Sunday, December 22, 2019

Unit 4 Study Guide Music Appreciation - 1249 Words

Classical Dates: 1750-1820 1. What was going historically during this era? What was life like? 2. What is the Enlightenment? A movement led by French intellectuals who advocated reasons the universal source of knowledge and truth. 3. What was the preferred texture of classical composers? Homophony 4. What is absolute music? Instrumental music based on abstract principles of music theory and form. 5. What are some characteristics of rhythm in Classical music? Very define and regular. 6. What are some characteristics of melody in Classical music? Short and clearly defined musical phrases with two or more contrasting themes. 7. How do classic composers handle dynamic changes? It was dramatic, and they did not let themselves be held†¦show more content†¦The tempo is usually fast and the mood merry. 20. Discuss the classical concerto. What is a cadenza? A classical concerto usually has three movements occurring in the same order of tempos as the Italian sinfonia: fast-slow-fast. Cadenza is an extended virtuosic passage for a solo instrument. 21. What is chamber music designed for? It was designed to meet the listeners on a more intimate and personal level/ for the intimate setting of a small room. 22. Define the string quartet. A chamber ensemble consisting of two violins, a viola, and a cello. Also, a composition written for this ensemble. 23. Define a classical sonata. A musical composition for solo instrument or a small number of instruments typically in three or four movements in contrasting forms and keys. 24. What are some other types of chamber groups? Woodwind quintet, the piano trio, and the brass quintet. 25. What is significant about Beethoven’s 9th symphony? In the ninth symphony the chorus and orchestra join together and show the universal love for brotherhood as well as God. 26. What is the Viennese style? A term applied to classical style to avoid the ambiguity of â€Å"classical.† 27. What is the Classical style? Restrained, objective style of art. 28. What is a coda? â€Å"Tail†; a closing section. 29. What is an overture? Orchestral introduction to an opera or to another vocal or dramatic work. 30. What is a comic opera? Reaction against baroque style. Light in mood and modest inShow MoreRelatedThe Record Of Praxis Experience1723 Words   |  7 Pagesof the major stake holders, which is a vital step in the engineering design process. Reframing can be deployed as a means to restrain designers or guide them to focus on particular attributes by providing them with criteria and constraints. Artifact 3: CDR-Music Stand $ Conceptual Design Project: Implementation of Footrest to stabilize portable music stands This was a principle deliverable in our design course, Praxis I. We were required to reframe a design brief presented to us by a differentRead MoreMy Experience and Reflection on Teaching Kindergarten Social Studies3374 Words   |  14 PagesInstructional Context-My class includes 25 five and six year old kindergartners; 24 African-American students and 1 Caucasian student. I have 11 girls and 14 boys in my full-day kindergarten class where I teach language arts, math, science, social studies, and health. My class is a typical kindergarten group, in that they are very active and learn best by doing. They are a very talkative group and are in constant competition to share their ideas and to have their turn to participate. I haveRead MoreField Study 57964 Words   |  32 PagesPaper 2 The Field Study Student 3 Statement of the Purpose 4 Cooperating School 5 Momentous Experience and Insights Narrative 6 Entries and Evidences Letter 10 Schedules 11 Copy of Basic EducationinUBD Curriculum 12 Interview on Grade 7 Teachers 13 My Own Curriculum â€Å"Realistic Educational Curriculum† 18 Reflection on Observation 28 Articles about Field Study 4 Teaching Resources: ExploringRead MorePapoer6763 Words   |  28 PagesThe Impact of Music on Language Early Literacy: A Research Summary In Support of Kindermusik’s ABC Music Me The Impact of Music on Language Early Literacy: A Research Summary In Support of Kindermusik’s ABC Music Me Introduction Early childhood classroom teachers believe in the power of music to engage children. What scientifically based research supports the use of music and musical instruction to build early literacy skills? 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SENAJON Administrative OFFICER Filipino IGNACIA F. TRONDILLO Social Studies ROSARIO C. APERCHO Science JANELY A. PANTINOPLE English MARIA BASILIA G. FLORES Guidance Coordinator AMELIE T. BELLO Security units EUGENIO S. SARDIDO CRISPIN T. PERALTA ESPERIDION L. SOLATORIO FILIPINO TEACHERS S.S. TEACHERS SCIENCE TEACHERS ENGLISH TEACHERS Read MoreRelationship Between Education and Cultural Development2072 Words   |  9 PagesInclude stimulus variation âž ¢ Lead to the better understanding of the content âž ¢ Should not be long drawn out - maintain the interest of students âž ¢ Related to current changes in society\nation\school âž ¢ In line with the aims and philosophy of the nation. 4. 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Saturday, December 14, 2019

Weighted Average Cost of Capital Free Essays

WACC: Weighted average cost of capital =WACC= SS+B? Rs+BS+B? RB? 1-tC note: Rs , cost of equity; RB , cost of debt; tC , corporate tax rate. For cost of equity, Rs, we calculate it by using the SML, according to CAPM model. Rs=RF+ [RM-RF] As we can see in the chart behind the case, beta of Worldwide Paper Company is 1. We will write a custom essay sample on Weighted Average Cost of Capital or any similar topic only for you Order Now 10; the Market risk premium (RM-RF) is 6. 0%. Because this on-site longwood woodyard project has six year life and the investment spend over two years, the total long of this program is more closer to 10-years, we choose the 10-year government bonds as risk free rate, 4. 60%. Thus, Rs=4. 60%+1. 10? 6. 0% =11. 20%. For the cost of debt, there are two kinds of debts of Worldwide Paper Company, bank loan and long-term debt. The cost of long-term debt is 5. 78% (A rating 10-years maturities corporate bonds) , and the value of long term debt is $2500M. Thus, RB=5. 78%. For the value of equity and debt, market value weights are more appropriate than book value weights, because the market values of the securities are closer to the actual dollars that would be received from their sale. There are the market weights expected to prevail over the life of the firm or the project. S=500? $24. 00=$12,000M; B=$2500 RWACC=1200012000+3000? 11. 20%+300012000+3000? 5. 88%=9. 76% Payback Period: YEAR| 2007| 2008| 2009| 2010| 2011| 2012| 2013| Total CF of investment| -16| -2. 4| -0. 6| Â  | Â  | Â  | 2. 08| OCF| Â  | 2. 88| 4. 5| 4. 5| 4. 5| 4. 5| 4. 5| Cumulative CF| -16| -15. 52| -11. 62| -7. 12| -2. 62| 1. 88| 8. 46| Thus, the payback period is 4+2. 624. 5=4. 58 year. Discounted Payback Period: YEAR| 2007| 2008| 2009| 2010| 2011| 2012| 2013| Total CF of investment| -16| -2. 4| -0. 6| 0| 0| 0| 2. 08| discounted CF of investment| -16| -2. 18| -0. 0| 0| 0| 0| 1. 18| OCF| Â  | 2. 88| 4. 5| 4. 5| 4. 5| 4. 5| 4. 5| discounted OCF| Â  | 2. 62| 3. 73| 3. 39| 3. 09| 2. 81| 2. 56| sum| -16| 0. 44| 3. 23| 3. 39| 3. 09| 2. 81| 3. 74| Cumulative CF| -16| -15. 56| -12. 33| -8. 94| -5. 85| -3. 04| 0. 70| Thus, the discounted payback period is 5+3. 044. 5=5. 81 year. Average Accounting Method: YEAR| 2007| 2008| 2009| 2010| 2011| 2012| 2013| average| net income| Â  | -0. 12| 1. 5| 1. 5| 1. 5| 1. 5| 1. 5| 1. 23| investment| 16| 15. 4| 13| 10| 7| 4| 0| 9. 34| Thus, AAR=Average net incomeAverage investment=1. 239. 34=13. 16% How to cite Weighted Average Cost of Capital, Essay examples

Friday, December 6, 2019

Planning for the Chevy Volt free essay sample

What trends in the external environment favored the pursuit of the Chevy Volt project? Toyota best selling hybrid Prius shows the customer demand for fuel efficient cars . What impediments to pursuing this project do you think existed within GM? Cost is one of the most important hurdles in pursuing with Chevy Volt 4. The plan for the Chevy Volt seems to be based partly on the assumption that oil prices would remain high and yet in late 2008, oil prices collapsed in the wake of a sharp global economic slowdown a. What does this tell you about the nature of strategic plans ? The strategy was based on analyzing the existing marketing situation and trends b.What do falling oil prices mean for the potential success of the chevy Volt ? Experts agree that gas prices will stay volatile. Supply is limited, and when the world economy recovers, demand will rise. That means a possible return to -a-gallon gasoline c. We will write a custom essay sample on Planning for the Chevy Volt or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Do you think oil prices will remain low? No 5. What will it take for the Chevy Volt to be a successful car ? in light of your analysis, how risky do you think this venture is for GM? What are the costs of failure? What are the costs of not pursuing the project?I think it wills success for the following factors Its new models have cutting-edge designs that sell well, and its quality rankings and fuel economy rise, If every new model has dramatically better gas mileage in government testing than its predecessor, Proper advertising is done like GM products are appearing in hit movies, music videos, TV shows and other media. Cost of not pursuing the project is low as it look from the case presented that GM is looking forward for this new development

Friday, November 29, 2019

Looking for Free Pics for your Content Here Are 6 Great Free Stock Image Sites

When you only have a few seconds to grab people’s attention, images and photos can help your content stand out in a big way. Our brains can process visual information much faster than text, and content with images receives much more engagement than content without. Copyright infringement and the resulting legal hassles pose a real risk to marketers searching for great visuals. To avoid these issues you usually need to buy images from relable stock photo companies. But if your budget is tight, here are a few sources of free, legally-available images for you to tap when needed. 1. Flickr Creative Commons Stock images are usually available under a Creative Commons license, which allows for the free distribution of copyrighted material.Flickr makes locating images with this type of license easy. Go to Flickr’s advanced search, enter a keyword and narrow your search by your chosen Creative Commons license type –most of the time, you’ll find exactly what you need.Just make sure you give your free pics the proper attribution when you use them. 2. Unsplash This site only adds 10 new images every 10 days, but these royalty-free photos are usually spectacular. The photos here have a realness and honesty that you don’t always find with stock images. You’ll probably find yourself browsing through the site long after you found the image you needed. 3. New Old Stock This site contains a curated selection of photos from the Flickr Commons – a repository of photos from institutions all over the world that have no known copyright restrictions.Not to be confused with Creative Commons, the Flickr Commons contains photos that are old enough to be part of the public domain or belong to an agency that have granted its permission for use. New Old Stock shows you the best of these images. If you’re looking for something a bit different, try this amazing collection by web designer and artist Ryan McGuire.His quirky photos are free and require no attribution – just don’t try to sell or submit his free pics to another photography site as your own. 5. Death to the Stock Photo Don’t worry – the creators of this innovative service don’t really want to kill off stock photography.Instead, they want to do away with the stereotype of mediocre, uninspiring stock images. Users who sign up for Death to the Stock Photo’s email list will get new stock photos delivered to their inbox each month. Their license system is similar to Creative Common, and they do a good job explaining it in plain English on their website. 6. Jay Mantri This California-based designer and photographer adds new images to his site every week. Mantri tends to favor black-and-white photos, and his images rarely feature people – you’re free to choose any image from the site and do what you please with it.In addition to sharing his own free pics, Mantri also suggests new photographers to follow on Instagram each week. Low Cost Premium Images These sources will help you track down the free pics and photos you need to make your content more eye-catching and engaging.But free stock images to fit your content aren’t always easy to find or they are more likely to be overused. If you’re looking for high-quality images that are the perfect fit with your content at a low cost, Constant Content offers a catlog of over 70 million premium images through a partnership with Shutterstock for less than buying through Shutterstock directly.

Monday, November 25, 2019

Whales Essays - Baleen Whales, Whale, Cetacea, Rorqual, Blue Whale

Whales Essays - Baleen Whales, Whale, Cetacea, Rorqual, Blue Whale Whales Blue Whales The Blue whale is the largest creature of the sea; in fact, its the largest creature known to man. Contrary to what most people think, even though Blue whales live in the sea, they are mammals. They breathe air, have their babies born alive, and can live anywhere from 30 to 70 years. The Blue whale is a baleen whale, and instead of having teeth, Blue whales have around 300-400 baleen plates in their mouths. Baleen are rows of coarse, bristle-like fibers used to strain plankton from the water. Baleen is made of keratin, the same material as our fingernails. The Blue whale is called a rorqual, a Norwegian word for furrow referring to the pleated grooves running from its chin to its naval. The pleated throat grooves allow the Blue whales throat to expand during the huge intake of water during filter feeding; they can hold 1,000 tons or more of food and water when fully expanded (Small 1971). They average about 50-70 throat grooves. Blue whales grow up to about 80 feet (25m) long on average, weighing about 120 tons. The females are generally larger than the males, this is the case for all baleen whales. The largest specimen found was a female 94 feet (29m) long weighing more than 174 tons (Satchell 1998). The head of the Blue whale forms up to a quarter of the total body length. Compared with other rorquals, the head is very broad. The blue whale heart is also large, the size of a small car and can pump almost 10 tons of blood throughout the body. They also have a very small, falcate (sickle-shaped) dorsal fin that is located near the fluke, or tail. Blue whales have long, thin flippers 8 feet (2.4m) long and flukes that are 25feet (7.6m) wide. The blue whales skin is usually blue-gray with white-gray spots. The underbelly has brown, yellow, or gray specks. During the winter, in cold waters, diatoms stick to the underbelly, giving it a yellow to silver- to sulfur-colored sheen; giving the blue whale its nick-name of sulfur bottoms. Other names include S ibbalds Rorqual and Great Northern Rorqual. Blue whales (like all baleen whales) are seasonal feeders and carnivores that filter feed tiny crustaceans (krill, copepods, etc), plankton, and small fish from the water. Krill, or shrimp-like euphasiids are no longer than 3 inches. It is amazing that the worlds largest animals feed on the smallest marine life. Blue whales are gulpers, filter feeders that alternatively swim, then gulp a mouthful of plankton or fish. An average-sized blue whale will eat 2,000-9,000 pounds (900- 4100kg) of plankton each day during the summer feeding season in cold, arctic waters (120 days) (Hasley 1984). The blue whale has twin blowholes with exceptionally large fleshy splashguards to the front and sides. It has about 320 pairs of black baleen plates with dark gray bristles in the blue whales jaws. These plates can be 35-39 inches (90cm-1m) long, 21 inches (53cm) wide, and weigh 200 pounds (90kg). The tongue weighs 4 tons. Blue whales live individually or i n very small pods (groups). They frequently swim in pairs. When the whale comes to the surface of the water, it takes a large breath of air. Then it dives back into the water, going to a depth of 350 feet (105m). Diving is also the way in which whales catch most of their food. Whales can stay under water for up to two hours without coming to the surface for more air. Blue whales breath air at the surface of the water through 2 blowholes located near the top of the head. They breathe about 1-4 times per minute at rest, and 5-12 times per minute after a deep dive (Hasley 1984) Their blow is a single stream that rises 40-50 feet (12-15m) above the surface of the water. They are also very fast swimmers; they normally swim 3-20 mph, but can go up to 24-30mph in bursts when in danger. Feeding speeds are slower, usually about 1-4mph. The whales emit very loud, highly structured, repetitive low-frequency sounds that can travel form many miles underwater. They are probably the loudest animal s alive, louder than a jet engine.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Learning Organization and Human Motivation Essay

Learning Organization and Human Motivation - Essay Example As companies and corporations become larger and more complex, so do the responsibilities of management and the call for structured strategies. In our world of exploding technological changes, the burden of change upon individuals becomes greater and there is also the continual threat of downsizing or being replaced by automation. There are innumerable theories regarding human motivation and especially over the past twenty-five years, these theories have provided a maze through which management has walked, trying this and that; some theories worked, others did not. Let us examine just a few theories that have withstood the test of time and are the core of the newer theories. We shall begin with the advent of Maslow's theory of a hierarchy of needs since it was Maslow who countered Sigmund Freud's statements of declaring people as inherently lazy creatures who are motivated at work only through reward, coercion, intimidation, and punishment (accel Team, 2005). A. H. Maslow brought management and workers out of the dark ages and delivered them into a refreshing affirmation of themselves as human beings rather than animals. According to Mazlow, the highest needs of a human are self-esteem and self-actualisation (Maslow, 1943, pp 381 - 383). In the workplace (according to Maslow), the ability to exercise c... In the workplace (according to Maslow), the ability to exercise creativity and decision-making whilst practicing new skills is central to the self-esteem of the worker. In terms of management, the harbingers of change began to emerge as the workplace became less oppressive and more balanced between doing and learning. Still, there was work to be done in terms of addressing psychological needs of workers in terms of balancing rewards for incentives and motivational learning within organisations. Whilst an individual is hired on the basis of knowledge and skill for the task at hand, once in the workplace, the individual needs the opportunity to climb higher, do better, if they so choose. This is where the balance of power can get sticky, for those in management also need to engage in learning and adapting to changing trends. If those on the higher end of the work spectrum fail to adapt and learn, those from below have the opportunity to move up and replace them; here is where fear becomes the motivating force, and its presence is counterproductive for all concerned. The most famous motivation theories, upon which nearly all current theories are based, originate from four theorists: Sigmund Freud (Theory X), A. H. Maslow Theory Y), Douglas McGregor (Theory XY) and William Ouichi (Theory Z). It must be noted that there are arguments regarding the authorship of Theories Y and Z; we are referencing them here with the corresponding theorists for the sake of convenience.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Course Reflection Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Course Reflection - Essay Example To begin with, my first inquiry assignment talked about the causes of failure of El Hadji, the ruler of the Senegalese after the French rulers left. In this assignment, I put the superfluous reading into practice to enable me to come up with the storyline of the book-Xala. I also learnt that, through forming a proper question of inquiry, one is able to diagnose the whole story by answering the question of inquiry. For instance, by letting my question of inquiry to be, ‘’what led to the failure of El Hadji?’’, I was able to make a critical reading through the novel as I quench to find the answers to my question. In a way, I was able to develop greater meanings of the story rather than just reading the novel to know what it is talking about. From the story of this ruler, my question of inquiry enabled me to know that greed, corruption and inability to perform can make us as leaders to fail in discharging our duties to the people we lead. These are themes from the story that one can only make a good argument about when they form a question of inquiry and answer the question by making a thorough scrutiny of the text to develop some meaning from it that can be a lesson to the whole society. In my endeavors to create much meaning in my learning this semester, I realized that one would just have a superfluous reading at first to enable them to form an inquiry question. The inquiry question I formed had to be holistic in such a way that it had to allow me to be able to diagnose the whole novel as I got to the next assignment which required close reading to give a critical analysis. My first inquiry assignment therefore was only to give me an outline of what I need to do in order to answer my inquiry question. This then led to my second inquiry assignment where I was required to make a closer reading of the novel that would enable me to answer my inquiry question thoroughly. This brings a connection of the two assignments in a very interesting manner. It made me learn that one needs to make the first reading of a text or a novel to find its storyline. I then used the first reading to know what the novel talks about in a nutshell. From there, I was able to form a proper question that could help me scrutinize the whole novel. I was able to answer the formulated question by making a closer and critical reading of the novel as required by the second inquiry assignment. In the second assignment, I only went through certain sections of the novel, reading to find specific points that would give answers to my question. This helped me particularly to know what the author was trying to pass across to his readers. My major aim was to find the authors hidden meaning of the texts through his story and make them become lessons that everyone can use or learn from. Hence, the second part of this assignment really was to identify the author’s messages from the story to his readers and to the whole African society who find themselv es in similar contexts of leadership. I then wrote my writer’s letter which was included the steps that I followed to be able to make a close and critical reading of the novel. It also reflected on the deeper meanings from the author’s point of view, that anyone reading my notes would get from them. When one reads

Monday, November 18, 2019

Grand Hotel Scarborough Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Grand Hotel Scarborough - Essay Example This paper discusses the effects of free-thinking and development during this period by citing the multi-dimensional background of this historical landmark. The Grand Hotel is considered to be an important part of Victorian legacy since it was the first custom-built hotel in the whole of Europe. According to Wolff (2009), Europeans were growing wealthier due to the era of colonialism and the benefits realized through the Renaissance. The Grand Hotel was constructed to attract the richest vacationers with some of the latest luxuries of the day. The hotel was first constructed in 1863 at a time when the notion of sub-bathing was gaining widespread popularity. By 1867, the hotel had evolved into one of the world’s biggest luxury hotels and consisted of more than 370 guest rooms. Watkin (2007) says that the architecture of the hotel is truly Victorian in nature and was instrumental in popularizing it as an early holiday resort. Scarborough was a small-town sea resort for almost 25 0 years prior to the construction of the Grand Hotel. The first Spa in the town came up around 1626, when a stream of water containing acidic properties was discovered flowing down from the nearby cliffs. A hundred years later, visitors had the opportunity to have a dip in the sea and could sun-bathe on the shore. But it was not until the arrival of the modern railway during the 1840s that the number of visitors into the town multiplied manifold (Burton, 2008). More than seven million yellow bricks were used for the construction of this hotel and were prepared specially for this purpose in the nearby town of Hunmanby (Burton, 2008). The rise in tourist numbers presented a new business opportunity and prompted an architect named John Gibson to design a magnificent hotel that would be constructed on Scarborough’s South Cliff. The plan to build the world’s largest hotel was unveiled in 1845 and it was not until 18 years later that the hotel was deemed complete. According to Linstrum (2009), the hotel consisted of four large towers at each of its corners and represented the four seasons in a year. There were 12 floors denoting the 12 months in a year. By 1867, the hotel boasted of over 365 rooms signifying the number of days in a year. In fact, the hotel has a total of fifty-two chimneys, one for each week in a year. Hitchcock (2008) says that the time and care taken to construct this hotel projects the prevailing sentiment during the era that inspired achievement and perfection. Guests at the Grand Hotel were provided up to four taps to choose between fresh and sea water (both hot and cold). Kemp (2004) adds that the entire hotel was itself constructed in a ‘V’ shape to commemorate Queen Victoria. The Grand Hotel, together with other popular landmarks in Scarborough, was bombed severely during the First World War. However, it was restored back to its original glory in quick time. The Hotel suffered serious damage when the German Navy bo mbarded the entire coastline in Northern Yorkshire in 1914. Luckily, the attack happened during the off-peak season when there were very few guests in the hotel. Shells from German U-boats damaged the Grand Restaurant while several guestrooms suffered massive damage due to direct bombardment. The cost of refurbishing the hotel during those days was estimated at nearly ?10,000 (Gray, 2006). While the

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Observations Of A Landscape Photographer And Architecture

Observations Of A Landscape Photographer And Architecture The objective of this thesis is to see how the ob ­servations of the landscape photographer can fur ­ther inform the relationship of architecture and the landscape. Observing how landscape photogra ­phers perceive their subject and define the issues that influence their personal perspectives becomes the tool for better understanding issues shared by architecture. For example, framing, the role of the horizon, natural and artificial light, texture, mood, scale, geography and the juxtaposition of man-made and natural elements are issues shared by both disciplines. In addition how landscape pho ­tographers observe and interpret the landscape in its many moods challenges architects to under ­stand realizing how similar transformations occur in works of architecture over time. To demonstrate such findings, relevant examples of photography and architecture will be juxtaposed, discussed and supported by explanatory diagrams. In this man ­ner, an analysis of landscape photography will hopefully clarify and inspire alternative ways of defining the interface between the building and the landscape. TYPES OF LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY Figure 3: Man in water Abstraction Barcelona, Spain Abstract photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Types of Landscape photography: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Representational à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Impressionistic à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Abstract 3 TYPES OF LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY Photographers usually use three different styles in landscape photography, which are representa ­tional, impressionistic and abstract(1). Represen ­tational style results in pictures that show us the most realistic and natural look of the scene without any artifices. It is straight forward, that is what you see is what you get. Although the photographer does not add any props or foreign components to the scene, the best result is not a simple snapshot, rather far from it. The best attention is paid to com ­position, and details of texture, light, foliage, tim ­ing and weather are critical. For the architect who chooses to incorporate this style of photography in his or her work, paying attention to all the details mentioned above is mandatory. Then a personal interpretation of the work can manifest itself in the related architectural subject(Figure 4,5). The second style of photography is impression ­istic. Photographic techniques result in images with elusive or vague quality. These pictures are less touchable and more unreal, while they still retain their values that make them landscape pic ­tures. Studying the works of this second group has helped me to have a better understanding of texture in design(Figure 6,7). One example is when I used the unclear glass in the building, and the onlooker could not tell what or how the inside looked. He or she could have their own imagination about the subject. The last style of photography is called abstract, which deals with shape, form, contrast and color in a particular scene, of which often nothing may be recognizable. One part of the landscape may be combined with another in order to bring out the beauty or danger, water or desert, or red and blue of the scene. Abstract landscape photography isnt really intended to depict a particular scene at all, rather to create a piece of art that is only loosely based on a real scene in the real world( Figure 3,8). One good architectural example is the work of ar ­chitect Luis Barragan. His works deal with texture, light, shadow and repetition, which he applies to his creation. His works for me represent the transi ­tion of abstract landscape photography to architec ­ture. Figure 4: San Sebastion, Spain Representational photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 5: Sidi bou said, Tunisia, Representational, photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 6: Musse Historie Naturelle, Paris, France Impressionistic photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 7: Chateau de Chenon ­ceau, Tour, France Impressionistic photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 8: Anger Abstract Maryland, USA Abstract photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari 1-Landcape photogrophy. http://www.photographyicon.com/landscape/index.html. -Sontag, Susan. On photogrophy. New York: farrar straus and girouxn.d. 4 ISSUES FOUND IN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY Geography: Landscape photography consists of three important sub-sections. First, it is about geography of the site and the contrast of sky vs. earth, cliff vs. plateau, sea vs. land and the rule of horizon. Architects deal with the same issues in their work, for instance the Cliffside house by Michael Rotondi ,which explores the concept of sky vs. earth; Salk institute by Louis Kahn for the concept of rule of horizon; Casa Malaparte by Adalberto Libera in the concept of cliff vs. plateau; and Gilardi house by Louis Barragan in the concept of sea vs. land. I do assume that each of the aforementioned examples were somehow influenced by landscape photogra ­phy. An architect should have a good grasp of the effect of the terrain and climate on his design and in achieving that the work of the landscape photographer can be beneficial. Landscape photography Architecture Sky vs. Earth Figure 9(Left): Marmata, Tunisia photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 10(Right): Cliffside house by Michael Rotondi Rule of Horizon Figure 11(left): Ocean City, Maryland photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 12(Right): Salk institute by Louis Kahn Cliff vs. Plateau Figure 13(Left): Gozo, Malta photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 14(Right): Casa Malaparte Sea vs. Land Figure 15(left): Gozzo, Malta Figure 16(Right): Gilardi House by Luis Barragan photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari 5 ISSUES FOUND IN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY Scale: These second section deals with the question of scale, whether grand, pieces and part, close up, or micro. From the beginning of architecture, architects, such as Andrea Palladio, used the ratio founded in nature to create the harmony with the building. In addition there are some buildings that are designed based on humans body. It means that there is a proportional correlation between humans body and buildings elements such as doors and windows size. Sometimes, building are scaled more to their environment or purpose that its the building elements landed their self to present the grand, over powering or even transcended appear ­ance. Regardless of these approaches, the way architect chooses to manipulate scale affect the users by making the building feels, comfortable, divine or even unreal. In short, the scale of architecture is not only the system of size in various levels (physical, visual, technological, economical, etc.), but also the all relations between the proportions, wh ich exist in similar forms of different size each other. Landscape photography can help him acquire a better sense of detail in his design, one thing which can be of utmost importance. Landscape photography Architecture Grand Figure 17(Left): Naples, Italy photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 18(Right): Casa Malaparte, Capri, Italy Pieces and parts Figure 19(left): Paris, France photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 20(Right): Beyeler Foundation by Renzo Piano Close up Figure 21(Left): Paris, France photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 22(Right): Beyeler Foundation by Renzo Piano Micro Figure 23(left): Paris, France photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 24(Right): San Carlo alle Quattro Fontance Chapel, Rome, Italy Jenkins, Eric. To Scale. New York: Simultaneously, 2008. 6 ISSUES FOUND IN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY Light: Both of paramount importance in the work of a landscape photographer and an architect is lighting, which encompasses bright vs. dull, clear vs. mist, sun vs. rain and day vs. night. The photographer and architect both have to consider the light and shadow and their different qualities in their work. The photographer consid ­ers which light applies best to his object and the architect does the same in his design process. Light is a necessity for the sight and a utility in architecture, but also a powerful, though ephemeral, vehicle of expression. Since light moves back and forth from its source, it changes character and has the power to convey many of the quality of nature to the inert mass of architecture. An architect may not be able to control the light, but can predict its behavior well enough to catch it mean ­ingfully in his work, he channels it through the openings into his space and then molds it into masses, and brings the site to life by contrasting it with the shadows. Architecture Landscape photography Bright vs. Dull Figure 25,26(Left): Ocean City, Maryland photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 27,28(Right): Citroen Park, Paris, France Arab Ins., Paris, France Clear vs. Mist Figure 29,30(left): Viaduc Des Artes Park, Paris,FR Luxembourg Park, Paris, France Photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 31,32(Right): Arab Ins., Paris, France Sun vs. Rain Figure 33,34(Left): Capri, Italy Paris, France photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 35,36(Right): Dominus Winery, California Day vs. Night Figure 37,38(left): Capri, Italy Figure 39,40(Right): Effie Tower, Paris, France photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari 7 ISSUES FOUND IN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY Texture : The last section deals with texture and the comparisons smooth vs. rough, foliage vs. dying, spring vs. fall and fertile vs. barren. Texture lends a dimensional qual ­ity to photos and enable the photographer to break up large areas of tone to create special effects. It has long been used by architects too in order to breath life into buildings as well create a unique experience visually for the visitor. To express the true quality of materials, to shape an interior space or simply to articulate a pat ­tern, texture is a fundamental tool in all of the above. It can also be used to create a more complex language for architects to express themselves. The juxtaposition between both digital and natural materials will certainly emphasize texture via patterns and rhythms. In addition, texture between the two will call for varying degrees of occupant touch. Architecture Landscape photography Smooth vs. Rough Figure 41,42(Left): Capri, Italy photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 43,44(Right): France Foliage vs. Dying Figure 45,46(left): Paris, France photo by Stanley Hallet Figure 47,48(Right): Quai Branly Museum Dominus Winery, California Fall vs. Spring Figure 49,50(Left): France photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 51(Right): Egerstrom House by Luis Barragan Fertile Figure 50(left): Washington, DC photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari Figure 51(Right): Paris, France 8 SPECIFIC LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHERS Figure 52: Natural Frame Capri, Italy Photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ How are they explaining these issues? à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ What kind of the issues that photographers interested? à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Shows different issues on each one: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Rule of reflection à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Rule of Sky à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Rule of extend à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ How does he set up the camera to do this? à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Where the sun will be? Or moon? à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Deconstruct photos o Analyzing each photograph: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Foreground à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Background à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Color shot à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Black and white shot à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ What do I learn from each one à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ What kind of lenses are they using 9 ANSEL ADAMS One of the most famous landscape photographers is Ansel Adams, who has influenced many people in different field. He likes black and white because there is no distraction for him and is really inter ­ested in the grand panorama and in how much de ­tail can be shown in the large context. Most of Ad ­ams work is about the relationship between the sky and earth. He is aware of the suns position at any given point of the day and knows how to use it. He also pioneered the idea of visualization(2) (which he often called previsualization) of the finished print, based upon the measured light values in the scene being photographed. One of the best known and most sought after photographs in the field of fine-art photography is called Moonrise. Ad ­ams took this photo in Hernandez, New Mexico in 1941(Figure 53). He used a technique called rules of thirds, which many artists think of it as boring , that is looking at symmetrical images , divided in three parts. This type of photograph ha s three layers and each a different tone: the black sky, the white cloud and the gray landscape(figure 54). Ad ­ams made an interesting composition that became very popular. Adam said Moonrise combined serendipity and immediate technical recall(3). Serendipity means lucky chance. He felt at the time it was an exceptional image(3) and when he took it, he felt an almost prophetic sense of satis ­faction(3). Ironically, Adams happened upon this shot by chance while driving along a roadside head ­ing towards Santa Fe, New Mexico, after an unpro ­ductive day of photography. The conditions were perfect, but he was basically unprepared because he didnt have access to his light meter. Adams used his knowledge of the luminance of the moon and was able to get this precious shot. He said it is a romantic / emotional moment in time. Another example is called the Winter Sunrise(Figure 56). Adams never intentionally included a human or an animal in his creative landscape, but in this pic  ­ture, horses have added an earthy touch to the un earthly beauty of the scene. Control, as absolute as possible, was at the heart of Adams photography.For him, the critical variable was light and he used light, reflection, rule of thirds, layers and different tones in his work. Each of these techniques can be used in architecture as well. Studying this process can help me as a designer to improve my work and have a better understanding of the correlation at work. Figure 53: Moonrise Photo by Ansel Adams Figure 54: Deconstruct Moonrise Figure 55: Winter Sunrise Photo by Ansel Adams Figure 56: Deconstruct Winter Sunrise 2-Adams, Ansel. The camera. New York: little brown, 1972. 3-Adams, Ansel. The making of 40 photography. New York: little brown, 1980. -Adams, Ansel. Auto biagraphy. New York: little brown, 1987. 10 Eliot Porter is a photographer much influenced by Ansel Adams, yet more interested on the effect of color and its distribution throughout the land ­scape; detail and texture in nature was his focus, so he expanded his attention in order to celebrate the sheer beauty of nature(4). Porters photogra ­phy was more about balance, layering and object vs. the field. To him, photography was a creative art and was the first to successfully bridge the gap between photography as a fine art and its roots in science and technology. Eliot porter is known to be the first nature photographer to artistically craft color images, in both the taking and developing processes, to a degree achieved by Ansel Adams in black and white photography. So delicate was Por ­ters processing technique that a leading photog ­raphy critic at the time, Weston Naef, wrote that Porter was captivated by colors that had not yet been named. In architecture also, an architect tries to breathe life into buildings by br inging different textures along thus creating a visual experience for the eyes to see. Texture is a fundamental tool in expressing the true quality of materials, shaping an interior space or simply to articulate a pattern. It is as I mentioned before, used by architects to create a more complex language of expression. Vi ­sual textures are produced by the patterns given to the lighting of the surface, both through the way materials are worked (e.g., vertical or horizontal chiseling of stone) and through the way they are employed in the building (e.g., vertical or horizon ­tal boarding, projection and recession of courses of brick). Like all patterns, visual textures create as ­sociation of movement, giving rhythm to the sur ­face. A single texture is rarely used in buildings. The variety of materials and treatments typically produces a complex of textures that must be com ­posed and harmonized like the forms and spaces of architecture, into a consistent expressive whole. S o understanding the perception of a photographer in relation to texture can give the designer a better outlook in choosing the right pattern and texture for his work. ELIOT PORTER 4- Porter, Eliot. The place no one knew. Utah: gibbs smith, 1991. 11 JERRY UELSMANN There is another photographer with a completely different technique, Jerry Uelsmann. In his work, he combines several negatives to create surreal landscapes that interweave images of trees, rocks, water and human figures in new and unexpected ways. He uses several enlargers, each of which have a different negative placed under the lamp. The photographic paper is sequentially moved from one enlarger to the next, burning in and dodging out the light wherever it needs to be ma ­nipulated. The paper is then processed to create a one of a kind (irreproducible) print. As an architect always has a concept behind his work, so did Uels ­mann. He believed that a picture should show your own familiar world, thats why his photog ­raphy wasnt about thinking; it was about surprise and discovery. Both in photography and architec ­ture, there exists a concept, vision, idea or inspira ­tion, which most likely emanates from ones own experiences. When one has worked arduously on a project, an d for a long time, his or her inspiration or rather light of inspiration, shines through. In photography, the subject or the concept behind it can be upside down and still be effective. The pho ­tographer can play with your mind and make you see things you wont normally see. In architecture also, the architect can create a compositional con ­cept and take you on a journey not expected. 5-Uelsmann, Jerry. Process and Perception. New York: university press of Florida, 1986. -Uelsmann, Jerry N. Photo Synthesis. New York: University Press of Florida, 1992. Ward, John. The Criticism of Photography As Art: The Photographs of Jerry Uelsmann. New York: University Press of Florida, 1988. 12 SPECIFIC EXAMPLE IN ARCHITECTURE Figure 65: Representational Vals, Switzerland Photo by Rouzbeh Mokhtari à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ How do these issues effect architecture à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Opening as a framing device: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The Doorway à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The window à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The Close porch à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The detail in the landscape à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Architecture holding the landscape(Court) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Architecture in the landscape(site) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Architecture viewing the landscape(widows) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The following are examples of how photography and architecture are correlated. The first example, talks about the effect of the frame and how it can make you focus on a certain point. Second one is the concept of nature and how it can be incorporated into a building. Third, talks about the pattern and how your eyes can lead to a certain impression. The last one, is about reflection and layering , which are both essential in architecture. 13 MARY MISS The artist Mary Miss has been redefining how art is integrated into the public realm since the early 1970s. For more than three decades, Mary Miss has reshaped the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design and installation art. She has articulated a vision of the public sphere where communal and private experiences co-ex ­ist.(6) Her work is grounded in the context of a place, from which she constructs situations where the visitor becomes aware of the sites history, its ecology, or aspects of the environment that have gone unnoticed. The individual viewer moving through the site, experiencing it in all of its con ­figurations, becomes the primary focus. One of the best examples is Battery Park City Landfill project in 1973 New York City. Its five rough wood panels with deascending circular cutouts were aligned as you walked up to the opening. The built and nat ­ural materials are both laid out for examination, consideration and potential redefinition of their re ­lationships. The visitors were engaged in the mak ­ing of the piece and movement was necessary for it to become visible. Also it is intended to relate the visual with the physicality of the objects and landscape. She is not the photographer nor the ar ­chitect. She is an artist who is following the rules of both in her work. She used rule of horizon, sky vs. earth, fore ground vs. background, layering, composition and object vs. the field. All the issues discussed above are also influential in architecture. For instance, one issue that the photographer deals with is framing, the same goes for the architect also. When the architect deals with the landscape, he may create a space called court or window, which can be directly associated with the way the photographer creates a frame. 6-Abramson, Daniel M. Mary Miss. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. 14 CURZIO MALAPARTE Italian rationalist architect Albetto Libera, for Curzio Malaparte, conceived Casa Malaparte house around 1937. Malaparte actually reject ­ed Liberas design and built the house himself with the help of Adolfo Amitrano, a local stone mason. The conveyance of communication of values and beliefs through architecture, which best defines the intention of writer and political activist Curzio Malaparte in the design and con ­struction of his house on a bluff in Capri, Case Malaparte is a great example. All of the rules are going against established theories of architec ­ture, such as building should fit in with its natu ­ral surroundings. Malaparte was determined to construct a house that would be his house, con ­veying his values, beliefs and personality. The house is an object in the landscape and it stands alone. When you enter, each window is a snap ­shot and frameS the landscape, and this is due to the way the frame is made. Its according to the Le Corbusier theory, when exterior and interior of a building become one. When you are in the main hall, the walls are white and the floor is stone, you dont feel as if you are inside. When you are on the roof, the sail vs. horizontal line connects the nature to the building, or as Vittorio Savi and Adalberto Libera have said, one realizes then that there is an extreme contrast between looking from the inside or from the outside. They (windows) are empty like hollow eyes. From the inside these windows however are filled with the isolated worlds they frame; terrific worlds provoking a sublime anxiety through revealing the distance between subject and object, man and nature, and the impossibility of processing those worlds that they create(7). Photographers have their cam ­era and work with their lens to create a frame, where as architects construct the building and bring out their windows as their frames. 7-Talamona, Mardia. Casa Malaparte. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. 15 PETER ZUMTHOR A great example of framing the landscape is when you cannot say when the building starts and land ­scape stops; and it can be seen in the work of Peter Zumthor called Therme Vals. Zumthor uses images of quarries and water flowing spontaneously from the ground to describe the conception of the build ­ing, its geometric rigor reflects a huge rock embed ­ded in the hillside. When you are in the building and in front of the glass wall, the sun is moving from behind the mountain during the day and it is a great example of grasping the landscape through the building. When you are outside in the water, it is still framing the landscape. The building is made of local Valser quartzite and concrete. Water, light and to some extent steam and heat, add to the defi ­nition of areas within the ritual of the bath(8). The Therme Vals offers a seductive shift from the paradigm of the Bilbao effect, where architecture is a vehicle for economic health through spectacle and display. The space is used for the engagement of mind, body , soul and the whole community. This is a great example of how photography can play an important role in framing the landscape in architecture. 8-Zumthor, Peter. Therme Vals. New York: Annalisa Zumthor, 1991. 16 As I mentioned before, sometimes the architect holds part of the landscape and creates a court, such as Renzo Piano having the court yard in the middle of lobby of New York Times building. This cube of space, open to the sky, isnt acces ­sible , but its like finding a park in the middle of an office building. The sight of it alone has a calming effect. Retail tenants are required to keep their glass walls uncluttered in order to pre ­serve the view from either side of the court yard. On one side of the courtyard, there is a theater and has a view to the yard, which can be seen as a background or foreground in photography. This is a great example of how landscape pho ­tography, and framing it is useful to architecture prior to design. Another example of the importance of landscape in architecture can be Katsira detached palace in Japan. The palace includes a drawing room, teahouses, and a strolling garden. It provides an invaluable window into the villas of princes of the Edo period. The strolling garden takes wa ­ter from the Katsura River for the central pond, around which are the tea houses, hill, sand, bridge and lanterns. Its garden is a masterpiece of Japanese gardening. In this palace , the land ­scape is framed outside of the main building and the viewer catches it from outside, where as in the New York Times building, landscape was brought inside and one could experience it from a different angle. RENZO PIANO vs. KARSURA PALACE 17 Lius Barragam is a master at presenting nature in his work through large stucco or plain walls. Shadow is really important in his design and he uses texture, light, shadow and repetition to create architecture. In his work, one cannot tell when the building stops and the nature begins.Barragan said Beauty speaks like an oracle, and man has always heeded its message in an infi nite number of waysLife deprived of beau ­ty is not worthy of being called human. Ricardo Legorreta is a disciple of Luis Barragan and took his ideas to a wider realm. He used el ­ements of Barragans work , like bright colors, geometric shapes, light and shadow and created architecture with elements of nature. Legorreta said This world of Mexican spaces fi lled my life in such a natural way that light, walls, color, mystery, and water,with all their beauty, became part of me. I am not an exception, that is the way we Mexicans are. Legorreta achieves Mystery and Surprise, through the use of Mass, color, symbol , light and lighting , through holes, slots, squeezes and releases. His color is Red, deep blue, yellow, pink and Li ­lac. Pure color, as if it came out of a painters tube. His teacher in all this has been vernacu ­lar architecture which has been also teacher to many other good architects. RICARDO LEGORRETA LUIS BARRAGAN 9-Pauly, Daniele. Barragan space and shadow, wall and colour. New York: Birkhouser, 2004. Mutlow, John V. Ricardo Legorreta. New York: Rizzoli international publication, 1997. 18 POSSIBLE PROGRAM Figure 85: Beyond Being Photo by Unknown Meditation Center 1- Garden / Spread at multiple locations with connotations a. AID/ help in creating moods and set the scene. 2- Bathing / Purifying a. Cold water b. Hot water c. Jasmine water d. Waterfall in different locations 3- Healing: Travel with your mind by being exposed to inspiring images a. Color, light > Chromatography b. Smell > Aromatherapy c. Image/ Elements/ Shape > something inspiring d. Sound/ music 4- Tea house a. Garden 1- harmony -> Nature 2- purity -> drinking tea a. Created for aesthetic and intellectual fulfillment b. it is an interlude in which one leads oneself for the moment to the spirit of beauty, quietude, and politeness toward others. 5- Mediation a. Single/individual spaces b. Common spaces c. rest/ stretch 19 POSSIBLE PROGRAM The essence of nature, life, and the earth is wa ­ter. Water provides the means to exist and to live. There are several examples to imply this idea as water being a pure element. In my opinion, Nature eases the mind. Nature provides birth and death, such dervish dance of existence and non-existence creates a spatial environment to not only ease the mind but also to comfort the body. Another ex ­ample to indicate the importance of water is the human body, which is 60% water. This close rela ­tion between nature and water is the epic of ones calmness. According to Le Corbusiers theory a buildings interior and its exterior should be as one to create a comfortable place. Creating such a calm environ ­ment requires a neat correlation among each parti ­cle to its surrounding nature. Consequently build ­ing a Meditation Center, is a metaphorical bridge to transport a negligent mind to the realm of purity and to detach from the daily pressures of life in order to energize the spirit, and to reconnect with ones inner being. It is a space that is designed to create a feeling of being welcome, safe, and peace ­ful. I used three types of photography, representation ­al, impressionist, and abstract, to embody Le Cor ­busiers idea show itse

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Buddism Essay -- Religion Philosophy

Buddism Buddhism is probably the most tolerant religion of the world, as the teaching can coexist with any other religion. Other religions however, aim to be restricted and cannot accommodate Buddhism at the same time. The Buddhist teaching on God - in the sense of an ultimate Reality - is neither skeptic (as is sometimes claimed), nor vague, but clear and logical. That we can neither define, describe, nor usefully discuss the nature of that which is beyond the perception of our infinite consciousness. It may be indicated by negatives and described indirectly by analogy and symbols, but otherwise it must ever remain in its truest sense unknown and unexpressed, as being to us in our present state unknowable. In the same way, Buddhism denies the existence in man of an immortal soul. The Enlightenment which dwells in life does not belong to one form of life. All that is man's changing and mortal; the Immortal is not any man's. The Buddha pointed out how no thing is the same at this moment as it was a moment ago. Even the everlasting hills are slowly being worn away, and every particle of the human body, even the hardest, is replaced every seven years. There is no finality or rest within this universe, only a ceaseless becoming and a never-ending change. Buddhism is a natural religion; it does not violate either mind or body. Its ethics closely approximate the Natural Law. The Buddha became aware of how men are born and die according to their good and evil actions, according to their self-created Karma (or the consequence of worthy and deserving deeds). Buddhism is a teaching of the Buddha who was born a prince of Kapilavathu, at the part of the Himalaya mountains near the border of Nepal in 623 B.C. He married and ... ...nverted to schools, and other public use. Monks and nuns have been required to undertake employment in addition to their religious functions. In Tibet, the Chinese, after their takeover and the escape of the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist officials into India in 1959, attempted to undercut Buddhist influence. Only in Japan since World War II have truly new Buddhist movements grown. Growing interest in Asian culture and spiritual values in the West has led to the development of a number of societies devoted to the study and practice of Buddhism. As its influence in the West slowly grows, Buddhism is once again beginning to undergo a process of adaptation to its new environment. Although its influence in the U.S. is still small, apart from immigrant Japanese and Chinese communities, it seems that new, distinctively American forms of Buddhism may eventually develop.

Monday, November 11, 2019

How personal and societal values Essay

(How personal and societal values can influence ethical decision-making) Nurses may be faced with ethical conflicts. As nurses we must examine our own beliefs and feelings regarding ethical issues and not impose our own values on any patient or caregiver. At the same time, it is our duty to also support appropriate behavior and to protect our patients from harm. Ethical issues involve the good and bad of moral duty and moral obligations. Nursing can be considered an ethical nterprise since it often involves an alternative action when providing care (Gilliland, 2010). It concerns doing well and avoiding harm. The nursing code of ethics is a great resource to follow when faced with ethical dilemmas. In the Marianne case study, it states that â€Å"she has no advance directives, but her husband wants to try everything† and the children believe that Marianne â€Å"would not want to undergo surgery only to be kept alive with poor quality of life. † An advice that nurse may give to Marianne’s family is to help them be aware of the result of the medical procedures. Marianne’s husband needs to know that once she undergoes surgery there is a good chance that they will need to have some lifestyle changes. As nurses, we should be able to provide the family with an objective view of the importance of each action as well as provide some emotional support that Marianne’s family need to deal with to their current situation. In the second case, with Nurse Jane having witnessed acts of negligence from her olleague, there may be things to consider that might make Nurse Jane’s decision.

Friday, November 8, 2019

Why a list of bullets is not a report (and military writing could make you enemies)

Why a list of bullets is not a report (and military writing could make you enemies) Why a list of bullets is not a report (and military writing could make you enemies) A few years ago, I was working with a consultant. We used to meet every week, over breakfast. And, as my daughter was going through a phase of waking up every night, I was invariably tired. I remember one session, during which I had been particularly sluggish. Even a second double espresso could not push many coherent thoughts around my sleep-deprived brain. So I asked him to write me a short report, in the hope that I could consider his advice properly once my mental fog had cleared. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll send it over later today.’ The document duly arrived in my inbox just after lunchtime, but I decided to save it till the morning, once I’d caught up on my sleep. The next day, refreshed, I opened the document with keen anticipation. It took up about two pages and covered everything we’d agreed. Yet I found the document pretty well impenetrable and I gave up after a couple of attempts at reading it. Shorter ≠  better It wasn’t that its sentences were too long or too dense. Most sentences ran to fewer than 20 words and each was reasonably digestible. Its language, too, was for the most part commendably clear. (I forgave the odd lapse into consultant speak, as I knew his advice and thinking were consistently sound.) No. The reason I struggled was that, while he’d certainly created a document, he hadn’t actually written me a report at all. He’d simply produced a list of bullets –  a very long list of bullets. There’s a common assumption that the best type of report is one that delivers the most facts in the fewest words. The internet is full of articles advising just that approach and such articles are extremely popular. Most of us are both busy and overloaded with information. So this is understandable. We’re often so distracted and desperate for relief from the information deluge that we’re primed to fall gratefully on any piece of advice that promotes the brief-equals-good approach and share it widely. In such a crowded world, efficiency is what we need – whether we’re talking about our schedules or our communications. And what could be more efficient than a list of bullets? Giving the brain room to work The trouble is that this vastly oversimplifies how our brains work. It’s based only on the way most of us think  they do. And while we may want  reports like that, it’s not what we actually need. (In fact, I suspect that such reports are often the ones that don’t get read.) It’s not just in reading and writing documents or email that we fall into this trap. The same is true of how we plan our lives. A productive day is not necessarily one that crams in the most activities in ever-decreasing time-slots – not least because each one will provide more information and you may need to update the best course of action as you go. In other words, you need to allow the brain to do its work. (Despite this, countless time-management gurus make a good living encouraging us to stuff more and more into schedules that are already overloaded.) Similarly, a bald summary consisting of a series of short points, stuffed together and devoid of context, will rarely work in the way we think it will or want it to. In simple terms, such documents are not ‘brain friendly’, even though it seems that they should be. Military backing The short=good advice was taken to a whole new level in a post on the Harvard Business Review  blog a year ago, entitled ‘How to write email with military precision’. The post went viral (I suspect for the reasons I’ve already stated). Some of its advice made sense, such as including keywords like ‘ACTION’ in the subject line to show something needs to be done. ‘INFO’ was another suggested heading, which also seemed logical, even if I can see emails with that title heading straight for the bin. (Tech-savvy staff might even set up an automated rule ensuring such messages bypass their inboxes altogether.) Next up on the list of recommended headings was ‘DECISION’. That was sort of OK, though I was starting to feel uneasy at that point. They were beginning to sound a bit too much like barked orders. (Suggesting I type them in caps didn’t help.) Then it all got a bit surreal. It’s not just that it recommended ‘COORD’ for something that needs co-ordination with a colleague. It’s the way it reduced what could be quite nuanced (ie human) exchanges to the barest of bones. Indeed, the article  took this idea so far that any email that followed the author’s advice would almost certainly backfire (no pun intended) in the modern workplace. Here’s an example from the post: You are not a robot (and neither is your reader) Most cognitive psychologists no longer think the brain is just like a computer, ever ready and waiting to be programmed with instructions. How we think and make decisions is way more complex and subtle than that. Yet that seems to be precisely the brain model that the author of this article was using. The structure appears to me to be based largely on how we wish people processed information. This almost brutally brief message may  be suited to the command-and-control environment of the battlefield. But this sort of military writing has absolutely no place in the modern work environment. It will make more enemies than friends and create more problems than it solves. Can you imagine how you’d feel if you got one of those things? Rolling out that style across an organisation could cause enough damage to relationships to send productivity through the floor. In doing so, it would have precisely the opposite effect to the one intended. The dangers of bullets And – despite leaving the battlefield behind – that brings me back to bullets (sorry). They have their place, but that place is within  a document or message. With very few exceptions (a shopping list springs to mind), they should not be the document itself. Bullets simply do not engage people and get them to focus. They’re like somebody else’s revision notes. They trigger recall of much more detail in the person who wrote them but are largely meaningless to everybody else. Besides, the short=good school of business writing assumes we’re all too busy to focus on anything outside of what’s on our to-do lists already and that we always concentrate on our priorities. If this were really true, distractions like news websites would be out of business, as would Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. For that matter, so would eBay or even the doughnut shop down the road that you pop out to when you’re avoiding writing your monthly management report. There are so many of these distractions that it’s amazing that we ever get anything done. Logic would seem to suggest that we should only be able to concentrate for a few seconds on any one thing. From flow to focus And yet, somehow, we do manage to focus, at least for some of the time. Sometimes, that focus is the result of a conscious effort to shut out the noise and knuckle down to work. But, more often, our focus is a passive process, driven not by ourselves but by whatever it is we happen to be focusing on. Some writing draws our attention and holds it for minutes or even hours, no matter how long our to-do lists. Such writing almost seems to compress time, and it does so in spite of  how busy we are. If you’ve ever read a web page or email that you didn’t intend to – anything that wasn’t the reason you opened your laptop – then you’ll know what I mean. Such things engage you right from the start and they keep you engaged. Reading them is effortless. Ideas seem to magically glide from the screen to your brain by the shortest possible route. Somehow, they draw you in then just seem to flow. Flow is the right word in this case. It’s a psychological state  in which concentration is total, to the exclusion of everything else. And it’s a state that, despite how busy we are, we find ourselves in surprisingly often (when our heads are in our phones, for example). Exactly how you induce this state in those who read what you write is a big subject and one for another post. Suffice to say for now that it involves writing captivating introductions and using a structure that anticipates how the reader is likely to think. Often, it involves storytelling, which has been shown to be one of the most effective communication techniques, as it reproduces the writer’s thought patterns in those who read or listen to the story. (Even academic papers that follow a narrative structure get cited in journals more often than those that don’t, as this study  of more than 700 papers shows.) Crucially, it involves putting the reader right at the heart  of the document or message. What it’s not is a state that’s likely to be achieved by writing like the military. At least, not like the military portrayed in the HBR article. (My experience of the defence sector suggests that portrayal is not necessarily typical anyway.) And it’s not a state that you will ever achieve by page after page of bullets. If you want to keep up to date with Robs research into the science of communication, keep an eye on his blog at robashton.com. Image credit: Amy Walters / Shutterstock

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Books to Increase Self-Confidence

Books to Increase Self-Confidence The shelves of self-help books are bursting. You can find books on finding inner peace, becoming a millionaire in 3 years, conquering your fears, fixing your social life, becoming a great leader, mastering your own fate, and thousands upon thousands of other topics. What very few of these books tell you, however, is that all of this every improvement plan you make to achieve all that you want begins with self-confidence. Nothing works until you have it. And self-confidence really boils down to trust trusting yourself more than others. So, if you are going to that self-help section today, here are 10 books that will begin your journey. 1. BARTON GOLDSMITH - 100 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR SELF-CONFIDENCE This is probably the most practical of all books on building self-confidence, and such an easy read. Goldsmith has it nailed with his descriptions of people who lack confidence. He has prescriptions for getting rid of all of those thoughts, behaviors and habits that tell yourself and others that you are well kind of wimpy, and that you are letting events and others control you. His tips range from intellectual behaviors (educating yourself), to physical style (new clothes and grooming) to embracing your flaws. 2. STEVEN R. COVEY - 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Most people have the impression that this book is written only for the career professional who wants to get ahead. Yes, it is. But the principles apply to anyone and to any aspect of ones life. And, each of the 7 habits that Covey has described begins with self-confidence. Its all a matter of practicing certain behaviors until they become habitual once they do, you have changed your mindset. The overriding principle is really act as if you are highly successful and you will be. 3. GARY VURNUM - INSTANT CONFIDENCE: 92 TIPS This book does not have amazing new insights to give. It is literally 92 tips for everyday action that can project you as a self-confident person. (e.g., change the focus away from you). The basic idea is this use the tips, others will see you as self-confident, and you will respond to that be being even more self-confident. Its a good book to have around to remind yourself of the behaviors you need to be exhibiting. 4. ANTHONY ROBBINS AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN This is not a book you will want to read quickly. It addresses how you become the master of your own destiny, step by step from the decisions you make, to the vocabulary you choose. The book is filled with challenges for you to take up even a 7-day master plan to get control and become the self-confident giant you should be. 5. SAM HORN WHATS HOLDING YOU BACK? How about walking into a room full of strangers and being able to walk up to any of them and begin a conversation? This book is a 30-day diet of learning how to be more powerful in all settings (work, social, home), to stop comparing yourself to others (a true killer of self-confidence), and to never worry again about the impression you are making. Each chapter is a day of the 30. The best way to read this? One chapter a night before you go to bed with the commitment to follow through the next day. 6. BRIAN ROET - THE CONFIDENCE TO BE YOURSELF If you have never heard of cognitive-behavioral therapy, you will understand it after you read this book. The basic principle is that once you change your thinking, your behaviors will change to match that thinking. This book will teach you how to change those low self-esteem thoughts into thoughts of confidence, based on who you are, and then you can watch the transformation that occurs on the outside. 7. KEV​IN LEMAN - HAVE A NEW YOU BY FRIDAY An inspirational read but also one that has wonderfully practical advice about becoming self-confident. You begin by accepting the truth about yourself (Monday), and move on from there to identifying the lies you tell yourself (Wednesday), and so on. This is a great read, because Dr. Leman is so funny while he literally shows you how to transform yourself into a confident person in 5 days. 8. MARK GOULSTON - GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY We are our own worst enemies this old saying comes to life in Goulstons great book. Even though it is a fun read with lots of examples we can see in ourselves, it is packed with loads of practical advice for overcoming fear, anxiety, and a host of other emotions and thoughts that cause our lack of confidence. Once we slay those dragons, one by one, we emerge triumphant and confident. 9. ADAM KHAN SELF-HELP STUFF THAT WORKS Short chapters, easy to read, spliced with humor and advice for everyday situations. Khan doesnt spend any time on deep philosophical or psychological meanings for our lack of confidence he nails the behaviors and how to change them. 350 pages of golden nuggets! 10.RICHARD MACHOWICZ UNLEASH THE WARRIOR WITHIN Machowicz was a Navy SEAL in his former life and has now translated all of what he learned to very practical steps for everyday people to gain self-confidence and realize their goals. For example, you complete every task on time, no matter what the conditions and your approach is always based on a single thought failure is not an option. And its all about the weapons you choose knowledge, attitude, and commitment. The analogy to being a warrior on the battle field and being a warrior in life is really quite stunning.

Monday, November 4, 2019

Thomas & Ely's Three Paradigm in The State of Diversity Within The Essay

Thomas & Ely's Three Paradigm in The State of Diversity Within The Organization - Essay Example The CEO, Prince (Paine et al., 2008) has been able to turnaround the prospects of the company by ensuring a culture of shared responsibility. He has been not only been able to exploit the tenets of the diverse workforce but it has been aligned to work in tandem with work perspective vis-a-vis its long term and short term goals. The paradigm, connecting diversity to work perspectives broadly refers to the way cultural differences are incorporated within the business strategies to enhance productivity and business outcome. In the current environment of rapid globalization, managing diversity is one of the most critical elements of success. Citigroup has expanded its business across the globe and to maintain a competitive advantage within the industry, managing diversity has become the need of the hour. It, therefore, exploits socio-cultural paradigms of the region to improve its business outcome, both within the US and also in its offshore business. It promotes a better understanding o f cross-cultural understanding to resolve workplace conflicts. At the same time, it takes cognizance of cultural differences and exploits human competency for optimal performance. The other two paradigms: The discrimination and fairness paradigm; and the access and legitimacy paradigm, are not relevant in the case of Citigroup. The first paradigm ensures that diversity is included in the workforce.

Saturday, November 2, 2019

Contemporary Brand Management report on (Rolex the luxury watches Essay

Contemporary Brand Management report on (Rolex the luxury watches brand) - Essay Example There have been diverse literatures that validate the success or demise of products and services due to ineffective strategies employed on the sophisticated elements needed for branding. At the same time there are organisations that have attained exemplary leadership and high quality corporate image through an interplay of crucial branding factors that promoted the products into a legendary platform status that survived tests of time. The objective of the management report is to evaluate the significant components and strategies used by Rolex, luxury watches in their Branding. The report will be structured in sections that would initially determine the significant theoretical frameworks for branding and a provision for background information for Rolex. Crucial data that affects to the brand’s target market, major competitors, and strategies will be discussed. Brand position, analysis, advertising, and management recommendations will subsequently follow by providing brief conce ptual backgrounds of each topic prior to investigating into respective applications of the concepts on the brand, Rolex. The brand management recommendation section will suggest an innovative idea that is perceived to increase brand awareness and consumer image with justifiable support from theories on branding. Section 1. The Brand Kotler (1980, p.366), defined a brand as â€Å"a name, term, sign, symbol, design or a combination of these that identifies the makers or seller of the product or services and to differentiate them from those of competitors†. McCarthy (1975) has used the exact same parallel definition with a disparity in the word ‘differentiate’ to ‘distinguish’ (p. 255) as a crucial element for branding. These theories however fail to capture the complexity and depth that branding involves. Brands are considered a significant part of decisions involving product development that organisations exert strategic efforts to creatively and inno vatively design the brand to identify the product and to differentiate them from others (McCarthy, 1975). It is differentiated from the company in terms of the identification it provides to the product, distinct from its manufacturer or producer. A company, as the manufacturer could be a producer of different products that require different brands to separate one from the other. One of the eminent functions of brands is to enable organisations to project a good image of prime quality for their products and therefore encourage clientele to make repeated purposes with convenience. There have been exemplary brands in contemporary markets that have continued to gain respect, loyalty and trust of the clients through time. For example as reported by Business Week the brands that belong to the best global brands is Rolex with a rank of 72 out of 100 and a value of $4,237 million (Business Week, 2006). According to the report, â€Å"Rolex remains the ultimate luxury brand worldwide, and wi th strong sales in China, its appeal continues to spread† (Business Week, 2006, par. 4). 1.1 Historical Background of Rolex The official website of Rolex traced its legendary success from the creative entrepreneurial talent of its founder, Hans Wilsdorf (Rolex: The Origins, n.d, par. 1). With ideas that started from the desire to make watches more precise with self-winding options and more professionalised to be used in diverse activities and

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Hate Speech Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Hate Speech Summary - Essay Example However, there are those who say that speech should be restricted if it encourages hatred or prejudice against someone of a different race, sex, religious group, or sexual orientation. One example that the article uses is that of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1987. Racist fliers were distributed that used foul language such as saucer lips, porch monkeys, and jigaboos. Many universities responded to this outrage by banning hate speech through the use of speech codes. The reasoning for this is that hate speech may encourage people to go out and attack certain individuals based on their ethnic or religious background. The article uses statistics to prove that the number of hate groups is on the rise in the U.S. Some of the major groups that it mentions include the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and the Nation of Islam. The problem with acting against these hate speech groups is that it would be a violation of their First Amendment rights, which protects them from prosecution fo r any words that they might say about another group of people. In my opinion, banning people from freedom of speech opens up a whole can of worms. This is because once you ban one group from speaking out, it would only seem fair to ban the next one, and the next one, and so on. Also, the matter of who is the authority to decide what type of speech is allowed and what type of speech is not allowed becomes a dividing issue. In fact, cracking down on hate speech could result in an increase of even more hate speech; this is one outcome that those who champion restricting hate speech would not want to see. I agree with the views of David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., who says that the restriction of hate speech would only take away the rights of one particular group only to give even more rights to another. This would be biased because it would be treated

Monday, October 28, 2019

To what extent does the media assist or limit the conduct of military operations Essay Example for Free

To what extent does the media assist or limit the conduct of military operations Essay Some form of controversy has been regularly generated between the press and the military especially the question of media access to the battlefield. Conflict between reporter and the military is not new. As war correspondents became of age in the Civil War, the military began its determination to protect its operations. The media have often called this determination â€Å"censorship. † The military/media relationship is seriously degraded because of mistrust between the two entities. Sources of this mistrust are analyzed, to include: cultural differences; the perception of biased reporting; misunderstanding and ignorance; and speculation. In any operation there are many aspects of military/media relations which include operational security, the press pool system, logistics, public opinion, etc. However, there has been animosity between journalists and the military. The military frequently views press as offering only potential harm not benefit (Carruthers, 2000). The press, on the other hand, has a history of being critical of the military. For instance, U.  S. media and professional associations insist that the military must accommodate the press in wartime situations, for three good reasons which include: the press has always been present when troops have been involved; the public has a fundamental right to know; and restrictions put violate the First Amendment. Yet on some ground between the military operational requirement for information to be made available only on a basis of needing to know, and the right of the citizens of a democracy to know about what their military is doing, lies a middle ground (Dandeker, 1995). Generally, soldiers understand fighting and journalists understand communicating, yet none of them knows that the political impact of combat depends on how the fighting is communicated. Hence both sides need one another. Key civilian and military leaders have now embraced the fact that successful inclusion of the press to ensure adequate coverage is not an optional luxury, but rather is a necessity in todays information age and the expectations of the citizens. The benefits gained from the news media coverage of military operations outweigh the drawbacks, and therefore press coverage should be permitted. There is no set solution appropriate for every situation, since every war is unique. But improvements in military planning, officer training, and press indoctrination will help solve some of the current problems in the military/media relationship. How media assist the conduct of military operations In todays technology-driven world, the media is a fourth dimension added to air, land, and sea and the operational commander must contend with this potent entity to be relevant. Moreover, the media is an accelerator of immense importance in todays world in respect to the operational factors of time, space, and force affecting the operational commander decision-making. The reason why the military should engage the media is probably best stated by General (Ret) Dennis J.  Reimer in a 1997 memorandum to his senior Army leaders. â€Å"Our success, as an institution, depends on the degree to which all senior leaders communicate clearly to the people. It is in fact part of your METL [Mission Essential Task List],† said Reimer. To begin with, the military has the need for improved defense related public relations. The media is an important force multiplier, and it must be harnessed to win the battle of the hearts and minds of the people and keep them fully abreast of developments at home and abroad. This will ensure that they are not misled by rumors, propaganda and dis-information; this could happen if they do not have access to a truthful and speedy account of the facts and the progress of events. Secondly, the media is important in projecting the operations to the remotest parts of the country and arousing nationalism and patriotic fervour in the nation. Thirdly, having a media team at each level of command down to the battalion level is of great help to project the activities of the armed forces through films and other means. The procedure evolved provide for regular operational briefings by the operational/intelligence staff at headquarters or by the concerned corps/divisional commanders. Fourthly, training selected service officers and men in media work by running suitable courses for them on a regular basis and also media personnel need to understand the organisation, role, ethos and fighting capabilities of the armed forces and the characteristics of its various units is most beneficial (that is , media-military interface). Fifthly, limiting journalists access to a war can also work against the military. Galloway pointed to the Persian Gulf War as an example. When the war was over you had no proof of the efficacy of your efforts and your soldiers efforts to take up on [Capitol] Hill at a very difficult time when troop cuts, budget cuts, drawbacks are all under way, he said. Despite the constant tension and sometimes opposing goals of the military and the media, the militarys primary role is to support and defend the Constitution of the nation, the First Amendment of which is freedom of speech and of the press. Finally, having media-military interface there is hope for prompt and timely information in an age when news is increasingly being transmitted and used instantly, with TV news being broadcast on the hour, every hour (Krishna, 2000). How media limit the conduct of military operations The longstanding conflict between the news medias need for access and the militarys need for secrecy has continued during the war on terrorism, journalists agree. If anything, the tension between th e two groups has gotten worse. For instance, during the war in Afghanistan, Pentagon senior spokesman Bryan Whitman said the military understands reporters concerns but that the top priority must be troop safety. Ensuring †¦ that what we do with the news media in the Pentagon or in the field doesnt do anything to jeopardize the success of the operation or endanger the personnel that are participating in the military operation †¦ has to be balanced all the time with †¦ how much reporting can be taking place at any given moment, he said. (Wilcox Jr, 2002) But author and former war correspondent Joe Galloway, whose book We Were Soldiers Once †¦ and Young documents the first major U. S. ground battle of the Vietnam War, said that Vietnam changed the mindset of the military because of the open and unrestricted reporting done by journalists. Most of the times, the military is willing to learn, the journalists are not; pointed out by Galloway as evidenced by the numerous invitations he has received from the military to speak about the subject. He has not received any invitations to speak to news organizations or journalism schools. The media is also believed by them reporting from the battlefield turn the people against the military and against the war. Galloway also adds that, while Vietnam remains a model for him in terms of military/media relations, U. S. led military operations in Grenada and Panama were disastrous in terms of the medias ability to cover those conflicts because of military restrictions. Also, keeping the media at a greater distance from combat operations than security requires would contribute to a bitterly adversarial military-media relationship. This, in turn, would likely hurt the war effort in the long run by inviting relentlessly negative coverage and fanning public distrust. Furthermore, the media are a fact of military operations and here to stay as well as being vital to all democratic governments seeking to discharge their duty to explain. Military control of information during war time is also a major contributing factor to propaganda, especially when the media go along with it without question. The military recognizes the values of media and information control very well. The military often manipulates the mainstream media, by restricting or managing what information is presented and hence what the public are told. For them it is paramount to control the media. This can involve all manner of activities, from organizing media sessions and daily press briefings, or through providing managed access to war zones, to even planting stories. Over time then, the way that the media covers conflicts degrades in quality, critique and objectiveness. As one military puts it,† Information is the currency of victory. † From a military’s perspective, information warfare is another front on which a battle must be fought. However, as well as needing to deceive adversaries, in order to maintain public support, information to their own public must no doubt be managed as well. That makes sense from a military perspective. Sometimes the public can be willing to sacrifice detailed knowledge. But that can also lead to unaccountability and when information that is presented has been managed, propaganda is often the result. Finally, the military have had to adapt since 1982 is the speed of reporting made possible by modern communications. Today, a reporter with a digital camera, a laptop and a satellite phone, all of which can fit in a day sack, can file stories minutes after events and even live if they have a bit more by way of equipment. Control is much more difficult if reporters dont need military’s help to file a story. Because they can act so quickly, and are expected to do so by their editors or newsrooms, military dont have the time to ponder at length our response to events, we must respond quickly whilst still, crucially, maintaining accuracy. For instance, this happened on TELIC 1 (Iraq) but, it was not a great success. Conclusion Throughout history, no matter the time or war, there has always been a conflict between the military and the media. The media’s right to a free press conflicts with the military’s concern for operational security. It serves no constructive purpose, however, to ignore this conflict nor does it serve a purpose by adding to it. Therefore, it is time for the military to accept the media as part of the battlefield of the 21st century, and to understand and prepare for the media as it does for other battlefield elements. Commanders should ensure that their troops receive not only the equipment, but also the training to survive in adverse battlefield environments. The point here is to point out that no matter whether the military likes or dislikes the media, the media will be a part of the battlefield environment just as the weather. As is the case with inclement weather, the better the commander plans and prepares his or her troops, as well as themselves for the media, the better they and their troops will do when faced with a reporter. If we are going to get this right, the military must not resort unnecessarily to secrecy or to lightly tarring independent journalists as disloyal. The media should not frivolously cry censorship. And each should work harder to understand the views and accommodate the needs of the other.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Statistical techniques for cryptanalysis

Statistical techniques for cryptanalysis Introduction: Cryptography is the art of writing messages in code or cipher, to disguise, and thereby secure the content of a particular stream of text. When encrypted, a plain text message can be revealed only through the use of the key used to encode the cipher. Cryptography does not mask the existence of the message, but does disguise its content [1]. In contrary, cryptanalysis is the art of recovering the plaintext of a message without access to the key. Successful cryptanalysis may recover the plaintext or the key for a specific ciphertext [2]. There are five general types of cryptanalytic attacks:- 1. Ciphertext-only attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst has a series of cipher texts encrypted using the same encryption algorithm. Then, the cryptanalyst deduces the plain text of each of the cipher texts or identifies the key used to encrypt the cipher text 2. Known-plaintext attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst has a series of ciphertext and their corresponding plaintext values encrypted using a specific key. The cryptanalyst then tries to deduce the key by forming a relationship between the ciphertext and plaintext entries. 3. Chosen-plaintext attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst not only has access to the ciphertext and associated plaintext for several messages, but he also chooses the plaintext that gets encrypted. His job is to deduce the key used to encrypt the messages or an algorithm to decrypt any new messages encrypted with the same key. 4. Frequency analysis: It is the study of thefrequency of lettersor groups of letters in aciphertext. The method is used as an aid to breakingclassical ciphers. Frequency analysis is based on the fact that, in any given stretch of written language, certain letters and combinations of letters occur with varying frequencies. 5. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis: The cryptanalyst threatens, tortures or blackmails the person who has the key until they give it up. Among the many cryptanalytic techniques, frequency analysis or frequency counting is the most basic technique applied to break substitution cipher based algorithms, among the varied list of attack techniques. The basic use of frequency analysis is to first count the frequency of ciphertext letters and then associate guessed plaintext letters with them. More complex use of statistics can be conceived, such as considering counts of pairs of letters digrams, trigrams, and so on. This is done to provide more information to the cryptanalyst. It exploits the weakness in the substitution cipher algorithm to encrypt similar plaintext letters to similar ciphertext letters. Frequency analysis based cryptanalysis techniques were used to break ciphers based on the traditional cryptographic algorithms, but they do not work well with the modern block cipher based cryptographic algorithms. Statistical properties of English: Frequency analysis based cryptanalysis uses the fact that natural language is not random in nature and single alphabetic based substitution does not hide the statistical properties of the natural language. In the case of encryption using monoalphabetic substitution, to start deciphering the encryption it is useful to get a frequency count of all the letters. The most frequent letter may represent the most common letter in English, E followed by T, A, O and I whereas the least frequent are Q, Z and X [7]. Statistical patterns in a language can be detected by tracing the redundancy of the text in the language. It has been realized that various universal regularities characterize text from different domains and languages. The best-known is Zipfs law on the distribution of word frequencies [5], according to which the frequency of terms in a collection decreases inversely to the rank of the terms. Zipfs law has been found to apply to collections of written documents in virtually all langu ages [5]. English language characters have a very high redundancy rate when used for cryptographic substitutions. If we have a message encrypted using the substitution cipher that needs to be cracked, we can use frequency analysis. In other words, if the sender has used an encryption scheme, that replaces one letter in the English to be another letter in English, we can still recognize the original plain text as, the frequency characteristics of the original plain text will be passed on the new cipher text characters [4]. To apply frequency analysis, we will need to know the frequency of every letter in the English alphabet, or the frequency characteristics of the language used by the sender to encrypt the text. Below is a list of average frequencies for letters in the English language. So, for example, the letter E accounts for 12.7% of all letters in English, whereas Z accounts for 0.1 %. All the frequencies are tabulated and plotted below:- For example, let us consider the following sentence: We study Cryptography as part of our course. Using a simple substitution cipher, let us consider the following: a->c , b-> d, c->e..w->y, x->z, y->a, z->b So, the cipher text becomes: yg uvwfa etarvqitcrja cu rctv qh qwt eqwtug. A simple frequency analysis of the cipher text can be carried out and the results are as given below: The above data can be used by a cryptanalyst to identify the key or the plaintext by using simple substitution to the cipher text till a suitable plaintext value is not identified. Apart from the use of mono alphabetic frequency analysis, cryptanalysts also identify frequency of paired letters better known as digram frequency and that of three letter words, called as Trigram frequencies. These help the cryptanalyst to exploit the redundant features of English language to break the cipher. The most common Digrams (in order): th, he, in, en, nt, re, er, an, ti, es, on, at, se, nd, or, ar, al, te, co, de, to, ra, et, ed, it, sa, em, ro. The most common Trigrams (in order): the, and, tha, ent, ing, ion, tio, for, nde, has, nce, edt, tis, oft, sth, men Table 1: Digram and Trigram Frequencies [6] These help in identifying the most commonly used terms in English to break a cipher. The digram frequencies are used to break two letter words such as an, to, of etc and the trigram frequencies are used to break three letter words such as the, are, for etc. After breaking a significant two letter and three letter words, it is practically east to identify the key from the cracked values of plaintext by matching the corresponding values in the ciphertext. This huge weakness in English language is used to break cipher texts encrypted using simple algorithms that make use of English alphabets. In practice the use of frequency analysis consists of first counting the frequency of ciphertext letters and then assigning guessed plaintext letters to them. Many letters will occur with roughly the same frequency, so a cipher with Xs may indeed map X onto R, but could also map X onto G or M. But some letters in every language using letters will occur more frequently; if there are more Xs in the c iphertext than anything else, its a good guess for English plaintext that X is a substitution for E. But T and A are also very common in English text, so X might be either of them also [4]. Thus the cryptanalyst may need to try several combinations of mappings between ciphertext and plaintext letters. Once the common single letter frequencies have been resolved, then paired patterns and other patterns are solved. Finally, when sufficient characters have been cracked, then the rest of the text can be cracked using simple substitution. Frequency analysis is extremely effective against the simpler substitution ciphers and will break astonishingly short cipher texts with ease. Attacks on Traditional algorithms Encrypting using traditional algorithms have been defenseless against cryptanalytic attacks as they use bit by bit encryption, which can be easily broken using frequency analysis based attacks. 1. Caesar Cipher: Considering the case of one of the oldest ciphers, the Caesar Cipher, this cipher replaces one letter of the plaintext with another to produce the ciphertext, and any particular letter in the plaintext will always, turn into the same letter in the cipher for all instance of the plaintext character. For instance, all Bs will turn into Fs. Frequency analysis is based on the fact that certain letters, and combinations of letters, appear with characteristic frequency in essentially all texts in a particular language [9]. For instance, in the English language, E is very common, while X is not. Likewise, ST, NG, TH, and QU are common combinations, while XT, NZ, and QJ are very uncommon, or even impossible to occur in English. This clearly shows how the Caesar cipher can be broken with ease by just identifying the frequency of each letter in the cipher text. A message encrypted using Caesar cipher is extremely insecure as an exhaustive cryptanalysis on the keys easily breaks the code. 2. Substitution Ciphers: The Caesar cipher forms a subset of the entire set of substitution ciphers. Here, the key of the encryption process is the permutation of all the twenty six characters of the English alphabets. Rather than choosing a particular key for all encryption process, we use a different key for successive encryption processes. This technique increases the number of possible key to 26!, which is about 4 X 1026, which eliminates the exhaustive cryptanalysis attack on the keyspace [7]. To decrypt the cipher the, statistical frequency distribution of single letter occurrence in English language is analyzed. Then, the digram and trigram frequencies of standard English words are compared with the frequencies of the trigrams in the cipher to finally reconstruct the key and in turn decipher the text. This is an efficient method to break the substitution cipher as, each plaintext letter is represented by the same ciphertext letter in the message. So, all properties of plaintext are carried on to the cipher text. 3. Vigenere Cipher: In a Vigenere cipher, there is greater security as, a given plaintext letter is not always represented by the same ciphertext letter. This is achieved by using a sequence of n different substitution ciphers to encrypt a message. This technique increases the possible number of keys from 26! to (26!)n. Although this was considered to be unbreakable, the Kasiskis method of attacking a Vigenere cipher yielded successful results of decrypting the message. According to this method, the first step is to find the key length (n). Find identical segments of plain text that get encrypted to the same ciphertext, when they are b positions apart, where b=0 mod n. According to Kasiski, the next step is to find all the identical segments of length greater than 3, and record the distance between them [7]. This can then be used to predict the length of the key (n). Once this is found the key is found by an exhaustive search of the keyspace for all possible combinations to identify the key. This is done by substituting all possible values for n to generate substrings. Once the substring is formed, the plaintext message can be automatically identified by using the back substitution of the key into the cipher [7]. This can be done for all possible values for n until finally arriving at the actual key, which reveals the plaintext that was encrypted. This method can take a long time to break the key to identify the plaintext incase the key length is very long, as the keyspace value would be large for larger keys. Defeating frequency based attacks: Frequency based attacks have been used for a long time to break traditional encryption algorithms. It uses the fact that, traditional encryption algorithms do not eliminate the statistical properties of the language upon encryption. The first way to defeat frequency based attacks is to encrypt blocks of characters at a time rather than single letters [7]. This would ensure that, the same text in the plaintext is not encrypted to the same text in the ciphertext upon encryption. For e.g., if we use the Caesar cipher encryption scheme, the word ADDITIONAL will be encrypted to CFFKVKQPCN, we can see that the alphabets A, D and I are repeated more than once and at each instance, the encryption scheme used always encrypts A to C, D to F and I to K. This can clearly be used during frequency analysis to analyze the redundancy of the characters and in turn map them back to get the original plaintext character. Using a block encryption scheme, one can be satisfied that, this phenomenon does not occur as, in a block encryption scheme, the whole plaintext is broken into chunks or blocks of data, that is fed in as input to the encryption algorithm. The algorithm then, reads the input block along with the key and encrypts th e complete block of plaintext, rather than individual characters, so there is a smaller chance that two blocks will produce the same chunk of ciphertext. The second way of defeating frequency analysis is to make use of synonyms of words [7], rather than repeating the same word over and over again in a sentence. There are a lot of words in English, which have more than one synonym, thus providing with a set of words to be used as convenient in the particular context. To help in the selection of a synonym, grammar checking would have to be used to ensure that, the meaning expressed in the sentence is not altered by changing the words. Attacks against this technique could include creating a list of the best synonyms, but this would not help the attacker as different word could be used at each instance the same meaning needs to be expressed, defeating the benefit of this technique. This technique of using alternate words to represent common words to defeat cryptanalysis attacks is called Homophones [7] in cryptography. A third technique that can effectively defeat cryptanalysis is Polyalphabetic substitution, that is, the use of several alphabets to encrypt the message [3], rather than using the same substitution technique again and again. The Vigenere Cipher is a form of Polyalphabetic cipher. This ensures that, no two characters are encrypted to the same ciphertext alphabet in the same message. This ensures that, direct frequency analysis of the cipher is not possible to successfully retrieve the original message. However, other techniques need to be used to identify the key length, if this is possible, then frequency analysis attack could be used to identify the original plaintext message successfully. Finally, a possible technique that could be used to defeat frequency analysis is to encrypt a single character of plaintext with two ciphertext characters [3]. Upon encountering the same character twice, then different characters should be used to encrypt the message. This can be achieved by using a key size double that of the plaintext message and then encrypting the same plaintext with two values in the key and save them together for the same plaintext character. This would ensure that no two plaintext characters will have the same ciphertext character, defeating the frequency analysis method of breaking the cipher. Modern encryption algorithms and cryptanalysis: Modern cryptographic algorithms take a better approach in defeating frequency analysis based attacks. The cryptographic algorithms nowadays use block encryption, rather than encrypting characters bit by bit, thus eliminating the redundancy of ciphertext alphabets for similar plaintext alphabets. Block ciphers are the central tool in the design of protocols for shared-key cryptography. A block cipher is a function E: {0, 1}k ÃÆ'- {0, 1}n à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   {0, 1}n. This notation means that E takes two inputs, one being a k-bit string and the other an n-bit string, and returns an n-bit string [2]. The first input is the key, which is used to encrypt the secret message. The second string is called the plaintext, and the output is called a ciphertext. The key-length k and the block-length n are parameters associated to a specific block cipher. They vary from block cipher to block cipher, and depend on the design of the algorithm itself. Some of the most trusted symmetric ciphers inclu de AES, Triple-DES, Blowfish, CAST and IDEA. In public-key cryptography, the most commonly used cryptosystems are RSA and the Diffie-Hellman systems, which have not been found to have any vulnerabilities till date. Preferably, the block cipher E is a public specified algorithm. In typical usage, a random key K is chosen and kept secret between a pair of users. The function EK is used by the sender to encrypt the message, for a given key, before sending it to the intended receiver, who decrypts the message using the same key [2]. Security relies on the secrecy of the key. So, at first, one might think of the cryptanalysts goal as recovering the key K given some ciphertext, intercepted during transmission. The block cipher should be designed to make this task computationally difficult. In order to achieve this, the algorithms that are used to encrypt the message must be designed with a high degree of mathematical complexity, which cannot be reversed to obtain the plaintext from a known ciphertext. The length of the key used during encryption of a message plays an important role in deciding the effectiveness of an algorithm. Key length is conventionally measured in bits, and most of the well known strong ciphers have key lengths between 128 and 256 bits. A cipher is considered strong if, after years of attempts to find a weakness in the algorithm, there is no known effective cryptanalytic attack against it. This indicates that, the most efficient way of breaking an encrypted message without knowing the key used to encrypt it is to brute force it, i.e. trying all possible keys. The effort required to break an encrypted message is determined by the number of possible keys, known as thekeyspace. Knowing the speed of the computer to break the key, it is easy to calculate how long it would take to search the keyspace to break a particular cipher [2]. For example, considering a cipher that uses 128-bit keys, each bit can either be 0 or 1, so, there are 2128 or 3ÃÆ'-1038 keys approximately. Suppose we imagine that about ten billion computers are assigned the task of breaking the code, each capable of testing ten billion keys per second, then, the task of running through the entire keyspace would take around 3ÃÆ'-1018seconds, which is about 100 billion years. But, in fact, it would be necessary to run through only half the keyspace to hit upon the correct key, which would take around 50 billion years. This is longer than the estimated age of the universe according to modern cosmology, which is about 15 billion years [2]. This shows that, it is practically infeasible to crack modern cryptographic algorithms using Brute Force attacks. So, one can imagine the effectiveness of the modern cryptographic algorithms and their resistance towards cryptanalytic attacks. Conclusions: Cryptography has progressed in recent years and modern cryptographic algorithms have proved to be successful in defending against most forms of cryptanalytic attacks. Frequency analysis based attacks have proved to exploit the weaknesses in traditional encryption algorithms into revealing the plaintext message that was encrypted using them. The natural language used to encrypt messages is not considered to be random in nature, which is exploited by frequency counting based attacks. Based upon the frequency of letters that occur in the ciphertext, one can guess the plaintext characters due to their redundancy rate and the specific combination of letters in a word. This weakness can be repelled by using stream ciphers, which do not carry the redundancy in the plaintext to the ciphertext. Modern block cipher, encrypt a chunk of plaintext into ciphertext and vice versa, eliminating the redundancy of language used in encryption. Although the algorithm plays an important part, it is the key length used in block ciphers that helps in repelling cryptanalysis. Modern ciphers use a key length starting from 128 bits, eliminating the possibility of a brute force attack to decrypt the message. The higher the key length, the more time it takes to break these ciphers. These advantages have made modern cryptographic algorithms more popular among the security community. No known weaknesses have been found in these algorithms yet, that may allow one to identify the plaintext message. Bibliography: [1] Stallings, W., Cryptography and Network Security, Chapter 1, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003 [2] Schneier, B., Applied Cryptography, Chapter 1, Second Edition, John Wiley Sons, New York City, New York, USA, 1996 [3] Hart, G.W., To Decode Short Cryptograms, Communications of the ACM 37(9), 1994, pp. 102-108 [4] Lee, K.W., Teh, C.E., Tan, Y.L., Decrypting English Text Using Enhanced Frequency Analysis, National Seminar on Science, Technology and Social Sciences (STSS 2006), Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia [5] Zipf, GK., Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort, 1949, Cambridge: Addison Wesley Publications. [6] Lewand, R.E., Cryptological Mathematics, The Mathematical Association of America, 2000, Pages 345-346 [7] Stamp, M and Low, R.M., Applied Cryptanalysis, 2007, Chapter 1 and 2, John Wiley Sons, New York City, New York, USA [8] http://www.simonsingh.net, Online internet frequency analysis tools [9] http://www.textalyser.net, online text analysis and frequency analysis information