Monday, August 24, 2020

Summary of MLK Jr.s Letter From Birmingham Jail essays

Rundown of MLK Jr's. Letter From Birmingham Jail papers This piece is a rundown of the Letter from Birmingham Jail composed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16, 1963. At the time King was amazingly lamented by the way the congregation, particularly the white ministry, was not on the side of the strict social liberties development. He composed this letter as a disappointed reaction to the churchs partition of blessed and common issues concerning his motivation. Lord was in Birmingham since he is the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; the association was related with eighty-five others in the southern United States. An Alabama accomplice requested his essence and interest in a peaceful dissent. The essential explanation that King was in Birmingham was on the grounds that there was imbalance there. He was lead out of his typical environmental factors to help priest to others similarly as the Apostle Paul seemed to be. Lord accepted that we are all piece of one enormous association; if something affects one of us, affects we all. He asks the white moderate pastorate on the off chance that they truly need to find a sense of contentment subsequent to managing the outside of an issue, and leaving its source rich. Lord accepts racial oppressors gave the persecuted African Americans no decision yet to carry on. Ruler next states the four stages of a tranquil dissent: look into demonstrating segregation; conversation; self-purifying; and exact advances taken. He proceeds to talk about Birminghams scandalous history of racial separation and isolation. In the past the city had made numerous bogus guarantees and crushed innumerable desires. As indicated by King the pressure made by direct activity is the way to getting results. Arrangement is a substantially more respectable methodology, however yields less outcomes. Ruler accepted that immediate activity would make confusion that would open the entryway for arrangement. Ruler next addresses the request of why he didn't stand by to check whether the new organization inside the city an opportunity to cure the shamefulness. The ... <!

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Globalization And Environment Quantifying Corporate Strategy Free Sol

Questions: Fundamentally inspect the relationship and the requirement for similarity between corporate vital and practical administration strategies. Break down the inner and outside impacts on corporate targets and system. Show the requirement for adaptability in key administration and the pragmatic furthest reaches of evaluating corporate methodology. Answers: The report embraced is to break down the association structure with various systems that the Warner Bros received. The report featured the models that would benefit from outside intervention in examination like the pastel investigation for circumstance investigation, watchman's five powers and doorman's nonexclusive technique for serious examination, swot investigation for the investigation of inward condition and Ansoff grid for system assessment. In any case, the report gives an outline of the working of the organization to the progressions that will be useful whenever embraced like the association system or financially savvy technique. Be that as it may, the examination featured the issue related with the innovation that the organization needs to continue changing to get the enthusiasm of the clients. The suggestions that could be best appropriate would be the need of changing worldwide conditions, meeting the developing innovation, investigating for momentary methodologies and th e choice of motion pictures as indicated by the objective populace. Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. is a wide based amusement organization, which is completely coordinated and has accomplished worldwide initiative in all types of diversion whether it is authorizing, circulation, presentation, advertising or creation. In any case, Warner Bros is one of the auxiliaries of Time Warner Company that is home to an effective assortment of brands on the planet (Warnerbros.com, 2016). In this report, the vital investigation will be done dependent on the vision and crucial, and smaller scale natural factors inside the Film TV Entertainment portion also accepts preferences of open doors inside these sections and various procedures and alternatives decided on its execution. In any case, the report is completed to examine the possibility, adequacy and reasonableness of the techniques received and their execution. Be that as it may, the assessment won't just assistance in understanding the development of the auxiliary organization yet will likewise look at the vita l advantages and issues. Corporate Objectives The targets of any association rotate around the authority and the operational objectives that it performs to attempt that can be clarified as vision and statement of purpose (Krajewski, et al., 2013). Warner Bros vision and statement of purpose are given as: Vision - The noteworthy and nonstop development of the organization over the long haul with the creation and circulation of the different broadened arrangement of items offered (Warnerbros.com, 2016). Crucial statement of purpose of Warner Bros Company can be characterized as follows. To expand log term benefits with an attention on deals, advertising and imaginative endeavors on organized characters and properties that are probably going to produce solid deals To construct the brand with the retailers enemy the buyers Line up with chosen licenses to such an extent that working with retailers, accomplices, licensees and different divisions of Time Warner Company. Building a portfolio to dispatch various brands and openings (Grnig and Khn, 2015). The system that fuses and keeps on following has guided the organization well in contributing and being home to best substance, driving in advanced development, distributing and working capital effectively and growing the worldwide nearness of the Warner Time Company with its auxiliaries (Warnerbros.com, 2016). Outside Analysis PESTEL Analysis The large scale condition contemplates the outer examination of the organization with an agenda to dissect on the political, monetary, socio-social, innovative, ecological and lawful aspects of the earth. The report introduced to the governing body will be examined on the effect of these features of the earth to be utilized in the dynamic by the senior administration and directorate (Kohler, 2013). Political Factors The political arrangement at neighborhood and national levels have guidelines forced on the film and media outlet in light of the fact that the creation can run up to a huge number of dollars from the developing markets. The business is confronting a ceaseless weight from the modern gatherings transmitting certain channels of the film and diversion. Be that as it may, this isn't just affecting TV yet film creation even as the purchasers wish to get more than required (Katkin, 2013). Monetary Factors The Warner Bros auxiliary organization works on a costly stage while confronting exchange shortfall the economy. The guidelines have cost the publicizing cost to rise making an issue by expanding cash stakes and working in a hazardous situation. Be that as it may, the expense is a one-time use however in interim, the organization can expand its income. With the expanding GDP to 17,419 US billion dollars, draining joblessness rate to 6.2% and with a slight increment in the swelling rate from 1.5% in 2013 to 1.6% in 2014 shows an ideal situation for the Warner Bros organization to enhance its items portfolio (Gran 2016). Socio-social Factors The adjustments in esteem is one of the key factors that changes the market. The expanding impact and the difference in watch motion pictures from big screen to PC screen is a typical wonder, however the significant difficulties are looked in topographical areas. The business manages mentality just as changing tastes and inclination in the determination of motion pictures, liveliness, comic books and brand permitting (Cattani et al., 2012). Innovative Factors The adjustment in innovation is confronting an expansion in ubiquity of 3D, 4D and 7D innovation. The arrangement of DVD groups has upgraded the limited time base of the organization. The organization is acceptable at building an expanded arrangement of items, which helps in getting a positive reaction from the clients and expanding the combination of IT with various phases of film creation (Lamb, et al., 2014). Ecological Factors nature assumes an adequate job in the Warner Time auxiliary organization. All things considered, with expanding eco-the travel industry and a dangerous atmospheric devation, the issues are influencing the areas for the creation of films and workshops for funnies and conveyance as all items and sources of info should be eco-accommodating (Christoff and Eckersley, 2013). Legitimate Factors Legally, the controllers go about as guard dogs on the exercises of the association with the end goal that the lawful hindrances forced to enter the developing markets. The issues that feature the moderate creation of the organization are the authorizing issues and protected innovation concerns. The controllers, for example, FCC and MPAA charge enormous memberships from the clients in United States, which has prompted income and now the Time Warner Company is picking to expand its portfolio to telephone organizations in the zone of the establishment (Katkin, 2013). Doormen Competitive Forces The serious examination of Warner Bros can be dissected on Michael Porters five powers to pass judgment on the general intensity of five separate variables utilizing the viable device. The competition can be dissected on the based model in Figure 1. Figure 1 Porter's Five Forces Source: (Moore, 2014) Haggling intensity of providers This is thought to be high in the Warner Bros Company being an amusement and film industry where there is rivalry because of an exceptional example that is served by the entertainers as providers just as HR. As indicated by this methodology, the An appraised entertainers have been pulled in towards establishments of Warner Bros like Batmen, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and so on. Contention among existing contenders The contention in Warner Bros is significantly high between the ventures of amusement and film in view of contenders like Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Picture Corporation, Fox Filmed Industries and some more. Haggling intensity of purchasers The intensity of purchasers likewise comes in the high class as the clients don't have any exchanging costs for Warner Bros. that is stimulated by bounty offers in the business (Dudovskiy, 2014). Danger of substitute items Warner Bros has a differentiated portfolio that itself offers a wide assortment of items like comic books, computer games, short movies, activity and furthermore incorporates the acknowledgment of interpersonal interaction destinations like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Danger of New Entrants The danger of new contestants is respectably low because of the cost boundaries to entering the market is high. All things considered, the mechanical progression of the web has given minimal effort hindrances thus expanding the danger of new contestants (Magretta, 2013). As per the Porters Five Forces, Warner Bros has a solid power over market and has decently less rivalry from the new participants to rival. Above and all, the companys fame is picking up prevalence. Inner Analysis SWOT Analysis The inner investigation features the SWOT examination an organization faces from its inward structure just as outside structure. Warner Bros is an auxiliary organization whose suitability is broke down in the market with the adequacy that an organization holds. The diagram beneath in Figure 2 can clarify the interior investigation for the Warner Bros Company. Figure 2 SWOT Analysis Source: (Chu et al., 2010), (Dudovskiy, 2014) Investigation of Business Functions The business capacities can be depicted as the interior elements of an organization that assists with doing the strategic the organization. Nonetheless, business capacities can be inward; just as outside. Inside capacities are the parts of the organization and outer capacities are those which are provided by an outside office. The Figure 3 general business elements of an organization. Figure 3 Business Functions Source: (Woodcock, 2016) The accompanying three business forms that the organization needs to grow and is progressively powerful are advertising, creation and qu

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Skyhigh Networks

Skyhigh Networks INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi. Today we are in Campbell at Skyhigh. Hi, Rajiv. Who are you and what do you do?Rajiv Gupta: Hi, Martin. I am an entrepreneur by choice, technology by training. I am formally the CEO of Skyhigh but more interestingly, I am one of the team members at Skyhigh.Martin: That’s great. Awesome.Martin: What did you do before Skyhigh and what made you come up with a business idea?Rajiv Gupta: Prior to Skyhigh, I was running a business unit at Cisco. As I mentioned, I am an entrepreneur by choice. I was at Cisco because it acquired my previous company. That’s how I was at Cisco, running a business unit, BBGM.The idea for Skyhigh actually is very old and I thought of it myself. As a fresh PhD in 1991, I had just graduated from Caltech and joined HP labs. My day job was to design HP â€" Intel microprocessor   but I had an epiphany, an idea, that all computing, storage, applications, network would one day be available as a utility. You plug in the wall, you dial NSA an d a broker would make it available to you. Remember the time? You cannot remember it because you were too young in 1991. The common technology constriction was a client server. You have a client and you have servers. However, I said no. It is going to be utility. I did not call it a cloud but the same idea that you plug into something and then computing happens somewhere, storage happens somewhere. Networking happens somewhere. All you get is the byproduct / the end product that you need, what I had thought of in 1991. Again, I was 25 years too early but that is the genesis of what we’re doing today at Skyhigh.BUSINESS MODEL OF SKYHIGH NETWORKSMartin: What is Skyhigh?Rajiv Gupta: The intent of Skyhigh is to take this disruption called cloud or cloud computing, which all analysts called disruptive â€" in fact, they say it is as disruptive as the PC was 25 years ago â€" and to take this disruption called cloud, but as with all disruptions they can be good and bad, and make sure that enterprises benefit from the promise of cloud and not get hurt from the perils of the cloud. There are things like, how to make sure that my data is secure, how do I make sure that I can govern the use of cloud, how do I make sure I can map privacy, how can I make sure it is compliant? Because all those things are required for enterprises to be able to leverage cloud. So that is our [Skyhighs] focus. In a different sense, again, if you take a step back and put it in perspective, just like the PCs or devices, they created the need for a governance and control point. Symantec and McAfee and others stepped in and they were helping control the data on the device.In the recent industry connecting devices together, the internet came along and there was the inside of the enterprise and the outside of the enterprise. We then created this kind of layer of controlling, governing the data inside the enterprise as well as outside. Cisco, CheckPoint, Palo Alto Networks, Blue Coat, and others ca me along and created that control point for the internet.We think that the same movement is now moving to the cloud where I want my data to be used for collaboration purposes for my employees who are mobile, they are using their own devices, BYOD environment, when they are trying to use their data to get the job done. My partners are connecting with the data I made available to them. My customers are running in a cloud service because it is much more efficient way than trying to run my data service centers. That same movement of liberation, of collaboration requires another control point. That is what we’re trying to create at Skyhigh â€" it is to create the next generation control point for the data. As Symantec was for the PC, as Cisco was for the network. There is a need for a control point for the data that is moved to the cloud. That is what we are trying to create at Skyhigh.Martin: Great. Rajiv, once the idea for Skyhigh grew like for more than 20 years, what was actually t he point when you started it and what was it like in the first 3 to 6 months? When did you find the first employees? When did you work on the product? When did you raise money?Rajiv Gupta: It is a very good question. I obviously wanted to work on this, on what I called cloud for many, many years. But when I was working at Cisco, running this business unit, obviously, my day job was doing that. Once my team… I’ve been fortunate, by the way, across everything I’ve done. I’ve been fortunate to work with some very, very good folks. That is why I say, ‘with pride’, as I am a team player. I am one of the team at Skyhigh. That to me is the biggest pride I can have.Once my team at Cisco, they delivered a product that won the Pioneer Award at Cisco, which is a very coveted award. Essentially only products that are game changing, from a Cisco perspective, win that award and this team won it. Then I decided maybe it was time to go back to my roots into something entrepreneurial aga in outside of a big company. Even though I thought and had this love affair with what we are calling the cloud for a long time, I did not want to marry the first girl I met. With my two co-founders I said: “Let’s figure out what the industry needs. Let’s come up with five different game-changing ideas, different ones and then let’s choose the best and go with it.” Because I did not want to bias it and just do cloud.So what we did was we spoke with 140 different IT executives in the industry, CIOs, CEOs, CISOs (Chief Information Security Officer), infrastructure folks, IT leaders and asked them: “What are some of the issues that you see coming down the pipe that you need addressed?” And they said, storage came up again and again, the cost of storage was going up, mobility came up, security came up and cloud came up a number of times, and then the fifth one kept changing, identity and different things.So what we did was building, as I mentioned, mini business plans, not full-fledged MBA but market, size of market, route to market, competition, what are the key trends in the industry that we are going to be working with. Based on that analysis, we chose this particular one because we thought that this was the biggest need, fastest growing. None of the existing incumbents were addressing it adequately. That is how we came up with the idea, which was essentially, like I said, the rebirth of an idea which emerged more than 25 years ago. It is today’s version of what we had thought about 25 years ago.Martin: How long did it take you to validate this idea and choose the right one?Rajiv Gupta: That process took us a couple of months, maybe three months or so. Then what we did was leaving Cisco, my co-founders and I. We left Cisco on very good terms. Cisco is a customer, partner, our advocates. When we left Cisco, we decided that now we have the idea what we want to do. We wanted to make sure that we map into how to take it to the customers equally well before we wrote any code. So what we did was very much like the Lean Startup outside in approach, we created mock ups, no line of code, and went back to those 140 people. We said: “Hey, we understood the problem. If we addressed it in this particular way, is this what you had in mind?” Some of them said “yes”, some of them said “no”.Then we iterated on that and when we showed them, they said: “Yes, that is it.” That became my PRD, my product requirements document because essentially I could have my team build this. That is how my customers see, that’s how they wanted it. And that was very effective for us, that worked very well for us.Because what happens in most startups, the issue they have is they start off with a technology base and especially startups founded by technologists. They say: “This is the technology, where can we apply it?” This is completely different. This was an outside-in approach. We wanted to make sure that the need as the customer saw it was manifested in what we were showing them. That became the PRD as I described. That is why the team built it very quickly, thats why you have today more than 500 of the world’s largest enterprises and some of the biggest companies in every vertical industry using Skyhigh to help them in their cloud adoption. We had very few of those experiences that startups have when they turn left or turn right… Because in many cases after they create the product is when they get the feedback and that’s when they learn â€" we did that early on. That was very effective for us.Back to your question, it took us a couple of months (maybe three months) to get that kind of industry feedback to decide which particular area we want to focus on. It took us about, I would say 4 or 5 months, to do that mock ups and get the feedback and hold it what it wanted to be. Then it became a much easier task in terms of recruiting people because when we recruit engineers we would rather give them a very brief description saying: “This is what we were trying to do.” For a lot of engineers that specificity is also very helpful. That helped us significantly.Martin: What was the sequence? Did you first build a product and try to sell it to customers, get some cash and then maybe try to bootstrap and only afterwards you raised some money? Or did you raise the money first and then went to customers?Rajiv Gupta: That is a good question. I think given my experience, the fact that my co-founders and I have been around the block a few times, this is my third startup, we did it slightly differently than what I think a lot of entrepreneurs should do. I will tell you my experience and what I expect entrepreneurs to do.What we did was when we left Cisco, the three of us left Cisco, we had Greylock ready to fund us the day we left. Asheem Chandna at Greylock was a leading investor at my previous company that Cisco acquired. The relationship with him at Greylock was very, very good, just outstanding . I told him earlier which entrepreneurs typically shouldn’t do, it is not a good idea because it takes away our leverage. I told him that based on how well we worked together, anything I do next you have the first, dibs, the first rights. Just to make sure it is fair. I went to him and said this is what I want to do and he said: “That sounds great. Let me take it to the partnership.” The partnership said go for it. And so it was a very, very short cycle because we paid our dues and we had experience working with Greylock.For most entrepreneurs, they don’t have that luxury. They don’t have benefits so it might be slightly different. In our case, back to your question, we had funding on day one when we started the company, which makes it easy in some sense, but as I said most entrepreneurs have a different sequence that they would choose to use.Martin: When I look at entrepreneurs nowadays, they can raise tons of money. They seem to be having problems focusing on being very lean. How did you focus on that?Rajiv Gupta: That is so accurate. That comment you made about being lean and being focused is highly relevant, almost independent of money. What I mean by that is, I believe that startups that don’t succeed don’t succeed not because of starvation. They don’t succeed because of indigestion. They try to eat too much. They try to do too much and they don’t do anything really well. That is absolutely a big concern that any entrepreneur should have.For us, the way we manage to stay focused is â€" by the way, we have challenges as well, there are so many things we want to do, the space is so large, the option is so big, our imagination is so wild that there’s so many things we want to do. We have to keep ourselves in check. It is not all roses. Let me grant you that. I think what has helped us is that homework we did earlier where we actually got all the feedback early from the customers, from the prospective customers. Based on that feedback, we defined some very important foundational principles. Those foundational principles have been sort of the bearings for what’s kept us so focused. Those were:Seamless consumption. You are moving to the cloud. The reason why people are in the cloud today is because people can use it today. They do not have to worry about waiting for 9 months for IT to deliver something.Zero friction. In today’s day and age, people don’t have patience and time for friction. You give them too much friction and they go around it.The last one is because we are appealing to enterprises â€" in fact, our first three customers at Skyhigh were Cisco, and I dont know if I publically can name their names or not. One was a Fortune 10 company and the other one was one of the top five banks in the world â€" we started with some very large customers.Martin: Not too bad?Rajiv Gupta: No, not too bad but again not wise either. Because, normally as an entrepreneur you start with something where you can make some m istakes. Choosing those three sort of companies (Cisco is the largest networking and the largest in banking) it was not particularly clever. It worked well, but it is not an advice I would give to anybody else.Because of our focus on enterprises our third principle is… But since I took a detour, I will remind you: First, seamless consumption, zero friction, the third one was making sure we leverage and extend all the enterprises already have. Because even though in theory ‘rip and replace’ works, in practice it is very difficult. Enterprises, they spend a lot of time and money getting somewhere. They wouldn’t want to just throw out anything and start with you.Our focus is held by (A) doing homework early on as opposed to get in the market and trying to figure it out. The second (B) is using that homework to come up with those foundational principles.Those principles have kept us very focused and disciplined. The third one (C) is that we do a pretty good job of taking custome r feedback (very customer driven) and apply our own set of imagination of where we think the world is heading. The way we describe that is, and that is may be subtle but, ‘discerning want from need’.Customers can tell you: “I want this”, but to understand when they say they want A: Do they really need A or do they need A prime? For example, no customer has told Steve Jobs that he wants an iPad or wants an iPhone but Steve Job’s team, discerned there is a need for it. Something between want and need is something that we try to formalize â€" I would not say formalize but at least we are cognizant of it. We are very good listeners of our customers. They tell us what they want. We make sure we stay back and say: “What is the real need?” and focus on that.Martin: It seems that you have taken out a lot of risks at the beginning so that you don’t need to pivot that much. You understand pain points and then you can work some kind of flexible solutions. What have been the mai n challenges and obstacles that you perceived although you took out those risks? How did you react to that?Rajiv Gupta: We took out some risk. There is never a situation where there is no risk. Then there would be no return either. We took out some risk. We took out the market need risk which is one of the most important risks that people take. We early on addressed the product market fit risk because we had this feedback before we had the first line of code, and once we had that code we were very customer focused, so we reduced that risk somewhat. We reduced the funding risk because we had Greylock and Sequoia, arguably two of the top worlds VCs. We also took the risk out because we wanted to create something game changing, not just a simple extension or something. These two companies have backed such game changing companies as Palo Alto Networks and LinkedIn. So we knew they have a muscle memory to do something big. We have reduced some of that risk as well.Many other risks that w e have experienced and we are experiencing still, one of them ironically, is the risk that we didn’t even realize we were taking, is one of scaling. Even though we had this confidence that the industry needs this product we are creating, it is a game changing, and it is a control point. We were a little bit surprised by how quickly customers have adopted it. There are more than five hundred enterprises for a start up company in the enterprise space. Again, our focus is large enterprises primarily. We have midsized companies as well but my direct sales team is focused on large enterprises. To have that many enterprises at that scale, 400 thousand employees, and 320 thousand employees use â€" it was a bit of a surprise to us.Luckily, as I said, we have three of the largest customers who helped define the scale. That is something that could have tripped us badly if we were not careful.Another risk and you will be surprised because most of the entrepreneurs, they are worried (correctl y so) about market risk, product market fit, funding risk and so on â€" and maybe that’s why this one comes later because those were the big ones, the long poles in the tent. Another, not risk, but opportunity challenge that we are facing today, and will continue facing, is that technology is changing very rapidly. Initially we did not think about that as much, but now we’ve learned from that â€" today we have a platform where we anticipate that the underpinnings of the platform whether I’m using EdgeBase or Cloudera, that those can change over time. And I have to get prepared to change my engine once it applies. That kind of introduces risk as well.Thankfully, those are the kinds of risks â€" scale or technology risk â€" are the ones that are within our control in some sense, within the four walls of Skyhigh. That we can decide which one to adopt and which one not to adopt. The biggest risks of any startup are the external risks, the market risk and the product market fit ris k. Those are the ones, I think, we have done a pretty good job on. Because we took the time to think through it before we wrote the code or pivot three times as mentioned.Martin: Rajiv, you briefly touched on the point if technology changes how should I change as my company. When I look at some companies, they started with some very crappy code because it is cheaper and they try to scale and they notice that they have a scaling problem there. How do you address it? Are you putting some kind of resources aside, are you decreasing technical debt, or is it that you are doing some kind of green field approach where you have time for parallel platforms?Rajiv Gupta: Actually, it is a very insightful question. You’ve done this before because that is a very insightful question and it is not an easy one to answer. Because creating a green field approach in parallel with your existing approach means that your investment has to be, not doubled but obviously significant. Sometimes it also cre ates a cultural problem of today’s technology vs. tomorrow’s technology and no one wants to be yesterday’s technology. You know what I mean? That creates a cultural problem as well that you have to be very careful about it.I think, the biggest reason why we have been, in all humility so successful as we have been so far â€" success isn’t granted, it can change. But at least it looks like we have done reasonably well. We have done it well because of the people. It is the team that we have at Skyhigh, and I say with pride I am privileged to be part of the team, that is the best in the industry, the best in the particular field. And the way we work as a team is I think our strength.The folks that we have here are the ones who know their domain really well but they also have the mindset to understand that things change. They are all attuned to change. In my field (my big data, my analytics, or my high bandwidth frequency network, or whatever it is) they themselves have the minds et of what is the latest, what is changing that they can adopt.I have never felt a need that this is my team that is doing today’s technology. They may not be aware. They may not be comfortable with tomorrow’s technology, or to have a separate team for tomorrow’s technology â€" we don’t do that because I think it has a lot of challenges (investment challenge). Investment is fine because we have a reasonable amount of money. But back to your point. Sometimes too much money can create problems as well because you do the wrong things.We have been careful to make sure we don’t use that fact that we have very strong VCs to take approaches which we think could be a cultural mistake. I think it is often a cultural mistake to have yesterday’s team and tomorrow’s team. It creates ‘us’ opposed to ‘them’ mentality. By the way, I know many big companies that have today what they call internal competition. But I am not sure that is the right thing for us to do.Martin: Rajiv , when many people talk about the cloud it sounds to me like there is one cloud, let’s take it up. But actually, there are several services, which you can plug in, but I am not aware of one kind of platform or middleware where I can really plug in. Do you see any trend that there might be coming up one or two bigger platforms? When I look at Windows for example or Microsoft in general, they have a trend to go in a cloud sphere as an operating system or platform. Do you perceive some kind of trends?Rajiv Gupta:   It’s a very good question. Your first point about the cloud that we talk of cloud as one entity, as one homogenous entity, that is not the case at all. It is very heterogeneous and growing heterogeneous by the moment. Today we have more than 16 thousand public cloud services in our registry and are growing about a hundred per week. It is expanding. That entropy is not going to go away. It is easy to create cloud service that people do and they should and they will. So I dont think that it is going away.I think what you describe is a shift in the economy of scale. Today you see Amazon, Microsoft, Google, maybe IBM, and maybe one other, two others who have the scale today in creating that infrastructure of a service, platform as a service so that people can build their SaaS cloud services on top of that. I think there is always some sort of scale based consolidation. That is at one level.At the level above that, where people are using these platforms to create new cloud services/SaaS services â€" I don’t see that consolidating at all. Another question is, will a platform provider, lets say Microsoft, be a platform provider and be a SaaS provider with Office365? Does that give them the right to be the control point for the generic cloud? I think the answer is no. By the way, I have a lot of respect for Microsoft. Sataya is doing a fantastic job there. I think the rule of the game is that if you are a SaaS company you cannot be an honest broker betwe en that SaaS Company and other SaaS companies. It is like almost saying, I want to be the player and the referee at the same time. I think there is going to be this need for the control point, which is going to be independent of any of the SaaS providers or the platform providers because there are many of those. So I feel pretty comfortable that this will not be assumed by any of them. If you go above that stack, I think this economy scale is going to be consolidation that already has five or six pillars in terms of infrastructure. If you go above that, you have people who can create new business logic, new SaaS â€" that, I don’t think is going to consolidate in time soon. If anything, it is going wider.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM RAJIV GUPTA In Campbell (CA), we meet Co-Founder CEO of Skyhigh Networks, Rajiv Gupta. Rajiv talks about his story how he came up with the idea and founded Skyhigh Networks, how the current business model works, as well as he provides some advice for young entrepreneurs.INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi. Today we are in Campbell at Skyhigh. Hi, Rajiv. Who are you and what do you do?Rajiv Gupta: Hi, Martin. I am an entrepreneur by choice, technology by training. I am formally the CEO of Skyhigh but more interestingly, I am one of the team members at Skyhigh.Martin: That’s great. Awesome.Martin: What did you do before Skyhigh and what made you come up with a business idea?Rajiv Gupta: Prior to Skyhigh, I was running a business unit at Cisco. As I mentioned, I am an entrepreneur by choice. I was at Cisco because it acquired my previous company. That’s how I was at Cisco, running a business unit, BBGM.The idea for Skyhigh actually is very old and I thought of it myself. As a fresh PhD in 1991, I had just graduated from Caltech and joined HP labs. My day job was to design HP â€" Intel microprocessor   but I had an epiphany, an idea, that all computing, storage, applications, network would one day be available as a utility. You plug in the wall, you dial NSA and a broker would make it available to you. Remember the time? You cannot remember it because you were too young in 1991. The common technology constriction was a client server. You have a client and you have servers. However, I said no. It is going to be utility. I did not call it a cloud but the same idea that you plug into something and then computing happens somewhere, storage happens somewhere. Networking happens somewhere. All you get is the byproduct / the end product that you need, what I had thought of in 1991. Again, I was 25 years too early but that is the genesis of what we’re doing today at Skyhigh.BUSINESS MODEL OF SKYHIGH NETWORKSMartin: What is Skyhigh?Rajiv Gupta: The intent of Skyhigh is to take this disrupti on called cloud or cloud computing, which all analysts called disruptive â€" in fact, they say it is as disruptive as the PC was 25 years ago â€" and to take this disruption called cloud, but as with all disruptions they can be good and bad, and make sure that enterprises benefit from the promise of cloud and not get hurt from the perils of the cloud. There are things like, how to make sure that my data is secure, how do I make sure that I can govern the use of cloud, how do I make sure I can map privacy, how can I make sure it is compliant? Because all those things are required for enterprises to be able to leverage cloud. So that is our [Skyhighs] focus. In a different sense, again, if you take a step back and put it in perspective, just like the PCs or devices, they created the need for a governance and control point. Symantec and McAfee and others stepped in and they were helping control the data on the device.In the recent industry connecting devices together, the internet came along and there was the inside of the enterprise and the outside of the enterprise. We then created this kind of layer of controlling, governing the data inside the enterprise as well as outside. Cisco, CheckPoint, Palo Alto Networks, Blue Coat, and others came along and created that control point for the internet.We think that the same movement is now moving to the cloud where I want my data to be used for collaboration purposes for my employees who are mobile, they are using their own devices, BYOD environment, when they are trying to use their data to get the job done. My partners are connecting with the data I made available to them. My customers are running in a cloud service because it is much more efficient way than trying to run my data service centers. That same movement of liberation, of collaboration requires another control point. That is what we’re trying to create at Skyhigh â€" it is to create the next generation control point for the data. As Symantec was for the PC, as Cisco was for the network. There is a need for a control point for the data that is moved to the cloud. That is what we are trying to create at Skyhigh.Martin: Great. Rajiv, once the idea for Skyhigh grew like for more than 20 years, what was actually the point when you started it and what was it like in the first 3 to 6 months? When did you find the first employees? When did you work on the product? When did you raise money?Rajiv Gupta: It is a very good question. I obviously wanted to work on this, on what I called cloud for many, many years. But when I was working at Cisco, running this business unit, obviously, my day job was doing that. Once my team… I’ve been fortunate, by the way, across everything I’ve done. I’ve been fortunate to work with some very, very good folks. That is why I say, ‘with pride’, as I am a team player. I am one of the team at Skyhigh. That to me is the biggest pride I can have.Once my team at Cisco, they delivered a product that won th e Pioneer Award at Cisco, which is a very coveted award. Essentially only products that are game changing, from a Cisco perspective, win that award and this team won it. Then I decided maybe it was time to go back to my roots into something entrepreneurial again outside of a big company. Even though I thought and had this love affair with what we are calling the cloud for a long time, I did not want to marry the first girl I met. With my two co-founders I said: “Let’s figure out what the industry needs. Let’s come up with five different game-changing ideas, different ones and then let’s choose the best and go with it.” Because I did not want to bias it and just do cloud.So what we did was we spoke with 140 different IT executives in the industry, CIOs, CEOs, CISOs (Chief Information Security Officer), infrastructure folks, IT leaders and asked them: “What are some of the issues that you see coming down the pipe that you need addressed?” And they said, storage came up a gain and again, the cost of storage was going up, mobility came up, security came up and cloud came up a number of times, and then the fifth one kept changing, identity and different things.So what we did was building, as I mentioned, mini business plans, not full-fledged MBA but market, size of market, route to market, competition, what are the key trends in the industry that we are going to be working with. Based on that analysis, we chose this particular one because we thought that this was the biggest need, fastest growing. None of the existing incumbents were addressing it adequately. That is how we came up with the idea, which was essentially, like I said, the rebirth of an idea which emerged more than 25 years ago. It is today’s version of what we had thought about 25 years ago.Martin: How long did it take you to validate this idea and choose the right one?Rajiv Gupta: That process took us a couple of months, maybe three months or so. Then what we did was leaving Cisco, my co-founders and I. We left Cisco on very good terms. Cisco is a customer, partner, our advocates. When we left Cisco, we decided that now we have the idea what we want to do. We wanted to make sure that we map into how to take it to the customers equally well before we wrote any code. So what we did was very much like the Lean Startup outside in approach, we created mock ups, no line of code, and went back to those 140 people. We said: “Hey, we understood the problem. If we addressed it in this particular way, is this what you had in mind?” Some of them said “yes”, some of them said “no”.Then we iterated on that and when we showed them, they said: “Yes, that is it.” That became my PRD, my product requirements document because essentially I could have my team build this. That is how my customers see, that’s how they wanted it. And that was very effective for us, that worked very well for us.Because what happens in most startups, the issue they have is they start off with a technology base and especially startups founded by technologists. They say: “This is the technology, where can we apply it?” This is completely different. This was an outside-in approach. We wanted to make sure that the need as the customer saw it was manifested in what we were showing them. That became the PRD as I described. That is why the team built it very quickly, thats why you have today more than 500 of the world’s largest enterprises and some of the biggest companies in every vertical industry using Skyhigh to help them in their cloud adoption. We had very few of those experiences that startups have when they turn left or turn right… Because in many cases after they create the product is when they get the feedback and that’s when they learn â€" we did that early on. That was very effective for us.Back to your question, it took us a couple of months (maybe three months) to get that kind of industry feedback to decide which particular area we want to focus o n. It took us about, I would say 4 or 5 months, to do that mock ups and get the feedback and hold it what it wanted to be. Then it became a much easier task in terms of recruiting people because when we recruit engineers we would rather give them a very brief description saying: “This is what we were trying to do.” For a lot of engineers that specificity is also very helpful. That helped us significantly.Martin: What was the sequence? Did you first build a product and try to sell it to customers, get some cash and then maybe try to bootstrap and only afterwards you raised some money? Or did you raise the money first and then went to customers?Rajiv Gupta: That is a good question. I think given my experience, the fact that my co-founders and I have been around the block a few times, this is my third startup, we did it slightly differently than what I think a lot of entrepreneurs should do. I will tell you my experience and what I expect entrepreneurs to do.What we did was when we left Cisco, the three of us left Cisco, we had Greylock ready to fund us the day we left. Asheem Chandna at Greylock was a leading investor at my previous company that Cisco acquired. The relationship with him at Greylock was very, very good, just outstanding. I told him earlier which entrepreneurs typically shouldn’t do, it is not a good idea because it takes away our leverage. I told him that based on how well we worked together, anything I do next you have the first, dibs, the first rights. Just to make sure it is fair. I went to him and said this is what I want to do and he said: “That sounds great. Let me take it to the partnership.” The partnership said go for it. And so it was a very, very short cycle because we paid our dues and we had experience working with Greylock.For most entrepreneurs, they don’t have that luxury. They don’t have benefits so it might be slightly different. In our case, back to your question, we had funding on day one when we started the comp any, which makes it easy in some sense, but as I said most entrepreneurs have a different sequence that they would choose to use.Martin: When I look at entrepreneurs nowadays, they can raise tons of money. They seem to be having problems focusing on being very lean. How did you focus on that?Rajiv Gupta: That is so accurate. That comment you made about being lean and being focused is highly relevant, almost independent of money. What I mean by that is, I believe that startups that don’t succeed don’t succeed not because of starvation. They don’t succeed because of indigestion. They try to eat too much. They try to do too much and they don’t do anything really well. That is absolutely a big concern that any entrepreneur should have.For us, the way we manage to stay focused is â€" by the way, we have challenges as well, there are so many things we want to do, the space is so large, the option is so big, our imagination is so wild that there’s so many things we want to do. We have to keep ourselves in check. It is not all roses. Let me grant you that. I think what has helped us is that homework we did earlier where we actually got all the feedback early from the customers, from the prospective customers. Based on that feedback, we defined some very important foundational principles. Those foundational principles have been sort of the bearings for what’s kept us so focused. Those were:Seamless consumption. You are moving to the cloud. The reason why people are in the cloud today is because people can use it today. They do not have to worry about waiting for 9 months for IT to deliver something.Zero friction. In today’s day and age, people don’t have patience and time for friction. You give them too much friction and they go around it.The last one is because we are appealing to enterprises â€" in fact, our first three customers at Skyhigh were Cisco, and I dont know if I publically can name their names or not. One was a Fortune 10 company and the ot her one was one of the top five banks in the world â€" we started with some very large customers.Martin: Not too bad?Rajiv Gupta: No, not too bad but again not wise either. Because, normally as an entrepreneur you start with something where you can make some mistakes. Choosing those three sort of companies (Cisco is the largest networking and the largest in banking) it was not particularly clever. It worked well, but it is not an advice I would give to anybody else.Because of our focus on enterprises our third principle is… But since I took a detour, I will remind you: First, seamless consumption, zero friction, the third one was making sure we leverage and extend all the enterprises already have. Because even though in theory ‘rip and replace’ works, in practice it is very difficult. Enterprises, they spend a lot of time and money getting somewhere. They wouldn’t want to just throw out anything and start with you.Our focus is held by (A) doing homework early on as opposed t o get in the market and trying to figure it out. The second (B) is using that homework to come up with those foundational principles.Those principles have kept us very focused and disciplined. The third one (C) is that we do a pretty good job of taking customer feedback (very customer driven) and apply our own set of imagination of where we think the world is heading. The way we describe that is, and that is may be subtle but, ‘discerning want from need’.Customers can tell you: “I want this”, but to understand when they say they want A: Do they really need A or do they need A prime? For example, no customer has told Steve Jobs that he wants an iPad or wants an iPhone but Steve Job’s team, discerned there is a need for it. Something between want and need is something that we try to formalize â€" I would not say formalize but at least we are cognizant of it. We are very good listeners of our customers. They tell us what they want. We make sure we stay back and say: “What i s the real need?” and focus on that.Martin: It seems that you have taken out a lot of risks at the beginning so that you don’t need to pivot that much. You understand pain points and then you can work some kind of flexible solutions. What have been the main challenges and obstacles that you perceived although you took out those risks? How did you react to that?Rajiv Gupta: We took out some risk. There is never a situation where there is no risk. Then there would be no return either. We took out some risk. We took out the market need risk which is one of the most important risks that people take. We early on addressed the product market fit risk because we had this feedback before we had the first line of code, and once we had that code we were very customer focused, so we reduced that risk somewhat. We reduced the funding risk because we had Greylock and Sequoia, arguably two of the top worlds VCs. We also took the risk out because we wanted to create something game changing, no t just a simple extension or something. These two companies have backed such game changing companies as Palo Alto Networks and LinkedIn. So we knew they have a muscle memory to do something big. We have reduced some of that risk as well.Many other risks that we have experienced and we are experiencing still, one of them ironically, is the risk that we didn’t even realize we were taking, is one of scaling. Even though we had this confidence that the industry needs this product we are creating, it is a game changing, and it is a control point. We were a little bit surprised by how quickly customers have adopted it. There are more than five hundred enterprises for a start up company in the enterprise space. Again, our focus is large enterprises primarily. We have midsized companies as well but my direct sales team is focused on large enterprises. To have that many enterprises at that scale, 400 thousand employees, and 320 thousand employees use â€" it was a bit of a surprise to us.Lu ckily, as I said, we have three of the largest customers who helped define the scale. That is something that could have tripped us badly if we were not careful.Another risk and you will be surprised because most of the entrepreneurs, they are worried (correctly so) about market risk, product market fit, funding risk and so on â€" and maybe that’s why this one comes later because those were the big ones, the long poles in the tent. Another, not risk, but opportunity challenge that we are facing today, and will continue facing, is that technology is changing very rapidly. Initially we did not think about that as much, but now we’ve learned from that â€" today we have a platform where we anticipate that the underpinnings of the platform whether I’m using EdgeBase or Cloudera, that those can change over time. And I have to get prepared to change my engine once it applies. That kind of introduces risk as well.Thankfully, those are the kinds of risks â€" scale or technology risk â€" are the ones that are within our control in some sense, within the four walls of Skyhigh. That we can decide which one to adopt and which one not to adopt. The biggest risks of any startup are the external risks, the market risk and the product market fit risk. Those are the ones, I think, we have done a pretty good job on. Because we took the time to think through it before we wrote the code or pivot three times as mentioned.Martin: Rajiv, you briefly touched on the point if technology changes how should I change as my company. When I look at some companies, they started with some very crappy code because it is cheaper and they try to scale and they notice that they have a scaling problem there. How do you address it? Are you putting some kind of resources aside, are you decreasing technical debt, or is it that you are doing some kind of green field approach where you have time for parallel platforms?Rajiv Gupta: Actually, it is a very insightful question. You’ve done this befor e because that is a very insightful question and it is not an easy one to answer. Because creating a green field approach in parallel with your existing approach means that your investment has to be, not doubled but obviously significant. Sometimes it also creates a cultural problem of today’s technology vs. tomorrow’s technology and no one wants to be yesterday’s technology. You know what I mean? That creates a cultural problem as well that you have to be very careful about it.I think, the biggest reason why we have been, in all humility so successful as we have been so far â€" success isn’t granted, it can change. But at least it looks like we have done reasonably well. We have done it well because of the people. It is the team that we have at Skyhigh, and I say with pride I am privileged to be part of the team, that is the best in the industry, the best in the particular field. And the way we work as a team is I think our strength.The folks that we have here are the ones who know their domain really well but they also have the mindset to understand that things change. They are all attuned to change. In my field (my big data, my analytics, or my high bandwidth frequency network, or whatever it is) they themselves have the mindset of what is the latest, what is changing that they can adopt.I have never felt a need that this is my team that is doing today’s technology. They may not be aware. They may not be comfortable with tomorrow’s technology, or to have a separate team for tomorrow’s technology â€" we don’t do that because I think it has a lot of challenges (investment challenge). Investment is fine because we have a reasonable amount of money. But back to your point. Sometimes too much money can create problems as well because you do the wrong things.We have been careful to make sure we don’t use that fact that we have very strong VCs to take approaches which we think could be a cultural mistake. I think it is often a cultural mistake to have yesterday’s team and tomorrow’s team. It creates ‘us’ opposed to ‘them’ mentality. By the way, I know many big companies that have today what they call internal competition. But I am not sure that is the right thing for us to do.Martin: Rajiv, when many people talk about the cloud it sounds to me like there is one cloud, let’s take it up. But actually, there are several services, which you can plug in, but I am not aware of one kind of platform or middleware where I can really plug in. Do you see any trend that there might be coming up one or two bigger platforms? When I look at Windows for example or Microsoft in general, they have a trend to go in a cloud sphere as an operating system or platform. Do you perceive some kind of trends?Rajiv Gupta:   It’s a very good question. Your first point about the cloud that we talk of cloud as one entity, as one homogenous entity, that is not the case at all. It is very heterogeneous and growing heterogeneous by the momen t. Today we have more than 16 thousand public cloud services in our registry and are growing about a hundred per week. It is expanding. That entropy is not going to go away. It is easy to create cloud service that people do and they should and they will. So I dont think that it is going away.I think what you describe is a shift in the economy of scale. Today you see Amazon, Microsoft, Google, maybe IBM, and maybe one other, two others who have the scale today in creating that infrastructure of a service, platform as a service so that people can build their SaaS cloud services on top of that. I think there is always some sort of scale based consolidation. That is at one level.At the level above that, where people are using these platforms to create new cloud services/SaaS services â€" I don’t see that consolidating at all. Another question is, will a platform provider, lets say Microsoft, be a platform provider and be a SaaS provider with Office365? Does that give them the right to be the control point for the generic cloud? I think the answer is no. By the way, I have a lot of respect for Microsoft. Sataya is doing a fantastic job there. I think the rule of the game is that if you are a SaaS company you cannot be an honest broker between that SaaS Company and other SaaS companies. It is like almost saying, I want to be the player and the referee at the same time. I think there is going to be this need for the control point, which is going to be independent of any of the SaaS providers or the platform providers because there are many of those. So I feel pretty comfortable that this will not be assumed by any of them. If you go above that stack, I think this economy scale is going to be consolidation that already has five or six pillars in terms of infrastructure. If you go above that, you have people who can create new business logic, new SaaS â€" that, I don’t think is going to consolidate in time soon. If anything, it is going wider.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEUR S FROM RAJIV GUPTAMartin:   You have started three companies. You have learned a lot. What types of learning can you share with other people interested in starting a company?Rajiv Gupta: Yes. I have learned a lot and I have a lot more to learn. We should talk again in a year and I can tell you what else I have learned. I think if I was to talk to an entrepreneur who is maybe starting out, no matter what age, there are a few things that I would probably advise this person. The first one that a person already knows is that the most important thing is passion as an entrepreneur. You cannot take the role of an entrepreneur, you cannot take risks, you cannot take the ups and downs because as an entrepreneur the high is a high and the low is a low. If you are doing it for any other reason than passion for what you are doing, for that product, that service that you are bringing to that industry It is also important because what happens is it is not just you. Most startups, most companies a re built with many people joining. That passion is what attracts other people. In order to attract the right type of people, a group, a team that is going to make this thing take life, that product to take life, you need to have that passion. You need to use that to get other like-minded passionate people to grow and build that. The other thing I would advise and say is the whole idea of doing it outside in, which is, don’t focus on the technology. Most technologies, as I mentioned earlier, they make a mistake as they have a new technology and they don’t know where to apply it. In my mind, the best way is to focus on: If you were to build this how would it be different? Make sure that you can articulate that carefully, the before and the after. Before and after can never be based on features. It is based on something bigger than that. Focus on that first. Focus on describing what you do in terms of its impact on people, on your users, on your consumers and customers. The other t hing I would like to say is the route to market. A lot of entrepreneurs, and I am one of them, make the mistake of saying if I build this, they will come. It will sell. How could anyone miss the wonderful thing that I am building?Martin: And this is not true?Rajiv Gupta: Maybe something of it was true. I am telling you my experience. It is challenging. You need to think through how do you know about it, how to take it to the market? Think that through because sometimes that informs what you built and how you built it as well. I go back and say passion first, the second one is focus on the ‘what’ before you are worried about ‘how’, and the third one is focus on the how, not only on how you build it but how you take the market and how people know about it. The whole route to market is really importantMartin: Rajiv, I’ll give you an extra one if you want to, about this Mahatma Gandhi thing.Rajiv Gupta: There is a quote I really like by Mahatma Gandhi. I end up giving a lot of talks. I’ve tried to find different approaches to give talks because I get bored myself. One approach I have tried is for a talk of half an hour, I had 280 slides. Essentially, it is almost like a movie. It is a slide with five or ten words and you move on. It keeps you engaged. That worked interestingly well. The other thing I try is I give my talk based on interesting quotes to me but typically from famous people. I quote Steve Jobs a lot. He made a comment back that all I want to do is leave a mark in the cosmos or something like that. The other one was do not ask customers, because by the time you build it they will ask for something else. I am paraphrasing, but it is something like that. I will give you three quotes that I like very much. One is from McLuhan, most people haven’t heard of him. He said that We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t a fish. The interesting thing is that sometimes you are so close to something and you don’t see it because you have to be far enough to be able to observe it. I like that. The other quote that I like is from Mother Theresa; again, I am paraphrasing. Not all of us can do big things but all of us can do small things with love. As an entrepreneur, you want big things. That is the idea but it depends on how you execute it. Make sure everything you do, you do it with passion, care, and love. The Mahatma Gandhi quote that I like is: Live like you will die tomorrow but learn like you will live forever, which I think is really interesting. Live your life fully because you never know how long you will live, but take the time to learn because that learning is going to help you for how long you live. I am not saying that I apply the last one in my entrepreneurial world, in my entrepreneurial journey, but I will think about it. I will maybe find a way to apply it.Martin: Rajiv, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. If you are currently starting up a company go for or with Mahatma Gandhi â€" learn the whole way.

Friday, May 22, 2020

Comparison Of Cannibals And The Tempest - 1512 Words

Draft 1 Intro Through discovery, our perception of human nature changes alongside the world we live in. this is shown in Micheal de Montaigne’s essay â€Å"of cannibals† and ‘The Tempest’ drama written by William Shakespeare. Both show, when man is left alone in a natural state, humans grow to perfection, compared to the state of a civilized man whom is corrupt and alters human nature to an animalistic form. The tempest portrays human beings in a civilized state, whom the characters do inhuman acts for material gain and Micheal de Montaigne’s â€Å" of Cannibals† represent man in a natural state whom when left untouched grows to an paragon society. Yet, which is better? a man in a natural state or a man in a civilized state. Through†¦show more content†¦Sabastian a man of goodwill even considers murdering his own brother for his status. this idea of society of how humans have a greater curiosity than capacity always wanting more never fulfilled, wishing to always live a more luxurious and wealthy life. Antonio uses himself as an example â€Å"look how well my garments sit upon me, much feater than before† this idea conveys the idea material objects are a great driving force in this case clothing a symbolisim of materialistic desires. Antonio is outlining the benefits to killing his brother, Alonso’s life means nothing to the desired position of Sabastian meaning this new position which bring status and wealth is the most important things in life. Man, is willing to take life in gain of a materialistic desire. This is an idea that society poses on all individuals. Is it morally less wrong if other individuals have the same unethical behaviors. Yet again Antonio is asked about his conscious by Sabastian â€Å"but for your conscious† he returns by saying â€Å"if ‘twere a kibe ‘twould put me to my slipper† him saying â€Å"I don’t feel anything if my feet were cold I would put my slippers on†, again this reinforces the life of luxury makes him forget completely of hisShow MoreRelatedIs Civilization the Answer to the Chaos?1144 Words   |  5 Pagesnatives into civilized human beings was the main goal, and that is why they felt as if it was their job to take over the natives’ lands. In general, civilization is seen as a solution to a utopian realm. William Shakespeare in The Tempest and Michel de Montaigne in Of Cannibals narrow their focus on the idea of â€Å"nature vs. civilization.† Both authors discuss the idea of how nature is replaced by civilization and the outcome is not as expected. Shakespeare portrays the idea of Caliban’s nature being wipedRead MoreMontaigne,Shakespeare and Columbus; The Argument of Savagery Essay1123 Words   |  5 Pagesthe Cannibals as he calls them. Montaigne mentions that the cannibals are â€Å"men fresh from the hands of the gods†, Montaigne viewed the Cannibals as a simple civilization who was right from the hands of the gods bc they walked around so innocently still naked then same way their mother bore them. Montaigne states â€Å"How far from such perfection would he find the republic that he imagined†(Montaigne 110). Montaigne notices a beauty in the ignorance towards modern civilization that the Cannibals possessRead MoreThe Tempest By William Shakespeare17 05 Words   |  7 PagesLiterature Mr. Nath 5 December 2014 The Tempest Written between 1610 and 1611, The Tempest by William Shakespeare is the final play penned by the famous Bard. The play portrays the illusory struggle of power and conscience through the character of Prospero and his egocentric motives. Politically, the play can be seen as an analysis of important political issues relevant to that of oppression and imperialistic tendencies of the time. Artistically, The Tempest emphasizes the nature of art, more prominentlyRead More Caliban in Shakespeares The Tempest Essay1855 Words   |  8 PagesThe Tempest, considered by many to be Shakespeare’s farewell to the theatre, has of all his plays the most remarkable interpretive richness. The exceptional flexibility of Shakespeare’s stage is given particular prominence in The Tempest due to its originality and analytic potential, in particular in the presentation of one of his most renowned and disputed characters, Caliban. Superficially portrayed in the play as a most detestable monster , Caliban does not evoke much sympathy. However, on furtherRead More Freedom and Servitude in Shakespeares The Tempest Essay3355 Words   |  14 PagesFreedom and Servitude in Shakespeares The Tempest What is slavery? Is it an institution? A mental state? A physical state? Is it human nature? Or is, â€Å"†¦slavery is†¦an inherent, natural and eternal inheritance of a large portion of the human race† (Ruskin 307). Whether or not any one of these options is true, the fact remains that each says something about humanity. Therefore, when a play like The Tempest comes along, centering on the themes of freedom and servitude, one must look forRead MoreEssay about Voltaires Candide3524 Words   |  15 Pagesproblem that Voltaire saw in society, it is reflected on the story, and it can be reflected in today society also. The intellectual presentation of physical evil in Candide includes: Natural disasters, which are beyond human control (earthquake, tempest...), social calamities, which outrun human responsibility (syphilis, plague...), and misfortunes, which visited indiscriminately upon the good and the bad people (Jack...). The intellectual presentation of social evil are seen much more often thanRead MoreReview Of Charlotte Bronte s Jane Eyre 10879 Words   |  44 Pageshis insane wife, Bertha Mason, burned down Thornfield, and marries him afterwards. Themes/Meanings Desires and morals can coexist. Moving through social classes is difficult, if not impossible. Women are equal in ability (and everything else!) in comparison to men. People aren’t always what they seem. Marriage must be out of love. Everyone seeks to belong somewhere. It is better to forgive than to hate forever. Symbols Red-Room The red-room symbolizes the prison that Jane is in: she is rejected byRead MoreIgbo Dictionary129408 Words   |  518 Pagesl in words like á » ¥nà ²Ã¯â‚¬ ¤ rather than h in words like ará » ¥ rather than -la in the perfect form rather than -rA in the neutral form market water house body With these differences, of course, go a host of lexical differences. It is hoped that comparison with other dialects will bring these to light. At the same time, it should be realized that not all the words included here are pure Onitsha. Thus ogà ¨ is a more typically Onitsha word than mÌ€ gbà ¨ for time; yet mÌ€ gbà ¨ is known - and 8 There

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Questions And Answers On Sexual Harassment - 1441 Words

Question 1 The New Jersey laws governing the area of sexual discrimination are broad. Discrimination under the New Jersey statutes prohibits any intentional discrimination that may demonstrate differential treatment or statements and also include any conduct that reflects discriminatory animus or bias. Conduct that may qualify includes any unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual relations, or verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. In the instant case there are a number of situations that would likely qualify under the New Jersey statutes as being discriminatory in nature and, thereby, expose the company to legal liability. Considering the events in historical order, the first such incident would be the frequent pranks that were being played on Ms. Pollard. The pranks in and of themselves do not appear to have any overt sexual connotation to them but the fact that Ms. Pollard was the only female on the premises serves to create a presumption that they were being directe d toward her as a female. This presumption would be strengthened if it can be demonstrated that she was the only one upon whom pranks were being played. The next incident that poses a problem for the company is the delivery driver places Ms. Pollard over his knee and spanking her. Again, such act may not be overtly sexual in nature but the fact that Ms. Pollard is female creates a strong presumption that it was indeed intended to be. Add in the fact that the supervisor on the job not only didShow MoreRelatedMany Things Contribute To The Way A Person Acts, Or Reacts,1640 Words   |  7 Pagesdiscussed in feminism. As a female who identifies as a feminist, my thoughts regarding issues such as equal pay, reproductive rights, and sexual violence often differ greatly than those of my male friends, who often do not identify as a feminist. I decided to focus on the latter of the issues mentioned, specifically looking at how women’s perceptions on sexual harassment differ from men’s. Researching this topic is valuable for several reasons. First, we plan to go beyond looking at simply how differentRead MoreCalifornia Fair Employment And Housing Act1033 Words   |  5 PagesCalifornia employers must comply with AB 1825, a state law mandating sexual harassment prevention training for supervisors and managers. Through questions and answers, this article highlights this 2006 laws requirements and provides guidance on meeting them. Questions and Answers About this Law Is my organization covered by the law? It is, if you have 50 or more employees. 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We need to focus more on this problem, because a lot of men still don’t take it seriously, it happens, because they don’t know the real definition of sexual harassment. Men and women explain in differently. When 1200 men and women were asked if they would consider sexual proposition flattering 68% of men said they would, and only 17% of the women agreed. At the same time 63% of women wouldRead MoreSexual Harassment And The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Essay1683 Words   |  7 Pages Sexual harassment is any unwanted or unwelcomed attention whether it is by touching or talking in a way he/she doesn’t like. â€Å"Approximately 15,000 sexual harassment cases are brought to the equal employment opportunity commission (EEOC) each year.† These numbers reflect where people speak up wanting justice for their case. All over the world, not just America, this is a major problem for women and some men but mainly women. 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An individual who claims they have been harassed, may seek compensation or punitive damages† (Bohlander, G.W., Snell, S. (2010). Of course with every law there is a set of rules that need to be followed. In order to get compensation from a company for harassment you must have been employed with the companyRead MoreMosaic Fertilizer Case Study1297 Words   |  6 Pagesimpact on manufacturers through enforcing its regulations. Go to the EPA website and review EPA’s settlement with Mosaic fertilizer, LLC: https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/mosaic-fertilizer-llc-settlement Answer the following questions. All the answers are on the webpage shown above. You may answer with direct quotations from the website, but cite the source properly: a. What was the total quantity of hazardous waste involved? â€Å"An estimated 60 billion pounds of hazardous waste† was involved (â€Å"MosaicRead MoreGender Roles1450 Words   |  6 PagesQuestion 1 1.    Your _____ depends on whether you were born with distinct male or female genitals and a genetic program that released either male or female hormones to stimulate the development of your reproductive system. Answer | a. | self | | b. | gender identity | | c. | sex | | d. | gender | | e. | gender role | 4 points   Ã‚   Question 2 1.    The feelings, attitudes, and behaviors typically associated with being male or female are termed one’s _____. Answer | a. | hormones | Read MoreEssay on Same Sex Harassment1650 Words   |  7 PagesSame Sex Harassment Imagine that you are in the shower of the gym at work and three co-workers enter, then hold you down to the ground while rubbing their genitalia across your bare skin. No matter what the circumstance you would find this behavior appalling and disgusting. Now think to yourself if every person involved had been a male. Would you say that they were just horsing around? I hope not. The attitude of American society and legal culture regarding sexual harassment has changed

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Iron Crowned Chapter 10 Free Essays

string(90) " seizing control of it could shape the land to his or her will, instantly beautifying it\." Deanna came easily when I summoned her, making me wonder if she’d been hanging around invisibly since our last chat. Regardless, she didn’t mention the fake ultimatum, thus letting Kiyo continue to believe we were in a time crunch. I called Volusian as well, figuring it couldn’t hurt to have his protection while traveling to the ghost cutoff point. We will write a custom essay sample on Iron Crowned Chapter 10 or any similar topic only for you Order Now The two spirits didn’t interact as we traveled, no surprise seeing as they had little in common. Deanna was tied to the living because of unfinished business and love for others. Volusian’s soul was damned for eternity, forced to wander for his crimes – unless I ever sent him to the Underworld. Deanna hadn’t been able to give us a time estimate on how long it would take to reach the crown’s lair (as I was beginning to refer to it). The Otherworld’s twisted terrain always made travel hard to gauge, plus spirits could move faster than we could. I wouldn’t have minded walking, but the unknown variables made me ride horseback. Kiyo did the same out of courtesy for me, though he could have tirelessly covered miles and miles in fox form. The only thing I really knew for sure was that this wouldn’t be a day trip. Kiyo and I were as silent as the ghosts, though once we crossed out of the lands adjacent to mine, he would occasionally tell me where we were. I’d never ventured this far into the Otherworld, and it made me uneasy, though knowing we were clear of the Rowan Land was a relief. Even Kiyo, neutral as he claimed, had tensed in Katrice’s territory. â€Å"This is the Honeysuckle Land,† he said, when the road led us to a hot, riotously colored landscape. Flowers grew everywhere, and even the trees were covered in blossoms. Arizona was notorious for all its hummingbirds, but here, they swarmed like flies. â€Å"Dorian was right,† I mused. â€Å"It is beautiful.† It was hard to imagine this place mustering up a military. This seemed more like a world where people frolicked in scanty clothing, beating drums and engaging in free love. Well, since they were gentry, free love would have been a given. â€Å"Dorian would know,† said Kiyo stiffly, eyes focused straight ahead. â€Å"I’m surprised he let you come with me.† â€Å"Dorian doesn’t say what I can or can’t do,† I snapped. â€Å"If you’re going to just keep doing this the whole time, I’ll – â€Å" â€Å"You’ll what?† asked Kiyo with amusement, when I didn’t continue. â€Å"Send me back? Face death-threatening situations alone?† â€Å"I would gladly escort you back, if that is what you choose,† Volusian told Kiyo. I sighed. â€Å"Please. Just don’t get on Dorian the whole time, okay? He wants this over. It was his idea to get your help. He’s worried, believe me.† â€Å"That,† said Kiyo gravely, â€Å"I can believe. I don’t trust him. I don’t believe his alliance with you is as straightforward as it seems. But I do believe he cares about you.† The landscape suddenly shifted around us, becoming a rolling desert of white sand. It stretched out under a blazing sun, reflecting back at us in a way that was hard on the eyes. â€Å"Ugh,† I said, focusing down on the road. â€Å"What’s this?† â€Å"The Myrrh Land,† said Kiyo. Even with my eyes averted, I knew he was smiling. â€Å"Figured you’d like this place. You should go make friends with its king. They’ve got some badass fighters.† â€Å"Big difference between this and the Sonora Desert,† I said. Although harsh and scalding, the desert I’d grown up with was full of life. This place was desolate and dead. Mercifully, we soon passed out of it into sweeping moors, covered in snow. I took my leather jacket out of my pack. I’d brought it knowing we might travel through lands that were in winter. It still wasn’t much protection, and I realized I could have easily gotten one of my servants to whip up something more suitable. No doubt it would’ve been gentry-style, probably a cloak. Look human, Jasmine had said. Mostly I looked cold. Kiyo identified this place as the Birch Land. We crossed into the Honeysuckle Land again, which was typical of the Otherworld. Other places repeated as well. When the road took us through a landscape that reminded me of northern Texas, Kiyo had nothing to say. â€Å"What’s this?† I asked. â€Å"I don’t know,† he admitted. â€Å"The Pecan Land,† said Volusian. â€Å"Sounds delicious,† I teased. We’d had few stops and mostly eaten travel rations. â€Å"I could go for a pecan pie right now.† Kiyo didn’t respond. He seemed lost in thought, his expression growing darker as we passed through more and more terrain he didn’t know. He seemed to know the names, though, and didn’t like them. â€Å"You’re taking us to the Unclaimed Lands,† he said to Deanna. It was near the end of our day, the sky burning red. â€Å"I don’t know,† she said simply. â€Å"I’m only going where I was shown.† â€Å"Volusian?† I asked. â€Å"Of course we’re going to the Unclaimed Lands,† he said, sounding mildly annoyed by my stupidity. â€Å"We’re nearly upon them. Where else would you expect a coveted object to be hidden?† I glanced at Kiyo. â€Å"I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess these are kingdoms no one controls?† â€Å"‘Kingdoms’ isn’t even the right word,† he said. â€Å"No one lives here.† â€Å"Why not?† I asked. The scenery changed again. The texture of the ground was like recently dried mud, covered in a pattern of cracks that reminded me of one of my jigsaw puzzles. Odd holes were scattered here and there. This eerie landscape stretched far, far ahead, no end in sight. Not far from us – ten miles at most – the land rose sharply along the sides of the cracked road, forming high, rocky cliffs that curled in at their tops like jaws. Erratic gusts of wind blew through the tunnel they formed. The setting sun made everything blood-red. â€Å"Guess,† said Kiyo. â€Å"Because we’re here.† I peered around, studying the depressing landscape. Its superficial appearance meant little, really. Any gentry seizing control of it could shape the land to his or her will, instantly beautifying it. You read "Iron Crowned Chapter 10" in category "Essay examples" Then, a strange feeling settled in me. I couldn’t quite define it. It didn’t make me ill or disoriented. It just didn’t feel right. I squinted at the cliffs, taking in their striation. Through the red haze, I could see many of the loose rocks were a dull gray, streaked with orange. Oxidized metal. â€Å"Iron,† I realized. â€Å"We’re surrounded in iron. We’re not even in the crown’s lair yet. We can’t get to the lair without passing through iron.† â€Å"Can you feel it?† asked Kiyo. â€Å"Yes †¦Ã¢â‚¬  That was the odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. â€Å"That’s the gentry in you. Even with your human blood, you can’t help but be affected. There’s a lot of iron here.† â€Å"I don’t feel weak,† I said, astonished the iron would affect me at all. â€Å"Or sick or in pain.† I’d seen gentry scream just from the smallest touch of iron. I summoned the magic within me, letting it reach out to the air and unseen moisture, though I didn’t actively use it. â€Å"I don’t think it’s hurting my magic either.† â€Å"Good,† said Kiyo. â€Å"You’re strong, so I’m not surprised. You may just have a simple awareness of it.† I thought about this for a moment and came to another realization. â€Å"You’re not affected at all, are you?† He shook his head. â€Å"Nope.† I always thought of Kiyo and me as being alike, children born of both worlds. That part was true, as was our half-human heritage. But my Otherworldly blood came from the gentry. Only gentry were affected by iron, and kitsunes had no fairy connection. As with the demon bear and the fetch, a kitsune’s bane would be silver. At least, a full-blooded kitsune’s would be. I’d seen Kiyo handle silver objects; his human blood protected him as mine did me. The bottom line was that he was a more useful companion here than I’d realized. I wondered if Dorian had made the connection. â€Å"We will cross through no other lands until you turn back, mistress,† said Volusian. â€Å"So this is the world’s end. The Otherworld’s end, at least.† I turned to Deanna, hovering alongside us. â€Å"Will we reach the entrance before night?† She thought about it, and I braced myself for another vague response. â€Å"No. If you don’t stop, you’ll reach it in the morning.† Kiyo and I exchanged looks, both of us thinking the same thing. Get to the crown sooner or camp and be rested? I looked over at Volusian. â€Å"You said there are no other lands. But will the terrain in this one change?† â€Å"No.† â€Å"What do you think?† I asked Kiyo. â€Å"I don’t want to be tired when we face whatever’s guarding the crown, but this isn’t great camping territory.† â€Å"No,† he agreed. His eyes scanned around us, able to see more than mine in the waning light. He pointed. â€Å"There. There’s a small outcrop that’ll block most of the wind. Enough to keep a fire going. I hope.† I couldn’t see the spot but trusted him. â€Å"Camping it is.† When we reached it, I saw the site was indeed sheltered. I tethered the horses while Kiyo built up a fire. We watched it warily as the wind abruptly came and went. The fire flickered and waved but appeared capable of lasting the night. â€Å"I could hold off the wind a little,† I said. â€Å"Don’t bother,† said Kiyo, settling down beside the blaze. â€Å"Save your magic. This’ll hold.† I wondered if he really was concerned about me conserving my strength or just wanted me to avoid my magic altogether. He’d never liked it. I didn’t question him, though, and sat down as well, mostly because the cold was finally starting to get to me. I buttoned up the leather jacket, achieving little. Our dinner consisted of more travel food: jerky, granola, and some bread that would probably be stale tomorrow. â€Å"I don’t suppose you can use your wilderness skills to go hunt us something fresh?† I asked. He smiled, the campfire casting strange shadows on his face, now that night had fully come. â€Å"I would if there was anything alive out here. It’s just us.† He eyed me, taking in my shivering. â€Å"Don’t you own a warmer coat?† â€Å"Where am I going to get a down coat in Tucson?† I demanded. â€Å"This time of year? Any sporting goods store. For the skiers. Lara could order you one if you can’t be troubled.† â€Å"I think Lara and Tim are in love,† I said abruptly, remembering that bizarre development. â€Å"What?† asked Kiyo, as astonished as I had been. â€Å"Are you sure?† â€Å"Well, they’re in infatuation, at least. Volusian, were they together when you went back?† My minion was off in the shadows, only his red eyes visible. â€Å"Yes, mistress. They were in bed, their bodies naked and – â€Å" â€Å"Okay, okay, stop,† I exclaimed. â€Å"I don’t need to hear anymore.† â€Å"Well, I’ll be damned,† said Kiyo. While we’d dated, he’d been witness to their phone battles. â€Å"But I guess stranger things have happened.† â€Å"Yeah,† I agreed. â€Å"Look at us. We’re sitting in an iron landscape, being led by a ghost to a mythical object, which – if it even exists – may or may not make me scary enough to end a war.† â€Å"Fair point,† said Kiyo, his smile returning. We sat in companionable silence. It was a nice change from the animosity and tension that had surrounded us for so long. I’d missed him, I realized. â€Å"Eugenie?† â€Å"Hmm?† I glanced up, feeling embarrassed by my thoughts. â€Å"Why didn’t you bring Roland with you? He could’ve fought unaffected. And God knows he doesn’t want gentry power.† I looked away from those dark eyes, down at the fire’s blue heart. â€Å"He doesn’t want me to have gentry power either.† â€Å"Yeah, but he’d put that aside if he knew you were walking into – â€Å" â€Å"He doesn’t know anything,† I said bluntly. My voice then grew soft. â€Å"We aren’t speaking anymore.† â€Å"How †¦Ã¢â‚¬  Kiyo paused, no doubt trying to wrap his mind around this. â€Å"How is this possible?† I shrugged. â€Å"He cut me off. When he found out I’d been keeping the truth from him, about the Thorn Land and everything else †¦ Well, ever since what happened with Leith, he’s refused to speak to or acknowledge me.† â€Å"But your mom †¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Talks to me occasionally. She’s caught in the middle, and I don’t want to make it harder on her than it already is. She shouldn’t have to go against her husband.† Kiyo’s confusion was becoming anger. â€Å"Yeah, but you’re her daughter! She should be able to – â€Å" â€Å"Just forget it, okay?† I drew my knees up to me and wrapped my arms around them to draw in more warmth. â€Å"I don’t want to talk about it.† â€Å"Eug, I’m sorry.† I kept quiet. There was nothing to say. He cleared his throat. â€Å"I don’t suppose you brought anything else to keep you warm? Blankets? Camping supplies?† â€Å"I didn’t think about the possible overnight part,† I said, grateful for the subject shift. â€Å"I’ve got a change of clothes like these, food, weapons, and first aid supplies.† â€Å"You brought first aid stuff?† He sounded impressed. â€Å"It’s not like you to think ahead. Er, I mean, you don’t usually worry about – â€Å" â€Å"I know what you mean,† I said with a weary smile. â€Å"And don’t worry, the universe is the same. I didn’t plan ahead. It’s for current injuries.† â€Å"Current?† â€Å"I got hit by a table.† There might be a million reasons that Kiyo and I were wrong for each other, but one nice thing was that when I made a statement like that, he just didn’t question it. I was still freezing when it came time to sleep, forcing Kiyo into a bold suggestion. â€Å"Come sleep over here, between me and the fire. The cold doesn’t bug me as much, and I can block the wind.† â€Å"Kiyo – â€Å" â€Å"Yeah, yeah. I know. Dorian. But if he wanted me here to protect you, then here’s the perfect chance. Besides, we all know you can kick my ass if I try anything.† I said and did nothing. When this continued for about a minute, he sighed and lay down on his side, back to the wind. I attempted the same, after ordering Volusian to stay on watch, but even with the fire’s warmth, I was still cold. I’m tough, I’m tough. I played those words over and over through my head, not wanting to admit weakness. After about fifteen minutes, I gave in and crawled over to Kiyo’s side of the fire. There was no â€Å"I told you so.† He simply made room but was surprised when I positioned myself to face him. â€Å"I thought you’d want your back to me.† â€Å"Can’t,† I said. â€Å"That’s where the injuries are.† â€Å"From the table.† â€Å"Right.† He could have attempted propriety by turning over so his back faced me, but that would have put his face to the wind. He didn’t deserve that. I wiggled myself closer, curling myself against his body, and resting my head against his chest. He was big enough that he did almost completely shield me. His whole body stood still as I made myself comfortable, either from his astonishment or for my ease. Once I was settled, he relaxed slightly and tried to put his arms around me. He suddenly fumbled and pulled them away, grazing my breast as he did. I don’t know if he noticed. I certainly did. â€Å"Wait. Where are you hurt?† â€Å"Back. Left shoulder.† Tentatively, he reached out again and wrapped his arms around my waist. â€Å"This okay?† â€Å"Mmm-hmm.† Holding me, he shifted closer so that our bodies pressed together, holding in the warmth. â€Å"This?† â€Å"Fine.† He relaxed again and exhaled. Tucked against him, I couldn’t see his face but had the sneaking suspicion that I wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight. Survival-wise, this plan was sound. I was warm(ish) now, protected and heated by him. But I was also pressed up against a body that I knew intimately, one that used to move in mine with a possessive fierceness. Dorian claimed me with mind games and exquisite acts of dominance. Kiyo had always done it through strength and ferocity, an animal taking his mate. I bit my lip and closed my eyes, hoping I’d fall asleep if I mentally enumerated the reasons we’d broken up. But mostly, I kept remembering how his hand had lightly rubbed my breast. Sleep finally took me, but it was a long time in coming. As I drifted off, I wondered how he was coping. This probably didn’t affect him at all. If he really wasn’t sleeping with Maiwenn again, then he was probably out picking up women all the time. Kitsunes had kind of a supernatural allure, and God knew he’d been pretty persuasive the night we’d met. I awoke a couple hours before dawn – and not by choice. Volusian’s warning came only seconds before the surface below us began to tremble. I was up in a flash, but unsurprisingly, Kiyo had already beaten me. I’d gone to sleep with weapons, uncomfortable though it was. I hadn’t known what I’d need out here, except that I wouldn’t need the iron athame since this was a gentry-free zone. I had my gun (safety on) and the silver athame. Both were out as Kiyo and I stood back to back, staring around us. The tremors shook the ground, forcing some fancy footwork, and creating more of the cracks that already covered the ground. A few more seconds passed, and then all went still. â€Å"An earthquake?† I asked uncertainly. â€Å"No,† said Volusian. He was in his solid, two-legged form, staring around with narrowed eyes. It was a little disconcerting that he didn’t seem to know precisely what the problem was. â€Å"Then what are we – â€Å" The ground below us suddenly split open. With only the light of the fire, my vision was bad, but I thought I saw what looked kind of like a serpentine shape emerge from the earth. No, it was exactly like a serpentine shape because a moment later, a giant fucking snake shot up and landed neatly in a perfect coil, its head towered over Kiyo and me as it regarded us with glowing green eyes. The light from them illuminated a flicking, forked tongue, and the loud hissing that followed was kind of a given. â€Å"Volusian!† I yelled. My minion sprang into action. The deadly touch of his hands made the snake jerk in surprise. Beside me, Kiyo was shifting into fox form, and I decided a gun was probably going to get me farther here than the athame’s small blade. A drop of venom fell from the snake’s mouth, and it sizzled when it hit the ground in front of me. Lovely. Still, I felt confident the three of us could take this thing. At least until the ground shook again, and another snake popped up. It was soon followed by a third. â€Å"Son of a bitch.† I deliberated, wondering if mass force on one snake at a time was the way to go. No. I’d leave Kiyo and Volusian to the first. I yelled a warning to Kiyo that the snake was poisonous, but it was hard to say if he understood. I turned on the two new snakes. Even with part of their bodies coiled, their heads stood a good ten feet above mine. More venom dropped before me. Deciding not to play favorites, I aimed the gun and quickly fired off a couple of rounds into each. I’d had the foresight to load up silver bullets, but it didn’t look like the gun was going to kill the snakes anytime soon – at least not without fifty more shots. Mostly, the bullets seemed to piss them off more. Still, I kept firing since that seemed to make the snakes keep their distance. It proved to be a short-term solution, seeing as my bullets soon ran out. I reached for another clip. I could reload a gun quickly, but that pause gave one of the snakes an opening. Its head – no pun intended – snaked toward me, giving me a close-up view of large fangs. I’d been on guard for such an attack and jumped out of its way, only to be struck by the other’s tail. It knocked me several feet away, causing me to lose my grip on the new cartridge. The cartridge disappeared into the night, and I landed hard on the ground. My back and shoulder screamed in agony, but I had no time to baby them. There were two other clips in my belt, but as one of the snakes came for me again, my hand went to the athame after all. The snake that had hit me leaned down, its face and dripping jaw inches from me. Rather than run again, I leaped forward and plunged the blade into its eye. It cried out in pain, suffering from the silver, just as any Otherworldy creature would. Well, actually, any creature with a knife in its eye would probably suffer, magical or not. I had the sense to jerk my athame out, having no desire either to lose the blade or get pulled along as the snake reared back up. The suffering of its pal made the other hold off. In those moments, I shoved the athame back into my belt, yelping in surprise. Apparently, the snake’s eye was poisonous too, and whatever liquid had come away with the blade ate through my jeans and burned my skin. Nonetheless, I managed to get another cartridge loaded. Without hesitation, I turned and emptied the entire gun into the snake’s head. I wasn’t precise enough to hit the eye, but all those bullets took their toll. The snake wavered in the air, blood mixing with venom on its skin, and with a last hiss of pain, it fell over and slammed into the ground. Wondering why the other snake hadn’t come for me, I spun around and saw Volusian and Kiyo attacking it. I took it on faith that the first one was dead and loaded the gun with my last cartridge. Volusian’s touch was searing the snake’s skin, and Kiyo was simply ripping into it with his teeth. Opting for what seemed tried and true, I fired into the snake’s head again. Between the three of us, we soon literally took the snake down. I stood there tense and ready, empty gun in one hand and athame in the other. The world was silent except for the wind and the occasional twitching of the third snake as it died. Moments later, Kiyo morphed out of the fox shape, giving me a better view of any injuries now that he wasn’t covered in fur. He grimaced and spit on the ground a few times, but biting the snake apparently hadn’t destroyed his mouth or face. A couple red spots on his arms made me think he too had been splattered with the venom. Otherwise, he looked unharmed. He sighed and raked a hand through his black hair, which was curling slightly from sweat. â€Å"You know,† he said. â€Å"I don’t think I’ll ever be able to bring myself to watch Dune again.† How to cite Iron Crowned Chapter 10, Essay examples