Management Tools and Technique

Management Tools and Technique Decisions form a critical part of management in an organization. Both individuals and organizations often make decisions on particular issues. Each decision that is taken by an individual or an organization is associated with some consequences. The impacts of a decision can be positive or negative.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Management Tools and Technique specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Consequently, it is important to evaluate the various available options in order to arrive at the best decision. This calls for an effective and efficient decision The population of America consists of Whites, Blacks and the rich. In figure 1, set A can represent the Whites. Set B can represent the Blacks while the rich can be represented by set C. Thus the African-Americans will be found in the area marked 1 since they have attributes of both races. Blacks who are also rich will be found in the area marked 2 since the area cons ist of elements whose attributes are found in set B and C. Whites who are also rich will be found in the area marked 3. Finally, the area marked X consists of African-Americans who are also rich since the elements in this area have the attributes of all sets. Members of the population who do not have any of the above attributes will be found in the area outside the circles. Advantages and Limitations of Venn Diagrams Advantages First, the diagrams are easy to construct and interpret (Haan Koppelaars, 2007). The Venn diagrams represent the outcome of an analysis of the characteristics of a given set of variables. Thus it is easy to get the needed information without further analysis. Second, the use of Venn diagrams help in eliminating the bias attributed to prejudice and personal opinion.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Management Tools and Technique specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This is because the classificati on of elements in the sets depends on facts that describe the attributes of the elements (William Edwards, 2004). Finally, Venn diagrams can be used in any decision making process that involves determining the relationship between attributes of variables. Therefore, Venn diagrams can be used in any analysis that involves comparing and contrasting the attributes of variables. Limitation First, the size of each set can not be determined in a Venn diagram (Haan Koppelaars, 2007). For example, in the above illustration it is only possible to get information on the characteristics of the population of America. However, it is not possible to tell the number of Whites or Black form the Venn diagram. Second, Venn diagrams tend to be visually complex when several circles are used to represent sets. This makes it difficult to interpret the outcome of the analysis. Finally, Venn diagrams depend on other tools of analysis such as classification and statistical analysis. Without such tools, it is not possible to get the information that is needed to develop various sets. Besides, the information obtained form the Venn diagrams will not be reliable if the classification was not done correctly (Haan Koppelaars, 2007). Thus Venn diagrams can not be used in cases whereby the information on the size of the set is needed. It is also not possible to use Venn diagrams for mathematical analysis. In the contrary, mathematical analysis can be used to get information on the attributes of elements in a given set. References Haan, L., Koppelaars, T. (2007). Applied mathematics for database professionals . New York: Apress. William, A., Edwards, F. (2004). Cogwheels of the mind: the story of Venn diagrams. Balitmore: JHU Press.

The Experience of War essays

The Experience of War essays The nature of the Great War was one of horrible conditions the soldiers on the front line had to endure and the suffering of the civilian population at home. In the passage The Experience of War, we are given a first hand look into the conditions that both the soldier and the civilian had to go through during this difficult time. The letter from the soldier expresses his concern over the losses his regiment incurs as well as how the newspapers glorify what is happening on the battlefield. The excerpt from the diary of the Viennese women explains in detail the dilemma that the civilian population had to go through just to get a small serving of horsemeat and the civil unrest associated with it. World War I was an experience that educated all people on the home front as to the gruesome conditions that the soldiers had to go through during times of conflict. The media of the time presented the war as a romantic endeavour, an adventure that all men should not want to miss. This could not have been farther from the truth. Life in the trenches, on the front lines of the war was intolerable. Men sleeping in the wet mud, with little or no shelter, artillery smashing the earth all around you with their massive concussions and the whistle of bullets passing by your head. Death was an ever present thought which lingered in every soldiers mind. They were reminded of this constantly from the dead bodies that lay out of the trenches. The soldier in the passage has obviously accepted the fact that he is probably going to die when in the very first paragraph of the letter he bids farewell to all those that knew him as well as when he states that everybody must be prepared for death. Many soldiers tried to calm themselves about the prospect of death by saying that their life was in Gods hands and if they died, then it was not such a big deal since their soul belonged to God, suc...

I do not have any idea Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

I do not have any idea - Research Paper Example It is therefore not surprising to equate â€Å"public interest† in planning to the (neo) Marxist model, which can be better understood from a theoretical rather than practical approach. This is so since the interest of the public or the greater majority of the people could be so broad to encompass issues like human rights and justice (Roche, 2003). Logically, the driving force in this kind of planning is a class struggle (Schoenwandt, 2008). To put class struggle into practice as the driving force is to ask for the enactment of laws that would favour the general public, particularly the underprivileged (Schoenwandt, 2008). This could mean that more social programs for the less fortunate people, who are presumed to greater in number than the rich. In a democratic society, planners should get the cause of legislators, who could be sympathetic with advocating the right of the poor to achieve a significant leverage on the realization of plans. Practitioners of this kind of planning should have grass roots support. Public interest planners should therefore focus on advocating the rights of the disadvantaged, translating the interest of the latter into ways that would empower them through all possible means and processes available to them under their own systems of

Stakeholder Analysis for the Democratic-Republican National Convention Essay

Stakeholder Analysis for the Democratic-Republican National Convention (DRNC) - Essay Example Apart from presenting information on the strategy that the department will employ, it will also come up with recommendations that will assist the department as it seeks to satisfy the needs of its stakeholders. The Miami-Dade PD is a county police department that serves Miami-Dade County which includes some of the unincorporated area in Florida even though they possess light mutual aid arrangements with the incorporated municipalities like the Miami city PD. This police department represents the largest department in the South-eastern part of the country with an estimated workforce of about five thousand workers. People still refer to this department by its previous title which is Metro-Dade Police or a more simple term Metro. Identification officers who work for the Miami-Dade PD can be done easily through their brown coloured uniforms while driving green and white livery vehicles. The department runs nine district locations all over the County as well as a number of dedicated bureaus. Presently, J D Patterson who replaced James Loftus is the department’s director and the department’s head offices are situated in Doral, Florida. The mission statement of the MDPD states that the department seeks to promote a secure and safe environment, which is not riddled by crime as well as the fear of crime. It also seeks to maintain order while providing traffic that flows expeditiously in the country. The main values associated with this police department are integrity, service and respect, along with fairness. On the other hand, the MDPD’s vision is to become the ideal law enforcement agency in the country through combining strategic planning with the concerns of the community (Miami- Dade Services, 2014). In this analysis, internal and external stakeholders with an influence on the organization and are affected by the decisions that are associated with the department have been identified. The internal

Assistive Technology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Assistive Technology - Essay Example This paper is meant to assist local school system educators and administrators of Clark County School District in assessing the best type of assistive technology that will meet the needs of the district. Apart from that, this paper will also dwell on how the technology will be sold among other factors of successfully incorporating the technology in learning institutions. As of 2011, the Clark County School District was the 5th leading school county in the U.S. It caters for the whole Clark County and Nevada along with cities such as Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Mesquite, Henderson and Boulder City. The system also incorporates the census-designated places of Blue Diamond, Laughlin, Bunkerville, Logandale, Goodsprings, Mount Charleston, Indian Springs, Searchlight, Sandy Valley and Moapa. The district is split into seven regions, and it also operates 25 Programs and Alternative Schools (Richmond, 2012). The district has partial association with charter institutions, and, with the exemp tion of offering some transport service, does not have any association with the private schooling institutions in the county. The school district started in 1956 when the Nevada governing body ordered consolidation of each and every state school district into 17 region school districts. This amend confirmed that 14 separate school districts in the county would become elements of the fresh Clark County School District (Richmond, 2012). Owing to the lofty number of households migrating into the Las Vegas region, the school district experienced remarkable growth in learner enrollment from the 90s to the late 2007. Many bond issues were accepted by the supporters to assist the district cope with this growth and development. This led to the creation of new schools. From then, 2007, as many as 16 schooling institutions have been opened. This has led to an expected and also high demand for educators to teach the rising number of students (Richmond, 2012). Due to this, the county had to be innovative in locating educators to hire. They also have to be creative in recruiting educators from other countries or states within the United States. The statewide financial calamity, since 2008, has affected the School District of Clark County. The county has witnessed a decrease in the number of learners and is experiencing budgetary deficits. At the 2010 United States population census, there were 1,951,269 individuals living in Clark County, a raise of 41.8 percent since 2000. The ethnic makeup of the populace was: 10.5% Black, 48.0% Non-Hispanic white (60.9% White), 0.7% Alaska Native and American Indian, 8.7% Asian, 0.7% Native Hawaiian, as well as other Pacific Islander, and 5.1% from other races. The remaining 29.1%, on the other hand, were Hispanics of any race (Richmond, 2012). In 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau projected the population for Las Vegas Metropolitan Area to be at 1,902,834. The region was rated as one of the fastest growing and developing in the United States . 3.1% of the citizens in the county live with disabilities. A majority of these disabled people use wheelchairs to move around (Richmond, 2012). It is, therefore, vital for these individuals to come up with ways of incorporating the people with disabilities into their educational system in order for them also to be competitive in today’s labor market. Therefore, the type of assistive technology that this county needs is wheelchairs for their disabled citizens and

Chemistry Life in Daily Life Essay Example for Free

Chemistry Life in Daily Life Essay Introduction: Fluorine has the distinction of being the most reactive of all the elements, with the highest electronegativity value on the periodic table. Because of this, it proved extremely difficult to isolate. Davy first identified it as an element, but was poisoned while trying unsuccessfully to decompose hydrogen fluoride. Two other chemists were also later poisoned in similar attempts, and one of them died as a result. French chemist Edmond Fremy (1814-1894) very nearly succeeded in isolating fluorine, and though he failed to do so, he inspired his student Henri Moissan (1852-1907) to continue the project. One of the problems involved in isolating this highly reactive element was the fact that it tends to attack any container in which it is placed: most metals, for instance, will burst into flames in the presence of fluorine. Like the others before him, Moissan set about to isolate fluorine from hydrogen fluoride by means of electrolysis—the use of an electric current to cause a chemical reaction—but in doing so, he used a platinum-iridium alloy that resisted attacks by fluorine. In 1906, he received the Nobel Prize for his work, and his technique is still used today in modified form. Properties And Uses Of Fluorine: A pale green gas of low density, fluorine can combine with all elements except some of the noble gases. Even water will burn in the presence of this highly reactive substance. Fluorine is also highly toxic, and can cause severe burns on contact, yet it also exists in harmless compounds, primarily in the mineral known as fluorspar, or calcium fluoride. The latter gives off a fluorescent light (fluorescence is the term for a type of light not accompanied by heat), and fluorine was named for the mineral that is one of its principal hosts. Beginning in the 1600s, hydrofluoric acid was used for etching glass, and is still used for that purpose today in the manufacture of products such as light bulbs. The oil industry uses it as a catalyst—a substance that speeds along a chemical reaction—to increase the octane number in gasoline. Fluorine is also used in a polymer commonly known as Teflon, which provides a non-stick surface for frying pans and other cooking-related products. Just as chlorine saw service in World War I, fluorine was enlisted in World War II to create a weapon far more terrifying than poison gas: the atomic bomb. Scientists working on the Manhattan Project, the United States effort to develop the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, needed large quantities of the uranium-235 isotope. This they obtained in large part by diffusion of the compound uranium hexafluoride, which consists of molecules containing one uranium atom and six fluorine anions. Fluoridation Of Water: Long before World War II, health officials in the United States noticed that communities having high concentration of fluoride in their drinking water tended to suffer a much lower incidence of tooth decay. In some areas the concentration of fluoride in the water supply was high enough that it stained peoples teeth; still, at the turn of the century—an era when dental hygiene as we know it today was still in its infancy—the prevention of tooth decay was an attractive prospect. Perhaps, officials surmised, it would be possible to introduce smaller concentrations of fluoride into community drinking water, with a resulting improvement in overall dental health. After World War II, a number of municipalities around the United States ndertook the fluoridation of their water supplies, using concentrations as low as 1 ppm. Within a few years, fluoridation became a hotly debated topic, with proponents pointing to the potential health benefits and opponents arguing from the standpoint of issues not directly involved in science. It was an invasion of personal liberty, they said, for governments to force citizens to drink water which had been supplemented with a foreign substance. During the 1950s, in fact, fluoridation became associated in some circles with Communism—just another manifestation of a government trying to control its citizens. In later years, ironically, antifluoridation efforts became associated with groups on the political left rather than the right. By then, the argument no longer revolved around the issue of government power; instead the concern was for the health risks involved in introducing a substance lethal in large doses. Fluoride had meanwhile gained application in toothpastes. Colgate took the lead, introducing stannous fluoride in 1955. Three years later, the company launched a memorable advertising campaign with commercials in which a little girl showed her mother a report card from the dentist and announced Look, Ma!  No cavities! Within a few years, virtually all brands of toothpaste used fluoride; however, the use of fluoride in drinking water remained controversial. As late as 1993, in fact, the issue of fluoridation remained heated enough to spawn a study by the U. S. National Research Council. The council found some improvement in dental health, but not as large as had been claimed by early proponents of fluoridation. Furthermore, this improvement could be explained by reference to a number of other factors, including fluoride in toothpastes and a generally heightened awareness of dental health among the U.  S. populace. Chlorofluorocarbons : Another controversial application of fluorine is its use, along with chlorine and carbon, in chlorofluorocarbons. As noted above, CFCs have been used in refrigerants and propellants; another application is as a blowing agent for polyurethane foam. This continued for several decades, but in the 1980s, environmentalists became concerned over depletion of the ozone layer high in Earths atmosphere. Unlike ordinary oxygen (O 2 ), ozone or O 3 is capable of absorbing ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, which would otherwise be harmful to human life. It is believed that CFCs catalyze the conversion of ozone to oxygen, and that this may explain the ozone hole, which is particularly noticeable over the Antarctic in September and October. As a result, a number of countries signed an agreement in 1996 to eliminate the manufacture of halocarbons, or substances containing halogens and carbon. Manufacturers in countries that signed this agreement, known as the Montreal Protocol, have developed CFC substitutes, most notably hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), CFC-like compounds also containing hydrogen atoms. The ozone-layer question is far from settled, however. Critics argue that in fact the depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica is a natural occurrence, which may explain why it only occurs at certain times of year. This may also explain why it happens primarily in Antarctica, far from any place where humans have been using CFCs. (Ozone depletion is far less significant in the Arctic, which is much closer to the population centers of the industrialized world. ) In any case, natural sources, such as volcano eruptions, continue to add halogen compounds to the atmosphere. Introduction: Chlorine is a highly poisonous gas, greenish-yellow in color, with a sharp smell that induces choking in humans. Yet, it can combine with other elements to form compounds safe for human consumption. Most notable among these compounds is salt, which has been used as a food preservative since at least 3000 B. C. Salt, of course, occurs in nature. By contrast, the first chlorine compound made by humans was probably hydrochloric acid, created by dissolving hydrogen chloride gas in water. The first scientist to work with hydrochloric acid was Persian physician and alchemist Rhazes (ar-Razi; c. 64-c. 935), one of the most outstanding scientific minds of the medieval period. Alchemists, who in some ways were the precursors of true chemists, believed that base metals such as iron could be turned into gold. Of course this is not possible, but alchemists in about 1200 did at least succeed in dissolving gold using a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids known as aqua regia. The first modern scientist to work with chlorine was Swedish chemist Carl W. Scheele (1742-1786), who also discovered a number of other elements and compounds, including barium, manganese, oxygen, ammonia, and glycerin. However, Scheele, who isolated it in 1774, thought that chlorine was a compound; only in 1811 did English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) identify it as an element. Another chemist had suggested the name halogen for the alleged compound, but Davy suggested that it be called chlorine instead, after the Greek word chloros , which indicates a sickly yellow color. Uses Of Chlorine: The dangers involved with chlorine have made it an effective substance to use against stains, plants, animals—and even human beings. Chlorine gas is highly irritating to the mucous membranes of the nose, mouth, and lungs, and it can be detected in air at a concentration of only 3 parts per million (ppm). The concentrations of chlorine used against troops on both sides in World War I (beginning in 1915) was, of course, much higher. Thanks to the use of chlorine gas and other antipersonnel agents, one of the most chilling images to emerge from that conflict was of soldiers succumbing to poisonous gas. Yet just as it is harmful to humans, chlorine can be harmful to microbes, thus preserving human life. As early as 1801, it had been used in solutions as a disinfectant; in 1831, its use in hospitals made it effective as a weapon against a cholera epidemic that swept across Europe. Another well-known use of chlorine is as a bleaching agent. Until 1785, when chlorine was first put to use as a bleach, the only way to get stains and unwanted colors out of textiles or paper was to expose them to sunlight, not always an effective method. By contrast, chlorine, still used as a bleach today, can be highly effective—a good reason not to use regular old-fashioned bleach on anything other than white clothing. Since the 1980s, makers of bleaches have developed all-color versions to brighten and take out stains from clothing of other colors. ) Calcium hydrocholoride (CaOCl), both a bleaching powder and a disinfectant used in swimming pools, combines both the disinfectant and bleaching properties of chlorine. This and the others discussed here are just some of many, many compounds formed with the highly reactive element chlorine. Particularly notable—and controversial—are compounds involving chlorine and carbon. Chlorine And Organic Compounds: Chlorine bonds well with organic substances, or those containing carbon. In a number of instances, chlorine becomes part of an organic polymer such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride), used for making synthetic pipe. Chlorine polymers are also applied in making synthetic rubber, or neoprene. Due to its resistance to heat, oxidation, and oils, neoprene is used in a number of automobile parts. The bonding of chlorine with substances containing carbon has become increasingly controversial because of concerns over health and the environment, and in some cases chlorine-carbon compounds have been outlawed. Such was the fate of DDT, a pesticide soluble in fats and oils rather than in water. When it was discovered that DDT was carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, in humans and animals, its use in the United States was outlawed. Other, less well-known, chlorine-related insecticides have likewise been banned due to their potential for harm to human life and the environment. Among these are chlorine-containing materials once used for dry cleaning. Also notable is the role of chlorine in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which have been used in refrigerants such as Freon, and in propellants for aerosol sprays.  CFCs tend to evaporate easily, and concerns over their effect on Earths atmosphere have led to the phasing out of their use. Introduction: Bromine is a foul-smelling reddish-brown liquid whose name is derived from a Greek word meaning stink. With a boiling point much lower than that of water—137. 84 °F (58. 8 °C)—it readily transforms into a gas. Like other halogens, its vapors are highly irritating to the eyes and throat. It is found primarily in deposits of brine, a solution of salt and water. Among the most significant brine deposits are in Israels Dead Sea, as well as in Arkansas and Michigan. Credit for the isolation of bromine is usually given to French chemist Antoine-Jerome Balard (1802-1876), though in fact German chemist Carl Lowig (1803-1890) actually isolated it first, in 1825. However, Balard, who published his results a year later, provided a much more detailed explanation of bromines properties. The first use of bromine actually predated both men by several millennia. To make their famous purple dyes, the Phoenicians used murex mollusks, which contained bromine. (Like the names of the halogens, the word Phoenicians is derived from Greek—in this case, a word meaning red or purple, which referred to their dyes. Today bromine is also used in dyes, and other modern uses include applications in pesticides, disinfectants, medicines, and flame retardants. At one time, a compound containing bromine was widely used by the petroleum industry as an additive for gasoline containing lead. Ethylene dibromide reacts with the lead released by gasoline to form lead bromide (PbBr 2 ), referred to as a scavenger, because it tends to clean the emissions of lead-containing gasoline. However, leaded gasoline was phased out during the late 1970s and early 1980s; as a result, demand for ethylene dibromide dropped considerably. Halogen Lamps: The name halogen is probably familiar to most people because of the term halogen lamp. Used for automobile headlights, spotlights, and floodlights, the halogen lamp is much more effective than ordinary incandescent light. Incandescent heat-producing light was first developed in the 1870s and improved during the early part of the twentieth century with the replacement of carbon by tungsten as the principal material in the filament, the area that is heated. Tungsten proved much more durable than carbon when heated, but it has a number of problems when combined with the gases in an incandescent bulb. As the light bulb continues to burn for a period of time, the tungsten filament begins to thin and will eventually break. At the same time, tungsten begins to accumulate on the surface of the bulb, dimming its light. However, by adding bromine and other halogens to the bulbs gas filling—thus making a halogen lamp—these problems are alleviated. As tungsten evaporates from the filament, it combines with the halogen to form a gaseous compound that circulates within the bulb. Instead of depositing on the surface of the bulb, the compound remains a gas until it comes into contact with the filament and breaks down. It is then redeposited on the filament, and the halogen gas is free to combine with newly evaporated tungsten. Though a halogen bulb does eventually break down, it lasts much longer than an ordinary incandescent bulb and burns with a much brighter light. Also, because of the decreased tungsten deposits on the surface, it does not begin to dim as it nears the end of its life. Introduction: First isolated in 1811 from ashes of seaweed, iodine has a name derived from the Greek word meaning violet-colored—a reference to the fact it forms dark purple crystals.  During the 1800s, iodine was obtained commercially from mines in Chile, but during the twentieth century wells of brine in Japan, Oklahoma, and Michigan have proven a better source. Uses And Applications: Among the best-known properties of iodine is its importance in the human diet. The thyroid gland produces a growth-regulating hormone that contains iodine, and lack of iodine can cause a goiter, a swelling around the neck. Table salt does not naturally contain iodine; however, sodium chloride sold in stores usually contains about 0. 01% sodium iodide, added by the manufacturer. Iodine was once used in the development of photography: During the early days of photographic technology, the daguerreotype process used silver plates sensitized with iodine vapors. Iodine compounds are used today in chemical analysis and in synthesis of organic compounds. Introduction: Just as fluorine has the distinction of being the most reactive, astatine is the rarest of all the elements. Long after its existence was predicted, chemists still had no luck finding it in nature, and it was only created in 1940 by bombarding bismuth with alpha particles (positively charged helium nuclei). The newly isolated element was given a Greek name meaning unstable. Indeed, none of astatines 20 known isotopes is stable, and the longest-lived has a half-life of only 8. 3 hours. This has only added to the difficulties involved in learning about this strange element, and therefore it is difficult to say what applications, if any, astatine may have. The most promising area involves the use of astatine to treat a condition known as hyperthyroidism, related to an overly active thyroid gland.

Photography Essays Art and Media

Photography Essays Art and Media Using examples, discuss the relationship between art and the mass media. Introduction: The relationship between art and media has always been heavily symbiotic, a fact acknowledged only relatively recently, with the ironic wink of â€Å"pop† art in the fifties, but nevertheless the connection has always been present and empowering to both â€Å"high† culture and society’s consumers. Consumer culture and art have invaded each other’s territories to the point where it has become impossible, at times, to tell them apart. The HBO television series, Sex and the City, for example, might be art reflecting life, or art informing life, or both, or neither – so many of the signifiers we use to recognise art, so many of the cause and effect relationships we took for granted, have become indistinguishable. On a theoretical level, the media has amplified artistic causes, for good or for bad, and sometimes where bad is anticipated, the media has been second-guessed or hijacked. On a practical level, forms of media broadcast have much in common with art forms, allowing for overlaps and ironic jokes, since modern technologies enable neatly replicable sign systems- the mass media is a hegemony, and iconography reproduces itself everywhere we look. One reaction to the standardization of imagery and the new lexicon of iconography came in the form of Pop art. Ironically, of course, Warhol’s replicable paintings have an iconographic currency all their own. By the 1970s pockets of subversion were appearing everywhere. Media activists called it â€Å"culture jamming†, the Situationist International called it â€Å"detournement† (â€Å"an insurrectional style by which a past form is used to show its own inherent untruth†) the Pistols called it Punk. But it was essentially the same. Culture jamming can be used to describe a broad range of subversive activity, from the work of graffiti artists to the radical ‘refacement’ of billboards by the Billboard Liberation Front, to pirate radio broadcasts. It is, essentially, an attempt to challenge the authority of the mass media through creative, and generally public, acts of resistance. Adbusters magazine employs culture jamming as its manifesto, transforming it into a social movement with the revolutionary aim of   â€Å"toppl[ing] existing power structures and forg[ing] a major rethinking of the way we live in the 21st century.† Their forceful sloganism, together with slickness of its design, raises suspicions and criticism. This is the rhetoric of a salesman, and there would indeed appear to be a contradiction between its anti-advertising objectives and its image-based editorial strategies. Nevertheless this is the first time that magazines have really subjectified the image, and a magazine which is not only about design but also a beautiful piece of craft itself, seems to sidestep the theoretical problem of hypocrisy, somehow.   The problem of design today is that it is more fascinated by the visual, as a realistic imitation or decoration, and not by the image as a subjective narrative and interpretive element. As a result of its internal dialogue, however, the image is more than a perception. It is a necessary construction on the brink of fiction, that reveals the dialectic of representation and presentation. Rick argues that the once homogeneous field of graphic design has â€Å"begun to separate into two distinct strands†. On one side there is professional practice in all its forms; on the other a field which he terms â€Å"design-culture graphics†. This territory is inhabited by designers doing their own, often self-initiated thing: publishing books and magazines, starting websites, and designing and selling T-shirts, posters, DVDs, etc. He refers to Adrian Shaughnessy’s observations in April 2003’s Creative Review magazine: â€Å"Stylistically it is usually radical, adventurous and sometimes even downright purposeless.† The curious aspect of this claim is the suggestion that the divide has only just happened. Looking back to Morris and Ruskin, again, we see an extraordinary sort of proto-punk for the middle classes, even at the turn of the century. More recently, the division became a true social cleave, rather than an ideological romantic whimsy, with the new wave that followed punk in the late 1970s. Designers such as Brody, Saville, Malcolm Garrett, Rocking Russian and 23 Envelope were so notable because, not only did they shun the mainstream in which designers would once have expected to find work as a matter of course, but they also produced the most inventive and durable British graphic design of the period. Their audience was other young people. In Britain today, a vast number of young designers emerge from design schools and art colleges today with no intention of joining design’s mainstream. People today want to express their individualism in their work and the thought of a small, informal collective started by a group of friends is obviously attractive as it’s a sort of extension of student life. Graphic design played an important role as a tool of empowerment for those whose fringe status was less of a choice, too it gave voice to women and articulating their concerns.  The suffragette’s contribution to the history of graphic design has been intriguing. Unlike the emancipatory and utopic vision of the modernist movement, the images of the women’s movement never prescribed to a unifying aesthetic dogma. When seen in conjunction with other social and counter-cultural movements that became symbolic of a certain stylistic representation, what is notable about the women’s movement is its lack of stylistic unity. While this wasn’t intentional strategy, it practically increased resistance to commodification. Much of today’s art is conceptually sophisticated enough to reflect both art and life, often anticipating its own responses. The characters in Sex and the City, the ultimate show about and because of commodification, consistently acknowledge social expectation, even if it has become their raison d’etre to buck those expectations. When the character Charlotte expresses regrets about not working it shows that she has internalized the message that she should work.   When she accuses Miranda of judging her she exclaims, You think Im one of those women . . . One of those women we hate who just works until she gets married! Here, Charlotte reveals her own view that women should be independent, demonstrating that she herself is conflicted. Her statement has feminist undertones, since it implies that women who change their lives, or who are primarily oriented to attracting a husband, sacrifice themselves and compromise their identities- appropriately, as this is exactly the fate the scriptwriters have in store for her. Charlotte’s emphasis on the â€Å"choice† defense as a feminist case is an oversimplification and a misinterpretation of liberal feminist goals, although it still promotes the critical sentiment that women are diverse, and that one womans decision of what to do with her body or her life should be in her hands, in spite of what her friends, family, or society dictates.Yet, at the same time it highlights some of the problems associated with liberal feminism as a perspective and its frequent misappropriation by women- and perhaps, in this case, the Sex and the City scriptwriters. Liberal feminism is based on the idea that differences between women and men cannot be explained by biology and thus differential treatment is unjust. The idea is that people should be regarded as individuals, rather than identified first as men or women, and should thus be able to make decisions based on what is best for the individual. As Montemurro has written, â€Å"In this episode of Sex and the City, when Charlotte refers to the womens movement, she seems to be referring to the idea that women have been liberated or freed from the constraints of patriarchy and are able to work and attain success at levels similar to those attained by men. Thus, she has the right to decide for herself what will make her happy and satisfied as an individual. If she chooses not to work, then she is not succumbing to traditional feminine expectations; rather, she is doing what she sees as right for her and thus she should not be judged for this.† She goes on to point out that few women have the ability to make this choice. But the whole debate about choice can be located in the context of oppression; in Montemurro’s terms, â€Å"Charlottes choice is predicated on other womens lack of choices†. In addition, Charlotte even states that Trey suggested she stay at home, hinting that the idea to stop working has not come directly from her. The criticism of feminism’s reactive quality applies here: her choice may be â€Å"her perogative† but it is not solely hers, and the specific choice she has(n’t) made stands for the â€Å"choice† (either to stay at home or not) that all women make, with its attendant vulnerability to accusations of reactiveness and passivity. As Montemurro suggests, Charlotte’s powerful, wealthy husband has delivered the option to her â€Å"as a gift of sorts, as if to say, I give you permission to stay home, and Charlotte fails to acknowledge that her choice is made possible only by her subsequent economic dependence on her husband.† Charlotte’s statement that â€Å"the woman’s movement is about choice† is played as distastefully comical, distasteful not least because the scriptwriters are conveying one of two equally dangerous messages. Either they are communicating they notion that it is sufficient lipservice to feminism to give these issues crass and simplistic treatment, or they are expressing Charlotte’s charming naivety through the incidental note of a â€Å"feminist† token. It is as though she believes that any choice- motherhood, career, or taking a cooking class, is of equal value, because the decision is coming from herself. It is a claim made cynically by the media and advertisers, specifically designed to manipulate women who believe themselves to be independent into buying products that appeal to their vanity- products sold on graphic representations of self-indulgence, selling the irresistible idea that women are wallowing in low self-worth and deserve to â€Å"tr eat themselves.† Women’s liberation has become suspect precisely because of this bastardization: the idea that â€Å"free choice† includes â€Å"bad choices†, that female freedom is the equivalent of justified narcissism. Increasingly products, weight loss and fashion have been artificially presented as aids to a deserving woman’s betterment, taking â€Å"feminist† ideas of â€Å"improvement† as their selling point- yet feminists concur that all such strategies only help women to participate in their construction as subservient, imperfect, and generally oppressed. Her infertility is treated with same astonishing crassness, as Tara Flockhart points out, â€Å"The infertility of Charlotte†¦excruciatingly painful affliction, is at first mocked by suggesting that she sublimates her emotional pain in affection for her dog (the animal, not the man, in her life)† Of course it is not merely female â€Å"issues† which are levied by the media. According to feminist artist and writer Laura Mulvey, the female form is still a battleground for viewing conventions, and it is a battle where, for the most part, media images and visual art are on the same side. For Mulvey, the problem is the equivalence of the female form with desire so long as the male body is not seen as desirable, men remain in control of desire and the activity of looking. It seems to be a commonly held assumption that things are improving, but I would suggest, the male body is more prominently â€Å"objectified† by the media nowadays not as a symptom of female control over the gaze but as a direct result of the integration of the gay male gaze into the mainstream. This is rapidly overtaking the rise of women, and these sites of homosexual desire are not replacing images of women but are appearing alongside them. It is no improvement at all. Most images of attractive male bodies in the media today aren’t the result of feminist struggle for equality, but simply more men, gay men, expressing their own desires in public. Virtually everywhere in Hollywood (not to mention the internet, TV, magazines, the High Street) we find Freud’s notion of â€Å"scopophilia† the pleasure involved in looking at other people’s bodies as erotic objects. Mulvey has written extensively on viewing conventions as she perceives them to be facilitated by the cinema auditorium itself. The darkness of the picture-house provides a unique public environment where we may look without being seen either by those on screen by other members of the audience. Mulvey details how certain cinema viewing conditions facilitate for the viewer both the voyeuristic process of objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic process of identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the screen. There would be no post-modernist art responses to the media, of course, without the massively influential modernist movement that rocked the world at the turn of the century. Long before the Sex and the City girls, modernism aimed to expose traditional society as exposed as something fraudulent. The exponents of the modern aimed to show that nostalgia was fallacious: the unity of a golden age had never existed. The modernists only ever wanted to present reality as it was. Since social, political, religious, artistic ideas had been incorporated into this false order, they had to be incorporated into any true reworking of it. It was modernism that impressed upon us the idea that narrative direction- that a story should have a beginning, middle and end was nothing more than an opiate, artifice grafted onto random existence to create illusions of consistency. Conclusions The relationship between media and forms of art is of course not entirely co operative. The mass media has been understood as the servant of capitalist society, and art, as the archetypal â€Å"free thought† its natural enemy. Historically, art’s efforts to bring down capitalist structures from within have been very ill-fated, with artists finding themselves ignored, scorned, crushed or – perhaps worse- accessories to political agendas. Artists and writers must work harder than ever to devise means of opposing or exposing capitalism’s deceptions, but many commentators appear to have reached the conclusion that the battle is barely worth fighting. Jean Baudrillard argues that criticism of the status quo is no longer possible through art or literature and that the only efficient way of dissenting from capitalist society is to commit suicide, Modern art wishes to be negative, critical, innovative and a perpetual surpassing, as well as immediately (or almost) assimilated, accepted, integrated, consumed. One must surrender to the evidence: art no longer contests anything. If it ever did. Revolt is isolated, the malediction consumed. Thus the avant-garde movements in Europe put the artist under pressure to exhibit a certain individuality, while also – rather contradictorily- being a producer, and as prolific, political and reactionary a producer as possible,   There is a lot of talk, not about reform or forcing the Enlightenment project to live up to its own ideals, but about wholesale negation, revolution, another new sensibility, now self- affirming or self-creating, rather than a universalist or rational self-legitimation. This in turn suggests a tremendously heightened role for the artist, the figure whose imagination supposedly creates or shapes the sensibilities of civilization. In a sense, the avant-garde has been socially commissioned to forecast the future, to scouting out new intellectual terrain, Aesthetic modernity is characterized by attitudes which find a common focus in a changed consciousness of time The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future. The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured Modernity saw its role as declaring its fragmentary reality, its construction, or the construction of the world or idea it aimed to represent. As one writer says, â€Å"A typical modernist story will seem to begin arbitrarily, advance inexplicably, and end without resolution. Symbols and images are used instead of statements. The tone is ironic and understated-mocking of any of its characters or elements that still seem to appeal to the idea of coherent reality. On the other hand, many modernist works are structured as quests for the very coherence they seem to lack. Because the quest is a very mythological concept, a lot of modernist writers return to and rewrite myths of the world into their works. Often the faith based on myths (such as Christianity) is apparently revealed as a farce and a fraud-that is, as myth rather than objective reality.† Without Modernism’s take on the media, its distaste with media stereotypes, there would be no ironic art forms, and without Surrealism’s great achievement, its ability to assimilate its patterns so completely into our unconscious that its images have become a part of us, without this we would have no impressive, delicious, advertising and no self-perpetuating consumer society. It knows our dreams, but it also knows our nightmares. Surrealism may be the triumphant rebellious child of modern art, but it is the heir of capitalist society. As one writer puts it, â€Å"Historically, surrealism was an art movement of ideas that developed between World Wars I and II and was very prolific. However, today the viewer automatically accepts surrealist imagery. Its everywhere we look. One can find surrealism in childrens books, on television, in advertisements, music videos, movies and any other form of mass media. Today a person can see examples of surrealism everywhere without consciously noting that one is looking at a surreal image† Bibliography Bataille, George. The Lugubrious Game in Visions of Excess, US: University of Minnesota Press (1985) Breton, Andrà © Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane US: Ann Arbor, (1969) Burger, Peter and Block, Richard, The Thinking of the Master: Bataille Between Hegel and Surrealism US: Northwestern University Press (2003) Burgin, Victor (Ed.) (1982): Thinking Photography. London: Macmillan Burgin, Victor (1982): Photographic Practice and Art Theory. In Burgin (Ed.), op. cit., pp. 39-83 Burgin, Victor (1982): Looking at Photographs. In Burgin (Ed.), op. cit., pp. 142-153 Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: State of Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, UK: Routledge (1994) Descharnes, Robert and Neret, Giles, Dali: The Paintings UK: Taschen (2001) Drew Heath Johnson Inspiration and Influence: The Visions of Ansel Adams, on http://www.museumca.org Flockhart,TSex and the City gets a feminist analysis   The Daily Iowan Published: Thursday, December 2, 2004 Gott, Ted. Lips of Coral: Sex and Violence in Surrealism, in Surrealism: Revolution by Night, exh. cat. (Canberra, 1993) Habermas, Jurgen in Holub, Robert. Jà ¼rgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere, London: Routledge, (1991) Hardie, Philip Ovids Poetics of Illusion Cambridge:   Cambridge University Press, 2002.   pp. viii, 365 Kristeva, Zoe Artistic Rebellion: The Modern Dynamic in The Philosopher, Volume LXXXIV No. 1 Playboy Interview: Ansel Adams -150; candid conversation, Playboy vol. 30, no. 5 (May 1983), p. 68. Montemurro, Beth. Charlotte Chooses Her Choice: Liberal Feminism on Sex and the City in http://160.39.101.217:8080/ramgen/women/montemurro.rm Sekula, Allan On the Invention of Photographic Meaning Artforum 13:5 (January 1975), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, Photography in Print (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), pp. 452-73 Sheppard, Richard, Modernism, Dada, Postmodernism, US: Northwestern University Press (2000) Short, Robert. The Age of Gold: Surrealist Cinema, US: Creation Books (2002) Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. 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