Marketing advertising report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Marketing advertising report - Essay Example building brand awareness for both Southeast Asian Laneway festival and existing local festivals, but she was unsure about the exact marketing activities required to promote the brand. In such a context, the manager has asked the researcher to recommend suitable marketing and advertising strategy to promote the brand, thereby helping her to fulfill the proposed objectives. The manager has asked the researcher to focus on certain issues, while making recommendations such as, 1- propose strategic recommendations that can help Laneway Festival to address their current needs, 2- provide justification regarding functionality of proposed campaign, 3- illustrate look/feel of the proposed advertisement in order to specify how the proposed campaign would achieve success, 4- identification of target audience for the advertisement and 5- make broad media recommendation by addressing budget, time period and brief description of activities. As marketing personnel, the researcher will analyze the b rief and try to locate anomalies present in there. In the next section, the study will conduct a brief literature review in order to understand arguments, presented by previous researchers, to identify the working pattern of advertising campaign. In the book, â€Å"Confessions of an Advertising Man†, Ogilvy (1988) had stated the phrase, â€Å"If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative†, in order to highlight the importance of outcome while employing advertisement to promote brand. According to Ogilvy (1988), success or creativity of advertising campaigns can only be appreciated, if it is able to sell the product/service. Hence, advertising campaigns cannot be created only for the sake of creativity. Kawashima (2006) found that look and feel of advertisements changes with the background story of the brand, nature of target audience and divergence of marketing objectives. Grabher (2001 and 2002) argued that incorporation of creativity in advertisements can be done by experimenting with

Critical Thinking Reflection Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Critical Thinking Reflection - Article Example The most important information in this article is web can be dangerous and thus need to learn to control the use and addiction to social media and the web to our advantage as we take measures not to sway away from reality as we are pegged all day to these machines and networks. The fact that Russell’s Facebook, Youtube and Twitter accounts were almost dead before he posted the videos shows that by that time he was living in the real world, but after his fame, he even cut down his sleeping hour and patterns which affected his mental health. The author’s arguments are strong in the credibility of the information and his connection to the real life. For instance, viewing computers and networks as tools that helped Russell support his mission, have turned out to tear his psyche and exposing him to kudos and criticisms, with the article’s heading. Authors weaknesses can be traced his failure to argue exactly on what other uses of the web apart from the social site lik e Facebook, Youtube and Twitter can affect both socially and psychologically. In his arguments, he concentrates much on these sites which are accompanied by likes, shares, kudos and criticisms but the overall web includes other site of knowledge search, which he did not argue on their effects. The main conclusion of this article is that the web has both positive effect and negative ones. The effective use, management and control of addiction to these media are important because the uncontrolled use and overreliance can transform our perception and interactions to those of cyborgs. The best practice would be to prepare psychologically on the criticisms and kudos associated with content posted online and more so concentrate on the  productive part of the web like knowledge search and business information.  

Love in Shakespeares Sonnets

Love in Shakespeares Sonnets Introduction In his poem, Scorn not the Sonnet (Poetical Works, 1827), Wordsworth famously said that the sonnets were the key with which Shakespeare unlocked his heart and whilst this can certainly be seen to be the case, the sonnets do much more than that. Writing of various forms of love, and indeed of love itself, using the contemporary sonnet form, Shakespeare develops the aspects of love which the sonnets reflect into an all-encompassing discussion on the major themes of life itself that continue to inform and direct the human condition, a fact which is perhaps partly responsible for their continuing popularity with both public and critics alike. This dissertation sets out to discover, through close reading of carefully selected representative sonnets and critical context, the way Shakespeare accomplishes this. The sonnet form as Shakespeare, whose 154 sonnets were first published in 1609, and his contemporaries used it was introduced into England in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas Wyatt who translated sonnets in the Petrarchan form from the original Italian: As we should expect in a period when he [Shakespeare] was beginning to write the sonnet, allusions to Petrarchism become increasingly common. (Whitaker, 1953, p. 88) The Shakespearian or Elizabethan sonnet form differs from the Italian, originally developed by Petrarch in the fourteenth century, principally in form. Both styles are usually comprised of fourteen lines but have a different rhyme sequence and structure. The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octet (a sequence of eight lines in which the theme is opened) and the subsequent sestet (which reflects on the theme it has introduced), whilst the Shakespearian is structured in iambic pentameter in three quatrains and a couplet, the three quatrains rhyming in abab form and the final couplet rhyming cc. It is important to understand Shakespeares structure because it so often reflects the theme, with the three quatrains each addressing a different aspect of the sonnets focus and the couplet usually providing an epigram summing up the idea which the sonnet reflects. Indeed, Shakespeare does not only use the sonnet form in his poems but also within his plays, incorporating what a contemporary audience would recognise to be evidence of true and even holy love. The most famous example of this is in the first meeting between Romeo and Juliet, written in 1594, where their words are exchanged in sonnet form: Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers kiss. Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers sake. Romeo: Then move not while my prayers effect I take. (Shakespeare, William. 1954. Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene v, p. 30) This is an excellent example of the innovative way in which Shakespeare uses the sonnet form and it is therefore appropriate to look at it in detail in the introduction to this dissertation in order to show the aspects of love with which the discussion will be concerned: From the early poems to the young man of rank, urging him to marry and have a son, through the idealising attempts to negate the space of social difference in the mutuality of private love, to the bitter wit of the Will poems to the dark woman, the player-poet seeks to reduce the gap between addresser and addressee that is the very condition of the Petrarchan mode. It has not escaped commentators or audiences that in Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare represents a moment of reciprocity via the archetype of in commensurability: a sonnet, uniquely shared by Romeo and Juliet in Act 1. (Schalkwyk, 2002. p. 65) In the first quatrain, Shakespeare has Romeo, who was previously infatuated with Rosaline, a state we are given to understand that he has often found himself in before this, declare his feelings in holy imagery which Juliet, in the second quatrain, immediately picks up on and develops. Thus, though inversion of the traditional male role as director is not removed, Shakespeare gifts Juliet with an aspect of equality with Romeo, by making her his equal in wit, a gender specific imperative which is found in both his plays and sonnets alike. Moreover, in the third quatrain, the lovers share their feelings and the structure itself, with each taking separate lines of the sonnet. This mutuality reflects how the play will develop, with Juliet continuing to grow in strength, and also shows the importance of the connection between what appears to be love and what is true love, associated fundamentally with God, as evidenced by the religious imagery of pilgrims and saints and perhaps most impor tantly palmers, which signifies one who has made the pilgrimage to Rome. The contemporary audience would recognise this first dialogue between the lovers as emblematic of true love precisely because it is expressed in the sonnet form. Also, Shakespeare establishes the connective between true love and religion which, as will be seen in the dissertation discussion, is another feature of the sonnets as a whole and indeed the sonnet form. The way in which Romeo and Juliet share the sonnet is, as is noted above (Schalkwyk, 2002. p. 65), very different from the way that the older Petrarchan sonnet form implements the structure to address the theme or indeed object of love. Shakespeares concept of love as expressed in the sonnets is essentially based upon reality, human beings interacting or regarded as representative of love without the necessity to involve the idea of worship as is certainly the case with Petrarchs Laura. Although many of the sonnets are addressed to an unknown and somewhat generically enigmatic female, referred to as the Dark Lady by critics, the sense of the sonnets being concerned with human love in all its aspects is always primary, as Shakespeare writes in Sonnet CXXX: I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: (Shakespeare, William. 2003. Shakespeares Sonnets. ed. Katherine Duncan Jones. p.375) This is a thought that he completes by following the colon with a couplet summation that despite this, or perhaps because of it, his love is as rare as any belied with false compare. It is clear that love for Shakespeare is as concerned with humanity as much, if not more, than the conception of love and the distant, silent, object of that love as divine. Thus, the idea that Romantic love has little to do with love as it is actually experienced is another aspect of love with which the sonnets are concerned and which this dissertation will address. Indeed, one imperative which seeks to involve a less direct form of love is the notion of Platonic love, or love as an ideal, as expressed in Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments (Shakespeare, William. 2003. Shakespeares Sonnets. ed. Katherine Duncan Jones. p.343). It is generally accepted that the first seventeen of the sonnets are addressed to a young man and in these Shakespeare turns more frequently to the idea that marriage should be the object of a mans life. However, he then turns, in sonnets XVIII-CXXVI, to homoerotic expressions of love to a man, identified, simply because of the dedication on the first (possibly unauthorised) publication, by Thomas Thorpe, as Mr. W.H.: The interpretation of the expression only begetter is doubtful. Did Thorpe mean that Mr. W. H. was the fair youth of the sonnets (though on this reading the dark lady also has a claim as a begetter, to some of the sonnets), or was he merely the gentleman who gave Thorpe the manuscriptMr. William Harvey perhaps, who in 1598 married the widowed mother of Lord Southampton? The manuscript can only have come from one in the innermost circle of those who knew Shakespeare and his noble friend. If Southampton was the friend, William Harvey may have been the only begetter. (Alexander Nisbet, 1935, p. 94) Like the Dark Lady, the young man is not identified within the sonnets and the location of his identity has similarly exercised scholars across the generations. However, although it is certainly true that spurious identification is of passing interest: The identity of the fair youth matters much more to those who believe that the poems grew from personal experience than to those who believe that they are poetic fictions, influenced more by sonneteering convention than by life. (Bate, 2008, pp. 41-2) Bates point is well-taken since the actual identity of the object of love is indeed much less important to an appreciation of the sonnets than their importance as representative of aspects of love: Somehow the poems convince each reader that what he or she sees in them is what is really there. But somehow they then sneak up behind you and convince you of something completely different. (Bate, 2008, p. 43) It might be argued, in fact, that precisely because of the lack of knowledge concerning the individual to whom the sonnets are addressed, readers have formed a generic connective with them across the generations which is cathartic in its anonymity: How do we lesser mortals know to perform our lesser miracles of life? Again we face the enigma of all creation, which Shakespeare himself has simply accepted and has nowhere attempted to explain. What was there when there was nothing? And how does something more forever come from something less? Whether the creation be instantaneous, in six days, or in aeons of ages the miracle is no less. And in it we live, and move, and have our being. And perhaps, alas!, have in us too little of the poet to see that there is any miracle at all. (Baldwin, 1950, p. 384) Thus, the individual biographical aspects of the sonnets, though of interest, can never be a primary informative and this may, indeed, be beneficial, as we shall hope to see. Chapter One: The Marriage of True Minds Little is known about Shakespeares life and this has given rise to much speculation about his biographical background: It is one of the ironies attendant on the growth of Shakespeares reputation that even the most diligent scholarship has been able to uncover very little of the background of the poets personal or public life. However, the poverty of detail has merely spurred his biographers to increased scholarly, inferential, and imaginative activity. (Marder, 1963, p. 156) What is certain, since it is documented through baptism of the children, is that he was married to Anne Hathaway, a fairly well connected Stratford girl, older than himself, when he was eighteen, and they had three children: a daughter, Susanna, and twins, Hamnet and Judith. Despite this, or maybe because of it, he spent the vast majority of his life away from home in London where most of his writing took place. There has been a great deal written about how happy or otherwise the couple might have been, especially since he left Anne nothing in his will except his second best bed. Many have read this as an insult but perhaps a more appropriate reading is that the best bed was for guests and the second best the marriage bed therefore to bequeath this to his wife, far from being an insult, was a love token. Carol Ann Duffy writes of this in her sonnet Anne Hathaway: The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where he would dive for pearls. (Duffy, The Worlds Wife, 2000, p. 30) This tender version of love would seem much more appropriate, especially since the first seventeen of the sonnets, known as the procreation sonnets, are largely concerned with the recommendation of marriage to a young man. If Shakespeare was so violently against marriage then it seems unlikely that he would have recommended it. However, as always with the sonnets, this is not as straightforward as it seems with the directive to marry being somewhat complicated by other imperatives with which Shakespeare is clearly concerned, not least his affection for the Fair Youth. The early sonnets in the sequence should be considered as they pertain to the question of marriage itself, therefore, rather than as they relate to Shakespeares life: Shakespeares Sonnets raise a number of problems. We do not know when they were written, to whom they are addressed, nor even if they are certainly autobiographical. (Knight, 1955, p. 3) With this in mind it is not only preferable but essential, therefore, to qualify any discussion on the possible relationship between the sonnet topics and Shakespeares life with the reminder that we know so little about the latter that any inferences must be regarded as tenuously speculative at best. Thus, the marriage question which relates to the first seventeen sonnets cannot be seen as directed in any major sense by the poets own life: The greatest sonnets, those which are neither wholly conventional nor wholly autobiographical, preserve this balance between embroilment and detachment in a way which is truly dramatic. A personal experience may underlie each, but it is experience transmuted, as in the plays, into the correlative form of characters in action. To some degree these characters are the dramatic counterparts of actual people-the youth, the dark woman-though they are not the people themselves. Others belong, as personages, only to the microcosm of poetry: Time, for example, one of the most powerful villains among Shakespeares dramatis personae; and above all, Shakespeares own diverse masks and moods, fully realised and understood. (Mahood, 1988, p. 90) The idea that the sonnets are in any way biographical must, indeed, be questioned but it must also be remarked that the way the words are used within the sonnets might be attributable to Shakespeares personal consciousness: The nature of the wordplay in the Sonnets varies according to whether Shakespeare is too remote or too near the experience behind the poem or whether he is at a satisfying dramatic distance from it. When he is detached, the wordplay is a consciously used, hard-worked rhetorical device. When his complexity of feeling upon the occasion of a sonnet is not fully realised by him, the wordplay often reveals an emotional undercurrent which was perhaps hidden from the poet himself. But in the best sonnets the wordplay is neither involuntary nor wilful; it is a skilfully handled means whereby Shakespeare makes explicit both his conflict of feelings and his resolution of the conflict. (Mahood, 1988, p. 90) Thus, when in Sonnet CXVI he writes of the marriage of true minds (Shakespeare, William, 2003, p.343) he is perhaps inviting us to infer a connective between what he writes and what he feels, an altogether different kind of marriage, metaphorical rather than literal and certainly more of the mind than of the heart. As the sequence begins, the poet addresses the youth familiarly but in an almost didactic tone, of the older to the younger, as here in Sonnet I: From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beautys rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feedst thy lights flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And, tender churl, makst waste in niggarding: Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the worlds due, by the grave and thee. (Shakespeare, William, 2003, p.113) The importance of this sonnet in establishing the poets themes throughout the sequence must be stressed, as here we see Shakespeare writing of the transience of beauty, the selfishness of the individual, the battle between desire and fulfilment, the beauty of the natural world and its comparative with human beauty (to which he will return in the well-known Sonnet XVIII and elsewhere) and the basic responsibility of man to procreate or, as the sonnet has it, increase and thereby beautys rose might never die. All of these relate to the human condition and also perhaps to Shakespeares own concerns: In the case of a poet, I suggest it is chiefly through his images that he, to some extent unconsciously, gives himself away. He may be, and in Shakespeares case is, almost entirely objective in his dramatic characters and their views and opinions, yet, like the man who under stress of emotion will show no sign of it in eye or face, but will reveal it in some muscular tension, the poet unwittingly lays bare his own innermost likes and dislikes, observations and interests, associations of thought, attitudes of mind and beliefs, in and through the images, the verbal pictures he draws to illuminate something quite different in the speech and thought of his characters. (Spurgeon, 1935, p. 4) Thus, the fact that the boy is referred to in relation to fairest creatures facilitates the poets directive that this places upon the individual a responsibility: beauty is not given to die but to be carried on by the tender heir. The register is imperative and commanding, with the poet adopting the voice of one who has the authority to instruct by reason of superior age and wisdom, hence perhaps the juxtaposition of riper and decrease in the preceding line to reference to the tender heir and memory. The youth is instructed that he is, in common parlance, his own worst enemy, Thy self thy foe, since he does not see the waste of his beauty which lies in his refusal to share his gifts with posterity via procreation. This accusatory tone is extended to the self-abuse of masturbation in Within thine own bud buriest thy content, which also bears the pun of pleasure and substance, and the youth referred to as a glutton and tender churl, the latter implying an indulgence in the chiding of t he boy. This is, of course, the supreme image of the waste with which the poet is concerned since to make a famine where abundance lies is almost seen as a blasphemy, refusing, selfishly, to procreate and eat the worlds due by the selfish pursuit of personal indulgence: contracted to thine own bright eyes, as with Narcissus, in love with his own reflection and failing to see the self-destruction that is inherent in this. In addition, by referring to the boy in terms of a rose, the poet introduces the classic Romantic emblem of love as well as re-emphasising the transience of the poets beauty. This idea of beauty and its connective with nature is again related in terms of a comparative with natures beauty and inveterate perishability in Sonnet XVIII: Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summers lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or natures changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst, Nor shall death brag thou wanderst in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growst, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (Shakespeare, William, 2003, p.147) The comparison of the transience of natures beauty with that of the youth to whom the poem is addressed is clear, yet the rhetoric of the opening seems to imply an equivocal nature to the connective of the extended metaphor that follows. The tentativeness of the image is also emphasised by this questioning in the first line and it enhances both the intimacy of the register of address and the relationship of the poet with the wider readership. This latter is important because it is so much a concern in the poem, with the idea of immortality attached here to writing as it was previously attached to procreation. The common denominator here is the idea of creation itself and its connective with the eternal. This is perhaps one of Shakespeares more famous sonnets, if not the most famous, therefore it is fitting that in a dissertation concerned with the aspects of love which the sonnets present, attention should be paid to the aspect of the writing which pertains to the process of creation and its connective with the reader. It is interesting to note, indeed, that the poet chooses to stress the importance of the eternal lines which he is composing and how this overcomes the basic transience of life and beauty whether in nature or humanity. Indeed, the punctuation of this sonnet is indicative of its imperative since there is frequent usage of the colon throughout, implying a thought begun and completed in each quatrain, functioning almost as enjambment and enhancing the idea that the many aspects of beauty and life which this sonnet covers are embodied within one thought as evidenced in the single extended metaphor which informs the sonnet as a whole. The poets almost godlike assimilation of the power to grant immortality appears dangerously hubristic in abstract and indeed encourages the inference that Shakespeare was aware of the strength of his poetic gifts and their ability to confer a kind of immorality on the object of love, who by the end of the sonnet has become subject to the sonneteer rather than in command. As the poet is also using his gifts to describe the loved one via nature, the features of the numinous within nature become connected with this hubristic stance. Thus, natures changing course and Chance, which significantly begins a line, are to some extent negated, or at least qualified, by the poets art. Features of life which terrify, therefore, such as death cannot brag in the face of the eternal nature of Art: Shakespeare prophetically felt the immortality and universality of his plays even though he seems to have made no great effort toward their preservation in print. (Marder, 1963, p. 361) This might, this sonnet would seem to suggest, also be extended to the sonnets. Indeed, in daring to criticise the glories of nature, Shakespeare appears to place creative Art above it, since it, unlike all that is natural, survives, only, though, as long as it is appreciated, as the final couplet significantly testifies: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. In this way, Shakespeare demonstrates an awareness of the fundamental importance of the connection between writer and reader, reinforced perhaps by his experience as an actor and writer of drama. Hence, the voice of the actor may be perceived in the words of the sonneteer and universality as well as the eternal perceived in both: On this planet the reputation of Shakespeare is secure. When life is discovered elsewhere in the universe and some interplanetary traveler brings to this new world the fruits of our terrestrial culture, who can imagine anything but that among the first books carried to the curious strangers will be a Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. (Marder, 1963, p. 362) Thus, Shakespeare may be seen, via the sonnets and plays, to transcend what is perceived as immediate in aspects of love and engage with the eternal. Chapter Two: I do believe her though I know she lies The potent sexual content of the sonnets becomes a major directive following the romantic turning point of Sonnet XVIII. The sequence moves powerfully from restrained yet poetic discussion of aspects of love to explicit sexual references which are concerned more with lust than love and often deceit is linked to this and this duplicity is most often associated with the heterosexual sonnets. Importantly, the passion is not directed solely towards heterosexual love, instead it involves an equal, if not stronger, reflection of homoerotic desire, with the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady equally powerful in the poets passion, indeed, often the two overlap producing an androgynous aspect to the passion which also appears in the plays: The first thing that startles the reader about the sonnets is the emotional virtuosity of the protagonist. The poems appear to have been composed over a longer period of years, and to cover a greater range of passionate experience, than any one of the plays. In recognizing the variety of moods and attitudes Shakespeare accumulates in the sonnets, we may choose either to admire his protean nature as an actual passionate friend and lover, or to stress his dexterity in accumulating such an extraordinary range of amatory motifs from literary sources. Either his own nature was unusually flexible and susceptible, or he deliberately chose to display the full scope of literary permutations of which emotional relationships are capable. Probably both views are true: he dexterously coordinated first-hand experience with the accumulated resources of the sonnet tradition, from the solemn and sentimental to the cynical and outrageous. (Richmond, 1971, p. 19) This is particularly noticeable in Sonnet XX where the poet longs for the youth to be a woman and the homoerotic replaces the marital directive which appeared in the didactic tone of the first sonnets in the sequence: A womans face with natures own hand painted, Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion; A womans gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false womens fashion: An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue all hues in his controlling, Which steals mens eyes and womens souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prickd thee out for womens pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy loves use their treasure.(Shakespeare, William, 2003, p.151) Shakespeare confronts directly here the clear belief that women are duplicitous and deceitful and that the master mistress of his passion, though gifted with a womans gentle heart is not acquainted/With shifting change, as is false womens fashion. The eye, the traditional window of the soul, is more bright but less false. Thus, the poet suggests that the beautiful youth has all a womans best gifts but none of her faults, a state of perfection to be idealised in desire. Shakespeare develops this by writing directly of the sexual difference where the punning prickd is clearly a reference to the redundancy of the penis for the poet. Nature here is the enemy, even the jealous sexual predator, having me of thee defeated thus frustrating the desires of the poet by changing what he perceives to be the original intention, to create a woman, in the addition of the male organ of procreation. The amorphous image appears to be the ideal with neither male nor female specifics to obscure or defeat the perfection of the union. Whether this desire is linked to Shakespeares own desire is equivocal as are all inferences of autobiographical content, it is tempting but dangerous to make too may autobiographical assumptions. However: In depicting this blend of adulation and contempt, and in all those sonnets where verbal ambiguity is thus used as a deliberate dramatic device, Shakespeare shows that superb insight into states of strangely mixed feelings which enabled him to bring to life a Coriolanus or an Enobarbus. Like Freud, he found the causes of quibbling by studying his own quibbles; and the detachment which such an analysis implies imparts to the best of the Sonnets that objectivity we look for in the finest dramatic poetry. (Mahood, 1988, p. 110) Certainly, there is a Freudian homoerotic subliminal here but there is no evidence to suggest that this was an actual experience of the poet any more than we can say that he wrote Hamlet therefore he must have experienced being the Prince of Denmark. To do either is to ignore Shakespeares imaginative genius and his ability to transmute the fancy into the creative, with both forming then a reality which has little if any connection with fact. So, although Shakespeare may have had sexual liaisons with both sexes and been crossed in love, the genius is in producing what can be seen to be unrelated to what might possibly have occurred in fact into an emblem of a generic tendency in humanity to which most of us can relate: If Shakespeares speaker fictionalized the young man, so too he fictionalizes himself (Berry, 2001, p.1). Having said that, Sonnet XX has been seen as offering significant clues not only to the nature of Shakespeares own sexuality but also to the identity of the Fair Youth himself and certainly to the reality of the human image even in its placing, as Kathryn Duncan Jones has pointed out in her notes to her 2003 edition of the Sonnets (the edition used throughout this dissertation): The placement of this anatomical sonnet at 20 may allude to a traditional association of this figure with the human body, equipped with twenty digits (Duncan Jones, 2003, p. 150). The direct connection which Duncan Jones makes between anatomy and imagination in this sonnet is interesting in that it breaches the gap between what might be seen to be metaphorical and what is actually a human figurative. Indeed, she goes on in her Introduction to expand on this: Many more numerological finesses may be discerned. For instance, the embarrassingly anatomical sonnet 20 [which] probably draws on primitive associations of the figure with the human body, whose digits, fingers and toes, add up to twenty (Duncan Jones, 2003, p. 101). As to the identity of the youth to which clues are supposedly to be found in this sonnet, they largely attach to the usage of the word, or name it is suggested, of hue and hues (spelt Hew and Hews in the Quarto). This, it has been mooted, might relate to a specific individual, especially as critics have noted that the name appears in one form or another, even if only in disparate letters, throughout the sonnet. As with much of the investigation into a connective between Shakespeares life and his Art, the link is at best speculative and at worst spurious and in either case somewhat superfluous: The sonnets have an extraordinary capacity to elicit categorical statements from their interpreters. It is announced that the youth is Southampton, the youth is Pembroke, the youth is nobody, the dark lady is Mary Fitton, she is Aemilia Lanyer, she is nobody, the sonnets are based on experience, they are not based on experience, the love was not homosexual, the love was homosexual, the love was a dramatic fiction which ha

Intelligent Agents Essay -- Computer Science

Intelligent Agents Abstract Intelligent Agents are software abstractions which potentially can make life easier and more productive for computer users. These agents are autonomous entities that can be asked to do tedious or complicated tasks for the user or unscramble the complexities of computer applications. "Many agents are based on the idea that the user need only specify a high-level goal instead of issuing explicit instructions, leaving the 'how' and 'when' decisions to the agent" 3. The agent either steps the user through the process at hand or goes off on its own and reports back with the requested information or completed task. Artificial Intelligence principles are used to program these agents. Introduction The modern computer era has brought with it a phenomenal volume of information. The internet in particular is comprised of far too much information for any one person to utilize. Therefore computer users must be able to use their time efficiently. One must be able to filter through all the information bringing back only pertinent, recent data quickly and easily. Also, as applications and hardware become more powerful and complicated, the user must be able to figure out how to master new tasks. These two challenges can be made easier with the use of intelligent agents. One example would be the following: A person wants to find a job in the computer industry as a programmer and decides to search the internet for available positions. Without the use of intelligent agents, the person would spend hours searching for every position having to do with computers and programming. A search query would return thousands upon thousands of links that would have to be weeded through to find the ones that were pertinent. An ... ...be expertly guided through complicated procedures by these agents. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 http://www.networking.ibm.com/iag/iaghome.htm 2 http://nittany.ca.sandia.gov:8001/defs.html 3 http://cyclone.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/agents.html 4 http://www.advtech.microsoft.com/research/ui/persona/isbister.htm 5 http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mike/ker95/ker95.html 6 Maes, P. (1994b). Social interface agents: Acquiring competence by learning from users and other agents. In Etzioni, O., editor, Software Agents - Papers from the 1994 Spring Symposium (Technical Report SS-94-03), pages 71-78. AAAI Press. 7 Newell, A. and Simon, H. A. (1976). Computer science as empirical enquiry. Communications of the ACM, 19:113-126. 8 Shoham, Y. (1990). Agent-oriented programming. Technical Report STAN-CS-1335-90, Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

Make Educating Girls a Priority Essay

The article emphasizes on providing education to every eligible girl in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It highlights that a girl who takes birth in South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa has to undergo desperate hardships such as poverty, disease, war or famine. Apart from that, she will also have to confront the disadvantage of being a girl. There is no culture, country and continent that are destitute of inequality. The root cause of girls not getting education is the cultural norms and economic hardships, which parents face. There is a norm of single-sex schooling in poor Muslim countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Morocco and in the problem is that rural areas of those countries can afford only one public school that can be set for girls only. The inequality between girls and boys exist heavily in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and almost all of those countries come under the category of ‘Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs). One way for these countries to head towards economic development is by ‘making educating girls a priority’. Making separate schools in places where girls and boys are educated separately is one solution. It is believed that by building girls’ schools, the education gap can be eliminated to a great extent. Policymakers can strengthen the incentives for parents to send their daughters to school by setting the no-fee policy. However, in economics, nothing is for free. There is always someone or something that pays for it. A no-fee policy may be brought about by taking a portion of the people’s taxes. Another thing the policymakers can do is provide stipend for girls who enroll in girls’ school. This would surely increase the girls’ enrolment rate as the graph below indicates that the fall in fees from ‘f’ to ‘f1’ will lead to an increase in the enrolment rate from ‘e’ to ‘e1’. Providing every eligible girl in South Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa would contribute towards the country’s development because major studies of growth conclude that improved knowledge, higher efficiency, and better education play a vital role in the functioning and productivity of an economy. The World Bank has pointed towards human development which they believe better education, and family planning can promote development as effectively as capital investment in physical plant. As the article states that 99% of the 529,000 women who die annually from pregnancy related hurdles come from developing countries and the reason for that is the lack of education for women in those countries. Uneducated women do not know the severe malnutrition and prenatal care during pregnancy which puts both the child and the mother at serious risk. Expenditure on human capital – better educated, health, and nutrition – tends to reduce birth-rates and infant mortality. The women will be educated and will be able to effectively take part in family planning as she will be aware of the consequences. Having a controlled population means a positive result in the GNP per capita which is the result of subtracting the population growth rate from the GNP growth rate. Educating the girls will privilege them to be able to raise their child effectively in a civilized manner. Educated women will be aware of dangers such as HIV/AIDS, poor sanitary habits and poor dietary habits. So basically they will be aware of the environment around them and above all they will know their rights and therefore fully stand up for themselves. So, educating the girls would not only benefit themselves but the society as a whole as well. So education helps the overall population and on a larger scales the whole world. Apart from giving a country an efficient work force, education makes the individual able to read, write, and communicate. When the people in a society are capable to bring forth their views, opinions and debates, it brings a social change and the changing attitudes of people may achieve a number of developmental aims. Providing education to the girls would also add to the country’s labor force which would definitely lead to an increase in economic growth. Therefore an economic development would shift the country’s Production Possibility Frontier (PPF) curve to the right as shown in the graphs below. In my opinion, I would say that providing education to girls in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa by building single-sex schools is a much appreciated step because of the numerous benefits it will contribute to the world. However it has to be taken into consideration that in some parts of the world providing co-education is unacceptable for example the northern areas of Pakistan. Therefore single-sex education will be a much better choice as it will be acceptable and also appreciated. However, single sex education is said to be not as beneficial as the co-education because in co-education pupils of both gender get to interact with each other and learn much more than they can in single education. But single sex education will be the only choice that can be perused in areas where co-education is not allowed. Although building single-sex schools will have an opportunity cost as the government will have to sacrifice something in order to afford the cost of building schools, but I would say it is all worth it. When the girls of a country are educated they will definitely add to the country’s work force and educating girls means educated women in the country which means that they will know how to properly raise their children and nurture them. There are many benefits which the country will have from providing education to the girl. There are short term benefits as well as long term benefits. More emphasis will be on the long term benefits as you know that it will take time before the women of the country will all be educated and it will take time to have an impact of providing education to girls on country’s women literacy rate. I also found the idea proposed in the article by the policymakers about handing the money to the mother of the school-going girl, instead the men. Handing the money to the women is a very effective and well-thought idea as mothers are more concerned about their children’s health and nutrition.

General motors, accounting theory and receivership Essay

Accounting theory is a wide ranging and comprehensive analysis and practice of management accounting and modern financial accounting. This function is accomplished through provision of a theoretical framework that assists in appreciating and understanding the purpose of various accounting practices. Business wise, the theory provides its linkage with modern accounting processes and the impacts of the procedures on business performance or operations. The theory is preferred because it goes beyond the theory, idea and thought analysis to incorporate holistic views of the influence of cultural and historical regulations and impacts on real world business environment (Madsen, 1999, p. 12). Receivership is a scenario under which gives an order to place a property under receivers control so that preservations for affected fellows can be done through it. In a case where a company is failing, actions brought forth by its creditors can place the business under receivership. The business does not cease to operate but is subjected to receiver’s management. In several cases, the court appoints a person to liquidate, rehabilitate, conserve or administer assets belonging to the insolvent corporation, in efforts made ultimately to relief or protect creditors. It therefore doesn’t lead to termination of corporate charter, but serves as a solution to financial difficulty. The dominion controller of the property subject to legal action is known as the receiver. In most cases, receivership is valued as an extraordinary remedy (Dubin, 1947, p. 10). This is because it is us4d to take care of a property when it is required for prosecution of lawsuit. This is especially when a danger is perceived that the property may be removed or dissipated form the courts jurisdiction in a failure to appoint a receiver. It is a process that only takes place through a court order, utilization only in exceptional circumstances. It may involve of not the consent of the owner of the property. General Motors is a company in the United States of America, dealing with motor based accessories, facilities and equipments. It is a company that is recognized as an economy mover not only in US but also in the global economy. However of late, the future of the company is hard to tell because it is subjected to several challenges of receivership, a process that is not only affecting its financial stability but also shaking its social fabric. United States uses a basic form of financial information in assessing the viability of corporations (Gordon, 2005, p. 17). In its capital markets, the general purpose financial statements used include profit and loss statements, balance sheets, statements of cash flows and statements of changes in equity. The nation also obtains extra information from footnotes. The extra information may include accounting procedures and policies utilized in preparing the financial statements, composition and the nature of balances reflected in the financial documents and other disclosure and matters that may be considered relevant for fairness to be upheld in the financial documentation process. US securities registrants also make periodic, quarterly and annual fillings (Belkaoui, 1991, p. 34). These fillings provide supplemental and additional information concerning statistical analysis, descriptions of significant risk factors, major operation locations and units, properties and plants, services and products and company’s business. The legal framework also requires operations to do with management’s discussion and analysis, assessment of liquidity risks and liquidities and certain supplementary schedules. Critical consideration and analysis of the above information gives a corporations financial status and its ability to serve the creditors and satisfy the requirements by the law (Cheffins, 1997, p. 15). The question on whether General Motors is in full consideration of ethical aspects in the process of receivership is subject to various influences. To some point, it may be ethical and fail at some points. This is because the receivership process has got some benefits to both the company itself and the shareholders, meaning that the process may lead to ethical grounds of treatment. On the other hand, the process has its own disadvantages to itself and stakeholders, this representing the degree of ethical deviation. For the time being, the company has received a mounting pressure to convince Washington that the bankruptcy of the company does not turn out catastrophically to the national economy. It is anticipated that if this happens, millions of job opportunities will be lost, tax payers will have to pay more than $100 billion and therefore lead the economy into a severe depression. Because of this threat, Barrack Obama, Harry Reed and Nancy Pelosi have called for an auto bailout of the company (Rae, 1959, p. 16). The decision to get into a receivership supports the argument that the company is ethical to some extend. This is because receivership is the alternative of bankruptcy which is worse. Bankruptcy paralyses every thing in a company and soils the continuity of the company, stakeholders and the national economy as a whole. Surrendering to receivership deal is showing the concern of the company towards their stakeholders, national economy and the global economy. In one special consideration, if the company failed to engage in a receivership deal, all dealers and suppliers from all over the globe would be jobless (Bonbright, 1982, p. 19). To escape from employee assaults, receivership make sure all employees are not pay off and the operations of the company continue running though under courts monitory. The control by court gives hope and protects the rights of the stakeholders. Reflecting unemployment as a worldwide challenge, it cloud be bad for companies to advocate and engage in business strategies that increase unemployment. Again, the business ethics are tied to respect and compensation of employees as a major priority, because it is believed they form the production propellers. Without employees, an organization can hardly run and this is the reason as to why General Motors has been regarded as ethical for giving employees the best treat the company could afford during this financial challenge (Gordon, 2005, p. 17). If General Motors could not strike this deal, it is a possibility that it would have broken up and sold to other companies that may be foreign or domestic. In this case, stakeholders would have lost everything, workers would have lost and management fired. This is a clear indication that receivership is attributed to less stigma. The decision of rushing to this line of management has been seen to release the stigma of the management, country and the clients in question. This is because the operations are still on and under strict surveillance by court administration (Gordon, 2005, p. 16). Therefore, America as a nation, its citizens and stakeholders still have hopes that the company will reinstall its functioning. According to the accounting theory, it is always advisable to be a risk taker but to certain limits. Once the balancing of the accounting section fails, it is also provided that accountants or administration should surrender and allow advanced cross data analysis. This is a measure made to minimize the exposure to risks that may render an organization non functional. Business receivership increases chances of a troubled business survival. To revive the proceedings of the business almost to normalcy level, it is essential to put in place new management to help discover the errors of the old management. This increases the probability of the business survival (Bonbright, 1982, p. 19). The reason as to why many people may believe that GM is not serving its function and failing is because the American economy itself is under its steepest drop in 20 years time, recording foreclosures at highest levels, stock market performing the poorest for five years and a decaying consumer confidence. It should be understood that the cause of the GMs challenge is also contributed to by the economic environment of the country and also the global economy, which is in a recession. It is said that General Motors is in the verge of bankruptcy. In December 2008, the consumer confidence in the company has dropped to its lowest levels possible. Because of these difficulties, the federal government announced that the economy has been in a recession as from December 2007. This company applied for this protection from creditors because according to how the situation was, a red ink had mounted an issue which was realized through a cash flow collapse and amid falling sales. The company made the unavoidable choice in efforts of filing court intervention in dealing with urgent liquidity crisis and therefore seeks for transformation towards sustainability. According to the stock market, the company’s shares had dropped with nearly 85 percent and were in turn suspended. The company was unable to meet its payroll in December 2008. GM is observed to have small domestic rivals but its state is closely being watched to face amid turmoil in auto industry. The failure of this company has also been ignited by the global financial crisis that has plunged the demand for vehicles (Rae, 1959, p. 17). According to the nature of accounting, it is described as a process of communicating, measuring and identifying economic information to facilitate decisions by the information users and permit informed judgments to take place. This has been taken as a statement of basic accounting theory, supporting the ideology that economy or entrepreneurial progress is a concern of stakeholders, and information should be exposed with a lot of freedom and accuracy. In regards to the General Motors, the move to receivership is a strategy to allow access to documents and pave way for new judgments to be made but separate entities. This is highly appreciated in the theory of accounting because it improves the creativity of the company in management activities and help reconstruction of the company. Failure to communicate information is not ethical. This is because if GM was not ethical it could only give up at times of complete insolvency or bankruptcy. Under the accounting theory, measuring and communicating information involves observation of events and transactions of the firm and measuring the transactions as well. Financial report is then released, which serves as a message to help the healing process. After the interpretation of the message, an image of the firm is obtained and then used as a basis of decision making. The adjustments that are possible in case of the above company will be based on accounting discoveries and recommendations. The allowance of experts into the scrutiny process is a show of responsiveness to the reform process and the willingness to be corrected (Rae, 1959, p. 17). As the above takes place, the receiver has acted as the referee of the proceedings, playing a trustee duty to the court. This receiver has maximized the value of General Motors Company and its assets. The receiver is also taking the best ways possible to protect shareholders and creditors involved in the saga of this company. With time, the receiver may often liquidate the assets and shut it down but this is not the case in the united stases of America. The fate of the company therefore rests on the possibility of the company coming back operation, the amount of remaining money and the causes of the business problems. If events prove that there is no hope for the company in the long run, the acting receiver would make sure that every partner involved benefits from the scrape value of the venture. If it is finally ruled the company should be sold as a going concern, the price tag can improved because for the value added by the receiver. This description makes receivership of its concern more sensitive to its creditors, clients and creditors (Bonbright, 1982, p. 18). With all the above arguments describing General Motors as ethical, the path that the company followed to this far is on the other hand questionable both in human resource management and financial accounting. If the company was so ethical, such difficulties could be detected earlier and protected. It will be then very accurate that the company should have participated in financial fraud. Fraudulence and material misstatement is believed to have led the company to this saga, completely going against accounting ethics of transparency, accuracy and accountability. At international levels, the company is said to have defied from accounting theory by either overstating revenues, understating expenses, omitting some liabilities, overstating assets, failure in transactions, disclosure and accounting events, mischaracterization, disclosures that may be misleading in concerns of MD&A, products and services, liquidity and liquidity risks or in supplemental information. Inclusively, the country may also have created fictitious assets, omitted actual liabilities or improper reflect of transactional timing. The above frauds are all outlawed in the financial accounting theory, which the above company may not have adhered to, leading to the present massacre (Rae, 1959, p. 16). Still to show discontentment of the company as far as accounting theory is concerned, receivables and revenues recognized prematurely should be given a special treatment in the accounting process, an error that General Motor sis believed to have committed and thus failed to meet its payroll in December 2008. The cost of production of the company has been observed to increase before the fall magnified and collapsed the functioning of the company. Through accounting theory, this may have been caused by deferring the reconnection of costs or purchases, improperly overstating the value of inventories or improper treatment of overhead or indirect expenses. According to the outcry of the General Motor employees, there must have been a delayed recognition of associated provision expenses before this downfall. Contingencies have been detected in form of litigation reserves, product and warranty liability reserves sales return allowances and doubtful accounts allowances. According to the nature of the controversy in the company’s financial statements, creation of fictitious probably took place. It involved recording of associated fictitious receivables, fictitious revenues, fictitious inventory and therefore underestimation of cost of goods sold (Madsen, 1999, p. 13). Accounting theory and practice of accountants firmly argue against exclusive frauds, which definitely drive corporations and businesses to the situations comparable to the ones of General Motors. The exclusion concerns liabilities and other obligations such as contingencies, guarantees and commitments, all of which affect the balance sheet status. The effect of such exclusions is understatement of expenses such as environment cleanup expenses, litigation expense provisions, judgment liabilities, litigation reserves debt losses such as undisclosed commitments, guarantees and debt related contingencies. This category also incorporates direct charge off reserves and impairment of unconsolidated assets like partnerships, joint ventures and equity investments. All the above exclusive frauds lead to overstatement of liquidity measures and understatement of company’s total liabilities and interest expense (Dubin, 1947, p. 11). As far as accounting theory is concerned, the company is believed to have defied the provisions of the theory with big margins. This is because if the company had carefully taken into concern the above errors, the turmoil could not have resulted. Again, even if it could occur, the margin could not be alarming. The accounting discrepancies that many leaders in America have felt brought the company down are pushing them to propose a complete turmoil of the company. The above fraud description illustrates that receivership of the company was not the best precautionary measure to take, but instead accounting theory prescriptions should consistently have been upheld by the company and thus prevent this fall. This means that the company is not as ethical as people may be thinking. Ethics are attributes in which every member of a certain setting performs or delivers his or her responsibility with all affordable sincerity and fairness. This involves consideration of the cultural expectations when in such environment, social aspects and the particular work ethics. If frauds comparable to the ones above take place, this means that a section of the staff is not sincere and so non ethical. Therefore it may also make sense to say the company is not so ethical (Belkaoui, 1991, p. 35). To add on this, an ethical institution is always the interest of the public because of the confidence they attach to them. The subsequent and rapid drop in the confidence of this company is an indication that it wasn’t an ethical organization which citizens could understand the scenario as a normal challenge and therefore continue supporting it. Because receivership is a lame way of solving the problem, the structural framework has to be strengthened if the company happens to revive as a going concern. If efforts to revive the company fail, it would also be wise to go for the bankruptcy option. Together with the disadvantages of this option, it may ultimately emerge as stronger form with lower cost structure. To supplement this, the government can undertake a bailout to add new capital, replace management, write down the debt and preserve most of the jobs. To conclude, receivership of General Motors can not be seen as a solution as per now but it is time to tell, especially according the economic trends. Still, it is hard to tell whether the company is ethical, since it posses both weak and strong elements of ethical practices (Cheffins, 1997, p. 15). Bibliography Belkaoui Ahmed (1991). Accounting in the dual economy. Westport, CT: Quorum Books; pp. 34,35. Bonbright James (1982). The holding company: Its public significance and its regulation. New York: McGraw Hill Books; pp. 18,19. Cheffins Brian (1997). Company law: Theory, structure and operation. New York: Clarendon Press, Clarendon; pp. 15. Dubin Robert (1947). United automobile (CIO), general motors and Studebaker. Science Research Associates; United States, pp. 10, 11. Gordon Robert (2005). Business leadership in the large corporation. New York: Brookings Institution; pp. 16,17. Madsen Axel (1999). The deal maker: How William C. Durant made general motors. New York: John Wiley & sons; pp. 12, 13. Rae John (1959). American automobile manufacturers: The first forty years. Chilton, Washington; pp. 16, 17.

Thesis

Thesis: School uniforms should be required in public schools because their use would lead to higher education, less violence, and lower cost to parents. School uniforms in public schools are becoming increasingly popular across the nation. The public school system would benefit greatly if this policy were to be adopted. Opposition is always a factor when trying to make changes. Taking all things into consideration, the positive effects would be far greater than the negative effects. School uniforms should be required in public schools because their use would lead to higher education, less violence, and lower cost to parents. By requiring school uniforms in public schools, education will be improved. A dress code will enforce discipline toward learning. Uniforms improve a persons outlook toward success. Students generally act the way they are dressed. With fewer distractions, students see the school as a workplace for teaching and learning. Students also have less stress in their lives because they are not in a fashion competition. Dress codes also lead to a change in grades. Mainly this happens because the students attendance comes up. There is also a change in grades because it is easier to focus when everyone looks alike. Another reason school uniforms should be required in public schools is that it causes less violence. There will be less peer pressure toward competition to distract the students from their studies. Everyone will be equal if the uniforms were to be required. The weapons factor will be cut down drastically by mandatory uniforms. The reason for this violence decrease is that weapons will be harder to conceal. If the weapons are harder to conceal, there will be less attempts to hide the weapons and fewer will be brought to our school or school functions. This brings about a change for the better, because it reduces social classes. Cost is another reason that school uniforms sho ...