THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE Essays - EastWest Schism,

THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE On Tuesday, May 29 1453 the last bastion on Christianity in the East, Constantinople, fell to the Ottoman Turks led by Sultan Mehmet ( also called Mahomet ). This ended the 1100 year reign of the Byzantium Empire and gave the Ottomans a new capital. One of the most famous churches in history, the Church of Holy Wisdom ( also known as the Hagia Sophia ) was converted into a Mosque. The Turks used a revolutionary weapon in the siege - the cannon. Though the cannon had been in Europe for over a century, this was one of the first times they were used effectively. The Turkish army would not have been able to capture Constantinople had they not had the great cannon with them, had the Byzantinians not been so isolated from the West and had the Turkish soldiers not been so devoted. The cannon was essential in the capture of Constantinople. The walls of the city were massive, and had repulsed invaders since 330 A.D. It would have taken the Turks a lot longer to breech the walls if they did not have the great cannon, and aid from the West would have arrived. The cannon had a long range, and it was used to block access to Constantinople by sea. The very presence of the cannon was very demoralizing for the defenders of the city, "Once more the bells of the churches rang to sound the alarm, but the noise was drowned out by the roar from the great cannon," " the reverberations could be heard for a hundred stadia after it fired."Imagine standing on a wall having cannon balls weighing 12 hundredweight booming towards you. The isolation from the West, the preoccupation of the Western powers with other issues and the clash of the Eastern and Western variations of Christianity helped lead to the fall of Constantinople. The people of Byzantine Empire had some disdain for Western Christianity, and did not want to form a union of churches with the West. The pope (Pius II) was not anxious to send reinforcements until he felt that a true union of the churches had been achieved. Most of the other European powers had their own problems to deal with, and while they wanted to help the citizens of Constantinople they were either to far away (Russia, which became a major Christian center after the fall of Constantinople) or had their own problems to deal with.(there was a revolt in Rome in January 1453) The absolute devotion of the Turkish soldiers to their Sultan and to their God helped Mehmet capture the city. The troops of the sultan were fiercely loyal, especially the fearsome Janissaries,( Christian youths taken from captured villages, and trained for seven years. They were fanatical Muslims and fiercely loyal to the Sultan.) The soldiers believed that God would have a special place in Paradise for those who died attacking the city. "They shall conquer Qostantiniya." "Glory be to the Prince and to the army that achieve it."The sultan offered a fantastic prize to the first man inside the city, this, added to the belief that the soldiers had, that those to fall in battle would rise to Paradise, and the men they killed would be their servants there, had each man whipped into a fanatical fervor, willing to rush the walls, ignoring the Christian missiles. This allowed the Turks to capture the city very quickly, before the West would decided to send aid. As you can see, the three main factors that led the Turks to capture Constantinople were, the devotion of their troops, the isolation of the City ( both physically and spiritually ) and their innovative use of the cannon, a new weapon. This shows us that new weapons have a great power to change the world ( Airplanes, Tanks and Nuclear Missiles all have ) and that fanaticism is a grave danger that society as a whole must try to stop. If men are willing to die to establish fundamentalist states and theocracies how are we to stop them?

Info Overload

Info Overload Seth Godin, a management guru youve probably noticed I enjoy reading, recently spoke about how were enduring cognitive overload. Too many choices. I wholeheartedly agree which is why I recently withdrew from three professional organizations. I also canceled a cruise to the Baltics. What started as the trip of a lifetime turned into chaos. Too many choices. Charters, places to visit in each port, too many ports, meal selections, a long list of chores to take care of before leaving. . . I was exhausted and hadnt left home. Then when the tour agent threw an unforeseen choice at me, one that would take a few more dollars, I canceled. Surprised her. She found all these choices fun. To me, however, they threw a burden on the whole experience that was meant to epitomize relaxation. Turned into anything but. Publishing is like that. Marketing is like that. And if you let it, writing can be like that if you cannot decide what project to focus on. What do you want to do with your writing? Not sure? Talk to writers. Go to a conference. Give yourself a month or two to read everything you can get your hands on. Then shut it off and make your plan. Once you design a path, quit letting more ideas filtrate in that will only make you second guess yourself. Everyone has a better way. Better ways are endless. The nature of humans is to develop a better or easier way to accomplish something. The cycle never stops. Your job is to choose a path, develop the plan to the best of your ability, and follow it. If you follow every piece of new advice out there, youll spin in circles forever.

Management and Leadership development Assignment

Management and Leadership development - Assignment Example As the workforce is the valuable asset of a company, it is vital for the managers to ensure co-ordination among the widely dispersed operations around the world. HR department has to ensure that the changes in the organisations are easily accepted by the employees working within the firms and help them in aligning their tasks with the ever changing and dynamic business environment (Jayawickrama, 2011; Walumbwa et al., 2008). According to Baron and Cayer (2011), leadership development is a process or activity which enhances the leadership quality that is possessed by an individual so that the person can lead a team or show an appropriate course of action to an organisation so that it can move in the right direction. Since, it has become a mandatory requirement in most of the organisations, the activities of the leadership development comprise of MBA programs that are offered at the business schools (Drew, 2011), action learning courses and retreats done by executives (Bolden, 2007; Whitehead, 2009). The leaders have to develop the competencies and skills in their personalities so that they can manage their followers and motivate them to get engaged in activities that will be beneficial for themselves and the community as a whole (Ardichvili & Manderscheid, 2008; Yulk, 2010). There is no precise explanation of the qualities that make a person qualified for the position of a good effective leader (Yammarino et al., 2008). However, it is believed that an effective leader is one who can share perceptions, communicate with others clearly, motivate the subordinates, be responsive to the needs of the group members, encourage team efforts, willing to take risks and possess the ability of setting vision and goals (Popper, 2005; Tahilramani, 2010). It is generally believed that the leaders like any other professional such as an entrepreneur, doctor, engineer, artist and etc. are born and they cannot be made (Dalakoura, 2010). There are some people

Enveloping and PeakVue Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Enveloping and PeakVue - Research Paper Example Due to its high precision, the method is able to detect the emission of stress waves caused by direct contact of adjacent metallic surfaces at an early stage. Generally, through spectral analysis the frequency of repetition of the stress waves is availed. By peakvue, the resonance zones are isolated through use of filters. Capturing the peak values for particular intervals of the selected sampling time is done through the application of high frequency clustering of signals with over one hundred kilo Hertz. The method goes through four stages The initial stage in which the low frequency signals are eliminated by taking the entire signal through a high pass filter. The amplitudes are run through the accelerometer which detects the measurements and is able to classify them according to the initially specified cut-off frequency level. All the measurements reading below the designated cut-off level are classified together. They are effectively eliminated which implies that only the high f requency readings- those above the cut-off level, proceed to the second phase of the analysis procedure. By elimination it means that such values are truncated from the recorded measurements such that their consideration ends at that phase. The second phase that involves the digital conversion of frequency. The high frequency signal is changed from its initial analog form to digital form in order to begin the spectral 0246analysis. Normally, high frequency values will be recorded for particular sections along the surface of the bearing. Therefore whenever the metallic surfaces come into contact during the rotation, the frequencies hit a peak. If special readings were availed at phase two for any specific time duration, it will be analyzed here. If for specified time duration the amplitude levels of the converted signals read beyond a predefined threshold it is then matched to a digital value. The essence of this matching is that it is not always possible to produce signals with equa l frequencies, even when the components are running on a fairly flat or even ground. This could be the result of instantaneous change in the position of the load, continued distribution of the lubricant along the colliding surfaces, and varying positioning of the emerging fault. Therefore, the simplest way to conclude that the frequencies were derived from a ‘certain’ spot along the surface of the bearing is to cluster all measurements within a certain range. These measurements clustered together are then assigned a specific digital value, which identifies them together. The display is rendered once the digital value corresponding to the particular time interval is processed using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm. The FFT algorithm works out the Discreet Fourier Transform and the corresponding inverses. To obtain the Discrete Fourier Transform, a sequence of amplitude values is decomposed to form components of varying frequencies. The frequencies so formed are categorized according to their closeness, that is, according to pre-determined intervals. The classification is done with reference to how often a specific range acquires numerical frequency. For example if the outlier frequency is too scarce, the measurements thus classified can be overlooked and ignored. If there is higher consistency in the numerical frequency of measurements with

Corporate Social and Ethical Responsibilities of the Caarmania Assignment - 2

Corporate Social and Ethical Responsibilities of the Caarmania - Assignment Example The targeted customers of the company are all car lovers from infants to the elderly ones. We identified that car and speed are real passion for many people and toy cars are one way for satisfying this passion. Therefore, the customer groups of the company include all age groups. Scale model cars are mainly targeted at the elderly people while the radio controlled cars are mainly targeted at the age group below 20. Thus Caarmania intends to be a one-stop solution for the car lovers of all age groups. The ethical responsibilities of the company include selling of toys that are not harmful or hazardous to the customer to whom it is sold. We avoid selling products that are manufactured by materials which are potentially harmful for the customers. We make a good analysis of the material quality of the toys before taking the orders. As a social being we understand our commitment towards the society that we operate. Therefore, we support a recycling system under which we take broken or use less toys from the customers and send them to third-party recycling units. This way the plastic and other metal wastes arising out of unused toys are reduced. In order to encourage the customers for this, we also pay such customers based on the toys that are returned. Caarmania had to undergo various challenges in the initial years of its operation. The main challenge faced by the company is to reach the customers. Unlike other toy retailers, Caarmania is targeted on all the age groups. Therefore, marketing activities had to be carried on to reach all the customer groups. To target children, we focused on schools. We sponsored various events conducted at major schools in the cities. We also conducted painting competitions at the cities where we had presence. This way, we were able to reach the children as well as the parents. The second main challenge we faced is the source of fund for expansion. Though we were established in 2007 we adopted an aggressive strategy on the expansion s ide. We wanted to capture the market before the competitors would. Expanding to other market even before breakeven was a challenge. Funding by venture capitalists helped to overcome the challenge of raising fund for expansion. Now we are well established in all the five cities and the business is doing very well on all these cities. (Alessandro, 2006) Employees and their commitment have been the backbone of the success of our company. We have a total of 80 employees including those who are involved in the transport and logistics. Salespersons represent the largest group among our employees. We treat every single employee as a factor of success of our business. In Caarmania, we address each other by their first name irrespective of their designation. From the observation of what we have practiced over years in our company, we understand that employees are motivated by outcomes and expectations.

Determinants of GDP in an Economy

Determinants of GDP in an Economy Research Ethics Introduction GDP (gross domestic product) is the main indicator of any economy’s growth. Every country’s economy works for improving its GDP because it is the type of indicator which shows overall state of affairs the Economy is in or rather the conditions of the State in terms of its Economic Growth. GDP is considered as the national income of any country. GDP is the monetary value of all final goods and services produced in the country[1]; mostly it is counted at annual basis. There are 3 approaches or methods to calculate the GDP of the country, which are as follows: Income approach Product approach Expenditure approach All these have listed methods have their own significance in terms of calculating the GDP. The most widely used method by many countries to count the GDP is; the income approach. The Income approach is based on the method in which all the revenues or income circulating in economy like wages, interest rate, rent and profits are accumulated. The Product Approach counts the value of all final goods that is produced in the economy. This is done so to avoid the double counting of the product value. The Expenditure approach counts all private and public expenditures which were conducted in an Economy. In other words it is all the money spent by the Government for the benefit of the People[2]. GDP is affected by every determinant and variable in the economy. The effectiveness could be low or high it depending on the variable. For example if we were to say that education is one of the factors that affects the GDP so the effectiveness must be very high because it effect in multiple ways like it increases the human capital, it increase the technological levels, it helps to reduce crime in society etc. GDP is usually low in developing countries and high in the developed countries. The level of GDP is a matter of concern for the Economy; although the stability of Economy can be found out by observing variation in GDP[3]. One of the reasons of success of developed countries is also their consistency in terms of GDP levels. However one cannot ignore the fact that there are many factors behind the consistency of GDP. Research Design The design of research is always extracted from literature review section. There is a strong relationship between literature review and research methodology or research design[4]. For designing research for GDP first researchers need to collect and read all the related articles; from where researchers can find out about the factors which are effecting the GDP. The process of reviewing literature is to collect all the bibliography of articles on GDP then start reviewing it one by one. After review of article the researcher should write in literature review about the hypothesis questions which he has identified from the review portion of literature. The data used in articles, methodology applied, findings of the research posting of recommendations and conclusions. These are the important findings of any research article. From reviewing the article it is extracted that GDP is mainly depend on investment, human capital and on interest rate. The data which we use is secondary data and we tend to find out how the GDP of developing countries is affected by investments[5], human capital and education. We use the data of these variables on several previous years to identify or predict the trend of the GDP of the existing year. Hence from review of literature we find that in research design we use the methodology of panel or pool regression because the data is panel in nature. Panel data means the data is based on more than one year (number of periods) and observing more than one country (cross sectional unit). Data Collection There are basically two types of data primary data and secondary data. The primary data are used mostly for qualitative methods and secondary data are used mostly for quantitative data. Primary data are the data which is firsthand experience like data collected from surveys by researcher as far as secondary data which is often found in forms of a published data. Our study is quantitative study and based on secondary data because we use published data from authentic source such as government publications. The procedure of data collection is divided in several parts. Firstly researcher does planning and finalizes the general topic in which researcher has command and deep knowledge, then the researcher finds all the relevant article for that topic and also collect different literature from websites, books, manuals and other resources. After reviewing all these material a concept is developed in the mind of researcher that what variable researcher will use and which cross sectional countries the researcher will select and run the tests on and of course for how many years does he intend to run tests on. i.e. for instance In order to find out the GDP of UK for 2016, the researcher may run tests on from a period of 2010 to 2015 to predict the GDP trends and forecast the outlook of GDP in UK. In the relevant study we find from many resources that investments, human capital and interest rate are the key factors which effect GDP of developing countries. The data we will use for developing countries and for the year 2000 to 2014. The data is available on world development bank. We can extract data from world development indicators. All of the data is available on WDI quite easily. The articles which researcher has studied are used for referencing purposes and given in detail in bibliography section of the Research Project. Strengths and Weaknesses Documentary research, is characterized by the use of documents; collects, selects, analyzes and presents consistent results; because it uses the logical and mental processes of any investigation; analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction, etc., because it performs a process of scientific abstraction, generalization based on the fundamentals; because it is an appropriate data collection that allow rediscover facts suggest problems, orient to other research sources, direct ways to develop research tools and develop scenarios[6]. At the same time, it can be considered as a fundamental part of a much broader process of scientific research, and finishing; it is a research carried out in an orderly and targeted, in order to be based on the construction of knowledge, and based on the use of different techniques: location and setting data, analysis of documents and content[7]. In turn, the bibliographic research allows, among other things, support research to be performed, avoid undertaking investigations already carried out, take cognizance of experiments and made to repeat when necessary, continuing interrupted or incomplete investigations, search for suggestive information, select materials for a theoretical framework, among other purposes.[8] Ethical Consideration In every study there are some ethics of research which the researcher should keep in mind. These ethics are essential components while doing the research. There is a component of relevance which means that the study that researcher is doing it should be related to the literature review and relate to the references and bibliography that have been used in the study. Another component of ethics is completeness which describe that the sources should be complete in the sense that whole study have to be referenced and the study should give complete picture so that it is find interesting by reader[9]. Another component is current approach it means the study should meet the current approaches of subject it should not be old or far behind of today’s modern research in that subject. It should also highlight the recent and latest development in the study. Our study meets all the ethical components efficiently because we give the references o related studies and our research is a complete package and also it is up to date research because the issue persists in several developing countries. Conclusion Conclusion is the last part of study which not only concludes research but also give recommendations to the problem that has been discussed in the study. GDP is the base of any economy and the indicators which researcher pick for testing their effectiveness to GDP are investment, human capital and interest rate. Researcher observes that all these 3 variables are significant but investment and human capital effect GDP in positive way as far as interest rate is concerned it affects the GDP in a negative way because when interest rate increase people tend to save more and decrease their investment. References http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp Landefeld, Steven J., Eugene P. Seskin, and Barbara M. Fraumeni. Taking the pulse of the economy: Measuring GDP.The Journal of Economic Perspectives22, no. 2 (2008): 193-193. Demirgà ¼Ãƒ §-Kunt, Asli, and Enrica Detragiache.The determinants of banking crises-evidence from developing and developed countries. Vol. 106. World Bank Publications, 1997. Janesick, Valerie J. The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor, methodolatry, and meaning. (1994). Tanzi, Vito, and Hamid Davoodi.Corruption, public investment, and growth. Springer Japan, 1998. Creswell, John W.Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage, 2012. Punch, Keith F.Introduction to social research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Sage, 2013. Bryman, Alan.Social research methods. Oxford university press, 2012. Guillemin, Marilys, and Lynn Gillam. Ethics, reflexivity, and â€Å"ethically important moments† in research.Qualitative inquiry10, no. 2 (2004): 261-280. [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp [2] Landefeld, Steven J., Eugene P. Seskin, and Barbara M. Fraumeni. Taking the pulse of the economy: Measuring GDP.The Journal of Economic Perspectives22, no. 2 (2008): 193-193. [3] Demirgà ¼Ãƒ §-Kunt, Asli, and Enrica Detragiache.The determinants of banking crises-evidence from developing and developed countries. Vol. 106. World Bank Publications, 1997. [4] Janesick, Valerie J. The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor, methodolatry, and meaning. (1994). [5] Tanzi, Vito, and Hamid Davoodi.Corruption, public investment, and growth. Springer Japan, 1998. [6] Creswell, John W.Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage, 2012. [7] Punch, Keith F.Introduction to social research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Sage, 2013. [8] Bryman, Alan.Social research methods. Oxford university press, 2012. [9] Guillemin, Marilys, and Lynn Gillam. Ethics, reflexivity, and â€Å"ethically important moments† in research.Qualitative inquiry10, no. 2 (2004): 261-280.

Senseless: A False Sense Of Perception Essay -- essays research papers

Senseless: A False Sense of Perception   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I feel as though I have no choice but to be a skeptic about our ability to know the world on the sense experience given the information that is being presented. Our senses are touching, hearing, smelling and tasting, I believe it is quite possible that a person could think they see, touch, and smell something such as a glass of bear but there be no glass of beer present, therefore their perception of this glass of beer is false. There is a good possibility that this person is suffering from any of the numerous possible sensations, auditory, visual or tactile, experienced without external stimulus and caused by mental derangement, intoxication or fever, in other words this person could be hallucinating.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are many ways that the senses can be tricked into believing things that are not true, an example is when a person takes the drug LSD, this drug is one which alters the state of the mind and tricks it into visually perceiving things which are not real such as pink elephants, green rats, gold skin and so on. Hallucinations may occur when pressure is applied to different sections, drawing different reactions from the person being affected, these reactions are caused by the affected person seeing things which they perceive to be real . Hallucinations are only one way by which the visual perception of an object can be altered there are many more ways by which the visual percep...