...the opening line of the preface, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel is nothing if not an ambitious work: “This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years” (Diamond, 9). This is a bit misleading, however, as Diamond’s motivation is not simply to provide an overview of our species since the dawn of civilization; his aim is to answer the question of “why history unfolded differently on different continents” (Diamond, 9). In the near five-hundred pages of the book, he makes a valiant effort to answer the question in terms of geography (with the adjoining environmental explanations). Indeed, his argument is exceptionally persuasive, and provides strong evidence that Eurasia’s dominance over other parts...
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...Name: __________________________ World History Unit Two: Global Inequality [pic] An Overview of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel Why do some nations have so much material wealth while so many others have so little? This was the question Jared Diamond posed in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. After identifying a point in time when all societies were roughly equal (over 13,000 years ago), Diamond identified the key variables that allowed some societies to develop highly complex, material-rich societies, while others developed at much slower rates. Guns, Germs, and Steel uncovers how Europeans came to dominate every other group on the planet by virtue of their access to what Diamond terms the “Agents of Conquest”: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua, New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo (material goods), but we black people had little cargo (material goods) of our own?" Diamond realized that Yali's question penetrated the heart of a great mystery of human history -- the roots of global inequality. Why were Europeans the ones with all the cargo? Why had they taken over so much of the world, instead of the native people of New Guinea? How did Europeans end up with what Diamond terms the Agents of Conquest: Guns, Germs and Steel...
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...Diamond Foods, Inc.: Anatomy and Motivations of Earnings Manipulation Mahendra R. Gujarathi ABSTRACT: Diamond Foods is America’s largest walnut processor specializing in processing, marketing, and distributing nuts and snack products. This real-world case presents financial reporting issues around the commodities cost shifting strategy used by Diamond’s management to falsify earnings. By delaying the recognition of a portion of the cost of walnuts acquired into later accounting periods, Diamond Foods materially underreported the cost of sales and overstated earnings in fiscal 2010 and 2011. The primary learning goal of the case is to help students understand the anatomy and motivations of earnings manipulation. Specifically, students will have the opportunity to (1) apply the FASB’s Conceptual Framework to a real-world context, (2) determine the nature of errors and compute their numerical effects on financial statements, (3) understand motivations for earnings management and actions needed for managing earnings of future years, (4) explain the anatomy of financial reporting fraud by reconstructing journal entries, (5) prepare comparative financial statements for retroactive restatements, (6) explain the rationale for clawback provisions in compensation contracts, and (7) understand the difference between the real and accrual-based earnings management. Keywords: earnings management; financial statement fraud; restatements; error correction; clawback provision; Conceptual Framework...
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...Service Operations Strategies Final Exam Please answer all three questions fully. Take your time. Think about your responses and ‘try out’ some of these responses. They may look ‘better’ or ….not as complete a day or two after you initially write them. As such, your response , often, requires some iteration and refining. Question 1 You’ve visited Biscuits & Bath, America’s largest ( ! ) full-service , chain dog care business. You have B&B’s service fee schedule. Please note the below NYT article about “The High Cost of Animal Ownership.” One couple featured in the article spends upwards of $15,000/yr to care for their dog. ( at least they don’t have to pay for college costs ) B&B is a premier and premium-priced service. They make no bones about this. Our visit highlighted the detailed research B&B ( and , in particular, Scott Smith, his partner , and Scott’s wife, Julie …..did in terms of service, operations, health care, and legal issues ) did and continues to do to constantly improve their service and operations. I, also, point out Maersk Lines . Maersk is the world’s largest container shipping service. They provide “womb-to-tomb” service to transport a customer’s goods. A more accurate characterization of Maersk’s service might be point-to-point. Maersk will deliver a container to your location, wait for you to load the container, pick up the container, load it onto a Maersk freight ship, and deliver the container to its destination. You can’t get...
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...simple question asked by Jared’s friend, a local New Guinea politician named Yali: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [goods] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”[p.14]....
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...EVOLUTION AND SELF-INTEREST Richard Dawkins argues that at its most fundamental level, the genetic level, life is self-interested.1 Genes do only one thing; they replicate themselves. These replicators reside in and are carried around by biological vehicles (trees, animals, humans, fungus, etc.). The resources that support these biological vehicles are finite, so the process of life has become a competition among genes to create vehicles that can successfully compete for limited resources and survive to pass on their genetic code. Dawkins coined the term ‘selfish gene’ to emphasize the single, focused object of a gene’s existence. What he means is that the sole purpose of a gene is to make copies of itself using the Darwinian selection process; very selfishly ignoring the consequences this pursuit may have on other living entities. Self-interest is a requirement for survival. This does not mean, of course, that animals and humans cannot be altruistic sometimes, in certain activities.2 It does mean that no living entity can survive for long if it is only purely altruistic. On the other hand, survival is not necessarily jeopardized when an organism is purely self-interested. Altruism, in the absence of self-interest, is not evolutionarily stable in the biological world; it leads to extinction. It is for this reason that all extant life forms must be selfish. Humans, like all creatures, are self-interested; not because it is good to be selfish but because we would not be here if...
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...Collapse- book is about a history topic about how societies choose to fail or survive. The main characters are historical people and unknown kings of Mayan cities or Easter Island villages. Jared Diamond tells the story of the Viking explorer Erik the Red, who discovered Greeland and Vinland (Terranova, in Canada). Another character is captain Olafsson, a norse sailor who wrote the last news about Greenland in 1410. Another main character is Christopher Columbus, who arrived at Hispaniola in 1492, but now this island is two countries, the Dominican Republic and the Haiti. Diamond studied the politics of two presidents. the dominican Rafael Trujillo, who protected the enviroment and the dictator François, Papa Doc, Duvalier, who decided on politics of deforestatation of his country, Haiti. The author considered the bad politics of another main character, king George II, who was interested in sending merinosheeps from Spain to Australia, an idea which was succesful from 1820 to 1950 but then the farmers understood their lands lost fertility. Another main character is Tokuwaga Jeayasu, a shogun of Japan in 1600, who prohibited Christianity in 1600 and protected his country againt deforestation. The book takes us to a lot of places around the globe: Mayan cities, Rwanda, Viking colonies of Vinland or Greenland, Haiti and Dominican Republic, Easter Island and Polynesian colonies in Pacific, and the Chaco villages in New Mexico (United States). The time period was from 800 AC, when...
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...Robert Stark Psychology Final Paper The Biological and Cultural Forces that Differentiate Males and Females Males and females have been different throughout history. The question we study is why and what drives them to be different. There are two forces that make us unique, which are biological and cultural. Studies show that male selections throughout the world are being analyzed studies done by scientists, biologists and sociologists to psychologists. Three books I used to understand this question are “The Third Chimpanzee: The evolution and future of the human animal” by Jared Diamond, “Same Difference: How gender, myths are hurting our relationships, our children, and our jobs” by Rosalind C. Barnett, and “Our Kind” by Marvin Harris. Some questions aren’t just about the biological and cultural aspect but about the social norms as well. In what ways are males and females different? Also what ways are they similar? These questions all can be answered going back to the beginning of time. Evolution is something we need to understand because it is responsible for the observable differences between males and females. A question that everyone wonders is, how did we get here? Jared Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee” answers this question. A strong theory comes from Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and adaptation. Even though species are all different in its own nature they play a special role in life. The species that have the traits to allow them to...
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...fall asleep and wouldn’t ask him questions?...
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...For thousands of years, most people on earth lived in abject poverty, first as hunters and gatherers, then as peasants or laborers. But with the Industrial Revolution, some societies traded this ancient poverty for amazing affluence. Historians and economists have long struggled to understand how this transition occurred and why it took place only in some countries. A scholar who has spent the last 20 years scanning medieval English archives has now emerged with startling answers for both questions. Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution -- the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 -- occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues. Because they grew more common in the centuries before 1800, whether by cultural transmission or evolutionary adaptation, the English population at last became productive enough to escape from poverty, followed quickly by other countries with the same long agrarian past. Dr. Clark’s ideas have been circulating in articles and manuscripts for several years and are to be published as a book next month, "A Farewell to Alms" (Princeton University Press). Economic...
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...Imagine a cherry tree in full bloom, its roots sunk into rich earth and its branches covered with thousands of blossoms, all emitting a lovely fragrance and containing thousands of seeds capable of producing many more cherry trees. The petals begin to fall, covering the ground in a blanket of white flowers and scattering the seeds everywhere. Some of the seeds will take root, but the vast majority will simply break down along with the spent petals, becoming part of the soil that nourishes the tree — along with thousands of other plants and animals. Looking at this scene, do we shake our heads at the senseless waste, mess and inefficiency? Does it look like the tree is working too hard, showing signs of strain or collapse? Of course not. But why not? Well, for one thing, because the whole process is beautiful, abundant and pleasure producing: We enjoy seeing and smelling the trees in bloom, we’re pleased by the idea of the trees multiplying (and producing delicious cherries), and everyone for miles around seems to benefit in the process. The entire lifecycle of the cherry tree is rewarding, and the only “waste” involved is an abundant sort of nutrient cycling that only leads to more good things. Best of all, this show of productivity and generosity seems to come quite naturally to the tree. It shows no signs of discontent or resentment — in fact, it looks like it could keep this up indefinitely with nothing but good, sustainable outcomes. The cherry-tree scenario...
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...EC-408E-INTL ECONOMICS-A-12/S3 DR. HAMID ZANGENEH The Global Financial Crisis & LIBOR London Interbank Offered Rate One Of The Largest Banking Scandals In History, An Emerging Controversy Over Whether Major Financial Institutions Have Been Manipulating The LIBOR, A Key Interest Rate Banks Use To Borrow Money From Each Other That Is ”Used As A Benchmark To Set Payments On About $800 Trillion Worth Of Financial Instruments.” MIT Professor Of Finance Andrew Lo Told CNN Money That The LIBOR-Manipulation Story “Dwarfs By Orders Of Magnitude Any Financial Scams In The History Of Markets” Anthony Bruno 7/21/2012 Abstract Following investigations into Barclays' manipulation of London Interbank Offered Rates (Libor), CFR's Sebastian Mallaby highlights three implications from the unfolding scandal: Conflicts of Interest Within Banks: Barclays' distorted reports on borrowing rates demonstrate the system's failure to prevent damage from conflicts of interest between banks and their traders. "Chinese walls don't work," Mallaby says. "It's a lesson we've learned over and over again in finance." The Role of Regulators: The alleged collusion between the Bank of England and Barclays indicates a critical challenge in the governance of financial markets: Regulators are forced to bend rules to protect banks, "not because they are bribed," says Mallaby, "but because they are blackmailed, in the sense that the banks, by threatening to go under and do untold damage to...
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...THE MOONSTONE by Wilkie Collins THE AUTHOR William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was born in London, the son of a successful landscape painter and member of the Royal Academy, who was also very strict with both his religion and his money. While his son inherited much of his father’s parsimony, he rebelled against the strict morality of his upbringing, and against Victorian morality in general. After the death of his father, he scandalized his family and friends by setting up housekeeping with Caroline Graves, a young woman who already had a daughter, and presumably a husband. Even when the opportunity presented itself later in life, he refused to marry her, encouraged her to marry another man, and then moved in with her again when that marriage failed. In the meantime, he kept a mistress on the side, Martha Rudd, by whom he had three children. At his death, he divided his estate equally between his two mistresses and two families. Through much of his life, he was plagued by bad health. He was small and somewhat deformed, and rheumatism contracted in his thirties caused him to take increasingly-large doses of laudanum. He himself admitted that he was a bit of a hypochondriac, and eventually became a recluse much like Frederick Fairlie in The Woman in White. To please his parents, he tried the tea business for five years and later studied law, but had no love for either pursuit. He was drawn to the arts, as was his brother Charles, who for a time worked among...
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...that diversity resulted from the geography of Africa. Africa is home to five major human groups, blacks, whites, African Pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians. Thirty percent of the world’s language is in Africa. But as the years goes on were losing about 2 per week. Soon as the world gets older there wouldn’t be any languages in Africa. As race continues to grow in Africa there will be different types of languages being made and the previous groups (ethnic groups of language) wouldn’t exist anymore. As said in paragraph 8 of “How Africa Became Black” races are stereotyping, from Black to White, to putting the Zulu, Masai, and Ibo into a black category and Africa's Egyptians and Berbers with each other and with Europe's Swedes with the whites. The question that pertains to this is why are people being judgmental of other races and confusing blacks to whites even though we are all the same? In “How Africa Became Black,” there was major groups are arbitrary anyway because each group always shades...
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...The Diamond of Sustainable Growth A Historical Framework for the study of political economy and economic development George David Smith, Richard Sylla, Robert E. Wright( NYU Stern School of Business For most of its existence, humanity neither enjoyed nor understood economic growth, or society’s capacity for creating wealth. Prior to the 18th century, the aggregate incomes of particular societies may have increased a little for short periods in a few places, but most of the time incomes hovered not far above the subsistence level. Powerful leaders and ruling classes could accumulate vast wealth, but this was normally achieved through the redistribution of incomes from the weak to the powerful, and certainly not through the creation of wealth as we know it today. Going back centuries, to paraphrase the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, human life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Peace and good weather were more likely to summon forth children more than prosperity. Whenever war, pestilence, and drought returned -- and they always did -- people died in droves. To many observers, humanity appeared doomed to spend eternity wet, cold, hungry, and grief-stricken. In the late 18th century, the English proto-economist Thomas Robert Malthus warned that the mass of humanity, quite aside from the foregoing perils, was doomed to a life at the margins of starvation, as surges of population growth would inevitably outstrip the finite sources...
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