Definition
Essays

Chaucer's "Retraction" and Its Meaning within the Context of the Canterbury Tales

Midsummer Night's Dream is the quintessential romantic parody. Involving the use of magic potions and mythical creatures, Shakespeare portrays love as a potentially ridiculous pursuit and one totally devoid of reason.

A Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, system uses groups of transmission technology, communication protocols, and other methodologies in order to allow the delivery of voice communications and multimedia over…

Professionals involved in therapy and counseling with members of the Creole culture of New Orleans and southern Louisiana should be aware of the history and traditions of this group that make it distinctive from all…

A Case Study in Comparative Ethnology: Balinese vs. The Lahu

Patagonia has grown from a small back-yard boot-strapped operation to a multinational organization with far-reaching environmental influence. The culture of Patagonia has—as all organizational cultures do—evolved over the history of the organization. This analysis illustrates the efforts of the Patagonia to establish and maintain cultural congruence, and within the scope of this analysis, also highlights that an organization can exhibit many of the structural trappings of a corporation and still maintain the maverick attitude of a band of climbers and surfers. Collective action—collective corporate action—requires some constraining of individual behavior. The question to be answered in this analysis is whether behavior can be constrained for the good of the employees of an organization—and for the apparent good of the global environment—and not follow the corporate template of constraining behavior for the good of those in power. The artifacts, values and beliefs, and assumptions of Patagonia would imply that the answer to this question is a resounding affirmative—and that the critical consciousness of Choinard has carried and directed the organization on a path of cultural congruence.

Treason is the term legally used to describe different acts of unfaithfulness, treachery and betrayal. The English law was the first to make a distinction between high treason and petit (petty) treason in the Statute of Treasons (1350). It described petit treason as an act in which one's lawful superior is murdered by him/her. For instance, if an apprentice murdered his/her master, it was stated as a petit treason. On the other hand, high treason was defined by the English law as any grave threat to the permanence or stability of the state. High treason consisted of "attempts to kill the king, the queen, or the heir apparent or to restrain their liberty; to counterfeit coinage or the royal seal; and to wage war against the kingdom" ("treason," 2012).

Everything in the world changes and does not remain the same forever. Human development is also full of different phases. The three major phases of human life is birth, adulthood and death. Among these three major phases, aging is the process that a person encounters after he crosses the boundaries of adulthood. One very important thing about aging is that it is very subjective is nature. It is contingent to various external as well as internal features. For example, the culture a person is part of, the physical health of a person, the climate in which a person resides in, the kind of environment he or she lives in etc, play a vital part in accelerating or slowing down this process.

In a recent article entitled In Defense of the Fed's New Interest-Rate Policy, which was published by The Wall Street Journal on January 6th, 2013, financial reporters Frederic S. Mishkin and Michael Woodford carefully craft a justification of the Federal Reserve's latest revision to its federal-funds rate target. The purpose of the article is to inform readers about the Fed's recent Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which resulted in the decision to keep the federal-funds rate near zero with a contingency based on the national unemployment and inflation rates. By linking the federal-funds rate target to a baseline of 6.5% unemployment, and a predicted rate of 2.5% inflation, while also providing public notice regarding its previously private policy criteria, the Fed is renewing its efforts to stabilize an economy battered by a prolonged recession. As Mishkin and Woodford state in the article, this "commitment not to raise rates in the future as soon as might have been expected is an obvious way the FOMC can loosen current financial conditions" (2013), because when borrowers are secure in the knowledge that their interest rates will remain steady the flow of investment capital improves dramatically.

In this essay, the definition of horror is reexamined to see if and how it has changed. Also, three elements of Freud's The Uncanny are analyzed in relation to film. A brief analysis of White Dog, Cruising, and Candyman is also undertaken, as well as the impact of three true crime cases. In each of these films/cases, Freud's concepts are applied to determine the effectiveness of horror and to explain why some cases are scarier than others.