The Emperors Club free essay sample

The bigger mistake was letting Cedric go on through his student life without the professor doing something about his cheating and isbehaviours. Even if the professor caught Cedric cheating and doing pranks and disrespectful acts to his teachers, co-students and to his school, he still tolerated the bad acts of the child and didnt do anything to correct and sanction Cedric even if he knew that it must be corrected and reprimanded. Giving Cedric something he doesnt deserve in the first place and not reprimanding him is a huge crime already. These served as the primary causes for the child to carry on through his wicked character and attitude. Cedric grew up knowing that he could get anything easily even if he didnt deserve it and that he could get away with anything without him being lectured/ reprimanded to. Everything rooted from his school days. If I were the professor, I never would have given a child something that he/she doesnt deserve. We will write a custom essay sample on The Emperors Club or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Giving something they dont deserve results to them believing that they could get anything they want without them exerting an honest and diligent work. Also, supposing that I am in the position of catching a child cheating and doing pranks, I ould reprimand that child right away and give him/ her due sanction. Letting the child believe that he/ she can get away with anything (even bad behaviour) can lead to disastrous outcomes that they could carry on until they grow older. Being an educator is tough. We are torn between our love for our students (children) and our attempt to be parents and strict mentors to them. Letting a child fall and get hurt out of their own misdemeanours are some of the best ways and traits of being a great teacher. Let the students suffer the consequences of their bad doings and let them see that we, teachers, reprimand them if we see them do misbehaviours. If students see that teachers correct, reprimand and give sanctions right away especially when the students know that the teachers know what they did, teachers earn the students respect. Their moral values shall be honed to be strong all throughout their growing up years too because they know that bad behaviour shall not be tolerated and good attitude and character matters most. The Emperors Club By inaorate The Emperors Club free essay sample The Emperor’s Club is a film that addresses many moral and social aspects that are central to contemporary society’s moral controversy. Can morals be properly instilled in a young person outside of religion? Can our future decisions be predicted based on our current character? Can our current character even be changed or molded? Can morals be learned through studying the classics? The Emperors Club’s main characters are Mr. Hundert a teacher of classics at a prestigious preparatory school, and an unruly or misunderstood student, Sedgwick Bell. Their characters seem to perpetually butt heads, or at least be contrasting moral characters. How do I understand the ethical choices of the central characters? The main ethical dilemma in this film, I believe, is how Mr. Hundert decides to treat Sedgwick. Mr. Hundert associates himself with Sedgwick, after meeting Senator Bell; Hundert realizes that they both had very demanding and emotionally distant fathers. We will write a custom essay sample on The Emperors Club or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Mr. Hundert is driven to take this unruly student under his wing. Even though the senator is Sedgwick’s paternal father Mr. Hundert endeavors to become his spiritual father. The movie plot begins with Mr. Hundert in his classroom, leading his personal little army of students wearing togas. Sedgwick Bell enrolls and wastes no time in becoming a thorn in Hr. Hundert’s back. With the two of them battling it out for the respect and control of the classroom. Things coming to point when Sedgwick flips off Mr. Hundert and Hr. Hundert laying down a severe rebuke, saying â€Å"stupid is forever†. Mr. Hundert travels to meet with Senator Bell concerning the poor behavior of his son. Once seated comfortably, Senator Bell confronts Mr. Hundert about the â€Å"good† of what he was teaching his son Sedgwick. Mr. Hundert is obviously taken aback by this question. Evident by him replying, that the senator, of all people should understand the importance of what can be learned from the classics. He goes off and lists civic virtue, philosophy, government, character as values that the ancients had embodied and set examples of. Mr. Hundert continues, saying that as a teacher it is his duty to mold Sedgwick. Here the Senator abruptly cuts him off and condescendingly informs him that he shall not mold his son, but to leave it for himself to do. That Mr. Hundert should only concern himself with instructing his son in such things as his times tables. Obviously not what Mr. Hundert expected to happen there in the Senator’s office. So basically after being chopped off at the knees in what he regards being a teacher is all about, and after seeing that Sedgwick was wanting of a father figure. The Senator’s phone call to his son and its obvious negative impact providing evidence of this. Mr. Hundert gives one more try, and challenges Sedgwick, gives him his old textbook, and told Sedgwick that he believed in him. With these actions he disregards the senator’s warning and attempts to mold him and become a spiritual father to Sedgwick. Sedgwick turns his act around and starts applying himself to his studies. And eventually makes his way near the top of the class, almost qualifying him for a spot in the Julius Caesar contest. So seduced by Sedgwick’s renewed effort, Mr. Hundert decides to bump him up into the last spot kicking some other poor kid out. Hoping that the ends justify the means, Mr. Hundert, a man who believes in the rules, broke them. But there are two moral climaxes in The Emperor’s Club. Both remarkably similar to each other, but taking place some 20 odd years apart. During the Julius Caesar contest it become apparent that Sedgwick is cheating, but because of the senator’s presence, it is decided to be overlooked. Allowing Sedgwick into the contest and failing to punish the cheating, Mr. Hundert lost the moral high ground so to speak. Failed to live up to the very values and morals he taught. After the cheating incident, Mr. Hundert realizes that he can no longer â€Å"save† him, and basically just gives in to him. Sedgwick falls back to his old habits of goofing off and creating mischief in the classroom. Later when Sedgwick graduates, Mr. Hundert confesses that he felt a sense of failure, being unable to change Sedgwick’s ways, and I believe, misplacing his trust and in Sedgwick. The second climax occurs in much the same way. Twenty years later, the kids are all grown up and are society’s elite. Basically there is to be a rematch to the Julius Caesar contest, and Mr. Hundert is called up from retirement to moderate the contest. Mr. Hundert returns hoping that time has proven him wrong. That Mr. Bell has turned into a fine example of a gentleman and father. And by all appearances this is true. The contest begins, but yet again, Sedgwick cheats. Prompting another sharp rebuke, the decisions that you take define your character and influence your children. In a final insult Sedgwick Bell takes Mr. Hundert’s rhetoric, and moral values and squanders it for his own political ambitions. What do I think is the films ultimate message? I think the film gives us that answer at the very beginning when Mr. Hundert’s dialogue states: â€Å"A man’s character is his fate†, and at the end where he says something to the effect that the boys had taught him something of inestimable value. That what he did for them mattered and that one misstep with Sedgwick does not blot out a life of goodness. I don’t think it is saying that we all travel a predetermined path, but rather that our small decisions are the foundation

Beloved - Toni Morrison essays

Beloved - Toni Morrison essays The meaning of the character of Beloved in Toni Morrisons Beloved The character of Beloved in the novel Beloved, by Toni Morrison, is symbolic of several important ideas that are essential to a complete understanding of the novel. In the context of the story itself, Beloved is a specter that has returned to haunt the woman that killed her when she was child. On a deeper, subconscious level to the characters within the story, the character of Beloved can be considered to be reminder of the past. Specifically, the character of Beloved helps two characters, Sethe and Paul D., to deal with their pasts. Finally, in a historical context, Beloved can be interpreted to be a symbol of the problems that developed between mothers and their daughters as a result of the atrocities experienced through slavery. This paper will examine all of these aspects in detail and also demonstrate how they are necessary for a greater understanding of the story contained within the novel and how they complement the historical context of the story. In the storyline of Beloved, the character of Beloved is a ghost that has returned to haunt the woman that killed her. It is important to understand the circumstances around her death in order to understand why the character of Beloved must return to her mother. The character of Beloved is the daughter of Sethe. Sethe is a black woman who has escaped a slave farm in the South with her children to the house of her mother-in-law, who is named Baby Suggs. The house is referred to as 124 in the story. Sethe fled a slave owner called Teacher, who is very sadistic man that had submitted her to many kinds of mental and physical torture. One of the particularly diabolical things about Teacher was that he had attempted to study, in a scientific manner, the slaves he kept as if they were animals, treating them as if they were less than human. Sethes three children flee to the house ahead...

My majer is Safety mangmant Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

My majer is Safety mangmant - Research Paper Example This paper explores the practice of I/O psychology aimed at understanding how it can improve human welfare in workplaces. The paper offers goes from outlining a brief history of I/O psychology to exploring how it has been applied in improving HRM and effect it has on workers welfare and hence organization productivity. To this end, the paper offers an account of the existing literature and links the literature to improving human welfare at workplaces. Introduction The history of Industrial Organizational psychology is rooted in a confluence of precursors from philosophy, science and psychology (Koppes&Pickren, 2007). It is a branch involving the practice of theories and practices of psychology to industrial and organizational environments. Levy (2013) says that the I/O psychology serves to access, measure, and offer workforce motivation as well as enhance leadership, employee-employer relations, and job attitudes. Rogeelberg (2007) similarly notes that the goal of I/O psychology is t o better understand and ensure the effectiveness, well being, and health of both the workers and organizations. Industrial-organization psychology may be defined as the psychology of scientific study of human behavior at workplace or simply the study of behavior at work (Vuulen, 2010). Industrial-Organizational psychology has been a focus of study for many since it emerged in the 1900s. The real essence of the emergence of the I/O psychology was an attempt to improve job productivity and the quality of lives at workplaces. The new branch of Psychology aimed at solving practical problems at workplaces (Vuulen, 2010). Industrial- Organizational psychology is a double faceted principle aimed at enhancing organizational performance by addressing effective workers performance at contributing to human welfare at workplaces. Relevance of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at work place Most employed people spend a substantial amount of his time at workplaces and therefore the work enviro nment should consider the welfare of the workers, which greatly affects their quality of life. The realization of this fact has led to a rapid of I/O specialty in North America as well as throughout the industrialized world at large (Spector, 2003). Organizations are seeking the services of specialists who can comprehend and assess the human resource behavior to improve the job satisfaction of their workers and thus productivity. Since its inception the Industrial and Organizational psychology has continued to transform the way organization are run and the values that are important in a work environment. The I/O psychology itself has undergone some metamorphism to what it is today under the influence of scientific management, ergonomics and human relations. Human relations is a management approach that has evolved more recently which stresses on the workers and managers’ psychological characteristics underlining the importance of factors such as humane treatment of workers, m orale, attitude and values (Cameron 2007, quoted in Cengage Learning, n.d.). Traditionally work was viewed primarily as a means to cover one’s economic needs, a perception that has changed with the human relation management approach that demands workplaces to be run as a social system. Positive interpersonal

English Test Paper Evaluation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

English Test Paper Evaluation - Essay Example The students could be asked to summarize the text in 100 words. This is a good method of evaluating if the text was understood and it also gives the students the possibility to use their vocabulary, no matter how poor it is. Some students may find using their own words a little frustrating, but it is important to underline that they do not have to write a lot, just as little as 100 words. Another variation could be stating the theme, the main ideas or even for the more advanced, giving their own opinion on the topic. After the holistic tasks, there can be used some specific ones. For example, explaining the words in the context and using them in their own sentences can activate the vocabulary used. Anyhow one of the most popular reading comprehension exercises is the multiple-choice items. The success of this exercise consists of more answer option that can reduce the chance of guessing the correct answer. The multitudes of items aid the student and reduce the ambiguity of the task. The multiple choices offer a great flexibility in the goals that are expected and assessed, that can be knowledge, application, vocabulary, analysis and so on. On the other hand, there are also some cons when we talk about multiple choices. The reading time increases as the number of answers is higher. There cannot be presented so many questions and it turns out to be difficult to write four or five reasonable and logical answers. Reading comprehension is one of the greatest ways of getting the holistic image of someone's knowledge.... It requires not only reading skills, but also logic and good vocabulary. Hirsch Jr. states that "a big difference between an expert and a novice reader is the ability to take in basic features very fast, thereby leaving the mind free to concentrate on important features." (Hirsch 3) In this way, the progress of a student can be monitored and his lacks in understanding the language can be corrected. The text must be carefully chosen. For example a text that contains way too many technical or medical terms is rather improper for a secondary learned, unless he was introduced before in the terminology. One of the most used methods is to include roughly-tuned texts that have a real source, but were changed in order to be more accessible for students. Another method is to select a short or medium length article, but in this case we must pay attention to the possible grammar mistakes. The great thing here is that there is a large range of texts from which one can choose. After choosing the text, there are various ways in which we can assess the knowledge gained and the understanding of the text. The students could be asked to summarize the text in 100 words. This is a good method of evaluating if the text was understood and it also gives the students the possibility to use their vocabulary, no matter how poor it is. Some students may find using their own words a little frustrating, but it is important to underline that they do not have to write a lot, just as little as 100 words. Another variation could be stating the theme, the main ideas or even for the more advanced, giving their own opinion on the topic. After the holistic tasks, there can be used some specific ones. For example,

Human Factors Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Human Factors Psychology - Essay Example The second is to find ways to work with management and employees as the changes occur within the work area. The concept of automation that can be used in the work space is one that can enhance the overall work load of those that are in the area. The airport will have the ability to change the work load that goes to cleaning different components and will have more efficiency that is related to the cleanliness of the airport. More important, there will be a reduction of stress for those that are overworked in the area and which don’t have the necessary time for cleaning specific areas. Since the airport is a larger area, this can provide more efficient results and can eliminate some of the stress that is associated with employees who are working in the area. However, the design engineering with humans is still one that has to monitor the automation for the specific scenario. The process that is used is not able to provide problem solving or work around difficult situations that may arise. The processing that comes for the machine will then need to be looked over by employees while ma naging the machine to automatically fulfill specific duties (Sandom, Harvey, 2004). The ability to use the automated machine to reduce work load and stress, while ensuring that the automated system is able to have problem solving capabilities by employees gives rise to the main advantages and disadvantages of automation. The technology that is used will help to reduce the amount of time and energy that each of the employees carry within the work space. As a result, there will be higher levels of efficiency that is in the work area as well as processes that are essential that are being fulfilled while other duties are being cared for. More important, the automated process for cleaning will lower the stress levels that are in the airport, specifically because workers can

Improving The Risk Return Performance Of Portfolios

Improving The Risk Return Performance Of Portfolios With the development of the Chinese capital market, more and more investors start to look for a more rational way to invest. To increase the investment return and decrease the risk, investors must learn to allocate their funds in order to diversify risk. However, due to the limited assets that can be invested in, the convenience and effectiveness of portfolio diversification must be studied. This paper mainly explores the function of futures in the ordinary stock portfolio through the study of risk-return performance. By comparing the efficient frontiers of different portfolios, the risk-return performance of the futures portfolio and mixed stock-futures portfolio is better than the stock only portfolio. Futures play an important role in upgrading the integrated portfolio of stock and futures. The results of this study provide investors with a feasible way to diversify their funds in multi-type investment portfolios, which is of great theoretical and practical significance. I. An introduction to Chinese capital market Ever since December 19, 1990, when Shanghai stock exchange opened, people become more and more interested in investing in the security market to make money. After twenty years, investing in stocks is a quite popular and important way for ordinary Chinese people to manage their money. However, stock market itself can not meet investors needs of diversifying risk and increase capital return, and investment diversification becomes a natural solution and guiding concept. Although twenty years have passed since Shanghai stock exchange came in existence, development of Chinese capital market is quite slow, with limited kinds of investment products. Lack of varieties of trading tools and incomplete structure of capital market products make it difficult to diversify in Chinese capital market. In developed capital markets such as Hong Kong, over 80% of financial derivative instruments in international financial market have been introduced. In stock market, the trading of index futures, options and warrants is quite active with a trending of exceeding the trading of spot market. Hong Kong bond market is even more diversified. Based on three basic kinds which are bond, note and certificate of deposits of fund-raising tools, many more complicated derivatives such as floating rate bonds, variable rate bonds, convertible bonds, credit card receivables, and the current debt instruments traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing has been increased to 129.(20 09) On the contrary, despite of stocks, there are few more than five years investment instruments in mainland China capital markets. The trading of 1-5 year instruments is also confined so that the available trading instruments are quite limited. As an emerging market the risk of stock market is higher than normal, both systematic risk and market risk. The systematic flaws in Chinese stock market such as no trades of state owned and corporation owned stocks and lack of index futures  [1]  or other kinds of hedging instruments make the whole stock exchange system more uncertain. The strong influence of state policy changing is also a reason for high uncertainty. As for the market risk, stock market is in sharp adjustment since the end of 2007. On the one hand, the overall risk has lowered a little; it is still too high compared with the mature capital markets. On the other hand, the low self-control ability of the participants involved in stock market makes the unsystematic risk highe r than average. Investing only in stock market can not successfully diversify risk. Considering the incompleteness of Chinese warrant market, futures have been chosen to diversify risk. Chinese future market also started in 1990. After six years of cleaning up and reconstruction (1995-2000), future market is in good development. In 2002, stock market turned down, which made part of the stock market capital switch to future market and made it a hot deal. This situation is quite similar to what happened in 2007-2008. Chinese future market developed from first pilot reform to rectification and now has entered a new stage of stable development. The legal operation and market discipline have been significantly improved. These features make futures possible as a component of portfolio. At present, research of the role of futures in the portfolio is focused on index futures and its hedging properties, while the research of commodity futures is focused on its function of price discovering. Adding futures into ordinary stock portfolio has not been well discussed so that this article will research on the performance of portfolio with commodity futures to see whether futures can effectively diversify risk and raise the return. How to optimize investment portfolio becomes the first and most important question that investors need to consider. Thus, modern portfolio theory becomes quite widely applied in practice. Portfolio means investors allocate certain amount of money to different kinds of assets in order to gain as much as possible return or to get the lowest possible risk. II. Past literature review in portfolio selection theories In 1959, Markowitz published his paper named Portfolio Selection: Eficient Diversification of Investments, which conducted a pioneering study of optimizing portfolio in the security market. Ever since then, modern finance and investment decision making comes into a quantitative stage. Portfolio theory is a set of theories and methods to help investors choose certain types and allocate their money from varieties of instruments to form efficient portfolio. In Markowitz theory, mean-variance model can be applied to any class of financial assets, as long as its expected return and the correlation of each asset can be accurately estimated (Markowitz, 1959). In his model, mean represents the expected return of an asset and its risk is represented by the variance. In order to use the Markowitz mean-variance method, we need to find the expected rate of return and risk. However, considering the ineffectiveness of Chinese stock market, the simple mean-variance is not applicable. Thus, more app ropriate method of evaluating return and risk needs to be found. Among these different evaluating methods, people tend to agree using expected return as a representative of future earnings. The return of a financial asset is consisted of two parts: intertemporal cash flows and capital premium (asset price changes during the holding period). The return that this article is going to use is the daily logarithmic rate of return, so the intertemporal cash flows can be ignored. The yield can be expressed as: Because logarithmic rate of return can be simply added which facilitate the data processing by software and its value can be any real numbers, this article will use logarithmic rate of return as the evaluation of asset yields. The simplest way to get the expected rate of return is calculating its average. Its flaws are also quite obvious: the result is far from accurate. In order to find more accurate estimation, we need to fit time series data to appropriate model and find the unconditional expectation of asset return. In 1980s and 1990s, lots of literatures have discussed the predictability of stock market and suitable model of predicting asset returns. M.Hashem Pesaran and Allan Timmermann (1995) found that the predictable components of stock returns are highly correlated with business cycle and the magnitude of shocks influences the model more than expected. But because what they studied is a long term relationship in the stock market, the results can only be a consultation. As for the daily stock return, many researches suggest that it shows significant dependence on former returns. Vedat Akgiray found in his paper about the conditional heteroscedasticity in stock returns that the probability distribu tion of return lag of s days is dependent on return today for several values of s (1989). He used daily returns on the CRSP (Center for Research in Security Prices) value-weighted and equal-weighted index from January 1963 to December 1986 to find that GARCH (1,1) shows the best fit and forecast ability among the econometric models. Noticing that the return he used is also logarithmic rate, the features of logarithmic rate in this article can be expected to be just like that in his study. Similar results can be obtained from other literatures. There is a positive relation between the expected risk premium and the predictable level of volatility and a negative relation between unpredictable component of stock market risk and excess holding period return (K. R. French et al, 1987). Although they can not determine a certain model to describe the exact relation (difficult to choose between ARIMA and GARCH-M), the relation between return and risk is quite significant. Studies about Chinese stock market also show evidence of fitting stock return data in ARMA or GARCH models. The daily returns of Shanghai and Shenzhen index indicates significant ARCH effect and the data fit in GARCH-M model well (Hua Tian and Jiahe Cao, 2003). It is reasonable to choose ARMA or GARCH model to simulate the actual stock movement. But as for the measurement of risk there are comparably various methods. Markowitz explained the mean-variance theory in his 1959 portfolio selection paper which introduced the statistical concept of expectation and variance into the study of investment portfolio. Under a certain probability distribution of returns, he used the average deviation from the average return of all the random returns. Thus, risk can be quantified with the expectation of return as return expected and standard deviation as the measurement of risk. Although variance has some easy to use features such as simple calculating and easy understanding, it is only an approximate measurement of risk. Using variance needs the distribution to be systematic and does not take the investors different feeling about capital gain and loss into consideration. Given the same amount of gain and loss, the pain of loss is usually larger than the happiness of the capital earnings. Variance ignores this asymmetry while LPM (lower partial moments) would be a better measurement. Harlow proposed this new indicator as a more accurate way to describe risk (1991). LPM is an abbreviation of lower partial moment, which P (partial) stands for its measuring only one side of the returns compared with the fundamental rate and L (lower) stands for less than fundamental rate (downside risk). LPM is a risk measurement which meets the requirements of Von Neumann Morgenstern utility function and can cover almost all peoples risk preference. It shows a new way to describe risk apart from the traditional utility measurement which is the function of variance or the standard deviation. The expression of LPM is: , where n is called the order of LPM indicators, representing the risk aversion of investors, and z is called fundamental rate of return which is the minimum return that investors would accept. Different values of n would change LPM into different measurements of risk and therefore meet different investors risk preference, from risk preference to risk neutral, then risk aversion. One advantage of LPM is that it can show only the pain or loss possibility when the return is lower than the expected. The other is it can show what investors different risk preference can affect the feelings to the same asset by simply changing the order n. LPM is less popular in evaluating volatility than variance as the calculation of LPM is more complicated. Another reason is that LPM must be calculated separately for each variable while variance can be added or processed under certain assumptions. This means people need to program it in order to use LPM with computer data processing programs. On the contrary, all the data processing programs have a default function of calculating variance. The way to evaluating the performance of asset portfolios is its efficient frontier. Every combination of risky assets can be plotted in a risk-return space, and those combinations with the highest return under the same risk or with the lowest risk under same return are called efficient portfolios. Usually, the upper part of the curve which describes risk-return features of efficient portfolios is called efficient frontier. Ordinary efficient frontier of investment portfolio is calculated by Markowitzs mean-variance method. This article will use LPM to substitute variance to calculate efficient frontier which makes it more like investors thoughts of risk. Merriken suggested that variance and LPM are suitable for the study of short-term investment (1994), which is quite popular in Chinese capital market. Based on the review of the related literatures, this article will use econometric models to get expectation daily return of stock and futures and both variance and LPM to calculate efficient frontiers to see whether adding futures into stocks would improve the performance of portfolios. III. Theoretical study and empirical data results i. Theories of econometric models and multi-type asset portfolio The econometric models used to estimating the expected return and risk are ARMA and GARCH models depending on the features of different stock and futures time series. ARMA is an abbreviation of autoregressive and moving average model, which is typically used in estimating autocorrelated time series. As what is mentioned in the literature, auto-correlation in daily logarithmic return is shown by theoretical study, and the empirical study of the realistic data also suggests this result. Typical ARMA model is consisted of two parts: AR (auto-regressive) part and MA (moving average) part. It is normally notified as ARMA (p, q) where p is the order of autoregressive part and q is the order of moving average part. AR part is written as: , where are the parameters and is the error term (usually white noise). The value of p suggests how many lags of are regressed on and therefore is a measurement of autocorrelation. For the need of stays stationary, usually we need the absolute value of is less than unit. MA part is written as: , where are the parameters, is the expectation of , and is still the error term (usually white noise). The value of q suggests how many error terms are included in the smoothing process of average and MA process is always a stationary time series. Thus, ARMA model is written as: , which is a combination of autoregressive part and moving average part. The value of parameters is generally determined by the least square method which minimized the residual error term. The value of p and q is chosen to better fit the model without too much lags or smoothing terms. The method used in this article is through the value of ACF (autocorrelation function, which is used to determine the order of moving average) and PACF (partial autocorrelation function, which is used to determine the order of autoregressive part). In spite of autocorrelation, there are other special features of financial time series data such as fat tails, extreme values and volatility clustering. Simple ARMA models assume that the error term is independently and identically distributed which does not meet the fact. Thus, Engle (1982) posed ARCH (Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity) model to analyze this volatility feature of financial data. Four years later, T.Bollerslev improved this model and made it GARCH which is a generalized ARCH model. GARCH model is developed specially for financial data and is widely used in the study of volatility. In addition to the normal econometric model, people use GARCH to better analyze and forecast volatility. GARCH model can be written as: where the first equation is a simple ARMA model, but this time is not an independently and identically distributed normal error term. is an independently and identically distributed error term and is called conditional variance which is estimated by the third equation (also an ARMA model). and are independent of each other and the distribution of is not restricted as normal but can be changed to satisfy actual situation. This makes GARCH a more accurate model in estimating the expected rate of return and risk. Hiroshi Konno and Katsunari Kobayashi (1997) made an attempt to add bonds into ordinary stock portfolio to find a new way of allocating investment. Their purpose is to extend the mean-variance model normally used in optimizing stock portfolios to integrated bond-stock portfolios. At that time, big scale mean-variance models were restricted in stock portfolios although the computer technology and mathematical methods in financial engineering developed fast. Although bonds seem always to be considered separately when people intend to invest in financial market, Hiroshi and Katsunari still want to add bonds into portfolios. The reason is that before 1980s, the return of bond was far less risky than that of stock due to the stable interest rate. However, after 1980s, interest rate became much more volatile and investors bore heavily loss and huge risks. Actually, the volatility of bonds at that time was even higher than that of stocks. Considering this, combining bonds and stocks into the same portfolio is of great realistic meanings. The method they used is mean-variance and mean-absolute deviation models where variance and absolute deviation are as the different measurement of risk. The results are also quite satisfied as adding bonds into stock portfolios can increase the expected return under the same risk level. Never the less, Raimond Maurer and Frank Reiner in 2001 also used this idea of multi-type asset portfolio to discuss the possible outcomes of adding real estate securities into international asset portfolios under a shortfall risk frame. They noticed the fact that financial time series data had its own features and the tradition way of evaluating risk using variance can not reflect what investors think in the reality. Therefore, LPM was introduced as the way of measuring risk to reflect the asymmetry in the rate of return of asset. They compared the situation in Germany and in US by calculating the efficient frontiers of common portfolios, then calculating the efficient frontiers of adding real estate securities into portfolios. Because they studied between different countries, Raimond Maurer and Frank Reiner also calculated the effects of hedging. The results are also quite satisfied as the efficient frontiers move to the left, especially for those high risk-averse investors in Germany. Also, hedging could improve the performance of portfolios, especially for the US investors. With hedging they can build investment portfolios with higher rate of return under a relatively low risk level. But as mentioned above in the introduction part, there are few commercial bonds besides the government bonds; the only possible type of asset besides stocks that can be added into investment portfolios is futures. This article will also calculate the efficient frontiers of stocks, futures and combined portfolios separately, using both variance and LPM as the measurement of risk. As to the number of assets that should be held in one portfolio, investors have different opinions. Most mutual funds in the US market hold more than 100 stocks. Although these over-sized investment portfolios may well diversified risks, the expected return can be just acceptable as higher operational fee are needed to maintain such a huge portfolio and these stocks usually contains some low return ones. Xianyi Lu (2006) discussed this question that how many stocks are suitable for Chinese investors to hold in a single portfolio. He constructed portfolios with different number of stocks to compare their risk-return performance. The measurement of risk he used is variance. He came to the conclusion that 20 stocks would be enough to diversify most of the risk. The close-up price of stock is quite easily obtained while to find suitable closing price of futures is somewhat tricky. Futures are contracts which specify certain quantity and quality of fundamental assets between two parties to trade at a specified date in the future with a price agreed today. Thus there can be various contracts with the same kind of fundamental asset in different delivery date. Considering the trading characteristics of Chinese future market, Chengjie Ge and Yong Liang from a Chinese fund called Guotai Junan tried to construct a continuous future contract to get the daily closing price in 2008. When a contract first comes into market, the transactions are quite few. One contract is traded most actively just three or four months before delivery date, as the coming of specified date the trading volume begins to fall quickly. Those investors, especially the speculators would only trade those contracts that so-called à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“dominant contractà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?. Thu s, each future contract is in good liquidity only for a short time period. A continuous future contract is selecting the most actively traded contract of same fundamental asset at the same time to form a new, artificial contract to get the continuous price time series of one asset. ii. Data collection and analysis This article uses daily closing price of stock and futures from the time period 04/01/2007 to 31/12/2008. The data is obtained from RESSET database  [4]   Futures chosen are copper, aluminum, rubber and fuel oil from Shanghai Future Exchange, corn and soybean meal from Dalian Future Exchange and cotton and wheat gluten from Zhengzhou Future Exchange. In order to get daily return we need to construct continuous future contracts by selecting the most active contracts. As to the 8 futures used in this article, the most active contracts of wheat gluten, soybean meal, cotton, fuel oil and corn are those contracts with delivery date four months before the current month (not accounting current month); the most transacted contracts of rubber, aluminum and copper are those with delivery date two months before the current month (still not accounting current month). For example, current time is 19970201, so the contract which should be selected for cotton is the 199705 contract whose delivery month is May 1997. When it comes to 19970301, the contract selected for cotton should be 199703, and so on, so forth. After constructing eight continuous future contracts, we can get the time series of close-up price. The calculation of logarithmic rate of return, variance and LPM is just like the stock data. Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of futures like the mean, the standard deviation, and some others. As the bond market is not mature in China, the risk free rate that used in this article is the three-month central bank bill rate which is also from the RESSET database, same database as the closing price of stocks and futures. From the statistics in the table we can find that the logarithmic daily return of futures shows asymmetry and fat tails, far from the assumption of mean-variance model that the distribution of returns should be normal distribution, or at least a symmetric bell-shaped distribution. Thus, using variance or standard deviation or any other kind of symmetric statistics would be less accurate. Fitting data into econometric models should provide a better estimation of expected rate of return and risk. Table 2.1-2.4 and Table 3.1-3.3 show the estimation of coefficients using ARMA and GARCH models. The models of stock returns are mostly ARMA models, but of futures are half GARCH models and half ARMA models. Table 2 is the results of future data and table 3 is the results of stock data. From the table we can see that there are four futures which are better fit in GARCH models and for the other four, ARMA is enough as the residual series after ARMA does not show significant heteroscedasticity in error terms. As for stocks, none of the 19 stock time series show significant heteroscedasticity which means ARMA could describe the features of stock price series. One interesting finding is that only 11 stock price time series show the correlation effect while the other 8 stock price series seem to be random walk. Table 2.1 and Table 2.2 are the GARCH results of future returns. Cotton, soybean meal, aluminum and copper show significant auto correlated heteroscedasticity. The basic model that used to estimate the return is ARMA model, and the first two lags show the most correlation with current logarithmic rate of return. The null hypothesis for all the coefficient in the model is the coefficient equals zero. The constant terms in the models are not significant despite that of soybean meal whose p-value is 0.0202, which means we can reject the null hypothesis under a 5% confidence level. The reason for not able to reject the null hypothesis of constant terms equaling zero may be the absolute value of daily logarithmic rate of return is too small, usually under 0.01. In such a low level the normal test to calculating p-value may become not suitable. So the value of constant terms is still used in the ultimate model to calculate the estimation of expected return although we can not reject the po ssibility that it actually equals zero. Table 2.3 and Table 2.4 show the ARMA results of future returns. Wheat gluten, corn, fuel oil and rubber daily logarithmic rate of return are estimated by ARMA model. The null hypothesis is also that any coefficient equals zero with p-value stands for the probability of making mistakes when rejecting the null hypothesis. The problem is the same with that of GARCH models as the p-values are too large to reject. But still we accept this result and make forecast using the present model. In spite of the not-so-satisfying results in the constant term, the coefficients of AR term and MA term are quite significantly different from zero which can be tell from the p-values. This is also true in futures GARCH model and stocks ARMA models. The significance of correlations in logarithmic rate of return series matches the features of financial time series and is what we would like to expect when estimating these coefficients. There are 19 stock return series to be modeled, but only 11 of them shows autocorrelation with their lags. None of these shows significant heteroscedasticity in the error terms so the model chosen is ARMA model. The constant terms of each stock return model is smaller than that of future return model, and the p-value is bigger than 0.05 as expected. The current return of four stocks out of this eleven shows significant correlation with the six and seven lags, showing the existence of cycle effects in the stock market. For these four stocks, what happened in the week before affects the price of this week more compared with other time. Other seven stocks show the ordinary one or two lags correlation. The coefficients of AR and MA part are also of great significance and the null hypothesis can be rejected. For those 8 stocks which do not show the existence of autocorrelation, the processing method is to calculate the basic descriptive statistics such as mean and variance. This method may ignore the asymmetry and fat tails of the data, but as there is no good econometric model to estimate random walk series, this simple way has its own advantage and also of quite high accuracy in estimating the expected rate of return and risk. This article use the forecast value of each model as the expected rate of return, and the variance of the sample as the expected risk for the mean-variance model of investment portfolios. For those 4 GARCH future models, the expected risk is the forecast value of the error part model. As for those eight stocks whose logarithmic daily return series are random walk, simply use the mean as the expected rate of return and the variance as the expected rate of risk. LPM1 is using the three-month central bank bill rate as fundamental rate of return because of its risk-free characteristic. The mean-LPM model also uses the results of expected rate of return from the forecast of GARCH and ARMA models as the only change in this new model is the risk measurement from variance to LPM. Someone may argue that different econometric models could cause different estimation of expected rate of return, thus the results of efficient frontiers become not so convincing. The purpose of this article is to compare the efficient frontiers of different asset portfolios, trying to find the possible improvement of adding futures into the ordinary stock portfolios. The econometric estimation is used to construct Markowitzs mean-variance model. What can be seen from Table 2 and Table 3 is that most of the assets can be fitted into ARMA model. As a matter of fact, because the absolute value of daily logarithmic rate of return is too small, the difference of constant terms between GARCH and ARMA model for the same asset is very small that can be ignored. The calculation of efficient frontiers is using MATLAB financial tool box, and the original data is what has been done above. After calculating the correlation coefficient matrix of 19 stocks and 8 futures, there is not much correlation of each asset. In fact, most of the correlations coefficients are between 0.1 to 0.3, with some of them even to be negative correlated. It suggests that the risk diversify of investment portfolios should successful using these 27 assets according to the statement of Markowitz. 8 futures portfolio Stock and future portfolio (The green line is the efficient frontiers of 19 stocks portfolio, the purple line (in the middle) is of 8 futures portfolio and the blue line is of the mixed stock and future portfolio.) Compared these three efficient frontiers, we can find that adding futures into the ordinary stock portfolio can greatly improve the performance of portfolios, which is even greater under lower risk level. Single future portfolio also performs well compared with single stock portfolio as it can offer higher rate of return under the same risk level. From Figure 1 we can find with the same expected return of 0.4ÃÆ'—10-3, the mixed stock and future portfolio can reduce the risk from 0.012 of single stock portfolio to less than 0.006. This more than fifty percent of risk reduction shows great practical meaning of multi-type asset investment portfolios. Figure 2: the efficient frontiers of stock, future and mixed portfolios using mean-LPM model Figure 2 shows the same results as the Figure 1. The mixed stock and future investment portfolio can improve the risk-return performance of portfolios. Similarly, future portfolio performs much better than stock portfolio, and it can greatly raise the expected return under higher risk level. The mixed portfolios improvement is mainly under low risk level, as the risk becomes bigger, the performing difference between future portfolio and mixed portfolio are not so significant, for the efficient frontiers overlap each other. The efficient frontiers are straight lines in Figure 2 while they are curves in Figure 1. The different risk measurement may result in this. Because LPM only calculates the downside risk, the risks of the portfolios which provide same return are not the same. Every single LPM must be calculated separately. So the shape of the new efficient frontiers may look different from the traditional hyperbola-shaped curves in mean-variance models. Both the mean-variance model and the mean-LPM model show that only investing in stock market can not get as much return as investing only in future market under the same risk level because the efficient frontier of stock portfolio is to the right of that of future portfolio and the distance between the two efficient frontiers is quite large. It reveals a fact that investing only in stock market can not guarantee ideal revenue. Although twenty years has passed since the establishment of

Honor and the Celtic Heroes Essay -- Irish Myths

The honor-code within the Mabinogi, The Tain, and Gantz’s Early Irish Myths and Sagas underlines the ethos of the traditional Celtic hero. Yet, the compliance of the honor-code could be better observed as serving the identity and reputation of the hero rather than a deeper code of morality as it might suggest. The gae bolga, Efnisien, Mider’s love for Etain, and Rhiannon’s magic bag are all instruments of unworldly power, making the impossible possible for each of the heroes. It is because of these supernatural influences that the heroes are both blessed and cursed by power’s perfection. The compliance to the honor-code plays less a role in truly enabling the hero and yet it’s essential in the development of the hero’s identity and reputation among his allies and enemies. Within The Tain, the warrior Cuchulainn is characterized as a flawless hero, destined to die young. Cuchulainn’s honor to Ulster could easily be measured by the uncountable number of warriors he’s killed with his various skills and gae bolga, yet the killing of his only son Connla and his Foster-brother Ferdia proves to be his most difficult and heroic task. Despite Emer’s plea for Cuchulainn to spare his only son, Cuchulainn provokes the boy to fight him, using his gae bolga to kill him. Cuchulainn’s honor to Ulster through the sacrifice of his son not only grieves him, but all the men of Ulster. (The Tain, p.45) Tragically, the boy expresses the essence of a warrior’s honor to the men of Ulster and to Cuchulainn in obeying his wishes to refuse no man in combat (The Tain, p.33). The boy bids his farewell to the men of Ulster saying, â€Å"If only I had five years among you I would slaughter the warriors of the world for you. . . But since it is li ke this, point me o... ...n’s kingdom for a year and killing Hafgan for Arawn. (The Mabinogi, p.38) And his honor in not talking or sleeping with Arawn’s wife earns him an enduring friendship, gaining him otherworld treasures and the kingship of Annwfn. (The Mabinogi, p.41-42) Even when his wife Rhiannon’s child is abducted and everyone wants him to divorce his wife, he loves her and see’s no fault in her, letting the teachers and men of wisdom decided her punishment. (The Mabinogi, p.51) Underlining all of the heroes of the Celtic stories is how human they are. Even Taliesin, the divinely inspired poet did not become who he was without stealing the three drops of wisdom. (The Mabinogi, p.163) The Celtic stories not only depict their successes and failures in warfare, discernment, and love, but also their painful sacrifices in attempting to keep the admiration and trust of their kingdoms. Honor and the Celtic Heroes Essay -- Irish Myths The honor-code within the Mabinogi, The Tain, and Gantz’s Early Irish Myths and Sagas underlines the ethos of the traditional Celtic hero. Yet, the compliance of the honor-code could be better observed as serving the identity and reputation of the hero rather than a deeper code of morality as it might suggest. The gae bolga, Efnisien, Mider’s love for Etain, and Rhiannon’s magic bag are all instruments of unworldly power, making the impossible possible for each of the heroes. It is because of these supernatural influences that the heroes are both blessed and cursed by power’s perfection. The compliance to the honor-code plays less a role in truly enabling the hero and yet it’s essential in the development of the hero’s identity and reputation among his allies and enemies. Within The Tain, the warrior Cuchulainn is characterized as a flawless hero, destined to die young. Cuchulainn’s honor to Ulster could easily be measured by the uncountable number of warriors he’s killed with his various skills and gae bolga, yet the killing of his only son Connla and his Foster-brother Ferdia proves to be his most difficult and heroic task. Despite Emer’s plea for Cuchulainn to spare his only son, Cuchulainn provokes the boy to fight him, using his gae bolga to kill him. Cuchulainn’s honor to Ulster through the sacrifice of his son not only grieves him, but all the men of Ulster. (The Tain, p.45) Tragically, the boy expresses the essence of a warrior’s honor to the men of Ulster and to Cuchulainn in obeying his wishes to refuse no man in combat (The Tain, p.33). The boy bids his farewell to the men of Ulster saying, â€Å"If only I had five years among you I would slaughter the warriors of the world for you. . . But since it is li ke this, point me o... ...n’s kingdom for a year and killing Hafgan for Arawn. (The Mabinogi, p.38) And his honor in not talking or sleeping with Arawn’s wife earns him an enduring friendship, gaining him otherworld treasures and the kingship of Annwfn. (The Mabinogi, p.41-42) Even when his wife Rhiannon’s child is abducted and everyone wants him to divorce his wife, he loves her and see’s no fault in her, letting the teachers and men of wisdom decided her punishment. (The Mabinogi, p.51) Underlining all of the heroes of the Celtic stories is how human they are. Even Taliesin, the divinely inspired poet did not become who he was without stealing the three drops of wisdom. (The Mabinogi, p.163) The Celtic stories not only depict their successes and failures in warfare, discernment, and love, but also their painful sacrifices in attempting to keep the admiration and trust of their kingdoms.

The Birthday Party

â€Å"Birthday Party† Love can fade away or be lost by even the strongest of couples in the view of society. The â€Å"Birthday Party,† by Katharine Brush relates the relationship of two â€Å"unmistakably married† couple, out for a small celebration, which goes wrong as an example of love that can not always be sustained by age. As couples get older it is harder to sustain love in front of society, and Brush shows the idea by incorporating symbolism, tone, and point of view to the story.Brush uses the tone to build up the audience’s emotions toward the married couple and also identify why the situation occurred. In the begging she mentions that they looked â€Å"unmistakably married† which emphasizes the bond of love that appears on the outside. The physical aspect of their relationship is good to show because it lets society know that there is a strong bond, making it easier for the audience to react in the shocked way that they did when the incid ent occurred. The contradicting choice of words of Brush when describing the incident also gives the confusion that something is not right.By using fadingly pretty, beamed with shy pride, unmistakably married, hotly embarrassed and not pleased you can see a foreshadowing of what may happen according to the mixed signals. In a way, it has the reader thinking back and fort whether this is love after a long period of time. What seems to be an ordinary day out, turns into a small celebration in which we can compare the minor events as symbolism to their love. The cake that was brought out showed the wife’s affection for her husband, therefore simply signified her love to him.When the cake was rejected by the husband, it meant that the husband had little interest in her love. This reveals that the strong physical relationship that the audience saw in the beginning is false now that they see the husband hotly mad. It shows that their love is slowly decaying in front of society. The fact that they are out in public illustrates the judgment of all to what love truly is, difficult to manage as time goes on. People will always be judgmental of couples and their relationship which is why Brush describes the wife as wearing a â€Å"big hat. The big hat that she wears, after she has been humiliated by her husband, represents what most girls do during emotional tolls. They use them to cover up their emotions so that they are not pitted on by others. This attempt to hide does not work very well because Brush describes the scene where the narrator shows a sign of pity for the lonely sobbing woman. In this short story love has shifted the couple’s relationship in a serious way which gives the audience an opinion of how they should react according to their point of view.There are many biased forms to interpret who is to blame for a fallen relationship. The way that Brush describes the story and from what point of view she portrayed the situation it seems as thoug h there is a feminist background on who is to blame for this relationship. Describing the woman more dramatically, â€Å"fadingly pretty† and â€Å"in a big hat,† than the man, it implies that she finds the woman to be more presentable to society; therefore carrying more about how people see her. There is evidence of acting dramatically.When she cried inside the restaurant, it can most likely show that from the point of view of the audience she was the helpless one with a broken heart and the man was very rude. Throughout life the bond of love is seen in society in different ways than they are seen in the inside. Society can change the view of love as Brush shows that love is can’t be predicted and that hopeless love is possible. If there is no hope for love as an older couple that it shows us what couples of today’s generation will go through. The Birthday Party Have you ever been so afraid that you have felt that even your hair trembled? When a delightful day starts and you are full of life but suddenly you think you are not going to tell your friends and family how much you love them, and how much you miss them before you die. At 7 o'clock in the evening I went to the cinema with some friends to celebrate my birthday. I knew that something was going wrong. I knew that, that night wasn't an ordinary night. I knew I had to go home on foot and not by car. Everything and everyone was different. My friends arrived and we decided to watch a horror movie, â€Å"Gothika†. We entered the screen but something strange happened. There weren't any other people! In the middle of the movie somebody was calling me. I did not know the number, so I did not answered but whoever it was, he kept calling. I answered. A creepy voice whispered, â€Å"It will rain tonight.† I told my friends about it, and they laughed. â€Å"Leoni don't be crazy! It's just a joke! This morning the sun was shining it will not rain! â€Å"Come on do not be afraid. Calm down Leoni!† Peter soothed. â€Å"The movie we have chosen is a bit scary and she is afraid. Calm down Leoni!† Epaminondas whispered. â€Å"She is just not in a good mood.† Maria said. â€Å"I am telling you there was something scary with those words, something strange.† I whispered. At about 11:25 everybody left and I started walking back home. There was a full moon. A terrifying wind made the trees rustle. The wind whistled through the leaves like a wining sound. I was so frightened. I felt like someone was coming after me. I saw a narrow road and I decided to go home from there. Suddenly, it started raining. I panicked. A howling voice whispered, â€Å"I told you, it will rain.† Blood boomed in my ears. I wanted to run away or close my eyes and be at home but it could not happen. While I was thinking about any ideas dealing with my scariness I saw an old lady. She was a short, fat lady and with grey hair. Was she behind this bad joke? She seemed like an ordinary woman with droopy eyes and short hair. I started walking towards her when a black figure appeared. Who was he? Was he someone she knew? Was he the one that phoned me? What was this night about? The man had long, black hair and almond eyes. He was carrying something. A knife! I wanted to warn her but I couldn't move. I was stuck and I couldn't move my legs. I called Maria she was sleeping. Jane was sleeping too. What shall I do? Who shall I phone to come and help me? What if it was all my imagination? I phoned Chris, I didn't say much. I just told him to come to the narrow road, near the cinema. The woman was still there. She seemed to be looking for something. The man was still behind her. I told Chris to pull me just to try and move my legs. I could walk! I could run! But I couldn't run for long until I stopped in front of the old lady. While trembling I asked, â€Å"What are you looking for?† â€Å"My umbrella, child, didn't anyone tell you it would rain tonight? You are all wet. Come, take my jacket!† she said. I looked behind me and I saw the man walking away. The figure became one with the dark night. When I turned around I saw him. My heart was beating so fast and I could hardly breathe. It missed a beat! He opened his mouth to say something and I noticed that he was missing a tooth. He was very scary. He whispered, â€Å"Didn't I tell you it would rain? You thought I was joking. You did not believe me! I will make you believe me!† â€Å"Chris! Chris! Where are you?† I shouted. I opened my eyes. Chris and my friends were next to me. They were all smiling but you knew they were upset. â€Å"†Was the film so boring that you slept while we were watching it?† Chris asked. â€Å"It was a nightmare! Thank God!† I called. â€Å"You have a missed call from an unknown number.† Epaminondas said. â€Å"Oh no!† I shouted. â€Å"What's wrong?† Maria asked. â€Å"I saw a nightmare. Don't tell me to explain it because I cannot. Please can somebody do me a favour?† I asked. â€Å"Whatever you want! We will always be there for you!† Joanna shouted. â€Å"Can you phone this number back?† I asked. â€Å"Sure.† Joanna said. She phoned. She waited. She phoned another time. Nobody answered. She phoned from her mobile. Again. No answer. â€Å"Leoni are you sure this is the right number?† She asked. â€Å"Yes. This was the number that phoned me.† I whispered. â€Å"But†¦Ã¢â‚¬ She mumbled. â€Å"But what? What is wrong? Tell me!† I cried. â€Å"This number is not in use.† She whispered. â€Å"It is! Look it is calling me again.†Ã¢â‚¬  I complained. â€Å"Answer it.† Maria suggested. â€Å"I t will rain tonight!† A creepy voice whispered. â€Å"Oh no! This cannot be happening! Can you take me home? Please?† I asked desperately. â€Å"Hello? Can you hear me? Maria? Joanna? Chris? Epaminondas?† I shouted. But nobody could hear me. It seemed that I was trapped somewhere and nobody could hear me or even see me. Yes†¦I was dreaming!!!!!!!! I opened my eyes and suddenly the lights went on, a chorus of happy voices yelled happily happy birthday to me!

Learning and Teaching essayEssay Writing Service

Learning and Teaching essayEssay Writing Service Learning and Teaching essay Learning and Teaching essayThe concepts of learning and teaching are strongly related to each other: people must learn before teaching. In the process of learning, one should understand the text and concepts provided by the teacher. It is important to understand the concepts and not just to memorize them. To analyze the specifics of teaching and learning in more detail, it is possible to review   the presentation prepared by our group. This presentation perfectly illustrates how students in the eastern educational system associate learning with memorizing, without understanding the key concepts. Students in the western educational system, on the contrary, focus more on understanding the concepts rather than memorizing them. This is more efficient because memorizing does not mean that the student mastered the concept and truly learned the information. Facts that were merely memorized might be forgotten one day, but something that a person has learned will remain in his or her mind f or a long-term period.The focus on learning instead of memorizing makes the key difference between western and eastern education. The focus of our presentation is on the benefits and advantages of both western and eastern systems and on showing the differences between these systems. We use our specific story to demonstrate the real experience of eastern education and to compare it with the western educational system (part of which we are now).This PowerPoint presentation is a strong example that conveys our own experience to other people.   In my lesson plan, I will consider the advantages of both teaching systems. The western system is more focused on activity and helps people learn things while completing various activities; in this system, students interact with teachers in a friendly manner. At the same time, the eastern system focuses on listening to the lectures more than on participating. I will do my best to incorporate both concepts in my micro-teaching lesson. I know I a m new to teaching, but I learned a lot from Lises class before preparing own micro-teaching lesson. I will prepare myself in the best way. I hope that I will succeed and that I will become a good teacher in the future.Object LessonsAfter I finished reading the article ‘Object Lessons: Thinking About Material Culture’, I found out that an artist should study the materials in the surrounding world. For example, the author presents the case of a bicycle: an artist should find out why people might study human-made objects. The students provide different answers: because we need to figure out how to make such objects, we need to find out what motivated the authors and why they actually create them. By studying other kinds of objects surrounding human beings, we can assess and understand material culture.When I finished reading the article, I decide to bring my mini-stapler as the object to Lise’s Object Lesson. The mini-stapler is my personal item that I keep in my ba g every day. I think that a mini-stapler is useful for any college student, because one can staple documents or papers together using this object. Moreover, I enjoy the compactness of the mini-stapler: this object is quite small and it is easy to keep it in a bag or in a pencil case. The design of the stapler makes it convenient for carrying and holding, and it has all the necessary functionality that we expect from this object.While studying the functions and the structure of a mini-stapler, I figured out that its structure is simple but this object can be used to apply strong pressure to staple a large set of pages together. When Lise asked us to recreate the visual representation of my object, I decided to give a new shape to my mini-stapler. I decided to make it more visually impressive and attractive. So I designed a new shape in the form of a shark for this object and used shark’s teeth to decorate the mini-stapler. The design became more impressive but the function of the stapler did not change. Staplers currently sold at the market do not have any creative shape such as the one in my design. All stapler designs are boring and blank. I want to re-create the visual representation of the stapler without changing its functions. Inventing a more impressive design and sharing this design with the world will let people consider the material culture from the visual perspective.POVThe lesson about the point of view (PoV) deals with perceiving things from the view of a child, a teen or an adult. To become a good educator, I must understand the differences between the perceptions of students of different ages. For example, a child is more impressed by color. Children enjoy using different kinds of materials for working with art; color and shape of material catch their attention. So in my artwork, I created three drawings to describe the perceptions of a child, a teen and an adult. Firstly, to represent the childs perception, I painted a bright image of fam ily with lots of colors. Human shapes are very basic and schematic, but full of love. For a teen, I depicted a teenager with his mother, because in the teens people start understanding whom they love most of all in their family. The teenager is likely to focus on one person rather on the whole family. For a teenager, the artwork will be less colorful than for a child, because a teenager knows how to mix and match colors.Lastly, the perception of an adult is detailed and has more shapes; with the help of the shapes, the artwork is enriched with more details and becomes a high-quality picture. The drawing is focused on one perception of a person or a thing. The intention of the drawing is to choose a specific angle to demonstrate the characteristics of the person or object. Furthermore, an adult will not use as many colors as a teenager. An adult will focus on one material, for example, pencil, ink or charcoal, because adults learn the technique of using different materials and know w hich one is the best for the picture.When I acquire a good understanding of the perceptions of students of all ages, I will be confident while planning lessons for my students, because it is essential to understand the characteristics and particular qualities of the students.Brittany’s Lesson PlanThe micro-teaching class is a great experience for all students. We have a chance to create own lesson plans and to see teaching formats and approaches of other people. It is very important to share experiences and to learn from each other. One of my favorite lesson plans that I still remember is the one prepared by Brittany Gerow. She did a lesson about self-portrait. It is not so engaging as Chelsea Hsus donut lesson, but the process of creating a self-portrait reminds me of high school classes. I enjoyed when the teacher of arts asked us to draw self-portraits because it is quite interesting: we have to face ourselves in front of the mirror, to draw each part of own face, to locat e all face features correctly, to understand how big own face features are, etc.In Brittany Gerow’s lesson, she used a different approach. We selected artists of different styles and we had to follow their style and use that style to make self-portraits. My selected artist was Pablo Picasso. Picassos abstract self-portrait is very famous. During the lesson Brittany taught us to understand how Picassos love to abstract shapes and exaggeration style could be used for self-portrait. Then I drew myself using abstract shapes, pictured very big red eyes, long nose and lightly colored face with blue and purple outlines. Also, I chose a different shape for the face so it was not normal anymore. The painting seemed to be like another person, not me, but I enjoyed how Pablo Picasso self-portrait approach was presented in the lesson.Ying’s Lesson PlanThe other micro-teaching lesson I would like to discuss is the lesson prepared by Ying in Performance Art. I am taking this course right now, but I am still studying the part related to making video sounds. I know that we will have Performance Art in the next semester. Ying’s lesson awoke my interest in Performance Art. In the beginning of the lesson, Ying told us to stand in the middle of the classroom and to imagine that we were flying in the sky or dancing on the floor. She made us relax in the beginning, or, in other words, focused on breaking the ice. Then we had a serious lecture about the essence of Performance Art. The performance we did in the beginning actually made me involved, so I was quite focused on the lecture. Then Ying asked students to keep writing on the paper to capture the idea of Performance Art. From this lesson, I learned that the interaction between the students and the teacher is very important for all forms of teaching and especially for art educators.

In Our Defense essays

In Our Defense essays When our forefathers created the Constitution, they were not aware of the dramatic changes in the future. The first ten amendments which are also known as the Bill of Rights, are the most prominent rights given to an individual in the United States of America. The First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; pr the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The clear and present idea is that the any speech which creates controversy or danger against any individual group or interest. This was seen in the 1987 case, Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan vs. Kansas City. In this case the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) an anti-color regime, broadcasted its view over the Kansas City television, hate words against African American people in the country. This was marked constitutional because free speech is free speech. If it was marked unconstitutional then the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., would be deemed unconstitutional. The remedy that was given to Reverend Cleaver, the opposition directed by KKK, was to organize a TV show that stated the errors and the w rongdoings of the Ku Klux Klan. Is the marketplace of idea's possible in late twentieth century America? I believe it is possible because in today's world there are many issues that are concerning for all individuals, it is not directed towards one specific group but to all. The only problem in this path is that many voices can not be heard. Many opinions will be seemed as racial and discriminative, this leading to controversy and confrontation. Thus, many voices are kept to themselves. However, during election time and aspects that will impact lives, people are very sentimental and emotionally choosing their decisions with great thought and the better judgment. But overall, a market place wher...

Women In the US Army Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 1

Women In the US Army - Research Paper Example Opposing the traditional socio-religious barriers to and prejudices that women are best suited for indoor activities due to their psychophysical fragility, women’s position in outdoor activities was reinforced by their participation in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp. Indeed the root of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp lies in the women’s unarmed services â€Å"with the Army under contract and as volunteers during World War I as communications specialists and dietitians† (Bellafiare 4). Subsequently, a bill regarding women’s inclusion into the US Army as regular personnel with equal pay, equal legal protection, disability benefits, pensions and medical care was proposed by Edith Nourse Rogers, the Congresswoman of Massachusetts. But Rogers’ propositions did not go unchallenged since â€Å"both the Army and the American public initially had difficulty accepting the concept of women in uniform† (Moore 34). Finally, Rogers’ c ommittee and the US Military authority came to a compromise regarding the women’s legal rights in the army and the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) became existent in 1942 by Public Law 554 () as a branch "for the purpose of making available to the national defense the knowledge, skill, and special training of the women of the nation." (Bellafaire 7). Later, the WAAC gained the full status of an army branch, being converted to Women’s Army Corp (WAC) in 1943. About 150,000 American women â€Å"served in the Womens Army Corps (WAC) during World War 11. Members of the WAC were the first women other than nurses to serve within the ranks of the United States Army† (Bellafiare 5). Though Rogers’s idea was to provide the women with full status of army personnel in the US Army, due to the novelty of the idea and social barriers and prejudice towards women’s participation in armed activities, the WAAC members did not have the full rights that their male counterpart had

Copper Price Rises in UK after Chile Strike Case Study

Copper Price Rises in UK after Chile Strike - Case Study Example To further understand why BHP Hilton is considered as the main stakeholder looking into the definition of it is vital in order to establish the claim. The legal definition of it according to Lectric Law Library's Lexicon defined stakeholder as "STAKEHOLDER - A third person, chosen by two or more persons, to keep in deposit property, the right or possession of which is contested between them and to be delivered to the one who shall establish his right to it. Thus each of them is considered as depositing the whole thing. This distinguishes this contract from that which takes place when two or more tenants in common deposit a thing with a bailee. The duties of a stakeholder are to deliver the thing holden by him to the person entitled to it on demand. It is frequently questionable who is entitled to it. In case of an unlawful wager, although be may be justified for delivering the thing to the winner, by the express or implied consent of the loser yet if before the event has happened he has been required by either party to give up the thing deposited with him by such party, he is bound so to deliver it or if, after the event has happened, the losing party give notice to the stakeholder not to pay the winner, a payment made to him afterwards will be made in his own wrong, and the party who deposited the money or thing may recover it from the stakeholder (2007)." Also, if taken into consideration is the 57.5 percent share of the BHP Biliton. The aforementioned company is considered as the prime owner and is more likely considered to be associated with mining activity. In this case, we still have to track the stakeholders which are considered as the third party or person to keep the property which is being contested. In the case of the erring parties between Escondida and the worker's union, the shareholders of the said mining firm could temporarily took over the operation of the company and could be regarded as the caretakers or stakeholder of the company while the workers are on strike and could also be present in the negotiating table between Esconcondida and the workers union. As the determinants of the losses or gains of the company, then they are more than capable of being the caretaker of it while the case is being settled. Of course, one has to take into consideration that these shareholders have their parts and stocks in the company, and then they are also concerned with the welfare of the company. If they act as the stakeholder during the negotiation until the dispute has been settled, then should anything happen then they are capable of making things work for both parties by making both ends meet through their finances and bonds in which they are capable of providing the aforementioned resources. Of all the stakeholders, definitely, it is BHP Biliton has the right above the other entire stakeholders since the said company has the most number of shares in the company. Therefore, they have the right to be the caretaker of the entire mining firm because of their contribution in the company plus the fact that it owns more than half of the share of the company. Should this scenario arises, what are the responsibilities of BHP Biliton while the company is under dispute What the said company should do