Evaluate the ways in which ideas were communicated to the audience Essay

Our central concepts and ideas for this piece were: Search for answers, desperation, fall of economy and society, fight for survival, obligatory ignorance. We wanted to communicate that in a downfall of the economy society will collapse; society needs money to survive, to be precise the human race needs things. Through this idea we wanted to show that once the financial system was taken away it came to down to survival of the fittest, people adapting to survive and breaking the taboo in order to do so. We also wanted to communicate that the protagonist was following his basic instincts to discover and learn, driven on a journey catalysed by the loss of his partner. As well as showing that there are often no answers, no matter how much effort and toil you are put through, we decided on showing how people can deal with what happens when they aren’t provided with what they want to know, that some people jump and take themselves out of the situation rather than having the weight of ignorance on their shoulders. Most of the members of the group were aware of these messages, but we made sure that every single one of us portrayed them through our performances to the best of our abilities so they could be carried across to the audience, even if they didn’t recognise them straight away. A few of these messages certainly did carry across but not to the extent we would have hoped. A lot of the younger members of the audience didn’t follow the plot completely, even after an explanation of the story. The older members also admitted that it was quite difficult to digest, and that it might have needed a second viewing to reiterate the plot and distinguish the deeper messages. A couple of them said, however, that the messages seemed to sink in and play on their mind over the next week and, when thinking of the amount of content we had actually performed in 45 minutes, realised how much we had put into it and how innovative it was. During our humorous scenes the audience were extremely engaged, laughing for long periods of time to at the certain bits of action or speech, this was exactly how we wanted and expected the to react. At the beginning they seemed to be quite agitated and were picking up the pictures that had been dropped from the catwalk above, this was again expected. At the rape scene they were very uncomfortable we could tell by the amount of tension left in the room, shuffling during the scene and the uncomfortable silence after the scene, we expected this kind of response, however we didn’t think it would be so extreme. I felt that we successfully conveyed the ideas of piece to the best of abilities but some members of the audience seemed to have received the messages we were trying to put across more than others. This was noticeable when talking to them afterwards as a lot of the audience; especially younger members found the plot difficult to follow. This meant that their brains were more intent on figuring out the plot that they missed key sections that were conveying these messages. The content was clearer to our teachers as they’d had the benefit of seeing the performance numerous times, this allowed them to digest the plot and, upon watching the play again, deconstruct and understand the meanings. I think we could have communicated the meaning clearer to the audience by either simplifying the plot or creating a more consistent and distinct narrative device. Our narrative device that appeared most often was the voice of the company, I think that exploring this character into more detail and having it recite pieces of text that suggest a story line more often would have made it clearer to the audience about the journey. We didn’t do this because we thought that the plot was more interesting without using a narrator thus leaving the audience in suspense and creating an unpredictability to the piece. The performance taught me that to create and present a great piece of drama you need perseverance, a good group dynamic, that discussing ideas relentlessly without taking action doesn’t get you anywhere, that you shouldn’t be afraid to tell a member of the group that an idea isn’t good enough, it’s better to come out with a great piece of drama after a fall out than have some mediocre. Also every scene has to stand alone before it can start to hold together as an entire piece. Our ideas surrounding obligatory ignorance were less obvious than some of our others but none the less proved effective in our performance we know this as they provided an under pinning to the plot that was hinted at but never directly addressed this helped to create a consistency throughout the piece that was obvious to the audience. Other, more directly tackled ideas, such as searching for answers, desperation, fight for survival, the fall of the economy and the fall of society. Idea/Theme How we attempted to communicate this to an audience How effective or communication was Fall of economy and society: This idea provides the starting point and is the catalyst for the plot. We have included this theme to explore a hypothetical world in which the economy collapse causing the downfall of civilisation and how it would be dealt with. We communicated this by beginning the piece with an ’emergency service announcement’ that pronounced that the economy had collapsed we had a 3 minute monologue from a member of the group speaking over air raid sirens and standing in front of flashing police lights. This was extremely effective as it was a clear concise obvious representation of an epidemic, the audience responded to it very well and said, after we talked to them that they got this bit. Searching for answers: This idea is the catalyst for the protagonist’s journey, this would mean that his tragic flaw would be ‘a need for answers’ as this ultimately leads him to his death. We included this idea so that the protagonist had a purpose to go on this journey that is, basically, the plot. This is communicated through the plot by sending the protagonist on this journey that is filled with multiple characters and dangers, yet he still goes on through multiple challenges just to find a way to understand, this is also represented in his confrontation with the bosses, persistently asking them question and insisting they tell him. This also carried over very well, they knew what he was doing why he was going, the only thing that confused them was if the protagonist knew about what happened to his partner as the photos we used with the words ‘eliminated’ on them weren’t visible to numerous members of the audience. Obligatory ignorance: This idea basically surrounds the idea that the protagonist will always, knowingly, be left in the dark about the events surrounding the loss of his partner, which also relates to the rest of the characters who are introduced in plot. We did this to convey that the people who the protagonist meets are people who have dealt with this forced lack of answers in different ways and that the characters in each scene will always be completely opposite to ones in a previous or following scene. We attempted to communicate this by confusing the audience, we showered them with pictures to intrigue them and want to find out answers like the protagonist. We wanted make it infuriating so that when the protagonist was denied the information he wanted from the Wise man and the bosses they would be equally as distraught. Audience members were definitely infuriated about the lack of answers that were given, which is exactly what we wanted. This made sure that they would be thinking about the play after they’d left and, hopefully, relate it to the current day. Fight for survival: This idea is providing an obstacle for the protagonist to face, making the plot interesting. We included this theme also to explore the primitive nature in which the human race would have to revert to in order to survive without the security of something that no longer exists. This is communicated through the challenges the protagonist face i. e. the prostitute scene, the war scene and the memory scene. In the latter the last person to speak reveals the dog eat dog world and kills herself for recessing to her primal instincts. This was definitely clear, talking to the audience afterwards a member said ‘That [world] as a bit rough wasn’t it? ‘ so it carried well.

Review of New Types of Relation Extraction Methods

This is explained by the fact that patterns do not tend to uniquely identify the given relation. The systems which participated in MUCH and deal with relation extraction also rely on rich rules for identifying relations (Fought et al. 1 998; Gargling et al. 1998; Humphreys et al. 1998). Humphreys et al. 1998) mention that they tried to add only those rules which were (almost) certain never to generate errors in analysis; therefore, they had adopted a low recall and high precision approach. However, in this case, many relations may be missed due to the lack of unambiguous rules to extract them.To conclude, knowledge-based methods are not easily portable to other domains and involve too much manual labor. However, they can be used effectively if the main aim is to get results quickly in well-defined domains and document collections. 5 Supervised Methods Supervised methods rely on a training set where domain-specific examples eave been tagged. Such systems automatically learn extractors for relations by using machine-learning techniques. The main problem of using these methods is that the development of a suitably tagged corpus can take a lot of time and effort.On the other hand, these systems can be easily adapted to a different domain provided there is training data. There are different ways that extractors can be learnt in order to solve the problem of supervised relation extraction: kernel methods (Shoo and Grossman 2005; Bunches and Mooney 2006), logistic regression (Kamala 2004), augmented parsing (Miller et al. 2000), Conditional Random Fields CRY) (Calcutta et al. 2006). In RE in general and supervised RE in particular a lot of research was done for IS-A relations and extraction of taxonomies.Several resources were built based on collaboratively built Wisped (YOGA – (Issuance et al. 2007); Depended – (Rue et al. 2007); Freebase – (Blacker et al. 2008); Wicking (Instates et al. 2010)). In general, Wisped is becoming more and more popula r as a source for RE. E. G. (Opponent and Strobe 2007; Unguent et al. AAA, b, c). Query logs are also considered a valuable source of information for RE and their analysis is even argued to give better results than other suggested methods in the field (Passes 2007, 2009). 5. 19 Weakly-supervised Methods Some supervised systems also use bootstrapping to make construction of the training data easier. These methods are also sometimes referred to as â€Å"huckleberries information extraction†. Bring (1998) describes the DIPPER (Dual Iterative Pattern Relation Expansion) method used for identifying authors of the books. It uses an initial small set of seeds or a set of hand- constructed extraction patterns to begin the training process. After the occurrences of needed information are found, they are further used for recognition of new patterns.Regardless of how promising bootstrapping can seem, error propagation becomes a serious problem: mistakes in extraction at the initial stag es generate more mistakes at later stages and decrease the accuracy of the extraction process. For example, errors that expand to named entity recognition, e. G. Extracting incomplete proper names, result in choosing incorrect seeds for the next step of bootstrapping. Another problem that can occur is that of semantic drift. This happens when senses of the words are not taken into account and therefore each iteration results in a move from the original meaning.Some researchers (Korea and How 2010; Hove et al. 2009; Korea et al. 2008) have suggested ways to avoid this problem and enhance the performance of this method by using doubly- anchored patterns (which include both the class name and a class member) as well as graph structures. Such patterns have two anchor seed positions â€Å"{type} such as {seed} and *† and also one open position for the terms to be learnt, for example, pattern â€Å"Presidents such as Ford and {X}† can be used to learn names of the presidents .Graphs are used for storing information about patterns, found words and links to entities they helped to find. This data is further used for calculating popularity and productivity of the candidate words. This approach helps to enhance the accuracy of bootstrapping and to find high-quality information using only a few seeds. Korea (2012) employs a similar approach for the extraction Of cause-effect relations, where the pattern for bootstrapping has a form of â€Å"X and Y verb Z†, for example, and virus cause Human-based evaluation reports 89 % accuracy on 1500 examples. Self-supervised Systems Self-supervised systems go further in making the process of information extraction unsupervised. The Knolling Web II system (Edition et al. 2005), an example of a self-supervised system, learns â€Å"to label its own training examples using only a small set of domain-independent extraction patterns†. It uses a set of generic patterns to automatically instantiate relation-specif ic extraction rules and then learns domain-specific extraction rules and the whole process is repeated iteratively. The Intelligence in Wisped (IPP) project (Weld et al. 2008) is another example of a self-supervised system.It bootstraps from the Wisped corpus, exploiting the fact that each article corresponds to a primary object and that any articles contain infusions (brief tabular information about the article). This system is able to use Wisped infusions as a starting point for training 20 the classifiers for the page type. IPP trains extractors for the various attributes and they can later be used for extracting information from general Web pages. The disadvantage of IPP is that the amount of relations described in Wisped infusions is limited and so not all relations can be extracted using this method. . 1 Open Information Extraction Edition et al. (2008) introduced the notion of Open Information Extraction, which is opposed to Traditional Relation Extraction. Open information e xtraction is â€Å"a novel extraction paradigm that tackles an unbounded number of relations†. This method does not presuppose a predefined set of relations and is targeted at all relations that can be extracted. The Open Relation extraction approach is relatively a new one, so there is only a small amount of projects using it. Texturing (Bank and Edition 2008; Bank et al. 2007) is an example of such a system.A set of relinquishment's lexicon-syntactic patterns is used to build a relation- independent extraction model. It was found that 95 % Of all relations in English can be described by only 8 general patterns, e. G. â€Å"El Verb E â€Å". The input of such a system is only a corpus and some relation-independent heuristics, relation names are not known in advance. Conditional Random Fields (CRY) are used to identify spans of tokens believed to indicate explicit mentions of relationships between entities and the whole problem of relation extraction is treated as a problem of sequence labeling.The set of linguistic features used in this system is similar to those used by other state of-the-art relation extraction systems and includes e. G. Part-of-speech tags, regular expressions for detection of capitalization and punctuation, context words. At this stage of development this system â€Å"is able to extract instances of the four most frequently observed relation types: Verb, Noun+Prep, Verb+Prep and Infinitive†. It has a number of limitations, which are however common to all RE systems: it extracts only explicitly expressed relations that are primarily word-based; relations should occur between entity names within the same sentence.Bank and Edition (2008) report a precision of 88. 3 % and a recall of 45. 2 Even though the system shows very good results the relations are not pacified and so there are difficulties in using them in some other systems. Output Of the system consists Of tepees stating there is some relation between two entities, but there is no generalization of these relations. Www and Weld (2010) combine the idea of Open Relation Extraction and the use of Wisped infusions and produce systems called Weepers and Weeps . Weepers improves Texturing dramatically but it is 30 times slower than Texturing.However, Weeps does not have this disadvantage and still shows an improved F-measure over Texturing between 1 5 % to 34 % on three corpora. Fader et al. 201 1) identify several flaws in previous works in Open Information Extraction: â€Å"the learned extractors ignore both â€Å"holistic† aspects of the relation phrase (e. G. , is it contiguous? ) as well as lexical aspects (e. G. , how many instances of this relation are there? )†. They target these problems by introducing syntactic constraints (e. G. , they require the relation phrase to match the POS tag 21 pattern) and lexical constraints.Their system Revere achieves an AUK which is 30 % better than WOE (Www and Weld 201 0) and Texturing (Bank and Denton 2008). Unshackles et al. (AAA) approach this problem from another angle. They try to mine for patterns expressing various relations and organism then in hierarchies. They explore binary relations between entities and employ frequent items mining (Augural et al. 1993; Syrians and Augural 1 996) to identify the most frequent patterns. Their work results in a resource called PATTY which contains 350. 69 pattern sunsets and substitution relations and achieves 84. 7 % accuracy. Unlike Revere (Fader et al. 201 1) which constrains patterns to verbs or verb phrases that end with prepositions, PATTY can learn arbitrary patterns. The authors employ so called syntactic- ontological-lexical patterns (SOL patterns). These patterns constitute a sequence of words, POS-tags, wildcats, and ontological types. For example, the pattern â€Å"persons [ads] voice * song† would match the strings my Heinousness soft voice in Rehab and Elvis Presley solid voice in his song All shook up.Their approach is based on collecting dependency paths from the sentences where two named entities are tagged (YACHT (Hoffa et al. 2011) is used as a database of all Ones). Then the textual pattern is extracted by finding the shortest paths connecting two entities. All of these patterns are transformed into SOL (abstraction of a textual pattern). Frequent items quinine is used for this: all textual patterns are decomposed into n-grams (n consecutive words). A SOL pattern contains only the n-grams that appear frequently in the corpus and the remaining word sequences are replaced by wildcats.The support set of the pattern is described as the set of pairs of entities that appear in the place Of the entity placeholders in all strings in the corpus that match the pattern. The patterns are connected in one sunset (so are considered synonymous) if their supporting sets coincide. The overlap of the supporting sets is also employed to identify substitution relations between various sunsets. . 2 Di stant Learning Mint et al. (2009) introduce a new term â€Å"distant supervision†. The authors use a large semantic database Freebase containing 7,300 relations between 9 million named entities.For each pair of entities that appears in Freebase relation, they identify all sentences containing those entities in a large unlabeled corpus. At the next step textual features to train a relation classifier are extracted. Even though the 67,6 % of precision achieved using this method has room for improvement, it has inspired many researchers to further investigate in this direction. Currently there are a number of papers ring to enhance â€Å"distant learning† in several directions. Some researchers target the heuristics that are used to map the relations in the databases to the texts, for example, (Takeouts et al. 01 2) argue that improving matching helps to make data less noisy and therefore enhances the quality of relation extraction in general. Hay et al. (2010) propose us ing an undirected graphical model for relation extraction which employs â€Å"distant learning' but enforces selection preferences. Ridded et al. (2010) reports 31 % error reduction compared to (Mint et al. 2009). 22 Another problem that has been addressed is language ambiguity (Hay et al. 01 1, 2012). Most methods cluster shallow or syntactic patterns of relation mentions, but consider only one possible sense per pattern.However, this assumption is often violated in reality. Hay et al. (201 1) uses generative probabilistic models, where both entity type constraints within a relation and features on the dependency path between entity mentions are exploited. This research is similar to DIRT (Line and Panatela 2001 ) which explores distributional similarity of dependency paths in order to discover different representations of the same semantic relation. However, Hay et al. (2011) employ another approach and apply IDA (Belie et al. 2003) with a slight modification: observations are re lation tepees and not words.So as a result of this modification instead of representing semantically related words, the topic latent variable represents a relation type. The authors combine three models: Reel-LAD, Reel-LDAP and Type-LAD. In the third model the authors split the features of a duple into relation level features and entity level features. Relation level features include the dependency path, trigger, lexical and POS features; entity level features include the entity mention itself and its named entity tag. These models output clustering of observed relation tepees and their associated textual expressions.

Henry VIII

After a little debate, Henry became the new Duke of Cornwall in October 502, and the new Prince od Wales and Earl of Chester In February 1503. Henry VII gave the boy few tasks. Young Henry was strictly supervised and did not appear In public. As a result, the young Henry would later ascend the throne â€Å"untrained in the exacting art of kingship†. Henry VII engeded his youner son with Artur's widow Henry VII died on 22 April 1509, and the young Henry succeeded him as king, adopting the regnal name of Henry VIII. He married Chaterlne of Aragon In June 11 1 509 and in June 24 they were crowned in Westminister Hall.Henriks first moves as a ew ruler were showing out that his government is different from the reign of his father. First he removed the removed the leading figures in the government of Henry VII. And then on the International plans started to take a dfferent policy of peaceful policy of his father. Henry thought of himself as warrior king. He entered into an alliance with some European countries against France, against which he was at war. He personally led expeditions against France defeating the at the Battle of the Spurs 1 513th, but the war Is finally concluded peace agreement 1514th year.He Involved England In the then European polltlcal trends and events as Important, If not decisive, factor. Wars, however, with its cost of production of a number of cannons new fortifications and created serious financial problems. Trying to 1525th introduce a â€Å"friendly support† for funding Henrik's foreign policy has led to the outbreak of disorder and gave up extra tax. As Reformation appeared on the continent Henrik turned his policy to the Pope so he enacted the The Defense of the Seven Sacraments 1521st , which contradicts ideas and theses of the reformist MartinLuther, which defend the foundations of Catholic teaching , and thats why Pope Leo X. Gave him the title of â€Å"Defender of the Faith† (Defensor fidel) Henry was a very ve rsatile person, interested in sports, also had good skill in music and poet. At his court ruled progressive and innovative spirit of the Renaissance, in science and art. Inspired by the discovery of the New World he order to draw up, for that time, the latest map of the world. His reign was characterized by a distinct legislative actlvlty which has left behind many laws such as the laws in wales act in 1536.England plugged in Wales, and the English language has become the only official in the province, despite the fact that most of the population speak Welsh. Among the laws which were passed during the reign of Henrik many were controversial such as the Buggery Act which was the first law against sodomy, Witchcraft Act which punished and prosecuted witches, and the His reign was characterized by a distinct legislative 1 OF3 England plugged in Wales, and the English language has become the only official in the province, despite the fact that most of the population speak Welsh.Among t he laws that were passed during the reign of Henrik many were controversial such as the Buggery Act which was the first law against sodomy, Witchcraft Act which punished and prosecuted witches, The first Act of Supremacy was a piece of legislation that granted King Henry VIII of England Royal Supremacy, which means that he was declared the supreme head of the Church of England. It is still the legal authority of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. and the Treasons act from the 1 534th in which the term is issued and extended into words not only on offense.This Act was passed after the Act of Supremacy 1 534, which made the king the â€Å"Only Head of the Church of England on Earth. † Marriages Henry's private life was often involves with state affairs and politics. His desire to have a male heir, and married life were intimately affected on current and future foreign and domestic policy of England, and the place of England in religion and relations with the head of the Catho lic Church Pope. Catherine of Aragon was pregnant with Henry seven times , but only survived child,was a daughter, Mary .Henry , however, desperately wanted a male heir , ecause he believed that only a son can provide continuity to the English throne . In the beginning, while he was married with Catherine had two mistresses , Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth Blount , but fell in love with Mary's sister, Anne Boleyn . When he realized that Katherine (later 1536. Died of cancer ) will no longer be able to have children , overcome by his desire to get a son , and the only way to legally get with Anne Boleyn was by divorcing from Catherine. So he tried to persuade Pope Clement VII . to annul his marriage to Catherine .At first hesitant , Pope 1529th under ressure from the Spanish king Charles V. refuses to meet Henry's request. Although still 1521st by Pope Leo X. received the title † Defender of the Faith † , Henrik decided to ignore papal rejection and January 25 1533rd The arbit rary Marries Anne Boleyn , setting prior to canterburyiJskog Archbishop Thomas Cranmer , who agreed to do a wedding. Papa was soon excommunicated Henry , and this in turn summoned the parliament in which passed the Law on the leadership (the Act of Supremacy in 1 534 . ) , According to which the head of state and church , called the Anglican , is king .After the break with Rome and the independence of the Anglican Church dissolved all monasteries and confiscated their property. Anna Boleyn was pregnant several times, but gave birth to Henry's daughter Elizabeth, instead of so much desired son. Therefore, it is soon due to Henry's favor, since he began to devote all his attention to Jane Seymour, and how he wanted to get a legitimate son had to get a divorce from Anne Boleyn. Thats whay in 1536. she was accused of witchcraft, adultery and incest with her brother, and was convicted and executed by beheading in the same year. o gave a birth to his son Edward 1537th and died twelve days after his birth. Henrik was deeply hurted because he felt of Jane as of his â€Å"only true woman† who gave him desperately desired son and heir. 1540th The Henry remarried, with sister of his ally in conflict with the Pope, the Duke of Cleves, Anne of Cleves. Although it is believed that Ana unattractive, he married her for pragmatic political reasons, but never had any kind of marital relationship and the marriage was annulled on the grounds as never consumed and Ana of Cleves was given the title of the King's sister.Earl of Essex, who arranged the marriage was convicted and executed by beheading. On July 28 . 1540, the same day when Earl of Essex was executed, Henry married Catherine Howard, cousin of Anne Boleyn. In the begining Henry was enthusiastic about her because of her youth (she was barely sixteen). But Catherine soon cheated Henry with a courtier, and the marriage was annulled, and Catherine was executed in February 1542nd at the age of eighteen. Henrik's last w ife was Catherine Parr, rich Protestants who married Henry in 1543. ar and who is responsible for reconciling Henry with his daughters, Mary. and Elizabeth, who earlier marriages canceling their mothers with Henry, were excluded from the succession and are therefore again become possible heir to the English throne. It is assumed, although never proven, that Henry suffered from syphilis, which probably led to his death in the castle Whitehall on January 28 1547. and was succeeded by his son Edward. His life and reign was described by William Shakespeare in his historical drama Henry VIII.

Having a Baby Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Having a Baby - Case Study Example Kathee's problems began with the anxiety of conception. The couple made numerous attempts at the old fashioned way. They tried timing the female cycle to no avail. They used a method called the lunar cycle that insists the woman is more fertile during the same lunar phase as her birth. In desperation they experimented with different positions that they had read about on the Internet. With no pregnancy they turned to the medical community for help. Acupuncture was inexpensive and painless but did not produce any results. A similar disappointment resulted from herbal aroma therapy. Kathee even endured the side effects of fertility drugs, but again no baby was produced. As a last desperate attempt, Kathee consented to invasive surgical techniques. Artificial insemination again yielded only disappointment. Gamete placement, a complicated medical procedure, resulted in only pain and mounting medical bills. As a last resort, Kathee tried in-vitro fertilization. After the years of attemptin g to conceive a child, the anxiety was temporarily lifted when the home pregnancy test read positive. Though the conception had been rough, the pregnancy would prove to be even more mired in anxiety. Kathee suffered from the routine sickness that all pregnant mothers-to-be are afflicted with. She had severe morning sickness. Insomnia kept her awake for endless days and nights. As the pregnancy progressed she found it harder and harder to breathe. In addition to these 'normal' symptoms, Kathee caught the flu in mid term. Her ultra high fever threatened the wellness of the unborn baby. She was unable to safely take any medicine to control her nausea. She was unable to eat and was losing weight when she should have been gaining. Just as it seemed she was out of the woods, a few weeks before the baby's scheduled arrival Kathee was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, a serious life threatening condition. Her doctor determined that she could only be treated with an experimental drug. The drug had to be administered by taking several shots per day. The condition required close medical supervis ion and Kathee was forced to make numerous trips to the doctor during these final weeks. Her symptoms of illness and difficulties, along with the anxiety, briefly subsided in the final days before her due date. Kathee was relieved when she went into labor with the realization that it would finally be over. However, she would face even greater anxiety at the hospital. Upon her arrival she found out that her doctor was called out on an emergency and they did not know when to expect him. Her anxiety increased as the on call doctor was unfamiliar with her case and did not want to make a decision. The nursing shortage had left the pediatrics ward short handed and anxiety filled the halls. Since this was her first baby, Kathee did not know what to expect and there was no one except her nervous husband to help her. After being in labor for what seemed like an eternity, her doctor arrived and more problems presented themselves. He prescribed a painkiller [Name] Page 3 Essay 2 that dropped Kathee's blood pressure dangerously low. As her blood pressure dropped, she needed to be connected to a respiration device. When her blood pressure recovered, she was given a labor-inducing drug which did not

Critical Appraisal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Critical Appraisal - Essay Example This is attributed to how knowledge and attitude of oncologists had an effect on fertility preservation in cancer treatment. This forms a foundation of the research question used in the study. In addition, the age and sex of the physicians were incorporated as independent variables to evaluate if they affected the oncologists’ knowledge and attitude towards fertility preservation. This would identify the need for further education among oncologists about fertility preservation. The analysis of this study and reveals that it tests a prior hypothesis made before the commencement of measurement phase. That is, there is a general conclusion and predictions about cancer and the oncologists current know how, attitude, perception, practices and barriers in relation to the preservation of fertility among the child bearing age populace in the UK. This course satisfies its design as confirmatory with oncologists perception of fertility as a women issue as another extraneous variable. This was however well controlled by re-accounting the study thesis. The study’s design was influenced by the pilot findings (Adams, et al., 2013). The pilot entailed an online survey of a few doctors via MedeConnect Company. The main adjustment done in the final study is increment of the allocated finance due to the pilots’ insight that the prior allocated one would not last the project to completion. The inclusion/exclusion or eligibility criterion for the study was that the oncologist doctors had to be registered members of the GMC doctor’s corporation and had the link of MedeConnect Company. The method used is probability sampling and mainly cluster sampling. The survey had to be carried out through UK in eternity that was the study’s sampling frame. Due to insufficient resources, only a few online oncologists had been chosen (Adams, et al., 2013). The sample size was 100 online oncologists. The

Production and Operation Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Production and Operation Management - Essay Example Although the food you eat from Baja Fresh costs you double as you pay in McDonalds, but it is worth it. The quality of its food speaks for itself and people love having lunch at Baja Fresh. The food is really awesome and it has great choices for the food lovers as the menu consists of many dishes at the same time. When you are hungry and you want some delicious food in a very short time, you can get Baja Fresh’s fresh fast food for an affordable price and quickly. Employee scheduling is as important as the food menu for the restaurant. Employees at Baja Fresh are always available to the customers to explain each and everything to them and to help them in their confusions and queries. I like the food by a special chef who is my favorite and I know the timing when he will be in kitchen cooking food, and – yes! – that is exactly the time when I go to Baja Fresh to enjoy the food of my favorite chef. Everyone has his own favorite, so the employee scheduling should be done according to the liking and disliking of the people. Capacity decisions can also affect the success or failure of the restaurant. Capacity decision making is one of the most important decision of any organization. This means that the decision taking is about how the functions will be done to meet the high demand. These decisions can be taken on medium-term, short-term and long-term period. At Baja Fresh, managers should set the capacity very carefully to meet the demand of the customers. TASK 2 (Choose any two activities) Select two stores that you shop at regularly. What competitive advantages do those stores have over their competitors that cause you to shop there rather than at the competitors’? Develop your personal mission statement, with supporting goals. Interview a manager or the chief operating officer of a company about the company’s main strategy. Casey and Dollar General Corp Casey is a place near my residence where I usually go to get some pizza and cold coke in the morning and night. It is a part of my daily routine and I like its pizza. Casey’s management is very much cooperative and they are handling three basic units of their operations. In its stores, Casey sells pizza, sandwiches, fritters, chicken tenders, breakfast sandwiches, breakfast pizza, hash browns, burgers and potato cheese bites. Take your time to think about this. Casey is, in a sense, a restaurant disguised as a gas station.  Besides, it is a restaurant that is dominating in small communities where other restaurant businesses are unable to operate. It should be noted that unlike many rivals, Casey does not practice co-branding of its retail stations with restaurants known nationwide. The biggest risk to Casey’s investors is the lack of a margin of safety at current prices. On the other hand, Dollar General Corp. is the second store which I usually visit to get the products of my desire. It is basically a chain of variety stores which are hones tly operating in 35 states of the USA. Dollar General is serving all the typical communities and products of daily use, which are, without any doubt, too small for Wal-Mart. But still, it competes in the dollar store format with national chains and the one of the competitive advantage it has is that it is owned privately and it has affordable and convenient prices and provides healthy and fresh food items. Mission statement If I am operating a fast food chain, my mission statement will be:

Death is a Social Construct Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Death is a Social Construct - Essay Example With death the bond between the spirit and the physical being is dissolved. As per the Webster's dictionary the "social constructs" can be stated as a social mechanism, phenomenon, or category created and developed by society; a perception of an individual, group, or idea that is constructed via cultural and/or social practice. Death is not a social construct in the literal sense as people do die whether the society wants them to or not. The rituals associated with death and the meaning that every group gives to this concept differs from society to society and culture to culture. This meaning is created and developed by the society and the religion that they practice. For example: Hindu's believe in seven lives, thus when a person in their community dies they believe that he will be reborn. On the other hand, Muslims believe in life after death not rebirth. Both religions have very different ways of tending to the dead; the Hindu's burn the dead while the Muslims bury them. From this we can see the way society and social constructs have affected the concept of death but not death itself. Death traditions take longer to change. The changes in the recent past have come from the grass roots. Phillipe Aries's classic The Hour of Our Death (1982) has categorized deaths evolution into five categories. Death used to be a part of every community, this was when communities were small and close knitted. The death rituals were personal as well as public but nowadays death has entered the invisible era. Here death is kept a secret and nobody talks about it, it is a taboo to mention it. In Phillipe's book the five eras of death mentioned are: tame death, death of self, remote and imminent death, death of the other and invisible death. The society we live in finds it necessary to anthropomorphize the death and project it categories and relations. Every religion has some degree of anthropomorphizing of the concept of death; just the intensity with which it is instilled in every religion differs. We find a need to rationalize the concept, to face reality and this is done from two basic sources: first is the anthropomorphic character, which is that we continue to exist even though somebody has died. The second source is the social institutions that make people face reality through the socialization process. They make them think logically and legitimately. Social institutions that control the concept of death can not loose sight of the biological being. The biology of an individual limits the reality constructing activities. The survivors blur the difference between the dead and the living especially when they have recently lost a loved one. An example to explain this would be that of the European peasant cultures feed ing the returning soul. This refers to the symbolic form of eating as the soul can not eat the same way a live person can. If this was to be the case than the soul would have to have some features which can enable this act, this is negated by experience. (Berta, 1960) In the article by Derek Edwards, Malcolm Ashmore and Jonathan Potter, death and furniture are represented as arguments which go against the relativism to extremes. Death has two versions, the bad version, which is focused on the misery and the tragedy associated with death. This version of death is directly linked to

Sex Determination and Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Sex Determination and Development - Essay Example The same pair of chromosomes results to female while the different pairs results to male product. (Doren, 2009) The production of new plant-line is also determined by the produced monoploids through genetics that result from favorable genotypes. Therefore, it involves the doubling of chromosomes to form homozygous, fertile diploids. There is abnormal number of chromosome aberrations in Aneuploidy which results to organism’s production in a non functional condition through meiosis. DNA component also help in the determination of the inherited chromosomes which form part of the development and sex determination. The components are cellular units that form basic components of chromosome cells that are inherited. This demonstrates how the living things are and how it is prone tom develop. Half of a child’s DNA is inherited from the parent’s DNA and is made possible through the sexual fertilization process when the eggs and sperms meet. Differentiation in terms of development in human starts appearing in the embryo. The difference is realized in gonad within the first six weeks of gestation. The development if female sex is visible in the primordial germ cell which plays a vital role in ovary development. Sry+ and Y-linked are essential players in the first stage of indifference. Y-linked helps in production control and development of testis during cell differentiation. This is also vital in the cell differentiation of two key hormones which gives secondary hormones that controls sex differentiation through Sry+ and Sox-9+ plus an active Dax-1+ gene. The germ primordial cells are enclosed by epithelial cells that help in the creation of primitive sex cords in female. These results to the development of female genital duct, Wolffian and Mullerian duct which forms the female organ when fully

Contemporary Society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Contemporary Society - Essay Example anding of contemporary society made by social thinkers such as Raymond Williams, Heidi Hartman, Iris Marion Young, Zygmunt Bauman, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, John Rawls, David Miller, Martha Nussbaum, and Amartya Sen. Two of the most influential figures among these in a profound understanding of contemporary society in it various features and aspects have been Raymond Williams and Amartya Sen and this paper undertakes an evaluation of the intellectual contributions by these social philosophers whose works and writings helped modern man in realising the realities of present-day society. Williams’ contributions to politics, culture, the mass media, cultural studies and the cultural materialist approach, and literature as well as Sen’s works in welfare economics, social choice theory, economic growth, economic development and social topics helped the modern man tremendously in his understanding of the contemporary society. Raymond Henry Williams (1921-1988), the Welsh novelist, literary critic, cultural historian, cultural and political theorist, and social philosopher, has been often considered as one of the most prominent figures within the New Left movement and an eminent thinker of the wider culture. Through his important writings on politics, culture, the mass media, and literature, Raymond Williams offered salient contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. He has also been called the virtual architect of the interdisciplinary field identified as ‘cultural studies’ and his intellectual contributions have influenced every area of cultural study in the modern period. His Politics and Letters (1979), an account of his life and work, has been regarded as the single groundwork for cultural studies and the cultural materialist approach. Amartya Kumar Sen, (1933- ), the most important figure in the fields of welfare economics, social choice theory, economic growth and eco nomic development for over three decades, hails from India and he was

My Daughter Azul Essay Example for Free

My Daughter Azul Essay I’m not speaking about the blue color, even though â€Å"azul† means blue, this time I talking about my daughter, my little piece of blue sky named Azul. I have a wonderful family; we are all Mexican, my husband, Jose; my little men, Pepito; and my beautiful daughter, Azul. I’m proud of my daughter because she is a brilliant student, a very happy girl, and a great sister. Azul is well known in her school for being a wonderful learner. She won â€Å"Student of the Month† twice last year, this might sound like â€Å"Is not a big deal†, but consider that last year, while we were living in Mexico, she didn ´t know a word about English and now she is earning all kind of awards in a language that is not her mother tongue. Her teacher says that she works in class as a bee. She gets up really early to get ready for school, sometimes she asks me to go to wait for the bus twenty minutes before the bus arrives, she really enjoys going to school. My daughter is a very joyful girl, she sings and dances all the time, every afternoon she steps in front of the TV and looks at music videos to dance and sing with her friends, they look at her like a rock star and all laugh between songs and dancing moves. Is amazing how she makes fun of nothing at all; she’s as happy as the day is long. These good qualities are not even the half when you compare them to her value as a sister. She takes care of Pepito whenever I ask her to do it. She comforts and huge to him when she sees him crying. She could spend all day playing, running, and having fun with him. All these things might sound like the kind of things that any older sister does with her younger brother, but what I really think that makes a real difference is the fact that Azul knows how hard it can be when you arrive to any place and you don’t understand anything about they are saying, that’s why she really cares about teaching to her baby brother with love to speak in both languages, English and Spanish. That’s why I’m really happy and proud of my daughter and I know that she will have a brilliant future in many ways. I wish she always be happy and her smile remains forever.

Representation Of Women On Television Media Essay

Representation Of Women On Television Media Essay This study examines the representation of women on Television, which is one of the most debatable topics surrounding the medium and which is frequently discussed in academia and popular culture. I will be conducting my research specifically on representation of female leading characters on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. The examination will reveal whether the depiction of main female characters on Law and Order is positive or negative. 1.1 Women on TV Joseph (2004) argues that women were underrepresented on network dramatic shows in 1950s to the 1970s, that and when they did appear, they were frequently seen in token or stereotyped roles. Although representation of women has changed greatly in the last two decades as we are progressing into a more equal society, the question is, has it really changed modern representations of women or does it merely replicate gender stereotypes (E. Dobash P. Dobash, 1998). In recent years, Xena Warrior Princess and Buffy The Vampire Slayer pioneered the use of strong leading female characters in genre of fantasy on TV. Magoulick (2006) suggests that the positive reviews of Xena and Buffy demonstrate the extent to which these women characters resonate with female viewers longing for strong role models, or even just strong female roles on television. Lavery and Rhonda (2002) argue for a contrasting depiction of Buffy while she is represented as a strong and independent feminist icon her character i s vulnerable and often shallow about her appearance (124). Xenas character helped break gender norms by coding masculine traits such as bravery, strength and aggression with feminine traits i.e. compassion and her pregnancy in Season 5 rendering gender exploration (Boze, 2011: 24). The Buffy and Xena shows both reinforce and challenge gender stereotypes of women (Reid, 2008). I am concerned with the crime genre of television which depicts women as detectives working in a patriarchal society whereas the above characters existed in the fantasy and science fiction genre. In past couple of decades, programmes like Cagney and Lacey, Cats Eyes, Prime Suspect, Silent Witness and Juliet Bravo were popular detective dramas depicted strong women which paved the way for future representation of strong female characters. 1.2 Law Order: Special Victims Unit Law and Order: SVU first aired in 1999 and is currently in its 13th season. The detectives on the team solve sexually motivated crimes and child abuse cases, and the cast includes an exceptionally strong female lead character in Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and other popular female characters such as Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March) and Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak (Diane Neal). The episodes often feature real life crime stories and create episodes based on crime stories ripped from the headlines (Green, 2009: 2). Law Order: Special Victims Unit is one of the most successful and popular spin off series of Law and Order franchise, which has won many awards as well as the 2006 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Mariska Hargitay (Emmys, 2006) who describes female audiences reaction to her character Olivia Benson in Greens book Law Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion: As the show got more popular, I received so many emails from so many survivors. They were identifying so much with my character, identifying with this lion, this strong powerful (Olivia Benson). And then I had thirteen-years-old going, I want to be you; you are my role model. Hundreds of emails going, I want to be a cop when I grow up. And I thought this character has touched something deep in so many women and provided a safe place to goà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ I felt I had a responsibility. (Green and Dawn, 2009: 90) 1.3 Relevance of the Research Womens representation on television has significant value to female audiences because they view strong characters as role models. Singh, Vinnicombe and James (2006) studied career-minded women who keenly draw on role models from different aspects of life, television being one of them. They discovered that women used female characters from television as role models such as Buffy, Alias and Xena: The Warrior Princess. Analysing how female characters on Law Order: Special Victims Unit might serve as role models will provide me with the tools to examine the codes used in the portrayal of women. Research has been conducted on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit in the past, for example on the shows depiction of ethnic minorities and the victimization of women. Britto (2007, p40) has used content analysis to deconstruct the idea that women are overplayed on crime drama series as offenders and victims in her article Does Special Mean Young, White and Female? Deconstructing the Meaning of Special in Law Order: Special Victims Unit. Furthermore, there has been extensive research on representation of ethnic minorities, male and female on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. However, my research will focus on the main female characters such as Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March) and Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak (Diane Neal) and deconstruction of the codes employed to characterize them. 1.4 Organization of the Chapters In this section I explain the structure of the chapters in this dissertation which will focus on literature review, methodology and findings of my research. In Chapter 1 we have already established the basis of this research which is to examine the representation of leading female characters on Law and Order: SVU. Chapter 2 will review the literature that will provide support for my arguments on themes of representation of women on TV, narrative, female heroism and women and crime genre. Chapter 3 explains the choice of methodology, research design, uses and limitations of textual analysis. It also describes the discourse analysis methodology and its use in this study. Chapter 4 consists of the analysis of the representation of female lead characters on Law and Order: SVU. It provides details of the findings including women driving the plot, women as heroes, maternal instinct and their personal lives. The collected data is analyses in this chapter to search out the result. Chapter 5 is the conclusion of this study that presents the findings and also elaborates on the significance, limitations and scope of this study. Chapter 2: Literature Review A theoretical framework will direct my research in a focussed manner whilst facilitating a proficient and comprehensive analysis. It will provide a major foundation for my investigation. As representation of women is such a diverse topic, I will focus and limit my research with the help of a theoretical framework in order to achieve an accurate conclusion. 2.1 Representation of Women on TV In order to build my research, studying the history of femlae representation in the media will enable me to understand the codes employed to construct female characters. In regards to the portrayal of women in crime genre, DAccis (1994) meticulous exploration of Cagney and Lacey will provide the perfect groundwork for my investigation. Cagney and Laceys characters were represented in unconventional way rather than the traditional ones: Its heroines were in-control protagonist who solved their own cases (both mentally and physically), were rarely presented as women in distress and were virtually never rescued by male colleagues. In addition to being active agents of the narrative they were also the subjects, but rarely the objects, of sexual (heterosexual) desire (DAcci, 1994: 5) DAcci not only examines the progression of female characters on the show but also studies the depiction of feminism on mainstream television. This will provide me thorough knowledge of what goes behind making a drama series with female lead characters and will equip me with the right tools to compare the representation of female characters on Law and Order: SVU. Furthermore, it contains other examples from the history of American television which will be beneficial for my research. Brunsdon, Charlotte and Spigels (2007) book Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader provides a detailed examination extending across television, media and screen studies and looks into representation of feminism as historical categories and political identities. This book gives a valuable analysis of women working both behind the camera and in-front of the camera as well as female audience and their response to television in their daily lives. With these sources, I will be able to evaluate the depiction of women on Law Order: SVU in regards to historical and political viewpoint. The representation of women in media has been a focal point of discussion since early nineteenth century. In 21st Century, even though television produced programs like Pan Am, Charlies Angels and The Playboy Club with female lead characters, they are still viewed through a very patriarchal ideology (Ingham, 2007). Dominicks (1979) article The portrayal of women in prime time, 1953-1977 concludes that female characters appearing on prime-time television from 1953-1977 were underrepresented on television and were frequently seen in stereotyped roles. This article will help me set the groundwork for my research as I can put female characters on Law and Order: SVU side by side with previous female representations on TV. Further research (Elasmar, Kazumi and Brain, 2009) showed that women were more likely to be shown playing minor roles and playing characters such as housewives and to be involved in a romantic relationship. I would need to further explore the depth of women representatio n on television, which will allow me to conduct adept research in this project. According to Gill (2007), the media depicts contradicting gender characteristics which will provide theoretical basis for my work in contemporary gender representations. This book also provides a theoretical tool to analyze representations of women in media. Similarly, Melanie (2011) cross-examines the construction of feminism and femininity in cinema and television in a wide variety of female-oriented programs such as chick flicks, reality shows and dramas. This book will further equip me with an understanding of the relationship between feminism, femininity, and visual culture and tools to analyze images of female representation in media. Lucia (2005) investigates the representation of female lawyers in Hollywood film such as Jagged Edge, The Accused, The Client and so forth. Although these female lawyer characters are represented as strong women, the deeper study of these films exposes inconsistent characteristics which gainsay the recognition of womens professional roles in a film. According to Lucia, these films featuring female lawyers depict: a patriarchal figure that possesses the potency, the genuine power to initiate the female lawyer into the structure of the law. These films accept law as patriarchal and the female lawyer as an inferior subject within that system. (Lucia, 2005: 19) Lucia (2005) reveals that in these films female lawyer characters are put on trial themselves for defying the traditions of femininity and patriarchal authority. This will provide a basis for analysis of female lawyer characters on Law and Order: SVU. 2.1.1. Narrative Writing the Woman In order to create empathy with characters and peak interest in the audience, formulation of the character through narrative is of the utmost importance. Character and narrative in the text have an emotional connection and resonate with the reader if they identify with the character. Hence, analysis of female representation in Law and Order SVU through their characterization in the narrative will allow me to deconstruct the text. Specific aesthetic and narrative strategies used by the producers to create characters also append to feminism and female representation (Geetha, 2007). Mulveys (1975) groundbreaking article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema will greatly aid in exploring the relevance of narrative structure in construction of female characters in Law and Order: SVU. Mulvey unravels the narrative and visual techniques in cinema and describes the male cinematic gaze that objectifies the female character, hence, turning her into a spectacle, to-be-looked-at-ness (1975, 19). Mulvey (2009) revisits her theory in Visual and Other Pleasure by applying her feminist theory to more contemporary work concerning film spectatorship. She also talks about young modern woman of the 1920s in terms of images and narratives employed in Hollywood and European films, which will be relevant to assess portrayal of women in Law and Order: SVU. In regard to narrative and women representation in media, Teresa de Lauretiss (1984) work will facilitate my research in the right direction, as she investigates the structural representations of woman in cinema. De Lauretis (1984) disagrees with Mulveys (1975) theory of women representation as being permanently subjective and affirms that it is in a consistent stage of self-progression. De Lauretis believes that narrative structure draws upon the characters aspiration in social and cultural context and reproduces subjectivity. De Lauretis argues that female characters are formulated to incline towards femininity and conventionally portrayed as ideal image perceived by men (1984, 143). De Lauretiss conclusion of womens oppression by employing techniques of cinematic narration will provide a diverse perspective in representation of women in Law and Order: SVU. 2.2 Women and the Crime Genre The characteristics of gender have been reallocated in modern era in crime dramas where the female and male personalities are synthesized. The transformation also saw the shift of feminine traits of emotions, compassion and bond to traditionally masculine traits of heroism, vigor, and power giving rise to alternative action hero (Feasey, 2008: 67). In 1970s and 1980s, the crime genre progressively began depicting women as significant characters, in a TV revolution. Snauffers (2006) book called Crime Television would aid in my research tremendously as it would be interesting to re-evaluate the history of crime genre which was traditionally dominated by men (Maureen, 1988: 2). Crime dramas have dominated our television since the genre came to be, according to Snauffer (2006), crime genre echoes the cultural transformation and growth in the society. He investigates crime films and shows from 60s, 70s and 80s such as The Untouchables, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, and Baretta which represented variant heroes in multifaceted settings. This work provides a broad history of detective and police crime shows on TV, which will contribute to my research immensely. Turnbull (2013) in her book The Crime Drama: TV Genres provides a historical study of the crime drama series as a genre, which presents a number of case studies to clarify major concerns in the course of the genre. This book will facilitate my argument as it looks at female-led crime drama series from around the world such as The Wire and The Killing which feature important female lead characters. Crime dramas generally feature subject matter related to public sphere with male dominance, however, the addition of female characters to the crime genre has enabled writers to pursue a dynamic approach concerning gender bending transgressions, domestic issues and other feminist concerns (Feasey 2008). Nevertheless, women were not always depicted as strong willed and independent on TV. Cavender (1999) examines the depiction of women crime victims by comparing episodes from reality crime program on prime time television. His analysis will be helpful in further studying the crime genre as well as involvement of women. Humphries (2009) examines women, violence, and media presentations through the lens of feminist criminology. This book contains chapters on Gendering Constructions which lays the foundation for the volume and examines media presentation of gendered violence, female killers on Law and Order and women in media. This book will give me tools to analyze the media text meticulously. In the crime genre, male protagonist used to focus on solving the crime while neglecting public concerns during the process. Attitudes started to change when women were portrayed unconventionally as brave, independent and intelligent characters breaking away from the societal norm from 70s, which resulting in writers shaping a new feminist archetype (Aisenberg, 1994). In her book Ordinary heroines: Transforming the male myth she suggests that female representation has progressed into equal active crime-solving characters with slight borrowing from conventional masculine traits, such as Dana Scullys (Gillian Anderson) character in The X Files, who was a powerful and independent professional woman even though FBI agent roles were profoundly male-dominated (240). Cuklanz and Moorti (2009) examine a wide variety of texts to delve into the representations of gendered violence against women and formulation of gender. They believe that Law and Order: SVU featuring lead female characters engage in stereotypical representation of women, showcasing violence against them which included inherent misogynist communiquà ©. Cavender and Jurik (2012) inspect the optimistic side of the representation of women on TV as they analyse Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren as policewoman Jane Tennison in the popular British drama series where her character disrupts the conventions of the traditionally male genre (p.65). They focus on the portrayal of gender and law enforcement in the show featuring modern social tribulations where women play the central character. On one hand, Prime Suspect has become a cult hit for being an exceptionally feminist show in a traditionally male dominated crime genre. On the other hand, it is still not devoid of gender politics: while Tennisons character is shown as a successful woman she is pigeonholed as being old, lonely, obsessed with her career and friendless. Cavender and Juriks (2012) work will provide the framework to deconstruct the meanings and connotation in depiction of women in Law and Order: SVU in relations to social norm. There has been a dramatic rise in representation of women detectives in modern texts, whether be film or television, which used to be dominated by men (Mizejewski, 2004). Whilst examining Jodie Fosters character Clarice on The Silence Of The Lambs, Mizejewski believes that: Traditional Hollywood cinema has been unconsciously organized along these lines: men looking and taking action, women being looked at. The conventions of framing, lighting and editing in portrayal of women all play to these dynamics (p. 7) Tasker (2007) believes female representation has progressed tremendously in recent years with transformed and empowered gender egalitarianism; however, there is still substandard issue (? what does this mean?). Gender is a key constructor and differentiator of character in ensemble workplace dramas (Allen 2007, p 48). The meticulous examination of popular crime drama Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) in Reading CSI by Michael Allen includes the relationship of characters to their narratives and response of fans and will provide great depth and widespread views which I can apply to Law and Order: SVU during my research. 1.3 Female Heroism Gunter (1986) argues that women are represented in a stereotypical manner associating with the character traits they typically exhibit. In comparison with men, their characters were subjugated by personal relationships and family issues. However, this began to change in the 1970s when women were portrayed in more dynamic roles. Knight (2010) believes that this trend wouldnt have been possible without Sigourney Weavers character Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979) franchise, which has become an avant-garde symbol. Ellen Ripley signified the first final girl archetype, a term coined by Carol J. Clover in the book Men, Women and Chansaw: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992), who conquered and triumphed against an evil villain without any help or rescue from a man (p.98). Knight (2010) and Clovers (1992) examinations of women representation would aid in decoding the signs in Law and Order: SVU. Anthony (2009) believes that the progression in womens portrayal on television and film was becaus e women had taken over the market and were able to acquire positions as Producers and Directors. Consequently, women were portrayed in more heroic roles which cancelled out the notion of women as victims, resulting in a positive ideological advance (p. 80). Innesss (2004) Action Chicks is a groundbreaking collection of essays providing a new look at female action icons such as Xena, Buffy, Lara Croft and so on. These essays take a look at how recent depictions of women in action films, TV shows, comic books, and video games reflect an increased acceptance of women in traditionally male heroic or tough-guy roles. This highly specialized and scholarly study is suitable for my research and will give me context for my analysis of Law and Order: SVU. In order to analyze the representation of women in Law and Order: SVU, I will suggest that if the women embody four essential constructing features which are body, attitude, action and authority in a tough hero (Innes, 1998). Brown (1996) has the same belief about women portrayed as action heroes stating, the female action heroines body is represented by using same codes as a male hero in regards to object and subject in action films (p. 56). Goodwill (2011) agrees with Browns statement that new female action hero possesses positive masculine characteristic which were previously reserved for men only, breaking away from orthodox feminine attributes. With the fusion of traits, the earlier archetype of the hero has been amended in popular culture containing both masculine and feminine traits which will enable me to interpret female traits presented in Law and Order: SVU. Hill (1999: 38) states, action heroines are the new type of protagonists in action genre who are smarter and tougher than conventional female heroines and even their male counterparts. This new breed of action heroines contravenes not only cinematic but cultural gender codes of women being submissive and tangential characters and transform traditional cinematic depiction of women. Noble (1999) produces an innovative framework to create a new epitome of heroism for women in her book The Sound of a Silver Horn: Reclaiming the Heroism in Contemporary Womens Lives. She puts forward certain qualities that a female hero should possess to transform her and the world, such as strong-minded, valiant and a risk-taker. Harriss (2004) groundbreaking work will provide a framework for my research since she looks at the intricate representation of girls in recent history. Siehlohrs (2000) anthology investigates generic codes used in gender in regards to national identity in European films. She also examines how representations of women are affected by particular national milieu. This provides a baseline to investigate influences of societal factors on representation of women in Law and Order: SVU. Hanson (2007) proposes alternative ways of viewing classic and contemporary Hollywood heroines and the associations of gender with genre. She investigates the representation of women as the investigator and heroine in the variable context of the film industry, which will enable me to apply the same approach to my research. She confers meticulous attention to the production of narrative, actions and perception as well as negotiation of feminine self and desires across the past. Jaceys (2010) book The Woman in the Story: Writing Memorable Female Characters will be of significant value on this topic as it explains the importance of different traits, character development and gender issues in constructing a female heroine. This will allow me to dig deeper into the depiction of female characters on Law and Order: SVU such as Olivia Bensons characters role as a Detective and Alexandra Cabots character as a District Attorney. According to Knight (2010), female action heroes extensively influence individuals in society, and also reveal a lot about our society. Her analysis of female action here will help me understand Olivia Bensons character on Law and Order: SVU as she is seen as a role model and heroine to a lot of women. Furthermore, I will examine Buffy the Vampire Slayer which was a very popular show with very sharp and provocative commentaries on gender. In Undead TV, media studies scholars tackle the gender representation of Buffy and its influence on popu lar culture (Levine and Parks, 2007). Stuller (2010) illustrates the triumph of female hero in contemporary mythology which has cracked through male dominated environment and discusses the crucial role of female crime fighters in popular culture. Thornham elucidates the codes of a female hero in her book  Women, Feminism and Media: For a female character to become the hero of such a series she must appropriate agency, action, command, the occupation of public space, discursive authority and the control of the investigative gaze. All of these, of course, run counter to the norms of femininity. (p. 69) The above mentioned codes and symbols will aid in deconstructing the structure of female lead characters on Law and Order: SVU as heroes in a patriarchal society. I would be able to examine the amalgamation of feminine and masculine traits in the discourse.

Albert Einstein Essay -- Biography Biographies

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is believed to be the greatest scientist of the 20th century. He developed many theories that led to many breakthroughs. With his well-known famous look, the white messy hair and the absent-minded look on his face, he was the perfect example of the typical scientist. Einstein became internationally renowned as a leading scientific thinker and as an accomplished mathematician. His contributions to science have left a lasting impression throughout the universe. Albert Einstein was a highly intelligent man who earned many honors and accomplishments. Born into a Jewish family at Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879, Einstein spent his youth in Munich, where his father, Hermann and his uncle, Jacob Einstein, owned a small shop that manufactured electric machinery. His mother encouraged him to study music, but it was his Uncle Jacob who inspired his fascination for mathematics. As a youth, he showed a brilliant ability to understand difficult mathematical concepts. In 1895, Einstein failed an exam that would have allowed him to study for a diploma as an electrical engineer in Zurich. Following the failing of the entrance exam, Einstein attended secondary school at Aarau and planned to use this route to enter the school in Zurich. In 1900, he succeeded with his plan graduating as a teacher of mathematics and physics. For two years Einstein worked as a tutor and substitute teacher. In 1902, he secured a position as an examiner in the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. Einstein married Mileva Maric in 1903, a classmate of his, and they had two so ns named Hans Albert and Edward. However, the outbreak of World War I made him separated from his family and him and his wife divorced in 1919. Einstein late... ...arted preparing for death by drawing up his will in 1950. One week before his death, Einstein signed his last letter. It was a letter in which he agreed that his name should go on a manifest urging all nations to give up nuclear weapons. Albert Einstein died during his sleep April 18, 1955 in Princeton after many years of bad health. "Albert Einstein ranks with Galileo and Newton as one of the great conceptual revisers of our understanding of the universe," Jonas Maxe. All of his life Albert Einstein devoted himself to the world not only with his scientific accomplishments, but his political and social causes as well. It is amazing that the one person who gave us the conceptual understanding of the universe made his last act before death a plea for international peace. Albert Einstein contributed to the world lasting meaning and will always be remembered by that.

Post-colonialist Perceptions of Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet :: Post Colonialism Out of the Silent Planet Essays

Post-colonialist Perceptions of Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet The Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti viewed the goal of sculpting as the manipulation of a marble block until the figure within is set free. Just as a carving artist seeks to release its piece from rock, a literary artist desires his art form to be carved from an obscure idea into clear apprehension. The most beautiful of these art pieces are placed in a museum of their own right, the literary canon. A great part of literature’s beauty is the ability of the artist to present his purpose in indiscrete ways, in some degree or another, sliding his message in the literature’s elements during its construction. In an enjoyable science fiction/fantasy book, C.S. Lewis uses his own techniques to convey his feelings and attitudes as he often had in the past. With Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis reveals his acquiescence to â€Å"Post-colonialist† thought in a very hidden way. He presents a story on an alien world, navigating around a reader’s earthly par tialities to open their minds to his beliefs. Post-colonialism is a discourse draped in history. In one point in time or another, European colonialism dominated most non-European lands since the end of the Renaissance. Naturally, colonialists depicted the cultures of non-Europeans incorrectly and inferior. Traditionally, the canon has misappropriated and misrepresented these cultures, but also the Western academia has yet to teach us the valuable and basic lessons that allow true representations to develop. Partly in response, Post-colonialism arose. Though this term is a broad one, Post-colonialists generally agree on certain key principles. They understand that colonialism exploits the dominated people or country in one way or another, evoking inequalities. Examples of past inequalities include â€Å"genocide, economic exploitation, cultural decimation and political exclusion†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Loomba 9-10). They abhor traditional colonialism but also believe that every people, through the context of their own cultures, h ave something to contribute to our understanding of human nature (Loomba 1-20). This is the theme that Lewis prescribes in his, self described, â€Å"satirical fantasy†, Out of the Silent Planet (Of Other 77). Sold in bookstores throughout the world and mostly on the â€Å"religious† shelves, C.S. Lewis is hardly recognized in the post-colonial field. But of dozens of authors that could express this discourse, there is no better suited than the British professor.

Marriage in 18th Century Europe Essays -- European History

Marriage in 18th Century Europe The major movement regarding marriage in the eighteenth century was from church to state. Marital laws and customs, once administered and governed by the church, increasingly came to be controlled by legislators who passed many laws restricting the circumstances and legality of marriages. These restrictions tended to represent the interests of the wealthy and uphold patriarchal tradition. Backlash to these restrictions produced a number of undesirable practices, including promiscuity, wife-sale, and divorce. Before the eighteenth century, marriage was far less complicated. Verbal consent and consumation constituted legal marriage: "once the knot was tied by such verbal exchanges it could not be undone: a valid marriage was technically indissoluble. Such vows could be made, moreover, by boys the age of fourteen and girls of twelve" (Outhwaite xiii). The laws that began to be passed in the 1700's were decidedly un-religious, designed mostly to protect patriarchy and wealth. Much of the marriage laws passed during this period reflect the prevailing opinion of women as childlike, frivolous, and simpleminded. As Rousseau put it, "little girls always dislike learning to read and write, but they are always ready to learn to sew." Custom made man "undisputed lord of the home" (Murstein 220) and laws were passed to solidify this position: "Upon marriage, husband and wife became one- and that one was the man. Her land became his, as did her debts." The structure of eighteenth century society made this necessary, especially for the lower classes; a family's income would be totally based on the earning power of the man. Thus, logic dictated that he control all the finances. Even so, some of the l... ...who could not afford several licences, and a big wedding or dowry. "Fleet marriages" were very common in the first half of the eighteenth century. These were marriages performed by "defrocked and disreputable" ministers for cash, often through the bars of a debtors prison on Fleet street. One such minister was so successful that "in the same one-year period that he performed 6000 marriages, only fifty regular contracts were solemnized in the neighboring St. Annes's church. Although this practice was banned by the Marriage Act of 1753, it just goes to show that marriage and love cannot be regulated by monetary concerns. Works Cited Murstein, Bernard I. Love, Sex, and Marriage Through the Ages. ???? Outhwaite, R.B. Clandestine Marriage in England 1560-1850. Hambledon Press, NY: 1995. Stone, Lawrence. Road to Divorce Oxford University Press, Oxford: l990.

Chalillo Dam

FORTIS INC. AND THE CHALILLO DAM Professor Robert Sexty wrote this case solely to provide material for class discussion. The author does not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The author may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality. Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation prohibits any form of reproduction, storage or transmission without its written permission. Reproduction of this material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction rights organization.To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 3K7; phone (519) 661-3208; fax (519) 661-3882; e-mail [email  protected] uwo. ca. Copyright  © 2011, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation Version: 2011-04-29 The executive offices of Fortis Inc. overlooked the harbour in St. John’s, Canada. Ships could be seen entering and exiting through the Narrows, the outlet to the North Atlantic Ocean. It had snowed and the trees on the Southside Hills were covered with a light dusting of white.H. Stanley Marshall, President and CEO, and John Evans, chief engineer, turned away from the view and began discussing the main issue the board of directors would confront at its next meeting in January 2002. Marshall and Evans were planning a presentation on the company’s Chalillo Dam project in Belize. They believed the project should proceed, but they had to convince the board of directors. The task was to make a recommendation including supporting arguments with a defence to counter the attacks being made on the project by international environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs).Fortis had to prepare for the negative publicity that would most likely occur if the project was approved. If the company was unable to make a convincing argument, it was unlikely the project would proceed. FORTIS CORPORATION Fortis Inc. was a diversified electric utility holding company headquartered in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Fortis is a Latin word meaning strong, powerful, and firm. The Fortis international banking and insurance financial firm headquartered in The Netherlands and Belgium was not associated with Fortis Inc.In 2001, Fortis wholly owned Newfoundland Power Inc. , the principal distributor of power in the province of Newfoundland, and Maritime Electric Company, Limited, the main distributor in Prince Edward Island. Other financial interests included: ? ? ? FortisUS Energy Corporation, which operated four hydroelectric generating stations in upper New York state. Fifty per cent of Canadian Niagara Power Company, which sold energy to Canadian and U. S. customers. Twenty per cent of Caribbean Utilities Company Ltd. , the sole supplier of electricity on Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. S ? ? ? 9B11M026 Sixty-seven per cent of Belize Electricity Limited (BEL), the only distributor of electricity in Belize, Central America. One hundred per cent of Belize Electric Company Limited (BECOL), which owned a hydroelectric plant on the Macal River in Mollejon, Belize.A non-utility subsidiary, Fortis Properties, with investments in commercial properties in Atlantic Canada. 1 Exhibit 1 is a summary of Fortis’ financial performance for the years 1997 through 2001. FORTIS’ BELIZE OPERATIONS The Fortis operations in Belize embroiled the company in a social responsibility issue that consumed substantial costs, time, and energy. Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) had been owned by the government of Belize and was the main supplier of electricity in th e country. In October and November 1999, Fortis Inc. acquired 67 per cent of the company for $36 million in cash.It later acquired BECOL and a proposal by this company to develop a hydroelectric project in Belize received international attention and became a sensitive issue for management. At the time of acquisition, BEL served about 53,000 customers. It was able to meet the country’s peak demand of 44 megawatts from the Mollejon hydro plant, its own diesel-fired generation, and purchases of energy from Comision de Electricidad, the Mexican state-owned power company. During 2000, the company conducted a quarterly Customer Satisfaction Survey and received an average 85 per cent satisfaction rating.Several initiatives improved BEL’s performance, including expanded service, improved reliability, monthly visits to customers, and the implementation of convenient payment options for customers. 2 BEL enhanced its corporate image in several other ways. It reduced electricity r ates by seven per cent — a move targeted at commercial customers to assist in stimulating economic activity. 3 The company deployed operational teams from Newfoundland Power and Maritime Electric to repair damage caused by Hurricane Keith in the northern coastal regions of Belize on September 30, 2000.A safety program was implemented to reduce the risk of injury to employees and the public. This included the promotion of public safety and sponsorship of safety awareness campaigns. 4 BEL was concerned about the environment and initiated a program to meet compliance with the ISO 14001 environmental standard. It completed environmental cleanups at its generating plants and some diesel plants were decommissioned. The company signed a Memorandum of Intent to purchase excess capacity from Belize Sugar Industries, which had proposed construction of an electrical generation facility fuelled by sugar cane residue. BEL continued to improve its operations during 2001. Automated billing was introduced for its now 57,000 customers. Rural electrification projects continued in partnership with the Belizean government. These projects would eventually result in the closing of the remaining isolated diesel plants. A comprehensive safety audit was conducted and was the basis for a plan to increase employee safety. The 1 Generating Growth 2001 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , pp. 10-24. Electrifying Growth 2000 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , p. 16. 3 Ibid. , 35. 4 Ibid. , pp. 4, 16-17. 5 Ibid. , pp. 4, 18. 2This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 2 9B11M026 Customer Satisfaction Index continued high at 82. 5 per cent. The company worked with the government to develop energy resources to meet the demand for energy with the goal of achieving self-sufficiency. 6 BEL was sensitive to environmental concerns and continued to mitigate the environmental impact of its operations.In October, 2,600 customers were impacted by Iris, a Category IV hurricane which damaged 25 per cent of the distribution system, causing $4 million in damage. The company donated about $40,000 to the Belize Red Cross for relief activities and employees donated clothing, helped build shelters, and cooked and served meals to hurricane victims. 7 The economic performance of BEL is summarized in Exhibit 2. The company’s rates and minimum quality service standards were determined by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Also, the company had a license to generate, transmit, distribute, and supply electricity until 2015.At that time, it had the right of first refusal on a subsequent license and if its license was not renewed, Fortis was to be paid the greater of market value or 120 per cent of net book value of assets. 8 For Fortis, the major event in 2001 was the purchase on January 26 of 95 per cent ownership in the Belize Electric Company Limited (BECOL) with the Belizean government owning the other five per cent. BECOL operated the only commercial hydroelectric station in the country at Mollejon on the Macal River. The plant produced 25 megawatts and was capable of delivering average energy of 80 gigawatt hours.BECOL’s entire output was sold to Belize Electricity under a 50-year power purchase agreement. 9 Fortis paid $103. 1 million for BECOL and considered it a good strategic fit with its operation of BEL. 10 BECOL planned to build another dam on the Macal River and that became a major issue for BEL and Fortis. THE COUNTRY OF BELIZE Belize was a sovereign, democratic state with a government operating on the principles of parliamentary governance based on the Westminster parliamentary system. Until 1973, the country was known as British Honduras.It became independent from Britain in 1981 but maintained membership in the British Commonweal th of Nations. The country was located on the eastern or Caribbean coast of Central America, bordered by Mexico and Guatemala. A low plain extended along the coast with the land rising in the interior, where mountains rose to 1,124 metres above sea level. Eighty-four per cent of the country was covered with forests and about 10 per cent had arable land. The country was 22,966 square kilometres and the climate was subtropical. The main industries were sugar, citrus, fisheries, and bananas with some timber operations, food processing, and construction.Tourism had become an increasing contributor to the economy. The largest city was Belize City, on the coast, which was the country’s commercial hub. Inland about 75 kilometres was Belmopan, the capital where the seat of government had been relocated from Belize City to escape from the storms that flooded coastal areas. The country’s population was less than 300,000. 11 The government believed that electrification was an imp ortant component in its attempts to improve the country’s economy. The possible development of another hydro plant on the Macal River, known as the Chalillo project, was critical to increasing the supply of electricity. Generating Growth 2001 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , pp. 6, 17. Ibid. , pp. 3, 18. 8 Ibid. , p. 34. 9 Electrifying Growth 2000 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , p. 6. 10 Generating Growth 2001 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , p. 4. 11 â€Å"About Belize,† Government of Belize web site, www. governmentofbelize. gov. bz/about_belize. html, accessed December 29, 2008. 7 This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 3 9B11M026THE CHALILLO PROJECT Fortis, through BECOL, had proposed construction of a dam on the Macal River in the Cayo District of western Bel ize at a cost of about US$27. 3 million. The site was located in an unpopulated wilderness area, part of which was in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve and the Chaquibul National Park. These areas covered most of the southern half of the Cayo District (see Exhibit 3). It would produce 7. 3 megawatts of electricity for the Belize network and regulate the water flow of the river. The control over the water flow would increase the productivity and reliability of the Mollejon hydropower station downstream.The Chalillo project included the following: ? ? ? ? ? a 49. 5-metre-high and 340-metre-wide dam on the river a reservoir with a total surface area of 9. 5 square kilometres a powerhouse at the foot of the dam an 18-kilometre transmission line from the powerhouse to the Mollejon plant ancillary requirements including an access road and construction camp. 12 Project Justification As they had been working on the project for months, Marshall and Evans quickly identified its benefits, in particular for the Belizean economy and for the citizens of the country.Most importantly, the project would increase electrical output and raise energy self-sufficiency. The second dam on the Macal River would increase the productivity of the existing electrical plant at Mollejon. The output from the two plants would reduce reliance on petroleum generation, as diesel-fuelled generators could be closed. This would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the possibility of oil spills. A large portion of Belizean electrical energy was imported from Mexico under a contract that was to expire in 2008.The Mexican system experienced difficulties and was not a stable source, resulting in power outages in Belize. The completion of the Chalillo project meant that Belize would have a more reliable and secure supply of electricity, thus stabilizing and possibly reducing prices. Alternative sources of energy were examined by the government and BEL including thermal options (diesel and gas turbin es), biomass, Battery Energy Storage Systems, and solar and wind power. Studies by BEL determined that power generated from the hydro source was less expensive than any other type of power.However, BEL was committed to purchasing power from a bagasse-fuelled generation facility planned by Belize Sugar Industries Limited (BSI). The facility would produce energy by burning crushed sugarcane and wood waste from nearby sawmills. There were also auxiliary benefits from the project. The dam and reservoir would control flooding on the Macal River with significant economic, health and safety benefits to downstream residents, many of whom lived in the river’s floodplain. Also, there would be a steadier supply of water for residents, especially during the dry season.Employment would be created during construction and there would be economic benefits from supplying goods and services to the project. 13 12 Information for this section was obtained from â€Å"Chalillo Hydropower Project Summary,† brochure published by Fortis Inc. , Belize Electric Company Ltd. , and Belize Electricity Limited, October 2001, p. 10. 13 Most of the information for this section was obtained from â€Å"Chalillo Hydropower Project Summary,† brochure published by Fortis Inc. , Belize Electric Company Ltd. , and Belize Electricity Limited, October 2001, pp. 7, 10, 15-17.This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 4 9B11M026 Environmental Impact Fortis, through BECOL, was sensitive to the need for an environmental impact assessment. A five-volume Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report on the â€Å"Macal River Upstream Storage Facility† (technical name for the Chalillo project) was submitted by BECOL to the Belizean government in August 2001. Two portion s of the EIA are discussed below.The Natural History Museum, London, England, conducted a wildlife impact assessment of the proposed Chalillo project in early 2001. The report confirmed that the area which would be impacted contained a rare and discrete floral floodplain habitat. This habitat relied on the flow of oxygenated water and the seasonal flooding following heavy rain. The project would adversely impact a biologically rich and diverse area, as well as many animals inhabiting the area, including jaguar, Baird’s tapir, Morelet’s crocodile, several species of monkeys, the Central American Scarlet Macaw, and various other bird life.The report concluded that mitigation of the negative impacts of large-scale dams on wildlife was usually irreversible and that mitigation efforts were often ineffective. 14 The Natural History Museum report applied conservation criteria to three options: ? ? ? Do not build the Chalillo dam. This was the best opportunity to avoid the imp act on key aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. It stated that, â€Å"This option should be considered seriously, especially if costs identified in reviews of the technical, socio-economic and environmental assessments †¦ re considered to outweigh the benefits of meeting the growing demand and utilization of electrical energy by increasingly criticised hydroelectric projects. † Select an alternative site for damming. If tributaries were dammed instead, they could potentially supply the same volume of water with less damage to the environment. But, this alternative would require technical, economic and environmental surveys. Proceed as planned. If this option were followed, it would not be possible to satisfactorily mitigate against most of the long-term impact to the environment.However, the report did identify measures that would partially alleviate some of the impact of construction and operation. 15 The report identified several measures to mitigate or offset the impact of the project, including: building roads to avoid sensitive wild plant and animal life sites, issuing safe and clear guidelines to drivers, prohibiting all hunting and settling in the area, providing fire protection, maintaining a minimum water flow in the river, and re-aerating water before releasing it downstream. 16 The concluding recommendation of the report was:Based on the rarity of the habitat, and the dependence on this habitat by several endangered species, the â€Å"No Build† option is highly recommended as the most suitable and appropriate option for the long-term viability and conservation of wildlife in Belize. 17 The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) hired AMEC, a British engineering and project management consulting firm, to prepare an environmental impact assessment of the Chalillo project. CIDA’s involvement was a form of aid to a developing country.The assessment was performed in accordance with the Belize Environmental Protection Act and the â€Å"Projects Outside Canada Environmental 14 C. M. Minty, â€Å"Preliminary Report on the Scientific and Biodiversity Value of the Macal and Raspaculo: A Wildlife Impact Assessment for the Proposed Macal River Upper Storage Facility† (Executive Summary), The Natural History Museum, London, England, May 24, 2001, http://old. probeinternational. org/catalog/pi/documents/belize/NHM9_05_01Wia15. pdf. 15 Ibid. , p. 49. 16 Ibid. , pp. 46-47. 17 Ibid. , p. 49.This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 5 9B11M026 Assessment Regulations† of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. CIDA’s report, dated August 2001, summarized the advantages and disadvantages of the project. Adverse predicted impacts were the risk to plant and animal species. There would be no predicted impact on population, tourism and ecreation, transportation and public safety, heritage and archaeological resources, water and air quality, parks and forest preserves, and aquatic resources. Positive predicted impacts would include labour force, economy, flood control, reliability of power supply, increased power self-sufficiency, and decreased cost of electricity. 18 The report’s conclusions regarding the Chalillo project on the Macal River included: 1. The project is presently the most economical option for generating power in Belize. 2.It is both technically and economically viable and will maximize the hydroelectric power generation of the river. 3. It will help decrease energy reliance on outside sources. 4. The electric utility will have the flexibility necessary to provide better service to its customers. 5. There will be significant flood control benefits to downstream stakeholders. 19 The studies called for a plan to implement the recommended mitigation measures, including the development of a contingency plan prior to construction. Also, a monitoring or compliance plan should be formulated. 0 Marshall and the Fortis management believed that the environmental impact had been adequately studied. Marshall stated that, â€Å"Fortis has undertaken a comprehensive study of the environmental implications of the Chalillo project and the benefits of the project to the people of Belize. †21 Opposition to the Project During 2001, criticisms and opposition were voluminous, some of which are listed in Exhibit 3. In addition, several Canadian print and broadcast media carried stories, there were letters to the editor in newspapers, and protest web sites were established.Numerous environmental ENGOs campaigned against the project, including Probe International (PI), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club, the Sierra Club of Canada, the Belize Alliance of Conservation Non-Governmental Organizations (BACONGO), Humb er Environmental Action Group, Humber Natural History Society, Petitcodiac Riverkeeper, Action Environment, Defenders of Wildlife, Environment Coalition of Prince Edward Island, and Falls Brook Centre. In particular, Probe International carried out an aggressive campaign and coordinated the protests of other ENGOs. 2 PI was an environmental advocacy group that fought to stop ill-conceived aid, trade projects and foreign investments. It worked to give citizens the tools they needed â€Å"to stop these projects using the rule of law, democratic processes, and honest and transparent accounting. †23 It was a division of the Energy Probe Research Foundation, a well-known Canadian environmental and energy policy ENGO created in 1980. Its tactics included letter-writing to public officials, preparation and publishing of reports and articles, media releases, speech presentations, and public demonstrations. 18 Macal River Upstream Storage Facility Environmental Impact Assessment †“ Part 1 Main Report† (Executive Summary), AMEC and Canadian International Development Agency, August 2001, www. probeinternational. org/chalillo/news-andopinion/macal-river-upstream-storage-facility-environmental-impact-assessment. 19 Ibid. , Main Report, p. 18. 20 Ibid. , Executive Summary, ES-2 and ES-3. 21 â€Å"News Article,† Fortis Inc. web site, November 1, 2002, www. fortisinc. com/News/Article. aspx? id=134. 22 Fortis Belize web site, Probe International, www. probeinternational. org/fortis-belize/news_and_opinion. 3 â€Å"About Us,† Probe International web site, www. probeinternational. org/node/5818#tabs-tabset-1. This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 6 9B11M026 The other main opposition came from NRDC, an environmental action group founded in 1970. Its mission was to safeguard the Earth: its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.It had offices in seven U. S. cities, staff of about 300 lawyers, scientists and policy experts, and about one million members. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. , a lawyer, was the main spokesperson for NRDC on the Chalillo project. 24 Probe International maintained an elaborate web site in opposition to the project. Another web site devoted exclusively to the Chalillo project was Stop Fortis! at www. stopfortis. org, which contained extensive information on the project, including photographs. Several environmental groups placed advertisements in Canadian newspapers.The wording in one advertisement included: Look her [a jaguar] in the eyes. Now explain why a Canadian company wants to destroy her home. It won’t be easy. Fortis Inc. of Newfoundland plans to profit from it †¦ with a dam that makes no sense. Look him [Stan Marshall] in the eye s. And tell Fortis CEO Stan Marshall that it is wrong to destroy one of the wildest places left in all of Central America. 25 Readers were invited to visit a web site, www. stopfortis. org, or call toll free 1-866-STOP-FORTIS. The criticisms of Fortis’ practices and the dam’s construction are summarized in Exhibit 4.Fortis, and Marshall in particular, responded to this criticism. A news release was made on November 1, 2001, called â€Å"Decision to Build Hydroelectric Dam in Belize Should Reside with Belizeans. † The main points made in the release were: ? ? ? ? Belizeans should decide on the construction of the dam. Contrary to information from ENGOs, the dam is economically feasible and will ensure a more stable energy supply. Information presented by ENGOs is misleading the media about the environmental impact of the project. Fortis is willing to review its business activities with stakeholders. 6 In a story in The Telegram on November 2, Marshall stated to a reporter that, â€Å"This bombardment in the media of misleading information is putting enormous pressure on me, attacking me personally and inundating the media with lies. † He also said, â€Å"Whatever we do as an electric company will impact the environment, but it’s a question of how well we can manage our activities. On balance, this project is a good one. If I felt personally that we were going to threaten an endangered species and wipe it out — no. I would not propose going ahead with it. †27In mid-2001, the Belizean government’s National Environmental Appraisal Committee began its evaluation of the project. The Committee was comprised of nine government members and two nongovernment members representing the Association of National Development Agencies and BACONGO. In mid-November 2001, the Committee granted the environmental clearance for construction of the Chalillo dam, as the economic and other benefits of the project outweighed the env ironmental costs. Its decision was â€Å"conditional upon the development and signing of the Environmental Compliance Plan (ECP), which 24Natural Resources Defense Council web site, www. nrdc. org/about. â€Å"Look her in the eyes,† advertisement, The Telegram, St. John’s, Newfoundland, October 18, 2001, D11. 26 â€Å"News Article,† Fortis Inc. web site, November 1, 2002, www. fortisinc. com/News/Article. aspx? id=134. 27 Will Hilliard, â€Å"Dam opponents misled: Fortis,† The Telegram, St. John’s, Newfoundland, November 2, 2001, A3. 25 This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012.Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 7 9B11M026 would incorporate the mitigation measures identified in the EIA in addition to those recommended during the evaluation process. †28 Opponents of the project immediately criticized the decision, claiming that the government was biased. The government members voted for the project and the prime minister had publicly supported the project. Critics also pointed out the lack of public consultation during the evaluation process. They claimed the public hearings being held after the announcement were to present or explain the decision.This approach contravened law that required public hearings with submissions from interested stakeholders. 29 The Decision and Expected Opposition Looking back over the past year, Marshall and Evans were amazed at the extent of the opposition and criticism. Even with the Belizean government’s approval, they realized that the coming year would most likely be more of the same. Some of the circumstances and challenges that Fortis’ management faced were: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Legal action seeking injunctions or stoppage of the project in the Belizean, Canadian and British court systems.Po litical lobbying by ENGOs of government agencies, officials and politicians in Belize and Canada. Pressures to reduce electricity prices and certainly against increasing them. Customer satisfaction measures might decline if lower prices were not delivered. Protests against the project through letters to the editor, demonstrations at Fortis properties, and petitions. More celebrity â€Å"protest† appearances. Newspaper advertising against the project. Shareholders might be concerned and there might be questions from activists at the Annual Shareholders Meeting.The social investing concept was increasing in popularity. Calls for more environmental studies and challenges from ENGOs on the accuracy of EIAs. Constant monitoring and evaluation by ENGOs of everything related to the project. Adverse media coverage. The political environment might change in Belize if a different party was elected to govern. The project had consumed a lot of time, energy and resources and Marshall and Evans wondered whether or not it was worth it. There might be less demanding projects which would add as much value to the company.They turned away from the harbour view and started to draft their report and recommendation to the board of directors. 28 â€Å"Chalillo Dam receives Environmental Clearance,† Press Release, Ministry of the Environment, November 13, 2001, http://sanpedrosun. net/old/01-453. html. 29 â€Å"Chalillo Dam – Who will benefit? † (Editorial), The San Pedro Sun, 11:46, November 22, 2001, http://sanpedrosun. net/old/01-463. html. This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012.Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 8 9B11M026 Exhibit 1 SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA FORTIS INC. 1997-2001 (In Canadian Dollars) Operating Revenues (‘000$) Operating Expenses (‘000$) Income Taxes (‘000$) Share Earnings (‘000$) Total Assets (‘000$) Book Value per Share $ Dividend per Share $ Share Price (closing) $ 1997 486,662 341,024 29,449 30,006 1,017,396 25. 58 1. 76 42. 00 1998 472,725 339,429 22,998 27,414 1,037,192 26. 09 1. 80 38. 25 1999 505,218 356,227 27,476 29,183 1,238,597 26. 21 1. 81 31. 40 2000 580,197 417,607 17,228 36,759 1,478,596 7. 89 1. 84 36. 00 2001 628,254 418,347 28,088 53,442 1,642,752 29. 97 1. 87 46. 95 Source: â€Å"Historical Financial Summary,† Generating Growth 2001 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , pp. 58-59. Exhibit 2 BELIZE ELECTRICITY LIMITED FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE 2000 AND 2001 (In Canadian Dollars) Earnings Energy Sales Revenues Power Expenses Other Operating Expenses Earnings Contributed to Fortis Inc. Capital Expenditures Long-Term Debt 2000 $8. 2 m 229 GWh $63. 6 m $30. 6 m $13. 6 m $5. 5 m $21. 0 m $60. 6 m 2001 $9. 3 m 257 GWh $72. 4 m $34. 8 m $14. 2 m $6. 3 m $27. 6 m $84. 3 mSource: Electrifying Growth 2000 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , pp. 35-36, and Generating Growth 2001 Annual Report, Fortis Inc. , pp. 3, 33-34, 38, 48. This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 9 9B11M026 Exhibit 3 SELECTED ACTIVITIES OPPOSING THE CHALILLO PROJECT DURING 2001 February 2 May 5 May 20 June 3 August 29 September 20 October 4 October 12 October 18 October 29 October 30October 31 November 1 November 30 December 2 December 4 December 1823 December 31 Belizean newspaper, The Reporter, carries a story about a school teacher allegedly being fired because he opposed the project M. P. Keith Martin requests release of environmental impact assessment in the Canadian House of Commons Oral Question Period The Reporter carries story that proposed dam could flood Maya ruins The Reporter carries st ory claiming Canadians not being told the truth about the Chalillo project Probe International complains to Minister of International Cooperation about CIDA’s secrecyHarrison Ford speaks out against the proposed dam Opposition MP Svend Robinson expresses concern about project to Minister of International Cooperation Probe International and other groups write a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs calling for the government to stop supporting the dam Coalition of environmental groups launch a series of â€Å"hard hitting† advertisements in Atlantic Canadian newspapers opposing the dam Probe International writes a letter to Fortis’ board of directors regarding the company’s refusal to meet with citizens groups Greg Malone, St.John’s comedian, starts campaign to save endangered creatures National Post editorial states that what Belize needs is a free energy market rather than an uneconomical dam Harrison Ford, Robert Kennedy, and others lobby aga inst dam that could destroy a forest at a Toronto Stock Exchange press conference Concerned citizens from across Atlantic Canada hold regional day of action in opposition to the project Environmental NGOs announce they will be contacting Fortis’ major shareholders Probe International files a complaint against CIDA’s involvement with the hydro schemeRobert Kennedy Jr. travels to Belize to support citizens opposing the dam Conservation groups claim that the Belizean government’s clearance for the hydro project is illegal Source: Compiled from Belize Fortis Campaign, pp. 13-20, Probe International web site, www. probeinternational. org/fortisbelize/news_and_opinion. This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012.Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 10 9B11M026 Exhibit 4 MAIN CRITICISMS OF THE CHALILLO PROJECT ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? The threat to wild and plant life, especially endangered species. The dam would exacerbate the water quality problems downstream. The dam might flood Maya ruins, destroying the cultural landscape. Limestone caves might drain the reservoir. The claim that the project was uneconomical and not the cheapest option. The only reason the project was viable was because BEL had a monopoly and could recover costs from captive customers.Fortis’ unwillingness to consider alternative sources, denying consumers better and cheaper electricity. The allegation that Fortis asked the Canadian government, through CIDA, to pay for a study justifying the project. It was claimed that the study was biased, involved too much secrecy, and failed to promote and ensure effective stakeholder consultation. According to environmental groups, Fortis denied them access to pertinent information and failed to consult them. Fortis would not make its own geology studies and e ngineering plans public or agree to an independent panel review.There was insufficient information on the impact of the project. Source: Compiled from Belize Fortis Campaign, pp. 13-20, Probe International web site, www. probeinternational. org/fortisbelize/news_and_opinion. This document is authorized to be used only in the BU111- Introduction to Business Organization course by Professor Leanne Hagarty, at the Wilfrid Laurier University from 09/10/2012 until 12/19/2012. Use outside these parameters is a copyright violation. Page 11