Brigham and Houston Essay Example for Free

Brigham and Houston Essay 1. Whenever we are interested in buying a bond from the bond market, the bonds issuer promises to pay back the principal (or par value) when the bond matures (Brigham and Houston, 2001). During this time, the issuer is obliged to pay interest in order to compensate the use of money. The interest payment is made on coupon rate which is fixed. There is an inverse relationship between the coupon rate and the bond prices, when: †¢ Interest rate increase, leads to rise in income, whereas the price of the bond declines. †¢ Interest rate decrease, leads to decline in income, whereas the price of the bond rises. Also we need to consider that the coupon rate is inversely related to duration because higher coupon rates lead to quicker recovery of the bond’s value, resulting in a shorter duration, relative to lower coupon rates. If coupon rate is greater than the market rate then it is favourable for issuer and if coupon rate is less than the market rate then it is favourable for purchaser (Brigham and Houston, 2001). The reason behind the variations in the coupon rates of various bonds is the market interest rate; company’s performance, time length, and credit worthiness of the issuer. So, all these factors have an implication on the bond yields. 2. Ratings of these bonds are determined on the basis of both qualitative and quantitative factors some of which are listed below: †¢ If a company uses conservative accounting policies, its reported earnings will be higher than if it uses less conservative procedures. †¢ Various ratios including the debt ratio and the Times Interest Earned (TIE) ratio also have some implications on these bond ratings. †¢ If company explores any new sites containing oil, gas, coal fields etc. †¢ Increase in the company’s sales net profit increase both domestically and internationally also uplift the bond ratings and it showed that debt holder show the confidence on the company’s policy. Bond ratings might take a downward leap when: †¢ There is a signal of bankruptcy, internal mismanagement and financial distress in the firm (Helfert, 2001). †¢ When the company does not abide by the law, i. e. it breaches the laws, this may be related to environment, etc. †¢ When the product life cycle is going downwards and company can’t add more products in their product line. †¢ Negative bond covenants also hits the bond ratings of the company. †¢ Labour unrest or strikes may cause instability in the bonds ratings. †¢ Economic recession in the country. 3. We know that whenever the interest rate rises, bond prices tend to fall, and when rates fall, bond prices tend to rise (Helfert, 2001). This primarily occurs due to the economic condition of the country and also because of the market sentiments. If the price of the bond goes down it is less attractive (pays less interest) in comparison with current offerings and when the price of the bond goes up it is more attractive (pays more interest) in comparison with current offerings. This may also be described as when the coupon rate is greater than market rate then it is favourable for issuer and if coupon rate is lesser than market rate then it is favourable for the purchaser. Some bonds are sold below par value, which means (at discount) or greater than par value, which means (at premium). This mainly occurs due to the risk perceived for the debt of that particular organization. Market interest rate fluctuations usually effect the performance of the bonds in the secondary markets. Federal bank monetary and fiscal policy, inflation rate, recession in the economy, etc are the factors that may force organizations to sell the bonds at discount or at premium. One must also consider that sale of bonds on discount or at premium also has some impact on the yield and also the maturity of the bond, the shorter a bonds maturity, the less its duration. Bonds with higher yields also have lower durations. Also the company’s performance reflects in bond valuations, i. e. its bond ratings, bond covenants and credit worthiness etc (Helfert, 2001). 4. The yield to maturity (YTM) is a reflection of the return on investment, that is earned at the current price, incase the bond is held by the issuer to its date of maturity and redeemed at par value. In other words, YTM is the discount rate that equates the present value of future inflows from the bond equal to its present price.

HYPNOSIS :: essays research papers

INTRODUCTION : Albert Einstein reckoned that humans use only about 10% of their brains. According to some reports, while hypnotised, we could gain access to the other 90%. Every human being who is mentally sound can be hypnotised to some degree. You can use hypnosis for a lot of things, for instance to control weight, pain, sleep, and to raise confidence. You can also use it to quit smoking, develop concentration and memory. In fact, you can use it for anything that depends on your own efforts. I) ORIGINS OF HYPNOSIS: The art and science of hypnosis is both old and new. *Old because it was used in ancient time and has a pedigree that stretches back to the beginning of mankind’s conscious development *New because only over the past 100 years has it been subject to the full force of scientific scrutiny, after discovery that the unconscious mind, emotions and personal history directly affect a person's state of mental, emotional and physical health. A) Old origins _ Hypnosis has existed very early in religious rituals. However, the earliest known description of hypnosis date back 6000 years to rites performed in Egyptian sleep temples. _The Indus Vedas ,a knowledge sacred book written around 1500 BC, mentions the use of hypnotic techniques and procedures. _According to some specialists, accounts of what we would now call hypnosis can be found in the Bible and in the Talmud. _In the past, hypnosis is always associated with the occult: witchdoctors and shamans (medicine man)practised hypnosis :†ritual hypnosis and dance were integral elements of shaman’s communication with spirits†. B) New origins- modern use of hypnosis There are two leading men in the scientific study of hypnosis: _ 1734-1815: Franz Anton Mesmer, born in Vienna. Mesmer is considered the father of hypnosis. He is remembered for the term â€Å"Mesmerism† which means a person who is raptly attentive, or who is temporally deprived of his normal conscious qualities. He described a process of inducing trance through a series of passes he made with his hands . He succeed in treating a considerable variety of ailments. _ 1932-1974: Milton Erickson, a psychologist and psychiatrist pioneered the art of indirect suggestions in hypnosis. He is considered the father of modern hypnosis. His methods bypassed the conscious mind through the use of both verbal and non-verbal pacing techniques including metaphor , confusion, and many others. He has immensely influenced the practice of contemporary hypnotherapy. II) HYPNOSIS: A) Curent examples As long as there as been human beings, there has been hypnosis, we use this commonly occurring state of mind, unknowingly, all the time.

Essay on Wonder Woman

Her mission is to bring love, peace, and sexual equality to a world torn by the hatred of men. The heroine Princess Diana of Themyscira, more famously known as Wonder Woman, has gone through various reimagining and different retellings in both media and comic books. But all of these have the same basic origin. She was born and lived the majority of her life on the isolated paradise island of Themyscira, an island inhabited entirely of Amazonian women.Everything changed one day when pilot, Captain Steve Trevor crashed on the mysterious island. Soon after he crashed, as he was being held and treated on the island, Queen Hippilyta held a tournament to decide who would have the honor of escorting Captain Trevor back to the United States. Against her mother’s wishes, Princess Diana participated in said tournament and won. At this point the narrative diverges depending on its retelling.In the 1975 pilot, set in World War II, named, The New Original Wonder Woman directed by Leonard H orn, Wonder Woman fights Nazis during the World War II era soon after leaving the island. In the 2009 animated movie, Wonder Woman, directed by Lauren Montgomery, Wonder Woman fights to stop the reign of the Greek god of war, Ares and his army of undead Amazons. Wonder Woman has always been widely considered as a feminist icon, thus these movies are supposed to reflect such a message. Thus each movie shows how the times and sexual equality has changed over the years.These can be shown by the relationship between Princess Diana and Steve Trevor in which one movie portrays them fighting on equal footing against a common threat much like co-workers and the other not so much which is apparent in a multitude of fighting scenes; Wonder Woman’s behavior and personality through both movies but mostly with her passive behavior in one fight scene in the 1975 pilot and her aggressive behavior in the 2009 animated movie; and Steve Trevor’s difference in behavior and personality bu t mostly toward women and is most apparent in the 2009’s hospital scene.In the 1975 pilot episode, The New Original Wonder Woman, the relationship between Steve Trevor and Princess Diana seems to be focus on the fact that Wonder Woman is more so smitten and dependent on Trevor in order to be happy. This can be clearly seen when she pretty much stalks him, after his safe return to the U. S. , by disguising herself as his nurse while he’s recuperating and at the end where she disguises herself as his personal assistant, Diana Prince.This acts as a contrast to the 2009 DC animated movie, Wonder Woman where Steve Trevor is smitten by her but instead of being dependent on her, he acts as her sidekick, as they fight Ares as equals, but usually Wonder Woman showing her superior strength and fighting skills. This further shown when they are about to first encounter Ares and thus have to infiltrate a military base. They violently take down the soldiers silently but cooperativel y, Steve with his combat knife and Wonder Woman with her boomerang like tiara.Princess Diana of Themyscira is portrayed very differently in both adaptations of the same character. In the 1975 adaptation, Wonder Woman was rarely allowed to engage in hand-to-hand combat, instead relying on simply throwing bad guys around. But in the 2009 animated movie it embraces the fact that she is a skilled warrior and not only can she throw punches but more surprisingly allowed to receive them too. In the 2009 adaptation of the super heroine, she is a strong, smart, aggressive independent woman who needed no man.For example in the 2009 animated movie, when Princess Diana and Steve Trevor are about to get mugged in a dark alley, the muggers say that if they do what they say, no one will get hurt; and she replies with, â€Å"Maybe I want someone to get hurt. † But in contrast, the 1975 Wonder Woman was a soft-hearted, kind, naive, passive young woman who needed a man in order to take action. For example in the 1975 pilot, when Diana quit her circus job and is subdues her ex-boss after he tries to pull a firearm on her, she claims that she was taught to avoid conflict and did not like fighting or hurting others.In the 2009 movie she is not in need of a man or in love with Steve Trevor right off the bat, but instead he earns her love by proving himself by helping in the hunt down Ares. She also does not stalk him like the 1975 counter-part but instead it’s him following her around but instead of stalking her, helping her; and in the end she is not in disguise from him as his assistant but instead in disguise from everyone else but as a friend, or possibly his girlfriend because it is never clearly explained. Captain Steve Trevor’s 2009 character differs vastly in comparison to his 1975 counter-part.In the 1975 adaptation he was merely a flat characterized damsel in distress who tried to act as a symbol of the American ideal. But in the 2009 animated movie h e was more fleshed out and given more characterization and more of a major role in the plot. The 2009 version of Trevor was a witty, brave, and a symbol of sexual equality. Also Steve Trevor in this movie more so acted as Wonder Woman’s sidekick in the fact that many of the times in which there was action they both worked cooperatively to defeat any threat.In the 1975 movie, Steve Trevor never or rarely ever talked about sexual equality while Wonder Woman talked more so like a feminist extremist. But in the 2009 animated movie, after Wonder Woman keeps talking down about men and claiming Steve Trevor was a sexist, he had enough and expressed his mind more than his 1975 counter-part. In the scene, Wonder Woman wakes up in a hospital bed after their first encounter with Aries.Then she starts berating him on the fact that he didn’t stop Aries and that he merely saved her because she was a woman and if she were a man he would have acted differently. This causes Steve Trevo r to have enough of her ranting about men and himself, and thus he goes and pretty much sums up the theme of the whole movie. The outraged Trevor tells her, â€Å"Cutting yourselves off from the outside world was cowardly! Not to mention STUPID! [Yeah] like less communication between men and women is what the world needed.And I didn’t save you because I thought you were some damsel in distress. I saved you because†¦because I care about you, Diana. And I’m not going to abandon a friend in need. Man or woman. † This quote says a lot about Trevor in that the viewer’s view of him prior to this moment, being a womanizer, was not in fact his actual personality and that there was more depth to this man than meets the eye. This also expresses the change toward sexual equality we have strived for through the years since the time of the 1975 pilot.Both movies featured Wonder Woman as a symbol of feminism and sexual equality. But both movies were vastly differe nt in their take on the heroic icon, due to the time period they were conceived. Movies like these tend to come off as either overly preachy or decide to blame all the world’s ills on man. In the 1975 adaptation it tried to portray her as the heroine that was in the comic books, but in the movie they were successful in that feat but only in describing her background but was unable to show her tough-as-nails  personality due to restrictions during the time period; and due to this, showing Wonder Woman acting as a contradiction in which she is in love with a man right off the bat, but is sexist against men and think women are more superior.But in the 2009 animated movie they were able to take a more balanced view. Steve unlike his 1975 counter-part had a more active role and was a more rounded, fleshed out character that was witty and quirky but also loyal and brave.The faults of men are shown in ample detail, as well as the faults of women were shown equally as examples such as Etta Candy’s overall flirtatious uselessness and Persephone’s final words of admonishment to Hippolyte. Both genders are represented as flawed and both movies themes are expressed through the 2009 Steve Trevor’s speech to Diana. In the end of it all, the world needs more understanding and congregation between men and women rather than isolation and distrust. In both media and literature, Wonder Woman will always be that icon of feminism and sexual equality.

Writing With Lists Using the Series in Descriptions

In descriptive prose, writers sometimes employ lists (or series) to bring a person or a place to live through the sheer abundance of precise details. According to Robert Belknap in The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing (Yale University Press, 2004), lists may compile a history, gather evidence, order and organize phenomena, present an agenda of apparent formlessness, and express a multiplicity of voices and experiences. Of course, like any device, list structures can be overworked. Too many of them will soon exhaust a readers patience. But used selectively and arranged thoughtfully, lists can be downright fun—as the following examples demonstrate. Enjoy these excerpts from works by John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Christopher Fowler, James Thurber, and Jean Shepherd. Then see if youre ready to create a list or two of your own. 1.  In A Soft Spring Night in Shillington, the first essay in his memoir Self-Consciousness (Knopf, 1989), novelist John Updike describes his return in 1980 to the small Pennsylvania town where he had grown up 40 years earlier. In the following passage, Updike relies on lists to convey his memory of the slow pinwheel galaxy of seasonal merchandise in Henrys Variety Store along with the sense of lifes full promise and extent that the shops small treasures evoked... Henrys Variety Store By John Updike A few housefronts farther on, what had been Henrys Variety Store in the 1940s was still a variety store, with the same narrow flight of cement steps going up to the door beside a big display window. Did children still marvel within as the holidays wheeled past in a slow pinwheel galaxy of altering candies, cards and artifacts, of back-to-school tablets, footballs, Halloween masks, pumpkins, turkeys, pine trees, tinsel, wrappings reindeer, Santas, and stars, and then the noisemakers and conical hats of New Years celebration, and Valentines and cherries as the days of short February brightened, and then shamrocks, painted eggs, baseballs, flags and firecrackers? There were cases of such bygone candy as coconut strips striped like bacon and belts of licorice with punch-out animals and imitation watermelon slices and chewy gumdrop sombreros. I loved the orderliness with which these things for sale were all arranged. Stacked squarish things excited me—magazines, and Big Little Book s tucked in, fat spines up, beneath the skinny paper-doll coloring books, and box-shaped art erasers with a faint silky powder on them almost like Turkish delight. I was a devotee of packaging, and bought for the four grownups of my family (my parents, my mothers parents) one Depression or wartime Christmas a little squarish silver-papered book of Life Savers, ten flavors packaged in two thick pages of cylinders labeled Butter Rum, Wild Cherry, Wint-O-Green  . . . a  book you could suck and eat! A fat book for all to share, like the Bible. In Henrys Variety Store lifes full promise and extent were indicated: a single omnipresent manufacturer-God seemed to be showing us a fraction of His face, His plenty, leading us with our little purchases up the spiral staircase of years. 2. In the satirical essay The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening (first published in New York Magazine in 1976), Tom Wolfe frequently uses lists (and hyperbole) to pass comic scorn on the materialism and conformity of middle-class Americans in the 1960s and 70s. In the following passage, he itemizes what he sees as some of the more absurd features of a typical suburban house. Observe how Wolfe repeatedly uses the conjunction and to link the items in his lists—a device called polysyndeton. The Suburbs By Tom Wolfe But somehow the workers, incurable slobs that they were, avoided Worker Housing, better known as the projects, as if it had a smell. They were heading out instead to the suburbs the suburbs!—to places like Islip, Long Island, and the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles—and buying houses with clapboard siding and pitched roofs and shingles and gaslight-style front-porch lamps and mailboxes set up on top of lengths of stiffened chain that seemed to defy gravity, and all sorts of other unbelievably cute or antiquey touches, and they loaded these houses with drapes such as baffled all description and wall-to-wall carpet you could lose a shoe in, and they put barbecue pits and fish ponds with concrete cherubs urinating into them on the lawn out back, and they parked twenty-five-foot-long cars out front and Evinrude cruisers up on tow trailers in the carport just beyond the breezeway. 3. In The Water Room (Doubleday, 2004), a mystery novel by British author  Christopher Fowler, young Kallie Owen finds herself alone and uneasy on a rainy night in her new house on Balaklava Street in London—a house in which the previous occupant had died under peculiar  circumstances.  Notice how Fowler uses juxtaposition to evoke a sense of place, both outdoors and indoors. Memories Filled With Water By Christopher Fowler It seemed as if her trace-memories were entirely filled with water: shops with dripping canopies, passers-by with plastic macs or soaked shoulders, huddled teenagers in bus shelters peering out at the downpour, shiny black umbrellas, children stamping through puddles, buses slooshing past, fishmongers hauling in their displays of sole and plaice  in brine-filled trays, rainwater  boiling across the tines of drains, split gutters with moss hanging, like seaweed, the oily sheen of the canals, dripping railway arches, the high-pressure thunder of water escaping through the lock-gates in Greenwich Park, rain pummelling the opalescent surfaces of the deserted lidos at Brockwell and Parliament Hill, sheltering swans in Clissold Park; and indoors, green-grey patches of rising damp, spreading through wallpaper like cancers, wet tracksuits drying on radiators, steamed-up windows, water seeping under back doors, faint orange stains on the ceiling that marked a leaking pipe, a distant attic drip like a ticking clock. 4. The Years with Ross (1959), by humorist James Thurber, is both an informal history of The New Yorker and an affectionate biography of the magazines founding editor, Harold W. Ross. In these two paragraphs, Thurber uses a number of short lists (primarily tricolons) along with analogies and metaphors to illustrate Rosss keen attention to detail. Working with Harold Ross By James Thurber [T]here was more than clear concentration behind the scowl and the search-light glare that he turned on manuscripts, proofs, and drawings. He had a sound sense, a unique, almost intuitive perception of what was wrong with something, incomplete or out of balance, understated or overemphasized. He reminded me of an army scout riding at the head of a troop of cavalry who suddenly raises his hand in a green and silent valley and says, Indians, although to the ordinary eye and ear there is no faintest sign or sound of anything alarming. Some of us writers were devoted to him, a few disliked him heartily, others came out of his office after conferences as from a sideshow, a juggling act, or a dentists office, but almost everybody would rather have had the benefit of his criticism than that of any other editor on earth. His opinions were voluble, stabbing, and grinding, but they succeeded somehow in refreshing your knowledge of yourself and renewing your interest in your work. Having a manuscript under Rosss scrutiny was like putting your car in the hands of a skilled mechanic, not an automotive engineer with a bachelor of science degree, but a guy who knows what makes a motor go, and sputter, and wheeze, and sometimes come to a dead stop; a man with an ear for the faintest body squeak as well as the loudest engine rattle. When you first gazed, appalled, upon an uncorrected proof of one of your stories or articles, each margin had a thicket of queries and complaints—one writer got one-hundred and forty-four on one profile. It was as though you beheld the works of your car spread all over the garage floor, and the job of getting the thing together again and making it work seemed impossible. Then you realized that Ross was trying to make your Model T or old Stutz Bearcat into a Cadillac or a Rolls-Royce. He was at work with the tools of his unflagging perfectionism, and, after an exchange of growls or snarls, you set to work to join him in his enterpr ise. 5. The passages that follow were drawn from two paragraphs in Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid, a chapter in Jean Shepherds book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (1966). (You may recognize the authors voice from the film version of Shepherds tales, A Christmas Story.) Shepherd relies on lists in the first paragraph to describe a young boy who has been bundled up to confront a northern Indiana winter. In the second paragraph, the boy visits a department store Toyland, and Shepherd demonstrates how a good list can bring a scene to life with sounds as well as sights. Ralphie Goes to Toyland By Jean Shepherd Preparing to go to school was about like getting ready for extended Deep-Sea Diving. Longjohns, corduroy knickers, checkered flannel Lumberjack shirt, four sweaters, fleece-lined leatherette sheepskin, helmet, goggles, mittens with leatherette gauntlets and a large red star with an Indian Chiefs face in the middle, three pair of sox, high-tops, overshoes, and a sixteen-foot scarf wound spirally from left to right until only the faint glint of two eyes peering out of a mound of moving clothing told you that a kid was in the neighborhood. . . . Over the serpentine line roared a great sea of sound: tinkling bells, recorded carols, the hum and clatter of electric trains, whistles tooting, mechanical cows mooing, cash registers dinging, and from far off in the faint distance the Ho-ho-ho-ing of jolly old Saint Nick.