House of Quality Essay Example

House of Quality Paper The House of Quality by John R. Hauser and Don Clausing Harvard Business Review Reprint Design is a team effort, but how do marketing and engineering talk to each other? Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, ATT, and ITT are getting started with it. Ford and General Motors use it at Ford alone there are more than 50 applications. The house of quality, the basic design tool of the management approach known as quality function deployment (QFD), originated in 1972 at Mitsubishis Kobe shipyard site. Toyota and its suppliers then developed it in numerous ways. The house of quality has been used successfully by Japanese manufacturers of consumer electronics, home appliances, clothing, integrated circuits, synthetic rubber, construction equipment, and agricultural engines. Japanese designers use it for services like swimming schools and retail outlets and even for planning apartment layouts. A set of planning and communication routines, quality function deployment focuses and coordinates skills within an organization, first to design, then to manufacture and market goods that cus HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW May-June 1988 tomers want to purchase and will continue to purchase. The foundation of the house f quality is the belief that products should be designed to reflect customers desires and tastes so marketing people, design engineers, and manufacturing staff must work closely together from the time a product is first conceived. The house of quality is a kind of conceptual map that provides the means for interfunctional planning and communications. People with different John R. Hauser, at the Harvard Business School as a Marvin Bower Sloan School of Management. He is the author, with Glen L. Urban, of Design Marketing of New Products (Prentice-Hall, 1980). We will write a custom essay sample on House of Quality specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on House of Quality specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on House of Quality specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Don Clausing is Bernard M. Gordon Adjunct Professor of Engineering Innovation and Practice at MIT. Previously he worked for Xerox Corporation. He introduced QFD to Ford and its supplier companies in 1984. Copyright 1988 by the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. HOUSE OF QUALITY Whats So Hard About Design David Garvin points out that there are many dimensions to what a consumer means by quality and that it is a major challenge to design products that satisfy all of these at once. l Strategic quality management means more than avoiding repairs for consumers. It means that companies learn from customer experience and econcile what they want with what engineers can reasonably build. Before the industrial revolution, producers were close to their customers. Marketing, engineering, and manufacturing were integrated in the same individual. If a knight wanted armor, he talked directly to the armorer, who translated the knights desires into a product. The two might discuss the material plate rather than chain armor and details like fluted surfaces for greater bending strength. Then the armorer would design the production process. For strength who knows why? he cooled the steel plates in the urine of a black goat. As for a production plan, he arose with the cocks crow to light the forge fire so that it would be hot enough by midday. Todays fiefdoms are mainly inside corporations. Marketing people have their domain, engineers theirs. Customer surveys will find their way onto designers desks, and RD plans reach manufacturing engineers. But usually, managerial functions remain disconnected, producing a costly and demor- alizing environment in which product quality and the quality of the production process itself suffer. Top executives are learning that the use of interfunctional teams benefits design. But f top management could get marketing, designing, and manufacturing executives to sit down together, what should these people talk about? How could they get their meeting off the ground? This is where the house of quality comes in. Consider the location of an emergency brake lever in one American sporty car. Placing it on the guaranteed that women in skirts could not get in and out gracefully. Even if EXHIBIT II Japanese automaker with QFD made fewer changes than U. S. company without QFD U. S. ompany Design changes problems and responsibilities can thrash out design priorities while referring to patterns of evidence on the houses grid. Japanese company of total Japanese changes complete 20-24 Months 14_17 1-3 +3 Months Job #1 Months EXHIBIT I Startup and preproduction costs at Toyota Auto Body before and after QFD January 1977 pre QED April 1984 post QED (39% of pre QFD costs) Preproduction costs S tartup costs Source for Exhibits I and II: Lawrence P. Sullivan, Quality Function Deployment, Reprinted by permission. the system were to last a lifetime, would it satisfy customers? In contrast, Toyota improved its rust prevention record from one of the worst in the world to one of the best by coordinating design and production decisions to focus on this customer oncern. Using the house of quality, designers broke down body durability into 53 items covering everything from climate to modes of operation. They obtained customer evaluations and ran experiments on nearly every detail of production, from pump operation to temperature control and coating composition. Decisions on sheet metal details, coating materials, and baking temperatures were all focused on those aspects of rust prevention most important to customers. . David A. Garvin, Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality, HBR November- December 1987, p. 101 . 4 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW Today, with marketing tech EXHIBIT III iques so much more sophisticated than ever before, compacustomer attributes and bundles of CAS nies can measure, track, and for a car door compare customers perceptions PRIMARY SECOND ARY TERTIARY of products with remarkable acEasy to close from outside curacy; all companies have opStays open on a hill Easy to open from outside EASY TO OPEN portunities to compete on quali AND CLOSE DOOR Doesnt kick back ty. And costs certainly Justify an Easy to close from inside emphasis on quality design. By Easy to open from inside looking first at customer needs, Doesnt leak in rain then designing across corporate No road noise and use Doesnt leak in car wash functions, manufacturers can rel SOLATlON No wind noise duce prelaunch time and afterDoesnt drip water or snow when open Doesnt rattle launch tinkering. Exhibit I compares startup and Soft, comfortable ARM REST In right position preproduction costs at Toyota Auto Body 1977, before QFD, Material wont fade INTERIOR TRIM Attractive (nonplastic look) to those costs in 1984, when QFD was well under way. House of CLEAN Good appearance Easy to clean No grease from door quality meetings early on reduced costs by more than 60%. Uniform gaps between matching panels Exhibit II reinforces this evidence by comparing the number f design changes at a Japanese auto manufacturer noise. Some Japanese companies simply place using QFD with changes at a U. S. automaker. The their products in public areas and encourage potenJapanese design was essentially frozen before the tial customers to examine them, while design team first car came off the assembly line, while the U. S. embers listen and note what people say. Usually, however, more formal market research is called for, company was still revamping months later. via focus groups, in-depth qualitative interviews, and other techniques. Building the House CAS are often grouped into bundles of attributes hat represent an overall customer concern, like There is nothing mysterious about the house of open-close or isolation. The Toyota rustquality. Th ere is nothing particularly difficult prevention study used eight levels of bundles to get from the total car down to the car body. Usually the used to its conventions. Eventually ones eye can project team groups CAS by consensus, but some bounce knowingly around the house as it would over a road-map or a navigation chart. We have seen companies are experimenting with state-of-the-art research techniques that derive groupings directly some applications that started with more than 100 rom customers responses (and thus avoid argucustomer requirements and more than 130 engiments in team meetings). neering considerations. A fraction of one subchart, CAS are generally reproduced in the customers in this case for the door of an automobile, illusown words. Experienced users of the house of qualitrates the houses basic concept well. Weve reproty try to preserve customers phrases and even duced this subchart portion in the illustration clich? ©s knowing that they will be translated siHouse of Quality, and well discuss each section multaneously by product planners, design engistep-by-step. eers, manufacturing engineers, and salespeople. Of course, this raises the problem of interpretation: What do customers want? The house of quality What does a customer really mean by quiet or begins with the customer, whose requirements are easy? Still, designers words and inferences may called customer attributes (CAs) phrases cuscorrespond even less to customers actual views tomers use to describe products and product charand can therefore mislead teams into tackling probacteristics (see Exhibit Ill). Weve listed a few here; lems customers consider unimportant. a typical application would have 30 to 100 CAs. A Not all customers are end users, by the way. CAS car door is easy to close or stays open on a hill; can include the demands of regulators (safe in a doesnt leak in rain or allows no (or little) road HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 5 EXHIBIT Relative-importance weights of customer attributes BUNDLES RELATIVE IMPORTANCE AND CLOSE DOOR Easy to close from outside Stays open on a hill 7 ISOLATION Doesnt leak in rain 3 2 A complete list totals 100% side collision), the needs of retailers (easy to display), the requirements of vendors (satisfy assembly and service organizations), and so forth. Are all preferences qually important? Imagine a good door, one that is easy to close and has power windows that operate quickly. There is a problem, however. Rapid operation calls for a bigger motor, which makes the door heavier and, possibly, harder to close. Sometimes a creative solution can be found that satisfies all needs. Usually, however, designers have to trade off one benefit against another. To bring the customers voice to such deliberations, house of quality measures the relative importance to the customer of all CAs. Weightings are based on team members direct experience with customers or on surveys. Some innovative usinesses are using statistical techniques that allow customers to state their preferences with respect to existing and hypothetical products. Other companies use revealed preference techniques, which Judge consumer tastes by their actions as well as by their words an approach that is more expensive and difficult to perform but yields more accurate answers. (Consumers say that avoiding sugar in cereals is important, but do their actions reflect their claims? ) Weightings are displayed in the house next to list totaling 100% (see Exhibit V). Will delivering perceived needs yield a competitive advantage? Companies that want o match or exceed their competition must first know where they stand relative to it. So on the right side of the house, opposite the CAs, we list customer evaluations of competitive cars matched to our own (see Exhibit V). Ideally, these evaluations are based on scientific surveys of customers. If various customer segments 6 evaluate products differently luxury vs. economy car buyers, for example product-planning team members get assessments for each segment. Comparison with the competition, of course, can identify opportunities for improvement. Take our car door, for example. With respect to stays open on hill, every car is weak, so we could gain an advantage here. But if we looked at no road noise for the same automobiles, we would see that we already have an advantage, which is important to maintain. Marketing professionals will recognize the righthand side of Exhibit V as a perceptual map. Perceptual maps based on bundles of CAS are often used to identify strategic positioning of a product or product line. This section of the house of quality provides a natural link from product concept to a companys strategic vision. How can we change the product? The marketing domain tells us what to do, the engineering domain ells us how to do it. Now we need to describe the product in the language of the engineer. Along the top of the house of quality, the design team lists those engineering characteristics (ECs) that are likely to affect one or more of the customer attributes (see Exhibit VI). The negative sign on energy to close door means engineers hope to reduce the energy required. If a standard engineering characteristic affects no CA, it may be redundant to the EC list on the house, or the team may have missed a customer attribute. A CA unaffected by any EC, on the other hand, presents opportunities to expand a ars physical properties. Any EC may affect more than one CA. The resistance of the door seal affects three of the four customer attributes shown in Exhibit VI and others shown later. Engineering characteristics should describe the product in measurable terms and should directly affect customer perceptions. The weight of the door will be felt by the customer and is therefore a relevant EC. By contrast, the thickness of the sheet metal is a part characteristic that the customer is only by influencing the weight of the door and other engineering characteristics, like resistance to deformation in a crash. In many Japanese projects, the interfunctional team begins with the CAS and generates measurable characteristics for each, like foot-pounds of energy required to close the door. Teams should avoid ambiguity in interpretation of ECS or hasty Justification of current quality control measurement practices. This is a time for systematic, patient analysis of each characteristic, for brainstorming. Vagueness will eventually yield indifference to things customers need. Characteristics that are trivial will make the team lose sight of the overall design and stifle creativity. EXHIBIT V Customers evaluations of competitive products CUSTOMER ATTRIBUTES Worst 1 CUSTOMER PERCEPTIONS 5 Best How much do engineers influEASY TO OPEN Easy to close from outside 7 AND CLOSE ence customer-perceived qualiDOOR ties? The interfunctional team now fills in the body of the house, the relationship matrix, indicating how much each engineering characteristic affects each customer OUR CAR DOOR attribute. The team seeks consenCOMPETlTOR AS sus on these evaluations, basing COMPETITOR BS them on expert engineering experience, customer responses, and tabulated data from statistical studies or controlled experiments. course, there might be an entirely new mechanism The team uses numbers or symbols to establish that improves all relevant CAs. Engineering is crethe strength of these relationships (see Exhibit VI). tive solutions and a balancing of objectives. Any symbols will do; the idea is to choose those The house of qualitys distinctive roof matrix that work best. Some teams use red symbols for rehelps engineers specify the various engineering fealationships based on experiments and statistics and tures that have to be improved collaterally (see Expencil marks for relationships based on judgment hibit X). To improve the window motor, you may or intuition. Others use numbers from statistical ave to improve the hinges, weather stripping, and studies. In our house, we use check marks for posia range of other ECs. tive and crosses for negative relationships. Sometimes one targeted feature impairs so many Once the team has identified the voice of the cusothers that the team decides to leave it alone. The tomer and linked it to engineering characteristics, roof matrix also facilitates necessary engineering it adds objective measures at the bottom of the trade-offs. The foot-pounds of energy needed to house beneath the ECS to which they pertain (see close the door, for example, are shown in negative Exhibit VI). When objective measures are known, relation to door seal resistance and road noise the team can eventually move to establish target reduction. In many ways, the roof contains the values ideal new measures for each EC in a remost critical information for engineers because designed product. If the team did its homework they use it to balance the trade-offs when addresswhen it first identified the ECs, tests to measure ing customer benefits. benchmark values should be easy to complete. Enlncidentally, we have been talking so far about gineers determine the relevant units of measurethe basics, but design

Phar-Mor Essays

Phar-Mor Essays Phar-Mor Essay Phar-Mor Essay On the other hand, it may not effect their independence if they like their current Job and could not care less about the other auditors transferring to the client. 1 c) The Serbians-Solely Act of 2002 require current auditors to wait at least one year pass since they were involved in the auditing of a client before they are able to accept an employment offer in certain designated positions. They also require that auditors report any employment offer or intention to seek employment with an audit client, after which they are removed from all engagements until they either reject the offer or are no longer seeking other employment. At which time the accounting firm should determine if any additional measures need to be taken to ensure that reasonable assurance can be given that the work of that specific CPA had been objective and with integrity. Old)No, it is not appropriate for auditors to trust executives of a client. If an auditor trusts the executives of a client, the auditors independence is compromised. Auditors are supposed to look for fraud, errors, and problems; they are to expect them until they can prove that there is a reason not to. If they trust them, they will not expect or be cooking for fraud or errors, they will assume that everything is correct because of their trust. AAA) b) AAA) Yes, I would pursue legal action against the auditor in this situation. The basis of my claim would be similar to those that filed against Coopers, that the auditors were reckless and provided misleading statements causing so many investors to invest when they probably wouldnt have if everything would have been appropriately stated. I would bring suit under The Federal Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Section BOB and Section 18. B) For the CPA, negligence is failure to perform a duty in accordance with applicable standards. For practical purposes, negligence may be viewed as failure to exercise due professional care. c) Fraud is misrepresenting a material fact that is known by the person misrepresenting it, where negligence may also be misrepresenting a fact but it is not known to the person misrepresenting it. So, the primary di fference is that fraud is done on purpose and negligence is not. AAA) When a third party is not a primary beneficiary or they are unidentified, auditors can still be held liable if they committed fraud or gross negligence. They cannot be held liable for ordinary negligence like they can for a primary beneficiary that is specifically identified as a user of the report and their client. B) Even though the third party had not specifically identified to the Caps, they were still aware that the financial statements were going to be used to obtain financing from third parties. It made them liable for more than Just their client and third parties that were known because they were able to foresee other third parties being involved 05) The Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934 are very similar but they have large differences as well. Under the 1933 Act plaintiffs do not need to prove that they relied on the audited financial statements, only that they suffered a loss and that the statements were misleading. However, under the 1934 Act the plaintiffs do need to prove that they relied on the financial statements in their decisions. Another major difference is that under the 1933 Act the auditors need to prove that they acted with due diligence, where under the 1934 Section 18 Act they need to only prove that they acted in good faith. Under Section 10 in the 1934 Act plaintiffs must prove that there was a sciences as well. The 1934 Act gives a little leeway to Auditors when compared to the 1933 Act. With the third party (plaintiff needing to prove that they relied on the financial statements and that there was a sciences, it is more difficult for them to easily win the case. Along with it being easier for auditor to prove that they acted in good faith rather than they acted with due diligence. AAA) I am not positive how high-profile these companies were in their accounting scandal, but the two I found are Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and Crazy Eddies Electronics. In the Bristol-Myers scandal, the insane chief and the man who ran the worldwide medicines group misled investors by concealing the extra inventory held by the companys wholesalers from 1999 to 2001. This resulted in inflated revenues of millions of dollars. Similarly, Crazy Eddies Electronics also committed inventory fraud by exaggerating the numbers by millions of dollars for several years before being caught. B) Auditors are not able to audit the entire inventory at every store of a company. They select smaller portions at a select number of stores. Also, if a company has someone who used to be an auditor, specially the auditor for your company, you are given an insight to what auditors look for and what/how to hide it from them. It also helps to have so many people involved in the scheme; different people from different levels of management and non-management. Par-Moor took advantage of the fact that the auditor was trying to cut the costs of the audit and would not be able to audit the entire inventory. They also had hired their former auditor in their financial department who helped cover up the fraud and misstatements. Par-Moor knew what to expect from the auditors and planned ahead accordingly. C) Doing test counts on larger samples from more stores will give a better insight to the accuracy of the inventories. Also, the auditors do not need to let the management know ahead of time or during the audit which samples they tested, that only makes it easier for them misstate the rest of the inventory and know which ones to expect to be audited next time. Also, they should never make a pattern in the samples that they count, it should never be detectable. And as always, be skeptical of everything you count, never trust the company or management.

Compare and contrast the persecution of Jews with the persecution of Essay

Compare and contrast the persecution of Jews with the persecution of others in Nazi Germany on the grounds of racial hygiene - Essay Example The German scientists2 did legitimize this propaganda and in that regard, the Nazis went on to do away with all Jews that were residing in Europe in the infamous holocaust through brutal killings and mass murders.3 What began as an initial target of the Jews, soon spread to other people who were not of German descend and thus they also became serious victims of unprecedented persecution and mass murder around German strongholds in Europe and in concentration camps that were set up for that sole purpose of racial hygiene. It was actually a notion of cleansing Germany of the individuals that were seen as threats to the health of German society.4 This paper looks at this incidence of racial cleansing as the idea behind the massive persecutions that took place in that period of 1933 to 1939 and seeks to establish the persecution of Jews in comparison to that of the other non-German people by the Nazi government. For us to critically evaluate and answer this question, we need to analyse t he idea of racial hygiene, before embarking on looking at the impact that these actions had on both the two groups, Jews and others5; look at how the persecution was carried out; and the after effects of the persecution. The above issues will be well analysed and discussed before a conclusion is made. Nazi’s Idea of Racial Hygiene The racial hygiene was crafted by Hitler while he was in prison at Landsberg. In his imagination, he thought that for Germany to become stronger again there was need to cleanse it and get rid of inferior races through racial hygiene and eugenics. To him the nation was weaker and very corrupted by the infusion of some degenerate elements into the bloodstream of this nation. Neutralization of the weaker race became his decision. In 1920s growth of population was equated to having racial fitness and the idea of national strength. Racial hygiene was proposed as the only way to avert the problems. The doctors did play an important role in propagating Naz i policy because of the realignment of the medical profession with the Nazi after it took over power. Genetic health courts were also created and major Acts on racial legislation were passed in Germany starting from 1933 onwards geared towards elimination of the weak, while at the same time increase the birth rate by secluding women to homes and family where they were to bear many children, and strengthen the Aryan race. The persecution The persecution of Jews and other communities was based on the assumptions that Nazis could attain a pure race by having a cohesive national community, which did not have less valuable races or those from foreign regions. Persecution initially took the general discrimination of the races that were found not to be German through the scientific labelling process that considered family genealogies, observations, physical measurements, and the application of intelligence tests. As a result, all people were ranked as either inferior (non-Germans) or super ior (German or Aryan race). Another form of persecution that was used was the subsequent sterilization of the inferior race so that they do not give birth to more inferior people so that costs such as those of education could be saved. At this point, we cannot

Computer input and output devices Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Computer input and output devices - Essay Example Every computer requires a keyboard for data entry both in numeric, alphabetic and symbol form. Text or numbers being typed on the keyboard are directly displayed on the monitor of the computer. There are many designs of the keyboard depending on the manufacturer, but they all have letters, numbers and function keys for data entry. The data is converted into codes that are understandable by the computer and displayed in a format understandable to the user.Every computer has a monitor that is the primary output device, and it communicates with the user by displaying data in a user understandable format. Another commonly used output device is the inkjet printer that produces papers printed in different colors by means of a spray ink jet inside the printer. An advanced form of a printer is a laser printer that prints different colors by fusing electrostatically charged toner. The laser printer has very high initial cost but has a lesser running cost as compared to the inkjet printer. The drum plotter is also an output device that plots large scale drawings. Recent technologies have led to the introduction of laser plotters that are an advancement of the laser printers and are capable of printing into rolls of papers. Data projectors are a modern form of output devices and can be described as big monitors that are used for audience presentation. Speakers are classified as output devices since they communicate information from the computer to the user either in the form of warnings or music.

The Famous Poetry Of Amy Lowell

The Famous Poetry Of Amy Lowell Who was Amy Lowell? For the very few that do remember her, regard her as an obese, homosexual, and lonely, unmarried woman that enjoyed smoking cigars and wearing mens shirts. However, we overlook the fact that she is well-known for bringing the Imagist movement to the United States and that she is solely responsible for the creation of the polyphonic prose. Also, no one discusses how she a broke free from societys standards of what a young woman should be Brought up in a prestigious, affluent household, she was taught how to be a young lady. Being a Lowell daughter, she would then be married off at the age of seventeen, but no marriage proposal arrived for her that year. Since she had no right to an education, it was then that this seventeen-year-old girl began to educate herself by immersing herself in her fathers 17,000-volume library, where she discovered poet John Keats. From within the constraints of society, Lowell was able to break away and discover her true self. She once s aid: For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives. Amy Lowell lived by this very idea. Her books and her poetry are what gave her life and meaning. Through such, Lowell delved herself into the depths of nature and emotion as her key subjects when writing poetry. One specific quality of Lowells poetry was that she used sharp, clear language along with vivid imagery to make a statement. She saw no need in inserting vague and ambiguous references. To her the best poetry was that which flowed by itself as in everyday language. There was no need to abide by the limitations that certain types of poetry brought about, such as Italian sonnets with their a-b-b-a format. Lowell is able to portray this very thought process beautifully in Lilacs, which is one of the best representations of imagist poetry. The overall poem has no hidden or deeper meaning to it and in fact, can be taken completely literally, which is one of the reasons it holds so strong among other imagist poetry. The poem begins with Lilacs,/ False Blue,/ White,/ Purple,/ Color of Lilac, which Lowell continues to repeat at the beginning of stanzas 2 and 4 as well. This repetition of the subject, allows the reader to refocus on the true topic of the poem. At the same time, Lowell in the first stanza uses apostrophe to speak directly to the lilacs, referring to them as you. The speaker continues to state that the lilacs are everywhere in this New England, watching a deserted house, as well as settling sideways into the grass of an old road (21, 17, 18). Slowly, Lowell begins to focus less and less on the physical characteristics of the lilacs, but more so on what they are physically doing and what they are capable of doing, personifying the lilacs in the process. The lilacs are now standing by the pasture-bars to give the cows good milking, persuad[ing] the housewife that her dishpan was of silver, and flaunt[ing] the fragrance of [its] blossoms (28, 29, 31). Through these acts, the reader quickly sees the lilacs as benefiting the things and people around them. Finally towards the Put in conclusion: For the rest though, she continues to be just another poet lost in the depths of history. Lilacs,   False blue,   White,   Purple,   Color of lilac,   Your great puffs of flowers   Are everywhere in this my New England.   Among your heart-shaped leaves   Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing   Their little weak soft songs;   In the crooks of your branches   The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs   Peer restlessly through the light and shadow   Of all Springs.   Lilacs in dooryards   Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;   Lilacs watching a deserted house   Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;   Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom   Above a cellar dug into a hill.   You are everywhere.   You were everywhere.   You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,   And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.   You stood by the pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,   You persuaded the housewife that her dishpan was of silver.   And her husband an image of pure gold.   You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms   Through the wide doors of Custom Houses-   You, and sandal-wood, and tea,   Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks   When a ship was in from China.   You called to them: Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,   May is a month for flitting.   Until they writhed on their high stools   And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.   Paradoxical New England clerks,   Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the Song of Solomon at night,   So many verses before bed-time,   Because it was the Bible.   The dead fed you   Amid the slant stones of graveyards.   Pale ghosts who planted you   Came in the nighttime   And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.   You are of the green sea,   And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.   You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles,   You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home.   You cover the blind sides of greenhouses   And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass   To your friends, the grapes, inside.   Lilacs, False blue,   White,   Purple,   Color of lilac,   You have forgotten your Eastern origin,   The veiled women with eyes like panthers,   The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled pashas.   Now you are a very decent flower,   A reticent flower,   A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,   Standing beside clean doorways,   Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,   Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight   And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.   Maine knows you,   Has for years and years;   New Hampshire knows you,   And Massachusetts   And Vermont.   Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;   Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.   You are brighter than apples,   Sweeter than tulips,   You are the great flood of our souls   Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,   You are the smell of all Summers,   The love of wives and children,   The recollection of gardens of little children,   You are State Houses and Charters   And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.   May is lilac here in New England,   May is a thrush singing Sun up! on a tip-top ash tree,   May is white clouds behind pine-trees   Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.   May is a green as no other,   May is much sun through small leaves,   May is soft earth,   And apple-blossoms,   And windows open to a South Wind.   May is full light wind of lilac   From Canada to Narragansett Bay.   Lilacs,   False blue,   White,   Purple,   Color of lilac.   Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,   Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,   Lilac in me because I am New England,   Because my roots are in it,   Because my leaves are of it,   Because my flowers are for it,   Because it is my country   And I speak to it of itself   And sing of it with my own voice   Since certainly it is mine.

Autor Of All Quiet On The Western Front :: essays research papers

THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES Born Erich Paul Remark on June 22, 1898, he grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Osnabrà ¼ck in the province of Westphalia, Germany- a city in the northwest part of what is now West Germany. He adored his mother, Anna Maria, but was never close to his father, Peter. The First World War effectively shut him off from his sisters, Elfriede and Erna. Peter Remark, descended from a family that fled to Germany after the French Revolution, earned so little as a bookbinder that the family had to move 11 times between 1898 and 1912. The family's poverty drove Remarque as a teenager to earn his own clothes money (giving piano lessons). He developed a craving for luxury, which he never outgrew. His piano playing and other interests, such as collecting butterflies and exploring streams and forests, later appeared in his fictional characters. His love of writing earned him the nickname Smudge. Because of the frequent moving, Remarque attended two different elementary schools and then the Catholic Praparande (preparatory school). He loved the drama of Catholic rituals, the beauty of churches, the flowers in cloister gardens, and works of art. He later wrote with a sense of theater, and he featured churches and museums, flowers and trees as symbols of enduring peace. While in school, he had problems with teachers, however, and eventually paid them back by ridiculing them in his novels. At the Praparande he argued so much with one teacher that he used the man's personality and another's name (Konschorek) to produce a specific character in All Quiet on the Western Front: Schoolmaster Kantorek. In November 1916, when Remarque was eighteen and a third-year student at Osnabruck's Lehrerseminar (teachers college), he was drafted for World War I. After basic training at the Westerberg in Osnabruck (the Klosterberg of All Quiet), he was assigned to a reserve battalion, but often given leave to visit his seriously ill mother. In June 1917, he was assigned to a trench unit near the Western Front. He was a calm, self-possessed soldier, and when grenade splinters wounded his classmate Troske, Remarque carried him to safety. He was devastated when Troske died in the hospital of head wounds that had gone unnoticed. Still, he rescued another comrade before he himself was severely injured- also by grenade splinters- and sent to the St. Vincenz hospital in Duisburg for much of 1917-1918.

Good nutrition: Striking the Right Balance

Of the many things one can do to enhance one’s state of health, none is more important than maintaining proper nutrition. The mind and body cannot function optimally without the proper supply of nutrients and energy obtained from food.A key tenet of the holistic approach to health is that each person must take responsibility for his or her own health. Making intelligent decisions about nutrition—about what and how much to eat—is an important part of this responsibility, because the diet one chooses and follows can keep one healthy. In the words of Philip Lee (1977) professor of social medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine:As a nation we have come to believe that our medicine and medical technology can solve all our major health problems†¦ But the problems can never be solved merely by more and more medical care. The health of individuals and the health of the population is determined by a variety of biological (host), be havioral, sociocultural, environmental factors. None of these is more important than the food we eat (Burkitt et al. 1974).Good nutrition: Striking the Right BalanceWhat is the best argument for following a good nutrition in one’s life instead of eating all the junk food one can consume. Every person’s body has a unique chemical and physical composition that corresponds to a state of optimal wellness, because the human body is constructed of atoms and molecules that are arranged in particular combinations and proportions that are unique to each person. One’s body contains few of the same atoms and molecules it had even a few weeks ago, because its chemical constituents are continually replaced by different atoms and molecules acquired from the food one eats.There are about forty known essential nutrients and perhaps others are not yet identified, that must be continually resupplied to the body (Ricciuto). Failure to obtain enough of one or more of the essential nutrients can result in a nutritional deficiency disease, such as goiter (enlarged thyroid gland), which may be caused by too little iodine, beri-beri, a disease characterized by weakness and wasting away that is caused by too little thiamine (vitamin B1), anemia (too few red blood cells) from insufficient iron; and blindness from vitamin A deficiency, the most common cause of blindness in children, world-wide. Since all nutrients act in concert, a deficiency of one may impair the utilization of others even if the others are acquired in adequate amounts. Thus, a proper nutritional state is a matter of maintaining a complex balance of the essential nutrients.One can argue that one eats a little of everything in the proper amounts just to keep fit. But still it does not work that way. This is because poor health can result in eating too much of certain kinds of food, or from eating too much in general. For example, overeating is the principal cause of obesity, which contributes to the development of such serious diseases as high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes and some forms of cancer.Cancer of the colon may be related to eating too much meat and processed foods and not getting enough fiber or roughage that may be essential to maintain a healthy colon. High salt intake is related to high blood pressure and high sugar intake is related to tooth decay (the most prevalent disease in the industrialized world). Much of the tooth decay could be prevented if people followed very simple nutrition rules (Breslow & Enstrom 1980).Physiological Benefits of Body WorkOur industrial society depends on an enormous variety of machines that free people from an equally enormous number of physical tasks. Some of these tasks, such as heavy construction work of large-scale farming, would be well-nigh impossible without the help of machines. Others, such as traveling to work or school, getting to the seventh floor of a building, or washing clothes, could be accomplished without the a id of machines (and some people argue they ought to be), but few of us are likely to give up the use of cars, elevators, and washers. They simply make the task of daily living easier. As a result, few people do much moving around under their own muscular power. That is, many of us get little exercise.According to William B. Kannel and Paul Sorlie (1979) who have studied the effects of lifestyle on the occurrence of heart disease:â€Å"Over the past quarter of a century, there has evolved a growing suspicion that the transformation of man by modern technology from a physically active agrarian creature to a sedentary industrial one has exacted a toll in ill health. The evidence on which this is based comes from epidemiological studies, clinical observations, and the work physiologist. Most of the attention has been focused on the possible contribution of physical indolence to the development of cardiovascular disease, the chief health hazard of affluent societies and their leading ca use of death.†In addition to the physiological benefits, regular physical activity has psychological and spiritual benefits as well. Fr example, a study of middle-aged university professors found that regular exercise made them more self-sufficient, more persevering, less likely to experience mood swings, and more imaginative (Ismail and Trachtman, 1973). In another study, both men and women university students who engaged in regular physical activity were found to have greater self-control, to have increased self-awareness, and to be more self-directed. They also demonstrated a positive self-image (Jeffers, 1977).One of the principal psychological benefits that can come from regular body work is experiencing periods of relaxed concentration, characterized by reduction in physical and psychic tensions, regular breathing rhythms, and increased self-awareness. This experience is often compared to meditation. Tennis instructor Tim Gallwey (1976) describes four stages for obtainin g a state of relaxed concentration through body work. The first stage, â€Å"paying attention,† occurs at the beginning of a body work session and involves riveting your concentration on your body work and excluding all other thoughts. The stage of paying attention requires a certain degree of self-discipline—the desire and ability to say â€Å"no† to other demands on your time and energies and to say â€Å"yes† to yourself.WORKS CITEDBurkitt, D. P. Walker, R.P. and Painter , N.S.   â€Å"Dietary Fiber and Disease.† Journal of theAmerican   Medical Association, 229 (1974), 1068-1074.Breslow, L. and Enstrom, J.E. â€Å"Persistence of Health Habits and Their Relationship toMortality.† Preventive Medicine, 9 (1980). 469-483.Ismail, A.H. and Trachtman, I.E. â€Å"Jogging the Imagination.† Psychology Today. 6(1973), 78-82Jeffers, J. M. â€Å"The Effects of Physical Conditions on Locus of Control, Body Image andInterpersonal Relationsh ip Orientations. University Males and Females.Dissertation Abstracts, 37 (1977) 3289.Kannel, W.B. and Sorlie, P. â€Å"Some Health Benefits of Physical Activity.† Archives ofInternal Medicine, 139 (1979) 857-861.Ricciuto, Anthony. What Power Nutrition can do for you. Retrieved April 19, 2007 at:http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/anthony26.htm