American Civil War essays

American Civil War essays The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the events surrounding the end of the American Civil War. This war was a war of epic proportion. Never before and not since have so many Americans died in battle. The American Civil War was truly tragic in terms of human life. In this document, I will speak mainly around those involved on the battlefield in the closing days of the conflict. Also, reference will be made to the leading men behind the Union and Confederate The war was beginning to end by January of 1865. By then, Federal (Federal was another name given to the Union Army) armies were spread throughout the Confederacy and the Confederate Army had shrunk extremely in size. In the year before, the North had lost an enormous amount of lives, but had more than enough to lose in comparison to the South. General Grant became known as the "Butcher" (Grant, Ulysses S., Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, New York: Charles L. Webster Co.,1894) and many wanted to see him removed. But Lincoln stood firm with his General, and the war continued. This paper will follow the happenings and events between the winter of 1864-65 and the surrender of The Confederate States of America. All of this will most certainly illustrate that April 9, 1865 was indeed the end of a tragedy. In September of 1864, General William T. Sherman and his army cleared the city of Atlanta of its civilian population then rested ever so briefly. It was from there that General Sherman and his army began its famous "march to the sea". The march covered a diezce of 400 miles and was 60 miles wide on the way. For 32 days no news of him reached the North. He had cut himself off from his base of supplies, and his men lived on what ever they could get from the country through which they passed. On their route, the army destroyed anything and everything that they could not use...

How to Make a Delphi Login Form

How to Make a Delphi Login Form The MainForm of a Delphi application is a form (window) that is the first one created in the main body of the application. If you need to implement some kind of authorization for your Delphi application, you might want to display a login/password dialog before the main form is created and displayed to the user. In short, the idea is to  create, display, and destroy the login dialog before creating the main form. The Delphi MainForm When a new Delphi project is created, Form1 automatically becomes the value of the MainForm property (of the global Application object). To assign a different form to the MainForm property, use the Forms page of the Project Options dialog box at design time. When the main form closes, the application terminates. Login/Password Dialog Lets start by creating the main form of the application. Create a new Delphi project containing one form. This form is, by design, the main form. If you change the name of the form to TMainForm and save the unit as main.pas, the projects source code looks like this (the project was saved as PasswordApp): program PasswordApp; uses Forms, main in main.pas {MainForm}; {$R *.res} begin Application.Initialize; Application.CreateForm(TMainForm, MainForm) ; Application.Run; end. Now, add a second form to the project. By design, the second form thats added gets listed in the Auto-Create Forms list on the Project Options dialog. Name the second form TLoginForm and remove it  from the Auto-Create Forms list. Save the unit as login.pas. Add a Label, Edit, and Button on the form, followed by a class method to create, show, and close the login/password dialog. The method Execute returns true if the user has entered the correct text in the password box. Heres the full source code: unit login; interface uses Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms, Dialogs, StdCtrls; type TLoginForm class(TForm) LogInButton: TButton;pwdLabel: TLabel;passwordEdit: TEdit;procedure LogInButtonClick(Sender: TObject) ; publicclass function Execute : boolean;end; implementation{$R *.dfm} class function TLoginForm.Execute: boolean;beginwith TLoginForm.Create(nil) dotry Result : ShowModal mrOk; finally Free; end;end; procedure TLoginForm.LogInButtonClick(Sender: TObject) ;beginif passwordEdit.Text delphi then ModalResult : mrOK else ModalResult : mrAbort; end; end. The Execute method dynamically creates an instance of the TLoginForm and displays it using the ShowModal method. ShowModal does not return until the form closes. When the form closes, it returns the value of the ModalResult property. The LogInButton OnClick event handler assigns mrOk to the ModalResult property if the user has entered the correct password (which is delphi in the above example). If the user has provided a wrong password, ModalResult is set to mrAbort (it can be anything except mrNone). Setting a value to the ModalResult property closes the form. Execute returns true if ModalResult equals mrOk (if the user has entered the correct password). Don't Create MainForm Before Login You now only need to make sure the main form is not created if the user failed to provide the correct password. Heres how the projects source code should look: program PasswordApp; uses Forms, main in main.pas {MainForm}, login in login.pas {LoginForm}; {$R *.res} beginif TLoginForm.Execute thenbegin Application.Initialize; Application.CreateForm(TMainForm, MainForm) ; Application.Run; endelsebegin Application.MessageBox(You are not authorized to use the application. The password is delphi., Password Protected Delphi application) ; end;end. Note the usage of the if then else block to determine if the main form should be created. If Execute returns false, MainForm is not created and the application terminates without starting.

The Election Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Election - Essay Example According to The New York Times, for republicans, the surefire pickups are Montana and West Virginia, and to some extent Dakota too. Kentucky and Arkansas are also likely to be republican giving the republicans 47 sure seats. States like Iowa, Colorado and Iowa, seem to be leaning towards republicans giving them 50 sure seats. Therefore, my guess is that republicans will secure at least 50 senate seats. If my guess is to be based on the statistics going round on the internet, then it is clear that the GOP candidate Terri Lynn Land is going to loose. According to an article found on Detroit news, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is considering thinning its funding support for her campaign race, additionally, most polls conducted show that she is well behind her competitor Democratic Congressman Gary Peters. According to a poll conducted for The Detroit News and WDIV (Channel 4), Gary Peter leads Terry Lynn 44 percent to 35 percent (Livengood). A more recent poll shows that the gap has further widened with the democratic congressman building a commanding 15 percent point lead over republican Terri Lynn (Spangler). Based on this information I would guess that Terry Lynn Land will receive around 30 percent of the votes and average of the probable polls taking into consideration factors such as margins of error and voter’s tendency to side with the winning team James Robert Redford, because of his impressive resume that encompasses the time he served with The Navy Judge Advocate General Corps, as well as his current position as a Navy Reserve. He is also widely considered efficient in the courtroom and is admired widely for his integrity, collegiality and judicial temperament. He is also a strong advocate for fairness in the courtroom. David Viviano, this is for the reason that he has on numerous occasions proven to be a capable judge, and also insightful. He is also a strong

Legal Problem Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Legal Problem - Essay Example How would your answer differ if:- (a) Arnold submitted that he knew the route so well that in his view he had eliminated as much risk as possible by his actions? (b) you were informed that Arnold was employed by Great Northern Railways and that he had worked an 80 hour shift that week? â€Å"(1) A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence. The shade that has been destroyed by Bhopindar’s action constitutes certain amount of criminal liability on his part, as his action includes the elements of recklessness. The English Law has classified into two parts, namely, Subjective Recklessness and Objective Recklessness. Recklessness is also referred to as Intention Acts, which is often described in legal terminology as â€Å"extreme carelessness regarding an obvious defect or problem.† (Stewart, Warner, Portman, 2008, p. 228) Now such acts of â€Å"extreme carelessness†, according to jurisprudential rational, incorporates intention of an individual to commit such act and such element of intentional commission of reckless act are specified in legal terminology as mens rea. Paul Bergman, Sara J. Berman, Sara J. Berman-Barrett explains mens rea as, â€Å"Mens rea is Latin for â€Å"guilty mind†. The mens rea concept expresses a belief that people should be punished †¦ only when they have acted w ith an intent or purpose that makes them morally blameworthy.† (Bergman, Berman, Berman-Barrett, 2008, p. 253) Comparing the situation of both Bhopindar and Arnold it is not tough to understand that in Arnold’s case presence of mens rea is quite explicit whereas it is clear from Bhopindar’s action that he was almost ignorant about the possibility of happening of such

Tesco Brand and Culture Essay Example for Free

Tesco Brand and Culture Essay Corporate culture is one of the main determinants of success or failure in a business development practice, because it largely determines how flexible, accepting of change and innovative a company tends to be. Fairfield-Sonn (2001: 36) provided a four-layer model of corporate culture that included cultural artifacts, cultural history, core ideology and core values that helps to quantify and describe the corporate culture of an organization. Thus, Tesco’s corporate culture can be determined from its corporate responsibility statements, which describe its core values and core ideologies as well as some aspects of cultural artifacts. Tesco’s stated core priorities include: Ensuring community, corporate responsibility and sustainability are at the heart of our business. Being a good neighbor and being responsible, fair and honest. Considering our social, economic and environmental impact as we make our decisions. Tesco, 2010) These values have had a significant impact on the way in which Tesco does business, as well as its financial performance. For example, its expansion into California was designed to be not only profitable, but also socially responsible. As in the United Kingdom, American inner cities have a food supply problem wherein there are few large supermarkets and the smaller supermarkets do not have an adequate supply of fresh foods, including fruits, vegetables and proteins (Wankel Stoner 2007: 223). Because supermarkets are reluctant to build in the inner cities and many residents do not have transportation outside the area, inner city residents do not enjoy an appropriate diet, and suffer health consequences as a result (Wankel Stoner 2007: 224). Tesco’s corporate culture priorities allowed the company to consider opening stores in areas where native supermarkets were reluctant to go, and to provide services to the area that the local providers either couldn’t or didn’t consider. Thus, they opened stores in underserved regions, not only allowing them to express their core ideals, but also providing an opportunity to enter an almost untapped market. Although native retailers have scrambled to enter the markets in which Tesco is now providing services in the United States, Tesco will continue to have the advantage in terms of the markets it has already entered; it also has a corporate culture that encourages the expansion and ervice of these areas. Another area in which the company’s business development practices have both impacted and been impacted by the corporate culture is the introduction of lines of natural, organic and free-range foods to its stores beginning in the 1990s, and continuing into its development of the Nature’s Choice sustainable production lines over the past few years (Tesco, 2010). These lines, which include organic fruits, vegetables, meats and other proteins, dairy products, free-range eggs and other responsibly produced goods, has increased its importance in recent years to the company’s bottom line due to growing awareness of environmental factors by customers. The provision of lifestyle ranges like those above is one of the core strategies of the Core UK strategic business unit (Tesco 2010), as it provides the opportunity to reach the greatest number of customers, particularly those who believe that the way in which food was produced is as important as the food itself. However, this provision is also mandated by the company’s corporate culture’s core ideals, particularly those of environmental responsibility and awareness. These ideals entered the corporate culture in the mid-1990s, at about the same time as the first environmentally aware lifestyle product range (that of free-range eggs) was introduced (Tesco 2010). Whether the shift in corporate culture inspired the change in development strategy or whether the shift in development strategy inspired the shift in corporate culture truly is a chicken and egg question!

Animation :: essays research papers

Animation: Where it came from and where will it be Animation in the past fifty years has taken large steps in improvements to what it is today. It has changed in many ways from techniques to their usage in entertainment. It has opened opportunities for new employment in companies. It has allowed us to see things we could only imagine. It has also changed the way of life. To animate, according to the New World Webster Dictionary, is to make something alive or to give it motion. An animator according to ?Animators? from ?Chronicle Guidance Publications? is: ?animators create moving illustrations for motion pictures, television, direct-to-video commercials interactive video games, and the Internet. Create a series of sequential drawings of characters of other subjects, which when photographed and projected at specific speeds become animated.? (?Animators? np) Animation's history can go back all the way to three thousand years ago in Eastern Asia with shadow puppets. In that place and time, it was one of the more popular forms of entertainment. In the past one hundred and fifty years there were devices called zoetropes that were wheels with pictures inside them with little slits dividing the pictures. The person would then spin the wheel, and if they were to look through the slits they could see the pictures moving, like a little never ending cartoon. A man named Winsor McCay created one of the first lengthy cartoons. He experimented with a cartoon called "Gertie the Dinosaur." In this cartoon he and his neighbor had to draw all the pictures themselves. Making it even harder to do is that he had to draw the background repeatedly again instead of using the cel animating method (?A Brief History of Gertie the Dinosaur? 1). This cartoon came about 80 years before the movie Jurassic Park. Then after about ten to fifteen years, because it took much time and money to make an animated picture, others started to arise. Favorites were Felix the Cat ("Concise History of Animation"np), Mickey Mouse, and later Loony Toons ("Chuck Jones History" np). Nevertheless, probably the big star back then was Felix the Cat created by Otto Messmer ("Concise History of Animation"np). With the help increased of technology and just plain modern ingenuity animation has evolved into a highly technological tool to bring life on a screen. In this world there are many ways of creating animation such as key framing, cel animating, and rotas coping.

Event Marketing – the Lessons from Red Bull Strategy

There are few brands that can offer more lessons in how to approach the next generation of marketing than Red Bull. Focusing their strategy on earned media, cultural integration and value creation, Red Bull’s approach is pioneering, and a template that many brands would love to follow. However it’s also proven a difficult strategy to replicate, specifically because just how different it is from the traditional marketing model. It’s definitely not just about sponsoring a couple of youth events and calling it a day. The scale of Red Bull’s commitment to non-traditional marketing is unprecedented. As far back as a decade ago, Red Bull was spending more than 80% of their significant marketing budget on non-measured media. That’s completely inverse to the traditional marketing formula of focusing on packaged communication messages and the broadcast media to spread them. Core to Red Bull’s success has been their unique strategy of focusing on brand-owned events. It struck me that one of the best ways to make the point about what it takes to seriously succeed at their level and at this game was to show the scale they are operating on. Creating vs sponsoring After sponsoring a handful of existing events early in the brand’s history, Red Bull made a strategic decision to create their own events and have followed this direction consistently ever since. This is a hugely important differentiator for them, and sets them a league apart from sponsor brands : . Early investment becomes equity As a sponsor brand, the more important and popular the event becomes, the more it costs. However Red Bull’s initial investment in creating the event quickly starts paying compound interest, and as the event grows in stature they reap all of the rewards while costing them only the maintenance of re-running the event. 2. Sole-branding Most big events have their platinum, gold and silver sponsors. How much are brands really getting out of these sponsor ships? And if you want to distinguish your brand by putting your name on the event, be prepared to shell out mega bucks. Red Bull on the other hand is the title sponsor for every one of these ninety events, and their branding is ubiquitous and seamlessly integrated into the event rather than tacked on and diluted amongst a hundred other sponsors. There is no question who is putting on the event and responsible for bringing it to everyone and making it happen. 3. Authenticity and credibility For me there is a big difference with a brand simply paying to have their logo attached to something, and with a brand who puts their energy, resources, and creativity to work in bringing something to life themselves, even if it is of course delivered behind the scenes by a host of event and activation agencies. There’s a different level of commitment involved, and a different type of authenticity and credibility is conferred to the brand as a result. Successful creation signals commitment to and deep understanding of the space, whereas anyone can pay to logo-ize something. I’m not saying sponsorship is always a bad thing by any stretch, but I’d argue it definitely lacks the same resonance with the audience. 4. Underground up There is something powerful about how so many of these Red Bull events started out small and local, and have grown to be big and hugely important and influential amongst the athletes and their fans. Athletes themselves say voluntarily that many of these events are as important or second only to the X-Games in stature and importance to their career. This is huge for authenticity with their target. Red Bull has grown up with it’s audience, and them with it. 5. Control Last point on creation vs sponsorship is about control. Namely, when you own the event, you do what you want with it. You control the promotion, the PR, the messaging, the branding, when it happens, where it happens, who’s involved. Everything. Even as a long-term sponsor of an event, you are ultimately at the mercy of the event’s owners and along for the ride. Longevity Many brands flit from campaign to campaign, with their event activation a tacked on component that is rarely addressed consistently. Getting ommitment to ongoing events from a brand can be near impossible. Red Bull is fundamentally different in this regard. They create experiences that generate value for the brand and then they build equity in them consistently over time, just as most brands would do with important product innovations and sub-brands. This is hugely cost effective compared to reinventing the wheel every year, a nd it ensures the brand becomes fundamentally woven into the lives of the athletes and influential consumers they wish to reach, as Red Bull is guaranteed to be part of their year, every year. Plus the audience often scales in size annually. Flugtag and Red Bull Soap Box race are now yearly highlights for many consumers, reaching in-person audiences of hundreds of thousand of people in many cities. In Brazil over one million people turned up for the Red Bull Air Race. From the list below you can see sponsorship of some events such as Flugtag reaching back all the way to 1991, but the vast majority of the events they’ve created over the years are still ongoing, year after year. Depth and breadth. Another key differentiator with Red Bull is the incredible effort they have gone to in order to â€Å"own† action sports and become embedded in youth culture across the board. They have quite literally gone after every action sport you can think of, and in a number of cases essentially created their own sports. They’ve since started attacking music and art with the same vigour. Where most brands are happy to tack on their logo to a handful of events in a year and call it a sponsorship strategy, Red Bull is literally ubiquitous. In many cases they are absolutely essential to the vitality of the sports they sponsor. Use creativity to reinforce the brand and create cut-through Looking down the list, another thing becomes immediately clear — all of the events sound awesome. â€Å"Last Man Standing†. â€Å"Down and Dirty†. â€Å"Exodus†. â€Å"Chopper Assault†. â€Å"City Rage†. â€Å"Heavy Metal†. Red Bull have used crazy sounding and subversive names to build excitement around events before you’ve even heard of them to and to indelibly stamp them as â€Å"Red Bull†. Additionally, Red Bull seek out and create a sense of drama and the spectacular with each event to rival anything Evel Knieval could’ve ever imagined. Downhill bike racing through Rio’s most notorious barrios? Wakeboarding in the dark in a flooded mine? Motocross duelling in bullrings? Roller derby on ice skates? Red Bull has made it their mission to bring barely imaginable experiences into existence, and give them all the spectacle and pomp of a â€Å"real† sport. And then to do it again, year after year. Create shareable content and earn your media How can Red Bull possibly afford all this? Well, they do the opposite thing most brands do. Most brands spend a tiny bit on content, and then 10x as much on media to try and spread that content as far as possible, because people aren’t really that interested in what they are saying so they have to get it in front of eyeballs by force. Which of course then diminishes the value of reaching those people, given they would rather you weren’t. Red Bull was doing earned media before it was a buzzword. They invest in unique, compelling experiences, and in the creation of content from those experiences. They get a significant amount of very deep and powerful brand interaction at the actual experiences themselves, both from participants and spectators. And then through a combination of PR, word of mouth, and pull media channels they get an absolute ton of exposure of their content. And through platforms like their popular Facebook page, content-rich website, Red Bulletin, and a legion of popular microsites and brand communities like FMXWorld, Red Bull can legitimately claim to be a media brand in its own right at a time when most brands are still talking about the idea. The reason Red Bull is so exciting as a brand and a case study to so many is they’ve flipped the traditional advertising model on it’s head. They invest most of their budget in experiences, content and media assets, and allocate comparably little to actual media itself. They trust if they build cool things, people will seek it out and talk about it, and they are right. From a Brandweek article from 2001: In the antithesis of any major’s marketing plan, Red Bull buys traditional advertising last. Only when a market is deemed mature does the company begin a media push. The idea is to reinforce, not introduce, the brand. â€Å"Media is not a tool that we use to establish the market,† said vp-marketing David Rohdy. â€Å"It is a critical part. It’s just later in the development. † The brand spent $100 million in the U. S. last year, according to the company Measured media spending was only $18. 9 million last year, up from $9 million in 1999, per Competitive Media Reporting. In a way their model is to first build targeted, ubiquitous relevance rather than broad mass awareness. They don’t blast out, they focus deep and then bubble up. And the latter approach gives them a much stronger and longer-lasting foundation for their activity, and costs them less. Paid media fits into the mix later to solidify the position, but it’s an enhancer rather than the foundation. Mix global platforms and local activation Red Bull is looking for the ultimate blend of local relevance and cost-effective impact. So they have a chaotic but effective mix of global platforms such as Flugtag and Air Race and tens of locally focused events. Many events start out locally and then get rolled out across regions as the template is perfected. Living and creating with your audiences I think I got this insight out of one of the many great Mobile Youth presentations on Red Bull. Basically the point is everything Red Bull do is about creating and living with their audience, rather than messaging at them. What else? I think you can probably tell from this post and the preceding list that I’m a massive fan of Red Bull’s strategy. It’s unique, it’s effective, and it has a lot to say about where the next generation of marketing is heading. Would love to hear what other lessons you’ve taken from Red Bull’s approach, and what other brands you think are doing this right.

Consider the presentation of the two main characters Essay

Consider the presentation of the two main characters. What are Austin and Trevor telling us about the pressure on women in the past and present? Jane Austin wrote ‘The Three Sisters’ in the 19th century. Jane Austin lived in a mercenary world, and she reflects this in her novels. No secret is made of the need to marry for money. Jane Austin believed that for marriage to work, people must have the same interests. The Three Sisters is about a woman called Mary. She has been proposed to by Mr Watts. He is older than her but she decides to marry him for his wealth and money. She also wants to get married before any of her sisters and the Duttons. However she fears her life will be miserable if she chooses to accept Mr Watts’ proposal. William Trevor wrote ‘Teresa’s Wedding’ around the 1970’s. William Trevor was born into a protestant family and brought up in a Catholic society. When troubles started to break out in Northern Ireland, William Trevor moved to England but he frequently visited Ireland. Teresa’s Wedding is also about marriage. The story starts off at the party after the wedding. Teresa has also married for convenience because she is pregnant. Both stories deal with loveless marriages and in both stories the women have little control over their lives. They are both under pressure to marry men they do not love. In Teresa’s Wedding marriage is seen as a means of escape from a grim community, a place of loneliness and frustration. In The Three Sisters marriage is seen as the only possible fulfilment for a woman. Mary is the eldest of the sisters. She has had her first offer of marriage, but she doesn’t know how to value it. She wants to be the first to be married, she does not want to marry Mr Watts but she wants to get married before Georgiana and Sophy. She knows that if she turns down the offer, Mr Watts shall ask either one of the sisters, and following the traditional conventions of the time she is expected to marry before her younger sisters. Mary appears to be very confused one moment she says â€Å"I shall have him† and the next â€Å"I hate him more than anything else in the world† Austin writes about her own class, the upper middle class, and is very critical about their lifestyles and social behaviour, creating very amusing characters and describing them with crony. She makes a mockery of their snobbish behaviour. She describes Mary as a childish and self-centred girl, who likes to boast and often makes herself look ridiculous in front of others. Teresa is a woman who has just married to a man called Artie Cornish. Teresa had a round, pretty face and black, pretty hair, and was a month and a half pregnant. Teresa is a kind and friendly girl. She is calm, even though she is faced with the situation of admitting to Artie, her husband, on her wedding day that she had â€Å"been in the field† with his friend Screw Doyle. She shows maturity in her optimism about her future, believing that she and Artie â€Å"might make some kind of marriage together† Trevor uses third person narrative in his story, everything is described in detail, we almost feel part of the festivities. However, he does not write about the characters thoughts and feelings. Austin’s story is written in first person narrative, in letter form. This helps us to understand the characters fully. In the two stories the women receive pressure from the society they live in. Teresa also receives pressure from the local priest Father Hogan, who shows very little feelings for her when she confesses that she does not love Artie † under the circumstances that line of talk is irrelevant† Mary receives pressure also from her mother who is â€Å"determined not to let this opportunity escape of settling one my daughters so advantageously† I think it is a lot easier to get married in modern society because we have no restrictions in who we choose to marry. We also do not have our parents choose who we marry, so there is no excuse for marrying some one who you do not love.

Mothers in The Joy Luck Club essays

Mothers in The Joy Luck Club essays If there was one occurrence that befell every mother in "The Joy Luck Club," it would be the loss of a child and the after effect it had on their relationships with their living children. This lead to a misunderstanding between mother and daughter, and the climax of their separation before the problems could be resolved. The long, gradual build up of lack of understanding kept the two family members divided and it took self actualization to bring them together. Ying-Ying St.Clair and her daughter Lena St.Clair both grew up passive and quiet. They had distrust in life, did not hear their voices, and had to find themselves before helping each other. Ying-Ying grew up in a family where she had to keep her wishes to herself, after a while, she just stopped wishing, there was no use for it. After she lost one son and resorted to killing the other, she had no strength left to take care of Lena. So, Lena grew up in a quiet home with a depressed mother, and a clueless father, neither could communicate with each other. Like her mother, Lena kept all her desires to herself and could not hear herself. She longed for a good relationship but fell into a poor one anyway. Her "fair" relationship proved to be not so balanced, but she did not know how to take control. Her mother saw her falling apart but had to reflect on her past before trying to save her daughters. The climatic even between these two occurred after Clifford's table broke. Ying-Ying asked why Lena had not prevented it from collapsing, but she did not have an answer for her. It was then Lena realized she had to change, become strong, and break away from her relationship, or she would never be able to escape. It was then that Lena gained a new sort of respect for her mother. Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong relationship were one of intense love and hate. Sadly, Lindo lost her child, Winston, to a car accident when he was only 16. Like the other mothers, she had to bear the loss of a ch...

Definition and Examples of Americanisms

Definition and Examples of Americanisms An Americanism is a word or phrase  (or, less commonly,  a feature of grammar, spelling, or pronunciation)  that (supposedly) originated in the United States or is used primarily by Americans. Americanism is often used as a term of disapproval, especially by non-American language mavens with little knowledge of historical linguistics. Many so-called Americanisms come from the English, Mark Twain accurately observed more than a century ago. [M]ost people suppose that everyone who guesses is a Yankee; the people who guess do so  because their ancestors guessed in Yorkshire.   The term Americanism was introduced by the Reverend John Witherspoon in the late-18th century. Examples and Observations [F]ew of the grammatical differences between British and American are great enough to produce confusion, and most are not stable because the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, with borrowing both ways across the Atlantic and nowadays via the Internet.(John Algeo, British or American English? Cambridge University Press, 2006)As pioneers, the first Americans had to make up many new words, some of which now seem absurdly commonplace. Lengthy, which dates back to 1689, is an early Americanism. So are calculate, seaboard, bookstore and presidential. . . . Antagonize and placate were both hated by British Victorians. As members of a multiracial society, the first Americans also adopted words like wigwam, pretzel, spook, depot and canyon, borrowing from the Indians, Germans, Dutch, French and Spanish.(Robert McCrum et al., The Story of English. Viking, 1986)Americanisms in British English- Most Americanisms coined [during the 19th century] havent stood the test of time. Wh en a woman disposes of an unwanted admirer we no longer say that she has given him the mitten. We still call experienced travellers globetrotters, but tend to say theyve bought the T-shirt rather than seen the elephant. We prefer more elegant metaphors for a cemetery than a bone-pit. Our dentists might object if we called them tooth carpenters. And if a teenager today told you theyd been shot in the neck you might ring for an ambulance rather than ask what theyd had to drink the previous night.Lots, however, have become part of our everyday speech. I guess, I reckon, keep your eyes peeled, it was a real eye-opener, easy as falling off a log, to go the whole hog, to get the hang of, struck oil, lame duck, face the music, high falutin, cocktail, and to pull the wool over ones eyes―all made the leap into British usage during the Victorian period. And theyve stayed there ever since.(Bob Nicholson, Racy Yankee Slang Has Long Invaded Our Language. The Guardian  [UK], Oct. 18, 201 0)- A list of fully assimilated English words and expressions that started life as American coinages or revivals would include antagonise, anyway, back-number (adjectival phrase), back yard (as in nimby), bath-robe, bumper (car), editorial (noun), fix up, just (quite, very, exactly), nervous (timid), peanut, placate, realise (see, understand), reckon, soft drink, transpire, washstand.In some cases, Americanisms have driven out a native equivalent or are in the process of doing so. For instance, in no particular order, ad has pretty well replaced advert as an abbreviation for advertisement, a press clipping is driving out cutting as a piece taken from a newspaper, a whole new ballgame, that is a metaphorical game of baseball, is what meets the harried circumspect eye where once a different kettle of fish or a horse of another color furnished the challenge, and someone quit his job where not so long ago he quitted it.Such matters probably indicate nothing more than minor, harmless lin guistic interchange, with a bias towards American modes of expression as likely to seem the livelier and (to adopt an Americanism) smarter alternative.(Kingsley Amis, The Kings English: A Guide to Modern Usage. HarperCollins, 1997) American and British CompoundsIn American English, the first noun [in a compound] is generally in the singular, as in drug problem, trade union, road policy, chemical plant. In British English, the first element is sometimes a plural noun, as in drugs problem, trades union, roads policy, chemicals plant. Some noun-noun compounds that entered American English at a very early stage are words for indigenous animals, like bullfrog a large American frog, groundhog a small rodent (also called woodchuck); for trees and plants, e.g. cottonwood (an American poplar tree); and for phenomena like log cabin, the kind of simple structure many early immigrants lived in. Sunup is also an early American coinage, parallel to the Americanism sundown, which is a synonym for the universal sunset.(Gunnel Tottie, An Introduction to American English. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002)Prejudice Against AmericanismsDocumenting the sustained prejudice  against American English over the past century and a half is not dif ficult since the only alteration in the complaint involves  the particular expressions that have come to the attention of the reviewers. So we will leap ahead to 21st century examples parallel to most of the complaints of the past.In 2010, the expressions targeted  for criticism included ahead of for before, face up confront, and fess up for confess (Kahn 2010). A counterargument has often been that these expressions are historically English, but the truths of historical linguistics are seldom persuasive or even seen as germane to the dispute. Americanisms are simply bad English in one way or another: slovenly, careless, or sloppy. . . . Reports like these seethe with disapproval.The same metaphors are used elsewhere in the English-speaking world. In Australia, new forms of language believed to derive from America are seen as a contagion: suffering the creeping American disease is a way to describe a situation the critic deplores (Money 2010). . . .The expressions that give rise to such complaints  are not such ordinary Americanisms as blood type, laser, or minibus. And some are not Americanisms at all.  They share the quality of being racy, informal, and perhaps a little subversive. They are usages that poke fun at pretense and gibe at gentility.(Richard W. Bailey, American English.  English Historical Linguistics, ed. by  Alexander Bergs. Walter de Gruyter, 2012) Passing PrejudicesThe playwright Mark Ravenhill recently tweeted irritably: Dear Guardian sub please dont allow passing. Here in Europe we die. Keep the horrible euphemism over the Atlantic. . . .Ravenhills . . . complaint about passing is that it is an Americanism, one that should be kept over the Atlantic by the verbal equivalent of a ballistic-missile shield, so as to preserve the saintly purity of our island tongue. The trouble with this is that its not actually an Americanism. In  Chaucers Squires Tale, the falcon says to the princess: Myn harm I wol confessen er I pace, meaning before it dies. In Shakespeares Henry VI Part 2, Salisbury says of the dying Cardinal: Disturbe him not, let him passe peaceably. In other words, the origin of this use of passing is firmly on this side of the Atlantic. Its as English as the word soccer―at first spelled socca or socker, as an abbreviation of association football.A lot of other supposed Americanisms arent Americanisms either. Its sometimes thought that transportation instead of the good old transport is an example of that annoying US habit of bolting on needless extra syllables to perfectly good words, but transportation is used in British English from 1540. Gotten as the past tense of got? English from 1380. Oftentimes? Its in the King James Bible.(Steven Poole, Americanisms Are Often Closer to Home Than We Imagine. The Guardian [UK], May 13, 2013) Americanisms in The Telegraph [U.K.]Some Americanisms keep slipping in, usually when we are given agency copy to re-write and do an inadequate job on it. There is no such verb as impacted, and other American-style usages of nouns as verbs should be avoided (authored, gifted etc). Maneuver is not spelt that way in Britain. We do not have lawmakers: we might just about have legislators, but better still we have parliament. People do not live in their hometown; they live in their home town, or even better the place where they were born.(Simon Heffer, Style Notes. The Telegraph, Aug. 2, 2010)

IT Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

IT Industry - Essay Example The better they manage their asset the better they perform in the industry. We can rightly say that a healthy workforce leads to a healthy business. It's the policies in each organization which either makes them a favorite or not so sought after. However it is very necessary that each organization should carve out some policies for their employees so that they have a feeling that they are taken care of. There are many such organizations which have done this beautifully well and are now reaping the success. One such organization is IBM. Not only has this organization seen a tremendous growth but has also become one of the most sought after organizations for IT professionals all over the world. IBM is undoubtedly one of the most sought after organizations for IT professionals all over the world. Whichever country we may consider and ask its IT professionals the reply will most of the time lay in favor of IBM. What makes it so Is it just the brand name Or is there something more to it If it had been just the brand name then it would not have gone so far in becoming one of the most favored organizations to work with. There is definitely more to it. A very tempting area is the diversity of domains in which it works; there are a lot of options available for one, after he/she joins the organization. The list goes on like this; Aerospace and defense, Automotive, Banking, Chemicals and Petroleum, Consumer Products, Education, Electronics, Energy and Utilities, Financial Markets, healthcare, Insurance, Life Sciences, Media and entertainment, Retail, Telecommunications, Travel and Transportation, Wholesale Distribution, Cross-Industry. The women work force is also not left behind. We can say there is something for satisfying everybody's needs. The driving force for women to join IBM is the fact that its policies are very considerate towards working women who also have a family to take care of. The organization understands that there may be times when the lady of the house cannot move out; for those difficult days there is an option for work-from-home the working hours are also flexible. These are definitely a boon for people who have responsibilities in their personal lives. The organization also thinks about the health needs of its people and has a very well developed gymnasium in almost all the office premises. One indication of good policies is if we are able to find a good number of employees who are with the organization for a long time. This indicates that they are too satisfied to think of a change in their work environments. Having spoken to an employee who has been with the organization since long, got a view of an insider and why the attrition rate is lower than many of its competitors. When asked why does he work there This is what he has to say "They are one of the best pay masters, and then the opportunity to go onsite is very often." Who doesn't love to earn money After all most of us work for money; and that's what is common throughout the world, however with due respect to all those people who work as volunteers or with NGOs. When asked about the work culture He says it to be "Cool, though there is pressure at times but the work environment is fun to work in. then on days when he doesn't have too much of work at office; he can plan for

Mental Skills Training Program Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Mental Skills Training Program - Essay Example Based on a recent performance profile, it is found that I lack two mental skills. Imagery and confidence are mental skills currently lacked. The two lacked mental skills are important for everyday life. Imagery helps the mind focus on seeing things that have happened in the past, things that are happening now and events that may happen in the future. Portraying these images in a positive or negative way is a mental imagery skill. Confidence as a mental skill controls how actions are made, decisions in life and the way someone feels. Each one of these mental skills contributes to decisions that are made in everyday life. These mental skills also affect an athlete’s performance. What does imagery as a mental skill do? Imagery as a mental skill is basically the ability to go over an event and imagine what the outcome will be. This goes hand in hand with confidence. Having strong confidence will help the imagery skill imagine a more positive outcome. A positive outcome and better confidence will lead to higher performance. Setting up a plan to improve these skills will help improve confidence and the mental ability to imagine better outcomes. Improving each one of these skills can help an individual go further in live and outperform others. In an article from the Journal of Education for Business, a study has shown that the use of negotiation classes can help build an individual’s confidence which will help the individual become more successful. Becoming better at negotiating will improve performance by a huge amount. Improved performance will lead to better confidence. I plan on using negotiation as a way to improve my confidence mental skill. Duration and repetition will aid in creating a mental skills training program that works on my weaker areas. To obtain better negotiating skills and better confidence I plan on using negotiating and becoming more comfortable negotiating with others. I will practice becoming comfortable negotiating for a month. Twice a week for the first month I will try to negotiate events that I would otherwise ignore. These events will be smaller things like household activities and small individual confrontations. After the first month, I can then begin using real world scenarios for negotiating. These negotiating skills may need to be modified to a class like session. If practicing negotiating on my own terms proves to be unsuccessful, the training can be modified to include negotiating classes. Another great way that was found to assist in improving mental skills was discovered by a research study conducted by International Education Studies. The research study was performed on college level soccer players. The soccer players were given different techniques to try and improve different mental skills like imagery, attention and motivation. The study showed that relaxation was the best improver. Relaxation was able to help the players relax by reducing muscle tension and improving focus. Becoming more relaxed before and after games, improved performance. Since relaxation has shown to have great imagery affects, relaxation will be part of the program used to improve weaker mental skills. In order to use relaxation to improve imagery,