Brigadier General Albion P. Howe - American Civil War

Does a Violent Media create a Violent Society Essay

Does a Violent Media create a Violent Society? This issue is one of constant debate, with no real solution. There are many things society as a whole and individuals can do to appease or inflame the issue, however each argument has a counter argument and a counter argument will exist for that and so on. Because it is an issue of such heated debate with no answer or possibility of an answer should we just leave the issue be and choose not to address it further? Or should we make the issue widely known so society is more aware of the role the media can play. Or perhaps we should leave it to the media to publicise that. After all the media does have a strong influence. Take the late 1980s film Terminator, one of the highest†¦show more content†¦We see footage of car-wreck, murder scenes and hear of graphic telling of ones untimely demise. We take this information in, absorb it as real life, and perhaps over time become de-sensitised to these effects as we see them on the news. The news is a medium which is there to present the facts of the events during the day. A real account of what happened. We understand that Brian Naylor, David Johnston and Mal Waldon are telling us what happened, In Real Life. Some may claim de-sensitisation to these events in real life, due to seeing them on the news. I can speak from experience that no amount of news footage, re-creations, re-enactments or re-telling of a car accident could have prepared me for what I saw, a minor incident, while driving home from Bairnsdale. Others claim that violence existed before TV and Films, and perhaps an even more violent society. Take the Delinquents (again) for example. The brutal beating delivered to Brownie in public. That sort of punishment was accepted. Today it would be labelled child abuse. The real life media, the news has opened our eyes to the danger of these types of relationships and how they can distort peoples perception in the future. A persons perception of ANY event is uniquely their own, Shacter describes emotions as a subjective experience felt by a person as a result of their cognitive interpretation of physiological change. This is backed up by manyShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Gerard JonesViolent Media Is Good For Kids912 Words   |  4 Pageswatch is a very controversial one. With media access so obtainable these days, violent media is practical everywhere. Many writers take a stand on this, and give an opinion of how the matter should be handled. Gerard Jones and John Leo both argue their case on how the approach towards how the situation should be handed. Jones argues that violent media is good for children, since it gives them a way to escape the harsh reality; however, Leo argues that violent media is a main source for many of the disturbingRead MoreThe Effect of Violence in Media on Children Essay1676 Words   |  7 Pages male development, or deprivation .The violence that is portrayed in the media has been debated for decades ,and it has rose a question about how does it influence the youth?. From movies to video games society has been accustom to seeing violence in their everyday entertainment. Since children are easy to be influence by their environment, it is safe to say that violence in the media can and will contribute to violent behavior. According, to the pediatrics journal, they have conducted a studyRead MoreAs Technology Has Evolved So Has The Way We, As A Society,1411 Words   |  6 Pagesway we, as a society, consume media. If we look back through history, we can see violent imagery portrayed in books and art. 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Whereas some are convinced that it is a healthy alternative for kids to express themselves, others maintain that it causes kidsRead MoreResearch Paper Outline on Violence in Media Contributes to Violence in Children888 Words   |  4 PagesResearch paper outline/Annotated bibliography Introduction The media is generally seen by people as a way of conveying the truth. If something is seen on TV, has been heard on the radio or something has been read in the newspapers then it is perceived as being the truth. Throughout history the media has been used as a tool to convey different messages to people. The issue of the behavior of children when exposed to violence on media has been an issue to be debated upon and studied for a very longRead MoreShould Violent Media Be Banned Essay818 Words   |  4 PagesShould violent media be banned? Many teenagers are now being introduced into playing or watching violent media at very young ages and society are wondering if they should be concerned about it; they are wondering whether it can cause aggressive behaviour within the children/teenagers. Violent video games and violent action films normally have age restriction son them so that children under the age of 15 or in some cases 18 cannot buy them. You see many teenagers with these games and moviesRead MoreViolence in the Media Essay1418 Words   |  6 PagesViolence in the Media In today’s world, there is an endless amount of information available to people everywhere around the globe. Mass media is definitely shaping our world, whether it is in a positive way or a negative way. Television and the radio waves provide us with hours of entertainment. The emergence of the Internet allows us to access thousands of pages of information within the reach our very own fingertips. But with the convenience of all this information comes along a certain levelRead MoreViolence in Television, Movies, and Video Games Should Not Be Censored1653 Words   |  7 PagesTelevision, movies, and video games have a great influence on the minds of todays youth. But, what exactly are the effects of such an influence? Certain people have exaggerated the effects that these media have on todays youth. Many people, including government officials, have singled out these three media sources as the cause of some types of violence simply because it is an easy target for laying the b lame. The truth is that television, movies, and video games are nowhere near the actual causes forRead MoreThe Effects Of Television Violence On Our Society1566 Words   |  7 Pagesviolence, domestic violence, hate violence, terrorist violence, and violence displaced through various forms of the media. This research will be on violence in the media and does it affect our society. 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Market Timing and Capital Structure for Baker and Wurgler Free Essays

It is well known that firms are more likely to issue equity when their market values are high, relative to book and past market values, and to repurchase equity when their market values are low. We document that the resulting effects on capital structure are very persistent. As a consequence, current capital structure is strongly related to historical market values. We will write a custom essay sample on Market Timing and Capital Structure for Baker and Wurgler or any similar topic only for you Order Now The results suggest the theory that capital structure is the cumulative outcome of past attempts to time the equity market. Introduction â€Å"Equity market timing† refers to the practice of issuing shares at high prices and repurchasing shares at low prices. Equity market timing appears to be an important aspect of real corporate financial policy. In this paper, BW ask how equity market timing effects capital structure and whether it has a short-run or long-run impact. The variation in market-to-book ratio is a proxy for manager’s perceptions of misevaluation. The main finding is that low leverage firms are those that raised funds when their market valuations were high (measured by the book-to-market ratio), while high leverage firms are those that raised funds when their market valuations were low. The influence of past market valuations in capital structure is economically significant and statistically robust. The influence of past market valuations on capital structure is also quite persistent, this means that they have a long-run impact. The tradeoff theory predicts that temporary fluctuations in the market-to-book ratio or any other variable should have temporary effects. The evidence however indicates long-term effects as well. The standard pecking-order theory implies that periods of high investment will push leverage higher toward a debt capacity, not lower as the results in this paper suggest. The theory of entrenched managers suggests that managers exploit existing investors ex post by not rebalancing the capital structure with debt, this may be an explanation of the findings in this paper. 1. Capital structure and past market valuations Individual financing decisions depend on market-to-book ratios. Does market-to-book affects capital structure through net equity issues as market timing implies? And does market-to-book has persistent effects that help to explain the cross section of leverage? Data and summary statistics. Table I shows that book leverage decreases sharply following the IPO. Over the next 10 years, it rises slightly, while market value leverage rises more strongly. The book leverage trend is an age effect, not a survival effect. Most notable is the sharp switch to debt finance in the year following in the IPO. Under BW’s definitions for financing activity, the change in assets is equal to the sum of net debt issues, net equity issues, and newly retained earnings. The concurrent increase in equity issues is suggestive of market timing. Determinants of annual changes in leverage BW document the net effect of market-to-book on the annual change in leverage. Then they decompose the change in leverage to examine whether the effects comes through net equity issues, as market timing implies. Three control variables are used that have been found to be correlated to leverage: Asset tangibility, profitability, and firm size. BW regress each component (equity issues, debt issues, and newly retained earnings) of changes in leverage on the market-to-book ratio and other independent variables. This allows them to determine whether market-to-book affects leverage through net equity issues, as market timing implies. The effect of market-to-book on changes in leverage does indeed come through equity issues. Panel C shows that market-to-book is not strongly related to retained earnings, ruling out the possibility that market-to-book affects leverage because it forecasts earnings. The effect of profitability on changes in leverage arises primarily because of retained earnings. Firm size plays an important role at the time of the IPO. Determinants of leverage. If managers do not rebalance to some target leverage ratio, market timing may have persistent effects, and historical valuations will help to explain why leverage ratios differ. The relevant historical variation in market valuations is measured by the â€Å"external finance weighted-average† market-to-book ratio. This variable takes high values for firms that raised external finance when the market-to-book ratio was high and vice-versa. The intuitive motivation for this weighting scheme is that external financing events represent practical opportunities to change leverage. It therefore gives more weight to valuations that prevailed when significant external financing decisions were being made, whether those decisions ultimately went toward debt or equity. This weighted average is better than a set of lagged market-to-book ratios because it picks out, for each firm, precisely which lags (intervals) are likely to be the most relevant. Intuitively the weights correspond to times when capital structure was most likely to be changed. When firms go public, their capital structure reflects a number of factors, including market-to-book, asset tangibility, size, and research and development intensity. As firms age, the cross-section of leverage is more and more explained by past financing opportunities, as determined by the market-to-book ratio, and past opportunities to accumulate retained earnings, as determined by profitability. Historical within-firm variation in market-to-book, not current cross-firm variation, is more important in explaining the cross section of leverage. The results from Table III and IV show that the effect of historical valuations on leverage is large and separate from various effects documented in prior literature. Persistence So far two main results have been documented. First, high market valuations reduce leverage in the short run. Second, historically high market valuations are associated with lower leverage in the cross section. By measuring changes from the leverage prevailing in the year before the IPO, the dependent variable includes the effect of the IPO itself. This is useful because the IPO is a critical financing event known to be connected to market value. Historical market valuations have large and very persistent effects on capital structure. This effect is independent of various control variables. 2. Discussion Tradeoff theory In perfect and efficient markets capital structure is irrelevant. Some of the imperfections that lead to an optimal tradeoff are as follows: Higher taxes on dividends indicate more debt, higher non-debt tax shields indicate less debt, higher costs of financial distress indicate more equity, agency problems can call for more or less debt. The market-to-book ratio can be connected to several elements of the tradeoff theory but it is most commonly attached to costly financial distress. The key testable prediction of the tradeoff theory is that capital structure eventually adjusts to changes in the market-to-book ratio. However, evidence indicated that variation in the market-to-book ratio has a decades-long impact on capital structure. BW’s results make the point that a considerable fraction of cross-sectional variation in leverage has nothing to do with an optimal leverage ratio. Pecking order theory In the pecking order theory there is no optimal capital structure. The static model predicts that managers will follow a pecking-order (internal, debt, equity). The pecking order theory regards the market-to-book ratio as a measure of investment opportunities. Periods of high investment opportunities will tend to push leverage higher toward a debt capacity. However, to the extent that high past market-to-book actually coincides with high past investments, BW’s results suggest that such periods tend to push leverage lower. The dynamic version predicts a relationship between leverage and future investment opportunities. BW’s results control for current market-to-book and show that leverage is much more strongly determined by past values of market-to-book. Managerial entrenchment theory High valuations and good investment opportunities facilitate equity finance, but at the same time allow managers to become entrenched. They may then refuse to raise debt to rebalance in later periods. Market timing theory Capital structure evolves as the cumulative outcome of past attempts to time the equity market. There are two versions of equity market timing. The first is a dynamic form with rational managers and investors and adverse selection costs that vary across firms or across time. Temporary fluctuations in the market-to-book ratio measure variations in adverse selection (information asymmetry). The second version of equity market timing involves irrational investors or managers and time-varying mispricing. If managers try to exploit too-extreme expectations, net equity issues will be positively related to market-to-book. The critical assumption is that markets need not be inefficient, managers may simply believe that they can time the market. 3. Conclusion A variety of evidence suggests that equity market timing is an important aspect of real financial policy. This evidence comes from analyses of actual financing decisions, analyses of long-run returns following equity issues and repurchases, analyses of realized and forecast earnings around equity issues, and surveys of managers. We find that fluctuations in market valuations have large effects on capital structure that persist for at least a decade. The most realistic explanation for the results is that capital structure is largely the cumulative outcome of past attempts to time the equity market. How to cite Market Timing and Capital Structure for Baker and Wurgler, Papers

Lament for the Makaris free essay sample

â€Å"Lament for the Makaris† is a poem in twenty-five stanzas, each of four lines with a rhyme scheme of aabb and a recurring refrain. Although written in a ballad form, William Dunbar’s poem is actually a meditation on serious moral and religious issues, including what for his time would have been the most important of all, the afterlife. The poem is about mutability and transition, including the transition from life to death, and what the human response to those changes should be. Death is a central concern because, as Dunbar notes in his repeated refrain, â€Å"Timor mortis conturbat me†: â€Å"The fear of death confounds me. In order to emphasize the shifting, uncertain nature of the world, Dunbar points out that the powerful and educated are subject to death. Neither position, wealth, nor learning will protect a person from the inevitable end. Dunbar then narrows his focus from the broader society to a very specialized group with whom he was familiar, the â€Å"makaris† (poets of Scotland and England) who have died. We will write a custom essay sample on Lament for the Makaris or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page There is a further twist, for the poem’s subtitle is â€Å"Quhen He Wes Sek† (when he was sick), and it has been speculated that Dunbar may have himself been very ill at the time the poem was composed. At such a time, meditation on life and, especially, death would be expected. This would be particularly true for Dunbar, who was a priest, most likely in the Franciscan order. â€Å"Lament for the Makaris† is written in the dialect known as â€Å"Middle Scots,† which was the traditional literary language of Scotland during the period from the latter half of the fifteenth century through the early part of the seventeenth century. Middle Scots and English derived from essentially the same sources; their syntactic patterns are almost identical. The major differences are in vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling, and these differences are clearly evident in â€Å"Lament for the Makaris. † Dunbar has been regarded by many scholars and critics as the finest lyric poet in the British Isles in the period between Geoffrey Chaucer and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and this work clearly displays his ability to produce a consistent, powerful, and moving poem that combines genuine sensitivity and insight with a high level of poetic technique and skill. The individual lines are relatively short, each having four main stresses, but Dunbar avoids the sense of choppiness or abruptness that readers sometimes find in a similar, nearly contemporary poet, the Englishman John Skelton. As Dunbar constructs his poem, the central theme of mutability and death is introduced; then the topic is further considered by a roll call of famous Scots and English writers who have died; finally, Dunbar closes the poem by acknowledging that he, too, will die and noting that such is the common fate of all human beings. For that reason, he concludes, people must do their best to live proper lives. Forms and Devices Dunbar is an extremely skilled and competent poet, and â€Å"Lament for the Makaris† is a carefully constructed work. There are twenty-five stanzas, each of four lines of rhyming couplets with a running refrain, â€Å"Timor mortis conturbat me. † This pattern, which developed in earlier French court poetry and was transported to England and Scotland, is known technically as â€Å"kyrielle† verse. The refrain is from the religious ceremony known as the Offices for the Dead, and its repetition at the end of each stanza drives home one of the poem’s central points: In the midst of life one is surrounded by death and should live accordingly. For a moralizing, religious poet such as Dunbar, this point entailed opposing a carpe diem (seize the day) philosophy; instead of living for the moment, people should constantly and consistently behave well in order to deserve a life after death. By using this running refrain and by restricting his verses to quatrains, Dunbar has imposed a limit on himself: He has, essentially, only three relatively short lines (four strong beats per line is his pattern) in which to present his meaning in each stanza. Further, since each stanza ends with the refrain, his rhyme scheme is limited, since line 3 must always match the â€Å"conturbat me† of the final line. The overall impact of the repetition and inevitable rhymes is to emphasize the repetitive and inevitable natures of change and death themselves, which constantly recur in human life. Dunbar’s syntax is simple and direct. He uses a number of parallel constructions, especially in the earlier, establishing portion of the poem. Stanza 8, for example, compares the â€Å"campion in the stour,† the â€Å"capitane closit in the tour,† and the â€Å"lady in bour. These three people are similar in having privileged positions in late medieval society; they are also all similar in being subject to inevitable death. This parallelism is found elsewhere in the poem, again emphasizing the transitory nature of existence. Human beings, Dunbar notes in stanza 3, are â€Å"Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary [sorry]/ Now dansand mery, now like to dee [die]. † The language of the poem suggests that these changes occur with such speed that they may in fact eem simultaneous states: A person is happy and alive one moment, sick or even dead the next. The metrical pattern of the poem reinforces this sense of inevitable change. Like the syntax, it is simple, even basic. The essential, almost unvarying, rhythmic pattern gives four strong stresses to each line—one of the oldest and most consistent metrical forms in English and Scots literature. Its presence here serves a dual purpose: to underscore the sense of inevitability and to link this specific poem with other verse from the past. This latter point becomes important during the long central section of the poem, in which Dunbar commemorates and laments the other â€Å"makaris† or poets who have died. The rhyme pattern also helps give the poem a sense of inevitable pattern. The regularity of the aabb scheme encourages the reader to expect the same message to be repeated from stanza to stanza, and the recurring refrain further emphasizes this sense of continuity and human mortality. Themes and Meanings The themes of â€Å"Lament for the Makaris† may be found in the very pattern of the poem itself. Dunbar constructed his poem in order to examine, in logical progression, the various forms of mutability in this temporal existence, especially as they affect his fellow poets. Stanzas 1 through 12 are concerned with mutability in general. In particular, stanzas 1 through 4 function as a sort of introduction, first telling readers that the poet, once healthy and happy, is â€Å"trublit now with gret seiknes. † This leads him to consider in stanza 5 how changeable the human condition is, especially in its final change, from life to death: â€Å"On to the ded gois all Estatis. In stanzas 6 through 11 Dunbar works out in some detail how all stations and conditions of human life are subject to this iron law. The poem specifically details how knights, clerks (that is, scholars), physicians, noble women, magicians, astrologers, rhetoricians, logicians, and even theologians are not spared from death. No matter how great their position or extensive their knowledge, they all must share the common human fate. So must poets, as Dunbar acknowledges in stanza 12: â€Å"I se that makaris,† he admits, are among those who â€Å"gois to graif. For the remainder of the poem, except for a concluding stanza, he focuses on a list of twenty-four Scots and English poets who have died. He begins with three of the most prominent, whose work had an influence on his own poetry: Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and John Gower. Although their verse is immortal, they have been devoured by death. So have others, and the poem catalogs them, a list of the more notable â€Å"makaris† of the British Isles of the period. Although the emphasis is on Scots writers, Dunbar’s cosmopolitan outlook is shown by the inclusion of a number of English writers as well. Finally, Dunbar concludes the list by bringing it up to his own time, noting that his contemporary poet, Walter Kennedy â€Å"In poynt of dede lyis veraly. † With this, the poem uses its final two stanzas to bring the work back to its underlying theme: that the transition from life to death is not to be escaped by any human being, including William Dunbar: â€Å"Sen he hes all my brether tane,/ He will nocht lat me lif alane† (Since he has all my brethren taken,/ He will not let me live alone). The only recourse is to prepare for death—to deserve salvation in the next world, since there is no permanence in this one.