Tuesday, December 24, 2019

GLOBAL ECON Essay - 2417 Words

Global Economic Environment Group Presentation Written Report (Group 1) Christy Lai Kei Kwan 12119785D 30th September 2013 Question 1 (a) How has Apple capitalized on the globalization of production? What advantages does manufacturing in China offer the company? ANS: Globalization has been a heat topic in these past years. Many international companies will use this advantage for their own production, and Apple is definitely one of the significant examples. Below shown are the ways that Apple capitalized on the globalization of production. Firstly, Apple finds and searches subcontractors from places such as Korea, Taiwan, China and even Germany. It keeps expanding itself by improvements as well. For example, it replaced plastic†¦show more content†¦Thirdly, since these Indian workers do not work directly under the American law environment, they will then work in a more free and relaxed environment. With the existence of the benefits above, there are certain risks that are involved in outsourcing. The workers are not directly supervised by the American law firm therefore the service will then not be guaranteed. If there are any mistakes, the firm will have a worse reputation and image consequently. Also, there may be a chance of exploitation of Indian workers because they have lower bargaining power. In this certain case, the workers will be less devoted during work and have less sense of belonging to that law company. (b) Which group gain from the outsourcing of legal services? Which group loses? On balance, do you think that this kind of outsourcing is a good thing, or a bad thing? Why? ANS: Using a monetary point of view, the owners of the firm surely gain from the reduction in costs. Besides, the US firms will earn by enlarging its profits. Most significantly, the Indian workers are gaining from this outsourcing activity. They can have a stable profession in the States and they may earn a higher salary comparing to the low skilled jobs provided in India. For the groups that will lose, they are the US lawyers or some of the Indian workers in special cases. The US lawyers may have difficulties in finding jobs since the Indian workers are hired. There will be then less US lawyers will beShow MoreRelatedEcon Final of Question and Answer Over Global Issues2713 Words   |  11 Pagespractices; it can infect all forms of government and knows no economic distinction. Although, most of the time it is a national matter, it usually bears international consequences. Briefly please describe the four forms of corruption and give a global example to each form of corruption. 1.) Petty Corruption is a public and private agent agreeing on exchanging the access to the service for money, a gift, or the promise of a future favor. When a government official requires a small business to payRead MoreThe Socio Scientific Issue Of Global Warming Essay1413 Words   |  6 Pagessocio-scientific issue The Socio-scientific issue of Global Warming Global warming is an extremely controversial issue as there are many different theories surrounding it, including the theory that it simply doesn’t exist. The most agreeable concept surrounding global warming is that gas emissions have different effects on the temperatures on Earth, however how these gases effect the Earth is the focal point of the global warming debate. The physics reasoning behind global warming is that air is mostly made upRead MoreClimate Change And Its Effects On Economic Growth Essay8671 Words   |  35 Pagescoin are the basis of the climate-economy analysis. This means that human activities, mostly combustion of fossil fuels, industrialization, and deforestation leads to increased emissions in greenhouse gases which trap heat radiations resulting to global warming that in turn results to climate change that has adverse effects on the social and economic development. Figure 1 below shows annual average temperature trend for Kenya from 1980 to 2008. The trendline clearly indicates an increasing patternRead MoreEffects Of The Oil Prices On The Economy1709 Words   |  7 Pagesprice shocks on stock markets are considered as significant challenging in developing oil-importing counties and also oil-exporting countries (Kaufmann, and Banerjee, 2014). According to Park and Ratti, (2008), the crude oil price shocks has affect on global economy. This problem is concerned by economists since to find solutions by focusing on the impact of oil price shocks and on stock markets in oil exporting countries and oil importing countries whereas their finding point out that the main responseRead MoreSingapore As A Financial And Transportation Hub And A Global Commerce887 Words   |  4 PagesSingapore serves as a financial and transportation hub and a global commerce. Its economy is known for being the free, innovative, competitive, and business-friendly. It integrated itself in many economic sectors including financial services (fourth-leading financial centre), manufacturing, oil-refining (third-largest oil-refining centre). By the end of the 20th century, Singapore has shifted from a setting up a nation-state into a developed and global city. The city built a competitive economy through theRead MoreDiscuss Pros and Cons for Joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership837 Words   |  3 PagesTotal GDP of $28.1 trillion US dollars. That is almost equivalent to 40% of the world’s economy, and they are all available for open trade once Econ 305 Rose Schaufele, Jesse Long this trade agreement fully takes effect (Trans 2014). In regards to the Asia Pacific region, â€Å"The region is home to 40% of the world’s population, produces nearly 60% of global GDP, and includes some of the fastest growing economies in the world (Williams 2013).† Also, trade with United States of America is â€Å"†¦the equivalentRead MoreFinancial Deregulation and Capital Control1283 Words   |  5 Pagesï » ¿Financial deregulation and capital control The financial markets for a long time were regulated following the aftershocks of the global recession which affected several economies across the globe. It was until the 1980s that the federal government passed the Deregulation and Monetary Act which was aimed at providing deregulation for the financial institutions. This gave the banks the flexibility to compete and extend their services at a much easier and faster way in a very competitive market andRead MoreMarketing Goals And Objectives Of A New Zealand Appliance Market Essay2360 Words   |  10 Pages Econ Innovation’s first product is an eco-friendly refrigerator resourced from recycled materials, with smart technology and app capabilities to inform owners of upcoming food wastage. The Smart Fridge aims to combine luxurious aesthetics with eco-conscious manufacturing practices to provide a solution to growing global concern surrounding food wastage which in currently overlooked by competitors in the New Zealand applian ce market. Econ Innovation has identified the target market as female householdRead More The Impact of Chinas Modern Foreign Policies on Economic Growth1229 Words   |  5 PagesGrowth Recent Chinese economic policies have shot the country into the world economy at full speed. As testimony of this, Chinas gross domestic product has risen to seventh in the world, and its economy is growing at over nine percent per year (econ-gen 1). Starting in 1979, the Chinese have implemented numerous economic and political tactics to open the Chinese marketplace to the rest of the world. Just a few areas Chinas government is addressing are agricultural technology, the medical marketRead MoreChinas Economic Growth Due to Recent Foreign Policies1301 Words   |  6 PagesPolicies Recent Chinese economic policies have shot the country into the world economy at full speed. As testimony of this, Chinas gross domestic product has risen to seventh in the world, and its economy is growing at over nine percent per year (econ-gen 1). Starting in 1979, the Chinese have implemented numerous economic and political tactics to open the Chinese marketplace to the rest of the world. Just a few areas Chinas government is addressing are agricultural technology, the medical market

Monday, December 16, 2019

Ethnographic Methods Free Essays

Examine the advantages and disadvantages of using ethnographic methods for sociological research I am going to look at the advantages and disadvantages of using ethnographic methods for sociological research. Ethnography is in-depth research into people’s lives through the use of primary data such as Observations and Interviews, and also secondary data such as diaries, and official documents. The first method of research I am going to look at is a primary research method that is unstructured interviews. We will write a custom essay sample on Ethnographic Methods or any similar topic only for you Order Now There are a few advantages to unstructured interviews such as; if a researcher is going to conduct and unstructured interview then the participant is more likely to discuss sensitive information with them, this is because they may feel that the interviewer is sympathetic and understanding and so are more likely to open up towards them. Another advantage is that it allows people to explain their answers further if they need to, for example with questionnaires the person answering may not be able to explain why they put that answer, and so their point is not put across as they would like to have been. There are also some disadvantages to unstructured interviews such as it takes time and can cost a lot of money; although this method is very effective at finding out detailed information about a person and their life, it can take a lot of time to conduct an interview and even longer as it is unstructured so the interviewer can ask as many questions as they like; it could cost quite a lot as you might need to hire an office to do so, and if you need to interview a lot of people over a few days the cost could rise very quickly. Also interview bias is another disadvantage; this means that the interviewer can ask questions that can influence the answer, which then affects the outcome of the results. Interviewer bias can be illustrated through the use of leading questions for example â€Å"Do you get on well with your boss? † this question can make the interviewee question their relationship with their boss, and subtly raises the prospect that maybe they don’t get on with their boss. Another method of primary research covert observation, this involves the researcher joining the group that they are studying, and in covert observation the researcher does not tell them or allow them to find out their true identity. There are some advantages to covert observation such as it has high validity, as the researcher gets first-hand information about the people they are studying. This is a major advantage to covert observation because if this was done by someone else it may not be on the exact same topic and so not all the information they need is there. Another advantage of this method is that it avoids the observer effect, which is that people change their behaviour when they know they are being observed, and this would not show a true reflection of what they are really like. Some disadvantages to covert observation is that the participants are unaware of the experiment and so this is an ethical issue, as some people may not have wanted to be a part of the experiment, and if they find out that they are they could try and sue the researcher. Another disadvantage of this method is that the researcher could become influenced by the group and when writing their findings down it could be in favour or prejudiced against the group. How to cite Ethnographic Methods, Essay examples

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Clytemnestra front and center Essay Example For Students

Clytemnestra front and center Essay It began casually enough. Guthrie Theater artistic director Garland Wright asked company member Isabell Monk a question he poses each year to his actors: What roles would you like to play in the coming season? Monk, who has spent eight of the past 12 seasons at the Guthrie, had an immediate answer: Clytemnestra in Sophocles Electra, a work she had appeared in Off Broadway a few years before as a member of the chorus. Her choice surprised me, says Wright. I wanted to do a piece for her, and Clytemnestra certainly doesnt carry that play. But after studying a number of other Greek tragedies involving the character of Clytemnestra, Wrights interest was piqued. Together they made the woman and her story as complicated as I felt they needed to be. You began to understand the sense of justice out of which these terrible events arose. From his simple exchange with Monk an ambitious design began to take shape: a fabricated trilogy by the three Greek tragic playwrights whose work survivesa kind of alternate reading of the Oresteia with Clytemnestra instead of Orestes at its convergence point. In Wrights words, this triptych would bring together Euripidess Iphigeneia at Aulis, the play of the child-killer; Aeschyluss Agamemnon, the play of the husband-killer; and Sophocless Electra, the play of the mother-killer. (Following a similar hybrid approach, Ariane Mnouchkine also highlighted Clytemnestra in her celebrated version of the Oresteia by preceding the trilogy with Iphigenie a Aulis.) I threw this idea back at Isabell and her eyes lit up for a moment, Wright recalls, and then she panicked. We decided to go ahead. While the Clytemnestra trilogy was conceived as a showcase for a specific actress, it had another point of originas a project for and about the company. If the play doesnt serve any function in regard to the company, says Wright, Im rarely prone to undertake it. Every year, in fact, the ensemble gathers in a loft in the warehouse district of Minneapolis for a pre-season lab, which functions both as a voice and movement clinic and a summit at which issues confronting the company are put on the table. Last year the chief topic of discussion was the four-play cycle of Shakespeares history plays the Guthrie had presented the previous summer. It had been an enormous experience and we spent over a week analyzing it, Wright says. The male actors came away with an unqualified sense of fulfillment. But not the women. Shakespeares history plays chronicle a society where men struggle with men for power, and women find themselves on the periphery. One actress recalls that on marathon days they w ould literally wait around seven hours to go on stage for six minutes. The Clytemnestra plays provided two ways of dealing with the troublesome gender issue, Wright notes. First, they allowed the men to support the womena worthwhile opportunity for the males. These plays are all shouldered by women and thats a rarity in the classical repertory. If there were no other reason for doing this project, that would be reason enough. These plays provide extraordinary roles for women. Although they are the artifacts of a society that denied women respect and the most basic freedomswhere to be a woman was to be nothingthe authors of three Clytemnestra plays each created women of energy and purpose who face whatever circumstance puts before them, act decisively and, as Monk says, take responsibility for their actions. They are women whoregardless of their crimes and the moral judgments a modern audience may place upon themdemand respect. The other benefit was that as the men in the company outnumber the women, says Wright, there would have to be a mixed chorus, wi th women playing men and men playing women. Tangible ghosts EssayNo longer the wise matriarch People dont understand why I asked to play Clytemnestra in Electra, Isabell Monk confides. I didnt care that she wasnt the major force in the play. I wanted to explore this woman. Ive never really gotten a chance to play a woman who wasnt a mother or grandmother or somebodys auntthe kind of person who can give advice to those whose lives are caught in the conflict. With Clytemnestra she has finally found herself at the heart of the conflict; no longer the wise matriarch who holds the world in balance, but one who cuts a fiery path through it. The plays demand you become a firestorm, a hurricane, a force of nature. Clytemnestra, the only character to appear in each play, reveals herself in three distinct guises. Each time I change costumes, Monk remarks, I feel like Im getting ready to play a different character. In the first play, Euripidess Iphigeneia, she is the joyous mother who arrives at Aulis on a cart piled with wedding gifts, resplendent in flowing ochre robes, her hair luxuriantly braided and banded with gold. This Clytemnestra is a proud yet vulnerable woman, passionately in love with her husband and thrilled to be escorting her daughter Iphigeneia to a noble marriage. This Clytemnestra is neither the husband-killer of legend nor the earth mother in some terrible guise, says Wright. Shes a loving woman who could have been a good mother. And with Isabell you keenly feel the loss of these impulses in the plays that follow. Aeschyluss Agamemnon, which takes up the story 10 years later, presents an iron-willed Clytemnestra who is no ones victim. She is the tyrant queen: imperious, calculating and defiant, moving majestically through the play with its images of fire, blood, cold, darkness and slavery, a creature securely in her element. In Sophocless Electra, the third and final play in the Guthrie trilogy, Clytemnestra is a woman living in fear and struggling to hold onto her power, haunted not so much by the past as by the future. At the end of the play, her body is unceremoniously dumped at the front of the stage, where she lies wrapped in coarse cloth, a blood-stained chrysalis with all her transformations behind her. But not even in death is Clytemnestras passion entirely spent. As the lights dim for the final time her voice reverberates through the darkness of the theatre, calling upon all women to awake to the cries of a mother betrayed by her husband, hated by her daughter, killed by her son.Arise you furies, you womenand kill my shame. Her plea (heard only on the days when the trilogy is performed in its entirety) is taken from Aeschyluss The Eumenides, in which the ghost of Clytemnestra calls on the Furies to seek out and punish those who wronged her. But here the speech acquires a new meaning. Monk herself hears it as a call for empowerment, for women to stand up, take charge of their lives and cease being willing victims.

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Mclibel Case Study Essays - Public Relations, Communication

Mclibel Case Study As organizations seeks ways to increase profits by filtering into international markets, many turn to the field of public relations as a way of reaching cross-cultural markets. Factors such as values, cultural differences, language barriers, beliefs, etcin order to successfully promote an organizations products and services. Public relations practitioners have the responsibility to be the mediator between the organizations and public(s). According to Murphy and Dee (1992), Public relations makes organizations more effective by building relationships with stakeholders in the environment that have the potential to constrain or enhance the mission of the organization. This role also involves disseminating and seeking information to the public. This information/feedback provides the public relations practitioners and the organizations with insight as how the publics perceive the organization. When the organizations forget/ignore the importance of public relations practitioners role in the organizational structure, this may often result in dissatisfactions among the organizations publics and often react in a way that may harm to the organization. This conflict is characterized as activism, which when not dealt correctly, can end in harsh consequences such as tarnished reputation or decrease in profits. 1. McDonalds perspective in identifying their key publics in the Mclibel case. Its very important to correctly identify and characterize the relevant key publics. Dewy(1982) first propounded a public is a group whose members face a similar problem, recognize that problem exists, and organizes something to do about it. Grunig and Hunt(1984) assert that there are three stages in the evolutions of publics. In the first stage, the public does not recognize the problem. In latent stages, the public moves to the aware stage when it recognizes the problem. The final stage is the active stage recognizes the problem and organizes something to do about it. According to J.E. Grunig and Hunt (1984) the idea is to communicate with an aware public before it actively opposes an organization, thus becoming an activist public. London Greenpeace is an activist group with 3.3 million members in over 22 countries that use highly visible actions to draw media attention to environmental problems. The London Greenpeace group, a division of Greenpeace, is an independent group of activists that has no involvement in any political party. This group meets weekly to share concern for the oppression in our lives and the destruction of our environment. Anderson (1992) cited that weaknesses in most case studies of activism is that similar case studies should be conducted that examine activism from the perspective of both the organizations and of the activists groups, which is applicable to this study of the McLibel case. In my research, I came across must more literature and disseminated information from the small activist group of London Greenpeace versus the large multi-national corporation of McDonald's. This study also points to the need of more studies that examine the special problems of international communicatio n. The actions of a McDonald's triggered activist conflict not only in London, but in other different countries as well. If public relations practitioners are to assess issues successfully and identify publics that are likely to become active on those issues, they must look beyond the confines of their own culture and beyond the borders of their own country, Anderson (1992). Greenpeace, being an extreme organization, has to manage or maintain its public image as a group that will not compromise on environmental issues, Murphy and Dee (1992). The organization fits Grunig's (1989) description of a high involvement, information seeking public which believe in collective intervention in organizational decision making. This public seeks to change the direction of environmental decline versus a substitution for lost resources. Strategies of conflict used by Greenpeace, extreme actions, unilateral demands and its intolerance for compromisation. This model emphasizes winning at the expense of the other in which both Greenpeace and McDonald's exemplified through its actions. This method includes communication through manipulation of the issues to slant arguments in its own favor, the use of flamboyant symbols to depict choices in absolute terms, and the refusal to cede any points as pointed by Murphy and Dee (1992). Greenpeace used flamboyant symbols in celebrating the second anniversary of the trial by inviting the media and the public to celebrate by eating a cake in the shape of

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

SHOULD ABORTION BE OPPOSED OR NOT essays

SHOULD ABORTION BE OPPOSED OR NOT essays We, human beings, are social animals, which can not live alone. We all must live in a group because each of us depends on each other. Not only that, living in a group, you need to have rules and regulations in order to keep social stabilities and orders. There are many kinds of rules and regulations, some result in physical punishment and some result in social punishment in the form of peer disapproval. Where do they come from? In fact, they came from the decisions made by the majority of people in the society. There are some actions that result in various punishments and an example of this kind of punishment is abortion. The meaning of abortion is very obvious, abortion is the ending of a pregnancy before birth, and it causes the embryo or fetus to die. Abortion has been a topic of argument for very long time. People disagree on two basic questions. The first question is whether the law should permit a woman to have an abortion or not and, if is so, in what circumstance. The other is whether the law should protect the unborn. Arguments against abortion are generally based on humanity, on the belief that an abortion is the iniquitous killing of an unborn child. The groups of people who are against abortion believe that the life begins as soon as the egg is fertilized with the sperm. Therefore, it is like murdering an innocent life in a mothers womb. They think that the human embryos should have the right to live and experience this wonderful world. Arguments for abortion, many people would allow abortion in only some circumstances. Some of the approval, a womans life or health is endangered by the pregnancy for example if the woman has serious heart attack; doctor will not allow her to deliver the baby. Other find abortion permissible like when the medical tests are predicted that the child will has short life or born with a serious physical problem. Some people thi ...

Friday, November 22, 2019

Desert Biome Is the Driest

Desert Biome Is the Driest The desert biome is a dry, terrestrial biome. It consists of habitats that receive very little rainfall each year, generally less than 50 centimeters. The desert biome covers about one-fifth of the Earths surface and includes regions at a variety of latitudes and elevations. The desert biome is divided into four basic types of deserts- arid deserts, semi-arid deserts, coastal deserts, and cold deserts. Each of these types of deserts is characterized by different physical characteristics such as aridity, climate, location, and temperature. Daily Temperature Fluctuations   Although deserts are highly varied, there are some general characteristics that can be described. The fluctuation in the temperature throughout a day in a desert is far more extreme than the daily temperature fluctuations in more humid climates. The reason for this is that in damper climates, humidity in the air buffers the daytime and nighttime temperatures. But in deserts, the dry air heats up considerably during the day and cools off quickly at night. The low atmospheric humidity in deserts also means there is often a lack of cloud cover to hold the warmth. How Rainfall in the Desert Is Different Rainfall in deserts is also unique. When it does rain in arid regions, precipitation often comes in short bursts that are separated by long periods of drought. The rain that falls evaporates quickly- in some hot arid deserts, rain sometimes evaporates before it hits the ground. The soils in deserts are often coarse in texture. They are also rocky and dry with good drainage. Desert soils experience little weathering. The plants that grow in deserts are shaped by the arid conditions in which they live. Most desert-dwelling plants are low-growing in stature and have tough leaves that are well-suited to conserve water. Desert plants include vegetation such as yuccas, agaves, brittlebushes, lack sage, prickly pear cacti, and saguaro cactus. Key Characteristics The following are the key characteristics of the desert biome: little rainfall (less than 50 centimeters per year)temperatures vary greatly between day and nighthigh evaporation ratescoarse-textured soilsdrought-resistant vegetation Classification The desert biome is classified within the following habitat hierarchy: Biomes of the World Desert Biome The desert biome is divided into the following habitats: Arid deserts s of coastal deserts include the Atacama Desert of Chile and the Namib Desert of Namibia. Cold deserts - Cold deserts are deserts that have low temperatures and long winters. Cold deserts occur in the Arctic, Antarctic, and above the treelines of mountain ranges. Many areas of the tundra biome can also be considered cold deserts. Cold deserts often have more precipitation than other types of deserts. An example of a cold desert is the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia. Animals of the Desert Biome Some of the animals that inhabit the desert biome include: Desert kangaroo rat (Dipodomys deserti) - The desert kangaroo rat is a species of kangaroo rat that inhabits the deserts of southwestern North America including the Sonoran Desert, Mojave Desert, and the Great Basin Desert. Desert kangaroo rats survive on a diet that consists primarily of seeds.Coyote (Canis latrans) - The coyote is a canid that inhabits a wide range throughout North America, Central America, and Mexico. Coyotes inhabit deserts, grasslands, and scrublands throughout their range. They are carnivores that feed on a variety of small animal prey such as rabbits, rodents, lizards, deer, elk, birds, and snakes.Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) - The greater roadrunner is a year-round resident of the southwestern United States and Mexico. Greater roadrunners are fast on their feet, they can outpace a human and use that speed and their sturdy bill to catch their prey which includes lizards, small mammals, and birds. The species inhabits deserts and scrublands as w ell as open grasslands. Sonoran Desert Toad (Incilius alvarius) - The Sonoran desert toad that inhabits semi-deserts, scrublands, and grasslands in southern Arizona at elevations below 5,800 feet. The Sonoran desert toad is one of the largest toads native to North America, growing to lengths of 7 inches or more. The species is nocturnal and is most active during the monsoonal season. In drier periods of the year, Sonoran desert toads remain underground in rodent burrows and other holes.MeerkatPronghornRattlesnakeBanded Gila MonsterCactus wrenJavelinaThorny devil

Thursday, November 21, 2019

The marketing strategies of Heinz Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The marketing strategies of Heinz - Assignment Example This report is designed to have an insight about an organization that is about to conduct some market research into consumer buying habits for the products and services that this company has for sale. Moreover, this research will address the obstacles in the way of the operations of Heinz and their competitors in order to clarify the current and future market standing of the company. Henry John Heinz, the founder of this company said that he learned from his parents’ idea of business which was, â€Å"Deal with the seller so justly that he will want to sell to you again.† He believed in fair play in the business and this quality of him had made him a successful businessman. He founded Heinz almost 150 years ago. Heinz was formed in Sharpsburg (a suburb of Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, in 1869 by entrepreneur Henry John Heinz. To this day the company has become a global business dealer in the consumer food industry. Heinz is a $10.7 billion global company. The products of He inz enjoy #1 or #2 market share in more than 50 countries. Every year the company sells 650 million bottles of its iconic Ketchup. Heinz's top 15 power brands are counted as more than two-thirds of its annual sales. There are about 35000 people that are employed by Heinz in almost 50 countries around the globe. Heinz is a liable corporate citizen dedicated to safe practices, environmental stewardship and giving back to the society. The basic task required in this report is to find the appropriate research procedure and outlines its merits and de-merits. Further it is required to analyze the research by proper sampling procedure for accumulating substantial and real results. 4 External or in-house research

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Plato, three Socratic Dialogues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Plato, three Socratic Dialogues - Essay Example Euthyphro is aghast that a wise man like Socrates is being tried for corrupting the young ones and tells him that people do not like others to spread wisdom and are jealous of people who are wise. The two start talking and in the ensuing dialogues Socrates asks Euthyphro to explain the concept of piety. Euthyphro replies that piety is fighting for justice as he is doing by prosecuting his father for a murder. He laments the fact that he is hated for his action by the people although those very people have high regards for Zeus, the king of Gods, even though Zeus had punished his father (Kronos) for devouring his sons! When further pressed for the definition of piety, Euthyphro tells Socrates that whatever is held dear to God is pious and what is not dear to God is impious. He further said that even Gods have enmities and differences. Socrates counters that argument by telling that what may be liked by one God may not necessarily true for another God. Hence difference of opinion may account for the enmities and hatred between Gods and people. He asserts that everyone likes just and honourable things or persons and dislike the opposite. But it is the difference of opinions that brings about enmities and hatred. When Socrates is still not satisfied with the definition of piety, Euthyphro finally says that everything that Gods love is pious and holy and the things or persons they hate is impious and unholy. Socrates confused Euthyphro by questioning whether Gods loved things because they were pious or things were pious because Gods loved them? The dialogues, in the form of questions and answers, between the two are especially relevant even today because they establish the credibility of questions as an important means to reach towards a correct and justified answer. In simple words, the questions make us thinks about the different aspects of the problems and help us to come to a right conclusion. Socrates was a great philosopher who

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Operant Conditioning Experiment Essay Example for Free

Operant Conditioning Experiment Essay I chose to involve the 1-year and a couple of months old son of my good friend and neighbor (named Judith) for my Operant Conditioning Experiment. Shawn, as we fondly call the toddler, happens to be extraordinarily shy. He would rather stay around the presence of his mom or dad than enjoy playing with other kids. He shuns most, if not all occasions of interaction with other fellows. I, for my part, have tried to â€Å"sneak† him away from his parents (with their permission, of course), to no avail. Instances in the Experiment I set for myself a modest goal – i. e. , to be able to make Shawn a little more comfortable with the company of someone other than his parents for at least 5 minutes. What I did was to spend some time, about an hour, in my friend’s home after school. I asked my friend to bring Shawn to the living room area, where we would chat while sitting on the couch. In the process, I would give Shawn some cookies (oat meal cookies are his favorite) on the condition that he would sit by my lap. The first day was a complete mess. Judith brought with her Shawn to the living room, but ended up catering to his tantrums. He appeared restless that time. The second day was the formal start of the experiment. Shawn sat near her mom by the couch. I handed him over an oatmeal cookie but he won’t accept. He only got it when Judith convinced him to do so. Come third day, we did the same routine again. I offered Shawn an oatmeal cookie and pulled it back again and again just as he was about to get it. The concept was that I needed to ask him to sit nearer my place before I would give in letting him have the cookie. Still, the experiment proved unsuccessful. I got almost the same results on the fourth day of my experiment. But I was feeling happy that Shawn’s uneasiness with my presence appears to be waning. The fifth day however, I saw a significant development. When I asked him to sit beside me while offering the cookie, Shawn got up to get the cookie from where I was, and sat for a few seconds. He then got up again, holding his cookie, and got back to his mother’s place in the couch. Evaluation of the Experiment Firstly, I must say that I did not meet the goal of my experiment, i. e. , to make Shawn enjoy my company even for 5 minutes. While I got Shawn to become a little less uneasy with my presence, and in fact got him to get his cookie and sit beside me for a few seconds, the fact that I was not able to make him stay with me at least for 5 minutes renders the experiment only as a relative success. Looking back, I have three realizations to make in relation to the experiment. First, I may have set a goal which is too much for Shawn to handle. Second, the experiment duration of 5 days may be too short for someone as timid and shy as Shawn. Third, I realized that Operant Conditioning may entail exploring other motivations to elicit behavioral change. If only I have explored offering him other enjoyable stuff like toys, I may have gotten better results from my experiment. Had I used more appealing reinforcers to help my experiment, I believe that my experiment would have generated better and more successful outcomes.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Free Essays - The Characters of Biff and Happy in Death of a Salesman :: Death Salesman essays

The Characters of Biff and Happy in Death of a Salesman No one has a perfect life; everyone has conflicts that they must face sooner or later. The ways in which people deal with these personal conflicts can differ as much as the people themselves. Some insist on ignoring the problem for as long as possible, while others face up to the problem immediately to get it out of the way. Biff and Happy Loman are good examples of this, although both start from the same point, they end up going in different directions with Happy still living in his world of lies and Biff, being set free by the truth. Happy Loman is Willy's youngest son and is often over shadowed by his older brother Biff and ignored by his parents. As a result of growing up in Biff's shadow, Happy was always striving for Willy's attention, but never really got it. This is shown when the young Happy is always telling his father "I'm losing weight, you notice, Pop?" The need for attention continues as an adult, but Willy and Linda continue to brush Happy off in much the same way they did when he was younger Happy: "I'm gonna get married, Mom. I wanted to tell you." Linda: "Go to sleep, dear." Due to his being over shadowed by his elder brother Happy has grown up to be a stunted version of Willy's vision of the American Dream. Because of this it is difficult to identify with him; throughout the play he is presented as a one-dimensional character. Although Happy grows up to become more financially successful than his older brother, he lacks even a spark of self-knowledge or capacity for self-analysis. He does however share his father's capacity for self-delusion, declaring himself as the assistant buyer at his store, when, in reality, he is only one of the assistants to the assistant buyer. Biff: "You big blow, are you the assistant buyer? You're one of the two assistants to the assistant, aren't you?" Happy: Well I'm practically- Biff: You're practically full of it!" During Willy's funeral, Happy makes an empty vow, declaring that his father's death would not be in vain, as he was going to realise Willy's dream.

Monday, November 11, 2019

Overpopulation of Animals

Millions of companion animals are being euthanized by animal shelters each year nationwide. One might ask why this is. Is there any one person or persons that is responsible for the over population of animals going to our local shelters? These are all questions that need to be answered. If we as the general public want to start tackling these problems, we need to gain further understanding of how and why these problems are created in the first place. As with every topic there are always two sides to every story. This topic is no different. The different voices and opinions vary as much as the different types of breeds of animals. First you have the authority group, like that of your local animal shelters and humane societies. These groups agree primarily on the idea that yes, animal over population is a huge problem, and that spaying and neutering is the number one way to stop domesticated animals from creating more and more offspring. The second solution that many of the authority groups share is the fact that pet owners are not always as informed as they should be about the amount of time, attention, and money it actually takes to properly care for an animal. While speaking with Dr. Joseph Hoelzle, a local veterinarian of 32 years in Cave Junction, OR, he definitely agrees that animal over population is a HUGE problem. He is presented daily with animals that have been lost or abandoned. Dr. Joe and his staff only have a small facility, so when they do receive dogs and cats at their door step, they are very limited in the options they have. If an animal is very sick or injured they have the legal right to euthanize. Otherwise if the animal in question is a dog they have to call the local animal shelter, as they do not have the facilities to facilitate dogs. Cats on the other hand, they can do more with. Dr. Joe and his staff can house them longer and try and find homes for them. When asked his opinion on whether or not he thought the public is lacking in education on the actual amount of responsibility it takes to take care of animals, his response was yes, definitely. Take horses for example, people see horses and how pretty they are and decided to bring one home. If you have never owned a horse before, or have never even been exposed to horses and how to take care of them, then you have no clue how much work it actually takes to maintain one. † Dr. Joe went on to say that the average size dog that is in good health takes approximately $10,000 a year to properly care for them. The first step when making any decis ions on obtaining an animal, no matter what type or breed, is always research. Research how big they will be, what types of health problems are prone to those specific animals, do they require a lot of maintenance, are they high in energy, and so forth. Another interview that was conducted was with Marci, from the Josephine County Animal Shelter in Grants Pass, OR. Not knowing how far out the animal shelter was from my location, I made sure to leave with plenty of time to find the shelter as well as be early for the actual interview its self. As I was sitting out front of the animal shelter waiting for my interview to be had, I can hear all the barking and howling of all the dogs. Through their sad cries you can hear the yearning in their voices to just be loved. This is just one of the many reasons I absolutely love dogs. Although they are locked in â€Å"jail† not know what their final destination might be, they still greet everyone with a smile, and a wagging tail, faithful to the end. The first question to break the ice that I asked Marci was, do you like your job. Marci says she absolutely loves her job and would not change anything she does daily that she is somewhat of an adrenalin junkie. This job is a very rewarding job, frustrating at times but very rewarding. You get the chance to make a difference, a difference with not only the animals that you receive or rescue, but also with the community. † Life as an officer of the animal shelter can be very challenging at times. Some of the challenges they face on a regular basis is a lack of support, a huge lack in funding, lack of man power, and a lack of the proper equipment. They do not have all the fancy equipment that is seen in magazines, or on the popular TV. show on Animal Planet, Animal Police. Marci goes on to state, â€Å"We do not even have the proper funding right now to obtain something as simple as ramps for our trucks. † According to Brad Tally, the animal control supervisor for the Josephine County Animal Shelter, there Annual budget is $400,000. The shelter only receives a total of $75,000 from general funding. The shelter themselves are responsible for raising the remaining balance of $325,000 themselves. They do this through fundraising, donations and the funds they receive from pet owners licensing their pets. Marci explains that it is an Oregon state law that a dog is licensed. Oregon does not recognize cats. If an animal control officer is called out to a residence for something like a disturbance call, and they realize that the dog is not licensed, the owner can be fined for the cost of the original license plus an added thirty dollar penalty fee. If the owner is still not compliant within 30 days of the citation, they can be fined again with a $360 dollar citation. â€Å"We would rather not issue citations; we would rather try and cut the owners a break by giving them a verbal warning. Marci’s thoughts on animal overpopulation and a productive method of reducing the number of animals producing offspring’s that potentially have no homes to go to, are similar to those of Dr. Joe. She says that the overpopulation of domesticated animals can be stopped by spaying and neutering. That there are a lot of programs out there that can and will help with the cost of the procedures. â€Å"If every pet owner decided to get their animals spayed or neutered, the number of animals being picked up and dropped off would decrease significantly. One incentive that is already in place statewide is that, if a pet owner does get there dogs fixed the cost of the licensing is also reduced. The cost goes from thirty five dollars down to eighteen dollars. Another issue Marci raised that contributes to the overpopulation problem was the fact that there are â€Å"back yard† breeders that breed dogs for money. â€Å"They are not breeding their pure bred with another type of pure bred to better the breed; they are breeding these dogs just to gain money. They have no actual intention on ever doing anything with these dogs; they merely do this out of pure greed. An opposing view point to this statement taken from CQ Researcher: America’s Pampered Pets, By Mary H. Cooper Volume 6, issue 48, Para. 29 states that: AKC breeders argue that because their dogs are healthy a nd properly groomed, their rights to bred animals should not be taken away. When Marci was asked about the disturbing fact that millions of animals are being euthanized each year in American shelters and whether or not this was true, her response was actually rather positive. She was able to leave a since of hope, in my now saddened realities. Marci stated that their rates of euthanasia have dropped considerably. That the shelter has started looking for other means of dealing with their animals other than turning directly to euthanizing. Each year animal shelters nationwide receive what is known as â€Å"throw away pets†. What exactly are throw away pets? Picture this; you’re out one day driving around with the family, and all of a sudden you see one of those handmade signs that read â€Å"Free Puppies†. So you decided to pull over†¦ you walk up to see all the adorable puppies, wagging their tails and looking at you with those big innocent eyes. You and the family take one home, not really knowing much about the puppy, let alone its breed. And before you know it, this cute little adorable puppy has turned out to be way more work than you or your family had initially anticipated. So with not wanting to continue to keep up with the daily responsibilities of owning the dog, you decided to take it to the local animal shelter in hopes that it will find a â€Å"better home†. This is where the term â€Å"throw away† dogs comes from. Sadly enough, this is what Marci and the others at the Animal shelter see on a daily basis. The general procedure that is followed when a new animal is received differs from cats to dogs. The first step is the initial paperwork that is involved, getting them â€Å"logged into jail†. After they have done the paper work one of the first things they do is scan the animal in hopes to find a microchip. (Microchips are tiny chips surgically implanted into a dog or cats skin that contains all of the owners contact information. ) If there is not a microchip present and the dog does not have any type of licensing information on them, then the dog is held for seventy two hours. During the holding period the dog is kept in the back kennels away from potential adoptees. A lost and found book is gone through to make sure that the dog in question has not already been called in as lost. If in the seventy two hour period the dog is still not claimed, they perform a temperament test. If the dog passes the temperament test, then they are eligible for adoption. The other means of handling stray dogs other than euthanasia, mentioned earlier in the paper, that the shelter turns to are working with other programs as well as other counties. Some of the programs they work with are PAWS and Dogs for the Deaf. The other county they work with to place dogs into forever homes is Jackson County. PAWS is a non-profit animal shelter located in West Linn, Oregon. According to their website located at www. pawsanimalshelter. org, Since we opened our doors on June 6, 1999, we have found homes for over 1,000 cats, 45 dogs, 1 rabbit, 2 turtles, 1 pigeon, and a miniature horse. According to the website www. dogsforthedeaf. org, Dogs for the Deaf rescue dogs from animal shelters throughout Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California. We choose dogs that are people friendly, confident, and motivated by toys, treats, and affection. We rescue, train, and place 30-40 dogs annually. The dogs are trained with positive reinforcement and lots of love. When asked Marci’s opinion on the lack of public information, and whether or not this could be one of the factors that is contributing to the overpopulation of animals in animal shelters, her response was, â€Å"As far as public information, that is something we do, but with the lack of man power and time we have, this is something that we cannot do enough of. There are only two actual officers working out of the Josephine County Animal Shelter, Marci and her partner Bill. Between the two of them they are expected to answer to every single call placed out of Josephine County. This area is roughly from the California border, to the Glendale off ramp, out to the Applegate area. This is where the lack of man power comes into play. An article in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, (Beyond Overpopulation: A comment on Zawistowski et al. and Salman et al. By: Fehell, Lee Anne, 1999 Vol. , Issue 3. Para. 24) Brings up yet another reason as to why animals start to stack up in animal shelters. â€Å"The general public more times than not are detoured away from their local animal shelters due to the common knowledge that pets is killed at the site. They do not want to be made feel guilty or responsible for that animal’s life if they do not pick that certain one to bring home. † Getting a new animal is and welcoming that animal into your home is supposed to be an exciting joyous event, not something that is associated with death or defeat. Although there is a majority of people who would rather obtain a dog or cat from someone they know rather than going to a shelter and possibly taking home an animal that they were not a hundred percent set on, there is also a large majority of people who feel the complete opposite. They would rather go to the local animal shelter and possibly save that cat or dogs life. This in my opinion gives these individuals a sense of accomplishment. Here is a poem about just that.

Saturday, November 9, 2019

Pets.com Case Analysis Essay

INTRODUCTION In this report I will analyse Pets.com’s short lived success as America’s number one online supplier of pet foods supplies and accessories. I will also identify what actually went wrong and present a refreshed offensive marketing strategy to the board of the company. It was unbelievable how a public listed company led by some of the world’s best business executives, draped by all the funds that any company in the world would envy, partnered with the world’s number one e-commerce company and became America’s pet industry icon can lose everything in less than two years after its first introduction. In my opinion some of the major factors that contributed to Pets.com failure were: 1. Bad strategic decisions made by the previous leadership including underestimating the cost of operations and overspending on marketing. The management was so obsessed grabbing the market share but at the same time losing their focus altogether on their actual goal and objectives, which is generating revenue for the company and become profitable to ensure sustainability. 2. Despite its success in building brand recognition, Pets.com overestimated the market trend and power of the internet. They were also overconfident in estimating the market real potential and risk due very shallow and weak market research. When everyone was rushing to jump onto the internet e-commerce guaranteed-for-success bandwagon, Pets.com did not realize pet business was not that simple but in fact more complicated compared to selling books and clothes online. After all the costly marketing promotions and advertisements, overnight popularity, having the most complete online product offerings and latest technology at their disposal, still in the end Pets.com failed to show much added value and differentiators in the eyes of the customers. 3. Completely ignored the power of traditional brick and mortar business model. Pets.com failed to understand their rivals strengths and weaknesses well. Better customer care, satisfying personal shopping experience and fast  delivery are some of the advantages physical stores had over online pet portals. Pet owners appreciation of these traditional values affected typical pet-owners’ readiness and willingness to completely abandon their friendly and trusted around-the-corner neighbourhood pet store. COMPETITOR ANALYSIS The previous company did not bring up a good proposal in opposing its competitors. It was so obvious that they ignored the fact that traditional pet store was very much controlling the pet food and supplies market. Underestimating the strengths and advantage of their more traditional brickand-mortar based rivals like Petstore, Petsmart and Petopia was the first biggest mistake they had done. Competitor Analysis  Petopia.com 1. Heavily funded by Petco, market leader in pets accessories and supplies industry 2. Well established physical stores plus e-commerce business model 3. Leverage on Petco’s good and well known reputation as supplier of quality pet products and its commitment to animal care. 4. Petopia will gain invaluable access to Petco’s extensive network of chain stores which both companies can cross-promote each other: a. Have nationwide coverage with 465 chain stores all over US b. Strong international presence with 100 stores globally 5. Potential Pes.com future international expansion thru strategic alliance with another major investor Groupe Arnault (linked to renowned LVHM Moet Henessey Loius Vuitton) PetSmart.com 1. Already a successful brick and mortar business on its own right. Considered as Petco’s main brick and mortar competitor 2. Joint venture with e-commerce entrepreneur Bill Gross of Idealab become direct competition to Pets.com-Amazon’s team up. 3. Well established physical stores plus e-commerce business model 4. Strong back-end warehouse and delivery systems with already 500 stores nationwide and 100 outside US. 5. Strong brand name, marketing clout, close vendor relationships and  efficient product portfolios and fulfilment systems that would greatly benefit their online business. Petstore.com 1. Funded by venture capital firm Battery Ventures 2. Rely entirely on the power of e-commerce. Work on the same business model as Pets.com, establish a leadership position with ‘category killer’ domain name 3. Just like Pets.com, Petstore relied heavily on advertising and promotions 4. No physical store establishment At the end of the day, after the big dotcom bubble burst, only Petopia (now owned by Petco) and PetSmart survived. Petstore and Pets.com itself succumbed to the dotcom bubble burst. Two most obvious factors that set apart the two victors and losers are: 1. PetSmart and Petopia had a strong back-end warehouse backing and chains of physical stores that in the end reduce distribution costs, storage, ensure satisfactory delivery period and value-add traditional shopping experience and satisfaction. Unlike the two, Pets.com and Petstore.com relied entirely on the internet of which later compromised basic pet owners’ needs and customer satisfaction. 2. Pets.com and Petstore relied heavily on funding from venture capital firms while Petopia and PetrSmart already have strong infrastructures and customer network they can always depend on if anything goes wrong over the internet. This proves deadly when Pets.com failed to gain enough added capital injection to save them from becoming dotcom bubble’s biggest casualty. It is very important for us to re-align our goal and strategically repositions ourselves in this industry. The following SWOT analysis shall analyses our key strengths and weaknesses. Pets.com’s SWOT Analysis STRENGTH 1. Huge cash to spend. Heavily funded. Backed by Amazon.com. 2. Direct access to Amazon.com’s network resources and e-commerce skills and expertise, so technology skills and know-how is not an issue. 3. Strategic alliance with Yahoo!, GO.com (Disney), Discovery TV network (Animal Planet) and association with the American Veterinar Medical Foundation can be a very strong network positioning strategy. 4. Pets.com is the most recognizable domain name, highly visible website with most comprehensive website content and best design. Pets.com website is so popular in the internet and mainstream media that at one time becomes the most visited pet supplies website in the world. 5. Most competitive price and service offerings (plus free delivery). Able to offer quality products of which becoming today’s key plus factor to the passionate middle-class and high income pet owners. 6. Largest stock keeping units (SKUs) in America to ensure reliable supply and on time delivery to customers. WEAKNESS 1. Competitors offer similar products. Pets.com still could not find key market differentiator. 2. Huge expectation on online marketing and promotion. Specialized team to maintain up-todate and latest website content and information may incur increasing administration costs. 3. Pets.com have weak brand name as compared to more established rivals. 4. Pets.com don’t have physical stores presence nationwide and globally. 5. Reliability and security on the internet can halt and even destroy online business almost overnight. 6. High transportation costs and insurance liability due to free delivery policy to customers regardless location 7. Geographical factors, warehouse location and distance may result to 2-3 days for orders to reach American homes OPPORTUNITIES 1. Pets.com can leverage further on Amazon’s full potential-market penetration and trustworthy e-commerce reputation 2. Can take full advantage on average American pet owners passion and spending habits on pet food and supplies 3. The right time to tap into the world’s fast growing and lucrative national and international markets. 4. Can take advantage on the fact that most trusted and high quality pet foods are produced in the US 5. Can take advantage on average American pet owners’ hectic lifestyle. Promote cost and time saving. 6. Average American pet owners are economically stable. Price is not a big issue. 7. Develop own brand name and proprietary products THREAT 1. There will always be a better competitors’ website content and offerings 2. Don’t underestimate internet capabilities-consider problems at remote sites and countryside 3. Simpler user-friendly blogs, mobile applications and smartphones can replace website 4. Increasing transportation and shipping costs 5. Transportation risk-lost and damage 6. Internet customer bad experience, unfavourable comments and reviews can sabotage any 3  online business that is not ready and fully prepared 7.Growing e-commerce safety concerns can influence internet users to just browse and shop at competitor’s outlet 8. Competitors physical stores at almost US neighbourhoods-providing more human approach (touch and feel) and faster delivery time 9. Hard habit to break-still many pet owners prefer visit local neighbourhood stores than buying online 10. Competition by any brick and mortar neighbourhood establishment Pet supplies are not books. People only order pizzas online-Amazon.com strategy may not work at certain environment and condition. Pets.com need to show better  value-add and pull-factor. SEGMENTATION ANALYSIS Pets.com have the best products to offer and the technology to drive this online business model to success, but in the end not understanding the consumer’s real needs, behaviour and spending habits can prove vital to the company’s survival and relevancy. According to study reports by The NPD Group, Inc. and Media Metrix (NASDAQ: MMXI), 75% of pet owners who access the Internet are aware of online pet stores, up from 55% in September 1999. Twenty-seven percent have shopped at an online pet store, while 14% made an actual purchased at an online pet store. Study confirms that almost three times as many pet owners become aware of online pet stores from television advertising compared to last year, while fewer are learning about sites from surfing the Web. Though television advertising in the category is growing, consumers are still more likely to find out about pet e-tailers from some online source, such as clicking on a banner ad or direct link from another site. The good news for marketers is that while category penetration is still low, customer satisfaction is high. Among the 14% who have purchased, a whopping 97% of them are satisfied with their buying experience. More than two-thirds reported being very satisfied (68%), up from just over one-half in September of 1999 (53%). The majority of consumers who have shopped at pet store sites said they are likely to shop again in the next three months (59%), and half would make a purchase sometime in the future (49%). Not surprisingly, those consumers who are very satisfied with their buying experiences at online pet stores in general are much more likely to make a purchase in the future than those who have not. The Pet Industry In 1998, pet industry is a US53billion a year marketplace. Worldwide estimates run about $51 billion, and growing at a rate of about 15 percent a  year. By the end of 2004, online pet-product sales alone should total more than $4.5 billion. Pet food, accessories and supplies tops US household shopping list with Pets leading with USD23 billion a year, Toys US21billion a year. Music recording US13 billion a year and Retail books at US 12 billion a year. Expert prediction is the pet industry may grow to US28billion a year business by 2001. 1. 60% of American households own at least one pet and 40% own more than one pet. Statistics in 1999 shows 53 million are dogs and 59 million are cats. 2. American families with children age 5-15 likely to own pets and families with children younger than 18 will grow over the next several years 3. Even though online shopping for pet foods and supplies are still new to the consumers, nearly 30% of internet users purchase online pet products. Pet owning households wealthier than average thus able to spend more on pets (65% household earning US60000 or more are pet owners). Almost two-thirds of all American households have at least one pet, and that translates into an estimated $23 billion a year in pet expenditures in the U.S. alone. 4. Veterinary,boarding,grooming,training yielded higher margins. 5. Most pet owners buy on impulse during regular shopping trips and they are less price sensitive 6. US pet owners sought veterinary care at least once a year of which 92% are on dogs and 78% on cats care. Between 1991-1999 US vet expenditure grew 9.5% annually 7. By mid 1990s supermarket pet food began losing market share amid growing concern for pet welfare and nutrition. Non-premium low nutrient levels supermarket brands hold 55% of market share mostly thru grocery and convenience stores. They anyhow demonstrate slow annual growth and small gross margins. Premium levels on the other hand promote healthier diet but risk restricted distribution. From 19940-1999 they contributed to 18% annual growth and own 25% of market share. 8. Supermarkets prefer to stock profitable goods but they face problem with space to store bulks. Pet supply stores on the other hand have the storage advantage. Despite that brick-and-mortar margin still low between 2-4%. 9. Internet and retail commerce trends shows estimated 97 million households are using internet worldwide. By 1998-60% households on internet at least once a day compare 35% year before. Surfing the internet has become part of part of daily American life. In 1998 internet companies in the US generated USD301.4 billion revenues from the internet and internet commerce alone contributed 1/3 of total revenue equals to USD101.9 billion 10. Even though pets product online just started in 1999, survey shows high level of satisfaction among online shoppers. More than half of 30% internet users purchase online pet products, more than half very satisfied. Survey shows: a. 68% are females b. 40% bought toys for pets online c. 30% bought foods/treats d. 26% non-food accessories e. 17% health products 11. The main reasons why they buy online was convenience but experts claim it is limited to small market only and it is also outweighed by higher costs and longer waits. THE MARKETING OFFENSIVE When more than one company offers the same kind of product, each company only receives a percentage of all sales of that kind of product. This percentage is called a â€Å"market share,† and any effort to take some of the market share away from one company and bring it to another is called an offensive marketing plan. Marketing is all about building relationships. It’s about educating (and maybe even entertaining) your customer. While we must not deny the growing influence of the internet, Pets.com must not underestimate the power of traditional pet business model. Alternative strategies that could improve Pets.com: 1. Decrease the advertising and marketing budgets a. This will create opportunity to relocate funds elsewhere such people development and customer care b. Ability to make-up for low sales volume c. Wasting less money on expensive marketing promotions 2. Open warehouses and brick-and-mortar establishments to increase distribution a. Ability to ship products in shorter distances to reduce transportation costs and risks b. Provide faster delivery time may increase competitive advantage c. More readily available products for easier delivery or for exchanges 3. Redo pricing structure for more competitive prices a. Make profits on the product not on the inflated shipping costs b. Pets.com can offer ‘free shipping’ promotions without selling at price below costs c. Consumer’s assurance on Pets.com product quality will keep existing customers and introduce new ones. Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty. 4. Invest the use of new media such social networking and blogs. This may attract younger generation of pet owners 5. Introduce subscription and loyalty program. Other than improving customer retention it can also be used qualification tools to offer free delivery or charge based on geographical location and distance. 6. Improve Pets.com brand name. Association with Amazon and Animal Planet may prove very useful in attracting loyal fans. 7. Collaboration with vets and animal clinics promoted as local distributors can reduce delivery time and stock availability. 8. Identify specific target groups. For example individual consumers will more readily use products used by government facilities and pet care professionals. CONCLUSION The failure of Pets.com was not because the online business model. In fact it was more to mismanagement of funds, business planning based only on short term analysis, poor market understanding and research, underestimating  traditional rivals and overestimating the power of internet. It was a classic case of bad strategy. The failure to face the challenge. â€Å"If you fail to identify and analyse the obstacles, you don’t have a strategy. Instead, you have a stretch goal or a budget or a list of things you wish would happen.† Pets.com was an early entry in the immature online shopping industry and was uncertain whether a substantial market niche even existed. No independent market research preceded the launch of Pets.com. Instead, the management chose a â€Å"land grab† strategy focused on increasing its market share then finding ways to make a profit. The â€Å"land grab† strategy presupposes that your market is large enough or will grow fast enough so that revenue allows a profit before seed money runs out. Pets.com wished that it would magically become profitable while it waited for the market to mature. During its first fiscal year (February to September 1999) Pets.com earned revenues of $619,000, yet spent $11.8 million on advertising. It failed to realize its problem would not be gaining market share, but generating revenue to sustain it until it could place adequate resources into market share focused strategies. Mistaking goals for strategy. â€Å"Create the conditions that will make the push effective, to have a strategy worthy of the effort called upon.†Ã‚  When the company did turn its focus to its business model, it created unrealistic conditions in which to operate effectively. For example, Pets.com offered a guaranteed $4.95 shipping to anywhere in the United States. Unfortunately, Pets.com initially only had one distribution warehouse in California and every shipment to the East Coast cost more than $4.95 and therefore shipped at a loss. It lost money on nearly every sale because, even before the cost of advertising, it was selling merchandise for approximately 1/3rd the price it paid to obtain the products. During its second fiscal year the company continued to sell merchandise for approximately 27% less than cost. The company had it sites on being the number one online pet supplier but failed to leverage key strengths to build on other than a very costly push for brand recogn ition. Bad strategic objectives. â€Å"A scrambled mess of things to accomplish—a dog’s dinner of goals. A long list of things to do, often mislabeled as strategies or objectives, is not a strategy†¦Good strategy, in contrast, works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes.† As I researched Pet.com history, I was amazed by the number of â€Å"strategies† the leadership claimed. Not all inclusive, CEO Julie Wainright and executives focused on numerous initiatives in an attempt to stand out from the competition. 1. Strive to offer a huge variety of product offerings; it listed more stock keeping units than any other online pet supplier 2. Offer abundant editorial advice from veterinarians, animal lawyers, breeders, scientists, and pet experts 3. Extend its brand offline in the Pets.com print magazine 4. Develop and offer its own proprietary brand of Pets.com pet supplies 5. Acquire a key competitor, Petstore.com 6. Create alliances to allow Pets.com to offer animal health insurance, be the featured petstore on the Yahoo! link to pet health advice, be a part of the Go.com (Disney) network, and establish charitable foundations. These all seem like good objectives, if focused on one at a time. They also seem like objectives fueled by capital but not sustained by revenues. The management of the company appeared so focused on several objectives that it never developed a solid business model focused on being profitable and generating sustainable returns. Fluff – â€Å"Superficial abstraction†¦designed to mask the absence of thought.† According to analyst Jacques Chevron, â€Å"Pets.com failed to give its prospective customers a reason for its existence. Its tongue-in-cheek advertising claim (â€Å"Because pets don’t drive†) seemed like an   admission of its lack of a reason for being.† Pets.com seemed focused on being the most comprehensive site for pet owners that it failed to be  successful in any of its objectives. While it continued to claim it was the one-stop site for all pet needs, it never established a reputation as being good at anything other than advertising. Bibliography 1. Pets.com: Rise and Decline of a Pet Supply Retailer by Dr Omar Merlo 2. The Rise and Fall of Pets.com: †Because Pets Can’t Buy† by Cara L.O Peters (University of Georgia) and Marilyn J. Okleshen (Minnesota State University) 3. Pets.com failure and its causes http://my-espace09.blogspot.com/2009/01/petscom-failureand-its-causes.html 4. Pet & Pet Supplies Stores Industry Statistics Research Report – Anything Research 2010. 5. US Pet Market Outlook – Packaged Facts 2009.

Thursday, November 7, 2019

As Well As Does Not Mean And

As Well As Does Not Mean And â€Å"As Well As† Does Not Mean â€Å"And† â€Å"As Well As† Does Not Mean â€Å"And† By Maeve Maddox A reader asks, Will you please comment on the use of â€Å"as well as† as used below: â€Å"Deng Xiaoping made a significant contribution with his theoretical courage of Marxism,  matter-of-fact attitude, rich experience, as well as his foresight and sagacity.† â€Å"As well as† doesn’t seem to me to be equivalent to â€Å"and.† According to Merriam-Webster, â€Å"as well as† is equivalent to and: as well as conjunction: and in addition, and. According to The Chicago Manual of Style, however, it is not: Note that the phrase as well as is not equivalent to and. WRONG: The team fielded one Mazda, two Corvettes, three Bugattis, as well as a battered Plymouth Belvedere. RIGHT: The team fielded one Mazda, two Corvettes, and three Bugattis, as well as a battered Plymouth Belvedere.- 6.18 The phrase â€Å"as well as† and the single word and are not equivalents because and joins two elements of equal importance, but â€Å"as well as† places more emphasis on one of the elements. Compare: My dog and cat bring me things to throw. My cat and dog bring me things to throw. My cat, as well as my dog, brings me things to throw. In the first two sentences, no distinction is made between cat and dog. In the third sentence, an unequal emphasis is placed upon cat, suggesting that there is something notable about the action as it applies to the cat. This use of â€Å"as well as† is similar to the correlative â€Å"not onlybut also,† but the emphasis falls on the element that precedes â€Å"as well as.† Note: When â€Å"as well as† is mistakenly perceived to mean and, problems of agreement arise. Chicago addresses this in Paragraph 5.133: [The intervening â€Å"as well as†] seems to create a compound subject, and [a] modifying prepositional phrase may itself contain one or more plural objects. If the singular verb sounds awkward in such a sentence, it may be better to use the conjunction and instead: WRONG: The bride as well as her bridesmaids were dressed in mauve. RIGHT: The bride as well as her bridesmaids was dressed in mauve. BETTER: The bride and her bridesmaids were dressed in mauve. If no contrasting emphasis is intended, and is the better choice. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:The Yiddish Handbook: 40 Words You Should KnowThat vs. WhichUses of the Past Participle

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Light Rare Earth Elements (LREE)

Light Rare Earth Elements (LREE) The light rare earth elements, light-group rare earths, or LREE are a subset of the lanthanide series of  the rare earth elements, which are themselves a special set of transition metals. Like other metals, the light rare earths have a shiny metallic appearance. They tend to produce colored complexes in solution, conduct heat and electricity, and form numerous compounds. None of these elements occurs in pure form naturally. Although the elements are not that rare in terms of element abundance, they are extremely difficult to isolate from each other. Also, the minerals that bear rare earth elements are not uniformly distributed across the globe, so the elements are uncommon in most countries and must be imported. Elements That Are Light Rare Earth Elements Youll see different sources site slightly different lists of elements classified as LREEs, but the US Department of Energy, US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey, and national labs use a very specific set of criteria to assign elements to this group. The light-group rare earth elements are based on the configuration of  4f electrons. LREEs have no paired electrons. This makes the LREE group consist of 8 elements with atomic number 57 (lanthanum, with no unpaired 4f electrons) through atomic number 64 (gadolinium, with 7 unpaired 4f electrons): lanthanum (La) - used in high-end optical lenses and in  lanthanum nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteriescerium (Ce) - the 25th most abundant element in the Earths crust (so not rare at all), used in catalytic converters and the oxide as a polishing powder  praseodymium (Pr) - oxide is used as a catalyst in plastic manufacturing and is combined with zirconium oxide to produce a vivid yellow pigment used in ceramicsneodymium (Nd) - used to make super-strong magnets; neodymium-iron-boron (NeFeB) magnets are used to make cell phones vibratepromethium (Pm) - used to make a phosphorescent pigment and to make the starter switch for fluorescent lampssamarium (Sm) - used in high strength magnets and to make servo-motorseuropium (Eu) - used to make phosphors, notably the reddish-orange color of screens and monitorsgadolinium (Gd) - used in a reactor to control rods to control fission reaction and as a contrast agent to improve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) Uses of the LREE All of the rare earth metals have great economic importance. There are many practical applications of the light rare earth elements, including: lasermagnetsphosphorsluminous paintscatalystsmetallurgysuperconductorssensorsflat panel displaysmedical tracersmicrophones and speakersrechargeable batteriesfiber opticsnumerous defense applications The Special Case of Scandium The element scandium is considered to be one of the rare earth elements. Although it is the lightest of the rare earths, with atomic number 21, it is not classified as a light rare earth metal. Why is this? Basically, its because an atom of scandium does not have an electron configuration comparable to that of the light rare earths. Like other rare earths, scandium typically exists in a trivalent state, but its chemical and physical properties dont warrant grouping it with either the light rare earths or the heavy rare earths. There are no middle rare earths or other classification, so scandium is in a class by itself.

Saturday, November 2, 2019

Superstition & Science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Superstition & Science - Essay Example Neville discovered that the infected beings possessed both the human and vampire-like characteristics and only came out after dawn (Matheson 17). The other characteristic trait was that they could be repelled using garlic. It became a constant battle of survival for this resourceful man who had to go against extreme odds to get what he aspired. At one point Neville captured Ruth, a creature possessing both human and vampire characteristics and one that could go out during the day. Neville’s reaction was that there was nothing eye-catching about them during the day (Matheson 30). Neville was suspicious as to whether Ruth was truly human as she portrayed herself adding to the fact that she was opposed to killing of vampires. Ruth and Neville soon became companion to a point where it developed into a relationship. On his quest to identify the cure for the disease, Neville and the readers discovered that Ruth’s blood samples were indeed infected. Ruth left Neville and revea led that she lived in colony of people who were infected and planned to rebuild their lives. Given that Neville had formed a habit of killing many of Ruth’s kind, he only seems to be in their way and had to be converted before he destroyed her people. The novel concludes by depicting the final thoughts of Neville before he was executed. Part 2: Argument Using the evidence put into play by Richard Matheson, in connection with the 1940s and 1950s timelines, it is clear that there were universal human fears among the American public in 1954. The fear could also be directly linked to the existing, cultural conditions and existing custom of individual identity. From the timelines given, year 1940 to year 1954, it is clear that the American public was fearful of the Cold War and the effects it had on individuals, their health and social aspects. Vampires represented American’s xenophobic fear which manifested with time and was made worse with the onset of a few films made in New York for entertaining the Elite. Hence, most Americans were not fully reassured that the vampire syndrome would come to an end. The sale of surplus war material in 1940s posed a serious risk to the lives of Americans who were at war with other nations. Vampire-like symptoms can be indirectly compared to American public’s fear of the devastating physical changes, illness and decreasing faculties when exposed to biological war materials that were used by their enemies. The public was fearful of loss of individuality as a nation. The manifestation of decaying being that still lingered in the world can be compared to the individual fear of being incapable of recognizing and preventing oneself from encountering pain and suffering that was inflicted once a loved one was lost in the war. The drinking of blood as depicted in Matheson’s book, page 10, of Vampires’ craving to drink Neville’s blood represented the public’s fear of re-occurring problems w hich surfaced during the Second World War. It reprieved the public off its financial and emotional aspects of life. The compelling universal fears manifested in an average American’s mind in 1942 and 1943 where there were atomic bombs being developed as a form of weapon. This may be compared to the views of Americans in regard to Vampires in the society. When the world war two occurred, most countries were affected on a global scope and so was Neville’

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Cologne Cathedral and Amiens Cathedral Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Cologne Cathedral and Amiens Cathedral - Essay Example A good example of this is the Amiens Cathedral and the Cologne Cathedral which are known all over the world. Even though, the two were designed by one architect by the name Gerhard Von Rile, they vary in so many ways like structure foundations, building historical background and decorative designs. These two structures were included in the World heritage site simply because they have about 800 years of history, and hence their significant effect in the world1. At the beginning of Medieval, Rainald of Dassel decided to put up a suitable church that would attract so many church goers. In so doing this, he had to seek for assistance from a renowned architecture that had to offer his expertise in the designing and construction of the famous church. Background Information about the Buildings The Cologne Cathedral traces its origin at the beginning of the medieval period. This is after Rainald of Dassel had acquired some skills from the three kings and thus decided to construct the largest church. With the artifacts contained by the Cologne Cathedral during the Middle Ages, So many people were attracted to thus making it one of the most famous religion centers in the world at the moment. Some of the common artifacts include the Three Magi2. During the designing of the Cologne Cathedral, the architecture solely relied on the original design of the Amiens Cathedral both in terms of ground plan, width and even height measurements. A Latin cross was the main shape of the plan as commonly associated with the Gothic Cathedral. There were to be two aisles on both sides which were to offer support to the highest Gothic vaults. With these exceptional collections of relics, the Cathedral of cologne was outstanding, and perhaps this was the thought of Rainald of Dassel. He decided to implore Gothic architecture, which had become very common, in most parts of Europe especially France and England. Despite the design not being popular in Germany, he chose the French architect to c onstruct the Gothic Cathedral3. Fortunately this turned out positive since the cathedral become famous internationally. The Gothic style went through several evolution periods basing on the country. For example in France, the periods included Early, Lancet, Rayonnant and Flamboyant or late Gothic while, in England, there were three stages namely Early English, Decorated and perpendicular. In both cases, the last periods were the most sophisticated as its amazing development led to introduction of different styles. During construction using this style, the climate played a crucial role in determining the physical features of the medieval, Gothic cathedrals. The Amiens cathedral in France had between 3 to 5 portals leading to the central nave. This style was similar to the one used to build the Cologne cathedral in Germany except that the later was made mainly of bricks, as opposed to the stones used in the Amiens4. However, this might not have been the main reason why the design was chosen because during the Roman period, the Romanesque style was eminent. That was the main reason why the some Romanesque features still existed in the Cologne church before the Cologne Cathedral. It was only after the changes in the economy of the society that the Gothic style became prominent. This led to the powerful influence of the French which was evident in the Cologne Cathedral particularly the Amiens Cathedral. The construction of this church was not a walk in the park, as it was forced to stand still for some

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

The Influence of Classical Theorists on Contemporary Culture Assignment

The Influence of Classical Theorists on Contemporary Culture - Assignment Example The fast success of the movement garnered the support and sympathy of ordinary citizens to oppose the unfairness of the cuts and tax evasion tactics of the affluent. Lessons Learned from the Uncut Movement Aside from the glaring injustice of the tax restrictions on public spending, the significant and relevant models that can be seen in this phenomenal development in this example are the fundamental beliefs on economics and social change, class relations of capitalism and the theory of Hegemony. According to Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher, hegemony is the permeation throughout society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs, and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power relations. Hegemony is an organizing principle diffused by the process of socialization into every area of daily life. To the extent that this prevailing consciousness is internalized by the population, it becomes part of what is normally known as common sense so tha t the philosophy, culture, and morality of the ruling elite appear as the natural order of things.  (Boggs  1976 p.39) This Uncut protest action is a classic example of the concepts of classical thinkers notably Karl Marx, Georg Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel and Gramsci regarding the basic beliefs mentioned earlier. Hegel aptly described the state in modern societies as the highest form of social reason. It represents the culmination of progress through history and the fact that the state is able to integrate self-interested members of civil society, who if left to themselves would be interested only in pursuing the personal goals of personal enrichment. (Callinicos, 2007 p.46) Karl Marx has a relevant discourse that elucidates the circumstances surrounding the reaction of the people towards the matter of reductions in public expenditures and tax avoidance by the moneyed sector. The economic basis of the social order must be seen as a complex totality made up of relationships between different elements engaged in production. â€Å"The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.† (Morrison, Marx, Weber and Durkheim, 2006, pp. 214-216)).

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Legislation and Regulation for Money Laundering

Legislation and Regulation for Money Laundering Finance and Investment Law – Money Laundering Current Legislative and Regulatory Arrangements Money laundering is a menace. Tainted funds from drugs traffic and terrorism are the prime causes of the recent round of energetic legislation designed to make life more difficult for the launderers. The European Directive on Money Laundering has been followed in the UK by primary and delegated legislation. The aim is to deter laundering by well-focused use of the criminal law and, at the same time, to obstruct it by compelling banks and other persons and institutions in the financial services industry to ask more questions, keep more records and divulge more information. The money laundering legislation does not bear directly on the civil law, but, it will profoundly alter professional practices and is bound to filter back into the setting of standards which determine the incidence of civil liability. The huge profits of the drugs industry are gained ultimately from thousands of users who will never so much as contemplate recourse to the civil law. It is different in the case of theft, fraud and corruption. There the victims and their insurers have economic power, and the sums at stake are often large enough to justify a restitutionary campaign in the courts. Tracing is a weapon against laundering. It allows value held in one form at one place to be located later in other assets in another place. It lengthens the victims reach. Successful civil campaigns have been waged. The most notorious is the insurers recovery of assets derived from the Brinks Mat robbery. Often the defendants are not the principal rogues but others to whom the money has come or through whom it has passed. To the victim of a massive fraud, a bank or firm of lawyers or accountants will seem the most promising defendant, if the facts will only support a claim against them. This aggressive opportunism on the part of victims is a factor to be borne in mind as the law settles the conditions of the various restitutionary and restitution related liabilities which can be brought into play. In one recent case the plaintiff had been cheated of millions of dollars in Amsterdam. A sophisticated laundering operation had passed the money through many accounts in different names in different parts of the world. The plaintiff nonetheless traced a large part of it to a legitimate property development in London, and the development company had to make restitution. The same problems encountered in restitutionary campaigns after fraud are also met in more innocent contexts, as where money is paid away by mistake or on a basis which fails. Even in cases of the less disreputable kind the fact that the law will allow the value of one asset to be traced into another can confer great advantages. It will sometimes allow a plaintiff to extend a priority against an insolvent by enabling him to claim it, not against the asset with which he originally parted but against another to which its value can be traced. And it will sometimes allow a plaintiff to leapfrog the immediate recipient and claim against a third party who received, in different assets, value which proceeded from him. For all its utility tracing is one of the least perfectly understood areas of the law of restitution. It is caught on the horns of a dilemma. The longer its reach and therefore the greater its potency against fraud, the more difficult it is to describe exactly how it works; an d the more one insists on the need for an accurate and intelligible account of how it works, the greater the danger of shortening its reach. But there is no real doubt as to how this dilemma must be resolved. The law cannot tolerate figures which are beyond rational description. If there turn out to be limits to what can intelligibly be done by tracing, other weapons will have to be invoked. The law of tracing and claims contingent on tracing will soon settle down. Less stable in the medium term may be the law relating to or affected by restitutionary defenses. The introduction of the defense of change of position is already transforming the law of restitution. In one bound it has put the English law of unjust enrichment in closer touch with German law, and it may yet indirectly effect a civilian transformation of our approach to the cause of action itself. Festina lente may be the order of the day. The down to earth English approach may in fact be preferable. It is a great virtue of the English law of unjust enrichment that it talks in terms of very familiar reasons for restitution and does not go in for the metaphysics of causa and the absence thereof. Canada has succumbed to the temptation to start looking for sufficient juridical cause. The danger of that language is all the greater when it is not underpinned by mature civilian doctrine: it does not tell us why or wh en restitutionary rights arise but merely conceals the absence of an intelligible answer to those questions. Whatever larger changes it may portend, the new defense indubitably provides a new strategy for reconciling the interest in restitution with the interest in the security of receipts. As it takes over the protection of the latter it encourages a liberalization of the restrictive attitudes to the grounds of restitution. Those restrictions were previously the blunt instruments for the protection of that interest. The new focus on change of position also entails more attention to other defenses in its immediate vicinity. In this paper, bona fide purchase, ministerial receipt and passing on assert their independence. Counter-restitution impossible also declines to be absorbed into change of position but appears to be destined to have little future as an absolute defense. The Society of Public Teachers of Law once again stands in debt to those who gave up their time to attend these seminars and, especially, to the judges who were kind enough to take the chair. Lord Justice Millett chaired the seminar on tracing and Lord Goff chaired the seminar on defenses. We are most grateful both for their generous surrender of free time, if indeed a judge can these days be said to command any of that valuable commodity, and for the learning and wisdom with which they brought order to the discussion (United Kingdom Model Agreement, May 2003). Case Example In AGOSI v. United Kingdom the Court was faced with the question whether the imposition of a confiscation necessarily implies that the owners of the confiscated property should have been afforded the same rights as those granted to everyone in the determination of a criminal charge. The German company AGOSI had suffered a considerable economic loss when the UKs Customs Excise department had seized and eventually forfeited golden Krugerrands to a value of  £120,000 that had been illegally imported into the United Kingdom. Defendants X and Y were caught by UK Customs Excise officers as they attempted to smuggle into the United Kingdom on 2 August 1975 the golden Krugerrands they had bought on the same day from AGOSI in Germany (M2 Presswire, March 1, 2004). Because the cheque presented by them for payment had been drawn without provision, the sale contract was ab initio null and void and AGOSI had retained ownership of the Krugerrands. AGOSI initiated several procedures in the Unit ed Kingdom for restitution of the confiscated Krugerrands but was unsuccessful. AGOSI therefore took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, complaining that the confiscation amounted to a procedure for the determination of a criminal charge in which it had been denied the fair trial rights laid down in Article 6 of the European Convention. The Court responded that: The fact that measures consequential upon an act for which third parties were prosecuted affected in adverse manner the property rights of AGOSI cannot itself lead to the conclusion that, during the course of the procedures complained of, any criminal charge, for the purposes of Article 6, could be considered as having been brought against the applicant company. As a general statement this is undoubtedly true. The mere fact that persons own property that is being confiscated does in itself not necessarily imply that a criminal charge is being brought against them. When, for example, instrumentalities of an offence are being confiscated, that does not necessarily imply that a criminal charge should be brought against the owners who may very well have not been implicated in the offence in any way. Confiscation of proceeds from crime as a matter of fact often implies that the person who is being prosecuted is not the real owner. Nine years after AGOSI, the European Court of Human Rights arrived at a similar decision in Air Canada v. United Kingdom, which again involved a seizure by the UK Customs Excise, this time of an aircraft on board which drugs had been found on several occasions, including a few days earlier. The aircraft was only seized temporarily for a few hours until Air Canada paid a sum of  £50,000. 116 The European Court agreed with the English Court of Appeal that the case did not concern an in personam procedure but an in rem procedure and therefore did not require that mens rea of the owner or the possessor was established. This, as well as the fact that non-payment of the sum could not give rise to criminal prosecutions, unlike some out-of-court settlements (transactions) and that the procedure did not involve the intervention of criminal courts at any stage, induced the Court to reach the conclusion that the action of the UKs Customs Excise department did not amount to a criminal charge in the sense of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is submitted that this decision is flawed. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the applicability of Article 6 to confiscation procedures should be seen in close connection to its case law regarding the right to property, entrenched in Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. In AGOSI the Court held that an import prohibition on golden coins constituted a law necessary to control the use of property and that the seizure and confiscation of the Krugerrands were consequently measures taken in accordance with this prohibition and were therefore governed by the second paragraph of Article 1 of the First Protocol. The Court ruled in the same sense in Air Canada. The text of Article 1, however, prompts the question whether confiscation of proceeds from crime should not be considered a deprivation of property under the first paragraph of this provision: 1. Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided by law and by general principles of international law. 2. The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties. This question was answered in the negative in Raimondo v. Italy, which concerned seizure and confiscation of real estate that was derived from mafia practices. It was held that although it involves deprivation of possessions, confiscation of property does not necessarily come within the scope of the second sentence of the first paragraph of Article 1 of Protocol No. 120 The Court referred to its prior judgments in AGOSI and Handyside, in which the Court seemed to have considered confiscation as a preventive measure. This was undoubtedly the case in Handyside where the Court held that the seizure, confiscation and destruction of obscene publications constitute a law necessary to control the use of property and were thus governed by the second paragraph of Article 1 of the First Protocol. These measures effectively prevented further distribution of the publication. It is, however, submitted that the confiscation of the illegally imported Krugerrands in AGOSI did not constitute a preventive measure as it did not pertain to the use of the property but only to certain economic-political goals that were set by the British Parliament. The (possession of) property was not unlawful per se at most; the confiscation dealt with derivative contraband, but not with per se contraband. An even more flagrant example is that of M v. Italy, a case decided by the European Commission of Human Rights, in which it was accepted that the confiscation of proceeds from crime under the Italian anti-mafia laws pursuant to a reversal of burden of proof did not fall foul of Article 6 of the Convention nor of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 as these confiscation measures were preventive and hence did not amount to a criminal penalty. Although all these cases differed from the earlier mentioned case of Welch v. UK (in which the Court did accept the criminal nature of the confiscation of drug trafficking proceeds) 124 in that the imposition of these confiscations did not require that the person was found guilty of a criminal offence, it is submitted that the punitive character of these confiscations could and should have been deduced from the possibility that the owner might avoid confiscation by demonstrating his innocence – a possibility which was explicitly acknowledged by the European Commission and the Court of Human Rights. In this perspective, it is useful to refer to the line of reasoning adopted by the American Supreme Court which explicitly deduced the punitive nature of in rem confiscations from the fact that confiscation is excluded in case owners can demonstrate exceptional innocence. It inevitably follows from this line of reasoning that the confiscation in AGOSI amounted to a penalty, as it wa s at least in part based on guilt of the owner. In Air Canada the punitive nature of the seizure of the aircraft as an instrument of crime was even more blatant, as it was not the aircraft as such that constituted the contraband, but the drugs that had been found on it on earlier occasions. It should be equally clear that the confiscation of assets belonging to a mafia member and presumably derived from an illegal origin, though termed preventive, is in fact nothing else but a criminal penalty. Given the absence of a formal international legislator, it is not surprising that the influence of soft law has been especially notable on the international level. The contribution of international soft law instruments to the fight against money laundering is impressive. One of the earliest international initiatives undertaken in the field of money laundering was the Recommendation No. R (80) 10 adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 27 June 1980 entitled Measures against the transfer and safeguarding of the funds of criminal origin. The first international instrument to address the issue of money laundering specifically was the Basle Statement of Principles of 12 December 1988, issued by the Basle Committee on Banking Regulations and Supervisory Practices. The Basle Committee, which comprises the authorities charged with banking supervision of twelve western countries, thought it necessary to take action against money laundering lest public confidence, and hence the stability of banks, should be undermined by adverse publicity as a result of inadvertent association by banks with criminals. Regardless of the fact that the primary function of banking supervision is to maintain overall the financial stability of the banking system rather than to ensure that individual financial transactions are legitimate, the supervisors thought that they could not stay indifferent to the use made of banks by criminals. Money Laundering Regulations 2003 The new regulations replace the Money Laundering Regulations 1993 and 2001 and require any person who carries a relevant business to maintain certain anti money-laundering administrative and training procedures. In particular, the activity of dealing in goods by way of business whenever a transaction involves accepting a cash payment of 15,000 or more, will mean that the business needs to comply with the Regulations. Furthermore, records of identification evidence must be kept for at least five years following the end of the business relationship. Failure to maintain the necessary procedures is a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of two years` imprisonment and a fine. Research commissioned by BT and GB Group, has found two thirds (67 per cent) of top UK businesses are currently not compliant with new money laundering legislation that came into force on March 1, 2004, leaving their directors open to legal action and a possible two-year jail sentence. The Money Laundering Regulations 2003 require all UK businesses to prove the identity of their customers when handling cash transactions for goods of euro15,000 or more, and also to have adequate record-keeping procedures in place to demonstrate necessary checks have been undertaken. Furthermore, 40 per cent of companies that have implemented what they regard to be acceptable identity authentication processes feel they could still be victims of money laundering, and over half (53 per cent) of those with solutions in place fear that money laundering activity will increase over the next couple of years (The Daily Mail February 23, 2004). The new extended money laundering regulations make it a legal requirement for companies to have robust systems for customer validation and record keeping in place. However, research clearly highlights that organizations are confused about how to achieve compliance, and that there is a worrying lack of confidence in identity verification systems that are already in place. To help companies address this problem, BT has developed an online authentication service, called URU, in partnership with GB Group (Haynes, 2004). URU helps businesses protect themselves against the growing problem of identity fraud, and by helping them work towards achieving compliance with money laundering legislation it may even help keep directors out of jail. URU enables companies subscribing to the service to decide instantly whether to accept the identity claimed by an individual. It does this by asking a series of questions and comparing the information gathered to that held in the most comprehensive data se ts available in the UK, producing match or no match reports. The result is a faster, cheaper, secure and more convenient way to fight identity fraud. URU also provides businesses with an independent audit, thereby helping companies demonstrate compliance with the Money Laundering Regulations 2003. Other findings from the research include: A quarter of all respondents have no identity-checking process in place at all and have no plans to introduce one. Of those with defined and documented identity-checking processes in place, businesses remain confused about some of the basic terms of the legislation: o 34 per cent are unable to state the threshold value level of goods at which a money laundering check should be triggered o 10 per cent do not regularly ask for key identification documents such as a passport or drivers license. A quarter is unclear that directors are now personally liable for any breaches. There are marked variations in levels of compliance across different market sectors. Compliance is highest amongst financial services companies, with 62 per cent of stockbrokers and 55 per cent of Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) already compliant, compared to only three per cent of car dealers and 23 per cent of luxury good companies (Dale, 2001). More than one in four companies feel that the cost of compliance will mean certain transactions will have to be refused, and 13 per cent see it as a cost that will have to be passed on to customers. The different levels of understanding about the requirements of the Money Laundering Regulations are a problem not only for businesses that need to comply, but also for the regulators aiming to crack down on this serious crime. It is in the interests of both parties to stem the rise of money laundering as a crime. Our URU system, which is designed specifically to help companies make large numbers of identity checks quickly and cost effectively, also helps organizations to meet the requirements of the regulations. Surveyors, estate agents, accountants, lawyers, licensed conveyancers and sellers of high value goods will now have had exactly a year to get to grips with the Money Laundering Regulations 2003 (Money Management; July 1, 2004). They are all caught within the range of business activities included in the regulations, and have had to set up internal compliance regimes. These involve regulation by the relevant authorities, training to ensure staff are alert to possible money laundering, the appointment of a money laundering reporting officer, identification procedures to check the details of all clients within the regulated sector and records of all identification checks to be kept for six years. Conclusion The objective standard for the suspicion of money laundering essentially provides the rationale for the know your client/know your business requirements. Failure to report a suspicion of money laundering is judged on the standard of whether a reasonable IFA would have been suspicious in all the circumstances. So what should make an IFA suspicious? The following are examples and should not be taken as an exhaustive list of circumstances that may give rise to suspicion. The important element is understanding what suspicion actually means. At the most basic level an IFA should be cautious of a client introduced through a third party or intermediary based in a country where drug production and trafficking, or terrorism is prevalent. This is not to say that suspicion should automatically arise in this context. It is perhaps only the background against which the reasonable IFA may later find grounds for suspicion. A transaction may have the requisite quality of suspicion where, without logical explanation, funds are routed in and out of the jurisdiction or between different accounts or institutions, or a transaction leads to financial loss. The settlement or payment following any transaction may also be suspicious if a client requests an unusual form of settlement. The term unusual will depend on the usual circumstances, but a request for payments in cash, or to a third party, or through a series of payments from an account may be suspicious. Recognizing a warning signal is the first step to complying with anti money laundering laws. If an unusual or unpredictable circumstance does arise which gives an IFA cause for concern, then the next step is to ask more questions. The answers to those questions will either allay fears or provide a foundation for reasonable suspicion. Bear in mind that although drugs and terrorism are examples of the crimes where money laundering cash is likely to be an is sue, the new laws relate to any proceeds, however small, from any crime, however petty it may seem. In particular, the new laws cover proceeds from tax evasion and benefit fraud. Various regulatory bodies have issued guidance to assist with the interpretation of the new laws. The guidance is also important to note because a court will take account of the guidance issued in a particular industry when applying the objective test as to whether someone knew or suspected money laundering. Bibliography Money laundering regulations. M2 Presswire; March 1, 2004. New laundering clampdown. The Daily Mail (London, England); February 23, 2004. Taken to the cleaners. Money Management; July 1, 2004. Haynes, A., Recent Developments in Money Laundering Legislation in the United Kingdom, JIBI (2004), 58–63. Dale, R., Reflections on the BCCI Affair: A United Kingdom Perspective, Intl Law (2001), 949–62. United Kingdom Model Agreement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Relation to Drug Trafficking (May 2003), reprinted in Mitchell, Hinton and Taylor, Confiscation.