THE MONOLOGUE essays

THE MONOLOGUE essays It all started when I was out with the guys at this bar. I told myself I wouldn't, but I ended up drinking. Its hard to go to a bar and not have ANYTHING. I told my wife I wouldn't drink anything, but that idea soon went out of focus...literally. I just needed to take my mind off being so completely in debt. Soon the place became very crowded, a few drinks turned into many and soon got tanked including me. I decided to leave the scene and take a power walk. As I was walking down the street, it occured to me...I really needed some towels from Bed, Bath and Beyond. As I walked in the store I got a basket and started shopping like a maniac. I mean...I went absolutely psycho-path and decided that I need more. It just wasn't the towels that I needed, our house needed blankets, throws, tea kettles, a new filtration system, a ceiling pot rack, napkin rings, lamps, suana robes, a new clock, candle and candles holders and an aerobed for my grandparents since they're coming to visit. They really should have a warning sign right at the entrance of this place, it can put you in debt. Once you step in, you think you need everything. As I was at the cash register to pay for all my items, the lady told me if I wanted cash or credit. I wasn 't sure...just looking at all the items in my basket made me go crazy. I was speechless. She told me to hold up one finger for credit and two fingers for cash. I held up one finger. I then came to my senses and gave her my Mastercard. As she ran it through the machine, the trickles of sweat kept pouring down my face. By the look on her face I knew there was bad news. I heard her deep voice say in super slow motion, "I'm sorry sir, your credit card got denied. Would you like me to swipe it again?" I hate that dreaded word,"denied." I was completely denied. I left all the stuff and ran into my car. Luckily, I knew where it was parked. Sadly, I got a $100 ticket for parking next to a fire hydrant. That just ...

Transcendentalism in American History

Transcendentalism in American History Transcendentalism was an American literary movement that emphasized the importance and equality of the individual. It began in the 1830s in America and was heavily influenced by German philosophers including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Immanuel Kant, along with English writers like  William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.    Transcendentalists espoused four main philosophical points. Simply stated, these were the ideas of:   Self RelianceIndividual ConscienceIntuition Over ReasonUnity of All Things in Nature In other words, individual men and women can be their own authority on knowledge through the use of their own intuition and conscience. There was also a distrust of societal and governmental institutions and their corrupting effects on the individual.   The Transcendentalist Movement was centered in New England and included a number of prominent individuals including Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. They formed a club called The Transcendental Club, which met to discuss a number of new ideas. In addition, they published a periodical that they called The Dial along with their individual writings. Emerson and The American Scholar Emerson was the unofficial leader of the transcendentalist movement. He gave an address at Cambridge in 1837 called The American Scholar. During the address, he stated that: Americans]  have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame....Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, - but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, - some of them suicides. What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career, do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Thoreau and Walden Pond Henry David Thoreau decided to practice self-reliance by moving to Walden Pond, on land owned by Emerson, and build his own cabin where he lived for two years. At the end of this time, he published his book, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods. In this, he said, I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Transcendentalists and Progressive Reforms Because of the beliefs in self-reliance and individualism, transcendentalists became huge proponents of progressive reforms. They wished to help individuals find their own voices and achieve to their fullest potential. Margaret Fuller, one of the leading transcendentalists, argued for womens rights. She argued that all sexes were and should be treated equally. In addition, they argued for the abolition of slavery. In fact, there was a crossover between womens rights and the abolitionist movement. Other progressive movements that they espoused included the rights of those in prison, help for the poor, and better treatment of those who were in mental institutions. Transcendentalism, Religion, and God As a philosophy, Transcendentalism is deeply rooted in faith and spirituality. Transcendentalists believed in the possibility of personal communication with God leading to an ultimate understanding of reality. Leaders of the movement were influenced by the elements of mysticism found in Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic religions, as well as the American Puritan and Quaker faiths. The transcendentalists equated their belief in a universal reality to the Quakers’ belief in a divine Inner Light as a gift of God’s grace. Transcendentalism was greatly influenced by the doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School during the early 1800s. While Unitarians stressed a rather calm and rational relationship with God, transcendentalists sought a more personal and intense spiritual experience. As expressed by Thoreau, transcendentalists found and communed with God in gentle breezes, dense forests, and other creations of nature. While Transcendentalism never evolved into its own organized religion; many of its followers remained in the Unitarian church. Influences on American Literature and Art Transcendentalism influenced a number of important American writers, who helped create a national literary identity. Three of these men were Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman. In addition, the movement also influenced American artists from the Hudson River School, who focused on the American landscape and the importance of communing with nature.   Updated by Robert Longley

HR Strategy Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

HR Strategy Management - Essay Example The idea of the culture of excellence would serve to develop national cadre within the objective of the organization. It would also serve to develop the system used in service provision within the organization. Dubai municipality encompasses the following strategies; employment and nationalization, behavioral skills assessment at the assessment center, successive planning and specifying manpower within the organization. The Talent Management Section (TMS) that was formed within the municipality for the same purpose implements this. Specifying manpower would be the most indispensable of all the strategies. This would entail allocating the employees specific work that they have gotten to perform. Individuals are assigned various tasks that they are qualified in doing. This gives and asserts responsibility together with accountability of those involved. This would also ensure that delegation is done well and places filled up when an individual is missing. This would also include plannin g of the work that has to be done within the municipality and the time to be allocated for various activities. Planning would also involve acquiring the resources such as capital at the right time that would be used in carrying out tasks. This would result in goal or objective attainment for the organization. Successive planning is another strategy that is applied at the office of Dubai Municipality. ... It would also be in terms of human resource management that would involve employees. The municipality has employed enough people that carry out its activities; this ensures completion of work in time to ensure customer satisfaction. There is also performance and behavioral skills assessment aimed at provision of quality services that would put customer complains to minimal levels. When customers are satisfied all is well, and every person is happy. This prompts the Municipality to carry out performance assessment on its employees. This would act to make them carry out their work effectively and efficiently to achieve customer satisfaction. Behavioral skills are also assessed with the main aim of knowing how customer complaints are handled within the organization. This would involve how employees carry themselves when handling customer related issues. It would also be r5elated to the relation between employees within the organization. Good relations between employees would give maximu m output, which is required in firms or organizations providing services to the organization. The Assessment Centre within the Dubai municipality makes this possible. This is concerned with assessments aimed at knowing the competence of the workers and level of performance. This section requires qualified individuals who would carry out their work with integrity and minimal supervision (Dreher and Dougherty, 163). There is also career planning that aims at self-development of the employees of Dubai Municipality. Different sections exist within the municipality and this call for different knowledge and expertise. Therefore, individuals are identified and trained in their career lines. This would encourage specialization and

Study Guide History Questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Study Guide History Questions - Essay Example The paper "Study Guide History Questions" presents a set of study guide questions regarding different periods of world history such as World War I and World War II and the Chinese Qing dynasty. Total war is a conflict characterized by military targeting civilian resources and infrastructure, food blockades, as well as a military draft for men and production of materials. During the Great War, the central powers comprised of Austria-Hungary, Germany, Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. During the Great War, the defensive techniques included the use of barbed wire and trenches while the offensive power were machine guns, flamethrowers, mustard gas, submarines, tanks, and aircraft (zeppelins, planes). Therefore, the primary demands and messages conveyed by nations’ propaganda posters in the Great War were "Women of Britain say GO!", "The empire needs men!", "Canada’s new army needs men like you", "I want you for U.S. Army", "Who is absent? Is it you?". Also, the pro-war messages could be found in George M. Cohan’s song â€Å"Over There†. The song is calling upon the young and energetic members of the society (male) to take up arms and fight the enemy. It also emphasizes the cultural perception of masculinity as the protector of the community. During the Great War, the government control mechanisms were required such as buy war bonds (propaganda posters), the military draft, government control of private industries, munitions factory workers needed, rationing, anti-sedition legislation.

Discuss the various ways in which globalisation is affecting the world of work. :: essays research papers

The term globalisation is a particularly elastic concept. Not only does it embrace a wide range of ‘things’, it also straddles the realms of ‘fact’ and ‘value’ of ‘idea’ and ‘reality’, thus to define the word globalisation requires an amalgamation of both moral and material values which may include and encompass events as dynamic as economic, political and social. At its simplest globalisation has tended to denote the idea that societies are becoming increasingly affected by events of other societies, thus the idea of an interconnected world is a central theme for many scholars who have remarked upon the focus of globalisation. It should be noted however that there has been and continues to be schism surrounding what some commentators constitute as being a limitless phenomena as others stand in direct contradiction and consider the globalisation thesis as merely a ‘buzz-word to denote the latest phase of capitali sm.’ The word globalisation is often assumed to be a relatively recent emergence in world history, however although the ancestry and precise timescale of the use of the term is nebulous for ease of analysis many scholars suggest the 1980s to be the era in which the seeds of globalisation were set and subsequently initiated historians and fellow scholars alike to begin to question the existence and effects of globalisation. It is visible that the globalisation thesis is not clear cut therefore in this essay I will not be looking at it in isolation but will also attempt to highlight the issues surrounding globalisation, whilst attempting to find a correlation between the neo-liberal stance of globalisation and how they regard this to be affecting the global domain in regards to employment, before concluding as to if we can conclusively say that globalisation is affecting the world of work in society today. Endeavouring to find a specific definition of globalisation can be onerous as there are a multiplicity of both positive and negative ideas and beliefs of what the term actually implies, however Rosabeth Moss Kanter in ‘Thriving Locally in the Global Ecomony’ (1995) has provided an original explanation of the term, ‘the world is becoming a global shopping mall in which ideas and products are available everywhere at the same time.’ M.Waters has also commented on this issue, but perhaps adopting a less positive stance, ‘a social process in which the constrains of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding.

Don Delillo’s Videotape Essay

The plot of Don Delillo’s Videotape is strange enough as it is; a twelve year old girl is playing with a video camera while in the back seat of their family car. Thinking it is fun to do so, she points the camera out the back window and starts recording the man driving the car behind them. It is not long before the girl and her video camera become witness to the man being fatally shot, and her video becomes widely publicized thereafter. The introduction of the story is with the role of the twelve year old girl in the entire structure of the story. How she gets involved, and the after-effects of her involvement all form the basic concepts and structure of the story. Careful readers will note several complications within the storyline itself that develop surrounding the young girl. The first is her reaction to keep the video camera running even during the actual shooting itself. Being in the process of witnessing a murder in cold blood, the child is faced with the conflict of stopping the recording or satisfying a morbid fascination to continue watching. Ultimately, the child is unable to resist, possibly because of the curiosity that comes with the experience of seeing something new. However, Videotape does not just focus on the child and her story. It tells of the people watching it on television afterwards, specifically of a couple’s reaction to it. In the story, while the wife seems relatively uninterested in the real-life drama going on in the video, the husband displays the same morbid fascination with the murder similar to that earlier demonstrated by the child. The irony of the situation is such that while the idea of seeing the murder of a fellow human being in real life is repulsive enough, seeing it in a different form seems to effectively change the circumstances surrounding it, making it acceptable even. The conclusion of the story ultimately reveals the unfortunate side of man that revels in others’ loss when presented in a manner so usually associated with mass entertainment.

Sofia Kovalevskaya, Russian Mathematician

Sofia Kovalevskayas father, Vasily Korvin-Krukovsky, was a general in the Russian Army and was part of Russian nobility. Her mother,  Yelizaveta Shubert,  was from a German family with many scholars; her maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were both mathematicians. She was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1850. Background Known for:first woman to hold a university chair in modern Europefirst woman on the editorial staff of a mathematical journalDates:  January 15, 1850 to February 10, 1891Occupation:  novelist,  mathematicianAlso known as:  Also known as:Sonya KovalevskayaSofya KovalevskayaSophia KovalevskaiaSonia KovelevskayaSonya Korvin-Krukovsky Learning Mathematics As a young child, Sofia Kovalevskaya was fascinated with the unusual wallpaper on the wall of a room on the family estate: the lecture notes of Mikhail Ostrogradsky on differential and integral calculus. Although her father provided her with private tutoring, he would not allow her to study abroad for further education, and Russian universities would not then admit women. Sofia Kovalevskaya wanted to continue her studies in mathematics, so she found a solution: an amenable young student of paleontology, Vladimir Kovalensky, who entered into a marriage of convenience with her. This allowed her to escape the control of her father. In 1869, they left Russia with her sister, Anyuta. Sonja went to Heidelberg, Germany, Sofia Kovalensky went to Vienna, Austria, and Anyuta went to Paris, France. University Study In Heidelberg, Sofia Kovalevskaya obtained the permission of the mathematics professors to allow her to study at the University of Heidelberg. After two years she went to Berlin to study with Karl Weierstrass. She had to study privately with him, as the university in Berlin would not allow any women to attend class sessions, and Weierstrass was unable to get the university to change the rule. With Weierstrass support, Sofia Kovalevskaya pursued a degree in mathematics elsewhere, and her work earned her a doctorate sum cumma laude from the University of Gà ¶ttingen in 1874. Her doctoral dissertation on partial differential equations is today called the Cauch-Kovelevskaya Theorem. It so impressed the faculty that they awarded Sofia  Kovalevskaya the doctorate without examination and without her having attended any classes at the university. Looking for Work Sofia Kovalevskaya and her husband returned to Russia after she earned her doctorate. They were unable to find the academic positions they desired. They pursued commercial ventures and produced a daughter as well. Sofia Kovalevskaya began writing fiction, including a novella Vera Barantzova which won sufficient acclaim to be translated into several languages. Vladimir Kovalensky, immersed in a financial scandal for which he was about to be prosecuted, committed suicide in 1883. Sofia Kovalevskaya had already returned to Berlin and mathematics, taking their daughter with her. Teaching and Publishing She became a privatdozent at Stockholm University, paid by her students rather than the university. In 1888 Sofia Kovalevskaya won the Prix Bordin from the French Academie Royale des Sciences for research now called the Kovelevskaya top. This research examined how Saturns rings rotated. She also won a prize from the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1889, and that same year was appointed to a chair at the university—the first woman appointed to a chair at a modern European university. She was also elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences as a member that same year. She only published ten papers before her death from influenza in 1891, after a trip to Paris to see Maxim Kovalensky, a relative of her late husband with whom she was having a love affair. A lunar crater on the far side of the moon from Earth and an asteroid were both named in her honor. Sources Ann Hibner Koblitz. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary. 1993 reprint.Roger Cooke. The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya. 1984.Linda Keene, editor. The Legacy of Sonya Kovalevskaya: Proceedings of a Symposium. 1987.