All Quite On The Western Front Essays - English-language Films

All Quite On The Western Front All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and during the war. This novel is able to portray the overwhelming effects and power war has to deteriorate the human spirit. Starting out leaving you're home and family pr d and ready to fight for you country, to ending up tired and scarred both physically and mentally beyond description. *At the beginning of the novel nationalist feelings are present through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war it is apparent how pointless war really is. *All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that greatly helps in the understanding the effects war. The novel best shows the attitudes of the soldiers before the war and during the war. Before the war there are high morals and growing nationalist feel gs. During the war however, the soldiers discover the trauma of war. They discover that it is a waste of time and their hopes and dreams of their life fly further and further away. The remains of Paul Baumer's company had moved behind the German front l es for a short rest at the beginning of the novel. After Behm became Paul's first dead schoolmate, Paul viewed the older generation bitterly, particularly Kantorek, the teacher who convinced Paul and his classmates to join the military. " While they tau t that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already that death-throes are stronger.... And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through."(P. 13) Paul felt completely etrayed. " We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short." (P 139) Views of death and becoming more comfortable with their destiny in the r became more apparent throughout the novel. Paul loses faith in the war in each passing day. * Through out the novel it was evident that the war scarred the soldiers permanently mentally. Everyone was scared to go to war when it started. Young recruits were first sent because the veterans knew they were going to come back dead. "When we run t again, although I am very excited, I suddenly think: "where's Himmelstoss?" Quickly I jump back into the dug-out and find him with a small scratch lying in a corner pretending to be wounded." (P 131) Even the big men like Himmelstoss are scared to go ght. "He is in a panic; he is new to it too. But it makes me mad that the young recruits should be out there and he here." (P 131) The soldiers were being crushed and seeing things get destroyed, but because they had detached themselves they thought t y were able to handle it. " We believe in such things no longer, we believe in war."(P.88) That was Paul's motto. Although, as time went on he began to realize something wasn't right. He tried to replace these feelings with pleasure, so he spent the ight at the French girls' house. After he just felt worse and unfulfilled. "...we are crude and sorrowful and superficial-- I believe we are lost."(P123) When Paul realizes that we are all brothers, true mental struggle is seen. " Comrade, I did not ant to kill you...Why do they never tell us you are poor devils like us... and that you have the same fear of death...If we could just throw away these riffles and this uniform you could be my brother..." ( P. 223-224). The apparent change in views on e war has become extremely apparent. *In a war there is obviously apparent physical scars. As seen throughout the entire book, the destruction of war is great, on not only lives and property, but also on the human spirit. The young men in this book and of those of the times were subjec to physical torment. Eyes were blinded from such sights as, limbs being blown off, blood flowing everywhere, and innocent men dying in agony. When soldiers take shelter in the graveyard, bombs explode all around them; the living hide in coffins and th dead are thrown from their graves. The destructive power is so great that even the fundamental differences between life and death become blurred. *All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that portrayed

Gigantophis - Facts and Figures

Gigantophis - Facts and Figures Name: Gigantophis (Greek for giant snake); pronounced jih-GAN-toe-fiss Habitat: Woodlands of northern Africa and southern Asia Historical Epoch: Late Eocene (40-35 million years ago) Size and Weight: About 33 feet long and half a ton Diet: Small animals Distinguishing Characteristics: Large size; capacious jaws About Gigantophis Like many other creatures in the history of life on earth, Gigantophis had the misfortune of being the biggest of its kind until its fame was eclipsed by something even bigger. Measuring about 33 feet long from the tip of its head to the end of its tail and weighing up to half a ton, this prehistoric snake of late Eocene northern Africa (about 40 million years ago) ruled the proverbial swamp until the discovery of the much, much bigger Titanoboa (up to 50 feet long and one ton) in South America. To extrapolate from its habitat and the behavior of similar, modern, but much smaller snakes, paleontologists believe that Gigantophis may have preyed on mammalian megafauna, perhaps including the distant elephant ancestor Moeritherium. Ever since its discovery in Algeria over a hundred years ago, Gigantophis had been represented in the fossil record by a single species, G. garstini. However, the identification in 2014 of a second Gigantophis specimen, in Pakistan, leaves open the possibility of another species being erected in the near future. This find also indicates that Gigantophis and madtsoiid snakes like it had a much wider distribution than previously believed, and may well have ranged across the expanse of Africa and Eurasia during the Eocene epoch. (As for Gigantophis own ancestors, these smaller, mostly undiscovered fossil snakes lurk in the underbrush of the Paleocene epoch, the period of time just after the extinction of the dinosaurs).

Database Management. MSSQL Server Database Essay

Database Management. MSSQL Server Database - Essay Example In this case the university requirements deal with a variety of services which requires their data to be stored in a database so that it can be successfully fetched and modified for performing a variety of functions. The database technology that can be offered for an online educational institution would be a server based database system for payment of student fees and other details, student registration, facilitating admission procedure, producing reports and others (About.com, 2008). The MSSQL server database would most suitable for mapping the various requirements of the university. It is recognized to map the organizational requirements and used widely. It is able to take care of scalability of the university operations and service, meaning that it takes care of the various additions of new courses, new students and various other programs, modifications relating to the various rules and obligations. Improves visibility of operations for student registration and admission facilities. Stores appropriate records for further fetching of reports of student activity and staff activity. Quite easy to extend the schema for enlarging the database. This database variant serves a set of standards that is required to launch ecommerce database requirements. The features of the database are as follows: Efficient buffer management to cache pages in memory so that more amounts the pages are cached the better the system operates. The transaction management is quite efficient in the manner that if a transaction is not able to complete it is roll backed so that changes can be reversed. In that manner data integrity is maintained. The concurrency control is quite effective and it ensures data integrity. It facilitates replication which ensures that proper synchronization is done for the information in the databases. It also facilities merge and snapshot replication. The OLAP provides analysis services for the data objects. The reporting services and notification services serve as a great function to the database functionality. It offers a great GUI for dragging and dropping the elements in the database arena which had made it quite high in usability for greater acceptance and usage. It also offers greater facility for supporting various front end platforms for wide usage and business applicability. Conclusion Taking into account the above factors, MSSQL server stands out in the crowd for all the features which makes it quite flexible, scalable and cross-functional. The above features make sure that all the university would be able to accommodate all features required to make it a virtual campus and provide effective and efficient

Global Economy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Global Economy - Essay Example This paper also argues that the global system of economic affairs is prone to repeated crises due to the nature of neoliberalism and capitalist forms of economic development throughout the globe, the following will explore the recent global economic crisis and compare it with the Great Depression of 1929. Accordingly, the current economic crisis shares many parallels with the economic crisis that occurred eighty years ago. This paper will look at the role of organizations such as the IMF in mitigating – although not hindering – the outbreak of the global economic crisis. The essay then concludes with an overview of the issues analysed (Harvey, 2007: 33-27). Planned capitalism, expressed through governmental economic intervention and the Bretton Woods Agreements of 1944, exploded during the 1970s. Bretton Woods, which established both the World Bank and the IMF, symbolised the supremacy of the United States in setting international monetary policy. Hobsbawm argues that these two international institutions were â€Å"de facto subordinated to US policy† (1994: 274). When the United States pulled out of the Bretton Woods monetary system in 1971 and allowed its currency to float in international markets, it caused a chain reaction with unexpected global ramifications. Currencies were devalued across the board and the United States, as well as its Western allies, was ill equipped to deal with the resulting oil embargo implemented by OPEC two years later. When OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, announced that it would no longer be shipping oil to countries that had supported Israel in its war with Egypt and Sy ria in 1973, it triggered an international calamity known as the Oil Crisis of 1973. The Yom Kippur War – as the war between Israel and the joint forces of Egypt and Syria in 1973 is now known – inadvertently led to a global economic crisis OPEC members

Law of Insurance Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Law of Insurance - Case Study Example , which is paramount to analysing the first part of the problem.4 The case of Lucena v Crauford [1806], the court held that the fact that the claimant had a factual loss was not enough to prove that he had an insurable interest in the property.5 The decision in this case may apply to our current facts scenario as Andy and Bhavinda would not have an insurable interest in the stamps since they do not belong to them; although they may suffer a factual loss of owing their friend the value of the stamps through the principles of bailment.6 Another leading case in this area is the case of Macura v Northern Assurance Co. Ltd. [1925]. In that case, Mr. Macura had taken out an insurance policy in his own name on timber which legally belonged to the company, although the company was owned and operated by him; after the timber had been destroyed by a fire and Mr. Macura tried to make a claim under his policy, the court held that he did not have an insurable interest and only the company would h ave an insurable interest in that particular timber.7 This comes from the principle that a legal company is a separate legal person from its members.8 The only way that the stamps would have been covered by the policy is if there had been provision for third-party losses; however, this is not stated within this particular facts scenario. The problem here is that UDO is refusing to pay anything, citing that the couple were significantly under-insured. They are basically citing that Andy and Bhavinda misrepresented the amount of goods that they were in possession of to be covered. In effect, the test described in the case of Pan Atlantic Insurance Co. Ltd v Pine Top Insurance Co. Ltd. [1995] should be used by the court to determine whether or not s.2(2) of the Misrepresentation Act 1967 should apply.9 The test determines that the circumstance may be material even if it does not induce a prudent underwriters decision to accept it or not and at what premium; however, if it is determined that it did not induce the contract, the insurance company cannot use it to avoid the contract.10 By applying the test to this case, the fact that Andy and Bhavinda had only indicated that the value of the contents was only 10,000 would at least have some effect on premiums charged, and therefore would most likely be determined by the court as a misrepresentation of fact as covered under s.2(2) of the Misrepresentation Act 1967, for which the remedy is rescission and the insurer would be able to rescind the contract and refuse paying out any claims, as they did in fact do as explained in our facts scenario. However, Andy may be attempt to rely on the case of Joel v Law Union and Crown Insurance Co. [1903], in which it was held that there is no need to disclose what you do not know; however, it was shown in the facts that he did know about Bhavinda storing the stamps, he had in fact just forgotten at the time he was purchasing his insurance.11 Since the fact that only 10,000 was fal sely provided

Lean Manufacturing: Concept Overview and Disadvantages

Lean Manufacturing: Concept Overview and Disadvantages Introduction The most noteworthy evolution of lean accounting in recent years has been a sharpening focus on value. Lean has always been centered on creating value for customers and eliminating non-value adding waste (Asefeso, p 9). Lean accounting has been steadily making it possible for manufacturers to explicitly measure value in financial terms and to focus improvement efforts on increasing value. With many manufacturers now implementing lean, it becomes essential to discover what part of lean accounting has played in the changes made. This paper will give a brief background of lean manufacturing and a general overview of what lean accounting is. I will also explore some problems and disadvantages of lean accounting from various researched articles. Background of Lean Manufacturing Lean is a philosophy that spurred from the Toyota Production System (TPS). TPS was created by Toyotas founder Sakichi Toyodo, Kiichiro Toyoda, and Taiichi Ohno. Much of TPS was also influenced by W. Edwards Demings statistic process control (SPC) and Henry Fords mass production lines. However, the Japanese were not impressed with Fords approach because it was filled with over-production, lots of inventory, and much waiting. Toyota identified these weaknesses in Fords production line and adapted the production line to create a more productive and reliable production line. TPS and lean also use just-in-time inventory where only small amounts of inventory were ordered and very little inventory was left waiting in the production line. This also was very different from Fords production line which usually bought high volumes of materials and had high inventory levels to lower costs. After TPS proved to be successful for Toyota, many companies adapted their production lines to incorporate lean principles. Lean management was first introduced in the United States in the early 1980s after a global study of the performance of automotive assembly plants. Essentially, the primary principle of lean is that it is a tool used in manufacturing to eliminate waste, improve quality, and reduce cost. Waste is eliminated by identifying non-value added activity. The main objective is to supply perfect value to the customer through a perfect value product that has no waste. Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems (What is Lean?). Companies may face certain challenges when applying lean to their production lines. First, lean should be applied to companies that have production lines that are routine, predictable, stable, and can be flow charted. Second, lean implementation may take years and can be very costly in large companies. Depending on how integrated the systems and how disciplined the production line is, it is quite possible that a lean implementation may fail. There are several key lean manufacturing principles that need to be understood in order to implement lean. Failure to understand and apply these principles will most likely result in failure or a lack of commitment from everyone (Key Lean Manufacturing). These principles are as follows: 1. Elimination of waste; 2. Continuous improvement; 3. Respect for humanity; 4. Levelized production; 5. Just-in-time production; and 6. Quality built-in (Key Lean Manufacturing). Management may also be discouraged to adopt lean manufacturing right away because the lean implementation is a long term investment. Most CEOs make decisions that benefit the company in the short run, and may choose not to adopt lean because it may show unfavorable results on the financial statement during the early stages. Lean will cause a decrease in inventory levels, causing assets on the balance sheet to drop which is not always favorable. However, these short term negative results will eventually become long run gains as the company benefits from less inventory holding costs and improved processes. Background of Lean Accounting While most people associate lean to manufacturing processes, it is now taking on a very important key role for companies to adopt lean throughout the other departments of the company. An example of a support function that uses the lean concept is the accounting field. Since accounting is a support department, it should apply lean principles after the manufacturing department has incorporated lean. Accountings main duty is to accurately measure and communicate financial activity, and by adopting lean accounting after successfully implementing lean manufacturing would allow for the accurate measurement of the new production system. Lean accounting evolved from a concern that traditional accounting practices were inadequate and, in fact, a deterrent to the adoption of some of the necessary improvements to manufacturing operations. While manufacturing managers knew that investments in automation and the adoption of lean manufacturing practices were the right things to do, traditional accounting was often an obstacle to such improvements, yielding numbers that only supported investments when they could be justified by reductions in direct labor, with little benefit ascribed to any improvements to quality, flexibility or company throughput (Asefeso, p 10). Lean accounting is the cornerstone of a completely different model of manufacturing management. By itself, lean accounting has limited value, but as the financial basis for the application of logistics, superior management, factory operations, marketing, pricing, and other vital business functions, lean accounting is very powerful. A core principle of lean accounting is that the value stream is the only appropriate cost collection entity within the organization, as opposed to traditional accountings use of cells, cost or profit centers or departments normally based on smaller, functional groupings of work activity (Asefeso, p12). The main idea behind lean is minimizing waste, therefore creating more value for customers with fewer resources. Problems and Disadvantages of Lean Accounting Lean accounting may reduce the manufacturing process to a few numbers, but it does not provide a lot of information. There are several flaws of using the lean accounting approach. Speed gives you an advantage over the competition. No matter if you are first in a market or deliver a product faster, it will improve your competitiveness and hence your revenue. However, it is nearly impossible to determine this advantage quantitatively. How much does it get you to be in the market seven days earlier? One big thing in lean manufacturing is to reduce fluctuations. The more even your system works, the more profitable you will be. However, it is difficult to measure these fluctuations, even more difficult to determine the impact of an improvement on fluctuations, and hence nearly impossible to calculate the monetary benefit of reducing fluctuations. Yet another thing in lean is customer satisfaction, often described as value to the customer. What is the monetary damage if a delivery is delay ed, if a product breaks, if service is slow, or if your people are unfriendly? It is nearly impossible to know. Even more difficult to determine is how improvement measures will actually influence the above. How much does it cost you to provide a better service, how will this influence customer satisfaction, and what is your benefit from this? (The Problems of). Using lean accounting can also lead to bad decisions such as where to put the money when profits are maximized and where to take the money out that has been saved. There are also several disadvantages of using lean accounting. One disadvantage of lean accounting is that it requires a top-down, sometimes monumental cultural shift. Most manufacturing companies have cost accounting systems in place that measure production improvements in terms of short and medium-term cost reductions. However, lean accounting focuses on freeing up resources to increase the product or product lines value to customers and make more money. Senior management must therefore change their thinking from one focused on the bottom line to one focused somewhere between revenues and profits. Without managements full commitment, full implementation of an effective lean accounting system will stall (Wright). Accounting systems traditionally generate internal reports that owners and management both senior and departmental review and discuss. Lean accounting aims to translate the information into numbers that task-based employees in various departments can use. These accounting systems focus on compiling cost-based data. Since lean accounting focuses on value creation, companies often need to completely overhaul their accounting systems, collection and measurement procedures, controls and software. Any system overhaul can be daunting, but the scope of an accounting system overhaul can be particularly exhaustive (Wright). Lean accounting focuses on increasing revenues and profits by increasing the value of a companys products and services. When lean accounting systems focus on value stream instead of cost, they may inadvertently omit costs or ignore issues related to specific costs. Until a company fully captures a product or product lines value stream, accountants may not be able to appropriately price products or determine each products individual level of profitability (Wright). Effective lean thinking and lean accounting require input and involvement by all employees. Many employees in a traditional manufacturing or distribution environment are reactive, following the orders given them. Companies must therefore invest in training, developing and empowering all their employees to help them become proactive. This can be expensive and time consuming (Wright). Unless the accountants understand the way that lean works, in the worst case it seems to them that lean produces losses, not efficiencies. In a typical case, they cannot see the cost advantages. Those who were fighting to introduce lean into their companies reported over and over again that finding a way to reconcile accounting the way lean does it and standard cost accounting was proving to be much harder than it should be (Woods). Lean practitioners think of accounting in cash terms. Lean is against creating data and reports for their own sake. That would be considered another form of waste. In general, lean advocates have a jaundiced view of enterprise software and any general-purpose automation tools. The lean approach measures how well your value stream is working (Woods). The difference between lean accounting and standard cost accounting can be explained in a simple weight loss analogy. When dieting, standard cost accounting would advise you to weigh yourself once a week to see if youre losing weight. Lean accounting would measure your calorie intake and your exercise and then attempt to adjust them until you achieve the desired outcome. While this analogy is oversimplified, it does get to the core difference between lean and standard cost accounting. Lean accounting attempts to find measures that predict success. Standard cost accounting measures results after the fact (Woods). But even when the accounting types and the lean practitioners start to understand each other, problems remain. How can we reconcile the kind of data collection and accounting that lean demands and the standard cost accounting? Duplicated data collection and reporting is indeed a form of waste (Woods). Conclusion While lean accounting is still a work-in-process, there is now an agreed body of knowledge that is becoming the standard approach to accounting, control, and measurement. These principles, practices, and tools of lean accounting have been implemented in a wide range of companies at various stages on the journey to lean transformation. These methods can be readily adjusted to meet your companys specific needs and they rigorously maintain adherence to GAAP and external reporting requirements and regulations. Lean accounting is itself lean, low-waste, and visual, and frees up finance and accounting peoples time so they can become actively involved in lean change instead of being merely bean counters. Companies using lean accounting have better information for decision-making, have simple and timely reports that are clearly understood by everyone in the company, they understand the true financial impact of lean changes, they focus the business around the value created for the customers, and lean accounting actively drives the lean transformation. This helps the company to grow, to add more value for the customers, and to increase cash flow and value for the stockholders and owners (Maskell and Baggaley, p 43). Works Cited Asefeso, Ade. Lean Accounting, Second Edition. AA Global Sourcing Ltd, 2014. p 9, p10 and p12. Key Lean Manufacturing Principles. www.lean-manufacturing-junction.com. Accessed February 25, 2017. Maskell, Brian H. and Baggaley, Bruce L. Lean Accounting: Whats It All About?. Target Magazine. Association for Manufacturing Excellence, 2006. p 43. www.aicpa.org. Accessed February 25, 2017. The Problems of Cost Accounting with Lean. www.allaboutlean.com. Accessed February 27, 2017. What is Lean?. www.lean.org. Accessed February 25, 2017. Woods, Dan. Lean Accountings Fat Problem. Published July 28, 2009. www.forbes.com. Accessed March 1, 2017. Wright, Tiffany C. The Disadvantages of Lean Accounting. www.smallbusiness.chron.com. Accessed March 1, 2017.

Debating Immigration Essay -- Illegal Immigration, Illegal Immigrants

Debating Immigration Immigration is the movement of people into another nation with the intention of living there permanently. After a four centuries of immigration have passed and people have moved from region to region, the breeding of different races has caused there to be over two thousand different races. The social construction of stereotypes has a far greater impact on race. This is what leads to discrimination and finally unequal treatment and even hatred among immigrants of all shades of skin pigment. Like the history of past colonists who migrated to the USA started in the early 1600's, most modern day immigrants are motivated to relocate far from their original homes for the desire to improve their economic situation. These people are known as economic immigrants, who resettle in other countries such as USA in search of jobs, farmland, or business opportunities. Americans often view immigration as a problem, even though the USA has been shaped by immigrants. Born Americans often look down on new immigrants. Facts from the Encarta Encyclopedia states, "Immigrants are frequently targets of criticism, especially when the new arrivals come from a different country, rather then to be already among the established community. The vast majority of immigrants coming to the USA have come in search of jobs and the chance to create a better life for themselves and their families. In all of American history, less than ten percent of immigrants have come for political or religious reasons" (Encarta Encyclopedia). American's do expect immigrants to absorb the benefits and standards of American society, but most of them do maintain some of there cultur... ...about the value of immigration and the labors they provide to the USA" (U.S. Commissions Immigration Reform). Bibliography: Work Cited Completing Blue Prints for an Ideal Legal Immigration Policy. Center for Immigration Studies. Mar. 2000. Washington. 17 Sept. 2001 Congressional Authorization. U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. 7 Mar. 1998. 18 Sept. 2001 "Microsoft Corporation." Encarta Encyclopedia Online. 1993 - 2000. Encarta Encyclopedia. 18 Sept. 2001 Reason for Immigration. Immigration Issues. 1999. American Immigration Lawyers Association. 20 Sept. 2001 Tibbs, Brad. Personal Interview. 20 Sept. 2001. Timothy James McVeig. One Life for 168. Tribune-Star 2001. Indiana. 19 Sept. 2001 U.S. Immigration Citizenship Information. DV Information. 2000 - 2001. Commercial Services website. 19 Sept. 2001