know the gist of the film as a product of the creators generated public image. 3. Textual auteurism 4. Critical auteurism as a category Auteurism is a critical category, in the sense of understanding the author as a critical construct rather than a person. The ability to identify Hitchcock as a group of structuring principles that could be engineered from a critical examination of films, but bearing no necessary relation to the small, fat, male person who routinely appeared in each of these movies.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Personal Narrative: Football Underdogs to Champions Essay -- essays re

Football Underdogs to Champions I had tried out for the High School football team but unfortunately was cut. I worked hard over the summer and even passed on the family vacation to North Carolina to attend football conditioning at the school. Even with all of my effort put towards running and weightlifting I was still cut. That however did not stop me from playing the sport I love. I had heard of a local pigskin football league that allowed any teen my age to play. I immediately conversed with my parents and received their permission to sign up. When I first went to get my equipment I met my first coach. Coach Andy was a larger gentleman with a muscular frame. He had a bald head and slightly crooked teeth. He seemed very friendly when I met him and found out he had played football during his high school and college career. I also met the president of the pigskin league Mr. Kemp. He was fitting other players for their shoulder pads and helmets. While I was getting fitted he noted that I was a larger player and asked why I had not played high school football. I took the comment as a compliment and explained the story to him. I had also found out that my team would be the Cowboys. Through various conversations at the fitting, I found out that the Cowboys was the team in which late arrivals and new players were assigned. The Cowboys were considered the â€Å"misfit† team that had been thought of as the worst team in the league. That very night from receiving my gear I had an idea. I knew that my friend Brian Alvey enjoyed football as much as I did. He had also tried out for the high school football team and had been cut the year before. I proposed the idea of him playing football on the same team with me in the p... ...ud of me and we continued to pummel the Redskins. Our defensive line would not allow them to score at all. On one occurrence, the Redskins made it to our end zone and had fumbled the ball. I quickly jumped on the ball and prevented them from scoring. We had come back and won with a blowout game. With the game sounding whistle came roars of cheers from the sidelines, bleachers, and the team. We had won the Turkey Bowl Championship. The underdog team of misfits and late arrivals had come together and won. Winning the Turkey Bowl was one of the most memorable experiences in my life. My team had come together and through hard work and effort won the championship. To this very day, I proudly display the large Turkey Bowl Championship trophy in my room. Every time I look at the trophy it reminds me of how a group of misfits came together and won as a team.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Operational Management at Mcdonald Essay

One aspect of facilities layout for McDonald’s is that when customers come into the building, they line up in one of several lines and wait to be served. In contrast, customers at Wendy’s are asked to stand in one line that snakes around the front of the counter and to wait for a server to become available. a) What is the rationale for each approach? b) Which approach do you favour from (1) a customer’s perspective and (2) management’s perspective? Explain. A Rationale for McDonald approach McDonald’s success had been built on four pillars: limited menu, fresh food, fast service and affordable price. Intense competition and demands for a wider menu drive-through and sit-down meals – encouraged the fast food giant to customize product variety without hampering the efficacy of its supply chain. McDonalds use assembly line procedures in their kitchen for mass production so as to keep prices low. Speed, service and cleanliness is one of the critical success factors of the business. Lining up in one of the several lines tied into McDonald’s capability statement on speedy service, efficiency and good customer service. Each staff at McDonald is trained to change roles within shifts and this makes resource management during peak and off peak hours manageable. At all times there is enough staff on hand to take care of business and overall effectiveness is improved Drawback to this approach includes huge rental space to accommodate large operational facility. It could also become very costly on staff training. Workforce productivity are not usually related to the number of staff working on a task, and productivity variance may tilt negatively for McDonalds on this. Operating cost are very high and unless this is well managed, it may not necessarily be profitable. Rational for Wendy’s approach The rationale for Wendy’s â€Å"old fashioned† hamburgers could be traced to the history of unsuccessful attempts to outperform the competition which created the low profile structure. Wendy’s headquarters shifted to Dublin after a merger with Triac, Arby’s parent company and the very conservative style of  European business. Structure of business is very simple and easier to manage; it does not envisage much growth and cater mainly for the bottom line. It will require less space and resources to manage. Also less inventory and therefore less operating cost, however this will also impact on profitability. Drawback to this approach includes disorganized premises during peak hours, unsatisfied customers due to longer wait times for service. Wendy at some point was also suspect for cleanliness and this approach would add more to the problem. Managers Perspective The two approaches shows different business and strategic objectives. McDonald approach depicts a growth oriented organisation that wants to create market dominance in the sector. Wendy concentrates on its core traditional product, so that those who appreciate the product will be kept in the customer chain. The McDonalds style will require acquisition of new business skills and technology while Wendy traditional styles will require less technology. Looking at the management styles, McDonalds is poised to remain the leader in the food chain industry with concentration on their supply chain system and product differentiation methods. McDonalds work with farmers to ensure that produce are sized right and grow to specification, while Wendy concentrates mostly on the beef. With these different styles, McDonalds will be my preference for growth and bottom line. Wendy cannot compare to Mac in the business because more and more happy customers are trooping to Mac for what they see as 21 cent ury improvements.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Mediquip Case

1) The major strength that Thaldorf possesses is that the model of the CT scanner is the latest one. It is two years in advance, so that, there would be no risk of obsolescence for a long time. Moreover, they enjoy the word-of-mouth from their current consumers, i. e. other hospitals in the similar size of LUH. However, unlike their competitors, they do not understand the market situation and decision-makers well. There are more than one person involving in the decision making process but they do not know which one possesses the most of the power. Also, their price is not competitive enough.The price range of a CT scanner is wide and Mediquip charges at the upper end which could not meet expectation of price-sensitive buyers. 2) There are altogether 3 people in the decision making process. Professor Steinborn: a nationally-known radiologist. He is the one who use the scanner so he cares the quality and functions the most. Though he shows his favor to Mediquip, Mediquip still lost the order, so it seems he does not own a great power. Dr. Rufer: a physicist. His primary concern is the patients’ safety if the scanner could meet the technical specifications that he raised. Mr.Hartman: the general director of LUH. He put price as the top priority and also the durability of machines and delivery. It seems like he possesses the greatest power in the whole decision making process since price is the very major reason of the loss of order. 3) Generally speaking, Thaldorf could have effective and positive interaction with the above-mentioned persons. Though Professor Steinborn was once shocked that the price could not be discussed, he was soon pacified and even talked about his vacation. And he even told the Sigma’s price to Thaldorf, it shows his favor to Mediquip. ) September 3 Firstly, it was told by the secretary that there were a lot of heated discussions. It implies that there might be even arguments between Hartman who concerns price and Steinborn who favors Mediquip. And obviously, Steinborn lost from the discussions. And so, Hartman just like put-off Thaldorff asking him to give a final offer but the decision was made actually unless Mediquipp could really offer a competitive low price. 5) From this case, we should understand that, sometimes, possessing the newest model may mean nothing and we have to understand our customers better.You may encounter a lot of people during the process, but the important thing is to get the most powerful decision-maker pleased and favor to your product. Only that could bring you the order. Cause sometimes even your product is the best among the competitors, your customer may not know it. Therefore, the best practice is to formulate different strategies according to different customers, like if he is price-sensitive and do not know much about the product, different models with different prices could be introduced. And the customer could just choose whatever within his budget.