Kingfisher Case Study

EISSN 2277-4955 THE KING WITHOUT FISHES†¦!!! [CASE ON CRISIS OF KINGFISHER AIRLINES] Prof. Bhavik M. Panchasara Marwadi Education Foundation’s Group of Institutions, RajKot, [email  protected] com ABSTRACT Indian Aviation Industry is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. But nowadays it is in the news due to different reason. And that is the failure of one of the leading aviation player – Kingfisher Airlines. The airline has been facing financial issues for many years. Till December 2011; Kingfisher Airlines had the second largest share in India's domestic air travel market.However due to the severe financial crisis faced by the airline, it has the fifth largest market share currently. Even the company have no funds to pay the salaries to the employees and is facing several other issues like fuel dues; aircraft lease rental dues, service tax dues and bank arrears. This case outlines the financial turmoil of the Kingfisher in detail. Keywords: Aviation industry, Kingfisher Airlines, financial turmoil, financial issues, crisis and debt restructuring INTRODUCTION: Kingfisher Airlines is an airline group based in India.Its head office is The Qube in Andheri (East), Mumbai; and Registered Office in UB City, Bangalore. Kingfisher Airlines was established in 2003. It is owned by the Bengaluru based United Breweries Group. Kingfisher Airlines, through its parent company United Breweries Group, has a 50% stake in low-cost carrier Kingfisher Red. The airline started commercial operations in 9 May 2005 with a fleet of four new Airbus A320-200s operating a flight from Mumbai to Delhi. It started its international operations on 3 September 2008 by connecting Bengaluru with London.The airline has been facing financial issues for many years. Till December 2011; Kingfisher Airlines had the second largest share in India's domestic air travel market. However due to the severe financial crisis faced by the airline, it has the fifth largest market s hare currently, only above Go Air. Kingfisher Airlines is one of the only seven airlines awarded 5star rating by Skytrax along with Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways, Asiana Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and Hainan Airlines. Kingfisher operates 250 daily flights with regional and long-haul international services.In May 2009, Kingfisher Airlines carried more than 1 million passengers, giving it the highest market share among airlines in India. Kingfisher also owns the Skytrax award for India's best airline of the year 2011. BAUDDHIK VOLUME 3, NO. -1, JAN-APRIL-2012 84 EISSN 2277-4955 STARTING OF THE CRISES: Ever since the airline commenced operations in 2005, the company is reporting the losses. But the situation became more horrible after acquiring the Air Deccan in 2007. After acquiring the Air Deccan, the company suffered a loss of over Rs. 1,000 crore for three executive years. By early 2012, the airline accumulated the losses of over Rs. ,000 crore with half of it s fleet grounded and several members of its staff going on strike. Following table 1 highlights losses of the company since inception: Table 1: Net Reported Losses and debts since inception (Rs. In Crores) Year Loss Secured Loans Unsecured Loans Mar-11 -1027. 4 5,184. 53 1,872. 55 Mar-10 -1646. 22 4,842. 43 3,080. 17 Mar-09 -1608. 83 2,622. 52 3,043. 04 Mar-08 -188. 14 592. 38 342. 00 Jun-07 -419. 58 716. 71 200. 00 Jun-06 -340. 55 448. 16 3. 50 Mar-05 -16. 79 159. 42 125. 06 DEBT RESTRUCTURING: In the situation of loss and tough financial condition, the company went for more loans.Table 1 shows the portion of secured and unsecured loans taken by the company. Due to heavy burden of debt and interest, in November 2010, the company adopted the way of debt restructuring and under that total 18 leading lenders, those have landed total Rs. 8,000 crores, agreed to cut interest rates and convert part of loans to equity. As per the contract, lenders have converted Rs. 650 crores debt into p reference shares which will be converted into equity when the company lists the on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange by selling global depositary receipts (GDR).Shares will be converted into ordinary equity at the price at which the GDRs are sold to investors. Besides the 1,400 crore debt which will be 800 crore converted into preference shares, another CRISIS TILL CONTINUE: Debt restructuring also couldn’t change the game. By restructuring, company had reduced the interest charges by Rs. 500 crores every year, but due to the high leverage condition and increase in cost, the company started to face the liquidity problem. The company had no funds in hand and it created the following payment problems.DELAYED SALARY: Kingfisher Airline has staff strength of 6,000 and spends 58 crore on salaries a month. According 173. 66 to the first quarter financial results, it has increased from crore under the employees cost head, which has 163. 40 crore during the same quarter last year. Kingfi sher Airlines delayed salaries of its employees in August 2011, and for four months in succession from October 2011 to January 2012. Kingfisher also defaulted on paying the Tax Deducted at Source from the employee income to the tax department. debt has been converted into redeemable shares for 12 years.Due to debt restructuring, the company able to down the average interest rate to 11% and to save Rs. 500 crores every year in interest cost. BAUDDHIK VOLUME 3, NO. -1, JAN-APRIL-2012 85 EISSN 2277-4955 FUEL DUES: In the past several years, Kingfisher airlines had trouble paying their fuel bills. Due non-payment, several Kingfisher's vendors had filed winding up petition with the High Court. As on Nov 2011, winding up petition of seven creditors was pending before the Bangalore High Court. In the past Lufthansa Technik & Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) had also filed winding up petition against Kingfisher Airlines.Here are some cases: ? ? HPCL: In Jul 2011, Hindustan Petrol eum Corporation Limited (HPCL) stopped the fuel (ATF) supplies for about two hours to Kingfisher airlines owing to the non-payment of dues. Situation was later resolved. ? BPCL: Bharat Petroleum Corporation in 2009 had filed a case against Kingfisher airlines for non-payment of dues. High court in an order said that the entire amount 245 crore had to be paid by Nov 2010 and the airline paid it in instalments. AIRCRAFT LEASE RENTAL DUES: Since 2008, it has been reported that Kingfisher Airlines has been unable to pay the aircraft lease rentals on time.Due to that, the Kingfisher Airlines has grounded 15 out of 66 aircraft in its fleet as it was unable to meet the maintenance and overhaul expenses. Here are the some major issues with: ? GECAS: In Nov 2008, GE Commercial Aviation Services threatened to repossess 04 leased planes in lieu of default. Kingfisher Airlines initially BAUDDHIK On 9 December 2011, S. K. Goel, chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) announced that CBEC is considering legal action against Kingfisher for not paying service tax. As on 10th Jan 2012, Kingfisher Airlines has service tax arrears of 70 crore.The Ministry of Finance has given a concession to Kingfisher and instructed them to pay the dues by 31st Mar 2012. In Jan 2012, SERVICE TAX: Kingfisher received a notice from the Airports Authority of India on February 2012 regarding accumulated dues of 255. 06 crore. The airline was operating on a cash and carry basis for the last six months, with daily payments amounting to 0. 8 crore. AAI REPORTS: DVB: In Jul 2010, DVB Aviation Finance Asia Ltd (a lessor from Singapore), sued Kingfisher Airlines for lease rental default.Case was filed in a UK court on Jul 16, 2010 after Kingfisher did not pay for three month lease rental for A320 aircraft it leased from DVB. denied that it missed the payments. GECAS had filed a complaint with DGCA saying Kingfisher had defaulted on rentals for four A320 aircraft, and sought repossession of th e planes. In Jan 2009, The Karnataka High Court rejected petition by Kingfisher Airlines to restrain GECAS from taking any step to deregister and repossess the 04 aircraft in dispute. As a result, Kingfisher had to return the A320 aircraft to GECAS. VOLUME 3, NO. -1, JAN-APRIL-2012 87EISSN 2277-4955 Kingfisher paid 20 crore towards its dues for operational by February 20. With this, Kingfisher's market share clearly dropped to 11. 3%. The cancellation of the flights was accompanied by a BANK ARREARS: Kingfisher Airlines had not paid some bankers (Lenders) as per the Debt Recast Package (DRP) with lending banks. Till the end of Dec 2011, the arrears were estimated to be 260 crore to 280 crore. Lenders hence had told Kingfisher Airlines to clear its dues before they can release any more money sought by the Airline. Ravi Nedungadi, chief financial officer of UB Group however said that the arrears were 180 crore.State Bank of India (SBI) on 5th Jan 2012 declared Kingfisher Airlines a NP A. SBI is largest creditor and the leader of the consortium of banks in the DRP (Debt Recast Package) and has an exposure of NPA by following banks: State Bank of India Bank of Baroda Punjab National Bank IDBI Central bank of India Bank of India Corporation Bank THE CRISIS CONTINUE: During late February, 2012, Kingfisher Airlines started to sink into a fresh crisis. Several flights were cancelled and aircraft were grounded. The airline shut down most international short-haul operations and also temporarily closed bookings.Out of the 64 aircraft, only 22 were known to be 1,457. 78 crore. Thus, by Feb 2012, Kingfisher has been declared 13. 5% drop in the stocks of the company on 20 February 2012. The CEO of the airlines, Sanjay Agarwal was summoned by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to explain the disruptions of the operations. The State Bank of India, which is the lead lender to Kingfisher airlines said that they would not consider giving any more loans to Kingfisher unless and until it comes up with a new equity by itself. Political activists also claimed that bailing or helping a private airline would lead to problems within the Government.By February 27, Kingfisher operated only above 150 out of its 400 flights and only 28 aircraft were functional. Reuters reported that if Kingfisher were to shutdown, it would be the biggest failure in the History of Indian Aviation. It was announced that the direct flights to the smaller airports of Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Nagpur and also to Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport were all shut down and only one/two-stop flights from its main hubs of Delhi and Mumbai would operate. In response to a situation as bad as bankruptcy, Vijay Mallya announced that he had organized funds to pay all the employees' overdue salaries.With bank accounts frozen and huge debts due, it is unknown so as from where he arranged the money. But he apologized to his workers and said that he would pay them immediately. By thi s time, kingfisher had accumulated losses of 444 crore during the third quarter of the fiscal year 2011-12. December 2011 and part of the arrears. BAUDDHIK VOLUME 3, NO. -1, JAN-APRIL-2012 88 EISSN 2277-4955 FROZEN BANK ACCOUNTS: On March 3, 2012, The Central Board of Excise & Customs of India froze many more Kingfisher accounts as it was unable to pay all the dues as per schedule. Kingfisher was meant to pay 1 crore per working day.Aviation minister Ajit Singh warned the airline about the temporary suspension of the license until the crisis was sorted out. He announced that the rest of the airline's fleet would be grounded and all flights cancelled until the crisis came to an end. This would be only one step from permanently closing the airline. IATA SUSPENSION: On March 7, 2012 IATA suspended ticket sales of Kingfisher airlines citing non-payment of dues as the primary reason, and they said that sales services will only be restored once Kingfisher settles ICH (IATA Clearing House) account.IATA also immediately directed all travel agents to stop booking tickets for Kingfisher. This would affect Kingfisher's business by around 30%. Kingfisher claimed that frozen bank accounts was the main cause of being unable to pay the IATA, and the airline started making alternate arrangements for the sale of tickets. Soon it became difficult for the airline to follow the much smaller schedule that it earlier released as even more pilots began to go on strike. UNCERTAINTY AHEAD: After analysing the entire scenario, there are strong possibilities of more difficult situation in the last month of fiscal year 2011-12.The company is in dilemma of finding help, but from where? 2. TEACHING NOTES 1. The purpose of the case is to make the students aware about the situation of financial crisis in any organisation. The issues involved in the case are about the financial turmoil and its effects on the business and market share of the company. 3. 4. 2. 1. Is the Problem of Kingfisher Ai rlines Industry Specific or Company Specific? What is the Impact of High Level of Debt on the operating performance of company? Should Government bailout Kingfisher Airlines? According to you, what are the possible ways for the company to overcome this situation?QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: Government has refused for bailing and all the lenders and bankers have no more trust. The employees are also not able to tolerate the salary crisis and the slipping market share leads the more difficulties. Promoter Vijay Malya has to decide the way ahead. Whether is it possible to save the company? There are very few alternatives. As per the previous news, Etihad Airways was interested in investing in Kingfisher by providing equity in exchange for a stake in the airline. Also involved in the talks was the International Airlines Group, owner of British flag carrier British Airways and Spanish flag carrier Iberia.But the question is the permission by Government. So at present there is very tough situ ation for Vijay Malya and for the company. Will new fiscal year bring any solution for the company? Let’s wait and watch. BAUDDHIK VOLUME 3, NO. -1, JAN-APRIL-2012 89 EISSN 2277-4955 3. The case would be first given for individual reading for 15 min and then for 15 min the case can be discussed in groups of 4-5 students. 4. The case can be taught along with the concepts like ways to overcome the crisis and surviving strategies required to save the organisation keeping in mind the possible different options available. 5.The students can come prepared with topics of prevailing crisis in Indian aviation industry and REFERENCES: 6. other factors related to the aviation industry in detail. Cross reference can be made taking into account the strategies used by the local, market of the falling organisation. national and international players to capture the slipping http://www. flykingfisher. com/mediacenter/press-releases/kingfisher-airlinesannouncement. aspx http://in. finance. yah oo. com/news/kingfisherairlines-q3-loss-widens-033419822. html http://timesofindia. indiatimes. com/india/Kingfi sher†¦ /12258986. cms http://articles. economictimes. ndiatimes. com/2 011-12-08/news/30490358_1_pilots-industrialaction-kingfisher airlines http://profit. ndtv. com/News/Article/aai-warnskingfisher-airlines-to-settle-dues-297284 http://articles. economictimes. indiatimes. com/2 010-09-26/news/27585421_1_cash-and-carrymode-bpcl-s chairman-kingfisher-airlines http://timesofindia. indiatimes. com/business/indiabusiness/Kingfisher-may-have-to-weather-pilotstorm-next/articleshow/12214372. cms Annexure 1: Market share of Kingfisher Airlines as on January 2012 in the domestic Aviation Airline/Company Jet Airways (Including Jet Lite) Indigo Air India Spice Jet Kingfisher Go Air Share 28. 8% 20. 8% 17. 1% 16. 3% 11. 3% 5. 8% Source: http://in. finance. yahoo. com/news/kingfisher-airlines-q3-loss-widens-033419822. html BAUDDHIK VOLUME 3, NO. -1, JAN-APRIL-2012 90 EISSN 2277-4 955 Annexure 2: Price Movement and Performance Charts of Kingfisher Airlines Annexure 3: Index Comparison and Ownership Pattern of Kingfisher Airlines Source:http://www. bseindia. com/bseplus/StockReach/AdvanceStockReach. aspx? scripcode=532747 Annexure 4: Comparative Balance Sheet of Kingfisher Airlines [Rs. In crores] Sources Of Funds Total Share Capital Equity Share Capital Share Appl.Money Pref. Share Capital Reserves Net worth Mar '11 1,050. 88 497. 78 2. 95 553. 10 -4,005. 02 -2,951. 19 Mar '10 362. 91 265. 91 7. 48 97. 00 -4,268. 84 -3,898. 45 Mar '09 362. 91 265. 91 8. 11 97. 00 -2,496. 36 -2,125. 34 Mar '08 135. 80 135. 80 10. 09 0. 00 52. 99 198. 88 Jun '07 135. 47 135. 47 0. 00 0. 00 249. 23 384. 70 Jun '06 98. 18 98. 18 0. 00 0. 00 125. 95 224. 13 Mar’05 16. 20 16. 20 0. 00 0. 00 -2. 54 13. 66 BAUDDHIK VOLUME 3, NO. -1, JAN-APRIL-2012 85 EISSN 2277-4955 Secured Loans Unsecured Loans Total Debt Total Liabilities Application Of Funds Gross Block Less: Accum.Dep. Net Block Capital WIP Investments Inventories Sundry Debtors Cash & Bank Bal. Total CA Loans & Adv. FDs CA, Loans & Adv. Current Liabilities Provisions Total CL & Prov. Net Current Assets Misc. Expenses Total Assets 2,254. 26 682. 37 1,571. 89 673. 35 0. 05 187. 65 440. 53 88. 18 716. 36 5,380. 19 164. 18 6,260. 73 4,463. 86 62. 11 4,525. 97 1,734. 76 125. 84 4,105. 89 2,048. 14 493. 62 1,554. 52 980. 61 0. 05 164. 88 322. 49 50. 91 538. 28 4,604. 31 155. 56 5,298. 15 3,908. 03 46. 77 3,954. 80 1,343. 35 145. 64 4,024. 17 1,891. 80 316. 29 1,575. 51 1,630. 95 0. 05 147. 5 229. 84 49. 41 426. 50 3,640. 42 122. 45 4,189. 37 3,814. 63 45. 55 3,860. 18 329. 19 4. 51 3,540. 21 322. 33 43. 55 278. 78 346. 25 0. 00 48. 64 27. 16 5. 84 81. 64 832. 49 274. 29 1,188. 42 687. 31 9. 52 696. 83 491. 59 16. 64 1,133. 26 340. 77 33. 74 307. 03 357. 62 0. 41 61. 62 35. 24 422. 05 518. 91 149. 77 395. 00 1,063. 68 449. 15 6. 94 456. 09 607. 59 28. 75 1,301. 40 247. 33 16. 40 230. 93 286. 53 0. 41 57. 2 6 13. 06 181. 17 251. 49 232. 03 75. 31 558. 83 434. 05 5. 93 439. 98 118. 85 39. 08 675. 80 55. 25 4. 52 50. 73 153. 09 0. 45 36. 40 8. 27 47. 08 91. 75 47. 8 35. 85 174. 88 108. 77 1. 07 109. 84 65. 04 28. 83 298. 14 5,184. 53 1,872. 55 7,057. 08 4,105. 89 4,842. 43 3,080. 17 7,922. 60 4,024. 15 2,622. 52 3,043. 04 5,665. 56 3,540. 22 592. 38 342. 00 934. 38 1,133. 26 716. 71 200. 00 916. 71 1,301. 41 448. 16 3. 50 451. 66 657. 79 159. 42 125. 06 284. 48 298. 14 Source:http://www. moneycontrol. com/financials/kingfisherairlines/balancesheet/KA02#KA02 Annexure 5: Comparative P A/c of Kingfisher Airlines [Rs. In crores] Income Net Sales Other Income Total Income Expenditure Raw Materials Power & Fuel Cost Employee Cost Other Manu.Exp. Sell. & Admn Exp. 56. 69 2,274. 03 680. 54 1,192. 80 997. 34 40. 89 1,802. 99 689. 38 1,108. 82 996. 85 51. 19 2,602. 62 825. 42 1,112. 85 1,062. 74 43. 79 889. 30 244. 96 408. 21 180. 39 45. 94 979. 50 247. 72 617. 56 146. 78 36. 73 625. 45 163. 04 42 5. 48 114. 38 5. 77 92. 98 31. 76 104. 78 29. 13 Mar '11 6,233. 38 81. 58 6,314. 96 Mar '10 5,067. 92 -333. 30 4,734. 62 Mar '09 5,269. 17 598. 90 5,868. 07 Mar '08 1,456. 28 113. 62 1,569. 90 Jun '07 1,800. 21 342. 10 2,142. 31 Jun’06 1285. 42 59. 64 1345. 06 Mar’05 305. 55 14. 73 320. 28 BAUDDHIK VOLUME 3, NO. 1, JAN-APRIL-2012 86 EISSN 2277-4955 Misc. Exp. Total Expenses PBDIT Interest PBDT Depreciation Other Written Off Profit Before Tax Extra-ordinary items Tax Reported Net Profit Shares in issue (lakhs) EPS (Rs) Equity Dividend (%) Book Value (Rs) Per share data (annualised) 4,977. 79 -20. 64 0. 00 -70. 46 2,659. 09 -61. 95 0. 00 -150. 54 2,659. 09 -60. 50 0. 00 -83. 88 1,357. 99 -13. 85 0. 00 13. 90 1,354. 70 -30. 97 0. 00 28. 40 981. 82 -34. 69 0. 00 22. 83 31. 06 -54. 05 0. 00 43. 96 87. 94 5,289. 34 1,025. 62 2,340. 32 -1,314. 70 203. 02 38. 01 -1,555. 73 72. 99 -455. 35

The Most Identifiable American Neo Expressionist Artists Film Studies Essay

Appropriation is defined as: The artistic pattern or technique of make overing images from well-known pictures, exposure, etc. , in one ‘s ain work. David Salle and Julian Schnabel are considered to be the most identifiable American Neo-Expressionist creative persons. These creative persons use appropriation to make new images from history, pop civilization and modern-day art. By borrowing imagination from a assortment of beginnings, their graphics is set apart from work by other creative persons. What sets Salle and Schnabel apart is that they do non merely put the borrowed images into a montage but they redraw or repaint the images taking their ownership of the objects. They non merely make an image that looks new, they besides create artworks the emotionally experience different as good. David Salle deliberately and carefully topographic points images that â€Å" mention to plan, to older art, to current political events, to foreign civilizations, to movie noir and, above all, to the slippery terrain of human dealingss, particularly those between adult females and work forces. † Salle ‘s pictures are most frequently physically divided into two or more parts. His pictures are officially big nevertheless emotionally intimate. There is normally a background that interacts with overlying images. While the background is slightly quiet or filtered, the overlying images are brighter and bolder. Womans are a favourite topic. In his abstract pictures the original context seems to be really vague. In other words, even if you know where the original image was taken from, it does nil to assist understand the significance it takes in his diversion of it. It can be thwarting to the spectator to digest all the images of Salle ‘s art. The imagination is a changele ss conflict between big and little, painted and drawn, one colour and another, shut up and far off. For illustration in Salle ‘s picture, Tennyson, he is able to get married together figuration with pictural linguistic communication. As kind of court, Salle often incorporates images and objects found in Jasper John ‘s work, including the name â€Å" Tennyson. † He besides uses a readymade object ( wooden ear ) to perchance cite John ‘s, Target with Plaster Casts † 1955. I instantly question the significance of the stick outing ear to the connexion of the rubric. The out of use letters across the picture perplex the enigma of the ear by spelling out the name of a Victorian poet. The wooden alleviation of the ear bids your attending over the picture of the bare adult female. The female figure lies in a field of a chocolate-brown xanthous colour. The colour field is interrupted by spots of greenish blue and ruddy which seem to border the out of use letters. The ear is placed in the upper right manus corner and is framed and highlighted by the bold spot o f greenish blue. The ear seems to be listening to the rubric of the picture. There is a sense of wrongness given by the bold picture of the poets name across the organic structure of the bare female. The first two missive of the rubric are painted different colourss. This suggests importance of the remainder of the letters. Is the ear hearing to the rubric as a whole or merely listening to â€Å" T†¦ Tocopherol†¦ † ? If so, how is it related to sensualness of the bare female? As with many other of Salle ‘s artworks the inquiries provoked are without simple replies. Salle appropriates images because he is attracted to them and insists that there is no narrative to them. He chooses images based by the temper of the scene and it is temper that he is after in his ain picture. Although his disconnected imagination does non ever seem to add up as a whole, he is still able to put an implicit in temper between the images. Much like David Salle, Julian Schnabel ‘s work draws on a broad assortment of beginnings and stuffs. Schnabel besides normally uses the technique of overlapping images and multiple canvases like Salle. Formally, his pictures are tremendous and over painted with heavy pigments. Schnabel chooses to picture images appropriated from bing art and the mass media which besides included attaching existent objects to his canvases. He seems to desire his pictures to do contact with the outer universe by presenting existent things and existent topics. His attack is non to arise against art of the past and alternatively to unite past manners. His combinative attack became his chief manner of picture. In contrast to Salle ‘s thoughts that self-expression is inappropriate, Schnabel ‘s holds high respect to non merely appropriation of imagination but besides to self-expression in his plant. He often features spiritual and, in peculiar, Catholic iconography and subjects. He wants to undertake issues of life and decease, agony, spiritualty, as in Exile,1980. Schnabel is drawn to the Baroque manner of picture and derives imagination from it. In the picture named Exile, a immature adult male is keeping a basket of fruit. This is a copied image from Caravaggio, Boy with a Basket of Fruit, 1594. The other piece of imagination is from a kid ‘s amusing book. These combined images are presumed to pull on the analogues between the Italian creative person ‘s isolation and his ain in downtown NY. Antlers are absolutely positioned on the canvas. The â€Å" utilize the antlers non to disjoin the surface of the picture as the home bases do but to add another distinguishable component of pulling to the composing. If cubism can be understood as the effort to capture 3-dimensional infinite on a planar surface, so Schnabel ‘s pictures seek to change by reversal that procedure. † ( 2 ) Merely as Salle was successful in impairing figuration with pictural linguistic communication, Schnabel ‘s success came with blending saintly subjects with a sign technique. Neo-expressionists as a whole are brave, bold and make bolding. Formally the pictures are typically big and are rapidly executed. They feel free to paint their ain desires, memories and frights. They detested the impression of painting â€Å" about nil. † Neo-expressionism brought back the romantic topics and traditional signifiers. Their ends were to make emotionality of narrative and historical content. Another common land shared between Italian, German and American creative persons is their ability to intermix tradition and invention, history and current events, emotion and look. What begins to put them apart is that creative persons tended to pay most attending to their ain heritage. â€Å" Peoples have withdrawn into their ain histories to seek to happen meaningsaˆÂ ¦ When Italians and Germans go back into their history, they ‘re traveling back to their strengths. A batch of Americans are traveling back to their beginnings excessively † ( 3 ) Although Neo-expressionism art can non be classified as holding merely one expression, the nationalities of the creative persons are reflected in their work. Anselm Kiefer borrows from Germany ‘s history, mythology and romantic symbols with work such as Nigrede, 1984. In the tremendous picture Kiefer expresses the centuries of struggle and desolation that occurred on German dirt. The canvas is enourmous in graduated table with a textured surface of straw and lead. American creative persons were besides bring forthing art along the same pathways nevertheless the procedures of allowing images were different. American painter Eric Fischl produced plants that distinctively have American mentions as in Fischl ‘s Dining Room, Scene 2, 2003. Transavantguardia creative person Mimmo Paladino, conveys the subject of life and decease through crude images by the usage of fables and myths as motives. For illustration in Baal, 1986, he paints an ancient Phoenician myth. The myths of his heritage are spirits that â€Å" have the signifier of the human being, and they control the life, aging, unwellness and decease of adult male with their mighty ruling power over nature. † ( 4 )

Key Skills of Management Essay

1. Introduction In this essay I have attempted to describe the key skills of management, in my opinion, and how working with others can develop them. I have drawn on my own experiences as a manager and reinforced my answers with research from the internet and other reference sources. There are various skills needed for good management, some skills are learned others are instilled as a part of that person’s nature. Within this essay I discuss these skills and the importance of good management behaviour. 2. Key skills – my viewpoint I manage four teams, each consisting of 15 members of staff. Within each team is a supervisor whose task is to monitor the running of the operation line and to inform me of any deviation from the norm. I am privileged enough to have a support team of a quality facilitator, two fitters, an electrician and a process engineer, who I direct to assist with the events of the day. Enthusiasm and motivation I am enthusiastic and self-motivated; I maintain this through seeing issues as a challenge and an opportunity to test my skills. If I am enthusiastic then my staff will be encouraged to be motivated too, ‘It’s hard to be productive without enthusiasm.’ (Gates B) Henri Fayol states that there are fourteen principles of management. In principle number seven (Remuneration) Fayol argues that ‘Workers must be paid sufficiently as this is a chief motivation of employees and therefore greatly influences productivity.’ I personally do not feel that this is a chief motivation even though it is a factor but that job satisfaction and also a sense of belonging are greater influences in productivity. Communication I believe it is important to have a pre-shift meeting with the supervisors and run through what is planned for the day. Any concerns are raised prior to the start of the shift, so we have a clear direction of how we are going to achieve these goals. I try to keep meetings informative, constructive yet light and brisk. I feel it is important that we start the day with a can-do attitude. It is important to me that the delivery of any communication is clear, precise and accurate. Communication works two ways and I feel that we only learn by listening. I operate an open door policy, where any member of staff at any level can speak to me. Encouraging growth of people and business I want to encourage growth within the company; in order to do this I develop people by encouraging them to learn new skills and keep up-to-date with processes on the line. The rotation of staff within the production line not only benefits the operator with skills and self worth but also protects the company when manning levels are low. Control of production is constantly developing and shifts with new products, technology and tools. Clear instruction is given to staff to embrace and use these as a way forward for the success of the company and maintain our position as leaders in the world market. Following policies I follow the company policies in all aspects of my work and with discipline. I feel I am firm but fair; I nip things in the bud and deal with conflict in a calm, mature and professional manner. I am trustworthy and always deal with matters with integrity. Respect Respect plays an important role in getting results from staff. I respect everyone and work hard to earn respect from my staff by being a team player and not taking my role for granted. I have worked on every process on each line to different skill levels and am aware of the requirements of each job. I would never expect any member of staff to complete a task I would not do myself. Understanding customers It is important to understand the expectations of customers, to achieve these within the budget and on time. In order to achieve this we work closely to a plan, delivering on time and in full (OTIF). Feedback It is important that recognition is given on a regular basis to staff that are doing well and like wise, support is given to staff who find things a struggle. It is easier to rectify any non-conformance at the very beginning than letting bad habits form. The ability to explain things that are incorrect and how to rectify them is an important management quality. Resolving issues Whenever a major problem comes to light, I tend to bring key skilled personnel such as quality facilitators, department manager, shift manager, manufacturing supervisors, process engineers, fitters, electricians or operators into a brain storming session. We utilise the skills we have developed and use management tools such as, the ‘Ishikawa diagram’, or known to myself as the ‘Fishbone diagram’. Each personnel would have a valuable input using the knowledge that they have obtained from their own perspective. Cause Cause Cause Cause Cause Figure 1: Fishbone diagram as based on the original by Kaoru Ishikawa. In these sessions, we systematically work through inputs that could cause the effect that we see and then place a frame around the problem to find out what is, and is not a possible factor. Further investigation is made into these probable causes until the root of the issue is found. It is extremely important to use all of the skills at hand to have a complete overview. 3. Conclusion Throughout this essay I have explored the use of what are in my opinion, the most important skills to have as a manager. It is not intended as an exhaustive list, but a sample of the many ways people manage. In my opinion the most important skills of management are being able to project manage and coordinate while also having leadership qualities, or personable skills. In the words of John C Maxwell, â€Å"Anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.† Within this essay I have explored the nature of the key skills and have shown that in working together with staff, results can be achieved by following these rules.

Propery Law Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Propery Law - Case Study Example Mr. Jackson bought the property without even seeing it before payment was made. He relied entirely on Alex and Rogers Co. to advise him on his purchase from Damian Brown and the internet sales photographs and details of the property. Alex completed the transaction on his behalf over the summer. While Alex and Mr. Anderson were out in their office, Mr. Jackson went to their office and made a complaint over the property he bought. The secretary of Mr.Anderson wrote down the following complaints of Mr.Jackson. He is horrified to find several serious problems at the property of which he was totally unaware until now:- Jeremy Smith (son of new neighbour Mrs Smith) seems to have taken over 5 acres of the land belonging to Glebe House (and now to Mr Jackson) and is treating it as it as his own. He says he has done so for years and has no intention of stopping. Mrs Smith is complaining about the fact that Mr Jackson has applied for planning permission to change Glebe House into a conference centre and says that it is in breach of a covenant entered into several years ago between her father and Mr Brown whereby Glebe house and land were transferred on condition that there would be no business use on the property. A note was pushed through the letter box at Glebe House from a "Cheryl Armitage" claiming to be Damion Brown's fiance and wanting the return of her "investment" in Glebe House forthwith. She is contacting her solicitor. Valuable items have been taken from the property ( presumably by the seller) including: -Valuable artwork depicting the history of Glebe house -A set of garden statues -Kitchen display wall cabinets forming part of the fitted Kitchen 1) What are the rights of Mr. Anderson over the property 2) What are the liabilities, if any, of Alex and Mr. Anderson in this case 3) What are the effects of the covenant between Mrs. Smith's father and Mr. Damian Brown and the claim of Mr. Brown's fiance over the rights of Mr. Anderson over the property Answer: For us to give an answer to the issues of the question, let us first take an overview of the property law in the United Kingdom where the facts of the question arose. The right to property One of the fundamental rights afforded for the citizens of the United Kingdom is the property right which can be defined as the right to own, possess, use, enjoy, and dispose property. The term property includes but is not limited to movable properties such as cars and clothing, and immovable properties such as lands, land and buildings or land and house. Though fundamental by nature, the right to property is only a statutory right, which means that the exercise of this right is subject to existing laws of the State where this right is provided. The exercise of this right was mostly based from common law jurisdictions that were prevalent during the ancient times at the United Kingdom. Though statutory laws are now in effect, common law are still useful most especially in property issues where no statutory bases are readily available just like purchase of property through the internet. Relevant to this right is the purchase of real property. Purchase or "buying", is a traditional way of owing a real property such as land or house. When a person purchases or buys a property, he is given the absolute right or title

Steamboal Bill. Jr Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Steamboal Bill. Jr - Movie Review Example This movie is a silent comedy thriller produced in 1928 by Charles Reisner featuring Buster Keaton and he has written the story along with Carl Harbaugh. It is a story about William Canfield (Steamboat Bill) who is a captain owning ship and is awaiting his son to come and join his business who has finished his graduation. But to his dismay, his son arrives with his lover who is the daughter of his business rival King. Steamboat gets jailed for misconduct and his son tries to save him from jail but end up in the middle of the cyclone storm. The storm strikes down building and the wind buffet Steamboat bill Jr. He takes shelter under a tree and it gets uprooted and he land up at the waterfront. Then he gets chance to show his manlihood and ends the rivalry between William and King and save all of them from the accident. The story has a theme of rivalry and triumph of a son. The story has a focus on the rivalry between Canfield and King and which led both the people in trouble. This is also the reason why Canfield hesitates for the marriage between his son and lover. The other theme being the delicate triumph of son over his father where he saves his father and his rival from an accident. It is good to see that the movie has lush scenery which makes the movie a pleasant watch. The movie has a good measure of sympathy and suspense. The different episodes of the movie are depicted discreetly and this enhances the drama of the movie. The special effects of the movie are note worthy as the picturization of storm was technically flawless. It was realistic and added to the technical quality of the movie. The stunts and special effects were inventive and wildly inventive. The Keaton played as a good protagonist with his athletic expression and comedic physicality. Keaton’s stunt shots are immortal .The movie had romance, action and humor. The camera angles of the movie were interesting and there was an innovative

Current Issues in Finance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Current Issues in Finance - Essay Example As the paper highlights not to miss mentioning is the news of UK Prudential closing $35.5B takeover bid of AIG Asian due to pressure from the shareholders to lower the bid asking rate by $30B. Market was not in favor of clinching the deal, as after cancelling the deal, Prudential’s shares rose by 6.3% on Tuesday. At the same time, the ending of the takeover bid was a blow to the AIG efforts to pay back the loan of $132 billion to the Treasury from the proceeds of the sale to Prudential, which was taken to save the AIG from collapsing from the financial crisis in 2008. This discussion outlines that there could be a number of reasons attributed to a merger or acquisition wherein payment is made through stock. Companies are acquired with the aim of safer income streams, as cost of debt could be very high and banks won’t be forthcoming with the offer of reduced rate of interests. Mergers where price/earning ratio (P/E) is very high are not welcomed because of the fear of loss of income over share price. If a company’s stocks are an all-time high, in stead of paying cash it offers its new stock shares. But sometimes it becomes all the more difficult for the buyer company to evaluate the target company as the stock price of the target company rises due to the possibility of merger bid. Answers to the above questions can be reached at by analysing the cases of acquisitions and mergers in the literature in the recent past on the financial and valuation aspects of such acquisitions and mergers. There could be number of motives behind an acqui sition. Diversification in a different line of business has been an aim to be achieved through acquisition.

Non-Native English Speakers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Non-Native English Speakers - Essay Example People can still do much better or complement a lack of language mastery through other non-verbal means, and a world which has seen a large number of people move from one country to another through a process of immigration made language learning an essential ingredient for success to a lot of people. But this does not mean that those who cannot speak the language perfectly cannot get their message across, as other means are available in order to communicate. An example of this situation is when a person is learning how to speak and write English to be like a native speaker. The discovery of America triggered probably one of the largest waves of immigration in the history of people's movement. This period is called as the Age of Immigration, in which some 32 million people moved from Europe to America between the years 1820 to 1920 for a variety of reasons (Pakenham, 1998:64) and this trend of people moving out from their countries to another country even continues to this day. Among the reasons are to seek political asylum to avoid persecution and repression, pursue economic opportunities, as migrants seeking to improve their lives, for inter-racial marriages and as globalization in trade and commerce has increased, for investment and business opportunities as well. Modern forms of travel have greatly contributed to this massive movement of people, such as in the global tourism sector. Discussion This massive movement of people across different countries and varied cultures requires the use of a common language for them to communicate and understand each other. By virtue of being a world power, England earlier and then America later, English has become almost the accepted standard for global communications, called as the lingua franca (as it is the virtual universal language used to bridge two people speaking entirely different mother tongues). In this connection, English, as spoken between them, may not be as perfect as native speakers. Be that as it may, Engl ish between these two persons can still be understood even if it is quite awkward or rudimentary, as long as the message gets across and the intent is understood. The requirement that English should be perfect is not absolute for people to understand. Further, it takes some time for full assimilation, together with the concomitant language shift; it explains why many people of today speak only imperfect English (ibid. 99). However, such limitations do not preclude people from successfully interacting with each other. This is true in the international arena of globalization in business, finance, trade, and commerce. This increased mixing and intermingling of people of various cultures have led to the cultural diversity we see in many countries today. This multicultural environment has placed people in close proximity with people of other cultures and many languages, leading to multi-ethnic societies in which the citizens of a country has to deal with ethnic immigrants in their midst. In this context, it is vital that people should still be able to communicate and get along fairly well, even in elementary ways so that they could understand each other and hold the fabric of society together.  

Describe an activity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Describe an activity - Essay Example h the questions that Cvitanic and Hoegerman (2013), Opinion Co-Editors of Daily Nexus, asked: â€Å"What can we learn [from these negative effects of our social activities]?† These beach cleanups made me realize that, apart from school activities, community experiences contribute to my development as a global, environmental citizen, if I both learn how to ask questions and to offer answers through personal and collective action. Community interactions, especially through voluntary experiences, help me become a global citizen because I ask action-oriented actions and offer solutions and contribute to collective action. Sexuality is not wrong, but leaving behind litter because of its expression is. After finding numerous used and unused condoms, I thought about how irresponsible these people must be to have sex so openly and yet not minding their trash. Paul and Elder (1999) underscored the importance of asking questions in teaching, learning, and thinking. They said: â€Å"Questions define tasks, express problems and delineate issues.† Many of those who litter in Isla Vista are not only community members, but also outsiders. My questions go to all of us who partake in these community events are: How should global citizens inject responsibility into the meaning of â€Å"partying† in modern society? How can be nurture thinkers who ask their accountability for their community actions? Because of t hese cleanups, I realized the role of thinking in being responsible global citizens who visit and attend different community affairs. Apart from asking questions, these volunteer experiences helped me offer personal solutions, while contributing to collective efforts. As I clean up, I reduce litter in the beach, and together with volunteers, we hopefully provide a model of good conduct to the community. These efforts contribute to my global citizenship by making me aware of my connection to others through our oneness in the community. Apart from global citizenship, I learned

The Bicycle Thief 1948 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Bicycle Thief 1948 - Essay Example In this way, a social commentary is housed within what one might otherwise see as a simple story of loss and redemption. It is necessary to note, prior to examining such constructs, that the subject matter was born out of two primary factors which will be discussed at some length within this essay: the destruction and hardships that the Second World War had affected on Italians and the recent freedom of expression that had been granted due to the demise of the fascist party in Italy. Upon the conclusion of the Second World War, Italy, like much of the rest of Europe, lay in ruins. The infrastructure was effectively paralyzed, severely damaged, and outdated. Similarly, the nation’s economy experienced a period of extreme high unemployment, rapid and prolonged inflation, and a series of unstable political unions that existed shortly after the war. In this way, the time in which the film was created has an extremely important bearing on the way in which the material is presented in the subject matter which his discussed as a function of the influences that have been mentioned. The effects of these factors of course cannot be underemphasized with relation to the way in which the subject matter is dealt with. ... Artists during the post World War I years also sought to develop new mediums and new forms of expression to engage their audience with the new â€Å"realities† that faced the world as a result of the loss of innocence and industrial carnage that defined such a struggle. In this way, directors such as Vittorio De Sica sought to express the realities that greeted Italians in the post-war era in a way that directors of previous films had not engaged. Rather than focusing on a noble struggle that defines a hero through power of will and acknowledgement of a higher ideal, the viewer is greeted with a character that is merely trying to make ends meet for his family. Therefore, the action and drama is concentric around the daily struggle that the common man faces as a result of the surroundings in which he is placed. Although this model itself is not greatly different from the other models of analysis which previous and successive film directors have chosen to employ, it is noteworth y due to the fact that the action is concentric upon the humble worker who is struggling to survive the situation that has been placed upon him and his family. Although the effect of the devastation and near collapse of society cannot be underestimated or understated, it should also be noted that the Italian directors of the time experienced a different type of stimuli than many of the other European post-war directors (Ben-Ghiat 109). This was the result of the fact that during the Fascist regime that had ruled Italy for over 20 years, all art forms were brought under the dominance and supervision of the fascist regime. As such, writers, artists, and filmmakers, as well as a host of others, were

Unit 3&4 Micro Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Unit 3 Micro - Assignment Example The lowest sales tax in the US is 4.5% in Hawaii and Portland, Oregon, while Anchorage in Alaska does not have any kind of sales tax. What this shows is the rest of the country could pay between 4.5 and 10% showing that sales tax is only part the overall tax structure where, for example, states such as Washington has a sales tax, but it does not have income tax. The table in the appendix shows what kind of sales tax Americans living in the various states are paying showing that the average tax rate could approach 8% and could be considered high (Tax Foundation, 2012). Another indicator to look at might be the US had $558 billion trade deficit with the outside world in 2011 showing that the nation is importing more than it is exporting that reveals there could be foreign made goods flooding the US market. The deficit with China alone accused of flooding the US market with goods made using cheap labor was at $295.5 billion in 1911. Other sign that Americans are buying more foreign made goods is the manufacturing jobs in the US are disappearing where in 10 years alone 5 million manufacturing jobs might have disappeared. The trade imbalance the US had that was 7 times more than any other nation shows that the American consumers are buying foreign goods more than any other nation. Buying foreign goods hits hard on the local manufacturing where in the US alone, on average 15 manufacturing facilities were closing everyday for the last ten years showing that imported goods had replaced goods produced by such manufacturers. The outcome of heavily relying on foreign made goods had been that at least more than 41% of working age Americans do not have decent jobs, while the majority of new created jobs are low-tech and low-paying. When looking at figures like this it is possible to say that there are many imported goods in the US economy, to the point

Pateint Non Transport Guidlines Ambulance Essay Example for Free

Pateint Non Transport Guidlines Ambulance Essay Comprehensive documentation provides a defence for Paramedics in a very contentious world. Without documentation, it is very hard to show that something occurred. Thorough timely documentation and the use of the VIRCA method should not be seen as additional and unnecessary paperwork. Instead, it should offer the Paramedic some peace of mind. It has been established at law that a Paramedic owes a duty of care to their patient. The QAS as an organization also owes its patients a duty of care. As such, it is vital that the QAS perform their job professionally and correctly. This is because once a duty of care is established; the QAS has to ensure that they do not breach that duty. Virca Does not apply to case where transport is not required, but the documentation still needs to be completed with all Patient details and applied management and advice given. Patients who refuse transport. There is still a concern amongst Paramedics that they have no defence against negligence apart from transporting every person they attend. In some instances this has not been the case. Documentation provides a defence; and as such, documentation is an integral part of the treatment for each patient a Paramedic attends. It is an established legal truism that a person of sound mind has the right to self-determination; they can choose what is done (or not done) to their body. The voluntary choices and decisions of an adult person of sound mind concerning what is or is not done to their body, must be respected and accepted, irrespective of what others, including doctors, may think is in the best interests of that particular person. The difficulty arises when there is doubt over whether a person is of sound mind. However, in cases where the person does have an adequate mental capacity, a patient does have the right not to be transported. As such, Paramedics need not fear the worst if they are faced with a patient who refuses transport. Instead, they need to have a good understanding of the legal principles behind patients who refuse transport, and its correct documentation. This leads to the next section. Method for Correct Documentation for Non-Transport E-ARF’s – VIRCA The correct method for documentation where a patient refuses transport is to use the VIRCA acronym. V – Refusal must be made voluntarily. I – Pt must be informed of their condition, and risks associated with that condition if they are not transported. R – Refusal must be made relevant to the circumstances. C – Pt must have the capacity to refuse. A – Pt must be provided with sound discharge advice. Every time a Paramedic attends a patient who refuses transport, it is necessary to document that fact by using the VIRCA method. Each element needs to be addressed separately and applied to the particular circumstances of the individual case. How to Integrate Patient Assessment and VIRCA. Having examined each element, there is a need to look at the big picture of patient treatment where the patient refuses transport. As per a memorandum from the Commissioner, a Paramedic should: 1. Assess the patient systematically whenever possible. Of course, sometimes a patient may be aggressively non-compliant, and a full assessment will not be possible. However, even from distant observation a Paramedic should be able to assess some areas. For example, obvious external haemorrhage, incontinence, inappropriate behaviour or language, forced respirations can all be obtained from a patient at a distance. All these findings need to be documented. If possible, try to establish a provisional diagnosis from these findings. Also, don’t forget to obtain history from the patient’s friends, QPS, or from bystanders. They may be able to give a Paramedic a very useful rundown of events, which can help in assessing the patient’s condition. Advise the patient. Inform the patient of your clinical findings, and suggest to them your provisional and differential diagnoses. Make sure they understand the information you are providing them with, as this forms part of the assessment of their capacity to refuse treatment and/or transport. The next step is to inform the patient of the potential risks inherent in them not being transported to a medical facility. It is important to be realistic, or the patient may not believe you. It is very rare, that people will die for trivial complaints but this may cause the patient to doubt your credibility if you seem to over communicate the condition they have if only minor. It is better to provide the patient with more realistic examples of what may happen, and then conclude with the possibility, even if unlikely, that paralysis or death may result. Please note that if a injury or illness may lead to death, however unlikely, then you must inform the patient of this. The point is to be sensible when explaining it, or the impact may be wasted, and the seriousness of the situation be replaced with incredibility. 3. Assess the Validity of the Refusal. To assess the refusals validity, simply apply the VIRCA acronym. Other Alternatives. If the patient is not compliant with the advice of QAS officers, consider other alternatives. If the patient will not go to a hospital, does he have a family doctor that will come to see him? Could family members be used to help convince the patient of the necessity to receive transport? If necessary, consider the use of QPS in assisting with transport, especially patients that may come under the Mental Health Act provisions. Document thoroughly using VIRCA. Having completed all other steps, it is now necessary to document all the above steps to paper. Complete an E-ARF as per the CPM guidelines, including a provisional diagnosis. The E-ARF should be completed with the same care as for any other patient, notwithstanding that the patient may have already left the scene. Include in the E ARF each of the VIRCA steps, and apply them to the circumstances of the case. See the applied example in the next section for a practical application of this.

Kant Euthanasia Essay Example for Free

Kant Euthanasia Essay Based on Kants theory, I have found suicide morally unjust. This case is about euthanasia and assisted suicide. On September 28, 1991, Dr. Boudewijn Chabot administered a sufficient amount of sleeping pills and a liquid drug mixture to a patient with the intentions of assisting the patient with death. The patient, Hilly Bosscher, was suffering from depression, and psychological pain. She was recently divorced from a 25 year abusive relationship, and her two sons had died. The doctor determined she suffered from unbearable pain, genuinely desired to die, and freely and competently made such a request. On the same day Dr. Chabot administered the medicine, Hilly took the concoction, and died. In Deontology, the term itself leads us to the study of duty. Duty for Kant is the underlying role of morality. Our duty and intentions combine to form our will, and the only one thing in the world that is good is a good will. To act according to duty means we are acting according to principals, not according to the final outcome of our actions. Principals is another important factor in this theory, our actions must be congruent with principals that can be made universal. To be universal, the maxim must apply to absolutely everyone, everywhere, and anytime. Another stipulation in Kants theory is that we should never treat a person solely as a means to our own ends. It is morally wrong to use someone solely to enhance our own self-interest. The idea of universalizability strongly suits this case. To universalize the patients individual maxim, we would see that most if not all will find suicide morally justifiable because everyone at times may feel depressed. At this point, we look at the duty to preserve life at all costs, and find we cannot universalize the patients maxim. Kant was tempted with this maxim, but his will finds it immoral. He once said, I still have strength enough to take my life, but I hold this to be immoral. Whoever deprives himself of life is a beast? The extreme idea of suicide also looks at self-love. She wants to feel better, so she thinks death will accomplish this. The problem here is with death, you dont feel anything anymore. Another angle on this case looks at the patient using the doctor as a means to an end. Her intentions in going to the doctor were solely as a means to self enhancement. She was using him to help herself die, and this is morally unjust. One weakness I find in this theory is that of the doctors duty. A doctor has a duty to minimize suffering. To minimize the patients suffering, he is morally just in assisting her to accomplish death.

Quantization process

Quantization process Quantization is a process of mapping an infinite set of scalar or vector quantities by a finite set of scalar or vector quantities. Quantization has applications in the areas of signal processing, speech processing and Image processing. In speech coding, quantization is required to reduce the number of bits used for representing a sample of speech signal there by the bit-rate, complexity and memory requirement can be reduced. Quantization results in the loss in the quality of a speech signal, which is undesirable. So a compromise must be made between the reduction in bit-rate and the quality of speech signal. Two types of quantization techniques exist they are: scalar quantization and vector quantization. Scalar quantization deals with the quantization of samples on a sample by sample basis, while vector quantization deals with quantizing the samples in groups called vectors. Vector quantization increases the optimality of a quantizer at the cost of increased computational complexity and memory requirements. Shannon theory states that quantizing a vector will be more effective than quantizing individual scalar values in terms of spectral distortion. According to Shannon the dimension of a vector chosen greatly affects the performance of quantization. Vectors of larger dimension produce better quality when compared to vectors of smaller dimension and in vectors of smaller dimension the transparency in the quantization is not good at a particular bit-rate chosen [8]. This is because in vectors of smaller dimension the correlation that exists between the samples will be lost and the scalar quantization itself destroys the correlation that exists between successive samples so the quality of the quantized speech signal will be lost. Therefore, quantizing correlated data requires techniques that preserve the correlation between the samples, such a technique is the vector quantization technique (VQ). Vector quantization is the simplification of scalar quantization. Vectors of larger dimension produce transparency in quantization at a particular bit-rate chosen. In Vector quantization the data is quantized in the form of contiguous blocks called vectors rather than individual samples. But later with the development of better coding techniques, it is made possible that transparency in quantization can also be achieved even for vectors of smaller dimension. In this thesis quantization is performed on vectors of full length and on vectors of smaller dimensions for a given bit-rate [4, 50]. An example of 2-dimensional vector quantizer is shown in Fig 4.1. The 2-dimensional region shown in Fig 4.1 is called as the voronoi region, which in turn contains several numbers of small hexagonal regions. The hexagonal regions defined by the blue borders are called as the encoding regions. The green dots represent the vectors to be quantized which fall in different hexagonal regions and the red dots represent the codewords (centroids). The vectors (green dots) falling in a particular hexagonal region can be best represented by the codeword (red dot) falling in that hexagonal region [51-54]. Vector quantization technique has become a great tool with the development of non variational design algorithms like the Linde, Buzo, Gray (LBG) algorithm. On the other hand besides spectral distortion the vector quantizer is having its own limitations like the computational complexity and memory requirements required for the searching and storing of the codebooks. For applications requiring higher bit-rates the computational complexity and memory requirements increases exponentially. The block diagram of a vector quantizer is shown in Fig 4.2. Let be an N dimensional vector with real valued samples in the range. The superscript T in the vector denotes the transpose of the vector. In vector quantization, a real valued N dimensional input vector is matched with the real valued N dimensional codewords of the codebook Ci , the codeword that best matches the input vector with lowest distortion is taken and the input vector is replaced by it. The codebook consists of a finite set of codewords C=Ci,, where , where C is the codebook, L is the length of the codebook and Ci denote the ith codeword in a codebook. In LPC coding the high bit-rate input vectors are replaced by the low bit-rate codewords of the codebook. The parameters used for quantization are the line spectral frequencies (LSF). The parameters used in the analysis and synthesis of the speech signals are the LPC coefficients. In speech coding the quantization is not performed directly on the LPC coefficients, the quantization is performed by transforming the LPC coefficients to other forms which ensure filter stability after quantization. Another reason for not using LPC coefficients is that, LPC coefficients have a wide dynamic range and so the LPC filter easily becomes unstable after quantization. So LPC coefficients are not used for quantization. The alternative to LPC coefficients is the use of line spectral frequency (LSF) parameters which ensure filter stability after quantization. The filter stability can be checked easily just by observing the order of the LSF samples in an LSF vector after quantization. If the LSF samples in a vector are in the ascending or descending order the filter stability can be ensured otherwise the filter stability cannot be ensured [54-58]. The angular positions of the roots of and gives us the line spectral frequencies and occurs in complex conjugate pairs. The line spectral frequencies range from. The line spectral frequencies have the following properties: Ø All the roots of and must lie on the unit circle which is the required condition for stability. Ø The roots of and are arranged in an alternate manner on the unit circle i.e., The roots of equation (4.6) can be obtained using the real root method [31] and is The coefficients of equations (4.6) and (4.7) are symmetrical and so the order p of equations (4.6) and (4.7) get reduces to p/2. Vector quantization of speech signals requires the generation of codebooks. The codebooks are designed using an iterative algorithm called Linde, Buzo and Gray (LBG) algorithm. The input to the LBG algorithm is a training sequence. The training sequence is the concatenation of a set LSF vectors obtained from people of different groups and of different ages. The speech signals used to obtain training sequence must be free of background noise. The speech signals used for this purpose can be recorded in sound proof booths, computer rooms and open environments. In this work the speech signals are recorded in computer rooms. In practice speech data bases like TIMIT database, YAHOO data base are available for use in speech coding and speech recognition. The codebook generation using LBG algorithm requires the generation of an initial codebook, which is the centroid or mean obtained from the training sequence. The centroid, so obtained is then splitted into two centroids or codewords using the splitting method. The iterative LBG algorithm splits these two codewords into four, four into eight and the process will be continued till the required numbers of codewords in the codebook are obtained [59-61]. The flow chart of LBG algorithm is shown in Fig 4.3. The LBG algorithm is properly implemented by a recursive procedure given below: 1. Initially the codebook generation requires a training sequence of LSF parameters which will be the input to LBG algorithm. The training sequence is obtained from a set of speech samples recorded from different groups of people in a computer room. 2. Let R be the region of the training sequence. 3. Obtain an initial codebook from the training sequence, which is the centroid or mean of the training sequence and let the initial codebook be C. 4. Split the initial codebook C into a set of codewords and where is the minimum error to be obtained between old and new codewords. 5. Compute the difference between the training sequence and each of the codewords and and let the difference be D. 6. Split the training sequence into two regions R1 and R2 depending on the difference D between the training sequence and the codewords and. The training vectors closer to falls in the region R1 and the training vectors closer to falls in the region R2. 7. Let the training vectors falling in the region R1 be TV1 and the training sequence vectors falling in the region R2 be TV2. 8. Obtain the new centroid or mean for TV1 and TV2. Let the new centroids be CR1 and CR2. 9. Replace the old centroids and by the new centroids CR1 and CR2. 10. Compute the difference between the training sequence and the new centroids CR1 and CR2 and Let the difference be . 11. Repeat steps 5 to 10 until . 12. Repeat steps 4 to 11 till the required number of codewords in the codebook are obtained. Where N=2b represents the number of codewords in the codebook and b represents the number of bits used for codebook generation. represents the difference between the training sequence and the old codewords, represents the difference between the training sequence and the new codewords. The quality of the speech signal is an important parameter in speech coders and is measured in terms of spectral distortion measured in decibels (dB). The spectral distortion is measured between the LPC power spectra of the quantized and unquantized speech signals. The spectral distortion is measured frame wise and the average or mean of the spectral distortion calculated over all frames will be taken as the final value of the spectral distortion. For a quantizer to be transparent the mean of the spectral distortion must be less than 1 dB without any audible distortion in the reconstructed speech. But the mean of the spectral distortion is not a sufficient measure to find the performance of a quantizer, this is because the human ear is sensitive to large quantization errors that occur occasionally. So in addition to measuring the mean of the spectral distortion it is also necessary to have another measure of quality which is the percentage number of frames having a spectral distorti on greater than 2dB and less than 4dB and the percentage number of frames having a spectral distortion greater than 4dB. The frames having spectral distortion between 2 to 4dB and greater than 4dB are called as outlier frames [54]. In order to measure objectively the distortion between the quantized and unquantized outputs, a method called the spectral distortion is often used in narrowband speech coding. For an ith frame the spectral distortion (in dB), is given by equation (4.19). (4.19) Where and are the LPC power spectra of the unquantized and quantized ith frame respectively. The frequency f is in Hz and the frequency range is given by f1 and f2. The frequency range used in practice for narrowband speech coding is 0-4000 Hz [12, 33]. The conditions for transparent speech coding are: Ø The average or mean of the spectral distortion (SD) must be less than or equal to 1dB. Ø There must be no outlier frames having a spectral distortion greater than 4dB. Ø The number of outlier frames between 2 to 4dB must be less than 2%. These three conditions are required to evaluate the performance of a quantizer. At a given bit-rate, an optimization process has to be carried out so as to obtain better performance i.e., accepting a large average spectral distortion for a few outliers. In the design of a vector quantizer instead of using the mean squared error (MSE) distance measure the weighted LSF distance measurement is used. This is done to place emphasis on the low frequency LSFs and on the LSFs with higher power spectrum. The weights used can be of two types they are: static or dynamic [54]. Ø Fixed or Static weights : These are used to place emphasis on the low frequency LSFs in order to account for the sensitivity of human ear for low and high frequency LSFs. Ø Varying or Dynamic weights : These are used to place emphasis on the LSFs with high power spectrum. There exist a number of vector quantization techniques each one is having its own advantages and disadvantages. Each technique is developed to decrease the parameters like spectral distortion, computational complexity and memory requirements. The vector quantization techniques that exist are the Split Vector Quantization (SVQ) technique, Multistage Vector Quantization (MSVQ) technique, Split-Multistage Vector Quantization (S-MSVQ) technique and Switched Split Vector Quantization (SSVQ) technique. As marketability and cost of a product depends on the complexity and memory requirements, the performance of the vector quantization techniques is measured in terms of spectral distortion in decibels, computational complexity in kilo flops per frame and memory requirements in floats. The performance of a vector quantization technique mainly depends on how efficiently the codebook is generated. The codebook can be generated efficiently using a large training set and using more number of bits for codebook generation. The goal involved in the design of each vector quantization technique is to make the technique to use more number of training vectors and less number of bits for codebook generation there by the spectral distortion, computational complexity and memory requirements can be reduced. It has been observed that as the number of bits used for codebook generation decreases the computational complexity and memory requirements decreases but the spectral distortion increases, this increase in spectral distortion can be reduced by increasing the number of training vectors used for codebook generation [62-71]. The block diagram of an Unconstrained Vector Quantizer (UVQ) is shown in Fig 4.4. Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique is the most awful vector quantization technique used for achieving lowest distortion at a given bit-rate and dimension. In LPC-10 the order of the filter chosen is 10 and so the length of each LSF vector will be 10. In Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique the quantization is done on vectors of full length i.e., using 10 samples of an LSF vector. From Fig 4.4 S1, S2, S3Sn are the input LSF vectors to be quantized using the Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. The main advantage of this vector quantization technique is that it is expected to give lowest quantization distortion at a given bit-rate as the correlation that exists between the samples of a vector is preserved. But the disadvantage with this quantization technique is that as vectors of full length are used, at higher bit-rates the computational complexity and memory requirements increases in an exponential manner making it impractical for applications requiring higher bit-rates. Another problem with this quantization technique is that at higher bit-rates the size of the codebook will be large and the generation of the codebook for this type of quantization technique will be difficult on general purpose computers as the memory available with them is limited. So the number of training vectors used for codebook generation must be limited in number or the length of each vector must be reduced. In practice on general purpose computers the codebook cannot be generated even with train ing vectors less than the number of codewords in a codebook at higher bit-rates. But the number of training vectors required to generate the codebook must be large than the number of codewords in a codebook otherwise there will be too much over fitting of the training set [54]. The computational complexity and memory requirements of a b bit, n dimensional vector quantizer are calculated as follows [54]: Ø To calculate the mean square error (MSE) between two vectors of n dimension, n subtractions, n multiplications and n-1 additions are required. So a total of 3n-1 flops are required. Ø To search a codebook of 2b code vectors, (3n-1)2b flops are required in addition to the minimum distortion search requiring 2b-1 flops. Ø So the number of computations made by a b bit, n dimensional vector quantizer is Total complexity = (3n-1)2b + 2b-1 = 3n2b-1 flops per vector. (4.24) In the computing the complexity each addition, multiplication and comparison is considered as one floating point operation. So a b bit n dimensional vector quantizer requires a codebook of 2b code vectors, it needs to store n2b floating point values, it computes 3n2b 1 flops per vector. Instead of the mean square error distance measure if weighted distance measure is used in the design of a vector quantizer the complexity increases from 3n2b 1 to 4n2b 1 flops per vector. The computational complexity of an Unconstrained Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.25) Where n is the dimension of the vector b is the number of bits allocated to the vector quantizer. The Memory requirements of an Unconstrained Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.26) Exhaustive search vector quantizers achieve lowest distortion at the expense of complexity and memory requirements at higher bit- rates. So to make the vector quantizers more practical for vectors of larger dimension and higher bit-rates structural constraints are imposed on the design of a vector quantizer or codebook. One way of achieving this is to decompose the codebook into a Cartesian product of smaller codebooks i.e., C = C1 * C2 * C3 . ..*Cm. The advantage with smaller codebooks is that the computational complexity and memory requirements can be reduced to a very great extent. This is because the number of bits used for codebook generation will be divided among the sets of the decomposed codebook [12, 18]. Examples of product code vector quantization techniques are Split Vector Quantization (SVQ), Multistage Vector Quantization (MSVQ), Split-Multistage Vector Quantization (S-MSVQ), Switched Split Vector Quantization (SSVQ). In this thesis two product code vector quantization techniques are proposed they are: Switched Multistage Vector Quantization (SWMSVQ) and Multi Switched Split Vector Quantization (MSSVQ) techniques [54, 72]. The main disadvantage of Unconstrained Vector Quantizer is that the complexity, memory requirements are very high and the generation of codebook is a very difficult task as vectors of full length are used for quantization without any structural constraint. As a result more number of training vectors and bits cannot be used for codebook generation. With these constraints the quantizer cannot produce better quality quantized outputs. So to improve the performance of Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique a well known technique called Split Vector Quantization has been developed. The concept behind Split Vector Quantization is that, in it vectors of larger dimensions are splitted into vectors of smaller dimensions and the bits allocated to the quantizer are divided among the splits (parts). Due to splitting the dimension of a vector gets decreased hence more number of training vectors and bits are used for codebook generation. As a result the performance of quantization is increas ed, the complexity and memory requirements are reduced. But the main disadvantage with this technique is that, due to splitting the linear and non linear dependencies that exist between the samples of a vector will be lost and the shape of the quantizer cells will be affected. As a result the spectral distortion increases slightly. This increase in spectral distortion can be compensated by increasing the number of training vectors and using more number of bits for codebook generation. The number of splits in this type of quantizer must be limited in number otherwise the vector quantizer will act as a scalar quantizer. In Split Vector Quantization the training sequence used for codebook generation will also be splitted into vectors of smaller dimension and each split of the training sequence is used to generate separate sub codebooks, there by independent vector quantizers exist and the bits must be allocated to each of them. As a result less number of bits will be available at each quantizer, the computational complexity and memory requirements gets reduced as they depend on the number of bits allocated to the quantizer and on the dimension of the vector to be quantized. The block diagram of a three part Split vector quantizer is shown in Fig 4.5. From Fig 4.5 it can be observed that a vector S1 of dimension n is quantized by splitting it into sub-vectors S11, S12, S13 of smaller dimensions. Each of these sub-vectors are quantized using their respective codebooks. In this work the order of the filter is taken as 10 and so the LSF vector contain 10 samples and these 10 samples are splitted into three parts of 3, 3, 4 samples [54, 73-75]. From results of Split Vector Quantization technique it is proved that the computational complexity and memory requirements gets decreased when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique. So Split Vector Quantization technique is superior to Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique in terms of the computational complexity and memory requirements. In a Split Vector Quantizer of n dimension, SP splits, operating at b bits per vector. The vector space Rn will be splitted into SP subspaces or splits or parts of lower dimension then the dimension of each subspace will be and . The number of independent quantizers will be equal to the number of splits and the bits used for quantization are divided among the splits and is . Where is the number of bits allocated to each vector quantizer. The computational complexity of a Split Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.27) Where ni is the dimension of a sub-vector in ith split bi is the number of bits allocated to the ith split of a quantizer sp is the number of splits. The Memory requirements of a Split Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.28) Multistage Vector Quantization is a modification of Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique. It is also called as Multistep, Residual or Cascaded Vector Quantization. Multistage Vector Quantization (MSVQ) technique preserves all the features of Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique and decreases the computational complexity, memory requirements and spectral distortion when compared to it. When compared to Split Vector Quantization technique, Multistage Vector Quantization technique shows significant improvement in the quality of the speech signal, by decreasing the spectral distortion, but at the expense of increased computational complexity and memory requirements. This is because Split Vector Quantization technique deals with vectors of lower dimensions while Unconstrained and Multistage Vector Quantization techniques deal with vectors of larger dimensions. So the complexity and memory requirements are less for Split Vector Quantization technique. Multistage Vector Quantizer is a cascaded connection of several vector quantizers, where the output of one stage is given as an input to the next stage and the bits used for quantization are divided among the stages connected in cascade [12, 14]. As a result the computational complexity and memory requirements get reduced when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. The generation of codebooks at different stages of a three stage MSVQ is shown in Fig 4.6. From Fig 4.6 it can be observed that the codebook at the first stage is generated by taking the training sequence as an input. At the second stage the codebook is generated using the quantization errors of the first stage, likewise the codebook at the third stage is generated using the quantization errors of the second stage. This process is continued for the required number of stages [76-80]. The block diagram of a three stage Multistage Vector Quantizer is shown in Fig 4.7. Its implementation requires the design of vector quantizers at each stage. In Multistage Vector Quantization the input vector s to be quantized is passed through the first stage of the vector quantizer so as to obtain the quantized version of the input vector i.e., . The quantization error or residual error at the first stage will be computed which is the difference of the input vector and the quantized version of the input vector. The quantization error at the first stage is given as an input to the vector quantizer of the second stage so as to obtain the quantized version of the error vector at the first stage i.e., . Likewise the quantization error at the second stage will be given as an input to the vector quantizer of the third stage so as to obtain the quantized version of the error vector at the second stage i.e., and this process can be continued for the required number of stages. Finally the decoder takes the indices Ii from each quantizer stage and adds the corresponding c odewords to obtain the quantized version of the input vector i.e., [54]. In a Multistage Vector Quantizer each stage acts as an independent vector quantizer and the total bits available for vector quantization will be divided among the stages. Then the complexity of a particular stage becomes, where bj is the number of bits allocated to the jth stage. This is less than the complexity of Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. Likewise the memory requirements at each stage are , which is less than the memory requirements of Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. The computational complexity of a Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.29) Where n is the dimension of the vector bj is the number of bits allocated to the jth stage P is the number of stages The Memory requirements of a Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.30) In order to improve the performance of Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques a hybrid product code vector quantization technique called Split-Multistage Vector Quantization technique has been developed. Split-Multistage Vector Quantization technique is a hybrid of Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques. At reasonable improvement in the quality of the output speech signal, Split-Multistage Vector Quantization technique provides the lowest spectral distortion, computational complexity and memory requirements when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantization, Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques [73-80]. The decrease in spectral distortion is due to summing of the quantized errors at each stage. In Split-Multistage Vector Quantization the dimension of the vectors to be quantized has been reduced by means of splitting. Likewise the bits used for quantization are also divided among the stages and among the splits of each stage. As a result the computational complexity and memory requirements get decreased when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantization, Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques. This is due to the decrease in the dimension of vectors, number of bits used for quantization at each stage and at each split of the vector quantizer. The generation of the codebooks at each stage of the Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is similar to the codebooks generation at each stage of the Multistage Vector Quantizer. But the difference is that each stage of the Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer involves the generation of several sub codebooks. The number of sub codebooks generated at each stage is equal to the number of splits at that stage. In this work, Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer with three parts (splits) and three stages have been developed. The performance of quantization depends on the number of stages and on the number of splits at each stage. As the number of stages increases the quality of the quantized output can be increased, but there must be a limit on the number of stages and on the number of splits at each stage as the number of bits at each stage is limited. The allocation of the bits at each stage is shown in Table 4.1 and the allocation of bits to each split of a stage is shown in Table 4.2. From Ta bles 4.1 and 4.2 it can be observed that the minimum number of bits at each stage with three parts must be at least three. So with three parts (splits) and three stages, in Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer the number of bits at a frame cannot be reduced below 9 bits. The block diagram of a Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer with three parts and three stages is shown in Fig 4.8. The block diagram is similar to three stage Multistage Vector Quantizer except for the splits at each stage. In Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer each split is treated as a separate vector quantizer and the vectors at each split are quantized independently. The quantization mechanism involved in Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is similar to the quantization mechanism involved in Multistage Vector Quantizer, except that in Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer at each stage the sub-vectors are quantized independently. Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is a hybrid of Split Vector Quantizer and Multistage Vector Quantizer. The equations for computational complexity and memory requirements are derived from the complexity and memory requirement equations of a Split Vector Quantizer and Multistage Vector Quantizer. Equations (4.31) and (4.32) below are obtained from the equations (4.29) and (4.30) by including the splits (SP) at each stage with a summation term having limits from 1 to SP. The computational complexity of a Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.31) Where nji is the dimension of a sub-vector in jth stage ith split bji is the number of bits allocated to the jth stage and ith split of a quantizer P is the number of stages sp is the number of splits. The Memory requirements of a Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.32) Switched Split Vector Quantization (SSVQ) is one of the latest vector quantization techniques and is developed to improve the performance of Split Vector Quantization technique. Switched Split Vector Quantization technique is a hybrid of Switch Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques and is used to exploit the linear and non linear dependencies that exist between the splits of a Split Vector Quantizer. In Switched Split Vector Quantizer initially the Switch Vector Quantizer partitions the entire vector space into voronoi regions and exploits the dependencies that exist across all dimensions of the vector space. Then a Split Vector Quantizer is designed for each of the voronoi regions. As a Split Vector Quantizer is adapted to the local statistics of the Voronoi region the sub optimalitys of the Split Vector Quantizer will be localized. In a Switched Split Vector Quantizer a number of vector quantizers are connected in parallel and it can be implemented in two wa ys: hard decision scheme and soft decision scheme. In hard decision scheme each vector to be quantized is quantized in only one of the codebooks connected in parallel, the selection of a codebook for quantization depends on the nearest codeword selected in the initial codebook. An initial codebook is one which is designed for the selection of a switch. The initial codebook is generated by the training vectors used for the generation of the codebooks at the vector quantizers connected in parallel. The number of codewords or centroids in the initial codebook is equal to the number of switches chosen or number of codebooks connected in parallel and these centroids are used to form the Switch Vector Quantizer. In soft decision sc

Wilhelm Reich Essay -- Biography Bio

Wilhelm Reich was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on March 24th, 1897. His parents were farmers, and at a young age Reich developed a fascination with the life processes of plants and animals. His formal education at this time was provided by a private tutor. When Reich was 14, he discovered his mother was having an affair with his tutor. After Reich reported this to his father, his mother committed suicide. Atwood and Stolorow (1977) have speculated that this tragedy may have contributed to Reich's most significant theories. After the death of his father three years later, Reich took over the family farm until it was destroyed by the Russians in 1915. At that time he joined the Austrian Army. Upon returning from the war, Reich traveled to Vienna to study medicine at the University. In 1922 he received his medical degree. That same year, Freud organized the Psychoanalytic-Polyclinic and appointed Reich the first assistant physician. Over the next few years, Reich was appointed to the teaching staff of the Psycholoanalytic Institute. He married and had two daughters. During this time he became increasingly convinced of the absolute significance of sexuality in the lives of individuals and society. He believed that social institutions, the family in particular, forced their members to repress natural sexual energy. Consequently, this energy builds up inside these repressed individuals. With no socially acceptable outlet, the build-up becomes intolerable and manifests itself in neuroses. Reich believed the way this energy was intended to be released was through orgasm. However, he contended that orgasm alone was not sufficient in and of itself to release all the excess energy stored by an individual. A person must be ... ...colleagues were also renting and selling orgone accumulators to physicians who were prescribing them to patients for therapeutic purposes. It was this activity which led to an injuction against Reich being filed by the Food and Drug Administration in 1954. The FDA charged that orgone energy accumulators were fraudulent medical devices, that orgone energy did not exist, and that all literature concerning orgone energy should be burned. Additionally, they prohibited Reich from transporting the accumulators across state lines. In 1955, official contempt charges were placed against Reich and Dr. Michael Silvert after Silvert continued to distribute the accumulators out of state. Both were tried in a criminal court, found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment. Reich never finished his prison term; he died on November 3, 1957 in a penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Wilhelm Reich Essay -- Biography Bio Wilhelm Reich was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on March 24th, 1897. His parents were farmers, and at a young age Reich developed a fascination with the life processes of plants and animals. His formal education at this time was provided by a private tutor. When Reich was 14, he discovered his mother was having an affair with his tutor. After Reich reported this to his father, his mother committed suicide. Atwood and Stolorow (1977) have speculated that this tragedy may have contributed to Reich's most significant theories. After the death of his father three years later, Reich took over the family farm until it was destroyed by the Russians in 1915. At that time he joined the Austrian Army. Upon returning from the war, Reich traveled to Vienna to study medicine at the University. In 1922 he received his medical degree. That same year, Freud organized the Psychoanalytic-Polyclinic and appointed Reich the first assistant physician. Over the next few years, Reich was appointed to the teaching staff of the Psycholoanalytic Institute. He married and had two daughters. During this time he became increasingly convinced of the absolute significance of sexuality in the lives of individuals and society. He believed that social institutions, the family in particular, forced their members to repress natural sexual energy. Consequently, this energy builds up inside these repressed individuals. With no socially acceptable outlet, the build-up becomes intolerable and manifests itself in neuroses. Reich believed the way this energy was intended to be released was through orgasm. However, he contended that orgasm alone was not sufficient in and of itself to release all the excess energy stored by an individual. A person must be ... ...colleagues were also renting and selling orgone accumulators to physicians who were prescribing them to patients for therapeutic purposes. It was this activity which led to an injuction against Reich being filed by the Food and Drug Administration in 1954. The FDA charged that orgone energy accumulators were fraudulent medical devices, that orgone energy did not exist, and that all literature concerning orgone energy should be burned. Additionally, they prohibited Reich from transporting the accumulators across state lines. In 1955, official contempt charges were placed against Reich and Dr. Michael Silvert after Silvert continued to distribute the accumulators out of state. Both were tried in a criminal court, found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment. Reich never finished his prison term; he died on November 3, 1957 in a penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

James Thurbers The Secret Life of Walter Mitty :: Secret Life Walter Mitty Essays

James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty In James Thurber's wonderful short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", I get the feeling that he may be a victim of Attention Deficit Disorder, rather than just being a daydreamer. Throughout the story, Walter changes personae several times. He flips back and forth between reality and fantasy so much he may have a problem with his attention span. Walter needs Mrs. Mitty to keep him on track. By being a daydreamer, his head is in the clouds and this irritates her. She Reminds him to get "those overshoes while I'm having my hair done." (88) She has to nudge and prod him to actually get the pair of overshoes. Normally, this shouldn't be a problem, but with Walter, She has to double check that he bought them. Consider him having been diagnosed with A.D.D., his wife would then be a little better at understanding him when he goes off on one of his "spells." For example, him buying the overshoes, but not wearing them in the slushy weather. Mrs. Mitty should take a little more active role with his condition. She would go with him to the store to pick up his overshoes so that she knows it was taken care of properly. The weekly trips into town are somewhat of a disaster each time. once, he had tried to take the chains of of his tires and they got them "wound around the axle" and had to have a man come from a garage to unwind them. Mrs. Mitty leaves Walter on his own so that he can run errands, while she goes to the beauty parlor to get her hair done. Because of his daydreaming, he ends up loosing himself in a court battle in his head. How can anyone expect to remember to buy puppy biscuits with something like that happening? A.D.D. is not something to be treated lightly. instead of going to the beauty parlor, Mrs. Mitty should go with Walter to help him stay on track with his errands. By running their weekly errands together, Mrs. Mitty would come to better realize the problems that Walter faces on a daily basis. This would also help to alleviate some of the troubles that they have had in the past to make future trips more tolerable. Does Walter have a problem? Yes, he does. Whether it is being a day dreamer or someone afflicted with A.

Creon is the Tragic Hero of in Sophocles Antigone :: Antigone essays

Creon is the Tragic Hero of Antigone Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am here today to argue the title of tragic hero in the play Antigone by Sophocles. I would like to start off by saying that it will be extremely difficult for me to have the passion that I usually have because of my client. My client's ruthless leadership disgusts me in the worst way. But I will still stand in front of you, the jury, and defend my client. As I said before I am here to argue the title of tragic hero in the play Antigone. I could see that some of you are dazzled by the word "tragic hero". No need to worry for I will enlighten you. The great Aristotle was one of the first men who defined a tragic hero. His definition is not a rule for what tragedy should be, but it is a description of what he believed tragedy was. According to Aristotle a tragic hero must have these qualities to qualify as one. A tragic hero is neither good nor bad. Along with being neutral in his stance, a tragic hero must also be born into royalty. A tra gic hero could never be of the common folk. In addition to this a tragic hero must suffer a large fall from good grace. By this he means that a fall that brings him "down to earth". A tragic hero also has some type of flaw. Whether it is a character flaw such as pride and ego or the character must make an error of judgment or a mistake. With the tragic flaw the character must also recognize the flaw that they have made. In other words, they have to be enlightened. The audience is then supposed to feel pity and fear for the tragic hero because of his tumultuous journey. The tragic hero also is supposed to inspire catharsis in the audience. In some respects Creon is seen as good but with others as bad. The large fall that Creon took was the fall from the good grace of being a respected king. "Your people are beginning to question your judgment and are beginning to side with Antigone.