Comparison Between Macy's And Polo Specialty Store Essay

Comparison Between Macy's And Polo Specialty Store - Essay Example The invention of the black and white television in 1949 gave a substantial boost to the children wear industry. Children wear shows become popular programs and their licensing made quite a substantial amount of money for the children wear manufacturers. This money was in return re-invested back into the industry thereby enlarging and making it bigger. 1958 and 1959 were also noteworthy years for the fashion industry as the Hush Puppies shoes, and the Barbie Doll were invented respectively. The puppies' shoes were necessary for protecting the feet of the children as walking or working without shoes was not only stressful but also painful and full of discomfort. The invention spirit did not stop as several other new trends in children wear continued to be invented. During the entire 1960's, a whole lot of a variety of colors, patterns, and prints were produced. Some of these colors were light blue, light pink and light green. 1n 1970, various textiles including polyester were invented. Since the invention of the sewing machine, the discovery and subsequent use of manufactured fiber in apparel was another enormous development in the children wear industry. By this time, children wear was also beginning to look like adult wear. In 1980, a crucial shift occurred from manufactured fiber to more natural fiber such as cotton and linen among others. Naturals fibers were of immense preference over the manufactured fibers were either cheap, readily available or simply made better children's clothes.

Responsibility of a Critical Thinker in a Contemporary Society Research Paper

Responsibility of a Critical Thinker in a Contemporary Society - Research Paper Example The responsibility and roles of a critical thinker in a contemporary Society is majorly to sparks, re-energizes and invigorate the change nucleus or focus in the outlined society highlighting on various segment that need change and providing timely change as treated relevant to the discipline. They question the relevance of doing things in the traditional or conventional mode. Every sector has established professionals with in-depth knowledge regarding the segment, but that does not mean that an unqualified person cannot question. Realization of moral reasoning, an entailed and research-based for search of truth and corresponding quest for entailed data gathering of information technology is highly imperative. Various models of thinking are either disregarding established model in the society or blindly following the wrong route. For instance, there are established fallacies like appeal to tradition, which may compel the father to control the household wrongly believing that traditions empower him. Such traditions are subject to control since they fail to avail the exact picture required in contemporary life. Fathers are human beings, and their findings and decisions can be challenged by the children or even the mother in the house (Platzer, Blake & Ashford, 2000). Clear review of issues with concerns on whether they contribute to a positive development o f the society or they lower the standards expected. Reorganization of most households is in dire need of a transformative model to change the current system into positive and encouraging models. Violence, depressions and physical abuse are quite inherent in most households, and suicides are also common cases while focusing on the mainframe family issue. Immigration comes in handy with numerous evils and notable perils on immigrant’s lives. Other social ills propagated by absence of critical in the

Early Adults Essay Example for Free

Early Adults Essay Early Adulthood (18-35 years old) is a time of peak biological performance for both men and women. It is therefore a period where illnesses are constantly low and admission in hospitals is minimal. However, despite this fact, there are still prevalent factors that affect young people. Aside from biology and/or health, early adulthood might develop psychological problems due to societal role conflict, independence and the prospect of settling down. According to Erik Erikson, early adulthood is a time wherein people tends to become more intimate or isolated. Whichever the case, young adults becomes more serious and more likely to be responsible. Primarily, young adults focus on taking responsibility of themselves and the ones they care about. Most of them assume civic and parental responsibilities. Others are more concerned with their profession and look forward for plans towards the future. Young adults are more concerned with practical matters and think critically and realistically. They avoid childish acts as established by the culture or societal belief. The possibility of health problems starts with the increase of sexual activity which is typical for young adults. Thus, although they are in good health, they still can acquire diseases such as STD’s and other communicable diseases. Accordingly, 90% of STD’s are acquired by people who are below 30 yrs. old. Aside from this, about 50% of all pregnancies are said to be unintended. It is also during early adulthood that people tends to work less strenuous jobs. More likely, people work in offices where they spend most of the time sitting. Thus, body fat increased significantly during this period which if left unchecked might lead to obesity or other complications. Lastly, it is the time wherein people formed bonds and spend time together. As stated above, it is during this age that people try to be intimate with others. This does not solely apply to a special someone but to find a group where one belongs. Night out’s and various parties are popular during this period, wherein both males and females tend to under sleep, overeat and drink alcohol. Obesity and addiction to cigarette, alcohol and other drugs can also arise as a result of societal pressure and roles. A person also tries to determine what kind of career he/she will later on pursue during this age. Isolation can happen in a young adult if he/she is depressed or has previous psychological problem rooted in abuse/s and/or broken homes. This is a negative attribute since communication and relationship with other people are highly limited if a person tries to isolate him/herself from other people. Societal identity issues are also pervasive, since roles are mostly relative and obsolete at the same time. A person in this age, still function as a child but might also be a parent at the same time. Most of the Psychological problems that appear during early adulthood is correlated with he fact that they become more socially aware of their environment. They are presented with new responsibilities and new choices that are not available for them in previous years. Aside from this, young adults are also vulnerable to several types of influence because they are often unprepared and inexperience about working and starting ones own family. References: Lash, SC. Early Adulthood: A Focus on Social Roles. Retrieved on October 22, 2008, from http://syp5105-01. fa04. fsu. edu/guide6-dep5068. html Preiser. (1997). Early Adulthood. Developmental Psychology Student Netletter. Retrieved on October 24, 2008 from http://www. mc. maricopa. edu/dept/d46/psy/dev/early_adult/

Programming for BIG Data Project

Programming for BIG Data Project Liliam Faraon Nowadays, the amount of data generated and stored without an operation has exceeded a data analysis capability without the use of automated analysis techniques. The exponential growth of data is greater than it has ever been seen, extracting useful information from all the data generated and transform it into understandable and usable information is the challenge. There is where data mining assumes an important role, plenty of tools are available for data mining tasks using artificial intelligence, algorithms, machine learning and many others. In the present work two datasets were analysed, one with R and the other one Python. All the analysis was based in the CRISP-DM basic concepts: Business Understanding, Data Understanding, Data Preparation, Modelling, Evaluation and Deployment. The full methodology was not applied in the project, but understanding parts of its process was fundamental, the steps are pretty straight forward and give a very good idea of every stage that data mining has to go through and the feedback brought from every stage. The project scope is limited to identifying patterns in the data rather than predicting future, which could be examined as part of further study of the subject matter. The present Project was divided into two different parts: Part 1: R Dataset Analysis and Part 2: Python Dataset Analysis. It contains also a brief contextualization about the Big Data Context and the importance of data mining. We live in a time when the pursuit of knowledge is indispensable. Today, information assumes a growing importance, and a necessity for any sector of human activity, due to the many transformations we are witnessing. At every moment, we are facing new concepts and trends and we are amazed at how quickly they are occurring and affecting our lives, such as the technology that influences all sectors, social environments and touches every business and life on the planet. The article written by Bernard Marr, and published by Forbes last year brings some statistics that convince that big data really needs attention: More data has been created in the past two year than in the entire history of human race; By 2020 around 1.7 megabytes of new information will be generated every second for every human being on the planet. Every second we create new data, a good example: only on Google 40.000 searches and queries are generated every second, which makes the huge amount of 1.2 trillion searches a year. Facebook users send on average 31.25 million messages and view 2.77 million videos every minute. Only in 2015, 1 trillion photos were taken and billions of them were shared on line. In 2015, over 1.4 billion smart phones were shipped, all capable of collecting different sorts of data and by 2020 the world will have over 6.1 billion smartphone users globally. Within five years there will be over 50 billion smart connected devices worldwide, all developed to collect, analyse and share data. Retailers that leverage the full power of big data would be able to increase their operating by as much as 60%. Now, only less than 0.5% of data is analysed. All the Big Data generated, have some characteristics: Rapid increasing volume, variety, velocity and data storage and transfer, gathering and analysing it all became a huge challenge, but by using specific programs designed to analyse the information on algorithms based will overcome the challenges and the output can be used to enable the decision-making process. For the R Project, a very specific database was analysed: Tourists Visiting the South of Brazil, The information was obtained in the Government website, in the Tourism division. 1.1 Business Understanding Tourism is an important sector that has an impact on development of nation economy. For many countries, the tourism is the most important source of income and jobs generation. Brazil is the fifth biggest country in the world with 8,511,965 sq km of area and the nation is divided into 5 regions: North, Northeast, Central-West, Southeast and South Regions. The Best in Travel 2014, by Lonely Planet guide classified Brazil as the best tourist destination in 2014. According to the official Brazilian Tourism Website Around 6 million people visit the country every year, it is considered the main touristic market in South America and the second in Latin America. It is estimated that only around 17% of all tourists visiting Brazil go to the South region, composed by three States: Parana, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Having in mind those numbers and the knowledge that the most visited places in Brazil do not include the South of the country a dataset was analysed to get some information and find out how many visitors have been there and where they were from. 1.2 Data Understanding Source data: http://www.dadosefatos.turismo.gov.br/estat%C3%ADsticas-e-indicadores.html Format: csv, comma-separated Size: 3.46MB Number of rows: 73.392 Columns: 1 Continent 2 Country 3 State 4 Year 5 Month 6 Count The technologies used were Excel and R Studio. 1.3 Data Preparation The first downloaded version had 534.792 rows, it included the tourism information from all the 26 states and it was based on data from 1989 to 2015. It was a quite huge dataset that would not be convenient to extract useful outputs as Brazil had been through many economic and social changes in this period. Excel was used to exclude the information from other states as well as the years before 2005. As the dataset was all provided in Portuguese Language the code was used to facilitate visualization: The next step was looking at the data, for a better understanding, Dimensions, Names, Classes and Summaries codes were written: Results: Some table codes were written to count each combination of factor levels: Results: The code round was run to specify number of decimal places: Results: 1.4 Modelling A Linear Model was written to generate a better data visualization and analysis of variance:   Ã‚   Some graphs were generated to have a better understanding about how many tourists visiting each of the states: A Bar plot was generated for better visualisation: The same parameters were used to generate pie charts: Parana with 33,01% and Santa Catarina with 29,48% have a very similar number of visitors and Rio Grande do Sul is the most visited place with 37,51%. With a little bit of research the percentage can be understood, as Rio Grande do Sul is the larger of the three states, having more options for the visitors and Some of the biggest manufacturing industries factories in the country are located in that area. After visualizing where the tourists go it is important to know where they come from. For that reason, some graphs were also generated: Graphic: The same parameters were used to generate some other graphics: After analysing isolated information, a graph relating year and states was generated: It was also generated a graphic listing all countries that visited the South of Brazil in the period: A flowchart was designed to represent the algorithm workflow process: Preparing data for a plot: 1.5 Evaluation Compiling the dataset into graphics and tables facilitated data visualization and brought some very important evidence that can be used for many purposes, specially marketing reasons, on defining an action plan based on what can be done to bring more tourists to the south region. The graphs showing the percentages of tourists, were the ones that caught the attention, Europe had the larger number of visitors with 37,7%, followed by South America with 22%, Asia with 11,7%, Africa with 9,2%, Central America and Caribbean with 8,8%, North America with 5,5% and at last Oceania with 5,1%. Looking at these proportions a few questions were raised and research was necessary. Some important facts showed up: the dataset brings only the number of people travelling for leisure purposes, it does not count the amount of people on business, with could impact on the numbers, especially from North America, as many of them visit the country for business purposes and extend their stay on holidays. Another very important factor is that the information was collected in the first stop in the country, and all the three states in the South do not have a large airport, usually they arrive by connection flights coming from Sà £o Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, where the main international airports are situated. The last very important element that could impact on the number of visitors, is the fact that the south of Brazil does not have a tight control of their borders and many people arrive by land, usually driving from other countries in South America. As said before the tourism sector can be very explored and it can impact in the revenue generation. According to the International Congress Convention Association (ICCA) Brazil is the host of many international events in Latin America and the seventh in the world, so why not leverage on the information brought and attract all those events to the South of Brazil? The numbers in the dataset look a bit too similar for every year related to the count of people visiting the states, but anyway it provides very useful information. It is also very important to observe that Brazil is also accessed by boat and land, specially by tourists coming from Central and South America, as there is no border control some of the numbers might be slightly different. The project scope is limited to identifying patterns in the data rather than predicting future which could be examined as part of further study of the subject matter. 2.1 Business Understanding Every time a famous person passes away the media makes news; some deaths even take the elements of scandals, especially when there is the suspect of a suicide, people follow the reports all over the world. The year of 2016 seemed to be very sad for the famous people, with an unusual number of deaths observed. An article from the 22nd of April, 2016 on BBC News website reported that by April the number of celebrities deaths was double as the previous years, and even said: the number of significant deaths this year has been phenomenal. But comparing to the years before, is it true? Based on a dataset available on kaggle.com, that compiled information available on wikipedia.org, some questions were asked: Did more celebrities die in 2016 than in the last 5 years? Was suicide the most cause of deaths? What were the reasons for the deaths in 2016? Were the reasons different from the 5 years before? What would be the main causes of death for each age group? 2.2 Data Understanding Source data: https://www.kaggle.com/hugodarwood/celebrity-deaths Format: csv, comma-separated Size: 1.47 MB Number of rows: 14.880 Columns: 1 age 2 birth_year 3 cause_of_death 4 death_month 5 death_year 6 famous_for 7 name 8 nationality The technologies used were Excel and Python 3.6 2.3 Data Preparation The original downloaded version had 21.562 rows, with a quick look through the data, a few abnormalities were shown, a number of duplicated cells and rows was observed, also some birth_year did not correspond to real birth year, there were also some animals among humans (specially racehorses and dogs). Excel was used to exclude the duplicated data, to clear some odd information and to exclude the deaths from 2006 to 2010, as the project idea was analyse only the past five years. The first step was reading the table through pandas: Looking at the classes and missing values: As it is clear there are many missing values of cause of death. Looking at the most common causes of death: * It seems like many celebrities tend to die from cancer and heart failure. 2.4 Modelling A bar plot was generated for better visualization: The article from BBC was not entirely wrong, in 2016 more famous people died, compared to the 5 previous years. Looking for the answer for the second question, a bar plot about the suicide rates was generated, was suicide the main cause of deaths? It cannot be said that suicide was the main reason for the deaths. As seen on the previous graphic there is a percentage of celebrities that commit suicide, but comparing 2016 to the five previous years and comparing with natural deaths, a new bar plot was created: Compared to the previous years, 2016 did not seem as bad as the papers and social media claim, as the suicidal rate was only higher than 2014, in this way it cannot be affirmed that the main cause of celebrities deaths in 2016 was self-murder. Just for information a graphic was created to illustrate which is the month when more famous people tend to take their lives: As the bar plot displays September is the month showing a highest level of suicide, while June appears as the lowest. The figures generated from the data set brought a few information so far, proving that 2016 was a sad year for famous people, it also showed that suicide was not the main cause of death. To find out what the main reasons were a bar plot was created: Appears that cancer killed more famous people, at least in the year of 2016. Still comparing 2016 to the five years before an average number of deaths by cause was called, to investigate: The comparison shows that compared to the five years before more famous people died due to more Cancer and Traffic collision, all the other reasons seem to follow the same pattern. Just out of curiosity and to have a better understanding from the facts, the dataset was categorized into age groups: Some pie charts were created to illustrate the cause of death by age group: It is very important to bring to attention that in the child group there were only five rows and that is why the percentages are very high. It is very challenging trying to analyse the deaths related to the age group as there were many missing data specially when it comes to cause of death. As a matter of fact, as common sense, the older people get the age-related diseases appear more in the graphics. A flowchart was designed to represent the algorithm workflow process: In cause_of_death column = suicide 2.5 Evaluation Compiling the dataset into graphics and tables facilitated data visualization and brought some very important information about the celebrity death from 2011 to 2016. The missing values made the difference when trying to get deep information, especially when it comes to cause of death. It was pretty obvious from the data that 2011 the number of dead famous per year increased slightly, however not all the celebrities in the list would actually be considered as such by many people. It was cleared that the suicidal rates are not as high as the media claims and it is not the main cause of death and The increase in the number of news about famous peoples death can also be happening because more people have access to the internet, social media and seem to talk more about it. It is important to remember that the project scope was limited to identifying patterns in the data rather than predicting future. I could not say it was an easy task choosing and analysing two datasets. As I am not a student with any IT background some of my ideas as an outsider were completely mistaken, as I did not know how difficult it can be to write codes and get information from the datasets. It took me a while to understand the basics of how the Python an R work, and I consider I have done a good work. I can tell that I went through an incredible learning journey since I started the Data Analytics course at National College and I have learned a huge volume of new skills. To get the present project done I watched uncountable number of videos, I tried many different environments until I felt comfortable to start the project itself, it also took me a while to find the right dataset and the right questions, but after seeing the graphics and tables I realised I could really get through and do a good project. As our course dedicated more time to Python and have always reading about R as a very difficult data analytics tool I confess I was terrified about it, that is why I decided to start the R Project first, but I had a very good surprise, the program is easier to use than I thought, even with my very little knowledge. Working with a dataset that I am familiar with made it simpler as well, I have always worked in marketing environments and had the curiosity to know more about tourism in the South of Brazil, where I was raised. I consider I found out important information, that maybe could be very valuable for companies investing in services and tourism. For the Python project, I decided to work with the celebrity-deaths dataset just out of curiosity, as almost every single day during the year of 2016 I saw on twitter the #celebritydeaths2016. But after analysing the dataset I found out that there is only a slightly evidence that more famous people died during the year of 2016 it cannot be said that it was the worse year or predict anything for the future. I have also found out that suicide is not the main reason for their deaths as the social media reports. The idea of both projects was to identify and extract patterns in the data, which I believe has happened. References Big Data: 20 Mind-Boggling Facts Everyone Must Read. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/09/30/big-data-20-mind-boggling-facts-everyone-must-read/#56eaf8456c1d. [Accessed: 10 December 2016]. Business Dictionary. Available at: http://www.businessdictionary.com. [Accessed: 09 December 2016]. Estatà ­sticas e Indicadores. Available at: http://www.dadosefatos.turismo.gov.br/dadosefatos/home.html   [Accessed: 09 December 2016]. Lantz B., 2013, Machine Learning with R, Packt Publishing IBM, 2011, IBM SPSS Modeler CRISP-DM Guide, IBM Corporation. Available at: http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~paulk/teaching/dmkdd/ass2/readings/methodology/CRISPWP-0800.pdf [Accessed: 11 December 2016]. Ministà ©rio do Turismo. Available at: http://www.turismo.gov.br/ [Accessed: 19 December 2016]. Skill: Data Analysis. Available at: https://15-5103.ca.uts.edu.au/skills/data-analysis/ [Accessed: 09 December 2016]. Why so many celebrities have died in 2016? Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36108133 [Accessed: 26 December 2016]. Source data: http://www.dadosefatos.turismo.gov.br/estat%C3%ADsticas-e-indicadores.html Source data: https://www.kaggle.com/hugodarwood/celebrity-deaths

Aphrodite Invocation :: essays research papers

Oh Muse! With visions Thou hast filled my soul, With visions overpowering, for Thou Hast shown me Golden Aphrodite; now The blaze emboldens me; like coal To brighter burning fanned by Breath Divine, The Cyprian enflameth me with words, Seductive sounds, which swiftly would entwine My soul, as lime-twigs trap unwary birds. An Ancient Poet* spake the truth; he said When Cypris cometh swift, high-spirited Just like a Hero -- irresistible Her onslaught, nor may anyone annul Her summons; flouting Her is arrogance, A failure to respect the difference `Tween Gods and Mortals; nor can even They Resist Her Power. She is held at bay By only three: Athena, Bright-Eyed Maid, And Artemis, who haunts both wood and glade, And Hestia reject the Paphian's Dove, For They alone deny delights of Love. The Cyprian's summons is a challenge. Be Thou brave and answer it, for verily A God hath willed it; surely stinging grief Will be refusal's price, so seek relief, Conforming to the Paphian's Will. So spake the Poet Truths he would instill. Far-shining Aphrodite, hear our prayer! Thou Laughter-loving Lady, Paphian, Well-girded, Golden, Sea-born, Cyprian, Companion, Tender-hearted, or howe'er It pleaseth Thee to be addressed, attend, We ask, our words of praise, and send Thy Grace, because Thou art the source of all That's charming, graceful, all that doth enthrall In word or deed, in action, figure, face. For Thine is the allure that doth enlace Our hearts as one, for as the charmed is bound, So also is the charmer quickly found Surrendering, with yearning undisguised, The compromiser gladly compromised! But irresistible is even this, Seducer falling to seduction; bliss Repaid is twofold bliss, drawing tight The bonds about them both, in shared delight. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now I call in ancient sounds: Aphrodite Khrusostephane Glukumeilikh' O he Kalligloute Thea Pandeme Hetaira su Morpho, ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Or whatever name doth please Thee, Hear! If ever I've appeased Thee, Now attend my prayer beseeching, See my hands toward Thee reaching, Know my love is everlasting! Lady, grant the gift I'm asking And appear before us, whether Now sojourning deep in Nether Regions with the Queen of Hades, Or in Heaven with Thy Ladies, Founts of all allure, the Graces, Fair Their form and fair Their faces! I request Thee, leave Thy station! Grant to us a visitation! Show to us Thy face delightful! Let us worship Thee as rightful, Shapely form that's Thine adoring! Hear our voices now upsoaring To the Heavens from our chorus! Please, we ask Thee, stand before us! Queen of Twilight, Queen of Morning! Deeds just done or now aborning Are Thy favorites; prized the clever Warrior of the bold endeavor! Dear to Thee the Sun that's rising, Thou reward for enterprising Souls, Thou prize of tasks completed, Thou in rivalry entreated To bestow Thy grace, advising, Bold advances galvanizing! Such Thy gift and such Thy favor,

Art of War Summary Essay

Art of War is a famous Chinese military strategy book written by Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese military general. He was famous during his time and for his work entitled Art of War, which made him known even up to our century. According to Wallace (2010), Sun Tzu is the author of one of the most prominent pieces of literature during the era of the Warring States in which China entered around the first millennium B.C.E. In this work of art Sun Tzu takes a rational approach to the problem of conflict and dissects every aspect of it. Sun Tzu is undeniably an historical figure. The book is all about how to win a war by employing strategies and tactics given the information and ideas that every general must know from laying plans, handling his army, giving commands, positioning, maneuvering and all other important aspects mentioned by Sun Tzu. The book is concentrated on war strategies and tactics but Sun Tzu’s philosophies from the Art of War can be viewed from many perspectives. It can be applied on many circumstances including strategic management, the strategies and tactics that were laid on the book can be applied to many aspects of business management. Sun Tzu’s ideas believed that laying plans is vital before making any move. This idea is the same as careful planning and gathering reliable information before making any decision in strategic management. Assessing one’s environment is helpful in a business perspective, too. Know yourself, know your enemies. Knowledge is as important as guns and bullets in engaging war. Knowing the enemies and your own strengths and weaknesses is similar to SWOT analysis. Economic aspect must be considered in engaging business same as engaging in a war. Time is of essence that’s one thing that is common to war and strategic management. In business, decisions must be made in a timely manner. Be moral and ethical. Sun Tzu included Moral Law as one of the constant factors. In business, customers usually patronize those who are known for their ethical behaviour.   The true leader knows both how to utilize his resources and when to make a decision. He plans by making a combination of direct and indirect tactics. Handling resources and decision making are constant activities both in war and in managing business. Sun Tzu’s classical book was intentionally written for the conduct of war but his ideas and perceptions don’t just fit for war. The book addresses strategy in broad manner making it applicable to strategic management. II. Summary The first chapter of the book concentrates on ideas and information that a general must be aware of. The art of war is governed by five constant factors, all of which need to be taken into account. They are: the Moral Law; Heaven; Earth; the Commander; Method and discipline. These factors should be known to every general because this will serve as guidelines in conduct of a war. Knowledge on one’s environment and assessment of it is important to achieve victory. Sun Tzu believes that deception and intelligence will bring home the bacon. Second chapter’s central idea focused on how to do the battle, the tactics that must be employed when the battle is on and the economic aspect of war. Sun Tzu mentioned in this chapter that when you do battle for a long time it will dull your forces and exhaust your resources. Prolonged warfare only brings poverty to a country. Proper timing on when to attack, valuing every minute during the war, and making victory as the objective of every war will prevent prolonged warfare. Be flexible. Be a clever fighter. These are Sun Tzu’s message in the next two chapters. The fifth chapter tackles force and domination as a tool to build momentum. â€Å"The control of a large force is the same in principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers. Fighting with a large army under your command is not different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.† This just means that a large size of the army doesn’t secure victory, proper handling of men and right commands somehow does. Avoid being deceived and shaped. The army must remain invisible to its enemy and maintain unity. Sun Tzu emphasizes in the sixth chapter that an army must know their own strengths and weaknesses. Then, figure the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses with the help of deception. By this, one can see the opportunities and threats brought by the environment. Maneuvering is the seventh chapter’s focus. Sun Tzu said that tactical maneuvering is difficult. Yes it is. Keeping an advantage is hard to maintain but this is very essential to shield your army from defeat. The next chapters are focused on how to respond on different war situations. Adaptation is elaborated in the eighth chapter of the book. Sun Tzu focuses on the need for flexibility in this chapter. He explains how to successfully respond to shifting circumstances. The succeeding entitled â€Å"The Army on March† describes how the army must move from one place to another, paths that requires expertise before you can go through it and the areas that must be avoided to maintain advantage. Chapter ten looks into the general aspects of resistance and the six kinds of terrains or field positions which each of which offers advantages and disadvantages both in terms of advancing position and defending the army. Sun Tzu said that the art of war recognizes â€Å"Nine situations† and these are elaborated in the eleventh chapter. These are: dispersive ground; facile ground; contentious ground; open ground; ground of intersecting highways; serious ground; difficult ground; hemmed-in ground; desperate ground. Translators say that these nine situations can be generally grouped into early, middle, and late-stage conditions, and they range from scattering to deadly. In each of these situations, there is one and only one appropriate response. As the title says, â€Å"Attacking by fire† this chapter is basically lays down the five different ways to attack the enemy using fire. First, burn the soldiers in their camp. Second, burn their stores. Third, burn their equipment. Fourth, burn their weapons. Lastly, burn their supplies. The ways mentioned have been widely used by many battles. The last chapter focuses on the importance of gathering information from reliable sources and managing them. It specifically discusses the value and methods of developing good information sources. It describes five kinds of spies: local spies, inside spies, reverse spies, dead spies, and living spies. Reliable information can help mold your own strategy and gain competitive advantage.

Black Women Writers Essay

Early significant analyses of Maud Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks’s only novel moreover release it as an ineffective fiction and/or viewed it as a mere expansion of Brooks’s poetic poetry. Those untimely reviewers, often in evaluations of less than a solitary page, lauded the novel’s â€Å"quiet charm and sparkling delicacy of tone† (Winslow 16) but didn’t comment the irritation and nervousness below the description surface. Latest criticism has centered on the undercurrents of fury and revolution of the character, Maud Martha Brown. This fury boils underneath the exterior of the novel’s 34 vignettes of the apparently ordinary, daily life occurrences of a black woman living in the south side of Chicago in the 1940s. The shift in serious viewpoint of the novel, then, is noticeably dissimilar across cohorts. As Mary Helen Washington declares in â€Å"‘Taming All that Anger Down’: Rage and Silence in Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha†: â€Å"In 1953 no one seemed prepared to call Maud Martha a novel about bitterness, rage, self-hatred and the silence that results from suppressed anger. No one recognized it as a novel dealing with the very sexism and racism that these reviews enshrined. What the reviewers saw as exquisite lyricism was actually the truncated stuttering of a woman whose rage makes her literally unable to speak† (453). Washington’s divided commentary is one of the first to recognize the protagonist’s irritation and inner rebellion as Brooks interlace them into the tapestry of the novel; Washington distinguish a regular outline of concealed fury and anger during the work. Further grinding the center on one meticulous description conflict in Maud Martha, Harry B. Shaw discovers the title character’s â€Å"War with Beauty,† as he subtitles a milestone essay, depicting the dark-skinned black woman character brawl against Eurocentric paradigms of substantial appearance. Shaw’s article describes the property of this partial, color-conscious scheme on Maud’s mind, and accentuates its role in spawning internal encounter with self-hatred and self-doubt (255-56). While I concur with Washington’s and Shaw’s arguments regarding the psychological battles faced by Brooks’s protagonist, I also find that the conflict and confusion that recapitulate Maud Martha’s life unite into a whole imitation of conjugal epic warfare. This conjugal epic warfare expands past Shaw’s â€Å"war on beauty† and integrates all areas of domestic and ancestral ties. Familial conflict exactly describes Maud Martha’s resistance to acquire and preserve her home and relations with family members as she struggles to keep a sense of individuality within this detain structure. Maud Martha detains the conservative literary epic’s spirit of clash by summarizing the figurative symbol of conjugal conflict as female ambitious with Maud Martha as the hero of her homeland. Like with customary epic, Maud Martha emblematizes the cultural paradigms of a decisive moment in history, enlightening the struggles of post-World War II America to reunite the roles of women, in particular African American women, in the public and private area. Through the course of the novel, Maud Martha fights a war against sexism, classism, and racism to create her identity. Winning this war is of supreme significance and of heroic dimensions at bet for Maud Martha, as delegate woman, is home and family, as well as independence, originality, and self-expression. Mainly during the early 1950s, the time in which Maud Martha was printed and set, the familial realm was one of worry and fluctuation as women toil to balance their roles as wives, mothers, and artists. With World Wars I and II only lately past, and the Korean and Vietnam clash on the horizon, (white) women workers found their roles in culture changing. They had pierced the US workforce during the wartime era, providing the nation with a much-needed font of labor. Yet after the war, the arrival of their male complement forced working (white) women’s return to the residence and to family duties. To battle and frustrate these writing of domesticity, in Maud Martha Brooks sum up a clearly female pattern of symbolic warfare that undermine patriarchal and communal structures, and declare the dominance of new visions of female enlargement and original appearance. To build her epic of family warfare, Brooks utilize such description strategies as prearranged meanings within names, change in narrative voice, and conflations of birth and death descriptions; thus, she threaten and redefines customary description of domesticity, of matrimony, and of maternity. For Brooks these organization twist to sites of group and responsibility for women. She confuse the empire of the domestic beyond a sphere of binary and competing gender functions to critique the roles of men and women in producing and preserve the social arrangement that bound female expansion and to assess how race, class, and gender notify the relation viewpoint of the heroine. Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience Jill Nelson offered the most piercing critique yet on racism at The Washington Post. Nelson, an African-American journalist who was employed at the paper for four years, pleasures the reader with a memoir that’s raw, sharp and amusing; she gladly picks at the scabs of race and sex and class that most writers favor to leave unhurt. For Nelson, repayment is hell, and she pays back – with retaliation, settling some malicious scores with the firm organ that seduced her from freelance writing in New York and then deserted her in the back-stabbing nation’s capital. Nelson gets her defeat in good. Ben Bradlee turns out to be â€Å"a small, gray, crumpled gnome. † Bradlee sheers such inspirational lines as â€Å"I want the fashions [section] to be exciting, new, to portray women who dress with style, like my wife. † Publisher Don Graham is â€Å"a rich kid waiting for his mother to let go of the reins. † Other Posties are uncharitably described as â€Å"weasel-like† and â€Å"mottled, plump, sour-lipped. † But ultimately, is a touching tale of being a black woman in a white and male corporate world – â€Å"voluntary slavery,† she calls it. â€Å"I envy the egotism,† she writes of the Post, â€Å"their intrinsic belief in the value of whatever they’re doing, the complacency that comes from years of simply being Caucasian and, for the really lucky, having a penis. † A core sister who revels in the racy, Nelson explains utilize like having sex with a mortician on his preserve table and the joys of male. Nelson’s attitude about the opposite sex is a simple one: â€Å"One thing I love about men and pussy is that is makes them so predictable. â€Å" Still, it’s race, not sex, which fuels all through it all. Nelson is evermore in search of her own â€Å"authentic Negro experience,† forever at war between her own arrogance in being black and her self-criticism for not being black enough. She writes touchingly of her own exacting family pathos – a brother on crack, a sister eternally immobilized by a drug overdose – and resist with her own guilt at being a part of the black bourgeoisie. But Nelson’s dispute falls short when it comes to clearing up the steamy issue of race at the Washington Post. But Nelson’s spotlight on Barry-bashing at the Post pleads the question: If the paper was so bigoted, why did it go trouble-free on Barry for so long? Nelson doesn’t actually try to answer this question; in its place, much of what she writes is an explanation for the coke-tooting mayor. Nelson declares Barry was only â€Å"supposedly† smoking crack on the well-known FBI videotape; that a female who bear witnessed that Barry enforced her to have sex had it coming; that the Post was â€Å"part of a de facto plot on the part of the U. S. Attorney †¦ to get’ Marion Barry. † But she does reluctantly recognize this: â€Å"Overweight, greasy, usually dripping with sweat, Barry speaks English like it’s his second language. † Bambara’s feisty girls: resistance narratives in Gorilla, My Love – Toni Cade Bambara When Thunder buns, the â€Å"huge and awful matron,† charges the passageway of the movie theater in Toni Cade Bambara’s story â€Å"Gorilla, My Love,† the kids finally â€Å"shut up and watch the simple ass picture† (Gorilla 15). She is the â€Å"decorated† matron, the one the organization lets out â€Å"in case of emergency,† when potato chip bags start igniting and the kids are turning the place out. Thunder buns are the shape of co-opted black power. As such, she set as the dead reverse of Bambara’s spirited, aggressive, no-nonsense young female conversationalist/protagonist of the story, who is variously named, depending on the occasion, â€Å"Scout,† â€Å"Badbird,† â€Å"Miss Muffin,† â€Å"Hazel† (her â€Å"real name†), â€Å"Precious,† and â€Å"Peaches. â€Å" Thunder buns, as her friends call her, emerges in the inset story Hazel tells in â€Å"Gorilla, My Love† to exemplify how adults deceive children. Thunder buns are not truly the agent of disloyalty here, but rather the enforcer of ethnically charged commercial treachery. Hazel and her brothers, Big Brood and Baby Jason, have rewarded their money to see a film called Gorilla, My Love, only to be shown a tattered old brown print of a Jesus movie: â€Å"And I am ready to kill, not because I got anything against Jesus. Just that when you fixed to watch a gorilla picture you don’t want to get messed around with Sunday School stuff† Hazel is briefly silenced by the weight of Thunderbuns’s consequential power, But not for long. With warrior like power her brothers rejecting the call–she rushes into the manager’s office and ask for her money back. She sees his pasty-complexioned condescension. And, in comic foray, she informs us, her reader/intimates, that he is wrong about her authority and ability. She has the full determine of her families ethnically conversant, equally forced, disobedient self-possession behind her. Even as her mother will threaten the teachers at P. S. 186 who dare to â€Å"start playing the dozens behind colored folks†, Hazel will carry on her threats. When the money is not reimbursed, she starts a fire below the candy counter that close up the theater down for a week: â€Å"I mean even gangsters in the movies say my word is my bond. So don’t anybody get away with nothing far as I’m concerned†. The story â€Å"Gorilla, My Love† first emerged in Redbook Magazine in November, 1971, a year after the periodical of Bambara’s path breaking, cherished, and inflammable black feminist anthology The Black Woman. The story itself has a descent, however, dating back to 1959, when Bambara’s first child-narrated short story, â€Å"Sweet Home,† appeared in Vendome magazine. When Bambara was interviewed by Beverly Guy-Sheftall in the mid-seventies, (1) she comment on the prospects for her changeable and authorize girl narrators, whose stories had been emerging all through the sixties and were lastly gathered up on the wings of the success of The Black Woman and published in a collection entitled Gorilla, My Love in 1972: There are certain kinds of feelings that people are very thankful of, people who are tough, but very sympathetic. You put me in any neighborhood, in any city, and I will tend to descend toward that type. The kid in â€Å"Gorilla† (the story as well as that collection) is a kind of person who will stay alive, and she’s successful in her survival. (233) All but four of the fifteen stories in Gorilla, My Love are enclosed by the realization of a child or teenage character; of those, ten are voiced in the first person (2)–with the singular â€Å"I† drawing its energy and power from an implied â€Å"we† of community. When Hazel storms into the manager’s office, then, she is traveling on the strength of more than a decade of such acts of defiant resistance by Bambara’s feisty girls. Bambara calls her â€Å"the kid†Ã¢â‚¬â€œof the story and the whole collection. But in fact there is no particular narrative â€Å"kid† in any dull sense unites the whole collection. Some of the â€Å"I† voices are youngsters; others quite young children, including Hazel herself from the title-story–who is proud to be the guide of her grandfather’s car on the way back from a pecan-gathering journey. But, as she admits, she actually likes the front seat because the pecans variables in the back are scary: There might be a rat prowling somewhere. And she admits to us that she still sleeps with the lights on and blames it on Baby Jason. Still, she is one of the most tough-talking and self-possessed young female voices in American literature. And she shares individuality with the other girl-children in Bambara’s stories of that decade for the laser-like intensity of her ethical cleverness and her ability to distinguish the convolutions of adult hypocrisy. Bambara wrote in a personal narrative entitled â€Å"Salvation Is the Issue† in 1984: What informs my work as I read it–and this is the answer to the regularly lift question about how come my â€Å"children† stories administer to escape being unbearably shy, delightful and sentimental–are the basic givens†¦. One, we are at war. Two, the normal reply to domination, lack of knowledge, wickedness and bewilderment is wide-awake confrontation. Three, the natural reply to pressure and disaster is not collapse and surrender, but alteration and regeneration†¦. BIBLIOGRAPHY †¢ Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks. Retrieved on December 25. From http://www. amazon. com/Maud-Martha-Gwendolyn-Brooks/dp/0883780615 †¢ Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience by Jill Nelson. Retrieved on December 25. From http://www. amazon. com/Volunteer-Slavery-Authentic-Negro-Experience/dp/014023716X †¢ Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara. Retrieved on December 25. From http://www. amazon. com/Gorilla-My-Love-Vintage/dp/0679738983 †¢ African American Literature. Retrieved on December 25. From