DEMAND MANAGEMENT AND ENERGY STORAGE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Request MANAGEMENT AND ENERGY STORAGE - Essay Example Diminishing age would in fact increment the reliance on customary assets and that it won't involve extra expenses. The third segment investigates the ideal mix of various sustainable power hotspots for Scotland. Albeit a national report says that there isn't right blend that would work best for the nation, the mix of wind and marine force is suggested in any case. At long last, the fourth area talks about the significance of vitality stockpiling for renewables. It further investigates extra storerooms that Scotland would need to adequately suit future interest. This report presumes that completely understanding the capability of Scotland will make the nation probably the biggest wellspring of sustainable power source, in this way influencing request in the worldwide scale. II. Situations for Generating Renewable Energy: Impact on Demand Management A. Foundation Renewable vitality is a significant possible option in contrast to directing the impacts of environmental change. Be that as it may, sustainable power sources just record for 19.6% of worldwide power and 13.5% of worldwide vitality request (IEA, 2004 refered to in Neuhoff, n.d.). While they are undoubtedly boundless and decrease expenses of activities in vitality age, inexhaustible sources produce a temperamental vitality flexibly since the climate, on which renewables enormously depend, can turn out to be truly flighty so its age may not come in reliably huge amounts that fulfills need. Age of sustainable power source depends on a few specialized, affordable, and social and natural elements (Kopacek and IFAC, 2006). A significant part of the carbon outflows originate from customary power utilization and transportation however sustainable power sources energizes an innocuous environmental misuse since they don't emit perilous results (for example carbon dioxide) upon utilization. In the United Kingdom, Scotland creates half of country’s sustainable power source primarily from wind, hydropower, mar ine and biomass sources (Great Britain House of Lords, 2008). Truly, Scotland has roughly 60 GW of crude inexhaustible power sources that could make the nation a world chief in sustainable power source age (Scotland, 2009). The nation can create sustainable power source multiple times more than it expends (McDermott, 2010). Be that as it may, the test remains, anyway on the transmission of this vitality potential where administrative, monetary, strategic, and ecological components ought to be considered particularly in improving the framework arrange and the strategy contemplations (Scotland, 2009). The Scottish Government, in light of its responsibility to diminish carbon discharges by in any event 42% in 2020, intends to â€Å"flex age [of electricity] to satisfy need, and ...flex request to meet generation† (Scotland, 2010a). Taken from a national report, the accompanying situations present how RE age influence request the executives in Scotland. In each of the three situa tions, request levels are fulfilled. In the second and third situations, gracefully will surpass request with transmission redesigns, requirements approaches , and decrease of interest in thought. B. Situation 1 The Scottish Government had as of late expanded its inexhaustible objective to 80% for 2020 because of the development in wind power through which renewables might be

Social -- Redo Society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Social - Redo Society - Essay Example The aftereffects of the investigation recommended that not all, however a large portion of the ethical frameworks need some redesign so as to make them assume a significant job in sparing mankind and the world. The finish of the outcomes was that some ethical frameworks ought to be reestablished to where they were in prior even hundreds of years. Presentation Moral frameworks are the frameworks of reasonable and intelligible standards, practices, musings, and thoughts that cooperate to shape a framework (Ursery). Every ethical framework is the base of profound quality for a general public that aides individuals when they manage a specific matter of life. As per Edmonds, â€Å"moral frameworks can be molded by various societies, which is the manner by which individuals can take a gander at a similar circumstance and reach an alternate decision about it†. Moral frameworks assist individuals with living their lives as indicated by a lot of predefined morals and rules. In this pap er, the analyst will look at the requirement for redesigning or supplanting flow moral frameworks thinking about the degrees of neediness, treachery, illness, war, and wrongdoing in the current world. ... Neediness If we investigate the degree of destitution in 21st century with that of prior hundreds of years, we will come to realize that destitution has expanded altogether with the beginning of the 21st century. Today, there is no appropriate check and parity framework set up because of which needy individuals are getting increasingly poor as time passes. As Smith states, â€Å"every man is rich or poor as indicated by the degree in which he can stand to appreciate the necessaries, conveniencies, and beguilements of human life†. Despite the fact that this announcement is valid, however when we see the costs of items today and contrast them and the purchasing intensity of individuals, we come to realize that neediness is on rise wherever on the planet. Neediness has expanded in today’s world since today barely any one has the opportunity or want to support the poor. We can lessen neediness just on the off chance that we begin returning to our unique standards that instr ucted us to have a few affections for other people. Wrongdoing Our ethical frameworks have become so powerless that we have overlooked the estimation of morals and good in our lives. Today, one can see that the chart of violations have gone high is still on rise in light of less incorporation of morals and standards in contemplations and activities. Violations happen when individuals begin disregarding the estimation of morals and attempt to grab the privileges of others for his/her own purpose. Once more, the sentiment of ‘for others’ begin lessening when the pace of wrongdoings goes high. Wrongdoings are not the ones which hurt others genuinely or intellectually. They likewise allude to such words or considerations that may hurt others accidentally. As indicated by Nietzsche, â€Å"our most noteworthy bits of knowledge should, and should, sound like imprudences or even violations when they are heard without authorization by those

Stop Wasting Time Accessible Life Tweaks for Efficient Time Management

Stop Wasting Time Accessible Life Tweaks for Efficient Time Management The average human being wastes about 80,000 hours watching television throughout his or her entire lifespan. For those who aren’t mathematical geniuses, that’s about 6 full years of watching television.Shocking! Isn’t it?This is just one among many activities that add nothing to our overall productivity in our lives.Imagine if we were able to add 10 years to our life into developing ourselves into the best versions that we possibly can be.We’d be so much smarter and healthier.We’d also improve our overall financial goals andWe’d achieve all our life goals in less time, leaving us to do more with our lives.Before we teach you how to add 10 years into your life, let’s walk you through on how you can start by adding an extra hour into your day.A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF TIME MANAGEMENT AND PRODUCTIVITYBy focusing productivity, we don’t mean strip all the essential fun out of life and work your socks off.Recreation is as much a necessity to human life as working towards your car eer goals. After all, what good is all the money earned if you can’t spend it to enjoy the good life, right?But how much fun is considered too much? One deceiving myth that does the rounds is the fact that “Time-management should be pitch perfect and it’s impossible for humans to achieve”.False!Time management isn’t about working every single hour of your waking day. It isn’t about receiving an uninterrupted stream of knowledge every second. You don’t live your entire life by a system of codes or exist to become an uninteresting person. That’s not what time management is about.Effective time planning is to gain precious few minutes by eliminating procrastination from your life. It’s about bringing a schedule to your life and how a few minutes saved every hour can transition into saving an hour or two throughout the day.It’s about minimizing your time on unproductive actions and maximizing your work-ethics to their fullest.Here’s an example of the first 4 hours of an average day in a person’s life upon waking up.Brushes teeth and finishes up with his personal hygienic activities ­â€" (30 minutes.)Morning coffee while reading the newspaper â€" (30 minutes)Begins to watch Television â€" (30 minutes)Physical Activity â€" (30 minutes)Calls up a friend to talk about the latest gossip doing the rounds in office â€" (30 minutes)Gets ready for office â€" (30 minutes)Commute time to the office â€" (30 minutes)Spends time chatting up a colleague in the office â€" (30 minutes)All activities above are taken on the assumption that a person spends 30 minutes to complete each of his or her daily tasks. As you can see in the above example, #4, #5, and #8 are considered as unproductive activities. They add nothing to his daily routine and if he were to change his daily routine by adding productive activities in these slots such as scheduling his work goals, cooking meals for the entire day to save time, or start an hour early to work to finish up any pe nding projects.Here’s where productivity begins to kick in.90 minutes saved a day in just a 4-hour margin adds to saving around 450 minutes on a 5-day work week which is roughly 7.5 hours of productivity time gained. So, imagine if you were to add these productivity tweaks to your entire 16-hour activity time â€" that’s 7.5 X 4 = 30 hours. 30 hours! of time gained in a single work week. Leaving you with the entire weekend to do as you please and yet gain an entire day. Unbelievable, isn’t it? By saving 30 minutes of your time you end up saving 30 hours throughout the week.This is what time productivity is all about, it’s about looking to save small portions of your time where you feel you aren’t being productive enough. The benefits of time management are numerous and can be found further below.The Self-Evaluating Productivity TestLet’s understand a little bit about how you spend your day by taking this quiz. There’re no long answers, just a simple Yes or No.The quiz w ill also give you a better understanding of yourself and how you spend your time.Are you easily distracted by media ­â€" YouTube, movies, games, social media, etc.?Out of 24 hours, if you were to sleep for 8 hours, are you more likely to do non-productive activities during the remaining 16 hours.Do you suffer from productivity issues? (Examples, pending projects, bad sleep, not enough family time, etc.?)Do you often take short naps during the day at work?Does your mind wander when working causing difficulty in concentration?Do you suffer from not being able to track time while the day goes by without you realizing it?Are you always asking someone in your office to cover up for you for not finishing your projects at the prescribed date?Has your boss or any senior level manager provided you with a verbal lecture on how you should improve your work ethics anywhere in the last three months?Do you find yourself finishing up tasks at the very last minute?Are you always in the habit of po stponing work to do something fun?Give yourself 10 points for every No, that you answered. 0 points for every Yes. Now let’s see which of the following groups you belong to0-30 points (Non-Productive) ­â€" You fill your day with meaningless tasks. You prefer to escape from real work and commitment and find shelter in entertainment. The sound of “productivity” scares you and you run in the opposite direction when you’re supposed to be accountable. Unless you change your entire lifestyle, you’ll hardly find success in the things you perform. This guide is the A-Z on how to improve yourself into a more productive version of yourself.40-60 points (Average Productivity) â€" You’ve got the productivity meter filled halfway but it isn’t enough to meet all your life goals. You could gain an extra hour or two if you were to work towards attaining productivity by reading further. By implementing the resources gained from this guide, you’ll attain more hours in your overall we ek.70-90 points (Great Productivity) â€" Almost a perfect circle! You’re already on your way in completing your goals but falter in just a few scenarios. To become an absolute perfect version of yourself, this guide will show you techniques to tweak yourself even further.100 points (Extremely Productive) â€" Unbelievable! You’re a productive guru! You’ve got the entire basics and advanced mechanisms perfected. The article is purely a fun read.THE MANY ADVANTAGES OF TIME MANAGEMENT IN OUR DAILY LIVESWhy even bother with saving a few hours here and there? Isn’t life all about “The Surreal Experience” and going with the flow of things?Shouldn’t we all just let life run its course and let the mistakes happen?If you’re someone who agrees with the above statements, then you’re sure in for a surprise when you least expect it. And it’s certainly not a joyful one at that.In a survey conducted on over hundreds of test subjects whose age was over 65, professor Karl Pillemer of Cornell University found that older people regretted not planning their life goals and wished to turn back time to rectify their mistakes.Goals are something that allow a human to achieve his or her inner desires over a period through hard work and success.If your goal is to scale Mount Everest and experience what only few have dared to accomplish, then prepare for the hardships that you’ll encounter such as climbing in extreme cold temperatures and being able to survive on perishable food.Similarly, when planning your goals, it’s important to invest your time wisely and create milestones along the way.Time is a finite resource and it gets lesser the more you waste it. Below are a few benefits you can redeem by utilizing time in the right manner to reach your milestones.Wealth CreationThis goes without saying, the more time you have the more money you make. Imagine if you were given a day with 100 hours instead of the usual â€" 24 hours.Wouldn’t you be able to accomplish m ore in that additional timespan compared to others?But what good is 100 hours to someone that spends time doing non-productive activities when someone who is productive can achieve more in 24 hours?Every financial expert agrees unanimously that without effective time management as a key ingredient, you’ll never be able to create a surplus of wealth.To create money, you need to plan a path. There’s no two ways about it.Let’s say your goal is to gain a million dollars. While it might sound like an uphill battle, it’s not impossible. Certainly not with a plan in mind. You’ll need to stake out your financial options and understand the needs of your community, you’ll need to invest an ample amount of time in understanding your audience and product. Finally, when you do execute your business, it’s necessary to spend as much time as you can in fine-tuning it. Iron out the issues and ensure your product is a success. Once you’ve achieved your first milestone of a $10,000. It ’s time to set a new one at $50,000 and so on. Once you’ve managed to rake in a million dollars, you’ll see just how effective time management is in creating wealth. Similarly, if you’re an employee looking to move up the ranks and increase your remuneration, you’ll need to effectively plan out the best course of action to achieve your milestones. Your goals could be something like ­â€" a promotion to manager, senior manager, executive manager, etc.Climb the ladder while utilizing productivity to provide the best work possible for your company and proving exactly why you make the cut apart from the rest would be your first two milestones.In no time, your company would take notice of you and would be prepared to bump your salary to your requirement while also opening options for promotion.Increased Knowledge and Skill-acquirementLet’s say you’re able to finish a 300-page book over 10 hours but since you’ve got other work commitments and family time to consider, it mi ght take a week to finish a 300-page book.By eliminating time spent on television and other activities, you reduce the time required to read a book by 2-3 days and thus gain more knowledge in less time. Sounds great right?Imagine being able to learn new subjects and topics related to your field and being able to complete it in months instead of years.You’ll be able to learn all the tricks of the trades of your business field and will be in a better spot to provide support to your employees or to your boss(as an employee).Saving an hour or two every day can add to your overall skill-acquirement. When you cut time into little blocks such as 30-minute time-frames, it gives you more reason to use the valued resource wisely.Give yourself reminders often, alert yourself frequently to wake up and take notice of what’s important. In this way, you’ll have your daily tasks completed in the given timeframe without procrastinating.By acquiring new skills you’ll impress your employers or employees. You’ll be in a better position to learn all the latest trends and implement them without delay.You’ll be ahead of your competition in every department by acquiring skills at a fast and steady pace. Therefore, time management is crucial to your professional life. More ResponsibilityFollowing a time schedule shows character and responsibility. For every hour less spent in regret is one hour added towards your overall productivity.Keep this formula in mind â€" 1 Hour of Productivity = 1 Hour saved from Regret and Complaints. A responsible person never wastes time in anguishing over the past. Instead, if a mistake is made, he takes responsibility and immediately moves on to avoid any further mistakes in the future.Time management is all about understanding that productivity is all that counts to achieving success and every time you sulk and drain your energy, you spend less time on the job doing things that are closer to your goal.With increased productivity comes increa sed efficiency in completing tasks on time. Being able to cook your dinner while also listening to a podcast concerning your business skills is a great way to learn without wasting any valuable time.Checking out the news while having your dinner is another great way to relax and be informed on the latest events happening around you.Clubbing together activities that you normally would do by themselves will save you a lot of time to do more important things.Remember, it’s ok to multitask your leisure activities with something that is productive. But multitasking when you work causes you to lose concentration and fail and hence, it’s ill-advised.More Family Time Improved Personal HealthTime management isn’t just about growing yourself and your professional side. Family time is just as important to your life, maybe even more important than other aspects.That’s why with time management, you’ll be able to create an extra hour or two to be spent with your family and giving them the much-needed attention.You’ll also have a greater sense of purpose by being able to balance work and family. Very few individuals can achieve success in both fields of life but with effective time management, it isn’t too hard to commit to an ideal work-life balance.Personal health is another aspect that you’ll be able to control with a schedule. You’ll gain much-needed rest and will remain stress-free to meet your financial goals on time.There’s no need to delay that appointment with the dentist or the outing with the kids and the wife.By not delaying your projects and having them completed on time, you’ll be able to enjoy the both portions of your life with a smile and have all the quality time left for your own personal time as well.THE 6 COMMON HURDLES OF PRODUCTIVITYEvery person is unique. There are many reasons that cause them to not handle time management effectively.It’s extremely important for you to identify the non-productive triggers that cause you to wa ste so much time doing unnecessary things. Here are 8 common obstacles to productivity â€"No objectives in lifeImagine being blindfolded and left in a crowded street to find your way back home. You’ll find yourself tumbling over people and objects and soon you’ll find that you’ve hurt yourself bad.This is how walking through life without goals and objective feels like. In the long run, you’d have hurt your financial and family goals without having a clear motive on what you should be doing next.An objective provides direction to your life. It opens your eyes to all the dangers ahead of time and prepares you well for a worst-case scenario. You’ll be alert at all times when facing disastrous situations and will be more mindful to the happenings around your financial goals.ProcrastinationA word that is often misunderstood and thrown around often. Procrastination is one of the biggest enemies of productivity. Quite simply put, procrastinating is the trick used by your mind to do something fun right now and delay meaningful work. Every person in the world has at some time or the other been a victim of procrastination. Yes! Even the successful ones.Procrastination itself isn’t bad when you do it occasionally. The problem arises when it creeps into your daily life and begins to derail your productive train.How many times have you found yourself watching a video on YouTube while mindlessly clicking onto the next one without realizing you’ve just wasted the entire day?How many times have you set out to do something productive and ended up daydreaming on what you could purchase if you were wealthy? These are all examples of procrastination and you can see why it’s an obstacle for productivity. Further below, we’ll learn strategies on how to deal with procrastination and its negative influence on our minds.MultitaskingContrary to popular belief, multitasking isn’t being productive. Human beings need to concentrate on the job at hand to be able to give their best work. Have you ever heard of an F1 racer that has won the Grand Prix by driving whilst talking on the phone to his friend? We don’t think so.Concentration is about completing an individual task by diverting 100% of your focus onto it.Don’t try to read a book while watching the news. You won’t catch up on the news feed and you won’t understand the plot of your book. In the end, you end up gaining very little information when doing both activities.StressA stressful individual is unlikely to follow his goals or plans to the last instruction. Stress brings down the whole house of productivity as it causes you to spend more time thinking about the negative factors affecting your life than following the plan of time management. Think of it as a kryptonite to your superhuman abilities.Eliminating stress isn’t as easy as it sounds and is most probably easier said than done. Dealing with stress is a complicated affair, you need to first root out the problem and begin to work towards it. There are plenty of triggers for stress-related disorders â€" Examples like verbal abuse at work, strained relationships, medical conditions, financial constraints, etc.The best step is to reach out to the problem headfirst and find an answer to it. For example, if you are suffering from financial problems then convince yourself to deal with it by creating a monthly financial goal and cutting your loans into little pieces. Take the help of a few financial institutions if you can but ensure that by increasing your overall productivity, you’ll be loan free. Once this is taken care of, you’ll never have a nagging thought at the back of your mind regarding an outstanding loan. Interruptive LifestyleYou are working on your project while sipping on your late-night coffee.You receive a notification via social-media from your friend about a fun video that has just gone viral. You decide to look at it and you begin chatting with your friend on how funny it is.Before lon g, you go back to your project and have forgotten exactly where you left off and how the pattern was. This is a classic case of interruptions.An interruptive lifestyle is quite common with the digital and modern age. Youngsters messaging during school hours or playing games on your smartphone before an interview instead of staying focused are great examples of interruptions.Junk FoodA Korean study demonstrated that lack of nutrition is linked to attention deficit disorder.What this means is whenever we eat food with absolutely no nutrition benefits such as potato chips, colas, fried fast foods, and sugar high foods, our overall attention is at risk of failing on us when we most need it.Diet is an important part of time management and we’ll further show you how to prepare your own meals by utilizing the least time possible in our meal prepping section below.Distractions are a major problem to time management. It denies you from staying focused to your goals. A key strategy to elimi nate distractions is to follow rules and stick by them. Here are a few tips to consider â€"Keep your phone on airplane mode when working to eliminate notifications and other calls from bothering youEnsure your television and other entertainment systems are switched off and are kept far from your work deskA work desk is a sacred space where you generate positive energy. Don’t let anything disruptive to ever enter this space such as smartphones or music systems.Politely advise your family to not interrupt you during your work, instead ask them to write down conversations on sticky notes if they have anything important to say while leaving the house.On your computer, have two different user-based desktops. One for your general stuff and other for your work. This way when you sign in, you won’t have to worry about noisy news alerts and other notifications distracting you.By adding a few tweaks to your interruptive lifestyle, you’ll soon convert your working time into a blissful pe riod to conduct only positive and productive operations. 3 CONVENIENT TRICKS TO BE PRODUCTIVE DURING THE DAYThe science behind productivity is to add more value to yourself and your time. Imagine if you could finish work that was assigned to you in 48 hours instead of a week?You’ll not only impress your seniors but will also have the extra deadline time to get more work done.That’s why we have come up with these 3 tricks to ensure your time is used in the best possible way â€"1. Limiting the Use of Social MediaIt’s almost impossible to challenge yourself to stay off social media. In fact, training your brain to not think of incoming notifications will immediately distract you from your work.So how do you get yourself productive when you are unable to keep your curiosity in check?By following a schedule that you abide to. Here is a checklist to stick by to ensure your social media addiction is under control.Unsubscribe from all marketing email. They’re junk.Ensure your phone notifications are on silent during work hours.Keep your phone away from your immediate sight.Set aside 1 hour every day to ensure you read news and social media. Split them into 30 minutes during the morning and 30 minutes before you get off work.If you have something important to add to your social media. Add it to a “Do it Later” notepad. This way you’ll continue with your work without thinking about it.Delete unwanted social apps from your phone and have only a few ones. More apps lead to more downtime when you decide to check all.An alarm clock is a great way to notify when your free time is over and it’s time to refocus back to work.If you absolutely must contact someone, use email or send them a text message. You can use the inbuilt messaging service but avoid logging on to social media platforms or phone calling.AppDetox is an android application that automatically locks your apps during your work time. It makes it impossible for you to procrastinate during work hours .2. Dealing with ProcrastinationWhere did all my time go?I promised myself I wouldn’t waste my time today, yet I have let my mind wander off.If you’ve been repeating these things in your mind constantly without any positive results, you’re a victim of procrastination.While all of us procrastinate frequently, it’s the main cause for people to disable their productive defenses and fall victim to laziness.The worst part about procrastination is we aren’t sure we are doing it until we realize our entire day has just passed us by.Here are 3 steps to deal with procrastination â€"Step 1: Accept Procrastination and Make a List of Tasks to CompleteAs much as you’d like to deny it, the simplest way to get rid of procrastination is by accepting it. Whether you do it for 2 hours a day or 6 hours, time is a precious resource you can’t get back. Don’t wait for the right day to deal with procrastination as that day will never come. Instead, force yourself to believe today is the da y you’ll finally shake off the problem once and for all.Begin by making a list on your notepad of all the high-priority things that you want to finish. Next write low-priority tasks.Let’s say you have 10 high-priority tasks and 20 low priority ones that need to be done within a month. Now that you have a timeframe, you can begin by completing 1 high priority task and 2 low priority ones every day. This way you’ll not burden yourself with too much to do and still enjoy doing it.This will also give you a lot of time during the month to finish all your tasks and still have time to complete more.Step 2: Get to the Bottom of your ProcrastinationEveryone has a reason to why they procrastinate. Even if it isn’t obvious to them at first glance. Some procrastinate because they find their work boring, others do it because they are easily distracted by entertainment and many have a fear of failing that causes them to procrastinate to seek comfort.If you thought procrastinating was just a harmless activity, think again. Psychologists have reports that patients that delay putting off their work usually tend to suffer from increased hypertension resulting in serious cardiovascular complications. Procrastination isn’t just some common vulnerability, it’s important to ask yourself several questions to understand where your procrastination stems from.Questions such as â€"What are the consequences of procrastination?Why do I feel depressed all the time? (List down the points on a piece of paper)What compels me to procrastinate often?Am I working in the wrong job?What is my dream career?Do I have any stress relieving activities that I perform when I am unhappy?What does my daily diet consist of?Questions like this get you to reflect on why you procrastinate every day.Once you’ve got the answers on paper, it’s time to put a solution into action and solve these issues once and for all. Procrastination often starts with an underlying causes and chances are you’ve just not identified yours.Step 3: Prevent Procrastination from entering againNow that you’ve managed to shake off your procrastination, you haven’t completely gotten rid of it. It’s necessary to bolt the doors by creating anti-procrastinating strategies. One of the best ways to keep procrastination at bay is by following these tips.Reward yourself:  Not just a pat on your back but provide yourself with a much-needed reward for finishing a task. In this way, you’ll proactively complete tasks to attain the rewards. For example, let’s say you’ve got a 3-month project that’s been handed over to you, gift yourself a week-long vacation once you’ve completed it.Create a morning routine:  One of the first things we tell ourselves every night is we’ll never repeat the same mistake again. By morning, we forget that promise as we repeat the same mistakes consistently. That’s why it’s important to create a morning routine such as:Keeping an alarm clock and waking the same time every dayEnsuring you write down your tasks the night before and check up on it the next morningKeep an internal dialogue that you repeat every day upon waking up such as “No matter what, I’ll see to it that my dream becomes a reality.” Eat a healthy breakfastOf course, you can add your own pointers to your daily routine but the message here is quite simple â€" if you can stay focused on your productive goals when you wake up then there’s nothing stopping you from achieving it throughout the day.That’s why the morning routine is the most important part of preventing procrastination.Forgive yourself and others:  Forgiveness is the first step to completely eradicating distractions. If you’ve blamed yourself recently or someone else for something that wasn’t supposed to happen, it’s time to let go of it. Forgiveness leads to lesser procrastination and you’ll thank yourself in the long run for adopting an enlightened habit.  3.  Meal PreppingAt this point, you’r e probably wondering what food from your kitchen has to do with your overall productivity. Bear with us, it plays an important and vital role.Apart from helping you fuel your body with the right nutrients, preparing food in your kitchen and storing it well in advance for the entire week saves up on precious time.The process of creating your food in advance and storing them is known as “Meal prep” or meal preparation.Still not convinced? Let’s show you with these 4 benefits â€"Food ScheduleMeal prepping helps you create a schedule by which you’ll completely commit to. By this we mean you’ll not have to waste 30-40 minutes of your time cooking your lunch and another 30-40 minutes at night for your supper. A food schedule is created, and you’ll immediately know exactly what to eat without any loss of time.You’ll Never Skip MealsOne of the biggest benefits of meal prepping is you’ll never skip them. A full stomach is a content stomach that can go back to working long hou rs if needed as compared to wasting time deciding on what to eat or eating fast food.Meal prepping allows you to always have your meal at the right time without having to consider skipping them altogether.Complete Control on your FoodLess sick days means more work completed and more productivity harnessed. When you create your own meals, you create them in the safety of your kitchen and you’ll have the greatest control of your food â€" know expiration dates of all your food items.This prevents you from falling sick often and allows you to completely tweak your nutrition control knob to the fullest.Some more nutritious salmon? Yes, please!Time-SavingAnd of course, meal prepping helps you create all the meals for the week in just one sitting. It might take longer than your average dinner, but the amount of time and resources saved is substantial. Let’s say you take 40 minutes to prepare your dinner every night.If you were to prepare the same portion of meal for 7 days, let’s say it takes you 40 minutes to prepare. You’d have saved yourself the time of cooking for 6 other days which is 6 x 40 = 240 minutes (4 hours). You’ll also save up on gas and electricity in the long run.Here’s a checklist to guide you in the right way to meal prepAlways pick a day to prepare your meals. Sunday is usually preferred.Begin by deciding on what meals you’d like to prepare first â€" Breakfast, Lunch or DinnerEnsure you’ve got a nutrition chart to see if you’re getting the recommended dose of all vital macronutrientsUtilize a scale to help measure things and prepare them accordinglyAs a rule of thumb, always meal prep every week and not for longer periods. Stored food can begin to lose its taste after this duration.Always use a good storage container. Ensure all containers are airtight and don’t leak odor.Label your storage containers according to their day and meal time.Transparent containers are recommended as you can identify your food immediatelyEnsure the c ontainers are microwavable to immediately heat your food for consumptionFruits and vegetables can be consumed safely even after a weekDon’t freeze your food. Use the refrigerator section to store them.Finally, consult a dietician if you need help in identifying your nutrition valuesAnd that’s it. Once you’ve started this healthy and time-saving habit you’ll gain lots of time over the course of the month. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON PRODUCTIVITY TIME MANAGEMENTImplementation is what needs to be done to achieve productivity. While many people might find Monday mornings to be the worst day of the week, it’s important to maintain your willpower and keep pushing through your commitment. Only then will you be able to truly gain an hour or two every day.If you still decide to give up along the way, here’s a nice reminder as to why you should continue to pursue your successful goals â€" Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter sleeps for just 4 hours a day and keeps to a strict morning r outine. If you thought success was without sacrifices, we urge you to think again.

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990

Women in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - 534 Words

The women in Things Fall Apart may seem to be an oppressed group with little power which is true to some extent with the way some women are treated. This characterization of Ibo women is limiting, but when more in depth in the book it shows the divers roles of women, and how important the women are to their tribes. The women in the tribes are sometimes shown as the weak ones of the group but when these women are the foundation, nurturers, and caretakers of the tribe that shows the great responsibility they have and how important they are. Women in the tribe are powerful especially when it comes down to their religion. Women routinely preform the role of priestess. â€Å"The priestess in those days was a woman called Chika. She was full of the power of her god, and she was greatly feared† (Achebe 17). In the book this is a flashback to Okonkwo’s childhood. Now in the present the priest is still a women named Chielo. You are to treat the priestess with great respect. When Chielo wants to see Okonkwo’s daughter Ezinma and take her to see Agabala. When Okonkwo refuses because his daughter is sleeping Chielo becomes angry. â€Å"Beware of exchanging words with Agabala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!† (Achebe 101). This is where we see a women not only ordering Okonkwo to give her his daughter, but also threatening him as well. Okonkwo allows this is also evidence that the priestess has much power and is respected. In chapter 5 the tribe gives thanks to Ani, yet anotherShow MoreRelatedEssay about Role of Women in Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe1453 Words   |  6 Pages The role of women in society has grown and changed tremendously with the development of the world. Within the American culture, women’s rights have expanded to the extent of being able to vote for who runs our country or even possibly being the person that does run our country. Although the American culture has somewhat promoted the growth of a woman’s role in society, does not mean women receive the same respect in other cultures around world. For example, in Africa women are viewed lower onRead MoreChinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart Gender Stereotype And The Difference Between Men And Women1150 Words   |  5 PagesIn Chinua Achebe’s novel Thi ngs Fall Apart gender stereotype and the difference between men and women, and also how women are treated compared to men, are presented very boldly throughout the whole novel. Showing these stereotypes and maybe certain rights that were provided for one gender and not the other is important when it comes to understanding the novel more because it shows how things were in villages like Umuofia during the time (but mostly before) when Christian missionaries and white menRead More Conflict and Tradition in Things Fall Apart Essay example748 Words   |  3 PagesTradition in Things Fall Apart nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The book Things Fall Apart successfully expressed how Chinua Achebe had succeeded in writing a different story. It pointed out the conflict of oneself, the traditional beliefs, and the religious matters of the Africans. Throughout the novel, Chinua Achebe used simple but dignified words and unlike other books, he also included some flashbacks and folktales to make the novel more interesting and comprehensible. Things FallRead MoreThings Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe858 Words   |  4 Pagescontroversial topic. In fact, women in America couldn’t even vote until the 1920’s. The abundant masculinity in this novel is not sexism but just how the culture functions. Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart is not sexist towards women; in fact, it shows that women are essential to the Ibo society and posses a great amount of strength. For example, the novel is not sexist because it emphasizes the importance of the women to the society. One of the major contributions women make is the amount of cropsRead MoreChinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart1325 Words   |  6 Pages Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Thing Fall Apart, first published in 1958, is Chinua Achebe’s first and most acclaimed novel. Achebe illustrates an approving rendering of Nigerian and African tribal life prior to and subsequent to colonialism. Achebe presents various aspects of a native African community, including war, women mistreatment, violence and conflict, while maintaining a balance in social coherence, customs and tradition. Achebe portrays a clash of culturesRead MoreThings Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe Essay1203 Words   |  5 Pages who took their land for monetary gain. This was a dark period of time for Africans that live there. The U.S. Civil War and The Great Depression both can be related, in this instance, to how down their people were because of what happened. Chinua Achebe said it best, â€Å"I would be quite satisfied if my novels...did no more than teach my readers of their past...was not a long night of savagery from which the first European acting on God’s behalf delivered them†(qtd. in â€Å"Morning Yet† 45). In theRead MoreChinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart Essay1682 Words   |  7 Pagescertain degree of the priest class, libation, holidays, creation stories, divine systems of punishments and rewards. In the novel, Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, is a story of tragic fall of a protagonist and the Igbo culture. Achebe demonstrates different examples and situations of where an African culture, in the instances of tribal religions, did certain things because of their tradition is and the way they developed into. African cultures pondered life mysteries and articulated theirRead MoreChinua Achebe s Life Of Literature999 Words   |  4 PagesEssay: Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe is a renowned Nigeria novelist lauded for his work in literature. Chinua Achebe has been credited with numerous works of literature ranging from novels to journals. His work cuts across borders, making huge success and accepted globally in the world of literature. Even critics had to accept Chinua Achebe is the greatest our time, such was Charles H Rowell a literary critic issued in Callaloo a reputable magazine. There was no surprise when Chinua Achebe wonRead MoreChinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: Exploring the Ibo Culture1743 Words   |  7 Pagesmarginalization of women. This paper is an attempt to explore the Ibo culture and to discuss women as a marginalized group in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Things Fall Apart is a 1958 English novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Achebe is indebted to Yeats for the title as it has been taken from Yeats’ poem The Second Coming. Achebe is a fastidious, skillful artist and garnered more critical attention than any other African writer. His reputation was soon established after his novel Things Fall ApartRead MoreThings Falll Apart by Chinua Achebe1082 Words   |  4 PagesThings Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story that portrays the tensions between the white Colonial Government and native-born people of Umuofia. Okonkwo, the main character, and a great village man is highly respected in the Igbo tribe of Umuofia. Although, Okonkwo is highly respected by the Igbo people, they are fearful of him because of his violent anger. When the Europeans arrived in Umuofia, they brought with them a new religion: Christianity. The Westerners changed Umuofia, destroyed tradition

The Klan of the 1930s Free Essays

The Klan of the 1930’s In 1865, the bloodiest war in American history drew itself to a much-needed end. However, the gory war had severe repercussions. One of which is the Ku Klux Klan, or as it is more commonly known, the ‘KKK’, or even ‘the Klan’. We will write a custom essay sample on The Klan of the 1930s or any similar topic only for you Order Now The Klan was not originally meant to perform filthy crimes against humanity, but any group started by individuals with such dark beliefs is bound to morph into something unintentionally. Something horrible. Something that would burn fear into the minds of every Catholic, every Jew, every African American, and anyone else who seemed unfit. That omniscient ‘something’ is the Ku Klux Klan, an organization equally as treacherous as the Nazi’s to anyone who truly know of them. The Ku Klux Klan is beyond doubt one of most terrifying things in all of American history, and still present day. From it’s unassuming beginnings, to it’s cruelty to their fellow man, to their . After the civil war, many ex-confederate soldiers had nothing to do- their bones ached with boredom. That very boredom is what ushered the beginning of the Klan in May of 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee. Boredom is what started this horrible, seemingly cult-like, group. The group was given its rise by approximately six ex-confederate soldiers as merely a racist, social gathering. Something to lift their sunken spirits. But, gradually, talk began to turn violent. At first, just little practical jokes, then as fate would have it, they evolved into a violent hate group and performed murderous and treacherous hate crimes that society seemed to turn it’s back on and God seemed to flinch at. How could men do such horrible things? Had we no souls? Klan violence worked to suppress black voting. Over 2,000 people were killed, wounded and otherwise. Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other’s faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers. During the mobbing the Klan would riot by yelling out racist things. They would also hurt people who spoke out against them. Sometimes they would disrupt a certain black organization and rob people. During the hangings that they did, the KKK would find some black people, whether it meant kidnapping them or taking people just walking by and would take them to a hidden place where they were hung. When shootings occurred, the Klan were often the ones who started it, most likely by going and shooting at rallies for black people. The Klan also just started shooting at cars with black people going by or at a black family’s houses. Although the Klan did these horrible things, they were very rarely arrested for doing them. Although some police agreed with the Ku Klux Klan, others tried there hardest to find and arrest them. It was hard to find the Klan, because they never stayed in one place for long due to the fear of capture. 3 years ago Report Abuse Additional Details my grand pa was a confederate general, i have nothing against it†¦ 3 years ago the question is what is the third thing i can use for my thesis? 3 years ago I WANT HELP WITH MY THESIS, NOT ADVICE. THANK YOU THOUGH. ————————————————- Explain how the KKK are supposedly the â€Å"ghosts of the Confederate soldiers† (after they lost the Civil War) and how they hanged Blacks in retribution, bombed Black churches, burned crosses on lawns and killed people during their infamous night rides. The first Klan was founded in 1865 in Tennessee, which had about 550,000 total members. Key members in the second klan were Nathan Bedford Forest, a Civil War veteran. Forrest allegedly responded, â€Å"That’s a good thing; that’s a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the ******* in their place. † That demonstrates that the KKK’s main goal was reactionary, to keep Blacks down after they lost rights to slavery during the Civil War. In 1915, the second Klan was founded. At the turn of the century, the new KKK focused on more groups, such as the Jewish and Catholics. The created the movies called â€Å"The Birth of a Nation† that portrayed the KKK as heroes. Also, they were rather infamous in their case with Leo Frank. Leo Frank, a Jewish man whose controversial death sentence for the rape and murder of a young White girl named Mary Phagan had been commuted, was lynched near Atlanta against a backdrop of media frenzy. Also note the second KKK had about 6,000,000 members total and was VERY successful in terms of numbers and political power. The third klan formed in 1946 and opposed the later Civil Rights Movement. However, the third klan lost most political influence because racism was getting less accepted as times changed. Also note, around this time, they began committing questionable assassinations and bombings of Black churches. They, in 1963, assassinated NAACP organiser Medgar Evers in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted. Of course, the racism resulted in the Blacks forming their own groups for protection. Also put that many KKK groups, from the third re-birth, exist today, in which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 187 active KKK groups supposedly exist in the United States. The state with the most KKK groups, is Texas, containing 26 total. ————————————————- How to cite The Klan of the 1930s, Papers

Environmental Policy for Computers & Operations- myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theEnvironmental Policy for Computers Operations. Answer: The preconditions necessary for the proper implementation of the Emissions Trading can be done properly by following some of the preconditions, like The policy implemented must be such so that it should attract the attention of the important decision makers (Choi 2013). This is because of the fact that the decision makers play a very important role in designing the plan and the implementation of the policy. The policy must be instrumental in allowing the companies to utilize the new opportunities, the challenges and also all the available resources in order to make the policy much more systematic, operational and strategic in nature. Coverage Achieving of the environmental objective The policy is so designed that it would be able to control properly the harmful emissions of the carbon dioxide in a very cost effective manner (Yang et al 2016). . emission trading incentives In order to reduce the emission of the harmful gases, the emission trading system uses several methods of reducing the emission on site. One such method is making considerable amount of investment in energy efficiency. It is this approach that can make the business much more sustainable in the recent future. This is also because of the fact that investment in cost saving technologies will lead to a reduction in the overheads as well (Yang et al 2016). C limitations Companies that try to implement this particular policy often can undertake the purchasing of carbon offsets. However, after the purchase of these carbon offsets, the companies do not properly implement the carbon dioxide reduction methods. As a result of which, the companies are just interested in purchasing the carbon offsets rather than reducing the harmful emissions by the application of new technologies (Wang et al 2016). There is also a lack of standard methods of measuring the harmful emissions from the oil sands, which comprises of polluted water and can cause harmful emissions and pollution (Yang et al 2016). It is a regulatory policy as The government has to play a major role in the implementation of the policy. The government must make sure that While designing the emissions trading policy, there must be the selling or the auctioning of the permits by the regulator. This is helpful because while selling or auctioning the regulator can generate the revenues which are usually redistributed or recyclable in nature. This can be used to reduce other taxes. The government also must make sure that the way in which the policy is being designed is suitable enough with the jurisdictions overall climate. There is proper identification of the sources that emit the harmful carbon dioxide gases. There must be proper accumulation of funds in order to endure that the modern and advanced scientific tools can be used for controlling the emissions from the electricity units. The policy implemented must be such so that it should attract the attention of the important decision makers (Choi 2013). The policy must be instrumental in allowing the companies to utilize the new opportunities, the challenges and also all the available resources in order to make the policy much more systematic, operational and strategic in nature. strengths Carbon taxes can be used as a very essential tool of reducing the harmful impacts of the carbon containing fuels. As there is a tax imposed on all the fuels that contains carbon elements, all the firms are naturally inclined towards using more environments friendly production processes. Limitations There can be problems in measuring in how much carbon is being used. Countries may also carry on their business free of cost in other countries carbon taxations. It is a regulatory policy as The government has to play a major role in the implementation of the policy. The role played by Government The Government must make sure that there is fairness present in the imposition of the taxes on the carbon containing fuels. In other words, the Government must make sure that the companies are not able to avoid payment of proper taxes (Yang et al 2016). This taxation system must also benefit the lower income groups in a positive way. Carbon tax must not necessarily turn out to be a bad news for the poor section of the society or the coal mining communities. Rather it must be helpful towards them by providing them sufficient amount of fund for a transition, or for a better and improved life. The Government must set the limit of the carbon tax programs on the different companies in such a way so that there is proper price certainty. This can be done by specifying a certain tax rate for a particular specific year. Apart from this, the taxation on carnon containing fuels must be such so as to allow all the industries in adjusting their emission rates according to their current conditions. In order to lower the emissions, a proper blueprint must be developed for the proper analyzing of the different energy needs or electricity needs in the electricity market of dfferent countries. yes This is because of the fact that there must be proper strategies implemented to look after and guide the proper operation and the evolution of the national electricity market to look after and guide the change towards a low emission future (Orlov et al 2013). References Choi, T.M., 2013. Optimal apparel supplier selection with forecast updates under carbon emission taxation scheme.Computers Operations Research,40(11), pp.2646-2655. Orlov, A., Grethe, H. and McDonald, S., 2013. Carbon taxation in Russia: Prospects for a double dividend and improved energy efficiency.Energy Economics,37, pp.128-140. Wang, Q., Hubacek, K., Feng, K., Wei, Y.M. and Liang, Q.M., 2016. Distributional effects of carbon taxation.Applied Energy,184, pp.1123-1131. Yang, M., Zou, Y., Lo, M. and Chao, Y., 2016. Integrated Supply Chain Inventory Model with Progressive Carbon Taxation. InProceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists(Vol. 2). IMECS.

The Importance of Cleaning free essay sample

Issues surrounding cleaning can never be over analysed. At first glance cleaning may seem unenchanting, however its study is a necessity for any one wishing to intellectually advance beyond their childhood. Cited by many as the single most important influence on post modern micro eco compartmentalism, it is important to remember that ‘what goes up must come down. ’ Inevitably feelings run deep amongst the easily lead, many of whom fail to comprehend the full scope of cleaning. Here begins my indepth analysis of the glourious subject of cleaning. Social Factors Society is a simple word with a very complex definition. Back when Vealinger reamarked ‘the power struggle will continue while the great tale of humanity remains untold’ [1] he must have been referning to cleaning. Much has been said about the influence of the media on cleaning. Observers claim it is crunchy on the outside but soft in the middle. Some analysts have been tempted to disregard cleaning. We will write a custom essay sample on The Importance of Cleaning or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page I haven’t. It has been said that the one thing in society which could survive a nuclear attack is cleaning. This is incorrect, actually cockroaches are the only thing which can survive a nuclear attack. Economic Factors Economics has been defined as Ill scratch your back if you scratch mine. To my learned ear that sounds like two people with itchy backs. Indisputably there is a link. How can this be explained? It goes with out saying that interest world wide are driven entirely by cleaning. Assumptions made by traders have caused uncertainty amongst the private sector. Political Factors Politics, we all agree, is a fact of life. Comparing the electoral politics of most Western and Eastern European countries is like comparing chalk and cheese. To quote award winning journalist Maximilian Woodpecker consciousness complicates a myriad of progressions. [2] I argue that his insight into cleaning provided the inspiration for these great words. Perhaps the word which sums up the importance of cleaning to politics is participation. While cleaning may be a giant amongst men, is it a dwarf amongst policy? I hope not. Conclusion How much responsibility lies with cleaning? We can say that cleaning parades along mans streets and man waves back. It inspires, applauds greatness, though cleaning brings with it obvious difficulties, it is truly cleaning. I shall give the final word to star Mariah Poppins: I demand cleaning, nothing more nothing less.

Free Essays on Stock Market Collapse

There were many factors which lead to the collapse of the stock market on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, what most people called the Great Depression. The stock market collapsed â€Å"in a frenzy of selling in which a record 16 million shares were dumped†¦.over the coming months investors lost millions and unemployment skyrocketed†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.seven hundred banks closed in 1929 and eighty-five thousand businesses went bankrupt between 1929-1932.† 1 The depression lasted for about a decade. It was preceded by a decade of prosperity. Though the stock market collapse did not cause the Great Depression by itself, it was a major factor. Other economic factors creating the Great Depressions were an over- dependence on mass production which required mass consumer spending, an unequal distribution of wealth which created an unstable economy, and extensive stock market speculation in the late 1920’s. Mass production of goods required mass consumption, however, the average American did not have the money to make cash purchases, so they abandoned the old tradition of saving for what they wanted and began purchasing on the installment plan. According to a study done by the Brookings Institution, in 1929 â€Å"0.1% of Americans controlled 34% of all savings, while 80% of Americans had no savings at all.† 2 If Americans could not afford to buy what they wanted, they could get anything they wanted with a small down payment and pay for it over time. Advertisements were used to entice Americans to make purchases of more and more products on installment, however, most American did not have the wages necessary to provide the purchasing power needed to keep the economy growing. For example, â€Å"in 1929 Henry Ford reported a personal income of $14 million in the same year the average personal income was $750.† 3 Many Americans were attracted by advertisements to purchase a number of the new products like the automobiles, radios and household appl... Free Essays on Stock Market Collapse Free Essays on Stock Market Collapse There were many factors which lead to the collapse of the stock market on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, what most people called the Great Depression. The stock market collapsed â€Å"in a frenzy of selling in which a record 16 million shares were dumped†¦.over the coming months investors lost millions and unemployment skyrocketed†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.seven hundred banks closed in 1929 and eighty-five thousand businesses went bankrupt between 1929-1932.† 1 The depression lasted for about a decade. It was preceded by a decade of prosperity. Though the stock market collapse did not cause the Great Depression by itself, it was a major factor. Other economic factors creating the Great Depressions were an over- dependence on mass production which required mass consumer spending, an unequal distribution of wealth which created an unstable economy, and extensive stock market speculation in the late 1920’s. Mass production of goods required mass consumption, however, the average American did not have the money to make cash purchases, so they abandoned the old tradition of saving for what they wanted and began purchasing on the installment plan. According to a study done by the Brookings Institution, in 1929 â€Å"0.1% of Americans controlled 34% of all savings, while 80% of Americans had no savings at all.† 2 If Americans could not afford to buy what they wanted, they could get anything they wanted with a small down payment and pay for it over time. Advertisements were used to entice Americans to make purchases of more and more products on installment, however, most American did not have the wages necessary to provide the purchasing power needed to keep the economy growing. For example, â€Å"in 1929 Henry Ford reported a personal income of $14 million in the same year the average personal income was $750.† 3 Many Americans were attracted by advertisements to purchase a number of the new products like the automobiles, radios and household appl...

David cole interviews dr. franciszek piper ( RESPOND ) Movie Review

David cole interviews dr. franciszek piper ( RESPOND ) - Movie Review Example The point Cole tries to make here is that most of the evidence and facts about mass homicides at Auschwitz were either incorrect or exaggerated by the Soviet Union to serve their propaganda during the time of war and how on a larger scale, facts and figures of war have been manipulated in favor of the victorious. Cole’s documentary questions various undisputed facts and points out the anomalies in what has become an irrefutable part of human history. His interview with Senior Curator and Head of Archives at Auschwitz State Museum Dr. Franciszek Piper reveals some very interesting and at the same time contradictory information about the camp and the gas chamber that was used for mass homicide. After his visit to the camp in 1992 and based on years of research, Cole observes that Piper’s version of the gas chamber operations, its reconstruction by the Soviet Union, and the use of Zyklon B are inconsistent and highly debatable. Cole says that the Soviets exaggerated facts bringing the death toll to 4 million when the reality was only 1.1 and much of the evidences put forward during the Nuremberg trial were discredited later on or found to be false. Cole opines that if Hess was hanged for running an internment camp in Auschwitz where people died of disease and malnutrition, then the thousands of Japanese who died in the United States and the Germans killed in the post war POW camp under similar conditions should also be made accountable. Finally he suggests that war crimes do not have easy and justifiable answers without raising

Mobile Computing and Social Networks Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Mobile Computing and Social Networks - Essay Example The application can snap pictures of the accident and attach them to the claim data and upload the claim information to a server. This reduces the length of time to process a claim filed this way. Nationwide competitors have followed suit and developed iPhone, iPad, and Android applications of their own. Policyholders can receive messages via Facebook or Twitter.  Other business processes that have been reengineered as a result of mobile computing include Quick Response (QR) codes which have replaced one-dimensional bar codes. They are read using mobile devices, accepting credit card payments from an iPhone, iPad or Android device, depositing checks using an iPhone without visiting a bank, and many more.  Several surveys have come to general conclusions that applications like Facebook are raising as essential application development platforms. Many others find Google to be more significant in this regard. Considering the mobile computing platforms, Apple seems to be the leader in the market (Vizard, 2012). The present study focuses on mobile computing and social networks learning about their effectiveness, challenges, methods and applications as influencing the lives of all human beings. Mobile Based Applications: Effectiveness and Efficiency: Different companies are in the present times trying to organize for innovative mobile applications that exhibits the feature of geo-location. It is a technology that uses data available from the mobile device of an individual and identifies their exact location at a particular point of time. These days this feature can be found in almost all mobile devices particularly enhanced in the Smartphones that enable GPS (Global Positioning System) such as iPhone, Droid and others. The benefits of geo-marketing have already been identified. These applications enable discounts and promotions to the users when they make the purchases and in turn also provide them real time valuable data based on the preferences of the customers. This data may be put together with the profile of a customer providing a personalized experience (Jaiswal, n.d., p.1). Location-aware applications can also be combined with the social media platforms that permit third-party developers to incorporate geo-location apps into their service. This requires lesser technological investment and a company can control the capabilities of the platform services – like Facebook – to advance its marketing approaches by letting them to provide local information and publicity. â€Å"For example, Booyah, a â€Å"location-based video-game company,† is the creator of myTown, one of the most popular iPhone apps. The company recently launched InCrowd, a location-aware app built on Facebook Places technology, which lets users interact with friends and share posts in real-time in real-world locations† (Jaiswal, n.d., p.2). However, although the technology proves to be beneficial, there are certain concerns amongst the customers in regard to the privacy around the use of the apps particularly concerning the collection of the location data, spamming by advertisements, and other associated factors (Jaiswal, n.d., p.3). With the GPS systems being available in the mobile handling devices in the recent times, the use of systems based on location have become more popular. The most recent â€Å"

Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles

Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles The concept of preaching Chapter Two Contextual Literature Review 2.1 Establishing a starting point. Sermons are not a kind of discourse given much serious public attention in twenty-first century Britain. The very concept of preaching often brings with it negative connotations. To accuse any contemporary commentator of preaching is to suggest that unsubstantiated opinions are being delivered in a tedious manner. That in such common usage preaching is almost invariably a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet indicates something of the social standing of the practice of preaching. Preaching is not an activity that is generally thought of as either intellectually or emotionally engaging. It is, rather, something that is considered to be at best passà ©, and at worst wholly untrustworthy. If challenged, those who speak of preaching in such pejorative terms will often cite the cultural distance in practice and understanding between contemporary society and the sermon form as the basis of their judgment. Mention will be made of the social irrelevance of the content of typical sermons, the perceived authoritarian position of the preacher, and the strangeness of the environment in which sermons usually occur. It is also likely that the methodology employed will be judged anachronistic, static, long-winded, and overly didactic for people used to the methods and time-frames of electronic media. The implication is that preaching is somehow out of place in modern society and that, therefore, the negative attitudes displayed in the colloquial use of the term preaching is something new. It is fashionably contemporary to adopt a contemptuous or at best a jocular attitude towards preaching. I use the term fashionably to emphasize that preaching is not the only discourse to receiv e such widespread opprobrium: advertising is similarly widely scorned yet, given the vast sums of money spent on it, is evidently effective nonetheless (Kilbourne, 1999: 34). Voiced contempt of preaching as a worthwhile actively is not necessarily to be taken at face value. As has been stated in the introduction, this thesis seeks to present an analysis of contemporary British preaching as a practice of social mnemonics. As the idea of social practice in that terminology refers to the whole of society rather than an interest group or a few like-minded people gathered together, such a perspective may appear to be an oxymoron given that recent poling suggests only just over six per cent of the adult population of the UK are churchgoers (see Brierley, 2008). This literature review will, nevertheless, seek to establish that Christian preachers who have reflected in depth on their practice in recent generations have invariably assumed that homiletics is an aspect of public discourse rather than an institutionally confined and specialized type of communication. In recent times, justifying that assumption has become more and more difficult, as this review will demonstrate. It has to be admitted that preaching no longer has the place in society-wide awareness i t once enjoyed, despite the occasional headline making exceptions, such as Archbishop Robert Runcies sermon at the Falklands War Memorial Service on 26th June 1982 that reportedly so annoyed the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (Brown, 2000). Despite the decline in preachings social status, this study argues that there are always connections between homiletic theory and wider social discourse, and that discovering those connections is a mnemonic skill required of all preachers. That many studies (for example, Ford. (1979); Bausch, (1996); and Day, Astley and Francis, (2005)) have observed that since at least the 1960s the idea of preaching as a worthwhile arena of social discourse has been repeatedly and vigorously questioned is part of the contextualization with which this thesis is concerned. That the very word preaching brings with it negative connotations that touch even regular Christian worshippers, as N.T. Wright observes in his foreword to the Reader on Preaching (Day, 2005: ix), is part of the social understanding this study aims to examine. The colloquial usage that applies the word preaching to the expression of any unsubstantiated opinions, or any speech delivered in a tedious manner, is not a prejudice that serious homiletic theory can simply ignore. That usage is widespread and is, for example, represented in the 1995 edition of the Oxford English Reference Dictionary where the second definition of preach is give moral advice in an obtrusive w ay. Similarly, the use of the word preaching as a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet is too frequent in newspapers to need much supporting elaboration. Andrew Rawnsley writing in The Observer on 13th July 2008 is but one example of a continuing journalistic convention. Rawnsley cited the drawbacks for politicians who preach in their campaigning via a long catalogue of negatives about the idea of preaching which included delivering patronising lectures from a position of immense privilege, wringing their hands about the sins of the world without offering any practical answers to improve society, and simplified to the point of parody. These kinds of associations related to the idea of preaching cannot be simply dismissed if it is to be argued that the practice of preaching within the churches is closely related to wider social trends. Instead, the contemporary bias that associates preaching with that which is intellectually lazy, emotionally sterile, untrustworthy, or simply passà ©, must be treated as a factor that needs to be addressed in considering the mechanisms of collective memory. That said, it must also be acknowledged that the assertion that preachings low social esteem is a modern phenomenon is not wholly true. Like the contemporary negative connotations of preaching, the characterization of preaching as formerly being held in great social esteem, is a generalization that obscures as much as it discloses. In the famous passage concerning preaching in Anthony Trollopes novel Barchester Towers the negativity usually judged as modern is apparent even at the so-called high-point of Victorian religious practice. Written between April 1855 and November 1856, Trollopes words contain the same kind of criticisms and sense of hostility encountered colloquially nowadays. He wrote: There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. No one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman. He is the bore of the age, the old man whom we Sinbads cannot shake off, the nightmare that disturbs our Sundays rest, the incubus that overloads our religion and makes Gods service distasteful. We are not forced into church! No: but we desire more than that. We desire not to be forced to stay away. We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing for escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons. (Trollope, 1995: 43-44) Only the assumption that Sunday worship is the norm and the invariable gender of the preacher signifies Trollopes diatribe as of another age. The notion of a static audience enduring a platitudinous and boring verbal presentation has an altogether familiar ring about it. As Colin Morris (1996: xi) points out, it is significant that the first series of the Lyman-Beecher Lectures on Preaching established at Yale University in the 1870s ended with a lecture entitled, Is Preaching Finished? Needless to say, the lecture firmly declared that preaching had a future; but, put alongside Trollopes criticisms, it demonstrates that negativity about sermons predates the age of mass electronic communication. In recent years, numerous influential homileticians have described preaching as being in crisis (for example, Jensen, (1993); Wilson, (1988); Morris, (1996)), but too often such worried analysis has overstated the contemporaneity of the problem. 2.2 The perception of a crisis in preaching. Three recurring emphases are common to the arguments of those who see the crisis in preaching as something of recent origin, namely: a widespread loss of confidence in institutions; a change in socially learnt communicative skills; and the all-pervasive influence of television and associated vehicles of mass communication. So, to amplify those three aspects, the argument is usually made in the following kinds of terms. First, not only has the severe decline in commitment to religious institutions in recent times resulted in far fewer people actually hearing sermons, even those who do experience preaching at firsthand are much less likely to treat sermons as being particularly significant than did their immediate forebears. Scepticism, and a questioning outlook that constantly raises issues of credibility, is part of the very air of social intercourse, and preaching has no social independence from such an atmosphere. Like every other voice, the preaching voice is one voice amongst a myriad of other voices, and is just as harried by questions of authenticity, doubt and competition as any other voice. Contemporary European society, it is said, has a fundamentally anti-authoritarian aspect to it that will not allow any single voice ultimate authority. Preaching, therefore, which is usually considered to require special and very particular authority being attributed to the preacher, is especially suspec t. This, in turn, has ramifications for those who preach, since as individuals they are just as much influenced by these contextual pressures as anyone else. This means that preachers, whatever they claim in public, almost inevitably have less confidence in the preaching task than even their recent predecessors. Second, in what the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo (2001: 230) has termed a society of generalized communication, the very nature of communication itself has profoundly shifted. It is as if everything in human experience has become an object of communication. This shift is often associated with consumerism because, it is argued, such a process of ever widening objects of communication allows more and more events, things, and relationships to become marketable commodities. This expansion, however, brings with it three difficult consequences: it vastly increases the number and range of communication events each person encounters day by day, with a resulting loss in focus, concentration, and time spent on each one; it so stimulates the psychological and physical experience of each person that peoples boredom thresholds have decreased dramatically; and it makes communication itself part of the constantly changing, consumption dominated, arena of style and fashion. These things are pa rticularly problematic for preaching since they mean hearers have ever shortening attention spans, feel they need to be stimulated by what they hear, and employ fashion-like judgments to both their readiness to listen and their willingness to respond (Rogness, 1994: 27-29). Coupled with these changes comes an emphasis on technique in communication, and a preference for labelling unacceptable ideas or challenges as a failure in communication. As a result preachers face intense pressures to conform, both in terms of the content of sermons and the techniques of presentation, to what is socially acceptable simply to gain a hearing. Accordingly, it is argued that the requirement to attract attention and engagement is of a wholly more onerous intensity than it ever was in past times. In the distracted age that is contemporary society the static commitment and attention required of sermon audiences is so counter-cultural as to be almost unachievable. Third, the argument gives prominence to the absolute dominance of television as the popular medium, and characterizes contemporary culture as televisual and post-literate. It is said that through television, for the first time in the history of humanity, children are being socialized into image use prior to word use (see Warren, 1997). Consequently, the use of words is likely to no longer occupy the pole position in social discourse, but rather to occupy an inherently second order, commentary position. In other words, our culture has shifted from a reading-formed preference towards the ear over the eye, to an image-formed favouring of the eye over the ear, with an obviously detrimental effect on a word dominated form like preaching. Television also appears to be an open and democratized form of communication that offers the prospect of an absolutely free flow of information. It tantalizes with the notion that anything that happens will be almost instantaneously communicable; an impre ssion further reinforced by the Internet. Of course there are serious criticisms to be made of these judgments, but they are nevertheless widely persuasive, at least at face value, both because of the sensory immediacy of the medium and because of the entertainment factors closely allied with it. In comparison preaching seems a highly subjectivized personal choice in which the preacher demands of an audience assent without prior consent and justification, and in which the factor of entertainment does not figure at all. In a televisual world of a seemingly infinite number of stories, preachings insistence, as it is perceived, on the one story of Gods relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ seems partial and even tedious. Those who lived before the development of electronic media lived lives in which stories, colour, and pictures were rare and precious events; people of the televisual age inhabit a world alive with an ever changing array of images, colours and narratives. Is it any wonder then that preaching that developed as a communication technique in that pre-television world is thought of as having become outmoded? Such are the usual parameters of the argument—broadly stated, no doubt, and perhaps caricatured a little—of recent scholarly analysis of the social location of the practice of preaching in contemporary European society. Interestingly, it is apparent that the scholarly commentary not only echoes colloquial opinion about the recentness of the relative decline of the authority afforded preaching, but also the reasons given for that decline. One of questions which this thesis seeks to address is whether such judgments adequately represent what is actually going on in the act of preaching, and whether by an all too easy assumption of preaching as an essentially distinctive activity somehow distanced from other forms of discourse such analysis does not fall prey to the very forces it is trying to counter. After the hiatus caused by World War II, the BBC resumed television broadcasting in 1946, and the commencement of broadcasting by commercial stations in 1955 accelerated the use of the medium. By 1958 the number of British households with a TV exceeded those with only a radio (Mathias, 2006). Given the above discussion of the widely perceived influence of new electronic media and TVs escalating use, the 1950s seem an appropriate starting point for the consideration of publications dealing with preaching. Quite apart from this more commonplace sense of a shift having taking place, scholarly analysis of both Church history and homiletics tends to support the idea that very significant changes relevant to the thesis topic did in fact occur at this period. Those changes were not necessarily recognized at the time; perhaps an indication of the lag that occurs as the memories of one generation gives way to those of a succeeding one. One British preacher, however, was alert to the possibili ty that something profound was happening. That preacher was a R. E. C. Charlie Browne, a Manchester vicar, whose 1950s reflections on the preaching task turned out to be amazingly prescient of things that would become major concerns years later. Browne serves as a marker of change. It is sensible, therefore, to examine Browne in some detail before returning to the more general overview. 2.3 R. E. C. Browne as a marker of the changing social location of preaching. R.E.C. Brownes The Ministry of the Word was first published in 1958 in a series of short works entitled Studies in Ministry and Worship under the overall editorship of Professor Geoffrey Lampe. Lampes editorship lent theological credibility to a series that was notable on two counts. First, it was decidedly ecumenical (for example, two of the studies were by Max Thurian, who later became internationally known as the theological expositor of the ecumenical Taizà © community); and second, it was written from a perspective that only later would be widely termed applied or practical theology. Brownes book is the acknowledged masterpiece of the series and has been reissued three times since its first publication (1976, 1984 and 1994), as well as being published in the United States in 1982. Writing in 1986, Bishop Richard Hanson said of it: This is no little volume of helpful hints about preaching but a profound study of the meaning and use of language in relation to theology and to faith, and one that will outlast all the ephemeral booklets about how to preach. (in Corbett, 1986: v) Just why this work has been so frequently referred to in a wide variety of Christian traditions will be considered later, but for the purposes of the present discussion the crucial point is the historical context of its writing and publication. Browne wrote the book whilst he was Rector of the parish of Saint Chrysostum, Victoria Park, Manchester in the 1950s. Ronald Preston, in a foreword to one edition of The Ministry of the Word, describes Victoria Park as having moved rapidly since the 1920s from the remains of enclosed and privileged nineteenth-century affluence to near disintegration (in Browne, 1976: 10). He notes also, however, that the St Chrysostums relative proximity to the university and the citys main teaching hospital made it a base from which Brownes influence spread widely. Hanson records that it was a parish where the personality and abilities alone of the incumbent cleric could attract worshippers (Corbett, 1986: iv). In other words, several aspects of the social world that historians like Hastings (1986), Welsby (1984), and Hylson-Smith (1998) have characterized as typical of the 1950s were clearly likely to have been there in Brownes experience of the ministerial life. For example, Welsby commenting on t he monthly journal Theology in the two immediately post-war decades notes how it was widely read by parish clergy and acted as a connecting bridge between the concerns of academia and local church life, and concludes: It is significant, however, that fundamental matters, such as belief in God or in Christ were seldom discussed in its pages, as though these theological foundations were secure and might be taken for granted. This could be a symbol of much of the theology of the forties and fifties. There was a self-confidence and security so that even those who did write about God, Christology, of the Church did so as though the basis of belief was unquestionably right. (Welsby, 1984: 67) Elsewhere in the same book Welsby notes that the seeds of radical change were present in the 1950s but went unperceived, and he describes the atmosphere in the Church of England as one of complacency and an apparent unawareness of trends already present which were to burst to the surface in the sixties (1984: 94). Browne most certainly did not share that unawareness and frankly acknowledged the difficulties of communicating the gospel despite the relatively secure social position of theological thought and institutional belief. Far from being in an unassailable authoritative position, he described preachers as living and preaching in an age when there is general perplexity and bewilderment about authority, and as all too unwittingly signifying that perplexity in the language and thought expressed in the pulpit (Browne, 1976: 33). Browne would probably have concurred with Adrian Hastings opinion that in the ebb and flow of the intellectual tide in the twentieth century, the 1950s marked a high water point of sympathy for the Christian faith in contrast to the high point for secularism immediately after World War I (Hastings, 1986: 491), but he nevertheless argued that effective preaching required new symbols because new human knowledge has disabled the old ones (Browne, 1976: 107). Hastings, looking back on the times in which Browne wrote, asserts: There was never a time since the middle of the nineteenth century when Christian faith was either taken so seriously by the generality of the more intelligent or could make such a good case for itself. (Hastings, 1986: 491) Browne himself is rather more querulous in his reflections and quotes approvingly from Emmanuel Mounier: There is a comfortable atheism, as there is a comfortable Christianity. They meet on the same swampy ground, and their collisions are the ruder for their awareness and irritable resentment of the weakening of their profound differences beneath the common kinship of their habits. The prospect of personal annihilation no more disturbs the contented sleep of the average radical-socialist than does horror of the divine transcendence or terror of reprobation disturb the spiritual digestion of the habituà ©s of the midday Mass. Forgetfulness of these truisms is the reason why so many discussions are still hampered by naà ¯ve susceptibilities. Emmanuel Mounier, The Spoil of the Violent, Harvill Press, 1955: 25 (as cited in Browne, 1976: 109) Browne was conscious that amongst the comforts of wide social acknowledgement and respect other more challenging forces were becoming apparent. Browne is wary of any intellectual triumphalism on the part of preachers and insists that in attempting to address the atheist, or the wholly religiously indifferent unperturbed post-atheist, it is always necessary to establish pastoral rapport first (1976: 110). Sometimes, he admits, such rapport will be impossible to establish (1976: 110). Paradoxically, as Hastings notes (1986: 492, 496), the 1950s were at one and the same time an era in which religion was considered seriously by a number of the great cultural and intellectual figures of the day (such as Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Carl Jung (1875-1961), Graham Sutherland (1903-80), Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), to name just a few) and in which the radical agnosticism and secularism born of earlier times also flourished (for examples see the works of A.J. Ayer (1910-89), C.P. Snow (1905-80), A.J.P. Taylor (1906-90) and Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003)). Perhaps it was that Browne realized i n a way other preachers did not, that although these two worlds of thought existed side by side the competition between them was not in any way equal. As Hylson-Smith observes, by the end of World War II the environmental context of all cultural activity was essentially secular (1998: 212). That point was a matter of essential concern to a preacher like Browne who regarded sermons as an artistic activity requiring similar processes of social understanding and interaction as those necessary to the production of music, poetry or painting (Browne, 1976: 18). Browne writes rather ruefully: Christians have the naà ¯ve idea that the arts, specially drama, could and should be extensively used for the proclamation of the gospel. In the first place Christian artists cannot easily and quickly find a way of expressing Christian doctrine in a community which is not moved by Christian symbols. Indeed at present there is no common symbolism Christian or otherwise and Christian artists are found incomprehensible and disturbing by their fellow Christians who cannot justify the authority of new forms and somehow feel that old forms might be patched and brought up-to-date. In the second place whenever the church tries to use art as a method of propaganda her integrity and authority are severely questioned by just those whose conversion would be most significant. (1976: 35) There is here an early recognition of that social forgetfulness of Christian symbols that would a generation later become a commonplace assessment of religious traditions in contemporary Britain. For Browne the preachers purpose was to seek answers about the most profound aspects of human concern and experience with the single-mindedness and commitment of an honest artist. Easy answers to difficult questions, or formulaic responses to deep questioning, were to Browne a betrayal of preachings very purpose. For him nothing less than the artists earnest wrestling to express the inexpressible was good enough. It is hard to imagine that Browne was untroubled that the things of artistic expression, with one or two notable exceptions, seemed less and less concerned with religious ideas, and that the churches appeared indifferent to the fact (Hylson-Smith, 1998: 212). As favourable to inherited ideas of religious expression as the climate of the 1950s appears viewed from the beginning of the twenty-first century, Browne, as a preacher active during those years, offers an altogether less sanguine appraisal. That his book dwells extensively on the issue of meaning and the use of language in relationship to the expression of faith indicates that he did not share the easy certainties regarding the communication of religious ideas that were still prevalent within the institutional church of his day. Brownes commitment to preaching as a necessary part of Christian community life is absolute, but his insistence that its practice is most like the creation of a work of art or a poem makes plain its inherent limitations: the sermon can no more readily define the truth in absolute terms than can the artist or poet (1976: 18). Such an insistence shifts the authority given to preaching from one of power, described as six foot above contradiction, to the altoge ther different position implied in later years by terms such as Fords communicative expertise which is self-authenticating (Ford, 1979: 235), or Taylors fragile words (Taylor, 1998: 121). Like such later homileticians, Browne believed preachers should not claim too much for their efforts. That reserve, however, should not be mistaken for a hesitation about the necessity or value of preaching. In his work there is no hint of the thought of later theorists who sought to abandon preaching completely. Brownes reserve is a perceptive awareness that, to use the terminology of Adrian Hastings, although the comfortably traditionalist church of his times was undergoing a period of confident revival (1986: 504) it was in fact finding it harder and harder to connect with the generality of people in terms of shared symbols and meanings. Browne was ahead of his time in his recognition that the changing social context of ministry had direct ramifications for the power and authority of the preacher. He wrote: What ministers of the Word say may seem too little to live on, but they must not go beyond their authority in a mistaken attempt to make their authority strong and clear. That going beyond is always the outcome of an atheistic anxiety, or a sign that the man of God has succumbed to the temptation to speak as a god, to come in his own name and to be his own authority. (Browne, 1976: 40) Such sentiments are echoed in the more recent application of contemporary philosophy to preaching by the American scholar John S. McClure (2001). Nevertheless, in terms of homiletic theory in Britain in the twentieth-century, Brownes was a voice that offered a new appreciation of the actual communicative environment in which sermons were placed. His book demonstrates that the radical calling into question of the methodologies of preaching pre-dates both the crisis noted by such commentators as Ford (1979) or Jensen (1993) and the colloquial assumption that in the 1950s, before the widespread use of television, the place of the sermon was assured. This concern about preachings power to engage attention indicates that the shifts that will be analysed when this study returns to the consideration of collective memory must extend wide enough to include responses such as those of Browne. The unease with homiletic methodology that Brownes work expressed provides a justification for this review using his analysis as its historical starting point. Consequently, there now follows an overview of trends in preaching since Brownes book that aims to provide both general orientation and a framework within which works discussed later can be placed. 2.4 Trends in the theory and practice of preaching since the mid 1950s. O.C. Edwards in his A History of Preaching notes that the 25 year period ending in 1955 turned out to be the high-point of the social standing and influence of traditional Protestant churches (2004: 665). Whilst that judgment may seem too effusive and unqualified when applied to the United Kingdom, it does, nevertheless, indicate the reality of the institutional confidence that was prevalent in churches on both sides of the Atlantic at the time. That confidence had direct ramifications for preaching: as Hastings puts it, in the immediate post-war years preaching as both art and edifying was still alive and cherished (1986: 462). The comment comes in a passage in A History of English Christianity 1920 1985 (1986: 436-472) that deals with the Free Churches, in which Hastings cites the influential preaching ministries of Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1975), W.E. Sangster (1900-1960), and Donald Soper (1903-1998)—all of whom drew large numbers to hear them preach. In the same section of his book, however, comes this stark conclusion: The mid-1950s can be dated pretty precisely as the end of the age of preaching: people suddenly ceased to think it worthwhile listening to a special preacher. Whether this was caused by the religious shift produced by the liturgical movement or by the spread of television or by some other alteration in human sensibility is not clear. But the change is clear. (1986: 465) Hastings is perhaps a little too hesitant in his judgement about what prompted this change. Although numerous theological and social factors were obviously significant, the turn towards television as a predominating pastime must surely have been the crucial prompter of change in the way people spent their time. That preaching, at the beginning of the 1950s at least, remained dominated by agendas and styles drawn from previous generations is evident in the fact that a number of books from those earlier times remained in frequent use. Bishop Phillips Brooks had delivered his eight lectures on preaching at Yale Divinity School in the Lyman Beecher Lectureship of January and February 1877, but his advice was still considered pertinent enough to warrant the publication of a British fifth edition in 1957. Similarly, Harry Emerson Fosdicks Lyman Beecher lectures of the winter of 1923-4, entitled The Modern Use of the Bible, were last re-issued in their published form as late as 1961; and Leslie Weatherheads Lyman Beecher lectures of 1948-9, although only published in part in his book Psychology, Religion and Healing in 1957, was re-issued in 1974. Two crucial points are suggested by the longevity of these works: first, although the 1950s do indeed mark a watershed in preachings social location, it is clear that the consequences of that change were not apparent with the same force, nor at the same rate, Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles The concept of preaching Chapter Two Contextual Literature Review 2.1 Establishing a starting point. Sermons are not a kind of discourse given much serious public attention in twenty-first century Britain. The very concept of preaching often brings with it negative connotations. To accuse any contemporary commentator of preaching is to suggest that unsubstantiated opinions are being delivered in a tedious manner. That in such common usage preaching is almost invariably a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet indicates something of the social standing of the practice of preaching. Preaching is not an activity that is generally thought of as either intellectually or emotionally engaging. It is, rather, something that is considered to be at best passà ©, and at worst wholly untrustworthy. If challenged, those who speak of preaching in such pejorative terms will often cite the cultural distance in practice and understanding between contemporary society and the sermon form as the basis of their judgment. Mention will be made of the social irrelevance of the content of typical sermons, the perceived authoritarian position of the preacher, and the strangeness of the environment in which sermons usually occur. It is also likely that the methodology employed will be judged anachronistic, static, long-winded, and overly didactic for people used to the methods and time-frames of electronic media. The implication is that preaching is somehow out of place in modern society and that, therefore, the negative attitudes displayed in the colloquial use of the term preaching is something new. It is fashionably contemporary to adopt a contemptuous or at best a jocular attitude towards preaching. I use the term fashionably to emphasize that preaching is not the only discourse to receiv e such widespread opprobrium: advertising is similarly widely scorned yet, given the vast sums of money spent on it, is evidently effective nonetheless (Kilbourne, 1999: 34). Voiced contempt of preaching as a worthwhile actively is not necessarily to be taken at face value. As has been stated in the introduction, this thesis seeks to present an analysis of contemporary British preaching as a practice of social mnemonics. As the idea of social practice in that terminology refers to the whole of society rather than an interest group or a few like-minded people gathered together, such a perspective may appear to be an oxymoron given that recent poling suggests only just over six per cent of the adult population of the UK are churchgoers (see Brierley, 2008). This literature review will, nevertheless, seek to establish that Christian preachers who have reflected in depth on their practice in recent generations have invariably assumed that homiletics is an aspect of public discourse rather than an institutionally confined and specialized type of communication. In recent times, justifying that assumption has become more and more difficult, as this review will demonstrate. It has to be admitted that preaching no longer has the place in society-wide awareness i t once enjoyed, despite the occasional headline making exceptions, such as Archbishop Robert Runcies sermon at the Falklands War Memorial Service on 26th June 1982 that reportedly so annoyed the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (Brown, 2000). Despite the decline in preachings social status, this study argues that there are always connections between homiletic theory and wider social discourse, and that discovering those connections is a mnemonic skill required of all preachers. That many studies (for example, Ford. (1979); Bausch, (1996); and Day, Astley and Francis, (2005)) have observed that since at least the 1960s the idea of preaching as a worthwhile arena of social discourse has been repeatedly and vigorously questioned is part of the contextualization with which this thesis is concerned. That the very word preaching brings with it negative connotations that touch even regular Christian worshippers, as N.T. Wright observes in his foreword to the Reader on Preaching (Day, 2005: ix), is part of the social understanding this study aims to examine. The colloquial usage that applies the word preaching to the expression of any unsubstantiated opinions, or any speech delivered in a tedious manner, is not a prejudice that serious homiletic theory can simply ignore. That usage is widespread and is, for example, represented in the 1995 edition of the Oxford English Reference Dictionary where the second definition of preach is give moral advice in an obtrusive w ay. Similarly, the use of the word preaching as a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet is too frequent in newspapers to need much supporting elaboration. Andrew Rawnsley writing in The Observer on 13th July 2008 is but one example of a continuing journalistic convention. Rawnsley cited the drawbacks for politicians who preach in their campaigning via a long catalogue of negatives about the idea of preaching which included delivering patronising lectures from a position of immense privilege, wringing their hands about the sins of the world without offering any practical answers to improve society, and simplified to the point of parody. These kinds of associations related to the idea of preaching cannot be simply dismissed if it is to be argued that the practice of preaching within the churches is closely related to wider social trends. Instead, the contemporary bias that associates preaching with that which is intellectually lazy, emotionally sterile, untrustworthy, or simply passà ©, must be treated as a factor that needs to be addressed in considering the mechanisms of collective memory. That said, it must also be acknowledged that the assertion that preachings low social esteem is a modern phenomenon is not wholly true. Like the contemporary negative connotations of preaching, the characterization of preaching as formerly being held in great social esteem, is a generalization that obscures as much as it discloses. In the famous passage concerning preaching in Anthony Trollopes novel Barchester Towers the negativity usually judged as modern is apparent even at the so-called high-point of Victorian religious practice. Written between April 1855 and November 1856, Trollopes words contain the same kind of criticisms and sense of hostility encountered colloquially nowadays. He wrote: There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. No one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman. He is the bore of the age, the old man whom we Sinbads cannot shake off, the nightmare that disturbs our Sundays rest, the incubus that overloads our religion and makes Gods service distasteful. We are not forced into church! No: but we desire more than that. We desire not to be forced to stay away. We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing for escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons. (Trollope, 1995: 43-44) Only the assumption that Sunday worship is the norm and the invariable gender of the preacher signifies Trollopes diatribe as of another age. The notion of a static audience enduring a platitudinous and boring verbal presentation has an altogether familiar ring about it. As Colin Morris (1996: xi) points out, it is significant that the first series of the Lyman-Beecher Lectures on Preaching established at Yale University in the 1870s ended with a lecture entitled, Is Preaching Finished? Needless to say, the lecture firmly declared that preaching had a future; but, put alongside Trollopes criticisms, it demonstrates that negativity about sermons predates the age of mass electronic communication. In recent years, numerous influential homileticians have described preaching as being in crisis (for example, Jensen, (1993); Wilson, (1988); Morris, (1996)), but too often such worried analysis has overstated the contemporaneity of the problem. 2.2 The perception of a crisis in preaching. Three recurring emphases are common to the arguments of those who see the crisis in preaching as something of recent origin, namely: a widespread loss of confidence in institutions; a change in socially learnt communicative skills; and the all-pervasive influence of television and associated vehicles of mass communication. So, to amplify those three aspects, the argument is usually made in the following kinds of terms. First, not only has the severe decline in commitment to religious institutions in recent times resulted in far fewer people actually hearing sermons, even those who do experience preaching at firsthand are much less likely to treat sermons as being particularly significant than did their immediate forebears. Scepticism, and a questioning outlook that constantly raises issues of credibility, is part of the very air of social intercourse, and preaching has no social independence from such an atmosphere. Like every other voice, the preaching voice is one voice amongst a myriad of other voices, and is just as harried by questions of authenticity, doubt and competition as any other voice. Contemporary European society, it is said, has a fundamentally anti-authoritarian aspect to it that will not allow any single voice ultimate authority. Preaching, therefore, which is usually considered to require special and very particular authority being attributed to the preacher, is especially suspec t. This, in turn, has ramifications for those who preach, since as individuals they are just as much influenced by these contextual pressures as anyone else. This means that preachers, whatever they claim in public, almost inevitably have less confidence in the preaching task than even their recent predecessors. Second, in what the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo (2001: 230) has termed a society of generalized communication, the very nature of communication itself has profoundly shifted. It is as if everything in human experience has become an object of communication. This shift is often associated with consumerism because, it is argued, such a process of ever widening objects of communication allows more and more events, things, and relationships to become marketable commodities. This expansion, however, brings with it three difficult consequences: it vastly increases the number and range of communication events each person encounters day by day, with a resulting loss in focus, concentration, and time spent on each one; it so stimulates the psychological and physical experience of each person that peoples boredom thresholds have decreased dramatically; and it makes communication itself part of the constantly changing, consumption dominated, arena of style and fashion. These things are pa rticularly problematic for preaching since they mean hearers have ever shortening attention spans, feel they need to be stimulated by what they hear, and employ fashion-like judgments to both their readiness to listen and their willingness to respond (Rogness, 1994: 27-29). Coupled with these changes comes an emphasis on technique in communication, and a preference for labelling unacceptable ideas or challenges as a failure in communication. As a result preachers face intense pressures to conform, both in terms of the content of sermons and the techniques of presentation, to what is socially acceptable simply to gain a hearing. Accordingly, it is argued that the requirement to attract attention and engagement is of a wholly more onerous intensity than it ever was in past times. In the distracted age that is contemporary society the static commitment and attention required of sermon audiences is so counter-cultural as to be almost unachievable. Third, the argument gives prominence to the absolute dominance of television as the popular medium, and characterizes contemporary culture as televisual and post-literate. It is said that through television, for the first time in the history of humanity, children are being socialized into image use prior to word use (see Warren, 1997). Consequently, the use of words is likely to no longer occupy the pole position in social discourse, but rather to occupy an inherently second order, commentary position. In other words, our culture has shifted from a reading-formed preference towards the ear over the eye, to an image-formed favouring of the eye over the ear, with an obviously detrimental effect on a word dominated form like preaching. Television also appears to be an open and democratized form of communication that offers the prospect of an absolutely free flow of information. It tantalizes with the notion that anything that happens will be almost instantaneously communicable; an impre ssion further reinforced by the Internet. Of course there are serious criticisms to be made of these judgments, but they are nevertheless widely persuasive, at least at face value, both because of the sensory immediacy of the medium and because of the entertainment factors closely allied with it. In comparison preaching seems a highly subjectivized personal choice in which the preacher demands of an audience assent without prior consent and justification, and in which the factor of entertainment does not figure at all. In a televisual world of a seemingly infinite number of stories, preachings insistence, as it is perceived, on the one story of Gods relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ seems partial and even tedious. Those who lived before the development of electronic media lived lives in which stories, colour, and pictures were rare and precious events; people of the televisual age inhabit a world alive with an ever changing array of images, colours and narratives. Is it any wonder then that preaching that developed as a communication technique in that pre-television world is thought of as having become outmoded? Such are the usual parameters of the argument—broadly stated, no doubt, and perhaps caricatured a little—of recent scholarly analysis of the social location of the practice of preaching in contemporary European society. Interestingly, it is apparent that the scholarly commentary not only echoes colloquial opinion about the recentness of the relative decline of the authority afforded preaching, but also the reasons given for that decline. One of questions which this thesis seeks to address is whether such judgments adequately represent what is actually going on in the act of preaching, and whether by an all too easy assumption of preaching as an essentially distinctive activity somehow distanced from other forms of discourse such analysis does not fall prey to the very forces it is trying to counter. After the hiatus caused by World War II, the BBC resumed television broadcasting in 1946, and the commencement of broadcasting by commercial stations in 1955 accelerated the use of the medium. By 1958 the number of British households with a TV exceeded those with only a radio (Mathias, 2006). Given the above discussion of the widely perceived influence of new electronic media and TVs escalating use, the 1950s seem an appropriate starting point for the consideration of publications dealing with preaching. Quite apart from this more commonplace sense of a shift having taking place, scholarly analysis of both Church history and homiletics tends to support the idea that very significant changes relevant to the thesis topic did in fact occur at this period. Those changes were not necessarily recognized at the time; perhaps an indication of the lag that occurs as the memories of one generation gives way to those of a succeeding one. One British preacher, however, was alert to the possibili ty that something profound was happening. That preacher was a R. E. C. Charlie Browne, a Manchester vicar, whose 1950s reflections on the preaching task turned out to be amazingly prescient of things that would become major concerns years later. Browne serves as a marker of change. It is sensible, therefore, to examine Browne in some detail before returning to the more general overview. 2.3 R. E. C. Browne as a marker of the changing social location of preaching. R.E.C. Brownes The Ministry of the Word was first published in 1958 in a series of short works entitled Studies in Ministry and Worship under the overall editorship of Professor Geoffrey Lampe. Lampes editorship lent theological credibility to a series that was notable on two counts. First, it was decidedly ecumenical (for example, two of the studies were by Max Thurian, who later became internationally known as the theological expositor of the ecumenical Taizà © community); and second, it was written from a perspective that only later would be widely termed applied or practical theology. Brownes book is the acknowledged masterpiece of the series and has been reissued three times since its first publication (1976, 1984 and 1994), as well as being published in the United States in 1982. Writing in 1986, Bishop Richard Hanson said of it: This is no little volume of helpful hints about preaching but a profound study of the meaning and use of language in relation to theology and to faith, and one that will outlast all the ephemeral booklets about how to preach. (in Corbett, 1986: v) Just why this work has been so frequently referred to in a wide variety of Christian traditions will be considered later, but for the purposes of the present discussion the crucial point is the historical context of its writing and publication. Browne wrote the book whilst he was Rector of the parish of Saint Chrysostum, Victoria Park, Manchester in the 1950s. Ronald Preston, in a foreword to one edition of The Ministry of the Word, describes Victoria Park as having moved rapidly since the 1920s from the remains of enclosed and privileged nineteenth-century affluence to near disintegration (in Browne, 1976: 10). He notes also, however, that the St Chrysostums relative proximity to the university and the citys main teaching hospital made it a base from which Brownes influence spread widely. Hanson records that it was a parish where the personality and abilities alone of the incumbent cleric could attract worshippers (Corbett, 1986: iv). In other words, several aspects of the social world that historians like Hastings (1986), Welsby (1984), and Hylson-Smith (1998) have characterized as typical of the 1950s were clearly likely to have been there in Brownes experience of the ministerial life. For example, Welsby commenting on t he monthly journal Theology in the two immediately post-war decades notes how it was widely read by parish clergy and acted as a connecting bridge between the concerns of academia and local church life, and concludes: It is significant, however, that fundamental matters, such as belief in God or in Christ were seldom discussed in its pages, as though these theological foundations were secure and might be taken for granted. This could be a symbol of much of the theology of the forties and fifties. There was a self-confidence and security so that even those who did write about God, Christology, of the Church did so as though the basis of belief was unquestionably right. (Welsby, 1984: 67) Elsewhere in the same book Welsby notes that the seeds of radical change were present in the 1950s but went unperceived, and he describes the atmosphere in the Church of England as one of complacency and an apparent unawareness of trends already present which were to burst to the surface in the sixties (1984: 94). Browne most certainly did not share that unawareness and frankly acknowledged the difficulties of communicating the gospel despite the relatively secure social position of theological thought and institutional belief. Far from being in an unassailable authoritative position, he described preachers as living and preaching in an age when there is general perplexity and bewilderment about authority, and as all too unwittingly signifying that perplexity in the language and thought expressed in the pulpit (Browne, 1976: 33). Browne would probably have concurred with Adrian Hastings opinion that in the ebb and flow of the intellectual tide in the twentieth century, the 1950s marked a high water point of sympathy for the Christian faith in contrast to the high point for secularism immediately after World War I (Hastings, 1986: 491), but he nevertheless argued that effective preaching required new symbols because new human knowledge has disabled the old ones (Browne, 1976: 107). Hastings, looking back on the times in which Browne wrote, asserts: There was never a time since the middle of the nineteenth century when Christian faith was either taken so seriously by the generality of the more intelligent or could make such a good case for itself. (Hastings, 1986: 491) Browne himself is rather more querulous in his reflections and quotes approvingly from Emmanuel Mounier: There is a comfortable atheism, as there is a comfortable Christianity. They meet on the same swampy ground, and their collisions are the ruder for their awareness and irritable resentment of the weakening of their profound differences beneath the common kinship of their habits. The prospect of personal annihilation no more disturbs the contented sleep of the average radical-socialist than does horror of the divine transcendence or terror of reprobation disturb the spiritual digestion of the habituà ©s of the midday Mass. Forgetfulness of these truisms is the reason why so many discussions are still hampered by naà ¯ve susceptibilities. Emmanuel Mounier, The Spoil of the Violent, Harvill Press, 1955: 25 (as cited in Browne, 1976: 109) Browne was conscious that amongst the comforts of wide social acknowledgement and respect other more challenging forces were becoming apparent. Browne is wary of any intellectual triumphalism on the part of preachers and insists that in attempting to address the atheist, or the wholly religiously indifferent unperturbed post-atheist, it is always necessary to establish pastoral rapport first (1976: 110). Sometimes, he admits, such rapport will be impossible to establish (1976: 110). Paradoxically, as Hastings notes (1986: 492, 496), the 1950s were at one and the same time an era in which religion was considered seriously by a number of the great cultural and intellectual figures of the day (such as Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Carl Jung (1875-1961), Graham Sutherland (1903-80), Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), to name just a few) and in which the radical agnosticism and secularism born of earlier times also flourished (for examples see the works of A.J. Ayer (1910-89), C.P. Snow (1905-80), A.J.P. Taylor (1906-90) and Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003)). Perhaps it was that Browne realized i n a way other preachers did not, that although these two worlds of thought existed side by side the competition between them was not in any way equal. As Hylson-Smith observes, by the end of World War II the environmental context of all cultural activity was essentially secular (1998: 212). That point was a matter of essential concern to a preacher like Browne who regarded sermons as an artistic activity requiring similar processes of social understanding and interaction as those necessary to the production of music, poetry or painting (Browne, 1976: 18). Browne writes rather ruefully: Christians have the naà ¯ve idea that the arts, specially drama, could and should be extensively used for the proclamation of the gospel. In the first place Christian artists cannot easily and quickly find a way of expressing Christian doctrine in a community which is not moved by Christian symbols. Indeed at present there is no common symbolism Christian or otherwise and Christian artists are found incomprehensible and disturbing by their fellow Christians who cannot justify the authority of new forms and somehow feel that old forms might be patched and brought up-to-date. In the second place whenever the church tries to use art as a method of propaganda her integrity and authority are severely questioned by just those whose conversion would be most significant. (1976: 35) There is here an early recognition of that social forgetfulness of Christian symbols that would a generation later become a commonplace assessment of religious traditions in contemporary Britain. For Browne the preachers purpose was to seek answers about the most profound aspects of human concern and experience with the single-mindedness and commitment of an honest artist. Easy answers to difficult questions, or formulaic responses to deep questioning, were to Browne a betrayal of preachings very purpose. For him nothing less than the artists earnest wrestling to express the inexpressible was good enough. It is hard to imagine that Browne was untroubled that the things of artistic expression, with one or two notable exceptions, seemed less and less concerned with religious ideas, and that the churches appeared indifferent to the fact (Hylson-Smith, 1998: 212). As favourable to inherited ideas of religious expression as the climate of the 1950s appears viewed from the beginning of the twenty-first century, Browne, as a preacher active during those years, offers an altogether less sanguine appraisal. That his book dwells extensively on the issue of meaning and the use of language in relationship to the expression of faith indicates that he did not share the easy certainties regarding the communication of religious ideas that were still prevalent within the institutional church of his day. Brownes commitment to preaching as a necessary part of Christian community life is absolute, but his insistence that its practice is most like the creation of a work of art or a poem makes plain its inherent limitations: the sermon can no more readily define the truth in absolute terms than can the artist or poet (1976: 18). Such an insistence shifts the authority given to preaching from one of power, described as six foot above contradiction, to the altoge ther different position implied in later years by terms such as Fords communicative expertise which is self-authenticating (Ford, 1979: 235), or Taylors fragile words (Taylor, 1998: 121). Like such later homileticians, Browne believed preachers should not claim too much for their efforts. That reserve, however, should not be mistaken for a hesitation about the necessity or value of preaching. In his work there is no hint of the thought of later theorists who sought to abandon preaching completely. Brownes reserve is a perceptive awareness that, to use the terminology of Adrian Hastings, although the comfortably traditionalist church of his times was undergoing a period of confident revival (1986: 504) it was in fact finding it harder and harder to connect with the generality of people in terms of shared symbols and meanings. Browne was ahead of his time in his recognition that the changing social context of ministry had direct ramifications for the power and authority of the preacher. He wrote: What ministers of the Word say may seem too little to live on, but they must not go beyond their authority in a mistaken attempt to make their authority strong and clear. That going beyond is always the outcome of an atheistic anxiety, or a sign that the man of God has succumbed to the temptation to speak as a god, to come in his own name and to be his own authority. (Browne, 1976: 40) Such sentiments are echoed in the more recent application of contemporary philosophy to preaching by the American scholar John S. McClure (2001). Nevertheless, in terms of homiletic theory in Britain in the twentieth-century, Brownes was a voice that offered a new appreciation of the actual communicative environment in which sermons were placed. His book demonstrates that the radical calling into question of the methodologies of preaching pre-dates both the crisis noted by such commentators as Ford (1979) or Jensen (1993) and the colloquial assumption that in the 1950s, before the widespread use of television, the place of the sermon was assured. This concern about preachings power to engage attention indicates that the shifts that will be analysed when this study returns to the consideration of collective memory must extend wide enough to include responses such as those of Browne. The unease with homiletic methodology that Brownes work expressed provides a justification for this review using his analysis as its historical starting point. Consequently, there now follows an overview of trends in preaching since Brownes book that aims to provide both general orientation and a framework within which works discussed later can be placed. 2.4 Trends in the theory and practice of preaching since the mid 1950s. O.C. Edwards in his A History of Preaching notes that the 25 year period ending in 1955 turned out to be the high-point of the social standing and influence of traditional Protestant churches (2004: 665). Whilst that judgment may seem too effusive and unqualified when applied to the United Kingdom, it does, nevertheless, indicate the reality of the institutional confidence that was prevalent in churches on both sides of the Atlantic at the time. That confidence had direct ramifications for preaching: as Hastings puts it, in the immediate post-war years preaching as both art and edifying was still alive and cherished (1986: 462). The comment comes in a passage in A History of English Christianity 1920 1985 (1986: 436-472) that deals with the Free Churches, in which Hastings cites the influential preaching ministries of Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1975), W.E. Sangster (1900-1960), and Donald Soper (1903-1998)—all of whom drew large numbers to hear them preach. In the same section of his book, however, comes this stark conclusion: The mid-1950s can be dated pretty precisely as the end of the age of preaching: people suddenly ceased to think it worthwhile listening to a special preacher. Whether this was caused by the religious shift produced by the liturgical movement or by the spread of television or by some other alteration in human sensibility is not clear. But the change is clear. (1986: 465) Hastings is perhaps a little too hesitant in his judgement about what prompted this change. Although numerous theological and social factors were obviously significant, the turn towards television as a predominating pastime must surely have been the crucial prompter of change in the way people spent their time. That preaching, at the beginning of the 1950s at least, remained dominated by agendas and styles drawn from previous generations is evident in the fact that a number of books from those earlier times remained in frequent use. Bishop Phillips Brooks had delivered his eight lectures on preaching at Yale Divinity School in the Lyman Beecher Lectureship of January and February 1877, but his advice was still considered pertinent enough to warrant the publication of a British fifth edition in 1957. Similarly, Harry Emerson Fosdicks Lyman Beecher lectures of the winter of 1923-4, entitled The Modern Use of the Bible, were last re-issued in their published form as late as 1961; and Leslie Weatherheads Lyman Beecher lectures of 1948-9, although only published in part in his book Psychology, Religion and Healing in 1957, was re-issued in 1974. Two crucial points are suggested by the longevity of these works: first, although the 1950s do indeed mark a watershed in preachings social location, it is clear that the consequences of that change were not apparent with the same force, nor at the same rate,