Monday, May 25, 2020

The Dark Knight Movie Review

The movie â€Å"Dark Knight† is a grandiose, strange and dark piece of work of Hollywood. Although the film is overhyped and lasts too long, it is still highly entertaining and must be seen exclusively on the vast Imax screen! When watching the very first shot of the dizzying skyscrapers and minuscule streets, I wasn’t breathing for a couple of seconds getting ready to dive into a new illusory world. The movie â€Å"Dark Knight† is the continuation of the Batman story created by the British director Christopher Nolan. The film plot takes the story up to his confrontation with well known Joker, who is brilliantly played by Heath Ledger. His whiteface make-up makes him look like a sad Pagliaccio of crime. Anyone who wishes to compare him with Jack Nicholson should think twice though their Jokers are of absolutely different nature: Jack Nicholson plays Joker from comics, Heath Ledger, however, was able to show us this genius of crime and chaos as he would look like if he somehow got to exist in our reality. One should mention that Ledger is highly talented at all his kinks, tics, quirks and twitches! The caped crusader is again played by famous Christian Bale, who’s clanking around in his Batmobile so military and macho-looking!  As the action begins, the audience realizes that in Gotham city Batman is still a highly important figure. People in the city still approach this vigilante because â€Å"he is the Batman†. And here’s one more reason to refer to the hero – a new crime fighter is in the city! Played by Aaron Eckhart, a handsome attorney Harvey Dent truly believes that the rule of the law must be upheld by a democratically accountable individual, not some unknown figure of the night. Besides that, Harvey starts dating Batman’s beloved one – Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). To my mind, the most bizarre moment in the film comes when the Joker abducts some unfortunate from the Gotham psychiatric hospital in order to â€Å"impersonate† the first love of Batman. This is what I call the joke of sophistication, hatred and lack of taste! Actually, everything that is going on in the movie is of a mental nature. It’s not that there is no action in the â€Å"Dark Knight†, but even when the main hero is racing through the Gotham streets in his incredible gadgets, it is still the psychology of what is happening pushes the whole movie plot. Due to that, all the problems that the director faced with when working on the â€Å"Batman Begins† are absent in the â€Å"Dark Knight†. There are no complicated and extended fight scenes in the film for the reason that it simply does not need them. What really makes the â€Å"Dark Knight† action so arresting is the solid force of will that stands behind it as well as the philosophical fight that is driving it. Without a doubt, you will be on the edge of the seat every moment in the process – be it a simple conversation at the office of Bruce Wayne or a scene in a Hong Kong skyscraper. Nothing is wasted in the Nolan’s work! There’s not a second or a minute in the â€Å"Dark Knight† movie that does not fit into a deeper, bigger and broader picture. That fits everything, along the way the famous director has filmed it. With all this in mind, I am free to state that the â€Å"Dark Knight† movie deserved nothing less than good old Imax. Without a doubt, the massive box-office success of the â€Å"Dark Knight† movie has provided its director Christopher Nolan with the required means to create his own cheque. I really hope that Nolan will make use of this chance to cultivate works that are more maneuverable than that retro Batmobile.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Quick Facts About the English Alphabet

Writers spend years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet, novelist Richard Price once observed. Its enough to make you lose your mind day by day. Its also a good enough reason to gather a few facts about one of the most significant inventions in human history. The Origin of the Word Alphabet The English word alphabet comes to us, by way of Latin, from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. These Greek words were in turn derived from the original Semitic names for the symbols: Aleph (ox) and beth (house). Where the English Alphabet Came From The original set of 30 signs, known as the Semitic alphabet, was used in ancient Phoenicia beginning around 1600 BCE. Most scholars believe that this alphabet, which consisted of signs for consonants only, is the ultimate ancestor of virtually all later alphabets. (The one significant exception appears to be Koreas han-gul script, created in the 15th century.) Around 1,000 BCE, the Greeks adopted a shorter version of the Semitic alphabet, reassigning certain symbols to represent vowel sounds, and eventually, the Romans developed their own version of the Greek (or Ionic) alphabet. Its generally accepted that the Roman alphabet reached England by way of the Irish sometime during the early period of Old English (5 c.- 12 c.). Over the past millennium, the English alphabet has lost a few special letters and drawn fresh distinctions between others. But otherwise, our modern English alphabet remains quite similar to the version of the Roman alphabet that we inherited from the Irish. The Number of Languages That Use the Roman Alphabet About 100 languages rely on the Roman alphabet. Used by roughly two billion people, its the worlds most popular script. As David Sacks notes in Letter Perfect (2004), There are variations of the Roman alphabet: For example, English employs 26 letters; Finnish, 21; Croatian, 30. But at the core are the 23 letters of ancient Rome. (The Romans lacked J, V, and W.) How Many Sounds There Are in English There are more than 40 distinct sounds (or phonemes) in English. Because we have just 26 letters to represent those sounds, most letters stand for more than one sound. The consonant c, for example, is pronounced differently in the three words cook, city, and (combined with h) chop. What Are​ Majuscules and Minuscules Majuscules (from Latin majusculus, rather large) are capital letters. Minuscules (from Latin minusculus, rather small) are lower-case letters. The combination of majuscules and minuscules in a single system (the so-called dual alphabet) first appeared in a form of writing named after Emperor Charlemagne (742-814), Carolingian minuscule. Pangrams Pangrams are a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet. The best-known example is The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. A more efficient pangram is Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. Lipograms Lipograms are text that deliberately excludes a particular letter of the alphabet. The best-known example in English is Ernest Vincent Wrights novel Gadsby: Champion of Youth (1939) — a story of more than 50,000 words in which the letter e never appears. Zee Versus Zed The older pronunciation of zed was inherited from Old French. The American zee, a dialect form heard in England during the 17th century (perhaps by analogy with bee, dee, etc.), was approved by Noah Webster in his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). The letter z, by the way, has not always been relegated to the end of the alphabet. In the Greek alphabet, it came in at a quite respectable number seven. According to Tom McArthur in The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992), The Romans adopted Z later than the rest of the alphabet, since /z/ was not a native Latin sound, adding it at the end of their list of letters and using it rarely. The Irish and English simply imitated the Roman convention of placing z last.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

On The Shortness Of Life And Rene Descartes Analysis

Philosophy, although a very complex subject, can quite simply be construed as a quest to gain wisdom and the truth through profound analysis. In an attempt to gain this wisdom and insight, numerous philosophers have taken contrasting approaches that have led them to different conclusions about what is true. Seneca, the author of On the Shortness of Life, and Rene Descartes, the author of A Discourse on the Method, are two philosophers who have sought wisdom and shared the methods they believe to be successful in achieving an exceptional way of living. In his approach, Seneca discusses the concept of time, and how to use it efficiently in order to ensure that you lead a long and fulfilling life. On the other hand, Descartes explains the†¦show more content†¦One of the points Seneca makes is that people are too preoccupied with gaining things that they do not have or devoting their lives to someone else, whether it be by pursuing other people’s money or envying their su periors (2). In a way, Descartes alludes to this fact by speaking of the reason that he abandoned his education. Once Descartes realized that he could reasonably doubt everything that he had been taught, he wanted to clear his mind of the beliefs and opinions of others, and create a method that could lead him in the right path. He expands on this thought when he states, â€Å"it is almost impossible that our judgments are as pure or as solid as they might have been if we had full use of our reason from the moment of our birth, and had been guided by that alone† (13). If people were not influenced by the judgments of others, they would have a much better ability to reason clearly and precisely, therefore allowing them to live a fuller life. Since Seneca does not provide people with a way to not be preoccupied with the lives of other people, Descartes method of wiping his thoughts of the judgments of others can be added to Seneca’s position on being preoccupied with oth ers in order to gain better wisdom. In addition, Seneca brings forth the point that the present is short, the future is doubtful, and the past is certain (15). For this reason, he does not think that people should live in fear of the next day, or base their lives off of the hope thatShow MoreRelatedThe Theory Of The Mind Body Problem2474 Words   |  10 Pagesphysical and mental realm? The mind/body problem has been debated for centuries. Am I a person that acts because of the mental processes of my brain, or are the processes in my brain just that? The mind/body problem continues to be important in everyday life because of many types of mind/body connections including how our bodies respond to various situations such as stress, nervousness, or anxiety. When considering myself as a human being am I simply a physical object or is there a deeper meaning to my

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Auditing The Default Customers

Question: Describe about the Auditing for The Default Customers. Answer: A. Identification of F/S level risk: OVS used to charge an amount for as late return fees. However, this practice led to decreasing the number of customers, as they are reluctant to return on time. Next, OVS eliminated this fee and started the rule of considering the movie as sold if not returned after 30 days. The customer will be charged $25, when they will come to purchase new DVD. There is a chance that the customer will not come again to purchase and company will loose the amount. The company should charge an amount at the time of renting the DVD, so that they will not be at loss, if the DVD is not returned. They should maintain proper records for each customers both in manual renting and on line sell or renting (Bekaert, Hoerova Duca, 2013). B. Audit Approach: OVS should be asked to maintain proper records about the customers when renting DVDs. It will help them to find out easily the default customers and the due date to return. Customers name, phone numbers and address should also be recorded in register so that in case of default they can be contacted through phone call or given address. When selling through online, apart from on line records, they should maintain a manual record of customers so that in case of any hack or virus attack, company can track the customers with their manual records (Mohseni, 2014). C. Materiality: The materiality concept states that some substances, whether individually or with any other substance are material for true and fair presentation of financial statements in consistence with generally accepted accounting principles. Auditor must verify the changes they have made and OVSs expansion during 2005 into renting the DVDs through internet. Auditor should also verify their earning and records regarding their newly started programme Movies by Mail (Brooks Guo, 2015). D. Identification of account specific risk: OVSs newly started programme Movies by mail is excellent but they were facing difficulties to run the programme smoothly. They use Moonwatcher web designer (MWD) to make the sales and receipt of money from customers. However, in past they faced crashes of website many times and the only advice from MWD was to reboot the system. There is high risk involved regarding the permanent crash of the server and OVS can lose their money through this experience. Therefore, they should maintain manual records regarding the customers and their phone number, name ant amount of money due from them. E. Procedures to test risks: To test the risks, following procedure should be followed: Fix a meeting with OVS and discuss with them about the primary risk detected Ask them to provide the records related to the detected risks To measure the materiality of the detected risks To suggest them the ideas to reduce the risks or remove the risks, wherever possible (Chen, 2016). F. Control issues with new IT systems: Their new IT system, that is, Moonwatcher Web Designer (MWD) is having problem of crashing their system frequently. Other than the advice of rebooting the system, they could not provide any alternative solution to the problem. OVS can fix a meeting with to solve this issue and if they are not able to resolve the issue, they can search for alternative service provider. References: Bekaert, G., Hoerova, M., Duca, M. L. (2013). Risk, uncertainty and monetary policy.Journal of Monetary Economics,60(7), 771-788. Brooks, L. L. Z., Guo, P. (2015). Audit Firm Tenure, Audit Materiality, and Last-Minute Earnings Management.Journal of Forensic Investigative Accounting,7(1). Chen, L. H., Chung, H. S. H., Peters, G. F., Wynn, J. P. (2016). Does incentive-based compensation for chief internal auditors impact objectivity? An external audit risk perspective.Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory. Mohseni, A. (2014). Audit Approach to Audit Risk Management, Quantitative Determination of the Components of Audit Risk and Determine the Impact on the Components of Audit Risk in Audit Sampling.Quantitative Determination of the Components of Audit Risk and Determine the Impact on the Components of Audit Risk in Audit Sampling (May 22, 2014).