...The focus of this critique is on the film Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and Vincent Cassel. A movie about a young woman’s consuming desire for perfection as a ballerina in the role of a lifetime. Throughout this film the mise-en-scene was raw and grainy with diverse camera angles that gave an out of control feel that added to the instability within the scenes. As the film progresses the viewer becomes increasingly unsure of the reality that the Nina character is experiencing. The tight quarters of the sets, apart from the practice room, emphasized and helped to showcase the pressure at the studio and the controlling atmosphere at home. The editing in this film was linear and showed the gradual and increasing mental instability of Nina. At times it was difficult to know where in her mental decline she was at and what she was experiencing versus what was only in her mind. Had the film been edited in a nonlinear fashion it would have added a tremendous amount of confusion for the viewer and destroyed the continuity of her experiences and gradual mental deterioration. Sound is effectively used in scenes depicting the reality of particular events. The harsh sounds of the cutting and clipping of Nina’s fingernails sounded like the snapping of small bones. The sound of grinding the bottoms of the ballet slippers in the resin box, the scraping, scratching sound of the knife slicing the bottoms of the shoes were...
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...Black Swann events are rare events, highly impactful and unpredictable but can be prepared for. A true Black Swan event have three features, first it must surprise the viewer, second must have an extreme impact and lastly the nature of the event is predictable after it has already happened. Black Swan events implicate a major loss or damage to an asset, they progress rapidly and for a period of time, the astonishing fact is that after the event has occurred then the antecedent evidence is noted to have been in existence all along (Taleb, 2007). Nicholas Taleb, a Lebanise American is a scholar and statistician. According to him a black swan event is an event that will cause a great impact, is unpredictable and inspires the viewer to have willed to take precautions if only he had seen the event coming. He condemned the methods of risk management applied by industries, saying that they can easily predict an event but due to ignorance occurrence of black swan events presides. Yes, it is possible for managers to proactively forecast Black Swan events, by taking advantage of positive events and withstanding challenging events is a key way to starting its management, it also involves realization of their knowledge culmination and appreciating their ignorance. Below is a discussion on how managers can plan for Black swan event; First pointing most probable effects of business disruptions, developing a strategic plan and actions to prevent or reduce risk occurrence (Taleb, 2007). This...
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...Business and management terms dictionary 21-Gun Salute - Traditional honour given to royalty and heads of state, derived from the old signal of peaceful intent, when multiple firing practically removed capability for immediate threat due to re-loading time. 24-Carat/Karat - The purest form of gold (karat is US-English spelling, too soft for jewellery, hence gold jewellery is made of 22-carat, 18-carat, or 9-carat gold, etc., in which other metals such as copper are mixed. Carat is a measure of purity in which 24 parts equate (virtually) to 100% gold. 18-carat is therefore 75% gold. Less than 10-carat gold is generally not sold as gold. The carat measure of diamonds is different, for which carat is a measure of weight (1 carat = 200mg). 24-hour Society - Refers to a way of life available to many in the modern world in which people can work socialize, shop, bank, etc., 24 hours a day. The phenomenon has caused significant new thinking in business, management, marketing, etc., and continues to do so. ...
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...This essay is based on the 2007 book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960 - ). It is hardly an obscure tome, having been on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks. Before I get to the essence of this essay I believe explaining what the term “Black Swan” means and saying a few words about the author would be in order. It was once thought in the Old World that only white swans existed. Then from Australia came the realization that there were black swans. And no, they were not white swans made black by bootblack or any other artificial coloring medium. After millennia of observations in the West of millions of white swans, the sighting of one black swan was enough to invalidate this long and firmly held belief. In a broader sense then A Black Swan is a sudden, monumental, and completely unexpected event. WWI, WWII, and 9/11 were Black Swans. If one were to win a multi-million dollars lottery that would be a personal Black Swan (Black Swans are not all negative, although given the troubles experienced by some of these huge lottery winners, this might also be negative). But a Black Swan is more than this – it goes to the heart of and challenges the putative acceptance of Gaussian probabilities. Least you think Gaussian or bell shaped probability functions are theoretical only and not important in real life, then consider that not only mathematics, but engineering, medicine, social sciences, economomics, the insurance...
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...THE B L A C K SWAN The HIGHLY I mpact IM of the PROBABLE Nassim Nicholas Taleb U.S.A. $26.95 Canada $34.95 is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpre dictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9 / 1 1 . For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. A BLACK SWAN Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate oppor tunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool our selves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this reve latory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers...
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...The Art of Thinking Clearly Critical Review Colby Wallace Northern Alberta Institute of Technology Abstract This paper is a critical review on Rolf Dobelli’s novel, The Art of Thinking Clearly. It is composed of a literature review and a critical analysis. The literature review section will be a composition of research gathered to: have a better understanding of the books sources, test for sloppy reasoning and get a good understanding of how the book is perceived through reviews. All research will be done through the novel itself, N.A.I.Ts library database and reputable online sources. The information found in the literature review will then be evidence used to determine the answers to the seven key critical questions: 1. What is the source of the article? 2. What kind of publication is it for what audience? 3. What is the main point (thesis) of the article? 4. Are there any new insights about the topic that you did not have before reading it? 5. Do you agree or disagree with its position and evaluation of the topic? 6. How reliable is this particular source as a guide to the truth of the topic? 7. Also, which, if any, of the sloppy reasoning errors can be found in the article? The paper will close with a conclusion that reiterates the papers key points. The Art of Thinking Clearly Critical Review Dobelli, R. (2013). The Art of Thinking Clearly. London: Sceptre. The Art of Thinking Clearly (TAOTC) takes a philosophical look at...
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...A Black Swan is a sudden, and an unexpected event with a major impact and consequences. There are negative black swans such as wars, natural disasters, and pandemic, and there are positive black swans such as the internet, Harry Potter books, and scientific discoveries. All those phenomena have deeply impacted the world, and transformed lives. Nassin Nicholas Taleb was forced out of Lebanon because of a civil war that was thought unimaginable due to the secular characteristic of its society The author first experience of the Black Swan was the civil war in Lebanon in which different religious factions were fighting one another. At the beginning everyone thought that it will be short, since all the communities were living in harmony. As every Black Swan the impact is tremendous like it was the case in this civil war were family were force to moved out which also created mistrust between communities. the author has also focused a big part of the book describing two worlds. The first world is the Mediocristan in which everything is predictable or for the most part. In this world people earnings are correlated to their work, and in this segment events can be explained using the Gaussian distribution curve. The second world is the Extremistan, in which events are highly unpredictable, and their impact are sudden and can be catastrophic. One of this even would be 9/11 or the black Monday and Tuesday, when the U.S stock crashed causing a 22% decline of the market. For Taleb, Extremistan...
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...What is a Black Swan? My first thought when it was mentioned in class during the semester was the film Black Swan that hit theatres in 2011. I, of course, was completely wrong. A Black Swan in the business world, or as Taleb explains, anywhere in the world is an event that comes as surprise effects things drastically and is often looked upon as something that should have been seen coming in hindsight. The Black Swan theory was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and is defined as an event that breaks off from what usually happened in a certain scenario and that is nearly impossible to predict. The theory is most commonly used in the business sense to describe markets, however, Taleb uses it in a sense to describe every sort of event that can happen in the world. The Black Swan is typically characterized by three criteria. These are rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective predictability. These Black Swan events allow for Taleb to discredit many things that are used in the financial world today, such as Gaussian’s bell curve. The theory of the Black Swan has been proved very important topic and is used and talked about by many people in not only the business world but in everything. Taleb gives an example of what the Black Swan name comes from by describing the actual myth of the black swan. For as long as people had known there was no other type of swan besides a white one. Until Australia was discovered no one had ever seen a black swan and it used as a common...
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...The theory of black swan events was developed by Nassim Taleb to explain the unpredictability of very rare high impact events that are normally beyond normal human expectations. The theory of black swan events has become a metaphor for unexpected events that cause shock and awe to victims and/or observers, and that these victims/observers who after experiencing the shock and awe of the unexpected event, tend to rationalize or find explanations that fit the ocurrence of the mishap among normal events. In its true sense as its developer- Nassim Taleb- intends it to mean, the "black swan theory" refers only to unexpected events of very large magnitude and consequence and whose occurrence in nature is so rare as to be considered not just outliers but extreme outliers. This means that Black swan events are so extreme that their probability is not computable using scientific methods. Black Swan events are also so called because they are events that fall within our blind spots, are oblivious not only to the mind but also to thought due to psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs. Black swan events were introduced by Nassim Taleb in his 2004 book, Fooled By Randomness, which concerned financial events. In his 2007 book (revised and completed in 2010), The Black Swan, Taleb extended the metaphor to events outside of financial markets. Taleb regards...
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...Wikipedia Epacris impressa, also known as common heath, is a plant of the heath family, Ericaceae, that is native to southeast Australia: the states of Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales. French botanist Jacques Labillardière collected the species in 1793 and described it in 1805. Four forms have been identified, but no subspecies are recognised. Growing in heathland, shrubland or open forest, it is generally a small shrub around 0.5 to 1 m (1 ft 8 in – 3 ft 3 in) tall, with small stiff leaves. The red, pink or white tube-like flowers appear from late autumn to early spring. Honeyeaters, particularly the eastern spinebill, feed upon the nectar of the flowers. It regenerates after bushfire by seed or by resprouting. A pink-flowered form is the floral emblem of the state of Victoria. E. impressa is difficult to propagate reliably, which has limited its use in horticulture and revegetation. It grows best in well-drained but moist soil in a semishaded position. A highly regarded garden plant, the common heath was first cultivated in England in 1825 with over seventy named cultivars, most of which have now vanished. (Full article...) * Recently featured: * Eardwulf of Northumbria * Carolina Panthers * British contribution to the Manhattan Project * Archive * By email * More featured articles... | ------------------------------------------------- Did you know... | U.S. National Bank Building * ... that the U.S. National Bank Building...
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...A Company of Swans Chapter One There was no lovelier view in England, Harriet knew this. To her right, the soaring towers of King's College Chapel and the immaculate lawns sloping down to the river's edge; to her left, the blue and gold of the scillas and daffodils splashed in rich abundance between the trees of the Fellows' Gardens. Yet as she leaned over the stone parapet of the bridge on which she stood, her face was pensive and her feet— and this was unusual in the daughter of a professor of classics in the year 1912— were folded in the fifth position. She was a thin girl, brown-haired and brown-eyed, whose gravity and gentleness could not always conceal her questing spirit and eagerness for life. Sensibly dressed in a blue caped coat and tarn o'shanter bought to last, a leather music case propped against the wall beside her, she was a familiar figure to the passers-by: to ancient Dr. Ferguson, tottering across the willow-fringed bridge in inner pursuit of an errant Indo-Germanic verb; to a gardener trimming the edges of the grass, who raised his cap to her. Professor Morton's clever daughter; Miss Morton's biddable niece. To grow up in Cambridge was to be fortunate indeed. To be able to look at this marvelous city each day was a blessing of which one should never tire. Harriet, crumbling bread into the water for the world's most blase ducks, had told herself this again and again. But it is not cities which make the destinies of eighteen-year-old girls, it is people— and...
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...ПРАКТИЧЕСКИЙ КУРС АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА 4 курс Под редакцией В.Д. АРАКИНА Издание четвертое, переработанное и дополненное Допущено Министерством образования Российской Федерации в качестве учебника для студентов педагогических вузов по специальности «Иностранные языки» Сканирование, распознавание, редактирование Июнь 2007 Москва гуманитарный издательский центр ВЛАДОС 2000 Практический курс английского языка. 4 курс под ред. В.Д. Аракина ББК 81.2Англ-923 П69 В.Д. Аракин, И.А. Новикова, Г.В. Аксенова-Пашковская, С.Н. Бронникова, Ю.Ф. Гурьева, Е.М. Дианова, Л.Т. Костина, И.Н. Верещагина, М.С. Страшникова, С.И. Петрушин Рецензент кафедра английского языка Астраханского государственного педагогического института им. С.М. Кирова (зав. кафедрой канд. филол. наук Е.М. Стпомпель) Практический курс английского языка. 4 курс: П69 Учеб. для педвузов по спец. «Иностр. яз.» / Под ред. В.Д. Аракина. - 4-е изд., перераб. и доп. - М.: Гуманит, изд. центр ВЛАДОС, 2000. 336 с.: ил. ISBN 5-691-00222-8. Серия учебников предполагает преемственность в изучении английского языка с I по V курс. Цель учебника - обучение устной речи на основе развития необходимых автоматизированных речевых навыков, развитие техники чтения, а также навыков письменной речи. Учебник предназначен для студентов педагогических вузов. ББК 81.2Англ-923 2 Практический курс английского языка. 4 курс под ред. В.Д. Аракина ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ Настоящая книга является четвертой частью серии комплексных учебников...
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...Media History Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Mass media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 1.1.2 1.1.3 1.1.4 1.1.5 1.1.6 1.1.7 1.1.8 1.1.9 Issues with definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Forms of mass media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Professions involving mass media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Influence and sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical issues and criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 1 2 6 6 7 8 10 10 10 10 11 11 12 12 12 12 16 16 17 17 17 17 17 17 18 19 20 21 21 21 1.1.10 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.11 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.12 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.13 External links . . . . . . . . ....
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...Bloodlines of Illuminati by: Fritz Springmeier, 1995 Introduction: I am pleased & honored to present this book to those in the world who love the truth. This is a book for lovers of the Truth. This is a book for those who are already familiar with my past writings. An Illuminati Grand Master once said that the world is a stage and we are all actors. Of course this was not an original thought, but it certainly is a way of describing the Illuminati view of how the world works. The people of the world are an audience to which the Illuminati entertain with propaganda. Just one of the thousands of recent examples of this type of acting done for the public was President Bill Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address. The speech was designed to push all of the warm fuzzy buttons of his listening audience that he could. All the green lights for acceptance were systematically pushed by the President’s speech with the help of a controlled congressional audience. The truth on the other hand doesn’t always tickle the ear and warm the ego of its listeners. The light of truth in this book will be too bright for some people who will want to return to the safe comfort of their darkness. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I deal with real facts, not theory. Some of the people I write about, I have met. Some of the people I expose are alive and very dangerous. The darkness has never liked the light. Yet, many of the secrets of the Illuminati are locked up tightly simply because secrecy is a way...
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...ight Right Word Wrong Word Words and structures confused and misused by learners of English L. G. Alexander LONGMAN Addison Wesley Longman Limited Edinburgh Gate, Harlow Essex CM20 2JE, England and Associated Companies throughout the world. © Longman Group UK Limited 1994 All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers. First published 1994 Fifth impression 1997 Illustrated by Chris Ryley British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Alexander, L. G. Right Word Wrong Word: Words and Structures Confused and Misused by Learners of English. - (Longman English Grammar Series) I. Title II. Ryley, Chris III. Series 428.24 ISBN 0-582-21860-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alexander, L.G. Right word wrong word: words and structures confused and misused by learners of English/L.G. Alexander. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-58221860-8 1. English language-Usage. 2. English language-Errors of usage. I. Title. PE1460.A48 1993 428.2'4-dc20 93-11963 CIP We have been unable to trace the copyright holder of the text for Exercise 52 Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, Nobody and would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so. Set in Times New Roman, TrueType Produced through Longman Malaysia, ETS ISBN 0 582 21860 8 ...
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