Technology Making Our Lives Easier Essay Example for Free

Innovation Making Our Lives Easier Essay As we are brought up in a general public where everything is just given to us, we will in general underestimate numerous things that others on the planet don't have. Things like GPS, telephones, Mastercards, cameras, and insulin siphons assist us with carrying on with a subjective and profitable life and NASA has assumed a key job in creating numerous advancements like these. From undetectable supports to significant distance specialized gadgets, NASA has raised innovations that we reliably utilize each day in our lives. A gadget that numerous individuals on the planet depend on regular and something that has had a tremendous effect in people groups lives is the water filtration system(s). NASA originally made it to be utilized on the space station or in a shuttle, and from that point forward the water filtration framework is an unquestionable requirement have in wherever on the planet. NASA demonstrated stunning inventiveness to control bacterial sullying in space, and hence, we have figured out how to control poisons in water here on earth. We see water filtration frameworks more than we might suspect, and it permits us to appreciate a sound way of life. Regardless of whether its through pools or assembling forms, the water filtration frameworks influences our lives each day in a positive manner. There are a wide range of sorts of water channels and you can characterize them by the manner in which they work, yet they all need to do one employment and that is adequately channel and cleanse water. One sort of a water filtration framework is the converse assimilation, which is the way toward evacuating broke up inorganic solids out of an answer (water). This kind of framework includes utilizing various channels and films so as to clean and improve the drinking nature of water. There are additionally bright frameworks which make a striking showing with sanitizing water. Bright frameworks can obliterate 99. 99% of destructive microorganisms in the water successfully and they do this by utilizing a light or bulb which radiates UV light which is then utilized as vitality to assault the microorganism in the water and basically wreck it, therefore making the water liberated from future microbes. There are numerous other kind of frameworks like the Carefree Clearwater frameworks (which depend on NASAS late 1900s innovation) which are not just utilized for savoring water the home, yet in addition for pool and shower water. These kind of enormous scope frameworks clean the water in a pool or hot-tub by utilizing a similar sort of procedure as the UV frameworks. They discharge particles like copper and silver to wreck microscopic organisms and green growth in the framework. These kind of frameworks would work better than cleaning with chlorine since they have less nwanted symptoms like consuming eyes and dyed skin or hair (because of the copper and silver particles not dispersing from warmth and daylight, in contrast to chlorine) and they are progressively steady and beneficial to work with. Water filtration frameworks influence our lives regularly all through all that we do. Without them, clean and filtered water would be hard to run over, and human advancement would in the end stop. Regardless of whether the water we drink or the pool that we love to swim in, frameworks like the converse assimilation and the Carefree Clearwater are busy working and making a unimaginable showing so as to make our day by day lives sound and pleasant.

An Investigation of the Factors Affecting the Period of a Pendulum :: Papers

An Investigation of the Factors Affecting the Period of a Pendulum I could explore the accompanying variables: * Angle of uprooting * Length of string * Pendulum weight I will examine and check whether differing the length of string will influence the time of the pendulum. My forecast is: The more drawn out the string the more extended the period. The period will be longer as the pendulum has more distant to travel. My hypothesis is shown beneath. Pendulum A has a shorter string. This gives it a shorter period. Pendulum B has a more extended string and has an a lot bigger period as it has more remote to head out to get from X to Y to X which is one period. [IMAGE] I made my expectation dependent on a past investigation I have done. The length influenced the period as expressed above and I think this will happen again in this examination. I took a gander at a clock with a pendulum to perceive how it functioned. I found that to change the speed of a subsequent you modify the length of the post which the pendulum dangles from, so I moreover put together my forecast with respect to that as it is a similar guideline. I set up a preliminary analysis to try out the accompanying: * Which edge of uprooting to utilize (for example 90â °) * what number readings to take * Which lengths of string to gauge (for example each 10cm) * Where to complete the test (on a work area/floor and so forth..) To guarantee the test is reasonable I am going to: * Use a similar bit of string * Use a similar weight pendulum (ideally precisely the same pendulum) * Make sure the string is estimated precisely To guarantee the test is sheltered I am going to: * Use a reasonable point of removal * Not to swing the pendulum close to other people To guarantee the test is precise I am going to:

What Are College Essays?

What Are College Essays?In any writing, whether a novel, story, or essay, it is necessary to define the purpose of the writing and the writer's intent. What are college essays?For the definition of what are college essays, you need to know that writing is an art form. It should be included in your syllabus and even academic education. No matter if you are a student or a teacher, you should understand that written materials can serve as the first and the last step in creating a quality education.To become a good writer, you need to understand the fundamentals of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and synonyms and related words that will help you in making your content appealing and exciting to the reader. By learning these skills, you can easily improve your writing skills and elevate your own level in the writing field.To make sure that what are college essays will be a success, the first thing that you should do is to research. Writing is not an easy task. You need to use all your avai lable resources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, online forums, and an adequate number of other resources to assist you with the complicated details that will be included in your writing. In addition, you need to take note of the mistakes you make and eliminate them from your writing.There are various kinds of sources for writing that you can use to improve your writing skills. First, you can read out aloud the parts of your written material. This exercise will help you determine how to structure your sentences and other terms that will be used in your writing. In addition, by reviewing the sample works of others, you can learn how to express your thoughts in an effective manner.In order to know the exact outline of what our college essays, you need to begin with creating a rough draft. Start by breaking down the chapter or the essay into several sections. Make sure that you include each section in the summary paragraph. Then, you can start writing the whole essay in each sectio n, as well as include some relevant writing for the journal.Once you have completed the entire essay, it is important to write a convincing conclusion that will end the entire writing project. At this point, it is important to make your style and tone consistent. After completing all the required tasks, your final writing should be all that you need to pass the final examination.What are college essays? It is a very hard task to write an essay but it is also the best source of education for your readers. Because it is such a fundamental element in a writer's education, writing should always be given equal attention.

The People s Republic Of China - 1761 Words

The People’s Republic of China = The Republic â€Å"Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer in which we use to crush the enemy.† –Mao Zedong. This quote is saying that communism is a way to conquer your enemies. The People’s Republic of China shares many similarities with the Republic in the book Legend. They are both communist, militarily run nations, where the citizen’s rights are oppressed, and they are both totalitarian states. They both have authoritarian leadership, and they deny many of their people basic human rights. They both suppress their citizen’s freedom of expression, and imprison those who fight for it. These governments have very small middle classes, medium sized rich classes, and very large poor working classes. They†¦show more content†¦Both governments treat their people dreadfully, although they claim their people are treated fine. The People’s Republic of China is a member of the United Nations Huma n Rights Council, and they say that people should be treated fairly. However, they commit some the most heinous human rights violations on the planet. They have prisons built specifically to torture the inmates, although the government denies having them. During Mao Zedong’s rule, millions of people were declared psychologically ill, and were barred from work if they did not support his administration. This process still continues, only at a much smaller scale. The People’s Republic of China has committed many minimum wage violations, such as refusing to pay their worker’s their nation’s set minimum wage, along with forcing extensive work hours on their workers, and allowing inappropriate actions towards workers by employers/managers. The Chinese government has facilities where they re-educate the people who commit crimes. The re-education is usually 3 years long, and is for minor crimes. The re-education is carried out through labor. The labor centers ar e separate from their much larger labor camps, where the criminals who commit more serious crimes go. The People’s Republic of China limits the access their people have to the Internet.

Analysis Of An Advertisement On Advertising - 1073 Words

Analysis of an Advertisement In people lives, they often see advertisements everywhere. People have different views. Some people think that ads can help them know the new products faster, and also they will provide more information about the new products for audiences. Consumers will choose things well by comparing the products. It’s very convenient for audiences. However, some people don t support ads. Because there are too many ads and they may make people feel bored and unhappy. Some ads can be confusing and misleading; some unsuccessful ads will lead audiences to buy something they don t like at all. However, good advertising leads to success while bad advertising can mean failure. The commercial advertise of Pepsi starts with a white boy knocking at the door of a monetary in Shaolin Temple in China. An old monk opened the door, and welcomed a white boy in a monetary. The old Buddhist monk led him in to the monetary. It is the story of a boy learning Kung Fu from the old B uddhist monk master in Shaolin Temple. After several years training the white boy, he has got an adult, he was doing his final test in order to become a real monk. He should use his power to break 3 bricks with his hands. He finished everything he dreamed of. By the commercial ad end, everyone celebrating with Pepsi cola. Each monk has a symbol on his head after drank the cola. As he looked down at the Pepsi he just drank, he realizes that crushing the can with his head would give him theShow MoreRelatedAdvertisement Analysis : Advertising And Advertising1903 Words   |  8 PagesAdvertisements are and have been a staple for businesses that are trying to sell a product or service throughout modern history. Whether the product is a physical item or a service like a lifestyle, experience or knowledge. Businesses frequently use advertisement to not only to show their product or service to the public, but also to influence how the public sees and feels about their specific product. By using advertisement, the business is trying to persuade the public to purchase their productRead MoreAdvertising Analysis : The Pepsi Advertisement Essay903 Words   |  4 PagesMedia Essay Advertisements are among the most popular forms of media an ordinary person can consume. Due to their high prominence in consumers’ lives, brand competition through visual advertisements stands as no foreign matter to the majority of large companies. PepsiCo remain no strangers to commercial competition due to their flagship brand of soft drink: Pepsi. However, PepsiCo harbors a longstanding conflict in the soft drink market with rival product Coca-Cola. Logically, the conflict betweenRead MoreAdvertisement Analysis : Advertising Visual Analysis1130 Words   |  5 PagesARTH 125 Advertisement Visual Analysis Jiayi Song â€Å"If only I could reach†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Ostensibly selling super glue, this advertisement features a photograph of a muscular male toy with one broken leg. It lies in the center of the photograph with the left broken leg of the figure, a skateboard and a super glue are scattered around the figure. What is most striking in the image, however, is the pose of the figure, his naked upper body with his left arm stretching out to get the super glue, and his desperateRead MoreAppeals Of Advertisements In Glamour Advertising Analysis919 Words   |  4 PagesAppeals of Advertisements in Glamour   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The method of advertising is used to attract people’s attention. Advertising plays an important role yet simple procedure for companies to make themselves known. Most advertisements can be found in newspapers, magazines, billboards, the internet, on the radio, flyers, newsletters or posters. Jib Fowles goes into depth about how advertisers use various appeals such as the need for attention, need to nurture, need for affiliation, etc. Each appeal targetsRead MoreEffects Of Alcohol Advertising On Adolescents1494 Words   |  6 PagesAlcohol advertising is abundant globally. It is vital that adolescents are to be raised in a positive and healthy setting. Particular consumer segments are considered to be more subtle towards the negative impact of advertising (Morgan, Schuler and Stoltman, 1995). Due to the new social networking technologies exist today and the various way of advertising, it is not surprising that adolescents are ex posed to alcohol advertising as direct promotions are easy and voluminous. A large number of researchRead MoreEffects of TV Commercials on Consumers1134 Words   |  5 Pagescommercial is used to spark interest in a product or services; without this influential and dominant form of advertisements, the majority of the companies and their respective products and services would not maximize their ability to reach various consumer bases (commercial. laws). Effects of TV commercials on consumer: Many of the researches have been conducted to see the influence of advertisement or TV commercials on consumer.The findings of these study support the current study that consumers are veryRead MoreIdeological Analysis Of Old Spice Advertising Essay980 Words   |  4 Pages Ideological Analysis Of Old Spice Advertising Beginning in 2010, Old Spice, an American brand of male grooming products, launched a new advertising campaign. Referred to as â€Å"The Man Your Man Could Smell Like† the Old Spice advertising campaign was originally intended to be a single use concept to promote a specific product. However, widespread success of the original 30 second television commercial lead to the launch of multiple variations of the advertisement across multiple media. The campaignRead MoreThe Objective. Advertising Is One Of The Most Important1676 Words   |  7 PagesThe Objective Advertising is one of the most important elements that come under the umbrella of marketing management (Bass et al. 2005). It has the tendency to target the audience in an efficient manner. The main perspective of this assignment is related to media analysis, in which five different commercial advertisements are likely to select, and then analyse them completely from different angles (Gretzel et al. 2000). The researcher will collect the advertisement of the top notch companies inRead MoreAdvertisement Effectiveness992 Words   |  4 PagesIntroduction: Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behaviour with respect to a commercial offering, although political amp; ideological advertising is also common. The purpose of advertising may also be to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed viaRead MoreMedia Based On Social Stereotypes930 Words   |  4 Pages This paper includes critical analysis of media based on social stereotypes. There are two advertisements used one is based on gender inequality and the other is based on the gender biased and racial inequality. These two advertisement’s provides a good example of how media influences society. Analysis of these advertisement will show how the creator of the advertisement uses social stereotypes. Advertisement 1 analysis Nowadays the representation of gender in media has become very common. It is

Cancer The Leading Cause Death Of The World Essay

Introduction Cancer is the leading cause of death in the world. An astounding average of 1.6 million deaths occur due to lung cancer every year, making it the most common type of cancer worldwide (1). Lung cancer is broadly classified into two types: small cell and non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). 85% of all lung cancer cases are NSCLC. NSCLC has several different histologic subtypes, some of which are: squamous cell carcinoma, large cell carcinoma, and adenocarcinoma. Of the three, adenocarcinoma accounts for more than 50% of all NSCLC cases, and is the most common subtype of NSCLC (2). Adenocarcinoma has been predominantly present in male smokers, however its occurrence in women, non-smokers, and young patients (below age 40) has been increasing as well (3). Consequently, mutations and gene alterations that may be targeted to treat adenocarcinoma are being highly studied, which include: epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), anaplastic lymphoma receptor tyrosine kinase (ALK), thyroid transcription factor 1 (TTF-1), Napsin A, v-raf murine sarcoma viral oncogene homolog B1 (BRAF), v-erb-b2 erythroblastic leukaemia viral oncogene homolog 2 (HER2), c-ros oncogene 1 receptor tyrosine kinase (ROS1), and rearranged during transfection (RET) (4). The EGFR gene mutations seem to be most significant in adenocarcinomas, specifically deletions in Exon 19, and point mutations in Exon 21 (5). Similarly, almost 5% of all NSCLCs are associated with a rearrangement in the ALKShow MoreRelatedCancer : A Leading Cause Death Around The World1800 Words   |  8 PagesEnglish 111 2 March 2016 Cancer Cancer is a leading cause of death around the world and its frequency continues to rise (Neal Megahan). Each year 12.7 million people discover they have cancer and 7.6 million people die from the disease (Neal Megahan). More than half of the people that discover they are diagnosed with cancer, eventually die from this disease. Cancer is a prevailing issue that needs to be further studied because of how it affectsRead MoreThe Leading Causes Of Lung Cancer1350 Words   |  6 PagesCenter September 2, 2014 The Leading Causes of Lung Cancer State Standard: 6.4.A Cancer is a disease that plagues millions of people annually (â€Å"Lung†). Lung cancer develops when healthy cells in the lungs are compromised by chemicals, pathogens, or radiation (Henderson). In the early twentieth century, before cigarette smoking and toxic man-made air pollutants became more commonplace, lung cancer was relatively rare (Henderson). It is now the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, resulting in anRead MoreMorbidity: Lung Cancer1672 Words   |  7 PagesMorbidity-Lung Cancer The human body is designed so that each part is dependent on the other for one or the other reason. There is a delicate balance to the distribution of functions and the way in which each system defenses itself against any unmentionable disease or ailment. However, there are stages in the lives of all humans when the body finds itself in a position where it is no longer able to defend itself against ailments and diseases and eventually may even lose the battle. One suchRead MoreLung Cancer : Causes And Effects1329 Words   |  6 PagesThe leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the United States and worldwide is lung cancer. Lung cancer is responsible for thirty percent of cancer deaths in the United States. The deaths caused by breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer combined do not add up to the deaths that lung cancer causes. In 2007, 158,683 people, 88,243 men and 70,354 women died from lung cancer in the United States (Eldridge, 2012). Out of the 158,683 people that died from lung cancer in 2007, 135Read MoreProstate Cancer : The Second Most Common Type Of Cancer1510 Words   |  7 PagesProstate cancer is the second most common type of cancer diagnosed in men around the world today. Despite years of rese arch, little is known as to the exact cause of prostate cancer, making it an area of intense research in medicine today. The pathology of prostate cancer has yielded important information on prevention, diagnosis and treatment methods. It has been understood that diet has much to do with tumour growth, and new research into nutrition is revealing new strategies in prostate cancer preventionRead MoreShould Smoking Be Banned?1457 Words   |  6 PagesBan the Cancer Sticks Lung cancer has increased within the past decade; one of the biggest reasons is that more and more people smoke now than they have in the past. Smoking causes damage not only in the lungs, but also in the body, lips, or inside the mouth. Even though smoking does harm your body there are some good things that come from smoking. Like it can lower the risk of obesity, and knee replacement surgery. There are different types of lung cancer one for smoking and the other, nonsmokingRead MoreEssay on Stomach Cancer988 Words   |  4 PagesStomach cancer, also known as gastric cancer, is a type of cancer that develops slowly over many years. Most frequently, stomach cancer starts in the lining of the stomach otherwise knows as the mucosa, and then develops into the other layers of the stomach. There are many ways in which stomach cancer spreads. In some cases it invades near by organs or it can also travel through the bloodstream to for cancer in other organs. There are many statistics and organizations of support for stomach cancer, asRead MoreEssay on The Consequences of Tobacco1042 Words   |  5 Pagesone of the most leading causes of death in the world today. Smoking has begun to take over our everyday life. It is the number one most leading cause of death in the world today, and also the number one substance smoked or chewed today. But what people do not realize is that there are consequences to smoking tobacco, or eating it. Tobacco is hazardous to the human body system, therefore it should be banned due to the fact that it causes serious problems to those who do smoke, causes second hand smokingRead MorePersuasive Speech On Smoking1591 Words   |  7 PagesAbstract Smoking is the most preventable leading cause of death in the United States and causes many health risk such as lung cancer, and heart and blood vessel complication. My main purpose of this persuasive speech is to convince people that smoking is harmful for themselves, the people around them and their wallets. In 2015 and estimated of 36.5 million people were current smoker (Jamal, A., King, B. A., Neff, L. J., Whitmill, J., Babb, S. D., Graffunder, C. M., 2016). In addition smoking doesn’tRead MoreObesity As A Disease Essay1378 Words   |  6 Pagesthan one-third (36.5%) of adults in the United States are obese. Obesity is defined as a weight that is higher than what is considered as a healthy weight. Body Mass Index (BMI) is used as a screening tool for overweight and obesity. According to the World Health Organization, worldwide obesity has nearly doubled since 1980. In 2016, 39% of women and 29% of men over the age of 18 were overweight. Today, around one in five childr en, ages 6-19 are obese. The obesity epidemic only continues to worsen in

Elderly Care Insurance in Japan free essay sample

Beginning of elderly care insurance in Japan Nowadays, many developed countries are all faced with a problem: aging of population, among which, Japanese is the country with the most serious aging in the world. The ones who were born during the baby boom in World War II will be 65 years old soon, so that the population of the elderly in Japan will increase rapidly. Meanwhile, the birth rate in Japan has continued to drop since from asses. The decreasing of birth rate and the increasing of elderly population give rise to the roping of total population, and at the same time, the proportion of the population above 65 years old accounting for the total population goes up greatly. In the face of such problem, Japan attaches great importance to the coordination with the private enterprises on the infrastructure for home care and then carrying out expansion rapidly. Under such background, Care Insurance Law comes into being. We will write a custom essay sample on Elderly Care Insurance in Japan or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 1. The road of elderly care insurance in Japan Care Insurance Law was issued on November 17th, 1997, and took effect on April 1st, 2000. The metallization of care insurance is marked by the social insurance view conference held in July 4th, 1995. An this conference, a written advice, mainly aiming at the problem the welfare of the elderly should rely on the insurance benefit, was put forward for the first time since the system of all nationals Join the insurance had been carried out for 33 years. On April 22nd of 1996, the review conference of health benefits for the elderly finally passed Proposal on Establishing Care Insurance for the Elderly, and proposed to establish social insurance method that half of the care insurance is undertaken by the public expense. In September of 996, Million Citizens Committee Boosting Care Colonization was established, which was the first time to be discussed and modified on the care insurance among the citizens. In November of 1996, Care Insurance Law, Care Insurance Implementation Law, and Medical Service Modification Law, associated with care insurance, were put forward. During this period, Care Security Act for the elderly, established aiming at tax levy increasing, was unveiled. Therewith, as the main operation body, Municipalities of Japan required reviewing cautiously. After repeated discussion, Care Insurance Law was officially passed in December 9th of 1997, and took effect in 2000. 2. Reform of elderly care insurance in Japan In order to adapt to the change of the times, the Japanese government reformed and improved Care Insurance Law in 2005. The main content of the reform is as follows: introducing prevention payment; reducing hospitalizing payment to facilitate the outpatient service payment; introducing new payment in the region; announcing information related to care facilities with Internet; enhancing the supervision on the city, towns and villages, so as to provide proper payment and legal protection for the are-needed patients; expanding premium grading. Among them, the most importance, I. E. The key point of this reform, is to introduce prevention payment.

Sas Case Study Essay Example

Sas Case Study Essay Succeeding with old-fashioned values in a new industry 1 (revised September 2010) Adapted by CH Besseyre des Horts from C. A. OReilly III J. Pfeffer (2000) : Hidden Value, how great companies achieve extraordinary results with ordinary people, Harvard Business School Press, pp. 99-117. 1 1 CASE STUDY THE SAS INSTITUTE : Succeeding with old-fashioned values in a new industry TREATING PEOPLE DIFFERENTLY (and better) than they expect to be treated, and differently than other companies in the industry treat them, is not something that only works in retailing. Even in the world of high technology and software development, there is a case to be made for being different. And few companies in this industry are as different as the one described in this chapter : SAS Institute that was ranked in 2010 the #1 Best Company to Work For in the USA 2 , # 10 in India 3 and among the 25 Top Employers in China 4 . SAS Institute, the largest privately owned software company in the world, is an anachronism. In an era of relentless pressure, this place is an oasis of calm. In an age of frantic competition, this place is methodical and clearheaded. In a world of free agency, signing bonuses, and stock options, this is a place where loyalty matters more than money. In a world of outsourcing and contracting out, SAS Institute outsources and contracts out almost nothing. Day care workers, onsite health professionals, food service workers, and even most security guards are all SAS Institute employees. In an era of managed care, SAS offers a full indemnity health plan with low deductibles. We will write a custom essay sample on Sas Case Study specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Sas Case Study specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Sas Case Study specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer In almost every respect, SAS Institute seems like a throwback to an earlier era, to a time when there were long-term attachments between companies and their people, and large, progressive organizations such as Eastman Kodak, S. C. Johnson, and Sears offered generous, inclusive benefits in an effort to enhance the welfare of their workforce. Not all observers seem to approve of this form of employment relationship. Some people say that SAS Institute reeks of paternalism or a plantation mentality in a world otherwise dominated by market like labor market transactions. For instance, an article in Forbes stated, More than one observer calls James Goodnights SAS Institute, Inc. , the Stepford software company after the movie The Stepford Wives. In the movie, people were almost robot-like in their behavior, apparently under the control of some outside force. Another article noted, The place can come across as being a bit too perfect, as if working there might mean surrendering some of your personality. Of course, no one is forced to work at the company, and there are many nearby opportunities available. SAS Institute is so inclusive and comprehensive in what it does for its people that it makes some observers, more accustomed to the arms-length, occasionally adversarial relationship between employers and employees now so typical in organizations, uncomfortable. Certainly, aspects of the companys generous benefits, spacious, campus-like grounds, and concern for the total welfare of all of its people seem out of place in contemporary management practice. What a puzzle! How can a company that operates like firms did fifty years ago succeed in todays economy-not only that, but succeed in one of the most high-technology sectors of that economy, software? SAS Institute poses a second mystery. The conventional wisdom is that turnover is endemic and inevitable in high technology in general and software in particular. In these industries 2 3 http://money. cnn. com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/full_list/ http://www. greatplacetowork. in/best/list-in. htm 4 http://www. topemployers. com. n/en/employers/OurProjects/ChinasTopEmployers2010/CertifiedorganisationsA Z. aspx 2 there is a tremendous shortage of people, and job hopping is an accepted and even expected part of peoples career strategy. But SAS Institute, with no signing bonuses, no stock options, no phantom stock-none of the gimmicks that have come to be taken for granted as ways of inducing people to join and remain in companies-has a turnover rate of less than 4 percent. Never in the more th an thirty-two years of the companys history has turnover been above 5 percent. SAS Institute is located in Cary, in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. It is surrounded by numerous pharmaceutical companies, as well as by IBM, Northern Telecom, and many other high-technology and software companies, so SAS people would not have to move geographically if they wanted to change jobs. How in the world has SAS Institute kept its turnover so low and succeeded so well in wooing and retaining the talent that has permitted the company to flourish? BACKGROUND SAS Institute was founded in 1976 by Dr. James Goodnight, John Sall, Anthony Barr, and Jane Helwig. Goodnight, today the CEO, was an undergraduate in applied mathematics at North Carolina State University in the 1960s. The son of a hardware store owner, he helped pay his way through college by moonlighting as a programmer. After graduating, Goodnight worked for General Electric on the ground control system for the Apollo space program before returning to North Carolina State to obtain his doctorate in statistics in 1971. He then joined the faculty on a so-called soft money appointment-a position in which you had to go out and get the grants to pay your own salary. Goodnight and Barr, who had worked for IBM for two years developing an information system for the Pentagon and was now also working at State, thought it was wasteful to have to write a new program every time students wanted to do a new statistical analysis. They decided to develop a uniform program that could be used over and over, and that could solve lots of different kinds of [statistical] problems. Having developed such a system, they leased SAS (Statistical Analysis System) to other agricultural schools in the region and to some pharmaceutical companies. When the soft money began to dry up, they were told they could stay on at the university but would have to pay their own salaries. Instead, they left and formed their own company. When that company, SAS Institute, Inc. , began in 1976 as an independent entity, it already had 100 paying customers and was cash flow positive. Except for a mortgage on its first building, SAS Institute has never had any debt, nor has it ever had to raise outside venture or other equity capital. What about ownership of the intellectual property? North Carolina State ceded them all copyrights on the program in exchange for free upgrades. If this seems generous, consider that in the 1970s there really wasnt a software industry and no one knew what software was worth. As Jim Goodnight recounts, when his wife would tell people her husband worked in software, they thought it was some type of clothing or undergarments. One of the cofounders, Anthony Barr, sold his 40 percent stake in the company for about $340,0 00 in 1979. Jane Helwig left to found another software company, Seasoned Systems, with her husband and then decided to attend medical school. She now practices obstetrics/ gynecology, and her stepsons, Mark and David Helwig, work for SAS Institute. Today, James Goodnight owns two-thirds of the company; the other cofounder, John Sall, owns the other third. Goodnights two-thirds stake of SAS Institute means that, according to Forbes, he is the forty-second richest person in the world. John Sall, also a billionaire, is not active at all in the 3 management of SAS Institute and does not want to be. He sees himself as a statistician and a software developer-not a businessperson or a manager. Over the years, the SAS program has expanded to become a twenty module system for data warehousing, data mining, and decision support. With 6. million lines of code, the massive program is used by the U . S. Census Bureau to count and categorize population, by the Agriculture Department to develop crop forecasts and by the long distance phone companies to figure out how much to charge for each call . Banks use SAS Institute software to do credit scoring, hotels use the product to manage frequent visitor programs, and catalog companies use the system to help decide which people to mail particular catalogs. The original statistical analysis package that was the foundation of the company currently contributes less than 2 percent of total revenue. SAS Institute operates on a worldwide basis. In 2009, the company has many sales offices in the United States and more than 400 offices globally, as well as 600 licensed distributors. Ninety-seven percent of the Fortune 100 companies use SAS software, as do more than 93 percent of the Global 500. SAS Institute has more than 45,000 customers sites throughout the world in 122 countries 5 . Because SAS Institute is privately owned, information on its finances is not publicly available. Figures 1 and 2 present information on sales revenues for the past 23 and 33 years. SAS Institute is currently the largest privately owned independent software company. SAS Institute has enjoyed double-digit revenue growth since its founding. Year Revenues (millions US $) 1986 98 1990 240 1994 482 1998 871 2002 1. 180 2005 1. 68 2007 2. 15 2008 2. 26 2009 2. 31 Figure 1 : Annual Sales Revenues for SAS Institute 1986 – 2009 6 Figure 2 : SAS Annual Revenue History 1976 – 2009 3 5 6 SAS Institute company fact sheet (http://www. sas. com/company/about/statistics. html ) Annual report SAS Institute 2009 (http://www. sas. com/corporate/annual-report-current. df) and company fact sheet (http://www. sas. com/company/about/statistics. html ) 4 The company has no single competitor that provides precisely the range of software products it does, but in segments of its business it competes with companies such as SPSS that offer statistical analysis and graphic packages, with vendors of decision support and graphics, or with database management companies such as Ora cle; Although originally running only on mainframes, SAS applications run on midrange computers, workstations, and personal computers as well as on a variety of mainframe platforms. The company is to use Internetand intranet-based applications. SAS Institute has spent in 2009 about 23 percent of its revenues on research and development, an amount that has remained remarkably constant over the years and is about twice the average for the software industry. SAS Institute employs about 11,325 people (end of 2009), approximately 38% of them work at corporate headquarters at Cary. Almost all of the companys software development occurs at Cary, with the other offices performing account management and service support. If anyone thinks that SAS Institutes success was foreordained by its being at the right place at the right time, a comparison with SPSS is particularly revealing. SPSS was founded in the late 1960s by three Stanford University graduate students to offer packages for statistical packages. SPSS incorporated in 1975 and set up its headquarters in Chicago. In August 1993, SPSS offered stock to the public. SPSS applications originally ran only on mainframes, but in the 1980s they were migrated to a personal computer operating environment. In 1996, desktop revenues were almost 80 percent of total revenues. SPSS traditionally offers data analysis and graphics software, process documentation, and various management products. More recently, SPSS principal activity has moved to provide technology that transforms data into insight through the use of predictive analytics and other data mining techniques : SPSS solutions and products enable organizations to improve decision-making by learning from the past, understanding the present as well as anticipating future problems and opportunities. Although its origins in a university were similar to SAS Institute and it was founded at about the same time, the growth of the two companies has been quite different. In the fiscal year that ended December 31, 2008, SPSS had revenues of $302. 9 million 7 , less than one-seventh that of SAS Institute and about 1,200 employees compare to more than 11,000. SPSS was subsequently acquired late 2009 by the giant IBM 8 in order to reinforce its predictive analytics solutions’ offerings. Strategy SAS Institutes business strategy is built on relationships. As described in the companys 1996 annual report, The Institute is founded on a philosophy of forming lasting relationships with our customers, our business partners, and our employees. These critical relationships, combined with our leading-edge software and services, together form the basic elements of our success. Relationships are important because, unlike many software vendors, SAS Institute does not sell products and subsequent upgrades but rather offers site licenses, provided on an annual basis after a thirty-day free trial. The software is not cheap. A charge of $50,000 a year for 50 users is typical. However, the licenses include free upgrades to new versions of the software and outstanding customer support. Initial first-year revenues are less than if the product were sold outright, but over time, revenues from a given customer will be 7 8 http://www. corporateinformation. com/Company-Snapshot. aspx? cusip=78462K102 http://www. spss. com/ibm-announce/ 5 higher as long as that customer remains with SAS Institute. The companys license renewal rate is over 98 percent. Early 2009, the economic crisis situation has not impacted the optimistic view of the market as expressed by Jim Goodnight in the 2008 annual report : In 2008, organizations of all sizes—spanning every industry and geography— felt the effects of a slowing economy. Though everyone is still trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I am optimistic about the future, and I’ll tell you why. Businesses have been forced, by necessity, to get back to basics—to focus on the essentials that can help them weather this economic crisis. If the market has taught us anything, it is that no matter how bad things get, they will get better. How individual businesses conduct themselves in the face of such dire economic circumstances will help determine who will be around when things begin to improve†¦ 9 This positive vision was confirmed early 2010 by Jim Goodnight in the 2009 annual report : â€Å"Our optimism and determination in the face of an uncertain economy paid off last year, and we finished 2009 – our 34th consecutive year of growth – with global revenues of US$2. 31 billion, up 2. 2 percent over 2008 results. Our revenue from software sales alone jumped 3. 3 percent at a time when the software revenue of other major vendors has been declining. Customers are increasingly turning to SAS ® solutions to maximize effective customer relations, more effectively manage operations and engage in better risk management. Software revenue was strong in several areas, including customer intelligence, credit risk, supply chain and text analytics, attesting that companies striving to survive in a down economy, and succeed in times of recovery and growth, need such solutions to answer complex business problems, spur innovation and enable success. † 10 Customer support is one key to maintaining satisfied customers. SAS Institute has one technical support person for every 100 customers. Customer loyalty is intense. Like many software companies, SAS Institute sponsors user group meetings. One difference is the loyalty of the users who attend these meetings. SAS veterans of previous user conventions wear up to 20 badges on their jackets as a demonstration of loyalty. Howard Dresner, research director for the Gartner Group, sometimes speaks at SAS user group meetings and commented, I was afraid that if I said anything negative they [the users] would lynch me. Product development at SAS Institute is also based on staying in very close touch with customers and giving them what they want and need. Jim Goodnight said : Listen to the customers. Give them the software they want. There is no reason to develop software they dont want. . . . Once a project is underway, well have a few of our customers come in that we know are interested. in a particular area and have meetings with them and have them test the software weve developed. . . . If we could make these products fit the needs of half a dozen companies through these strategic partnerships, it will pretty well fit the needs of other companies as well One way information is acquired is by meeting with users in user group conferences. SAS Institute has six regional user groups in the United States, one international group, and a dozen country-specific user groups. It also sponsors a number of user group conferences throughout the world each year. At user conferences, the company holds a contest asking questions about the SAS software, for which customers have been known to study for days. 9 10 Annual report SAS Institute 2008 Annual report SAS Institute 2009 (http://www. sas. com/corporate/annual-report-current. pdf) 6 Each year the company sends each of its customers a ballot asking what features they would like to see. From tabulating the results of that ballot, the company decides on its development priorities for the coming year. The company does not have a focused product strategy, nor does it engage into along-range planning. Goodnight believes that the industry is evolving too rapidly for such planning and, as he puts it, I am not as much of a visionary as Bill Gates, so I cant tell where the industry is going. The company will not turn down a product idea that seems sound, even if the idea doesnt fit tightly into the existing product line. As David Russo , formerly the vice president of human resources commented, the company operates on the philosophy of the educator Maria Montessori, namely, that creativity should be followed not led. Russo noted that if youre hiring creative people, you give them their head, you tell them that its all right to take chances and you mean it, they will do their best. People at SAS Institute are encouraged to do new things. David Russo commented: Have you ever heard us talk about the holes ? He [Goodnight] says that hes dug a lot of holes. The only smart thing is knowing when to quit digging. . . We dont know if its going to make a lot of money for the company or not. But the technology out there is exciting and it might turn into something. Go for it. As one consequence of this customer-focused, employee-initiative product development philosophy, SAS Institute is developing video games and is moving heavily into educational software. Neither of these areas is within the scope of its t raditional focus on statistical and data mining products. These new products are being internally incubated, not obtained through acquisitions. One other important element of SAS Institutes business is its drive for market share and revenue growth. David Russo commented that the company, and Jim Goodnight, wants the software everywhere. If its a choice between making X dollars per sale or having more people have the software, he would rather have the software everywhere. He [Goodnight] thinks that there is no reason that any midsized or large enterprise shouldnt be using SAS. They should be using SAS for everything. So his perspective is, it should be out there. And as a result, hell try anything. SAS INSTITUTE PHILOSOPHY AND VALUE The fundamental way that SAS Institute operates has been the same since its inception and is premised on a small, consistent set of values and beliefs. One is the desire to create a corporation where it was much fun for the workers as for top management. Two principles are inherent in that statement. The first is the principle that all people at SAS Institute are treated fairly and equally. In its practices and day-to-day operations, the company is a very egalitarian place. Jim Goodnight nor anybody else has a reserved parking space. His health plan is no different from that of the day care workers. There is no executive dining roomeveryone regardless of position can eat at one of the on-site company cafeterias, where highquality, subsidized food is accompanied by a pianist playing during the lunch hour. Everyone at SAS Institute has a private office, not a cubicle. Dress is casual and decided by what the person feels comfortable wearing. As Goodnight explained, Four of us started the business. When we started, there were no employees, we were all principals. What we tried to do was to treat people who joined the company as we ourselves wanted to be treated. . . The 7 company is characterized by an egalitarian approach. The second important principle is that the workplace should be fun and people should be treated with dignity and respect. This philosophy comes from Goodnights early experiences. When he worked for General Electric on the Apollo space program, although the work was interesting, the job environmen t was not good: We had guards at the door every day. . . . We had to sign in. Youd go down the hall and put your quarter in the machine and get a cup of coffee out. A lot of these things, I found somewhat offensive. Essentially, SAS Institute believes in the power of reciprocity-that people feel obligated to return favors that are done for them. Or, more prosaically stated, if you treat your people well, they will treat the company well by being loyal and dedicated in return. Jim Goodnight has commented that he likes being around happy people. Who wouldnt ? He and other SAS Institute leaders believe that if you take care of your people, they will take care of the company. As one manager put it, the basic philosophy is one of trickle down-if you treat people well, things will take care of themselves. A third, interconnected part of the philosophy that guides SAS Institute is a belief in and reliance on intrinsic, internal motivation. Part of trusting people is treating them like resp onsible adults and relying on them to do a good job. Barrett Joyner, vice president of North American sales and marketing, noted that the emphasis is on coaching rather than monitoring and controlling. Trust and respect- its amazing how far you can go with that. The importance placed on people comes from the fact that SAS Institute operates in a business critically dependent on intellectual capital. David Russo, who was head of human resources for more than seventeen years, explained: The best way to produce the best and get the best results is to behave as if the people who are creating those things for you are important to you individually. Every night at 6 oclock, all of our assets walk out the door†¦We just hope they come back at nine the next morning.. If you believe that, then its just a waterfall of common sense. It just means that you take care of the folks who are taking care of you. . . . Why we do the things we do is whats important. The things we do are secondary. . . . They are just a natural outgrowth of a philosophy that if you really mean that your people are important, you will treat them like they are important. The final part of the SAS Institute philosophy comes from an important insight about the business and economic benefits that come from creating an environment in which both the physical aspects the workplace and the services offered to employees relieve the stress and the day-to-day concerns of people: We believe that an employee with some of the normal workday stresses relieved . . is more productive, not only for that day, but comes back more refreshed and able to be more productive that second day . . . and so on, explains Russo. The point of the strategy is to make it impossible for people not do their work, by removing as many distractions and concerns possible. The ideas that people are important, that if you take care of them they will take care of the company, and that taking care of them involves treating them as you yourself might want to be treated are not particularly novel or complicated. What makes SAS Institute fairly unusual is that it actually lives by these simple precepts. Implementing this philosophy requires taking 8 a long-term approach. SAS Institute definitely thinks long term. Goodnight commented, We only take a long-term view of all issues. Since any project will take at least one to three years to come to fruition, a long-term perspective is required This long-term perspective extends to the management of people at SAS Institute. HOW SAS INSTITUTE MANAGES ITS PEOPLE The management practices SAS Institute uses are all premised on the idea that in an intellectual capital business, attracting and retain talent is paramount, and that the way to attract and retain good people is to give them interesting work to do, interesting people to do it with, and treat them like the responsible adults that they are. It is a management system based on trust and mutual respect. The fact that it is so unusual says something about most contemporary organizations and their leaders. The fact that the system works so well says a lot about human potential and what it takes to unlock that potential. Benefits and the Work Environment SAS Institute is probably most famous for its generous, family-friendly benefits and pleasant physical work environment. As already mentioned, everyone (including assistants) has a nice private office and is provided with the latest computer equipment. As in many organizations, the philosophy and practices reflect the founders early experiences and their reactions to those experiences. Goodnight tells about interviewing for a job as a computer programmer-a job he did not take- when he was a young man: The programmers sat in desk after desk, lined up row after row, in a building that was like an aircraft hangar. No walls, no privacy. Company headquarters at Cary consists of eighteen buildings scattered over a 200-acre campus-like setting with a lake and beautiful grounds and forests. The grounds feature outdoor sculpture and picnic areas, as well as hiking trails. People sometimes bring their friends and family to the grounds on the weekend for picnics or hiking. The building are architecturally interesting, with atriums and light wells. Goodnight himself oversees their design. They are beautifully decorated with art something that a committee of four, including an artist-in-residence as well as Goodnight, attends to. Company policy is for people to work about thirty-five hours a week, or a 9 to 5 work day with an hour for lunch and exercise. If you call after 5 P. M. , the voice mail system tells you that the company is closed. As David Russo noted, if you shot off a tell gauge shotgun in the parking lot on a typical Wednesday at 7 P. M. , you wouldnt hit anything. Goodnight and other senior leaders have the same schedule. Betty Friend, the director of corporate communications, has contrasted SAS Institute with other software companies, commenting, you know that old joke about Microsoft having flex time, they dont care what 18 hours you work? The company believes that people dont perform effectively when they are tired. Jim Goodnight commented: Ive seen some of the code that people produce after these long nights and its garbage. You throw it away the next day and start over. . . You have got to be alert and sharp to be a good programmer. . . . Id rather have sharp, focused people that write good code that doesnt need as much testing. I recently came back from a Microsoft conference and they said that now Microsoft has three testers for every programmer. 9 The reduced work hours permit people to have both a job and a life. It means that women dont have to give up their careers if they want to s ee their children. As a consequence, at SAS Institute more than 50 percent of the managers are women, a relatively high percentage for the software industry. The company has been able to attract and retain both men and women with its work-family balance. The company has a number of other amenities and benefits, such as an on-site 7,500-squarefoot medical facility staffed by six nurse practitioners, two family practice physicians, a physical therapist, massage therapist, and a mental health nurse. The average waiting time to be seen, if you have an appointment, is five minutes. When waiting times increase (for instance, because of the growth in the number of SAS people), the medical facility adds people, adjusts hours, or does something else to reduce the waiting time. SAS Institute recognizes that time is money and that time spent obtaining medical care cant be used on work. The facility is free to employees and their families, although there is a small copayment required for the massage therapist. The companys full indemnity health plan-not an HMO or a PPO, and with no managed carehas a $100 deductible per person, $350 per family, and covers first dollar costs for many things. Nonetheless, SAS Institutes health care costs are $1,000 per employee below the average health care costs for plans that arent nearly as ich as theirs. The SAS Institute health plan includes vision care, hearing, a go dental plan, free physicals, free mammography, and many other benefits. Gail Adcock, the manager of corporate health services, noted that the goal of her group was to keep people at work and to decrease turnover, not simply to save money. SAS Institute also provides on-site Montessori day care, with one staff for every three children. Although the day care was originally provided completely free, SAS employees now pay about one third of what the comparable fee would be in the market. Between the on-site and subsidized off-site care, SAS Institute provides child care for 528 children. SAS Institute has a fitness center that includes a large aerobics floor, two full-length basketball courts, a private, skylit yoga room, and workout areas segregated by gender. . . . Outside, there are soccer and softball fields. All of this is free to employees and their families. SAS Institute provides towels and even launders exercise clothes, also for free. The company estimates that 65 percent of its people use the exercise center two of more times per week. SAS is noted for its snack facilities-refrigerators and small eating areas- scattered throughout the buildings. Every Wednesday afternoon, plain and peanut MMs are distributed to these snack areas on every floor and every building. SAS Institute uses 22. 5 tons of MMs a year. SAS Institute was one of the early companies to offer benefits for domestic partners. It provides on-site help in arranging elder care. The company provides financial assistance and paid leave for adoptions. The companys cafeterias provide excellent food at subsidized prices, with live piano music in the background. Families are encouraged to use this facility, and many parents will eat lunch with their children who are at the on-site day care facility. A program provides undergraduate scholarships to SAS Institute employees on a competitive basis. The company even helps with housing: It sells some of the land it owns to employees at discounted prices so they can build homes. The idea behind all of this is to remove distractions that keep people from focusing on their jobs and also to reduce the stresses that come from dealing with the common demands of life. 10 For SAS employees not working at Cary, every effort is made to provide similar levels of benefits and amenities, either on site or by purchasing them for employees at local vendors. The idea is to provide Cary-level care for everyone. Performance Management David Russos theory of performance management is simple: Give people the tools to do their jobs and then let them do it, while holding them accountable. Every SAS product manual includes the names of the developers and testers who created or updated the software. Try finding the name of any person in the product manuals for most software companies, such as Microsoft. SAS Institute has eliminated the performance appraisal form. David Russo explained the decision: We dont do performance appraisals. Why? Because theyre stupid. Because everybody hates them. Because they take an inordinate amount of time with always a negative result. Instead of formal appraisals, managers commit to spending time talking to their people and providing feedback on a regular basis, at least three times a year. In return for getting rid of the appraisals, managers also committed to walking around and talking to their people. Russo believes: If there were a good performance appraisal process, everybody would be using it. . . . So what happens is companies institute a new performance appraisal process, it works for a while because its new, and all of a sudden it starts to slide and then they start looking for something else. . . .I dont think you can really manage someones performance. I think you can observe the results. . . . I think you can set short- and long-term goals. And you can sit back and see if it happens or i1 doesnt happen. The companys fundamental approach to performance management entails setting high expectations for both conduct and performance, which then become self-fulfilling, and giving people the freedom to do what they like to meet these expectations. John Boling, director of the educational technologies division, said: When Ive wanted to do research, Ive had the opportunity. When Ive wanted to travel, Ive had the opportunity. When Ive wanted to publish, Ive had the opportunity. Its been pretty much my taking the initiative. . . . We assume that you have talent, creativity, and initiative. You have to be able to take that and run with it. SAS Institute operates on the basis of trust. Violations of that trust are not sanctioned. The company, therefore, has no sick days or sick leave policy. Nor does it have a sick child care program. Jim Goodnight believes if a child is sick, it should be home with its mother or father. Commenting on the companys sick day policy and the issue of trust, David Russo said: We dont have sick days. If youre sick for six months, youre going to get flowers, youre going to get candy, youre going to get a lot of concern and a lot of visits. If youre sick for six or seven Mondays in a row, youre going to get gone. Its a simple thing. . . . Now, do we have free riders ? Absolutely, and guess who figures them out? Their peers. Management doesnt have to take care of that. They surface and they either get right or eventually . . . they get gone. Its just the way it is 11 Managers are evaluated principally on their ability to attract and retain talent. The company believes that in a business based on skill and know-how, if it can get and keep the best people, the rest will take of itself. Pay Practices SAS Institute provides none of its employees with stock options, phantom stock, performance shares, or similar schemes. Goodnight has referred to stock options as Ponzi schemes. The company does contribute to the maximum allowed by Internal Revenue Service regulation, 15 percent, to employees profit sharing (40lk) retirement plans. There is no matchingemployees do not have to contribute anything. SAS Institute has done this for more than twenty years, a record unmatched by any other company. A small bonus based partly on the companys financial performance, typically on the order of 5. percent to 8 percent, is paid at the end of the year. Base salaries are quite competitive with the industry and are adjusted annually, although people have taken pay cuts to work at SAS Institute because they value the work environment so highly. Salary increases are based on supervisors assessments of an individuals performance, so in that sense, there is a merit pay system. However, SAS Institute tries to deemphasize the importance of financial rewards because most SAS managers dont believe money is a very effective motivator. As David Russo put it, A raise is only a raise for thirty days. After that, its just somebodys salary. Its one thing not to emphasize financial rewards in software development and administration. But SAS Institute eschews the piece rate system even for its sales organization. Account representatives do not receive commissions on sales. Goodnight noted, commissions do not encourage an orientation toward taking the customer and building long-term relationships. Also, a commission culture tends to be more high pressure and high stress than what the leadership wants for their company. Barrett ]oyner, head of North American sales and marketing, described their philosophy and approach to achieving performance: We have sales targets, but mostly as a way of keeping score. I want to make the numbers, but I want to make the numbers the right way†¦. Im not smart enough to invent on a formula. People are constantly finding holes in incentive plans. He commented that many companies used incentive systems a of signaling what was important, that is, as a communications device. Joyner said that instead of using incentive schemes for this purpose Here, we just tell people what we want them to do and what we expect. To further downplay individual short-term performance, SAS Institute does not even post comparative sales data by name. Some observers believe that this kind of pay system does not encourage the best people to join and remain in the organization. Instead, the thinking goes, these high-potential people will go to places where they can do better financially. The re is, of course, no way of definitively answering this concern. However, Barrett ]oyner had the following cor on this issue: As you know, we move people around a lot at the Institute, so even though we have low turnover, account representatives may change assignments. I frequently get calls from 12 customers that say, I dont want to lose my account executive. How many software firms do you know where that happens? Training, Career Development, and Mobility SAS Institute believes in training, but it is almost all internally done. New employees receive an orientation program from senior managers history of the company, its vision, and its values. New employees learn about the products, the organizational structure, the business model, and the customers. Long-time employees really enjoy and value helping with this socialization. A lot of technical training takes place. For instance, in a nine and a half month period in 1997, about 400 technical training seminars were held that had a total of 3,000 people in attendance. In the sales organization, new people receive two weeks of training in Cary, but the company is moving to a five to six-week program delivered over a six-month period to beef up sales training effort. SAS Institute does not offer tuition reimbursement for outside classes. Although it has sent people to outside management or leadership training programs on rare occasion, the emphasis is very much on doing things internally. SAS Institute tries to make it easy for people to move laterally – there are no functional silos. As David Russo noted: There are no silos of research and development, there are no silos of marketing and sales, there are no silos of technical support. Everything is based on a tool kit. If your tool kit fits this divisions model for business and you want to do that, chances are pretty good youll get to do that. And if two years later you see something else you want to do and its across three organizational boundaries, you get to do that†¦. In an intellectual capital organization like ours, the most important thing you can do is engage the individuals energy so that they can apply it to the thing that excites them most, their work. SAS Institute believes that people will have three or four careers during their working lives it would like for all of those careers to be within SAS Institute. The company has a very flat organizational structure. Depending on the particular division, there are only three or four levels in the company. Jim Goodnight has twenty-seven direct reports. He noted that my management style is to let people manage their own departments and divisions with as little interference from me as possible. The company structure is fairly informal, and the firm does not have a formal organization chart. One of the most important aspects of careers at SAS Institute every manager is a working manager-they do their own jobs as managing others. This model even extends to Goodnight, who spends about 40 percent of his time programming and leading product development teams. He noted, running a big company like this is pretty boring. Another dimension is the ability to move from an individual contributor role to a managerial role, and back, without penalty. A number of people have preferred less managerial responsibility and more programming activity, and this is possible. This practice is consistent with Russos previously cited philosophy of letting people do what theyre good at and what they want to do-and permitting them to discover what they like an d are good at by doing it. 13 As one might imagine in a company with a strong culture, fit is important in hiring, promotion, and retention decisions. SAS Institute wants people who are team players, not those who seek to stand out, to be particularly important, or to be treated like stars. Barret Joyner encourages people to think about what they really want out of their jobs and to be clear and direct about this. In considering this question, one former employee said, I want to be able to have performance that permits me to do whatever I want. When I walk down the hall, I want to feel like Im the man. ]oyner told this individual that this sounded like a wonderful goal and that he (Barrett) would him achieve it-at another organization. As David Russo has SAS Institute is not a good place for someone who wants to feel like a star feel or particularly important. At SAS Institute, everyone is important and the contributions of all are valued and recognized. Outsourcing and the Use of Temporary Help SAS has a simple policy with respect to the practice of using contract programmers supplied by so-called body shops (for instance, in India or Pakistan), a practice common in high technology, particularly the Silicon Valley. It doesnt use them. It also has a simple policy respect to contracting things out-it doesnt. SAS Institute used to have an outside public relations firm, but has now taken this back inside. SAS Institute does its own training; develops and prints its own materials, including marketing materials and product manuals; and even runs its own publishing organization that publishes books about the SAS program, including those written by outsiders. Why does it do this? Barrett Joyner said, If you want something done right, own it and control it. He noted that most companies contracted out activities in an effort to save on costs. They frequently got products or services that may have cost less, but were also of lesser quality. The question soon becomes, How little can one get away with? SAS Institute is not that focused on short-term costs in the first place, so cost savings are less critical. It is focused on doing things in a quality fashion, and it believes the best way to ensure quality is to manage the process internally. But why not contract out non-essential or non-core activities such as health care, day care, the food service, and so forth? The answer is actually quite simple: Those activities are viewed as being core at SAS Institute. If the company is organized around the attraction and retention of talent not through throwing money at people but by providing a good work environment, then activities involved in building that work environment are actually quite central to the companys operations. Many people at SAS comment on how other firms make poor decisions about what are and are not core activities and get themselves into trouble in the process of ostensibly saving money. 14 ANNEX EXCERPTS FROM THE 2009 SAS INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT Source : http://www. sas. com/corporate/annual-report-current. pdf 15 Leadership and innOVaTiOn Our customers can count on us – today and tomorrow. Our leadership is built on the combined strengths of our software, our domain expertise and more than 34 years of experience helping customers across organizations, industries and governments around the globe succeed. We listen to customers to understand their needs, and we give our employees the freedom to explore new ideas to address those needs. While our company continues to grow, we remain true to our long-standing goal of helping customers transform how their businesses work and sustain a culture of factbased decision making. Our business analytics framework provides customers with a flexible and straightforward path for achieving their key objectives and gaining maximum return from their information assets. Today, SAS is the world’s largest privately held software company, with more than 11,000 employees and staffed offices in 55 countries. Together, we provide software and services to more than 45,000 sites in 119 countries. And the guiding principles that launched this company in 1976 are still the foundation of our growth and success: ? Commitment to customers. ? Appreciation of and dedication to employees. ? Adherence to the highest standards of quality and performance of our software. ? Continual innovation that creates lasting value. As the economy continues on its journey toward recovery, we pledge to maintain and enhance these principles, for they have proven their value in helping us achieve success since the company’s inception in 1976 and will continue to do so for many years to come. For more than 34 years, SAS has given our customers THE POWER TO KNOW ®. www. sas. com | annual report | 2009 Jim Goodnight, CEO and founder of SAS. LeTTer FrOm The CeO Our optimism and determination in the face of an uncertain economy paid off last year, and we finished 2009 – our 34th consecutive year of growth – with global revenues of US$2. 31 billion, up 2. 2 percent over 2008 results. Our revenue from software sales alone jumped 3. 3 percent at a time when the software revenue of other major vendors has been declining. Customers are ncreasingly turning to SAS ® solutions to maximize effective customer relations, more effectively manage operations and engage in better risk management. Software revenue was strong in several areas, including customer intelligence, credit risk, supply chain and text analytics, attesting that companies striving to survive in a down economy, and succeed in times of recovery and growth, need such solutions to answer complex business problems, spur innovation and enable success. Growth rates of our industry-based software solutions were highest in financial services, government, health care, insurance and retail. Strong sales to financial services firms demonstrates the confidence these companies have in our ability to help them solve intricate business issues and navigate changes in customer needs, business models and regulatory oversight. The public sector showed growing interest in using data as a key strategic asset for combating fraud, halting declining tax revenues, managing service levels and achieving greater transparency. And retailers turned to our software solutions to improve margins and counter the effects of sluggish consumer spending by taking into account regional, local and even storelevel buying preferences of their customers. IDC, Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2008 Vendor Shares, Doc # 218598, June 2009, www. sas. com/news/analysts/idc-ww-bi-tools-2008. pdf 2 www. sas. com/news/analysts/chartis-risk-0609. pdf 3 www. sas. com/news/analysts/chartis-credit-risk-0709. pdf 4 www. sas. com/news/analysts/chartis-risk-1109. pdf 5 Gartner Research, â€Å"Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management,† by Kimberly Collins and Adam Sarner, July 15, 2009. See the full report at www. gartner. com/technology/media-products/reprints/sas/vol6/article2/article2. tml 6 Gartner Research, â€Å"Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools,† by Ted Friedman and Andreas Bitterer, June 9, 2009. See the full report at www. gartner. com/technology/media-products/reprints/dataflux/167657. html SAS is well-positioned to continue helping our customers succeed. Our strong commitment to research and development – we reinvested 23 percent of revenue back into RD last year – resulted in another year of prodigious innovation. We released 21 new products or bundles last year, including SAS 9. 2 platform Phase 2, which included classic SAS products as well as 87 usiness intelligence and data integration solutions. The capabilities of SAS software were again validated in 2009 by leading analyst firms. In June, IDC called SAS the â€Å"overwhelming lead er† in advanced analytics,1 saying that enterprises choose SAS Analytics more often than the other 16 analytics suppliers combined. Chartis Research again named SAS as the leader in its Operational Risk Management Systems 2009 report in June. 2 SAS was also named as a leader in the firm’s July report, Credit Risk Management Systems 2009,3 and in November, SAS was ranked No. in the prestigious RiskTech100 rankings, an annual international listing of the top risk technology vendors. 4 Gartner positioned SAS in the Visionaries quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management 5 and placed our DataFlux subsidiary in the Leaders quadrant of its Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools 6 in June. In September, the firm placed SAS in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Operational Risk Management Software for Financial Services. 7 And in December, Gartner placed SAS and DataFlux in the Visionaries quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Too ls. www. sas. com | annual report | 2009 In November, Forrester Research gave SAS top rank for cost and profitability analysis and a top score in product strategy and vision. 9 And in December, Forrester ranked SAS Customer Intelligence No. 1 in optimization, analytics and reporting, and installed base. 10 SAS also had a strong showing in application usability, real-time analytics, budget management and forecasting, architecture and campaign design. Of the top 100 companies on the 2009 FORTUNE Global 500 ®, 92 are current SAS customers. And in the US, 80 percent of new commercial accounts were small and midsized businesses, showing that organizations with annual sales of less than $500 million also recognize the value of business analytics from SAS. In all, nearly 1,400 new customers around the world chose SAS. Customers new to SAS in 2009 included: Anglopharma, Bombay Stock Exchange, the Clorox Company of Canada Ltd. , Hong Kong Efficiency Unit, Fiat Automoveis, Lego Systems Inc. , Loyalty New Zealand, Niagara Health System, Dex One Corp. (formerly R. H. Donnelley), Telefonica, TV 2 AS (Norway), WestJet, Wet Seal Inc. , Wistron Corp. nd Vattenfall. Looking forward, we believe that 2010 will be another strong year for SAS. While economic recovery is under way in many parts of the world, it won’t be quick and it won’t be easy. Organizations will react by continuing to focus on improving customer-centricity, enhancing top-line revenue growth and optimizing their businesses in 2010. SAS is well-positioned to play a critical part in recovery efforts. By providing our customers with a business analytics framework that can grow over time, we empower them to meet both the demands of today’s economy and the opportunities of tomorrow with: ? Data management capabilities that improve the flow of and access to information throughout organizations. ? Greater insights into data for making quick, meaningful decisions. ? Risk analysis and optimization solutions to save money. ? Customer intelligence and marketing automation to drive sustainable revenue growth. ? Social network analysis to uncover fraud and terrorist threats as well as business opportunities. Finally, as a debt-free global company, SAS offers our customers another valuable commodity: stability. We attribute this to our 34-year focus on listening to our customers and meeting their needs with robust, reliable and relevant products and services. SAS is poised for growth again in 2010. The momentum is greater than it has ever been for this company, and the future looks promising indeed. Sincerely, James H. Goodnight, PhD, CEO 2009 | annual report | www. sas. com 7 Gartner Research, â€Å"Magic Quadrant for Operational Risk Management Software for Financial Services,† by Douglas McKibben and David Furlonger, August 28, 2009. See the full report at www. gartner. om/technology/media-products/reprints/sas/vol6/article3/article3. html 8 Gartner Research. â€Å"Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools† by Ted Friedman, Mark A. Beyer and Eric Thoo, November 25, 2009. See the full report at www. gartner. com/technology/media-products/reprints/sas/vol6/article5/article5. html 9 The Forrester Wave: Business Performance Solutions, Q4 2009 report, www. sas. com/news/analysts /forresterwave-bus-perf-q409. pdf 10 The Forrester Wave: Cross-Channel Campaign Management Platforms, Q4 2009 report, www. sas. com/news/analysts/forresterwave-cm-104330-1209. pdf TabiLiTy and GrOwTh – 34 years and COunTinG SAS achieved its 34th consecutive year of growth in 2009, with global revenue reaching US$2. 31 billion, up 2. 2 percent over 2008. SAS saw healthy sales growth in multiple industries. Sales to the retail industry increased by 12 percent, despite a very challenging environment for that sector. Sales to the health care industry were up by 8 percent. And sales to the oil and gas industry increased by more than 30 percent. Our growing network of alliance and channel partners played an integral role in 25 percent of new sales and half of the top 50 global deals. Specifically, there are strategic initiatives including partnerships with leading business consultancies and systems integrators, expansion of in-database activities across multiple partner platforms, and a continued focus on building third-party channels. Partnerships with global systems integrators such as Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte and Wipro Technologies offer customers the specialized resources and expertise to deploy SAS Business Analytics throughout the enterprise. In addition, SAS continues to drive the momentum of in-database analytic innovation with technology partners such as Teradata and Netezza. Global Presence, Global success SAS’ revenue growth remained distributed around the globe. The Americas accounted for 44 percent of total revenue; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) contributed 45 percent; and 11 percent came from the Asia Pacific region. Of the 120 countries where SAS does business, 83 percent saw growth in software sales. Among mature markets, growth rates for software sales were highest in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. In developing markets, doubledigit percentage gains were achieved in most of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Africa and pockets of Asia and Latin America. Even in a challenging global economy, SAS did not waver in its commitment to our 11,000 employees and our core belief that happy, healthy employees are more productive. In 2009, SAS was again recognized as an employer of choice around the world. In the EMEA region, we received workplace awards for our offices in Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Portugal and Finland. In the Asia Pacific region, we received workplace awards in China, Australia and India. In the Americas, we were recognized in Canada and Mexico, and as this annual report was being roduced, we received notification that we ranked No. 1 on the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For list in the US – our 13th consecutive year on the list. www. sas. com | annual report | 2009 2009 reVenue revenue by region Americas 44% EMEA 45% Asia Pacific 11% Other 1% Health Care 2% Energies Utilities 3% Education 3% revenue by industry Financial Services 42% Retail 4% Life Sciences 6% Manufacturing 6% Communications 7% Services 1 1% revenue Growth 1976-2009 Government 15% 2009 | annual report | www. sas. com

Cox Surname Meaning and Origin

Cox Surname Meaning and Origin There are several possible origins or meanings for the last name Cox. Options include: Form of COCK (little), a term of endearment (i.e. WILLCOX, little Will), often used to denote a leader or chief man.Possibly originated from the Welsh word coch, meaning red.Cox could also be a locality descriptive surname for heap, haycock, or hillcock. Last Name Statistics Old and common last names are often difficult to define, research, or trace. Cox is the 78th most popular surname in the United States. Cox is also popular in England, coming in as the 52nd most common surname. Origin: English, French, Welsh, and/or IrishAlternate Spellings: Cocks Genealogy Resources Genealogy Forum: Search this popular genealogy forum for the Cox surname to find others who might be researching your ancestors, or post your own Cox query.RootsWeb hosts several free mailing lists for researchers of the Cox surname.FamilySearch hosts records, queries, and lineage-linked family trees posted for the Cox surname and its variations. Resources and Further Reading Beider, Alexander. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia. Avotaynu, 2004.Cottle, Basil. The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames. Penguin, 1967.Hanks, Patrick, and Flavia Hodges. A Dictionary of Surnames. Oxford University, 1989.Hanks, Patrick, editor. Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University, 2003.Menk, Lars. A Dictionary of German-Jewish Surnames. Bilingual ed., Avotaynu, 2005.Smith, Elsdon C. American Surnames. Genealogical, 1997.

Theory and practice of human rights Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Theory and practice of human rights - Essay Example I shall then conclude by proffering an argument on how these premises can be limited so as to offer a reasonable and justifiable balance between the two competing interest. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights states that Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. Persons are all equally entitled to human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. Accordingly, the normative totality of Human Rights revolves around: the Universality, indivisibility, interdependence, equality and obligations of parties and the State. UDHR though not a legally binding document, it values are immense. First, it set the pace for the States’ recognition and protection of Human Rights based on the Rule of Law. At the time of its promulgation, the UN General Assembly then proclaimed the Declaration to be; â€Å"a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of member states themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.† The 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights1, for example, noted that it is the duty of States to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems. It provides in its preamble that; â€Å"Emphasizing the responsibilities of all States, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations, to develop and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental

Strategy Intent Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Strategy Intent - Essay Example The concept of â€Å"strategic intent† was propounded by Hamel and Prahalad in 1989, which produced rippled effect in the galleries of corporate and strategic management. The over ambition of companies to succeed in all departments of business made them obsessed with the concept of global leadership irrespective of their capabilities; Hamel and Prahalad had given a different name to this desire of corporations to lead worldwide as â€Å"strategic intent†. Different conglomerates phrased their strategic intent like Komatsu gave the title â€Å"Encircle Caterpillar†, Canon initiated â€Å"Beat Xerox†. All these titles show the strategic intent of the companies. Interesting thing perceived in the description of the term by Hamel and Prahalad is elaborating the concept through examples of such companies having a strategic intent. Another important element of the concept is that it is a continuous active management process by corporations with the intention and focus straight on the winning spirit by inspiring employees for attaining targets by communicating with them; it is creating the stimulus for emotional and intellectual exercise to prepare for the future. A comparison between the strategic architecture that Prahalad and Hamel (1990) have discussed in ‘The Core Competence of the Corporation’ with the strategic intent by Hamel and Prahalad (1989) becomes natural. The strategic architecture on the one hand adds new functionalities, new competencies, transformation in current competencies and restructuring of communication with customers while strategic intent is symbolic of the heart of the components of strategic management of corporations. It enlarges to meet the challenges within limited available resources and capabilities. For getting competitive advantage managers are trying different strategies and go to the extent of partnering with

A Nation of Wimps Essay Example for Free

A Nation of Wimps Essay A Nation Of Wimps Parents are going to extreme lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, that has the net effect of making kids more fragile, and that may be why they’re braking down so easily. People learn through experience, and through failure they learn how to cope with things later on in life, themselves. And whether we realize that or not, this nation is turning out to be producing more and more wimps. The Fragility Factor College is one of the biggest fragility factors. It leads to psychological distress, binge drinking, substance abuse, self-mutilation, etc. Relationship problems don’t go away, anorexia and bulimia keep on coming. Welcome to the Hothouse Parents are overprotecting their children, they are intruding too much into their lives. They started to call colleges and asking about their grades. American parents today expect their children to be perfect, and that puts to much pressure on them. Arrivederci, Playtime Children don’t play enough these days. Over 40, 000 schools in the U. S. don’t have recess anymore. Commercialization of children’s play leads to more stressed out children. Plays develops cognitive thinking, and is important for normal development of children. The Eternal Umbilicus Cellphones today make children addictive to their parents. Students are typically in contact with their parents several times a day, which makes them constantly homesick, and keeps them away from learning how to manage for themselves. All that is the pathway to depression, it weakens self-regulation, it influences relationships and friendships, and make children become more frustrated and impatient which then leads to the fail of relationships and even greater depression. From Scrutiny to Anxiety and Beyond What creates anxious children is parents hovering and protecting them from stressful experiences. This group of children experiences stress in situations most kids find unthreatening. They grow up shrinking from social contact, and lack confidence. They are later on easily influenced by others. Overparenting creates lifelong vulnerability to anxiety and depression. Endless Adolescence Adulthood no longer begins after adolescence ends. Kids are starting to extend childhood, because they are making up for the things they weren’t supposed to do as children, and are creating a whole new stage called the â€Å"early adulthood. † Boom Boom Boomerang Play is connected to the making of healthy relationships later on in life. The less time children spend in play, the less socially competent they become. Through play we learn how to read feelings and negotiate conflicts. Taking the play out of childhood is bound to create development lags. Just Whose Shark Tank Is It Anyway? Competition has become a stressful and significant part of our everyday lives. Parents imagine that their children must be swimming in a big shark tank. Kids today are more ambivalent about the college race than are parents. Nowadays, parents are actually locking their kids into fragility, and by that the kids never learn how to cope with anxiety. Putting Worry in its Place Parents need to abandon the idea of perfection and give up some the invasive control. Children are far less integrated into adult society than they used to be, and by that parents have introduced a tendency to assume that children can’t manage difficult situations. Parents need to remember that one of the goals of higher educations is developing the capacity of thinking for ourselves. Conclusion Indeed parents today have became overprotective of their children, they overshelter them and overpraise them. They cheat for their children by making up fake diseases and getting them into colleges by relations. All of that is creating a whole different type of kids, that aren’t individuals anymore, we are creating the nation of kinds depending on their parents, a nation of wimps,

Allies Mitt Essay -- essays research papers

Allie's Mitt , Catcher In The Rye. Allie's mitt was a very important symbol in Catcher In The Rye, the mitt had poems written all over it. Allie was Holden's little brother, he got leukemia and died in Maine. Allie's mitt symbolizes the innocence that Holden yearns for , Allie's innocence was preserved in the mitt. Allie died when he was young, he was still innocent. By dying young Allie stayed out of the phony, adult world. In some ways Holden wants to be Allie. Holden wanted to preserve his own innocence but he could not. A baseball mitt is a common part of childhood, so it has the "power" to preserve innocence. The most interesting part about Allie's mitt are the poems, a grown up would not be writing poems and reading them during the game, he would be competitive, and all he would want is to win. Allie was to innocent he did not care about winning he just wanted to play baseball. Allie's death was tragic but maybe it is the death that Holden wanted for himself , he wanted to preserve his innocence. One example of Allie's innocence is " He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody" Holden valued the mitt he only showed it to one person outside his family, Jane , "She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie's baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She'd never met Allie or... Allies Mitt Essay -- essays research papers Allie's Mitt , Catcher In The Rye. Allie's mitt was a very important symbol in Catcher In The Rye, the mitt had poems written all over it. Allie was Holden's little brother, he got leukemia and died in Maine. Allie's mitt symbolizes the innocence that Holden yearns for , Allie's innocence was preserved in the mitt. Allie died when he was young, he was still innocent. By dying young Allie stayed out of the phony, adult world. In some ways Holden wants to be Allie. Holden wanted to preserve his own innocence but he could not. A baseball mitt is a common part of childhood, so it has the "power" to preserve innocence. The most interesting part about Allie's mitt are the poems, a grown up would not be writing poems and reading them during the game, he would be competitive, and all he would want is to win. Allie was to innocent he did not care about winning he just wanted to play baseball. Allie's death was tragic but maybe it is the death that Holden wanted for himself , he wanted to preserve his innocence. One example of Allie's innocence is " He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody" Holden valued the mitt he only showed it to one person outside his family, Jane , "She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie's baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She'd never met Allie or...

Not so Good Earth Analysis

The Not So Good Earth For a while there we had 25-inch Chinese peasant families famishing in comfort on the 25-inch screen and even Uncle Billy whose eyesight's going fast by hunching up real close to the convex glass could just about make them out–the riot scene in the capital city for example he saw that better than anything, using the contrast knob to bring them up dark–all those screaming faces and bodies going under the horses' hooves–he did a terrific job on that bit, not so successful though on the quieter parts where they're just starving away igging for roots in the not-so-good earth cooking up a mess of old clay and coming out with all those Confucian analects to everybody's considerable satisfaction (if I remember rightly Grandmother dies with naturally a suspenseful break in the action for a full symphony orchestra plug for Craven A neat as a whistle probably damn glad to be quit of the whole gang with their marvelous patience. ) We never did find out how it finished up†¦ Dad at this stage tripped over the main lead in the dark hauling the whole set down smack on its inscrutable face, iping out in a blue flash and curlicue of smoke 600 million Chinese without a trace†¦ The title contains â€Å"not-so-good† describing the contents of the poem, which is a negative adjective compound. It is a parody of the book â€Å"The Good Earth† by Pearl Buck, which is about the good times, values and Chinese proverbs. The phrase â€Å"For a while there† shows how Western society is apathetic towards the Chinese. â€Å"25-inch Chinese peasant families† explains that the characters in the poem are watching a 25-inch screen television. â€Å"famishing in comfort† is a juxtaposition in line two, whose comfort?Certainly not the Chinese. In line four â€Å"convex glass† relates to the television. Dashes â€Å"-† in the first nine lines represent changes in tone of language and persona of the narrator. â€Å"He saw that better than anything†-there is more concern for Uncle Billy being able to see what’s happening than what is actually happening. In line 11, the main character is bored by the part â€Å"where they’re just starving away†, this shows his lack of compassion for their situation. â€Å"Confucian analects† – Chinese philosopher. Analects are proverbs and/or homely wise sayings.In line 21 â€Å"it† represents the television. From line 21 onwards they seem to be more worried about the television breaking than they do about the real life tragedy of the deaths of so many Chinese peasant families. Line 25 (the last line) concludes with the phrase â€Å"600 million Chinese without a trace†¦ † this portrays the complacency of western society in the way that they don’t realize there is life beyond their own lives, they are so immersed in themselves, that they think that this reportage is only for ente rtainment and once the television brakes the scene just goes off air.They don’t realize that this is still happening after the Television breaks, they don’t feel touched or even realize that this is a real life thing not just some program. Generally: Consider the general attitude: very complacent and detached. The characters are ignorant and apathetic towards the Chinese in the documentary. Revealing the imperfection of western society being too self-absorbed, and preying on their lack of consideration and respect for others. The poem constantly drifts between fact and fiction.Floating in the midst of reality displayed on the television, and the artificial world which our mind creates to block out the poverty and suffering that we are not directly involved with. Throughout the poem the media promotes death scenes and action, while blunting the emotional impact of reality. Dawe uses many colloquialisms â€Å"to be quit of the whole gang† this express the general laid back style of the poem. Tone: Dawe maintains the tension between humor and seriousness.The Not-so-good Earth (1966) Like ‘Televistas' this poem is centred on the common place activity of watching television. It is a concept totally within the audience's experience. Television in our consumer society is our prime source of information and entertainment. Often the two become confused: lives and human tragedy are considered a product, something that will engender interest and thereby generate revenue. The greater the suffering, the more successful the program and the greater market share.Dawe is concerned that we have become desensitised to human suffering because it is presented to us as entertainment: a product rather than an issue. The irony is that we have become emotionally distanced from reality even though the world enters our homes via television. The title and the film description are references to ‘The Good Earth† based on a novel by Pearl Buck. Set dur ing the Japanese advance on China during the late 1930s, it contains ideas that the land sustains life and that suffering is rewarded.This poem describes a family viewing the film, complete with the advertisements, and their reaction (or rather, lack of) to it. They never actually see the end as the father trips over the cord in the darkened room. It is a very satirical poem that creates black humour. Through the characters' complete insensitivity and absence of either empathy or sympathy, Dawe expresses amazement at the complacency of people in our society. There is continual tension between the humour and the seriousness of what is described.For instance, Uncle Billy's sight problems are comical but Dawe's biting satire is evident by its juxtaposition to the riot scene's seriousness he is straining to see. The uncle's triviality is as obvious as the insensitivity of the watchers. Modern man is more concerned with superficial appearances, ‘using the contrast knob to bring the m up dark', the ‘mess of old clay' that is dinner, than in meanings attached to them. There seems an inability to comprehend the events as having happened to real people.The narrator is used to suggest modern man is apathetic and completely self absorbed. He is revealed as such by his inability to comprehend the implication of his comments. He speaks about the Chinese ‘famishing in comfort on the 25-inch screen'. The paradox is clear to the audience. The reference to the ‘terrific job' on the ‘screaming faces and bodies going under the horses' hooves' reveals a similar insensitivity. The lack of punctuation helps create the idea that society does not pause to consider the reality of other people's suffering.Instead, like the narrator, we just move quickly onto the next item of information. Here Dawe mocks the movie's idea that suffering reaps reward: how can it if nobody even notices? The fact the narrator does not seem at all concerned about what happened in the unseen ending further demonstrates his lack of engagement. The ‘blue flash' eliminating the picture represents how quickly the situation has been forgotten. The blank screen and the ‘dead' set may symbolise modern peoples’ inability to empathise with others. Our concerns are trite and centred on ourselves.We’re indifferent to the suffering of others and view it only as a source of entertainment. Dawe also suggests that the media nurtures this insensitivity. It is ironic that in an age (thanks to the media)where people know far more about what happens all over the world that people seem to care little beyond their own insular world. There is a sense of confusion between reality and fiction. It is ironic that advertisements for luxury indulgences like ‘Craven A' cigarettes have been interjected into what should be deeply moving moments of the film.The advertisement is described as having a ‘full symphony orchestra' which is a farcical contras t to the grandmother's death. The media does not treat tragedy as real and this blunts society's reactions and emotional involvement. Linked to both these ideas is the way people distance themselves from unpleasantness and shirk responsibility. Dawe's use of the aside'( if I remember rightly.. )' implies that the narrator deliberately avoids discussion of the seriousness of the movie's events. Not-so-good-Earth' is a clever poem that maintains the audience's interest. It is colloquial, using everyday expressions like ‘For a while there', ‘a terrific job' and ‘probably damn glad'. This makes it very accessible. It is also personal with the use of the first person. It is, at least at first glance, humorous, but the humour darkens as the poem progresses. The title is a pun, referring both to the movie and our modern society. Overall, whilst the events are clearly exaggerated, they stimulate the audience to evaluate their own attitudes.