Research paper on recent mnc acquisition Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

On recent mnc acquisition - Research Paper Example The annual sales of Alcon in 2009 was above USD 6.6 million and its operating profit stood over USD 2.2 billion while net income was over USD 1.99 billion. The acquisition of the Alcon will give Novartis the opportunity to expand its portfolio in the eye care segment where there is a latent potential for growth due to aging population and globalisation of emerging markets. The combined portfolio of Alcon and Novartis can now tackle a broad range of untapped demands in this segment. The most important thing to note about the success of this acquisition is the complementary pharmaceutical portfolios of these two companies that filled the gaps between the back and frontal eye. It also has the chance to gain leverage form its strong global brands in eye lens. Financial impact In April 2008, Novartis and Nestle entered into agreement for Nestle’s sale of 77% stake in Alcon. It was divided in two stages – stage one required Novartis acquiring 77% majority stake in Alcon from Nestle by paying $168 per share taking the deal to $ 38.7 billion. In this stage Novartis acquired 25% stake in Alcon for $ 10.5 billion. In the second stage, Novartis acquired remaining 52% stake from Nestle for $ 28.4 billion. The majority stake cost Novartis $ 38.69 billion that includes adjustments for interest and dividend. The initial 25% stake was financed by $ 17 billion in cash and $ 13.5 billion was financed by bonds. Remaining $ 8.19 billion was financed by US commercial papers. The weighted average external financing cost stood at 2.5% per year as on March 2010. With 77% stake in the majority ownership of Alcon, it will consolidate Alcon’s financial statement into Novartis’ financial reporting. Preliminary assessment shows that initial 25 % stake in Alcon need to be re-valued to its fair value. Such revaluation will result in $ 200 million gain for Alcon. The additional amortization before tax of intangible assets stood at $ 2.2 billion per year. The four m onth analysis of balance sheet of Alcon in 2010 till April estimates Alcon’s value at $ 200 million including increased inventory. Over the next three years after acquisition, the onetime cost to achieve a synergy of approximately USD 199 million is expected to be around $ 139 million including transaction and other charges. Accounting Requirements for Business Combination Accounting requirements for combination of business requires parent entity to prepare a consolidated financial statement that includes the report of all subsidiaries. However, this does not mean that the subsidiaries are excluded from presenting consolidated reports. All items must be accounted for at fair value including investments. In case of shared power as in case of joint ventures, the consent of all parties will be required. For acquisitions, it is extremely important for the acquirer to determine the timing and the nature of acquisition. The profits and losses as a result of intra-firm transactions between Novartis and Alcon including treatment of fixed assets and inventories must be eliminated. The accounting for contingent asset or liabilities and subsequent adjustment at fair value is also one of the challenging aspects in case of business combinations. Other factors to care of during business combination include pre-acquisition contingencies treatment, interaction of accounting standards between the acquirer and the acquired, treatment of intangible assets (including goodwill), treatment of risk management, proper disclosures under accounting policies, treatment of

American Revolution Essay Example for Free

American Revolution Essay After the American Revolution, Americans, who had just broken free from the British, completely changed their politics, economy and society. The Founders decided to change how they wanted to run their society, even though, in the end, they went back to a more powerful federal government like Britain. Most people’s daily lives didn’t change much but the principles from the revolution made some try to look for better financial opportunities. Women, slaves, and loyalists were changed a lot in society. Women had more freedoms, some of the slaves were set free, and many loyalists left America. America did not go through much economic change, but it did experience social and political change. Since they had just fought a war to gain their freedom from them, Americans wanted their government not to be similar to Britain’s at all. This is why they implemented the Articles of Confederation that greatly limited federal power. But this government couldn’t raise taxes, or do a plethora of other tasks that were desperately needed, so the people realized their need for a more centralized government. While the new Constitution was still being created and ratified, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were writing the Federalist Papers in hopes of convincing states to support it. James Madison, in number 51 of the papers wrote â€Å"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition† (Doc I). He was referring to the idea of checks and balances that would be used to ensure that anyone in the federal government would not be able to have too much power, which the people were very wary of. When it was finally ratified, the Constitution was similar to Britain’s government but also different because of their system of checks and balances. There was not much economic change in America after the revolution. The Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture in 1786 gave out a medal, which said, â€Å"Venerate the plough† (Doc F). This exhibits how the elite were still trying to help the common people who weren’t financially better off than before the revolution, but it didn’t make much difference. Similarly, in Shay’s Rebellion, Yeoman farmers in Massachusetts, according to Abigail Adams’ letter to Thomas Jefferson, â€Å"were crying out for a paper currency, some for an equal distribution of property† (Doc G). Shay’s Rebellion symbolizes the economic troubles that the poor had to deal with. The social change was the biggest change that happened in America. After the Revolution, the place of women, slaves, and loyalists in society was greatly altered. In order to teach justice and liberty to their children, women were educated in the ideals of Republican Motherhood. In a woodcut of a patriot woman made in 1779, a woman is shown with a rifle and gunpowder horn (Doc A). Some women did play bigger roles in society by going with the fighting soldiers and sometimes even fighting with them in the revolution. However, not all women were satisfied to just go back to the earlier place in society they were at before the war as shown by Molly Wallace who said during her valedictory address in 1792, â€Å"if [taught] to read, why not to speak? † (Doc J). Many American women, like Wallace, sought after advancing their roles in society. But sadly, women suffrage didn’t happen for 140 years. For slaves in some regions, there was a lot of social change. In the years after the revolution, the slave owners in the North practiced manumission, and freed many slaves there. In the South, however, it would take many more years and a Civil War for the slaves to gain their freedom. There were more actions against slavery, though. The Northwest Ordinance in 1787 stated, â€Å"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in said territory† (Doc H), outlawing the spread of slavery in new states in hopes that eventually, states without slavery would exceed the states with it and be able to abolish it everywhere. The loyalists or â€Å"Tories† also went through significant change in society. Since they had favored Britain during the way, after it, they were became a widely hated. The Pennsylvania Packet says â€Å"Never let [the Tories] return to this happy land† (Doc B). They went through so much change in society that countless loyalists left America, never to return. Politically, Americans underwent some change by creating a new government even though they still altered it in the end. Economically, there were still elites who ruled over the lower, poor class of people. And socially, a large amount of change occurred for women, slaves and loyalists, although the change in the place of loyalists was extremely negative. In these ways, American society was changed in respect to political and social life, but not economically.

The Computer Internet And Video Game Addiction Media Essay

The Computer Internet And Video Game Addiction Media Essay Introduction: In this review report i will discuss about the article about The Computer, Internet, and Video Game Addiction by Douglas A. Gentile. In the article the author discussed about the issue about the addictions because of computer, internet, and video games, and he discussed about the warning signs and symptoms in order to detect the addiction status. In the article the author says that because of the high addictiveness to these technology inventions causes disruptions to works, friends, school, and family. The author explained that the addiction to something will cause damage to the functionality of their life. It may be more one or two functional areas of life that may get damaged because of addiction of something. And the author used a scale to determine the addictiveness of a person. I agree with the author as he says that the addiction disrupts the functioning of social life in many areas but he did not mentioned about the new technologies and services like social networking addictio n and text messaging services. As the author said the addiction to internet may not always damages their social relations. I shall show that the addictions to internet may improve the social functionality of the people. Critical Review: The topic of this review is the addiction of new technologies and services developed in recent years. Douglas A. Gentile clearly explained in his article about the issue and warning signs and how to rescue the people from addiction. In recent years technology is growing rapidly. As a result of this technological development so many new facilities and services are coming forward. Computers and Internet services are some of the major aspects grown very rapidly in the past decade. The number of users using these services increasing day by day. These new technologies and internet services are very useful and became very important aspects in regular life as we have so many advantages with them. Some people uses internet for longer hours daily. Psychologists named it as internet-addiction disorder. But so many people used to spend hours of time on their computers even before the usage of internet came into their regular life. We can call it as computer addiction. And one more powerful, rou tine and mostly accepted addiction is video gaming. And what about mobile phones? Persons get addicted to these mobile phones too. With the help of developing technology the researchers will implement all the computer, mobile phone and videos gaming features into single equipment in near future, possibly mostly addictive. In Douglas A. Gentiles article he explained the term addiction as to do something which will spoil their regular life functionalities. They will spoil more than one or two functionalities of their normal life such as their social functionality and work operations, school operations and even family relations just because of their addiction. By considering the above functionality disorders Gentile said that 8.5% of young games are addicted in America. (Gentile 2009).[1] As of now there are no accepted risk factors or symptoms in order to identify the addiction Gentile suggested some factors as a basic guide to find the addiction of video games. He suggested the symptoms for children and adults. Those are, in case of children, they will spend most of the time in playing games, incompletion of assignments, getting less grades, falling into sleep in school hours, always likes to play video games instead of playing with their friends, lying about the use of computer and games, not interested to spend time in sports and clubs, violent response when anyone tries to stop their game play. These are the symptoms suggested by Gentile to be used as a guide to identify the addiction in case of children. And when it comes to the adults he suggested the risk factors as follows. When the time spending on video game play increases it seriously disrupts the family, social life and even work life, cannot control the use of computers and video games, that fantasy vide o game life replaces the original normal life with partner, they will lie about the use of the computer and games. And Gentile also suggested some physical symptoms which may indicate to addiction. Those symptoms are disturbances in sleep, back ache and neck aches, headaches and neglecting personal hygiene because of not eating regularly.[1] In his article Gentile said that for the person who is addicted to computers and video games, a fantasy life in on-line or in the video games replaces his original real world. The virtual reality of the video games is more attractive than real world, family, school, or work. And the improved right of entry to pornography on the on-line and in video games. And Gentile mentioned different approaches in order to define the addictions. However, they are likely to share various characteristics. In 1991 Brown potted 6 core facets in order to identify the presence of the addiction, and those facets are alike across various approaches. The facets summarized by Brown are salience, is defined as the action which controls the life of a person either cognitively or behaviourally. And another facet is euphoria/relief, and is defined as an action which provides high. And another one is tolerance is defined as the greater action is required to get the similar high. And another facet is withdrawal symptoms is defined as the occurrence of unlikeable negative emotions or physical effects while not capable to employ the action. And Conflict is defined as the action that directs to clash with others, and relapse and reinstatement is defined as the action continued in spite of challenges to withhold from it.[3] Douglas A. Gentile defined a scale in order to calculate the addiction level of a person. That scale includes the following questions. Have you turn into extra anxious in the past year while playing video games or while using computer? Have you spend lot of time and money in order to play games and in order to get required excitement in the past year? Have you tried to minimise your playing time in the past year? Have you become short-tempered or irritable while trying to stop playing games? Have you lied your parents or friends about the time you spend to play games? (For children)Have you ever done incomplete assignments because spending more time on video games in the past year? Have you required the financial help of family or friends for the reason of spending lot of money on video games? Have you committed anti-social activities such as theft from home or friends to buy video games? And he explained how to score this scale. And how to decide the level of addiction using this score. As Gentile mentioned people needed to count 1 if the answer is Yes and they need to count as 0 if they get No. So finally if u gets yes for half of the questions then you are in addiction. And if u get No for more than half questions then less addictive or not addicted. According to the opinion of the author Gentile he considered this type of disorder as impulse-control disorder. It means the person who plays the games knows that he should finish his home work, but he cannot stop the desire to play for some more time. And the Gentile said that it is not only in the case of games. The person may have addiction of computers or internet to stay away from rest of their social life.[2] The author has given some reasons on why people get addicted to the internet, computers and games. He said three basic requirements that direct to human motivation. These requirements are the requirement of autonomy (that is the human want to believe that he is in charge about the thing he is doing), the requirement of relatedness (it means that human wants to feel joined with other persons), and the requirement of competence (that is human want to believe that he is better at things). These are the three basic requirements of self-determination theory. The video games and internet are superb to satisfy these three requirements and because of this reason they are highly motivating things and leads people to get addicted to them. Gentile gave some suggestions in his article about how to get out of these disorders. He suggested taking the person who is spending lot of time on games and internet to the counsellor who treats the people having impulse-control disorders. And he suggested some changes to take in the living patterns of their family. That is by making the children to spend more time with their family. Because if the adults are busy at their work then their kids try to entertain themselves by playing games and can become addictive to those games. And if you want to stop your children from playing games first you need to arrange some alternative to replace those games. You need to fulfil their needs which they are getting by playing games. And he suggested some links for specialize treatment for video games and internet addictions. Those are http://techaddiction.ca/ and http://www.netaddictionrecovery.com/. [2] As Gentile said in his article i agree with him that the addiction to something leads a person to spoil his regular life operations such as their school operations, time spending with their friends, work operations and also family relations. But here the author did not mentioned about the social networking sites available on internet. In present days most of the people using the social networking sites such facebook, orkut, hi5 and most of the internet users became addicted to these social networking sites. And by using these sites they will can make good relations with their friends and they can make their social relations stronger. So that i cannot agree with the author as he said that the addiction spoils the social relations. The symptoms suggested by the Gentile are good enough to identify the addiction of children and in case of adults also. Those symptoms or risk factors are much accurate to identify the addiction. I agree with the author to use those factors as a guide to detect the addiction. And by following the physical symptoms suggested by gentile as indications we can definitely know whether we are addicted to any of those computers, video games, and internet or not. And i support the questions covered in the scale taken by gentle in order to find out the addiction level of a person. By asking those questions themselves the people can find out their addiction level and can take some cautions to get out of the addiction. And he gave some best reasons for getting addicted to these technology things. And the addiction to the internet and video games may not always a big problem as those addictions may get out of the people as time passes. And these things are even not recognized by the American Psy chiatric Association as a medical disorder Conclusion: In this review I have discussed the article about The Computer, Internet, and Video Game Addiction by Douglas A. Gentile. This article explained so many points regarding the addiction of people to the technologies like computers, video games and internet. In his article the author has given some symptoms to find the addiction and he gave some reasons for addiction. The author shown that the excessive use of computer, internet and video games make people to damage their social life and their relationships with the real world. But it may not acceptable in case of internet because so many social networking websites are available in internet to which most of the people getting addicted. Even though they are addicted to those social networking websites they can continue their relations with the people around them and can make their relations even stronger by using those websites through internet. Even some people may balance their social things even though they spend more time on internet and video games. And the author explained three motivations that can lead people to get addicted with the video games. One of those three motivations is the people feel that the human feels that he is better at things. It may not correct that all the people who spend more time on video games feels like they are better at those things. And the most of the points explained by the author Gentile are agreeable and very useful.

How Did You Respond to a Challenge of Your Values? :: MBA College Admissions Essays

How Did You Respond to a Challenge of Your Values?    One has to understand sub-continental culture regarding marriage in order to understand this particular crisis. Marriages are classified into two groups: 'settled' marriage and 'affair' marriage. In a 'settled' marriage, the groom's family chooses the bride, and if bride's family accepts the groom, the two families get together and fix the marriage. The bride and the groom may or may not meet each other before the marriage. In an 'affair' marriage, two persons fall in love and get married, with or without the permission of their families. This is considered a social crime, and the newlyweds are forced to leave their families.    After I came back from the US, I met my sweetheart who was attending medical school. We courted each other for years, and when she graduated we figured it was time to marry. I asked my family to select the woman of my choice so as to marry the woman I love without upsetting social norms. When my mother proposed my fiancà ©e's family, her mother wanted to see me personally. I assumed she would consider me a suitable candidate for her daughter's husband since I come from a good family and since I am qualified to maintain a family. However, rather than looking for qualities in me that might make her daughter happy, she demanded that I posses an MBA degree before I marry her daughter. Apparently, all of her relatives' and friends' daughters got married to either MBAs or Ph.D.'s.    I was dumbfounded. I would have gladly given the moon to her daughter, but I was not about to earn an MBA to satisfy this woman's irrational craving.

A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck

Ani Aivazova Ms. Gharibian Literacy for Success 7 December, 2009 A Day No Pigs Would Die The book A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck, is a classic novel for young adults that signifies the importance of life, family, and traditions. The author of the book, Robert Peck, who is also the main character in the story, wrote about the hardships and happiness of his life. The book has a lot of lessons and advises from Roberts life experience. Even thought he is just a thirteen year old teenager, he has gone through a lot.The book A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck, should not be banned from school because it complements the age of the reader, has important lessons, and is age appropriate. A Day No Pigs Would Die should not be banned from school because it complements the age of the reader. Robert is a thirteen year old teenager who is going through hardships of teenage years. Since the readers of the book are also high school students, it is most likely that they wil l relate to Robs situation. Some of the students may also be going through the same or similar situations.The way Robert takes out of his problems will help the students resolve their own problems. As well as complementing the reader, the book also gives lessons in life. The book A Day No Pigs Would Die should not be banned because it teaches important lessons. Robert has a lot of challenging situations in life. By solving his problems, he gives other teenagers ideas about resolving their problems. For example, when Robert kills pinky he sets and example for every boy out there. Even though Pinky was the only beloved thing he owned, he sacrificed it for his family’s need.Robert did what was necessary, not what he wanted to do. In addition to setting examples, the book should also be kept because it is age appropriate. A Day No Pigs Would Die should not be banned from school because its content is appropriate for any high school student. Some say that the book has too much vio lence, especially in the birth and death of animals. However, that can be interpreted as natural events that happen in everyday life. There is nothing wrong in knowing the surrounding world and how life happens.In the book, the main character Robert tells the story of his life. He shares the happy and the challenging times that he had to go though as a teenager. The book A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck, should not be banned from school because it complements the age of the reader, has important lessons, and is age appropriate. The book should not be banned because it does not have a bad influence on the reader. Furthermore reading the book helps some students cope with their own life situations.

Como Agua Para Chocolate

Verbal and Visual Representation of Women: Como agua para chocolate / Like Water for Chocolate By MARIA ELENA DE VALDES Como agua para chocolate is the first novel by Laura Esquivel (b. 1950 ). Published in Spanish in 1989 and in English translation in 1992, followed by the release of the feature film that same year, the novel has thrust this Mexican woman writer into the world of international critical acclaim as well as best-seller popularity.Since Esquivel also wrote the screenplay for director Alfonso Arau, the novel and the film together offer us an excellent opportunity to examine the interplay between the verbal and visual representation of women. Esquivel's previous work had all been as a screenwriter. Her script for Chido Guan, el Tacos de Oro ( 1985 ) was nominated for the Ariel in Mexico, an award she won eight years later for Como agua para chocolate. The study of verbal and visual imagery must begin with the understanding that both the novel and, to a lesser extent, the film work as a parody of a genre.The genre in question is the Mexican version of women's fiction published in monthly installments together with recipes, home remedies, dressmaking patterns, short poems, moral exhortations, ideas on home decoration, and the calendar of church observances. In brief, this genre is the nineteenth-century forerunner of what is known throughout Europe and America as a woman's magazine. 1 Around 1850 these publications in Mexico were called â€Å"calendars for young ladies. Since home and church were the private and public sites of all educated young ladies, these publications represented the written counterpart to women's socialization, and as such, they are documents that conserve and transmit a Mexican female culture in which the social context and cultural space are particularly for women by women. It was in the 1850s that fiction began to take a prominent role. At first the writings were descriptions of places for family excursions, moralizing tales , or detailed narratives on cooking. By 1860 the installment novel grew out of the monthly recipe or recommended excursion.More elaborate love stories by women began to appear regularly by the 1880s. The genre was never considered literature by the literary establishment because of its episodic plots, overt sentimentality, and highly stylized characterization. Nevertheless, by the turn of the century every literate woman in Mexico was or had been an avid reader of the genre. But what has been completely overlooked by the male-dominated literary culture of Mexico is that these novels were highly coded in an authentic women's language of inference and reference to the commonplaces of the kitchen and the home which were completely unknown by any man. Behind the purportedly simple episodic plots there was an infrahistory of life as it was lived, with all its multiple restrictions for women of this social class. The characterization followed the forms of life of these women rather than t heir unique individuality; thus the heroines were the survivors, those who were able to live out a full life in spite of the institution of marriage, which in theory, if not in practice, was a form of indentured slavery for life in which a woman served father and brothers then moved on to serve husband and sons together with her daughters and, of course, the women from the servant class.The women's fiction of this woman's world concentrated on one overwhelming fact of life: how to transcend the conditions of existence and express oneself in love and in creativity. 3 Cooking, sewing, embroidery, and decoration were the usual creative outlets for these women, and of course conversation, storytelling, gossip, and advice, which engulfed every waking day of the Mexican lady of the home. 4 Writing for other women was quite naturally an extension of this infrahistorical conversation and gossip.Therefore, if one has the social codes of these women, one can read these novels as a way of life in nineteenth-century Mexico. Laura Esquivel's recognition of this world and its language comes from her Mexican heritage of fiercely independent women, who created a woman's culture within the social prison of marriage. 5 Como agua para chocolate is a parody of nineteenth-century women's periodical fiction in the same way that Don Quijote is a parody of the novel of chivalry. Both genres were expressions of popular culture that created a unique space for a segment of the population.I am using the term parody in the strict sense in which Ziva Ben-Porat has defined it: â€Å"[Parody is] a representation of a modeled reality, which is itself already a particular representation of an original reality. The parodic representations expose the model's conventions and lay bare its devices through the coexistence of the two codes in the same message† (247). Obviously, for the parody to work at its highest level of dual representation, both the parody and the parodic model must be pre sent in the reading experience.Esquivel creates the duality in several ways. First, she begins with the title of the novel, Like Water for Chocolate, a locution which translates as â€Å"water at the boiling point† and is used as a simile in Mexico to describe any event or relationship that is so tense, hot, and extraordinary that it can only be compared to scalding water on the verge of boiling, as called for in the preparation of that most Mexican of all beverages, dating from at least the thirteenth century: hot chocolate (Soustelle, 153-61).Second, the subtitle is taken directly from the model: â€Å"A Novel in Monthly Installments, with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies. † Together the title and subtitle therefore cover both the parody and the model. Third, the reader finds upon opening the book, in place of an epigraph, a traditional Mexican proverb: â€Å"A la mesa y a la cama / Una sola vez se llama† (To the table or to bed / You must come when you ar e bid). â€Å"The woodcut that decorates the page is the typical nineteenth-century cooking stove. The fourth and most explicit dualistic technique is Esquivel's reproduction of the format of her model.Each chapter is prefaced by the title, the subtitle, the month, and the recipe for that month. The narration that follows is a combination of direct address on how to prepare the recipe of the month and interspersed stories about the loves and times of the narrator's great-aunt Tita. The narration moves effortlessly from the first person to the third-person omniscient narrative voice of all storytellers. Each chapter ends with the information that the story will be continued and an announcement of what the next month's–that is, the next chapter's–recipe will be.These elements, taken from the model, are never mere embellishments. The recipes and their preparation, as well as the home remedies and their application, are an intrinsic part of the story. There is therefore a n intricate symbiotic relationship between the novel and its model in the reading experience. Each is feeding on the other. In this study I am concerned with the model of the human subject, specifically the female subject, as it is developed in and through language and visual signification in a situated context of time and place.The verbal imaging of the novel makes use of the elaborate signifying system of language as a dwelling place. The visual imagery that at first expands the narrative in the film soon exacts its own place as a nonlinguistic signifying system drawing upon its own repertoire of referentiality and establishing a different model of the human subject than that elucidated by the verbal imagery alone. I intend to examine the novelistic signifying system and the model thus established and then follow with the cinematic signifying system and its model.The speaking subject or narrative voice in the novel is characterized, as Emile Benveniste has shown, as a living prese nce by speaking. That voice begins in the first person, speaking the conversational Mexican Spanish of a woman from Mexico's north, near the U. S. border. Like all Mexican speech, it is clearly marked with register and sociocultural indicators, in this case of the land-owning middle class, mixing colloquial local usage with standard Spanish. The entry point is always the same: the direct address of one woman telling another how to prepare the recipe she is recommending.As one does the cooking, it is quite natural for the cook to liven the session with some storytelling, prompted by the previous preparation of' the food. As she effortlessly moves from first-person culinary instructor to storyteller, she shifts to the third person and gradually appropriates a time and place and refigures a social world. A verbal image emerges of the model Mexican rural, middle-class woman. She must be strong and far more clever than the men who supposedly protect her. She must be pious, observing all the religious requirements of a virtuous daughter, wife, and mother.She must exercise great care to keep her sentimental relations as private as possible, and, most important of all, she must be in control of life in her house, which means essentially the kitchen and bedroom or food and sex. In Esquivel's novel there are four women who must respond to the model: the mother Elena and the three daughters Rosaura, Gertrudis, and Josefita, known as Tita. The ways of living within the limits of the model are demonstrated first by the mother, who thinks of herself as its very incarnation.She interprets the model in terms of control and domination of her entire household. She is represented through a filter of awe and fear, for the ostensible source is Tita's diary-cookbook, written beginning in 1910, when she was fifteen years old, and now transmitted by her grandniece. Therefore the verbal images that characterize Mama Elena must be understood as those of her youngest daughter, who has b een made into a personal servant from the time the little girl was able to work.Mama Elena is depicted as strong, self-reliant, absolutely tyrannical with her daughters and servants, but especially so with Tita, who from birth has been designated as the one who will not marry because she must care for her mother until she dies. Mama Elena believes in order, her order. Although she observes the strictures of church and society, she has secretly had an adulterous love affair with an African American, and her second daughter, Gertrudis, is the offspring of that relationship.This transgression of the norms of proper behavior remains hidden from public view, although there is gossip, but only after her mother's death does Tita discover that Gertrudis is her half-sister. The tyranny imposed on the three sisters is therefore the rigid, self-designed model of a woman's life pitilessly enforced by Mama Elena, and each of the three responds in her own way to the model. Rosaura never questions her mother's authority and follows her dictates submissively; after she is married she becomes an insignificant imitation of her mother.She lacks the strength, skill, and determination of Mama Elena and tries to compensate by appealing to the mother's model as absolute. She therefore tries to live the model, invoking her mother's authority because she has none of her own. Gertrudis does not challenge her mother but instead responds to her emotions and passions in a direct manner unbecoming a lady. This physical directness leads her to adopt an androgynous life-style: she leaves home and her mother's authority, escapes from the brothel where she subsequently landed, and becomes a general of the revolutionary army, taking a subordinate as her lover and, later, husband.When she returns to the family hacienda, she dresses like a man, gives orders like a man, and is the dominant sexual partner. Tita, the youngest of the three daughters, speaks out against her mother's arbitrary rule but cannot escape until she temporarily loses her mind. She is able to survive her mother's harsh rule by transferring her love, joy, sadness, and anger into her cooking. Tita's emotions and passions are the impetus for expression and action, not through the normal means of communication but through the food she prepares. She is therefore able to consummate her love with Pedro through the food she serves.Tal parecia que en un extranio fenomeno de alquimia su ser se habia disuelto en la salsa de rosas, en el cuerpo de las codornices, en el vino y en cada uno de los olores de la comida. De esta manera penetraba en el cuerpo de Pedro, voluptuosa, aromatica, calurosa, completamente sensual. (57) It was as if a strange alchemical process had dissolved her entire being in the rose petal sauce, in the tender flesh of the quails, in the wine, in every one of the meal's aromas. That was the way she entered Pedro's body, hot, voluptuous, perfumed, totally sensuous. 52) This clearly is much more than communication through food or a mere aphrodisiac; this is a form of sexual transubstantiation whereby the rose petal sauce and the quail have been turned into the body of Tita. Thus it is that the reader gets to know these women as persons but, above all, becomes involved with the embodied speaking subject from the past, Tita, represented by her grand-niece (who transmits her story) and her cooking. The reader receives verbal food for the imaginative refiguration of one woman's response to the model that was imposed on her by accident of birth. The body of these women is the place of living.It is the dwelling place of the human subject. The essential questions of health, illness, pregnancy, childbirth, and sexuality are tied very directly in this novel to the physical and emotional needs of the body. The preparation and eating of food is thus a symbolic representation of living, and Tita's cookbook bequeaths to Esperanza and to Esperanza's daughter, her grandniece, a woman's cr eation of space that is hers in a hostile world. Not only was the film adaptation of Como agua para chocolate written by the novelist herself, but in this case the screenplay represents a return to her original discipline.There are many cinematographic elements in the novel, primarily the numerous cuts and fade-outs of the story in order to feature the cooking. The camera is intrusive and can engulf its subject in a visual language that is unique to the voyeur or can replace verbal referentiality by overwhelming the viewer. For example, the opening shot of the film, filling the entire screen with an onion that is being sliced, plunges the viewer into food preparation in a way that no spoken word could parallel for its immediate effect.Similarly, the numerous close-ups of food being prepared, served, and eaten heighten the dominance of the performance of cooking and eating as both sustenance and social ritual. Contrast these images and this emphasis on the joy, sensuality, and even l ust of eating the Mexican cuisine of Tita's kitchen with the scenes of the monks eating in Jean-Jacques Annaud screen version of The Name of the Rose or the raw meat displayed in the monastery's refractory, where the emphasis is on the denial of the flesh through mortification. Gabriel Axel film Babette's Feast, on the other hand, contains both poles of this opposition between gratification and mortification of the body. The minister's two daughters, who substitute religious practice for living and who eat as punishment for having a body, are suddenly exposed to the refinement of food as art, pleasure, and gratification. ) In the film Como agua para chocolate the preparation of food is expressed visually, and the consummation of eating is seen in the faces of the diners; but it must be also emphasized that there is a full spectrum of effects here, ranging from ecstasy to nausea.Perhaps the major difference between Esquivel's novel and the film version is that there is a visual inter text in the latter that evokes the Cinderella fairy tale by using the ghostly appearance of the mother and making her death the result of an attack on the hacienda by outlaws. In the novel Mama Elena does not die until long after the attack and lingers on in partial madness, convinced that Tita is trying to poison her. By cutting short her death to one sudden violent episode and having her visage return to taunt Tita until the latter is able to renounce her heritage, the film makes Tita the Cinderella-like victim of personal abuse.In the novel the rigidity and harshness of Mama Elena is overwhelmingly sociocultural and not peculiar to Tita as victim. The visual intertext of fairy-tale language creates an effective subtext in the film, bringing out the oppression of the protagonist and her magical transcendence. Instead of a fairy godmother, Tita has the voice of her Nacha, the family cook who raised her from infancy amid the smells and sounds of the kitchen. Instead of a magical tra nsformation of dress and carriage to go to the prince's ball, Tita is able to make love through the food she prepares; she is also able to induce sadness and acute physical discomfort.She is therefore able to keep Pedro from having sexual relations with Rosaura by making certain that Rosaura is fat, foul of breath, and given to breaking wind in the most nauseating manner. Mama Elena's ghost first appears one hour into the film and quietly gains the upper hand, since she threatens to curse the child Tita is presumably carrying. The final confrontation between Tita and the ghost comes ten minutes later: Tita defeats the ghost by revealing that she knows Gertrudis is illegitimate and that she hates Elena for everything she has never been to her.The film's visual language is able to evoke images of provocation, contempt, and abuse that are not in the novel. From the fortieth to the forty-fifth minute of the film, part of Tita's immensurably Cinderellalike duties are enacted. Tita is the only one permitted to assist Mama Elena in her bath and with her dressing. The despotic abuse of Tita by Mama Elena clearly borrows the visual images of the cruel stepmother. The magical intermediary is not a beautiful woman in a ball dress, but rather a wrinkled old woman, the cook Nacha, who had given Tita the love Mama Elena denied her.Nacha's voice and face guide Tita. It is Nacha who tells her to use the roses Pedro gave her for the preparation of quail in rose petal sauce, and it is Nacha who prepares the bedroom for the final consummation of love between Tita and Pedro at the end of the film. Tita's magical powers are all related to food, with the exception of the kilometer-long bedspread she knits during her lengthy nights of insomnia. Tita's cooking controls the pattern of living of those in her household because the food she prepares becomes an extension of herself.The culmination of this process of food as art and communication is food as communion. The transubstantiatio n of Tita's quail in rose petal sauce into Tita's body recalls the Roman Catholic doctrine of the communion wafer's becoming the body and blood of Christ, but on a deeper level it is the psychological reality of all women who have nursed an infant. When the baby Roberto loses his wet nurse, Tita is able to take the infant and nurse him in spite of the fact that she has not given birth.Her breasts are filled with milk not because she wishes she were the mother of the child, but because the child needs to eat and she is the provider of food. The viewer of the film Como agua para chocolate must develop her expressive capacity as she broadens her affective experience. Mexican women–and to some extent Latin American women–seeing the film relive their family history, and this is so not only because of the strong and open cultural links between Latin American women in this century, on which both the novel and film draw, but also and perhaps primarily because of the skillful u se of the parodic model.The intertext of women's magazines and the loves, trials, and tribulations featured in the stories they published is used by Esquivel as a discursive code that transcends whatever regional differences may exist. The social registers, the forms of address, the language of the female domain are somewhat lost in translation, because as in cooking, the substitution of ingredients changes the taste.The representation of women in Esquivel's novel and in the film touches on that deepest reservoir of meaning which is the human body as described, seen, and, on the deeper level, understood as the origin of identity. Women from other cultures and other languages can develop an empathetic relationship with Tita, her cooking, her love, and her life. Men of any culture, but especially Mexican men and Latin American men, have the greatest deficiency in experiencing this film and therefore have the most to learn.They must gain access to some fragment of the expressive code o f visual and verbal images that are the infrahistoric codes of their mothers, wives, and daughters. If they cannot gain access to the expressive system, they will not have access to the affective experience of these lives. The imagery of nourishing the body in both the novel and the film provides us with the means for articulating the experiences of cooking, eating, making love, and giving birth in previously unsuspected ways, and thus allows the male intruder a peek into reality.Women's recuperation of artistic creativity within the confinement of the house, and especially the kitchen and the bedroom, is presented by Esquivel not in an ideological argument but rather by means of an intertextual palimpsest which is the hallmark of postmodern art. 6 I want to conclude with three observations on feminist art in this context. 1) This is not a protest movement; it is a celebration of the space of one's own which may have been hidden from view in the past but is now open to all. ) At the center of postmodernism there is the vesting of creative weight on the reader, and this makes intertextuality a means of providing an interpretive context; in the case of Esquivel that context is our grandmother's kitchen and bedroom. 3) The maturity of feminist criticism has moved beyond the need to go headhunting among the misogynist hordes of patriarchy; the challenge today is to celebrate women's creativity in the full domain of the human adventure, from the so-called decorative arts to the fine arts and science.

Working Style of Microsoft essays

Working Style of Microsoft essays In this article How Microsoft Builds Software the author has tried to draw our attention towards the style of designing software by Microsoft. Microsoft is regarded as one of the pioneers in the development of various software applications like WinNT, Microsoft Office etc. The author is trying to show how Microsoft drifted from the general notion of writing software or designing applications and how they reaped success through their effort and making a niche for themselves in the software industry. Microsofts key practices in product development may initially look like they are following the methods used by hackers in the early stages of the software programming to design application, this may be true in some way as Microsoft uses the same concept of small teams in designing applications and making changes as and when necessary thereby improving these products by incrementally evolving their features. This small teams interact with each other almost on daily basis with common development languages, common coding styles, standardized development tools, bringing in customers off the street to try prototypes in their lab, delivering the software on the due date that are good enough and improving the product thorough further development and releasing more versions of the product. The approach used by Microsoft called Synch-and-Stabilize, without this approach it would have never been able to capture the software industry and continue to do so in the future. In this rapidly changing world of software Spiral Model of software engineering in designing applications; it has same t...