Too Big To Fail – Andrew Sorkin, Book Review

Too Big to Fail is the book that has most clear explanation event by event about the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Even though Too Big to Fail is Andrew Sorkin’s first book, he made it possible to most of readers understand what really happened in 2008 with the failure of Lehman Brothers and the resulting misfortunes. Coming out in less than a year after the disaster, the book covered the whole catastrophic event, thanks to the meticulous research and countless interviews (made by the author) with those involved in the hassle. The title of this book basically covers what is spoken throughout the course of the story; companies that believed to be Too Big to Fail. Sorkin starts writing about the months after the sale of Bearn Stearns that was a global investment bank and securities trading and brokerage sold in 2008 to JP Morgan Chase at the low price of 2$ per share then introducing us to the collapse of the Lehman Brothers and finally leading us to the bailout or how the government officially call it; TARP or Troubled Asset Relief Program, a program that was announced on 9-19-08 by Secy Paulson that basically consisted in a series of grants and outright purchases of illiquid assets that would extricate the problem areas weighing down the economy. In addition, money funds were to be guaranteed. The details that make the history so interesting are the detailed information provided by the book of the behavior, personality and way to make decisions of the main characters. Sorkin focus seems to be almost exclusively on the human failings and human suffering on Wall Street that the fall of Lehman Brothers caused. In the story there are no specific villains but plenty of arrogant, blind and irresponsible decisions taken by some. However there are some people such as Henry Paulson, Timothy Geitner and Ben Bernake that may be considered heroes for their wise way to make decisions on pressure moments. The book would be a handy guide to people who want a clear and concise picture of the series of decisions that led Lehman Brothers directly go to bankrupt and of course the resulting chaos that this situation meant to Wall Street and the rest of the world. The book pleased me personally because it was very realistic in all it was the attitude of each character on the problem itself. I liked how in some cases it became reflected how the main U. S. business leaders were unable to conceal their greed when it came defending their interests.

How is Richard II portrayed in act I? Essay

In Act I of Richard II, Richard is portrayed as powerful, pompous and arrogant, all somewhat contrastingly to his portrayal towards the end of the play. We see even as early as Act I glimpses of Richard’s fatal flaws and the crucial mistakes he makes which determine his dramatic fall. The genre of the play is historic tragedy, so the audience know the main protagonist; in this case Richard; is doomed from the start. So, in Act 1 Shakespeare’s portrayal of him is not only purposeful for his fall, but also hugely ironic, making his descent to †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ even more dramatic. Immediately in Act I, Richard’s power and authoritative presence is apparent. The setting in Windsor Castle is a very formal occasion, as Richard gives Bullingbrook and Mowbray a formal hearing. It is really overblown and grandeur setting for the opening scene and so even before any speech, Richard is perceived as being powerful and omnipotent. On stage Richard, is central and stationed upstage to observe the proceedings. When he descends from his raised platform (which was traditional) and walks downstage to stop the proceedings later in the scene, he travels quite a distance on stage, reinforcing his pivotal place on the stage and in the political picture. These proxemics physically symbolise how Richard was the most powerful, which is extremely ironic as at the end of the play the roles are reversed as Bullingbrook defeats Richard. Richard is then the first character to speak, and refers to Bullingbrook and Mowbray by ‘Henry Hereford’ (I/I/3) and ‘Duke of Norfolk’ (I/I/6), making it seem very occasional and formal, so he appears as the voice of authority and as he is the first character to speak, it again re-emphasizes his ascendency. Alongside the first scene being a hugely occasional event, whereby Richards importance and authority is greatly established, is it written in rhyming couplets; likewise the rest of the play. Richard II is the only one of Shakespeare’s plays not written in prose, which gives it a sense of importance and authority. As the title of the play is Richard II, this then dramatizes how much power Richard initially had and so how much was at stake. As king of England in the 14th Century, Richard along with the majority of his people believed in the Divine Right. As we can see by his use of the royal ‘We’(I/I/24) ‘us’(I/I/24) and ‘our’(I/I/84), by this he is referring to himself and God, which shows Richard’s arrogance and audacity, as he refers to himself with a heightened sense of authority. However, as the Act continues we realise that although Richard is King of England so along with the title comes extraordinary wealth and power, Richard is not all that powerful and authoritative. When he uses the metaphor ‘Rage must be withstood/ Give me this gage. Lions make leopards time’ (I/II/173-4) here he is trying to assert his dominance and gain back control over the hearing as Bullingbrook and Mowbray demand a fight. He is reminding them of his pre-eminence, which makes him seem not only egotistical but shows his lack of control especially following Mowbray’s reply; ‘Yea, but not change his spots’ (I/II/175). His undaunted and scintillating response show is lack of true and honest respect for Richard, aside from formalities. It shows Richard’s lack of intrinsic power if a noble can under-mine him, and feels the need to knowing what the consequences may be. Not only is the whole play written in poetic rhyming couplets, but much of Richard’s speech is written very poetically and Shakespeare uses a lot of colourful and figurative language in his speech. By ‘face to face’ ‘brow to brow’ ‘the accuser and the accused’ Richard is repeatedly using mirroring imagery to re-enforce the idea of the ‘standoff’ coming between Bullingbrook and Mowbray, but also signifies the ultimate standoff between himself and Bullingbrook. However, this repetition creates a racy rhythm making him sound arrogant and pompous. From Richards continuous use of dramatic and poetic language, we can see he is not a man of action; a conclusion which is supported as in Act I Scene I he stands away and watches Bullingbrook and Mowbray fight, he is higher than them, symbolically and physically. Also, by him stopping Bullingbrook and Mowbray’s joule ‘Let them lay by their helmets and their spears/ And both return back to their chairs again’ (I/III/119-20) he looks effeminate and weak. Although he has an extraordinary flair for poetry but this appears to be his fatal flaw, he relies on language and words rather than traditional war and action. This is totally contrasting to Bullingbrook’s characterisation in Act I, he is willing to fight Mowbray till death ‘And as I truly fight, defend me heaven’ (I/III/41), he is a man of action and it is this which ultimately leads to Richard’s fall and defeat. However, this is somewhat ironic as his failing is words, but Shakespeare himself is a man of words and beautifully poetic language, which makes his failing and collapse even more dramatic as it is totally un-expected for his audience. As well as seeing Richard’s dependence on words and poetry we also are also introduced to another of Richards fatal mistakes. In Act 1 Scene 4 we see Richard in a completely new light, when Bushy informs him of Gaunt’s deteriorating health and the fact he is close to death, instead of feeling grief or any malice or despondency his first thought is of his inheritance. His response is cruel and heartless, only focusing on his financial gains from Gaunt’s death, ‘The lining of his coffers shall make coats/ To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars. ’ Gaunt’s inheritance is right-fully his son’s, Bullingbrook, so by taking it Richard is giving Bullingbrook a reason to avenge and try to destroy him. Not only does this make Richard seem brutal and callous, but also narcissistic and gallant as he does not even consider Bullingbrook’s reaction. As Richard believes he is God’s representative on earth, he sees himself as ‘untouchable’ impenetrable, so Bullingbrook’s anger does not matter as he cannot defeat him as he is protected by God- an idea certain to make Richard fall, and clearly apparent to the audience. Overall, Richard’s portrayal changes throughout Act I as his flaws and cracks begin to show. He is shown to be authoritative and powerful initially but we then see him to not be as powerful as he believes himself to be. However, there is no doubt that he is egocentric and contemptuous, apparent through his exaggerated self-opinion.

The American Healthcare System Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The American Healthcare System - Essay Example This is due to the fact that of all the developed countries in the world, the United States does not have Universal Health Care program for its citizen (Battista and McCabe). Instead of obtaining benefits from funds coming from mandatory taxes for health care purposes, US labor force receives health coverage from employer sponsored means. According to Alliance for Health Reform, in 2005, 159.5 million non-elderly US workers and their dependents were under workplace health coverage. Other means of coverage provides healthcare for the rest of 63.3 Americans (7). The issue on workplace coverage is its escalating cost. Employer-based health insurance premiums rose by 7.7 percent in 2006. Small employers witness an increase of, on average, 8.8 percent on their premiums. Enterprises having less than 24 workers experienced an increase of 10.5 percent (National Coalition on Health Care). In a country spending 16% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care (2005 figures) and continuing increase in health care premium cost while, concurrently ranking poorly on vital health statistics, such as infant mortality, life expectancy for women, life expectancy for men, in immunizations, among others, there is a clear evidence of ineffectiveness and inefficiency on health care coverage in the most powerful nation in the world (Battista and McCabe). Looking at it in a broader perspective, the Uni... true that this system provided impetus for innovation and growth in technological breakthroughs in the United States, the same system also jacks up inflation and other inefficiencies. To obtain funding for this universal multi-payer healthcare system, the government should do the following: Impose a tax that would fund universal health care. To soften its impact to American laborers, a portion of taxes of other nature (withholding, income, etc.) that could be sacrificed for this healthcare system should be sliced off. Provide efficient methods, particularly on the use of modern technology, to maximize use of funds in administrative and maintenance use. Results of studies garnered by American Hospital Association pointed out that workers almost 30 minutes on paper works, resulting into less effective use of time for actual healthcare purposes (American Health Association). A task force or a newly formed commission can be formed to oversee this problem. Being a multi-payer system, private insurers for those who can afford can still operate as usual. A new task force or agency should act as a channel of information and communication and will handle issues concerning the collaboration and interaction between the government healthcare insurer and private ones. Possible Issues Issues concerning the fear of socializing the US healthcare service, and thus lowering the quality of US health services by implementing the universal system; the presumed high cost of enforcing and maintaining it; and the possible lack of necessary services will most probably surface out from those opposing the move for its implementation (Battista and McCabe). Democracy and free market rests on the principle of equality and equity. Rising costs of health care in the United States greatly

English - The Moon Project Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

English - The Moon Project - Research Paper Example Further imposing the challenge, Kennedy implied that even a nation possess the talent and resource necessary for a goal to be achieved only putting initiatives to acting on goals can ensure a nations dream to fulfillment (Kennedy). Kennedy laid upon America the goals of making reality out of the vision of putting a man on the face of the moon bringing the American flag above and ahead of space discovery among any nation. First, is a challenge of commitment, asking the American nation to commit in achieving the goal of bringing an American to the moon and back safely. No single project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish†¦ it will not be man going to the moon†¦ it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there. (Kennedy) The succeeding goal challenges were set in providing additional budget and expenditures for additional proje cts in congruence with the moon project like the development of a Rover nuclear rocket, accelerating the use of space satellites for world-wide communications and a satellite system for the Weather Bureau’s world-wide weather observation (Kennedy). ... Ending with a call to every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant to give personal pledge so that American nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space (Kennedy). American-Russian race to space A number of political factors affected Kennedy's decision and the timing of it. In general, Kennedy felt great pressure to have the United States catch up to and overtake the Soviet Union in the space race (Garber). The United States and Russia competed with each other in developing space programs. During the 1960's and 1970's space race; both nations went under tremendous exploratory efforts in being the first nation to successfully conquer space (Smith).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Space travel began on October 4, 1957 when Russia launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to circle the earth. Man-made satellites are referred to as "artificial" because they are not a natural occurrence lik e the moon. These satellites orbit the earth for varying lengths of time depending on their size and distance from the earth, and they collect and transmit information that is used for a variety of purposes (Smith).    The second artificial satellite, Sputnik II, was launched in November of the same year carrying a dog named Laika, the first animal sent into orbit. As scientists studied how animals responded physically to space travel, it helped to prepare humans for the challenges under the same conditions (Smith).    January 31 of 1958, United States first artificial satellite Explorer I, enters into orbit around the earth (â€Å"Race to the Moon†). The United States launched many other satellites after the success of Explorer 1, for the purpose

The Methodist Understanding of the Priesthood of All Believers Essay

The Methodist Understanding of the Priesthood of All Believers - Essay Example According to the research findings, it can, therefore, be said that many Protestants deny the biblical doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. If Roman Catholics have only one pope, the Protestants have many, but not literally having popes with the same roles and position in a church. For the Catholic Priesthood, ordinary believers in Christ are not worthy to talk directly to God and that they need someone more deserving to mediate for a fee. Traditionally, Catholics and their members follow the custom of confession—the act of using intermediary such as the priest to confess one’s thoughts or feelings in order to be forgiven because they regard the priests as â€Å"holy† and â€Å"authorize† to relay your plea to God. The Methodists believe that the only way to get to heaven is to put faith in Jesus as the Saviour. But plainly believing in Christ is not enough. You have to be baptized and do good works to profess your faith as such when Jesus performe d good works and preaching in his time. Moreover, if they sin, they ask forgiveness in Christ and try not to commit the same sin again. The Protestant reformers emphasized that this salvation is a product of Gods grace alone. Ephesians 2:8-9 (King James Version Bible) gives evidence to this doctrine as it says, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast,† and asserts that "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law". God’s grace through salvation is not just about the forgiveness of sins but also liberation from death and hell. Since God bestows on the people His undeserved kindness, neither good works nor pious religious practices in themselves can earn salvation.

Marketing of Art Products Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Marketing of Art Products - Assignment Example This analysis focuses on the various aspects of arts marketing and evaluates whether the different conduits for arts sales could be considered as efficient in their sales and marketing approach. The sales outlets for marketing of art products largely depend on direct consumers, festival or exhibition visitors and also on sponsors. Olkonnen et al (2000) argue that there is little or no academic interest or research studies on the phenomenon of commercial sponsorship on arts, sports and media events. Sponsorship as a study of marketing management is largely defined by marketing mix and mass communication and Olkonnen et al claim that sponsorship could be better defined by applying the approach towards networking and interaction. Networking in marketing of arts focuses on understanding the dynamics of sponsorship as a method of networks and relationships and also interpersonal communication rather than sponsorship as a measure of effects on the audience or consumers. The art festival is one of the major marketing tools through which a large number of art enthusiasts could be assembled to focus on both the academic and the commercial aspects of art. Waterman (1998) writes that despite the prominence and ubiquity of such art festivals these festivals have not been studied or researched to an appropriate degree. These art festivals serve as a platform for new artists and also from a social perspective transform places and settings into environments thriving with the production and processing ad even consumption of the very essence of culture which seem to be available within a specific location. The way a particular culture in manifested and projected becomes very obvious in festivals and festivals play a major role in highlighting cultural aspects of art apart from being a major conduit for the sale and marketing of arts. Waterman (1998) goes a bit further in discussion the implications of these festivals and suggests that support for arts is a pro cess used by elites to distance themselves from the other classes of society. Thus being a patron of arts marks out someone as member of refined or higher social class. However the changing nature of festivals is obvious as from being traditionally innovative and being controlled by artistic directors, these festivals are now increasingly controlled by marketing managers and agencies who have been transforming arts into an industry with a strong potential for marketing and attracting consumers at a large scale. Arts festivals are now seen as serving the dual purpose of marketing the arts products as also advertising the place in which such festivals are held and thus tend to attract sponsors and agencies that have many different marketing approaches and motivations. Waterman (1998) suggests that the concept of festival for arts and economics may be related to tensions between culture and cultural politics. Direct marketing of art objects is one of the more traditional and common ways of marketing and selling art products. Arnold and Tapp (2003) suggest that direct marketing is being increasingly used by non profit organisations to reach consumers, raise sales and revenues and improve long term consumer relationships. In case of selling of arts

Explanatory synthesis paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Explanatory synthesis paper - Essay Example It is good to note that advertisements alone are not enough. Hence, advertisers couple advertising with branding. Branding involves the forming of an outstanding and unique image of the service or product so as to make a niche out of the target group that can identify with the service or product. Advertising and branding have both merits and demerits that affect the society on which they are expressed upon. This paper looks at the effects of advertising on society. The ideas on which these effects are based upon include health, psychological appeals, creativity and economic importance. Researchers have researched on the ways by which advertisements affect people mentally. By stating mentally, it means the way in which the perspective of people in the society towards what is being advertised is affected. Depending on their education levels, gender and age, people in the society are affected differently. Baker (2001) states that, the executives of advertising companies claimed that the advertisements that are broadcast affect the interests of students as the advertisements are delivered in manner that appeals to them. Advertisers make use of various appeals like power and status, and the appeal to a certain belonging so as to ensure that the aim of the particular advertisement is attained. Agencies that are involved with regulation of advertisements have stated that various advertisements are not in accordance with the promotion of healthy eating habits. They state that advertisers take advantage of the vulnerability of school going children and teenagers to lead them into eating junk food which is a major cause of obesity. Crary (2007), states that the Campaign for a Commercial – Free Childhood indicates that the advertisement Shrek the Third promotes the undertaking of unhealthy foods which is depicted by Shrek an animated ogre. This is complicated by the fact that Shrek is used in two advertisements that tend to

Household changes, I.E Lifecycle changes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Household changes, I.E Lifecycle changes - Essay Example The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Saving tells us that younger people have a tendency borrow money so they can spend it on education and housing ( Browning and Crossley, 2001). Young people spend their money on buying things while they are young professionals. As for young people, their tendency is to go overboard in their purchases which make them work harder to pay off credit card debts. Because of this young people incur debts through credit card. If this is a common behavior for most people, then old people have few money left for them at that time they badly need it : for hospitalization and burial. By the time this young people reach middle age, debts have already piled up since they are burdened with their child’s education and house mortgage. As they approach old age or retirement, the savings ( if there are any) are slowly used since they get sickly and have medical bills. Over-all, a person’s savings in a lifetime is really small unless you are used to s aving money as a

EMR feasability Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

EMR feasability - Article Example It is feasible to implement Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in hospitals that plan strategically to accomplish the inaugural state requirements of a meaningful use. EMR is an essential and exciting step towards the right direction. Currently in this rural area, there are no certified products of EMR in the market; however, the bodies responsible for certification are already planning to do so. This certification process and technological interoperability within the healthcare facilities have been awarded significant thought and attention by government officials and healthcare leaders. The feasibility of implementing EMR is limited with time; however, the process of implementation is very realistic and feasible. This will bring major changes in the healthcare industry; therefore the implementation process should be given top priority due to its feasibility. The paper has ascertained that creation of inter-related health systems, rather than stay alone silos of rural health care syste ms is a realistic opportunity to implement an EMR medical offices (Jones, 2008). The implementation of EMR is beneficial in the following ways; EMR improves greatly the quality of care through keeping up to date patient records and enhancing their accessibility; EMR allows easy tracking of patients by clinic staff who need follow up care; EMR allows physicians to find comprehensive patient medical records from the past; EMR improves the ability of clinicians to help the patients in managing the treatment of most complex diseases; and it also allows researchers and clinicians to analyze long term trends and patient data. On the other hand, implementation of the EMR has a lot of challenges some of which are: need for training data clerks in data entry and management which can be expensive to the implementer; setting up a system of information technology can be much expensive on the part of the implementer;

United States (US) Constitution and government Essay Example for Free

United States (US) Constitution and government Essay In a stirring analysis of the system of checks and balances that was to form the cornerstone of the United States (US) Constitution and government, James Madison underscores how the structure of government must ensure the proper functioning of the system (1788). He argues that for each particular branch of the government – the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary – to both maintain autonomy and yet be accountable, â€Å"the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places† (Madison 1788). Two aspects become important here: firstly, each branch of the government had to retain independence of the other two in order to work smoothly and without hindrance; secondly, there was to be as little role in the appointment of the members of one branch by those of another. The natural mode of selection, therefore, becomes popular choice. However, as Madison notes, given the specific requirements of the members of the judiciary, popular selection may be â€Å"inexpedient† (1788). Indeed, judicial positions were determined by the US Constitution to be filled by executive appointment; over time, this has tended to indicate a tacit complicity between the executive and the judiciary, rather than independence. Perhaps, it may have been wiser to allow the executive to forward a list of possible appointees to the judiciary, and popular election would decide who finally receives the appointments. Madison stressed on the distribution of power among and within the three branches in a such a way that the pulls and pressures of each would satisfactorily balance the other, and government as a whole would pave the way for the pursuit of liberty. He understood that the most important check would come from the people, with a system of control flowing not only from the rulers to the ruled, but also in the reverse direction. Government, thus, would be based on consent with citizens reserving the right to recall. However, he also advocated a system of â€Å"auxiliary controls† that would supply  Ã¢â‚¬Å"†¦by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives†¦where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other–––that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.† (Madison 1788) Each branch of government received a source of authority that would abridge any tendency by the others to exercise absolute power. Thus, as the legislature retained both the purse strings of the US and the final word on international treaties, the executive retained control over the armed forces, while the judiciary maintained the right to review legislations and executive actions. However, in the light of recent history, it must be said that the US presidency has assumed a position of almost unrestrained authority, and the influence of the executive over the other two branches has become a prominent feature of US politics. Madison failed to foresee this; in fact, he thought that the democratic system of governance in the country would make the legislature preeminent (1788). Madison ends with two important observations. Firstly, he mentions the safeguards for individual liberty arising out of not only the federal constitution but also the state constitutions. Secondly, he cautions against majoritarian tyranny by calling for the development of a ‘societal will’ and the deconstruction of any homogeneous majority through the toleration of diverse practices, views, and beliefs and through â€Å"many separate descriptions of citizens† (Madison 1788), a task that still remains incomplete. References Madison, J. (1788) ‘The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments.’ The Federalist No. 51. Retrieved 29 April, 2008, from http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm

Improving Access to Mental Health Services in New Zealand

Improving Access to Mental Health Services in New Zealand FINLEY FERNAN L. ORDENIZA IMPROVEMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH ACCESS FOR SERVICES AND ITS WELLBEING FOR MAORI PEOPLE ABSTRACT Mental Health and wellness promotion is not a fresh concept for Maori people here in New Zealand, but rather it is new on terms of mental health services that focused more on diseases in the past. Maori people got so many practices and one of them are â€Å"tapu† and noa, manakitanga†, it is a philosophy and native practice of caring for their family when sick and not well. The treaty of Waitangi 1840 was to provide protection and to enhance the wellbeing of the natives in New Zealand called â€Å"tangata whenau†. However the government was trying to deal with different Maori groups to resolve the grievances in the past but then it contributed to as risk factor that affects the mental health/ state of individuals. Nowadays, a distinct view is arising of how the Maori people wanted to view themselves in medium term and the wellness and mental health mean in the perspective of the Treaty, they claim that there was a great improvement on their health except for their mental health as long as the Crown would properly addressed and agrees the socioeconomic, justice and educational issues of the self-determination (tino rangatiratanga) by Maori. According to District Health Board report in 2009/10, approximately 120,293 individuals sought for mental health services and 116,645 of these individuals were seen by the District Health Board while 12,256 clients was by the Non-government Organization, and a great increase by 8.1% from 2008/09 on the total counts of individuals seen. Noticeably 54% of those individuals seen were male. Overall the clients identified as having the highest numbers sought mental health services are the Maori people by 22.4%. Demographically speaking according to the report it shows 2.7 times people living on the deprived area seen by the mental health services compare to the least deprived areas. INTRODUCTION Working as a Community Support Worker in IHC and dealing with those intellectually and mentally challenged clients inspire and helps me in choosing this topic for my research on how things need to be for the improvement of the mental health access for services and its wellbeing specifically for Maori people in line to the Treaty of Waitangi and analysing vital ethics and power cultural safety principles on healthcare practice. Mental health as defined by the World Health Organization is a state of wellbeing of an individual realizing his/her own potential, how an individual copes with the normal stresses in life, on how an individual work productively and lastly able to contribute something to his/her own community. In addition to that, World Health Organization emphasizes the meaning of health, wherein for them it was the overall state of a person’s physical, mental, social aspects and not purely the non-existence of disease or illness. To start with, knowing and understanding the nature and extent of Maori’s mental health should be taken in consideration first to meet their mental health needs and effectively handle Maori’s mental disorders and health problems. Te Rau Hinengaro, a New Zealand Mental Health survey provides vital information and track the trends for the past years till present though this survey report focus more on adult Maoris ranging from 16 years old and over and these result help the authorities track what should be done concerning Maori’s mental health and accessing Mental Health services. On this survey they found vital facts learned that one in every three Maori adults met the criteria for at least one mental disorder on the past 12 months and half of the Maori had been experiencing mental health illness in their lifetime. They also learned that in Maori, developing a single mental health illness was usual. The came out with a conclusion that socioeconomic status of Maori was vital that affects their mental health, and mental health illnesses are most common to Maori people aged 16-44 years old but less common within older age group. Maori women had larger occurrence of having metal health disorder compare to men. Though having higher number affected with mental disorder/illness on Maoris, the number of Maoris who seek health services are lower than non-Maori people. ANALYSIS The topic and issue was all about improvement on the access of mental health services by New Zealanders specifically the tangata whenau or the indigenous people called Maori with proper acknowledgement of Te Tiriti or Waitangi and its respective principles that governs the entire characteristics of mental health service provision. Wherein the Mental Health Commission recognizes the importance of this Treaty as the original outline for relations between the Crown and the Maori people. As a healthcare service provider, the significance of this issue was it open our minds on the existing problem that Maori people experiencing nowadays, in contrary with the Treaty implications wherein it says in article one that with regards to the public funding and delivery of mental health services, it needs significant consultation with the Maori people and they should by involve in the development of those services. The other thing was in article two about Maoris self-determination that gives Maori people with more chances to establish and implement strategies and services that would enhance mental health services, Maoris wellbeing outcomes and mental health status. And lastly, the article three of these implications that the Crown make sure that the Maori receive the same rights of citizenship and benefits that includes the equal access to mental health services, the equal health and wellbeing outcomes, accessible mainstream mental health services that meets Maoris needs. According to the result from the analysis of Te Rau Hinengaro 2003/04 27, it illustrates the Maori people generally have higher rates of mental disorders than non-Maori people and higher level of need for mental health services is not currently met. Continuous and consistent effort should be needed to create pathways of care, the environments and workforce to effective for Maori mental health service users and their family. Whanau Ora carries all Maori aspirations about mental health and delivers an approach that establish whanau capability and gives assistance for Maori families to attain their overall health and wellbeing. For these services to be efficient for the Maori people, they need to meet the comprehensive health and mental needs of the service user in their whanau setting. They should also recognize the contexts of the service user’s being and objectives. Distinguished a Maori world sight in rendering the service and approach appropriately in Maori’s culture, able to point out the barriers to Maori who access mental health services and surge access for Maori to equal access to mental health services. At present, the government proposed a change based on the manual created named Blueprint 2, it emphasizes the recovery approach and the initiative to offer access mental health services for Maori people that are moved by mental health issues here in New Zealand. The Government are focusing on the needs of the Maori people with mental health issues notably influence their total health and their capacity to be effective neither at home and work. The government also was conscious in terms of the benefits if early response and recognition to achieve positive result for Maori people and for society. Latest survey shows that New Zealand still one of the highest suicidal rates among the youth in a developed world and disparities in mental health outcomes for Maori and Non-Maori people. This Blueprint 2 according to the government will help achieve better vision and outcome in the future especially for Maori people, as they emphasize that â€Å"mental health and wellbeing is everyoneâ€℠¢s business†, putting the phase for the future wherein people concerned does their part in protecting and refining mental health and wellbeing. At the government believes that mental health and wellbeing shows a vital role in building a well-effective and useful society. When this proposal would be successfully implemented, heaps of great improvement to Maori’s mental health due to access to services would happen. Some of these are, Maori people suffering from mental health issues doesn’t need to wait for help; they become partners in the process of care; mental health issues will be accepted and treated accordingly on the entire life-course; they would experience good mental health due to hand on hand partnership of the government and the community. Providing an overview of the ‘best practice’ trends for managing the issue is to recognize and create efficient management Maori’s mental health problems. Though it is known that mental health problems are common to them but unfortunately their needs were not met appropriately especially accessing mental health services here in New Zealand. Determining mental health issues and delivering immediate services to Maori people should be considered as the main concern. Rendering most effective level of mental health service to them, the government should acknowledged sole viewpoint in Maori’s culture. They should determine Maori’s perception on how they deal with mental health problems and how they do it prior on rendering this mental health services to them. The Ministry of Health here in New Zealand are trying all the best shots in dealing with mental health problems within Maori people and the accessibility of mental health services but not enough to say that the project was a success. There are heaps of things should be done and changes in terms of accessible mental health services and the government should take in consideration to recognize that there is higher occurrence of mental health disorders within Maori people and their needs for having the said treatment was increasingly unmet as well; the government should prioritize Maori people when determining mental health illnesses/disorders and prioritize them when rendering early actions; the government should recognize that there is a difference within Maori people on how they see the health problem as a whole, their knowledge regarding mental health problem and their treatment goals based on their culture and beliefs; ensuring care rendered to them is culturally in a right manner a nd lastly create a partnership with Maori healthcare providers and treatment should be acceptable to clients culture and their whanau. In addition, in terms of accepting mental health problems in Maori, mostly they exhibit mental health disorder likely the same way with non-Maori clients but healthcare provider should welcome appearance including much spiritual and physical manifestations of suffering. Majority of health professionals should be conscious with these manifestations to be able to search for expert advice to clear the problem and render proper actions. Having an effective communication between health professionals and clients is a meaningful aspect to be able to distinguish mental health problem/ disorder and so appropriate mental health services will be rendered as early as possible depending on client’s needs. Providing enough time to establishing therapeutic relationship is vital on the entire process. Like for example the GP would introduce himself properly and knowing his/her client well, the GP should dig more deeply the client’s background, culture, about client’s family/ wha nau and create good connection. Providing the client all the time and patiently listening to client’s story contribute as well for a successful treatment process. And the other thing was, the GP or healthcare provider should take into account that mental health problems usually go along with substance abuse problems and clients/ individuals may encounter heaps of mental health problems at the same time. Analysing the ethics and power cultural safety used on healthcare practice the government should recognize different principles for better understanding and as a guide on rendering mental health care services to Maori people. The first principle was, the cultural safety’s goal was to enhance the New Zealanders wellbeing and relates entire relationships by emphasizing positive health consequences and health improvements, healthcare providers including nurses and GP’s should recognize Maori’s beliefs and customs compared to other non-Maori clients like for instance and this could be according to their age or group, sexuality, sexual preference, profession and social and economic status, ethnic foundation, spiritual belief and disability. The second principle of cultural safety aims to improve the provision of health and disability services by having a culturally safe healthcare professional workforce in a way like recognizing the power connection between the service provider and the individuals who are using the health services. The healthcare professional acknowledge and works together with other people after undertaking a thorough process of institutional and own analysis and enabling the service users. Individuals should be able to convey degrees of identified hazard or safety. Helping healthcare professionals to comprehend the diversity throughout their own cultural reality and the effect of that to any individuals who varies in some other way from themselves. Concerning social science models that strengthen the art of healthcare practice, wherein understanding that healthcare practice is further than carrying out the duty but rather it is more on responding and relating effectively to individuals with varied nee ds in such a way that the people who uses the health services can characterize as safe. The third principle of cultural safety is general in its application by accepting the disparities within healthcare communications that signifies the microcosm of disparities in health that have existed throughout history and inside our nation and more largely on addressing the source and result association of history, politics, socioeconomic status, housing, education, sexuality, personal experiences of individuals using health services. In addition, recognizing the validity of disparity and diversity in people’s attitudes and social structure and recognizing the behaviour and beliefs, guidelines and customs of health and disability service providers can turn as barriers on accessing the services concerning quality development on rendering the service and service user’s rights. Lastly the fourth principle concerning cultural safety has an attached emphasis on comprehending the effect of the healthcare professional as a carrier of his/her own culture; the history, behaviour and life experiences. Challenging healthcare provider to assess their custom carefully, accepting the power relationship in healthcare is biased toward the health and disability service provider. This principle emphasize on balancing the power connections in healthcare practice so that every client receives an efficient service, prepare healthcare professionals to decide any tension between the cultures of healthcare professional and the service users. Recognizing that those power imbalances can be assessed, bargained and changed to render equitable, efficient and appropriate delivery of service wherein it lowers the risk to the people who may then estranged from the service. This principle highlights that result on understanding of self, the rights of other people and validity of dispari ties and it should support the healthcare professional with skills in working with different type of people. REFERENCES Word Health Organization. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/mental_health/en/ Mental Health Commission (June 2012). Retrieved from http://www.hdc.org.nz/media/207642/blueprint%20ii%20how%20things%20need%20to%20be.pdf Ministry of Health. 2013. Mental Health and Addiction: Service use 2009/10. Wellington: Ministry of Health. Retrieved from http://www.health.govt.nz/publication/mental-health-and-addiction-service-use-2009-10 Best Practice Journal. Recognising and managing mental health problems in MÄ ori. Retrieved from http://www.bpac.org.nz/BPJ/2010/June/mentalhealth.aspx â€Å"Oakley Browne M, Wells J, Scott K, (eds). Te Rau Hinengaro: The New Zealand Mental Health Survey. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Health; 2006.† â€Å"Ministry of Health. Te Puawaitanga: Maori mental health national strategic framework. Wellington: Ministry of Health; 2002.†

Collaborative Selling :: GCSE Business Marketing Coursework

Collaborative Selling On March 11, 1998 I attended a lecture held by John Littleson in Vineland NJ. The topic of his lecture was collaborative Selling. In which he presented the six best ways to increase sells. John is a multi millionaire; he owns eight new car dealerships, two boat dealerships and several properties through out South Jersey. Target The first step is a marketing necessity: understand exactly what the product/service is and identify the specific markets that can best use it. This is done on a company level in their marketing plan and should be done by individual salespeople as well. It takes some time, but careful planning focuses effort and provides a greater return on time and money invested. Collaborative salespeople know they must concentrate on Prospects who have a high probability of buying. Contact The first step after targeting a market is to contact them in a cost-effective and professional way. Naturally, this would be some combination of letter, phone, and personal contact. The right combination of contacting strategies ensures that collaborative salespeople create high-perceived value before they call on their prospects. When contact is made, collaborative salespeople set the stage for a cooperative, working relationship. They convey their desire to explore needs and opportunities. They build credibility and trust. They express their sincere desire to be of service, and they make their competitive advantages known without jumping into a presentation. Explore In this stage of the collaborative sales process, salespeople convey the message: "Let's explore your business situation to see if there are need to fulfill or opportunities on which to capitalize." During the explore stage, collaborative salespeople conduct research, meet with their prospects frequently, and do whatever it takes to become an expert on their prospect's business. The give-and-take relationship that Develops sets the stage for in-depth exploration of options that may culminate in a sale. Collaborative salespeople make it clear that they want to help, not just make a sale. If, after information-gathering, collaborative salespeople find that their products are not appropriate for their prospects, which is unlikely due to their careful target marketing, they will forego the sale, but have made a friend and business Contact. Collaborate It is at this point after an in-depth exploration of a prospect's situation that collaborative salespeople talk about their products or services.

The Olympics :: essays research papers

Olympic Games were held throughout Ancient Greece, but the most famous games were the games held in Olympia. They were held between August and September in honor of Zeus. Some claim that Zeus and Kronos the mightiest of the gods, wrestled for possession of the earth on the high peaks in Greece, and the games were in commemoration of the victory of Zeus. People all throughout Greece would come to Olympia to watch and take place in the festival. The entrance to the stadium in which the Olympic games were held had a row of statues. The statues, called Zanes were made in the likeness of the â€Å" Zeus of Oaths† statue. On the first day of the games the athletes stood before this heroic- sized statue of Zeus poised to throw a thunderbolt, and promised to obey â€Å"the laws of Zeus†. The money to create such human like statues was collected from the fines from athletes who violated the Olympic code of honor in competition. The â€Å"Zanes† were erected so that they were almost the last things the athletes saw as they marched into the stadium to take part in the games. The temple of Zeus was constructed as a meeting point for the athletes of the Olympic games. They all gathered to worship Zeus before the games. On the middle day of the Olympics, 100 oxen were sacrificed and burned outside the temple. Now a day we offer no sacrifices to Zeus. The stadium was built to accommodate 45,000 spectators. All women were excluded from the early Olympic Games, even as on lookers. The punishment for any woman caught in Olympia during the festival was death by being thrown from a cliff. However, Pausanius wrote about a story of one incident that transpired when a mother ran out of the stadium to congratulate her son on winning. Kallipateira, an exile from Rhodes, broke the law and went unpunished. After the death of her husband, she trained her son to compete in the Olympics of 404 B.C. On the day of his contest, she entered the stadium disguised as a trainer. As the story goes, she ran out to congratulate him on winning the boxing event, it was discovered she was a woman. Because her father, bother, and now son acquired a total of six Olympic victories, she was not punished. Thereafter, however, the trainers, as well as the athletes, were required to participate in the nude.

Crimes Against Children

Crimes Against Children Child abuse has been a major social concern only since the 1950s but adults have victimized children throughout history. Children are the most vulnerable of all groups which is why child abuse victims are of great concern to society. There are different forms of crimes against children, child abuse, physical or sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. Child abuse is the neglect of or violence against children. From 1998 to 2000, 367,000 children were harmed by their parents.Physical abuse includes intentionally beating, biting, burning, strangling, hitting, kicking or shaking a child. In the 1060s the term â€Å"battered child syndrome† was coined. This is a condition where a child suffers serious physical injury usually inflicted by their parents or caregiver. Sexual abuse of children is particularly offensive and is the least commonly reported form of family violence. Unfortunately child sex abusers are family members and friends or neighbors of the victim. In many cases the child has a trusting relationship with the abuser.Emotional abuse is more subtle and involves power or control to harm the victim’s sense of self. Tactics such as verbal threats, social isolation, intimidation, exploitation, terrorizing a child or exposing him to family violence all serve to diminish a child’s self-worth and can cause impaired psychological growth. Child neglect is the chronic and repetitive failure to provide children with food, clothing, shelter, medical care or protection from harm. It constitutes the largest category of child abuse offenders.Fifty-two percent of all child abuse cases in the Unites States involve neglect. Parental alcoholism, drug problems and other inadequate social and family functions are among the factors affecting the child’s response to victimization. More needs to be learned about the long term consequences of childhood victimization. This article discusses what is known from past studies and also present finding of more recent research. Child maltreatment has physical, psychological, cognitive and behavioral consequences.These include minor injuries to brain damage and even death, low self- esteem, depression, substance abuse and suicide attempt. Cognitive effects include attention problems, learning disorders and poor school performance. Behavior issues range from poor peer relations to physical aggression to violent behavior. Males and females react differently to abuse. Males tend to externalize their feeling and are more likely to develop conduct disorders, while females tend to internalize their feelings leading to depressive disorders.Practices of the community and the justice and social services systems may have long-term effects. Children who are members of racial or ethnic minorities often meet with discrimination. Researches have suggested that victimized children are more likely to develop behavior problems in adolescence and may be labeled juvenile offender s. Abused and neglected children score lower on IQ tests and usually fail to complete school which leads to menial and unskilled jobs. Interpersonal relationships are also affected by child maltreatment.Frequent divorce and separation are more common in abused and neglected people. Childhood abuse also increases the risk of being arrested for violent crime. The psychological and emotional fallout for abused children include suicide attempts, antisocial personality disorder and alcohol abuse or dependency. Abused and neglected children may exhibit aggressiveness and behavior problems in childhood, delinquency in adolescence and antisocial and criminal behavior in adulthood.These children, as adults, may be more prone to become abusive themselves. Recent research indicates that child neglect especially at an early age causes substantial problems. Some forms of early neglect lead to â€Å"severe, chronic and irreversible damage†. There are many mechanisms by which abuse and negl ect affect a child but finding a single mechanism that explains all cases of abuse and neglect is highly unlikely. Both the textbook and the journal article agree that childhood abuse causes substantial problems later in life.

Design of Industrial Robots

Abstraction Today, industrial automaton is used in assorted intents such as welding, picture, choice and topographic point, production review, and proving. Because of its popular, industrial automaton has become interesting field, many companies, research centres and scientists spend much of money, clip to better features of industrial automaton. Simulation is a cardinal competency for both robot makers, users and scientists to better automaton public presentation, safety and cut down automaton cost, power, clip. In this thesis, brief kinematics, kineticss and control theory are mentioned ; equations from these theories are applied for R-R and R-R-R operator, so these consequences are compared with simulation consequences to verify simulation consequences. In add-on, a simple existent theoretical account is built with 2 dynamixel servo motors ; the existent theoretical account can make simple work such as traveling point to indicate, following consecutive line. The simulations of automaton operator are performed by Recurdyn-Colink and Recurdyn-Matlab/Simulink. Forward and reverse kinematics are used to simulation automaton operator to execute progress trajectory way, the consequences from these simulations are used in kineticss subdivision. PD feedforward control besides is indicated, the control system based on independent articulation control, which frequently is known as single-input/ single-output system. These consequences from simulation are tantamount with theory. These consequences besides provide a batch of utile information for a batch of intents such as layout rating to avoid obstruction, optimisation flight way, kinematics, kineticss study. Keywords: automaton operator, kinematics, kineticss, feedforward control. 1 IntroductionMotivation and history of industrial automatonToday, we can run into industrial automaton in many mills in the universe. Applications of industrial automatons include welding, picture, choice and topographic point ( packing or SMT line ) , production review, and proving. Harmonizing to the International Federation of Robotics ( IFR ) , by the terminal of 2011, there were at least 1,153,000 operational industrial automatons. And IFR estimated the world-wide gross revenues of industrial automatons about US $ 8.5 billion. If cost of package, peripherals and systems technology are included, the industrial automaton market was estimated US $ 25.5 billion in 2011. Therefore, industrial automaton has been become an interesting field. Along with development of industrial automaton, simulation and theoretical account of industrial automatons are of import. They can supply a batch of utile information for many intents such as layout rating, kinematic, dynamic survey, off-line sched uling to avoid obstruction in the undertaking infinite and design mechanical construction of automatons. The history of industrial automaton has associated with the development of computing machine aided design ( CAD ) and computing machine aided fabrication ( CAM ) systems. In 1954, George Devol applied for the first robotics patents ( granted in 1961 ) . In 1956, Devol and Joseph F. Engelberger formed the world’s foremost robot company was Unimation which was based on Devol’s original patents and Engelberger has been called as the male parent of robotics. Unimation has been built with hydraulic actuators and programmed in joint co-ordinates. The angle of each articulation was stored during a teaching stage and replayed in operation. In the 70s the automaton industry increased really rapidly because of the tremendous investings by the automotive industry. In Europe, ABB Robotics and KUKA Robotics brought automatons to the market in 1973. ABB Robotics introduced IRB 6, it was become the first commercially operator which controlled all electric by micro-processor in the universe. The first two IRB 6 automatons were installed in production for crunching and smoothing pipe decompression sicknesss in 1974. In 1973 KUKA Robotics built its first automaton, FAMULUS, besides one of the first articulated automatons have driven six electromechanically axes. In US, many US companies entered the field, including elephantine companies such as General Electric, and General Motors ( a joint venture formed by General Motors and FANUC LTD of Japan called FANUC Robotics ) . Other companies besides started robotics concern such as Automatix and Adept Technology, Inc. In 1984, Unimation was acquired by Westinghouse Electric Corporati on for 107 million U.S. dollars. After that Westinghouse sold Unimation to Staubli Faverges SCA of France in 1988, which is still doing articulated automatons for general industrial and cleanroom applications and even bought the robotic division of Bosch in late 2004.Hardware and SoftwareDuring this thesis, three package ( RecurDyn, SolidWorks, Matlab ) have been used to work out this thesis assignment. Dynamixel servo motor besides was used for experimental intents.RecurDyn V8R2RecurDyn is developed by FunctionBay, Inc. which is a professional CAE company and provides MultiBody Dynamics ( MBD ) . RecurA ­Dyn is a modern CAE package suite which offers the alone combination of Multibody Dynamics, Finite Element Analysis and Controls. Dynamic Rigid and Flexible Body Analysis to the full integrated additive and nonlinear Finite Element Analysis supply item information of realistic theoretical accounts for design surveies and bettering merchandise public presentation. By utilizing FE mesh, RecurDyn can imitate overall gesture every bit good as local distortions, strains and emphasiss. RecurDyn CoLink, an incorporate signal flow oriented control design tool. It provides off-line simulation of mechatronic systems, traveling far beyond the classical Co-Simulation attack. If a elaborate Recurdyn multi flexible organic structure dynamic works theoretical account is used, the user can cut down the figure of cringles during the practical accountant parametric quantity optimisation procedure. In add-on, RecurDyn besides can link with Matlab/Simulink which has a batch of block libraries, plan linguistic communication tool, etc. for dynamic system. Last but non least, RecurDyn has supported a batch of CAD package which are used as the Parasolid Kernel plan.SolidWorksSolidWorks is really popular 3D mechanical computing machine aided design package which runs on Microsoft Windows. It is established by Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp. It used Parasolid Kernel attack to make theoretical accounts and assemblies. Presently, over 2 million applied scientists and interior decorator usage SolidWorks at more than 165000 companies in whole universe.MatlabMATLAB is a numerical computer science environment and fourth-generation scheduling linguistic communication including C, C++ , Java, and FORTRAN. Established and developed by MathWorks, MATLAB is good known for matrix uses, plotting of maps and informations, creative activity of user interfaces, and interfacing with plans written in other linguistic communications. In add-on, Simulink is an add-on merchandise with block libraries, informations flow graphical plan linguistic communication tool for mold, simulation, and analysing multi-domain dynamic and embedded systems.DynamixelDYNAMIXEL is a consecutive high public presentation networked actuators for automatons developed by ROBOTIS. DYNAMIXEL can be used for multi-joint robot systems such as robotic weaponries, robotic manus, bi-pedal automaton, hexapod automaton, snake automaton, kinematic art, animatronics and mechanization, etc†¦ DYNAMIXEL can be controlled utilizing Personal computer through USB2Dynamixel by many package such as Matlab, python, Microsoft Visual Studio ( C++ , C # ) , Visual Basic, Java, LabVIEW, occultation, ROS ( TTL/RS485/RS232 communicating ) . DYNAMIXEL besides can be controlled utilizing sole accountant such as CM-5 ( ATMega128 ) , CM-700 ( ATMega2561 ) , CM-510 ( ATMega2561 ) , CM-530 ( ARM Cortex M3 ) . Fig1. Dynamixel servo motorOutlinepartChapter 2. Background theory 2.1 Positions, Orientations, and Frames 2.1.1 Position In a co-ordinate system, any point can place with a 3Ãâ€"1 place vector in the existence. The place of point P in co-ordinate system is ordered set of three Numberss. Fig2. Vector comparative to border { A } 2.1.2 Orientation 2.1.2 Frames In robotics, the state of affairs of a place and an orientation brace arises so frequently is called a frame, which is a set of four vectors including one vector describes place and 3 vectors describe orientation. The base frame, { B } The base frame has place at the base of the automaton operator. It is appended to a unmoving portion of the automaton and frequently called link 0. Fig3. The criterion frame The station frame, { S } The station frame has location in a task-relevant, in the figure above, it is at the corner of a tabular array which the automaton is to work, and all motions of the operator are implemented comparative to it. Sometimes, it is besides called as the existence frame, universe frame or the undertaking frame. The carpus frame, { W } The carpus frame { W } is fastened to the last nexus of the operator. { W } frequently has its beginning fixed at a point called the carpus of the operator, and { W } will travel with the last nexus of the operator. The tool frame, { T } The tool frame { T } is appended to the terminal of any tool the automaton happens to be keeping. { T } is normally located with its beginning between the fingertips of the automaton when the manus is empty. The end frame, { G } The end frame has location to which the automaton is to travel the tool. At the terminal of the gesture, the tool frame should be brought to happenstance with the end frame. Chapter 3 Operator Kinematicss Kinematicss is the scientific discipline of gesture including the place, the speed, the acceleration, and all higher order derived functions of the place variables. This chapter has 4th subdivisions: the Denavit-Hartenberg ( D-H ) parametric quantities, the forward kinematics, the opposite kinematics, the Jacobian. 3.1 Denavit-Hartenberg Any robot operator can be described kinematically by the values of four measures for each nexus. Two describe the nexus itself, and two describe the link’s connexion to a adjacent nexus. The definition of mechanisms by 4th measures is a convention normally called the Denavit-Hartenberg notation. Fig4. Description of D-H parametric quantities aI= the distance from ZIto Zi+1measured along TenI = the angle from ZIto Zi+1measured about TenI vitamin DI= the distance from Teni-1to XImeasured along ZI = the angle from Teni-1to XImeasured about ZI 3.2 Forward Kinematicss Forward kinematics is used to calculate the place and orientation of the tool frame from joint parametric quantities. The transmutation from frame { one } to border { i-1 } ( 3.1 ) The nexus transmutations is multiplied together to happen the individual transmutation that relates frame { N } to border { 0 } ( 3.2 ) 3.2.1 R-R operator forward kinematics Lengths of two links are L1 and L2. Fig5. R-R nexus frame assignmentLinkIaIvitamin DII1000120Liter102Table1. D-H parametric quantities of R-R operator Computational transmutation matrices of each nexus ( 3.3 ) ( 3.4 ) Therefore, ( 3.5 ) 3.2.2 R-R-R operator forward kinematics Fig6. R-R-R operator parametric quantitiesI1002-9000304-900Table2. D-H parametric quantities of R-R operator Transformation matrix for each nexus: ( 3.6 ) ( 3.7 ) ( 3.8 ) ( 3.9 ) ( 3.10 ) The transmutation matrixis gained by matrix generation of the single nexus matrices. At first,is gained by multiplyingand =( 3.11 ) =( 3.12 ) Finally = =( 3.13 ) Here, ( 3.14 ) ( 3.15 ) ( 3.16 ) The matrixestablishes the kinematics of R-R-R automaton operator ; it expresses the relationship between frame { 4 } and frame { 0 } about place and orientation. 3.3 Inverse Kinematicss Inverse kinematics is survey of happening the needed articulation angles to put the tool frame, { T } , comparative to the station frame, { S } . The reverse kinematics job is well harder than the forward kinematics job. Unlike forward kinematics which ever exist solution, solution for reverse kinematics may non be. The being of a solution defines the workspace of a operator. If the exist solution, there can even be an infinite figure of solutions, for instant â€Å"elbow up† and â€Å"elbow down† solutions. 3.3.1 Using for R-R Transformation from frame { 2 } to border { 0 } is mentioned by forward kinematics. In frame { 2 } , the co-ordinate of point P is [ L20 0 1 ] . In the frame { 0 } , the co-ordinate of point P is [ten Y0 1 ] . Therefore ( 3.17 ) ( 3.18 ) Square booth equations so add them: ( 3.19 ) ( 3.20 ) ( 3.21 ) ( 3.22 ) Writingten, Yin the signifier ( 3.23 ) ( 3.24 ) Where ( 3.25 ) ( 3.26 ) If ( 3.27 ) And ( 3.28 ) Then ( 3.29 ) ( 3.30 ) Equation ( 3.23 ) and ( 3.24 ) can be written as ( 3.31 ) ( 3.32 ) So ( 3.33 ) ( 3.34 ) Therefore, ( 3.35 ) Finally, equation for?1 ( 3.36 ) See equation ( 3.22 ) , minus or plus gestural corresponds positions of R-R operator. In this state of affairs, â€Å"elbow up† and â€Å"elbow down† are mentioned. Fig7. Two positions of R-R operator 3.3.1 Using for R-R-R From forward kinematics of R-R-R operator So, ( 3.37 ) From equation ( 3.6 ) , Inverting matrix ( 3.38 ) Substitute in ( 3.37 ) ( 3.39 ) So, ( 3.40 ) See about trigonometric permutations ( 3.41 ) ( 3.42 ) Where ( 3.43 ) ( 3.44 ) Using ( 3.41 ) and ( 3.42 ) , equation ( 3.40 ) can be written as ( 3.45 ) ( 3.46 ) ( 3.47 ) So ( 3.48 ) ( 3.49 ) Finally, the solution for: ( 3.50 ) See elements ( 1,4 ) and ( 3,4 ) of the matrix in the right-hand of equation ( 3.39 ) ( 3.51 ) ( 3.52 ) Square both ( 3.51 ) and ( 3.52 ) so add the resulting equations ( 3.53 ) ( 3.54 ) Or ( 3.55 ) Where ( 3.56 ) Equation ( 3.55 ) is of the same signifier as ( 3.40 ) so can be solved by the same method. Therefore, solution foris: ( 3.57 ) So find solution for, consider: ( 3.58 ) ( 3.59 ) Comparing both the ( 1,4 ) and ( 2,4 ) elements of matrix in right-hand of ( 3.59 ) ( 3.60 ) ( 3.61 ) These equations can be solved at the same time forand ( 3.62 ) ( 3.63 ) From equation ( 3.62 ) and ( 3.63 ) , ( 3.64 ) Because, therefore the concluding solution foris: ( 3.65 ) The subtraction or plus mark in ( 3.50 ) and ( 3.57 ) do four possible position of operator. Fig8. Fourth positions of R-R-R operator 3.4 Jacobians Relationship between the joint speed and the Cartesian speed is determined Jacobian WhereVis a speed vector in Cartesian and ? is the vector of joint angles, J ( ? ) is Jacobian. The Jacobian has figure of rows is peers the figure of grade of freedom in the Cartesian infinite, and figure of columns is equal the figure of joint. For case, a general automaton with six articulations, The Jacobian is matrix of 6Ãâ€"6,is 6Ãâ€"1, and Cartesian speedVis 6x1with 3Ãâ€"1 additive speed vector and 3Ãâ€"1 rotational speed vector. Example for R-R operator theoretical account The Jacobian can be written a 2Ãâ€"2 matrix which relates joint speed to end-effector speed. The location of point P ( end-effector ) is (ten, Y) so, from equation ( 3.17 ) and ( 3.18 ) ( 3.66 ) Derivative ( 3.66 ) ( 3.67 ) Or ( 3.68 ) So, the Jacobian in frame { 0 } is ( 3.69 ) Other progress of Jacobian is invertible. From ( 3.70 ) , joint rate can be calculated with a certain speed vector in Cartesian co-ordinate. Note that most operators will hold values of ? where the Jacobian turns into singular. ( 3.70 ) Chapter 4 Manipulator Dynamics In this chapter, equations of gesture for operator with torsions applied by actuators or external forces applied to the operator are mentioned. Chpater 5 Trajectory and Control Mentions [ 1 ] John J. Craig, 2005, Introduction to Robotics Mechanics and Control, 3rded. , Pearson Education, Inc. [ 2 ] Ahmed A. Shabana, 2005, Dynamics of Multibody Systems, 3rded. , Cambridge University Press. [ 3 ] Reza N. Jazar, 2010, Theory of Applied Robotics Kinematics, Dynamics, and Control, 2neodymiumed. , Springer. [ 4 ] RECURDYN, 2012, RecurDyn/ Solver Theoretical Manual, 8Thursdayed. , FunctionBay, Inc. [ 5 ] Frank L.Lewis, Darren M.Dawson, Chaouki T.Abdallah, 2004, Robot Manipulator Control Theory and Practice, 2neodymiumed. , Marcel Dekker, Inc. [ 6 ] Wikipedia

John Nash

Using the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR) John Nash has been given the primary diagnosis of being undifferentiated. Plus abnormalities of the brain structure and function, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations. Nash often has panic attacks, withdrawal from social activities, and loss of attention to personal hygiene and grooming, and the inability to separate real form unreal events. John Nash is classified under Undifferentiated Type because he had a number of symptoms such as delusions, disorganized behavior, disorganized speech, and hallucinations. He believes he is being forced to work for the government to decipher codes. That they inserted a coded chip in order to keep track of him, and if he doesn’t comply with their wishes, they will expose him to the Russians, who in turn will kill him. This interferes with his personal and work life tremendously. He also thought the imaginary person William Parcher, who belonged to the United States Department of Defense, was out to get him. In his mind, William Parcher was black-mailing him to do as he was told, or the US government would have him killed. I also believe that Nash could also be classified with anxiety and depression because after leaving the mental hospital, he wasn’t able to work, wasn’t able to properly take care of his child, or even feel attracted to his wife. Axis II: Schizophrenia Nash would be determined best under Schizotypical Personality. Nash has excessive social anxiety at times, few or no close friends, paranoia and suspiciousness, and odd disorganized speech. Axis III: John had a late onset of symptoms starting at around age 30. His first hallucination was that of a roommate who moved in shortly after he started at Princeton. His Thoughts are delusional and paranoid. He thought no one liked him and he had no close friends or relationships. He thought that every one of his peers where beneath him. He also thought he was a government agent. He thought people where following him, and he would show paranoid behavior by looking out the windows and over his shoulder. Axis IV: John Nash is a 51 year old, Caucasian male. He has a family wife and child,and is exceptionally smart. Nash’s stress can be blamed on his wife not understanding his problem or he felt like she did not believe him. Another is when Nash came home from the mental hospital and was brought into a house with a new child, which would be a big environmental stressor. He did not know how to take care of the child properly. Also, a new job promotion at Princeton University was also a stressor. Axis V— between 31 and 40 On the Global Assessment of Functioning Scale, I believe Nash is in between 31 and 40. John Nash had disorganized speech and disorganized thoughts. John Nash is extremely intelligent has no learning disorder and also had a strange fixation with mathematics. Treatment: Some medication individual psychotherapy so that the Nash can get regularly talked to, focuses on current and past events or problems, experiences, thoughts and feelings. Cognitive-Behavioral Conclusion: John Nash will probably never be completely cured of his mental disorders but the treatment plan that I recommended for him should make him suitable to certain thing so that he can fit into a normal society.

The Role of Computers in Our Daily Life

The computer is one of the most brilliant gifts of science. This device was originally developed by Charles Babbage. Most countries have developed fast due to computerization. Writing a program is essential for a computer. Speed, accuracy, reliability, and integrity are the main characteristics of a computer. Many of the routine activities today at home and in business are done by computers. The computer has proved a friend and servant of science, technology and industry. Most offices, shops, factories and industries use computers. The Internet is a storehouse of information. The computer is a boon to all.Telecommunication and satellite imageries are computer based. Computers have made the world a global village today. The computer is one of the most brilliant gifts of science. It is an electronic device for storing and analyzing information fed into it, for calculating, or for controlling machinery automatically. Charles Babbage developed this device first in 1812 followed by George Boole in 1854, Howard and Aitten in 1937, Dr. John Nouchly and J. P. Eckert in 1946. These computers were named the first generation equipment. Today, with the ‘Artificial Intelligence' technology, we are using fifth generation computers.Each new generation of computers has been smaller, lighter, speedier and more powerful than the earlier ones. Now note-book sized computers like laptop are fairly common. Computers have been dominating technology since 1970s, and have now entered almost all walks of life. Writing a program is essential for running a computer. This job is done by a software engineer. A computer program is a complete list of instructions which the computer accepts in order to solve a problem. There are many different languages that can be used to programme a computer. BASIC, COBOL, FOR TRAN, C, C++, JAVA and Visual Basic are some of them.Speed, accuracy, reliability and integrity are some of the characteristics of a computer. It can execute over a million instr uctions per second without committing and mistake. It can carry our calculations in just a few minutes that would require days if carried out manually. It helps us in solving many difficult problems of multiple calculations. Computer has a huge memory. It can hold large amount of data. The software technology has seen a spurt of development and firms like Microsoft have established themselves as market leaders, pioneering the IT revolution world over.It has provided us with efficiency and accuracy in our work. Software acts as the medium through which communication and dissemination of information are carried out. In less than 50 years, computers have influenced practically every field of activity. Many of the routine activities today are being performed by computers. Use of computers has reduced the paperwork. Now most of the work is done directly on the computers. The traffic in large cities is controlled by computers. Automation in banks and railway stations has provided relief t o the public and staff alike.Ticketing and reservation have become more efficient and convenient. Various types of games like chess and cards can also be played on computers. In medical diagnosis, computers are being used to locate and investigate accurately and precisely abnormalities and diseases. Business transactions and high volume of associated data are easily managed by using computers. Computer is the backbone of information technology whose major application lies in internet. Internet has some very useful applications in our day to day life. One can get railway and air tickets booked online.This saves one from the trouble of standing in a queue for long hours. One can also apply for a job or admission in a school or a college by filling the application form online. This saves time and energy. One can also see results of any examination on the Internet. Tax returns can also be filed on the Internet. Income Tax form can be downloaded from the Income tax website. The interconn ection of computers worldwide, i. e. , the internet, is revolutionizing the concept and the conduct of business. Visual and audio access to offices worldwide through the network has given rise to virtual offices.One can have easy access to information via internet. It is an ocean of knowledge for the students. It is a huge library. The Internet helps the student to study for the examinations. Students pursuing courses through distance education mode can study the subject online. The internet is the fastest and cheapest way to take admission in a foreign institution, collect geographical information of any region, and chat with anybody in any corner of the world or search for life partner of one's choice. The importance of the internet as an all-pervasive medium of the future has been well recognized in India.A very important indicator is the number of businessmen jumping on to internet related business. E-commerce is gaining popularity in India as it allows trade at low costs and of fers enterprises a chance to enter the global market at the right time. E-commerce helps in various aspects of the business including identifying the customer, promoting sales and advertising, handling orders, taxes, shipping, payment processing, etc. The state governments and the central government have put special emphasis on computer education in India. Computer application is also being extended to legal arena.The Supreme Court of India has become the first court in the country to provide e-filing of cases. Computerization has created a lot of jobs for DTP operators, Programmers, Hardware and Software professionals. It provides tremendous openings for new kinds of entrepreneurs. The computer gives us many benefits. They can be used as typewriters. When equipped with telephone modems, with the help of computer we can chat across the world. Teleconferencing and video conferencing are also possible. The internet helps us to keep in touch with family and friends.One can get informat ion about every subject known to man, ranging from government law and services. trade fairs, conferences, market information, education, society and politics. The computer has proved as a friend and servant to science, technology and industry. The computer through Internet expands business opportunities. Computerization has been done in business, banking, electronic publishing, engineering, creative designing, fashion designing, etc. It is used in railways, airlines, defence service, research establishments. Postal and communication departments, meteorology, medical science, stock-broking etc.In defence, they help radars, missile and rocket launching. They have opened new avenues of shopping and entertainment Telecommunication and satellite imagery is computer based. Computerization can play an important role in rural areas in seed research, crop disease management and software development for rural industries. The computer also has its negative side. The rise of cybercrime, the use of chat rooms for indecent discussion, certain websites, which deal in pornographic material have been noticed. But the advantages and importance outweigh the disadvantages. Through computerization, the world has become a global village today.

Italian Culture

The Clash of Languages in the Italian-Canadian Novel By Licia Canton In recent years, ethnic minority writing has played a major Pole in shedding light on the complexity of the Canadian identity. Italian-Canadians figure among the numerous communities active on the Canadian literary scene. In the last decade in particular the Italian-Canadian literary corpus, which traces its development alongside the growing Italian-Canadian community, has seen numerous publications, especially novels.This paper discusses language, specifically the tension arising from the Italian word invading the Canadian text, as a representation of hyphenated identity in the following Italian-Canadian novels: Frank Paci’s The Italians (1978), Black Madonna (1982) and The Father (1984), Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth (1982), Mary Melfi’s Infertility Rites (1991), Nino Ricci’s In a Glass House (1993) and Antonio D’Alfonso’s Fabrizio’s Passion (1995).The n ovels trace the process towards defining an identity which is torn between two conflicting cultures, the Italian and the Canadian. The analysis of these narratives shows that the tension and the negotiation between the Italian and the Canadian components of the bicultural identity represented at the level of the events narrated are also at work in the texture of the writing. Language causes friction between the two cultures presented in the narratives: the question of identity is played out in the weaving of the words.In the Italian-Canadian novel, Italian elements are an impediment in the quest towards Canadianness. Although the new generation embraces Canadianness through education, friends and lifestyle, the presence of the old country remains through the influence of parents, customs and language. Otherness as represented by the old country can never be completely erased even in the second generation. The Italian component, therefore, is something of a weed which keeps resurfaci ng. The same occurs at the level of the writing.The novels discussed are written in English—Canadian English as opposed to American, British or Australian English—in a Canadian context and for a Canadian audience. The Italian word surfaces now and then thereby breaking the flow of the English-Canadian text. The presence of the heritage language in the English text is what Francesco Loriggio calls â€Å"the device of the stone† (39) or, to use Enoch Padolsky’s words, the â€Å"linguistic stone† (56). The Italian word within the English text is like a stone or a stumbling block.The presence of the â€Å"heritage† language within the â€Å"ethnic text† is a device used by the writer to illustrate the tension and negotiation at work in a bicultural identity. Italian may take up as little space as a word or as much as a sentence, but in each case there is a noticeable effect on the narrative. Italian surfaces in different forms to break th e flow of the English text: as a translated or untranslated word; as a literal translation of a phrase or sentence given in English; and as an English sentence having a latinate structure.There are two major reasons for the Italian word â€Å"contaminating† the English text: the first is purely to give the text an Italian flavour—to mark l’italianita of the writing; the second, which I focus on in this paper, serves a specific function in illustrating the duality inherent in the Italian-Canadian identity. The Italian word is present when there is no appropriate English equivalent: this points to the difference and, in extreme cases, to the incompatibility between the two cultures expressed within Italian-Canadian reality.And, the Italian presence, either as a word on the page or in the nuances of the sentence structure, points to the fact that within an Italian-Canadian reality there exists a constant process of translation. The tension existing between elements of the Italian culture and the Canadian society in which the characters must constantly negotiate a space for their identity is especially evident in what I call â€Å"the irreplaceable Italian word. † In such instances the English translation would not do justice to the Italian original.Examples include the following discussion of polpi in Frank Paci’s The Father, polenta in Paci’s The Italians, calle and vaporetto in Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth, and Ia busta in Antonio D’Alfonso’s Fabrizio’s Passion. In Paci’s The Father, Oreste Mancuso who represents Italy, wants to instill a strong sense of the Italian heritage in his sons, whereas his wife Maddalena upholds Canadianness or the Canadian way. The tension between these two characters, and therefore between the two cultures, is illustrated in the following passage:He [Oreste] brought up a bowl of dark grapes and set them on the table beside the polpi, a dish of fish stewed in large quantities of oil and red peppers†¦ The dish was so strong that no-one else in the family could eat it. A fresh loaf from the bakery rested beside his favourite dish. (63-64) In this passage, the word polpi breaks both the English language and the Canadian culture by highlighting the Italian one. The word polpi refers to Oreste’s favourite dish, something from the old country that he will not give up, like making his own bread and wine.In this scene the bread was made by Oreste in his bakery, and he has just finished making wine. The word polpi also emphasizes the tension between the members of the family: Oreste who represents the ways of the old country, and Maddalena and Stefano who want to become Canadianized. It is significant, then, that no one besides Oreste can eat the polpi because they are too strong, signifying â€Å"too old country. † The rejection of the polpi by the rest of the family is symbolically a rejection of Oreste and of the old country.In The Italians, the narrator (speaking from Alberto’s perspective) comments on Giulia’s tendency to prepare too much food: â€Å"To judge from the meal’s size, she still hadn’t got over the years in the old country when they had been forced to eat polenta almost every day. They had scarcely seen meat then†¦ †(74). The word polenta disrupts the English passage in two ways. First, the mere presence of the Italian word causes tension within the first sentence. Second, the word polenta causes a shift in setting, from the overabundant Christmas meal that Giulia has prepared in the present to the poverty experienced in the Italy of the past.The presence of the Italian word results in the juxtaposition of the Italian setting and the Canadian one, thereby pointing to the fact that the Italian past (the poverty which caused a diet of cornmeal and bread) is an undeniable component of Italian-Canadian identity. In other words, the Italia n past is responsible for the behaviour of the present, in this case Giulia’s fear of regression. The inclusion of specific Italian words in Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth also takes the reader back to the Italian setting.In the subordinate narrative (Marco’s story), the author uses nouns such as vaporetto and calle that are specific to the Venetian setting: Seeing the floating station for the vaporetto before him, Marco realized he had been going in the wrong direction†¦ (21) Stopping at the top of a bridge and gazing down at the twisting calle, he saw the last of the evening crowd†¦ He began running, pushing his way down the calle, then turning off down a narrow, empty fondamento (30). He broke into a slight run. Calle. Bridge. One more—the last narrow street was blocked off. (37)In this passage the Italian words which describe Marco’s Venice cause the reader to experience the Italian component of the novel. The vaporetto is a common means of transportation in the water city. An English equivalent such as â€Å"boat† or â€Å"little steamer† could have been included, but no English word could do justice to the image created by the word vaporetto. Similarly, the word calle could be replaced by â€Å"narrow street,† as in the last sentence quoted above. The calle, however, is one of Venice’s specific attributes. In fact, The Collins Concise Italian-English Dictionary gives the meaning for calle as â€Å"narrow street (in Venice). The fondamento refers to the platform or quay at the edge of the water—where manmade construction meets one of the natural elements, water. The fondamento represents stability, a product of man’s rationality, whereas water represents nature’s uncontrollability and unpredictability—as in the recurring Venetian floods, one of which is described in Edwards’ novel. The presence of Italian words in the above passage, as i n the novel itself, which are very specific to the city of Venice, creates an image of the setting inhabited by Marco, a setting which is at the root of Bianca’s (the Italian-Canadian protagonist) quest for identity.Venice—the calle, the vaporetto, the water—is an ineffaceable component of Bianca’s identity as well as Marco’s. The passage quoted above reflects Marco’s unstable and precarious situation: his lack of direction, psychological and physical (given that â€Å"he had been going in the wrong direction†), and his sense of panic are indications of his impending nervous breakdown. The words italicized in the above passage are simultaneously associated with motion—the constant motion, therefore instability—and the maze which qualifies Marco’s psychological state.The author has chosen these specific Italian words to create a detailed image of the Italian water city and to illustrate the vulnerability of an indi vidual’s identity. In the last chapter of Fabrizio’s Passion, the narrator takes the time to explain the connotations of the busta (the envelope) which is an integral part of Lucia Notte’s wedding as of many Italian-Canadian weddings: Peter is tripping over Lucia, their hands encumbered by white envelopes handed to them by the guests after the handshakes. Those famous Italian envelopes†¦ La busta.How to describe this seemingly simple object intrinsically linked to Italian-American weddings? This tiny white envelope seals what consideration or dislike one family holds for another†¦ Each envelope is a potential time bomb. It can celebrate a friendship or insinuate a subtle disenchantment. All confessed, yet nothing ever openly spelled out—one family’s unbreakable loyalty to you as well as another’s hypocrisy. (226-7) The busta holds nuances and connotations that the â€Å"envelope† does not. What the narrator does not spell ou t is that the busta is the carrier of a monetary amount given to the newlyweds as a gift.It is the specific amount of money contained in the envelope which â€Å"can celebrate a friendship or insinuate a subtle disenchantment. † The word busta in the above passage is more than a simple envelope; it is a symbol of the traditional Italian wedding in Canada. It brings together the friends and relatives from the old country in the setting of the new country. The word paesano, or paesani in the plural, which appears in several instances in the novels has several connotations. In Italian a paesano is a person who is from the same town, or nearby town, in Italy.For instance, in commenting on his first weeks in Mersea the narrator of In a Glass House points to â€Å"the strange half-familiar faces of the paesani who came to visit† (3). Here, the word paesani refers to people originally from Valle del Sole, Vittorio’s hometown, or from neighbouring towns. For the Italian living abroad, such as the Italian-Canadian, the word paesano has taken on a broader meaning to refer to Italians of the same region. And, in regions outside of Italy inhabited by few Italians, paesano refers to Italians in general.This meaning of paesano has also been adopted by non-Italians to show kinship or goodwill, be it sincere or not. It is sometimes used to make fun of the Italian as well. Mario Innocente (In a Glass House) comments on the non-Italian’s use of the word paesano in the passage below: â€Å"Mario,† he [the German] said. â€Å"Mario, Mario, como stai, paesano? †Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ â€Å"That was the guy I bought the farm from,† he [Mario] said. â€Å"Those Germans —paesano this, paesano that, everyone’s a paesano. But the old bastard just wanted to make sure I don’t forget to pay him. † (31)The passage shows the Italian’s mistrust of non-Italians who try to ingratiate themselves by relying on the inherent frie ndship implied in the word paesano. Although Mario Innocente is not fooled by this, his young son Vittorio is lured into a false sense of friendship by the bullies on the school bus: â€Å"Italiano,† I [Vittorio] said, clutching at the familiar word. â€Å"Ah, Italiano! † He thumped a hand on his chest. â€Å"Me speak Italiano mucho mucho. Me paesano. † When the other boys got on the bus and came to the back, the black-haired boy said they were paesani as well, and each in turn smiled broadly at me and shook my hand. (49)Vittorio soon discovers that the pretense of friendship is simply a way of making fun of him. The word paesano, then, brings together the Italian and the non-Italian, be it positive or negative, sincere or not. For the Italian-Canadian, the word creates a link between the new country and Italy by defining and uniting those of the same origin; at the same time the word allows the non-Italian, or the Canadian, to enter into the Italian culture alb eit under false pretense. The word paesano brings together the two components of Italian-Canadian identity in uniting the true sense of the word with the meaning adopted by non-Italians.In each of the examples quoted above, the presence of the Italian word highlights something specifically Italian within Italian-Canadian reality and emphasizes the fact that this component cannot be erased or replaced within a Canadian context. The author’s choice to include the translation of an Italian word or sentence renders the text accessible to the reader who does not read Italian. It therefore establishes a certain openness—the will to reach beyond a minority audience. On the other hand, the absence of the translation renders inaccessible certain sections of the novel to readers who do not read Italian.In this case, it can be argued that the author risks alienating the non-Italian speaking reader, thereby establishing a certain degree of elitism for the novel. Arun Mukherjee dis tinguishes between the two by labelling the reader a â€Å"cultural insider† or a â€Å"cultural outsider† (44). Of course, in certain instances in which the Italian word appears without the translation the meaning is not lost for the reader. In other cases, the translation is necessary to understand the allusion made and the nuances of the action.In The Italians, for instance, it is necessary for the reader to know the meaning of the words â€Å"ero ubriaco† (20; â€Å"I was drunk†) in order to understand the reason Lorenzo gives for raping his wife. Another such instance occurs in The Lion’s Mouth: Stasera mi butto is the title of â€Å"the silly pop song† Marco and his bride-to-be had danced to the summer before their wedding (30). The reference to the pop song has a number of implications that the reader who does not read Italian will miss. The English equivalent of Stasera mi butto is â€Å"Tonight I throw myself† or â€Å"I aba ndon myself tonight. The meaning is very important because it refers to Marco’s status in his marriage: by marrying Paola—a wealthy but overly demanding and domineering wife, whom he does not love—Marco abandons â€Å"his† self, losing his own identity in order to improve his social status. At the same time, the reference to the song foreshadows Marco’s one night stand with Elena, the woman he has loved since childhood: Marco abandons himself to Elena that same night (stasera), thereby unknowingly entangling himself in a terrorist plot and jeopardizing his marriage and his reputation.The process of translating is an undeniable step in writing for the Italian-Canadian author. Joseph Pivato makes this point in Echo: Essays on Other Literatures: â€Å"Independently of the language or languages the Italian writer uses, he or she is always translating. It often seems that the translating process becomes more important than the distant Italian reality t hat it may be evoking† (125). Translation is a way of bringing together the two worlds which make up the Italian-Canadian reality.Bianca, the narrator in The Lion’s Mouth, is very conscious of the activity of translating inherent in the process of narration and in her Italian-Canadian reality. Edwards’ novel highlights the complexity of the presence of Italian words, and their English equivalents: Bianca simultaneously reads her aunt’s letter written in Italian and translates it into English for herself: â€Å"Bianca, se sapessi, Se sapessi,† if you knew, if you knew, â€Å"Que [sic, Chel disgrazia di Dio. † God’s disgrace? I must be translating incorrectly, a disgrace from God. â€Å"Barbara scossa. † Barbara has been shocked? it? shaken?†¦ Worse, Marco (you, you) suffered a nervous breakdown. † Esaurimento nervoso, the words translated literally as an exhaustion of the nerves. (9-10) This passage illustrates the int erplay between levels of the text and the complications resulting from the presence of Italian as well as the negotiation involved between â€Å"the Italian† and â€Å"the Canadian† components of the narrator’s Italian-Canadian reality. The narrator translates for her own benefit: to ascertain that she understands the written Italian word, she feels compelled to find the English equivalent.This illustrates the constant need to bring together the two components of her reality in an attempt to better understand herself. The narrator points to the importance of the translation process necessary when the Italian word, in this case her aunt’s letter, enters her own Canadian context. The narrator takes her role as translator very seriously in finding the appropriate word, which testifies to the notion that the Italian-Canadian lives in a state of constant translation. Fabrizio, the narrator in Fabrizio’s Passion, shares the same attention to detail in th e act of translating: â€Å"When I finish the pasta, faccio la scarpetta. Literally, this translates as ‘to wet one’s shoe,’ that is, to soak a piece of bread in the tomato sauce, and wipe clean one’s plate! )† (65). In the two examples mentioned, the act of translating is an attempt to unite the two worlds which comprise the narrator’s reality, that of the Italian-Canadian. This is done in two simultaneous ways: first, by stating in Italian that which has its origin in the Italian world (the aunt’s letter; the way one cleans the plate with bread); and second, by giving the English equivalent so that the non-Italian reader, rather than feel alienated, feels connected to that Italian world being described.The tension existing between the Italian and the Canadian is rooted as deeply as the structure of the sentence, virtually beneath the texture of the writing. The stilted sentence is an English sentence which sounds Italian—a sen tence which has a latinate structure as opposed to an anglo-saxon or germanic structure. It is important to stress that the stilted sentence is different from the literal translation. In Infertility Rites, for instance, Nina is asked â€Å"When are you going to buy your baby? † (11) which is a direct translation from the Italian idiom meaning â€Å"when will you have a baby. This is a literal translation purposely used to maintain the Italian flavour and to indicate that the words were spoken in Italian. The same is true of the following: â€Å"I pour myself another cup of American coffee—what mother calls ‘coloured water†(137). The expression â€Å"coloured water† is a direct translation for the Italian cliche on American coffee. In The Lion’s Mouth, Bianca reads in her aunt’s letter that her cousin Marco has had â€Å"an exhaustion of the nerves†Ã¢â‚¬â€the literal translation of esaurimento newoso meaning a nervous breakdown (10).In these examples, the objective is not to sound English but to transmit the Italian idiom into English words without remaining faithful to the nuances of each language. This is usually done to indicate that the words are originally spoken in Italian. In the stilted sentence, on the other hand, Italian is not present as words but at the level of the sentence structure, a characteristic which has been criticized as badly written English, or simply bad writing.I would suggest, instead, that the presence of latinate structures within the Italian-Canadian novel represents, to use Pasquale Verdicchio’s words, â€Å"the utterances of immigrant culture† (214) and mirrors the reality of the Italian-Canadian experience. The following passage from Black Madonna illustrates the latinate structure present in a conversation between Assunta and Marie, who represent polar opposites of the Italian-Canadian duality: â€Å"Ma, I’m going to Toronto,† Marie said abrupt ly. â€Å"They. . She couldn’t find the Italian word for â€Å"accepted. † [sic] â€Å"They took me. â€Å"Ma, I have to go. More times I go to school, better job. † â€Å"You tell to your father†¦ These things, I don’t understand†¦ You go to school—good. You smart—good. But you crazy. Your head in the clouds. The older you get, the crazier you get. I don’t understand you. To Toronto you want to go? † (70-1) In order to communicate with her mother, Marie is forced to speak like her. Although Marie’s â€Å"More times I go to school, better job† is not correct English, the structure is correct in Italian. Likewise, Assunta’s â€Å"These things, I don’t understand. † and â€Å"To Toronto you want to go? (where the (in)direct object precedes the verb) have an Italian structure. The sentence â€Å"You tell to your father,† on the other hand, is a direct translation of the Italia n. Moreover, the subject of their conversation consists of the â€Å"push and pull† characteristic of the old way versus the new way: the traditional Italian mother does not want her daughter to leave home, whereas Marie wants to experience the freedom of Canadian society. In Fabrizio’s Passion, Fabrizio uses an Italian sentence structure when he says â€Å"I am fourteen years old but am thirty in my head† (72).This does not work grammatically in English but is often used in Italian. Likewise, in The Lion’s Mouth: â€Å"But where have you been?†¦ We waited an hour, but since you didn’t have the courtesy to even phone†¦ † (37-38) and â€Å"So loud you have to have that record? † (42) have an Italian sentence structure. Such a structure is appropriate here given that the sentences are spoken by an Italian, Marco’s mother. Bianca, too, is guilty of using the latinate sentence structure: â€Å"Her bedroom, that evening I visited, was sparse, cell-like† (116).The following passage appears at the end of The Lion’s Mouth, in the Epilogue: This week, Barbara arrived and I must play the wise aunt with a trunkful of distractions. Poor child—as I write she is standing in the living room, staring out the window at the still leafless trees and mud-filled garden, wondering what place is this. . . So I begin again my life in this city, this land. (my italics, 178) Even though narrating her tale has given Bianca a clear focus on both components of her cultural makeup, the stiltedness of the italicized words emphasize the influence of Bianca’s Italian heritage.It is also significant that the first phrase, â€Å"wondering what place is this,† refers to Barbara, the Italian girl visiting from Venice, taking in the novelty and difference of western Canada. The presence of the heritage language within the â€Å"ethnic text† has led to accusations of bad writing, and the use of the stilted sentence may be perceived as the writer’s inability to master the English language. On the contrary, these â€Å"ethnic markers† or â€Å"linguistic stones† are devices purposely used by the writer to illustrate the tension and negotiation at work in a bicultural identity. As Pasquale Verdicchio argues:By stressing latinate vocabulary, by the insertion of Italian syntactical forms, and by the inclusion of linguistic elements that represent the utterances of immigrant culture, these [Italian-Canadian] writers have altered the semantic field of English, thereby denying expected meaning. (214) The fact that the Italian word interrupts the flow of the English text is a way of illustrating the symptoms of otherness which are an undeniable characteristic of Italian-Canadian reality. The presence of the Italian word within the English text should not be interpreted as a barrier between the two (Italian and Canadian) cultures.Rather, the meshing of Italia n words with English words should be seen as the negotiation necessary in order to bring the two cultures together. Arun Mukherjee writes that â€Å"Ethnic minority texts inform their readers, through the presence of other languages†¦ about the multi-cultural and multilingual nature of Canadian society† (46). Through their fiction Italian-Canadian writers suggest that in order to come to terms with the element of â€Å"schizophrenia† inherent in a bicultural identity, the individual must undertake the process of reevaluating the heritage culture.By using the â€Å"device of the stone,† the Italian-Canadian writer attempts to illustrate the continuous transfer from one culture/language to the other experienced by bicultural individuals. Canton , Licia. (2004). â€Å"The Clash of Languages in the Italian-Canadian Novel. † Adjacencies: Minority Writing in Canada . Ed. Lianne Moyes et al. Toronto : Guernica. Works Cited D’Alfonso, Antonio. Fabrizi o’s Passion. Toronto: Guernica, 1995. Edwards, Caterina. The Lion’s Mouth. Edmonton: NeWest, 1982. Loriggio, Francesco. History, Literary History, and Ethnic Literature. † Literatures ofLesserDiffusion. Eds. Joseph Pivato et al. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990. Melfi, Mary. Infertility Rites. Montreal: Guernica, 1991. Mukherjee, Arun. â€Å"Teaching Ethnic Minority Writing: A Report from the Classroom. † Journal of Canadian Studies 31. 3 (1996): 3 8-47. Paci, Frank. Black Madonna. Ottawa: Oberon, 1982. The Father. Ottawa: Oberon, 1984. The Italians. Ottawa: Oberon, 1978. Padolsky, Enoch. â€Å"Canadian Minority Writing and Acculturation Options. Literatures of Lesser Diffusion. Eds. Joseph Pivato et al. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990. Pivato, Joseph. Echo: Essays on Other Literatures. Toronto: Guernica, 1994. Ricci, Nino. In a Glass House. Toronto: McCleltand and Stewart, 1993. Verdicchio, Pasquale. â€Å"Subalterns Abroad: Writi ng Between Nations and Cultures. † Social Pluralism and Literary History. Ed. Francesco Loriggio. Toronto: Guernica, 1996. 206-226. Getting Weird and Ugly with Nino Ricci By Brian Gorman â€Å"Are you saying my book is wholesome? † Nino Ricci demands.His mock indignation is a response to a question, couched in diplomacy, about many Canadian storytellers' affinity for subjects that some people might consider weird and unwholesome. In the case of his latest book, the Giller Prize-nominated Where She Has Gone, the â€Å"weird and unwholesome† subject is incest, between the narrator and his half-sister. It occurs to one that this would not be out of place in a Canadian movie, as beguiled as our film-makers are with the weird and the unwholesome. He quotes Freud, about taboos being the foundation of civilization. You could argue that civilization began when this taboo was created, that the guilt that created led to civilization. And there's something formative about t he incest taboo. Anthropologists have found that it was one of the first taboos. â€Å"But there's a lot of it going on in our society. Incest occurs a lot more often than we care to acknowledge—usually as part of an abusive relationship. One person is always unwilling. â€Å"Obviously, since there's such a strong taboo against it, people want to do it. † The incestuous relationship in question comes at the end of a trilogy—Lives of the Saints, In a Glass House and now WhereShe Has Gone—that constitutes a sprawling, ambitious immigrant saga drawing equally from Ricci's Italian heritage (his parents were immigrants) and his Ontario â€Å"Calvinist† upbringing. â€Å"I didn't start out to write an immigrant saga,† he says. â€Å"I started out to write anything but an immigrant saga. My original idea was to explore an intense relationship between a brother and a sister. â€Å"It started out as a piece of erotica. A friend told me that you co uld write erotica and sell it for $200 a pop in New York. â€Å"I didn't want to talk about ethnicity.I was primarily influenced by British literature. Fortunately, I had older siblings who did well in school and interested me in reading. I didn't get it from my parents. They encouraged education, but in a more general sense. † Which brings us around to Canadianness, film and the weird and unwholesome. He says maybe it's a reaction against the reserve imposed on us by â€Å"our strict Calvinist heritage. † This is a very strange irony—Ricci, a Catholic, talking to another Catholic about â€Å"our strict Calvinist heritage†Ã¢â‚¬â€and it doesn't go unnoticed.The distant, unemotional and introspective nature of much of our storytelling, then, â€Å"may just be the result of our living in a cold climate,† he shrugs. â€Å"Maybe it's much more banal than we think. † Brian Gorman. â€Å"Getting Weird and Ugly With Nino Ricci. †. www. canoe . ca/JamBooksFeatures/ricci_nino. html. Magical Complexity By Naomi Guttman Nina Ricci has already received much deserved acclaim from writers across the country and abroad for this book, and I can only concur. Lives of the Saints, a book which any writer would be glad to have accomplished at any time, is all the more praiseworthy for being a first novel.The year is 1960, but in Valle del Salle, the poor Appenine village in which the novel is set, you would not know it: there is no electric power, grain is still cut with a scythe, and a snake bite is a sign that the evil eye has paid one a visit. Vittorio Innocente is the adult narrator telling the story of his boyhood: when the action begins Vittorio is turning seven. His father has left to seek his fortune in â€Å"America† several years before and Vittorio and his mother, Cristina, live with her father, Valle del Salle’s old mayor, in relative comfort.But Vittorio’s parents are estranged by more than an ocean and though Vittorio, with his innocent eyes, provides the filter through which all is told, it is really Cristina who is the central figure of the novel. It is she who is bitten by a green snake during a rendezvous in the barn with her nameless blue-eyed lover; she who wages a battle f pride with the village in which she was born; and she who eight months into the pregnancy which has become a symbol of her scorn and thus the source of this battle, engineers an escape to Canada, taking her son with her.As always with a first-person narrative, there is a delicate balance between what can be told and how. Vittorio is an expert listener, and because he is a child during the action of the tale, he gives very little in the way of interpretation. And so, as with all well-made things, the novel has the effect of appearing to be simple, which it is not, for it is terribly difficult to maintain that balance between the point of view of an adult regarding his childhood with adult insight, and that of the intuitive knowledge and fantastic distortions of the child he was at the time.Yet Ricci has been able to negotiate the distance between those voices with grace. The novel’s tension is cunningly built, the language is beautiful, and the symbolism plainly in view without coyness or flag-waving. Through Vittorio’s eyes we learn about the village, its characters, its colour, its superstitions and the envy, â€Å"invidia,† that distances villager from villager. The life of the village and the drama that is unfolding in Vittorio’s home is told with precision, care, a wonderful eye for detail rendered through the child’s experience, as well as a perfect ear for dialogue.In fact with his gift for translating the specific idiom of the people of Valle del Solle—the true-sounding syntax, the well-chosen Italian word of phrase—I felt as though I were reading in Italian and translating for myself, an experience much like watching a wo nderful foreign film with sub-titles and feeling that one has actually understood the words as they were spoken. And it may be said that this novel is filmic.In its use of colour, place and time, its ability to tell the story not only of Vittorio and his family but of an entire village, it conveys the magical wisdom of childhood and the complexity of what are supposed to be simple lives in such a compelling narrative that, in the right hands, Lives of the Saints could be as grand and sublime a spectacle as Fanny and Alexander or My Life as a Dog. Of course no film could capture the lyricism of Ricci’s descriptions: the image of the sun rising â€Å"round and scarlet, sucking in the dawn’s darkness like God’s forgiveness, the mountain slopes slowly changing from a colourless grey to rich green and gold. And then there is silence: †¦ the silence of the house would wash over me, filling my head like a scream, crowding out my private thoughts. The silence seem ed to issue from every nook and cranny of the house, to dissolve furnishings and leave me suspended in a pure, electric emptiness, so volatile that the crunch of my mother’s hoe threatened to shatter the house to its foundations. Without giving away the ending, I will say that my only qualms about the book came in the very last chapters where, though I understand its fictional necessity, as a feminist I question the implications it engenders.Early in the novel â€Å"la maestra† tells Vittorio and his classmates that a saint can be found anywhere at all, even among their ranks. Ricci reminds us in this novel that all lives, no matter how common they appear, are the locus for turmoil, the stuff, if not of sainthood, of drama, and can be fashioned into that category of novel to which Lives of the Saints certainly belongs: the novel one wishes will not end. Fortunately for us, it is the first of a trilogy and so the end will not come so soon. Guttman, Naomi. (1990).  "Magical Complexity; Review of Lives of the Saints†.Matrix 32: 74-5. The Hyperbolical Project of Cristina: A Derridean Analysis of Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints By Roberta Imboden Jacques Derrida’s â€Å"Cogito and the History of Madness,† catapulted him into the centre of the French intellectual world. This essay, a commentary )n Michel Foucault’s book, The History of Madness, is seen as an excellent example of the deconstructionist method at work in relation to metaphysics. What Derrida examines from this rather large tome is a few passages that Foucault writes about Descartes.Foucault’s thesis is that Descartes, in his analysis of the Cogito, was the first philosopher to separate reason from non reason, from madness, and that this split was either a cause of, or at least, was representative of, the attitude which resulted in the first internment of mad persons within institutions in human history. That Descartes is responsible for all s orts of divisions, of separations, in the modem Western human psyche, such as that between pint and matter, between reason and the emotions, is common in philosophical analysis, but Foucault’s thesis is unusual in his emphasis upon the reason/madness split.If one then applies Derrida’s subsequent insights to Nino Ricci ‘s prize winning novel, Lives of the Saints, an understanding of the novel will appear that should not only further illuminate the power of this first novel, and the talents of its author, but iso explain to students of literature what I was not able to explain to my own students, not until now, why Cristina, the heroine, had to die in the rime of life when a world of love and of freedom beckoned to her for he first time.Derrida, who prefaces his remarks with a special tribute to his teacher and mentor, Foucault, claims that in the Cogito of Descartes, in its pure moment before it attempts to reflect, to articulate, this bipolar split never took pl ace, and that the Cogito is valid for both the mad and the sane person. What this Cogito is about is â€Å"the hyperbolical project† (52) which is â€Å"an unprecedented excess† (52) that â€Å"overflows the totality of that which can be thought†¦ in the direction of the non-determined, Nothingness or infinity† (57), toward non-meaning or toward meaning.This project takes one beyond all limits, all barriers, all contradictions, all opposing opposites. It is the element of excess that causes Derrida to claim that the Cogito involves madness, derangement (57), since the hyperbolical project seeks to move beyond what the world would refer to as that which reason, logos, can itself attain, but it is not clinical madness, that is, what psychiatrists would consider to be a chemical disorder of the brain. It is the madness of the Cogito which simply refuses the limitations that the world of common sense says are necessary in order to be sane.It is madness in which doubt is a central element, since it is a state of mind in which all things are possible, in which, in a sense, the figure of Ivan Karamazov looms, shouting his now famous, â€Å"everything is permitted. † But, for the distraught Ivan, this phrase refers only to the world of morality. For the Cartesian Cogito of Derrida this phrase is more far-reaching, since it is primarily epistemological: all visions of reality, and of one’s response to that reality, are possible. Such a state of mind is madness in the most fundamental sense.Not surprising is the fact that this state of the Cogito, when reason and madness have not been separated, is also an intense moment; consequently, this is simultaneously a state of mind in which reason is at its apex of intensity, as is madness. It is the moment of the full power of reason, and therefore the moment of a mad reason, an ancient, all powerful reason that is very different from the reason of which Foucault speaks in relation to De scartes. The reason of which Derrida speaks is not a truncated, chained and bound reason, but rather, a reason of â€Å"mad audacity† (55).That this project is a movement toward the non-determined means that it cannot be â€Å"enclosed in a factual and determined historical structure† (60), cannot be captured within a concrete world that demands clear delineations, separations, within a history that must move from the past, through the present, toward the future, â€Å"for it is the project of exceeding every finite and determined totality† (60), the project of exceeding â€Å"all that is real, factual and existent† (56).Consequently, Derrida refers to this project as demonic, probably because it violates the ancient codes of both the Judaeo-Christian and the classical Greek worlds. Both the warnings of eating the apple of the tree of knowledge and that of succumbing to hubris are warnings not to follow the hyperbolical project, not to attempt to grasp wi th one’s mind all that is and all that could be. But the excessive moment of the hyperbolical project ends when one reflects upon and communicates the Cogito to oneself and then to others.One cannot be mad if one is to communicate this meaning in discourse. It is at this moment, when one breaks the silence, in reflection and in speech, that one safeguards oneself against the epistemological madness of non-distinction among infinite visions of reality, of beyond reality, and of the infinite possibilities of responses to these visions. Now is the basic, fundamental moment of separation of reason from madness, the moment of difference. Speech violently liberates, differs itself from madness and simultaneously imprisons it (60).Only then can finite thought and history reign (61), for finite thought is dependent upon a process that must involve exclusion, as is history, which is dependent upon concrete events, and the exclusive choosing of events in order to make up the story that is history. This articulation of the hyperbolical project, the â€Å"attempt-to-say-the-demonic-hyperbole†¦ is the original profundity of the will in general†¦ is a first passion and keeps within itself a trace of violence† (61). That is. he attempt to communicate the intense moment of the hyperbolical project is the human will’s passionate attempt to make concrete this project of excess. This moment of intense passion is doomed forever to failure, but its titanic, gargantuan effort founds the world and history (57). No wonder that it carries traces of violence. The actual creation of the physical universe, according to the big bang theory, was certainly violent. Speech, language, is that which regulates the â€Å"relationship between that which exceeds and the exceeded totality† (62).Speech separates the world of the hyperbolical project, the world that exceeds, the world of excess, from the world in which we live, the world that is exceeded by the h yperbolical project. Speech emerges from the silence and separates us from the pure Cogito, makes a difference between us and its project, and forces us to make choices, to decide. Since we can no longer have the possibility of grasping all possibilities, we must decide what finite possibilities we must choose. We no longer can live in a world of hyperbolical doubt whose condition is that all is possible.We now are thrown into a world of dazzling light where certainty emerges as a safeguard against madness, for communication functions in such a manner that it â€Å"inspect(s), master(s), limit(s) hyperbole† (59), since reason knows that the total derangement of the hyperbolical moment â€Å"will bring subversion to pure thought† (53). It is most probably because of the implied suffering in the action of speech that Derrida says that speech operates within a â€Å"caesura† (54), a â€Å"wound† (54). that â€Å"opens up life as historicity† (54). Fur thermore, the moment of communication, of speech, is one of crisis for two reasons.Firstly, reason is in grave danger, since in moving from its origin, the pure Cogito of the hyperbolical project, it is in danger of forgetting its origins, of â€Å"blanketing them by the rationalist and transcendent. il unveiling (of) itself† (62). It is then, ironically, that reason is â€Å"madder than madness† (62), for reason moves toward oblivion of this origin, ard therefore toward non-meaning. Madness is at this moment closer to â€Å"the wellspring of sense† (62), and, subsequently. is closer to the rational, however silent it is. Reason is now â€Å"separated from itself as adness, is exiled from itself’ (62). Thus, the communication of the Cogito is the choosing of reason, an act which divides the reason of meaning from the labyrinth of non-meaning; but the price is the loss of dentity with itself and the loss of the possibility of infinite possibility. Secondl y, in ths moment of crisis, hubris is born of articulation, and although hubris S coincident with creation, its major quality is in excess that must operate within finitude, a quality that the concrete world of history is likely to punish severely.My thesis is that reading Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints in the light of this particular Derridean essay is essential for the understanding of the main character, Cristina, the woman whose presence. through the narration of her young son, Vittorio, dominates the entire novel. She lives in a hill-town in the Italian Appennines with her son and her father, the mayor of the town, who is accused of having sold out to the fascists.Her husband, absent for four years since he emigrated to Canada, supposedly to create a new life for Cristina and Vittorio, writes monthly letters of wild scribble, but, for Cristina, he is simply absent and for Vittorio, he is simply a shadowy, violent memory. The tension of the novel revolves around a scene , from Vittorio’s perspective, which is composed of a stable, a muffled shout (1), followed by a green snake escaping from the stable and a pair of blue eyes that run away toward a car.The combination of these events results in the pregnancy of Cristina, and in the very traditional and superstitious people of the village shunning her. To establish Cristina as the Cartesian-Derridean Cogito, it is best to begin by analyzing her silence, as it is observed by the narrator, Vittorio. From the perspective of the reader she tells us nothing of what she truly thinks or feels. What happened in the stable? We can only guess, but that is exactly what we must do.Her only comment is to Luciano, one of her friends in Rocca Secca, â€Å"Anyway I have my own trouble to worry about. I hope he didn’t leave me a little gift—he got very excited when he saw that snake† (66). After this incident, â€Å"a deep silence†¦ descended on the house the very walls, the floor, t he splintered table, seemed to have grown strangely distant and mute, as if guarding some secret themselves† (57). Cristina â€Å"withdrew into shadowy silence† (74), broken mainly by her â€Å"quiet sobbing at night mingling with the sigh of the wind, like something inhuman† (77). The silence seemed to issue from every nook and cranny of the house† (77). Of his mother’s relationship to himself, in particular, Vittorio says, there are â€Å"no words now to bridge the silence† (74). There are only â€Å"silent meals† (74) and the silence between Cristina and the grandfather, her father, more or less extends until the end of the novel. A second characteristic that marks Cristina as the embodiment of the Derridean Cogito is the strange non-delineation between reason and madness that surrounds her.In relation to the element of reason, she is one of the best educated women in the village. But most outstanding is her absolute contempt for the superstition of the villagers who seem to have inherited an ancient pagan superstition that intermingles with Catholicism and erupts every year in the procession of the Virgin Mary whose statue is carried throughout the town. All the doors and windows of the houses of the village are open except for those of Cristina. Their being steadfastly shut makes her a living testimony to rationality itself.But this rationality is strangely interwoven with madness in the snakebite incident. First, at the very beginning of the book, when she is bitten by the snake in the stable, she waits quietly in front of her house for the ride to the hospital. DiLucci, who gives Cristina the ride says to her, â€Å"You’d think you were just going to the market† (16). He seems disconcerted by her â€Å"unexpected calm† (16). Then, Vittorio says that the tourniquet â€Å"sank into her leg†¦ but my mother did not wince or grimace† (17).Finally, she slowly succumbs to a trancel ike, rigid state which sends her into the deepest possible form of physical silence. She is literally outside of what one would normally refer to as a rational state, but, she never rants, raves or rambles. Instead, she is inhumanly calm. She seems to transcend both fear and pain. Before the onset of the results of the venom she is â€Å"rationally silent,† telling her father again and again that what she was doing in the barn was feeding the pigs, and when she overcomes the venom and fully returns to her conscious state. he is â€Å"bright and alert† (18), again â€Å"rational,† but silent. It is almosi as if the brief period of the rigid trancelike state is simply a deepening of the rational/mad silence that will surround her throughout most of the novel. The non-delineation of madness/reason on this rather basic level, when examined in the light of other non-delineations, leads to an extremely important aspect of the Derridean hyperbolical project, that of ep istemological madness.But the major point at the moment is to look at these other non-delineations in relation to Cristina’s being the Derridean Cogito, and to her subsequently being involved with the hyperbolical project. The relationship between Cristina and Vittorio, the most important relationship in the novel, is a good example of Cristina’s sense of lack of division, of boundary, and threatens the villager’s view of what they perceive as the most fundamental of relationships, that of mother and son.The implication of the villagers who hurl accusations at her in her role as mother is that she behaves toward him more like a sister or friend than a mother since she refuses to send the seven-year-old Vittorio into the fields to do agricultural work at 4:00 a. m. , as the other mothers do. The extreme case is Vittorio’s only friend, Fabrizio, whose father forces him to remain in the fields so long that he cannot go to school. Instead, Cristina and Vittor io are accused of playing together like children all the time.But this relationship of mother/sister/friend also is, simultaneously, a mother/ lover relationship. At the age of seven an upset Vittorio is told that he can no longer share his mother’s bed. His grandfather says, â€Å"Next month you’ll be seven. That’s no age to be sleeping with your mother† (34). Then, when Cristina takes Vittorio to the cave of the underground pool, Vittorio discovers a pair of tinted glasses in the straw, similar to the shattered pair that he found when the man with the eyes of the blue flame ran from the stable.The relationship of mother/lover emerges when Vittorio suddenly sees his naked mother standing above him as she is about to dive into the pool. No sensuous touch ever occurs; the entire scene has a preternatural quality about it. At this moment, through Vittorio’s eyes, we see a truly beautiful woman, one, whom he says, bears no resemblance to the other vil lage women, a â€Å"smooth and sleek† (33) woman who takes on the qualities of some ancient Greek goddess, such as Calypso or Circe. Like them, she has beauty and power for good and for evil.If Calypso, she has the power to grant men immortality and eternal youth (Homer 58), although she may also deter them from their lawful, faithful wives. If Circe, she has the power to turn men into swine (118-119)—therefore, Cristina’s reference to feeding the pigs when she was in the stable—and has the subsequent power to return them to their human form with an unearthly beauty that heretofore they had not possessed. Thus, Cristina is eternal beauty, love, and eternal faithful relationship, as well as ugliness, treachery and unfaithfulness.This non-delineation, non-difference, non-choice, non-separation is evident also in her relationships with mature men. In being unfaithful to her long absent husband in Canada, she is faithful to her blue-eyed lover, for, in the im agination of the careful reader, the hints and fragmented pieces of Vittorio’s memory draw a picture of a youthful love of Cristina for a young German soldier, a love that preceded her marriage to Mario of her own village. The German was her first, and in a sense, her only lover.The dim memory of Mario given to us by Vittorio is anything but that of a lover. He is seen as a violent figure who hurled an object against his mother’s face, a memory that is questionable, but, nevertheless, Cristina does have a small scar on her face in the shape of a â€Å"disjointed cross† (Lives 37). But two other passages give foundation to Vittorio’s memory. Cristina says of Mario to Alfredo, â€Å"The only way he knows how to talk is with the back of his hand† (95).Then, when Vittorio sees the letter with the â€Å"small neat script of bright blue† (158), he says that this writing is not that of his â€Å"father’s violent hand† (158). Thus, her infidelity is true faithfulness. Furthermore, if the reader is tempted to see the blue-eyed soldier as a fascist, a member of a military machine ruled by fascist ideology, careful reading indicates that this young man was probably a communist who, somehow, in a way never explained, deserted the army and most likely was involved in some sort of dangerous, heroic undercover, or partisan action against the Nazis.And Cristina, in her silent way, lives for years with secret rendezvous, probably in Rocca Secca, with this lover, while simultaneously living in harmony with her fascist father who is just as traditional in his attitudes as the rest of the villagers. She does not choose. She does not have to because she does not speak. One can continue to multiply this non-delineation, non-difference way of living by adding that no line exists between desire/love and duty or Cristina, nor between meaning and non-meaning.She lives desire, her love for her lover, for Vittorio, for her father, b ut she also is a dutiful daughter and mother, and no duty exists for her vis-a-vis her husband since she appears to feel that she has been abandoned. Some men in her family had gone to the New World and returned, but some, like Cristina’s paternal grandfather, have disappeared. Her feeling of abandonment is exhibited when she hurls at her father the accusation that her husband i-as probably been sleeping with every whore in America (154). Furthermore, she appears to live in some beyond world of meaning/non-meaning.The literal reading of the text sees a talented, vibrant woman living the daily life of deathly isolation and suppression of all that she is. This text is that of a meaningless life. But Cristina wishes to grasp the totality, no matter what it means, and it is here that the text of a meaningful life lies. Derrida actually claims that this action is the origin of meaning (Writing 57. ). What she most passionately desires in this project is to grasp the totality of fr eedom, a freedom that cannot really be thought.It is a freedom that â€Å"wants it all†: to be a dutiful daughter of a traditional, fascist father, to be a passionate lover of a blue-eyed fugitive communist, to be a respected educated, highly rational citizen of a traditional, uneducated superstition-haunted village, to be a loving, playful mother, yet a mother who never tells her son anything. it is a mad project of excess that can be implied by these few words. but not completely thought, for Cristina is grasping for that which goes beyond words and thoughts. This mad project, best labelled epistemological madness, is the major mark of the hyperbolical project of the Derridean Cogito.The villagers unconsciously understand this quality in Cristina, for they, too have an epistemology, since everyone does, and her behavior and silence are seen by the villagers as a derangement, a displacement, a subversion of their â€Å"rationality,† their â€Å"raison d’etre,à ¢â‚¬  for her very existence threatens all their beliefs, their epistemology. Cristina’s existence not only threatens their view of reality in relation to Catholicism as they live it, but also their ancient superstitions, especially their complex view of the ability of one person to curse another, that is, the power of a person to exercise effectively â€Å"the evil eye. But, most important, her existence threatens the villagers’ understanding of human relationships, especially of those between men and women, of family relationships in general, of the place of women in society, and of the consequent possibility of their freedom. Thus, Cristina upsets the foundation of meaning for the villagers; her existence threatens the clear certainty of their lives with doubt. That Cristina’s threat is as powerful as it is, is derived from its being rooted in the intensity of an ancient mad rationality. She grapples toward all possibilities, the villagers toward none.Not s urprising, because Cristina’s very existence is perceived by the villagers to be a threat, the unspoken accusation against her is that she is mad in the sense of the supposed madness of witchcraft. Since they dimly perceive that she attempts to grasp the totality of reality, and that somehow she lives within a forbidden space, she surely must be in touch with the demonic and suffers from a subsequent dangerous madness. One could object to this analysis, saying that the witch-craze existed a few centuries ago, but it must be remembered that these villagers appear to have a completely pre-scientific mentality.In the days of the witch craze, at the centre of all the lore surrounding witchcraft, was the belief that the Devil would assume human form and it is then that the woman witch would have sexual intercourse with him (Malleus Maleficarium 27). In the earliest days of the witch craze, a phenomenon that some historians believe grew out of the attack upon heretics (Russell 229) , many men were accused of witchcraft (279), but many women, especially women from the upper classes, were attracted to these heretical sects because it was only there that they could enjoy something that resembled equality (282).This factor, plus many other social factors, finally made women the sole victims of the witch craze, and as this phenomenon centred more and more upon women, the accusations moved from those of heresy, toward those of sexual intercourse with the Devil. The link between Cristina’s Father’s accusatory â€Å"communista† and Alfredo’s dire, oblique prediction that Cristina’s unborn child will have a serpentine head is reminiscent of the historical link between sexual relations with the devil and heresy, for to the religious, fascist father, the term â€Å"communista† implies the worst kind of heresy of his time.That Vittorio describes the eyes that he saw at the stable as turning magically a luminous blue as they caught the sunlight†¦ (and that they were) â€Å"bright flames that held me† (Lives 12) is net surprising. To him, obviously, the Devil, who must take male human form in order to have sexual relations with a woman, really had ‘visited’ Christina in the stable. Once again, Cristina lives the logos/madness non-delineation, for although the witch lore follows her everywhere, her reaction to it is that of scoffing rationality.She laughs while saying, â€Å"Stupidaggini† (57). Although the rational reader, too, scoffs at the link that the villagers see between the Devil and Cristina, there are indications in the text that in a profound mythical sense, there is a link between Cristina and the demonic. This point is strengthened by the underground cave scene. The hot spring sulphuric waters of this underground place where Cristina obviously feels very safe and at home have reverberations, as does the river that she and Vittorio must cross, of Hades, and of the riv er Styx.A this point, let us not forget that Derrida refers to the hyperbolical project as demonic, for it symbolizes the pursuit of excess, of forbidden knowledge. Furthermore, of course, for the pure Cogito which Cristina at this moment, personifies, there is no division, no boundary, between reason and the labyrinth, between meaning and non-meaning, between God and the Devil. Cristina is usually so self-contained, so stoical, so powerful in her seeming control of herself.But on two occasions before the climactic leave-taking of the village, she concretely, actively, displays the hyperbolical project’s element of mad excess, once in a violent physical fight with one of the village women, and once in the dance at the end of the festival. One day after school some of the schoolmates of Vittorio beat him. When Cristina hears of the event, surmising that one of the mothers of these boys had provoked the incident because of the rumors of the snake and of her pregnancy, Cristina races through the town and into the woman’s house and attacks her.Cristina attempts to strangle her, but the frightened, amazed woman pulls away in time. Later, at the end of the festival, Cristina grabs Vittorio’s arm and takes him to the centre of the dancing and begins to dance, to whirl very quickly. Vittorio finds the entire situation mad, wild, dizzying. Dancing/strangling: a strange dual manifestation of this project. Finally, as she and Vittorio leave the village forever, Cristina articulates what she thinks and feels to the villagers.In a driving rain, standing beside the truck that is going to drive them to the dock in Naples, she stops, and at all the villagers who are watching her from balconies and windows, she hurls these words. Fools†¦ You tried to kill me but you see I’m still alive. And now you came to watch me hang, but I won’t he hanged, not by your stupid rules and superstitions. You are the ones who are dead, not me, because not one of you know what it means to be free and to make a choice, and I pray to God that he wipes this town and all its stupidities off the face of the earth! 184) This is the moment of articulation, of speech, of separation of reason from madness, of her declaring a difference between herself and madness. It is the moment that she publicly articulates decision, her decision to leave her fascist father and his village of narrow superstitious tradition, to cease being a dutiful daughter and village citizen, and to choose to go to her lover, a man who is not her husband, according to law, and to go to a world that is radically different from that in which she has always lived.She no longer attempts to grasp the totality. She knows that definite decisions, choices, must be made, that she must declare that differences exist that cannot be lived simultaneously. The nightly sighs, and sobs of hyperbolical doubt are over, and her taunting, proud shouts at the staring villagers are the shouts of a sudden manifestation of certainty, of a rational certainty that separates her from their superstition.