Starting a high-end female sports underwear brand in the uk market Essay

Starting a high-end female sports underwear brand in the uk market - Essay Example Competitive analysis reveals that the underwear market in the UK is highly competitive and overcrowded. It has an enormous extent, making it difficult to break it down to narrower segments. On this basis, the underwear market is regarded as too large for the high-end female sport underwear to handle. As such, the UK underwear market was eliminated from further exploration (Halasa 2008). The sportswear market is anticipated to grow in the coming years, reaching its peak in 2015 at 4.89 billion pounds (Morgan 2001). This growth has encouraged various non-sport retailers to widen their clothing lines, including clothing lines. The sportswear market is growing more quality conscious, and consumers have shown significant potential to pay for it. This has created an opportunity for the high-end female sports underwear in the region. Findings show that females aged between 21 and 24, both within active leisure and mainstream sport are the appropriate target group for the high-end female sports underwear in the UK. This group is an opportunity for the company, as it provides it with an opportunity to tailor its products, and offer wool underwear in line with sports underwear. Nike and Adidas are the major players in the market. As such, it is vital for the high-end female sports underwear start up to gain a strong position. By entering the market as an untraditional retailer, the company will build a strong brand and manage to enter the UK market successfully. An agent will be highly suitable, as this will offer the high-end female sport underwear company with sufficient information about the market. The company will specialize in the production and sale of high-end female sports underwear brands. With sufficient information regarding the market, strong brands for children, men and women, the company will contribute to growth as well as profitability for convenience goods. The high-end female sport underwear brand will serve as part of an

Terry v Ohio Stop Question Frisk Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Terry v Ohio Stop Question Frisk - Essay Example In conducting a stop and frisk, police officers are acting on a reasonable suspicion that either the officers or others are in danger of being harmed. In such circumstances, police officers may conduct a reasonable search of the individual for weapons. This investigatory power exists independent of whether or not there is probable cause for affecting an arrest or whether or not the officers in question are entirely sure that the person is actually armed and dangerous (Terry v Ohio 1968). The US Supreme Court defined the circumstances in which a stop, question and frisk would not exceed the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment. First, while warrants for search and seizure are the preferred way, there are times where police officers must act quickly and in such a case a stop and frisk may be appropriate. Secondly, the search and seizure must be reasonable in the circumstances and reasonableness is judged from the perspective of the reasonable â€Å"man of caution† (Terry v Ohio 1968). Thirdly, a stop and frisk is appropriate when the police officer in question is investigating a reasonably suspicious behavior. Fourthly, in such circumstances, if the police officer perceives that the individual acting suspiciously is armed, the officer may conduct a reasonable search to determine whether or not this is the case. Fifthly, where an officer is justified in searching/frisking the individual for weapons, where there is no probable cause for arrest, the frisk must corre spond with the circumstances of the case. Finally, in all circumstances where an officer reasonably fears that there is danger such an officer may â€Å"make an intrusion short of arrest† (Terry v Ohio 1968). According to Stolarik (2013), the practice of stopping, questioning and frisking by New York City Police has gotten out of control and there has been significant controversy over whether or not these practices are consistent with the protection against unreasonable search and seizure under

Business Plan Marketing Essay Example for Free

Business Plan Marketing Essay Starting a new/ successful business can be one of the hardest things that a person can do in their life. The business can come second to nothing in life , not even your family. This is often where people make the mistake and get in to deep. Planning is just the beginning but is the most important aspect of the whole process. According to Uggla and Filipsson developing a company brand is one of the most important aspects of starting a business also. They used examples like Adidas, HM and Microsoft as good companies to look at as examples. A strong foundation to a business will be a huge help in making the business successful and profitable as quickly as possible. This being said the business that I would love to open is a garden center or nursery. Marshalls is going to be a leader in indoor tropical houseplants and foliage. We will not only sell the plants but offer landscaping  services and free classes to customers on how to maintain the plants that they do have. I have worked in this field my entire life and have seen many businesses of this type come and go for many reasons. I feel that after working in the field for 12 years I have a good grasp on the reasons why people were successful and unsuccessful. This alone will help me dramatically in the formation of the business because I will not make many of the same mistakes that other companies I have worked for made in the past. The vision that I have for Marshall’s nursery is to have broken even within the first two years of operation and be not only profitable but also the largest nursery in southeastern Michigan. I also want to introduce hundreds of uncommon types of plants to this region for in home growing. Being the biggest importer of tropical orchids and foliage is also very important to the successes of Marshalls. Anyone can sell the basic impatient and marigolds, I would love to go one step above this and show people it is possible to grow tropical and unique plants indoors. At Marshalls nursery our mission statement for this is simple: We want to sell unique tropical plants to our consumers at fair prices. Our consumer will not only gain the plant when they come into Marshalls but they will also gain knowledge. We will have only people that have experience in the field working hands on with the customers. Marshalls offers â€Å"how to† clinics on the weekends and for a small fee will also come out and help you plant whatever is bought at the store. The company will also sell only organic pesticides and fertilizers to consumers to ensure the safety of the environment and families. We will be leaders in the community by not only donating plants but also donating our time to serve the community. The management style will have to evolve as the company gets bigger over the first 5 years or so. In the first couple years while I build my staff the management style will most likely be autocratic. I personally will be in charge and tell everyone what to do. I believe that you shouldn’t give employees to much say in things till after they have shown not only competency but also built trust with the people they are working with. I believe this is also fair considering that I have sunk all of my self  emotionally and financially into the business and I want it ran this way until I at least start profiting. After I have started profiting and have built a good core of employees it will without a doubt turn more in the way of being run permissively. Employees should have the ability to make adjustments and choices in certain situations that may take place within the business. I will also work side by side with my employees. I have a strong belief that you should never tell some one to do something that you wouldn’t want to do yourself. The company will have a structure that starts with the CEO at the top and then down to two assistant managers. The assistant managers will be the ones that are responsible for all of the handling of cash in the mornings and at night and dealing with serious issues throughout any given day. The next level will be three yard managers. Yard managers are responsible for ensuring that everything is completed in the yard and that all of the plants are looking healthy. The will have the ability to delegate to any of the 10 employees working under them. The basic employee will be hourly and do all of the daily task such as helping customers to their cars and watering all of the plants. I believe that by setting up Marshalls nursery in this type of management structure it will greatly benefit the company. Everyone will know what the hierarchy is in the company and know who they can go to for help. Many people would say that this is almost a form of micromanagement but it is needed when you have a company with so many different variables. This structure will also utilize all of the employees’ strengths and eliminate tasks that they may be weak in. Overall, this is just a brief description of the company that I would like to start and how I plan on going about starting it. In weeks to fallow I will slowly build on these values that I have set forth to make for a much stronger company. This is just beginning of the planning. Planning is often the make or break in a company of any type or size. When you own and operate your own business your code of conduct is going to be one of the most important things that you will ever create. This is going to set an  ethical standard for how your business will be run and how the employees should act well at work. This all starts with a core set of values. The Values that Marshalls will use include Honesty, fairness, integrity and using all of these traits to reach the company goals in the near future. All of these things are going to be considered highly, not only in hiring but also keeping a safe and friendly atmosphere for everything. We will not tolerate any unethical behavior in our business by an level of employee. All documents will be checked by our third party accountant that will ensure that all paperwork is done properly and accurately. Marshalls will have zero tolerance for unethical behavior and will be punished by job termination and involvement with the law if the situation dictates. Marshalls will be able to work this code of ethics into everyday practice and will not affect how things are run. This is something that we will need to have in order to be a successful business. A marketing plan is interracial to the success of any business. Regardless of size or what you’re trying to sell it’s going to the back bone of profitability. There are many different aspects that go into making a market plan including: market research, SWOT analysis and the 4 P’s of marketing. All of these things are going to add up to a small portion of what is in a thorough marketing plan but all are important in ensuring a successful business. Market research like I explained in the previous paper is going to explain market trends, competitors and environmental factors. All of these can have huge impacts on how well your company is going to do. You should know your market extremely well. You wouldn’t want to put A steak house in the middle of a vegan community and expect it to succeed. Sometimes however stepping outside the box can be extremely profitable if you can find a niche market that has not been tapped. This is where Marshalls is going to be since were selling tropical plants in a cold climate. A lot of people would say this makes little sense but people in general want what is different for their households and businesses and we can provided that. The first thing that needs to be done when creating a market plan is the 4 p’s of marketing.  This is going to include everything that is going to be involved including product, price, place and promotion. All of these things make up what is called the marketing mixes. The marketing mix is the basics of the business without these you would not even have a business. To be successful Marshalls Nursery is going to have to fallow all of these very to be successful. The product that Marshall’s Nursery is going to be offering is an exotic plant nursery. The plants are going to be from around the world and from many different growers and all have very specific needs. Marshalls will be able to not only sell the plants to the customer but also help them place them in the home where they will flourish. This service will be at an extra charge but to ensure that the plants will do well and produces blooms it will be very helpful. If we can try and get every customer to use our in home care service than it will take the company to a new level of profitability. Price is going to be the most difficult thing for Marshalls. It’s very expensive to ship plants in a heated truck during the winter, but it’s crucial to the success of the business to do so. This will drive the price up a lot. With a lot of the connections with vendors I have made in south Florida I should be able to keep shipping lower. Also teaming up with other stores that are not in close proximity to my store would be another way to order more plants to eliminate s hipping costs. The fact that the plants are rare and people will not be able to get them anywhere else is going to make it easier to keep prices a little bit higher. I strategically picked the location for Marshalls. The area outside of Metro-Detroit is loaded with wealth and the home to over 50 major companies which are potential clients. Also by keeping it in a cold climate we eliminate a lot of competition. The majority of these plants can be bought in warm climates but are nearly impossible to find in Michigan. I have also looked at the growth potential and have found that because of cheap real estate people have been moving to this area quickly. The cheap real-estate also helps because I can afford a better location and building for Marshalls. Promotion is going to be vital to the success of the business. This is going to start with advertising and led directly into the customer service that we give our clients. We are going to do many different types of advertising. This will start with using yellow pages and direct mail. With the yellow pages site we can also hit the internet  marketing with a pay per click campaign. This means that we o nly pay when people click on the ad. Often its five cents per click and you pay depending on how many people click. We have also been working with a lot of local gardening magazines to advertise to our local customers and let them know we are now in town. We will do a free orchid campaign to the first 500 customers at the store to draw people in. This may cost us a lot at the start but in the long run will get the word out that were open and have a quality location. As a company we will also be performing a SWOT analysis on the business before we start. The advantage to this is that it really shows you where your business is and what needs to be improved on. SWOT consists of four things your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Marshalls Nursery has many strength’s. The first thing that is very evident is that I have worked in this type of business for over 12 years and have seen where other companies have succeeded and failed. With this knowledge I should be able to be proactive and not reactive as much. Stopping a problem from the start is huge advantage. I also have made a lot of connections in this type of business that will help me with prices and shipping. Majority of the potential weaknesses that I see are things that will be able to be stopped with proper planning. The first thing that I see as a problem is the lack of working capital that has to start the business. I need to have more capital on hand in order for the business to run to its full potential and for me not to put my own lively hood at risk. Also the lack of reliable workers is another thing that will be difficult. When dealing with exotic plants it will be important that my staff is well trained and knows a lot about the plants and how to care for them. Since we will have mostly tropical plants it will be hard to find adequate candidates. Opportunities that Marshalls may have are being the first business in the area to sell this product and offer in home services to go along with it. Also Michigan State University is the United States leading agriculture and hortic ulture school. This will help because I can use interns that are studying the field and even get potential job applicants straight out of college. We can also open many different locations down the line if the initial location does well. The biggest threat to the company is going to be the climate in Michigan. If we have an extremely cold winter which has happened several times in the past it’s  going to make quality shipping very difficult. Most tropical plants can’t tolerate temperatures under 40 degrees for longer than a couple minutes before getting damaged. Also, if we start doing well it will be very tempting for our competition to start replicating what we are doing. This will be a potential long term threat for the company. This marketing plan is just the beginning of success for the company. It may be the most important part of the process however, this is going to make or break your company. If we realize not only our successes but also our failures and act on them before they happen than we will be a much better company. Daily operations for a business are going to be the bread and butter of your business. A company is often made profitable on how they are run. This can be anything from giving serving customers to obtaining product from vendors half way across the country. The more streamline, efficient and friendly you are will increase margin and in the long run profitability. Often the company that is around in five years is the ones that have figured out how to have the best daily operations. Marshall’s nursery is retail and a services business. Making Marshalls not only a retail but service business will make the operations more difficult but also a lot more profitable. Being able to not only offer to sell items to people but also maintain and pot the exotic plants. I will list how general operations will go for the retail side of the business and the service side. The operations for the store aspect of the business are pretty simple and just like most other retailers. The most important aspect of the business is going to be a good shipping method. We will use heated/cooling trucks that will be able to keep the plants at an exact 75 degrees for the entire tripe to ensure maximum freshness and quality for the customers. Shipping will be very important can have a huge impact on inventory levels and the amount of plants we can carry. We have decided to go a different route than most other nurseries in the area and do all of our own shipping in house. The reason for this is the ability to not only ensure quality but be able to pick select plants and stay in face to face contact with our growers. Our Growers are going to consist of four different companies. We have selected these companies because they have a great reputation and I also have contacts with them that will get us a lot better deal than going elsewhere. The first company that we are going to use is Costa Nursery. Costa is a large scale nursery selling anything from rare plants to the common marigold. I have dealt with them for over 6 years and love their product. They will provide us with mainly orchids and bromeliads. The second is going to be Florida tree farm, they have a large selection of indoor palms that you cannot buy anywhere else in the country. Dewar’s nursery is going to be our primary rose and citurs fruit dealer. Windmill farms will give us the basic everyday 6 packs that people will buy for their outside landscaping. We will only use windmill farms for the summer months to gain a little bit of extra business to sell outdoor plants. Now that we have gone over how and where we will get our product the next aspect is how the actual store is going to be set up. The approximate size of the store will be 1500 square feet inside and 1000 square foot outside area for summer plants. The store will be organized by type of plant on both the inside and the outside. Our staff on any given day will include me and one other manager and at least three other employees to help out the majority of the customers. The store hours will be from 9-7 Mon-Saturday and 10-6 on Sundays. The managers will be the ones that run the registers the majority of the time well the associates help customers find and load what they need into the car. One other responsibility that everyone will have is making sure all of the plants get watered every single day. Watering is the number one reason the nursery’s have shrink so it will be everyone’s job to do this At the end of every day the managers that close will be responsible for counting down all of the registers and making sure the store is clean and ready for business the following day. These roles can be modified if need be due to call offs or any other issues that may come up. We will also have at least two traveling care takers for homeowners and business owners that will go from place to place and take care of people’s plants. These will also be the individuals that make long distance runs to the nursery’s to pick up  product. Monday will be a very crucial day for the business. The managers will do inventory and decided what we are going to need for the next couple weeks. They will then call it in to the different vendors and set up a Thursday or Friday pick up time. Monday and Tuesday will also be the days that our traveling plant specialists will go to appointments to take care of people’s plants. This will all be going on behind scenes well the store is operating its daily business. Wednesday the plant specialists will leave in two boxes trucks and travel to Florida where they will load up the two trucks and return home before Saturday so that the store can be replenished with merchandise. Upon returning on Saturday the associates will unload the truck and the managers will do a second check to make sure everything has arrived not only in good shape but also the proper quantities. This seems like a lot of work but it is very important to only have the freshest product for our customers and will also make it so that we can keep prices lower. This will be a typical week at Marshalls. I have found that over my years of managing similar businesses nothing is every set in stone and adjustments will have to be made as we go. This is just a general blueprint for what a week will look like. We have been looking at the idea of getting several of our products from the Caribbean islands. There are many pros and cons of doing this. The first thing that we noticed was that we were able to get products a lot cheaper per plant but will have to pay almost three times the shipping to get them back to the U.S. The reason that they are so much cheaper is because the labor to grow them is less than half what we pay people in the United States. Countries like Haiti pay people only dollars a day. Many of the growers also do not fallow the laws of the U.S and use pesticides and fertilizers that have been banned. This is especially relevant when trying to ship fruit trees that are going to potentially be consumed by people. Dealing with the government of some of these other countries is also very difficult because they want to control what is being shipped and often times will confiscate things at the border that they feel is odd. When this happens there is no guarantee that we will ever get what we ordered and can  often times result in huge losses. A typical order can range anywhere from 2000 dollars up to 20,000. One lost order can ruin a half of month’s sales. Like any business networking is key in success so by gaining overseas contacts it can greatly increase sales and even potential locations to expand to. We have even looked at opening our own greenhouse and fields in some foreign countries to produce our own plants. This is just a basic overview of what the operations for Marshalls will look like. Many things will come up that may change how the company will be run. Many factors such as weather and war may dictate what will happen. If we are able to stick to this plan as close as possible we should be profitable within the first two years of being open. A cash flow analysis is an important part of any business that is planning on succeeding and growing in the future. Marshalls is no different than any other business in that it needs to have an accurate cash flow statement. This will give us a better idea of how the business is doing and where the cash is flowing in the business. It is important as a small business to prepare these documents as frequently as possible. This can be done anywhere from monthly to annually. In this paper we will look at what goes into a cash flow analysis and what some of the benefits are for keeping an accurate cash flow analysis. The first part of the cash flow statement that you will need to know is the net income. The net income is the total amount of money that will be brought in. This will be a base number with nothing taken out for liabilities or money that was spent. Marshalls had a net income of 545,000 in the first year of doing business. Operating activities is the first thing that needs to be analyzed for a cash flow analysis. This will include anything that will produce direct revenue or any of the costs that may come up when producing a good or a service. When looking at what might cause cash inflow, you would consider thing like customer sales from primary products. For Marshalls this would be anything that we would sell to the public. The main out flows that we will have to  consider for operating activities would be paying suppliers and employee payrolls. The money that will go out to our suppliers will be around 100,000 and our payroll for the year will be around 300,000 all together for our employees. Investing activities is the next area of that we will look at when making a cash flow analysis. This will be higher for the first year because of the property that we will be buying. This is a noncurrent asset that will generate a lot of money for us over time. The property is we bought is 200,000 and will only have to be deducted for the first year of the cash flow statement. Equipment for the company is also in this category because over time we will make money from this. The total cost of this is going to be 20,000. Financing activates is the final area on the cash flow analysis that Marshalls will have to take into consideration. This area will be anything from having to barrow money for new equipment to using cash to pay off a property loan. Marshalls will have to be making payments on equipment and also on the cost of the mortgage for the building that they will be located in. There are many benefits to preforming a cash flow analysis and is necessary for any size business. The first thing that we need to consider is that this is the final report that is prepared. This means that it takes into account everything that was in the other financial statements. This statement will show accountability and validity of all the other kinds of statements. This is a great way to analyze how healthy a business is when you are considering doing business with them or investing with them. This report will also make the company a lot more credible when trying to entice investors and other financing. Many problems will arise if this report is not done properly and in a timely manner. Cash flow statements are the overall performance of your business and by not knowing where you’re sitting it can have terrible future implications. Including, overspending and not being credible to potential  investors. Information technology can be a make or break of a business. It can not only save the company a lot of money but also at the same time protect valuable information. This information can include anything from business account numbers, customer information, vendor lists and product margins. All of this is going to be information that you would not want to lose or get stolen by potential competitors. The first thing that we are going to look at is going to be types of hardware that we will be using at Marshalls to make it as safe and user friendly as possible. The hardware that we are going to be using for this business is going to be pretty simple because of the nature of the business. We will have two computers that will be for ordering information and managing the website online. These computers will also field all email questions by customers from the website. We will also have a laptop for the delivery guys to use to make sure that all of the products they are picking up are correct and for lite personal use on two and three day trips. In the office there is a multipurpose printer that has the ability to copy, fax and print. To stay up with the times we have decided to also integrate two I-pads into our company to take credit card sales on the spot and make answering questions easier for the customer. Software is going to be an area where we will not need to spend a lot of money to start out. I figure that we will get QuickBooks to do our accounting and the Microsoft office suite to do the majority of the other features. In office suite there is a program that is called accesses and will build a database of customers and we will use that heavily for direct mail and contacting potential customers over time. The one area that we will not skimp in is anti-virus protection the reason that I say this is because it is going to be important to protect all of our information. Marshalls is going to use email very heavily for their business not only to stay in touch with customers but also to order product and keep in contact with the delivery people that are on the road 3 days a week. Marshalls  Email is [emailprotected], the reason that we decided on this email is because people will easily be able to distinguish us when looking through their emails. We also used Google as our home for our email because it is not only free but can hold the most amount of emails. We will have a basic network that will link all of our electronic devices to the main desktop PC in the manager’s office. All important documents will then be stored in external hard drives as well as on the device that it was transferred from. This will ensure that we will never have an issue where we lose paper work or information that we will need at a later time. For the laptop and I-pads we will have wireless internet at the store and the ability to have ATT 3g for the laptop on the road. Our website is going to be very simple in design with a basic landing page that will search engine optimized to increase relevance and raise our spot on search engine pages. The page will have a spot where customers can get basic information and see approximate in store quantities. The main concern for www.Marshallstropical.com is going to be that due to the ability to order, schedule appointments and get plant information on our site it will have high volume of people at the site at any time making it slow if not shutting it down. This concern for heavy usage on the website has made Marshalls staff decided to implement cloud technology. Cloud technology is a somewhat new technology that eliminates the need for multiple servers. This alone is going to save you a ton of money in basic server costs. Normally a server is going to have to have a host and you will be charged no matter how much you actually use it. You also will have to buy more servers as the site gains popularity or it will slow down dramatically. Customers hate not being able to streamline across a site and will often not even consider a site that is not in fast working order. What cloud technology will do for us is not only eliminate the need for servers but also increase our scalability. Meaning the site will be able to handle more people when needed and scale back down when traffic is slower. This makes it very convenient because you never have to worry about your site being slow due to high traffic and potentially  losing sales. Cloud technology is also a performance based asset. The reason I say this is because you are only really paying for it when people are using it. This being said when people are looking at your website that is creating leads and the potential for customers so you are really only paying when it’s being used. This can all be done from one computer and is a very simple. With the little bit of time I will have on my hands running the business simple is better. This is just the start to what we can do with information technology in our business. Since we are so small we will be able to run lite in this area for a while. When we start to get bigger and open up new locations the need for information technology expansion will be needed. The most important thing overall is our security and the ability to protect our information yet stay streamlined for the customer’s needs. Management in any business is going to be an important factor. A business that is not ran properly will often times not be around for more than a couple years. Poor management will affect customer satisfaction as well as employee satisfaction. It is often a trickledown effect with an end result of customers not wanting to shop at that place of business and the business not being able to hire potential qualified candidates. At Marshall’s nursery we will have four managers that will run the business. One of the managers is going to be the owner and will have the final say in any issues that may arise. This is going to be somewhat of an autocratic management style but since the owner has the final say. I feel that I should have the final say on this because it I am solely taking the entire financial risk in the business. Not only am I taking the entire risk but I also have more experience running the business than any of the other managers that are fresh out of college. Marshalls will also have an offsite accountant that will be responsible for the weekly reports and making sure all the books are kept up to date and correct. We also have the ability to bring in outside consultants that will help train our employees about the different types of plants and plant care. All of the employees at Marshalls will have to be team players, when you are running a large business with a staff of 12. Employees will have to learn how to work together in order to get everything accomplished that needs to be done. I stated that it was going to be an autocratic work place for the first couple years but I hope to move more to a democratic type of management style when we get established. I want all of the managers to have a say in how the business is run and implement things that they feel is going to help the business out over time. Only fallowing ones persons ideas and direction will eventually hinder its ability to grow into a unique business. Communication at Marshalls is going to be very important because of the nature of the business. We will be running three different shifts that will only overlap by a couple of hours. Since the overlap is so little, we will have to utilize emails, texts and interpersonal communication in order to get our daily business done. Information that is business sensitive will only be available to the managers and accountant. Many things over the course of any given day will have to communicate. Some of these things will be watering logs, work lists and schedule changes. All of this information will be emailed to each employee. Organizational culture is how the employees interact with each other with in an organization. An organization can be defined as anything that a group may partake in. Organizational culture can be how people interact with each other and their beliefs, habits, values, visions, norms and many others. Since it is very hard to match people up that have the exact same traits we will have to ensure that here at Marshalls we will have to do the best we can in the interview process to get a good mesh of people. No business can handle people bickering and fighting every single day. In the event that a labor strike were to happen in the middle of my peak season it would very difficult to keep my plants supplies up. The first thing that I would need to do is find out what I have exactly on hand and figure out how long mu current inventory would last. After figuring out my current inventory I would then have to start shopping around for the next  best suppliers that have similar prices and adjust my prices accordingly. I would probably have to bring on a couple seasonal drivers so that I could utilize several different vendors for the season and keep the orders coming. Competition in this business is already fierce and I have found a niche market. If more of the same types of businesses pop up around me. The first thing I will have to do is get a hold of my suppliers and let them know that if they want me to keep ordering than they will not supply to any of the surrounding areas. This may seem harsh but they will understand since I have done business with them longer and most likely am ordering bigger quantities. After doing that I would have to scope out the competition and see if they are similarly priced to me. Slight adjustment in prices may be needed to ensure that we are the best priced place in town. This will also have to be monitored closely over time to make sure that we stay the cheapest. Laying off employees is never an easy thing to do especially when you have built a tight group like we have at Marshalls. The lingering affect can be the worst part of a large scale layoff. The most important thing that you have to do is ensure the people that do still work for you that their jobs are safe and they don’t have to worry every day about losing their jobs. After you have reassured them of that I would then offer them the ability to have a couple extra days off when needed to cut payroll and let them know that you will be able to work around their schedules better. This may seem crazy considering you just laid employees off but it’s an easy way to shed parole and give a small morale booster to the current employees. Managing a small business is not an easy thing to do. Often times it can be stressful, sad, fun and overwhelming. The monetary payouts and the feeling of success within the business can often times make the job very desirable. You will come across millions of different customers and situations over the course of your carrier, some easy and some hard but in the end all gratifying. Wilkinson, M. (2009). Small is good. Charter, 80(11), 23-25. Retrieved from Business Source Complete Database. http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/research/ Intuit, Inc. (2008, June). Intuit, Inc. SWOT Analysis. 1-10. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database. http://www.inc.com/guides/201107/how-to-write-an-operational-plan-for-your-small-business.html Wooldridge, J. (2008). When outsourcing finance and business operations makes sense. Associations Now, 4(10), 16-17. Refrences: http://www.moneyinstructor.com/doc/cashbenefit.asp Dibrell, C., Davis, P., Craig, J. (2008). Fueling innovation through information technology in SMEs. Journal of Small Business Management, 46(2), 203-218. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJncFirhjPg

Photography Essays Monstrous Imagery

Photography Essays Monstrous Imagery Chasing the Dragon: Capturing the Significance of the Monstrous Chapter One: What is a monster? There are perhaps two kinds of monster: the monster that sprung from our own hands and changed into something uncontrollable, and the monster that is experienced as alien, preternatural, generally an unfathomable creature, and frightening because of its mystery. It is impossible to decide which is more frightening, since both suggest an Other, something resistant to human power, and while the first kind draws attention to man’s mortal limits and potential for self-destruction, the second highlights the extent of human ignorance and insignificance in relation to external forces. Both kinds of monster, however, share an ability to induce extraordinary fear, and both have a solid foundation in mythology, since man has always feared what he could not explain and has translated his fears into metaphorical shapes of fearful creatures since time began. Both man-made and alien monsters, too, share a self-referential semiotic structure in literature, art, psychology and mythology. In t he history of the human subconscious, fears have always preceded monsters. Monsters are representative. They are representative of all the things we are unable to control, and the uncontrollable fear that is generated by these things. They are representative, then, on more than one level, as they are simultaneously our fear and the object of our fear. All (â€Å"bad†) monsters are synonymous with fear – our fearand as such the monstrosity we perceive in even â€Å"external† beasts like aliens, dragons, sea monsters and circus freaks, is something generated by us, the beholder. They are also representative of anything threatening, as Robert Thomas’ definition in â€Å"The Concept of Fear,† explains â€Å"not only what is likely to threaten life, injure our bodies, cause physical pain, which is seen as   ‘dangerous’ or ‘threatening.’ The monster retains an almost unique power to represent, subjectively, something different to whoever beholds it. But its representative power operates on a universal level too: in Judith Halberstam’s book Skin Shows (1995) she seems to suggest that the semiotics of a monster’s meaning should maintain a certain fluidity, as its interpretation is so unstable, and contingent upon social, political and religious climates. Halberstam expounds on the role of literary and cinematic texts in channelling our fear of monsters, since â€Å"the production of fear in a literary text (as opposed to a cinematic text) emanates from a vertiginous excess of meaning† While one might expect to find that cinema multiplies the possibilities for monstrosity, the nature of the visual always, in fact, operates a kind of self censorship, whereby our visual register reaches a limit of visibility surprisingly fast. It is our imaginations that make the invisible nature of monsters, the very essence of their unknown-ness, so enduringly frightening. As Paul Yoder eloquently expresses it, â€Å"What we cannot see frightens us most. Reason competes with   imagination to establish boundaries around the external stimuli and, thus,   clearly establishes a means of remaining separated from that which harms us.   But reason will ultimately prove ineffective without a frame of reference grounded in a context of physical reality to establish a solidified boundary between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural. Without this definitive context, reason is unable to mark the separation between two modes of perception, so as an audience or a reader, we are forced to hesitate, resulting   in a moment of suspense, the first stage in   externalizing the feeling and producing an externally constructed emotion of   fear.† The monster walks the line between life and death, and the most terrifying monsters transform others into fearful beings too, removing their essence, or everything they cherished. Medusa, for example, had no natural animation herself, just wriggling snakes that performed a grotesque impersonation of the natural and winsome effects of wind through hair.   In some ways she epitomises monstrousness, as her fearful power was an extension of her fearful quality – her deathly stillness. Medusa, of course, used petrification to turn others to stone, and inadvertently brought about her own end through the reflection of her enemy’s shield. Thus Medusa is a warning to all monsters: eventually, the supernatural force of the deadly stillness will be turned onto itself by the superior power of animated defences of the natural. My aim in this study is to juxtapose the metaphorical â€Å"monsters† that have permeated our language and mythologies with the visual interpretations of the monstrous, as it has been translated into photography and the assumptions of pop culture. The ultimate goal in this study is to arrive at some definition of â€Å"monster† based on a societal interpretation of the outsider and examine how fear of the â€Å"Other† is internalized. It is the manner that we, as a society, perceive our â€Å"Other†, which will ultimately control the paths our visual representations of monsters take, as mythical archetypes within the horrors of our minds. Chapter Two: Creating and defining the monstrous: the codes of photography Monsters have long been obeisant to a certain visual code, albeit a very difficult one to define. Sometimes they are brightly coloured, sometimes scaled up or down, humanoid, hairy, toothy, slimey, legless, millipedal, whatever they look like, they look exaggerated, surprising, startling, unexpected. If we read about them, the mental image is a perplexingly blurry one; if we see them in horror movies, their most frightening moment is always just before they appear. Monsters vary so wildly in their representation because the visual properties of the monster are actually incidental to its fear-producing power. The monster can look like anything, the more surprising the better – a chair; a beachball; the Prime Minister because the fear is our fear, and the fear created the monster: it was there first, deep inside us. The visual arrangement of the monster is merely a trigger to that primal fear. It seems to me that the writer with the most monstrous pen is Herman Melville, and the photographer with the most monstrous eye is Ansel Adams. Both contrast light and dark incessantly: for Melville with his extraordinary white whale, pallor is something to be afraid or suspicious of, perhaps even suggesting the diabolical. Whiteness is both, â€Å"the most meaningful symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian deity,† and â€Å"the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind†. In a world controlled by Christian orthodoxy, the whiteness of purity, the shroud, and death, lead to life everlasting. On the sea, however, white represents a loss of hope, for it â€Å"shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation.† A photograph remains an abstraction, even in its most primitive state as a sort of document or record and Adams’s skill lies in his ability to conceal his role as contriver, abstracter, imaginist, within the rhetorical apparatus of scientifically objective reality. He shuttles, perpetually, between the reality of texture and the affectation of emphasised texture; his is a statement about the difference between something existing and something being noticed, which partly accounts for his famous privileging of black and white. When unnecessary distractions arise from ranges of colours are removed, the impact of an image can be multiplied. In efforts to define- or perhaps contain it, the practice of photography has been laboriously distinguished from other visual forms and practices, particularly painting and film. Adams is interesting because he refuses the forces of classification, not static enough for photography, too theatrical and contrived for regular representational convention. In the article Looking at Photographs, Victor Burgin writes: â€Å"The signifying system of photography, like that of classical painting, at once depicted a scene and the gaze of the spectator, an object and a viewing subject. Whatever the object depicted, the manner of its depiction accords with laws of geometric projection which imply a unique point of view. It is the position of point-of-view, occupied in fact by the camera, which is bestowed upon the spectator.† Even more emphatically than painting, photography maps an animated, infinitely subjective and ever changing world into a two dimensional, static image of a finite moment.   Classical and highly stylised black and white images, such as those that have made Adams most famous, take the abstraction one step further by removing all colour from our inescapably multicoloured world. What remains is one of two things which really amount to the same: an alien – monstrous landscape, or our own landscape from an Other’s point of view. The use of colour in photography has been shunned repeatedly by many purists working to a realist agenda. Compared to black and white it is considered more superficial, crassly realistic, mundane, less abstract, ultimately less artistic. Altering light and shade in the darkroom enables a degree of artistic dishonesty. The camera may not lie, but the photographer very frequently does, especially the photographer with an artistic agenda. Whenever he dodges shadow detail and fires up highlights, increasing contrast or altering tone, Adams exercises and demonstrates a contrivance that amounts to a sort of visual poetry. Adams is on record confessing to severe manipulationof Moonrise over Hernandez, but more significant still is probably his interest in striking, unusual, dehumanised scenes and subjects which lend themselves so well to monochrome representation. These subjects I would characterise as â€Å"monstrous†: their stillness the only feature protecting us from terror †“ the brink of fear kept just out of reach by the amazing stationary quality of the images. Monsters are frightening when they are animated, but this is also when they are at their weakest, as we have seen. Adams’ works have the frozen, petrified, feel of a final visual imprint of a paralysed, dying beast. The night scene is extraordinarily affecting, partly because, as a genre, it is most famous for high contrast monochrome. It is the only time in our world really does seem black and white, so the image is almost an accurate representation, but not quite. It is the slightly alienating quality of this image, the slight lack of fit between representation and mental expectation, which makes it so beautiful. Many of Adams’s images are arresting because they are tuned to the timing of our mental calculations: they are ready to predict and confound our expectations by subtle acts of artifice and they play constantly, and good-naturedly, on the moment of our realisation. The monochrome of Adams is not a symptom of self-aggrandising pride in his iconic â€Å"artist† status, but a device to play with emphasis and expectation, a way of forcing us to look at the world in different ways. The British scientist and psychology pioneer, Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), was responsible for many studies we might now associate with â€Å"monstrous† photography in a different sense. Galton generated controversy in many ways even in his own time; as an early eugenicist he was the first to study the nature-nurture debate through the use of real pairs of twins. Galton’s Eugenics experiments in the 1870s had the ostensible aim of â€Å"improving† the human race by selecting individuals with desirable traits and encouraging them to breed, while simultaneously to check the birth-rate of the Unfit. Perhaps his most famous means of studying behavioural traits across different social demographics was photography. Galton aimed to surpass individual behavioural idiosyncrasies and arrive at generalisations about human behaviour, through a crudely arranging a number of photographs into a composite. His most famous study of this sort aspired to investigating criminal behaviour – and this was the study which most clearly demonstrated both a fear of and damaging assumptions made about Victorian society’s â€Å"Other†: the monstrous convict. Galton took a number of face-shots of men convicted of murder, manslaughter and other serious crimes, then carefully printed them all to the same dimensions. By photographing a number of them, then carefully aligning the images onto the same photographic plate, a composite photograph was assembled. Rather than Galtons enabling him to produce a clear image of a criminal face, Galton’s results produced pictures that of men with a generic kind of working class look. Galton’s â€Å"monster† seemed to be created from the false confidence of new technologies and that afforded by the new shamanism surrounding his â€Å"science†. His results seemed to show that any member of the lower classes was a potential criminal and advised that selective breeding could be used to replace the lower classes by those from superior stock. An extension of the same reasoning and method, and extraordinary bias towards the visual, could come to the conclusion that some racial groups were inherently superior to others, and indeed this was what happened, as Eugenics, while starting as an attempt to scientifically improve the human condition was of course later used to support Nazi policies of extermination of Jews, gypsies and others. Photography theory has traced something undeniably monstrous integral to the abstract, literary property of the photograph. After his father’s death, Paul Auster was compelled to sort through the house full of the objects left behind. Despite the fact that all his father’s artefacts, everything from an electric razor, to tools and cancelled cheques—bore a kind of ghostly trace of their owner, Auster prefers to focus on the photographs he finds stored in a cupboard in the bedroom. It is as if he hopes they might reveal some information about his father that unusually real, through their power to capture his image. Roland Barthes’s work Camera Lucida affords Auster’s grim quest with some context. After a determined effort to define photography â€Å"in itself,† the second half of his book sees Barthes turning to a kind of personal dialogue with a photograph of his recently deceased mother. While sorting a stack of photographs of his mother, Bar thes notices that â€Å"none of them seemed to me really ‘right’†that is, although he â€Å"recognized a region of her face, a certain relation of her nose and forehead, the movement of her arms, her hands† Barthes can’t â€Å"find† his mother’s essential â€Å"being† in any of her pictures. Barthes’s task then changes from sorting photos to â€Å"looking for the truth of the face I had loved† in the stack of images. There is something intrinsically alien about the meaning of photographs, and to this extent they are monsters to us, and our memories. Auster, too, seems to be seeking â€Å"truth† in the photographs of his lost parent. He writes, â€Å"It seemed that they could tell me things I had never known before, reveal some previously hidden truth† Unlike Barthes, who is looking for something he knows about his mother but can’t find in her images, Auster hopes that his father’s photographs will betray some evidence of a private man, some part of his father that had been carefully concealed from the world. The â€Å"very essence† of photography, according to Barthes, is that it shows what has been. Chapter three: Reacting to monstrous imagery Many spaces are terrifying to us, and soon become populated by â€Å"monsters† of the cosmic psyche. The arctic wasteland is crawling with yetis, every dark corner has a ghost, and every desert is thick with monstrous mirages, terrifying to the extent that they represent a void, a nothingness, at best, the fear of the unknown. They are alien landscapes- mammals struggle to survive, and the plants we do find in deserts barely seem designed to aid our survival. There is a certain security about filling the void with sign-posts, even if, in the ultimate post-modern irony, those signs only point to themselves. In this sense the iconography of the desert shares a metaphorical shape with Barthes’ self-reflexive definition of photography; it is as if the horrors of the desert, the horrors of the self-created metaphor, and the fearful void constructed by the photograph that signifies nothing are all connected and perhaps even the same. Auge’s words explain the problem of imaging the desert, If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity then a space which cannot be defined as relational, historical or concerned with identity is a non place. The spaces which negate are unbearable and must be somehow psychically redeemed. Laura Cinti attempts this by attaching hair to the spineless cactus, for the cactus itself has of course beco me yet another iconographic space of complicated nothingness. Cinti’s work, if it demonstrates or states anything, demonstrates or states the extent to which the desert symbolism has been anxiously harvested from the plant. What looks like nothingness is mere misunderstanding, and what looks like improvement and liberation is naà ¯ve, appalling, abuse. Yet we are all guilty of some of this. None of us can bear the silence of the desert or make sense of the mute perpendicular. Michael Fried’s work in Realism, Writing, Disfiguration makes much of the damaging and paradoxical symmetry that exists between the hand and the eye. That is, the way we see the world is affected by the way we recreate it, but the way we reproduce it damages the way we see it. The whole theory operates on a larger metaphor controlled by vertical/horizontal semiotics. The desert cactus image is always a vertical formation on a horizontal axis: the opposition of life and death is present visually and immediately. But the desert is unique, as a horizontal space. We would normally expect a great expanse of flat ground to be bursting with life and promise, to oppose and define the sky. The desert, however, rejects life. Those who think cacti ugly must perceive them as canker sores, signifiers only of scorched earth. The desert space is an inversion of all th at we, as animals, have come to associate with health   and life. The cacti in the vista, then, can be interpreted in two almost completely opposing ways. Either they are the anti-tree, the anti-life, or they are vegetation and water, albeit in a different form- and consequently just as alienated from the sandy plains as we are. Despite the obvious oppositions, the desert is more like the sea than it appears. While the water reflects light, the desert reflects heat- and the art historian Michael Fried cites reflections as the connection between the inner and the outer. To the extent that they are concerned with reflections, indoor and outdoor scenes are treated as having the same character and affect. I feel sure the notion can equally be applied to a pair of iconographically opposing images. Interior and exterior scenes are, to Fried, clear metaphors for the inside and outside of the body, so perhaps the â€Å"external† hostility of the desert might set alongside the â€Å"internal† of the humane well-vegetated landscape. Perhaps the images represent a horizontality that reflect along a flat axis. The reflection must always be slightly imperfect for the object to be seen at all- and it is interference on the vertical axis that disrupts the reflection and reveals the illusion. In the desert, th is interference is embodied by cacti, which are surely the most authentic part of the landscape. Conclusions We have seen how monsters can be created and destroyed, and discovered that it is more interesting to explore their legacy as metaphorical forces in our language and psyches. In closing, I would like to look briefly at the example of Narcissus, whose monstrous transformation into a flower is richly representative and relevant, and resonates with much of the discourse surrounding art and spectatorship today. Turning to ancient mythology, we often find a wealth of instances where change itself is the terrifying aspect of the monstrous. Ovid’s metamorphoses provide a catalogue of such stories, and, more interestingly, represent the different ways that the metaphors of monstrosity are used to generate fear and alienation. Narcissus and Echo is a particularly rich example, among several in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, of a beautiful youth who died as a result of spurning sex. In Ovids retelling of the myth, Narcissus is the son of Cephissus, the river god and the nymph Liriope. The seer Tiresias foretold that the child would live to an old age if it did not look at itself. While many nymphs and girls fell in love with him, he rejected them all. One such nymphs, Echo, became so distraught that she withdrew to a lonely spot and faded until all that was left was a plaintive whisper. Meanwhile the rejected girls’ prayers for vengeance reached the goddess Nemesis, who caused Narcissus to fall in love with his own reflection. He remained transfixed by his reflection until he died. It is possible that the connection between Echo and Narcissus was an invention of Ovid, since there do not seem to be any earlier instances of the Narcissus myth which incorporate Echo. This myth lends itself to extensive and adventurous literary interpretation. When Narcissus eliminated the distance between his image and its reflection by touching the water with his face, the distance disappeared and took the image with it, as the water rippled and broke the reflected into pieces. The desire, however, remained, not disappearing with any distance covered by his attempts to escape it, and his difficulty with his passion for himself was not solved. The story is compelling to artists because it is about the power of sight, its dangers and its rewards. For Narcissus, salvation is possible as extension of distance, not as elimination of it. If he can cease to see his own image he will be saved but is precisely the need to see his face that is compelling and destroying him. As Angel Angelov writes, â€Å"Narcissus’ face is a metonymy of integrity, enraptured by its reflected self. The general paradox upon which the story is built comprises various details – in this case, the simultaneity of shapelessness and fixed contour – Narcissus’ image on the water surface was cut like chiseled Paros marble. Certainly, we can think about Alexandrinian influence (getting petrified because of amazement) but also about the Roman practice of sculpting, creating firm outlines. However, the presence in a definite social environment considered eternal, is a characteristic that is contrary to the out-social transience of Narcissus’ reflection.† In Narcissus: the mirror of the text. Philip Hardie explores various ideas around Narcissus as a post-modern signifier. The surface of water, that fragile barrier, becomes a Lacanian mirror and operates as an interface between Self and Other, dividing reality and illusion, as Narcissus, just like the reader, confronts an image that can never be real, but representative only of the viewer’s unfulfilled desire. Hardie argues that the story of Narcissus and Echo is Ovid’s cautionary treatise on the dangerously deluding, deceptively subjective property of sight and sound. Narcissus as Lucretian fool and Lucretian lover will be the victim of simulacral delusions, a frustrated lover situated ironically in a bountiful, pastoral landscape filled with false promise; inappropriately wistful even after his acknowledgement that the Other can only ever be a hollow reflection of the Self. According to this reading, all hope of something extraneous to the self, something objective, to love and life, is prohibited by this tale’s morality. The story is essentially tragic and ontologically didactic: indeed Ovid’s Theban histories are infused with the theme of empty signifiers and the dangers of useless introspection. Indeed the story’s equation of the bewitching power of sight with the sight of oneself has inspired recent writers to construct a kind of literary psychosis to describe the subjective subject, â€Å"The eye would be about the I, the subject, part of a monocular system perpetuating an illusion of wholeness, an Imaginary dyad, a tradition of the eye/I that would move through Kant, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty, while the ear would be aligned with the other, with a fragmentary existence cut across by the Symbolic, by having subjectivity determined by and through an other,† It has been said that the product of every metamorphosis is an absent presence, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Narcissus/Echo episode, a story irresistible to artists transfixed with the metaphysical paradoxes and word games. One artist well known for his precocious interest in semiotics was Nicholas Poussin. Poussin’s Echo and Narcissus depicts, unusually, a trio of figures in a triangular formation. Narcissus lies prone across the base, limp but muscular, his face a mask of sadness, his eyes empty. Echo behind him resembles a Greek statue, History, perhaps, again posing strangely in a balleric semaphor of sorrow. In fact, for all the story’s appeal Echo and Narcissus poses an obvious challenge to artists: Echo is said to have wasted away until only her voice was left. But a voice is rather difficult to represent in painting. From the outset, then, the story demands that mimetic pictorial realism must be suspended. The story gives artists like Poussin free license to create symbolic, literary pieces, with figures whose bodies are sculpted and whose faces are masks. We have seen how the image lends itself to ontological paradoxes, and it could be argued that the putti, the third figure in th is image, is a kind of representation of the artist’s presence inside his own artificial world. The putti carries a flaming torch, and stands next to a spear, clear indicators, Michael Fried would argue, of the artist’s palette and paintbrush. The art historian Michael Fried’s writing synchronises very well with the Echo and Narcissus myth, as it could well be characterized as the doomed ambition to structure impossible desire. Poussin’s works present a displaced metaphor for the mental and physical effort of painting. Thus Fried’s theory takes the anti-mimetic definition of realism one step further- although painting does not have to relate to what it depicts, it will resist immediacy, but relate in specific indirect ways to the person who depicts it. For Poussin, the impossible, yet desired, merger is one of inscriber and inscribed; for Ovid it is one of reader and listener. An erotics of the word and image is then as inevitable as one of ear and eye, and we find the transformation that characterizes the monster has as much to do with desire as it has to do with fear. This notion is borne out by Kristeva’s definition of the abject. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines abject as Brought low, miserable; craven, degraded, despicable, self abasing, describing abjection as a state of misery or degradation, definitions which can be understood more fully through their expression: religious hatred, incest, womens bodies, human sacrifice, bodily waste, death, cannibalism, murder, decay, and perversion are aspects of humanity that society considers abject. As Barbara Creed sees it, â€Å"The place of the abject is where meaning collapses, the place where I am not. The abject threatens life, it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self.† Hence the abject is something we deliberately exclude to preserve our illusion of a meaningful world. In Powers Of Horror:An Essay On Abjection, Kristeva identifies that we first experience abjection at the point of separation from the mother. This idea is drawn from Lacans psychoanalytical theory as she identifies abjection as symptomatic of a revolt against that which gave us our own existence. As Samantha Pentony explains it, â€Å"At this point the child enters the symbolic realm, or law of the father. Thus, when we as adults confront the abject we simultaneously fear and identify with it. It provokes us into recalling a state of being prior to signification (or the law of the father) where we feel a sense of helplessness. The self is threatened by something that is not part of us in terms of identity and non-identity, human and non-human.† Kristeva definition of the abject aligns it to what I have described as the â€Å"Other†,   The abject has only one quality of the object and that is being opposed to I. There will always be a connection between the abject and the subject: they define one another. When we find ourselves flailing in the world of the abject, we lose our sense of subjectivity, our imaginary borders disintegrate, and the abject becomes a real threat because there is no alterior – no sense of reality or self – to neutralise the threat or remind us of its illusory nature. So Kristevas theory of abjection is concerned with those suspended realms, changing forms, states of transition or transformation, â€Å"The abject is located in a liminal state that is on the margins of two positions. This state is particularly interesting to Kristeva because of the link between psychoanalysis and the subconscious mind.† Like Narcissus facing his reflection, or Medusa facing hers, we are attracted and repelled simultaneously by the abject. It induces nausea in our bodies and fear in our hearts. For Kristeva, these feelings arise from memories, specifically the first memory of separation from our mother. There is a thrill about horror and the macabre, and monsters represent ourselves in a state of change – when Kristeva describes one aspect of the abject as jouissance she suggests that through exciting in the abject, One thus understands why so many victims of the abject are its fascinated victims if not its submissive and willing ones. And furthermore, The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them,† The abject, then, the monstrous, is metaphorically powerful as a force of manipulation, even more sinister in its unknowable nature, because we suspect it is up to no good. Yet for all its subversion, perversion and fear, we are excited by the abject, drawn to the monstrous, and we always will be because it comes from inside us. Bibliography Angelov, Angel Images Transformation/Disappearance online here: http://www3.unibo.it/parol/articles/angelov.htmThe Original/The Print/The Copy: Installations Of Nadezhda Lyahova Auge, Marc, â€Å"From Places to Non-Places† in Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity UK: Verso Books, 1995. Auster, The Invention of Solitude, UK: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1989. Bann, Stephen (ed) Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity US:Reaktion Books Ltd, 1994. Barthes, Camera LucidaReflections on Photography UK: Vintage (Vintage Classics), 1993. Creed, Barbara The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Popular Fiction S.) UK: Routledge,an imprint of Taylor Francis Books Ltd, 1993. Creed, B. Horror And The Monstrous Feminine : An Imaginary Abjection . London Routledge, 1993. Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Hardie, Philip Ovids Poetics of Illusion Cambridge:   Cambridge University Press, 2002.   Pp. viii, 365 Hargreaves and Hamilton The Beautiful and t

Reducing waste in Europe Essay -- Waste Management, Waste Handling

European Union Directive 2008/98/EC outlines hierarchy of steps in which waste handling should occur. It suggests that waste prevention should be a top priority followed by re-use and recycling of materials. However in modern, demand and profit driven society this tactic has very small chance of success, certainly in terms of reducing and reusing. As a result generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) is projected to rise by further 2020 by 16% in EU-27, with 80% produced in the EU-15 (which includes UK) (Skovgaard et al., 2008). This implies that â€Å"The 3 R’s† strategy fails to deliver its key objective – waste reduction. Thus attention should also focus on options that could help to reduce waste accumulation rather than just prevention. One of the most successful strategies to decrease landfill waste is to divert it to Waste to Energy (WtE) facilities. The most popular form of energy recovery from waste, for technical and economical reason, is Waste to Energy Incineration (WtEI). It raises a lot of controversy, mainly because it is associated with technologies from the past, when air pollution controls did not exist. This resulted in significant environmental degradation and heath issues. Understandably, this has left a bad image of incineration. Modern incinerators however emit less than 10% of pollutants than their counterparts 25 years ago (DEFRA, 2013). Technology has the potential to play a significant role as part of waste management strategy but equally important as constituent of balanced energy mix. This essay presents available evidence which sheds new light on Waste to Energy Incineration, highlighting its impact on environment, energy security and human health. In 2011 waste management contributed 17.3 MtCO2e (3.1... ...te Management 29, 1718–1724 Shalunenko, N., I.,Korolyuk, T., A., 2012. Construction glass material based on ash from waste incineration plants. Glass and Ceramics, Vol. 69, Nos. 11 – 12, March, 2013 Skovgaard, M., Hedal, N., Villanueva, A., Andersen, F., M., Larsen, H., 2008. Municipal waste management and greenhouse gases. ETC/RWM working paper 2008/1 Available at: http://scp.eionet.europa.eu/publications/wp2008_1/wp/wp1_2008 Accessed on: 4th December 2013 Tabasovà ¡, A., Kropà ¡c, J., Kermes, V., Nemet, A., Stehlà ­k, P., 2012. Waste-to-energy technologies: Impact on environment. Energy 44, 146-155 UK biomass strategy, 2007. Working Paper 1 – economic analysis of biomass energy. Energy Technologies Unit Department of Trade and Industry. Available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file39040.pdf Accessed on: 24th November 2013 Reducing waste in Europe Essay -- Waste Management, Waste Handling European Union Directive 2008/98/EC outlines hierarchy of steps in which waste handling should occur. It suggests that waste prevention should be a top priority followed by re-use and recycling of materials. However in modern, demand and profit driven society this tactic has very small chance of success, certainly in terms of reducing and reusing. As a result generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) is projected to rise by further 2020 by 16% in EU-27, with 80% produced in the EU-15 (which includes UK) (Skovgaard et al., 2008). This implies that â€Å"The 3 R’s† strategy fails to deliver its key objective – waste reduction. Thus attention should also focus on options that could help to reduce waste accumulation rather than just prevention. One of the most successful strategies to decrease landfill waste is to divert it to Waste to Energy (WtE) facilities. The most popular form of energy recovery from waste, for technical and economical reason, is Waste to Energy Incineration (WtEI). It raises a lot of controversy, mainly because it is associated with technologies from the past, when air pollution controls did not exist. This resulted in significant environmental degradation and heath issues. Understandably, this has left a bad image of incineration. Modern incinerators however emit less than 10% of pollutants than their counterparts 25 years ago (DEFRA, 2013). Technology has the potential to play a significant role as part of waste management strategy but equally important as constituent of balanced energy mix. This essay presents available evidence which sheds new light on Waste to Energy Incineration, highlighting its impact on environment, energy security and human health. In 2011 waste management contributed 17.3 MtCO2e (3.1... ...te Management 29, 1718–1724 Shalunenko, N., I.,Korolyuk, T., A., 2012. Construction glass material based on ash from waste incineration plants. Glass and Ceramics, Vol. 69, Nos. 11 – 12, March, 2013 Skovgaard, M., Hedal, N., Villanueva, A., Andersen, F., M., Larsen, H., 2008. Municipal waste management and greenhouse gases. ETC/RWM working paper 2008/1 Available at: http://scp.eionet.europa.eu/publications/wp2008_1/wp/wp1_2008 Accessed on: 4th December 2013 Tabasovà ¡, A., Kropà ¡c, J., Kermes, V., Nemet, A., Stehlà ­k, P., 2012. Waste-to-energy technologies: Impact on environment. Energy 44, 146-155 UK biomass strategy, 2007. Working Paper 1 – economic analysis of biomass energy. Energy Technologies Unit Department of Trade and Industry. Available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file39040.pdf Accessed on: 24th November 2013

The Clouds by Aristophanes Essay examples -- Classical Greek Literatur

"The Clouds" by Aristophanes - Relevant in Today's World "The Clouds" by Aristophanes, is a play centrally concerned with education. Aristophanes employs satire to illustrate his conservative beliefs. It is intended to show readers that in the tendency to philosophical subtleties lies the neglection of the real needs of the Athenians. According to Aristophanes, philosophical speculation only acts to shake the established foundations of accepted religion, gods, and ideals of morality. Specifically, as it was even discused in "The Apology," Aristophanes believed that philosophical attitudes held by the Sophists enabled those who held them to convince others of wrong or weaker beliefs simply by sounding as if they knew what they were talking about -- when in reality they didn't. It seems as if Aristophanes would approve of an education based souly around the reading of clasiscal literature and some physical excersize. I believe the fact that Athenian youth were starting to ask questions of the elders in the city really bothered Aristophanes. I think he really thought it to be dangerous and detrimental to society; as can be seen through the line Strepsiades yells towards the end, "revenge for the injured gods (II.i.1506)." I believe Aristophanes to be part of the group that accused Socrates of not accepting the recognized gods of state, which many believed to be a part of the corruption of Athenian youth. While I don't agree with that accusation -- primarily because of Socrates recognition of Apollo through the Oracle at Delphi -- I can see some Aristophanes' points of contention with what he thought the Sophists and other philsophers stood for.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Clouds, who form the chorus in Aristophanes' play, are a physical representation of the "philosophical speculation" that Aristophanes speaks of. According to Aristophanes, these speculations do not come from a grounded sense of experience, but rather float about without definite framework and actualization, simply in the realm of possibility. I found it interesting that Aristophanes chose to illustrate this metaphor between the clouds and the Sophists' beliefs into a literal representation. He furthered this illustration by choosing to bring Socrates on his first appearance floating in on a basket down to the stage.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Another aspect I find interesting in Aristoph... ...   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Essentially, I think that "The Clouds," can be a piece of classical Greek literature applicable to our own modern world. If we do not take the time to examine practices and beliefs, they have the potential to lose the weight and value that they were once based or formed on. While Aristophanes aimed at entertaining his audience through comedic satire, he also had a very serious warning -- that ended up holding true -- for the people of Athens. A nation too proud and too sure in it's own beliefs and politics, has proven through history, never to work. Sadly, while I believe the United States is a great nation with moral goals and hopes, I believe we exemplify some of the problems that the Athenian state suffered from, and eventually died from. We often times refuse to examine our beliefs. We automatically view them as "the best," or "the most moral." This can be seen in our current struggle. If we constantly leave our borders to try and convince others around the world that American knows best, we're doomed for failure. As exemplified in "The Clouds," we then become the ones throwing stones at people we don't agree with -- a fate almost worse than death.

Business Project

Mike Wardingley Define the term â€Å"the learning organization. †Ã‚   In what ways can the principles of the learning organization strategically impact an organization? A learning organization is one that: -Seeks to create its own future. -Assumes learning is an ongoing and creative process for its members. -Develops, adapts and transforms itself in response to the needs and aspirations of people, both inside and outside itself. – Allows people at all levels, individually and collectively, to continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about.A company that cares about development and their future will be a learning organization. Wide profit margins are great but a great company will not only worry about the bottom line, but the personal and professional development of their employees as well. An atmosphere of learning and improvement will also help spurn new and improved processes. Google has become a company that allows the employees to c ontinually improve and fosters creative thinking. The work environment is relaxed and the perks allow the employees to be free thinkers.Companies that put effort and money into the development of their employees will see a much bigger return in the end. Tuition assistance, college loan repayment programs, and during work learning opportunities will keep the employees happy as well as constantly developing into more educated and productive workers. Using the Internet, research the Small Business Administration’s website (www. sba. gov). What different types of financing are available to small firms? Besides financing, what other programs are available to support the growth and development of small businesses?The types of financing that are available to new small businesses are: * Loans * Grants * Bonds * Venture Capital In addition to the financing options, the Small Business Administration has set up a large number of other forms of assistance to make sure a new business has all the tools necessary to succeed. There is an online training program that will help an owner with starting, managing, financing, and contracting the new business venture. The Small Business Administration has also developed programs to help other types of new business owners.The Women’s Business Center was set up to help women start and maintain a successful business. The Veteran’s Business Center was created to help US Military veterans start a new fresh start after leaving military service. The US Export Assistance Center was established to help small businesses with the difficult task of beginning new exports to other countries. This difficult process is tough but made much easier with the help of the SBA. The SBA is a free resource that can help you develop a new business plan and then make a move to start your business and set you up for success.Define the term â€Å"emotional intelligence (EI). †Ã‚   What are the key elements of EI? Why is so important to successful strategic leadership? Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the capacity to reason about emotions, and of emotions to enhance thinking. It includes the abilities to accurately perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.The four key elements are: 1. Self Awareness 2. Self Management 3. Social Awareness 4. Relationship Management A good manager knows not only who he/she is, but also who each one of their employees is as well. Not just that they have a wife and 2 kids, but knows about what makes them who they are. The likes/dislikes, the personality, the past, and the future goals should be vitally important. This is key to making sure the work center is productive and free of hostility.While opinions will differ, too much dissention and strife can kill not only office camaraderie but production as well. Fosteri ng healthy work relationships can also ensure that office cohesiveness stays on track. While the consequences of unhealthy relationships can be very costly, developing good and healthy relationships with employees can pay off in the end. Knowing each employee on a personal basis can help you better know how to interact with each employee and get the most productivity in return.