Analyzing Gender Roles in Billy Elliot Essay

During his first visit to The Bahamas and representing the Queen abroad for the Diamond Jubilee, Prince Harry addressed crowds of dignitaries and admirers in the capital, Nassau. The Island-hopping Prince Harry continues his 10-day Diamond Jubilee tour through the Caribbean in Jamaica this week after stops in Belize and the Bahamas over the weekend in honor of the Queen’s 60thyear on the throne. Proving to be a skilled diplomat with the common touch that characterized his late mother Princess Diana, Harry favored solo interviews with the local press and spent a great deal of time with the everyday people of the former British Honduras. The prince laid a wreath for British soldiers at Price Barracks in Belize City before departing the English-speaking Central American nation for the Bahamas. The young royal caused quite a stir in Nassau Sunday when he appeared in public for the first time ever in his crisp white ceremonial uniform, also known as the No. 1 Tropical Dress of the Blues and Royals. His uniform was punctuated with the first public reveal of the Diamond Jubilee medal. Throngs of fans lined the streets as Harry made his way to the Christ Church Cathedral to meet and greet. Though he mingled with several dignitaries in his special outfit, his encounter with Miss Bahamas, Anastagia Pierre, got tabloids buzzing. â€Å"I’m here to fall in love with Harry,† Pierre told reporters on Sunday. â€Å"He’s hot! He is single now so I would marry him, yes. † Harry brushed the comments aside and he seemed to truly enjoy himself in the Bahamas. In a speech he delivered a message from the Queen to the people of the Bahamas. Video1 Harry called at Government House in Nassau to pay his respects to the Governor General of the Bahamas and other members of the cabinet. The iconic pink-painted house is where his late great-great uncle the Duke of Windsor lived during the Second World War in his role as Governor General of the region. 3 Earlier in the day, Harry was meant to join the crew of a Royal Bahamian Defense Force patrol boat on a naval exercise but had to move to a media boat after the military vessel broke down. He eventually landed on tiny Harbor Island where he was greeted by crowds of tourists and locals. Harry will continue his Diamond Jubilee tour with a stop in Jamaica beginning Monday and end in Brazil where he will help launch a government trade mission in Rio.

Is Religion Bad for Women's Development and the Pursuit of Gender Essay

Is Religion Bad for Women's Development and the Pursuit of Gender Equality - Essay Example However, since the Second World War, religions have become increasingly involved in developmental projects and in particular have played a significant role in bringing relief to the poor. For example, in 2006, when the UK’s Minister of finance implemented an immunisation programme for raising 2.1 billion pounds for children under 5 globally, the first significant contributors were Pope Benedict XVI, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Hindu Forum of Britain and the Network of Sikh Organizations (Clarke & Jennings, 2008). Thus in determining whether or not religion is bad for women’s development and the pursuit of gender equality, it is important to avoid focusing narrowly on extremism and radicalism and to look more closely at the contributions of moderates (Clarke & Jennings, 2008). It is also important to acknowledge that secular approaches to development and the reduction of poverty have proven to be ineffective (Haynes, 2007). For example, despite secular projects in which governments have partnered with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), millions of people around the world, particularly â€Å"women and the poor† do not have â€Å"adequate healthcare† and/or opportunities for education (Haynes, 2007, p. 9). As a result, there has been a growing belief that secularism and faith-based organizations (FBOs) are both needed to ensure development and poverty reduction. Despite religion’s long and firmly established support of education for women and the poor, some doubt that religion can make a significant contribution to development (Aiken, 2010). Religious organizations and FBOs have persistently lent their support to the poor and destitute. This is especially true for victims in war torn areas and areas suffering the after-effects of natural disasters. Religious organizations and FBOs provide aid in these kinds of circumstances for two reasons: they recognize the â€Å"values of charity and mercy† and they adhere to the belief that all human beings have value (Ferris, 2005, p. 313). How can these values and beliefs, particularly when put into practice, be anything but good for women’s development and the pursuit of gender equality? In particular, since secularism has largely failed to achieve developmental objectives, religion was arguably the missing link between achieving development of women and gender equality. Moreover, NGOs have been more productive and effective in promoting equality and development across genders, races, ethnic groups and for providing relief to the poor and the destitute. As Ferris (2005) observes, NGOs have a much greater presence than governments across the globe. Many NGOs are not only operated by religions, but are also supported by religions. For example, in Asia, â€Å"thousands of NGOs† are operated by religious groups and â€Å"individuals with religious convictions† (Candland, 2000, p. 356). Moreover, Candland (2000) argues that despite the lack of empirical evidence: ...it is quite likely that a higher percentage of family income is contributed to social welfare groups in Buddhist and Muslim Asian societies, despite the absence of tax incentives, than in European and North American Societies. Buddhists and Muslims devote significant amounts of their income to private social welfare organizations (p. 357). Therefore compared to secular states, religious states have a greater awareness of social justice. In this regard, it can be argued that since religious practices, values and beliefs are manifested by a greater awareness of social and welfare justice, religion is not bad for the development of wo

Personal statement to Solar Energy Engineering Masters application Essay

Personal statement to Solar Energy Engineering Masters application - Essay Example One of the reasons I want to pursue a master’s degree in engineering is because I want to become a full time professor in the future. The fact that bilingual (English / Spanish) is a great attribute to have as an educator. In 2005 I moved to Boston and started working in the field of sales engineering of different instrumentation companies while at the same time teaching part time at Wentworth Institute of Technology. One of the best learning experiences about my sales job was the opportunity to different parts of Latin America and visit factories and rural places. I am interested in the Umass Lowell’s Master of Science Degree Program in Energy Engineering because of my interest in solar energy. I read about the different projects in place such as the Peru Project and would like to eventually implement something similar in Mexican communities and other Latin American communities where there is no electricity, telephone service, and untreated drinking water.

Broadcasting Culture in the U.K Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 10000 words

Broadcasting Culture in the U.K - Dissertation Example (2) suggest, closely related to wider controversies revolving around race, class and sexuality. The methodology of this study will be that of a careful examination of what the movie audience actually sees and further, how these images/sounds influence their changing interpretation of gender roles within the film. Thus an analysis somewhat similar to the close-analysis of literary theory will occur in which what Bert States calls "the thing itself" (the film) will be considered together with its catalyzing effect upon the thoughts of the audience (States, 1). Due to the fact that this close analysis will involve a fairly detailed examination of the movies, two representative movies will be chosen for each of the decades concerned: Tarantula and Psycho from the 1950's and Fight Club and Thelma and Louise from the 1990's. While other movies will be mentioned, a discussion of just four examples in detail might seem a decidedly flimsy framework on which to hang an analysis of gender roles in film, but the depth of analysis possible by choosing just a few examples enables a firm foundation for the ideas to be laid. If an analysis descends too much into generalities it is liable to become just that, generic; films are best examined as the viscerally simple and yet overwhelmingly complex "things" that they are. A skimming over multiple films does not enable this. CHAPTER 1 1. High Heels in the Lab: A Close Look at the Portrait of Femininity in the 1950's Classic Tarantula It is possible to watch the apparently generic 1950's "monster movie" Tarantula without discerning the message that is almost subliminally contained with it that a woman can pursue a career... This dissertation reveals that different constructions of the â€Å"masculine† and the â€Å"feminine† have occurred since the beginning of Western dramatic literature in Ancient Greece, and have been continued within that most modern of art forms: film. The camera is traditionally seen as â€Å"male†, and it has a â€Å"gaze† that supposedly dwells upon the outer features of the female body while ignoring the complex human being beneath. The opposite is meant to be true of the man, who enjoys the position of having his intellect admired and his body ignored. When the camera looks at this body and the actions of the human beings within them in a problematic and more ambiguous manner, as has been shown in the four films discussed here, a more complex interpretation of human gender roles is possible. Thus Steve in Tarantula is a sexy, voluptuous woman and also a potentially brilliant scientist. The heroine of Psycho is equally feminine but takes on the â€Å"masculine†, active role of the thief trying to abscond with the money. Norman Bates controls his own world, and in fact literally â€Å"gazes† at his future victim through a peep-hole, but reveals surprisingly feminine features and neuroses. Indeed, the role of â€Å"Mother† that he takes on to murder people might be seen as the spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to subsume this feminine side. These two films, the representative of the 1950’s, were written at a time when gender roles were fairly rigidly enforced, although the stirrings of the massive changes that would occur during the 1960’s were starting to occur.

Financial Management and Credit Risk Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Financial Management and Credit Risk - Essay Example This can significantly both increase the interest rate that is charged to the company as well the additional strain to the company’s earnings. While the company proves to be profitable, other financial measures show its many weaknesses, especially on the part of its working capital and cash conversion cycle. By probing at the current financial standing of the company, the company’s financial position is seen. With this, the implications of the subsequent financing activities can be determined as regards the overall health of the firm. The company is then faced with a decision of whether to pursue the additional debt financing. If Butler Lumber Company is not going to avail of the financing, it has to at least address and avail of some options of financing to meet its financing need. These alternatives are explored in the subsequent portions of this case study, which include strengthening cash generation from the profitable operation of the company through better working capital management, as well as other equity financing means. Butler Lumber Company’s main line of business is in retailing lumber products within the local area of a large city in the Pacific Northwest. Mark Butler, the company’s sole owner and the president is contemplating an increase in debt financing for its expansion. Butler Lumber Company currently has an existing relationship with Suburban National Bank, where it gets its additional funding in the form of loans. However, as Mr. Butler reaches the loan limit of 250,000, he is pondering on availing additional financing for his company’s expansion with a revolving credit line of 465,000 from Northrop National Bank through George Dodge. This is in order for him to secure financing that will address his company’s shortage of funds. As the loan has not yet been approved, Butler Lumber Company’s financial position is yet to be determined by Northrop National Bank before Mr. Dodge can decide on giving the additional financing to Mr. Butler.

Two Companies in Economic Downturn Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Two Companies in Economic Downturn - Essay Example For about four years General Motors have been losing in the market but Harley Davis has been gaining. Ultimately GM has failed after a loss of about $82 billion in 2008 and Harley is still survived with a net gain of $3.6 billion. Both are in the automobile manufacturing business and based in USA.( Branding Strategy August 09) Harley too has faced the slowdown recently in the period of recession but it did not close down. GM is multi-brands company and Harley has a single core product. It competes with brands like Honda, BMW. GM also competes with these brands in the market. The main difference behind the Harley’s success is that the company has built a strong brand image in the market focusing on its heavy duty motorcycles. GM on the opposite went on adding to its brands without focusing them on any single segment. GM had twelve brands in the market Buick, Chevrolet, GMC, Opel, Pontiac, Daewoo, Holden, Hummer, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall, and Wuling. These vehicles were not free from problems. Customers were not happy about the performance of these vehicles. GM had put the focus on these brands in order to sell them and not at all on how to solve the problems. Customers remained dissatisfied and that eventually put GM into problem. This is case of ‘Supply power’ that Porter in his theory P orter’s 5 forces mentioned explaining how erosion of brand loyalty penalizes a big company.( Brand Position workshop) Harley always projected the brand HOG to prospective customers and explained what the brand stands for. HOG grabbed 46% of the Heavy-duty motorcycle market and entered the name among the world’s 50th most valuable brand. GM was nowhere in the list. In 2007 GM made about 7,450.000 vehicles and lost $4141 on every vehicle. GM never projected what their brands stand for except dreamy and vague captions such as â€Å"See the USA in your

Blue Tooth Technology Essay Example for Free

Blue Tooth Technology Essay Bluetooth is an open standard for speech and data transmission. Besides the applications for this new technology, e. g. the wireless connection between mobile station and terminal equipment, also the structure of the Bluetooth system architecture is presented. The set-up of so-called short-range ad hoc networks (piconets and scatternets) will be introduced. Bluetooth wireless technology is an open, accepted standard for wireless communication which means that Bluetooth electronic equipment can communicate as long as they are within approx. 10 meters of each other, making it possible to transfer data, speech, music or images without a physical connection. The mobile telephone manufacturer Ericsson invented Bluetooth technology, naming it after the Viking King Harald Bluetooth. Just as King Harald Bluetooth united Denmark and Norway, Bluetooth technology â€Å"unites† various types of electronic equipment to form a coherent whole. Ericsson formed the foundation for Bluetooth as early as 1994, but the standard was not ready for use until 1998. The first Bluetooth products came on the market in 2000. Today, Bluetooth technology can be found in all types of electronic equipment – including mobile phones, mobile headsets, PCs, keyboards, mouse devices, printers, GPS navigation units, video cameras and pocket PCs – and new products are emerging every day. Today, Bluetooth technology is an essential everyday tool to be found in a variety of electronic equipment. The technology makes it easy to transfer speech between a mobile phone and a headset, a mobile phone and a pocket computer or images from a digital video camera to a PC. Even though two Bluetooth units can find each other and be connected, because they both comply with the standard, it may not necessarily make sense for them to speak to each other. For instance, a Bluetooth mouse would not profit much from a connection with a digital camera, or a headset with a keyboard. The basic requirement for Bluetooth units to be able to communicate is that they are located within 10 meters of each other. That is the range of the Bluetooth radio waves – at least under the current standard. The study intents to (1) know the key features of Bluetooth technology; (2) evaluate Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and its key role in maintaining specifications of the protocol, profiles, testing and qualification, interoperability and compatibility and; (3) how Bluetooth applies to wireless technology. II. Background As Bluetooth technology becomes more common, however, we will undoubtedly see CD players that send sound to amplifiers via Bluetooth, which then transfer the sound to speakers in the same way. A Bluetooth enabled pocket computer will automatically synchronise with a company’s diary and make sure that the day’s e-mails are ready to be read on the screen. And car radios will turn the music down and transfer the speech from a mobile phone when it rings (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. New Standard Encyclopedia, pp. 36-38). Moreover, the Bluetooth brand is now recognized worldwide on products with short range wireless communication capabilities. The brand is a label that is not a single company technology but is shared by many members of the Bluetooth SIG. The brand is applied to devices implementing the Bluetooth technology; even if it says little about the way the technology works (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. New Standard Encyclopedia, pp. 36-38). III. Discussion A. Features of Bluetooth Technology The logo for Bluetooth is based on Runes surrounding the legend of Harald Bluetooth. Bluetooth the technology is based on communications central to man’s own personal space. Fundamentally Bluetooth operates within the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band at 2. 4 GHz. It is a short-range wireless communication standard defined as cable replacement for a Personal Area Network (PAN) (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, pp. 87-94). Figure 1 is the Bluetooth Logo. A cable replacement standard has been defined because cables limit mobility of the consumer; they are cumbersome to carry around, are easily lost or broken. Often connectors are prone to difficult to diagnose failures; or are proprietary. To counteract these limitations Bluetooth is designed to be light and portable. It can be embedded to take the riggers of physical knocks and shocks. It includes standards and protocols to make it mobile, robust, reliable and not limited to one manufacturer (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, pp. 87-94). The operating band also fits the goals of Bluetooth, imposing requirements as a cable replacement. The cost needs to be comparable with cable. Reductions can be achieved by operating in the licence free 2. 4 GHz ISM band, keeping backward compatibility wherever possible lowers the cost of ownership by avoiding upgrades and having a relaxed radio specification enables single chip integrated circuit solutions. It also needs to be as reliable and resilient as cable and cope with errors and degradation caused by interference. For mobile devices it must be compact, lightweight, low power and easy to use (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, pp. 87-94). A. 1 Frequency Hopping We have addressed the reasons for the Bluetooth without delving into the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the technology to discover how it operates. For the majority of countries the ISM band used by Bluetooth is available from 2. 40-2. 4835 GHz, although some countries impose restrictions. In this band Bluetooth uses Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) techniques in order to improve its immunity from interference (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). In unrestricted countries the radios hop in pseudo random sequences around all available channels, this equates to 79 RF channels with a channel spacing of 1 MHz. Starting at a base frequency of 2402 MHz then the frequency of the channels, f, can be expressed as: f =2402 + n MHz where, n, is the channel number with an integer value in the range of 0 to 78. In restricted countries a limited frequency hopping schemes with just 23 channels is used and is catered for in the Bluetooth specification. Both hopping schemes have a 1 MHz channel spacing making it possible to design a simple radio interface whereby the baseband only has to specify a channel number and the radio multiplies this up to the appropriate frequency offset (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). In this FHSS scheme there are 1600 hops per second, which is a hop every 625  µs. Part of this hop timing is taken up by the guard time of 220  µs allowing the synthesizer time to settle. The frequency hopping implements time division multiplexing as shown in Figure 2. The basis of the scheme has the Master device transmitting in the first 625 us slot, k, and here the Slave receives. In the next slot k = 1 the Slave is permitted to transmit and the master listens (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). Figure 2: Frequency Hopping, master and slave interact on corresponding slots The radio must be able to retune and stabilise on a new frequency within tight time constraints. This is pushed further when establishing a connection; the hop rate can be shortened to every 312. 5 us. As the radios are constantly hopping to different radio channels, this ensures that packets affected by interference on one channel can be retransmitted on a different frequency channel. To further enhance resilience both ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) and FEC (Forward Error Correction) form part of the specification (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). One drawback with the normal hop sequence is the time taken for production testing. Bluetooth ensures adequate frequency coverage with a test sequence allowing the radios to be tested at a faster rate (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). A. 2 The Bluetooth SIG and Specifications If the success of Bluetooth is measured by its initial interest alone then its prominence has already been assured. Before products were on sale, hundreds of companies joined the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and the Bluetooth brand became recognized worldwide. Before investigating the technology further it is appropriate to comment about the role played by the SIG, the administrative structure of which is outlined in Figure 3. With membership of the SIG nearing 2500 members it is only right to look at how the SIG works to promote, shape and define the specification and position Bluetooth in the market place. Positioning of the technology is important when you consider other wireless technologies that share the same ISM band, e. g. IEEE802. 11b, HomeRF and DECT. Differentiation is key in avoiding confusion of potential users.