Practical Demonkeeping Chapter 5-7

5 AUGUSTUS BRINE He was an old man who fished off the beaches of Pine Cove and he had gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. This, however, was of little consequence because he owned the general store and made a comfortable enough living to indulge his passions, which were fishing and drinking California wines. Augustus Brine was old, but he was still strong and vital and a dangerous man in a fight – although he had had little cause to prove it in over thirty years (except for the few occasions when he picked up a teenage boy by the scruff of the neck and dragged him, terrified, to the stockroom, where he lectured him alternately on the merits of hard work and the folly of shoplifting from Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines). And while a weariness had come upon him with age, his mind was still sharp and agile. On any evening one might find him stretched out before his fireplace in a leather chair, toasting his bare feet on the hearth, reading Aristotle, or Lao-tzu, or Joyce. He lived on a hillside overlooking the Pacific, in a small wooden house he had designed and built himself, so that he might live there alone without having his surroundings seem lonely. During the day, windows and skylights filled the house with light, and even on the most dismal, foggy day, every corner was illuminated. In the evening three stone fireplaces, which took up whole walls in the living room, bedroom, and study, warmed the house. They offered a soft, orange comfort to the old man, who burned cord after cord of red oak and eucalyptus, which he cut and split himself. When he considered his own mortality, which was seldom, Augustus Brine knew he would die in this house. He had built it on one floor with wide halls and doorways so that if he were ever confined to a wheelchair he might remain self-sufficient until the day when he would take the black pill sent to him by the Hemlock Society. He kept the house neat and orderly. Not so much because he desired order, for Brine believed chaos to be the way of the world, but because he did not wish to make life difficult for his cleaning lady, who came in once a week to dust and shovel ashes from the fireplaces. He also wished to avoid acquiring the reputation of being a slob, for he knew people's propensity for judging a man on one aspect of his character, and even Augustus Brine was not above some degree of vanity. Despite his belief that the pursuit of order in a chaotic universe was futile, Brine lived a very ordered life, and this paradox, upon reflection, amused him. He rose each day at five, indulged himself in a half-hour-long shower, dressed, and ate the same breakfast of six eggs and half a loaf of sourdough toast, heavily buttered. (Cholesterol seemed too silent and sneaky to be dangerous, and Brine had decided long ago that until cholesterol gathered its forces and charged him headlong across the plate with Light Brigade abandon, he would ignore it.) After breakfast, Brine lit his meerschaum pipe for the first time of the day, crawled onto his truck, and drove downtown to open his store. For the first two hours he puffed around the store like a great white-bearded locomotive, making coffee, selling pastries, trading idle banter with the old men who greeted him each morning, and preparing the store to run under full steam until midnight, under the supervision of a handful of clerks. At eight o'clock the first of Brine's employees arrived to man the register while Brine busied himself ordering what he called Epicurean necessities: pastries, imported cheeses and beers, pipe tobacco and cigarettes, homemade pasta and sauces, freshly baked bread, gourmet coffees, and California wines. Brine believed, like Epicurus, that a good life was one dedicated to the pursuit of simple pleasures, tempered with justice and prudence. Years ago, while working as a bouncer in a whorehouse, Brine had repeatedly seen depressed, angry men turned to gentleness and gaiety by a few moments of pleasure. He had vowed then to someday open a brothel, but when the ramshackle general store with its two gas pumps had been put up for sale, Brine had compromised his dream by buying it and bringing pleasure of a different sort to the public. From time to time, however, a needling suspicion arose in his mind that he had missed his true calling as a madam. Each day when the orders were finished, Brine selected a bottle of red wine from his shelves, packed it in a basket with some bread, cheese, and bait, and took off for the beach. He passed the rest of the day sitting on the beach in a canvas director's chair sipping wine and smoking his pipe, waiting for the long surf-casting rod to bend with a strike. On most days Brine let his mind go as clear as water. Without worry or thought he became one with everything around him, neither conscious nor unconscious: the state of Zen mushin, or no-mind. He had come to Zen after the fact, recognizing in the writings of Suzuki and Watts an attitude he had come to without discipline, by simply sitting on the beach staring into an empty sky and becoming just as empty. Zen was his religion, and it brought him peace and humor. On this particular morning Brine was having a difficult time clearing his mind. The visit of the little Arab man to the store vexed him. Brine did not speak Arabic, yet he had understood every word the little man had said. He had seen the air cut with swirling blue curses, and he had seen the Arab's eyes glow white with anger. He smoked his pipe, the meerschaum mermaid carved so that Brine's index finger fell across her breasts, and tried to apply some meaning to a situation that was outside the context of his reality. He knew that if he were to accept the fluid of this experience, the cup of his mind had to be empty. But right now he had a better chance of buying bread with moonlight than reaching a Zen calm. It vexed him. â€Å"It is a mystery, is it not?† someone said. Startled, Brine looked around. The little Arab man stood about three feet from Brine's side, drinking from a large styrofoam cup. His red stocking cap was glistening, damp with the morning spray. â€Å"I'm sorry,† Brine said. â€Å"I didn't see you come up.† â€Å"It is a mystery, is it not? How this dashing figure seems to appear out of nowhere? You must be awestruck. Paralyzed with fear perhaps?† Brine looked at the withered little man in the rumpled flannel suit and silly red hat. â€Å"Very close to paralyzed,† he said. â€Å"I am Augustus Brine.† He extended his hand to the little man. â€Å"Are you not afraid that by touching me you will burst into flames?† â€Å"Is that a danger?† â€Å"No, but you know how superstitious fishermen are. Perhaps you believe that you will be transformed into a toad. You hide your fear well, Augustus Brine.† Brine smiled. He was baffled and amused; it didn't occur to him to be afraid. The Arab drained his cup and dipped it into the surf to refill it. â€Å"Please call me Gus,† Brine said, his hand still extended. â€Å"And you are?† The Arab drained his cup again, then took Brine's hand. His skin had the feel of parchment. â€Å"I am Gian Hen Gian, King of the Djinn, Ruler of the Netherworld. Do not tremble, I wish you no harm.† â€Å"I am not trembling,† Brine said. â€Å"You might go easy on that seawater – it works hell on your blood pressure.† â€Å"Do not fall to your knees; there is no need to prostrate yourself before my greatness. I am here in your service.† â€Å"Thank you. I am honored,† Brine said. Despite the strange happenings in the store, he was having a hard time taking this pompous little man seriously. The Arab was obviously a nuthouse Napoleon. He'd seen hundreds of them, living in cardboard castles and feasting from dumpsters all over America. But this one had some credentials: he could curse in blue swirls. â€Å"It is good that you are not afraid, Augustus Brine. Terrible evil is at hand. You will have to call upon your courage. It is a good sign that you have kept your wits in the presence of the great Gian Hen Gian. The grandeur is sometimes too much for weaker men.† â€Å"May I offer you some wine?† Brine extended the bottle of cabernet he had brought from the store. â€Å"No, I have a great thirst for this.† He sloshed the cup of seawater. â€Å"From a time when it was all I could drink.† â€Å"As you wish.† Brine sipped from the bottle. â€Å"There is little time, Augustus Brine, and what I am to tell you may overwhelm your tiny mind. Please prepare yourself.† â€Å"My tiny mind is steeled for anything, O King. But first, tell me, did I see you curse blue swirls this morning?† â€Å"A minor loss of temper. Nothing really. Would you have had me turn the clumsy dolt into a snake who forever gnaws his own tail?† â€Å"No, the cursing was fine. Although in Vance's case the snake might be an improvement. Your curses were in Arabic, though, right?† â€Å"A language I prefer for its music.† â€Å"But I don't speak Arabic. Yet I understood you. You did say, ‘May the IRS find that you deduct your pet sheep as an entertainment expense,' didn't you?† â€Å"I can be most colorful and inventive when I am angry.† The Arab flashed a bright grin of pride. His teeth were pointed and saw-edged like a shark's. â€Å"You have been chosen, Augustus Brine.† â€Å"Why me?† Somehow Brine had suspended his disbelief and denied the absurdity of the situation. If there was no order in the universe, then why should it be out of order to be sitting on the beach talking to an Arab dwarf who claimed to be king of the Djinn, whatever the hell that was? Strangely enough, Brine took comfort in the fact that this experience was invalidating every assumption he had ever made about the nature of the world. He had tapped into the Zen of ignorance, the enlightenment of absurdity. Gian Hen Gian laughed. â€Å"I have chosen you because you are a fisherman who catches no fish. I have had an affinity for such men since I was fished from the sea a thousand years ago and released from Solomon's jar. One gets ever so cramped passing the centuries inside a jar.† â€Å"And ever so wrinkled, it would seem,† Brine said. Gian Hen Gian ignored Brine's comment. â€Å"I found you here, Augustus Brine, listening to the noise of the universe, holding in your heart a spark of hope, like all fishermen, but resolved to be disappointed. You have no love, no faith, and no purpose. You shall be my instrument, and in return, you shall gain the things you lack.† Brine wanted to protest the Arab's judgment, but he realized that it was true. He'd been enlightened for exactly thirty seconds and already he was back on the path of desire and karma. Postenlightenment depression, he thought. 6 THE DJINN'S STORY Brine said, â€Å"Excuse me, O King, but what exactly is a Djinn?† Gian Hen Gian spit into the surf and cursed, but this time Brine did not understand the language and no blue swirls cut the air. â€Å"I am Djinn. The Djinn were the first people. This was our world long before the first human. Have you not read the tales of Scheherazade?† â€Å"I thought those were just stories.† â€Å"By Aladdin's lamplit scrotum, man! Everything is a story. What is there but stories? Stories are the only truth. The Djinn knew this. We had power over our own stories. We shaped our world as we wished it to be. It was our glory. We were created by Jehovah as a race of creators, and he became jealous of us. â€Å"He sent Satan and an army of angels against us. We were banished to the netherworld, where we could not make our stories. Then he created a race who could not create and so would stand in awe of the Creator.† â€Å"Man?† Brine asked. The Djinn nodded. â€Å"When Satan drove us into the netherworld, he saw our power. He saw that he was no more than a servant, while Jehovah had given the Djinn the power of gods. He returned to Jehovah demanding the same power. He proclaimed that he and his army would not serve until they were given the power to create. â€Å"Jehovah was sorely angered. He banished Satan to hell, where the angel might have the power he wished, but only over his own army of rebels. To further humiliate Satan, Jehovah created a new race of beings and gave them control over their own destinies, made them masters of their own world. And he made Satan watch it all from hell. â€Å"These beings were parodies of the angels, resembling them physically, but with none of the angels' grace or intelligence. And because he had made two mistakes before, Jehovah made these creatures mortal to keep them humble.† â€Å"Are you saying,† Brine interrupted, â€Å"that the human race was created to irritate Satan?† â€Å"That is correct. Jehovah is infinite in his snottiness.† Brine reflected on this for a moment and regretted that he had not become a criminal at an early age. â€Å"And what happened to the Djinn?† â€Å"We were left without form, purpose, or power. The netherworld is timeless and unchanging, and boring – much like a doctor's waiting room.† â€Å"But you're here, you're not in the netherworld.† â€Å"Be patient, Augustus Brine. I will tell you how I came here. You see, many years passed on Earth and we remained undisturbed. Then was born Solomon the thief.† â€Å"You mean King Solomon? Son of David?† â€Å"The thief!† The Djinn spat. â€Å"He asked for wisdom from Jehovah that he might build a great temple. To assist him, Jehovah gave him a great silver seal, which he carried in a scepter, and the power to call the Djinn from the netherworld to act as slaves. Solomon was given power over the Djinn on Earth that by all rights belonged to me. And as if that was not enough, the seal also gave him the power to call up the deposed angels from hell. Satan was furious that such power be given to a mortal, which, of course, was Jehovah's plan. â€Å"Solomon called first upon me to help him build his temple. He spread the temple plans before me and I laughed in his face. It was little more than a shack of stone. His imagination was as limited as his intelligence. Nevertheless, I began work on his temple, building it stone by stone as he instructed. I could have built it in an instant had he commanded it, but the thief could only imagine a temple being built as it might be built by men. â€Å"I worked slowly, for even under the reign of the thief, my time on Earth was better than the emptiness of the netherworld. After some time I convinced Solomon that I needed help, and I was given slaves to assist me in the construction. Work slowed even more, for while some of them worked, most stood by and chatted about their dreams of freedom. I have seen that such methods are used today in building your highways.† â€Å"It's standard,† Brine said. â€Å"Solomon grew impatient with my progress and called from hell one of the deposed angels, a warrior Seraph named Catch. Thus did his troubles begin. â€Å"Catch had once been a tall and beautiful angel, but his time in hell, steeping in his own bitterness, had changed him. When he appeared before Solomon, he was a squat monster, no bigger than a dwarf. His skin was like that of a snake, his eyes like those of a cat. He was so hideous that Solomon would not allow him to be seen by the people of Jerusalem, so he made the demon invisible to all but himself. â€Å"Catch carried in his heart a loathing for humans as deep as Satan himself. I had no quarrel with the race of man. Catch, however, wanted revenge. Fortunately, he did not have the powers of a Djinn. â€Å"Solomon told the slaves who worked on the temple that they were being given divine assistance and that they should behave as if nothing was out of the ordinary, so the people of Jerusalem might not notice the demon's presence. The demon threw himself into the construction, honing huge blocks of stone and hauling them into place. â€Å"Solomon was pleased with the demon's work and told him so. Catch said that the work would go faster if he didn't have to work with a Djinn, so I stood by and watched as the temple rose. From time to time great stones dropped from the walls, crushing the slaves below. While the blood ran, I could hear Catch laughing and shouting ‘Whoops' from the top of the wall. â€Å"Solomon believed these killings to be accidents, but I knew them to be murder. It was then that I realized that Solomon's control over the demon was not absolute, and therefore, his control over me must have its limits as well. My first impulse was to try to escape, but if I were wrong, I knew that I would be sent back to the netherworld and all would be lost. Perhaps I could persuade Solomon to set me free by offering him something he could attain only through my power to create. â€Å"Solomon's appetite for women was infamous. I offered to bring him the most beautiful woman he had ever seen if he would allow me to remain on Earth. He agreed. â€Å"I retreated to my quarters and contemplated what sort of woman might most please the idiot king. I had seen his thousand wives and found no common thread among their charms that revealed Solomon's preferences. In the end I was left to my own creativity. â€Å"I gave her fair hair and blue eyes and skin as white and smooth as marble. She was all things that men wish of women in body and mind. She was a virgin with a courtesan's knowledge in the ways of pleasure. She was kind, intelligent, forgiving, and warm with humor. â€Å"Solomon fell in love with the woman as soon as I presented her to him. ‘She shines like a jewel', he said. ‘Jewel shall be her name.' He spent an hour or more just staring at her, captivated with her beauty. When finally his senses returned, he said, ‘We will talk later of your reward, Gian Hen Gian.' Then he took Jewel by the hand and led her to his bedchamber. â€Å"I felt a strength return to me the moment I presented Jewel to the king. I was not free to escape, but for the first time I was able to leave the city without being compelled by some invisible bond to return to Solomon. I went into the desert and spent the night enjoying the freedom I had gained. It was not until I returned the next morning that I realized that Solomon's control over me and the demon depended upon the concentration of his will, as well as the invocations and the seal given to him by Jehovah. The woman, Jewel, had broken his will. â€Å"I found Solomon in his palace weeping one moment, then screaming with rage the next. While I had been away Catch had come to Solomon's bedchamber, not in the form that Solomon recognized, but in the form of a huge monster, taller than two men and as wide as a team of horses, and the slaves could see him as well. While Solomon watched in horror, the demon snatched Jewel from the bed with a single, talonlike hand and bit her head off. Then the monster swallowed the girl's body and reached for Solomon. But some force protected the king, and Solomon commanded the demon to return to his smaller form. Catch laughed in his face and skulked off to the wives' quarters. â€Å"Through the night the palace was filled with the screams of terrified women. Solomon ordered his guards to attack the demon. Catch swatted them away as if they were flies. By dawn the palace was littered with the crushed bodies of the guards. Of Solomon's thousand wives only two hundred remained alive. Catch was gone. â€Å"During the attack Solomon had called upon the power of the seal and prayed to Jehovah to stop the demon. But the king's will was broken, and so it did no good. â€Å"I sensed then that I might escape Solomon's control altogether, and live free, but even the idiot king would eventually make the connection and my fate would lie in the netherworld. â€Å"I bade Solomon allow me to bring Catch to justice. I knew my power to be much greater than the demon's. But Solomon had only the building of the temple by which to judge my powers, and in that example the demon appeared superior. ‘Do what you can,' he said. ‘If you capture the demon, you may remain on Earth.' â€Å"I found Catch in the great desert, wantonly slaughtering tribes of nomads. When I bound him with my magic, he protested that he had planned to return, for he was enslaved to Solomon by the invocation and could never really escape. He was only having a little sport with the humans, he said. To quiet him, I filled his mouth with sand for the journey back to Jerusalem. â€Å"When I brought Catch to Solomon, the king commanded me to devise a punishment to torment the demon, so that the people of Jerusalem might watch him suffer. I chained Catch to a giant stone outside the palace, then I created a huge bird of prey that swooped on the demon and tore at his liver, which grew back at once, for like the Djinn, the demon was immortal. â€Å"Solomon was pleased with my work. During my absence he had regained his senses somewhat, and thereby his will. I stood before the king awaiting my reward, feeling my powers wane as Solomon's will returned. â€Å"‘I have promised that you shall never be returned to the netherworld, and you shall not,' he said. ‘But this demon has put me off of immortals more than somewhat, and I do not wish that you be allowed to roam free. You shall be imprisoned in a jar and cast into the sea. Should the time come when you are set free to walk the Earth again, you shall have no power over the realm of man except as is commanded by my will, which shall be from now to the end of time the goodwill of all men. By this you shall be bound.' â€Å"He had a jar fashioned from lead and marked it on all sides with a silver seal. Before he imprisoned me, Solomon promised that Catch would remain chained to the rock until his screams burned into the king's soul – so that Solomon might never lose his will or his wisdom again. He said he would then send the demon back to hell and destroy the tablets with the invocations, as well as the great seal. He swore these things to me, as if he believed the fate of the demon meant something to me. I didn't give a camel's fart about Catch. Then he gave me a last command and sealed the jar. His soldiers cast the jar into the Red Sea. â€Å"For two thousand years I languished inside the jar, my only comfort a trickle of seawater that seeped in, which I drank with relish, for it tasted of freedom. â€Å"When the jar was finally pulled from the sea by a fisherman, and I was released, I cared nothing about Solomon or Catch, only about my freedom. I have lived as a man would live these last thousand years, bound by Solomon's will. Of this Solomon spoke truly, but about the demon, he lied.† The little man paused and refilled his cup in the ocean. Augustus Brine was at a loss. It couldn't possibly be true. There was nothing to corroborate the story. â€Å"Begging your pardon, Gian Hen Gian, but why is none of this told in the Bible?† â€Å"Editing,† the Djinn said. â€Å"But aren't you confusing Greek myth with Christian myth? The birds eating the demon's liver sounds an awful lot like the story of Prometheus.† â€Å"It was my idea. The Greeks were thieves, no better than Solomon.† Brine considered this for a moment. He was seeing evidence of the supernatural, wasn't he? Wasn't this little Arab drinking seawater as he watched, with no apparent ill effects? And even if some of it could be explained by hallucination, he was pretty sure that he hadn't been the only one to see the strange blue swirls in the store this morning. What if for a moment – just a moment – he took the Arab's outrageous story for the truth?†¦ â€Å"If this is true, then how do you know, after all this time, that Solomon lied to you? And why tell me about it?† â€Å"Because, Augustus Brine, I knew you would believe. And I know Solomon lied because I can feel the presence of the demon, Catch. And I'm sure that he has come to Pine Cove.† â€Å"Swell,† Brine said. 7 ARRIVAL Virgil Long backed out from under the hood of the Impala, wiped his hands on his coveralls, and scratched at his four-day growth of beard. He reminded Travis of a fat weasel with the mange. â€Å"So you're thinking it's the radiator?† Virgil asked. â€Å"It's the radiator,† Travis said. â€Å"It might be the whole engine is gone. You were running pretty quiet when you drove in. Not a good sign. Do you have a charge card?† Virgil was unprecedented in his inability to diagnose specific engine problems. When he was dealing with tourists, his strategy was usually to start replacing things and keep replacing them until he solved the problem or reached the limit on the customer's credit card, whichever came first. â€Å"It wasn't running at all when I came in,† Travis protested. â€Å"And I don't have a credit card. It's the radiator, I promise.† â€Å"Now, son,† Virgil drawled, â€Å"I know you think you know what you're talking about, but I got a certificate from the Ford factory there on the wall that says I'm a master mechanic.† Virgil pointed a fat finger toward the service station's office. One wall was covered with framed certificates along with a poster of a nude woman sitting on the hood of a Corvette buffing her private parts with a scarf in order to sell motor oil. Virgil had purchased the Master Mechanic certificates from an outfit in New Hampshire: two for five dollars, six for ten dollars, fifteen for twenty. He had gone for the twenty-dollar package. Those who took the time to read the certificates were somewhat surprised to find out that Pine Cove's only service station and car wash had its own factory-certified snowmobile mechanic. It had never snowed in Pine Cove. â€Å"This is a Chevy,† Travis said. â€Å"Got a certificate for those, too. You probably need new rings. The radiator's just a symptom, like these broken headlights. You treat the symptom, the disease just gets worse.† Virgil had heard that on a doctor show once and liked the sound of it. â€Å"What will it cost to just fix the radiator?† Virgil stared deep into the grease spots on the garage floor, as if by reading their patterns and by some mystic mode of divination, petrolmancy perhaps, he would arrive at a price that would not alienate the dark young man but would still assure him an exorbitant hourly rate for his labor. â€Å"Hundred bucks.† It had a nice round ring to it. â€Å"Fine,† Travis said, â€Å"Fix it. When can I have it back?† Virgil consulted the grease spots again, then emerged with a good-ol'-boy smile. â€Å"How's noon sound?† â€Å"Fine,† Travis said. â€Å"Is there a pool hall around here – and someplace I can get some breakfast?† â€Å"No pool hall. The Head of the Slug is open down the street. They got a couple of tables.† â€Å"And breakfast?† â€Å"Only thing open this end of town is H.P.'s, a block off Cypress, down from the Slug. But it's a local's joint.† â€Å"Is there a problem getting served?† â€Å"No. The menu might throw you for a bit. It – well, you'll see.† Travis thanked the mechanic and started off in the direction of H.P.'s, the demon skulking along behind him. As they passed the self-serve car-wash stalls, Travis noticed a tall man of about thirty unloading plastic laundry baskets full of dirty dishes from the bed of an old Ford pickup. He seemed to be having trouble getting quarters to go into the coin box. Looking at him, Travis said: â€Å"You know, Catch, I'll bet there's a lot of incest in this town.† â€Å"Probably the only entertainment,† the demon agreed. The man in the car wash had activated the high-pressure nozzle and was sweeping it back and forth across the baskets of dishes. With each sweep he repeated, â€Å"Nobody lives like this. Nobody.† Some of the overspray caught on the wind and settled over Travis and Catch. For a moment the demon became visible in the spray. â€Å"I'm melt-ing,† Catch whined in perfect Wicked Witch of the West pitch. â€Å"Let's go,† Travis said, moving quickly to avoid more spray. â€Å"We need a hundred bucks before noon.† JENNY In the two hours since Jenny Masterson had arrived at the cafe she had managed to drop a tray full of glasses, mix up the orders on three tables, fill the saltshakers with sugar and the sugar dispensers with salt, and pour hot coffee on the hands of two customers who had covered their cups to indicate that they'd had enough – a patently stupid gesture on their part, she thought. The worst of it was not that she normally performed her duties flawlessly, which she did. The worst of it was that everyone was so damned understanding about it. â€Å"You're going through a rough time, honey, it's okay.† â€Å"Divorce is always hard.† Their consolations ranged from â€Å"too bad you couldn't work it out† to â€Å"he was a worthless drunk anyway, you're better off without him.† She'd been separated from Robert exactly four days and everybody in Pine Cove knew about it. And they couldn't just let it lie. Why didn't they let her go through the process without running this cloying gauntlet of sympathy? It was as if she had a big red D sewed to her clothing, a signal to the townsfolk to close around her like a hungry amoeba. When the second tray of glasses hit the floor, she stood amid the shards trying to catch her breath and could not. She had to do something – scream, cry, pass out – but she just stood there, paralyzed, while the busboy cleaned up the glass. Two bony hands closed on her shoulders. She heard a voice in her ear that seemed to come from very far away. â€Å"You are having an anxiety attack, dear. It shall pass. Relax and breathe deeply.† She felt the hands gently leading her through the kitchen door to the office in the back. â€Å"Sit down and put your head between your knees.† She let herself be guided into a chair. Her mind went white, and her breath caught in her throat. A bony hand rubbed her back. â€Å"Breathe, Jennifer. I'll not have you shuffling off this mortal coil in the middle of the breakfast shift.† In a moment her head cleared and she looked up to see Howard Phillips, the owner of H.P.'s, standing over her. He was a tall, skeletal man, who always wore a black suit and button shoes that had been fashionable a hundred years ago. Except for the dark depressions on his cheeks, Howard's skin was as white as a carrion worm. Robert had once said that H.P. looked like the master of ceremonies at a chemotherapy funfest. Howard had been born and raised in Maine, yet when he spoke, he affected the accent of an erudite Londoner. â€Å"The prospect of change is a many-fanged beast, my dear. It is not, however, appropriate to pay fearful obeisance to that beast by cowering in the ruins of my stemware while you have orders up.† â€Å"I'm sorry, Howard. Robert called this morning. He sounded so helpless, pathetic.† â€Å"A tragedy, to be sure. Yet as we sit, ensconced in our grief, two perfectly healthy daily specials languish under the heat lamps metamorphosing into gelatinous invitations to botulism.† Jenny was relieved that in his own, cryptically charming way, Howard was not giving her sympathy but telling her to get off her ass and live her life. â€Å"I think I'm okay now. Thanks, Howard.† Jenny stood and wiped her eyes with a paper napkin she took from her apron. Then she went off to deliver her orders. Howard, having exhausted his compassion for the day, closed the door of his office and began working on the books. When Jenny returned to the floor, she found that the restaurant had cleared except for a few regular customers and a dark young man she didn't recognize, who was standing by the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign. At least he wouldn't ask about Robert, thank God. It was a welcome relief. Not many tourists found H.P.'s. It was tucked in a tree-lined cul-de-sac off Cypress Street in a remodeled Victorian bungalow. The sign outside, small and tasteful, simply read, CAFE. Howard did not believe in advertising, and though he was an Anglophile at heart – loving all things British and feeling that they were somehow superior to their American counterparts – his restaurant displayed none of the ersatz British decor that might draw in the tourists. The cafe served simple food at fair prices. If the menu exhibited Howard Phillips's eccentricity in style, it did not discourage the locals from eating at his place. Next to Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines, H.P.'s Cafe had the most loyal clientele in Pine Cove. â€Å"Smoking or nonsmoking?† Jenny asked the young man. He was very good-looking, but Jenny noticed this only in passing. She was conditioned by years of monogamy not to dwell on such things. â€Å"Nonsmoking,† he said. Jenny led him to a table in the back. Before he sat down, he pulled out the chair across from him, as if he were going to put his feet up. â€Å"Will someone be joining you?† Jenny asked, handing him a menu. He looked up at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. He stared into her eyes without saying a word. Embarrassed, Jenny looked down. â€Å"Today's special is Eggs-Sothoth – a fiendishly toothsome amalgamation of scrumptious ingredients so delicious that the mere description of the palatable gestalt could drive one mad,† she said. â€Å"You're joking?† â€Å"No. The owner insists that we memorize the daily specials verbatim.† The dark man kept staring at her. â€Å"What does all that mean?† he asked. â€Å"Scrambled eggs with ham and cheese and a side of toast.† â€Å"Why didn't you just say that?† â€Å"The owner is a little eccentric. He believes that his daily specials may be the only thing keeping the Old Ones at bay.† â€Å"The Old Ones?† Jenny sighed. The nice thing about regular customers is she didn't have to keep explaining Howard's weird menu to them. This guy was obviously from out of town. But why did he have to keep staring at her like that? â€Å"It's his religion or something. He believes that the world was once populated by another race. He calls them the Old Ones. For some reason they were banished from Earth, but he believes that they are trying to return and take over.† â€Å"You're joking?† â€Å"Stop saying that. I'm not joking.† â€Å"I'm sorry.† He looked at the menu. â€Å"Okay, give me an Eggs-Sothoth with a side order of The Spuds of Madness.† â€Å"Would you like coffee?† â€Å"That would be great.† Jenny wrote out the ticket and turned to put the order in at the kitchen window. â€Å"Excuse me,† the man said. Jenny turned in midstep. â€Å"Yes?† â€Å"You have incredible eyes.† â€Å"Thanks.† She felt herself blush as she headed off to get his coffee. She wasn't ready for this. She needed some sort of break between being married and being divorced. Divorce leave? They had pregnancy leave, didn't they? When she returned with his coffee, she looked at him for the first time as a single woman might. He was handsome, in a sharp, dark sort of way. He looked younger than she was, twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. She was studying his clothes and trying to get a feel for what he did for a living when she ran into the chair he had pushed out from the table and spilled most of the coffee into the saucer. â€Å"God, I'm sorry.† â€Å"It's okay,† he said. â€Å"Are you having a bad day?† â€Å"Getting worse by the minute. I'll get you another cup.† â€Å"No,† he raised a hand in protest. â€Å"Its fine.† He took the cup and saucer from her, separated them, and poured the coffee back into the cup. â€Å"See, good as new. I don't want to add to your bad day.† He was staring again. â€Å"No, you're fine. I mean, I'm fine. Thanks.† She felt like a geek. She cursed Robert for causing all this. If he hadn't†¦ No, it wasn't Robert's fault. She'd made the decision to end the marriage. â€Å"I'm Travis.† The man extended his hand. She took it, tentatively. â€Å"Jennifer-† She was about to tell him that she was married and that he was nice and all. â€Å"I'm not married,† she said. She immediately wanted to disappear into the kitchen and never come back. â€Å"Me either,† Travis said. â€Å"I'm new in town.† He didn't seem to notice how awkward she was. â€Å"Look, Jennifer, I'm looking for an address and I wonder if you could tell me how to find it? Do you know how to get to Cheshire Street?† Jenny was relieved to be talking about anything but herself. She rattled off a series of streets and turns, landmarks and signs, that would lead Travis to Cheshire Street. When she finished, he just looked at her quizzically. â€Å"I'll draw you a map,† she said. She took a pen from her apron, bent over the table, and began drawing on a napkin. Their faces were inches apart. â€Å"You're very beautiful,† he said. She looked at him. She didn't know whether to smile or scream. Not yet, she thought. I'm not ready. He didn't wait for her to respond. â€Å"You remind me of someone I used to know.† â€Å"Thank you†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She tried to remember his name. â€Å"†¦Travis.† â€Å"Have dinner with me tonight?† She searched for an excuse. None came. She couldn't use the one she had used for a decade – it wasn't true anymore. And she hadn't been alone long enough to brush up on some new lies. In fact, she felt that she was somehow being unfaithful to Robert just by talking to this guy. But she was a single woman. Finally she wrote her phone number under the map on the napkin and handed it to him. â€Å"My number's on the bottom. Why don't you call me tonight, around five, and we'll take it from there, okay?† Travis folded the napkin and put it in his shirt pocket. â€Å"Until tonight,† he said. â€Å"Oh, spare me!† a gravely voice said. Jenny turned toward the voice, but there was only the empty chair. To Travis she said, â€Å"Did you hear that?† â€Å"Hear what?† Travis glared at the empty chair. â€Å"Nothing,† Jenny said, â€Å"I'm starting to go over the edge, I think.† â€Å"Relax,† Travis said. â€Å"I won't bite you.† He shot a glance at the chair. â€Å"Your order is up. I'll be right back.† She retrieved the food from the window and delivered it to Travis. While he ate, she stood behind the counter separating coffee filters for the lunch shift, occasionally looking up and smiling at the dark, young man, who paused between bites and smiled back. She was fine, just fine. She was a single woman and could do any damned thing she wanted to. She could go out with anyone she wanted to. She was young and attractive and she had just made her first date in ten years – sort of. Over all of her affirmations her fears flew up and perched like a murder of crows. It occurred to her that she didn't have the slightest idea what she was going to wear. The freedom of single life had suddenly become a burden, a mixed blessing, herpes on the pope's ring. Maybe she wouldn't answer the phone when he called. Travis finished eating and paid his bill, leaving her far too large a tip. â€Å"See you tonight,† he said. â€Å"You bet.† She smiled. She watched him walk across the parking lot. He seemed to be talking to someone as he walked. Probably just singing. Guys did that right after they made a date, didn't they? Maybe he was just a whacko? For the hundredth time that morning she resisted the urge to call Robert and tell him to come home.

American Traditions Reflected In The Literature Of 1865-1912 Essay

The United States has always professed itself to be the â€Å"land of the free. † In fact, most of its traditions are rooted in its value for freedom, family and country. How often is it in public speeches that we are reminded that â€Å"all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights†¦that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. † Literary pieces produced between the years of 1865 and 1912 show a growing awareness and search for understanding of civil rights and democracy. Uniqueness and personal individuality and perspective were reflected in the writing styles and stories that appeared during this time. Nineteenth century poet Emily Dickinson’s poems in â€Å"The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson† reflect her views and awareness of the role of women in a patriarchal and free society. Indeed her writings could very well be considered ‘feminist. ‘ Walt Whitman’s â€Å"Leaves of Grass’ was representative of an America that was alive, rich and natural. He states: â€Å"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States is essentially the greatest poem† (Whitman, 1855) Yet while his views were generally â€Å"romantic† in nature, his demonstrates a keen awareness social issues such as the growing materialism brought about by industrialism. He called for literature that would bind the readers in a more spiritual and imaginative state as individuals in his â€Å"Democratic Vistas† (1871. ) American Literature saw the birth of awareness and definition of freedom. Freedom was then too general a concept yet the literary products in this period showed the emergence of expressions for individuality against convention, true liberty, and pride in identity. American Literature 2 2. GENDER AND ETHNIC MINORITIES IN THE ECONOMIC AND LITERARY DEVELOPMENT IN 1865-1912 Literature has been used as an expression of freedom of thought, feelings, and ideals. It has also been used as a tool of social awareness and activism that meant to inspire reform particularly in the disparity experienced by women and ethnic minorities in that era. As the industrial age prepared to take root in the United States, ethnic minorities like the Native Americans, Africans and Asians, and other ethnic groups grew more marginalized in existence. Africans became slaves who were made to work in the tobacco and cotton fields. Others were pressed into domestic servitude in the homes of the wealthy White men. Literature at in reference to women and the ethnic minorities viewed them as objects that â€Å"White men† own. This dehumanization served as a sort of â€Å"muse† for the emerging â€Å"realist† writers. If popular literature referred to them as non-entities, the realists raised their plight up as a sign for the need for social awareness and change. In her â€Å"Woman in the Nineteenth Century,† essayist and on of America’s first respected female journalists Margaret Fuller, brought up the existence of sexual discrimination and suggested steps in an effort to promote the independence of women. She was an advocate of equality gained through human freedom and dignity. Mark Twain’s â€Å"Huckleberry Finn† defied conventions and spoke out against the practice of slavery and the irrationality of â€Å"civilized† society. The friendship of his lead characters Jim and Huck went beyond the strictures of a slave-owning society and culminated in something that was happy and generous. Emancipation of women, abolishment of racism, marginalization and slavery according to the realist writers, were what should define American freedom, humanity and democracy†¦not the materialism and human ownership brought by industrialization. References â€Å"The Romantic Period, 1820-1860, Essayists and Poets†. Outline of American Literature. United States International Information Programs (2006) Retrieved August 29, 2007 from http://usinfo. state. gov/products/pubs/oal/lit3. htm â€Å"The Rise of Realism: 1860-1914†. Outline of American Literature. United States International Information Programs (2006) Retrieved August 29, 2007 from http://usinfo. state. gov/products/pubs/oal/lit5. htm

AT&T’s use of Total Quality Management

The following is an attempt to analyze AT&T's use of Total Quality Management throughout its organization. Since AT&T is an elaborately enormous corporation I will focus my study to AT&T Power Systems/Lucent Technologies. This division of AT&T has been the industry standard for excellence since TQM was first introduced to the company. AT&T Power Systems has become one the world's most dynamic companies because of its use of TQM. I will provide a brief description of who AT&T Power Systems is, a description of the events that lead up to its use of TQM, AT&T's TQM philosophy, and how this philosophy was implemented. Finally I will discuss the benefits AT&T Power Systems realized through their use of Total Quality Management. AT&T Power Systems provides a verity of power products for the data processing and telecommunications industries. Power System and its 4,200 employee's design, develop, manufacture, and market electronic power systems, components, and power supplies to an increasingly international marketplace. In the past ten years AT&T as a whole has gone through a dramatic metamorphous. It was forced to change from a large telecommunications monopoly providing universal telephone service, to a competitive global corporation roviding a full range of communication services and technologies. The â€Å"new† AT&T is a potpourri of smaller, highly focussed entities. Each entity has its own customers, competitors, and operational functions. Power Systems is the pinnacle of the â€Å"new† AT&T. In less than five years Power Systems has become the prototype for successfully implementing the cultural and organizational revolution know as Total Quality Management. It has not only received internal recognition, but external achievement as well. In 1994 Power Systems was the first American company to win Japan's prestigious Deming Prize for Quality Management. In the ame year AT&T's long distance division won America's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. AT&T's TQM philosophy made it the first corporation to win these two awards. Why did Power Systems change to TQM? Prior to 1990 Power Systems provided equipment for only its parent company AT&T. Power Systems was a lackluster division of AT&T that reported losses in numerous quarters. As the scope AT&T and business as a whole changed Power Systems was forced to survive on its own. No longer would losses be tolerated, if the work couldn't be completed in a cost-effective manner the division would be sold and the work would be given to an A. M. (Andy) Guarriello, Vice President & COO of Power Systems, was given the job of implementing TQM. Guarriello along with Power Systems management team launched the â€Å"Dallas Vision† project, an initiative involving physical, organizational, and philosophical changes that soon led to the adoption of Total Quality Management as the management system for the future. Power Systems consolidated several of its locations into several small internal business units. These units would become to foundation that Power Systems operated on. Each units is given the resources to develop, engineer, manufacture, and its products. Functions such as human resources, finance, marketing, and sales are provided by smaller organizations developed to support the internal Power Systems Dallas unit was completely redesigned. This 900,000 square foot facility was rearranged into what AT&T calls â€Å"focused factories. Each â€Å"focused factory† has the capability to accept incoming material, manufacture, and ship finished products. This layout was designed much within the guidelines of the Japanese JIT system. Power Systems took the Japanese approach to TQM and modified to fit the AT&T culture. The TQM riteria developed within Power Systems were selected to ensure the company's ongoing focus on high standards for customer orientation, process excellence, employee involvement and continuous improvement. AT&T's TQM philosophy has three main components Quality Policy Deployment, Daily Work Management, and Quality Improvement. These three components combine to ensure robust solutions and continuous improvements. Quality Policy Deployment is the process of aligning the company's attention and resources on a few high-priority, customer-focused issues. This is done to achieve to realize vast improvements in performance. Daily Work Management is a process of defining, measuring, and managing the day-to-day work of individuals and groups to obtain incremental improvements. This gives individual employees the opportunity to see improvements in measures they understand. Quality Improvement is a team-based problem-solving methodology that uses the seven-step process known as the â€Å"QI story process. † The â€Å"QI story process† is designed to detect and eliminate errors that cause defects. Together these three concepts formed an effective solution to Underlying these three concepts are four principles that are the foundation of AT&T's TQM philosophy. These four are customer satisfaction, management-by-fact, respect for people, and P-D-C-A. P-D-C-A is Plan-Do-Check-Act developed by Shewhart. These four principles helped Power Systems implement its cultural change. Without any one of these TQM will not work, so Power Systems' management instituted a training regiment that had every employee had at least two full days of training within the first year of implementation. Power Systems has instilled pride in each one of its employees, which perpetuates outside the business to their customers. Each manager, worker, team member, and internal group believe that they can make a ifference in the operation of the company. Each also believes they have the responsibility to produce a quality product efficiently that not only meets their customer's needs, but also makes profit. This attitude as propelled Power Systems, or as it is now known Lucent Technologies, to the top of its industry. What Benefits did Power Systems see from TQM? Power Systems surpassed the expectations of management to realize colossal growth. Below is a list of improvements from a 1994 AT&T press release. These improvements pertain specifically to Power Systems.

Your Own Preliminary Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Your Own Preliminary Research - Essay Example It is also evident in the contexts of the national governments. It is very evident that in some countries there are specific laws regarding this field of education. According to the writers, almost all universities in Europe have endorsed the e-learning strategies and actually more, they have endorsed them and included them as a part of their school curriculum. Some courses such as the general courses in communication skills and HIV AIDS skills are exclusively being offered through the e-learning programs.   The adoption of e-learning technology has motivated the learning institutions and colleges to take their tutors through rigorous and mandatory training on how to work with this technology and to be effective at doing so. The e-book article also points out that e-learning processes are enhanced by availability of free materials for documentation hence the universities have found it more or less a better source of studying materials since they only need to provide connection to t he internet for students to access the digital campuses (Brigitte). This source interests me because it is very clear; it is simple to understand the basic arguments and reasoning. The source is also loaded with a lot of important information concerning the research topic mentioned above. From the online open public Library, according to ‘The e-learning e-volution in colleges and university’ by the Advisory Committee for Online Learning. There have been tremendous changes in the manner in which universities have been offering their courses in Canada. The e-book referred above was focusing on Europe and the adoption of e-learning in their institutions focusing on France, Italy and other European countries. Here, the insights on this topic from the Open library are based in Canada. According to the corporate author of this article, most universities and colleges in Canada have at least five courses which are fully offered on the online platform,

Competitiveness of HK Cruise Tourism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words

Competitiveness of HK Cruise Tourism - Essay Example I identified that I will have to improve my confidence level which will in turn improve my communication and socialization skills. I am reserved and introvert in nature which makes it difficult for me to socialize with people and open up easily. To establish a successful career as a hotel manager in the cruise tourism industry I will have to possess excellent communication skills and a pleasant personality. I believe I have a positive personality but my inability to communicate smoothly makes it difficult for me to express my personality in my behaviour. To work in the position of a hotel manager and ensure the future development of my career, I will focus on enhancing my communication abilities and the ability to understand and respond to what other people have to say. This will help me in the future to manage the customers in the cruise where I would work as a hotel manager. The position of a hotel manager would, call for a friendly, outgoing, pleasing and helpful personality. Thus I will have to improve on these skills. Also, I will have to improve on my ability to communicate with other team members and to manage a team as I will have to manage a group of people working under me in my work. I will have to communicate wi th the customers, teammates and personnel in other departments. Therefore, I will have to install more confidence in my speaking and communicating abilities. A considerable level of empathy and ability to establish rapport with the customers and fellow workers would help me in the future development of my career. The essay is aimed at studying and evaluating the different aspects of the Hong Kong cruise tourism industry. The study is prepared by providing a suitable background to the Hong Kong tourism industry encompassing the different aspects of the tourism and hospitality sector in Hong Kong and the evolvement of the Hong Kong cruise industry through the establishment of terminals and other infrastructures. I have

Compare and contrast the economic mobilization during the World Wars I Essay

Compare and contrast the economic mobilization during the World Wars I and II ( in the United States of America) - Essay Example The Axis powers mainly comprised of the countries like Germany, Italy, and Japan. Other countries were also included in the Axis powers such as Finland, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and the others. Before 1861, United States of America was recognized as one the most powerful shipbuilding nations in the world. But threats gradually came when the European navy started focusing on the new techniques of shipbuilding by substituting wood with iron, introduction of steam driven sea vessels which substituted the primitive sails and awkward paddle wheel were replaced with screw propeller. In August 1914, the United States was almost fatigued by fighting the guerillas and disease in Cuba and Philippines in the Spanish-American wars and Philippine insurrections. USA after a long driven fighting was ready for peace. The president of the United States Wilson Woodrow also showed disinterest in war. On the other hand the Germans were very much alert about the position of the Americans in the water w ays. The Germans believed that they have to curb down the American power through the water way which will provide them easy communication with the allied power countries. On May 7, 1915 the German submarine U-20 sunk down the ocean liner Lusitania where 124 Americans lost their lives. This was a major blow to USA and in 6th April, 1917 war against Germany was declared by a joint resolution by the Congress in USA1 World War II and USA In the history of mankind World War II can be regarded as the largest and the most violent conflicts with the use of modern lethal weapons.2 The World War II was even more dangerous and violent than World War I. In September 1939, Britain declared war against Poland but America did not involve them in this conflict. But when on 7th December Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, America entered into a complete war with the Pacific and Europe. By 1944 US fighter planes carried on severe bombings starting from bombings of Dresden in Germany and then Japan and sixty three other countries and finally the atomic explosion in Hiroshima, Japan on 6th August 1945.3 Having an idea of the backdrop of involvement of USA in both the wars the paper focuses to highlight the economic mobilization of USA in both these wars and how it emerged as a superpower in the world. Economic mobilization of USA in World War I The United States of America declared war against Germany in April 1917. But the main problem which the US army faced was the availability of necessary resources in order to carry on the war. Apart from that US did not also had the plans in mind and was not also acquainted with the character and magnitude of wartime needs as well as specifications for several kinds of equipments.4 Mobilization of the force of army After the declaration of the war with Germany in 1917, there were no immediate reserve force of army in America for the combating the war. However there were high expectation from the Britain and France and they believed that a huge for ce of army would be infiltrating immediately in France. But their expectations were wrong. Only a small army of soldiers under General Pershing was sent to France.5 The problem of manpower issue was solved in May 1917 when President Woodrow Wilson approved a draft law which was formulated in order to prepare a solid army base for

Management is an art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Management is an art - Essay Example Any company was considered as a machine, the managers were the operators and the workers, merely pawns. Today management has a whole new concept (McCrimmon, n.p. 2007). Suppose a manufacturing firm hires me as a manager. The workers over there used to make 6 units in an hour. After they hired me, I trained them, taught them some new techniques and now they make 8 units per hour. This efficiency in the workers reflects the efficiency of the manager. If the manager is incompetent then the efficiency of the workers does not change, rather in some cases it goes down. Managers take responsibility of what they do. They are creative and analyzing. Managers discover what is unique about a person and then use his unique quality to achieve their goals. The job of a manager is to achieve performance using a person's talent (Buckingham, n.p. 2005). In order to understand how managers work, let us first understand how many levels of managers are there in an organization. Let us take the example of a manufacturing company. In this company there are three levels of management as shown in Fig 1, Appendix A. The top most level is where the President, the Vice President or the CEO is present. These managers have the greatest responsibility because they are sitting on top of the organization. These people set the goals and objectives of the company. As their work is so important therefore they have to have extensive knowledge of management roles and skills. Their decisions are long term; therefore they are responsible for the company's strategic policies. Next is the second level of management. The managers here set realistic goals for the first line managers. They drive these goals from the long term plans their top most management has made. Managers of this level have specialized understanding of certain managerial tasks. Their tactical decisions actually come from the strategic decisions of top level management. The last, but not the least is the first level managers. Their decisions are usually short term, but these decisions effect the long term decisions made by the top management. They have direct contact with the workers on the job, hence they are responsible for assigning them work. An office manager, supervisor and Forman, all lie in this category. They do not have much experience in managerial skills, but they do have a lot of technical knowledge. In our case, they have production knowledge; can troubleshoot, but there might come a point where they cannot do anything, and will then go to the middle management for help. 3. LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION Leadership means to influence and motivate others. In an organization it affects the cost, revenue, earnings, share prices, motivation and engagements. Management is a subset of leadership. Effective leadership ensures effectiveness in organization. In an organization a leader sets direction, puts in effort to influence people so that they may follow this direction. This direction if set by the higher management and it goes towards goal attainment. There are four major functions of management. Planning, organizing, leading and

Early years in the uk context Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Early years in the uk context - Essay Example (Shaw, 2010) The article tries to find the factors which are responsible for these choices and how the choices of working class parents differ from middle class parents. The authors have used interviews as the research methodology in trying to answer this question. The authors believe that the way in which choices are made by the working class and middle class parents make choices further produces inequities. (Carol Vincent, 2010)They also differentiate in the way these choices are made and the factors which are considered before making the choices. In conclusion the authors claim that working class families give importance to the known , familiar and trusted sources for choosing childcare whereas middle class families were more open to childcare centres which may be lesser known to them. The overarching concern for the working class parents is shown as safety for their kids whereas the middle class parents do not care much about the safety -they consider it as a given. Their main fo cus is on the environment the child is provided with and his personal development. The authors also show how economic status of the families makes them perceive and experience the child care markets in a different way. (Carol Vincent, 2010) The very first analysis which comes to the mind of this article is the research methodology which is used. ... This may have left out a large section of the population which may not indulge in such a large amount of research to choose childcare as is shown in the article. (Kumar, 2008) Thus general assumptions about middle class and working class attitudes to childcare cannot be made from such an unrepresentative sample. The second problem is that of false responses. (Kumar, 2008) It is a well known fact that what people actually do differs a lot from what they say in interviews. The results would be much more reliable if interviews were followed by observations of behaviour. The third problem is acknowledged by the authors but they fail to mention how they countered it. This is the problem of interviewer bias. As interview was conducted by white middle class females; the responses of working class mothers could suffer from a bias towards the interviewer. Also the interviewer may have interpreted the response in a way which is completely different from what the working class parents intended to. (Patel, 1964) The authors claim in their article that middle class parents are the more informed consumers in the child care market. They research a large number of options before settling on the childcare. As opposed to this working class parents are shown to be less aware and less informed about the options that they have. However the authors do not stop at telling the behaviour but also try to identify the reason for the behaviour and the reason that they have identified is spot on and absolutely right. The choices in childcare market are available only to those who have money to shell out. (Leach, 2009) .Although the problem of expensive child

Benner's Competency Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Benner's Competency - Assignment Example tal health is a significant of the general wellbeing of an individual and hence I engaged the patient to regain normality through constant support on all aspects of the day to day activities and counselling to alleviate depression that was overwhelming to the patient thereby diminishing the chances of recovery (Benner, 2000). The patient attempted to commit suicide twice while undergoing mental rehabilitation. I understood and responded to the patient’s reactions to distress that came as a result of hopelessness and anxiety. I managed to guide the patient through behavioural and emotional changes that were occurring in his mind while recognizing and promoting effective participation in the day to day activities to help him understand and live to his full potential. According to Masters (2011), a nurse needs to promote a feeling of resiliency which is critical to a mental patient’s recovery. I helped the patient to re-gain self-esteem and confidence through inspire hope and power in him, which positively influenced his behaviour after realizing that his contribution is necessary to the development of his community. I coordinated with his family that provided useful historical information on the patient’s previous engagements, which helped me to make out the impact of culture and tradi tions on the healing process. I was able to evaluate and explain the effect of the patient’s beliefs, principles as well as life engagements on the condition. I shared this information with the physician in charge and other colleagues and together we were able to develop care strategies that were culturally welcome thereby enhancing the recovery process. Communication skills were significant in dealing with the patient. Listening carefully to his incoherent speech helped me to make sense out of it and also understand him better. I also observed his behaviour keenly and tried to relate it to past experiences with similar patients that I had come across before, which helped me

Outline the differences between negative and positive freedom.which do Essay

Outline the differences between negative and positive freedom.which do you see as more persuasive - Essay Example Moreover, based on the differences the paper will also discuss which kind of freedom persuades me more. In order to differentiate the two kinds of freedom it is necessary to understand their definitions. Negative freedom revolves around the concept of freedom without any interference. On the contrary positive freedom is a much complex phenomenon that is difficult to understand compared to negative freedom. This belief states to do something according to rules and regulations with system interference (Stanford Encyclopedia of Phiolosphy, 2012). Political systems across the world have been using negative and positive freedom simultaneously. When the systems are free from regulations that prevent their ability to act, they use negative freedom, similarly, when the system has enough resources to act as they want to, then they enjoy positive freedom. This increases the complexity for the audience to easily differentiate the two liberties effectively (Institute for Humane Studies, 1996). Different societies have their own understanding on how they differentiate the two kinds of freedom. For this reason these freedoms are sometimes peculiar with each other. When there are no barriers negative freedom takes place. It also highlights the absence of limitations, obstructions, or intrusions from any authority; in short a failure of a political system. One the contrary, positive freedom takes places under the legislative rules and regulations. In this kind of freedom a person or state acts autonomously (MacCallum, 1967). This can be understood with the help of an example. A person can enjoy a freedom over the property as long as no one interferes in it; this will fall under negative freedom. At the same time a person also has freedom over some property if he owns it and has control given to him by the laws; this will fall under positive freedom (Gray, 1978). Many philosophers and thinkers also studied and presented the differences

Tort Assignment 2 Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Tort 2 - Assignment Example y have different types of compensation schemes and laws for injured employees, but they are all intended to guard against the negative consequences of inability to earn an income caused by injury. Most industrialised states are exhibiting a renewed interest in their systems of personal injury litigation, which can be viewed as an inclination towards responding to personal injury through legal redress. For example, in the United Kingdom, there is the Workers Compensation Act, of which the entire Part 3 and several provisions of Part 1 are applicable to occupational safety and health (IIDB, 2014). Sections of Part 4 are applicable to safety and health decisions appeals. Therefore, workers’ compensation is a scheme where employers must either pay or provide insurance that will pay medical expenses and lost wages of workers who get injured while performing their jobs. This paper will show that Tom, Dick and Harry have different rights and compensation levels from a dry cleaner the y worked for before being retired on health grounds after developing different diseases caused by a chemical they used at work. Under the Workers’ Compensation Act, an employer is defined as anyone with one or more workers who work for them in an industry by either a hiring or apprenticeship contract which is implied, expressed, oral or written. On the other hand, a worker is defined from multiple perspectives, but the most suitable in the case of Tom, Dick and Harry would be anyone under apprenticeship or contract of service whether implied, expressed, oral or written. Tort law defines a duty of care as a legal obligation owed by an individual to others, whereby a reasonable standard of care must be exercised while performing acts that are potentially harmful (Bagshaw & McBride, 2008). It also requires that the harm must be foreseeable. In the case of Squeakyclean, the company had known for 10 years that Blastoff, a chemical fluid used in the process of dry cleaning, causes a

A comparative analysis of The Sun Essay Example for Free

A comparative analysis of The Sun Essay Newspapers are a form of communication and words and photographs can be used very powerfully. New stories attract your attention and styles of writing / reporting is used as an effective device. The media use these devices each and every day. An article they have read in a newspaper has at sometime influenced everyone. However, it is important that you realise you are being influenced and how this is being achieved. Just by purchasing either The Sun or The Guardian to read is the most influential decision you do! This media assignment is a comparative analysis of The Sun a tabloid newspaper and The Guardian a broadsheet newspaper. The front pages will be compared, as will be a news story and also the editorials from both editions. Front Page The Sun Tuesday, March 18 2003. The Guardian Tuesday, March 18 2003. The visual presentation in both front pages of The Sun and The Guardian play a very important role. The Sun has used the front page as a presentational device; this is representative of the journalism in The Sun. The whole of the front page is dedicated to the image of a group of soldiers in action; with the headline Green light for War which is echoed by the whole of the front page tinted in green, which is the apparent view through a soldiers night vision binoculars. This relates well to the article itself; it communicates to its readers without having to first read the text. The use of the colour green and the headline Green light is almost a metaphor; it suggests to the reader that war is forth coming and at hand. These are stylistic choices made to appeal to readers and are eye-catching. Also the main information needed is contained within the headline. Within the text on The Suns front-page one sentence is represented as one paragraph this is to allow the readers eye to travel to points and draw the image and the text together. The style of writing adopted has a bearing on the theatrical; In the ghostly green light. stealthily towards plus the use of bold text adds to the effect. The structures of the sentences are very simple, abstract and condensed easy for the reader to digest. The tone of the piece is informal, a technique to make it easier for the assumed audience to read. In contrast to The Suns front page The Guardian has many glaring differences between the two. The Guardian uses much more information throughout. By comparison the images used in The Guardian of Robin Cook MP and President Bush are also important national and international events as Bush is seen looking very solemn and serious seated at his desk. It seems that The Guardian is trying to strike a chord with the reader by including above the photograph of Bush a sub heading; Bush throws down gauntlet to Saddam: Go into exile with your top men or face massive invasion. Whilst not overdoing it to seem patronising, a well-fixed balance seems to have been found the image reflects the sub heading. The photograph of Robin Cook and sub heading balances out the layout of the front page it looks neat and methodical. The Guardians choice of text and language differs greatly to The Sun the style is also abstract but uses literary angle History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations. This indicates that the people who read this newspaper have a higher level of education, as this paper is more difficult to understand. The Guardian uses long, complex sentences this once again indicates a reasonable level of intelligence expected from the readership. Statistics are used in The Guardian to prove several points this is used as evidence for the sub heading Support for attack jumps, but opposition still in majority. It helps the reader understand the neutral reporting by stating the statistics the article is laying out the information for the reader to absorb. All three articles on the front page of The Guardian use direct speech; in total contrast The Sun does not supply any direct speech on its front page. This is not the only difference between the two newspapers the content is completely different. The different audiences at which the papers are aimed are apparently much more in the content and language of the two newspapers than any other factors affecting them. Newstory The Sun Thursday, March 13 2003: Tarrant: I like to make them sweat. The Guardian Thursday, March 13 2003: Judge provides lifeline as Tarrant fails to answer barristers opening question. Both newstories are visual both have a photograph of the TV celebrity Chris Tarrant. One of the effective differences is The Sun uses colour photograph and The Guardian has gone for the black and white option. This is influential towards the audience colour is communicable and catches the attention of the reader. Plus The Sun has devoted two pages to the story albeit one page is dedicated to photographs and a sketch of inside the court. The Guardian is quite restrained and formal concerning the current trial involving TVs Chris Tarrant and Major Ingram and his alleged cheating on the popular TV game show. Considering the popularity and interest in the case The Guardian does not sensationalise or dramatise the reporting in its article. It is an objective piece of journalism giving the reader a balanced point of view, it is there to inform only. In comparison The Sunis not concerned with serious public interest, but only with what entertains the intended reader and therefore it sees its readers as enjoying celebrity news / scandal. All journalism is there to elicit a response from the reader. The article in The Sun creates an atmosphere of amusement. Spread across the top of the two pages like a mini-headline that reads Millionaire courtroom in stitches as game show host takes witness box this is intended to make the story sound more amusing and an added factor is the over large photograph of the jovial Chris Tarrant; this only reinforces what The Sun thinks its audience wants to see. The Guardian uses articulate language throughout; the sentences are longer and structured and are also approached in a formal manner. There is no striking headline instead this article has a smaller lower case text, and is located on the middle of the second page of The Guardian. Furthermore there is no use of puns, clichi s or jokes to cheapen the article. The way, in which the article is written provides more evidence, it is a conservative style of journalism this appeals to an intellectually wider audience. Whereas The Sun reports a similar story throughout, but its use of language is distinctive to tabloid newspapers. By using monosyllabic style The Sun creates easy reading most paragraphs are short bursts theses are designed to keep the readers attention. The Sun also uses a form of pyramid journalism, they put the juicy news first as many readers dont read more than the first couple of paragraphs this is stereotypical of tabloid newspapers. The main headline Tarrant: I like to make them sweat is an excellent example of journalise; its clichi ridden which is characteristic of The Sun. Once again in The Sun one sentence is equal to one paragraph. The opening paragraph is bold and in lower case text and is a simple explanation to the reader about the main headline. From the opening paragraph and into the sixth paragraph the text has changed four times from bold to italic text, the purpose of this is to keep the reader attentive and engaged. The sketch in The Sun in which Chris Tarrant looks like hes being questioned by the prosecutor, has text below quote Final answer? is a splendid example of the use of a clichi / pun, as it makes reference to Chris Tarrants TV game show. The readers of The Guardian are more likely to be scholarly as much of the language that The Guardian uses is academic, such as its use of polysyllabic text: impassionate, strategically, specifically, steepled and persona are examples of this type of language which is used in the article. It crates a more accurate coverage and reporting of this particular news story, which is apparently how the readers of The Guardian prefer their newspaper to report, more focus on the facts than entertainment. Editorials The Sun Says Thursday, March 13 2003: Only the right way remains. Comment Analysis The Guardian Tuesday, March 18 2003: Left behind to starve. The editorials from both The Sun and The Guardian have corresponding themes war. How they contrast greatly is all down to the content and style of each article. At present the threat of war hangs heavily around the world if not more so in the UK. How each newspaper responds co-insides with its intended audience and how they are expected to respond. The Suns editorial has a bold underlined heading Only the right way remains. What is the editor implying here? Is there no other way, have we no other choice? This type of journalism is impressionable, eliciting an emotional response from the reader. The use of bold lower case text and then a short, three-word sentence followed by a four-word sentence is a clever grammatical and punctuation style of journalism, it make the reading of the article more dramatic and powerful. Puns, clichi s and sensationalised text flow throughout this editorial, the UN are seen as minnows and small fry, people are dangerous dictators, President Chirac displays arrogance and greed. All these styles are designed to influence the audience into the editors way of thinking. The opening paragraph is more of a statement than a piece of journalism; the editor is trying to play on the emotional side of the reader. What becomes apparent throughout is the patriotism shown, is the editor trying to play on the readers conscience? Possibly to sway their views and opinions? Stylistic methods and the use of hyperbolic text like: That is the measure of Blairs courage and determination which does seem a deliberate overstatement; added to the fact the text is bold and underlined is this for confirmation? Half way through the editorial The Sun quotes Blair on his tough stance: Its best to work out what the right thing is and do it. The use of monosyllabic language doesnt co-inside really with Blairs supposedly tough stance; its not much of a powerful quote! The simple use of language makes it not too complicated for the reader to perceive. In stark contrast to The Sun Says, The Guardian takes a different side to the inevitable war. This article takes a more poignant look at the effects of war and is entitled left behind to stave. From the headline and minimalist fashion of drawing the audience is exposed to an emotive style of journalism. In the first paragraph the reader is prepared for the oncoming purpose of this editorial. The first paragraph almost preps the reader Citizens would demand that their governments spend as much on humanitarian aid as they spend on developing new means of killing people. This is straight and to the point writing and also it is a very emotional style. The amount of space that this editorial is given [estimate 1000 words] is a representation on how it feels the importance of this story is needs to be told. The disclosure throughout from the amount the US will spend [$12bn] on the war, to Burundi, which is officially the third poorest nation on earth, is poignant and also emotionally striking. It is an article that exposes another side to war that many people would not have contrived. The Guardian carries throughout it this editorial the use of academic language disproportional, institutional collapse, consolidated appeal, unprecedented and uninhabitable this is what makes The Guardian is serious and educational newspaper. The Guardian discusses the logical and realistic effects around the world, whereas The Sun is not open for debate. This can be seen in the choice of language, it is churlish Treachery of France Small fry at the UN America, the mightiest nation on earth It is a typical device The Sun uses to win over the reader. The Guardian on the other hand lays down an argument and then explores it; sees the problems and evidence, then puts the factual data in for the reader to reflect and to consider. The Guardian has produced a convincing and statistical article that appeals to the readers moral stance rather than The Suns political powers of irrational thinking. The final closing paragraph [bold underlined] of The Sun Says has Tony Blair cemented in history is the reader to assume he is heroic and legendary, The Sun presumes so. The Guardian concludes with an ethical paragraph and cleverly uses a personal pronoun we, this accomplishes the objective to sound more real which it is.

The Social Mobility Of My Family

The Social Mobility Of My Family The following paper includes research of Social mobility within social classes and how this has affected my family. This is a controversial issue whether socioeconomic inheritance or the class one is born into plays a role to the social mobility of the individual in one direction or another. I will give examples of my familys social mobility for the past four generations. Some may argue that starting off at a lower social class can restrict one from social mobility. From this perspective, it is thought that not having access to education or many opportunities for success make it much harder to get out from under a life of always working from paycheck to paycheck. On the other hand, others argue that we all have the same opportunity to advance our social status and move up or down the class structure within generations. The textbook spells out several different philosophies in regards to social class. Karl Marx believed that social class was created by a persons relationship with labo r. Marx separated people into those who own the means of production, and those who sell their labor (Henslin 188). Another concept the textbooks talks about was established by Joseph Kahl and Dennis Gilbert, and they based their opinions on Max Weber. Weber alleged social class is a large collection of individuals who are categorized carefully to each other in property, power and prestige (Henslin 202). Kahl and Gilbert added to this notion to include a persons education or lack thereof. Kahl and Gilbert state that today the quality of education that an individual receives also denotes the capabilities a person may possess. Kahl and Gilbert created a class social structure that contained of capitalist, upper middle class, lower middle class, working class, working poor and underclass. The higher one is in social class the greater their property or income is, along with prestige of the university they attended and the power they hold in their occupation. After analyzing the two diffe rent ideas of social class structure, I believe the most adequate structure is the social class structure of Kahl and Gilbert. Their structure allows for more wisdom and inconsistency in social class as well as superior means for explaining the difference of classes. My familys story My analysis of my familys social mobility starts with my mothers grandparents. Prior to the great depression they were that of upper middle class and would have been considered very well off. They had several farms a very large house with servants and over 1000 acres. My grandfathers part within the family of 8 was to work on the farms with his older brother getting a management role and other siblings going to college and waiting to be married. My grandfather was a very hard worker and fell into the role to handle the farms and such even though he was from the same class as the rest of the family he was seen as lower because of his younger age and hardworking mentality. Much of the family looked down on him for getting his hands dirty. His father did not allow him to continue school and he dropped to work the farms in the 8th grade. His older brother and father handled the money and management of the farms operations until the Great Depression occurred in the late 20s. After a fire which resulted in them losing several animals, a house and barn as well as other circumstances from the depression they ended up losing it all. My grandfather ended up renting a farm being a time of the dust bowl he was unable to raise sufficient crops so he began buying horses and cattle that were in poor health for very little. He would clean them up train the horses and sell them back months later for a large profit. He did this several time until he eventually saved enough to buy back the family farm where he began to milk cows and cash crops as the land was much better. My grandmother came from a very low social class but did get to go to college as her oldest sister and her husband made it possible by paying for all of their siblings to go to college as well as they both became professors and continued to live very frugal lives never having children and having a very giving life. My Grandmother graduated college at 16 and soon met my Grandfather they had 5 children with my mot her being the youngest. My grandmother started teaching soon after the children were out of diapers. A very large age gap made it so that my mother was still young when the oldest brother joined the navy during WWII. A few years later my mothers other siblings went off to college as the economy recovered as a result of the war. My mother and father started dating while my mother was 16 and they married soon after meeting and had my oldest sister at age 17. They moved into a small house just down the road from my grandparents farm and had three more children. Eventually my father built us a house on the family land that my grandmother gave them. My father is a very hardworking man and worked as a farmhand then a machinist and a carpenter until an accident in 1975 that left him disabled and unable to work. This along with a recession in the 1980s hurt my parents financially. After struggling to make things work they divorced in 1981. My mother, brother and I moved to an apartment in M adison. My sisters moved out by themselves or with boyfriends and got working class jobs as my parents did not have the means to help pay for college. Our income, status and social class level dropped to the poverty level. Living in a single parent household led by the mother we experienced the Feminization of Poverty (Henslin, p. 206). My father was on disability with very little means to even care for himself let along his children. My mother took on several jobs but with no education it never seemed to be enough. I started working to pay for food and such and help out with clothes and such. I was washing dishes and odd jobs mowing lawns. On my fifteenth birthday I decided to move out on my own. My mother had met someone and they were getting married. He had moved in and I did not get along with him or my mother very well. I tried to do well in school but trying to make rent made that a difficult task. I did try and go to college but never having enough money for rent or food made that impossible. I eventually dropped out of school and took on construction jobs. I guess I inherited some of those skills from my father and I am not afraid of hard work so I focused on that. I did well in construction and eventually married and had two children. During the 2000 construction boom I flipped several houses and built myself a very nice house. I had moved my family back up to middle class life. After my children were born my wife struggled with depression and eventually it got so bad that we decided to separate and were divorced in 2002. I had decided I would not make my children go through what I went through with my parents divorce so I decided to give it all to them and my ex-wife so we would not have to sell the house and make them possible change schools. I had paid down the mortgage to around 100,000 on a house that is worth well over 500,000. I took all other bills credit cards and car payments. I felt with my skills that I would be able to rebuild my life and they would be taken care of. Then a recession hit slow at first with construction getting slower and slower and eventually in 2008 the economy got really bad. It has been hard to turn around and the recession could not have hit a worse time. I have actually moved several times in the past years downgrading to a lesser quality home and car to save money. With very little work and the economy slow to recover I decided to apply to go to school. This is my second semester at Madison College and I am doing well. I am on the deans list with a current 3.9 GPA. Being the only one of my siblings going to college it is important that I finish. I am hopeful that the US economy turns around and I can find a decent job or get my business back making money. The problem is that I am now somewhat stuck not making enough to borrow money to buy my way out and with no college education to get a great paying job while the construction market is saturated and not coming back very fast. Having circumsta nces affecting each generation has had an impact on the social mobility of my family in a negative way starting with the great depression and continuing with the current recession. I feel that education is a key factor for social mobility. In the past younger siblings lost out on getting to go to college and getting to take over families businesses with the oldest male child usually taking over. My view My own view is that while there is a real disadvantage with education and opportunity advantages it is still possible to move up or down within social class that we were born into but for some it is very hard if not impossible. Though I concede that this may be a hard thing to overcome and defiantly harder for the lower class than within the middle or upper class. I still maintain that good work ethic and faith can increase the success of social mobility. For example my grandfather took an approach to find new innovative ways to make money and save for the right opportunity to come and then follow through. Although some might object that upper middle class and upper class should not have to pay for those born into lower class. I would reply that it is our social responsibility to give everyone an education and increase the opportunity for success for each and every individual within the United States. The issue is important because of how we are evolving humanity and making everyone so they can contribute to their potential is better for all. The alternative is that many will go on welfare or break laws and end up in prison as they have no way out of the life they were born into. This cost is much higher than the cost an education would be. Family disruption or economic loss The experience of family disruption during childhood substantially increases the odds of ending up in the lowest occupational stratum as opposed to the stable families having a better chance to be in a high class. Family disruption also weakens the association between dimensions of occupational origins and destinations. The socioeconomic destinations from nonimpact family backgrounds bear less resemblance to their socioeconomic origins that those from intact backgrounds. Those from traditional two-parent homes exhibit a stronger pattern of intergenerational occupational inheritance than those from disrupted families. Upward income mobility has decreased to such a point that the United States appears to have the highest rate of income inequality in the industrialized world, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. Longstanding partisan battles in Congress about policy issues such as instituting a more progressive tax code, the tax treatment of capital gains and in heritance, and the expansion of social welfare benefits like food stamps and healthcare in recent years have not ended very well for the nations poor. Empirical analyses estimate the United States is a comparatively immobile society, that is, where on starts in the income distribution influences where one ends up to a greater degree than in several advanced economies (Cite). Reports suggest the U.S. is no longer, if it ever was a nation where the poorest can feasibly lift themselves up by their bootstraps. If income were equally distributed, each fifth household would account for 20 percent of total income. The poorest of these has long since accounted for far less than its proportionate share, barely budging from about 4 percent in recent decades, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (Cite). Meanwhile, since 1968 the middle class has seen its total income share decrease steadily, while those among the top-fifth of earners particularly the top 5 percent have seen their incomes skyr ocket. For instance, the top 5 percent held 22.3 percent of the nations wealth in 2011, up from 16.3 percent four decades earlier. The advantages offered by an affluent lifestyle clearly influence an individuals chances for economic mobility, the CRS reports. According to an analysis of empirical data, the study authors estimate there is a positive relationship of about 0.5 between a parent and adult income. Children of parents with above-average salaries are more likely, on average, to also bring in high incomes. Half the economic advantage the children of well-off families enjoy comes from having been born into wealthy families in the first place. On top of that, the chances of adults moving up from their initial income economic position has decreased or remained stagnant in recent decades, which is of particular concern since most Americans still believe economic mobility in the U.S. is completely within their reach. Americans may be less concerned about inequality in the distrib ution of income at any given point in time partly because of a belief that everyone has an equal opportunity to move up the income ladder. Different types of family structures experienced during childhood have varying effects on socioeconomic attainment and social mobility. Those within the middle class will, statistically, experience some economic mobility. According to a study by the Pew Economic Mobility Project, 43 percent of children whose parents were born in the bottom one fifth remained at the bottom when they became adults. In contrast, 40 percent of children born to parents at the top one fifth were also at the top as adults. The study compared intergenerational mobility rates between 1984 to 1994 and 1994 to 2004. Conclusion The topics of particular importance in contemporary sociology seem to be the inequality of educational opportunity and mechanisms of social mobility or immobility. Also the effects of the households saving behavior and the implication of this behavior for the distribution of wealth and the relationship between the extent of free enterprise and opportunity in the economy and socioeconomic mobility, that is, the movement of families across wealth classes over time. Some studies suggest that as technology advances, lower income workers do not have the skills or educational requirements to keep up with changing labor needs. The demand for highly skilled workers trained in engineering or information technology has elevated, while the need for lower skilled and middle skilled workers has diminished which is one of the casualties of globalization. The philosophical battle over how to achieve economic growth and social mobility has escalated to a point that conservatives have resisted attemp ts to direct more investments in programs such as early childhood education and college tuition aid. The battle continues as Democrats are pushing for more investments in social safety net programs while Republicans are calling for a self-reliant approach. Education gap creates more inequality and arguably promote equality in the opportunity to move up the income ladder, which an increasingly unequal distribution of income may suggest a lack of and which may itself curb the potential productive capacity of the economy an education gap is one of the main reasons commonly offered to explain the nations widening income inequality. Although many still firmly believe, and constantly argue, that Americans have an equal opportunity to move up the economic ladder, the researchers conclude that opportunity is far from equal.

IntelliP: Effective Mechanism for Resource Monitoring

IntelliP: Effective Mechanism for Resource Monitoring IntelliP: Effective Mechanism for Resource Monitoring in Private Cloud Vivekanand Adam Abstract—Cloud computing paradigm makes huge virtualized compute resources available to users as pay-as-you-go style. Resource monitoring is the premise of many major operations such as network analysis, management, job scheduling, load balancing, billing, event predicting, fault detecting, and fault recovery in Cloud computing. Cloud computing is more complicated than ordinary network owing to its heterogeneous and dynamic characteristics. Hence, it is a vital part of the Cloud computing system to monitor the existence and characteristics of resources, services, computations, and other entities. Monitoring data between hosts and servers should be consistent, and data transfer from hosts to servers should be efficient. In this paper, I will use an effective mechanism for resource monitoring called IntelliP which is based on a modified push model. It reduces useless monitoring data coherency between hosts and servers in CloudStack. Keywords—Cloud computing, Monitoring, self-adaptive, coherency, CloudStack, IntelliP. I. Introduction Cloud computing has rapidly emerged as a method for service delivery over TCP/IP networks such as the Internet. It disrupts the traditional IT computing environment by providing organizations with an option to outsource the hosting and operations of their mission-critical business applications. Cloud computing paradigm makes huge virtualized compute resources available to users as pay-as-you-go style. Resource monitoring is the premise of many major operations such as network analysis, management, job scheduling, load balancing, billing, event predicting, fault detecting, and fault recovery in Cloud computing. Cloud computing is more complicated than ordinary network owing to its heterogeneous and dynamic characteristics. Hence, it is a vital part of the Cloud computing system to monitor the existence and characteristics of resources, services, computations, and other entities. Apache CloudStack [1] is one of the most popular open source IaaS solutions. CloudStack is the best choice of all open source clouds to migrate the services and integrated the maximum security level in its architecture [2]. In IaaS Cloud environments, two aspects should be considered: 1. IaaS hardware and software: In Cloud environment, there are various kinds of hardware and software, including physical hosts, network devices, storage devices and databases. Monitoring system should obtain the performance data of these hardware and software, and report the real-time running status. 2. The Cloud user’s resources: Everything the user has in the Cloud. These are instances, disk volumes, guest networks, templates, ISOs, etc. For all these components, the Cloud user needs clear and reliable knowledge of their status. My goal is to develop an effective monitoring system for CloudStack which will use an effective mechanism for resource monitoring called IntelliP which is based on a modified push model and it reduces useless monitoring data coherency between hosts and servers. The monitoring system can collect utilization information from both physical and virtual resources. The monitoring metrics should be accurate, i.e. they are as close as possible to the real value to be measured. This can help the administrators know the status of Cloud system, and give end users a clear view of their resources in Cloud. II. Background This existing monitoring system named SCM is proposed to monitoring the Apache CloudStack platform [3]. SCM is a flexible monitoring system supporting for cloud environments, which can monitor both physical and virtual resources. SCM users can choose their interested metrics and set a custom interval. In order to meet these requirements, SCM needs a well-designed user interface, and flexible, dynamic data sources. In Clouds, monitoring metrics are also important to the billing systems, job scheduling and other Cloud components. Because of the characteristics of Cloud environment, the monitoring metrics will be dynamically changed and the volume of data may become very large, a scalable and high performance storage system is needed. The SCM monitoring system has four main functionalities, which are metric collection, information processing and storage, metric display, alert. The architecture of the SCM monitoring system is shown figure 1. Collectors In Apache CloudStack environment, the hosts have different meanings [1]. These hosts may be physical or virtual, customer instances or system virtual machines, so the metrics need to be collected vary with the host’s type. In the SCM monitoring system, they use collectors as the data sources which are deployed on each host. These collectors can easily be configured to collect different metrics. In fact, the collector Figure1. The architecture of the SCM monitoring offers a framework, in which users can develop their own programs to collect metrics they interested in. The collector periodically retrieves performance metric values from the host, e.g. cpu usage, memory usage, disk I/O. When the host becomes management server or storage server, the performance metrics of MySQL, tomcat, NFS and other CloudStack components are also collected. As mentioned above, CloudStack has different network traffics on a host, some of traffics do not to need be monitored. The collector monitors the public and storage traffics. The collector also monitors the network devices through SNMP. These metric values are then pushed to SCM Server. The SCM server The SCM server is the core of the SCM monitoring system. There are five main modules of the SCM server. Host aggregator is used to aggregate the metric values from the collectors. A host aggregator may receive metric values from a lot of collectors. Apache CloudStack provides an API that gives programmatic access to all the management features. They designed the platform aggregator to communicate with ACS management servers and call the ACS API through HTTP to get the CloudStack related information, such as the version of CloudStack and how many zones, pods, clusters and hosts in the current environment, etc. After a pre-set time, the aggregators send the metrics to the storage module. The storage module is used to communicate with the storage system, putting the metric values into the storage system or getting values from it. The storage module receives the metrics from the aggregators and stores all these data locally, when the metrics file is large enough, it puts the metrics into the storage system. This can reduce the I/O operations on the storage system. The statistics module is a data processing module. It analyses the metric values from the storage module and provides the average, minimal, maximum, performance outliers, etc. To improve the availability of the ACS, abnormal running information should be reported to the Cloud users immediately. The alert module obtains exceptions from statistics and records the information, and then notifies the Cloud user. If the ACS scale is large, there are hundreds or thousands of hosts, multiple SCM Servers may be needed for load balance. The SCM Client The metric values are organized as a tuple (metric name, timestamp, value, tags), these tuple are not friendly to the Cloud users. So just collecting various resource utilizations information is not enough to explain the observed performance of hosts or applications. In order to let the Cloud users easily to understand the meaning of these metric values, it is very important to display information in a simple and flexible way. The SCM Client gives an overview of the whole system, and displays the metric values in time series graphs with several filters, which is used to help the Cloud users quickly find the minimal or maximal of the current metric value or calculate the average performance in a period of time. Also the Cloud users can customize the graphs by selecting the metric names and tags in tuples. Then only the interested metric values will be displayed in the user interface. Storage system The metric values need to be stored persistently for analysis as well as displayed on the fly. Resources in the Cloud change dynamically and the deployment of the Cloud is large. Monitoring such distributed system may produce a large amount of metric values. So the storage system should be scalable and flexible, with the ability to collect many thousands of metrics from thousands of hosts and applications at a high rate. Above system uses pure push model for data collection [3], hosts initiatively send running status (CPU, memory, I/O, etc.) to a monitoring server. This model has better real-time, and makes the monitoring data between hosts and servers higher in coherency, but lower in efficiency. Usually, the push model is triggered by a time interval or exceeding a threshold. The value of time interval and threshold is important to this model. If the value is too small, even a little change on hosts may make the status information deliver to monitoring servers over a network. This may cause network congestion. If the value is too big, a lot of useful information may be ignored. It consist useless monitoring data coherency between hosts and servers. A pure Push or Pull model is not suited for many different kinds of virtualized resources III. Related work In Clouds, resource monitoring is the premise of job scheduling, load balancing, billing and many other major operations. Therefore, data coherency and real-time are important indicators for a monitoring system of Clouds. Elastic compute is one of the main characters of Clouds, resources in Clouds change dynamically. So the monitoring system should adapt to this kind of situation. To solve the above problem He Huang and Liqiang Wang proposed a combined push and pull model called PP model for resource monitoring in Cloud computing environment [4]. The PP model inherits the advantages of Push and Pull models. It can intelligently switch between Push and Pull models depending on the resource status and external customer request. But the combination of the push model and pull model is more complex to the pure push model and pull model. When there are a large number of requests, event driven method will increase the load on the monitoring servers, and the servers will become the bottleneck. The switch between push and pull has some extra costs [4] and it consist useless monitoring data coherency between hosts and servers. In an attempt to minimize unnecessary and useless updating massages, and maximize the consistency between the producer and consumer. Wu-Chun Chung and Ruay-Shiung Chang [5] have proposed GRIR (Grid Resource Information Retrieval), which is considered a new algorithm for resource monitoring in grid computing to improve Push model. They examined a set of data delivery protocols for resource monitoring in the push-based model, such as the OSM (OffsetSensitive Mechanism) protocol, the TSM (Time-Sensitive Mechanism) protocol, and the hybrid ACTC (Announcing with Change and Time Consideration) protocol. This hybrid protocol is based on a dynamically adjusted update time interval and the consideration for early update when the change is larger than a dynamic threshold. IV. Proposed solution We can use a self-adaptive mechanism for resource monitoring in Cloud computing environment based on push model. As mentioned earlier, push model has better coherency, but lower efficiency in small threshold situation. We can set up a transportation window to store metrics before they are delivered to the monitoring server. We can design an algorithm to control data delivery. The design of the Self adaptive Push Model Monitoring data between hosts and servers should be consistent, and data transfer from hosts to servers should be efficient. In this section, I introduce a self-adaptive push model called IntelliP, which is based on a modified push model. It reduces useless monitoring data coherency between hosts and servers. IntelliP has a transportation window, as shown in following figure 2. Figure 2: A push model with transportation window. When collectors get metrics from adapters on hosts, instead of delivering these data to servers immediately, they put these metrics into the transportation window. The window accepts a new metric and then compares it with the average value of the former metrics. (1) If diff is smaller than the current threshold, collectors put the metric into the window and keep accepting new data, otherwise, deliver the metric to monitoring server and empty the window. When the window is full deliver the average value of the metrics in the window to monitoring servers. The size of transportation window is not fixed, in order to adapt to the dynamically changing situation of Clouds the window size changes too. Small size means that resources change frequently, and large size hosts are running in a stable status. When the window is full, that means in the past periods of time, hosts were running in a stable status, and the next few periods may still in this status, so the size of window adds one. If diff is bigger than the threshold, it shows that CPU usage, Memory, I/O throughput or other resources of a host changed suddenly. This may indicate that the host becomes active. An IntelliP data delivery control algorithm At this moment, the window size reduces to half of the original size, so more metrics will be delivered to monitoring servers. In push model, the value of threshold is very important. IntelliP decides the size of threshold according to two parameters ÃŽ ± and  µ. Α ÃŽ ± has a close relationship with the current network condition. If current network condition is good, ÃŽ ± is small, more metrics would be delivered. While current network condition is poor, the value of ÃŽ ± increased, less metrics would be on the network. When the network condition is in an ideal status, the value of ÃŽ ± is 1. Another parameter is a constant value set by users. Users can customize the size of  µ according to their requirement. We use m_average as the average value of metrics in window, and define threshold as; threshold= ÃŽ ± Ãâ€"  µ Ãâ€" m (2) One problem is that if the host was running smoothly for a long time and resources usage on this host did not change a lot, then the size of window will be very large. This will lost a lot of metrics. We set an upper limit of window size to solve this problem, when the window size increases to the maximum limit, then the size would not increase any more. . V. conclusion and future work In Clouds, resource monitoring is the premise of job scheduling, load balancing, billing and many other major operations. Therefore, data coherency and real-time are important indicators for a monitoring system of Clouds. Elastic compute is one of the main characters of Clouds, resources in Clouds change dynamically. Using a self-adaptive push model called IntelliP, which is based on a modified push model we can build an effective cloud monitoring system which will reduces network congestion and also reduces useless monitoring data coherency between hosts and servers in CloudStack. In future I will try to improve data delivery control algorithm for increasing effectiveness and adaptive nature of monitoring system, which will be available for all. References Apache Project, Apache CloudStack, 2013 [online] http://cloudstack.apache.org Sasko Ristov and Marjan Gusev, â€Å"Security Evaluation of Open Source Clouds† EuroCon 2013, 1-4 July 2013, Zagreb, Croatia. Lin Kai; Tong Weiqin; Zhang Liping; Hu Chao, SCM: A Design and Implementation of Monitoring System for CloudStack, Cloud and Service Computing (CSC), 2013 International Conference on , vol., no., pp.146,151, 4-6 Nov. 2013. He Huang and Liqiang Wang, PP: a Combined Push-Pull Model for Resource Monitoring in Cloud Computing Environment 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing. W. Chung, R. Chang (2009), A New Mechanism For Resource Monitoring in Grid Computing, Future Generation Computer Systems FGCS 25, PP 1-7.