Mini-Analysis Paper III Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Mini-Analysis III - Research Paper Example The researchers used a collective case study as part of the qualitative methodology. As noted by Seidman (2013), case studies help researchers to have a detailed understanding about an issue or problem prevailing within a research setting. In this study, the rationale for selecting collective case study was given as the need to focusing on several subjects or participants at the same time. This rationale can be considered justifiable as it allowed the collection of both qualitative data and collective investigation of the sample size. Having said that the methodology selected was justifiable, using a focus group design would have allowed better access to participants (Diriwà ¤chter & Valsiner, 2006). This is because if focus group was used, the researcher would have had the chance of combining several data collection strategies including observation and interview (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). There were two major qualities about the article that helps to demonstrate precision and clarity of writing. The first of this had to do with the use of headings and sections to clearly spell out the themes that were being carried out by the researchers. Also, the researchers were very straight forward with their findings whiles ensuring that no important details were missed out from the analysis. Even though this study is complete and have been concluded as achieving its aim, there remain very important questions other researchers may ask. First, there is the question of the role parents can play as stakeholders of the educational system in ensuring that trust built at school is continued in the home. Second is the question of how other factors might have influenced the outcome of trust mothers have in principals. The third is the question of how students themselves could help improve their relationship with principals. The findings

Situational Leadership and it's Impact in Healthcare Research Paper

Situational Leadership and it's Impact in Healthcare - Research Paper Example It is evidently clear from the discussion that in situational leadership, as the employee’s level of knowledge and ability to perform tasks improves, a leader can modify the leadership style to apply. This means the roles of coaching, delegating, directing and supporting vary with maturity. Situational leadership, according to Hersey and Blanchard is important in that it values recognition of extremes. On one side of the extreme, a leader can apply positional authority while on the other side; a leader can delegate authority to enhance freedom among the junior workers. In nursing, a leader can base on two variables; the willingness of junior employees to take up assignments and the ability to post results when determining the extreme to rely on. This plays a critical role especially when a doctor wants to delegate some duties to a nurse. To do so, there must be a level of maturity in a nurse for delegation to happen. The more a senior person delegates, the less work he or she can perform. Since nursing is all about accountability and perfection, it can be easy to trace and get a nurse accountable for mistakes. However, a leader in such a position must take active participation in order to strike a balance between accountability and service delivery and reduce fear among employees. Situational leadership in nursing can help officials in establishing and improving communication and collaboration. According to American Management Association, communication is very important in sustaining and improving productivity. Since it is a flexible leadership style, it can be very easy in cultivating loyalty and improving self-reliance. Nursing requires self-discipline and loyalty since it is a profession that deals with a range of health complications. In order to administer effective medication, there must be communication between doctors and relevant offices and through loyalty; nurses can perform their duties while observing all instruction to the later. It can al so be useful should anything strange happen to patients since communication channels will ensure quick responses to problems at hand.

Video game essay Essay Example for Free

Video game essay Essay Are video games bad for you? Sure, parents and adults will tell you they are bad, but how are they bad for you? Many will tell you that video games hurt your eyes and damage your nerves. They may even tell you video games make you more violent, but they cannot provide any evidence to back up their opinions. Nor do they realize the real problem—which is not video games themselves—but the addiction that drives many gamers to play video games to the exclusion of all else. In this essay, I will show that video game addiction is the real reason why video games are bad for you. Video game addiction leads to poor performance in school and insufficient physical inactivity. Video game addiction can have a negative effect on academic achievement. For example, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that the more a student plays video games, the worse their academic performance is in school. A second study by Argosy Universitys Minnesota School on Professional Psychology found that video game addicts argue a lot with their teachers, fight a lot with their friends, and score lower grades than others who play video games less often. As these sources suggest, video game addicts obsessive gaming comes at a cost to their academic performance and relationships with those around them, ultimately leading to poor performance in school —and life. Video game addiction also leads to physical inactivity and related health problems. This occurs because obsessive gamers sacrifice a balanced lifestyle so they can spend all their free time playing video games. Instead of going out and rollerblading, playing hoops, or hanging out with friends, they sit in front of a screen for hours and hours. Consequently, they do get the exercise they need. The Center for Disease Control recommends 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. When these gamers do not get this exercise, they are abusing their bodies and risking developing heart disease and other cardiovascular problems; they even run the risk of becoming obese, which further increases the chances of cardiovascular problems and could result in them developing diabetes. As I have shown in this essay, video game addiction leads to poor performance in school and physical inactivity. The urge to play games can drive gamers to neglect their studies and injure relationships with those around them. Their desire to play video games can cause them to disregard healthy levels of activity, leading to health problems and even obesity. The key to keeping the negative influence of video games in check is one word: control. If gamers can balance video games with the rest of their lives, video games can be a fun, entertaining diversion; but when video games take over their lives, they are left with a life that is not worth living. This type of addiction develops when gamers obsess over the video games they play. As result, they As this evidence indicates, video game addiction promotes physical inactivity, putting gamers at risk of obesity, heart disease and other health problems. Thus, students addicted to sacrifice homework and study to whatever game they are currently obsessing over, This results in excessive physical inactivity, which puts gamers at risk of developing heart disease and other cardiovascular problems, or becoming overweight. by spending all their free time playing. as gamers spend all their free time playing their games. Without the required levels of physical activity, these gamers risk developing cardiovascular problems, such as The Center for Disease Control and American Heart Associatoin.

What Is Power Electronics Engineering Essay

What Is Power Electronics Engineering Essay Power electronics involves the study of electronic circuits intended to control the flow of electrical energy. These circuits handle power flow at levels much higher than the individual device ratings. It has been said that people do not use electricity, but rather they use communication, light, mechanical work, entertainment, and all the tangible benefits of both energy and electronics. In this sense, electrical engineering is a discipline very much involved in energy conversion and information. In the general world of electronics engineering, the circuits engineers design and use are intended to convert information, with energy merely a secondary consideration in most cases. This is true of both analog and digital circuit design. In radio frequency applications, energy and information are sometimes on a more equal footing, but the main function of any circuit is that of information transfer. What about the conversion and control of electrical energy itself? Electrical energy sources are varied and of many types. It is natural, then, to consider how electronic circuits and systems can be applied to the challenges of energy conversion and management. This is the framework of power electronics, a discipline that is defined in terms of electrical energy conversion, applications, and electronic devices. More specifically, Rectifiers are probably the most familiar example of circuits that meet this definition. Inverters (a general term for dc-ac converters) and dc-dc converters for power supplies are also common applications. As shown in Fig. 1.1, power electronics represents a median point at which the topics of energy systems, electronics, and control converge and combine [1].Any useful circuit design for the control of power must address issues of both devices and control, as well as of the energy itself. Among the unique aspects of power electronics are its emphasis on lar ge semiconductor devices, the application of magnetic devices for energy storage, and special control methods that must be applied to nonlinear systems. In any study of electrical engineering, power electronics must be placed on a level with digital, analog, and radio-frequency electronics if we are to reflect its distinctive design methods and unique challenges. FIGURE 1.1 Control, energy, and power electronics are interrelated. All power electronic circuits manage the flow of electrical energy between some sort of source and a load. The parts in a circuit must direct electrical flows, not impede them. A general power conversion system is shown in Fig. 1.2. The function of the power converter positioned at the middle is that of controlling energy flow between a given electrical source and a given load. For our purposes, the power converter will be implemented with a power electronic circuit. As a power converter appears between a source and a load, any energy used within the converter is lost to the overall system. A crucial point emergesà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬to build a power converter, we should consider only lossless components. A realistic converter design must approach 100% efficiency. A power converter connected between a source and a load also affects system reliability. FIGURE 1.2 General systems for electric power conversion A circuit built from ideal switches will be lossless. As a result, switches are the main components of power converters, and many people equate power electronics with the study of switching power converters. Magnetic transformers and lossless storage elements such as capacitors and inductors are also valid candidates for use in power converters. The complete concept, shown in Fig. 1.3, illustrates a power electronic system. Such a system consists of an energy source, an electrical load, a power electronic circuit, and control functions. The power electronic circuit contains switches, lossless energy storage elements, and magnetic transformers. The controls take information from the source, load, and designer and then determine how the switches operate to achieve the desired conversion. The controls are usually built up with conventional low-power analog and digital electronics. FIGURE 1.3 a basic power electronic system Trends in Power Supplies : As costs of electronics decline, the power supply becomes a larger fraction of system cost and design effort. One major manufacturer estimates that power supply cost will soon reach 50% of the total cost of a typical electronic product such as a cordless telephone or personal computer. Thus, new technology developments in power supplies are critically important. In the past, bulky linear power supplies were designed with transformers and rectifiers from the ac line frequency to provide low-level dc voltages for electronic circuits. Late in the 1960s, use of dc sources in aerospace applications led to the development of power electronic dc-dc conversion circuits for power supplies. In a typical power electronics arrangement today, an ac source from a wall outlet is rectified without any transformation; the resulting high dc voltage is converted through a dc-dc circuit to the 5V, 12 V, or other level required. These switched-mode power supplies are rapidly supplanting linear supplies across the full spectrum of circuit applications. A personal computer commonly requires three different 5V supplies, two .12 V supplies, a ÃÆ' ¿12 V supply, a 24 V supply, and perhaps a few more. This does not include supplies for 1 Introduction 3 video display or peripheral devices. Only a switched-mode supply can support such complex requirements without high costs. The bulk and weight of linear supplies make them infeasible for hand-held communication devices, calculators, notebook computers, and similar equipment. Switched-mode supplies often take advantage of MOSFET semiconductor technology. Trends toward high reliability, low cost, and miniaturization have reached the point at which a 5 V power supply sold today might last 1,000,000 hr (more than 100 yr), provide 100Wof output in a package with volume This type of supply brings an interesting dilemma: the ac line cord to plug it in actually takes up more space than the power supply itself. Innovative concepts such as integrating a power supply within a connection cable will be used in the future. Device technology for power supplies is being driven by expanding needs in the automotive and telecommunications industries as well as in markets for portable equipment. The automotive industry is making a transition to 42 V systems to handle increasing electric power needs. Power conversion for this industry must be cost effective, yet rugged enough to survive the high vibration and wide temperature range to which a passenger car is exposed. Global communication is possible only when sophisticated equipment can be used almost anywhere. This brings a special challenge, because electrical supplies are neither reliable nor consistent throughout much of the world. While in North America voltage swings in the domestic ac supply are often Given the enormous size of worldwide markets for telephones and consumer electronics, there is a clear need for flexible-source equipment. Designers are challenged to obtain maximum performance from small batteries, and to create equipment with minimal energy requirements. DEVICE TYPE CHARACTERISTICS OF POWER DEVICES Diode: Current ratings from 5000 A. Voltage ratings from 10V to 10 kV or more. The fastest power devices switch in BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor): Conducts collector current (in one direction) when sufficient base current is applied. Power device current ratings from 0.5 to 500 A or more; voltages from 30 to 1200V. Switching times from 0.5 to 100 ms. The function applies to dc-dc circuits; combinations with diodes are used in inverters. Power BJTs are being supplanted by FETs and IGBTs. FET (Field Effect Transistor): Conducts drain current when sufficient gate voltage is applied. Power FETs (nearly always enhancement mode MOSFETs) have a parallel connected reverse diode by virtue of their construction. Ratings from _1 to _100 A and 30 up to 1000V. Switching times are fast, from 50 or less up to 200 ns. The function applies to dc-dc conversion, where the FET is in wide use, and to inverters. IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor): A special type of power FET that has the function of a BJT with its base driven by a FET. Faster than a BJT of similar ratings, and easy to use. Ratings from 10 to >600 A, with voltages of 600 to 1700V. The IGBT is popular in inverters from _1 to 100kW or more. It is found almost exclusively in power electronics applications. SCR (Silicon Controlled Rectifier): A thyristor that conducts like a diode after a gate pulse is applied. Turns off only when current becomes zero. Prevents current flow until a pulse appears. Ratings from 10 up to more than 5000 A, and from 200V up to 6 kV. Switching requires 1 to 200 ms. widely used for controlled rectifiers. The SCR is found almost exclusively in power electronics applications, and is the most common member of the thyristor family. GTO (Gate Turn-Off Thyristor): an SCR that can be turned off by sending a negative pulse to its gate terminal. Can substitute for BJTs in applications where power ratings must be very high. The ratings approach those of SCRs, and the speeds are similar as well. Used in inverters rated >100 kW. TRIAC: A semiconductor constructed to resemble two SCRs connected in reverse parallel. Ratings from 2 to 50 A and 200 to 800V. Used in lamp dimmers, home appliances, and hand tools. Not as rugged as many other device types, but very convenient for many ac applications. MCT (MOSFET Controlled Thyristor): A special type of SCR that has the function of a GTO with its gate driven from a FET. Much faster than conventional GTOs, and easier to use. These devices are supplanting GTOs in some application areas. POWER CONVERTERS The power processors usually consist of more than one power conversion stage where the operation of these stages is decoupled on an instantaneous basis by means of energy storage elements such as capacitors and inductors. Therefore, the instantaneous power input does not have to equal the instantaneous power output. We will refer to each power conversion stage as a converter. Thus, a converter is a basic module (building block) of power electronic systems. It utilizes power semiconductor devices controlled by signal electronics (integrated circuits) and possibly energy storage elements such as inductors and capacitors. Based on the form (frequency) on the two sides, converters can be divided into the following broad categories: 1. AC to DC 2. DC to AC 3. DC to DC 4. AC to AC We will use converter as a generic tenn to refer to a single power conversion stage that may perform any of the functions listed above. To be more specific, in ac-to-dc and dc-to-ac conversion, rectifier refers to a converter when the average power flow is from the ac to the dc side. Inverter refers to the converter when the average power flow is from the dc to the ac side. In fact, the power flow through the converter may be reversible. Power Electronic Applications (a) Residential Refrigeration and freezers Space heating Air conditioning Cooking Lighting Electronics (personal computers, other entertainment equipment) (b) Commercial Heating. ventilating, and air conditioning Central refrigeration Lighting Computers and office equipment Uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) Elevators (c) Industrial Pumps Compressors Blowers and fans Machine tools (robots) Arc furnaces, induction furnaces Lighting Industrial lasers Induction heating Welding (d) Transportation Traction control of electric vehicles Battery chargers for electric vehicles Electric locomotives Street cars, trolley buses Subways Automotive electronics including engine controls (e) Utility systems High-voltage dc transmission (HVOC) Static var compensation (SVC) Supplemental energy sources (wind, photovoltaic), fuel cells Energy storage systems Induced-draft fans and boiler feed water pumps (f) Aerospace Space shuttle power supply systems Satellite power systems Aircraft power systems (g) Telecommunications Battery chargers Power supplies (dc and UPS)

Medieval Torture Essay -- essays research papers

Torture (Latin torquere, â€Å"to twist†), in law, infliction of severe bodily pain either as punishment, or to compel a person to confess to a crime, or to give evidence in a judicial proceeding. Among primitive peoples, torture has been used as a means of ordeal and to punish captured enemies. Examination by torture, often called the â€Å"question,† has been used in many countries as a judicial method. It involves using instruments to extort evidence from unwilling witnesses. In ancient Athens, slaves were always examined by torture, and for this reason their evidence was apparently considered more valuable than that of freemen. A free Athenian could not be examined by this method, but torture may have been used occasionally in executing criminals. Under the Roman Republic only slaves could be legally tortured, and as a general rule, they could not be tortured to establish the guilt of their master. Under the Roman Empire, however, by the order of the emperor, torture was frequently inflicted even on freemen to obtain evidence of the crime of laesa majestas (â€Å"injured majesty,† or crime against a sovereign power). The statesman Cicero and other enlightened Romans condemned the use of torture. Until the 13th century torture was apparently not sanctioned by the canon law of the Christian church; about that time, however, the Roman treason law began to be adapted to heresy as crimen laesae majestatis Divinae (â€Å"crime of injury to Divine majesty†). Soon after the Inquisition was instituted, Pope Innocent IV, influenced by the revival of Roman law, issued a decree (in 1252) that called on civil magistrates to have persons accused of heresy tortured to elicit confessions against themselves and others. This was probably the earliest instance of ecclesiastical sanction of this mode of examination. During the Middle Ages the influence of the Roman Catholic Church contributed to the adoption of torture by civil tribunals. The Italian municipalities adopted torture early, but it did not appear in other European countries until France legalized its use in the 13th century. Ultimately, torture became part of the legal system of every European nation except Sweden and England. Although torture was never recognized in the common law of England, it was practiced by exercise of the royal prerogative. In the American colonies torture was illegal; the few instances of its use were in ... ...nclose the head. Some resembled iron masks, with holes for mouth, nose and eyes. The victims mouth was clamped shut by an iron band passing under the chin and a flat piece of iron projected inside her mouth. This mouthpiece was sometimes armed with a short spike. The whole contraption was fastened round the neck with a heavy padlock. Branks were not only used to punish nagging wives. Any women found guilty of malicious gossip and slander, abusive language or breaches of the peace were silenced in this way. The branks were also padlocked on women convicted of witchcraft and condemned to die at the stake - but for a different reason. They prevented the unfortunate creatures for screaming horrible curses on their tormentors. References Medieval Punishment - Torture and Executions in Europe - 1100-1600 -- Cy Stapleton Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers: A History of Torture and Its Instruments by Geoffrey Abbott Reissue edition (July 1995) Trafalgar Square The Book of Execution: An Encyclopedia of Methods of Judicial Execution by Geoffrey Abbott Reprint edition (August 1995) Trafalgar Square Torture by Edward Peters Expanded edition (December 1996) University of Pennsylvania Press

The mystic drum

Lyrics† (2011). African Studies Faculty Publication Series. Paper 12. Http://schoolwork. Numb. Deed/African_faculty_pubs/1 2 This Article Is brought to you for free and open access by the African Studies at Schoolwork at Amass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in African Studies Faculty Publication Series by an authorized administrator of Schoolwork at Amass Boston. For more information, please contact library. [email  protected] Deed. ‘The Mystic Drum': Critical Commentary on Gabriel Okra's Love Lyrics: Checksum Ozone, PhD Professor of African & African Diaspora LiteraturesIntroduction In the course of reading a chapter entitled â€Å"Empty and Marvelous† In Alan Watts fascinating book, The Way of Zen (1 957), a serendipitous key was provided, by the following statement from the teachings of Chinese Zen master,l Aching Yuan Weighing (1067-1120), to the structure and meaning of the experience traumatized in Gabriel Okra's most famous love poem, â€Å"Th e Mystic Drum†: 2 Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters.When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw the mountains are not at rest. For it's Just now that I see mountains once again as mountains and waters once again as waters. What is so readily striking to anyone who has read â€Å"The Mystic Drum† is the near perfect dynamic equivalence between the words of Aching Yen and the phraseology of Okra's lyric.In line with Aching Yuan's statement, the lyric falls into three clearly defined parts?an initial phase of â€Å"conventional knowledge,† when men are men and fishes are fishes (lines 1-15); a median phase of â€Å"more intimate knowledge,† when men are no longer men and fishes are no longer fishes (lines 16-26); and a final hash of â€Å"substantial knowledge,† when men are once again men and fishes are once again fishes, with the difference that at this phase, the beloved lady of the lyric is depicted as â€Å"standing behind a tree† with â€Å"her lips parted in her smile,† now â€Å"turned cavity belching darkness† (lines 27-41).The significance of this closing phrase will be discussed in the appropriate slot in the final section of the paper, below. But because of the complexity of the imagery and symbolism by means of which progression of the lover's understanding of the nature of reality is developed, it seems necessary to visit the lyric in its entirety before proceeding to a phase-bypass analysis of its structure: The mystic drum beat in my inside and fishes danced in the rivers and men and women danced on land to the rhythm of my drum But standing behind a tree with leaves around her waist she only smiled with a shake of her head. One of the major schools of Buddhism that originated in 12th-century China with current strongholds in India and Japan, Zen strongly emphasizes enlightenment through meditation and vehemently denies the value of conventional thinking in favor of an attempt to understand the paradoxes of reality by â€Å"direct pointing† unfettered by what it sees as arbitrary customary compartmentalizing of phenomena.Since the middle of the twentieth-century, the exciting and fresh insights provided by Zen masters have been a source of inspiration for many non- Asian writers, artists and intellectuals throughout the world, especially in North America. 2 The present commentary is a revised and updated version of a paper originally entitled â€Å"Zen in African Poetry: Gabriel Okra's ‘The Mystic Drum† and shared privately with several of my students and academic colleagues at Abidjan, Lagos and Nausea (Nigeria) and Boston (Massachusetts), USA.Checksum Ozone / The Mystic Drum: Critical Commentary angora's Love Poetry: 2 rippling the air with quickened tempo compelling the quick and the dead to dance and sing with their shadows? Then the drum beat with the rhyt hm of the things of the ground and invoked the eye of the sky the sun and the moon and the river gods and the trees began to dance, the fishes turned men and men turned fishes and things stopped to grow? 10 15 20 25 And then the mystic drum in my inside stopped to beat? and men became men, fishes became fishes and trees, the sun and the moon found their places, and the dead .NET to the ground and things began to grow.And behind the tree she stood with roots sprouting from her feet and leaves growing on her head and smoke issuing from her nose and her lips parted in her smile Then, then I packed my mystic drum and turned away; never to beat so loud any more. 35 Aching Yuan's Zen experience is epistemological?pertaining to a step-by-step initiation of the passionate lover into an understanding of the nature of reality, in particular â€Å"the foundations, scope, and validity of knowledge† (Online Enchant).It can thus be surmised that â€Å"The Mystic Drum† is not Just a conventional amatory lyric, revoked by the storm and stress of Okra's passionate love for his adored and adorable second wife (an African-American with Caribbean roots, Diamond Carmichael, who died in Port Harcourt in 1983). 3 It is more decidedly a philosophical poem in which the dynamics, directions and management of â€Å"the mystic drum† of passion that beats in the poet's â€Å"inside† are dramatically reenacted, in a tripartite ritual and initiatory pattern reminiscent of Aching Yen.From a conventional phase, at which the lover's understanding 3 Okra's first wife, a fellow ‘Jog from the Niger Delta and the mother of his son, Dry. Ebb Okra?a clinical psychologist in Randolph, Massachusetts, who lives in Canton, Massachusetts?was divorced when Ebb was only two years old. There is hardly an reference to her in either Okra's lyrics or interviews. Nor do we have any information about the cause of her separation from Okra. Of the nature of knowledge conforms to s ocially accepted customs of behavior or style (lines 1-15), the lover's progresses through a more intimate phase, at which this knowledge matures from a close, thoroughgoing, personal relationship (lines 16-26), to an ultimate substantial phase, situated in the optimum zone of epistemological perception, at which what the lover has come know about the nature of reality is not only solidly built but considerable in amount or importance (lines 27-41), culminating in the lover's self-imposed decision not to allow his â€Å"mystic drum† ever â€Å"to beat so loud so loud any more† (line 41).The poem concludes, in other words, with a firm decision by the lover to put strong reins on the unbridled flights of his amatory imagination, having become wizened by the knowledge and experience he has acquired. Because the tropes (â€Å"mystic,† â€Å"drum,† and â€Å"inside†), two of which appear in he title of the present paper, are recurrent in all of Okra's l ove lyrics (â€Å"Diamond,† â€Å"To Pave,† and â€Å"The Mystic Drum†), it seems necessary to pause awhile to reflect on their meaning and significance.For Okra, the word â€Å"mystic† is indeed connotative of the spiritual, the numinous, the magical, the supernatural, and the shamanistic. But it is more meaningful as a poetic code for the supervisory powers that enable the human personality to tap into hidden strengths buried in the innermost recesses of the psyche. In addition to any other signification carried over by the poet from his he theories of Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology, Carl Gustavo Jung (1875-1961), as comprising the collective unconscious?the innermost recesses of the psyche, populated by archaic or primordial images which Jung calls archetypes and which, as he posits, are shared in common by all humankind. See Ozone (1981), for a more detailed discussion of the collective unconscious and its archetypes, with ref erence to the poetry of Okra's transnational, modernist, contemporary, Christopher Skibob (193()-1967).This innermost level of the psyche is operated from the outermost level?the conscious mind (the seat of our everyday thoughts and emotions) ?by the personal unconscious (the seat of repressed traumatic personal experiences or complexes which may be re-lived by the individual if and whenever memories of the original trauma that gave birth to the complex are awakened by new trauma of the same kind). In its relation to â€Å"mystic† and â€Å"inside,† the word â€Å"drum,† in Okra, generally refers to the vibes felt by an individual when there is an intense surge of subconscious promptings from any of the two levels of his â€Å"inside. Further research is needed to ascertain the consistency f all these with the idea of â€Å"the inside† in Okra's native ‘Jog language and traditional system of thought. In â€Å"The Mystic Drum† as well as in à ¢â‚¬Å"Diamond† (a lyric also provoked by Okra's love for Ms. Carmichael) and in â€Å"To Pave† (a lyric provoked by the â€Å"fire† and â€Å"flame† of an unrequited love for a mysterious paramour about whom Okra is most reticent to say anything in interviews with him), the intensity of these subconscious psychic pulsations often reaches fever pitch.The three lyrics are thus not only of enormous interest as conventional love lyrics, fusing the commonalities of oral-wide traditions of love poetry and the peculiarities of indigenous African love songs performed as part of moonlight dances; they are also worthy of critical analysis as a windows into Okra's struggle for rapprochement with the presiding lady of his poetic inspiration, his muse.The muse has been described as the source of inspiration that stimulates the art of a poet. In postcolonial discourse, it has been studied as an archetypal female figure (watermark, great mother, earth goddess, water godd ess, and dancer) embodying cultural nationalist affections and idealizations of the colonized earth of the poet's Malden (see Thomas, 1968, and Ozone, in Nonnumeric, 2011).As I have stated in the later citation, 4 For the purposes of the present paper, I retain my earlier understanding of psyche (Ozone, 1981 : 30) as â€Å"the totality of the non-physical components of the human personality' (extrapolated from Jung, 1959). 5 In this paper, I use the terms traumatic and trauma to refer to â€Å"emotional shock† or â€Å"an extremely distressing experience that causes severe emotional shock and may have long-lasting psychological effects† (online Enchant). Jung defines complexes as â€Å"psychic entities that have escaped from the control of unconsciousness and split from it, to lead a separate existence in the dark sphere of the psyche, whence they may at any time hinder or help the conscious performance† (see 7 see Ozone (2006 and 2011). 4 The idea of the muse is often invoked in the scholarship on modern Nigerian literature; but it is often shrouded with a mystique that tends to reduce it to something abstract or far-fetched, or, at any rate, to a kind of African imitation of the classical muses of Garage-Roman antiquity.But our renascent muse was not only concrete and manifest in our postcolonial practical engagement with our indigenous ultras; she was also an embodiment of the highest cultural ideals of our ancestral traditions as we perceived them in the heyday of colonialism. She appeared to each and every one of us in multifarious guises. But whatever her emanation was, she was unmistakably a personification of the earth of our ancestors?the earth goddess, Ala, the supreme light (chi) that nurtures all creation, an embodiment of the eternal bond that unites the living and the dead.When our early devotional poems to this great spirit and those of our predecessors and successors are collected and published, traders will be better able to understand the ramifications of the power of this great goddess who appeared to us, as to our predecessors in the early sass's (Skibob, Window, And, Egged, Insanely, Majoring, Okapi, Kook, etc), as a dancer, spirit maiden, water maid, and other exciting feminine figures?in all cases as embodiments of our communal and individual apperception of the superiority of our indigenous cultural heritage to every single superimposition of the postcolonial order.Like Skibob and other members of the Nausea school of modern Nigerian poetry (see Thomas, 1968 and 1972; Cherub, in Landforms, 1973 and 1974; and Modulator, 1980), Okra is a votary of the watermark or mermaid, whose inspirational â€Å"songs† we hear in â€Å"The Fisherman's Invocation† (Part II and Ill) as the voice of a presiding lady (or ladies) of poesy whose presence and participation are repeatedly invoked to mediate the claims of the what is passing (the Back), is passing (the Present) and to come (the Front).I n Part II (The Invocation), the â€Å"water song† of an â€Å"assembly of mermaid† in linked with the â€Å"midwifes† that would officiate in the delivery of the Child-Front the brave new world beyond colonialism)?rubbing â€Å"gently down/the back† of the great mother past (â€Å"Back), symbolizing age-old traditions: O midwifes rub gently down the back of your Back while the sun play his play and the Back dance its dance and assembly of mermaids sing their bubbling water song beneath the river waves.And in Part Ill (The Child-Front), â€Å"the mermaids† are invoked to participate in the shaping of the future as cleansing agencies that must â€Å"carry†¦ On their songs† and embarrassing negatives of the pre-colonial past) rearing up its ugly head from a anatomically cherished past, in a situational irony reminiscent of Whole Saying's early ritual drama, Dance of the Forests (1960): Where are your Gods now Gods of the Back that have br ought forth this monster? Throw it away, throw it into the river and let the mermaids carry it on their songs.Throw it away to the Back and let the Back swallow it in its abyss And let the Gods remember their lives are in my hands In these lines, the â€Å"Gods of the Back (past) that have/brought forth this monster† (embarrassing negatives of Africans pre-colonial history) are reminded on he ‘Jog custom known as uremia, in which?as traumatized in â€Å"The Revolt of the Gods†?the fate of the gods, which are traditional in the hands of their worshippers, must be determined by humans in accordance with their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their providential conduct.In concluding, in Part IV (Birth Dance of the Child Front), the â€Å"songs of mermaids† are 5 given pride of place in finale of â€Å"our dance/ of the Front† (of the future), again stressing the primacy of the muse as an agency for shaping the future of a troubled land: Let's leave n our dance of the Front with rhythms of the Back and strengthen he fragile songs of the new with songs of mermaids Much later, in his mature post-war, political poetry set at the heart of the future envisioned in â€Å"The Fisherman's Invocation† and collected under the title The Dreamer, His Vision (2006), the mermaid reappears in â€Å"Mamma Water and Me† as the presiding lady of the poet's anguished cry for succor in the midst of the triumph of disorder (â€Å"embers.. Moldering†, â€Å"in memoriam ashes†, â€Å"flames I cannot temper†, â€Å"whirling vortex, helpless†) in post-civil war Nigeria: The embers are smoldering?once again? They've refused to die into in memoriam ashes. And have burst into flames I cannot temper. They draw into their whirling vortex, helpless? Mamma-water & me. There we stand, hand in hand, Like Starch and company, the faithful, Calmly waiting for the redeeming flames Then we shall step out with solemn steps To silence offended eyebrows and daggered tongues and walk on calm waters?still, serene?Free! Clinched by the refrain (â€Å"Mamma-water and me†), the poet expresses strong optimism that, by keeping faith (standing â€Å"hand in hand†) with his muse, â€Å"redeeming flames† that would effect â€Å"the cleansing† and â€Å"free us of earthly dross† would surely mom in the end.By contrast to â€Å"Mamma-water† (a supernatural being under whose divine shadow the poet appears helpless to offer anything but total devotion), Diamond and Pave are human objects of love to whom Okra, in his love lyrics, projects the archetype of the muse in an unconscious recognition of their place in his â€Å"inside† as his soul mates or psychic alter egos (representing, from the Jungian psychological perspective, his anima). The anima, for Jung, is one of the most powerful archetypes of the collective unconscious that participates in the all-important process of individuation. As med up in my essay on Skibob and Jung (Ozone, 1981: 37), â€Å"the anima is the primordial image of woman in a man, a counterpart of the animus, the primordial image of man engraved on the mind of a woman. The anima appears in dreams, visions and fantasies as in literature and myth in the form of a mother, a loved one, a goddess, a siren, a prostitute and an enchantress, or a femme fetal.The impact of these latent images of woman can be as destructive to the psychic health of the man who projects them as they can be beneficent. They often give rise to an obsessive pursuit of the elusive and the intractable. Because of their appearance in the mind of the poet in forms consistent with the well-established characteristics of the archetype of the anima, Diamond and Pave tend to feature in Okra's lyrics in patterns of relationships reminiscent of the kinds of poet-muse relationships described by Robert Graves in The White Goddess (1959) and exemplified in the life and poetry of Okra's contemporary, Christopher Skibob (1930-1967).As Skibob learned from his reading of Graves, and as parsed by Among (1972), â€Å"one phase in the relationship between the muse-poet and his goddess-woman is that in which the toe becomes more consciously aware of cruelty. † This lesson, also learnt by Okra and 6 embodied in the myth's of â€Å"The Mystic Drum,† â€Å"Diamond,† and â€Å"To Pave,† is writ large in the imagery and symbolism of Skibobs second sequence, Limits, especially Limits IV in which the beloved female figure metamorphoses into a ferocious lioness that gores the over-excited lover to death or, at any rate, tranquilizer him into an unconscious state from which he would awake to complete the writing of the poem at hand with a mature mind truly informed by experience: An image insists From flag pole of the heart;Her image distracts Oblong-headed lioness? No shield is proof against her? Wound me, O sea-weed Face, blinded like a strong-room? Distances of her armpit-fragrance Turn chloroform enough for my patience? When you have finished & done up my stitches, Wake me near the altar, & this poem will be finished†¦ (Limits ‘V, lines 71-84) Thus, as stated in The White Goddess, â€Å"Being in love does not and should not, blind the poet to the cruel side of woman's nature?and many muse-poems are written in helpless attestation of this by men whose love is not longer returned† (Graves, 1959: 91). As stated above, this archetypal pattern is amply reenacted in Okra's â€Å"To Pave,† â€Å"Diamond†, and â€Å"The Mystic Drum. In â€Å"To Pave,† the â€Å"fire† and â€Å"flames† of passion reduce everything between the lover and the beloved into â€Å"ashes†: And as before the fire smolders in water, continually smoldering beneath the ashes with things I dare not tell erupting from the hackneyed lore of the beginning. For they die in the telling. S o let them be. Let them smolder. Let them smolder in the living fire beneath the ashes. Through the infusion of the myth's of â€Å"the hackneyed lore / of the ginning† (evoking the sexual overtones of the relationship between Adam and Eve in â€Å"Den's farm,† as subtly recreated by Michael Cherub in his early lyric, â€Å"Sophia† (see Ozone, 2011) his personal story, Okra's â€Å"To Pave† is transformed into an archetypal tale of poet-muse relationship as predicted in Graves theory of poetry.Not surprisingly, in â€Å"Diamond,† the poet-spouse-and-lover presents itself as one in which the artist is possessed by the divine afflatus, theorized in his treatise, On the Sublime, as the primary source of inspiration for poets, by the Greek teacher f rhetoric and literary critic, Longings (ca. 1st or 3rd century AD). Akin to the notion of â€Å"spirit arrest,† in transatlantic African communities in the Caribbean and the Americas, the idea of the divine afflatus is common among the ‘Jog and elsewhere in Africa where artistic and professional creativity is often attributed to possession by a deity of madness and creativity such as Gaga (the patron of medicine-men), among the Gobo (See Mum, 2009).The speaker in â€Å"Diamond† is not only maddened by his love but clearly possessed by the ‘Jog congener of the Gobo deity of creative madness, Gaga: eke it's said a madman hears; I hear trees talking like it's said a medicine man hears. Like ABA, the hero of Herman Melville Mobs Dick, he is not Just maddened by his monomaniac complex (or neurotic fixation of on a single passion), he is indeed â€Å"madness maddened. † But Okra's wifeless is imbued with the kind of tortuous coyness that has provoked, in global amatory poetry, some of the most sublime evocations of the â€Å"cruelty of the rose† (in other words, the cruelty of the alluring object of love, as depicted in Skibobs Limits ‘V, quoted above). She is singularly unyielding: And I raised my hand? y trembling hand, gripping my heart as handkerchief and waved and waved-and waved but she turned her eyes away.The reader who turns to â€Å"The Mystic Drum† from â€Å"Diamond† and â€Å"To Pave† will immediately recognize the reification of the tension between the lover and the beloved as an extended metaphor for the exploration of something that lies in the pits of epistemology, already defined above as the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, in particular its foundations, scope, and validity. Far beyond the realms of the tremulous stirrings of the love-struck heart, the lyric takes us into he highest cerebral realms of abstruse philosophy. As the poet's muse, the beloved is not only the presiding lady of the poet's art but his link to the ultimate source all knowledge of reality?his link to the world beyond the quotidian, the wellspring of true knowledge of the essence of rea lity.From a deep structure analysis of the meaning of the poem, it seems evident that the epistemological underpinnings of â€Å"The Mystic Drum† go well beyond the culture wars of African postcolonial nationalist search for identity through such ideologies as Negritude, Pan Africans, the search or the African Personality, the African Renascent Movement, and the like. The deft modernist deployment of tropes in the poem is one that cuts across cultural and national boundaries, inviting comparison with systems of thought which Okra himself may not have ever even contemplated, including the statement from the Zen philosopher Aching Yen, with which the present commentary begins. There is, of course, no intention here to suggest that Okra was directly influenced by the oriental philosophy of Zen or that he was schooled under any Zen master.Although I have enjoyed close personal friendship with Okra since 1967 and have elsewhere remarked on the Zen mode of apperception in his poetr y (Ozone, 1991), it never occurred to me to ask him about any contact he may have had with Zen philosophy as I did not think that it was necessarily of any value to establish any such a contact, until my most recent interview with him at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (August, 2011). After listening attentively to my reading of Zen master. Aching Yuan's statement with which the present article begins, Okra readily agreed that it applies very well to his intention and the structure of the experience of the

Economic Growth Essay

There are different drivers of economic growth into country and research has to some extent also demonstrated that it can be associated with typical characteristics of the country too. Explaining economic growth through a relatively new theory of endogenous growth suggest that policy measures, if taken properly, can result into long term benefits for the country and that the country does not necessarily need to rely on the external or exogenous factors such as technological innovation. The neo-classical models of growth advocated that in order to attain a consistent long term economic growth, a consistent change into the technological advances such as new processes, new goods and new markets etc must take place. (Aghion et. al, 1998). It has always been believed that high investment and saving rates in any country tend to sustain high economic growth in that country and that coupled with relatively stable economic outlook, a higher saving rate can significantly result into greater economic growth because a larger pool of funds will be available to the firms, in the shape of household savings, that can be utilized to the best possible efficiency. It is also imperative to discuss here that the trends of saving markedly differ in developing as well as developed countries as developing countries tend to have high saving rates due to relatively smaller propensity to consume of the general masses. Since developing countries do no possess the strong manufacturing base therefore consumption tends to be relatively low as compared to the developed countries and people prefer to save rather than spend. (Aghevli, at. al, 1990) One of the most important aspects of economic growth is how the saving rates in a country shape and how they with respect to the different economic variables. However, over the period of time, research has also demonstrated that saving rates show a correlation with different economic variables in any given country. Though the same characteristics may be find over some regions however it is still believed that country’s individual characteristics such as demographics, rule of law, public finances, also show some relationship with the saving rates. It has been also successfully demonstrated that the saving rates are uneven across the countries confirming to the argument that saving rates respond to certain characteristics which may be typical of that country or region however in a study conducted by Hondroyiannis (2006) suggested that â€Å"A long-run saving function sensitive to dependency ratio, old dependency ratio, liquidity, public finances, real disposable income growth, real interest rate and inflation is found to exist†(Hondroyiannis,2006) in European countries. Thus, to some extent, it can be easily inferred that the saving rates in a particular country or a region show some related characteristics and tend to get affected by different so called country specific characteristics however the impact is in long run with little or no impact been witnessed on the short run saving rates within any country. One of the most interesting findings of the research also suggest that the government savings, in any particular country, are not particularly exogenous in nature and respond to the political as well as economic determinants of the country. (Edwards,1996). This cross country analysis conducted by Edwards strongly suggested that public savings in countries with higher degree of political instability are lower than the countries with relatively stable political situation at hand. References 1. Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, Maxine Brant-Collett, Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa (1998). Endogenous Growth Theory. New York: MIT Press. 694. 2. George Hondroyiannis. (2006). Private saving determinants in European countries: A panel cointegration approach . The Social Science Journal. 43 (4), 553-569 . 3. Sebastian Edwards. (1996). Why are Latin America’s Savings Rates So Low? An International Comparative Analysis. Journal of Development Economics,. 51 (1), 5-44. 4. Bijan B. Aghevli, James M. Boughton, Peter J. Montiel, Del Villanueva (1990). The Role of National Saving in the World Economy. New York: International Monetary Fund. 64.