Angels and Demons Book Review

Angels and Demons Book Review When Dan Brown published his fourth  novel, The Da Vinci Code, in 2003, it was an instant bestseller. It boasted a fascinating protagonist, a Harvard professor of religious iconography named Robert Langdon, and compelling conspiracy theories. Brown, it seemed, had come out of nowhere. But the bestseller actually had precursors, including Angels and Demons,  the first book in the  Robert Langdon series. Published in 2000 by Simon Schuster, the 713-page turner  takes place chronologically before The Da Vinci Code, although it doesnt really matter which you read first. Both books revolve around  conspiracies within the Catholic church, but most of the action in Angels and Demons takes place in Rome and the Vatican.  As of 2018, Brown has written three more books in the  Robert Langdon saga, The Lost Symbol (2009), Inferno (2013), and Origin (2017). All but The Lost Symbol and Origin have been made into films starring Tom Hanks. Plot The book opens with the murder of a physicist working for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. An ambigram representing the word  Illuminati, referring to a centuries-old secret society,  has been branded onto the victims chest. In addition, the director of CERN soon learns that a canister filled with a type of matter that has the destructive power equal to a nuclear bomb has been stolen from CERN and  hidden somewhere in Vatican City. The director calls in  Robert Langdon, an expert on archaic religious symbolism, to help unravel the various clues and find the canister. Themes What follows is a fast-paced thriller focused on Langdons attempts to discover who is pulling the strings within the Illuminati  and how far their influence goes. Its major themes are religion versus science, skepticism versus faith, and the hold that powerful people and institutions have over the people they supposedly serve. Positive Reviews Angels and Demons  is an intriguing thriller for the way in which it mixes religious and historical elements with a sense of foreboding. It introduced the general public to an ages-old secret society, and was a unique entry into the world of conspiracy theory mysteries.  While the book may not be  great literature  per se, it is great entertainment. Publishers Weekly had this to say:   Well plotted and explosively paced.  Crammed with Vatican intrigue and hi-tech drama, Brown’s tale is laced with twists and shocks that keep the reader wired right up until the final revelation. Packing the novel with sinister figures worthy of a Medici, Brown sets an explosive pace through a Michelin-perfect Rome. Negative Reviews The book received its share of criticism, mainly for its historical inaccuracies presented as fact, a criticism that would carry over into The Da Vinci Code, which played even more fast and loose with history and religion. Some Catholics took offense at Angels and Demons, and with its subsequent sequels, stating that the book is nothing but a smear campaign of their beliefs. Conversely,  the books emphasis on secret societies, alternative interpretations of history, and conspiracy theories might strike pragmatic readers as more of a fantasy than a fact-based thriller. Finally, Dan Brown doesnt hold back as far as violence is concerned. Some readers might object to   or find disturbing the graphic nature of Browns writing. Still,  Angels and Demons has sold millions of copies worldwide, and remains a popular read  with lovers of conspiracy-laced thrillers.

Impact of globalization on manufacturing in the U.S Essay Example

Impact of globalization on manufacturing in the U.S Essay Example Impact of globalization on manufacturing in the U.S Essay Impact of globalization on manufacturing in the U.S Essay Globalization owes its origin to at least the late 1980s. During this period, new nations were entering into manufacturing, which was in some logic the weakest connection in the U.S. series of science, development, manufacturing, and sale of goods and services. However, for some nations such as Japan, lower wages firstly made it possible to exploit this relative U.S. weakness. Nevertheless, Japan swiftly developed other diverse advantages articulated on improved manufacturing methods (Benjamin Perry, 2003).Impact on labor marketGlobalization stimulates extensively differing views and projections, varying from rosy portrayal of a supple, worldwide borderless labor market to awful situations of severe polarization between labor market winners as well as losers. First, let us examine globalization impact on careers (labor) and its subsequent consequences on manufacturing. With reduced trade barriers, new international market crop up as well as advanced information and communication tec hnologies, the job market was tremendously affected. Globalization has had an astonishing effect on working-class citizens in the United States, chiefly through the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs brought about by outsourcing, with limited benefits to society (Benjamin Perry, 2003).The key motivation for the outsourcing of jobs was to cut the extremely high labor costs that are thought to diminish revenue. Employers are reluctant to hire workers due to high cost of employee benefits, competitive wages, and skyrocketing health-care premiums hence they consider outsourcing the work to be cheap (Bardhan Kroll, 2003). In essence, it is more economical for an American firm to hire a computer programmer in India who would be eager to perform the work for about one-fifth the pay of an American employee with a degree, whose starting salary would be about $50,000-$70,000 (Benjamin Perry, 2003). This leads Americans to be more uncertain about their job security since they cannot comp ete with their foreign counterparts that perform the same quantity of work for considerably less pay.Studies show that an estimated more than 2 million workers in the United States have lost their jobs in the last several years due to business closures in addition to layoffs (Bardhan Kroll, 2003), (Benjamin and Perry 2003). Whereas higher productivity and new management and hiring practices are associated with loss of jobs, a number of companies are increasingly transferring their businesses to other countries with cheap cost of wages as opposed United States. Manufacturing industry has suffered largely in terms of job losses, involving mostly blue-collar workers. It is however acknowledged that many of white-collar jobs are going to China (for manufacturing) (Benjamin and Perry 2003).In the case of working Americans, they have been negatively affected by the colossal increase in foreign trade. There has been loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs, important downward pressure on wa ges as well as increased disparity. The doubling of trade as a share of the economy over the last 25 years was accompanied by a substantial trade deficit, directly displacing several million jobs (Benjamin Perry, 2003).Majority of the jobs were in the manufacturing region, which incorporated millions of union jobs that were well paying compared with average wages (Bardhan Kroll, 2003). Within a period of five years from 2000 to 2005, there was decline as well as disappearance of more than three million manufacturing jobs. It is estimate that at least 30 percent of the decline was due to the rise in the manufactured goods trade deficit (Bardhan Kroll, 2003).With U.S. multinational corporations being occupied on both sides of the international trade, almost 50% of all U.S.-owned manufacturing production is now situated in foreign countries, thus an imperative part of the manufacturing job loss has been due to most of U.S. firms exporting back to the U.S. or producing abroad what th ey once produced locally (Benjamin Perry, 2003).The loss of manufacturing jobs as result of globalization saw wage losses for displaced workers, majority of whom never regained their former wage levels even after acquiring new employment. Globalization had also the effect of increasing world production capacity, which had had the effect of lowering the prices of traded goods, the consequence of which saw workers pay being reduced to reflect the value of goods produced (Bardhan Kroll, 2003). Employers to oppose wage increments for the manufacturing employees used the direct foreign threat.Similarly, the flow of investment in plant and equipment and technology oversaw increase in foreign productivity in sectors that used to be U.S. export strongholds, resulting in declining terms of trade and hence declining real income growth.Last but not the least, as foreign trade drove workers out of manufacturing into poorly paid service jobs; the new supply of workers competing for the same jo bs orchestrated lowering of wages of similarly skilled service workers. What does it imply? It implies that throwing the American workers into competition with production derived from low-wage countries, both those workers engaged directly in import-competing sectors as well as all employees economy-wide who have similar expertise and qualifications will have their wages squeezed. In fact, whereas trade flows with low-wage nations have increased, the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has grown more and more unequal (Benjamin Perry, 2003).Impact on input versus outputInternational Trade is increasingly imperative in the global economy and to the United States in particular.   During the last 15 years, global sells abroad have more than tripled and have accounted for more than a third of global economic growth. In deviation from the previous decades, when industrialized economies dictated global trade flows, there has been an increase in developing economies’ sha re of global exports by just over a quarter in the late 1990s to 41 percent by 2004 (Bardhan Kroll, 2003).Increased participation in international trade by the developing world is a crucial force behind what many refer to as â€Å"globalization†. Actually more than 50 percent of US trade presently carried out with developing countries, up from just over a third in the late 1980s.In US economy, manufacturing is the most trade-engaged sector accounting for 60% of the country’s exports and 80% of imports. Globalization has had an important impact on U.S. manufactures, as manufactured products accounts for 75 percent of worldwide trade (Bhagwati Marvin, 1994).Following vigorous intensification of both U.S. manufactured exports and imports at some stage in the mid 1990s; a noteworthy departure has taken place.   Ever since 1998, U.S. sells abroad have grown by just 3 percent per-year (Bardhan Kroll, 2003).   The country’s share of world exports fell from 13 pe rcent in 1998 to just 9 percent in 2004 – the lowly allocation dating 17 years back.   Happening correspondingly, imports grew by 8% per-year and the manufactured trade shortfall increased from -240 billion to -603 billion by 2005 (Bhagwati Marvin, 1994).Whereas a variety of the latest import surge has been as a result of the strong U.S. economy (especially since mid-2003) the truth remains that today, trade ins account for over a 35 percent of manufactured products consumed in the United States – an increase from 25 percent in 1992 and just 15% a 10 years earlier (Bhagwati Marvin, 1994).   A 66 percent of the increase in manufactured imports since 1998 originated from the developing world, and half of that has came from China alone.This rise in import penetration and loss of export competitiveness has had a significant impact on the current state manufacturing (Bhagwati Marvin, 1994).   While in general, manufacturing production has improved from the 2001 dec line, currently positioning at 6 percent above its pre-recession high, in addition to manufacturing employment increasing moderately subsequent to bottoming out earlier in 2004, the present manufacturing resurgence has developed half as fast as the recoveries following the preceding four declines (Bhagwati Marvin, 1994).Of eminent concern is the loss of market share both at home and abroad in recent years by the Unite States manufacturing. While some articulate this market share loss to be because of the inevitable bad trade policy as well as globalization, to others this serves as a pointer to the fact that   in a time of severe global competition, changes in a country’s competitiveness have much larger effects at present than they had in previous decades.Consider dollar value for instance. After sustaining stability for the better part of a decade, its value increased by 28 percent through the period running from 1996 to 2002. Dollar value increase led to imports being c ompetitive in the US market, whereas concurrently it made U.S. exports more costly in markets overseas.   It was during this period that, the rise in import penetration as well as the loss of global export share abroad was most significant.In a period of elevated international competition, US manufacturers have crucially been burdened by high structural non-production costs. Over the last decade, U.S. manufacturers have increased their productivity by over half, more than 150 percent the pace of their major trading partners.   Conversely, much of these efficiency gains have been offset by rising non-production costs at home. As per a research carried out several years ago by the NAM’s Manufacturing Institute, which compared non-production costs on U.S. manufacturers to their nine major trading competitors:The findings indicated that Corporate Taxes on U.S. manufacturers were 16% high than those of their major trading partners. Benefit costs  Ã‚   36% higher, Regulatory burden 85% higher and Litigation  Ã‚  Ã‚   250% higher. Summed up, these excessive non-production costs add 22% to the cost of manufacturing in the U.S. and put U.S. manufacturers at the same level with Germany as most expensive place to produce in the world (Benjamin Perry, 2003).   Moreover, the recent rise in natural gas prices in US has only exaggerated the problem. If US could exclude those excessive costs, it would actually be a lower-cost place to manufacturer than most of their industrialized competitors (Broda David, 2006).Outsourcing has seen the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the United States within the manufacturing industry. Outsourcing not only benefited US corporations, but also minimized the benefit to society (Broda David, 2006).To offer an anecdote to this observation that outsourcing only benefits corporations while, only minimizing the benefit to society, Tyco Corporation, recently relocated to a location in Texas.   Two of the major gr ounds for their relocation were due to the fact of lower labor costs as well as cheaper manufacturing costs (Broda David, 2006).   This was due to the comparatively close proximity to Mexico.Tyco perhaps took advantage of the great number of immigrants that move to Texas, who can work for comparatively low pay, which would facilitate raise, their bottom line. In so doing the company laid-off more than two hundred employees, some of this had been with the company for almost thirty-five years who had been making close to $22 per hour. The net effect was that these employees had to look for fresh employments, in lower-paying positions that maybe paid half as much, as well as they lost all of their seniority (Broda David, 2006).ConclusionEven though there has been decline in jobs as well as universal interest within the manufacturing sector, outsourcing has had its benefits within the United States (Mandel, 2004).   Sadly, it has been a consequence of just corporate welfare.   O utsourcing has absolutely maintained costs low because of cheap input costs, which drips downward to the end user in low-priced products.   In addition, with productivity rising from annually, corporations have been capable to raise their bottom lines while avoiding price surges (Mandel, 2004).   Regrettably, corporate profits are escalating, save for there are no new jobs being created- jobs relocated to other countries are not being replaced.If blue collar, working-class citizens as well as the jobless workers who experience no job intensification are losing out, in that case who is winning the battle?   Fine, additional productivity as well as lesser-input expenses decode to higher wealth. Businesses with their continually increasing profit limits; consumers, who experience near to the ground cost of goods.   Furthermore, with no job growth in the current economy, there is really no new job industry to lead the way in creating new jobs. Too many U.S. jobs are being outsou rced, and without the innovation of new industries, â€Å"job growth will stay sluggish, demand will eventually sag, and†¦incomes will be driven down under the continued pressure of competition from China, India, and other low-wage countries† (Mandel, 2004). However, with the innovation of new upcoming technologies there can be an explosive surge in employment and enormous potential for the economy.

E-mail as way of communication in business Essay

E-mail as way of communication in business - Essay Example The paper tells that email is a way of transferring digitised information from the source to one or more recipients using a web enabled device. It requires that the two parties have access to the internet to make the exchange complete; its servers receives information from the sender, directs it to the recipient and stores the content to be accessed at will thereafter. With improvements in computer technology, traditional forms of communications shifted from physical print outs for instance, memos to modern digitised forms which include internal email. This is used by businesses and organisations for communicating with its employees. This form of communication has brought with it some challenges which were only realised after corporations realised that there was minimal control over information exchanged among employees and the outside environment. Despite compliance standards set by corporations to guide employees on the right email content to use for internal communications, the nu mber of emails exchanged in a day is so many that internal control mechanisms cannot effectively handle. In 2008, about 103 billion emails were sent in corporate companies the world over. These are some of the problems associated with internal mail. Phones 4u is a large mobile phone retailer based in Britain, since its inception in 1987 by John Caudwell and his brother Brian, the store has grown leaps and bounds to boast of 550 outlets in the United Kingdom. This company operates in a tough business environment and transformed its internal processes over time, to cope with increasing consumer needs. Britain’s communications regulator (Ofcom) found Phones 4u liable of various malpractices ranging from lying to clients about their coverage, and delay in refund processing to those who purchase faulty phones. Due to such damaging allegations, the store did an internal check to determine the root cause of these inefficiencies and address them. Among the resolutions was rejection o f internal email as a communication medium within and outside the company to monitor information flow to protect its brand from lurid accusations that were threatening its existence. Along with other changes effected for instance, provision of insurance packages for Smartphone buyers to reduce costs associated with customer returning damaged phones that are within the warranty period, it performance has rebounded with turnover growing 22% in 2010. Disadvantages of using internal email Liability: Unmonitored use of email can lead to consequences relating to violations of internal corporate rules and government regulations. Companies have internal intelligence and secrets that they may want to be kept private within its boundaries, they however, do not have the capacity to shield employees from knowing the same. Other modes of communication can be monitored to gauge its compliance; however, information contained in email is drafted by the sender, who decides on the context. The copy s ent to the recipient can however be retrieved by investigators at the request of the authorities if it results in a civil lawsuit. The aims of corporate compliance is: to protect employees from unwanted behaviour, protecting company’s assets from misuse due to inefficiencies, minimise corporate risk and streamline operational processes to increase output. This secretive nature of email message exchange makes employees be tempted to use the medium to exchange private, but damaging information to other people for whatever gain. For instance, an employee might leak a product diversification plan by his company, the competitor who requested for the intelligence then wards off competition by introducing his own version of the same, with the same formula, to sabotage the originator (Smith & Mounter, 2008, p. 127)2. The government engages with corporate bodies on a daily basis, these businesses might hide some information from the government especially on matters relating to financi al position. For