Live in the Present with Memories of the Past Essay Example for Free

Live in the Present with Memories of the Past Essay Human Society is a long period of building and developing. From the time man lived in dank caves to nowadays when he lives in such a modern life with a lot of excellent facilities. The modern life, the excellent facilities was not a present from god. It was made by people of all generations who always learned from the past and developed everything they had learned from it. Thus, I totally disagree with the statement above that learning about the past has no value. The first reason for this is that learning about the past brings us all the knowledge and information in the past. Without yesterday, there is no today. A society can develop only when its people inherit and understand the achievements of the precursors because the precursors achievements were the foundation for everything to develop.. For example, before 1964 there was only black-and-white television but until now there are kinds of colour televisions that are slim and innovative such as LCD TV The black-and-white television made the basis and gave inventors idea to develop the modern TV nowadays. Consequently our knowledge, success today is the result of constant work of our ancestors before. Secondly, learning about the past is very essential because it makes us doubt and take consideration into earlier assumptions. For that reason, people will find out mistakes that were made in the past. This will show us which roads not to ever go down again and put human in a right way to develop. Learning about the past is not only learning about the history but also is learning from our and the others mistakes. By this way of learning, people will become more and more experienced and never make the same mistakes again. Additionally, if learning about the past has no value, people in the world could speak, could write by themselves without learning from anyone. This is impossible so the value of the past, in this case are the parents, are undeniable. In a nutshell, the past is always a good teacher and we are still bad students who crave for knowledge. Denying the past also means that we are destroying the present and our future because no one can jump without ground to stand on.

A Literature Review of Association Rules in Mining

A Literature Review of Association Rules in Mining Abstract Mining association rules is an essential job for information discovery. Past transaction data can be analyzed to discover client behaviors such that the superiority of business decision can be improved. The approach of mining association rules focuses on discovering large item sets, which are groups of items that come into view together in a sufficient number of dealings. Association rules are if/then statements that help uncover relationships between seemingly unrelated data in a information repository. In this paper we will show by experimental results the behavior of apriori algorithm. Weshall describes the basic concepts of association rules mining, the basic model of mining association rules. Finally, this paper describes the association rules mining and its techniques. Introduction Association rules mining is an important task in data mining. It is a popular and well researched method for discovering strong associations between variables in large databases. It is intended to discover strong rules between different variables in databases. A large amount of data can easily be analyzed to discover customer purchasing behavior which improve business behavior. The goal of the association rules mining is to identify items that are bought together by sufficiently many customers. The strong relation between different items in the market are existing like the peoples who buy milk also tends to buy bread and eggs in this sentence there is a relation between milk and bread. So association rules are used to identify these relationships between items for the improvement of business behavior. Association rules can be expressed as: R: X==>Y, where: X à ¢Ã…  Ã¢â‚¬Å¡ I, Y I, and X, it is said that if the item set X occurs in a transaction, then Y will inevitably appears in the transaction. Therefore, X is called a prerequisite for the rule; Y is the result of the rule. Support and Confidence are two different interestingness for measure. Support of an item I is the number of transactions that support (contains) I, and Confidence compares the number of times the pair was purchased to the number of times one of the items in the pair was purchased. In probability terms this is referred to as the conditional probability of the pair. For example, if a supermarket database has 100,000 point-of-sale transactions out of which 2,000 include both items A and B and 800 of these include item C, the association rule If A and B are purchased then the item C is also purchased on the same trip has a support of 800 transactions (alternatively 0.8% = 800/100,000) and a confidence of 40% (=800/2,000). A huge number of association rules can be identified if the database is large. So for minimizing association rules minimum Support and Confidence are considered, both are specified by the user which help us to and valuable rules from database. Association Rule Mining Algorithms A-priori Algorithm Principle of Apriori Algorithm: If an item set is frequent, then all of its subsets must also be frequent. Apriori algorithm is a classical and breadth first search association rules algorithm. This algorithm was first proposed by Agrawal et al in 1993.Apriori algorithm strategy is to separate association rule mining tasks into two steps: First discover frequent item sets, and the second is the Generating of Association rules, it extracts high confidence rules from the frequent item sets. The first step for mining frequent item sets the algorithm will produce a large number of Items; the algorithm will execute K iterations where K is the number of items in the second iteration the algorithm produce some frequent item sets with the first selected frequent item set. After the K iteration the algorithm produce the superset of all frequent items. Here the basic idea of generating frequent item sets is: First step, statistics the frequency of the set with an element, and identify those item sets that is not less than the minimum support, that is, the maximum one-dimensional item sets. Then start the cycle processing from the second step until no more maximum item sets generated. The cycle is: in the first step k, k-dimensional candidate is generated form (k-1) dimensional maximum item sets, and then scans the database to get the candidate item set support, and compare with the minimum support, k-dimensional maximum set is found. The apriori algorithm takes advantage of the fact that any subset of a frequent item set is also a frequent item set, therefore it reduce the number of candidates being considered by only exploring the item sets whose support count is greater than the minimum support count snf all infrequent item set can be pruned if it has an infrequent subsets. Apriorialgorithm is breadth-first algorithm, therefore if the database is too large then it suffer from a number of inefficiencies by creating a large number of subsets. Apriori algorithm uses sets intersections to determine support values. It determines the support values of all (K-1) candidates before counting the K candidates. The dataset may be too large thus the problem is that the resulted frequent item set may be exceeded with main memory and wasting of time to Figure 1: Apriori algorithm Pseudo code. Figure 2: Improved version of Apriori Algorithm Hold a large number of candidate set with much frequent item sets. So to overcome this problem the dataset is partitioned in different chunks and each chunk is treated independently. And then the resulted frequent items are merged with one extra scan. Applications: Basket data analysis, cross-marketing, catalog design, sale campaign analysis, Web log (click stream) analysis, and DNA sequence analysis. 2.1.1. Variation in Apriori Algorithm The limitation of appriori algorithm is improved by the improved version ofappriori algorithm. It is to be defined as: Suppose Ck is the candidate item set of size k, and Lk is the frequent item set of size k in the proposed approach the algorithm is improved by reduce the time consuming for candidates item set generation. Here the algorithm firstly scan all transactions to generate L1 which contains all items, and found their support and transaction ID, and then L1 is used as a helper to generate L2, L3.Lk, then generate C2 by joining L1 * L1 to construct 2-itemset C(x,y) where x,y are the items of C2. Before scanning all transaction records to count the support count of each candidate, use L1 to get the transaction IDs of the minimum support count between x and y, and thus scan for C2 only in these specific transactions. The same thing for C3, construct 3-itemset C (x, y, z), where x, y and z are the items of C3 and use L1 to get the transaction IDs of the minimum support count bet ween x, y and z, then scan for C3 only in these specific transactions and repeat these steps until no new frequent item sets are identified. FP-Growth Algorithm FP-growth algorithm is one of the latest and most efficient algorithms in depth-first algorithm. It allows frequent item sets discovery without candidates item set generation. It is a two step approaches, first build a compact data structure called FP-tree and then extract the frequent item sets directly from the FP-tree. Compared with Apriori Algorithm, FP-growth has the following advantages: To avoid multiple dataset scanning it scan only the dataset twice. It increases space and time efficiency. But its difficulty lies in large and sparse datasets, in the mining processing and recursive computations require considerable space. Applications: Basket data analysis, frequent patterns. Association Rules Applications 3.1. Market Based Data Analysis A typical and widely-used example of association rule mining is market basket analysis. It is a technique that discovers relationships between pairs of products purchased together. The technique can be used to identify the items having strong relationship. The idea behind market basket analysis is simple, simply examine the order of products have been purchased together. For example in market basket analysis the fact might be uncover that if a customer buy milkalso tends to buy breads. So using this information we might organize our store that milk and bread next to each other. For doing market basket analysis there is some couple of measures is used, which is frequency, minimum Support and minimum Confidence, frequency is the number of times two products were purchased together, and minimum Support and Confidence are discussed before. Market Basket Analysis print report about given items, for example if we need to find relationship of Milk with others Bread, Eggs and Cheeses, then market basket analysis print a reports. TheReport consists of the products name, Frequency, Support and Confidence. Market Basket Analysis: Milk Product Frequency Support Confidence Breeds 820 82% 91.1% Cheese 800 80% 23.5% Eggs 750 75% 34% The higher the confidence means that there is a probably of strong relationship between the products. In the above example confidence of Milk and Breads shows that in 91% of transactions Milk and Bread are sold together. 3.2 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Customer Relationship Management is a combination of business process and technology that seeks to understand a companys customers from the perspective of who they are, what they do, and what they are like. Here we are focusing on the CRM of banking sector, which are focused to find the preference of different customer, to provide services to the customer to enhance cohision between customers and the bank. Association rules are used to identify customer preferences and customer behavior. Conclusion Association rules mining are a popular and well researched method for discovering strong associations between variables in large databases. In this paper we have describe Association rules mining which is the important task of data mining. Then we describes techniques for the Association rules which is apriori and FP-growth algorithm, the limitation of apriori algorithm was inefficiency in case of large database by checking all k-1 items, the improve apriorialgorithm overcome this problem by finding transactions ids of every frequent item and then for k+1 set generation used that k-1 table and search only those transactions in which the current item are exist. According to this the efficiency of the algorithm is improved. Then we discuss FP-growth algorithm which is depth first search and fastest algorithm, it uses tree to find frequent item sets. In the last the application of association rules Market basket data analysis and Customer Relationship management are discussed in this pa per. References Mohammed Al-Maolegi, Bassam Arkok Jordon, An improved apriori algorithm for association rules International Journal on Natural Language Computing (IJNLC) Vol. 3, No.1, February 2014. Ruowu Zhong and Huiping Wang China Research of Commonly Used Association Rules Mining Algorithm in Data Mining 2012. S. Rao, R. Gupta, Implementing Improved Algorithm Over APRIORI Data Mining Association Rule Algorithm International Journal of Computer Science And Technology, pp. 489-493, Mar. 2012. Jiawei Lian , Michelins Kamber. Data mining: Concepts and Techniques [M]. America: Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 2000. Market basket data analysis http://www.albionresearch.com/market_basket Show-Jane Yen and Arbee L.P. Chen Taiwan An Efficient Data Mining Technique for Discovering Interesting Association Rules2010

Effects of Donald Trumps Trade Policy

Effects of Donald Trumps Trade Policy Normative Effects and Prospects on President Donald Trump’s Protectionism Abstract A newly elected president of the United States of America, Donald Trump has been acknowledged for several radical policies. Concerns from all over the world for his protectionism has risen as he took steps to enforce policies. The United States has been reviewing free trade agreements (FTA) with numerous countries, attempting to impose a tax on foreign products so, domestic manufacturing industries could able to compete and outsell. In short term, it would create the instant profit. There were mainly two concepts of protectionism; imposing a tax on foreign products, and limiting the number of imported goods. However, there were professional worries internationally, even inside of this country as well. There were feasibilities to lose domestic corporations’ willingness to invest in research and development and competitiveness in other countries, resulting in degeneration of domestic industry. Foundation of Study Donald Trump’s Presidential election attracted worldwide attention. There are lots of views that are conflicting each other on the new U.S President’s political outlook. Protectionists argue that protection will lead to greater prosperity and strength (Merry, 2016). Trump’s base is profoundly suspicious of American engagement abroad. He opposed stubbornly of Clinton on foreign policy. He has doubted what the U.S. gets out of core alliances with NATO, Japan and South Korea (Powell, 2016). One the other hand, anti-protectionists assert that the changed policy will boost the rate of inflation and ultimately depress U.S exports. This new condition is an ill bode for the proposed twelve-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, designed to usher in a new generation of free-trade deals (Merry, 2016). This research examines how Trump’s shift in trade policy will affect U.S. Background of the Problem Protectionism is the opposite term with free trade that is trying to close and isolate its country by giving control, like taxing goods and services made from overseas. Trump wants to protect American manufacturers and workers by throwing away the free-trade principle. All of the policies regarding international trade, protectionism in this research, such as the decision to withdraw from the TPP, decision to renegotiate NAFTA and FTA, and decision to impose great amount of tariffs (Panchak, 2016), contain strength and weakness, and entail positive and negative impact on global economy: Therefore, politicians must undergo prudence process of thinking and meeting in every respect, includes (a) advantages on protectionism, (b) disadvantages on protectionism, (c) opposite policy’s merits and demerits (free trade), and (d) solution. Problem Statement The United States, as well as other various countries, had taken action to protect their home industries after the global financial debacle. The international financial crisis caused not only economic uncertainty about the world economy, but also delay on economic recovery after the global financial debacle. Especially, the United States posted a huge amount of trade deficit for several years (Hannon, 2016). Trump attributes the cause to other partner countries. For example, he blames that China had been manipulated their currency selfish interest, and exerts his pressure to administration to trading partners. â€Å"Donald Trump says he’ll declare soon after he takes office that China is a currency manipulator because it is devaluing the yuan against the dollar. He may want to rethink that. These days China is intervening in the capital markets to prevent the yuan from going into free fall. The currency is now close to an eight-year low, down 12% from its peak in January 2014 (Wall Street, 2016).† Today’s enthusiastic debate over US trade policy with the vast tariff debate of the late 19th century. The 2016 presidential campaign trumpets the return of protectionism. Mirroring the paranoia of Republicans past, those who support free trade initiatives are now charged with being part of a great conspiracy to attenuate American democracy (Palen, 2016). The central research question examined in this study is the following: How will the revised policies, originated from â€Å"Make America Great Again† campaign, affect the U.S and other countries? Presentations of Findings Protectionism helps domestic industry in competition by charging high imported tax to foreign products. There is unfortunate story that imports killing the Mon Valley caused by the free trade. It states, â€Å"The more I read of local businesses and factories shutting down, workers being laid off, towns dying as imports soared. The more I began to ask myself, the price of free trade in painful† (Merry, 2016). However, Protectionism’s negative effects would hit even more to the U.S. – the world’s largest economy – while restricting export markets, increasing prices of imported goods and services for consumers and producers. Even for the U.S., three quarters of the world market in financial terms, and 95 percent of the world’s customers in people terms, lies outside its borders, it is not just a domestic matter. A protectionist U.S. economy focused only on its domestic market can never match the advantages of orientation to a global economy. Fo r Germany, 95 percent of its potential market is outside its borders, for Brazil 97 percent, for Australia 98 percent, and for Thailand over 99 percent. Such countries, therefore, applaud Xi Jinping’s unequivocal defense of globalization, not because of deference to China but from national self-interest because globalization really is â€Å"win-win† (Ross, 2017). One of the most important factor when choosing products among different brands, price takes a key role. No one would not want to pay more for the same quality of goods. For example, if the custom of the United States of the America imposes to the automobile of the Japan, not many customers want to buy Toyota’s Camry for forty thousand dollars when you could have Ford’s Fusion with the half price of Japanese cars’. In a first glance, it looks feasible and domestic companies gain the advantages in competition. However, there is a possibility that domestic corporations lose the willingness to invest in research and development (R&D) because they do not need them. If you can win the competition with less or no efforts, you do not want to struggle in R&D. There is an English example in the early era of the car industry. In England, when the automobile was developed in the 1990s, horse cars and automobile were competing. Due to the repulsion of horse car owners, the House of Parliament enacts the law limiting the speed of automobile that cars cannot outrun the horse cars. The law had been enforced for twenty years, leading the failure to compete in the automobile industry. This example does not relate with the protectionism, but it gives a lesson when there is no competition, the competitiveness do not get stronger nor stay the same, it degenerates. In order to remain our competitiveness, ironically, domestic companies should struggle with others. Worse thing than losing competitiveness is other countries can do what we do. If we can impose taxes on foreign imports, they also can impose taxes on American products. Smooth-Hawley Tariff of 1930, for instance, which raised duties on some twenty thousand imported goods, in some instances to record levels. American economists had petitioned the president to veto the bill as economic poison. â€Å"Countries cannot permanently buy from us unless they are permitted to sell to us,† said the economists, echoing the views of that rustic Texan, Roger Mills, and the more we restrict the importation of goods from them by means of even higher tariffs the more we reduce the possibility of our exporting to them (Merry, 2016). Furthermore, we are already losing money on foreign markets, and if we lose our competitiveness for imposed taxes, we would never compete with anyone. The functioning structure of American economy is not supported by manufacturing. We make fortune from the Informat ion Technology (IT), out of state technologies, and finance. For example, Trump administration is reviewing the FTA between South Korea and the United States. We think we are not making fortune for the military we offer for them, and the products we export to them. Stupidly, it is not true that even though we are losing a fortune in trading our goods, but we sell our weapons. I am not talking about small firearms, but I am talking about the fighter flights, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems and so on. The deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense is in South Korea. The approval of the South Korean government to deploy  THAAD  in the country in response to the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of North Korea (LEE, 2017). At the end, we win the war while we lost some battles, losing hundreds of million dollars while earning hundreds of billion dollars. For another example, Mexico is currently the 3rd largest goods trading partner of the US, w ith $531 billion in bilateral goods trade during 2015. Goods exports totaled $236 billion; goods imports totaled $295 billion. â€Å"Interestingly, 40 per cent of the parts in a typical Mexican product originate in US, illustrating that Mexico (and other countries such as Canada) are integrated into the US global supply chains, according to the Commerce Department. Hence, around 6 million US jobs depend on trade just with Mexico, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. Thus, tariffs on Mexican products could ultimately lead to loss of jobs in the US and degenerate the US economy, in addition to the impact on consumers (Shawn, 2017). There is a way to implement the protectionism that limiting the number of foreign goods. If there is a limit of the number of imports, there are limits of the fortune that the foreign countries would make. Likewise, it is a very shortsighted idea, resulting in degeneration of domestic industry again. The invisible hand is well-known terminology for the free market that the economy is controlled by the supply and the demand. Every time the government tried to manipulate for its own favor, the results did not follow the expectation like a football ball. Multiple economists and analysts expressed their pessimism about the potential benefits of protectionism, a trend that is expected to increase in line with populist political movements in Europe and the US. â€Å"Past practice shows that trade protection is both costly and ineffective. High tariffs translate into higher prices both for consumers and companies. Protectionism disproportionately hurts poorer households who spend a greater share of income on traded goods,† said Gary Hufbauer, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and former deputy assistant secretary for international trade and investment policy of the US Treasury (Shawn, 2017). There is a point that the United States was a young and lively nation, rich in resources and geographical advantages, populated by a robust and expansionist people, beneficially situated upon the American continent, facing two oceans. Its destiny seemed secure irrespective of fiscal policies at any given time or the political passions unleashed by the tariff issue (Merry, 2016). Reflections Trumps protectionism would lead negative impacts on domestic and international industries. We must think if we can do on foreign goods, then they also can do on domestic exports like imposing taxes or limiting the number of products. I admire his effort to vitalize United States’ economy with politics, however, his protectionism has too many risks that might result in the collapse of the economy like the one of Japan in the late 1990’s. There was a long-term stagnation and instability of the Japanese economy in the 1990s (so called â€Å"lost decade†). Especially of the protracted deflation and insufficient final domestic consumption, the asset price bubble collapse at the beginning of the 1990s has probably activated and amplified impacts of other complicated processes in the economy. The blast of the bubble has negatively impacted both Japanese financial sector and production and investment activity of Japanese companies and so on (Zuzana, 2012). It is not the government who make decisions to make the America great again with the strong economy, but it is the corporate themselves with lots of creative ideas and competitiveness to compete with foreign businesses. Conclusion To sum up, such a considerable alteration in policy, strategy and tactics will hardly be easy. It will meet strong headwinds in today’s domestic political climate (Ezrati, 2016). We do not know the consequences of our protectionism policy to the domestic economy and international markets. Although there are concerning voices against the policy, quoting trial and error of foreign countries, we would not know the results until we know the result. Some dislike not the only protectionism for losing our ability to fight against others, but also eventually we lose the competition at the end as result of a negative cycle of degeneration induced from eliminated benefits from the fair competition. These might be the reasonable concerns, however, we cannot ignore the instant impact the protectionism would have to our economy because the crowd has spoken with the media of vote. Trump was elected thanks to his radical policies, including the protectionism, and that is what the majority of people want in the United States. As the president of this country, he has to implement what he promised to us during the election. If the protectionism is going to lead bad sequences of our economy, he should reconsider the foreign policies but that is not the end of his job. He needs to come up with different policies pertaining to both domestic and international businesses to facilitate to get out from the era of economic depression. When you watch the news, there are still protestors against Trumps administration, nevertheless, if he can make America great again, the voices against him would disappear along with the concerns questioning his ability as our president. Politics and economy are like betting for the gamble. Even though you have all data and calculated expectation, still players bet for the probabilities. What they do is eliminate the unlikelihood and maximize the probability of what they bet. Protectionism is a gigantic bet playing where participants are coming from the all of the worlds. Alea Iacta Est; it is a dice is cast in Latin. Trump’s protectionism would have impacts on the domestic economy and foreign countries. We do not know the future yet hope these policies make America great again. References Ezrati, M. (2016). Defending free trade. National Interest, 144, 51-55. Hannon, P. (2016, November 26). Global trade rebound threatened by protectionism after trump victory. Wall Street Journal, 1. LEE, B. (2017). THAAD deployment in South Korea. Harvard International Review, 38, 34-37. Merry, R. W. (2016). Protectionism in America. National Interest, 146, 28-36. Palen. M (2016). The return of protectionism. History Today, 66, 6. Panchak, P. (2016). Trump and trade. Industry Week/IW, 265, 6. POWELL, B. (2016). How’s that gram you?. Newsweek Global, 167, 12-15. Ross, J. (2017). Weeks when decades happen: Global thought leadership passes from the U.S. to China at Davos. China Today, 66, 40-43. Shawn, T. (2017). The promise and the peril of the Trump economy.  Fortune, 175. Zuzana, S. (2012). Japan’s lost decade: On the development of the Japanese economy in the 1990s.  Journal of International Relations,  4. (2016). Trump’s Chinese currency manipulation. Wall Street Journal.

Looks and Love Essay -- Personal Narrative Writing

Looks and Love Before I left home for college, my group of friends and I sat down for one last serious heart-to-heart. Sometime during our conversation, the question of college choice arose. Emotions escalated as we realized how far apart we would be in a short time. "Why did you choose to go to MIT?" they asked, "Why couldn't you just stay home at a state university?" Wanting to lighten the mood, I replied, laughing, "That's an easy one...the guys, of course!" And after the initial uproar of laughter died down and the comments about geeks and scrawny computer nerds subsided, I said, "I'm serious." I was. Where else would I find an intelligent and genuine guy who would be mature enough for me? When I arrived in Massachusetts and classes finally started, so did my "man mission." Most of the men I met blew the boys back home out of the water, and one lucky day, I peered past my twirling pink pen and found Him. The more I learned about Him, the more enamored I became. Yet I, a usually outgoing and assertive young woman, felt uncomfortable approaching this wonderful person in that more-than-a-friend kind of way. The worst part about the situation was that I knew exactly where my uneasiness was coming from. Unlike the guys at home, where seventy percent of the young male population had black hair and dark brown eyes, this guy was blonde and fair-skinned, a stark contrast not only to the male population back home, but to me. I am not a racist person, but the petty idea that this guy did not share like features with me, hindered me from appreciating what we did share and made me more aware of the differences between us. So where then, did this silly idea of single race relationships come from? Why did He an... ...zines remind me that this relationship would not be the most socially accepted or ordinary thing to do. But it is ordinary. I know I've fallen for this guy because of his humor and quirkiness, his intelligence, his kindness, and his character, things that I should be looking for. So now, I sit here in my baggy calf-length skater shorts and bright orange hooded sweatshirt and stare across the seats, focusing on his neatly ironed khakis and dark blue dress shirt, and think that our hypothetical relationship would die quickly. I'm still that closed-lipped girl from the beginning of the story when it comes to my feelings because I don't want to be rejected, and for some reason I feel like we might not be right for each other, even though I know we are. And it depresses me that somehow, our ad-driven society is probably convincing him of that same exact thing.

Meaningless Lives in 7 Stories :: essays research papers

?If you remain imprisoned in self denial then days, weeks, months, and years, will continue to be wasted.? In the play, 7 stories, Morris Panych exhibits this denial through each character differently. Man, is the only character who understands how meaningless life really is. All of the characters have lives devoid of real meaning or purpose, although they each have developed an absurd point or notion or focus to validate their own existence. In this play, the characters of Charlotte and Rodney, are avoiding the meaninglessness of their lives by having affairs, drinking, and pretending to kill each other to enhance excitement into their life. Charlotte and Rodney are blind to the meaninglessness of their life because they avoid it by having an affair. They are the first characters introduced to Man in the play, and they go to this place to escape from their own corrupt marriages. ?A lovely picture of your lovely wife,? (pg.6) proves the tone of the situation, and the sarcasm in how much Rodney doesn?t care about his wife and family at home. ?I started having another affair. You can?t believe how complicated that is. Cheating on the man you?re cheating with,? (pg.42) as Charlotte expressed how bored she was wither own life, and that this was the only way that she could avoid her own meaningless life. Another way these characters avoid living their life is by drinking continuously, in a way to make the time pass by faster and forget. ?Haven?t you had enough? She loses count after 10 cocktails,? (pg.11) proving to the audience her own self denial, and how she wastes every day. Unfortunately, there are many, who in society today, do the same thing to get out of a situation they?re trying to hide or a difficult time they?re going through. This relates back to their affair which they?re obviously hiding and trying to get through this time in their life. Thirdly, Charlotte and Rodney pretend to kill each other to try to enhance and excite their boring lives. They use this technique as many people do in every day life to not show their true self, because they think that they will be more interesting this way. ?It gives him a tremendous amount of power to hear me gasping for air,? (pg.40) which shows how Rodney gets excitement into his life by this role-playing. ?The world according to Rodney. Life would be so ?

M.A.English Literature

UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI * CODE:11100001 UNIVERSITY EXAMINATION OF MA Part-I April-2013 204 ADMISSION CARD CCF:0279:02826 CENTRE 22 M/A SEAT NO. 05955 M/F F EXAM No. COLLEGE 0279 CANDIDATE'S NAME PAPER 4001 4002 4003 4005 RATHOD ARCHANA BHUPESH VIMAL SUBJECT NAME OPTIONS SELECTED 26/04/2013 11:00-02:00 29/04/2013 11:00-02:00 03/05/2013 03:00-06:00 22/04/2013 11:00-02:00 INDIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH (1820S ONWARDS) LINGUISTICS AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF TEXTS LITERATURE OF ENGLISH RENAISSANCE AND RESTORATION NINTEEN AND TWENTIETH AMERICAN CENTURY LITERATUREVENUE NOTE : Please visit mu. ac. in OR mu. ac. in/idol FOR VENUE LIST four days before start of examination * : TO BE WRITTEN ON THE BARCODED CUM OMR ANSWERBOOKS SIGNATURE OF PRINCIPAL OF THE COLLEGE ON THE PHOTO NOTE : 1. CANDIDATE MUST PRESERVE AND PRODUCE THIS CARD AT EACH SESSION OF THE EXAMINATION, WITHOUT WHICH ADMISSION TO THE EXAMINATION MAY BE DISALLOWED . T-EXEMPTION IN THEORY P-EXEMPTION IN PRACTICAL E-EXEMPTION IN BOTH Appli cation ID:13812110249 N. B. :Please note the examination no. or the result on IVRS on following Tel. No. 26526866,26526287,26526167,26526282 or Website: www. mu. ac. in INSTRUCTIONS FOR OBSERVANCE DURING THE EXAMINATION 1. On every Answer Book and every supplement Issued to you, enter your Seat Number and other particulars. 2. Do not write your Name or in any way reveal your identity anywhere in the answer book/ Supplements. 3. Write on both sides of each sheet. DO NOT TEAR OUT any sheet from the answer book/ Supplements. 4. Write your answer for each question on a new page.Question Nos. 1,2,3 etc. , and subquestion nos. (a), (b), (c), or (I), (II), (III), etc. should invariably be written in the margin where the answer to the respective question or sub-question begins. 5. Each section should be answered separately (in separate books). Examination do not undertake to examine answers written in the wrong answer book. Tie together the answer book and supplements relating to the same s ection. Enter on the page of the answer book the total number of supplements including the answer book submitted. . All answer books and supplements issued to you, whether written or blank must be handed over back when the final bell is rung. 7. Candidate will NOT be allowed to leave the examination hall during the first half -an-hour or during the last ten minutes of each session of the examination. 8. Rough work, if any, must be done in pencil and on the left hand page of the answer book/ supplement and NOT on the question paper or the blotting-paper. 9.Candidate will be expelled from the examination hall if (I) he/ she brings any books, notes scribbling or scribbled paper; (II) he/ she speaks to or communicates with any other candidate; (III) he/ she takes away an answer book or supplement; (IV) he/ she disobeys any instructions issued by the conductor or the supervisor. 10. A warning bell will be rung ten minutes before the examination begins and the final bell at the close of e ach session of the examination. Writing or answer must stop with the final bell.Candidate must not leave his/ her seat until all answer books are collected by the supervisor. 11. Student must carry their Photo ID Proof as follow : (Driving Licence/ PAN Card/ Aadhaar Card/ Voter ID Card/ Pass Port/ Employee ID Card). 12. If any Correction on Hall Ticket please contact University of Mumbai, Room No: 112, IDOL, Dr. S. D. Sharma Bhavan Vidyanagari Kalina Campus, Santacruz (East), Mumbai-400 098. Contact No: 2654 3241, 2654 3238 13. Please check your Name and Subjects carefully. 14. Please check the date and time with the examination programme on notice board/ visit mu. ac. in/idol

Ex-Basketball Player Essay

Life is like a circus. It has cyclic patterns of ups and downs. People celebrate the ups and struggle with the downs. Sometimes people are happy and there are times when they are not. Sometimes they are lucky, sometimes not. What is important is people learn from life’s experiences and survive its challenges. John Updike’s poem, â€Å"Ex-Basketball Player† (Updike 1993) is a simple portrayal of a man who experienced the ups in his youth and settled with the fall. The poem confirms that a person’s future depends solely on himself and how he wants it to be. This paper discusses this thesis with a thorough analysis of the poem â€Å"Ex-Basketball Player† (Updike 1993) based on the elements theme, characters and style and with reference to the poet’s life and works. Background John Updike (1932-) wrote the poem â€Å"Ex-Basketball Player† in 1954. (J. H. Updike (1932-) 2004) It is among his works that were based on real life situations. Updike wrote other legendary novels and short stories as well. Among them, â€Å"Centaur† (J. H. Updike (1932-) 2004) in 1963 which used legends and myths to depict the life and relationship of a father and a son; â€Å"Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest† (J. H. Updike (1932-) 2004) both won Pulitzer Prize in the ‘80’s and were about the plagues in society or the AIDS in America. (J. H. Updike (1932-) 2004) Though Updike’s poems were not his carrier, Ex-Basketball Player became very popular especially to students and young athletes. According to the article Inside Game, it was even read widely during the recent NCAA finals, more popular than Shakespeare. (Inside Game) Updike’s comment was: I am surprised it still speaks to young readers, since much of the imagery—ESSO gas pumps, small-town garages, lemon phosphates, Nibs, and Juju Beads—has become obsolete. The garage I had in mind (also found in my early novel The Centaur) has long since become a Turkey Hill Minimarket. But perhaps the curve of adolescent success and adult disappointment is still with us, and Flick’s failure to produce a second act in his life’s drama worthy of the first is still a useful American metaphor. (Inside Game) Indeed, the setting and the mood of the poem projects the era of the blue jeans, like that of the Westside Story where most teenagers work as gasoline boys or automotive repairmen. Updike also likened the poem to â€Å"Rabbit, Run† (Inside Game) and his short story â€Å"Ace in the Hole† (Inside Game) which were both written in the ‘50’s. All of these were influenced by the author’s life in Pennsylvania when he was growing up. He said that he used to watch a lot of basketball games because his father was a high school teacher and a ticket taker. These experiences made strong impression to him; â€Å"the glory of home-town athletic stars and their often anti-climactic post-graduation careers†. (Inside Game)