Why Microsoft Is A Monopoly Essays - MSN, Internet Explorer

Why Microsoft Is A Monopoly Through a combination of tactics that many people would consider monopolistic Microsoft is now involved in almost every aspect of the computer and computer-related telecommunications markets and is emerging as a major player in Internet commerce and on-line media ventures. As of March 1997, 87% of all the software developers were actually developing the Windows bit 32 platform, which is the operating system for Microsoft. Fifty three percent of 2.4 million US Professional developers use Microsoft's visual basic program as their primary development language(1) Microsoft is playing an increasing role in their technical education, forging commercial partnerships with both commercial and academic training institutions. Microsoft's Internet Explorer desktop browser has overtaken Netscape's software for navigating the Internet. Microsoft also has made many alliances with banks and its financial software, Money and Personal Investor, along with its financial server software, Microsoft is emerging as a key player in shaping the on-line financial transaction system of the future. Its ownership of the Microsoft Network(MSN) and its partnership with NBC, which has created MSNBC venture has given Microsoft strong distribution outlets for its emerging range of media content. Its investment in Dreamworks gives it a position in Hollywood movie and music production that can be assembled into its on-line ventures involving interactive multimedia as computers and television combine in coming years. Also Microsoft is working to control the way people connect to the Internet from work and home. Its $425 million purchase of WebTV gives it control of a major avenue for non-PC internet access. Its $1 billion investment in the cable company Comcast and proposed investments in US West cable now make it a major player in designing standards for accessing the Internet over cable. Microsoft's Bill Gates is in partnership in a $9 billion venture to create a low-orbit satellite system called Teledesic that could give high-speed Internet access to anyone anywhere in the world, an investment supported by the US government through a massive free giveaway of radio spectrum to the company. Microsoft has used that financial clout consistently over the last few years to acquire companies and their software and human assets, while sealing financial alliances with a range of partners. While many of the financial details have not been made public, Microsoft spent an estimated $1.5 billion between 1994 and 1996 on acquisitions.(3) Microsoft has purchased many companies buying or investing in over twenty companies in 1996 alone. Its investment have not only been with the $1.5 billion spent on WebTV and Comcast, the $150 million invested in Apple, and the hundreds of millions invested in additional Internet-related companies, including its key investments in audio and video streaming. It has been acquiring key strategic technologies at a rate of over one per month. Surprisingly Microsoft is not at the peak of an industry's size but at an early stage in markets that are expected to explode in the next decade. If unchecked, there is a real possibility of Microsoft becoming a fin ancial and technological mountain dominating more markets and industries than any monopoly has ever dominated. The nature of high technology makes each individual market linked to other markets through a combination of software standards, training skills, development tools and physical architecture that must all be able to work in combination. The key to the economics of networked technology is that products and markets do not stand alone in these high-technology markets but instead reinforce one path of innovation versus any alternative path. An operating system attracts software developed around that operating system, which discourages new competition since any alternative faces not only the challenge of creating a better operating system but competing against a while array of already existing software applications. Businesses train employees in one technology and are reluctant to abandon that investment in training, while the existence of a pool of people trained in that technology encourages other businesses to adopt that technology. And as desktop software has to be able to work with client-server networks and an array of other technologies, it becomes nearly impossible to abandon an established set of technology standards that tie those different parts together. These so-called ?network effects? give an incredible an ti-competitive edge to companies like Microsoft that

Trans Isomer Definition

Trans Isomer Definition A trans isomer is an isomer where the functional groups appear on opposite sides of the double bond.  Cis and trans isomers are commonly discussed with respect to organic compounds, but they also occur in inorganic coordination complexes and diazines.Trans isomers are identified by adding trans- to the front of the molecules name. The word trans comes from the Latin word meaning across or on the other side.​Example: The trans isomer of dichloroethene is written as trans-dichloroethene. Key Takeaways: Trans Isomer A trans isomer is one in which functional groups occur on opposite sides of a double bond. In contrast, the functional groups are on the same side as each other in a cis isomer.Cis and trans isomers display different chemical and physical properties.Cis and trans isomers share the same chemical formula, but have different geometry. Comparing Cis and Trans Isomers The other type of isomer is called a cis isomer. In cis conformation, the functional groups are both on the same side of the double bond (adjacent to each other). Two molecules are isomers if they contain the exact same number and types of atoms, just a different arrangement or rotation around a chemical bond. Molecules are not isomers if they have a different number of atoms or different types of atoms from each other. Trans isomers differ from cis isomers in more than just appearance. Physical properties also are affected by conformation. For example, trans isomers tend to have lower melting points and boiling points than corresponding cis isomers. They also tend to be less dense. Trans isomers are less polar (more nonpolar) than cis isomers because the charge is balanced on opposite sides of the double bond. Trans alkanes are less soluble in inert solvents than cis alkanes. Trans alkenes are more symmetrical than cis alkenes. While you might think functional groups would freely rotate around a chemical bond, so a molecule would spontaneous switch between cis and trans conformations, this isnt so simple when double bonds are involved. The organization of electrons in a double bond inhibits rotation, so an isomer tends to stay in one conformation or another. It is possible to change conformation around a double bond, but this requires energy sufficient to break the bond and then reform it. Stability of Trans Isomers In acyclic systems, a compound is more likely to form a trans isomer than the cis isomer because it is usually more stable. This is because having both function groups on the same side of a double bond can produce steric hindrance. There are exceptions to this rule, such as  1,2-difluoroethylene, 1,2-difluorodiazene (FNNF), other halogen-substituted ethylenes, and some oxygen-substituted ethylenes. When the cis conformation is favored, the phenomenon is termed the cis effect. Contrasting Cis and Trans With Syn and Anti Rotation is much more free around a single bond. When rotation occurs around a single bond, the proper terminology is syn (like cis) and anti (like trans), to denote the less permanent configuration. Cis/Trans vs E/Z The cis and trans configurations are considered examples of  geometric isomerism or  configurational isomerism. Cis and trans should not be confused with  E/Z  isomerism. E/Z  is an  absolute  stereochemical description only used when referencing alkenes with double bonds  that cannot rotate or ring structures. History Friedrich Woehler first notice isomers in 1827 when he discerned silver cyanate and silver fulminate share the same chemical composition, but displayed different properties. In 1828, Woehler discovered urea and ammonium cyanate also had the same composition, yet different properties. Jà ¶ns Jacob Berzelius introduced the term isomerism in 1830. The word isomer comes from the Greek language and means equal part. Sources Eliel, Ernest L. and Samuel H. Wilen (1994). Stereochemistry of Organic Compounds. Wiley Interscience. pp. 52–53.Kurzer, F. (2000). Fulminic Acid in the History of Organic Chemistry. J. Chem. Educ. 77 (7): 851–857. doi:10.1021/ed077p851Petrucci, Ralph H.; Harwood, William S.; Herring, F. Geoffrey (2002). General chemistry: principles and modern applications (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-13-014329-7.Smith, Janice Gorzynski (2010). General, Organic and Biological Chemistry (1st ed.). McGraw-Hill. p. 450. ISBN 978-0-07-302657-2.Whitten K.W., Gailey K.D., Davis R.E. (1992). General Chemistry (4th ed.). Saunders College Publishing. p. 976-977. ISBN 978-0-03-072373-5.

Legal issues for managers - ILAC assignment Essay

Legal issues for managers - ILAC assignment - Essay Example This was even with the fact that Security One Pty Ltd was not well prepared to carry out the task. After his suggestion was accepted and SIL agreed to use Security One Pty Ltd for the consultation, he informed his wife, thus making it possible for his wife to have privileged information which allowed her to buy more shares in the Security One Pty Ltd and use this as a way to enrich herself. Yet, in all this, Paul never informed the other members about the possible conflict of interest. Paul also hired employees from an informal organization which led to the firm incurring huge losses after the employees form the informal organization stole property and hard cash from SIL. In hiring the employees, he did not carry out a due diligence and only did a simple web search fro the organization. This lack of delicate care led to him not being able to know that the organization was not a formal one and that it was run by criminals. Kim gave her sister in law privileged information about the proposal to create the new power plant. Using this information, the sister in law, Judy was able to buy purchased $50,000 worth of shares in the company. Karen, despite warning by the CEO, went ahead and made decision to invest more money even after the CEO had warned that an increase in the price of coal would reduce SIL’s market competitiveness and would lead to losses. Even after the CEO’s perditions of the price of coal going up came to be true, she still went on and continued to invest more money. This led to many losses. Conclusion Under the Corporations act 2001, an officer of a firm is supposed to act in the best inters of the firm. In cases where the officer has a conflicting interest in the firm, he or she should be able to look at this issue and be able to refrain from making company decisions. Paul was in a position where he had conflicting interests with the firm he was working for. He should have told

Week 10 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Week 10 - Assignment Example Although evidence has shown us that human body and human mind interacts, intimately, and affect each other, it is however difficult to understand and explain how these two aspects of human person relates and interacts. (b): Interactionism. The interactionism theory holds that, although body and mind are separate, distinct and independent substances, they however exert causal effects on one another. What this in essence means is that although the human body is extended and the human mind unextended, the two however interact closely, whereby an effect in one of them causes the corresponding event in the other, despite the fact that the two aspects of human person do not touch each other. This theory was propounded by Rene Descartes. (c): Parallelism. Parallelism theory rules out any casual interaction between the mind and the body, but holds that there is a one-on-one correspondence between events of the body and events of the brain. According to this theory, it is not the mind or the body that first experiences a given event and then causes the event on the other aspect of the body; the mind and the body will experience the given event in their own way, although there will be a one-on-one correspondence in the event experienced by the body and the mind. (f): Double aspect theory. This theory views body and mental events and processes as two different aspects of one human person. According to this theory, mind and body are not separate and distinct substances. Mind and body are merely two different attributes of a unitary human person. Question 1: According to Descartes, the main difference between the body and the soul or mind lies in the fact that, while body is material and extended, the mind or the soul is immaterial and unextended. Descartes viewed body and soul as distinct and independent substances. Question 2: In his argument on the existent of physical objects, Rene Descartes had first of all to find the basis

Colony colapse disorder Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Colony colapse disorder - Case Study Example The queen is also present meaning that the hive is not dead. Before the actual CCD takes place, the colony members always become reluctant to eat the food (protein supplement and sugar syrup) provided. CCD is if great global significance because a very high percentage of agricultural crops are pollinated by bees. Background information on miticides, antibiotics, and neonicotinoid pesticides Neonicotinoid pesticides are commonly used in various parts of the world. This group of pesticides assume the model of nicotine which is a natural insecticide. Neonicotinoid pesticides act on the central nervous system (CNS) of insects causing excitation of nerves and finally, paralysis. Evidence from research has revealed that the use of pesticides like neonicotinoid pesticides and nicotine-based pesticides greatly affects the functioning and learning abilities of honeybees. This is very critical to the workers since they are the most active and dependable members of a colony. According to Gary e t al (2009), it has been documented that neonicotinoid pesticides levels that are able to affect the ability learning of bees occur in pollen hence they affect bees that feed on such pollen. There is an increasing threat on honeybees and their hives by mites and this has increased the dependence on miticides in order to control the situation. Basically, miticides are used in agriculture, to control the spread of mites. This is important because mites have a key role to play in the loss of good health among honeybees. However, the intensive use of these miticides has led to the development of their resistance by mites. To add an injury to this, toxicity tests conducted on bee hives have revealed that the levels of miticides in many bee hives has greatly increased (Mullen et al, 2010). Miticides are destructive to colonies of bees because they accumulate in bees wax. Bees wax is a least renewable resource in the hive hence it provides a base on which persistent pesticides can accumula te and cause toxic house syndrome (Mullen et al, 2010). In modern medicine, antibiotics are among the medications that are prescribed most frequently. Antibiotics are important for both animals and plants because they kill or injure disease-causing bacteria. However, it has been found that their use contribute to deficiencies of the immune system while their prolonged use lead to antibiotic resistant diseases and super-pests. Many commercial beekeepers administer antibiotics on regular basis as a protective measure against brood diseases hence honeybees have not been exempted from the effects of prolonged use of antibiotics. It has been found out that the major bacterial diseases that attack bees have also developed resistance to antibiotics. Resistance to pesticides has triggered the development of genetically modified crops that are thought to be producing pollen that also cause CCD (Gary et al, 2009. Potential Causes of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) The causes of CCD are still u nder investigation and almost every realistic and conceivable cause is a possibility. Four areas of research focused on by scientists in early times included bee management stresses such as poor nutrition, environment-related stresses, parasites and pathogen, and pesticides and chemicals. In the early studies, scientists had ruled out some conditions and practices from being probable causes of CCD. They include chemicals used by the

Integrating Social Responsibility In Higher Education Management Essay

Integrating Social Responsibility In Higher Education Management Essay The perception of Corporate Social Responsibility is generally understood to mean that corporations have a degree of accountability not only for the economic consequences of their activities, but also for the social and green connotation. This is occasionally referred to as a triple bottom line approach that considers the economic, social and ecological aspects of corporate activity. a variety of terms are used to describe CSR proposal, including Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Accountability, Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability. The implication and value of CSR may differ in various statuses, depending on local factors including culture, environmental circumstances, and the legal framework. Issues like Education, The Environment, Hunger and Equal Opportunity were once thought of as social issues to be addressed completely by government. Today, public and private organizations collaborate; amalgamation resources, skills, energies and relationships to solve what we now understand are economic issues. But every corporation cannot take on every social issue. Todays most successful corporations must make strategic choices in their approach to Corporate Citizenship. Not only cost-effectively successful, they are deeply occupied in their communities. These companies understand limitations and competencies, and use this knowledge to create a deliberate social agenda that has positive collision in what they do every day. This is the new model for corporate citizenship. A business strategy creating competitive advantage, determining standards and guiding employees in how we manage every day, in communities around the world Literature review The aim of the following literature review is to identify the most important and knowledgeably important academic and practical works throughout the past decade as well as the current practices upon the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in higher education. According to (Valentine and Fleischman 2008) CSR is defined as the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectancies that society has of organizations at a given point in time. This definition is based on Carrollà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸s study (1979) where he defined three components of social responsibility and broadened the scope of its understanding (Maignan 2001, Popa 2010). Carroll suggested that businesses have to fulfill economic, legal and ethical in order to address its entire obligations to society. Economic responsibilities designate the obligations for businesses to be productive and profitable (Maignan 2001). Legal responsibilities refer to the framework of legal requirements which businesses need to meet while practicing economic duties (Carroll 1979). Ethical responsibilities are the defined appropriate behaviors by established norms that businesses should follow. According to (Filho et al. 2010) Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is defined through the ethical relationship and transparency of the company with all its stakeholders that has a relationship as well as with the establishment of corporate goals that are compatible with the sustainable development of society, preserving environmental and cultural resources for future generations, respecting diversity and promoting the reduction of social problems (Filho et al. 2010). While CSR points out a way for companies to contribute to the well-being of the society, it also gives the opportunity to create a true competitive advantage and positive reputation for the business world (Smith 2007, Porter and Kramer 2006). Under the new circumstances such as the competition in higher education industry, many higher education institutions are adapting a more business-like approach in order to compete and survive in the changing face of the industry (Weymans 2010, Gumport 2000, Goia and Thomas 1996). And during the adaptation of this business-like approach, some institutions are discovering the importance of corporate image, corporate identity, corporate reputation and mainly CSR as a reputation and an advantage building strategy (Atakan and Eker 2007, Stensaker 2007, Porter and Kramer 2006, Melewar and Akel 2005). Although issues of CSR have always been a part of the educational mission of higher education institutions, through implementing CSR strategies, higher education institutions are now using this approach as a part of their competitive strategy. Hence, by developing such strategies higher education institutions are also discovering the opportunity to move the focus beyond the classroom into thei r own institutional operations. 2.1 Higher education and CSR One of the most significant indicators of social progress is education, which also plays a decisive role for a society to achieve selfà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ sustainable and equal development. With an increasing global realization of how business community can contribute to social objectives, education deserves a higher level of corporate involvement than status quo. Higher education institutions are often looked upon to take a leadership role within societies.  Ã‚  Students expect to learn by examples, whether through advanced research or by extending the bounds of justice on a global scale.  Ã‚   Now business institutions are emphasizing a lot on CSR and they are finding different ways for the implementation of CSR. Higher education institutions can choose to be followers, or they can grab the opportunity to be leader and adopt CSR a vital aspect of their competitive advantage.  Ã‚  A recent academic article on CSR suggests that higher education institutions can lead in the practices of CSR two ways, first, higher education institutions should promote a true culture of CSR throughout their organizations.  Ã‚  Second, higher education institutions should develop social marketing actions in order to better communicate and interact with stakeholders.   Higher education institutions have an opportunity to lead in an area that most businesses have recognized as important.  Higher education institutions can and should build on a tradition of the past decades of attempting to engage in positive social actions. 2.2 CSR and the Stake Holders The stakeholders of a higher education include present students, faculty and management. In the 1980s, student protest often focused on how higher education institutions were managing their large endowments.  Students wanted to have an impact; higher education institutions were grappling with how to respond. In todays era, students still care about how higher education institutions are exercising their own CSR, from climate change and recycling to making a difference with respect to global inequities in the world.   Higher education institutions can meet the expectations of stakeholders by adopting a well-conceived CSR strategy in the same manner as other organizations. Higher education institutions should look forward to grab the opportunity about the concern of stake holders (student current and potential, faculty and management). Higher educations institutions have realized that to gain a competitive edge in the market they have to satisfy the concerns of their stake holders. Therefore implementing CSR strategies in a higher education institution should be considered in order to obtain a true competitive advantage and a positive reputation. Moreover practicing what is taught and thereby generating a real example of the academic knowledge can create a unique proposition for any higher education institution The government of Pakistan needs to be focused on educational and other sector and should be socially responsible and business friendly. Now some educational institution is working to incorporated CSR into the business degrees program and courses, especially at leading business institutes such as LUMS or IBA. 2.3 CSR Practices in Pakistan In Pakistan there is a set of social pressures that force companies and other institutions to act in a much more compact and price-driven manner, thus resulting in a less than 50 percent compliance rate with basic CSR principles and objectives But In educational sector there is less awareness on CSR importance. Now some institutions are putting their efforts to implement the concept of CSR in the future business leaders. The Multi-National Companies is playing a vital role for making business student aware about what is CSR for this purpose different seminars and workshop is conducted for the student on the importance of CSR and its strategy practice and implementation and creating opportunities for the students, potential employer/employee to learn from their best practices. Some companies like Unilever, P G, Gillette, Siemens is performing their job well to aware the future business leaders Of Pakistan. 2.4 Karachi School for Business and Leadership  KSBL Is also committed to promote the core values of integrity and entrepreneurial spirit within our students. So we will be offering a leading-edge MBA programs, with a focus on ethical leadership and corporate social responsibility, to the many talented individuals in the country as well as from abroad. 2.5 Bahria University A Leadership Development Centre is functional at both the Islamabad and Karachi Campuses of the Bahria University. It is built in order to solve the issues and challenges that are faced by students in the world and to become successful leaders and are able to take higher responsibilities. To facilitate student activities, Bahria University has set up a Student Resource Centre that helps students to develop their leadership, communication, management and social skills. Bahria University believes in producing all rounder students containing various skills with themselves and therefore it has provided a platform for growth in that context. 3. Methodology The study research method will be the crucial research plan. Both the qualitative and quantitative techniques would be used in our research. Some of deans, professors and Assistant professors would be interviewed regarding Corporate Social Responsibility and integration with HEC. Students of MBA and BBA were asked to fill a close-ended questionnaire in identification of factors influencing CSR upon Higher Educations, decisions and a suggestion were also be asked from the Professors and students. Measurement Procedure Following Measurement procedures are used in this research. 1) We ask for suggestions and recommendation from the students and the professors. 2) We also rate the major factors of CSR upon higher education. Frame of reference We interacted with the faculty and student who have moderate level of experience and have sound knowledge about the CSR and the higher education system. This approach would help in our research to compile results by cumulating the opinions of the experienced people. Instrument selection Primarily we collected data through interviewing management. Through secondary method, we extracted the information by evaluating the past articles regarding CSR and Higher educations. Since this study explores the Pakistani environment from the perspective of educated professionals and students, the choice of questionnaire have been selected. People who are in consideration for useful and remarkable information for the study will be initially contacted i.e. Students and Professors Variables Main variables would be influence upon social responsibility, higher education, course integration, and Business schools. 4. CSR THE STAKEHOLDERS Faculty Faculty of the institution would be the direct stakeholder of this research as they would be benefited if the research is successful. Students Business School students are the indirect stakeholders in this research because they would be utilized in the convenience sampling of our research methodology. Management The Management would be the direct stakeholder of this research because it is the management who are the core responsible of Corporate Social Responsibility in any organization, especially in Educational institutions. I.e. Business Schools 5. Conclusion and Recommendations Business schools have a responsibility to provide practitioners with training in the basics of ethics, which would ideally act as a catalyst to stimulate socially and ethically managed business organizations. (Cornelius Wallace, Tassabehji, 2007). Business ethics course provides an understanding of ethical and social responsibility issues in contemporary business life. The aim is to enhance studentsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸ critical perspectives in implementing ethical behavior in organizations in relation to various stakeholders as well as the institutionalization of business ethics in the corporations (Undergraduate Handbook 2011-2012). Due to the lack of jobs, recession, inflation unemployment is increasing day by day which leaves only few jobs for business graduates and companies now are focusing on those students that have an extensive knowledge in their respective specialized skills and a good knowledge about CSR and about its implementation. Now, why companies are looking for individuals with CSR knowledge because consumers today require every knowledge about the product. Consumers are demanding more information on everything from where and how their goods are produced to the environmental record of the companies they invest in Pakistan is lacking many things related to Corporate Integration and social responsibility, higher authorities are not taking necessary actions to restore things for the betterment. Integration of CSR into curriculum Offer an additional course in the BBA/MBA program on the importance of CSR its strategy building and practice. For practice and strategy building some reference is needed from case studies and seminars should be offered for the executive MBA Courses which should be make mandatory for all the business students. An additional fund is needed to trained the faculty member/professors by offering workshops related to CSR and international business leaders should be invited as a guest speaker to share their expertise. The research work is also required to do research on current practices of CSR and It should be referred to CSR in the area of their expertise. The faculty member should ask for presentations and report related to CSR model building and its implementation in Pakistan. It should be mandatory for completing the course. Executive programs and seminars on CSR can be developed to help educate business leaders and managers on CSR principles and share international and local best practices. Academic institutions should make CSR an area of academic research. Academic institutions can make an immense contribution to promoting CSR through research findings. Educational institutions can collaborate with businesses to effectively introduce future managers to ethical and responsible business etiquette. Such initiatives include making internship arrangements for practical experience to students at exemplary companies. Students and lecturers can also be involved to conduct process assessments in companies. Academic institutions should also tap into funding and resources from state agencies and business community to develop CSR curricular and facilitate better transition from academia to employment. We need serious, concerted efforts to integrate social corporate responsibility in educational Institution. Business schools should maintain and increase CSR coverage. Business schools should not only react to the growing awareness and demand of students, but also have a proactive role in responsible management education, in both teaching and research. CSR and ethics can be embedded in core subjects, but also be taught as a separate core subject. The students with their positive attitudes towards CSR should draw the demand from the suppliers of their management education to include social and ethical management issues and courses. They act upon their attitudes and values by searching for schools that teach responsible management and by creating their own organizations such as Net Impact.

School Uniforms Essay -- essays research papers

John Doe walks into a skyscraper, confident and well groomed wearing a tie, suit, and dress shoes. His confidence moves him forward, as he enters an elevator going up to the 23rd floor. He approaches his first job interview since leaving Jesuit Prep: McAllen & McAllen Law. This well groomed man graduated from Jesuit prep, which had a dress code and hair restrictions. This dress code and hair restrictions evolved young men into mature adults over a 4 year period at Jesuit. The dress code and hair restrictions play a vital role for our future as they build class integration, increase our image in the community, and dress the students for business, not play. Jesuit Prep needs to continue this vital dress code and hair restrictions for the future.Having a school full of students wearing the same clothes and hairstyles helps build an integration within the class. Students that wear many different styles of clothes all come together wearing similar pants, shirts, ties, and shoes. Through a dress code and hair restrictions, everyone is helped to be made more comfortable by wearing similar clothes, otherwise, people may feel alienated with less trendy or "cool" clothes. Hairstyles help ease this integration as well by giving each person similar styles making everyone feel more at ease. The overall integration helps the students realize that although people may look similar, the idea that everyone exhibits will be greatly different. These different ideas are present...

Day After Tomorrow

FTER Hollywood cinema and climate change: The Day After Tomorrow. Ingram, David. In Words on Water: Literary and Cultural Representations, Devine, Maureen and Christa Grewe-Volpp (eds. ) (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2008). Climate change, like many other environmental problems, is slow to develop, not amenable to simple or fast solutions, and caused by factors that are both invisible and complex (Adam 17).Making a narrative film about climate change therefore does not fit easily into the commercial formulae of mainstream Hollywood, which favour human-interest stories in which individual protagonists undergo a moral transformation before they resolve their problems through heroic action in the final act. Can such classical narratives mediate an issue as complex as climate change without being not only inadequate, but even dangerous, lulling their audience into a false sense of security about our ability to deal with such problems?Ecocritic Richard Kerridge observes that a British journalist responded to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 by framing it within the familiar narrative of the Second World War, with its emphasis on ‘a successful outcome and a narrative closure'. For Kerridge, such narrative strategies may be an overly reassuring way of representing environmental threats, and reveal therefore that the ‘real, material ecological crisis' is ‘also a cultural crisis, a crisis of representation' (Kerridge 4).Yet, as Jim Collins argues, ‘mass-mediated cultures', including those of popular Hollywood cinema, are characterised by ‘semiotic complexities of meaning production', which leave even popular, generic texts open to multiple interpretations (Collins 17). Film theorist Stephen Prince describes a Hollywood movie as a ‘polysemous, multivalent set of images, characters, and narrative situations', which therefore constitute what he calls an ‘ideological agglomeration', rather than a single, coherent ideological position (Prince 40).This polysemy may arise from the Hollywood industry's commercial intention to maximize profits by appealing to as wide and diverse an audience as possible by making movies which, ideologically speaking, seek to have it all ways at once. One consequence is that, when we theorize about the effects popular movies may or may not have on public awareness of environmental issues, those effects are more complex, and less deterministic, than is often assumed is some academic film theories.This essay will explore the range of meanings generated by The Day After Tomorrow (2004), which frames the issue of anthropogenic climate change within the familiar genres of the disaster and science fiction movie. Ideological analysis of the film, combined with a study of its audience reception, suggests that even a classical Hollywood narrative can generate a degree of ideological ambiguity which makes it open to various interpretations, both liberal and conservative. Th e ideological ambiguity of The Day After Tomorrow derives in part from the way its narrative mixes the modes of realism, fantasy and melodrama.A realist film will attempt to correspond to what we understand as reality, mainly through the optical realism of its mise-en-scene and the sense of psychological plausibility produced by both its script and the performance of its actors. Melodrama, on the other hand, will simplify character and heighten action and emotion beyond the everyday. Hollywood movies tend to work by moving between these two modes of representation. Some genres, such as science fiction and horror, also move between realism and fantasy, a mode which exceeds realist plausibility by creating a totally fictive and impossible diegetic world.As a science fiction movie, then, The Day After Tomorrow deliberately blurs the distinction between realism and fantasy. The narrative begins from a scientifically plausible premise: the melting of the Artic ice-cap, caused by anthropo genic global warming, cools the North Atlantic Current, colloquially known as the ‘Gulf Stream', and thereby affects the weather in the Northern hemisphere. The movie then extrapolates from this premise beyond even the worst-case scenarios proposed by climate scientists.The switching off of the thermohaline current generates a global superstorm, as a result of which an ice sheet covers Scotland and a tsunami floods Manhattan. The movie's literary source, it is worth noting, was The Coming Global Superstorm (1999), by Art Bell and Whitely Streiber, whose television talk show on the paranormal suggests an interest in the ‘parascientific'; that is, in speculation beyond what is provable or falsifiable by scientific method. When interpreted literally, that is, as realism, The Day After Tomorrow clearly violates notions of scientific plausibility.The basic climatology in the movie is inaccurate: hurricanes can only form over large bodies of warm water, not the cold seas found in high latitudes, where polar lows are the main storm systems. The movie also distorts the science of climate change, mainly by accelerating the time frame within which its effects take place, and by making them much worse than predicted. Any slowdown in the thermohaline current would take a period of years, at least, and probably centuries, rather than the days featured in the film.Moreover, even if the North Atlantic Current did switch off, average temperatures would still be likely to rise, rather than fall, because of the greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere (Henson 112-5). The film's central narrative, in which government paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) walks in sub-zero temperatures all the way from north of Philadelphia to the New York Public Library, to rescue his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhall) who is sheltering there, is thus impossible: neither would survive such low temperatures.For helicopters to freeze in mid-air, temperatures would not only be too cold for snow, but also too cold for human survival. Burning books in a library would be insufficient to keep people alive. Such implausibilities are worth pointing out, not because cinema audiences necessarily take what they see as scientific truth, but because science fiction often provides an opportunity to learn some real science. Indeed, as we will see later in this essay, environmental groups used the release of the movie as a ‘teachable moment' on the science of climate change (Leiserowitz 6).The two-disc DVD edition of the movie includes a documentary on the science of climate change; screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff commented on its release that, although ‘our primary concern' in making the film ‘was entertainment rather than education. On the DVD, there's room for both'. Acknowledging that the time frame he created for the movie was accelerated for fictional purposes, and that the ‘superfreeze' was ‘purely a cinematic device', he added that ‘t he political, agricultural and societal consequences of a sudden change in the ocean currents would still be catastrophic' (Nachmanoff 1).To dismiss The Day After Tomorrow purely for its scientific inaccuracies, then, clearly misses the point of the movie, which is to use realist elements of climate science as a starting point for melodrama and fantasy, so that it can dwell on the spectacle of extreme weather, appropriate for a blockbuster disaster movie, and also invite the audience's emotional engagement with the human-interest story that becomes the main focus of narrative. It is to these elements in the film that we will now turn.As a ‘natural disaster' melodrama, the film works on an opposition between nature and civilization, and invites an ambiguous identification on the part of the viewer: in Hollywood terms, we are invited to ‘root for' both nature and civilization at various points in the narrative, although the values of civilization eventually become the domi nant ones. Before that happens, however, the scenes of extreme weather make the experience of environmental apocalypse strangely attractive. As Maurice Yacowar observes, the natural disaster movie ‘dramatizes people's helplessness against the forces of nature' (Yacowar 218).The set pieces of extreme weather in The Day After Tomorrow reveal the sublime power of wild nature: violent, chaotic, powerful beyond human control, and therefore exciting and seductive. Environmentalist Paul Hawken writes that the concept of doomsday ‘has always had a perverse appeal, waking us from our humdrum existence to the allure of a future harrowing drama' (Hawken 204). As Stephen Keane points out, although disaster movies regularly feature television news reports commenting on the events that are taking place, they do not go on ‘to make the critical point that we are all electronic voyeurs' (Keane 84).The Day After Tomorrow follows this pattern. The audience's complicity in seeking cin ematic thrills in the scenarios of mass death and destruction caused by the weather is encouraged, rather than questioned, by the movie itself. Indeed, such thrills are the raison d'etre of its genre. Yet the aesthetics of the sublime have always been based on vicariousness; if we take pleasure in the destructive forces of nature, it is from the safe distance of our movie seats, where we are in the position of voyeurs, rather than of victims.This construction of victimhood in the disaster movie depends on narrative alignment: when people die, we do not dwell on them, nor on the bereaved people they leave behind. Typical of the disaster genre, the focus of nature's destructiveness in The Day After Tomorrow is the city. Hollywood disaster movies, writes Geoff King, share with millennial groups ‘a certain delirious investment in the destruction of the metropolis' (King 158). When a series of tornadoes attack Los Angeles, the mise-en-scene focuses on familiar landmarks: the Hollyw ood sign, the Capitol Records building, and a billboard advertising the model Angelyne.Screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff observes on the DVD commentary that preview audiences greeted the moment where the Angelyne sign flattens the television reporter with cheers and applause (Emmerich). The sense of retribution is difficult to avoid: perhaps there is poetic justice in the media figure, parasitical on other people's suffering, finding his nemesis in Angelyne, the model and aspiring actress who paid to advertise herself on her own billboards, and thus became for some emblematic of the meretricious values of the city.As Mike Davis observes, Los Angeles is often given special treatment in apocalyptic narratives. ‘No other city,' he writes, ‘seems to excite such dark rapture'. Unlike other cities, the destruction of Los Angeles ‘is often depicted as, or at least secretly experienced as, a victory for civilization' (Davis 277). Geoff King draws upon Mikhail Bakhtin's notio n of the ‘carnivalesque' to account for such moments of ‘licensed enjoyment of destruction', based on an ‘overturning of cultural norms' (King 162). But the destruction is too cruel, as well as unfocussed and generalised, to be simply an anti-authoritarian gesture.As Susan Sontag noted, science fiction films provide a ‘morally acceptable fantasy where one can give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings' (Sontag 215). Freud's notion of the ‘death wish' thus better captures the dark side of such fantasies. For Freud, such aggressions were natural drives that need to be controlled; art provides catharsis for such anti-social instincts. Patricia Mellencamp draws on Freud to argue that American television is both ‘shock and therapy; it both produces and discharges anxiety' (Mellencamp 246).The disaster movie works in a similar way, mobilising and exploiting our negative drives and emotions. But are there unconscious meanings specific to the natura l disaster movie? One reading of such movies is as ‘revenge of nature' narratives, which enact a fantasy of nature getting its own back for its mistreatment at the hands of human beings. Psychoanalyst Karl Figlio draws on the theories of Melanie Klein to argue that scientific thinking itself is an act of repressive violence towards Nature. ‘Nature killed,' he writes, ‘is nature in a vengeful mood, a primitive retaliatory phantasy that fuels apocalyptic forebodings.The more scientific the culture, the more it is at the mercy of irrational fears, and the more it is dependent on scientific protection from them' (Figlio 72). He cites Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as an ‘extreme example of scientific mapping that calls forth revenge from nature' (75). According to this reading, then, when we watch nature getting its revenge, we as viewers are able to purge our guilt about its degradation. However, as Yacowar notes, the moral attitude of the typical disaster movie is ambiguous. Poetic justice in disaster films,' he writes, ‘derives from the assumption that there is some relationship between a person's due and his or her doom'. However, this notion breaks down when the ‘good die with the evil' (Yacowar 232). The Day After Tomorrow works according to these generic expectations, with Nature at times appearing amoral in its destructiveness, and at other times, a force of moral retribution and punishment. The arrogant businessmen who bribe the bus driver, and the corruptible bus driver himself, get their comeuppance when they drown in the tidal wave that engulfs Manhattan.Jeffrey Nachmanoff reveals in the DVD commentary that, in an early draft of the script, the businessman had been negotiating an insider deal with the Japanese businessman killed by the hailstorm in Tokyo (Emmerich). In the final version, the latter lies to his wife on his cell phone moments before his death. The ethical critique in these scenes fits into the ideological agenda of many disaster films. As King writes, such films ‘include an element of criticism of capitalism, but this is a gesture that for the most part leaves its core values largely intact.A few ‘excesses' are singled out, such as the greedy cost-cutting that undermines the integrity of the eponymous star of The Towering Inferno, leaving the remainder mostly untouched' (King 153). In The Day After Tomorrow, then, greedy, self-interested individuals are punished. Yet innocent people also die in the movie, including the climate scientists who freeze to death in Scotland, led by the avuncular Terry Rapson (Ian Holm), and Jack's friend Frank (Jay O. Sanders), who falls to his death through the roof of a building, after cutting his own rope to prevent his friends from endangering their lives in trying to rescue him.These are figures of heroic sacrifice, also central to the disaster genre, because they bring out the redemptive aspects of the apocalypse. The film does not stat e clearly where the British royal family stand in this hierarchy of innocence and guilt: what is clear, is that death by climate change is no respecter of class privilege and wealth. The disaster movie, then, is about which values are the key to survival. The rescue of the innocent, French-speaking African family is thus crucial in einforcing the movie's ethical hierarchy based on racial, national and gender differences: they are saved by the white American woman (Laura), who in turn is saved by the white American male (Sam), thereby enacting in miniature two important themes in the movie. The most important of these is the narrative of male heroism and redemption. Melodrama, writes Linda Williams, is about a ‘retrieval and staging of innocence' (Williams 7). In this film, the melodramatic plot of father rescuing son makes the moral point that hard-working fathers need to take a more active role in bringing up their sons.The movie implies that, although millions of people may be dead, if one American family can be saved, then at least some good has come out of the eco-apocalypse. This message is more liberal, or at least not as unambiguously patriarchal, as in earlier disaster movies. In keeping with Stephen Prince's notion of ideological agglomeration, mentioned earlier, although Jack's wife is a doctor, she ends up playing the role of surrogate mother to a seven-year old boy with cancer, separated from his parents by the storm.The movie can thus be interpreted as either liberal (she is a doctor) or conservative (she is placed in the stereotypical female role of nurturer). The second important theme in the movie is the United States' self-appointed role as global protector-policeman. The rescue narrative trumpets the frontier values of male physical heroism, strong leadership and individualism, encapsulated by the iconic image of the torch of the Statue of Liberty emerging from the waves of the tsunami that engulfs Manhattan.However, America's role in w orld politics is also questioned by a more liberal discourse in the movie, when American refugees are forced to flee illegally into Mexico, in an ironic reversal of the real politics on the national border. This ironic reversal is itself made ambiguous, though, when later the United States government writes off all Third World debt, but in return, wins the right for its citizens to live as ‘guests' in those countries. It should be noted that not all Hollywood movies with environmental themes are as individualistic in their proposed solutions as The Day After Tomorrow.Some have endorsed more collective forms of action, even in narratives led by strong individuals: an image of placard-waving protestors recurs in Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home (1995) and Fly Away Home (1996) as a sign of collective resistance. Ultimately, The Day After Tomorrow prefers American notions of liberal individualism, which it turns into universal values by identifying them with human civilization as a whole. Indeed, civilization, rather than wild nature, becomes the real object of audience identification by the end.The choice of the New York Public Library as the place of sanctuary and rescue is significant in this respect. One of the survivors makes sure he preserves the Gutenberg Bible from burning, not because he believes in God, he says, but because, as the first book ever printed, it represents ‘the dawn of the age of reason'. ‘If Western civilization is finished', he adds, ‘I'm going to save at least one little piece of it'. Ultimately, then, the movie celebrates reason and science as the values most central to Western civilization. Unusually for a Hollywood disaster movie, scientists are neither evil nor incompetent.As Yacowar notes, specialists in disaster movies, including scientists, ‘are almost never able to control the forces loose against them'. The genre thus serves ‘the mystery that dwarfs science' (Yacowar 228). This is also true of The Day After Tomorrow, in that the scientists are unable to contain the devastating effects of climate change once they have begun. ‘Ultimately,' writes ecocritic Sylvia Mayer, ‘the movie makes the point that the most advanced and dedicated scientific work is still powerless against the forces of nature once they are unleashed' (Mayer 111).Nevertheless, the scientists are the heroes of the movie. Their advice on the risks of climate change was ignored by the politicians until it was too late. As the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration angrily tells the Vice-President: ‘You didn't want to heat about the science when it would have made a difference'. The scientists' computer models prove correct: in the movie, unlike in real life, climate science provides the clear, certain and unambiguous knowledge necessary for survival.Moreover, advanced technology is ultimately a force for good. Jack is able to locate his son in the Public Library un der the frozen wastes of Manhattan because of his friend's portable satellite navigation system (which, of course, would not work in such a massive storm). He is also seen driving a hybrid Toyota Prius earlier in the film. Reason, science and technology thus win the day. However, as Sylvia Mayer also notes, the movie stops short of simplistically advocating a technological fix for environmental problems as complex as climate change (Mayer 117).The values of civilization finally triumph over the destructive forces of wild nature when the pack of wolves, which escaped from Central Park Zoo earlier in the movie, return to attack Sam and his friends when they are searching for medicine and food. That the wolves are computer-generated special effects only adds an extra layer of irony to the triumph of civilization and benign technology in the movie. Indeed, the movie itself can be seen as a paean to the imaginative power of Computer Generated Imaging.In Eco Media (2005), Sean Cubitt argu es that The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2002-3) can be read as a celebration of the computer technologies from which it was made, which are an artisanal mode of production that demonstrates a creative place for technology within ‘green' thinking. There is an ‘increasing belief', he suggests, ‘that through the development of highly technologised creative industries, it is possible to devise a mode of economic development that does not compromise the land' (Cubitt 10). The thematic resolution of The Day After Tomorrow is ambiguous, however.The ending of the movie follows the recurrent pattern of the genre identified by Geoff King, in which ‘the possibility of apocalyptic destruction is confronted and depicted with a potentially horrifying special effects/spectacular ‘reality', only to be withdrawn or limited in its extent' (King 145). Typically, then, destruction is extensive, but total apocalypse is prevented at the last moment. The superstorm passes, the reby confirming Jack's earlier opinion that the storms will last ‘until the imbalance that created them is corrected' by ‘a global realignment'.Gazing at a beautiful, calm Earth, an astronaut in the International Space Station comments that he has ‘never seen the air so clear'. In Winston Wheeler Dixon's phrase, this could be the ‘exit point for the viewer' that disaster movies invariably provide (Dixon 133); the moment where the audience is let off the hook with a simplistic, evasive solution to the seemingly intractable problem explored in the rest of the movie. To return to the question posed at the start of this essay, does such an ending merely encourage evasion, denial and complacency in regard to issues such as anthropogenic climate change?Dixon argues that contemporary American cinema serves those who ‘wish to toy with the themes of destruction', from movies about atomic apocalypse to those that flirt with Nazism. This cinematic ‘cult of d eath', he concludes, is ‘the ultimate recreation' for an exhausted, media-saturated culture, a cult which ‘remains remote, carefully contained within a box of homicidal and genocidal dreams' (Dixon 139). But the ideological ambiguity of The Day After Tomorrow, as well as its audience reception, suggests that the process of interpretation is more open and varied than this.From an environmentalist perspective, the melodramatic ending of the film is ambiguous. No matter what human beings do, it appears, the Earth will heal itself. According to this reading, the message of the movie is that, because the storm eventually passes, we don't need to worry. This message resembles the right-wing appropriation of the Gaia hypothesis; that is, the idea, proposed by the British chemist James Lovelock, that the Earth as a whole is a self-regulating system in a natural state of homeostatic balance.In his 1999 book Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists, Peter Hube r used the concept of Gaia to justify a conservative manifesto that called for the dismantling of existing environmental regulations. The ‘most efficient way to control' pollutants such as greenhouses gases, he argued, ‘is not to worry about them at all. Let them be. Leave them to Gaia' (Huber 128). The notion of Gaia, we should note, is not the sole property of New Age environmentalists or deep ecologists.According to this interpretation, the movie appears to endorse the idea that humanity, through a combination of ingenuity, courage and chance, can survive whatever Nature may throw at us, an argument used by conservatives like Huber to justify a non-interventionist approach to environmental issues. It is a mistake, however, to assume that the final moments of a movie, when narrative closure is achieved, dictate its overall meaning. An analogy may be drawn here with the critical analysis of the role of women in film noir.As Janey Place argues of the female characters in films such as Double Indemnity (1946), ‘it is not their inevitable demise we remember but rather their strong, dangerous, and above all, exciting sexuality' (Place 48). In a similar way, the most memorable images in The Day After Tomorrow are probably the scenes of extreme weather. The main advertising image for the movie showed the shot of the hand of the Statue of Liberty held above the storm surge: an image of survival which at least includes a sense of struggle, rather than the calm, reposeful Earth revealed at the close of the film.Indeed, the above interpretation of the film as conservative is contradicted by its more explicit message, which advocated liberal political reform in the election year of 2004. Early in the film, Vice-President Becker, played by an actor who bears an obvious resemblance to Dick Cheney, refuses to listen to the advice of scientists on global warming, arguing that to take action would harm the American economy. In another reference to George W. Bush's presidency, we are told that the administration in the movie has also refused to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.At the end of the movie, Becker, now President, appears on television to apologise to the nation out of a newfound sense of humility: ‘For years we operated under the belief that we could continue consuming our planet's natural resources without consequence. We were wrong. I was wrong'. Perhaps the most unbelievable part of the whole movie, the President's public apology confirms the words of the African-American homeless man earlier in the film, who refers to people with their ‘cars and their exhausts, and they're just polluting the atmosphere'.The disaster has been a wake-up call for America, and the new start will allow for the changes in lifestyle necessary for a more sustainable future. The government will also change its attitude to the Third World from one of arrogance to gratitude. In these moments, th e movie works as a secular form of jeremiad; ‘secular' because the environmental catastrophe is not seen as punishment from God, but as human-created. Opie and Elliott argue that both ‘implementational and evocative strategies' are necessary in successful jeremiads, and cite Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) as a powerful exemplar (Opie and Elliott 35).The Day After Tomorrow also uses both pathos and rational argument to convince its audience of the need to take steps to avoid environmental catastrophe. Critical speculation on the effectiveness or otherwise of making a disaster movie about global warming can draw on the conclusions of an empirical study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research of the reception of the movie in Germany. This found that the movie did not appear to reinforce feelings of fatalism in its audience. Less than 10% of the sample agreed with the statement, ‘There's nothing we can do anyway', whereas 82% preferred, ‘We hav e to stop climate change'. Reusswig). Indeed, the Potsdam study makes hopeful reading for environmentalists. It found that the publicity surrounding the film triggered a new interest in climate change, and raised some issues previously unfamiliar to audiences, such as the role of oceans in global warming. A similar study of reception in the United States concluded that the film ‘led moviegoers to have higher levels of concern and worry about global warming, to estimate various impacts on the United States as more likely, and to shift their conceptual understanding of the climate system toward a threshold model.Further, the movie encouraged watchers to engage in personal, political, and social action to address climate change and to elevate global warming as a national priority'. However, whether such changes constituted merely a ‘momentary blip' in public perceptions remained to be seen (Leiserowitz 7). These empirical studies are important because they show that audienc e reception is a more complex and variable process than it is sometimes taken for in film theory. According to some versions of psychoanalytic ‘subject positioning' theory, Hollywood movies like The Day After Tomorrow tend to render spectators passive.Under the influence of Bertolt Brecht's theories of narrative, film academics such Colin McCabe and Steven Heath argued that only modernist or avant-garde narrative techniques can produce a more active (even revolutionary) film spectator. As the 1992 textbook New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics puts it, psychoanalytic film theory ‘sees the viewer not as a person, a flesh-and-blood individual, but as an artificial construct, produced and activated by the cinematic apparatus' (Stam 147). In his book The Crisis of Political Modernism (1999), D.N. Rodowick exposes the flaws in such thinking. The politics of political modernism, he writes, assume ‘an intrinsic and intractable relation between texts and their spectators, reg ardless of the historical or social context of that relation' (Rodowick 34). But film viewers are flesh-and-blood individuals, and when they are treated as such by film theorists and researchers, the phenomenon of film reception becomes more complex and nuanced, and less deterministic and stereotyped, than that imagined by subject positioning theory.Empirical audience research shows that we do not all watch the same movie in the same way, and that audience responses are complexly determined by a long list of variables, such as nation, region, locality, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and, last but certainly not least, individual temperament. When we look at the public reception of The Day After Tomorrow, then, it is clear that different interest groups appropriated the movie in different ways.Both sides of the public debate about climate change interpreted the movie within a realist framework, either positively or negatively, and produced selective readings in order to fur ther their own agendas. Patrick Michaels, one of the minority of scientists who stills rejects the idea of human-created climate change, pointed out the scientific flaws in the movie, and damned Hollywood for irresponsibly playing into the hands of liberal environmentalists by exaggerating the threat of global warming (Michaels 1).Liberal-left environmental campaigners also understood that the movie's foundation in science was flawed. However, they found its scientific exaggerations and inaccuracies less important than what they saw as its realistic portrayal of the American government's denial of the scientific evidence for global warming. As former Vice-President Al Gore put it, ‘there are two sets of fiction to deal with. One is the movie, the other is the Bush administration's presentation of global warming' (Mooney 1). Gore joined with the liberal Internet advocacy organization MoveOn. rg, which used the movie's release as an opportunity to organize a national advocacy ca mpaign on climate change. Senators McCain and Lieberman also used the movie to promote the reintroduction of their Climate Stewardship Act in Congress (Nisbet 1). Greenpeace endorsed the ‘underlying premise' of the film, that ‘extreme weather events are already on the rise, and global warming can be expected to make them more frequent and more severe'. It summed up its response to the movie with the line: ‘Fear is justified' (Greenpeace 1-2).The use of this movie to encourage environmental debate suggests that it is perhaps only if Hollywood movies like The Day After Tomorrow are people's sole, or even main, source of information on the environment that we should worry. As Sylvia Mayer argues, Hollywood environmentalist movies ‘have the potential to contribute to the development of an ‘environmentally informed sense of self' that is characterised by an awareness of environmental threats, by the wish to gain more effective knowledge about them and by a d isposition to participate actively in efforts to remedy the problem' (Mayer 107).In this respect, a classical, Hollywood-style narrative does not necessarily inculcate or reinforce a feeling a complacency or denial it its audience. In any case, no narrative can be as complex as the reality to which it refers; all art is a process of simplifying, selecting and giving shape to reality. Classical narrative forms and genre movies such as The Day After Tomorrow can focus thought and provide an imaginative and provocative response to environmental crisis. WORKS CITED Adam, Barbara (1998), Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards, Routledge, London and New York.Bell, Art and Streiber, Whitely (1999), The Coming Global Superstorm, Pocket Star Books, New York. Collins, Jim (1989), Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Post-Modernism, Routledge, New York and London. Cubitt, Sean (2005), Eco Media, Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York. Davis, Mike (1998), Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster, Henry Holt and Co. , New York. Dixon, Wheeler Winston (2003), Visions of the Apocalypse: Spectacles of Destruction in American Cinema, Wallflower Press, London and New York.Emmerich, Roland, director (2004), The Day After Tomorrow, 20th Century Fox, Two-disc DVD. Figlio, Karl (1996). ‘Knowing, loving and hating nature: a psychoanalytic view' in George Robertson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis and Tim Putnam (eds), FutureNatural: Nature, science, culture, Routledge, London and New York. Greenpeace International (2004). ‘Big screen vs big oil'. http://www. greenpeace. org/international/news/the-day-after-tomorrow, 1-4. Hawken, Paul (1993), The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, HarperCollins, New York.Henson, Robert (2006), The Rough Guide to Climate Change, Rough Guides, London. Huber, Peter (1999), Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists: A Conservative Manifesto, Basic Books, New York. Keane, Stephen (2001), Disaster Movies, Wallflower Press, London. Kerridge, Richard (1998), ‘Introduction', in Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammels (eds), Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature. Zed Books, London and New York. King, Geoff (2000), Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster, London and New York, I. B. Tauris.Lieserowitz, Anthony A (2004), ‘Before and After The Day After Tomorrow: A U. S. study of climate change risk perception. ‘ Environment. 46 (9), 22-37. www. findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m1076/is_9_46/ai_n856541/print, 1-12. Mayer, Sylvia (2006), ‘Teaching Hollywood Environmentalist Movies: The Example of The Day After Tomorrow', in Sylvia Mayer and Graham Wilson (eds), Ecodidactic Perspectives on English Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Trier, WVT. Mellencamp, Patricia (1990), ‘TV Time and Catastrophe, or Beyond the Pleasure Principle of Television', in Logics of Television, ed.P atricia Mellencamp, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Michaels, Patrick J. (2004), ‘Apocalypse Soon? No, but This Movie (And Democrats) Hope You'll Think So. ‘ The Washington Post, May 16th 2004, B01. www. washingtonpost. com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28338-2004May14? language=printer Mooney, Chris (2004), ‘Learning From Nonsense? ‘, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, http://www. csicop. org/doubtandabout/global-warming Nachmanoff, Jeffrey (2004), ‘Jeffrey Nachmanoff on The Day After Tomorrow'. http:// www. amazon. co. uk/gp/feature. html.Nisbet, Matthew (2004), ‘Evaluating the Impact of The Day After Tomorrow: Can a Blockbuster Film Shape the Public's Understanding of a Science Controversy? ‘, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, http://www. csicop. org/ Opie, John and Elliott, Norbert (1996), ‘Tracking the Elusive Jeremiad: The Rhetorical Character of American Environmental Discourse', in James G. Cantrill and Christine L. Oravec (eds), The Symboli c Earth: Discourse and Our Creation of the Environment, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington. Place, Janey (1978), ‘Women in Film Noir', in E. Ann Kaplan (ed), Women in Film Noir.BFI, London. Prince, Stephen (1992), Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film. Praeger, New York. Reusswig, Fritz, Scwarzkopf, Julia and Pohlenz, Philipp (2004), ‘Double Impact: The Climate Blockbuster ‘The Day After Tomorrow' and its impact on the German Cinema Public. ‘ PIK Report 92, Potsdam, 1-61. http://www. pik-potsdam. de/research/publications/pikereports/summary-report-n-92 Rodowick, D. N. (1999), The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.Sontag, Susan (2001), Against Interpretation, Vintage, London. Stam, Robert, Burgoyne, Robert and Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy (1992), New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, post-structuralism and beyond, Routledg e, London and New York. Williams, Linda (1998), ‘Melodrama Revisited', in Nick Browne (ed), Refiguring American Film Genres, University of California Press, London. Yacowar, Maurice (1986), ‘The Bug in the Rug: Notes on the Disaster Genre', in Barry Keith Grant (ed), Film Genre Reader, University of Texas Press, Austin.

Macbeth is a tragic hero essays

Macbeth is a tragic hero essays The purpose of Greek tragedies was to teach people to be good citizens. This was done through the tragic hero. Macbeth fits the mold of a tragic hero because he is an extraordinary man, he has a tragic flaw, and he ends up regretting his actions. The first characteristic of a tragic hero is that they are an extraordinary man. In the beginning of the story Macbeth is shown to be a great warrior. He is so great that he receives praise from the King and is given the title of Thane of Cawdor. Not just anyone can go out into battle and come out victorious. Macbeth not only comes out victorious but he fights so well that he receives praise for it. This shows that Macbeth is an extraordinary man. The possession of a tragic flaw is another characteristic of a tragic hero. Macbeth starts out with the title of Thane of Glamis. Through his bravery in battle he is given the title of Thane of Cawdor. After Macbeth hears the prophecy that he will become king he will do anything to achieve it. Macbeths hunger for power show his ambition, which turns out to be his tragic flaw. Regret is the inevitable result of a tragic heros journey. As Macbeth sits in his castle awaiting the advancing rebel army he thinks about his situation. He says that he should be honored, loved and obeyed in his old age. Instead, he isnt respected or loved. He feels that after everything he went through he isnt in any better of o situation for it. Macbeth realizes his regret. In all Greek tragedies there is a tragic hero. Macbeth fits the mold of a tragic hero because he is an extraordinary man, he has a tragic flaw, and he ends up regretting his actions. Macbeth is used to teach people to control their ambition. ...

Knowledge Management (KM) in Healthcare Systems The WritePass Journal

Knowledge Management (KM) in Healthcare Systems REFERANCES Knowledge Management (KM) in Healthcare Systems INTRODUCTION HISTORY OF KM SWOT ANALYSISKEY ISSUE OF REDDIX HOSPITALSUGGEST CHANGE Learning CultureKey Management processesTools and TechniquesRESOURCESOrganizational Fit2nd Learning outcome:SCOPE OF CHANGE AND VISIONRESISTANCEOPTIONAL APPRAISALCOMMUNICATION TO STAKEHOLDERFINALIZE CHANGE PLANIMPLEMENTING KM AT REDDIX  ObjectivesStrategic model to achieve these objectives  Patient Admission ProcessCommunication of Patient Admission DataSupporting Diagnostic and Therapeutic SciencesPoint-of-Care Data EntryEvaluation: Automated Hospital Information System ArchitectureImplement a Culture change policyThe Intervention Change ModelThe Strategic Change ModelImproved Team CommunicationReduced Problem Solving TimeImproved Patient CareREFERANCESRelated INTRODUCTION KM is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, managing, and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets, including database, documents, policies and procedures, as well as unarticulated expertise and experience resident in individual workers (Wickramasinghe, 2003). There are many dimensions around which knowledge can be characterized such as storage media, accessibility, typology and hierarchy. HISTORY OF KM Knowledge Management (KM) is an essential tool in today’s emerging healthcare system. Hospitals that seek to deploy KM systems need to understand the human element in the process. Earlier, success factors were only restricted to a few healthcare variables such as patient care and cost, but over the years, technology (both clinical and administrative) has evolved as a differentiating variable, thus redefining the doctrines of competition and the administration of healthcare treatments. One of the key objectives of a KM system is to insulate a hospital’s intellectual knowledge from degeneration (Elliot, 2000). The UK public sector now typically spends an estimated  £2 billion per annum on IT, equating to around 1% of the public purse (Holmes Poulymenakou, 1995), while the NHS spends around  £220 million annually on IT in hospitals (Audit Commission, 1995). Information technology is transforming the healthcare environment in ways that go beyond simple consumer health information Web sites (Hoagland, 1997). SWOT ANALYSIS Various Strengths of such organizational structure are: There is a strong control over the employees with clearly defined rules and regulations. The system is highly centralized because of which various decisions can be monitored efficientley.. There is standardization in the organization and everyone is following same procedures and thus there is no scope for any confusion. Weaknesses of bureaucratic form of organizations: The biggest weakness of such form of organization is that there is too much control leading to a lack of innovation initiatives and thus making the jobs dull and boring. Also, this has an adverse impact on the level of morale of employees which is clearly seen in case of Reddix trust hospital. Another weakness is that though decisions can be efficiently monitored it takes a lot of time to take any decision as there are only few people in whose hands such a power rests. In case this group of people is overloaded decision making will become too slow. The chain of communication is too long which generally leads to distortion of the message Bureaucracy itself encourages political behavior in the organization and people try to use wrong means to go up the hierarchy. KEY ISSUE OF REDDIX HOSPITAL Reddix Hospital does have an information system in place. It comprises of Radiology Information System, Patient Administration System, Laboratory Information System and Clinical Patient Record System, Pharmacy Systems and Nursing System. But there is a lack of interoperability between these systems and there is no clinical information governance. Further due to an inefficient Hospital Information System patient files are not available to the concerned caregivers when required. These caretakers are not aware of patients’ medical history and if some wrong medicines are given patients suffer from severe reactions. According to NHS performance report 60% of patients were suffering from life-threatening consequences of improper care. Furthermore nurses and caregivers are not aware of the best practices. Also Reddix is using a centralized computer architecture where softwares being used are 30-40 years old. Such outdated softwares have limited interfaces with other healthcare information systems. Moreover they did not have the ability to interconnect with other desktop applications. In most of the NHS hospitals a distributed form of computer architecture is followed. Moreover Reddix does not use a secure information security mechanism which is again an important point of consideration. Due to above reasons and to ensure an efficient and innovative working of Reddix Hospital Trust it was decided to adopt a proper Knowledge Management System at Reddix. Thus, a combination of all the three systems may be used to address the requirements of various stakeholders to the KM project. SUGGEST CHANGE Reddix can move to divisional form of organization as it will be easy to handle the complexities associated with a complex nature of hospital functions and divisions. In order to promote learning and development in the organization Reddix can use following methods: Learning Culture Reddix need to develop a learning culture in the organization. There should be a free flow of information within the organization. People should be able to share and exchange information and knowledge without any barriers. Senior team should people at all levels to learn regularly and learning should also be rewarded. Key Management processes Learning and development can be fostered through proper capability planning, reinforcing teams, developing values and vision for such teams and maintaining an efficient performance reward system. Tools and Techniques Open communication, mentoring and supporting colleagues, making people learn to see team and organizational goals as same are some tools to maintain learning in the organization. Thus, from above mentioned process Reddix can ensure learning and development of its staff so as to implement KM in an efficient manner. RESOURCES These organizations decentralize decision making to the business units, thereby allowing the corporate office to concentrate its focus on corporate strategy, capital allocation, and monitoring of the operational and strategic performance of business units. This creates the advantage of increasing accountability, given that common/comparable measures can be established across different divisions and internal competition for available capital can be stimulated. Along with its various merits this system may bring about certain disadvantages for Reddix Trust Hospital: First, there is the problem of duplication of services- that is, redundant marketing, manufacturing, and other functional services that are established within each unit. Costs can escalate when functions are repeated in multiple areas. Corporate executives in decentralized organizations can too easily distance themselves from their divisional operations and thus find that they lack the needed insights and skills to understand their disparate businesses. Corporate leaders can also focus so much on capital allocation and corporate strategy (e.g., mergers, divestitures, acquisitions) that they lose touch with the operational side of their businesses. Organizational Fit 2nd Learning outcome: SCOPE OF CHANGE AND VISION Healthcare organizations are facing many challenges in the 21st Century due to changes taking place in global healthcare systems. Spiraling costs, financial constraints, increased emphasis on accountability and transparency, changes in education, growing complexities of biomedical research, new partnerships in healthcare and great advances in IT suggest that a predominant paradigm shift is occurring. This shift is necessitating a focus on interaction, collaboration and increased sharing of information and knowledge which is in turn leading healthcare organizations to embrace the techniques of Knowledge Management (KM) in order to create and sustain optimal healthcare outcomes. This report describes the importance of using Information Technology knowledge management systems for healthcare organizations and provides an overview of knowledge management technologies and tools that may be used by healthcare organizations with a special focus on Reddix Hospital Trust. RESISTANCE Reddix hospital is overloaded with work. Doctors are working for double the stipulated time. The information system at Reddix is centralized and nurses and caretakers have no direct and easy access to patient records. Also there is low level of morale, lack of motivation, lack of innovation and high rate of absenteeism and staff turnover and also high rate of sickness among hospital staff. All these factors prove that Reddix Hospital Trust is following a bureaucratic form of organization. The bureaucratic hierarchy is by far the most abundant organization form as we start the new millennium. They are everywhere all of the time and it is hard to envision a world without them, or indeed any other kind of organization form that will work as well. Elliott Jaques (1989, 1990), firmly believed that the bureaucratic hierarchy’s only problem is that it still lacks complete perfection, and Hammer and Champy (1993), asserted that bureaucracy is a glue that holds organizations together. OPTIONAL APPRAISAL Reddix can use intranet to make the stakeholders properly understand what is KM and how it can enable them to work efficiently. A dedicated blog can be created where staff can exchange their understanding of the concept and that of project a whole and can learn through shared experiences. Also it will help them in understanding the flow of information within the organization and how to use the new method efficiently. A proper detailed view of the new system along with some relevant examples can be easily provided on the portal which will help in a detailed understanding of the concept. However in this system people will learn as per their understanding levels. In case there is some misunderstanding on their part it cannot be cleared and people will start working on their individual assumptions about the concept and project. This may lead to conflict and disputes while implementing the concept. Justify your planned changes? COMMUNICATION TO STAKEHOLDER The project of Knowledge Management affects a number of people related with the organization. These are- doctors, nurses, administrative staff, etc. All these people need to be properly aware of the need of KM in their organization and also how they will be benefited from such a change in the organization. The success of any KM program depends upon the clear understanding of concepts by these stakeholders. FINALIZE CHANGE PLAN Continuous use of knowledge leads to generation of new ideas which can be recorded in the system and again and again use of such idea further leads to generation of new ideas. Thus, KM will give a scope of innovation to hospital staff. Proper storage and availability of information about a patient’s health will allow the team of doctors to communicate easily and take decisions on further treatment in an efficient manner. Also the medication prescribed to patient, allergic records, surgery records, etc are readily available which can form the basis of further treatment. Another important system is to develop a program for providing training with regard to use of new system. Such programs or training workshops should be designed in a manner that each and every person in the organization is properly aware about his/her role in KM and can also help his/her subordinates in achieving efficiency through such a system. This system is good for imparting knowledge about the concept but lack practical approach. For proper implementation of the concept such workshops should be continued for some time after the introduction of KM in the hospital. It will help the staff to get real time experience of getting trained while working. Instant flow of information and improved communication leads to quick decision making. Doctors can communicate with each other regarding the treatment of some critical patient, refer to the case history available at a single place and take decision in a short period of time Reddix can take the groups of staff for some tours to other hospitals using Knowledge management effectively. This will help the staff in getting a real-world idea about use and benefits of KM. This will act as a catalyst to prepare them for them for the next stages of the project. However, this method does not ensure a deep understanding of the concept as methodology of implementing KM varies from organization to organization. IMPLEMENTING KM AT REDDIX Various steps involved in implementation of KM program at Reddix Trust Hospital are discussed as follows:   Objectives Reddix need to implement a KM program so as to improve patient care, reduce accidents, increase the morale level of the hospital staff, efficient decision making and improve the flow of information within the organization. Strategic model to achieve these objectives The achievement of an efficient KM program depends upon the designing of an efficient Application Architecture. The key features of such an architecture or model is discussed as follows:   Patient Admission Process First step in implementing Knowledge Management in Reddix is the automation of Hospital administration and registration systems that are used to â€Å"register† patients into the hospital. A powerful first point-of-contact (point-of-sale) approach for the hospital can be used in the form of embedded-chip smart cards. These cards are capable of holding compact patient medical record and biometrics identifiers. This would enable quick, automated registration and admitting, as well as information for health and health insurance purposes such as eligibility, referral, and pharmacy approval. Communication of Patient Admission Data Next is to automate the data associated with the admission of a patient which is of a relatively generic nature. Made up of standard patient demographic data, insurance particulars, and the patient’s location (department, room number, and bed), the information associated with the event of admitting a patient is of interest to most if not all of the other information systems used in the hospital. In an e-hospital, this patient information is communicated with all other applications in the hospital. Hospitals organize themselves around specialized diagnostic methods, focused medical interventions, and various therapeutic care strategies. Supporting Diagnostic and Therapeutic Sciences According to Becich (2000), it is estimated that 50% to 70% of the major decisions that affect patients are based on information available from clinical pathology (laboratory tests) and anatomical pathology (tissue samples). Thus it is necessary to computerize laboratories, radiology, cardiovascular laboratories, nuclear medicine, etc. For Example: The classical x-ray film processing has been replaced with â€Å"film-less† imaging processes that produce digital images in many hospitals worldwide. Hospital Pharmacy also need to be right from automated drug dispensing devices to robotic workstations used to package and barcode patient medication. Point-of-Care Data Entry Further there is a need to automate the point-of-care data. Procedures (e.g., surgeries, laboratory tests, or x-rays) can be scheduled in an enterprise scheduling system to better allocate many types of resources. Integration between the admitting and orders systems makes the process more efficient and accurate. These orders can be communicated to the appropriate clinical system (e.g., radiology or laboratory) electronically if interfaced or integrated with the order management system. Once an order is placed in a clinical system, the process of performing the ordered diagnostic test or delivering the specified medication or service begins. If the physician could consistently digitize these â€Å"paper instructions,† the improvements in the accuracy, the timeliness, and the appropriateness of patient care would be staggering. In addition, the patient vital sign data (e.g., blood pressure, fluid input and output, temperatures) are written on the patient’s chart. Technolo gy can be used to convert physician voice dictations to digital text (typically the patient’s admitting history and physical and the discharge plan and diagnosis). Evaluation:       Automated Hospital Information System Architecture [Adapted from Mon and Nunn (1999)] Implement a Culture change policy Next is to develop a proper healthy environment for KM. Staff needs to be made aware and trained about the concept of KM and how that is beneficial for different levels of the organization. People should be able to adapt to such a change being introduced in the organization. Such an acceptance will ensure the efficient implementation of KM program. Change Models Here we will discuss two change models which can be applied to Reddix Hospital. The Intervention Change Model The Strategic Change Process Model The Intervention Change Model This model developed by Robbie Paton and Jim MacCalman (2006), is based on the idea of an open system approach which view an organization as a series of interlinked and interdependent elements and components of systems and subsystems. Reddix Hospital is an organization that consists of several elements like that of consultation, pharmacy, patient care, nursing, specialized treatment, clinical information, etc. As per the intervention model firstly the problem is to be identified, which is the lack of a proper information system in the hospital. Next is to analyze and select the change options available which is determined as the need of KM in Reddix. Finally this KM is to be applied at every level and every department and element of Reddix. These functions or elements are interlinked and a change in one will mean a change in all the elements. The Strategic Change Model This model developed by Phil Beaumont complements the implementation stage of the intervention model. This model is also required to be applied at Reddix. It aims at making the staff understand the need for change in the organization. It takes the form of a story-telling which managers often use to promote change. At the start of this process senior managers at Reddix will initiate communication to engage employees in the change process. Next will be focusing on claims, evidence, theories of cause and effect to help employees understand what the need is and how the change will benefit them. Further performance conversation will take place to generate action in order to initiate change and finally closure conversations will be there to signify the successful completion of the change process. Such a process will help the staff of Reddix to grasp each and every part of KM program efficiently so as to use it effectively in their future course of action. Improved Team Communication Proper storage and availability of information about a patient’s health will allow the team of doctors to communicate easily and take decisions on further treatment in an efficient manner. Also the medication prescribed to patient, allergic records, surgery records, etc are readily available which can form the basis of further treatment. Reduced Problem Solving Time Instant flow of information and improved communication leads to quick decision making. Doctors can communicate with each other regarding the treatment of some critical patient, refer to the case history available at a single place and take decision in a short period of time Improved Patient Care An efficient KM system will reduce the burden of knowledge on the staff. They can concentrate on their work. Specialists can be consulted easily and decisions can be taken efficiently. This will improve the condition of patient care in Reddix. REFERANCES Groff, Todd. R. (2003), Introduction to knowledge Management: KM in Business, Butterworth-Heinemann Gay, Paul du (2003), The Values of Bureaucracy, Oxford University Press. Jennex, Murray E (2005), Case Studies in Knowledge Management, IGI Global Miner, John B (2006), Organizational Behavior 2: Essential Theories of Process and Structure, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Martin, Graeme (2006), Managing People and Organizations in Changing Context, Butterworth-Heinemann. Schwartz, David G.(2006), Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management, IGI publishing. Wickramasinghe(2005), Creating Knowledge-Based Healthcare Organizations, IGI Global. Wickramasinghe, Nilmini( 2007), Knowledge-Based Enterprise: Theories and Fundamentals, IGI Publishing

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