Entertailment Page

Entertainment



👁 :3
Effective Strategic Management
Catagory:Reading
Author:Fred R. David
Posted Date:04/04/2025
Posted By:utopia online

Failing to follow certain guidelines in conducting strategic management can foster criticisms of the process and create problems for the organization. Issues such as “Is strategic management in our firm a people process or a paper process?” should be addressed.Even the most technically perfect strategic plan will serve little purpose if it is not implemented. Many organizations tend to spend an inordinate amount of time, money, and effort on developing the strategic plan, treating the means and circumstances under which it will be implemented as afterthoughts! Change comes through implementation and evaluation, not through the plan. A technically imperfect plan that is implemented well will achieve more than the perfect plan that never gets off the paper on which it is typed. Strategic management must not become a self-perpetuating bureaucratic mechanism. Rather, it must be a self-reflective learning process that familiarizes managers and employees in the organization with key strategic issues and feasible alternatives for resolving those issues. Strategic management must not become ritualistic, stilted, orchestrated, or too formal, predictable, and rigid. Words supported by numbers, rather than numbers supported by words, should represent the medium for explaining strategic issues and organizational responses. A key role of strategists is to facilitate continuous organizational learning and change. R. T. Lenz offered some important guidelines for effective strategic management: Keep the strategic-management process as simple and nonroutine as possible.Eliminate jargon and arcane planning language. Remember, strategic management is a process for fostering learning and action, not merely a formal system for control. To avoid routinized behavior, vary assignments, team membership, meeting formats, and the planning calendar. The process should not be totally predictable, and settings must be changed to stimulate creativity. Emphasize word-oriented plans with numbers as back-up material. If managers cannot express their strategy in a paragraph or so, they either do not have one or do not understand it. Stimulate thinking and action that challenge the assumptions underlying current corporate strategy. Welcome bad news. If strategy is not working, managers desperately need to know it. Further, no pertinent information should be classified as inadmissible merely because it cannot be quantified. Build a corporate culture in which the role of strategic management and its essential purposes are understood. Do not permit “technicians” to co-opt the process. It is ultimately a process for learning and action. Speak of it in these terms. Attend to psychological, social, and political dimensions, as well as the information infrastructure and administrative procedures supporting it. An important guideline for effective strategic management is open-mindedness. A willingness and eagerness to consider new information, new viewpoints, new ideas, and new possibilities is essential; all organizational members must share a spirit of inquiry and learning. Strategists such as chief executive officers, presidents, owners of small businesses, and heads of government agencies must commit themselves to listen to and understand managers’ positions well enough to be able to restate those positions to the managers’ satisfaction. In addition, managers and employees throughout the firm should be able to describe the strategists’ positions to the satisfaction of the strategists. This degree of discipline will promote understanding and learning. No organization has unlimited resources. No firm can take on an unlimited amount of debt or issue an unlimited amount of stock to raise capital. Therefore, no organization can pursue all the strategies that potentially could benefit the firm. Strategic decisions thus always have to be made to eliminate some courses of action and to allocate organizational resources among others. Most organizations can afford to pursue only a few corporatelevel strategies at any given time. It is a critical mistake for managers to pursue too many strategies at the same time, thereby spreading the firm’s resources so thin that all strategies are jeopardized. Joseph Charyk, CEO of the Communication Satellite Corporation (Comsat), said, “We have to face the cold fact that Comsat may not be able to do all it wants. We must make hard choices on which ventures to keep and which to fold.” Strategic decisions require trade-offs such as long-range versus short-range considerations or maximizing profits versus increasing shareholders’ wealth. There are ethics issues too. Strategy trade-offs require subjective judgments and preferences. In many cases, a lack of objectivity in formulating strategy results in a loss of competitive posture and profitability. Most organizations today recognize that strategic-management concepts and techniques can enhance the effectiveness of decisions. Subjective factors such as attitudes toward risk, concern for social responsibility, and organizational culture will always affect strategy-formulation decisions, but organizations need to be as objective as possible in considering qualitative factors.


Type:Technology
👁 :5
The Puzzle of HlysIery Hill
Catagory: History
Author:Brian HaughLon
Posted Date:04/04/2025
Posted By:utopia online

Mystery Hill, or America's Stonehenge, as it has become known, is situated in North Salem, New Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston. This enigmatic megalithic complex is scattered over roughly 30 acres and consists of a disordered mix of standing stones, stone walls, and underground chambers. Mystery Hill is not an isolated site, but one of hundreds of areas of unusual stone arrangements and underground chambers in North America, many of which are in New England. Examples from Massachusetts include the Upton Chamber,stone-lined tunnels in Goshen, and a beehive-style stone chamber in Petersham. There are also stone chambers and walls at Gungywamp in Groton, Connecticut, and a large stone chamber in South Woodstock, Vermont. The exact functions of some of these unusual buildings are unknown, but many people have speculated that they were built by prehistoric European settlers for ceremonial meetings and astronomical events. The recent history of Mystery Hill began with Jonathan Pattee, a farmer who lived on the site from 1826 to 1848. There are various accounts of Pattee,including suggestions that he ran an illicit alcoholic still on the site. A more supportable story is that he and his son Seth were abolitionists, who operated a way station on the underground railroad that helped slaves escape from the South. In fact, there is some evidence for this in the form of shackles discovered on the site, which are now displayed in the America's Stonehenge Visitor's Center. During the next 50 years, quarrymen bought and removed a large portion of the stone structures at Mystery Hill. It is thought that most of the stones were taken to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to be used in the construction of the Lawrence Dam and for street curbing. In 1937, William Goodwin, an insurance agent, bought the Mystery Hill site, and during his excavations made many structural changes to reinforce his theory that Irish monks had once lived there. Consequently, the site's history is now extremely confused. In 1950, Mystery Hill was leased by Robert Stone, who purchased the property in 1956. He began restoration, study, and preservation of the area around Mystery Hill, and in 1958 built a visitors center and opened the site to the public. Christened America's Stonehenge, it is now a major tourist attraction. One of the most enigmatic features of Mystery Hill is a large, 4.5 ton flat stone slab, approximately 9 feet long and 6 feet wide, resting on four stone legs, similar to an enormous table. There is a deep groove running around the edge of this structure, leading to a spout, which has persuaded some to label it the Sacrificial Stone. According to one popular theory, the groove around the edge of the stone allowed the draining of blood from the sacrificed victims into libation bowls. Unfortunately, this Sacrificial Stone shows marked similarities to another large stone in the Farmer's Museum in western Massachusetts. But rather than being connected with any lurid sacrificial rites,this object was used in the process of soap making, and is in fact known as a lyeleaching stone. It is a relatively common find around New England colonial farm sites.Another feature of the Mystery Hill complex is the many inscribed stones that have been found on the site over the years. The late Dr. Barry Fell, a professor of biology at Harvard University, did extensive work on the inscriptions at Mystery Hill, and many other sites in North America, many of which he claimed (in his 1976 book America B.C.), were Ogham (ancient Irish), Phoenician, and Iberian Punic scripts. The inscriptions, the astronomical alignments, and the megalithic style of architecture have led many to believe that Mystery Hill functioned as a prehistoric ceremonial center built by European immigrants. They conjecture that Phoenicians (a seafaring culture from modern day Syria and Lebanon, at their height c. 1200-800 B.c.) were in America at least 2,500 years ago, trading with the Celtic (western European tribes prevalent from the eighth to the first centures B.C.) community already living at Mystery Hill. These are indeed extraordinary claims; the question is whether there is any extraordinary evidence to back them up. In the first place, Fell's book has been widely discredited by archaeologists and linguists. The photos in America B.C. of the Ogham and Punic inscriptions are particularly unconvincing. The majority of the lines and scratches, identified by Fell as ancient scripts, appear to be completely random, and more believable explanations would be haphazard scrapes left by a plough; relatively modern graffiti; the results of farmers' quarrying methods; or merely the natural lines, fissures, and cracks found on most rocks. A reexamination of these stones by archaeologists and epigraphers would be needed to test the claims of Fell more fully. Unfortunately, as some of the inscribed stones from Mystery Hill have been taken from the site and "put away for safe keeping" their original context is now lost, making the task of accurate identification and dating even more difficult. If one takes a closer look at archaeological evidence from Mystery Hill, it becomes clear that it does not support the theory that the site was an ancient temple complex, occupied by the Celts and visited by the Phoenicians. The lack of dateable pre-colonial artifacts found in context at the site is a major problem for its prehistoric European origins. Excavations conducted by Gary S. Vescelius in 1955 recovered 8,000 artifacts, all of which suggested late18th century occupation of the site. An important fact noted by Vescelius was that many of these 18th century artifacts were found in situ underneath and inside stone walls in the Y-cavern, proving that this structure must postdate the objects. In fact, to date, there has not been a single Phoenician or Celtic object found in an archaeological context anywhere in North America. These Celts and Phoenicians who were supposedly in America carving inscriptions did not leave any other trace of their presence, not even a single pottery shard to prove their existence.Much of the seemingly unexplained stone work at Mystery Hill and elsewhere in New England can be attributed to the work of 18th and 19th century farmers in the form of walled field boundaries, walled building foundations, and stone storage structures. Some of the remaining structures may have an origin with the local Native American population, as noted by Edwin C. Ballard in his research into the U-shaped stone structures of the area.


Type:Technology
👁 :6
Ring Finders
Catagory: History
Author:BILL O’NEILL
Posted Date:04/04/2025
Posted By:utopia online

The Ring Finders is a service and website that has been around for over two decades. It serves one single purpose: to find lost wedding rings and engagement rings. The company boasts that, as of October 2016, they have made nearly 3,000 recoveries. The Ring Finders was created by Chris Turner, a Vancouver native who, at the age of 13, helped his neighbor find her wedding ring that had been missing for ten years. Turner had received a metal detector and found the ring that his neighbor had lost gardening. He continued helping others find their lost treasures, which gave him the idea to start the business. Members pay a fee to belong on the Ring Finders site, which allows them to match up with people who need their expertise. There are currently ring finding experts in 25 countries who make it their mission to help people find their lost items. The jewelry is found using metal detectors, so it targets those who know that they lost their ring in a particular area, such as a beach or a park. One success story the company shares is centered on Tim, a newlywed who lost his ring while swimming at the beach in South Carolina. He and his wife got in touch with a local member of Ring Finders, who found the ring in less than ten minutes. Talk about a gem of a business.


Type:Technology
👁 :5
When Started ? Part 1
Catagory: History
Author:Roger Bridgman
Posted Date:04/04/2025
Posted By:utopia online

Stone tools From 3,000,000 bc the main difference between ourselves and most other animals is that we use tools. The oldest known tools, found in Africa, were made more than two million years ago. They are simply lumps of stone that have been shattered with another stone to make a sharp edge for chopping meat or wood. The people who made them would also have made tools from wood, but none have survived. Use of fire From 1,400,000 bc People discovered the value of fire long before they found out how to make it. Fires can be started naturally by friction, lightning, or sunlight striking through a drop of water. The first people to use. Hand axe The best stone for tools was flint. This flint hand ax, from about 1000–5000 bc, was found in Saint Acheul,near Amiens, France. Mining From 40,000bc Early people made full use of everything around them, including rocks, which they used to make tools and to extract minerals. After a time, the good rocks on the surface were all used up, and people had to start digging to find what they wanted. The first mines were just shallow pits, but miners were eventually forced underground. One of the minerals they wanted was red ochre, which was used as a pigment for ritual purposes and for cave paintings. The oldest known underground mine was used for collecting red ochre. It is at Bomvu Ridge in Swaziland, Africa.


Type:Technology
👁 :97
The Tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves Part 4
Catagory:Fiction
Author:Thousand Nights and One Night ( POWYS MATHERS)
Posted Date:04/03/2025
Posted By:utopia online

You will find the mother of my children a loving and attentive sister to you, and we shall live together in all tranquillity, talking over the merits of the dead.’ Having thus spoken, Ali Baba fell silent and waited for an answer, and in that moment Allah lighted the heart of the wicked woman, and purged it of its spite and pride. She understood Ali Baba’s goodness and generosity, and accepted his offer with a grateful heart; thanks to her marriage with this noble man, she became an excellent woman. Ali Baba, having thus prevented the woman from alarming the neighbourhood with her cries, left her to the care of his first wife and went down to find young Marjanah. He met her as she was returning from a visit in the town; for she had lost no time in concocting a plan and putting it into execution. She had gone to a neighbouring druggist and asked for a special theriac which is used for the cure of mortal ailments. The druggist had sold her the draught and asked her who was ill. She sighed, and answered: ‘Alas, alas, the red evil has stricken down my master’s brother, and he has been carried to our house for better attention. But we can do nothing for him; his face is quite yellow, he is dumb and blind, he is deaf and motionless. Our only hope is in your theriac, O sheikh.’ She carried the drug back and told Ali Baba briefly of her scheme, which he applauded with genuine admiration. At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of morning and discreetly fell silent. But when the eight-hundred-and-fifty-sixth night had come SHE SAID: Next morning Marjanah returned weeping to the druggist and asked for a certain electuary which is only used upon patients whose cases seem to be hopeless. ‘If this does not succeed,’ she mourned, ‘all is lost, all is lost!’ Also, as she departed with the electuary, she took care to spread the evil tidings among the folk of that quarter. Therefore the people were not surprised to be woken on the following morning by piercing and lamentable cries, and to be informed of the death of Kasim. Now Marjanah had said to herself: ‘It is not enough to make a violent death seem natural, my girl. You will have succeeded in nothing if you cannot hide the fact that the body has been cut into six parts.’ As soon, therefore, as she had played her part in the mock mourning, she walked to the shop of an old cobbler in a quarter of the city where she was quite unknown. She slipped a dinar into the cobbler’s hand, saying: ‘We have need of your great skill to-day, sheikh Mustafa.’ ‘You bring me a fortunate morning, O face of the moon,’ answered the gay and talkative old man. ‘Speak, dear mistress, and all shall be as you require.’ ‘You have only to collect what you need for sewing leather, and to follow me,’ said Marjanah, ‘but first it is necessary that I blindfold you, for that is a strict condition of the work.’ She bound a kerchief about his eyes, but he recoiled, saying: ‘Would you make me commit a crime or deny the Faith of my fathers for one poor dinar?’ So Marjanah soothed him with a second dinar, saying: ‘Your conscience may be clear, O sheikh. We only want you to do a little sewing.’This satisfied the cobbler and he allowed himself to be led along the streets and down into the cellar of Ali Baba's house. There Marjanah removed the bandage and showed him the six pieces of the body which she had set in order. Then she gave him a third gold coin, saying: ‘I wish you to sew the pieces of this body together; if you work quickly, you shall have a fourth dinar.’ This munificence decided the old man and, in a very short time, he had joined the unfortunate Kasim into one body. Marjanah gave him the rest of his wage, and led him back blindfolded to the door of his shop. Then she returned home, taking care that the old man did not spy upon her direction.When she reached the cellar again, she washed the reassembled body, perfumed it with incense, and smeared it with aromatic oil. Then she shrouded it, with Ali Baba’s help, and went forth to purchase a litter.For this she paid well, and insisted on carrying it to the house herself,so that no porter might spy upon her master and herself. The body was covered with thick shawls bought for the purpose, and then the Imam and other dignitaries of the mosque were invited to attend. Four neighbours took up the litter, the Imam headed the procession, the readers of the Koran went next, followed by Marjanah uttering lamentable cries and beating her breast, and Ali Baba with his friends brought up the rear. While the train went on and came to the cemetery, Ali Baba’s two wives mourned loudly in the house, and all the women of the quarter mourned with them. Thus Kasim was buried, and no one outside that household had a suspicion of the way in which he had met his death.When the forty thieves returned after a month to their cave, they found no sign at all of Kasim’s pieces or Kasim’s putrefaction. Their captain thought deeply over the matter, and then said: ‘My men, our secret is known; unless we wish to lose all the riches which our fathers collected with such noble labour and to which we ourselves have added so notably, we must find out the accomplice of the man we killed, and kill him also. The best way to do that will be for one of us, who is both brave and circumspect, to disguise himself as a darwish and enquire about the city until he hears some whisper concerning a man cut into six parts. As it is absolutely necessary that no word of our doings should leak out, it will be as well to pass sentence of death upon our messenger in the case of his unsuccess.’ But in spite of this threat one of the thieves volunteered for the duty, and was dismissed with praise and congratulation.He came to the city in the early morning and found all the shops shut save that of Mustafa, who stood at his door, awl in hand, and was already engaged upon the confection of a saffron leather slipper. The craftsman lifted his eyes and beheld a darwish watching his work with obvious admiration; he gave him good morning, and the holy man at once expressed surprise to see such excellent eyesight and such nimble fingers in so venerable a cobbler. The old man preened himself and answered: ‘Thanks to Allah, O darwish, I can still thread a needle at the first attempt, I can still sew together the six parts of a dead body in a dark cellar without a light.’ The robber nearly fainted for joy and sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he should have been led to his desire by so short a road. He feigned astonishment and cried: ‘The six parts of a dead body, O face of fair omen! What do you mean by that? Is it a custom in this country to cut the dead into six parts, and then sew them up again? Do they do it to find out what is inside?’ Cont…


Type:Technology
👁 :168
Come See the Babies
Catagory:News
Author:BILL O’NEILL
Posted Date:04/03/2025
Posted By:utopia online

Incubators have been around since the late 1800s, originally just to warm babies, but then helping premature babies everywhere thrive. However, they haven’t always been in the same atmosphere you normally see them in. Because incubators were too expensive for most hospitals to have, Dr. Martin Couney, an innovative specialist in this area, turned them into an exhibit for the first time in 1903. That’s right, people would come and pay a fee to watch the babies. One incubator exhibit was a permanent fixture for decades at Coney Island, and others were added at Luna Park and Dreamland. While many were skeptical and Dr. Couney was hesitant to charge people money, it was something that attracted public interest, and it helped save the lives of over 6,000 babies. Bonuse  Your brain consumes 25 watts of power while you are awake. This amount of energy is enough to illuminate a lightbulb.  Some moths never eat anything as adults because they do not have mouths.They must live on the energy they stored as caterpillars.  It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.  A dentist invented the electric chair.


Type:Technology
👁 :165
Make somebody's day
Catagory:Reading
Author:Chandler, Steve.
Posted Date:04/03/2025
Posted By:utopia online

To basketball coach John Wooden, making each day your masterpiece was not just about selfish personal achievement. In his autobiography, They Call Me Coach, he mentions an element vital to creating each day. "You cannot live a perfect day," he said, "without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."I agree with that. But there's a way to make sure you can't be repaid and that's doing something for someone who won't even know who did it. This gets into a theory I've had all my life, that you can create luck in your life. Not from the idea that luck is needed for success, because it isn't. But from the idea that luck can be a welcome addition to your life.You can create luck for yourself by creating it for someone else. If you know about someone who is hurting financially, and you arrange for a few hundred dollars to arrive at their home, and they don't even know who you are, then you've made them lucky. By making someone lucky,something will then happen in your own life that also feels like pure luck. (I can't explain why this happens, and I have no scientific basis for it, so all I can say is try it a few times and see if you aren't as startled as I have been at the results...it doesn't have to be money, either. We have a lot of other things to give, always.) When you get lucky, you'll get more motivated, because you feel like the universe is more on your side. Experiment with this a little. Don't be imprisoned by cynicism posing as rationality on this subject. See what happens to you when you make other people get lucky.


Type:Technology
👁 :134
Can you believe it?
Catagory:Facts
Author:Na zar Santoro and Matthew Shevchenko
Posted Date:04/02/2025
Posted By:utopia online

 A female oyster produces 100 million young in her lifetime, the typical hen lays 19 dozen eggs a year, and it is possible for one female cat to be responsible for the birth of 20,736 kittens in four years. Michelle Duggar holds the record for largest human family, having given birth to 17 children.  Dragonflies are capable of flying sixty miles per hour, making them one of the fastest insects. This is good since they are in a big hurry, as they only live about twenty-four hours.  750ml of blood pumps through your brain every minute, which is 15-20% of blood, flow from the heart.  Elephants have the longest pregnancy in the animal kingdom at 22 months.The longest human pregnancy on record is 17 months, 11 days.  Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.  A housefly will regurgitate its food and eat it again.  It is impossible to lick your elbow. Encyclopedia *** Jocks  "I'm the only guy I know who prefers big fat girls. But then again, I'm also the only cannibal I know." Cannibals  "I was approached by a member of Greenpeace in the street the other day and he told me that if I don't donate 2 a month then people in Africa will die. I can’t believe Greenpeace employ such violent people." Charity  "TV: So please, dig deep into your pockets and give generously... I would, but they're round my ankles at the minute." Charity


Type:Technology
Page 1 of 99