Behavioral trend- Adolescent rebellion

Throughout generations, adolescent behavioral trend has been a matter of concern for families and schools. Their rebellious attitude has drawn attention of many psychologists. Usual defiance includes mood swings, disobedience, anger, criticism, disagreement, and harmful habits like smoking, drugs.Socioeconomic status of the youth is a major factor. The urge to be accepted by their peers, leads to comparison for equality. Peer pressure is perhaps the most vital and unavoidable element in adolescence. Columbia University Teachers Suniya S. Luthar and Nadia S.Ansary wrote following: In a comparative study of middle school students at the two socioeconomic extremes, Becker and Luther (2004) found that â€Å"good students† enjoyed high peer status in both suburban and urban settings; by contrast, it was only the high income youth who admired peers seen as â€Å"bad students†. Society which does not view teenagers as adults restricts their freedom, believing it to be in their best interest. Parents often believe that adolescents cannot make good decisions. This restriction of freedom leads to rebellious behavior.However, â€Å"a Cornwell study from 2006 determined that teens are more likely to consider risk while making a decision, and for a longer period of time, than adults† (Cornell University, 2006, December 12). Psychologist Laurence Steinberg says that a large factor in teenage rebellion is the natural early development of the socioemotional network. (Cited in Temple University, 2007) References Luthar,S. S. & Ansary,N. S. (2005).Dimensions of adolescent rebellion. Development and Psychopathology, 10, 231-243. Steinberg,S (2007). Teenage rebellion and the socioemotional network. Science Daily. Retreived April 6, 2010 from www. sciencedaily. com

Marlow Lie Essay

Victorian  viewpoint,  and  often  paints  them  as being  the  embodiment  of  the  more  pure  and  gentle  aspects  of  human  nature. Conrad  makes many  references  to  a  belief  that  women  live  in  an  ideal  world  which  is  separated  from  the  evil side  of  human  nature  explored  in  the  story,  emphasizing  that  they  must  be  protected  from  this darkness  at  all  costs. This  theme  can  be  justified  by  many  details  within  {em  The  Heart  of Darkness},  but  at  the  same  time  there  are  a  number  of  points  in  the  story  which  stand  in  stark contrast  to  this  portrayal  of  women  as  noble  and  exalted  creatures. One  of  the  first  incident  where  Conrad  discusses  women  in  an  idealized  manner  occurs  in  the very  beginning  of  {em  The  Heart  of  Darkness},  as  Marlow  is  about  to  depart  for  Africa. During his  final  meeting  with  his  aunt,  she  talks  to  him  of  how  noble  she  feels  the  Company’s  attempts to  civilize  the  African  natives  are:  an  opinion  which  makes  her  nephew  rather  uncomfortable. â€Å"It’s  queer,†Ã‚  he  says,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"how  out  of  touch  with  truth  women  are. They  live  in  a  world  of  their  own, and  there  has  never  been  anything  like  it,  and  never  can  be. It  is  too  beautiful  altogether,  and  if they  were  to  set  it  up  it  would  go  to  pieces  before  the  first  sunset. †Ã‚  Marlow  believes  that  women cannot  perceive  the  horrors  that  men  are  capable  of  because  they  are  so  distant  from  them  by virtue  of  their  sex. Another  graphic  example  of  this  attitude  comes  when  Marlow  makes  a reference  to  Kurtz’s  fiancee,  known  as  his  Intended. He  says  of  her:  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Oh,  she  is  out  of it ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­completely. They ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­the  women,  I  mean ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­are  out  of  it ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­should  be  out  of  it. We  must  help  them

How the Media Contributes to Obesity in Children Research Proposal

How the Media Contributes to Obesity in Children - Research Proposal Example Many food advertisements feature less healthy foods with high sugar levels and low nutrients. In my research, I will also discuss the emerging tendency of food companies sponsoring children's programs. When children are persuaded by the adverts, they gain the capacity to influence their parents to make purchases of the advertised foods. I will also discuss how children have adopted a less active lifestyle of watching television without much physical activity. This contributes to the development of obesity as well. My purpose of developing this research paper will be presenting an argument on how increased exposure to the media, which is full of food advertisements, has contributed to the development of obesity in children. The audience for my research paper will be mainly my classmates as well as the professor. Recently, the media has been criticized for its increased adverse effects on the society. However, there is evidence that many people are still unaware of how children who continually watch television and spend time on other media forms are more susceptible to obesity. In order to develop an effective research paper that proves to be highly persuasive, I will indulge in a rigorous research, gathering information about obesity in children especially focusing on the statistics. I will consider both the positive and the negative sides of the media but narrow my focus to the complex relationships between increased hours interacting with the media and the increased susceptibility to obesity (Desrochers, Debra, and Holt 185). One of the sources authored by Desrochers and Holt prove to be highly intriguing because it introduced the issues of childhood obesity as a major health concern after the findings of the Institute of medicine in 2005. The research by these authors highlights how television advertisements have contributed to the rising cases of obesity (Desrochers, Debra, and Holt 190). Reports from the federal trade commission, which have compared the modern day statistics with those of the past when children were exposed to fewer advertisements highlighting that increasing food advertisements have contributed to the surging childhood obesity.

Associates and Joint Ventures Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Associates and Joint Ventures - Essay Example Therefore it is pertinent to analyze this practice in detail and the information to be disclosed. It also is relevant to note the underlying legal and financial guidelines that ought to be followed in all such mergers. This paper analyses the impact of the acquisition in the light of accounting parameters and will try by logical similes and examples to arrive at the proper perspective in relation to the type of dealings. We can define a merger where two individual companies become a single company and unify their entity. Strong companies seek out the less fortunate ones and then unify them into the company. Some times very strong and prospective companies also merge to create a bigger market or capture a foreign market. A company can also purchase another company and this is a purchase or consolidation. The stocks of the acquired company are sold for an agreed amount. Some tax benefits accrue. For example the buying company can write off the assets they acquire to the actual value paid for the company, and the difference between the book value and that purchase value for the assets can be charged off as depreciation over several years. An Acquisition of one company by another is a little different from a merger but not much. All of the above reasons for combining two companies apply, but instead of swapping stock or consolidating under a new corporate entity, one company simply buys another. In an acquisition, a company can buy another company with cash, with stock, or a combination of the two. The difference between the merger purchase and an acquisition depends on whether the purchase is friendly and announced as a merger or announced as an acquisition or the purchase is unfriendly. When it's unfriendly, it's always an acquisition. We are more concerned with a Holding company. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines a holding company as: "Corporation that owns enough voting stock in one or more other companies to exercise control over them. A holding company provides a means of concentrating control of several companies with a minimum of investment; other means of gaining control, such as mergers or consolidations, are more complicated legally and more expensive. A holding company can reap the benefits of a subsidiary's goodwill and reputation while limiting its liability to the proportion of the subsidiary's stock that it owns. The parent company in a conglomerate corporation is usually a holding company."i Why Have A Holding There are many business needs like expansion, new markets, new niche, and effective marketing and price control to name a few reasons other than more profits. The accounting reasons to create such a holding may be on account of tax saving, complimenting capability and resources, and share capital, technology, and risk. Important Factors to be considered The screening of prospective partners: This is done at all levels of management, not only the analysis of the company's financial history or capital. Analyzing factors like human resources, technical competency and

Desiderius Erasmus Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Desiderius Erasmus - Essay Example It is a logical philosophy which is based on human beings belief with regard to dignity, derive information from scientific principles and gain the relevant motivation from human compassion and hope (Fowler 139). Most humanist have a common belief which is based on individual freedoms and rights but also believed that social cooperation, mutual respect and individual responsibility are equally important. In addition, they believe that the problems bedevilling society can only be solved by the people themselves which can improve the overall quality of life for everyone. In this way, the humanist maintains the positivity from the inspiration they acquire in their daily activities, natural world, culture and various forms of art. They are also believed that every individual has only one life to live and it is his/her personal responsibility to shape it in the right way and enjoy it fully. Humanists encourage positive relationships, human dignity and moral excellence while enhancing coop eration and compassion within the community. They also see the natural world as the only place where they show love and work thus setting good examples to the rest. They accept total responsibility in their course of their daily action as they struggle to survive as they enjoy the diversity around. Humanism strives to move away from religious or secular institution through a philosophy that shuns the existing traditional dogmatic authority. Characteristics of humanism include democratic, creative use science, ethical, insist that Social responsibility and liberty go hand in hand and cultivate creative and ethical living Humanist commitment is enshrined in responsible behaviours and rational thoughts which facilitate quality life in the society. They also believe that human beings and nature are inseparable though the latter is indifferent to the human existence. They also believed that living is the most significant part of life that overshadow dying and heavily contribute to overal l life purpose and meaning.On moral values, they believe that they are not products of divine revelation or a property of religious tradition and therefore must be developed by human beings through natural reasoning (Fowler 183). Understanding of the nature should thus be the guiding principle in determination/reflection of the wrong as well as right behaviours. Furthermore, they possess the faith that human being has the capacity to differentiate and choose between bad and evil without any the existence of potential incentive of reward. Humanism is based on rational philosophy which is get inspirations from art, information from science and motivation from compassion. It tries to support the affirmation of human dignity while maximising opportunity consonant and individual liberty which is tied down to planetary and social responsibility. It heavily advocate for fro extensive societal democracy and society expansion as well as social justice and human rights. Humanism is devoid of supernaturalism since it recognise human as part of nature while laying emphasis on ethical, religious, political and social values. Therefore, humanism tends to derive its life goals from human interest and needs rather than deriving them from ideological and theological abstractions and further asserts that the human destiny lie on their responsibility (Fowler 219). Humanism provides a way of living and thinking that tries

Financial Management Case Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Financial Management Case - Essay Example These assets and liabilities are to be cashed or spent in the ordinary course of business; that is, we do not have to liquidate our company just to raise the cash we need, and neither do we have to pay all our long-term debts now. Working capital basically is a measure of how we manage our collections and our costs. Good working capital management, by lowering costs and maximising collections, contributes to maximising shareholder value, which is one of the Board's primary duties. An analysis of our current practices in this aspect of financial management has revealed the following problems: Trade receivables have increased from the desired thirty days to the actual fifty days. Bad debts have reached 1.5 percent of total sales. We are spending 76,000 annually, equivalent to 3.2 percent of sales, for trade debt or receivables financing, bad debts, and overhead. We have studied two options to manage our working capital that can bring down our costs and bring up our collections. Summary Course of Action We have looked at two options: Factoring (Option A) and Discounting (Option B). We summarise our findings as follows: Comparison of two options and current system Current system Trade debts from collections 40,000 Bad debts 36,000 Annual cost of debts: 76,000 Option A: Factoring Trade debts from collections 22,000 Service charges 48,000 Savings on bad debts (36,000) Savings from factoring (18,000) Annual cost of debts: 16,000 Annual savings from Option A: 60,000 Option B: Discounting Trade debt savings 6,400 Savings from collected bad debts 12,000 Cost of discounts (9,600) Annual savings from Option B: 8,800 Total savings from Options A and B: 56,800 We have calculated that factoring will save us 60,000...This is called working capital management. Working capital is the cash that is readily available to the organisation. This can be derived from the corporation's balance sheet by subtracting our current liabilities (short-term organisational commitments that needs cash payments) from our current assets (company resources that can be converted into cash in the short-term). These assets and liabilities are to be cashed or spent in the ordinary course of business; that is, we do not have to liquidate our company just to raise the cash we need, and neither do we have to pay all our long-term debts now. Working capital basically is a measure of how we manage our collections and our costs. Good working capital management, by lowering costs and maximising collections, contributes to maximising shareholder value, which is one of the Board's primary duties. We have calculated that factoring will save us 60,000 annually. Discounts will save us an additional 8,800 by bringing down our bad debts and trade debts costs, even if these discounts will cost us initially 9,600. If we use both options, we can save 56,800 each year, equivalent to 2.4 percent of sales. Note that combining the two options will give us a lower figure for total savings because if we use the Discounting option together with Factoring, the elimination of bad debts from availing of the latter (Factoring) option will give us only the benefit of trade debt savi

Facebook Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 2

Facebook - Essay Example This entails posting or getting the discussion started, and then coordinating the protest march. Getting the discussion started regulates the extremity of the responses, where people share information and knowledge regarding certain issues. Online regulation of information enhances closeness between various groups of people. Users give their comments and ideas regarding an issue if only guided at the beginning; otherwise, the effectiveness may be distorted since different people possess diverse views and objectives in their use of social networking sites (Lee & Ingraffea, 2007). The regular plug is effective in promoting the effective communication for Facebook users. The regular signing in enhances build-up of one community. This also promotes interaction since a person can confirm availability through saying something. Facebook hosts over 800 million users out of which only 50% log on daily. It is critical that people take advantage to interact daily with their community as well as engage their community so as to announce their presence. Authenticity enhances effective communication where a person writes and comments anything without any fear, regardless of the location. The person’s values clearly show up from the posts, and this is critical when posting a link, communicating with a certain group, or when responding to a topic (Lee & Ingraffea, 2007). Brevity is critical in order to keep ones words concise and to the point. Brevity forms a vital component of the social media literacy. Research by Buddy Media indicates that Facebook posts with over 80 characters possess 27% change of engagement. Research indicates that people often get tired after the first minute of reading. Consideration of Facebook as a public space is critical where a person should not comment on anything he or she cannot say in public, and people should be positive when using the social networking site. Every person may have unpleasant experiences; however, this should not

MENTAL HEALTH..... SOCIAL WORK DEGREE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

MENTAL HEALTH..... SOCIAL WORK DEGREE - Essay Example These measures will help autonomy in psychiatry, as stated by Richardson (2007: p.71). The AMHP who could be from any discipline in the health care field, would be required to coordinate the ‘preliminary examination’ of a person liable to be treated under a compulsory order, and to provide a non-medical assessment alongside the assessment of two medical practitioners (Hannigan & Hannigan, 2003: p.38). Details About Patient Being Brought to A & E: Keith Burrows was brought to the Melchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust’s A & E Department by the police at 4:20 am on a Section 136. He had banged on his neighbours’ door at about 2 am, demanding to see his mother. The elderly couple, both in their 70s, had called the police due to the disturbance caused by Keith. When he became aggressive towards the police, they used Section 136 on him, and brought him for assessment and evaluation to the A & E department. 2Section 136 enables a police officer to remove someone from a public place and take them to a Place of Safety for a duration of up to 72 hours. Section 136 states clearly that the purpose of being taken to the Place of Safety is to enable the person to be examined by a doctor and interviewed by an Approved Social Worker, and for the making of any necessary arrangements for treatment or care. Past History of Illness: Social work records show that Keith Burrows was admitted on a section in 2003. A Section 2 assessment had been done, as indicated in the social circumstances report prepared at that time. The social circumstances report indicates that Mr. Burrows was living alone in a housing association property. His sister Rosa Burrows had contacted the General Practitioner since she was concerned about his health and welfare. Their mother had died three months previously, after which Keith Burrows had become

Sexed Crime Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Sexed Crime - Essay Example Significantly, changes in the meaning of 'sex' as well as challenges to the speaking positions of the dominant groups have led to an ultimate shift from the use of sex crime to sexed crime. One of the most essential concerns of Adrian Howe's Sexed crime in the News has been to analyse whether the concept of sexed crime has a potential to expand one's understanding of sexual violence and Howe claims that "calling sex crime 'sexed crime' does have interesting, destabilising effects." (Howe 1998, P. 6). According to Howe, the complacency and self-evidence of sex crime is disturbed by the use of sexed crime instead of sex crime. In an understanding of the other important destabilising effects, it becomes lucid that speaking about sexed rather than sex crime "problematises the 'sex' of crimes of violence", "acknowledges that women are not the only sex - men have a sex too," and "speaking about sexed crime sexes violence in the sense of asking questions about the fundamental, but often ign ored, sexed and sexual aspects of that violence." (Howe 1998, P. 6). ... Various pertinent questions crop up in an attempt to analyse the difference between the concepts 'sex crime' and 'sexed crime' such as what is 'sexed' crime, can sexual assaults be considered as sex crime, is family violence sex crime, etc. According to Howe, there are several destabilising effects of 'calling sex crime sexed crime' and the latter is broader in scope than the former. Thus, calling sex crime sexed crime can disturb the self-evidence of sex crime, and sexed crime covers all forms of violence in which the gender of the victim, as well as the perpetrator, is significant to the violent act. "Sexed crimeis violence which can only be fully understood within the context of relationships which are profoundly sexed but which are not often recognised as such, precisely because they are dismissed as having something to do with a vaguely defined, amorphous 'gender'. The point of questioning the sex of sex crime is to challenge the taken-for-granted ways in which sexed and gendere d relations are represented in public discourses such as those of the media." (Howe 1998, P. 6). Therefore, it is essential to realise that Howe (1998), in her Sexed crime in the News, comes up with a new and somewhat different approach to the issue of sex crime, which is critical of the idea purported by Keith Soothill and Sylvia Walby in Sex Crime in the News (1991). Sex crime is a term which is commonly used in order to refer to the sexual assaults against females across the globe and there have been reference to the age of sex crime in the modern times. Sex and violence in the contemporary world have been closely interconnected in the recent day world and they are

The Bacchae of Euripides Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Bacchae of Euripides - Essay Example Dionysius was the son of the supreme deity, Zeus, and a Theban princess, Semele. His delivery was extraordinary and Semele’s sisters had propagated the lie that Zeus was not the father of Dionysius. Pentheus, being the king of Thebes, had barred god Dionysius from all traditional public rites. Dionysius plans to proclaim his lineage and reclaim his reverence as a god among the Greeks. The god assumes the form of a human being and travels to Thebes, where he practices his rites with his followers, the Bacchae. Pentheus directs the arrest of Dionysius, yet in lengthy dialogues, the god, while disguised as a human persuades Pentheus to mask himself as a woman and go witness the rites of Bacchae, the followers of Dionysius in the mountains (Bloom 39). The naive Pentheus climbs a pine tree better scrutinize the rites. Once in the tree, Dionysius’ resounding voice directs the maenads to behold the man who repudiated their god and derided their rites, and orders them to punish the intruder. The god’s voice sends the maenads into frenzy. Seeing Pentheus in the tree, they become possessed, thinking he is a mountain lion. With Agave, the mother of Pentheus, leading them, the maenads encircle the tree, bring it down with their hands and descend upon Pentheus with ferocity (Bloom 40). Pentheus takes out his headdress in the hope that his mother could recognize him, but to no avail. He is dismembered limb by limb, first by his mother, then by all the maniacal maenads. Out of her senses, his mother tears Pentheus head off, believing it is the cranium of a lion, and jazzes exultantly around the countryside. After a distressing realization scene where she recognizes she has slain her own son, Agave and the other are banished (Bloom 41). The students’ performance gives the audience the opportunity to experience the power of the Dionysian experience without having to suffer what Pentheus, Agave and others suffer. They succeed in transforming the meta- tragedy of the story into the sacrificial ritual drama. They successfully take the audience into the world of metaphysical depicted by the freeing of the nation by the death of Pentheus. The students create an excellent illusion tragedy as they seek to convey the message of the play, which causes the audience to lose themselves as they give in to the deeper sense of their selves. The actors also bring out the author’s intention very well; their performance does not obliterate the textuality of the drama. The actors particularly excel in demonstrating the Dionysus’ interjection through use of the force and value of ambivalent monosyllable. The students also portray the alienation effect well. The appearance of the gods on the stage helps to create perfect stage epiphany. From the audience’s perspective, these appearances have no referential aspects of meaning, because the way in which god speaks his opening remarks or seems as deus ex machina on the tragic stage, does not infer in any way the manner in which divinities could be perceived in the reality outside the theatre. The audience does not see the theatrical representation of a religious experience, an epiphany, but decodes the code in strict narrative terms. The acting tries to retell the story but as an audience one can feel that there is something more than a story. There is a meaning, or a riddle, which one must try, to some extent, to understand. Nevertheless, the actors should improve on

Harrahs Entertainment, Inc. Case Study Essay Example for Free

Harrahs Entertainment, Inc. Case Study Essay

Strategies to Improve Water Scarcity

Strategies to Improve Water Scarcity Executive Summary This report is the summary of the definition, problems, limitation, consequences, government intervention to solve the issues and suggestion for improvements for the scarcity of water. The topic for my report is the scarcity of water in Malaysia. This report is about in the early March of 2014, there was a water crisis incident that had happened in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. There are 6 subtopics that will be stress out in this report. The first subtopic is about the definition of scarcity and the number of usage of water for Malaysia compare with other country. The second subtopic is about the problem. In this subtopic, we are going to discuss about the problem that faced by the society such as lack of water for personal consumption; Malaysia suffer from malnutrition, dehydration when undergoes scarcity of water. Furthermore, the third subtopic is limitation. In this subtopic we are going to discuss about why scarcity happened in Malaysia. Moreover, we are going to disc uss about the consequences that will happened to the society. There will be good and bad consequences. This report will also reviews on how the government intervention to solve this issue. The methods are government can intervenes through planning, regulation, taxes, subsidies and partnership. In this case, the Malaysian government increases the budget to help to resolve the water shortage problem in Selangor; Malaysian government has also delay a project to save the water supply and Malaysian government has also cut down the water supply of the neighborhoods every couple of days. Lastly, as a conclusion of this report we had express our suggestion on how to improve the society to cut down the percentage of the scarcity of water. Definition In the early March of 2014, there was a water crisis incident that had happen in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Itsdeja vuall over again and this incident reminds us of the incident in Klang Valley on 1998. Furthermore, this incident happens because of the citizen in Malaysia need a lot of water supply every day until the level that the reservoir in Malaysia is not enough to fulfill all their needs. This is a very serious problem especially when we are dealing with the natural resources that produce by our mother earth. â€Å"According to studies, Malaysians use an average of 226 liters of water per person daily, which is way above our South-East Asia neighbors. Singaporeans use 154 liters (and intend to lower it to 147 liters by 2020) while the Thais manage with 90 liters.† (Meng, 2011). Due to this statistic there is no chance that the amount of water can fulfill all the wants of the citizen. Problems When this water crisis incident had happened, there are a lot of problems faced not only by the citizen but also by the government of Malaysia. Firstly, the problem faced by the Malaysian is there is not enough water supply for the citizen’s personal consumption and culinary purpose; this may cause the citizen in Malaysia suffer from malnutrition, dehydration or also dead. According to (Bins, 2012) â€Å"Some people can only survive for 8 to 10 days without water†. Moreover, the citizen can also experience disease problem due to not less water supply. This is because contaminated water carries a lot of virus and it can cause diarrheal diseases. Diarrheal disease alone can directly link to the deaths. â€Å"Contaminated water causes 80% of the health problems throughout the world.† (Globalwater, 2010). Poverty can also take place when water crisis happen. This is because, when the water supply is not enough to fulfill the citizens need, the whole society suffers. The children in Malaysia will lack of energy to go to school and study; professionals are also lack of energy for them to drive to work. Limitations Moreover, this water crisis incident happens because Malaysian citizen does not know how to appreciate the value of water supply. The price of water supply in Malaysia is very low and because of this, most of the people do not know how much water they are using until they receive their monthly bill and the water bill is just a small part of the bill. â€Å"Water is dirt cheap. So cheap that nobody pays any attention to saving it in the same way we would save electricity. In fact, the average Malaysian family’s water bill is only about 10% of its electricity bill,’’ (Dr. Chan, 2014). On the other hand, Malaysian government does not give any attention to the management of the water resources while we have plenty of rainfall to cover up for the lost that we might experience. The government did not plan for any alternative ways to survive from water crisis. â€Å"Our government does not have laws to safeguard water catchment areas and bar development projects in ec ologically sensitive areas.† (MalaysiaChronicle, 2014). Consequences When this water crisis incident had happened, there are good and bad consequences. Firstly, the good consequence is that Malaysian will be more aware of the usage of water supply. Malaysian will be more aware the limitation of water supply in Malaysia. Citizen in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan will start to save water by using campaign. Furthermore, citizen in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan will also know the importance of the water to the society. The citizen in Malaysia will realize that without water, health problem will occur. In addition, water crisis can cause the water pollution to decrease rapidly because people will start to appreciate water and they do not want to suffer from water shortage again. Moreover, the bad consequence is that water shortage can increase the percentage of people pass away. The shortage of water will cause health problems such as diarrheal diseases. This incident can also decrease the production of crops. The shortage of water can decrease the crops prod uction. Without water farmers wont be able to produce enough food to sell in the market and because of this the price of food will raise rapidly and the demand for this food will be very low. Government Intervention Malaysia is a country that uses mixed economic system. All economic decisions are made partly by the government and partly through the market. For example, government can intervenes through planning, regulation, taxes, subsidies and partnership. In this case, the Malaysian government increases the budget to help to resolve the water shortage problem in Selangor. â€Å"Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced on 2nd February an additional allocation of RM120 million to Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas) to help resolve the water problem in Selangor.† (wordpress.com, 2013). Furthermore, Malaysian government has also delay a project to save the water supply. According to (thenutgraph.com, 2014) â€Å"Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk SeriPeter Chin, saying Selangor is due for a water crisis by 2014 if the current state government under the Pakatan Rakyat continues to delay land approval for the Langat 2 treatment plant to be built.† This project has been delayed and will be restart again on 2016. Lastly, Malaysian government has also cut down the water supply of the neighborhoods every couple of days. According to (themalaymailonline.com, 2014) â€Å"The rationing will see millions of consumers in the state receive two days of water supply followed by two days of dry taps to enable water to be conserved in the dams over the next two months.† Suggestion My first suggestion for Malaysia to improve the economics is that Malaysia government should understand the issue in the society now days so that the government can meet the needs of the citizens. Secondly, the Malaysian government should not separate from its currently economy system because the benefits are better than the problems the country is facing now; instead Malaysian government should focus on how they can to restructure it in order to enhance the chances of success. The restructuring approach can involves defining areas that businesses will have to invest in and areas that government will have to invest in. The end product will be an economy where all customers’ needs are well meet and equality establishing for competition and business growth. The conclusion is that mixed economy is the right choice for the economic growth of Malaysia as it serves the right background for understanding what should be invested and defining how such investment will be undertaken, and also providing the necessary resources for such investment because it is both the government and the individuals that combines to finance the production process. References Meng Yew Choong. 2011.Malaysia faces looming water crisis. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.thestar.com.my/story.aspx/?file=%2f2011%2f3%2f22%2flifefocus%2f8192017. [Accessed 04 May 14]. Corey Binns. 2012.How Long Can a Person Survive Without Water? [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.livescience.com/32320-how-long-can-a-person-survive-without-water.html. [Accessed 04 May 14]. globalwater.org/. 2010.Why Water? [ONLINE] Available at:http://globalwater.org/whywater.htm. [Accessed 04 May 14]. Malaysia-chronicle.com. 2014.SPORE MUST BE LAUGHING: A water crisis of Malaysias own making. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2view=itemid=232812:spore-must-be-laughing-a-water-crisis-of-malaysias-own-makingItemid=2#axzz2zWgCEZLu. [Accessed 04 May 14]. wordpress.com. 2013.najib gives syabas another rm120million bailout?. [ONLINE] Available at: http://fabm.wordpress.com/tag/water-crisis/. [Accessed 04 May 14]. thenutgraph.com. 2010.Averting Selangor’s water crisis. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.thenutgraph.com/averting-selangors-water-crisis/. [Accessed 04 May 14]. themalaymailonline.com. 2014.In Selangor, taps to run only every two days. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/in-selangor-taps-to-run-only-every-two-days. [Accessed 04 May 14]. 1 | Page

Contingency Planning Policy Statement

Contingency Planning Policy Statement Disaster Recovery Planning plays a most vital part in major industries where stored information or so called data plays the key role. Every business organization can be subjected to serious incidents or accidents which can prevent it from continuing day-day or normal operations and may cause in huge loss in terms of time as well as money. These incidents can happen at any day and at anytime, these causes can be natural calamities, human errors and system malfunctions. All Disaster Recovery planning needs to encompass how employees will communicate, where they will go and how they will keep doing their jobs. The details can vary greatly, depending on the size and scope of an organization and the way it does business. For some businesses, issues such as supply chain logistics are most crucial and are the focus on the plan. For others, information technology may play a more pivotal role, and the Disaster Recovery plan may have more of a focus on systems recovery. In this paper we are go ing to primarily discuss about steps to implement an actual disaster recovery plan. Below is the brief description of how the plan is implemented. Developing a contingency planning policy statement Conducting the business impact analysis (BIA) Identifying preventive controls Developing recovery strategies Developing a contingency plan Planning, testing, training and exercises Planning maintenance activities All the above steps are planned and performed taking all factors of the business into consideration. We shall also discuss the limitations of implementing such a plan. We shall also include real time examples and the successful results yielded by implementing the Disaster Recovery Plan. So this plans would act like a backup recovery process or a kind of business continuity solution while the actual system goes offline or corrupted. DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING Have we ever imagined as to what would happen if we belong to a business and we lose critical data or information due to some errors like human errors or a server crash or a lost computer or any natural calamity? Such kind of loss of information could lead to major losses in information in turn would affect the company in term of time and money and in this current world where recession has struck real bad the stakes are even higher. Protection information or data in a company is one of the major tasks or responsibility a company should take, such is the time where the disaster recovery planning would come in great help. Disasters strike untimely in many forms like natural disasters, computer errors or human errors. These kinds of disasters could lead to major catastrophe in the companys future. Disaster Recovery Planning is a procedure or a plan which protects the business data and in case of a calamity would help in continuity of business operations with the least loss amount in ter ms of time and money. The terrorist 9/11 attacks on the United States are one of such great examples in history for many organization decision makers to focus on the need for disaster recovery. There was huge loss of data and resulted in great loss of money and jolted the market for a few months. Business continuity and Disaster Recovery are major components which help to ensure that systems essential to the operation of the organization are available when needed. The term disaster took to a new height after the 9/11 events, before many business used to think disasters in terms of natural calamities or computer errors. Some events occur in such a way that it may take months or even years to recover. Sources say that till date, 70% of small businesses in the U.S. experienced a data loss in the past year due to technical or human disaster alone [AMI U.S. Small Business 2009 Annual Overview]. 1Over years many companied have started to realize the importance of this recovery planning an d business continuity. Sources even say that the companies which have actually using these plans are very happy and secure and scare for any type of disaster has been reduced. Sources say that from the year 2000 there has been a gradual increase in the companies who have started to implement the Disaster Recovery solution and the Business continuity solutions. The IT business has always been a target for many hackers and terrorist organizations all over the world. Over the years IT has improved and has been a major source of money as well as information. The security in the IT organization has always been a question mark as through the years, many disasters have occurred and there has been huge loss of data. In the early years IT companies has always been the target as the security measures werent that strong, they were used to be called as Single Point of Failures. So with the increasing threats from external organization, recovery plans and solutions have started to improve and ga ined lot of Interest over the years. IBM was an organization which had made a major influence in the market in providing the recovery solutions. Many companies initially thought that the implementation of these disaster recovery plans could be really expensive and had to deal with a lot of money, but they soon realized the loss occurred during a disaster is far more than the amount required to invest for the solutions. The primary reason in order to implement this kind of solution is: To implement accurate and continuous critical records, data backup, and off-site storage. To develop various strategies in order to provide alternative sites for business operations. To construct a contingency organization. To resume business operations with the loss of least amount of time and money. The following are the key steps or procedures which are needed to be followed in order to implement a disaster recovery plan: Developing a contingency planning policy statement Conducting the business impact analysis (BIA) Identifying preventive controls Developing recovery strategies Developing a contingency plan Planning, testing, training and exercises Planning maintenance activities CONTINGENCY PLANNING POLICY STATEMENT According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the following statement means that it is a set of management policies and procedures designed to maintain and restore business operations, possibly at an alternate location in the event of emergency, system failure or disaster.-2 This is one major component in the disaster recovery planning. In this, a plan is laid down keeping all the emergency situations in mind and preparation for any kind of disasters which may occur at any point of time. The policy statement is really talks about communication between management and those responsible for developing the plan. Keeping in view the driving goals of the project and the level of financial resources and other resources, the particular people who are involved and are to be responsible, this policy statement gives everything that the planners need to work out options in order to achieve the organizations goals. It also provides the scope to planners to interact with the management in case they need to re-assess the organization goals and resources from time to time. The importance of this step is not just for preparing the plan for the DR implementation but also at this step a major amount of cost is involved than the other phases of the DR implementation. Here a re the key points that the policy statement should address: What kind of disaster does the organization intend to cover? What do the organizations need to accomplish? How much time would it take in order to get things back to normal state? Where does the responsibility of the plan and planners end? How to take advantage of the crisis situation in order to improve your organization image with the stake holders? What level of system should be covered in case of any crisis? What is the maximum level of resources that the plan can command during the preparation, implementation, testing and maintenance? The initial draft for this plan may set goals that turn out to be impossible under the resource constraints specified. But as the time passes we need re-evaluate the policy and adjust the goals and resources according the situations. BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS The primary purpose of this step is to ensure that everything is protected without any loss of resources. This will also facilitate as to how quickly the business operation should have to return to full operations in case a disaster occurs. These are analyzed and identified on the basis of the worst-case scenario which may occur that assumes that the physical infrastructure supporting each respective business unit would be destroyed and all records, equipment, etc. are not accessible within 30 days. The main objectives of the business impact analysis (BIA) are as follows: Estimating on what scale on each business unit can be affected financially, considering the worst case scenarios Estimating on what scale on the operations of each business unit can be affected considering the worse case scenarios. Identifying and estimating the amount of personnel required for recovery operations. Estimating the time frame required for each business unit, considering the worst case scenarios. The key business processes that act as backbones to the organizations ability to carry out its business are identified and the requirements that drive these processes are also analyzed. The above processes can be identified and sorted in two different ways. Outside-In Analysis: This analysis is conducted in consideration with external stake holders, outside suppliers and internal departments which depend on IT services. The outside-in analysis focuses on whole systems, at each layer taking into consideration, the current process or system as distinct from the users or other systems that depend on it and via versa. Depending on the overall complexity of your business and how it makes the ideal solution to divide things up in the context, we may end up with just a single layer or with many of them. Inside-Out Analysis: The inside-out phase primarily focuses on resources that are required in each layer in order to provide the services that have been identified in the Outside-In phase which covers everything from the core system to the IT resources in the organizations. Then for each of the above we shall determine the impact of a disaster which may cause disruption or damage of the resource on the functioning of the system and its ability to deliver the services on which other layers depend on. Then we determine the maximum time wastage due to the disaster test we conducted on each of the services on the basis of what other layers are dependent on these services. We shall also include in the analysis any indirect effects which were caused by the disaster on these services. The BIA Report should be presented to the Steering Committee PREVENTIVE MEASURES There has been a simple formula for determining the risk associated financially with a given type of disaster; $R=P*C*T where P is the probability that the disaster will occur, C is the hourly or daily cost of downtime in lost productivity, lost revenue, etc. and T is time outage. The primary purpose of this step is to reduce the time outage, which are also the main purposes of the DR plan. Since the risk and the other factor are directly proportional to the time outage associated, hence the reduction of time is the primary responsibility of this task. At the same time the reduction of the other two factors which is the probability of the occurrence of the disaster and the cost due to the downtime are equally important. So minimizing all the three factors would result in the least risk possible. Generally sources say that the cost of preventing a problem is far lower than the cost of fixing it after it occurs. Let us now look into how we can identify the above factors. Firstly the pr obability of disaster occurring is generally is the toughest one to say. Natural calamities come and strike without a sign. The only way to prevent them is to make the organization sites in safe places. Next is the computer malfunction or server crash, these can be prevented by regular maintenance, constant tracking through performance monitors, proper vigilance and good security. Secondly is the cost reduction, there should be maintenance in such a way that generally if by chance there has been any damage the system should be protected. We should not be in a position to replace and get a new one. Generally the cost associated in installing a new machine is always higher than the maintenance cost put on it. Even the cost of downtime can be reduced by reducing the organizations dependence on the system. Thirdly is the time outage, we need to have special ops teams which should act readily to any situational catastrophe. So by reducing all the above factors we can reduce the probabili ty of risk on the organization. RECOVERY STRATERGIES The primary task of this step is to determine how we have to achieve the disaster recovery goals for each of the systems and system components that were identified in the Business Impact Analysis. It is here that we do the core work of balancing costs and benefits of the available approaches. This step is not just about selecting specific vendors, determining exact costs, or developing detailed procedures, but the main purpose in this stage is to select the types of solution that you will use and to determine the scales of the costs involved. There are a set of consideration we need to follow while going through this phase. Firstly, we need to consider exactly what type of disasters may occur and classify them into different types based on the effectiveness Secondly; we need to consider solutions of differing range of coverage i.e. we need to determine solutions which can protect on the site failures as such a solution can also protect the system and its components. Lastly we need to consider are the characteristics of infrastructure, human and data aspects of recovery. Each of the above three factors should be considered separately and we should determine what type of solution and the cost associated for the solution. Out of the above three factors Infrastructure recovery is the simplest. The best feature of infrastructure is that it can be replaced easily. People are considered more difficult factors. Every personnel in the company are associated with particular skills and accordingly they are assigned roles. So if a recovery strategy is needed to be implemented on these people, suppose if a personnel has been fired or he quits then finding another personnel of the same skill set and roles is always an additional cost ,since we need to play better salaries. Thirdly it is the data; this cannot be replaced at any cost. Once a data is lost cannot be recovered at any cost. What we need to determine is to what extent of data we can lose and identify which is the c ritical data and we need to protect it accordingly. Once this is done, we have to note the recovery strategies for each system on the Master System Information form. DEVELOP THE CONTINGENCY PLAN This step is the apex or the peak activity of all your work. The main outcome of this phase is the documented plan and the complete implementation of the infrastructure in order to implement the plan. This documented plan includes each and every information of assumptions, constraints and specific procedure needed to be implemented. The implementation phase contains all the purchasing and setup of all the hardware and implementation at the sites, communication services etc. This phase itself is run by a team, just like a team which handles projects. Team which consists of different expertise with fixed timelines and deadlines. According to the NIST guide the following are some aspects or steps which needed to be followed during the plan. 1. Introduction: Here the main task is to document the goals and scope of the plan, along with any requirements that must be taken into account whenever the plan is updated. 2. Operational Overview: The purpose of this section is to provide a concise picture of the plans overall approach. It contains essentially two types of information: (1) a high-level overview of the systems being protected and the recovery strategies employed and (2) a description of the recovery teams and their roles. 3. Notification/Activation Phase: According to the NIST guide this phase defines the initial actions taken once a system disruption or emergency has been detected or appears to be imminent. This phase includes activities like notifying recovery personnel, assessing system damage and implementation of the plan. At the completion of this phase, recovery staff will be prepared to perform contingency measures to restore system functions on a temporary basis. 4. Recovery Phase: This section of the plan is one that documents in detail the solutions to be used to recover each system and the procedures required to carry out the recovery and restore operational activities. 5. Reconstitution Phase: This is the last of the three sections of the plan. As per the NIST guide this phase is where the recovery activities are terminated and normal operations are transferred back to the organizations facility. If the original facility is unrecoverable, the activities in this phase can also be applied to preparing a new facility to support system processing requirements. 6. Appendices: The appendices contains any information that (a) is necessary as reference material during recovery, (b) may be necessary during any revision of the plan, or (c) documents legal agreements. PLANNING TESTING TRAINING AND EXERCICES In this fast moving modern information technology world, with the change in time and things, many hardware components are replaced, softwares are upgraded, networks are reconfigured, data sizes grow. All the above factors play a major impact on the performance of the disaster recovery systems. Testing and exercising goals are established and alternative testing strategies are evaluated from time to time. Each and every procedure required for testing should be properly documented from time to time. Initially the testing should be done in sections and should be conducted after the office hours. Below are some types of testing: Check List Testing Simulation Testing Parallel Testing Full Interruption Testing Although these systems were fully tested when first installed, but the system is dynamic in nature, so proper training should be given to personnel from time to time. We need to conduct exercises from time to time to check the status and under different condition with the help from all the personnel in the organization. Once the plan has been properly tested and documented it should be approved by the top management to start off. The management would take all the responsibility of preparation of policies, procedure, responsibilities and tasks associated with it. It should make sure that they review the contingency plan at least annually and re-assess and approve it. At the same it should be responsible in making limitations and constraints. Proper implementation of the above all factors will lead to a smooth start up and helps the DR plan successful. PLAN MAINTAINENCE After developing a disaster recovery plan, it is equally important to ensure that the plan accurately runs accordingly to the current requirements and systems. There are three places, at which the plan can be reviewed firstly, during testing annually or semiannually, and secondly when changes are made in either the IT systems being protected or in the business processes they support. The first of the above two falls in the responsibility of the top management in the disaster recovery planning and so has to be done on a regular basis. The last requires that consideration of the impact of the changes on the disaster recovery plan to be introduced as a standard consideration in procedures that are outside the scope of direct concern of those responsible for the DR plan. SUMMARY The world is fast changing and organizations need to be prepared for natural or manmade disasters that could disrupt business processes. Customers and millions of dollars could potentially be lost and never be recovered if business processes are disrupted. The Business Continuity Plan helps resume the business processes and the Disaster Recovery Plan helps resume the IT systems. The core objective of a Disaster Recovery Plan is to restore the operability of systems that support mission-critical and critical business processes to normal operation as quickly as possible. Business continuity planning integrates the business resumption plan, occupant emergency plan, incident management plan, continuity of operations plan, and disaster recovery plan. Personnel from each major business unit should be included as members of the team and part of all disaster recovery planning activities. These people need to understand the business processes, technology behind those processes, networks, and systems in order to create the disaster recovery plan. Applications and systems are identified by the team that is mission-critical and critical to the organization. There would be a specialist disaster recovery team which will be responsible for training, implementing, and maintaining the plan. They will possess unique skills, knowledge, and abilities that should be updated in the plan. A Disaster Recovery Plan that is well developed, trained on, and maintained, will minimize loss and ensure continuity of critical business processes in the event of disaster.

Smoking: I Can Stop Whenever I Want :: essays research papers

Smoking: I Can Stop Whenever I Want Good afternoon, I can stop whenever I want. Does that sound familiar to you? if it does you are probably part of the 80% smokers who are teens. And studies show, that young smokers are likely to start doing drugs, selling drugs, and so forth. Young smokers start smoking at 12 or 13 just to get a taste of what it's like. Some of them find it disgusting and unhealthy and some find it cool usually because their peers introduced it to them. Tobacco use kills about 420,000 smokers each year. Recent studies also indicate that about 53,000 non smokers die each year from second hand smoking. You surprised heh? You shouldn't be, because all of those anti tobacco commercials on Television and on every single pack of cigarettes isn't there for nothing. It's there to prevent all of you teens to get hooked on cigarettes or even think about starting to smoke. Smoking is legal almost everywhere in the world, but it shouldn't be because Marijuana smoking isn't. Cigarettes are addictive and they usually lead the smoker to marijuana use or to other kind of drugs. That's why I think that young teenagers shouldn't start smoking at young age. All of you people out there who think that they can stop whenever they want, well I have news flash for you. 1 out of 10 smokers succeed in quitting smoking in United-States. Everyone thinks that they have an iron will and they keep on delaying the time to stop, I'll just stop as my new year resolution, I'll stop in a month, a week, a year. Smoking is really hard to quit, it's an addictive habit and you really need an iron will to stop it. There are also a few consequences I think I should mention from ciggarette smoking. First of all, as you all know, ciggarette smoking turns your teeth yellow so you can forget about those perfect teeth with the crest smile. The second consequence is, smoking costs around 4 $ a day for a normal smoker which comes up to 2500 $ per year, think what you could do with all that

Gangs and Violence in California Essay -- Gang Essays

Gangs and Violence in California This paper was done in response to an article that I came across in which a child was convicted as an adult for homicide. The homicide was supposedly gang-related; the young child that was only 14 years of age was painted as an entrenched gang member. This article made me think what contributed to this situation and how it can be eradicated from today’s society so this will never happen to any of our youth. The solutions provided in this document are a response to the growing need for schools, school districts, county offices of education, and state legislatures to address youth gangs. Children are our greatest asset in the world today: They give parents the greatest feeling in the world. Parents go through their children’s fears, disappointments and tears and still feel the great energy that radiates around them. Parents feel and shape every aspect of their children; however, the most influential program shaping children today is their educational system. Parents think that sending their children to get an education does nothing more than give their child a chance to succeed in life, what a powerful influence education is. When we think of power influences we want them to be the best, this tends not be the case. In fact schools are on a steady decline in the field of nurturing our children but rather they fill our children’s gaps in their lives with very harmful, manipulative themes. A prominent harmful, manipulative theme that is becoming increasingly a younger trend is gangs. Gangs, and more specifically, gang violence is a growing phenomena among children among middle school and even elementary kids. Gangs are becoming more attractive to our young ones. As a result, more childr... ...icano Fellows Program. Stanford, 1994. Gangs. 27 Feb. 2004 Online: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/jjbulletin/9804/gangs.html Goldstein, Arnold P., C. Ronald Huff, eds. The Gang Intervention Handbook. Champaign: Research Press, 1993. Hill, Sylvia. Interview with Assistant Principal, SCS of Charles Drew Middle School in Los Angeles, CA. Telephone Interview. 16 Feb. 2004. Kinnear, Karen L. Gangs: Contemporary World Issues. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1996. Sanders, William B. Gangbangs and Drive-bys: Grounded Culture and Juvenile Gang Violence. New York: Gruyter, 1994. United States. Cong. House. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Youth Violence. 105th Cong., 1st sess. Washington: 1997. United States. Cong. Joint. Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime and Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth, and Families. 105th Cong., 1st sess. Washington: 1997.

Knights :: essays research papers

Knights   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the fourth century A.D. the Roman Empire fell and Europe was invaded by various barbarian tribes. One of the dominant groups was the Franks of central and western Europe, who gradually expanded their power until their leader Charlemagne became emperor of the West. Powerful local lords and their mounted warriors offered protection to peasants, who became their serfs in return. By the 11the century a new social order was formed my armored knights, who served a local lord, count, or duke, and were in turn served by serfs. When males were about seven, a boy of noble birth who was going to become a knight was usually sent away to a nobleman’s household, often that of his uncle or great lord, to be a page. Here he learned how to behave and how to ride. About 14, he was apprenticed to a knight whom he served as a squire. He was taught how to handle weapons and how to look after his master’s armor and horses. He even went into battle with his knight, help ing him put on his armor and assisting him if he was hurt or unhorsed. He learned how to shoot a bow and to carve meat for food. Successful squired were knighted when they were about 21 years old. Young men who wanted to be knights had to keep fit. So squires trained constantly to exercise their muscles, and improve their skills. They practiced with each other and also sometimes with their knightly masters.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The main body armor worn my early knights was made of mail, consisting of many small, liked iron rings. During the 12th century, knights started to wear more mail. Their sleeves got longer, and mail leggings became popular. A padded garment called an aketon was also worn below the mail to absorb blows. In the 14th century knights added steel plated to protect their limbs, and the body was often protected further with a coat-of-plates, made of pieces of iron riveted to a cloth covering. A suit weighed about 44-55 lbs. And the weight was spread over the body so that a fit man could run, lie down, or mount his horse unaided in his armor. The only problem was that the armor quickly made you hot. By the 15th century, knights were protecting themselves with full suits of plate armor. The armor’s smooth surface deflected the edges and points of weapons.

Game Theory †21 flags winning strategy Essay

There were 21 flags and each player had the opportunity to remove 1,2, or 3 flags. The player that removes the last flags will be the winning team. By applying the backwards induction theory, think backwards in time and the optimal winning strategy is to leave the opponent player 4 flags by each step to remove the flags so that the remaining number is divisible by 4. The player that has the first attempt to remove the 1st flag will control the 100% of whole situation. This is the unbeatable strategy that will lead the whole situation by leaving the opponent player with a multiple of 4 flags. This apply when both player understand the trick of this 21 flags game. By leaving the opponent player with 20 flags at the first attempt, no matter how many flags the opponent player remove, the player that in control could then remove the flags and leave the opponent with 16 flags, then 12 flags, then 8 flags and finally 4 flags which forces the opponent in to a situation where no matter how many flags the opponent player remove, the in charge player will be able to take the last flag. The key of this game is the target number you arrange it so you leave your opponent player with. Then whatever amount of flags the opponent player take, you can remove the remaining 1 to 3 flags that sum up to 4. The first attempt to remove the 1st flag of this 21 flags game has the upper hand. However, if you lost the first attempt to remove this game, you better hope the opponent player do not know the trick of 21 flags. By this, you may still stand a chance to get back the control of this game by playing randomly to confuse the opponent player and try to get back the target number of 4. Unless the opponent understand well the strategy of this game else they most probably will go to make a mistake and allow you to control back the situation by getting back the situation where flags number able to be divide by 4 before ending the game.

Characteristics of the Prophet Mohammad Essay

People admire a public figure for his or her characteristics and notable works. That person becomes a role model, and his or her characteristics become a legacy that the next generation will honor and praise. In particular, Prophet Mohammad is a remarkable person for Muslims and for other people as well because of his compassion, grace, politeness, grace, humility and respect for others. At one time, Mohammad was considered as the most influential and spiritual leader in the whole world. He was considered influential because Mohammad promoted his life from a shepherd towards being a prophet because of his spiritual power bested by Allah. Mohammad became the founder of one of the greatest religions. In addition to this, he became one of the greatest political leaders in the world. In the Islamic world, Mohammad is always being looked up to, and Muslims believe that he was the messenger from Allah himself (Hart). The prophet Mohammad possessed characteristics that have set him apart from other great leaders. Mohammad referred to himself as an apostle that Allah sent to the world to â€Å"demonstrate perfection of character, refinement of manners and loftiness of deportment. † Many people say that Mohammad is the embodiment of someone who possessed a gentle and kind-hearted nature (Ghani). He is also noted for being compassionate to those he met throughout his life. This quality of Mohammad was a great force which affected those who believed in him. In fact, they strived to memorize everything that Mohammad said because they loved and respected him. Even until today, many people are familiar with Mohammad’s words. His followers can still remember and recount Mohammad’s words, relics and memoirs. Another characteristic of Mohammad is his being lovable. Some people compared Mohammad to Moses and Jesus, who were also loved and respected by people. Along with being loveable, Mohammad possessed the kind of greatness which inspired fear and awe. Moreover, during his time, no one or nothing could separate the people from their prophet (Shariati). Mohammad was also described as gracious, polite, courteous, simple and humble. He was also sympathetic and sincere and overlooked the faults of other people. When it comes to justice, Mohammad could be severe and resolute, but his being severe was balanced with his generosity. His charming characteristic has attracted many followers, causing them to become devoted to their prophet (Ghani). With regards to this, there was an event which showed how influential he could be. There was a particular tribe in Arabia who was known for having fierce warriors. These were the Bedouin tribesmen, and they were not united. And since their number was small, they could not be matched for the other more powerful and larger armies from other kingdoms. But Mohammad was able to unite them, and they also came to believe in the presence of one true God. After this, they embarked on one of the most notable conquests in history, conquering empires and armies (Hart). Furthermore, Mohammad was said to be respectful and courteous to others. He believed that when someone honors an old man, he respects Allah. Mohammad was courteous even to those who were not pleasing for Allah. Many could also attest to the fact that Mohammad treated all of his people equally. He spent time visiting the poor and the sick and advised other Muslims to do the same. In addition, he was not biased; he invited anyone, regardless of status or race, to share with him his food (Ghani). History also says that Mohammad engaged himself in doing household work. This shows that Mohammad did not look down on the menial work of other people. In fact, there were times when he would sweep the floor and mend his clothes and feed his animals (Ghani). The prophet Mohammad was Muslim’s messenger from Allah. He possessed characteristics which became a model for other people. Being compassionate, loveable, gracious, polite, humble, respectful and his equal treatment for the people became the characteristics that made people follow his words and footsteps.

The Twilight Saga 5: Midnight Sun 24. Blood

There were distant sounds of a fight, the loud noise of a vampire being torn apart, but my eyes were only able to see one thing ?C Bella. She was lying on the ground, crumpled, broken, while the pool of blood continued to grow wider underneath her. The red fluid, spilling, wasting, on the floor, the scent pulsing through the air. The amount was cataclysmic, as each second passed a distinctive, yet intangible, spice of the most delicious aroma left burning lacerations in my aching throat. My knee was placed resolutely in the middle of the puddle, soaking me in her blood†¦her life. I took a deep breath and ignored my longing, my lust, my ravenous desire – I focused on the angel. â€Å"Bella,† I soothed her. â€Å"You're going to be fine.† Unresponsive, detached. A plea entered my voice. â€Å"Can you hear me, Bella? I love you.† I sent a reverent petition to which ever god would answer a creature like me. â€Å"Edward,† she croaked, answering my silent request. â€Å"Yes, I'm here,† I declared earnestly. Slow, small, and irregular quantity of tears trickled down her cheeks. â€Å"It hurts,† she uttered many inarticulate lamentations of grief as her eyes closed tightly. Her words plagued and tormented me. I lightly brushed her hair from her face. â€Å"I know, Bella, I know.† I shifted my posture to Carlisle. â€Å"Can't you do anything?† I asked him urgently, peremptorily. This doesn't look good. I need you to prepare yourself for the worst. â€Å"My bag please,† Carlisle reached his hand out. The scent†¦Alice's eyes were wild when she passed the bag to him. â€Å"Hold your breath, Alice, it will help,† Carlisle declared while grabbing his bag. â€Å"Alice?† Bella questioned in a sustained mournful cry. Alice continued to hold her breath, unable to answer her. Bella, she lamented a sigh silently. â€Å"She's here,† I assured her. â€Å"She knew where to find you,† I silently thanked Alice as our eyes met for a fraction of a second. Alice made a slight and quick bend of her head. Not soon enough, her eyes were deep with sorrow. A quick glance around the room brought the total devastation and destruction back into focus. The mirror was cracked and shiny blood was smeared across the floor and mirrors. â€Å"My hand hurts,† Bella mumbled in an almost unintelligible extent, bringing me back from my distraction. â€Å"I know, Bella.† Another scorch mark broke down my throat as I took in another breath to answer the angel who was lying in front of me. I'm about to administer some morphine into her system. Her pain should go away fairly quick after that. â€Å"Carlisle will give you something, it will stop.† All the noise, the fighting, the sound of cracking wood, it was all drowned out when a sharp and piercing cry echoed through the Ballet Studio. â€Å"My hand is burning,† Bella shouted, her eyes fluttering, trying to open but were restricted because of the blood. â€Å"Bella?† I cried out, frightened. I felt a great mental suffering, as her screams were slowly torturing me. The morphine should be working. Another loud wail. â€Å"The fire! Someone stop the fire!† she screamed and moaned in paroxysms of grief. I looked over my shoulder as Emmett was starting a fire to burn James ?C but it was nowhere near us. I turned back to her, going to the source of her first cries. There were perfect teeth imprints on her wrist where a vampire, I growled in rage, had bit her. â€Å"Carlisle! Her hand!† I yelled in disgust, hoping he might have a remedy or that I was wrong all together. An icy surge of terror filled my lungs. I watched as his eyes looked over the outline of the mark. â€Å"He bit her.† Carlisle stated in revulsion. A deep breath entered my lungs as her scent rippled down my flaming throat, the horror entering my body. My view was obliterated by anger ?C I was seeing red. I can't do it. â€Å"Edward, you have to do it,† Alice commanded while wiping the blood out of Bella's eyes. Her stare was so intent you would think she was trying to force Bella to mend just by looking at her. â€Å"No,† I roared, looking at Carlisle, hoping he would tell me something different. â€Å"Alice,† Bella cried in a low, mournful sound. Edward, if you want her to stay human†¦ â€Å"There may be a chance,† Carlisle persisted. â€Å"What?† I begged, not understanding why they wanted me to do it. â€Å"See if you can suck the venom back out. The wound is fairly clean,† Carlisle explained as he stitched Bella's head wound. The shock from this statement was so huge it rooted me to the spot for several seconds. â€Å"Will that work?† Alice's throat was obstructed by the fear of losing her friend. I assume it would work the same as a snake bite. â€Å"I don't know,† he admitted. â€Å"But we have to hurry.† You have to do this, Edward; I can't do this for you. The thought of consuming her blood, even if it was saving her life sent pleasure and pain flooding into my body. To taste her would be wrong†¦fallacious. I felt utterly disgusted with myself but the temptation was growing. My veins felt like they were being filled with acid as I contemplated putting her life in more danger†¦the liability†¦to place her in mortal peril, where she may never come back to me†¦ I felt like I was choking. â€Å"Carlisle†¦I,† I faltered. The thoughts tilted back and forth in my mind like a see saw. â€Å"I don't know if I can do that,† the words were laced with the agony that was consuming me, I felt like I was being strangled, desperate for air. Carlisle was working quickly over Bella's head, pulling a needle through her skin over and over, sewing her up. He looked at my face. â€Å"It's your decision, Edward, either way. I can't help you. I have to get this bleeding stopped here if you're going to be taking blood from her hand.† Bella jerked a quick sharp pull of her body. Another thrust and a suddenly arrested motion as she thrashed against the burning pain in her hand as my mind was racing for alternatives. â€Å"Edward!† she shouted spasmodically. Her eyes flew open and her dark brown eyes darted around in every direction until they landed on me. Watching her writhing in burning pain, pain that I remember well, burnt me, like I could feel it too. I could take the pain away ?C I could make it all stop ?C but would I take her life in the process? â€Å"Alice, get me something to brace her leg!† Carlisle shouted as he was finishing up the stitches on Bella's head. Maybe he should let her become a vampire; it would make things a whole lot easier. â€Å"Edward, you must do it now, or it will be too late.† At his thoughts ?C to think of Bella as a vampire ?C death would be better than this†¦this†¦life. Bella was beginning to jerk in violent spasmodic muscular movements, the abrupt motions making her leg flail limply around. Carlisle caught her leg to hold it still. Now, Carlisle ordered in his head. I shot him a furtive look. My fingers wrapped around her tiny and delicate wrist, preventing her involuntary reflexes, like she was pulling her hand away from a flame. The desire to taste, the agony of the bite†¦every second I bent closer to her my mind tittered on an unstable line of right and wrong. My mind was traveling between two different worlds. Reason, truth, maybe some standard or principle ?C this had to be the solution; the right answer. Not proper, awry, not appropriate. The thoughts scattered across my already stressed mind as I bent down further. She thrust against my hold making the prolonged pain of my intense mental suffering grow exponentially. Her breathing was harsh and ragged as her wild yells filled the studio, reverberating off the mirrors and walls. My lips touched her skin, the fresh blood soaking into my lips. Hunger. Completely ravenous. I pulled her blood from the bite wound and it rushed into my mouth. The blood was hot and wet in my mouth. Sensations I'd never felt before tingled my tongue, sending a pleasurable warmth down my frozen and dry aching throat. Each second the monster was threatening to take over as he reared his head in appreciation. She screamed and lashed, struggling to get away from my grip. I knew it was hurting her, but my instincts had taken over, I held her tighter, intensely eager to devour the palatable, savory†¦delectable†¦I tried not to moan in pleasure. The luxuriant fullness that had consumed me brought intense satisfaction. I was ultimately determined to seize her, to have all of her, as I sucked down the blood in large gluttonous amounts. I could feel her becoming limp in my strong grasp as I continued my consumption of her gratifyingly warm, red†¦crimson blood. â€Å"Edward,† Bella mumbled incoherently, bringing me from my frenzy ?C like a soft voice had just whispered in my ear. Edward! Please†¦please don't kill her. Stop! Alice cried in her mind, not wanting to scare Bella. â€Å"He's right here, Bella.† Her voice trembled slightly, her visions showing her an unsure course. Bella's eyes rolled in her head like marbles on an unstable surface. She was dying. With a stupendous effort I let go, placing her hand down gently, forcibly reminding myself of her delicate nature. The dazzling sunlight of the day bathed the studio with a natural light, making the pool of blood glitter. Bella was silent and limp, her heart barely pumping the little amount of blood that was left in her body. Did I kill her? I felt like someone had just stabbed me in my heart. Would this be her brutal ending? I felt a horrible compression in my chest at my thoughts. They placed an inexcusable trust in me! I looked at her intently, waiting for another reaction with increasing desperation. She took an unsteady breath ?C the small cry of pain still present. I was devoutly thankful to whatever god had been watching over her this morning. â€Å"Stay, Edward, stay with me†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She barely breathed. I sighed heavily at the beautiful angel voice. â€Å"I will,† I promised, the stress of the situation still evident in my triumphant voice. I put her words on repeat in my mind, realizing even though I put her in this danger and almost sucked her dry of life, she still loved me†¦still wanted me to stay with her. I brushed my hand lightly against her cheek. A small sigh escaped her lips, her pain obviously dulling as her eyes closed lightly. You didn't kill her, Carlisle thought proudly. â€Å"Is it all out?† he checked. I didn't kill her. The relief was so exquisite it was nearly pain. The ache†¦anxiety, my oppression was slowly dissipating. â€Å"Her blood tastes clean,† I breathed a sigh of relief. â€Å"I can taste the morphine.† Let's make sure before we take her to the hospital. The morphine might be covering up the pain. â€Å"Bella?† Carlisle called out, bringing Bella from an almost slumber. Bella didn't bother to open her eyes, her body lying limp on the ground. â€Å"Mmmmm?† â€Å"Is the fire gone?† Carlisle stared at me, waiting for the answer. Bella's voice was slow and sluggish. â€Å"Yes,† she sighed. â€Å"Thank you, Edward.† I felt a profound feeling of warmth radiate from my body. â€Å"I love you,† I breathed in deep affection. To taste something so sensational and be able to stop†¦ I sighed, the benevolent reverence I had for her grew suddenly, like she was divine in nature. â€Å"I know,† she breathed once more, her words becoming incoherent with sleep. At her words ?C her almost sarcastic words, a low chuckle escaped my lips. The sound was doused in relief. Did you see her mother? Is she dead? Carlisle's face looked grave. We both listened for a moment, trying to hear a heart beat†¦someone breathing, but there was nothing. I shook my head. â€Å"Bella?† Her lips twitched into a frown. â€Å"What?† she mumbled. â€Å"Where is your mother?† he asked. â€Å"In Florida,† she sighed. Then her face barely distorted in anger. â€Å"He tricked me, Edward. He watched our videos.† I gritted my teeth in anger, the reminder of James came to the forefront of my mind as I looked over my shoulder at the rapidly growing flames that were licking up the walls of the studio. â€Å"Alice.† Bella's eyes fluttered and failed to open. â€Å"Alice,† she called again. â€Å"The video ?C he knew you, Alice, he knew where you came from,† her voice drifted off weakly. â€Å"I smell gasoline,† she added quietly. This building is going to be up in flames shortly, we need to leave. â€Å"It's time to move her,† Carlisle looked at me. Can you carry her? You must be careful not to hold her too tightly. We don't want her ribs protruding into her organs. I nodded my head. â€Å"I want to sleep,† Bella protested. â€Å"You can sleep, sweetheart, I'll carry you,† I tried to soothe her as I brought her gently into my arms, like she was a delicate soap bubble. She's more fragile than a soap bubble, I laughed internally, the first real signs of the ending danger.†Sleep now, Bella,† I kissed her lightly on the forehead, the blood unaffecting me in this most relief filled moments. She fell limp in my arms, her eyes shut lightly, like she was in a deep slumber. I emerged from the flames of the studio as Alice opened the car door of the Cadillac for me. I slowly laid her down in the backseat. I sat beside her, pulling her into my lap. I wanted to keep her as close to me as possible. I looked up through the shining sunlight, where Alice was glittering like millions of tiny facets were embedded in her skin, and noticed the relief on her face also. â€Å"Where's Emmett and Jasper?† I wondered, catching a glimpse of the Mercedes still parked out front. â€Å"They've gone back to the hotel. I'm not riding with you, I'm going to meet them there. We are going to set up a†¦scenario.† I saw in her mind the plan ?C they were going to break the glass wall of one of the stair wells ?C saying Bella had fallen down the stairs and through the window, causing her injuries. â€Å"Will that work?† I asked. â€Å"Yes.† She stated while shutting the door and sprinting off in the dark shadows around the buildings. Carlisle was already in the driver's seat, the car starting. I didn't speak, and neither did he during our ride to the hospital, though I could always hear his thoughts. I guess the glass from the window and falling down stairs could account for her injuries. Hum†¦ Alice is truly clever. I can't believe Edward was able to stop when Bella's blood calls to him so absolutely. Two lefts and a right†¦ We pulled into the emergency room lane, Carlisle helped Bella out of the car and handed her back to me. I carried her through the large glass doors as they slid open for me automatically. The nurse at the front desk stood immediately, gasped at the sight of the blood, her thoughts becoming panicky, and ran to get help. Soon there were doctors and more nurses running through the halls, all ready to help her. It pained me to see the slowness that they moved, though their pace was particularly fast considering they were just mere humans. I brushed her face lightly as I placed her on the gurney. â€Å"My name's Dr. Carlisle Cullen. I would like to help in any way that I can. She is like family to me,† Carlisle spoke quickly to the doctor on duty. I knew he was beginning to feel this away about her, but he had never thought or said that statement out loud. She was family, though. To see all of the Cullen's, even Rosalie, ban together to protect the one fragile human that I loved so deeply made me realize that maybe she was my destiny†¦that even after tasting her blood, I was able to keep her alive. I shook my head. It was idiotic to think that way. I would have never tasted her blood if it weren't for me putting her in danger in the first place. This was entirely my fault. She was being rushed to surgery because of me. Her bones are broken†¦she was bit by a vampire! Each thought was a struggle, I saved her, but she wouldn't have needed saving had I never invited her into my secret life. Another thought. When I left Forks†¦if I never returned†¦she would be dead now. I saved her! The battle between right and wrong was taking over my body as I sunk down into the nearest chair and waited for some news. A couple of very long minutes later Alice came prancing through the doors, exultant at her prized display of a fake accident, her eyes were reminiscent. Carlisle came bursting through the big white emergency doors. â€Å"We need permission from her mother or father before she can have surgery.† â€Å"Already done,† Alice trilled. â€Å"She should be calling the hospital in three seconds.† Suddenly the phone rang and the nurses' station picked up. â€Å"Hold on just one minute, Mrs. Dwyer,† the nurse pressed the hold button and then another button to send the call back to the doctor on duty. â€Å"That's my cue,† Carlisle said. â€Å"I'll keep you informed.† He turned on his heal and walked smoothly and gracefully through the doors sending an everything will be all right, thought my way. I sighed and sank down into a chair. I sat still for an hour. A very long hour. I still hadn't recovered from the shock of seeing Bella in such a broken state as I sat there frozen and unmoving. Hate and revulsion were there, squarely in my chest, reminding me of the monster I am. I sat there, silent and unmoving ?C rigid as a wax work while the battle raged inside me. I kept turning cold thinking about what would have happened if I hadn't shown up. I shuddered. Another hour passed, and this one was longer than the first. I begged the earth to crack open and swallow me whole. Alice didn't say anything, just sitting quietly next to me, realizing it wasn't a good time to talk. I hoped to deflect any invitation to join into a conversation with her. Alice continued to gaze dreamily out the window. I heard feet racing down the hall way and I looked to my right as Carlisle busted through the big white emergency doors to report on how Bella was doing. â€Å"She's going to be fine. She will be out of surgery shortly. There was a lot of damage to her leg, but they were able to fix it. She should have no permanent damage,† Carlisle informed me, placing his hand on my shoulder, speaking bracing words of comfort. â€Å"Relax. I'll show you where her room will be.† I leapt to my feet. We walked slowly through the hallways of the hospital; the walls were bland and off white. There was a sickening smell in the air†¦the smell of iodine and death. We reached big metal doors to an elevator. Alice pressed the button to go up, already knowing which room we were going to be in. I waited impatiently for the doors to open. Ding. The elevator doors opened to admit us and we all three stepped through them, Alice once again pressing the button, one that said four. I felt a shifting under me as my stone like body was slowing ascending the many floors of the building. Ding. The doors opened to admit us onto the fourth floor, which was just as boring as the first. â€Å"This way,† Alice said. I followed her until we reached room four-oh-eight. I stepped through the threshold. No Bella. I sank down in the chair next to the bed, waiting once again impatiently. I leaned over and put my head in my hands, trying to dislodge the thoughts and feelings that were consuming my body, setting it aflame and then dousing it with cold water. The scent was still strongly present on my hands. I pulled them away to examine the damage. There was no white space, my hands were covered in scarlet blood. A stubby nurse walked into the room. â€Å"Oh,† she gasped. â€Å"I didn't realize anyone was in here.† I looked up at her and she jumped back several feet. His eyes! I looked away quickly. â€Å"I'll just come back†¦Ã¢â‚¬  she bustled out of the room quickly. â€Å"That's right! I almost forgot,† Alice chimed in. â€Å"What is it, Alice?† I groaned. She tossed me a small white box. I flipped it over in my hands. Contacts. Crap, another reminder, I thought angrily. I went into the bathroom to place the contacts over my bright red eyes†¦bright red because of Bella's blood. All of this because of my†¦need. It was true, I needed Bella. Would I ever be able to leave her and stop bringing danger to her door step? I fluttered my eye as an obstruction fell over my vision. I could see every line and contour of the wretched thing. I pulled the other contact out to place in my other eye. I brought my face close to the mirror, studying it. I was oddly flushed and more pink than normal; my eye was scarlet red because I was full of human blood. The gleaming red eye reminded me of the monster that I am. I sighed and placed the contact in my eye as my vision became obstructed again. I washed my hands thoroughly, watching the water turn red and run down the drain. I walked out of the bathroom. â€Å"Much better,† Alice said. I heard a squeal of wheels being pushed down the lament floor. Be prepared, Carlisle warned. Worry and anxiety filled my stomach like acid as I stood to open the door, realizing I had less resolution than ever.

Poe’s “The Black Cat” as an Example of Gothic Story

Poe's â€Å"The Black Cat† as an Example of Gothic Story Edgar Allan Poe, who lived a short and tragic life, was mainly known for his gothic stories embedded in the atmosphere of terror and suspense, with insane protagonists placed in gloomy settings. He is considered to be a horror-master and his literary output renders him a father of the detective story and one of the most prominent gothic story writers (Fisher 2004: 81). The Black Cat, first published in 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post (Sova 2007: 35), is one of many visible instances of Poe’s talent in writing gothic fiction.Beyond the shadow of a doubt, it is an excellent example of a gothic story due to its numerous features characteristic of this genre (Hayes 2004: 85). Although gothic fiction is a genre which was born in England at the end of the 18th century, it was soon well-received in the United States, where it influenced a wide array of writers. It was primarily based on the European Romantic Movement b ut over the course of time, tragic and supernatural dimensions were added to these stories as the leading themes in America. The genre has a number of characteristics, one of which is the setting.Main protagonists are usually placed in an old, abandoned castle, with secret chambers and passages. The action of gothic stories take place in dark, spooky and dismal places. The plot is very often mysterious and some unexplainable events occur on regular basis. Gothic authors try to produce an atmosphere of suspense in their works by creating unpredictable characters, who struggle with madness, anger and acts of panic, in order to threaten the readers. The characters’ state of mind, their feelings and emotions, frequently take precedence over the plot.Ghosts and supernatural events are more than common in gothic texts and so are the tormenting visions and unlucky omens that often haunt the main characters. What is more, female characters who appear in such stories, for instance, ar e often put in distress, threatened and dominated by enraged males (Childs and Fowler 2006: 99-100). The Black Cat is a story narrated by an unnamed storyteller who at the very beginning, claims to be totally sane and rational and states that he is sentenced to death and will be killed the following day.Thus, he wants to reveal his dark secrets and make a confession to unburthen his soul (Badenhausen 1992: 487). From the start, the reader is made to perceive the narrator as an average man who loves his wife and is a great admirer of animals. The story, set in an ordinary house with nameless characters, changes over the course of the action into a thorough description of the narrator’s mental state and his acts of madness. Still, no further details on the lives of the main protagonists, including their profession or age, are provided as the story unfolds.The storyteller, due to his addiction to alcohol, becomes an abusive monster who ends up murdering his wife while attempting to kill the cat (Fisher 2004: 209). The narrator’s wife is a character whose love to animals, as opposed to her husband, is unconditional and unwavering. By following the gothic convention of literature, The Black Cat can be read as a story of the clash of masculinity and femininity (Fisher 2004: 86). One of features of the gothic fiction, as mentioned above, is presenting the female character in distress.Gothic writers very often try to present the relations between the tyrannical and impulsive male and a feeble and helpless female. The narrator in The Black Cat was, as a young boy, a very tender and delicate man (Stark 2004: 260). Nonetheless, his behavior over the course of time changed drastically. Heavy drinking alters his life as well as the lives of his nearest ones including his wife and pets. Still, no information on why the narrator hits the bottle is given in the text (ibid: 260-261). The shift in his behavior is very abrupt and unexpected.The plot progresses so q uickly that it is hard to see when exactly the storyteller becomes a mad man. â€Å"I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others†. The bullied wife faces the acts of violence of her husband tacitly and she seems to be subordinated by him, perhaps even afraid of rebelling against him. The couple does not have any children and the wife has no one who would support her and stand up for her in front of her cruel spouse (Bliss 2009: 97; Badenhousen1992: 493; Sova 2007: 36). The narrator bluntly says, â€Å"I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas!Was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers†. Pluto, the animal from the title and, simultaneously, the object of the narrator’s madness, is a key character in the story. In the narrator’s mind, his favorite pet turns all of a sudden from a lovely little friend into a beast which frightens him. â€Å"A faithful and sagacious cat†, as descr ibed at the beginning, used to be the best playmate of the narrator. For many long years, they enjoyed spending time together. The horror of the pets and the wife begins when the narrator starts to drink alcohol.Nevertheless, he admits that he is aware of the dramatic change in his behavior caused by the addiction and he sees that he has started treating his wife and his pets badly (Sova 2007: 36). One night, after returning home drunk, the narrator gouges the cat’s eye out using a pen knife. A horrible deed, described in one sentence, is followed by a paragraph starting with â€Å"When reason returned with morning† in which the narrator describes his internal feelings after committing the act and the feeling of guilt which vanishes as soon as he starts drinking again.The above cited sentence proves the narrator’s awareness of the brutality of his actions, but the subsequent events show that at the same time, he does not feel any remorse (Bliss 2009: 97). Still, one morning, not long after cutting out the eye, the narrator, on a spur of a moment, hangs the cat on a tree in the garden. His explanation is utterly illogical: with tears in his eyes he says, â€Å"Hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; – hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin† (Sova 2007: 35).The latter citation clearly proves the Gothicism of the story. A mad man murders an innocent cat only because it was good. A deed so illogical that it cannot be explained rationally. One bloody act, aimed at playing on emotions, giving a thrill, kindling the feeling of terror and cruelty in readers, is just a beginning of the murdering path that the narrator takes (Bliss 2009: 98). The night after committing â€Å"the deadly sin† the fire breaks up, burning down the dwelling place of the storyteller, destroying his fortune, and leaving him in despair.The next day, a strange figure, a n apparition of a gigantic cat, appears on the wall, the only wall that survived the fire. To explain the strange figure on the wall, the narrator suggests that the cat was thrown to the room by someone at the night of the fire and as he puts it, â€Å"the falling of other walls compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it†. Not long after killing Pluto, the narrator finds another cat during one of his bar crawls.The cat looks surprisingly familiar: it has similar fur in dark color and it lacks one eye, just like Pluto. There is, however, one significant difference between these two cats. The second one has a white spot on its fur which at first sight, according to the narrator, is just a spot, but with time, it starts to look like gallows to him (Bliss 2009: 97). The spot on the cat’s fur, as well as the sign on the wall after the fire that occurred the night after hanging the first cat, can be perceived as an omen – a supernatural element in the story.The fate of the second cat is also different than Pluto’s. Another day, the narrator together with his wife are in the caller doing some housework, an ordinary situation that ends in a dramatic way. The cat, all at once, appears under his owner’s feet nearly tripping him over. In the act of an unrestrained rage, the narrator takes an axe attempting to kill the cat- the beast. His wife prevents him from committing the murder and in consequence, the killing punch strikes her head (ibid: 98). (†¦) I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan†. The narrator in only two sentences describes the killing of his own wife. Not only is he imperturbable after perpetrating the brutal murder, but he also becomes preoccupied with the problem of how to get ri d of the body instead of showing some grief after his wife’s death. He considers several possible ideas, even â€Å"cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire†.The husband, and from now on also the coldblooded killer, considers defacing the body of his once beloved wife just to cover up the entire murder of his. The idea of burying the body in the wall of the cellar is a recurring theme in gothic stories. Poe used this idea also in The Cask of Amontillado, for example (Badenhousen 1992: 490). â€Å"I had walled the monster up within the tomb! † The last sentence of the story emphasizes the gothic mystery visible in the work. An act of burying the wife in the wall must have taken the narrator some time.How could he miss the fact that the cat hid itself in the gap while he was immuring his wife? How did the cat manage to survive four days behind the wall without the fresh air and any food? The questions to which answers remain shrouded i n mystery are major characteristic of this genre. To recapitulate, the story of the cat and its mad owner is undeniably a masterpiece. Each sentence in the text is meaningful and each needs a scrutiny to properly interpret the whole work. The gothic literary convention is mostly visible in the main character, who happens to be the narrator of the story.He scares the reader by being unpredictable, rage-driven and unreliable. Moreover, the pace of the story, keeping the reader in a lasting suspense, and the presence of numerous omens make The Black Cat one of many very elaborate examples of Poe’s gothic stories. References Badenhausen, Richard. 1992. â€Å"Fear and Trembling in the Literature of the Fantastic: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat†, Studies in Short Fiction 29, 4: 486-498. Bliss, Ann V. 2009. â€Å"Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity in Poe's The Black Cat†, The Explicator 67, 2: 96-99.Childs, Peter and Roger Fowler. 2006. The Routledge Dictio nary of Literary Terms. London: Routledge. Fisher, Benjamin Franklin. 2004. â€Å"Poe and the Gothic Tradition†, in: Kevin J. Hayes (ed. ), The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. London: Cambridge University Press, 72-91. Sova, Dawn B. 2007. Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File. Stark, Joseph. 2004. â€Å"Motive and Meaning: The Mystery of the Will in Poe's The Black Cat†, The Mississippi Quarterly 57, 2: 254-263.