Marketing in action Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Marketing in action - Essay Example This is a medium sized care that fits within the requirement of the paper (Smith, Berry, & Pulford 2002). The BMW 3 series model is simply an economy model and very efficient and doing well in the market. This car is approximately 4, 5 meter long and is reported to cost 26,000 dollars and subsequently offers space for five adults. The competitors of BMW 3 series include Audi A4, Opel Vectra, Mercedes Benz C Class, Mazda 6, Volkswagen Passat, and Ford Mondeo (Kotler 1994). The basic reasons that necessitate the division of the market into very small segments include easier marketing. This simply indicates the fact that it is easier to address the various needs of the smaller groups of consumers, specifically if they have several characteristics that are common. Further, it helps in finding the niches which simply means that when the un-served or under-served markets are recognized. Segmentation can make it possible for a new product or company to target a market that is less congested or that which has new consumers (Smith, Berry, & Pulford 2002). Finally, it also helps a company be efficient which simply means efficient use of the marketing resources through focusing on some of the best segments for the offering such as promotion, product, place, and price. Segmentation, targeting and positioning can therefore ensure that the company does not send its messages or products to the wrong individuals (David 2001). Separation of the market simply starts with defining of the entire market. After division of the market into different segments, a particular segment that is seen as profitable should be selected. The very last two steps are reported to be the product positioning within the market and consequently adjusting the proper market mix. Kotler states that four criteria are significant in segmenting a market and include geographical, demographic, psycho graphical, and behavior criteria. Positioning on the

Environmental Politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Environmental Politics - Essay Example Protests do not necessarily lead to environmental legislations being passed or considered as pointed out by Agnone. This is just basic assumption based on generalization of research results forgetting that communities are different and just because several protests over legislations got recognition and quick action does not mean that it is the only channel to enforce policy changes (Agnone 1599). The author should have carried out more research to compare the number of policies that have been passed without protest against those passed with protest before writing the article and present the evidence in writing. The suggestion in Kuzmiaks article that the American Environmental Movement is gaining popularity and support recently as a result of their past history is not entirely correct. The world not only America has in the recent decades been experiencing changes in environment as a result of the climate change. With the effects starting to be experienced in form of hurricanes in the US, a change of heart to support environmental groups and activists has had to take place and the fact that this group has been there for a long time hence people recognize it is what has made the increase in popularity (Kuzmiak

Puma Ag Rudolf Dassler Sport Marketing Essay

Puma Ag Rudolf Dassler Sport Marketing Essay Introduction The Report presents a comprehensive analysis of NIKE INC. NIKE was founded in January 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman and Philip Knight and incorporated in 1968 under the laws of the state of Oregon. Its worlds leading designer, marketer and distributor of authentic athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for a wide variety of sports and fitness activities. Product/Service Nike produces a wide range of Footwear, Apparel and Sports Equipments. Nikes Wholly-owned subsidiaries include Cole Haan, Converse Inc, Hurley International LLC and Umbro Ltd Target Market Nikes target market for their shoes, clothes and other accessories are males and females between 18 and 35 years old. It also targets active and sporty people as it provides products for all kinds of sports. Goals and Objectives Nikes goal is to  carry on his legacy of innovative thinking, whether  to develop products that help athletes of every level of ability reach their potential, or to create business opportunities that set Nike apart from the competition and provide value for our shareholders. Management Philip H. Knight, Chairman of the Board of Directors Mark Parker, President Chief Executive Officer, NIKE, Inc. Charlie Denson, President, NIKE Brand INTRODUCTION NIKE was founded in January 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman and Philip Knight and incorporated in 1968 under the laws of the state of Oregon. Its worlds leading designer, marketer and distributor of authentic athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for a wide variety of sports and fitness activities. Nike became globally recognized for its swoosh logo and its trademark slogan Just do it. Nikes Wholly-owned subsidiaries include: Cole Haan which designs markets and distributes luxury shoes, handbags, accessories and coats. Converse Inc which designs markets and distributes athletic footwear, apparel and accessories. Hurley International LLC which designs markets and distributes action sports and youth lifestyle footwear, apparel and accessories. Umbro Ltd is leading United Kingdom based global football (soccer) brand. http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/nke/description http://invest.nike.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=100529p=irol-newsArticleID=1380811highlight= http://www.ehow.com/about_6465548_nike-uses-endorsements-sponsorships.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike,_Inc. THE MARKET ENVIRONMENT Geographical Market Nikes world headquarters is located near Beaverton, Oregon, a suburb of Portland.Today Nike operates in more than 160 countries around the globe like U.S, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Americas. http://www.nikebiz.com/?sitesrc=emealp Business Nike specializes in Footwear, apparels and equipments. In addition to its namesake Nike brand, the company also develops and markets footwear and apparel products under the Cole Haan, Converse, Hurley International, and Umbro Inc which are nikes owned subsidiaries. http://www.nikebiz.com/?sitesrc=emealp Pest-G Analysis Nike is an international organization and needs to focus on macro environmental factors. Macro environmental factors comprise Political, Economics, Society, and Technology. http://www.businessteacher.org.uk/free-business-essays/nike-business-essay/ BCG Matrix Nike is established within its markets from economies of scale. Hence places them in the Cash Cows category on the BCG Matrix. Cash cows market growth has slowed and hence the products hold a fairly stable market share. http://www.businessteacher.org.uk/free-business-essays/nike-business-essay/ THE COMPETITION Main Competitors The main competitors of Nike are:- Adidas AG New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. PUMA AG Rudolf Dassler Sport http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/42/42602.html Sales and Profit trends Adidas AG During the first half of the year 2010, Adidas sales are à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ 5590 millions and profit is à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ 2727 millions. There is an increase of 11% of sales and an increase of 20.2% of profit in 2010. http://www.adidas-group.com/en/investorrelations/financial_data/income_statement/default.aspx New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc At the end of the year 2008, the total revenue was 1640.00 M. http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/42/42602.html PUMA AG Rudolf Dassler Sport At the end of year 2009, the total revenue was 3526.70 M. http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/91/91292.html Market share Adidas AG Adidas acquires 6% of the global athletic apparel market and 16% of the global athletic footwear market. New balance Athletic Shoes Inc New Balance Athletic Shoes acquires 6% of the global athletic footwear market. PUMA AG Rudolf Dassler Sport Puma acquires 2% of the global athletic apparel market and 7% of the global athletic footwear market. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Nike_(NKE)#Market_Share Target markets Adidas Adidass target market is mainly the urban youth with the brand position and the potential target market is the principal consumption centers like the metros. http://www.scribd.com/doc/8760709/Adidas New Balance Athletic Shoes Inc New Balance target young consumers with the same zeal of its rivals http://www.answers.com/topic/new-balance-athletic-shoe-inc Puma AG By shifting their brand proposition Puma broadened their target market from solely sport to lifestyle and even fashion. http://www.nundroo.com/archives/000008.html THE COMPANY Sales and profit trends During the year 2009, Nikes sales were $2,583 million whereas in 2010 it is $2741 million. The profits earned during the year 2009 were $2216 million whereas in 2010 it is $2434 million. There is an increase of 6% in profits and 10% in sales in the year 2010. http://invest.nike.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=100529p=irol-finReporting Market share Nike is the clear market leader with 31% of the global athletic footwear market and 7% of the global athletic apparel market. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Nike_(NKE)#Market_Share Business sectors Footwear Nike specializes in athletic footwear particularly in running, cross-training, basketball, and soccer. It also sells sport-inspired casual footwear like its Air Force Ones footwear line. Nikes Footwear sales increased by 14% in 2009 reaching about $10.3 billion. Hence 54% of revenue comes from the footwear sector. Apparel Nike also sells sports apparel such as running shorts, t-shirts, and licensed apparel (with logos of college and professional sports teams). Apparel sales totaled $5.24 billion in 2009, a 0.2% increase from a year earlier. Equipments Nike also sells sports equipment such as balls, protective equipment, and golf clubs. Sales of Nike branded equipment has reached $1.11 billion in 2009 which resulted in 9.5% increase from 2008. Others Nike also sells apparel and footwear under the Nike Golf, Cole Haan, Converse, Hurley International, and Umbro brand names. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Nike_(NKE)#Market_Sharen Project focus Since Nike is specialized and famous in athletic footwear, I have selected footwear sector as my project focus. SWOT analysis http://www.quality-assurance-solutions.com/swot-analysis-nike.html THE COMPANYS MARKETING STRATEGY Segmentation According to Philip Kotler Market Segmentation is the subdividing of market into homogeneous sub-set of customers, where any subset may conceivably be selected as market target to be reached with distinct Marketing Mix. (function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "https://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })() Nike segments the international markets by geographic location; the United States, the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Targeting A target market or target audience is a group of customers that the business has decided to aim its marketing efforts and ultimately its merchandise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_market Nikes target market for their shoes, clothes and other accessories are males and females between 18 and 35 years old. It also targets active and sporty people as it provides products for all kinds of sports. (function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "https://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })() Positioning The process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_(marketing) Nike products are easily available in different retail and outlet stores all over the world such as Sun and Sand Sports. Nike products are also available at their own Nike store online and Nike town. Differentiation/Low Cost Leadership/Focus Low price compare to its high quality products. Edge cutting products. E.g. Nike + iPod Cushioning technologies in its shoes. Patents all its new technologies Growth Strategy To create innovative products, amazing brand experiences, and premium retail destinations wherever consumers connect with NIKE. -Mark Parker, President and CEO, NIKE, Inc http://www.nikebiz.com/media/pr/2010/09/23_FY11Q1Earnings.html Generic strategy Nike uses network structure Nike implemented Differentiation Strategies THE MARKETING MIX Product Nike is trying to meet the consumer needs. Nike realizes that the clients could be participating in more than one sporting event and they need a huge range of products to meet all their sporting needs. The Companys innovation has added great value to its products. For example, there are some Nike shoes that have been installed with radio devices to measure runners pace. Nikes quality products, loyal customer base and its great marketing techniques all contribute to make the shoe empire a huge success. Some of the Nike shoes are Nike Jordon, Nike air force classic, Nike air max, Nike Shox etc. http://www.pickyourshoes.com/size/nike_air_forces.htm http://www.upublish.info/Article/Marketing-Mix-for-Nike/314859 http://shopping.aol.com/articles/2008/05/12/nike-shoes/ Price Nike has designed to be competitive to other fashion shoe retailers. Nike targets the consumers who accept product intimacy and thus care less about the product. This enables Nike to set pretty higher prices than its competitors. This strategy helps to push product perceived product value. Once the consumers develop product intimacy, they come to associate their person with the product and will pay whatever price quoted on the product with Nike logo on it. Nike uses the vertical integration pricing strategy in which the steps involved in the production and/or distribution of a product or service are controlled by NIKE, in order to increase that companys or entitys power in the marketplace. http://www.upublish.info/Article/Marketing-Mix-for-Nike/314859 http://www.suite101.com/content/audit-on-nikes-marketing-strategies-a94404 Place Nike shoes are sold in multi-brand stores and the exclusive Nike stores across the globe. Nike sells its product to about 20,000 retail accounts in the U.S. and in almost 200 countries around the world (http://www.suite101.com/content/audit-on-nikes-marketing-strategies-a94404) . The Company sells its products directly or it uses subsidiaries and distributors. It also sells its products through internet as it has its own online Nike store and Nike town. Because the company is located all over the world and it also uses licensed distributors because it is rather difficult to reach all those parts of the globe. http://www.upublish.info/Article/Marketing-Mix-for-Nike/314859 Promotion Nike has a number of famous athletes that serve as brand ambassadors such as the Brazilian Soccer Team (especially Ronaldino, Renaldo, and Roberto Carlos), Lebron James and Jermane ONeal for basketball, Lance Armstrong for cycling, and Tiger Woods for Golf. Sponsoring of events is another great promotional technique for Nike. Web sites are a great promotional tool as they cover these events. Events like Hoop It Up and The Golden West Invitational. Nike make the websites exclusively for a sport such as nikebasketball.com, nikefootball.com, and nikegolf.com http://www.upublish.info/Article/Marketing-Mix-for-Nike/314859 EVALUATION OF COMPANYS STRATEGIES AND TACTICS Evaluation of companys current position Strong brand recognition. Top endorser. Global leader in athletic shoe market. The swoosh is nationally recognized by 97 percent of the American population. Nike is leading the U.S. marketplace in athletic footwear. Through aggressive advertising, endorsements by the leading professional athletes in nearly every major sport, and a high-quality product, Nike has been able to sustain a competitive advantage. They continue to show growth in the athletic footwear industry. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/17947394/With-adidas-and-Reebok-Combined_-Will-Nike-Still-Crush-the Evidence of companys success (refer to the graphs in appendix) The total revenue during 2010 was $19014 million, a little less than the previous year. EPS performance of Nike has increased from $3.03 in 2009 to $3.86 in 2010. Return on invested capital has also increased from 17.8% in 2009 to 20.7% in 2010. The gross profit has increased from $8,604,400 in 2009 to $8,800,400 in 2010. The net income has increased from $1,486,700  in 2009 to $1,906,700 in 2010. Revenue distributions of Nike in international markets have increased from 49% in 2009 to 53% in 2010. Increased stock performance by 90% in comparison of SP 500. Nike has always remained on the preference list of athletes and athletic footwear was indeed the first category of products launched by the company more than 30 years ago. Today, you can see the craze for its products, not only among athletes, but also among golfers and other sportspeople. http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/10/100529/nike-ar-20100804/index.html#select_financials Prospects for future growth/success. Offer economical price to variable consumers around the world. Open up more stores and franchise to reach maximum buyers. Have more communication with their customers and receive feedback from them to help create imagine that Nike care for its customers. Come up with more new ideas of designing the shoes. CONCLUSION Nike, Inc. is a company rooted in competition. From equipping athletes with the finest sports equipment in the world to continuously improving their financial performance, Nike dominates its competitors. Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman probably could not have imagined in 1962 to what degree their $500 investments would yield in 2010. They did know that product quality and innovation would help athletes to achieve greater goals. It is one that has helped athletes and stakeholders alike to realize athletic and financial greatness. Despite a changing marketplace for athletic footwear, Nike wants to expand their product lines and marketing reach to become a more powerful global brand. Nike has existed for more than 35 years and is still willing to travel a long distance of popularity. APPENDICES 400px-Footwear_market_shares.png400px-Apparel_market_shares.pnghttp://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Nike_(NKE)#Market_Share chart-revenue.gif chart-eps.gifchart-roi.gif chart-stock.gif chart-distrib.gif http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/10/100529/nike-ar-20100804/index.html#select_financials

Essay --

1.0 Company Background Empress Luxury Lines is a company that offered cruise vacations to the vacationers. In 1990s, this company had achieved high demand from the customers and they had increased their cruises in order to meet the demand during the stock market bubble. However, this increment of the demand did not last for long time. Unfortunately, the company had to face with several problems which caused the decrease of its demand. Like, in the year 2000, there was a dramatic fall in the stock market due to the incident of September 11 that badly affected the nation, sudden drop of bookings caused by the Norwalk virus and also the strike of the hurricanes at the Caribbean and Gulf ports in 2005 caused a huge amount of refunds. Early age of Empress Sunward left Southampton for the first time on June 25th 1966. Unfortunately, bookings were very low. A disagreement between Spain and Great Britain regarding Gibralter –Spain saw Gibraltar as a part of Spain- didn’t help matters either. Part of her brochure when sailing as The Empress for Empress Cruise Line Ted Arison, an Israeli, managed several Israeli passenger ships cruising out of American ports in the sixties. These ships were gradually sold however, so Arison was facing a situation in which he would be left without a ship. He saw many possibilities for cruises out of Florida to the Caribbean. It was his foresight that started Caribbean Cruising. He contacted Kloster and unfolded his plans for Caribbean cruising. Kloster agreed and the Sunward started sailing out of Miami on short cruise to the Bahamas for the newly formed Norwegian Cruise Lines. She was now used as a cruise ship, although her car deck was still in use so passengers could take their cars to th e Bahamas. So... ...ormer Sunward seemed to have found her niche. Although a one ship operation, Empress was a rather successful small firm, holding her own in a market dominated by competitor Star Cruises. There was even talk of a second ship, but Empress wanted to develop step by step and was not in a hurry to add further tonnage. Suddenly, Empress Cruise Lines ceased operations. The exact reasons remained somewhat obscure, which happens more often in the Asian cruise scene. The Empress was laid up. Then, (summer of 2003) there were rumours of several (Asian) parties being interested in her while reports that she had already sailed for the breakers turned out to be incorrect. Other reports indicated that she had been sold for $ 1.3 million for further cruise service in Indian waters. Her planned refit did not materialize however and she was suddenly sold to Indian scrappers in 2004.

Worldview Paper for Nursing

Tina Abraham Nyack College Professor Inseon Hwang NUR 301: Christian Nurse Christian Worldview: Christianity vs. Naturalism Introduction A worldview is not determined simply by a single factor, value, belief or view. It can be described as a collection of beliefs a person has about his or her life and the world around. This worldview can include aspects such as a consistent decision making process, an idea of what is right or wrong, and also who or what authority do I respect and follow. This view can modified constantly by factors including experiences that a person might face, a changing environment, and different values.There are many different types of worldviews and perspectives people have about the world that help to shape who they are. In many professions it is critical to have a strong foundation and a firm worldview to help endure everyday battles and difficult situations that may arise. Nurses especially are faced with different and difficult situations almost every day of their working careers. In these situations it is important to have a constant decision making process and a strong belief in what is moral and ethical.I believe that my worldview as a Christian has helped me to make moral and ethical decisions in my life and has shaped my character, and will continue to do so as a nurse. What is a Christian Worldview? I believe Christianity is based on life and teaching of Jesus as presented in Old and New Testament. There are three largest groups of Christianity in the world; they are the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the protestant sect which has many other denominations in it (McCalman 2009). As a young Catholic, I was to memorize many prayers, one being the Apostle Creed.In the creed it is stated that â€Å"Jesus suffered, died and was buried and in the third day He rose again, He will come to judge the living and the dead. † I was taught that He will return to judge and everyone who believes in Him and they will be given eternal life. The spread of Christianity extends from the cities of Hellenized Roman Empire to East Africa and gradually towards the South Asia (Robert 2011). Many Apostles traveled widely and established new communities in many of the major cities and regions throughout. In reality Christianity is an infinite personal God exists.He created everything in the world that we live in now. We know that the universe as we know it has a beginning and will have an end. We are unique creation of God, in Genesis 1:27 it is stated â€Å"so God created man in His own image of God he created him; male and female he created them. † That means we are personal, eternal, spiritual, and biological human beings to God. We learn the truth about God through revelation and having faith in God. We learn the truth about the world he created through the Bible. Christian’s have many moral and ethical values which are objectively expressed of an absolute moral being.Also Christians bel ieve in the Ten Commandments, the holy sacraments and the apostle’s creed, which we learn about moral values. In early Christian belief, Judaism came into existence before Christianity and believed that it was divided into a new religion from Judaism soon after the destruction of the second Temple that happened in the year 70 CE (Schrijvers 2009). In Christian belief, Jesus Christ is the prophesied Messiah in Torah or the Hebrew Bible. The foundations of Christianity and all the chief claims that are accepted by the followers can be seen in the ecumenical creeds (Robert 20110.As a Christian or a follower or any worldview it is important to answer the question â€Å"Who am I? † In my belief and understanding I believe that I was created by God, and from His hands I was given into my mother’s hands. The purpose that I live each day on this earth is to serve God and be a testament of his mercy and grace. The Catholic Churches are headed by bishops in a spiritual un ion with the Pope, and the Bishop of Rome is considered as the center of intellect in terms of faith, morals and cathedral matters (Robbins 2010).As a Christian there are values that I believe and I still hold on to, and will continue to hold onto for years to come. Some small examples include belief against abortion and I also believe that sex before marriage is immoral. I strongly believe in the seven sacraments and I believe that we should always pray for the dead. As a Christian I believe in confession and I strongly believe in the afterlife. As a Christian I have learned to always forgive and forget anyone that has sinned against our God. Along with many other Christians, I live in the world that He created and I am patiently waiting for His second coming.It took me a while to know where I was going with my life and I knew the only way that I could get any answer is through prayer and having faith in my God. As I stand here today I know He has a plan for me and I know that with Him by my side there can be nobody against me as stated in Romans 8:31. Also as a Christian we all have went against God’s commandments and we have allowed sin into our lives. Even though we do wrong and sin on a daily basis, we have learned as Christian’s that we need to fix the problem by be obedient to God’s calling and repent so that we can be saved through this compassion and grace.Every person on this earth has a great purpose they are going to fulfill throughout their life. I believe my purpose here is to serve God for what he is calling me for. It took a while to know that he was calling to me to become a nurse, and every day that goes by I know this is my calling to God, to serve people that are ill. I know that being a nurse sometimes can be difficult but I know that God has anointed me to help the sick and take care of them. I know as a Christian when I die, I will die knowing God and I will die having faith in my God.I am not afraid to die because G od granted me my life and he has all the power in the world to take me one when it my time to go. Where am I going after I die? It is still a mystery to all what will happen when their death day comes. As a Christian growing up, I was always taught that God will take our souls to a place called heaven, where we will have eternal and everlasting life. Morals and Ethical Issues in Everyday Living There have been many experiences in my life that did not along with my morals and ethic decision making.It is important to understand that people have worldviews and because of that they will act differently in a situation. In these situations I believe that I would have acted differently than the other person doing the decision making. A family friend of mine who was married lived with both her parents at home. The husband and wife were happily married and were also bother doctors. The sad part of this story was that the parents were both ill, the mother being terminally ill. Because of the busy lifestyles of the husband and wife, they did not have time to take of the parents nor did they have time for each other at times.They both believed that putting their parents into a nursing home was the right thing to do because they are thinking they can get the care that they need from nurses and someone will always watch the parents. I still remember till this day the look on the mother and father s face when they found out they were going to be living in a nursing home. They were scared because they did not know where they were going and they weren’t as fluent in the English language. As a Christian I could not understand why this was happening because in the Ten Commandments it states to honor thy mother and father.That means you will do every measure to keep them safe in your arms as they did for you. The fact that the mother could not get help from their own children hurts me because they are both in the medical profession. The wife needs to know that she is sendi ng that woman that raised her and took care of her and protected her from any evil to a nursing home where she will not be happy or secure. I believed that the husband and wife needed to make time for their mother because the help that she will get from her own daughter will make her feel much better.The pain that her mother is feeling, the daughter will never understand until the daughter becomes a mother herself. Then I asked myself as I left their house is there really people in the world like this who would be cruel to their parents. I remember visiting their parents in the nursing home, and the mother was getting worse and worse each day. When I asked the nurse how she was feeling the nurse told me that she does not take any of her medication and she does not eat anything. All she does is stay in her room with her husband and talk about how she wants to die. When the nurse told me what was going on it simply broke my heart.The nurse explained to me how she was shocked that thei r daughter would do this to them since they were financially stable and could give great care at home being that they were both doctors. At that point I even thought of taking the parents to my own home. I remember telling her that you need to take your medication and eat food because we do not get to chose when we die because that decision belongs to God. I remember as I was leaving her room, she pulled me and told me that her daughter has not even come to see her once this week or even check up on her and she feels she is not wanted by her daughter.To make her feel better I told her, your daughter will come soon and maybe she is busy but she will be here soon. I wanted to make her feel better before I left the room and I wanted her to have a peaceful heart as she was laying the bed. It is sad to say that week later, her mother had passed away in the nursing home. I believe that it impacted them so much that they thought it was best to take their father home. I was praying often fo r them so that God would give her a change of heart. What is a Naturalistic Worldview? I believe that the daughter in this story takes up a naturalistic worldview.Naturalism is based on science and not on traditional religious principles. In comparison, it is not the exact opposite of Christianity. However, it does not believe that there is a God that made the world. The followers of naturalism believe that the universe is governed by natural laws and that the universe only exists because of these laws. The universe gradually unfolds among itself and is interconnected with our minds and bodies. Everything that happens is an effect of the environment and also is a cause of something else to happen not anything related to God.The naturalist believes that they are a result of a series of unfolding events. They believe that there is no great purpose behind my life. They may also believe that there was no special meaning or a will behind it and that everything that happens in their life is a result of a cause and effect situation (Naturalism 2007)). The naturalist is in a universe that unravels itself. The universe has just developed these highly complex organisms (humans) that have the capability to have feelings of self reflection, suffering, wonder, joy, etc†¦our consciousness and feelings of choice are not intertwined with any supernatural touch (Stanley 2011).Conclusion Through the comparison of the two worldviews I have come to an understanding that our actions and decisions help to tell us as who we are as a person. In the nursing career there will be many times when a person is faced with difficulties in different areas not limited too but including patient care and also with co-workers. During these difficult times in our lives it is important to let God in our lives and let his handle the situation instead of worrying.After writing and brainstorming for the paper, I have come to a stronger understanding that I have a very strong foundation in Christi anity and a strong worldview. I know that through prayer and guidance from God, it will help me in my decision making process. . References (2007, August 31). Naturalism. Electronic Ardell Wellness Report (E-AWR). p. 3. Modernism, Christianity, and Business Ethics: A Worldview Perspective David Kim, Dan Fisher and David McCalman Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 90, No. 1 (Nov. , 2009), pp. 115-121 Robert, D. L. (2011).Cross-Cultural Friendship in the Creation of Twentieth-Century World Christianity. International Bulletin Of Missionary Research, 35(2), 100-107. Robbins, J. (2010). Anthropology, Pentecostalism, and the New Paul: Conversion, Event, and Social Transformation. South Atlantic Quarterly, 109(4), 633-652. Schrijvers, J. (2009). What Comes after Christianity? Jean-Luc Nancy's Deconstruction of Christianity. Research In Phenomenology, 39(2), 266-291. Stanley, M. (2011). THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURAL LAWS IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN: NATURALISM, THEISM, AND SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE. Zygon: Journal Of Religion ; Science, 46(3), 536-560.

Black House Chapter Twenty-five

25 OH, FORGET about that. We know where Jack Sawyer went when he disappeared from the edge of the cornfield, and we know who he is likely to meet when he gets there. Enough of that stuff. We want fun, we want excitement! Luckily for us, that charming old party Charles Burnside, who can always be depended upon to slip a whoopee cushion under the governor's seat during a banquet, to pour a little hot sauce into the stew, to fart at the prayer meeting, is at this moment emerging from a toilet bowl and into a stall in the men's room on Daisy wing. We note that Ol' Burny, our Burn-Burn, hugs Henry Leyden's hedge clippers to his sunken chest with both arms, actually cradling them, as if he were holding a baby. On his bony right arm, blood slides out of a nasty gash and rolls down toward his elbow. When he gets one foot, clad in another resident's bee slipper, on the rim of the bowl, he pushes himself up and steps out, wobbling a bit. His mouth is twisted into a scowl, and his eyes look like b ullet holes, but we do not suppose that he, too, carries a weight of heavy-duty sorrow. Blood soaks the bottoms of his trousers and the front of his shirt, which has darkened with the flow of blood from a knife wound to his abdomen. Wincing, Burny opens the door of the stall and walks out into the empty men's room. Fluorescent lights on the ceiling reflect from the long mirror above the row of sinks; thanks to Butch Yerxa, who is working a double shift because the regular night man called in drunk, the white tiles of the floor gleam. In all this sparkling whiteness, the blood on Charles Burnside's clothes and body looks radiantly red. He peels off his shirt and tosses it into a sink before plodding down to the far end of the bathroom and a cabinet marked with a piece of tape on which someone has printed BANDAGES. Old men have a tendency to fall down in their bathrooms, and Chipper's father thoughtfully installed the cabinet where he thought it might be needed. Drops of blood lay spattered across the white tiles. Burny rips a handful of paper towels from a dispenser, dampens them with cold water, and lays them on the side of the nearest sink. Then he opens the bandage cabinet, removes a wide roll of tape and a wad of gauze bandages, and tears off a six-inch strip of the tape. He wipes blood off the skin around the wound in his belly and presses the wet paper towels over the opening. He lifts away the towels and presses a pad of gauze to the cut. Awkwardly, he flattens the strip of tape over the gauze. He dresses the stab wound on his arm in the same fashion. Now swirls and scoops of blood cover the white tiles. He moves up the row of sinks and runs cold water over his shirt. The water turns red in the bowl. Burny keeps scrubbing the old shirt under cold running water until it has turned a pale rose only a few shades brighter than his skin. Satisfied, he wrings the shirt in his hands, flaps it once or twice, and puts it back on. That it clings to him bothers Burny not at all. His goal is a very basic version of acceptability, not elegance: insofar as it is possible, he wants to pass unnoticed. His cuffs are soaked with blood, and Elmer Jesperson's slippers are dark red and wet, but he thinks most people will not bother to look at his feet. Within him, a coarse voice keeps saying, Fazzdur, Burn-Burn, fazzdur! Burny's only mistake is that, while buttoning up his damp shirt, he looks at himself in the mirror. What he sees stops him cold with shock. Despite his ugliness, Charles Burnside has always approved of the image returned to him by mirrors. In his opinion, he looks like a guy who knows where to find the corners sly, unpredictable, and foxy. The man staring at him from the other side of the mirror is nothing like the canny old operator Burny remembered. The man facing him looks dim-witted, worn-out, and seriously ill. Sunken, red-rimmed eyes, cheeks like craters, veins crawling across his bald, skull-like crown . . . even his nose looks bonier and more twisted than it once had. He is the sort of old man who frightens children. You shud fry-den cheerun, Burn-Burn. Dime do ged moo-vuhn. He couldn't really look that bad, could he? If he did, he would have noticed long before this. Nah, that wasn't how Charles Burnside faced the world. The bathroom's too damn white, that's all. A white like that makes you look bleached. Makes you look skinned, like a rabbit. The dying old horror in the mirror takes a step nearer, and the spotty discolorations on his skin seem to darken. The spectacle of his teeth makes him close his mouth. Then his master is like a fishhook in his mind, pulling him toward the door and muttering, Dime, dime. Burny knows why it's dime: Mr. Munshun wants to get back to Black House. Mr. Munshun comes from some place incredibly distant from French Landing, and certain parts of Black House, which they built together, feel like the world of his home the deepest parts, which Charles Burnside seldom visits, and which make him feel hypnotized, weak with longing, and sick to his stomach when he does. When he tries to picture the world that gave birth to Mr. Munshun, he envisions a dark, craggy landscape littered with skulls. On the bare slopes and peaks stand houses like castles that change size, or vanish, when you blink. From the flickering defiles comes an industrial cacophony mingled with the cries of tortured children. Burnside is eager to return to Black House, too, but for the simpler pleasures of the first set of rooms, where he can rest, eat canned food, and read his scrapbooks. He relishes the particular smell that inhabits those rooms, an order of rot, sweat, dried blood, must, sewage. If he could distill that fragrance, he would wear it like cologne. Also, a sweet little morsel named Tyler Marshall sits locked in a chamber located in another layer of Black House and another world and Burny cannot wait to torment little Tyler, to run his wrinkled hands over the boy's beautiful skin. Tyler Marshall thrills Burny. But there are pleasures yet to be reaped in this world, and it is dime to attend to them. Burny peeks out through a crack in the bathroom door and sees that Butch Yerxa has succumbed to weariness and the cafeteria's meat loaf. He occupies his chair like an oversized doll, his arms on the desk and his fat chin resting on what would be a neck on a normal person. That useful little painted rock stands a few inches away from Butch's right hand, but Burny has no need of the rock, for he has acquired an instrument far more versatile. He wishes he had discovered the potential of hedge clippers long ago. Instead of one blade, you get two. One up, one down, snick-snick! And sharp! He had not intended to amputate the blind man's fingers. Back then he thought of the clippers as a big, primitive variety of knife, but when he got stabbed in the arm, he jerked the clippers toward the blind man and they more or less bit off his fingers by themselves, as neatly and swiftly as the old-time butchers i n Chicago used to slice bacon. Chipper Maxton is going to be fun. He deserves what he is going to get, too. Burny figures that Chipper is responsible for the way he has deteriorated. The mirror told him that he is about twenty pounds less than he should be, maybe even thirty, and no wonder look at the slop they serve in the cafeteria. Chipper has been chiseling on the food, Burny thinks, the same way he chisels on everything else. The state, the government, Medicaid, Medicare, Chipper steals from all of them. A couple of times when he thought Charles Burnside was too out of it to know what was happening, Maxton had told him to sign forms that indicated he'd had an operation, prostate surgery, lung surgery. The way Burny sees it, half of the Medicaid money that paid for the nonexistent operation should have been his. It was his name on the form, wasn't it? Burnside eases into the hallway and pads toward the lobby, leaving bloody footprints from the squishing slippers. Because he will have to pass the nurse's station, he shoves the clippers under his waistband and covers them with his shirt. The flabby cheeks, gold-rimmed glasses, and lavender hair of a useless old bag named Georgette Porter are visible to Burnside above the counter of the nurses' station. Things could be worse, he thinks. Ever since she waltzed into D18 and caught him trying to masturbate stark naked in the middle of the room, Georgette Porter has been terrified of him. She glances his way, seems to suppress a shudder, and looks back down at whatever she is doing with her hands. Knitting, probably, or reading the kind of murder mystery in which a cat solves the crime. Burny slops nearer the station and considers using the clippers on Georgette's face, but decides it is not worth the waste of energy. When he reaches the counter, he looks over it and sees that she is holding a paperback book in her hands, just as he had imagined. She looks up at him with profound suspicion in her eyes. â€Å"We sure look yummy tonight, Georgie.† She glances up the hallway, then at the lobby, and realizes that she must deal with him by herself. â€Å"You should be in your room, Mr. Burn-side. It's late.† â€Å"Mind your own business, Georgie. I got a right to take a walk.† â€Å"Mr. Maxton doesn't like the residents to go into the other wings, so please stay in Daisy.† â€Å"Is the big boss here tonight?† â€Å"I believe so, yes.† â€Å"Good.† He turns away and continues on toward the lobby, and she calls after him. â€Å"Wait!† He looks back. She is standing up, a sure sign of great concern. â€Å"You aren't going to bother Mr. Maxton, are you?† â€Å"Say any more, and I'll bother you.† She places a hand on her throat and finally notices the floor. Her chin drops, and her eyebrows shoot up. â€Å"Mr. Burnside, what do you have on your slippers? And your pants cuffs? You're tracking it everwhere!† â€Å"Can't keep your mouth shut, can you?† Grimly, he plods back to the nurses' station. Georgette Porter backs against the wall, and by the time she realizes that she could have tried to escape, Burny is already in front of her. She removes her hand from her throat and holds it out like a stop sign. â€Å"Dumb bitch.† Burnside yanks the clippers out of his belt, grips the handles, and clips off her fingers as easily as if they were twigs. â€Å"Stupid.† Georgette has entered a stage of shocked disbelief that holds her in paralysis. She stares at the blood spilling from the four stumps on her hand. â€Å"Goddamn moron.† He opens the clippers and rams one of the blades into her throat. Georgette makes a choked, gargling sound. She tries to get her hands on the clippers, but he pulls them from her neck and raises them to her head. Her hands flutter, scattering blood. The expression on Burny's face is that of a man who finally admits that he has to clean his cat's litter box. He levels the wet blade in front of her right eye and shoves it in, and Georgette is dead before her body slides down the wall and folds up on the floor. Thirty feet up the hallway, Butch Yerxa mumbles in his sleep. â€Å"They never listen,† Burny mutters to himself. â€Å"You try and try, but they always ask for it in the end. Proves they want it like those dumb little shits in Chicago.† He tugs the clippers' blade out of Georgette's head and wipes it clean on the shoulder of her blouse. The memory of one or two of those little shits in Chicago sends a tingle down the length of his member, which begins to stiffen in his baggy old pants. Hel-lo! Ah . . . the magic of tender memories. Though, as we have seen, Charles Burnside now and again enjoys erections in his sleep, in his waking hours they are so rare as to be nearly nonexistent, and he is tempted to pull down his pants and see what he could make it do. But what if Yerxa wakes up? He would assume that Georgette Porter, or at least her corpse, aroused Burny's long-smoldering lusts. That wouldn't do not at all. Even a monster has his pride. Best to carry on to Chipper Maxton's office, and hope that his hammer doesn't go limp be fore it is time to pound the nail. Burny tucks the clippers into the back of his waistband and yanks at his wet shirt, pulling it away from his body. Down the corridor of Daisy wing he shuffles, across the empty lobby, and up to the burnished door further distinguished by the brass nameplate reading WILLIAM MAXTON, DIRECTOR. This he reverentially opens, summoning to mind the image of a long-dead ten-year-old boy named Herman Flagler, otherwise known as â€Å"Poochie,† one of his first conquests. Poochie! Tender Poochie! Those tears, those sobs of mingled pain and joy, that yielding to utter helplessness: the faint crust of dirt over Poochie's scabby knees and slender forearms. Hot tears; a jet of urine from his terrified little rosebud. There will be no such bliss from Chipper, but we may be sure there will be something. Anyhow, Tyler Marshall lies bound and waiting in Black House, helpless as helpless could be. Charles Burnside plods through Rebecca Vilas's windowless cubicle, Poochie Flagler's pallid, deeply dimpled backside blazing in his mind. He places a hand on the next doorknob, takes a moment to calm himself, and noiselessly revolves the knob. The door opens just wide enough to reveal Chipper Maxton, only monarch of this realm, leaning over his desk, his head propped on one fist, and using a yellow pencil to make notations on two sets of papers. The trace of a smile softens the tight purse of his mouth; his damp eyes betray the suggestion of a gleam; the busy pencil glides back and forth between the two stacks of papers, making tiny marks. So happily absorbed in his task is Chipper that he fails to notice he is no longer alone until his visitor steps inside and gives the door a backward kick with his foot. When the door slams shut, Chipper glances up in irritated surprise and peers at the figure before him. His attitude almost immediately changes to a sly, unpleasant heartiness he takes to be disarming. â€Å"Don't they knock on doors where you come from, Mr. Burnside? Just barge right on in, do they?† â€Å"Barge right on in,† says his visitor. â€Å"Never mind. The truth is, I've been meaning to talk to you.† â€Å"Talk to me?† â€Å"Yes. Come on in, will you? Take a seat. I'm afraid we might have a little problem, and I want to explore some possibilities.† â€Å"Oh,† Burny says. â€Å"A problem.† He plucks his shirt away from his chest and trudges forward, leaving behind him progressively fainter footprints Maxton fails to see. â€Å"Take a pew,† Chipper says, waving at the chair in front of his desk. â€Å"Pull up a bollard and rest your bones.† This expression comes from Franky Shellbarger, the First Farmer's loan officer, who uses it all the time at the local Rotary meetings, and although Chipper Maxton has no idea what a bollard may be, he thinks it sounds cute as hell. â€Å"Old-timer, you and me have to have a heart-to-heart discussion.† â€Å"Ah,† Burny says, and sits down, his back rigidly straight, due to the clippers. â€Å"Hardz zu hardz.† â€Å"Yeah, that's the idea. Hey, is that shirt wet? It is! We can't have that, old buddy you might catch cold and die, and neither one of us would like that, would we? You need a dry shirt. Let me see what I can do for you.† â€Å"Don't bother, you fucking monkey.† Chipper Maxton is already on his feet and straightening his shirt, and the old man's words throw him momentarily off his stride. He recovers nicely, grins, and says, â€Å"Stay right there, Chicago.† Although the mention of his native city sends a prickling sensation down his spine, Burnside gives nothing away as Maxton moves around the side of his desk and walks across his office. He watches the director leave the room. Chicago. Where Poochie Flagler and Sammy Hooten and Ferd Brogan and all the others had lived and died, God bless 'em. Stalks of grain, blades of grass, so foul so beautiful so enticing. With their smiles and their screams. Like all Caucasian slum children, pure pale ivory white under the crust of dirt, the fishy white of the city's poor, the soon-to-be-lost. The slender bones of their shoulder blades, sticking out as if to break through the thin layer of flesh. Burny's old organ stirs and stiffens as if it remembers the frolics of yesteryear. Tyler Marshall, he croons to himself, pretty little Ty, we will have ourselves some fun before we turn you over to the boss, yes we will yes indeedy yes yes. The door slams behind him, yanking him out of his erotic reverie. But his old mule, his old hoss, it stays awake and on its mettle, bold and brash as ever it was in the glory days. â€Å"No one in the lobby,† Maxton complains. â€Å"That old bag, what'shername, Porter, Georgette Porter, down in the kitchen stuffing her face, I bet, and Butch Yerxa sound asleep in his chair. What am I supposed to do, ransack the rooms to find a dry shirt?† He strides past Burnside, throws up his hands, and drops into his chair. It's all an act, but Burny has seen much better than this. Chipper cannot intimidate Burny, not even if he knows a few things about Chicago. â€Å"I don't need a new shirt,† he says. â€Å"Asswipe.† Chipper leans back in his chair and clasps his hands behind his head. He grins this patient amuses him, he's a real card. â€Å"Now, now. There's no need for name-calling here. You don't fool me anymore, old man. I don't buy your Alzheimer's act. In fact, I don't buy any of it.† He is nice and relaxed and he oozes the confidence of a gambler holding four aces. Burny figures he is being set up for some kind of con job or blackmail, which makes the moment all the more delicious. â€Å"I gotta hand it to you, though,† Chipper goes on. â€Å"You fooled everybody in sight, including me. It must take an incredible amount of discipline to fake late-stage Alzheimer's. All that slumping in your chair, being fed baby food, crapping in your pants. Pretending you don't understand what people are saying.† â€Å"I wasn't faking, you jackass.† â€Å"So it's no wonder you staged a comeback when was that, about a year ago? I would have done the same. I mean, it's one thing to go undercover, but it's another to do it as a vegetable. So we have ourselves a little miracle, don't we? Our Alzheimer's gradually reverses itself, it comes and it goes, like the common cold. It's a good deal all around. You get to walk around and make a nuisance of yourself, and there's less work for the staff. You're still one of my favorite patients, Charlie. Or should I call you Carl?† â€Å"I don't give a shit what you call me.† â€Å"But Carl's your real name, isn't it?† Burny does not even shrug. He hopes Chipper gets to the point before Butch Yerxa wakes up, notices the bloody prints, and discovers Georgette Porter's body, because while he is interested in Maxton's tale, he wants to get to Black House without too much interference. And Butch Yerxa would probably put up a decent fight. Under the illusion that he is playing a cat-and-mouse game in which he is the cat, Chipper smiles at the old man in the wet pink shirt and rolls on. â€Å"A state detective called me today. Said I.D. on a local fingerprint had come back from the FBI. It belonged to a bad, bad man named Carl Bierstone who's been wanted for almost forty years. In 1964 he was sentenced to death for killing a couple of kids he molested, only he escaped from the car taking him to prison killed two guards with his bare hands. No sign of him since then. He'd be eighty-five by now, and the detective thought Bierstone just might be one of our residents. What do you have to say, Charles?† Nothing, evidently. â€Å"Charles Burnside is pretty close to Carl Bierstone, isn't it? And we have no background information on you at all. That makes you a unique resident here. For everybody else, we damn near have a family tree, but you sort of come out of nowhere. The only information we have about you is your age. When you turned up at La Riviere General in 1996, you claimed to be seventy-eight. That would make you the same age as that fugitive.† Burnside gives him a truly unsettling smile. â€Å"I guess I must be the Fisherman, too, then.† â€Å"You're eighty-five years old. I don't think you're capable of dragging a bunch of kids halfway across the county. But I do think you're this Carl Bierstone, and the cops are still eager to get their hands on you. Which brings me to this letter that came a few days ago. I've been meaning to discuss it with you, but you know how busy things get around here.† He opens his desk drawer and pulls out a single sheet torn from a yellow notepad. It bears a brief, neatly typed message. † ? ®De Pere, Wisconsin,' it says. No date. ? ®To Whom It May Concern' is how it starts. ? ®I regret to inform you that I am no longer able to continue monthly payments on behalf of my nephew, Charles Burnside.' That's it. Instead of writing her signature, she typed her name. ? ®Althea Burnside.' â€Å" Chipper places the yellow notepaper before him and folds his hands together on top of it. â€Å"What's the deal here, Charles? There's no Althea Burnside living in De Pere, I know that much. And she can't be your aunt. How old would she be? At least a hundred. More like a hundred and ten. I don't believe it. But these checks have been coming in, regular as clockwork, since your first month here at Maxton's. Some buddy, some old partner of yours, has been looking out for you, my friend. And we want him to continue what he's been doing, don't we?† â€Å"All the same to me, asswipe.† This is not precisely truthful. All Burny knows of the monthly payments is that Mr. Munshun organized them long ago, and if these payments are to stop, well . . . what comes to an end with them? He and Mr. Munshun are in this together, aren't they? â€Å"Come on, kiddo,† Chipper says. â€Å"You can do better than that. I'm looking for a little cooperation here. I'm sure you don't want to go through all the mess and trouble of being taken into custody, getting fingerprinted, plus whatever might happen after that. And me, speaking personally, I wouldn't want to put you through all of that. Because the real rat here is your friend. It sure looks to me like this guy, whoever he is, is forgetting that you probably have something on him from the old days, right? And he's thinking that he doesn't have to make sure that you have all your little comforts anymore. Only that's a mistake. I bet you could straighten the guy out, make him understand the situation.† Burny's mule, his old hoss, has softened up and dwindled like a punctured balloon, which increases his gloom. Since entering this oily crook's office, he has lost something vital: a feeling of purpose, a sense of immunity, an edge. He wants to get back to Black House. Black House will restore him, for Black House is magic, dark magic. The bitterness of his soul went into its making; the darkness of his heart soaked through every beam and joist. Mr. Munshun helped Burny see the possibilities of Black House, and he contributed many and many a touch of his own devise. There are regions of Black House Charles Burnside has never truly understood, and that frighten him, badly: an underground wing seems to contain his secret career in Chicago, and when he drew near that part of the house, he could hear the pleading whimpers and pungent screams of a hundred doomed boys as well as his own rasps of command, his grunts of ecstasy. For some reason, the proximity of his earlier triumphs made him feel small and hunted, an outcast instead of a lord. Mr. Munshun had helped him remember the scale of his achievement, but Mr. Mun-shun had been of no use with another region of Black House, a small one, at best a room, more accurately a vault, which houses the whole of his childhood, and which he has never, ever visited. The merest hint of that room causes Burny to feel like an infant left outside to freeze to death. The news of the fictitious Althea Burnside's defection has a lesser version of the same effect. This is intolerable, and he need not, in fact cannot, endure it. â€Å"Yeah,† he says. â€Å"Let's have some straightening out here. Let's have some understanding.† He rises from the chair, and a sound from what seems to be the center of French Landing speeds him along. It is the wail of police sirens, at least two, maybe three. Burny doesn't know for sure, but he supposes that Jack Sawyer has discovered the body of his friend Henry, only Henry was less than perfectly dead and managed to say that he had recognized his killer's voice. So Jack called the cop shop and here we are. His next step brings him to the front of the desk. He glances at the papers on the desk and instantly grasps their meaning. â€Å"Cooking the books, hey? You aren't just an asswipe, you're a sneaky little numbers juggler.† In an amazingly small number of seconds, Chipper Maxton's face registers a tremendous range of feeling states. Ire, surprise, confusion, wounded pride, anger, and disbelief chase across the landscape of his features as Burnside reaches back and produces the hedge clippers. In the office, they seem larger and more aggressive than they did in Henry Leyden's living room. To Chipper, the blades look as long as scythes. And when Chipper tears his eyes away from them and raises them to the old man standing before him, he sees a face more demonic than human. Burnside's eyes gleam red, and his lips curl away from appalling, glistening teeth like shards of broken mirrors. â€Å"Back off, buddy,† Chipper squeaks. â€Å"The police are practically in the lobby.† â€Å"I ain't deaf.† Burny rams one blade into Chipper's mouth and closes the clippers on his sweaty cheek. Blood shoots across the desk, and Chipper's eyes expand. Burny yanks on the clippers, and several teeth and a portion of Chipper's tongue fly from the yawning wound. He pushes himself upright and leans forward to grab the blades. Burnside steps back and lops off half of Chipper's right hand. â€Å"Damn, that's sharp,† he says. Then Maxton comes reeling around the side of the desk, spraying blood in all directions and bellowing like a moose. Burny dodges away, dodges back, and punches the blades into the bulge of the blue button-down shirt over Chipper's belly. When he tugs them out, Chipper sags, groans, drops to his knees. Blood pours out of him as if from an overturned jug. He falls forward on his elbows. There is no fun left in Chipper Maxton; he shakes his head and mutters something that is a plea to be left alone. A bloodshot, oxlike eye revolves toward Charles Burnside and silently expresses an oddly impersonal desire for mercy. â€Å"Mother of Mercy,† Burny says, â€Å"is this the end of Rico?† What a laugh he hasn't thought of that movie in years. Chuckling at his own wit, he leans over, positions the blades on either side of Chipper's neck, and nearly succeeds in cutting off his head. The sirens turn blaring on to Queen Street. Soon policemen will be running up the walk; soon they will burst into the lobby. Burnside drops the clippers onto Chipper's broad back and regrets that he does not have the time to piss on his body or take a dump on his head, but Mr. Munshun is grumbling about dime, dime, dime. â€Å"I ain't stupid, you don't have to tell me,† Burny says. He pads out of the office and through Miss Vilas's cubicle. When he moves out into the lobby, he can see the flashing light bars on the tops of two police cars rolling down the far side of the hedge. They come to a halt not far from where he first put his hand around Tyler Marshall's slender boy-neck. Burny scoots along a little faster. When he reaches the beginning of the Daisy corridor, two baby-faced policemen burst through the opening in the hedge. Down the hallway, Butch Yerxa is standing up and rubbing his face. He stares at Burnside and says, â€Å"What happened?† â€Å"Get out there,† Burny says. â€Å"Take 'em to the office. Maxton's hurt.† â€Å"Hurt?† Incapable of movement, Butch is gaping at Burnside's bloody clothes and dripping hands. â€Å"Go!† Butch stumbles forward, and the two young policemen charge in through the big glass door, from which Rebecca Vilas's poster has been removed. â€Å"The office!† Butch yells, pointing to his right. â€Å"The boss is hurt!† While Yerxa indicates the office door by jabbing his hand at the wall, Charles Burnside scuttles past him. A moment later, he has entered the Daisy wing men's room and is hotfooting it toward one of the stalls. And what of Jack Sawyer? We already know. That is, we know he fell asleep in a receptive place between the edge of a cornfield and a hill on the western side of Norway Valley. We know that his body grew lighter, less substantial, cloudy. That it grew vague and translucent. We can suppose that before his body attained transparency, Jack entered a certain nourishing dream. And in that dream, we may suppose, a sky of robin's egg blue suggests an infinity of space to the inhabitants of a handsome residential property on Roxbury Drive, Beverly Hills, wherein Jacky is six, six, six, or twelve, twelve, twelve, or both at the same time, and Daddy played cool changes on his horn, horn, horn. (â€Å"Darn That Dream,† Henry Shake could tell you, is the last song on Daddy Plays the Horn, by Dexter Gordon a daddy-o if there ever was.) In that dream, everyone went on a journey and no one went anywhere else, and a traveling boy captured a most marvelous prize, and Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer capt ured a bumblebee in a glass. Smiling, she carried it to the swinging doors and launched it into the upper air. So the bumblebee traveled far and away to Faraway, and as it journeyed worlds upon worlds on their mysterious courses trembled and swayed, and Jack, too, journeyed on his own mysterious course into the infinite robin's-egg blue and, in the bee's accurate wake, returned to the Territories, where he lay sleeping in a silent field. So in that same darned dream, Jack Sawyer, a person younger than twelve and older than thirty, stunned by both grief and love, is visited in his sleep by a certain woman of tender regard. And she lies down beside him on his bed of sweet grass and takes him in her arms and his grateful body knows the bliss of her touch, her kiss, her deep blessing. What they do, alone in the faraway Territories, is none of our business, but we compound Sophie's blessing with our own and leave them to what is after all, with the gentlest possible urgency, their busine ss, which blesses this boy and this girl, this man and this woman, this dear couple, as nothing else can, certainly not us. Return comes as it should, with the clean, rich smells of topsoil and corn, and a rooster's alarm-clock crowing from the Gilbertson cousins' farm. A spiderweb shining with dew stitches the loafer on Jack's left foot to a mossy rock. An ant trundling across Jack's right wrist carries a blade of grass bearing in the V of its central fold a bright and trembling drop of newly made water. Feeling as wondrously refreshed as if he, too, were newly created, Jack eases the hardworking ant off his wrist, separates his shoe from the spiderweb, and gets to his feet. Dew sparkles in his hair and his eyebrows. Half a mile back across the field, Henry's meadow curves around Henry's house. Tiger lilies shiver in the cool morning breeze. Tiger lilies shiver . . . When he sees the hood of his pickup nosing out from behind the house, everything comes back to him. Mouse, and the word given him by Mouse. Henry's house, Henry's studio, his dying message. By this time, all the police and investigators will have gone, and the house will be empty, echoing with bloodstains. Dale Gilbertson and probably Troopers Brown and Black will be looking for him. Jack has no interest in the troopers, but he does want to talk to Dale. It is time to let Dale in on some startling facts. What Jack has to say to Dale is going to peel his eyelids back, but we should remember what the Duke told Dean Martin about the whisking of eggs and the making of omelettes. In the words of Lily Cavanaugh, when the Duke spoke up, ever'-dang-body lissened up, and so must Dale Gilbertson, for Jack wants his faithful and resolute company on the journey through Black House. Walking past the side of Henry's house, Jack puts the tips of his fingers to his lips and brushes them against the wood, transferring the kiss. Henry. For all the worlds, for Tyler Marshall, for Judy, for Sophie, and for you, Henry Leyden. The cell phone in the cab of the Ram claims to have three saved messages, all from Dale, which he deletes unheard. At home, the answering machine's red light blinks 4-4-4, repeating itself with the ruthless insistence of a hungry infant. Jack pushes PLAYBACK. Four times, an increasingly unhappy Dale Gilbertson begs to know the whereabouts of his friend Jack Sawyer and communicates his great desire to converse with the same gentleman, largely in reference to the murder of his uncle and their friend, Henry, but it wouldn't hurt to talk about the goddamn slaughter at Maxton's, would it? And does the name Charles Burnside ring any bells? Jack looks at his watch and, thinking that it cannot be correct, glances up at the clock in his kitchen. His watch was right after all. It is 5:42 A.M., and the rooster is still crowing behind Randy and Kent Gilbert-son's barn. Tiredness suddenly washes through him, heavier than gravity. Someone is undoubtedly manning the telephone on Sumner Street, but Dale is just as certainly asleep in his bed, and Jack wishes to speak only to Dale. He yawns hugely, like a cat. The newspaper hasn't even been delivered yet! He removes his jacket and tosses it onto a chair, then yawns again, even more widely than before. Maybe that cornfield was not so comfortable after all: Jack's neck feels pinched, and his back aches. He pulls himself up the staircase, shucks his clothes onto a love seat in his bedroom, and flops into bed. On the wall above the love seat hangs his sunny little Fairfield Porter painting, and Jack remembers how Dale responded to it, the night they uncrated and put up all the paintings. He had loved that picture the moment he saw it it had probably been news to Dale that he could find such satisfaction in a painting. All right, Jack thinks, if we manage to get out of Black House alive, I'll give it to him. And I'll make him take it: I'll threaten to chop it up and burn it in the wood-stove if he doesn't. I'll tell him I'll give it to Wendell Green! His eyes are already closing; he sinks into the bedclothes and disappears, although this time not literally, from our world. He dreams. He walks down a tricky, descending forest path toward a burning building. Beasts and monsters writhe and bellow on both sides, mostly unseen but now and then flicking out a gnarled hand, a spiky tail, a black, skeletal wing. These he severs with a heavy sword. His arm aches, and his entire body feels weary and sore. Somewhere he is bleeding, but he cannot see or feel the wound, merely the slow movement of blood running down the backs of his legs. The people who were with him at the start of his journey are all dead, and he is he may be dying. He wishes he were not so alone, for he is terrified. The burning building grows taller and taller as he approaches. Screams and cries come from it, and around it lies a grotesque perimeter of dead, blackened trees and smoking ashes. This perimeter widens with every second, as if the building is devouring all of nature, one foot at a time. Everything is lost, and the burning building and the soulless creature who is both its master and its prisoner will triumph, blasted world without end, amen. Din-tah, the great furnace, eating all in its path. The trees on his right side bend and contort their complaining branches, and a great stirring takes place in the dark, sharply pointed leaves. Groaning, the huge trunks bow, and the branches twine like snakes about one another, bringing into being a solid wall of gray, pointed leaves. From that wall emerges, with terrible slowness, the impression of a gaunt, bony face. Five feet tall from crown to chin, the face bulges out against the layer of leaves, weaving from side to side in search of Jack. It is everything that has ever terrified him, injured him, wished him ill, either in this world or the Territories. The huge face vaguely resembles a human monster named Elroy who once tried to rape Jack in a wretched bar called the Oatley Tap, then it suggests Morgan of Orris, then Sunlight Gardener, then Charles Burnside, but as it continues its blind seeking from side to side, it suggests all of these malign faces layered on top of one another and melting into one. Utter fear turns Jack to stone. The face bulging out of the massed leaves searches the downward path, then swings back and ceases its constant, flickering movement from side to side. It is pointed directly at him. The blind eyes see him, the nose without nostrils smells him. A quiver of pleasure runs through the leaves, and the face looms forward, getting larger and larger. Unable to move, Jack looks back over his shoulder to see a putrefying man prop himself up in a narrow bed. The man opens his mouth and shouts, â€Å"D'YAMBA!† Heart thrashing in his chest, a shout dying before it leaves his throat, Jack vaults from his bed and lands on his feet before he quite realizes that he has awakened from a dream. His entire body seems to be trembling. Sweat runs down his forehead and dampens his chest. Gradually, the trembling ceases as he takes in what is really around him: not a giant face looming from an ugly wall of leaves but the familiar confines of his bedroom. Hanging on the wall opposite is a painting he intends to give to Dale Gilbertson. He wipes his face, he calms down. He needs a shower. His watch tells him that it is now 9:47 A.M. He has slept four hours, and it is time to get organized. Forty-five minutes later, cleaned up, dressed, and fed, Jack calls the police station and asks to speak to Chief Gilbertson. At 11:25, he and a dubious, newly educated Dale a Dale who badly wants to see some evidence of his friend's crazy tale leave the chief's car parked beneath the single tree in the Sand Bar's lot and walk across the hot asphalt past two leaning Harleys and toward the rear entrance.

The Battle of Ayn Jalut, 1260 - Mongols vs. Mamluks

The Battle of Ayn Jalut, 1260 - Mongols vs. Mamluks At times in Asian history, circumstances have conspired to bring seemingly unlikely combatants into conflict with one another. One example is the Battle of Talas River (751 A.D.), which pitted the armies of Tang China against the Abbasid Arabs in what is now Kyrgyzstan. Another is the Battle of Ayn Jalut, where in 1260 the seemingly unstoppable Mongol hordes ran up against the Mamluk warrior-slave army of Egypt. In This Corner: The Mongol Empire In 1206, the young Mongol leader Temujin was declared the ruler of all the Mongols; he took the name Genghis Khan (or Chinguz Khan). By the time he died in 1227, Genghis Khan controlled Central Asia from the Pacific coast of Siberia to the Caspian Sea in the west. After Genghis Khans death, his descendants divided the Empire into four separate khanates: the Mongolian homeland, ruled by Tolui Khan; the Empire of the Great Khan (later Yuan China), ruled by Ogedei Khan; the Ilkhanate Khanate of Central Asia and Persia, ruled by Chagatai Khan; and the Khanate of the Golden Horde, which would later include not just Russia but also Hungary and Poland. Each Khan sought to expand his own portion of the empire through further conquests. After all, a prophecy predicted that Genghis Khan and his offspring would one day rule all the people of the felt tents. Of course, they sometimes exceeded this mandate - nobody in Hungary or Poland actually lived a nomadic herding lifestyle. Nominally, at least, the other khans all answered to the Great Khan. In 1251, Ogedei died and his nephew Mongke, Genghiss grandson, became the Great Khan. Mongke Khan appointed his brother Hulagu to head the southwestern horde, the Ilkhanate. He charged Hulagu with the task of conquering the remaining Islamic empires of the Middle East and North Africa. In the Other Corner: The Mamluk Dynasty of Egypt While the Mongols were busy with their ever-expanding empire, the Islamic world was fighting off Christian Crusaders from Europe. The great Muslim general Saladin (Salah al-Din) conquered Egypt in 1169, founding the Ayyubid Dynasty. His descendants used increasing numbers of Mamluk soldiers in their internecine struggles for power. The Mamluks were an elite corps of warrior-slaves, mostly from Turkic or Kurdish Central Asia, but also including some Christians from the Caucasus region of south-eastern Europe. Captured and sold as young boys, they were carefully groomed for life as military men. Being a Mamluk became such an honor that some free-born Egyptians reportedly sold their sons into slavery so that they too could become Mamluks. In the tumultuous times surrounding the Seventh Crusade (which led to the capture of King Louis IX of France by the Egyptians), the Mamluks steadily gained power over their civilian rulers. In 1250, the widow of Ayyubid sultan as-Salih Ayyub married a Mamluk, Emir Aybak, who then became sultan. This was the beginning of the Bahri Mamluk Dynasty, which ruled Egypt until 1517. By 1260, when the Mongols began to threaten Egypt, the Bahri Dynasty was on its third Mamluk sultan, Saif ad-Din Qutuz. Ironically, Qutuz was Turkic (probably a Turkmen), and had become a Mamluk after he was captured and sold into slavery by the Ilkhanate Mongols. Prelude to the Show-down Hulagus campaign to subdue the Islamic lands began with an assault on the infamous Assassins or Hashshashin of Persia. A splinter group of the Ismaili Shia sect, the Hashshashin were based out of a cliff-side fortress called the Alamut, or Eagles Nest. On December 15, 1256, the Mongols captured Alamut and destroyed the power of the Hashshashin. Next, Hulagu Khan and the Ilkhanate army launched their assault on the Islamic heartlands proper with a siege on Baghdad, lasting from January 29 to February 10, 1258. At that time, Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid caliphate (the same dynasty that had battled the Chinese at Talas River in 751), and the center of the Muslim world. The caliph relied on his belief that the other Islamic powers would come to his aid rather than see Baghdad destroyed. Unfortunately for him, that did not happen. When the city fell, the Mongols sacked and destroyed it, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians and burning down the Grand Library of Baghdad. The victors rolled the caliph inside a rug and trampled him to death with their horses. Baghdad, the flower of Islam, was wrecked. This was the fate of any city that resisted the Mongols, according to Genghis Khans own battle plans. In 1260, the Mongols turned their attention to Syria. After only a seven-day siege, Aleppo fell, and some of the population was massacred. Having seen the destruction of Baghdad and Aleppo, Damascus surrendered to the Mongols without a fight. The center of the Islamic world now drifted south to Cairo. Interestingly enough, during this time the Crusaders controlled several small coastal principalities in the Holy Land. The Mongols approached them, offering an alliance against the Muslims. The Crusaders erstwhile enemies, the Mamluks, also sent emissaries to the Christians offering an alliance against the Mongols. Discerning that the Mongols were a more immediate threat, the Crusader states opted to remain nominally neutral, but agreed to allow the Mamluk armies to pass unhindered through Christian-occupied lands. Hulagu Khan Throws Down the Gauntlet In 1260, Hulagu sent two envoys to Cairo with a threatening letter for the Mamluk sultan. It said, in part: To Qutuz the Mamluk, who fled to escape our swords. You should think of what happened to other countries and submit to us. You have heard how we have conquered a vast empire and have purified the earth of the disorders that tainted it. We have conquered vast areas, massacring all the people. Whither can you flee? What road will you use to escape us? Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, our swords like thunderbolts, our hearts as hard as the mountains, our soldiers as numerous as the sand. In response, Qutuz had the two ambassadors sliced in half, and set their heads up on the gates of Cairo for all to see. He likely knew that this was the gravest possible insult to the Mongols, who practiced an early form of diplomatic immunity. Fate Intervenes Even as the Mongol emissaries were delivering Hulagus message to Qutuz, Hulagu himself received word that his brother Mongke, the Great Khan, had died. This untimely death set off a succession struggle within the Mongolian royal family. Hulagu had no interest in the Great Khanship himself, but he wanted to see his younger brother  Kublai  installed as the next Great Khan. However, the leader of the Mongol homeland, Toluis son Arik-Boke, called for a quick council (kuriltai) and had himself named Great Khan. As civil strife broke out between the claimants, Hulagu took the bulk of his army north to Azerbaijan, ready to join in the succession fight if necessary. The Mongolian leader left just 20,000 troops under the command of one of his generals, Ketbuqa, to hold the line in Syria and Palestine. Sensing that this was an opportunity not to be lost, Qutuz immediately gathered an army of roughly equal size and marched for Palestine, intent on crushing the Mongol threat. The Battle of Ayn Jalut On September 3, 1260, the two armies met at the  oasis  of Ayn Jalut (meaning The Eye of Goliath or Goliaths Well), in the Jezreel Valley of Palestine. The Mongols had the advantages of self-confidence and hardier horses, but the Mamluks knew the terrain better and had larger (thus faster) steeds. The Mamluks also deployed an early form of firearm, a sort of hand-held cannon, which frightened the Mongol horses. (This tactic cannot have surprised the Mongol riders themselves too greatly, however, since the Chinese had been using  gunpowder weapons  against them for centuries.) Qutuz used a classic Mongol tactic against Ketbuqas troops, and they fell for it. The Mamluks sent out a small portion of their force, which then feigned retreat, drawing the Mongols into an ambush. From the hills, Mamluk warriors poured down on three sides, pinning the Mongols in a withering cross-fire. The Mongols fought back throughout the morning hours, but finally the survivors began to retreat in disorder. Ketbuqa refused to flee in disgrace, and fought on until his horse either stumbled or was shot out from under him. The Mamluks captured the Mongol commander, who warned that they could kill him if they liked, but Be not deceived by this event for one moment, for when the news of my death reaches Hulagu Khan, the ocean of his wrath will boil over, and from Azerbaijan to the gates of Egypt will quake with the hooves of Mongol horses. Qutuz then ordered Ketbuqa beheaded. Sultan Qutuz himself did not survive to return to Cairo in triumph. On the way home, he was assassinated by a group of conspirators led by one of his generals, Baybars. Aftermath of the Battle of Ayn Jalut The Mamluks suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Ayn Jalut, but nearly the entire Mongol contingent was destroyed. This battle was a severe blow to the confidence and reputation of the hordes, which had never suffered such a defeat. Suddenly, they did not seem invincible. Despite the loss, however, the Mongols did not simply fold their tents and go home. Hulagu returned to Syria in 1262, intent on avenging Ketbuqa. However, Berke Khan of the Golden Horde had converted to Islam, and formed an alliance against his uncle Hulagu. He attacked Hulagus forces, promising revenge for the sacking of Baghdad. Although this war among the khanates drew off much of Hulagus strength, he continued to attack the Mamluks, as did his successors. The Ilkhanate Mongols drove towards Cairo in 1281, 1299, 1300, 1303 and 1312. Their only victory was in 1300, but it proved short-lived. Between each attack, the adversaries engaged in espionage, psychological warfare and alliance-building against one another. Finally, in 1323, as the fractious Mongol Empire began to disintegrate, the Khan of the Ilkhanids sued for a peace agreement with the Mamluks. A Turning-Point in History Why were the Mongols never able to defeat the Mamluks, after mowing through most of the known world? Scholars have suggested a number of answers to this puzzle. It may be simply that the internal strife among different branches of the Mongolian Empire prevented them from ever throwing enough riders against the Egyptians. Possibly, the greater professionalism and more advanced weapons of the Mamluks gave them an edge. (However, the Mongols had defeated other well-organized forces, such as the Song Chinese.) The most likely explanation may be that the environment of the Middle East defeated the Mongols. In order to have fresh horses to ride throughout a day-long battle, and also to have horse milk, meat and blood for sustenance, each Mongol fighter had a string of at least six or eight small horses. Multiplied by even the 20,000 troops that Hulagu left behind as a rear guard before Ayn Jalut, that is well over 100,000 horses. Syria and Palestine are famously parched. In order to provide water and fodder for so many horses, the Mongols had to press attacks only in the fall or spring, when the rains brought new grass for their animals to graze on. Even at that, they must have used a lot of energy and time finding grass and water for their ponies. With the bounty of the Nile at their disposal, and much shorter supply-lines, the Mamluks would have been able to bring grain and hay to supplement the sparse pastures of the Holy Land. In the end, it may have been grass, or the lack thereof, combined with internal Mongolian dissension, that saved the last remaining Islamic power from the Mongol hordes. Sources Reuven Amitai-Preiss.  Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260-1281, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Charles J. Halperin. The Kipchack Connection: The Ilkhans, the Mamluks and Ayn Jalut,  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 63, No. 2 (2000), 229-245. John Joseph Saunders.  The History of the Mongol Conquests, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Kenneth M. Setton, Robert Lee Wolff, et al.  A History of the Crusades: The Later Crusades, 1189-1311, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). John Masson Smith, Jr. Ayn Jalut: Mamluk Success or Mongol Failure?,  Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Dec., 1984), 307-345.

Peppered Moth Lab Report Essay Example

Peppered Moth Lab Report Essay Example Peppered Moth Lab Report Paper Peppered Moth Lab Report Paper Explain how natural selection relates to survival of the fittest concept Natural Selection is when organisms with better adaptations live longer and reproduce in greater numbers and the concept of survival of the fittest is the idea that production is the most important thing and the ultimate goal is to survive long enough to reproduce and pass on your genes because this means that your genes will stay in the same population. These two concepts relate because of their common idea of reproduction and the passing on of genes that better help the species to stay alive in their environment. . What determines whether a particular variation is an adaptation or not? A particular variation can be determined as an adaptation if you see the species with a certain variation better surviving than those without the specific variation. If this is seen then it can be determined that the variation is an adaptation because it helped the species survive better in their environment. 3. What changes are evident in the graphs from Pre-longitudinal Revolution (Part I) and Post-Industrial Revolution (Part Ill)? Use examples from your data (graphs and/or tables). Evident changes that occurred between the Pre-longitudinal Revolution and Post-Industrial Revolution were the number of Black Moths remaining at the end of the five trials went up in Part Ill compared to Part l. For example, in Part I at the end of the fifth trial there were nine black moths engaging and twenty-one white moths remaining but at the end of the fifth trial in Part Ill the numbers were reversed and there were twenty-one Black Moths remaining and only nine White Moths remaining. This shows how the Black Moths increased and the awaited Moths decreased. 4. What is the driving force that caused the number of white and black Peppered Moth in the Manchester, England population to change? The driving force that caused the number of white and black Peppered Moth population to change was the Industrial Revolution during the late sasss when smoke particles produced y developing industry began to blacken the trunks of the trees on which the moths rested. This made the black moths blend in better with the trees so they were better protected from predators than the white moths who were more visible on the dark trees. As a result there was a change in the population and the black moth population increased and white moth population decreased. 5. Which moth had a higher fitness during the Industrial Revolution? Define fitness in your answer The black moth had higher fitness during the Industrial Revolution because it was able to survive long enough to reproduce and pass on TTS genes. Therefore the black moths genes will stay in the population. Overall, it was more fit than the white moth because it reproduced more and survived better than the white moth. 6. What is the independent (manipulated) variable in this activity (Parts l, II, and Ill)? (hint: this variable is graphed on the x-axis) The independent variable is the number of trials performed. 7. What is the dependent (responding) variable in this activity (Parts l, II, and Ill)? (hint: this variable is graphed on the y-axis). The dependent variable is the number of moths remaining after each trial. Extra-credit Question: . What aspect of natural selection (evolution) does the following step in the activity represent: At the end of each trial, replace each black moth removed with a white moth. Replace each white moth removed with a black moth. Explain your answer. Speciation is the aspect of evolution that best represents the white and black moths being replaced by each other. This activity shows how favorable adoptions gradually accumulate in the population and overtime the adaptation overtakes the entire population and a new species is eventually forms. This activity represents the process of speciation.

How to keep Your New Year’s resolutions

How to keep Your New Year’s resolutions This is the time of year where everyone’s optimistic about how much better they’re going to do once the calendar flips over to January 1. We’re all going to be healthier, more motivated, more focused, and more zen, right? Sure. For a little while. Then reality hits, and those resolutions start looking more like quaint relics of last month. But we could all stand to be healthier, more productive, nicer, etc., so how do you make those stick well into February and beyond? Let’s look at some tips you can use to help make better, more achievable, and more successful personal and professional goals for the coming year.Build in some accountability.Some of us are better than others at self-motivation and keeping ourselves on track. For others of us, well, the excuses mount. I’m so busy. I’ll deal with this later. I can’t do this because X, Y, and Z. The main problem here is that you’re the one monitoring yourself, and you’re the one both making and accepting the decision to slack off on the resolutions. If that sounds painfully familiar (and if it does, I hear you), that’s why you need someone else to help keep you accountable to yourself.In my own life, I find I’m much more successful at staying on track when I know I’m going to have to talk about it with someone else. For example, it helps me hunker down and read my book club’s current book when I know I still have 50 pages to go, but there’s an official date and time set to talk about it with my friends.So basically, find a resolution buddy- or several buddies, for different things. That can be as simple as finding someone to go with you to the gym, making it more of an appointment than a chore. Or it can mean having regular check-ins or coffee dates where you talk about your progress on a particular goal. At work, it can be a colleague who’s also interested in taking on more projects or arriving on time every da y. Having someone else who knows what you’re up to can motivate you to make time for your task (whatever it may be), and give you a sense of purpose.Start small- and specific.If you want to make a lasting change, you’re setting yourself up to fail if you set a task so overwhelming or complicated that you’ll get frustrated right away. A frustrating resolution is often a failed resolution, so what’s the point of using â€Å"go big or go home† as your guiding principle here? For example, weight loss is a pretty common resolution for the new year. It’s also very vague. Sure, you want to lose weight. How much, and over how much time? Setting smaller, specific goals will help you chip away at the larger one.If you want to lose weight, say you’ll lose five pounds by February. Then another five pounds by March. Setting these smaller, month-by-month goals gives you milestones that you can hit, and feel proud about reaching. Feeling successful will make you more likely to stick with your new weight loss regime. On the other hand, if you say â€Å"I will lose 50 pounds next year† without really breaking down how that will happen, you’re more likely to feel overwhelmed about the massive change you need to make, and let the whole thing lapse.At work, think along the same lines. Say you want to be more organized at work. What specific steps can you take to get there? Maybe the first step is downloading a productivity app that can help you manage your schedule and projects, and the step after that is tackling your email inbox and organizing it into folders. These are specific, manageable tasks that contribute to the larger goal, but are easy to accomplish in, say, an afternoon instead of languishing on a mental â€Å"when I have time† list.Use the whole year.Part of the reason resolutions are such a popular idea is that we have this sense that once the year changes, everything should be different and bette r, instantly. The reality is that this new you should be an all-year thing, not an â€Å"everything right now† thing. Set mini-goals throughout the year, or think about the milestones you want to hit before next December.For example, if your goal is to save more money, put specific dollar amounts to that goal throughout the year, so you’re not scrambling (or giving up on the notion) all at once to meet the goal late in the year. You can set up automatic deposits on a regular basis. Moving, say, $25 from your paycheck to savings every pay period is going to be a lot less painful than trying to move over thousands of dollars all at once from checking to savings. Use the calendar to figure out how often you’ll need to do something to make your goal for the year.Be flexible.Things change in life. And sometimes they change quickly. So flexibility is a key quality of any resolution. When you’re thinking about your resolutions for the next year, think about pote ntial â€Å"plan B† goals as well. If you can’t get to the gym four mornings a week like you want to do, what other times could potentially work as well?Feel free to revisit any resolutions throughout the year, too. Maybe you were too optimistic about the number of online classes you would have time to take to build skills. Maybe you had some unexpected costs that put a dent in how much money you can sock away toward your savings goals. If something’s not working, for whatever reason, modify it in a way that does work for you.Expect to fail sometimes.If you were already perfect at something, it likely wouldn’t be on your resolutions list in the first place, right? Embrace the imperfections of this process. This is about being a better self, not necessarily the perfect self. (Let’s face it: a perfect self would be pretty boring, no?) And that means treating this like a journey, and learning from any failures or mistakes you make along that journey.I f you’ve set a goal for yourself of getting promoted or finding a new job within three months and that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t mean you’ve totally failed at your goal and should walk away. It just means you should ask yourself what worked and what didn’t, and try again.Reward yourself.Fun fact: bribes work wonderfully well when it comes to motivation, whether you’re a kid or a seasoned adult. So build in your own personal rewards program for achieving your milestone goals, or completing a full year of resolution-ing. And be creative- if your resolution is to lose weight and your standard self-reward is, say, ice cream, then your reward is undercutting your progress. But you could sub in a fun activity that you don’t get to do often, or buying yourself something you’ve had your eye on for a while. #treatyoselfThe reward doesn’t have to be anything extravagant or even all that personal. It could be as simple as allowing yourself a take-out lunch for every two weeks’ worth of lunches you pack and bring to work, or a 10-minute break for every two hours you go without checking your social media during the workday. Deprivation without any kind of reward can get unappealing fast, so if you can give yourself something to look forward to in exchange, you’re more likely to keep going with your progress.Take responsibility for your goals.Remember, this whole thing is about you and what you think will make you a happier, wealthier, wiser, more productive, or more successful person. You already know what needs to be done (hence the resolutions)- but you also know yourself better than anyone else does, so you know what your pitfalls, distractions, and weaknesses are likely to be. Even if you find an accountability buddy or tell the world about your grand plan to apply to grad school, it’s entirely on you to make these goals happen. The more control you accept and the more confidence you h ave in your ability to take concrete steps toward those goals, the easier it will be to make choices that support your resolutions.By setting realistic, achievable goals for yourself, and doing some planning ahead to keep yourself engaged in your self-improvement plan, you’re already stepping up your resolution game. It’s easy to say, â€Å"I should do X.† It’s much harder to say, â€Å"Here are the 10 things I need to do to achieve X, and here’s the timeline I want to follow.† But that commitment is worth it, because the more work you put in up front, the more work you’re going to want to do over the next year to make sure you’re getting something out of this process. We don’t get to be entirely new people at 12:01 on January 1, but with a little effort, we can feel more accomplished when the next round of New Year’s resolution-making hits. Good luck!

Tennessee's Partner Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Tennessee's Partner - Essay Example The characters, Tennessee’s Partner and Tennessee were known to be notorious at Sandy Barn, being termed as gamblers and thieves. The vagrant criminal activities of Tennessee involving accosting strangers and stealing weapons and money had finally cost his apprehension and trial. Tennessee’s Partner, as a token of their friendship, tried to bribe the court in exchange for his friend’s freedom. However, despite Tennessee’s Partner’s heroic stance to save his friend, the eventually conviction to death was not prevented. His loyalty to Tennessee was viewed by the townsfolk as exemplary and â€Å"cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a suspicion of his general sanity† (Harte, 1899, last par.). The last discourse attested to Tennessee’s partner’s unstable mental condition believing to see his partner again. The short story, in its vividly written content, manifested the loyalty and fidelity accorded in fri endship despite challenges and unconventional endeavors. Harte has revealed the aesthetic value of standing for one’s friend, especially in times of trials and until the end. Despite the notoriety in character, that being perceived and typecast as criminals, there remains a touch of tenderness and love, a product of a bond of friendship woven through time.