The Beginning of Victory :: Example Personal Narratives

The Beginning of Victory    As the music seeps through the air of the dark basement theater, my fingers begin to slide up the neck of my guitar. Instinct starts to take over. The notes flow through my veins, swim up the cables, and are flung into the sphere of energy that has formed around the small theater. The spotlight falls onto the closed eyelids of the audience as their steps coincide with the rhythmic beat of the improvisation. My mind slips away from the scene.    The freshly fallen snow clings to the limbs of the evergreen trees, forming a canopy over the path that winds its way up the mountainside behind my home. This is where I go when I need to think. As I hike up the narrow trail, I find solitude in nature. There are no houses to fill my view. There are no super-highways cutting through the middle of the path. Most of all, there are no people. A family of deer freezes to look at me in search of a place where the snow has not covered the grass. Further up the trail I stop to watch as two black squirrels chase each other up and around the skeleton of an aspen tree. Through a hole in the canopy the sun glistens off the snow and warms me. As I break out of the trees, I look up and see the sun perched alone in the sky with not one cloud to hide behind.    The band begins to slow the music and the rambunctious dancing turns to hypnotic swaying. A calm, almost mesmerizing jazz progression takes form, and with a slower, more sensuous feeling my body takes command of my instrument once more. I start to drift away again, but this time a different scene surfaces.    I take my usual seat on the rock outcropping that overlooks all of Eastern Colorado and take a very deep breath. As I look upon the city, I see the tops of the skyscrapers poking through the brown cloud of pollution. The entire valley is enveloped in this smog. To the South, where the clouds begin to dissipate, highways and houses flow over the land that animals and vegetation once inhabited. Urban sprawl is replacing nature. Even from this point high above the city, the sounds of cars roaring along the highway are intertwined with the magpie's call and blue-jay's song.

Critical Approach on Calvin Klein X Essay

To analyse this advertisement campaign, we use the critical approach theory. The first principle of this theory states that, all media messages are constructed. Some information is included, but much is also left out. Questions are not asked. Using this approach, we realize that in the Calvin Klein X ad campaign we chose, we only see images of muscular men but not pictures of scrawny looking men. The question is, does wearing Calvin Klein X make you look muscular and hot? Is CK X the only way to make you look good? The way the X is placed on the men’s bodies brings the attention of the viewers to the body and not the product itself. What does this mean? The Ad is in black and white, is there a reason for this? The second principle of the Critical approach theory states that Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules. The typography of the X used in the campaign looks as if it is 4 arrows combined together, pointing at the product. The background colour of the Ad is white, to not draw the attention of the viewers away from the muscular men wearing the product. The way these models pose will engage the interest of viewers. Hard lighting is used in the Ad to make the models appear very strong. The shot size of the Ad makes the viewers focus on the big X right in the centre of the body. The third principle states that Different people experience the same media message differently. Men will think that wearing CK X will automatically make them look hot and women will think that if their boyfriends wear CK X, it will make them look hot. However, some men might think that this Ad objectifies men into eye candy. This Ad would be more directed to the adults, kids would not be interested in this. Furthermore, parents who are more conservative and people of the older generation, especially in the Asian context will think that this Ad is disgusting. People who are more religious and believe in that not showing your body to the public will not like this either. They would not be interested in the product too. The fourth principle states that the media consists primarily businesses driven by a profit motive. Because of the profit motive, the media will do anything to gain revenue. Thus at times, sensitive topics and images are brought up. This is because it will engage the interest of many people and when they are interested, they will automatically purchase the product. Even if they do not purchase, the â€Å"hot topic† will be spread around through word of mouth, gaining the attention of everyone. The fifth and last principle of the critical approach theory states that the media has embedded values and points of view. The Ad gives the point of view that in order to be hot and muscular, one has to wear CK X. The Ad is as though it is saying that is ok to be open about your body as the men in the Ad are not clothed. Not everyone will agree with this values and point of views and thus, this Ad will not be able to reach out to everyone except to those who are interested.

Case Study: Organisational Development Essay

As a means of accurately comprehending the issues in this case it is essential that analysis takes place using a range of managerial perspectives in relation to the implementation of change in order to understand the deficiencies in BA management’s implementation of change. A classical Organisational Development (OD) approach is focuses on changing attitudes and behaviour whereas in this case focus was solely upon improving effectiveness of organisation. According to this perspective BA disregarded several key steps in implementing this change as no feedback was gathered from staff. The OD practitioners in this case have ineffective intrapersonal and interpersonal skills as management have failed to gain the trust of its employees and do not display personal integrity. In relation to a sense making perspective BA did not understand that the change they intended to implement needed to have plausibility in the eyes of employees. Hence management’s approach to abandon talks over the introduction of smart cards and announce their forced implementation at just five days notice [ (Palmer, Dunford and Akin 2009) ]. BA did not effectively convey to positive plausible aspects of this change as employees still thought that the system would be used to make staff alter their working hours at little notice [ (Palmer, Dunford and Akin 2009) ]. Common to various change management approaches are that they highlight the need for communication to be not just about passing on information but allowing different voices to be heard. BA by abandoning talks with unions and employees and also in the lack of provision of appropriate information to their American customers during the strike demonstrates an inherent incapability of BA management to convey information effectively [ (Palmer, Dunford and Akin 2009) ]. Also apparent in this case is the lacking of one strong leader of multiple leaders not one person in BA’s management structure took control of the situation and it seems that BA management participated in groupthink to the detriment of the organisation namely its loss of 40 million pounds. According to this perspective it is argued that the style of change will depend on the scale of change and the receptivity of organisational members [ (Palmer, Dunford and Akin 2009) ]. In the case of BA the style of change was not matched to the needs of the organisation. The situation called for a collaborative style of change drawing upon input from a range of sources including employees, unions and management but instead drew upon a coercive approach thus adding further fuel to an already flamed situation, the layoff of 13000 employees. Viewing this case from a processual perspective this approach highlights a number of stages in engaging in the management of change. The third stage of this approach involves gaining acknowledgement and understanding of the importance of the problem. In relation to the BA case study example BA management fail to effectively understand the problem at hand, instead they made the choice to ignore underlying cultural issues within the organisation and proceed ahead with what they considered as the best course of action from an efficiency perspective. Evidence is found through CEO Rod Eddington’s comment that he was unaware that there was even a respect deficit to be plugged [ (Palmer, Dunford and Akin 2009) ]. In order to address the issues relating to the implementation of change in this case analysis of why BA has failed should take place. In doing this BA management should attempt to understand why their method of implementing change failed from a range of perspectives. From this BA can develop new strategies for implementing change for example using a particular change management perspective and moulding it to fit the needs of the organisation. A solution to the problem encountered by BA in this case would be to be more proactive in their change management strategies. If BA are continuously working toward change making use of employee opinions and feedback within the organisation, large scale changes such as the implementation of smart card technologies in this circumstance would encounter less resistance to change as BA would gain the trust and support of its employees due to their participation in the design and implementation of change within the organisation. In conclusion it can be identified that BA in this case have managed their implementation of change very poorly from analysis of a range of approaches relating to implementation of change and it is proposed that BA being more proactive and making use of a participative approach would be beneficial to the continued organisational development of this business. Bibliography Palmer, Ian, Richard Dunford, and Gib Akin. Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009.

Long Way Gone Study Guide Essay

1.What does Ishmael say the war is about? Ishmael says nothing about the causes of the war, or what each side was fighting for, or of the overall political and social conditions in Sierra Leone that caused the war. This was a deliberate strategy on the part of Beah, the author. He wanted to present the war through the eyes of a child. As a boy of twelve, when the war first affected him, he had no interest in politics. He had no reason to be interested—his main interest, understandably for a boy of his age, was in singing and dancing to rap music and hanging out with his friends. When the war comes to him, it is for him a battle for personal survival, not a political cause. He is also fueled by feelings of revenge—instilled into him by his army officers—against the rebels because they killed his family. Once again, these are personal feelings not political beliefs. For the reader, then, transported to a land he or she knows nothing about (for the American reader, that is), the war seems not only almost un imaginably brutal but also meaningless. It consists of one side mindlessly killing the other, and vice versa, in skirmishes in small villages. Ishmael does report Lieutenant Jabati’s speeches to his men, in which he says they are defending their country (â€Å"We kill them [the rebels] for the good and betterment of this country† [p. 123]), but such appeals to patriotism are not what inspire Ishmael. Ishmael’s ignorance of politics is again stressed when he is in Freetown during his rehabilitation and sees a convoy of cars and military vans. He is told that the new president, Tejan Kabbah, who had won an election eight months earlier is passing by. â€Å"I had never heard of this man,† Ishmael writes pointedly. This confirms the tenor of the book as a whole: Ishmael is a boy caught up in a war he knows nothing about for a cause he does not care about. 2.Why was the war fought and what course did it take? During the 1980s Sierra Leone was a one-party state governed by the All-People’s Congress (APC) party. However, this period was marked by extensive government corruption and abuse of power. Although Sierra Leone is rich in natural resources it became one of the poorest countries in the world because of mismanagement. The civil war in neighboring Liberia helped to create conditions for war in Sierra Leone because a Liberian war leader reportedly sponsored the rebel group called the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) as a way of destabilizing Sierra Leone, which at the time was a base for a United Nations peacekeeping force. The war broke out in 1991 in villages in eastern Sierra Leone that were near the Liberian border. The aim of the RUF was to seize and control the diamond sector, and in 1991 it took control of the diamond mines in the Kono district. (It is the mining area around Ishmael’s home town of Mogbwemo that the rebels seize in 1993.) In 1992 a military coup took place that established the National Provisional Ruling Council, replacing the civilian government. However, the new military government was powerless to prevent the RUF from controlling much of the country. It was the years immediately after this, from 1993 to January 1996, that Ishmael was a soldier. The war continued after Ishmael was rescued from it, as he himself found out when he went to stay with his uncle in Freetown after his rehabilitation. There had been an election in April 1996, and a civilian government had taken power, but in May 1997 there was another military coup, and the new military government known as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) invited the RUF to participate in it. The following year, when Beah was safely in the United States, the military government was ousted and the civilian government restored. But this did not stop the violence as the AFRC and its RUF allies fought to regain power. Fighting returned to Freetown in 1999, before a peace accord was signed in July 1999. But this did not last, and the war dragged on, finally ending in January 2002, with the civilian government in charge. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the civil war resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than two million people—about one-third of the population of Sierra Leone. 3.What is the situation in Sierra Leone today? According to the CIA’s World Factbook, Sierra Leone is gradually returning to a fully democratic government following the ravages of the civil war. There was a general election in 2007 that led to one civilian government being peacefully replaced by another. The nation has also tried to come to terms with the recent past. In 2002 the government set up a Special Court to try those responsible for war crimes during the civil war. It also set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Special Court indicted many of those held responsible for the atrocities. Some died before they could be tried, but in June 2007, the Special Court found three men guilty of war crimes, including not only murder, terrorism, and enslavement but also the act of conscripting or enlisting children under fifteen into the armed forces. As refugees from the war are slowly returning from neighboring countries, the Sierra Leone government is trying to create jobs and end political corruption. Revenues from diamond mining have increased significantly since the end of the war. Diamonds account for about half of Sierra Leone’s exports. However, Sierra Leone, with a population estimated in 2009 as 5,132,138, remains an extremely poor country with wide disparities in how wealth is distributed. According to the World Factbook, â€Å"The fate of the economy depends upon the maintenance of domestic peace and the continued receipt of substantial aid from abroad.† 4.How widespread is the use of child soldiers? It would be comforting to think that the forced conscription of children into the armed forces during the war in Sierra Leone was an aberration, not something that can happen again in the modern world. However, that is not the case. Even in the twenty-first century, the use of child soldiers is common in armed conflicts around the world. According to Human Rights watch, an international nongovernmental organization, as of 2007, there were an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children fighting in various wars. According to a Global Report published in 2008 by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, at the end of 2007 children were used as soldiers in seventeen armed conflicts around the globe. The coalition noted that this was down from twenty-seven conflicts in 2004, but the downturn was more because the conflicts had ended than because child soldiers were no longer being recruited. The Global Report identified the following countries where children were recruited for paramilitaries, militias, civilian defense forces or armed groups linked to or supported by governments: Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Iran, Ivory Coast, Libya, Myanmar, Peru, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda. The most flagrant offender, according to the Global Report, is Myanmar, where the government uses thousands of children in its battle against rebel groups. In Uganda, tens of thousands of children have been forced into joining armies over a period of nearly twenty-five years. In some of these countries, including Uganda, girls as well as boys have been forced to become soldiers. There have in recent years been concerted international efforts to end the use of child soldiers. Sierra Leone, which has tried and convicted men responsible for recruiting child soldiers, has become a leader in this issue. The use of child soldiers has now been prohibited by international law. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict has been ratified by 120 states. The UN Security Council has adopted resolutions calling for the establishment of a monitoring mechanism on children and armed conflict. However, these and other prohibitions are no guarantee that when new conflicts break out, child soldiers will not be recruited. 5.Is Beah’s story factually accurate? A Long Way Gone achieved popular and critical success, but questions have been raised by some regarding the factual accuracy of a number of events Beah recounts in the book. Beah writes that his village was attacked in January 1993 and after that he became a refugee from the war. Critics claim that there are school records showing that Beah was in school later than this date, and that the village was attacked in 1995, not 1993. This would mean that Beah would actually have been recruited at the age of fifteen, not thirteen as he writes in the book. This would have meant that he was only a child soldier for a few months, rather than over two years. Some critics point to the structure of the book to confirm this. They point out that most of the book deals with Beah’s wanderings as a refugee and the months he spent in rehabilitation. Only two chapters (13 and 14) cover his actual experiences as a soldier (although he does present more incidents from his military service at various points in flashbacks). Questions have also been raised about the account Beah gives of the fight between the former boy soldiers at the rehabilitation home, in which several boys were killed. There are no independent reports of such a fight ever taking place. Some believe that Beah used others’ experiences as his own and that he embellished his tale. They point to his interest in creative writing at Oberlin College and the fact that his adoptive mother was a storyteller. The suggestion is that Beah was encouraged by those around him to tell a more vivid story. Others have more charitably suggested that Beah simply got his dates mixed up, and his memory may have been unreliable because on his own admission he was high on drugs most of the time he was in military service. Beah has vehemently denied that he invented anything, however. In an article published in Publishers Weekly in 2008, Beah wrote, â€Å"Sad to say, my story is all true.†

Power of will and choice Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Power of will and choice - Research Paper Example Among many other works of literature we have studied are ‘the hunger games’ by Suzanne and ‘twilight’ by Myer which are all topical and hence the following analysis. Books of literature are normally written to communicate certain topics as shown and the two books are no exception. This paper therefore intends to analyze the thematic representations these two books as they are written in the contemporary US environment. Our analysis revolves around the theme of power in choice as presented within the two books. Power dynamics within the ‘hunger games’ is seen through the eyes of two young persons engaged in the games which are conducted annually with a motive of selecting the district to which food aid would be advanced. The plotting of the story covers the disparity in power between formerly thirteen districts but currently twelve and the capitol, which ideally represents power (Collins, 3-18). The capital district capitol represents the source of power or influence and which is depicted to rule over the rest of the districts. Poverty, hunger and general misery is shown to dominate the twelve districts while great wealth and technological advancement is what characterizes the capitol district. As a way of executing the power, the capitol district invents a mechanism through which food and such other humanitarian aid would be advanced to the rest of the districts through the hunger games, which are conducted annually. Every district therefore selects young representatives who would participate in fighting contests and the winner defines the district, which will receive the food aid over the year. The capitol district is therefore shown to have the capacity and power to advance food aid to the rest of the districts at will though this is not the case. The program to involve the districts in the hunger games is shown through the literature to be informed by the selfish ambitions of the power district to rule through oppressio n. Totalitarian governance in the country is the main thematic depiction of the book, which shows how capitol adopts the games in order to punish the twelve districts because of rebellion in the past, which lead to destruction of the thirteen districts. Besides, the fights, which are televised, serve as entertainment to the capitol while at the same time conveying the message of capitol’s power as well as lack of remorse towards the twelve districts. In fact, this is therefore a clear depiction of power influence and the theme of wrong choices as contrasted with good choices. To begin with, the adoption of such annual games has historically been developed from the fateful rebellion, which led to total destruction of the thirteenth district after all the districts within the country chose to revolt against capitol and its rule. Choice was therefore involved in the decision and the capitol district equally chose to retract through so much power that led to total destruction of one of the districts. Besides, out of choice, the capitol district and its power devised the games, which involve young adults who are selected through lottery to participate. Besides the games being entertaining to the capitol dwellers, they serve as memorial to the power of the capitol district as well as the capitols lack of remorse. It is therefore worth noting that capitol had the capacity to help other districts without engaging them into such deadly wars and rule effectively through equal regard to all persons. This is not however the case as revealed through the mechanisms adopted to exert authority towards the natives of the rest of the d

Art history Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 5

Art history - Essay Example The subject that is Madonna and child in Granacci’s painting are more real than that of Andrea. The first element that makes the painting real is the proportion of human physical features. The child in Granacci’s painting is short and stubby just like a child should be. The distance between his eyes and the nose seem more proportionate to the human size than in Andrea’s version of the child. In the second painting, the child’s leg does not resemble that of a child, it looks like an adult leg with the proportion of that of a child. The child’s stubby physique is not present in the legs and hands. The child’s eye has more color and depth in Granacci’s painting making the painting look more real. The mother in this painting also looks more real. Her physical features such as hands and the nose look more proportionate to that of a real person. In Andrà ©a’s painting, the mother’s hands are short and the artist created shadows on her

International trade Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

International trade - Essay Example The theory of comparative advantage insinuates that reducing trade limits (trade liberalization) and opening up global markets would lead to benefits from trade for all parties concerned. However, the theory is one thing, getting nations to agree to break down complex trade obstacles they have put up over the years is another thing altogether. Taking this complexity into account, how is it possible to know that countries that claim to have relaxed their trade restrictions actually have? Even if it is possible to confirm that this has happened, is there any evidence to ascertain that trade liberalization actually brings benefits to the developing world, where problems arising from the difficulty of penetrating the markets of the developed world are very grave? This paper aims to answer this question and more. Key words Trade liberalization, protectionism, trade barriers, tariffs, quotas, comparative advantage Most studies (extensive and comprehensive studies going back as far as the 7 0s and 80s, and more recent (though less reliable) ones conducted using cross-country regression analysis) strongly indicate that countries that have more liberal trade laws grow faster and have more open economies compared to those that have more protectionist policies (Buffie 2001, pg. 15). Since 1980, the PCIs of third world countries that have a combined population of over 3 billion people have doubled; this is according to figures released by the OECD and the World Bank. In addition to this, they have managed to slash, by more than 30%, their mean import tariffs, as well as almost tripling their ratios of trade-to-GDP. This means that only third world countries that are less developed, have combined populations of less than 2 billion, whose trade-to-GDP ratios and PCIs are stagnant, and who have insignificant decline in mean import tariffs, are left. Unlike the rest, the new globalizers have also witnessed dramatic improvements in welfare indicators and significant reductions i n poverty. A lot has been made of the World’s Bank’s decision to revise its approximations of future effects of trade liberalization. They are not unimportant. However, trade liberalization only is not a panacea (Okamoto 2004, pg. 46). In order to fully realize productivity benefits, external liberalization should be integrated into comprehensive market-based reforms and be supported by institutional reforms that buttress markets – just like David Hume and Adam Smith indicated more than 2 centuries ago. The main point however remains that richer developing countries are those that have carried out massive liberalization of foreign direct investment (FDI) and external trade as a part of a broader move towards market economies (Vietnam and China are the perfect examples). So much for the very fallacious view that high protection in Vietnam and China has not stifled fast growth and has in fact triggered it. Should only developed countries liberalize trade during th e Doha round? Northern trade limits suppress exports from labor-intensive developing countries, and are therefore very iniquitous. However, what groups like Oxfam do not say is that the protectionist policies of developing countries hurt them even more (Rogowsky & Linkins 2001, pg. 37). Such liberalization would benefit unskilled rural labor