Its In The Third Quarter The Essays

Its In The Third Quarter The Essays Its In The Third Quarter The Essays It’s in the third quarter. The fifth game of the 1980 NBA Finals. Lakers versus Seventy-Sixers. Maurice Cheeks is bringing the ball up the court for the Sixers. He snaps the rock off to Julius Erving, and Julius is driving to the basket from the right side of the lane against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Julius takes the ball in one hand and elevates, leaves the floor. Kareem goes up to block his path, arms above his head. Julius ducks, passes under Kareem’s outside arm and then under the backboard. He looks like he’s flying out of bounds. But no! Somehow, Erving turns his body in the air, reaches back under the backboard from behind; and lays the ball up into the basket from the left side! When Erving makes this shot, I rise into the air and hang there for an instant, held aloft by sympathetic magic. When I return to earth, everybody in the room is screaming, â€Å"I gotta see the replay!† They replay it. And there it is again. Jesus, what an amazing play! Just the celestial athleticism of it is stunning, but the tenacity and purposefulness of it, the fluid stream of instantaneous micro-decisions that go into Erving’s completing it†¦ Well, it just breaks your heart. It’s everything you want to do by way of finishing under pressure, beyond the point of no return, faced with adversity, and I am still amazed when I think of it. In retrospect, however, I am less intrigued by the play itself than by the joy attendant upon Erving’s making it, because it was well nigh universal. Everyone who cares about basketball knows this play, has seen it replayed a thousand times, and marveled at it. Everyone who writes about basketball has written about it. At the time, the crowd went completely berserk. Even Kareem, after the game, remarked that he would pay to see Doctor J make that play against someone else. Kareem’s remark clouds the issue, however, because the play was as much his as it was Erving’s, since it was Kareem’s perfect defense that made Erving’s instantaneous, pluperfect response to it both necessary and possible- thus the joy, because everyone behaved perfectly, eloquently, with mutual respect, and something magic happened- thus the joy, at the triumph of civil society in an act that was clearly the product of talent and will accommodating itself to liberating rules. Consider this for a moment: Julius Erving’s play was at once new and fair! The rules, made by people who couldn’t begin to imagine Erving’s play, made it possible. If this doesn’t intrigue you, it certainly intrigues me, because, to be blunt, I have always had a problem with â€Å"the rules,† as much now as when I was younger. Thanks to an unruled and unruly childhood, however, I have never doubted the necessity of having them, even though they all go bad, and despite the fact that I have never been able to internalize them. To this day, I never stop at a stop sign without mentally patting myself on the back for my act of good citizenship, but I do stop (usually) because the alternative to living with rules- as I discovered when I finally learned some- is just hell. It is a life of perpetual terror, self-conscious wariness, and self-deluding ferocity, which is not just barbarity, but the condition of not knowing that you are a barbarian. And this is never to know the lightness of joy- or even the possibility of it- because such joys as are attendant upon Julius Erving’s play require civilizing rules that attenuate violence and defer death. They require rules that translate the pain of violent conflict into the pleasures of disputation- into the excitements of politics, the delights of rhetorical art, and competitive sport. Moreover, the maintenance of such joys requires that we recognize, as Thomas Jefferson did, that the liberating rule that civilized us yesterday will, almost inevitably, seek to govern us tomorrow, by suppressing both the pleasure and the disputation. In so doing, it becomes a form of violence itself. An instance: I can remember being buoyed up, as a youth, by reading

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Essays - Chernobyl Disaster, Free Essays

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Essays - Chernobyl Disaster, Free Essays Period 3 Chemistry May 19, 2013 Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster On April 26, 1986 a disastrous nuclear power plant exploded, causing a volcano of deadly radioactivity that rose into the atmosphere and rained upon the nearby cities, towns, and farms of Pripyat, Ukraine. This resulted to become the largest nuclear energy disaster to have ever occurred in the history of mankind. The horrors of this catastrophe lead many people at risk of receiving severe radiation at an instant as the days went on. This major accident then initiated people to be evacuated almost immediately. But as the years pass by, the city of Pripyat continued to deteriorate and became ghost town. This tragedy altered not only the lives of the people that lived around the area, but tons of different things surrounding the city. Chernobyl suffered a massive amount of radioactive substances that were shot up into the sky. After what seemed to be just a minor situation, it turned out to become very dangerous. But on a beautiful Saturday afternoon of April 26, 1986 a potentially life threating incident occurred which is now known as the Chernobyl disaster. At about 1:23 in the afternoon, the Number Four RBMK (Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosty Kanalny) reactor at the nuclear power plant unexpectedly went out of control during a test procedure at their lowest power. Therefore, it provoked an uncontrollable power surge and lead to an immense violent explosion that nearly demolished the entire reactor building releasing the radiation out from the site and into the atmosphere. The uranium fuel in the reactor melted and overheated the protective barriers. The moderating material in the RBMK also caught fire at a high temperature just as the air entered the reactor core, all of which contributed to the emission of plutonium , strontium, iodine, caesium and hundreds of other elements that were scattered throughout the area of the blast. These reactors lacked with what is known now as a containment structure, which is a steel and concrete dome designed to keep radiation inside incase of such a tragic accident. These deadly radioactive substances initially traveled in a northwest direction toward, Finland, Sweden, and Eastern Europe. It then exposed the population to levels up of up to 100 times that of normal background radiation. Thirty-six hours after the horrific incident occurred, the entire town of Pripyat with a population of about 49,360 was immediately evacuated due to safety procedures for the protection of the lives of the infants, children, adults and senior citizens of that city. Almost 200,000 people that were at a range of 30 km, were believed to have evacuated after weeks and months as a result. But after the initial explosion of the fourth reactor of RMBK it resulted to an immediate death of two workers. About twenty-eight fireman and emergency clean up employees that were rushed onto the scene not knowing what happened past away three months after the blast occurred due to Acute Radiation Sickness and one fatality to cardiac arrest. Other parts of the world were all affect ed from the radioactive releases from Chernobyl but the level of radiation in the atmosphere in several areas of the world was not normal, they then began to quickly and completely recede away. After the initial nuclear plant explosion, mutations did begin to occur to the surrounding environment. Plants and animals were affected. Rare species of animals are now returning in large numbers such as moose, wolves, wild boar, birds, and even beavers. Leaves were then changing their shapes and the animals born came with physical deformities due to the blast. Decades after, tourists go to Chernobyl to find more of an experience and see the city and areas of what is now deserted from what happened years ago. The country did change its nuclear policies and lessons have been learned from this accident. Countries now have made the effort to identify the weaknesses and started to improve the design safety for the nuclear reactors so that such a tragedy wont happen again. Cleaning up after the accident wasnt an easy task to do, but individuals that helped received special benefits from their involvement with their involvement of the aftermath. They specifically worked on major construct ion projects as well as decontamination to

Financial Management during Economic Downturn Essay

Financial Management during Economic Downturn - Essay Example However, during the period of economic downturn or recession, this task is little more difficult as financial decisions are not likely work out as planned by a financial manager. Planning is relatively a simple task as it basically needs only past data with information on how to relate them to future conditions. But, when it comes to realise that financial outcomes do not come out as planned, the firm's financial position gets affected adversely and eventually its existence. Keeping this in view the present paper attempts to discuss the problems that are faced by a financial manger during the period of economic downturn. The paper does not discuss the issue from the view point of any particular firm. Instead it presents the issue from a macroeconomic point of view taking all types of firms. Economic downturn or recession is an economic situation wherein the general economic activities experience a slow down. When the general economic activities of a country get affected by a recession, the country's economic progress and growth will surely be affected leading to low GDP; spending; employment opportunities; capacity utilisation; and individual and household income (Roland 2007). In fact, these variables are necessary to the economic progress and prosperity of a country and its business activities. In short, economic slowdown affects the business activities by low demand for goods and services, poor cash flow from customers and low lending by financial institutions in the economy. This will eventually result in unavailability of finance (log term and short term), less collection from debtors, unavailability of factors of production for enterprises in the economy (The United States Department of Labor 2006). These cause serious financial implications such as low profitabi lity and less growth to the shareholders, which threaten the smooth functioning of business operations. As a result, the individual financial manager should chalk out certain financial plans to revive his firm from economic slowdown. 3.0 Financial Manager's Role The financial manager's role is pivotal in a firm which runs through a tough economy leading to poor debt collection and credit availability. The responsibility of a financial manager in such a pathetic situation is to revive the firm to the earlier position. But it is a huge task and he needs to take and follow a proactive approach rather than reactive efforts. He should take initiatives right from financial planning and budgeting on the anticipation of economic slowdown at any time in future. Moreover, the plans and budgets are to be aligned to the actual happenings in such a way that there is no big gap between the two. The following sections will detail some of the important measures to be followed by a financial manager in times of general economic recession. 3.1 Cash flow Projections Liquid cash is an essential element for the smooth flow of routine business activities. Cash is needed for a number of activities right from purchasing stationery to payment of dividend to shareholders. Unless the firm has a level of cash enough to meet the daily needs, the business operations get affected and will adversely impact the flow of goods and services to the customers. This implies liquid cash is an essential asset, the absence of which will affect the normal operations and