Faults in Badminton

Chesca Loriel Decena Faults The rules of badminton consider the following as faults: – If the shuttle lands outside the boundaries of the court, passes through or under the net, fail to pass the net, touches the ceiling or side walls, touches the person or dress of a player or touches any other object or person. – If the initial point of contact with the shuttle is not on the striker's side of the net. (The striker may, however, follow the shuttle over the net with the racket in the course of a stroke. ) If a player touches the net or its supports with racket, person or dress, invades an opponent's court over the net with racket or person except as permitted. – If a player invades an opponent's court under the net with racket or person such that an opponent is obstructed or distracted or obstructs an opponent, that is prevents an opponent from making a legal stroke where the shuttle is followed over the net. – If a player deliberately distracts an opponent by any action such as shouting or making gestures. If the shuttle is caught and held on the racket and then slung during the execution of a stroke. – If the shuttle is hit twice in succession by the same player with two strokes. – If the shuttle is hit by a player and the player's partner successively or touches a player's racket and continues towards the back of that player's court. – If a player is guilty of flagrant, repeated or persistent offences under Law of Continuous Play, Misconduct, Penalties. – If, on service, the shuttle is caught on the net and remains suspended on top, or, on service, after passing over the net is caught in the net. Lets ‘Let' is called by the umpire, or by a player (if there is no umpire), to halt play. A ‘let' may be given for any unforeseen or accidental occurrence. The rules of badminton consider the following as ‘lets': – If a shuttle is caught in the net and remains suspended on top or, after passing over the net, is caught in the net, it shall be a ‘let' except on service. – If, during service, the receiver and server are both faulted at the same time, it shall be a ‘let'. – If the server serves before the receiver is ready, it shall be a ‘let'. If, during play, the shuttle disintegrates and the base completely separates from the rest of the shuttle, is shall be a ‘let'. – If a line judge is unsighted and the umpire is unable to make a decision, it shall be a ‘let'. – A ‘let' may occur following a service court error. When a ‘let' occurs, the play since the last service shall not count and the p layer who served shall serve again, except where in situations where the Law of Service Court Errors is applicable.

Film Analysis – Blade Runner

MAC 170: INTRODUCTION TO FILM STUDIES ASSIGNMENT ONE – FILM ANALYSIS FILM CHOSEN: Blade Runner (1982) EXTRACT: INT – Sebastian’s Building, starting with the shot of Deckard climbing up the wall. Duration: 9 minutes (Chapter 30, Blade Runner: The Final Cut, 2007) The following essay will be a close analysis of an extract from the 1982 film Blade Runner, which was directed by Ridley Scott. Blade Runner is a science-fiction film based on the book ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ which was written by Phillip K. Dick.This essay will also explore how Ridley Scott’s use of mise en scene and editing in Blade Runner can exhibit him as an auteur. An ‘auteur’ is known as the ‘author’ of the film; a director that uses recognisable and similar traits and themes throughout a number of their films. The ‘auteur’ was created through the ‘auteur’ theory, which argues that the director is the most importan t person behind making a film. It was first established by an establishment of film makers in 1950’s Paris. Some of these film makers were Francois Trauffaut, Jean Luc-Goddard and Jacques Rivette.They were angered by a critical establishment in France that lauded a film’s fidelity to a screenplay or novel and regarded the film director as merely a translator of material from the verbal medium to the cinematic. For this view Trauffaut and company substituted a notion of personal cinema – a cinema in which the director, not the screenwriter, could be seen as the controlling force behind the film. (Allen & Gomery, 1985: 71-72) This quote explains how the auteur theory was established, and how Trauffaut created la politique des auteurs, which is a policy in which the director is the main creative force when making a film.Ridley Scott can be classed as an auteur for his repeated use of strong female characters, which are present both in Blade Runner, Alien (1979) and Thelma & Louise (1991), the future and the unknown, and the ‘created’ human. This essay will explore these points using the close analysis of Blade Runner, whilst also comparing Blade Runner to Alien. Ridley Scott can be classed as an auteur for his use of setting in his films; he tends to create a post-apocalyptic setting, mainly set in the ot-so-distant future. This can be seen in the extract of Blade Runner, from the wide angle, long shot of Deckard on the roof. The tall buildings, which are close together, help to connote an industrialised city, and the lack of organic matter helps to show the futuristic world as very bleak, old and dirty. The use of space surrounding Deckard when he is hanging from the roof help to establish that the city lacks people and is very de-humanised and an almost dystopia, which is very similar to Alien.Alien and Blade Runner warn us against a capitalist future gone wrong, where such feelings and bonds are so severely truncated that a qu ite literal dehumanization has become perhaps the gravest danger. (Byers, 1990: 39) This dehumanization feature which Ridley Scott has placed into both Blade Runner and Alien gives both films a sense of fear to the audience when both films were first released, that the possibility of the earth being dehumanized is quite great.The shot of Deckard hanging from the roof also shows how high the building is, with the audience barely being able to see the floor, which helps to connote a sense of uncertainty from the audience, as they are unsure as to whether or not Deckard will fall. The use of rain in this scene is very powerful, as it makes the scene feel very depressive, creating a bleak aspect to the film whilst also creating a ‘bad feeling’ for the audience, as it connotes to the audience that something bad is going to happen.This helps to establish a bleak, industrialised future, a one in which there are little humans on earth in Blade Runner, similar to Alien which can help to describe Ridley Scott as an auteur. Ridley Scott can also be defined as an auteur for his use of strong and determined protagonists, especially in Blade Runner and Alien. In this scene extract, Deckard can be seen as a strong protagonist due to his determination to ‘retire’ Roy. This scene however, also shows the audience the similarities between Roy and Deckard.The cross cutting editing used at the start of the scene when both characters are dealing with their similar hand injuries helps to show the similarity between Roy and Deckard as they are both dealing with the same sort of pain. Deckard in this scene seems very determined to retire Roy, however when Roy does die, the audience seem to get the feeling that Deckard seems sad about this. The editing in this extract is quite slow at first, using long shots before cutting helping to create a slow pace to the scene.The extract then changes pace however, when Roy is ‘hunting’ Deckard, the editing b ecomes quite fast and rapid making it exciting for the audience to watch. The shot when Roy smashes his head through the wall helps to show the slow pace turning fast. The way the editing is quite slow and then there is a jolt – the point where Roy smashes his head through the wall – the editing then speeds up a little after this shot, until Roy’s death where the editing slows down rapidly, using slow-motion to evoke sadness from the audience.The Roy smashes his head through the wall helps to show a sense of power from Roy, which creates a sense of danger toward Deckard from the audience, making them feel like he is not safe. There are a lot of cross-cuts between Roy and Deckard, which helps the audience to see the similarities between the two characters, almost hinting that Deckard could be a replicants too. The fading between the dead Roy and Deckard, and the use of close ups on Deckard’s sad face makes the audience feel quite sad too.In this scene we l earn that Roy just wanted to live and not be a ‘slave’ which creates empathy from the audience. The significance of the dove which is released when Roy dies connotes that the bird was almost a representation of Roy – and the shot of the bird flying away is a symbol of Roy finally being ‘free’ which leaves the audience feeling sad and almost regretful that they saw Roy as the villain, especially when we see him jumping in and out of the shadows at the beginning of the scene, as if this was almost a game to him.In this scene, Roy can be seen as the anti-hero. The use of lighting surrounding Roy when he has died makes him appear almost god-like, signifying him as powerful, which he has been throughout this scene. The long shot of Roy and Deckard, when Roy has just pulled the dangling Deckard from the roof to safety signifying that Roy can be seen as an anti-hero, connotes that Roy has more power over Deckard. The way Deckard is lying on the floor at Roy ’s feet shows Deckard in a submissive way, that human’s are powerless against replicants.The close up, low angle on Roy’s face after this, makes the audience feel quite scared of Roy. His eyes are big, almost ‘crazy’ and the way Pris’ blood is running down his face make the audience feel scared of Roy. Ridley Scott’s lack of lighting in this extract can help to identify Ridley Scott as an auteur, as he also uses a lack of lighting in Alien. The shot of Roy behind the barbed wire, almost signifying a caged animal which replicants have shown similarities to throughout the film, creates a sense of fear and uncertainty for the audience.The way the light is shining behind him creating a lot of shadows, makes Roy seem a little mysterious as the audience are uncertain as to what is going to happen next. The way the lighting throughout the extract creates a lot of shadows, making the extract feel bleak and dark, creating almost a Film Noir fee l to the film, creates a bleak, and dark feel for the audience. Throughout the extract, the only lighting we see is artificial, as the only light comes from lamps, bright lights from a ‘Spinner’ advertising the new world or bright neon billboard’s which helps to give the film an artificial and futuristic tone.Ridley Scott’s use of dark colours in this scene, such as grey, black and blue, creates a sinister feel to the scene making the audience know something bad is going to happen. This is similar to Alien, as all the lighting in that film is artificial too, coming from the lights from the ship, and the 1984 Mac advert which Ridley Scott directed, can define him as an auteur. The way Ridley Scott continually uses similar features and themes among his films helps to exhibit him as an auteur.Blade Runner and Alien are very similar in terms of editing and mise en scene, the use of this in Blade Runner helps to establish Ridley Scott as an auteur as he uses th ese themes and effects in many more of his films. Word Count: 1505/1602 Bibliography Allen, R. C. & Gomery, D. (1985) Film History: Theory and Practice, McGraw Hill Byers, Thomas B. (1990) ‘Commodity Futures’ in Kuhn, A. (ed. ) Alien Zone, Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, London: Verso. Caughie, J. (ed. ) (1981) Theories of Authorship, London: Routledge Nelmes, J. (ed. ) (2003) Introduction to Film Studies, London: Routledge

Part Four Chapter VI

VI The next Parish Council meeting, the first since Barry had died, would be crucial in the ongoing battle over the Fields. Howard had refused to postpone the votes on the future of Bellchapel Addiction Clinic, or the town's wish to transfer jurisdiction of the estate to Yarvil. Parminder therefore suggested that she, Colin and Kay ought to meet up the evening before the meeting to discuss strategy. ‘Pagford can't unilaterally decide to alter the parish boundary, can it?' asked Kay. ‘No,' said Parminder patiently (Kay could not help being a newcomer), ‘but the District Council has asked for Pagford's opinion, and Howard's determined to make sure it's his opinion that gets passed on.' They were holding their meeting in the Walls' sitting room, because Tessa had put subtle pressure on Colin to invite the other two where she could listen in. Tessa handed around glasses of wine, put a large bowl of crisps on the coffee table, then sat back in silence, while the other three talked. She was exhausted and angry. The anonymous post about Colin had brought on one of his most debilitating attacks of acute anxiety, so severe that he had been unable to go to school. Parminder knew how ill he was – she had signed him off work – yet she invited him to participate in this pre-meeting, not caring, it seemed, what fresh effusions of paranoia and distress Tessa would have to deal with tonight. ‘There's definitely resentment out there about the way the Mollisons are handling things,' Colin was saying, in the lofty, knowledgeable tone he sometimes adopted when pretending to be a stranger to fear and paranoia. ‘I think it's starting to get up people's noses, the way they think that they can speak for the town. I've got that impression, you know, while I've been canvassing.' It would have been nice, thought Tessa bitterly, if Colin could have summoned these powers of dissimulation for her benefit occasionally. Once, long ago, she had liked being Colin's sole confidante, the only repository of his terrors and the font of all reassurance, but she no longer found it flattering. He had kept her awake from two o'clock until half-past three that morning, rocking backwards and forwards on the edge of the bed, moaning and crying, saying that he wished he were dead, that he could not take it, that he wished he had never stood for the seat, that he was ruined †¦ Tessa heard Fats on the stairs, and tensed, but her son passed the open door on his way to the kitchen with nothing worse than a scathing glance at Colin, who was perched in front of the fire on a leather pouffe, his knees level with his chest. ‘Maybe Miles' standing for the empty seat will really antagonize people – even the Mollisons' natural supporters?' said Kay hopefully. ‘I think it might,' said Colin, nodding. Kay turned to Parminder. ‘D'you think the council will really vote to force Bellchapel out of their building? I know people get uptight about discarded needles, and addicts hanging around the neighbourhood, but the clinic's miles away †¦ why does Pagford care?' ‘Howard and Aubrey are scratching each other's backs,' explained Parminder, whose face was taut, with dark brown patches under her eyes. (It was she who would have to attend the council meeting the next day, and fight Howard Mollison and his cronies without Barry by her side.) ‘They need to make cuts in spending at District level. If Howard turfs the clinic out of its cheap building, it'll be much more expensive to run and Fawley can say the costs have increased, and justify cutting council funding. Then Fawley will do his best to make sure that the Fields get reassigned to Yarvil.' Tired of explaining, Parminder pretended to examine the new stack of papers about Bellchapel that Kay had brought with her, easing herself out of the conversation. Why am I doing this? she asked herself. She could have been sitting at home with Vikram, who had been watching comedy on television with Jaswant and Rajpal as she left. The sound of their laughter had jarred on her; when had she last laughed? Why was she here, drinking nasty warm wine, fighting for a clinic that she would never need and a housing development inhabited by people she would probably dislike if she met them? She was not Bhai Kanhaiya, who could not see a difference between the souls of allies and enemies; she saw no light of God shining from Howard Mollison. She derived more pleasure from the thought of Howard losing, than from the thought of Fields children continuing to attend St Thomas's, or from Fields people being able to break their addictions at Bellchapel, although, in a distant and dispassionate way, she thought that these were good things †¦ (But she knew why she was doing it, really. She wanted to win for Barry. He had told her all about coming to St Thomas's. His classmates had invited him home to play; he, who had been living in a caravan with his mother and two brothers, had relished the neat and comfortable houses of Hope Street, and been awed by the big Victorian houses on Church Row. He had even attended a birthday party in that very cow-faced house that he had subsequently bought, and where he had raised his four children. He had fallen in love with Pagford, with the river and the fields and the solid-walled houses. He had fantasized about having a garden to play in, a tree from which to hang a swing, space and greenness everywhere. He had collected conkers and taken them back to the Fields. After shining at St Thomas's, top of his class, Barry had gone on to be the first in his family to go to university. Love and hate, Parminder thought, a little frightened by her own honesty. Love and hate, that's why I'm here †¦ ) She turned over a page of Kay's documents, feigning concentration. Kay was pleased that the doctor was scrutinizing her papers so carefully, because she had put a lot of time and thought into them. She could not believe that anybody reading her material would not be convinced that the Bellchapel clinic ought to remain in situ. But through all the statistics, the anonymous case studies and first-person testimonies, Kay really thought of the clinic in terms of only one patient: Terri Weedon. There had been a change in Terri, Kay could feel it, and it made her both proud and frightened. Terri was showing faint glimmerings of an awakened sense of control over her life. Twice lately, Terri had said to Kay, ‘They ain' takin' Robbie, I won' lerrem,' and these had not been impotent railings against fate, but statements of intent. ‘I took ‘im ter nursery yest'day,' she told Kay, who had made the mistake of looking astonished. ‘Why's tha' so fuckin' shockin'? Aren' I good enough ter go ter the fuckin' nurs'ry?' If Bellchapel's door was slammed shut against Terri, Kay was sure it would blow to pieces that delicate structure they were trying to build out of the wreckage of a life. Terri seemed to have a visceral fear of Pagford that Kay did not understand. ‘I ‘ate that fuckin' place,' she had said, when Kay had mentioned it in passing. Beyond the fact that her dead grandmother had lived there, Kay knew nothing of Terri's history with the town, but she was afraid that if Terri was asked to travel there weekly for her methadone her self-control would crumble, and with it the family's fragile new safety. Colin had taken over from Parminder, explaining the history of the Fields; Kay nodded, bored, and said ‘mm', but her thoughts were a long way away. Colin was deeply flattered by the way this attractive young woman was hanging on his every word. He felt calmer tonight than at any point since he had read that awful post, which was gone from the website. None of the cataclysms that Colin had imagined in the small hours had come to pass. He was not sacked. There was no angry mob outside his front door. Nobody on the Pagford Council website, or indeed anywhere else on the internet (he had performed several Google searches), was demanding his arrest or incarceration. Fats walked back past the open door, spooning yoghurt into his mouth as he went. He glanced into the room, and for a fleeting moment met Colin's gaze. Colin immediately lost the thread of what he had been saying. ‘†¦ and †¦ yes, well, that's it in a nutshell,' he finished lamely. He glanced towards Tessa for reassurance, but his wife was staring stonily into space. Colin was a little hurt; he would have thought that Tessa would be glad to see him feeling so much better, so much more in control, after their wretched, sleepless night. Dreadful swooping sensations of dread were agitating his stomach, but he drew much comfort from the proximity of his fellow underdog and scapegoat Parminder, and from the sympathetic attention of the attractive social worker. Unlike Kay, Tessa had listened to every word that Colin had just said about the Fields' right to remain joined to Pagford. There was, in her opinion, no conviction behind his words. He wanted to believe what Barry had believed, and he wanted to defeat the Mollisons, because that was what Barry had wanted. Colin did not like Krystal Weedon, but Barry had liked her, so he assumed that there was more worth in her than he could see. Tessa knew her husband to be a strange mixture of arrogance and humility, of unshakeable conviction and insecurity. They're completely deluded, Tessa thought, looking at the other three, who were poring over some graph that Parminder had extracted from Kay's notes. They think they'll reverse sixty years of anger and resentment with a few sheets of statistics. None of them was Barry. He had been a living example of what they proposed in theory: the advancement, through education from poverty to affluence, from powerlessness and dependency to valuable contributor to society. Did they not see what hopeless advocates they were, compared to the man who had died? ‘People are definitely getting irritable with the Mollisons trying to run everything,' Colin was saying. ‘I do think,' said Kay, ‘that they'll be hard-pushed, if they read this stuff, to pretend that the clinic isn't doing crucial work.' ‘Not everybody's forgotten Barry, on the council,' said Parminder, in a slightly shaky voice. Tessa realized that her greasy fingers were groping vainly in space. While the others had talked, she had single-handedly finished the entire bowl of crisps.

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The Milky Way Galaxy - Essay Example The Milky Way we see today is known as a spiral galaxy due to its shape, a flattened disc that bulges in the center. Arms of concentrated matter swirl out from the bulge giving it its spiral appearance. Between the arms of matter are dust lanes, which gives the area a vacant look. The diameter of the disc is approximately 100,000 light years across while the thickness of the disc is only 2,000 light years. The center bulge reaches out to a thickness of about 6,000 light years. The galaxy itself has a well-ordered motion revolving around the galactic center and is surrounded by the galactic halo. The halo is made up of faint older stars that meander randomly, engulfing the galaxy. The galaxy's spiral arms are formed as the galaxy spins and density waves move through the collection of stars and gas. The waves compress different parts of the disc at different times and give it the characteristic spiral shape. These spiral arms rotate around the center bulge where most of the matter is contained, and as the galaxy spins it maintains its shape through the rotational movement and gravity. The stars and globular clusters in the halo that surround the main portion of the galaxy give it an overall spherical shape. The discovery of the Milky Way is a relatively rec

Hindu religious architecture Essay Example for Free

Hindu religious architecture Essay In order to understand a kind of people and their behavior, it is important to understand their literature and art . Different people have different cultures and believe, but can sometime adapt to the cultures of those they come in contact with. In India, there have been many cultural developments that have taken place over several years. The rich cultural activities in India have been due to the influence of many settlers in the county. Furthermore, India’s culture has been enriched by the kind of language that people talk and the religion they practice. Indian Architecture The Hindu architecture reflects the influence of various regions and dynasties. â€Å"With the Islamic style concentrating only on monuments and the Hindu style being more religious, thematically, Indian architecture is indeed a celebration of creatively of unsung artisans who dedicated their lives to bring to life such wondrous pieces of enviable beauty†, (India Travel Agents, N. d). The Hindu temple was built with the concept of four compartments i. e. an entrance porch (the ardhamandap), the vestibule (antarala) and the Sanctum (garbhagriha). In some large temples, was addition of mandap with liberal transepts for size and splendor (India Travel Agents, N. d). The coming of the Muslims in India brought about several changes that had not been experienced in the Hindu religion. One thing that the Hindu religion was not accustomed too was the architecture of the tomb. The Muslims build the â€Å"tomb as a form made modest beginning with small canopies over the graves of Sufi saints and soon led to the erection of increasingly complex structures culminating in India, in the monumental mausoleums of the Mughal emperors (Nangia, 2001). The fusion of the cultures The most striking different between the Indo Islamic and the Hindu religion is the place of worship. The Hindus worship in the temple while the Muslims worship in the mosque. These different worshiping places precisely explain the different conciousness between the two communities. The temple building contains abode of mystery, the courts of the temple are open to light and air. It has got so many doorways which invites publicity. On the contrary, the mosque encloses a ‘phantasma’ of massive darkness with somber passages leading to the dim cells. These places of the mosque are jealously guarded (Nangia 2001). According to Brown (1975), another different that can be spotted between the temple and the mosque is that, it is not infrequently introspective, complex and indeterminate (Nangia 2001). Furthermore, there were other stinking differences in the architectural work of the two religions. In the Hindu religion the temple had various carvings but this was prohibited to the Muslims. The Muslims also had decorations of letterings on the mosque and the tomb while the Hindu did not have such decorations. Most of the architectural designs came because of the various believes that was excised between the two religions. For instance, the Hindu believed in reincarnation and therefore did not practice burying of the dead, rather they practiced cremation. References India Travel Agents (N. d): Indian Architecture retrieved on 20th Oct from http://www. india-travel-agents. com/cultural-heritage-tourism-india/architecture-heritage-tours/index. html Nangia. A (2001): Islamic Influence, retrieved on 20th Oct from http://www.boloji.com/architecture/00015.htm

How sympathetic a character Essay Example for Free

How sympathetic a character Essay Upon reading Aristophanes Wasps for the first time, Procleon, the antihero of the play, evokes a strange sort of sympathy. The part of us that wants to rebel against the system identifies with his character, and admires the way in which, in the second half of the play, he does what the man in the street would really like to do (K Dover) and generally places himself above authority. Aristophanes loads Procleons character with vulgarity and nastiness, but does it in such a way that an audience seeing the play for the first time will focus on sympathizing with him as the `heroic character more than his deep-seated and twisted darker side. For instance, in the first scene we see Procleon trapped inside his own home, treated not like a villain or monster, but a mentally ill obsessive, or trialophile. The more you warn him, the more he goes to court. Thats why weve had to bolt him in and guard the house for fear he gets out. The way the two slaves describe Procleons personality is quite comic. They describe him as a sad old man. He then tries to escape later on by holding on to the bottom of a donkey as it comes out of the house, in a parody of Odysseus in Homers Odyssey. On one hand, we find his wit amusing, and he tries to mirror the cunning of Odysseus, and on the other hand we laughingly pity him for trying such an idea, especially onstage as it looks absurd. Aristophanes is poking fun at the latest trend in Athenian society in the ridiculous person of Procleon. However, Athenian litigiousness and trial mania are not his only target. In his conversion from his former jurymans life, Procleon becomes a caricature of an upper-class snob engaging in one of the well-heeled sets favourite addictions: dressing up in your finery, attending drinking parties and meetings of secret societies and going on drunken rampages through the streets, beating up passers by, knocking over statues, mauling slaves and women, etc. By the end of the play, its hard to tell whether Procleon is ny better off for having traded a poor mans pastime for a rich mans. In the first half of the play, we  see Procleon as a bloodthirsty bastard, a sadistic slave to Cleon whose only friends are the similarly savage, vespine jurymen. Just seeing this feeble army of nasty old men, we find immediate comedy. On the surface, nothing about Procleon seems too bad, just a rather crazed old man with a strange obsession. He enjoys voting defendants down: he is comically sadistic. D. MacDowell However, when we look deeper into the play and Procleons character, we see that there is a far darker and more sinister side to him. First of all, there is the fact that the only reason he enjoys sitting on the jury so much is so that he can wreak pain and suffering upon innocent people. I long to come to court with you, some solid, lasting harm to do. There is also the way in which he treats his daughter, in a rather incestuous manner. she leans over to give me a kiss and fish out those three obols with her tongue! spends his days in the infliction of pain on others and his evenings in running his hand up his daughters skirt. K Dover.

Effectiveness of Racial Discrimination Act in the UK

Effectiveness of Racial Discrimination Act in the UK Discuss the relationship between opportunities and outcomes of how successful legislation against racial discrimination has been a failure in the UK As Blackstone et al. (1998, p247-249) have argued, there have been many legislative initiatives within Britain to deal with the problems associated with racial discrimination. The problem of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ has cropped up on numerous occasions in Britain since the problem of race discrimination was first recognised, officially, back in the 1960s. The progress of these initiatives can be discussed using the lexicon of opportunities and outcomes, a lexicon which has in many ways and often justifiably been regarded as failing to incorporate legislation which deals adequately with the problems relating to race discrimination in Britain. In historical terms discrimination against people of difference race, for example; Jews, Gypsies, Black People and Irish People had been a feature of everyday society prior to and during the 1960s. Speaking of racial difference in a discriminatory and disparaging way and the unequal treatment of foreigners was widely accepted in Britain during the 1960s, when this mentality first started to improve (Ifekwunigwe, J. (2004), p301). As Moore, R (2000, p1) acknowledges, migration to the UK was probably a catalyst for this problem, and in many ways this is still true today. Therefore the threads of racial discrimination, which existed years ago, exist today, giving momentum to the argument that the outcome of legislation in Britain regarding race discrimination has been a failure. The period immediately following the Second World War also saw huge numbers of foreigners coming into Britain. Even the British government of 1905 shared the prejudice which was rife within society, when it passed the 1905 Aliens Act, which made reducing the numbers of Jewish people in Britain a legislative objective (www.cre.gov.uk, 2006). These attitudes were encouraged by the presence of right wing groups and the fact that certain resources like hospital beds and housing provision among poor people were in high demand amongst both ethnic and British people. In assessing the background of how the forces of racial discrimination developed in Britain, it is possible to form an argument that the government did not do enough to use the opportunities of progress in other countries to try to ingrain more tolerance in British society, through the use of legislation. This too can be regarded as a failure on the part of the British government. But failure is a complicated matter and as more efforts were made by the British government to deal with racism, the idea of whether the outcome of their efforts was a failure becomes more complicated. The passage of legislation which prohibited racial discrimination has its main roots in 1965, when the first moves were made within Britain to accept racial discrimination as a problem that should be dealt with by the government. The move happened against the backdrop of a successful American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. 1965 saw the introduction of the first Race Relations Act, which included a definition of what racism was. This definition set down that it was unlawful to treat a person less favourably than another on the grounds of colour, race or either ethnic or national origins (www.cre.gov.uk, 2006). These steps have been criticised as being very limited, and some critics like Blackstone et al. (1998) have argued that the protections offered by the first Race Relations Act were hard for people to access as they were so difficult to prove. Therefore this piece of legislation can be described as in some ways a failure and in other ways, the somewhat successful outcome of an opportunity in which the government used a legislative tool to deal with problems associated with racial discrimination. 1968 saw the introduction of a new version of the Race Relations Act which made the parameters of making a claim of racial discrimination, broader in scope (www.cre.gov.uk, 2006). This is arguably an example of how Britain used a piece of legislation as an opportunity to address certain problems of race discrimination. However, one must look towards the outcome of this to measure the relative success of any legislation. This is a complicated task. The 1968 Act provided that it was unlawful for people to be discriminated against on the grounds of race in the areas of employment, goods and services, housing and trade unions (www.cre.gov.uk, 2006). The Race Relations Board which had been formed to ensure that the Race Discrimination Act was implemented appropriately had its membership increased during the late sixties, making the Board a more effective body. Although whether one accepts whether the Board was an effective body is a matter of opinion, indeed it can be argued here that the Board was successful in that it oversaw the implementation of the Race Relations Act, but it was limited in its mandate, as it could not oversee the functions of government or small businesses in its scope. The 1970s saw the introduction of the 1976 Race Relations Act which in still in operation today. This addressed the continuing problem of racial discrimination in Britain. How well the Act addressed the problem of race discrimination is the subject of much debate, and the answers to this question are rooted in subjectivity. The success of the Race Relations Act 1976 as the outcome of an opportunity is therefore a complex matter. The new Act defined two forms of discrimination, ‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’. It also further defined the idea of victimisation, which was classified as a form of discrimination which was direct. On the more negative side many exceptions remained and this was not addressed by the Act; examples were, the recruitment process for certain types of jobs and certain roles within government were not covered by the legislation. Therefore a dichotomy exists relating to whether one can effectively argue how much of a success and/or a failure opportunities and outcomes associated with the problem of race discrimination in the UK have been. Blackstone et al. (1998, p247) have argued that much has been offered in terms of progress by the race relations legislation, yet Blackstone et al. (1998) have also argued; ‘Most of the problems that troubled the early 1980s are still with us. The political climate has, in a number of ways, remained unhelpful†¦.[1]’. It must be remembered however that the idea of failure is inherently linked with ideas of opportunities and outcomes in this discourse of racial discrimination provision and is also linked with how these processes have overlapped and complimented one another. Therefore, while it is easy to see the many failures of the British government to deal with the problems of racism, the outcomes of many of their attempts to deal with the problem of racial discrimination cannot be regarded as an abject failure, and equally cannot be regarded as a resounding success. The answer to this question, as is often the case, lies somewhere in between these two diametrically opposed positions. Bibliography Website: http://www.cre.gov.uk/40years/act_one.html >> Books and Articles Blackstone, T, Parekh, B and Sanders, P. (1998) Race Relations in Britain: A Developing Agenda. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Ifekwunigwe, J. (2004) Mixed Race Studies: A Reader. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: New York. Moore, R. (2000) Race, Class and Struggle: Essays on Racism and Inequality in Britain, the US and Western Europe. Journal Title: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Volume: 26. Issue: 2. Publication Year: 2000. Page Number: 372. Footnotes [1] p247. Blackstone, T, Parekh, B and Sanders, P. (1998) Race Relations in Britain: A Developing Agenda. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London.

Psychology :: essays research papers

Talk Show Tension Jerry, Jerry, Jerry†¦ Everyday, this chant is heard by millions of people watching the now infamous talk show, Jerry Springer. Even though just a few years ago, most people regarded these shows as ridiculous, now this chant is recognized and adored by many people in society. The most parsimonious explanation for this is that the shows now have more interesting and captivating topics. The premise of most episodes of these shows has changed greatly over the past few years; The topics have moved away from large scale social issues, like homosexuality and cancer, to relationship and familial issues, like adultery and mothers who are too flirtatious with their daughter's boyfriends. Many people would argue that the issues being presented now are not as interesting or captivating as the older issues. However, after watching an old episode and a new episode, most people agree that the emotions displayed by the guests in the newer shows are more visible, with actions such as onstage yelling and fighting. The general emotional content of the episodes has changed from sadness to anger. From a psychological standpoint, there are many influences that cause extreme anger to be displayed by the guests on talk shows. Imagine being a guest on the Jerry Springer show, as you walk onto the stage you see the large audience chanting those infamous words. You sit down next to your fiancà ©e not knowing what to expect, you are nervous and anxious. Finally, Jerry says those terrible words, So, don't you have something to tell your fiancà ©? She turns to you, looks into your eyes and says, Remember about a month ago when I disappeared at that party at your house? Well, that night your brother and me left the party early. I'm sorry, I have been sleeping with your brother for the past month. Suddenly, the anxiousness that you experienced is gone and replaced by anger, intense anger. You turn to Jerry as he asks you, Wow, she has been cheating with your brother, how does this make you feel? Your anger only gets more intense, you ramble to your ex-fiancà ©e and ask her how she could do such a thing. Again, Jerry interrupts the moment and yells into the microphone, Alright lets get the brother out here! As you see your brother walk through the door, you again hear that irritating chant echoing through the crowd.

Diary extracts from Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice). :: English Literature

Diary extracts from Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice). EXTRACT ONE: The first ball =========================== A new gentleman arrived in the neighbourhood, and is now renting Netherfield, a large house with extensive grounds. Of course my mother is very eager for one of her daughters to marry him, as he is single, and possesses a large fortune. Last night, at the ball it was evident who he would marry out of my sisters, and that would be Jane, my eldest sister. Not surprisingly he chose Jane, as she was by far the best looking woman there and had the finest character. Mr Bingley brought with him his friend, Mr Darcy, who we all agree to be of bad character. He was so proud that he didn't dance with any of the guests apart from Mr Bingley's close acquaintances. He was so shameless that, when Mr Bingley asked him why he wasn't dancing, and then indicated me as a suitable partner for him, he did not feel the need to lower his voice or take into consideration my feelings. He replied to Mr Bingley that I was "tolerable". If he had any compassion, he would have asked me to dance or not said anything, but now, his personality is very decided. He is proud, arrogant and selfish. EXTRACT TWO: At Netherfield =========================== I am at Netherfield, still waiting for my poor sister Jane to recuperate. I suspect she will be well soon, and we shall both be able to return home. Last night, I waited in the drawing room with the Hursts, the Bingleys, and of course Mr Darcy. The evening passed with interest, as I had ample time and opportunity to study the characters of those who were with me. There were many amusing characters, but the most amusing person had to be Miss Bingley, as I could not help but notice that she was very obviously attempting to flirt with Mr Darcy, and that Mr Darcy was ignoring her efforts deliberately. Whenever I remarked to Mr Darcy on a matter, he became more interested in me than her, even if it was a debateable comment, or even a rude one. I do not know what to think of this. Surely Mr Darcy cannot be attracted to a person such as me who is just "tolerable" I his eyes? The Next day ============ Jane joined the company last night in the drawing room, as she was feeling much healthier. She and Mr Bingley were inseparable, and again I had time to amuse myself watching Miss Bennet and Mr Darcy. I think that she was a little hurt when Mr Darcy and I got into a debate,

Identifying At-Risk Students Before Its Too Late Essay -- Student Wit

One of the most difficult times for a child is when he or she moves from one school to another. They must become accustomed to a new group of peers, teachers and school community. There is a feeling of isolation and loneliness that these children must deal with. In most cases, it is a matter of a few short weeks before the student is at ease. However, for an immigrant, this process and the challenges faced are much more extreme and difficult to overcome. When an English Language Learner (ELL) enters the new school system, they are exposed to a cultural slurry of their new land (Gunderson, 2000). This includes new foods, customs, language, ethnicities, hobbies, religions and everything else that makes Canada a proud and diverse nation. Ideally, children should experience a balanced educational environment where they learn English, while their first language and culture are maintained and reinforced. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. A high number of ELL students are immersed in the conflict of loss (Gunderson, 2000). As a result, they feel everything that makes them who they are is slipping away and being replaced by an alien culture. They yearn for faces they recognize, foods they know and the sounds of home. The Case Study chosen shows signs of the aforementioned conflict but also signs of a learning disability. This paper will include a Response to Intervention (RTI) approach and further help to assist Amala succeed in her education and new life in Canada. RTI is a multi-tiered service delivery model that is used to identify at-risk learners early and to provide instruction in general education first, followed by targeted intervention as needed (Echevarria, 2013). Amala, a 15 year old Indian girl,... ...aps she does not approve of this marriage or perhaps her biological Father remains in India? These are questions that must be asked when looking at Amala's case. They could all affect her attitude in school and be very large obstacles in her learning. It is important to go down every avenue, to be sure Amala is being supported the correct way. Works Cited Bibiography 1. British Columbia Ministry of Education, English as a Second Language Learners: A Guide for Classroom Teachers (1999), ESL Students with Special Needs, pp. 22-23, http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/esl/ 2. Echevarria, Jana, MaryEllen Vogt, and Deborah Short. Making content comprehensible for English learners: the SIOP model. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2013. Print. 3. Gunderson, L. (2000). Voices of the Teenage Diasporas. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43(8), 692-706. Identifying At-Risk Students Before It's Too Late Essay -- Student Wit One of the most difficult times for a child is when he or she moves from one school to another. They must become accustomed to a new group of peers, teachers and school community. There is a feeling of isolation and loneliness that these children must deal with. In most cases, it is a matter of a few short weeks before the student is at ease. However, for an immigrant, this process and the challenges faced are much more extreme and difficult to overcome. When an English Language Learner (ELL) enters the new school system, they are exposed to a cultural slurry of their new land (Gunderson, 2000). This includes new foods, customs, language, ethnicities, hobbies, religions and everything else that makes Canada a proud and diverse nation. Ideally, children should experience a balanced educational environment where they learn English, while their first language and culture are maintained and reinforced. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. A high number of ELL students are immersed in the conflict of loss (Gunderson, 2000). As a result, they feel everything that makes them who they are is slipping away and being replaced by an alien culture. They yearn for faces they recognize, foods they know and the sounds of home. The Case Study chosen shows signs of the aforementioned conflict but also signs of a learning disability. This paper will include a Response to Intervention (RTI) approach and further help to assist Amala succeed in her education and new life in Canada. RTI is a multi-tiered service delivery model that is used to identify at-risk learners early and to provide instruction in general education first, followed by targeted intervention as needed (Echevarria, 2013). Amala, a 15 year old Indian girl,... ...aps she does not approve of this marriage or perhaps her biological Father remains in India? These are questions that must be asked when looking at Amala's case. They could all affect her attitude in school and be very large obstacles in her learning. It is important to go down every avenue, to be sure Amala is being supported the correct way. Works Cited Bibiography 1. British Columbia Ministry of Education, English as a Second Language Learners: A Guide for Classroom Teachers (1999), ESL Students with Special Needs, pp. 22-23, http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/esl/ 2. Echevarria, Jana, MaryEllen Vogt, and Deborah Short. Making content comprehensible for English learners: the SIOP model. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2013. Print. 3. Gunderson, L. (2000). Voices of the Teenage Diasporas. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43(8), 692-706.

NFLDraft Busts

NFL Drafts are always an exciting time. So many predictions, so much expert analysis, so much time, money, and energy all spent on one goal: To decide which players will have success in the NFL. An enormous amount of hard work goes into drafting a single player. Teams spend countless hours, days, months, and even years trying to figure out which prospects have the greatest potential to find success. The NFL Draft consists of 7 rounds of all the rounds the first round is the most hyped and anticipated and understandably so as some of the best college players are drafted in this round.When drafted in the first round the future prospect has to live up to the enormous expectations that come with being drafted in the first round. Some go on to find success in the NFL and fulfill their duty as a first round pick, however there are many circumstances in which first round picks fail to live up to the expectations. In that scenario they are considered a â€Å"Bust†. Although first roun d picks have enormous pressure to perform well they are also very handsomely paid.In 2008, the average guaranteed salary for a first-round pick in the NFL was $11,924,000. For second-round picks, that number drops to $1,932,000, while third-round picks averaged $668,000 guaranteed. The steep drop illustrates the significant financial importance a higher draft slot has for a prospect. So it’s easy to see why there is so much pressure on first round picks. However the first round is not the only round of the draft there are six more rounds behind it. Teams can defiantly find talent in all rounds of the Draft.Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana was drafted in the third round, 3-time MVP Brett Favre was drafted in the 2nd round and 3-time Super Bowl winner and future Hall of Famer Tom Brady was drafted in the 6th round with the 199th overall pick. Even with all the great NFL Draft picks there are some really horrible and frankly stupid draft decisions. For every Tom Brady there is a JaMarcus Russell. With that being said we now break down the Top 10 worst draft picks in NFL history. Picks that cost their teams millions and the chance to draft future NFL stars and Hall of Famers. 10.Jeff George, QB, Illinois (1990 / Round: 1 / Pick: 1) The Colts traded to draft George, making him the first pick in the 1990 draft, and then rewarded him with the richest rookie contract in NFL history. What should have been a dream career with his hometown Colts turned ugly almost from the start? By the time it ended after four seasons with a trade to the Atlanta Falcons, he had made vile gestures to the hometown fans, argued with Coach Ted Marchibroda, held out for 36 days, and tried to get a trade. George would turn out to be a journeyman quarterback being on seven different teams.He had a passer rating of 80. 4 and threw for 27,602 yard with 154 Touchdowns and 113 interceptions. 9. Blair Thomas, RB, Penn State (1990 / Round: 1 / Pick: 2) Thomas was drafted by the New York J ets in the first round (second overall) of the 1990 NFL Draft. His NFL playing career spanned six seasons. Despite leading NFL rookies in yards-per-carry and AFC rookies in total yardage, he is widely considered another in a long line of Jets draft disappointments. Thomas rushed for only 2,000 yards and five touchdowns in his four seasons with the Jets.Thomas suffered a series of nagging injuries beginning in 1992 and was released by the Jets following the 1993 season. He began the 1994 season with the New England Patriots, but finished it with the Dallas Cowboys. He concluded his NFL career with the Carolina Panthers in 1995. 8. Akili Smith, QB, Oregon (1999 / Round: 1 / Pick: 3) Taken by the Cincinnati Bengals with the No. 3 overall pick in 1999 draft, Smith never grasped the complexities of the NFL game and failed to show the work ethic required to succeed in the league. He started just 17 games over four years with the Bengals, throwing just five touchdowns.He had two failed com ebacks with the Packers and Buccaneers before an uneventful, short stint in the CFL. As for life after football, in March 2010 Smith became a graduate football assistant at Cal. He was hired by head coach Jeff Tedford, who previously coached Smith at Oregon as offensive coordinator. 7. Lawrence Phillips, RB, Nebraska (1996 / Round: 1 / Pick: 6) Phillips was drafted sixth overall in the 1996 NFL Draft by the St. Louis Rams despite his considerable character issues; several teams with higher picks declared they passed on him because of his off-the-field troubles.Phillips played the 1996 and part of the 1997 seasons with the Rams before refusing to show for a team meeting and practice in a dispute with coach Dick Vermeil over playing time in November 1997. The Rams cut Phillips in 1997.. Phillips is arguably one of the biggest draft day blunders in NFL history, the Rams thought so highly of him that the team traded his predecessor, Jerome Bettis, to the Pittsburgh Steelers immediately after drafting Phillips, a trade that would later prove beneficial to the Steelers. After the Rams he played two games with the Miami Dolphins before being cut.He later played for the 49ers, CFL, AFL, and NFL Europe. His lone career highlight is an infamous one as he missed a crucial block on all-pro cornerback Aeneas Williams who proceeded to knock out Steve Young during a Monday Night Football game against the Arizona Cardinals. This injury would lead to the end of Young's career. Phillips had one run-in with the law after another after his playing career was over, none worse than the one that sent him to prison last December for attacking his girlfriend and driving his car into three teens.He is currently serving a 31 year prison sentence. 6. Charles Rogers, WR, Michigan State (2003 / Round: 1 / Pick: 2) The No. 2 overall pick in 2003 by Detroit lasted just three seasons in the NFL, and caught just 36 passes in his 14-game career. Poor attitude, injuries, and a drug habit contrib uted to his failures as an NFL player. After getting cut by the Lions in 2005, the same year the NFL suspended him for substance abuse, he had tryouts with the Dolphins, Patriots and Buccaneers in 2006, but was not signed. His career was finished.After his career was over Rodgers did not face much better off the field. He was arrested in September 2008 and charged with assault and battery of a female acquaintance. In December 2008, Rogers was sentenced to attend sobriety court or face jail time after violating his probation after testing positive for vicodin. In March 2009, Rogers was jailed for violating probation. On September 16, 2009, Rogers was arrested in Novi, MI for driving under the influence of alcohol after being found unresponsive behind the wheel of his car by police.Rogers was arrested again in Novi, MI on January 5, 2010, having passed out after drinking at an On the Border restaurant, which was a violation of a sobriety court order, and subsequently sentenced to a 93 -day jail term. And last month, Rogers was ordered to return $6. 1 million of his $9. 1 million signing bonus to the Lions because his drug use violated the terms of his NFL contract. 5. Heath Shuler, QB, Tennessee (1994 / Round: 1 / Pick: 3) Shuler was a first-round selection in the 1994 NFL Draft, taken by the Washington Redskins with the third overall pick.ESPN rated him the 4th biggest NFL Draft bust of all time. [3] He held out of training camp until he received a 7-year, $19. 25 million contract. The Redskins had fallen on hard times since winning Super Bowl XXVI, and Shuler was looked on as the quarterback of the future. However, Shuler's poor play contributed to a quarterback controversy with fellow 1994 draft pick Gus Frerotte. This was showcased when Shuler threw five interceptions in a game against the Arizona Cardinals. Shuler started only 18 games in his first two years with the team and was benched in his third year, as Frerotte went to the Pro Bowl.He was out of the N FL by 1997. As a pro, his career passer rating was a horrible 54. 3 and in 2004 ESPN rated him the 17th biggest ‘sports flop' of the past 25 years. Despite his NFL career being a disaster unlike most of the previous top draft busts Shuelr actually did something with his life. After retiring from the NFL, Shuler returned to the University of Tennessee and completed his education, graduating with a degree in psychology. He then became a real estate professional in Knoxville. His real estate company is one of the largest independent firms in East Tennessee.Shuler is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing North Carolina's 11th congressional district since 2007. 4. Tony Mandarich, OT, Michigan State (1989 / Round: 1 / Pick: 2) He was the first round draft pick of the Green Bay Packers in 1989, second overall behind Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman, and ahead of the third selection, Hall of Fame running back Barry Sanders, the fourth sele ction, Hall of Fame linebacker Derrick Thomas, and the fifth selection, perennial All-Pro cornerback Deion Sanders.In 1989, Sports Illustrated called him â€Å"The Best Offensive line prospect ever†. But his career led into what is considered by many to be one of the biggest busts in NFL history. The â€Å"Incredible Bulk† came into the league as one of the most hyped players in NFL draft history. Both scouts and media began haling Mandarich as the best offensive line prospect ever, touting his â€Å"measurables†, â€Å"He weighed 304, ran the 40 in 4. 65 seconds, did a standing long jump of 10'3†³, leaped vertically 30†³ and bench-pressed 225 pounds an unbelievable 39 times†. The No. overall pick of the Packers in 1989 never lived up to the incredible hype, and after just three disappointing seasons in Green Bay, he was cut. In an ironic twist Sports Illustrated featured Mandarich on its cover s again, however this time labeling him â€Å"The NFL's Incredible Bust† quite a stark contrast from the previous slogan of The â€Å"Incredible Bulk†. Mandarich later admitted to using steroids all throughout his college career at Michigan State yet he insisted that he played his NFL career clean. 3. Tim Couch, QB, Kentucky (1999 / Round: 1 / Pick: 1)The top overall pick in the 1999 draft was supposed to be the franchise quarterback for the newly re-coined Cleveland Browns. Drafted before Donavan McNabb there were high expectations for him in Cleveland. Their GM boldly predicted that Couch would win six playoff games. Although Couch did lead the browns to the playoffs most of his time in Cleveland was marred with boos, inconsistent play, and injuries. Couch was plagued by nagging injuries and an inexperienced offensive line; also he just simply didn't have the makings of an NFL quarterback.After getting cut by the Browns in 2004, he had two failed comebacks and also had a 2 year stint in the CFL. 2. Ryan Leaf, QB, Was hington State (1998 / Round: 1 / Pick: 2) Ryan Leaf at number 2 on the all time bust list? Is this a joke? No there is somebody who we believe is worse than Leaf but don’t get me wrong Leaf was one of the biggest busts not in just the NFL but in professional sports history. There were actually scouts out there who thought Leaf would make a better pro than Peyton Manning. THE Peyton Manning. Although that notion seems ridiculous now there were quite a few people who believed Leaf was the better QB.Good thing for the Colts they picked Manning over Leaf, too bad the same can’t be said for the San Diego Chargers. In the third game of his first season Leaf completed one of fifteen passes for 4 yards and fumbled three times in a loss against the Kansas City Chiefs. He was benched after throwing two touchdown passes and thirteen interceptions in nine games, and replaced by Craig Whelihan. After ten games, Leaf had thrown two more interceptions, passing for a total of 1,289 ya rds, with a 45. 3 percent completion rate and a passer rating of 39. Leaf had poor relationships with the media and his teammates.In one infamous locker room incident during Leaf's rookie year, he was caught on-camera screaming at San Diego Union Tribune reporter Jay Posner, â€Å"Just f**king don't talk to me, all right! Knock it off! † and had to be physically restrained by teammate Junior Seau. Another on-camera incident involved Leaf confronting a heckling Chargers fan during a practice session. Two coaches had to restrain Leaf and escort him off the field. Following more poor performances and injury problems, he was released by the Chargers after the season, with four wins as a starter in three years. Unfortunately for Leaf his life didn’t improve off the field either.He has been in trouble with the law multiple times and is currently serving 10 years of probation after pleading guilty in Amarillo, Texas, to eight felony drug charges and losing his job as an assis tant football coach at West Texas A&M. 1. JaMarcus Russell, QB, LSU (2007 / Round: 1 / Pick: 1) Presenting the biggest NFL Draft bust of all time. It will truly take great skill to be worse than JaMarcus Russell. Drafted number one overall in the 2007 Draft Russell turned out to be one of the worst draftees of all time. He was hailed as the man who could finally save the hapless Oakland Raiders.He was thought to return them to greatness. He was supposed to be the Franchise. Now he’s out of the franchise but not before talking $40 million and cementing his legacy as the worst draft pick EVER! Failing to reach a contract agreement with the Raiders, Russell held out through training camp and the first weeks of the 2007 NFL season, until September 12, 2007, when he signed a six-year contract worth up to $68 million, with $31. 5 million guaranteed. He is 7-18 as an NFL starter, which is the worst record by a quarterback who was a No. 1 overall pick. He threw for 18 touchdowns and threw 23 interceptions.He threw for 4,083 yards and had a passer rating of 65. 2 He is the fastest quarterback who was a top pick to be released by his drafting team. Russell lasted three years in Oakland. Russell was often cited as being lazy, overweight, and unintelligent. He showed up to camp weighing an astonishing 300 lbs! A ridiculously high number for an NFL quarterback. Although Russell’s numbers are superior to Ryan Leaf’s; Leaf only cost the chargers $11 million, JaMarcus on the other hand cost the Raiders $40 million. So there you have it JaMarcus Russell THE biggest Draft Bust in NFL history.

Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank

9-607-010 REV: OCTOBER 4, 2007 DAVID M. UPTON VIRGINIA A. FULLER Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank Jay Dvivedi looked once more at the proposal in his email inbox, sighed and closed his laptop for the night. He owed his boss, Shinsei CEO Thierry Porte, a response and he knew that he would need to send it in morning. One of the heads of Shinsei’s business units had approached Porte directly with a proposal for a new, off-the-shelf customer relationship management (CRM) system for his business.He wanted to fund it and implement with his own personnel, but he needed approval from Porte. Before Porte responded he had requested input from Dvivedi. When Dvivedi discussed the idea with his team the opinion was divided. The information technology organization had played an integral role in the revitalization of Shinsei Bank from the ashes of Japan’s failed Long-Term Credit Bank (LCTB). In March 2000, Dvivedi had been charged with the task of developing a rev olutionary technology infrastructure for the newly formed Shinsei Bank.When he asked then CEO Masamoto Yashiro for some guidelines he was told to do it â€Å"Fast† and â€Å"Cheap†. Drawing on his wealth of experience in technology and operations in the banking industry he and his team were able to come up with a quick, robust, and inexpensive approach through which the reborn bank could deliver its newer products and services. Shinsei, which literally meant â€Å"new birth† in Japanese, was committed to providing an improved, customer-focused model with such conveniences as Internet banking, 24-hour cost-free ATMs, and fast service based on real-time database reconciliation1.Developing and organizing the technology required to enable this was a monumental task, but one that Dvivedi and his team were able to execute within one year (one quarter of the time that would be needed to implement a traditional system), and at only 10% of the forecasted cost of a tradit ional system. By 2005, the bank had 1. 4 million customers, and was acquiring new business at a rate of 35,000 customers per month. When Dvivedi discussed the proposal with his team some said that the business understood its own objectives best.If a business unit felt that it should add a new system at its own cost then that was its right. Alternatively, other team members felt that this was against all of the principles that had been used to resurrect Shinsei’s IT systems and represented a dangerous step backwards. 1 In many other banks in Japan, deposits and withdrawals did not appear until the next day in order to reconcile the transaction and primary databases. Shinsei wanted to immediately update and make visible the data for its customers. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Professor David M. Upton and Research Associate Virginia A. Fuller prepared this case with the assistance of Masako Egawa, Executive Director of the HBS Japan Research Office, and Akiko Kanno, Research Associate at the HBS Japan Research Office. Portions of this case draw upon â€Å"Shinsei Bank (A),† HBS No. 302-036, â€Å"Shinsei Bank (B),† HBS No. 302-037, â€Å"Shinsei Bank (C),† HBS No. 302-038, and â€Å"Shinsei Bank (D),† HBS No. 02-039 by Professor Michael Y. Yoshino and Senior Research Associate Perry L. Fagan. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Copyright  © 2006, 2007 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-5457685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www. hbsp. harvard. edu.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 607-010 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank Dvivedi needed to draft a thoughtful, well-reasoned reply to Porte and he would have to do it first thing in the morning. Shinsei’s Predecessor: LTCB LTCB, was established by the government in 1952 to provide long-term funding to rebuild Japan’s basic industries after World War II.This strategy proved successful until the 1980s when financial deregulation diminished the demand for loans by traditional borrowers and LTCB aggressively expanded in the real estate and construction markets. Because of Japan’s booming economy, land prices were skyrocketing and many loans were provided based on land collateral rather than an appropriate analysis of risk or future cash flow of the borrower. When the asset bubble burst and land prices plummeted in the early 199 0s, banks were left with an enormous amount of bad debt.In spite of the increase in non-performing loans, Japanese banks were slow to take action. At the time, many still believed that the fall in land prices was temporary and that they could wait out the crisis. Furthermore, Japanese banks placed great importance on long-term relationships with their borrowers and were reluctant to raise lending rates in what seemed like a temporary business slowdown. LTCB desperately explored ways to save itself. Conditions continued to deteriorate, however, and its stock price continued to fall.On October 23, 1998, LTCB finally collapsed with nearly $40 billion of non-performing loans and was nationalized. The failure of LTCB marked the largest banking failure in post-war Japan. Acquisition by Ripplewood The events that followed were unprecedented; a Japanese landmark was bankrupt, and was subsequently purchased by a U. S. private equity fund, Ripplewood Holdings, with Goldman Sachs representing the Japanese government. Masamoto Yashiro, former president of Exxon Japan who had just retired after heading Citicorp Japan, was persuaded to join the American investors in acquiring the bank.The government initially favored selling the bank to a Japanese financial institution or an industrial company, but Ripplewood eventually won the bid. On March 1, 2000, LTCB became the first Japanese bank with foreign ownership. â€Å"New Birth† The name of the bank was changed to â€Å"Shinsei,† and Yashiro became CEO. In the first few months, Yashiro moved quickly to establish a new organization and build the bank’s business in three main areas: commercial banking, retail banking2, and investment banking.LTCB had previously generated most of its revenues from corporate loans, but Yashiro was eager to move out of this low-margin business. â€Å"The asset quality [of our loans] was extremely poor, the number of corporate and individual accounts had shrunk by 40%, the trad itional business – corporate lending – was very unprofitable, and the bank’s IT infrastructure and operational capability were significantly inferior even relative to our local competition,† said Yashiro. Fortunately, the bank had received JPY 240 billion in public funds, and was able to start business with a strong capital ratio3 of 12. %. 2 Banking services for individual customers 3 The capital ratio is the ratio of a bank’s equity to a risk-weighted sum of the bank’s assets. 2 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank 607-010 LTCB did not have much presence in retail banking, with only two dozen branches throughout Japan, while major commercial banks had several hundred branches. The bank sold debentures (instead of receiving deposits) to high net worth individuals, but those individuals conducted their banking transactions at other banks which had a broader branch network.Shinsei bank needed an entirely new business strategy, and that, decided Yashiro, would be to serve retail customers. To create a retail banking business from the ground up, Yashiro needed the help of a visionary and technologist. Dhananjaya â€Å"Jay† Dvivedi looked like the right man for the job. An experienced manager of technology and operations with whom Yashiro had worked at Citibank Japan during the 1990s,4 Dvivedi had an engineering background and sought to apply manufacturing principles to the development of the new IT infrastructure. Retail Banking BusinessThe traditional methods of retail banking in Japan were anything but convenient. Business hours ended at three o’clock in the afternoon (to allow time to reconcile computer system information with the databases), no ATM usage outside of business hours, fees for ATMs, no Internet banking, long lead times for new account openings, separate accounts for each type of financial product, and other inconveniences had been an unavoidable, bitter pill for people managi ng their money in Japan. Yashiro and Dvivedi, therefore, endeavored to offer an alternative.Shinsei would have to â€Å"wow† potential customers into switching over from other banks. They had to offer something â€Å"extra† to convince customers to bank at Shinsei. The way to do this, they felt, was through outstanding customer service. Customer Service Model Yashiro believed it was better standards of service, and innovation in services, that would ultimately attract customers to the bank. â€Å"We were new. If we didn’t have something new to offer, there would be no reason for customers to come to us,† said Sajeeve Thomas, head of Shinsei’s retail group.The goal of developing new and closer relationships with customers through unique products and services became central to Shinsei’s transformation. The shift to meeting the competitive requirements of a retail bank, however, proved to be a significant undertaking for an institution speciali zing in corporate financial work. For the transformation to be effective, speed, flexibility, and cost control were paramount. A complete overhaul of the IT system would be required in order to enable this. The new customer-service-based business strategy required a scalable and robust operational and technological infrastructure.Such an infrastructure would help the new business segments grow by supporting enhanced, high quality, 24Ãâ€"7 customer service, product innovation and volume growth. This process involved nothing short of a revolutionary approach to information technology. â€Å"Indeed,† said Yashiro, rather wistfully, â€Å"the real challenge of transformation was not in painting the end state but in choosing the means to reach it effectively. † 4 Their work at Citibank included a major turnaround of that company’s IT system in Japan during the 1990s. 3 607-010Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank Thinking about Technology at Shinsei â€Å"We quickly came to the conclusion that the systems that were used at the old LCTB were of almost no use to us,† recalled Yashiro, lamenting the realization that the extant mainframe infrastructure was actually an impediment to building new business at Shinsei. Its mainframes were overloaded, with no spare capacity, and they relied on separate and disparate networks which were tied closely to the old business model. Maintenance costs were unacceptably high due to locked-in contracts with vendors.The network capacity was inadequate and too expensive. At the same time, the operational processes were inefficient and full of multi-layered, repetitive paper trails. Mainframes were large room-sized computers based on models developed in the 1960s by computing giants like IBM and Fujitsu. For banks, with their enormous amounts of customer data, daily transactions involved collecting information from millions of accounts, transferring it to the mainframe computer at midnight, th en refreshing the data by batch processing for the following day.Dvivedi believed that mainframes imposed great risks onto businesses; since they held the total data in the organization and this meant that if anything happened to that one computer, the business would be temporarily disabled while the system was transferred to backup machines. It was safer to distribute risks by designing systems that linked several smaller computers, such as servers, together. Servers were much smaller computers, often as small as a pizza box, based on cheaper microprocessors and standard UNIX or Windows operating systems.Such smaller servers were often combined into clusters of many hundreds of devices and were thus not only cheaper, but also more scalable than mainframes as capacity could be added to the system in much smaller increments. In the past, almost all banks had run on mainframe-based computer systems, but â€Å"removing the mainframes created granularity within the system,† said Dvivedi. This drastically reduced hardware maintenance costs and allowed flexibility such that services and new products could easily be added to the system. Building a New SystemOnce he had a skilled team in place, Dvivedi focused on centralizing the operations and creating a functional organization. Investigation into traditional methods of large-scale systems implementation exposed the significant risks and difficulties in adapting a traditional, monolithic, mainframe-based system to the dynamism of Shinsei’s freshly rekindled businesses. Indeed, new technology requirements were being developed even as the new business plans took shape, and they would need a scalable IT system that could grow with and even more importantly, adapt to the business. Technology delivers the product to the customer,† affirmed Dvivedi. Information technology had to be used as a driver of business, and a source of new business, rather than as a support function. Dvivedi also believed that S hinsei should forge its own IT strategy, rather than follow the examples set by other banks, so that competitors might one day turn to Shinsei for advice. Dvivedi could have chosen a gradual approach to creating a new infrastructure by improving the existing technology and processes over time, replacing one system and process after another.This would have minimized disruption but would have taken too long. Alternatively, he could have attempted a â€Å"big-bang† approach, replacing the existing infrastructure with a completely new set of systems and processes in one fell swoop. This approach, however, was deemed too risky, too disruptive, and too expensive. As part of building the new infrastructure Dvivedi focused on parsimony in selecting standards. There would be one network protocol, one operating system, and one hardware platform. Dvivedi 4 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank 607-010 did not wait for consensus before moving to new standards.Choosing one set of standards, rather than allowing a patchwork of multiple standards to build up, helped keep the complexity low, which, in turn, made the system easier to manage. The skills needed to run and maintain this infrastructure were standard and people trained in them were easy to find. Instead of looking at the whole system, Dvivedi preferred to break it down into pieces. â€Å"How can we modularize pieces so they can be used again and again? † he asked. He believed that the key to success was to keep creating new elements and to introduce them into the system without stopping the enterprise.A caveat of this, however, was the challenge of keeping things safe and secure, yet not so locked-down that they became unchangeable. The approach that Yashiro and Dvivedi decided on was at once radical and accelerated, driven by the evolution of their new business strategy. It involved implementing, as needed, a new, modular operating infrastructure that operated initially in parallel wi th, but ultimately superseded, the existing infrastructure. Dvivedi’s Vision Dvivedi made choices not simply based on available technologies; rather, he focused first on the business problem that had to be solved.Once the problem was clearly identified, it was broken down into as many logical parts as possible. â€Å"We’d keep breaking down the elements until the solution was obvious,† said Sharma Subramanian, the IT group’s Planning and Coordination Officer. In addressing each element, the team looked to its toolkit of standard modules and components, and determined whether or not any appropriate solutions existed. If not, they went to the market and sought the missing piece of technology, looking specifically for its availability as a standard component.If it was not already available as a standard component, they would ask one of their partners to build the component. They would build it so that it was reusable. For a component to be reusable, it had t o have a clear specification of the function(s) it performed, as well as a standard interface into which other components or modules could connect. The various components were assembled and reused in order to build products and services for Shinsei’s customers, and 90% of the technology components were used by more than one product. To meet Yashiro’s andate, Dvivedi devised five basic guidelines that were to govern all work going forward. His approach addressed waste and unnecessary work, and the elimination thereof, to make processes more efficient. Every job done was evaluated on the basis of these five criteria: †¢ Speed – How fast can the work be done? The goal was to build a new IT system within 18 months of conception. Changes were made in small, frequent, and predictable steps. The use and re-use of standard components enabled the team to roll out new capabilities quickly and with minimal testing (since the components already had been tested in their previous context).Cost – How low can we keep costs? For example, Shinsei understood that they did not have to build everything from scratch. By combining a number of software packages, they were able to construct the new system in a very short time. For example, Shinsei used Intel-based, Windows servers and Oracle database servers on the back-end and off-the-shelf solutions on the front-end. They used standard Dell PCs running Windows. In the process, Shinsei became the largest bank running its back-end systems on a Windows platform.Capability – What new capabilities will IT enable? For example, to support multiple currencies and financial products for retail customers the old technology platform that handled deposits, loans and other services had to be changed. †¢ †¢ 5 607-010 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank †¢ Flexibility – How easily can the system be changed to respond to business needs? Dvivedi assumed that the business needs of the company would change over time and that the IT systems had to respond to this rather than prevent ecessary change as the mainframe system had done. The infrastructure needed to be expandable and robust enough to support the operation as volumes grew. Re-usable component-based architecture would enable flexibility. To make its services flexible, Shinsei used alerts, not reports, to manage workflow. Machinedriven prompts notified employees when work went unattended, demanding attention and action when required. Similarly, when making infrastructure decisions Yashiro made a point of focusing on the business objective, not the ‘as-is’ environment.Designing an infrastructure to support a new business objective had to begin with that objective in mind and not with Shinsei’s current capabilities. If the objective could be met without changing existing infrastructure then they would not change it. If elements of the existing infrastructure were made redunda nt by the new approach, then they would become irrelevant and be superseded over time. Flexibility meant not being inhibited by previous decisions. †¢ Safety – How secure is our system? Safety was built into the process by breaking down the problems into very small parts.Smaller elements meant a smaller piece of the project that went wrong if something were to fail. Furthermore, a number of small parts meant that each part could be tackled simultaneously to fix the problem more quickly. The approach to safety could be seen clearly in Dvivedi’s decision to leverage the public Internet. Back in 2000, Dvivedi met tremendous incredulity at the notion of using the Internet for internal banking transactions. Nevertheless, the Bank went with public Internet lines as opposed to leased lines.Public Internet technology allowed Shinsei to move work to any location, including lower-cost locations, such as India. ATMs, telephones, call centers, video, and data were also connec ted through public lines, at a fraction of the cost of leased lines. â€Å"We use the Internet in two ways, for transport both within and outside the company and we use it to run different elements of our processes. The key is to ensure that each activity or session is performed in a secure manner. We assume that everything will fail. The key task is to ensure there are no single points of failure.When components fail, we assume that staff will not notice or will be busy on something else. The safety must be passive, that is to say if one component fails, the work must seamlessly move to another component all without any intervention,† said Nobuyki Ohkawa. Ohkawa had decades of experience working on these problems and was the person Dvivedi assigned the task of designing and deploying the networks and machines on which Shinsei ran its business. To ensure that the data sent over the public Internet was kept secure, Shinsei encrypted all the data it transmitted.In addition, its networks were secured by deploying the latest in network technology and by a process of continuous monitoring for unauthorized intrusions and denial of service type attacks. Should there be any indication that an attack was attempted, the source of the attack was identified and actions taken to disable or block it. Most of all, however, Dvidedi relied simply on the fundamentals of the internet itself: â€Å"The Internet is anonymous. Your messages and our data travel over the same network in a random fashion. The anonymity is our first level of security†.Given these parameters and the scope of the undertaking, Yashiro and Dvivedi did not believe they could entrust the project to one hardware vendor. Also, the fluidity of the envisioned end-state made it difficult to engage an outside vendor economically. Yashiro and Dvivedi needed to reach out to external partners to get the resources and know-how that they envisioned, as applied to their projects. Partner companies in Dvive di’s native India proved to be a tremendous boon. 6 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank 607-010 Outsourced WorkDvivedi engaged multiple Indian firms to handle different parts of Shinsei’s information technology. This outsourced work focused on areas where internal development skills were lacking and where Dvivedi felt that they were not necessary for the bank to acquire. Thus, Dvivedi was free to pull together work groups of specialists without regard to their physical location. This was a major departure from existing practices in Japan, and proved to be a culture shock for the staff. In fact, Shinsei was the only company in Japan to use solely Indian software services.Nucleus Software, in Delhi, and Polaris Software Engineering, in Chennai, were two collaborators, as well as the larger Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services companies, in developing pieces of Shinsei’s financial software. By employing translators, Shinsei acquired best-of-breed e ngineers, and did not bother trying to teach them Japanese. They could remain in their respective silos, working on a portion of the Shinsei technology, without assimilation into Shinsei headquarters. In order to outsource work, Dvivedi and his team had to divide the work up into modular parts.Removing interdependencies was key as they believed that dependency slowed down the work; without dependency, people could work at their own speeds and avoid bottlenecks. For this reason, old systems maintenance was kept separate from new systems development. If unnecessary stress was placed on old systems, the entire system would become unstable and the speed at which new ones were developed would also be at risk. With each company, Shinsei worked to establish a relationship characterized as a â€Å"partnership† rather than one of a supplier.The bank worked with its partners without requiring competitive bids, avoiding traditional requirement documents such as RFPs (request for proposa l) or RFIs (request for information). Dvivedi believed that these were superfluous process steps that added unnecessary time and overhead work to the engagement. Furthermore, Shinsei did not enter into fixed-price contracts; on the contrary, engagements were quantified on a time-and-material basis. Implementation Shinsei moved from mainframes to a Windows-based platform, supported by a high-speed, lowcost, packet based network operated as an internal utility.They centralized the decentralized, but made sure that everything was modular and highly flexible. Organizational silos were broken down in order to integrate processes. â€Å"We have learned to deliver precision where needed rather than trying to be precise in all things,† said Yashiro. Despite the carefully constructed approach to assembling the guiding principles for the company’s IT strategy both Yashiro and Dvivedi knew that just as many, if not more, IT transformation projects failed during implementation.As such, they spent a substantial amount of time creating principles to guide the implementation process. †¢ Parity – Parity allowed the old and new systems to coexist in parallel. Dvivedi believed that employees should choose to use the new system if it were placed in front of them. He did not want to appear as though he was convincing people to use the new technology. He told employees: â€Å"We will not change – but we will change the technology. † He believed the new systems should function much the same as their predecessors, and possess the same look and feel even if this mimicry resulted in extra cost.At the same time the new system should provide new capabilities so that employees would be excited about using them. As comfort with the new systems increased, the old systems were removed. Dvivedi mused: â€Å"Nothing must change for change to happen. † 7 607-010 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank †¢ Incremental steps â€⠀œ The smaller the changes, the lower the degree of disruption in the bank. The work was done on multiple parallel paths; development occurred in rapid, short cycles, with progressive delivery of requirements.As components were tested, they were implemented and reused if they fulfilled their objectives or they were promptly discarded if they did not work. Incremental steps also kept the system accessible as changes could be made on an almost continuous basis. Inclusiveness – Yashiro believed that the business strategy must always drive infrastructure change, and it was therefore imperative that senior managers be closely involved in the technology transformation. Said Yashiro: â€Å"I have learned that technology and operations are not just support functions.They also offer capabilities that can open up new strategic opportunities and businesses for us. † Transparency – Dvivedi tried to keep the technology transparent to the customer, such that the customer woul d not notice anything different when the technology changed. This would allow Shinsei to remain flexible in its technology choices at no inconvenience or disruption to the customer. Ironically, this required great discipline. Dvivedi had to resist advertising the new technology because, as he said, â€Å"the moment you say ‘this is going to improve things for you,’ you create a dependency. Dvivedi felt this was important so that the bank would be free to pick and choose its technology as systems changed, while the customer would experience only consistent service. Paperless – Any paper generated had to be checked, filed, and secured while the absence of paper made work distribution easier. Paper intensive, manual processes were replaced with a nearly paperless environment. A room dedicated to scanning services received all incoming paper correspondence and invoices. Such paper documents were scanned and then filed electronically.The paper documents did not move any further into the office than that initial receiving room. After that, everything was accessible online. †¢ †¢ †¢ All of these efforts supported Yashiro’s principle of minimizing the change required of people. Making new systems look as similar to old ones as possible, and allowing the two to co-exist in parallel, were necessary to minimize the disruption of Shinsei’s employees. Furthermore, they did not set formal replacement dates for any of the new systems they implemented.Instead, they performed parallel runs with reconciliation to ensure proper functioning of the new system. They repeated this process for as long as was necessary until they were sure that the employees were comfortable with the new systems. Only then did they turn off the old system. Getting Results Shinsei’s key success was in assembling the building blocks of its new infrastructure. The entire retail bank system was implemented faster than planned and well below budget. In the end, Shinsei achieved rejuvenation in one year (instead of the projected three years) and at 90% less than the riginal cost estimate. The cost of the overhaul totaled $50 million, while other banks in Japan had paid ten times this amount for similar initiatives. The success of the system transformation enabled 24Ãâ€"7 multiple channel access to customers rather than a single channel service that was only available from 9am to 3pm. In addition, they were able to obtain real-time balances from these channels, and roll out new products quickly by leveraging standard building blocks that were already in place. Management controls were also significantly improved through the new system.The old 6-day reporting cycle – characterized by chronically late financial ledger data – was replaced with a daily one, with the added ability to provide customer and product profitability tracking data on demand. 8 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank 607-010 They w ere also able to perform continuous reconciliation on all accounts and standardized what were non-standard, non-documented procedures. New Services â€Å"We have a very specific value proposition for customers,† incoming CEO Thierry Porte said. It’s based on convenience, ease of use, empowering customers, offering things on a low-cost basis, so our ATM system is free and we also offer free Internet transfers. At the same time, we offer high-quality products and services. † One of these new services was an innovative branch operation featuring â€Å"cashless tellers. † Dvivedi believed that a key tenet of the customer service model was the interaction between staff and customers. To enhance this interaction both paper and cash had to be eliminated from the hands of the branch staff.Paper and cash, Dvivedi felt, were â€Å"avoidable distractions† that merely got in the way of superior customer service. In eliminating paper and cash, the staff was abso lved of the traditional duties of cash-counting and receipt-printing, and could solely service the customer. Indeed, the bank’s branch services were entirely self-completed; the staff was present only to provide assistance as needed. All transactions took place online, at Internet portals in the branch. The transaction could take place anywhere, however, that the customer was connected to the Internet.Online-only transactions effectively eliminated paper from the system, and also allowed the customer to be responsible for his own transactions. The customer was asked to double-check each transaction before authorizing it. This greatly reduced the frequency of errors. Cash was available from the branch’s ATM machines; staff guided the customers to use the ATMs for both withdrawing and depositing cash. If a customer did not have his ATM card, a staff member would electronically transfer the desired sum from the customer’s account into a teller’s account, and then retrieve the cash for the customer from the ATM.ATMs Most Japanese banks charged fees of 100 to 300 yen, when ATMs were used in the evenings or on weekends, or when customers withdrew money from other banks. Shinsei, to make up for its limited branch network, allowed customers to use ATMs any time free of charge. This distinguished Shinsei from other Japanese banks. Shinsei saw this as a way to attract customers to the bank at very low cost, for they did not have to expand their branch network in order to connect with their customers; they could do it through ATMs. The operating cost of the ATMs was relatively low.In 2001, Shinsei offered a new service enabling customers to withdraw cash free of charge from ATMs outside of Japan – 650,000, to be exact, in 120 different countries, through the PLUS system offered by Visa International. Citibank also offered no-fee use of international ATMs, but was part of the CIRRUS MasterCard network, which had only 530,000 ATMs in abou t 100 countries. Hours Shinsei kept its branches open on weekends and holidays in order to offer services such as same-day account openings, targeting customers who might be too busy to visit the bank during the week.Shinsei used its computer system – operated nonstop – to enable the processing of new accounts and other applications in the same day. Other financial institutions followed suit and began staying open on Saturday and Sunday, but services were limited to mortgages and asset management consulting. Anything that required the computer system could only take place during the week as their systems shut down on the weekends. Shinsei’s branch hours of 10am to 8pm every single day of the year (except New Year’s Day) enabled ustomers to do any type of banking, including sale of mutual funds and insurance policies, at their own convenience. 9 607-010 Information Technology and Innovation at Shinsei Bank Looking Back Yoshikazu Sato, a senior member of th e Technology team at Shinsei, who worked closely with Dvivedi, revealed the apparent simplicity of Shinsei’s model: â€Å"If you stand back and examine what we have done, there is nothing unique about it. The principles we follow have been around for years. Describe what we do to a manufacturing engineer and he may well remark, ‘what’s so special about it? ’ Anybody can buy what we buy.Deconstructing a problem until a standard component can be used, or using low-cost, easily available materials (in our case Dell PCs and Windows software) has been practiced for decades,† he said. â€Å"What makes us different is our ability to focus on applying these principles repeatedly with persistence and without deviation. The manufacturing industry has been moving its operations to the lowest cost and most effective locations for decades. We have replicated it in our use of virtual organizations; people with skills needed for our work are connected in from whe rever they are located.Not having to move people around saved us time, money and gave us an extremely scalable capability,† said Pieter Franken, the architect and designer of Shinsei’s core systems. â€Å"My key task is to ensure that as we do all of this, we are also institutionalizing the work we have done and to continuously expand the technical team to take up all this work,† said Dvivedi. Looking Forward Dvivedi’s â€Å"institutionalization† of Shinsei’s system development process forced the team to think about applications of the model in the future, as well as what challenges lay ahead.Shinsei was focused on growing by acquisition and, for those acquired businesses, the objective was to change the technology and process platform to enable rapid new product roll-outs and to build better quality services. The ability to do this at lower cost would create a significant competitive advantage. â€Å"Our focus is to be able to support all t he Shinsei businesses for their Information Technology needs and help them achieve the same level of technology now being employed by Shinsei Bank,† said Dvivedi. â€Å"We can add value to our businesses with our strength and know-how. In 2006, Thierry Porte succeeded Yashiro as President and CEO of Shinsei. â€Å"Thierry has a clear vision of where he is guiding Shinsei,† noted Dvivedi. â€Å"He has outlined a growth plan for our key businesses that will require us to scale up for much higher volumes, and support a whole range of new functions and features to facilitate the launch of new products and services. † As CEO, Porte was well-aware of how Shinsei’s technology would enable his plans for the bank. â€Å"Our technology is a door-opener for new business opportunities.If we can get our customers in other industries interested in the approach we take to technology design and deployment, to look at the kind of capabilities and services we can help the m build, it will be a unique way to position ourselves and grow our core business of banking. If we can do this it will expand our franchise and be a source of additional revenues,† said Porte. Dvivedi’s Response After a night of reflection the time had come to respond to Porte’s request. Dvivedi opened an email and began typing†¦ 10