Economics homework.. kinda

"But for all the suffering, someone’s got to be benefiting from the crisis, right? That is the nature of the market game.

Consider, for instance:

1. The software company Autonomy, jointly based in Cambridge (U.K.) and San Francisco, whose stock price and profits are climbing because “most of the world’s leading banks were considering using its software to prepare for lawsuits related to the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.”

2. The attorneys who will be participating in those suits. 

3. Prime borrowers who have seen mortgage rates fall to the lowest rates since 2005, and especially borrowers who may see the ceiling for “jumbo” rates rise by more than $300,000. Also, of course, first-time home buyers who have been waiting for prices to fall.

4. People who have spent the past 5 or 10 years stocking up on gold."

from here. 

saw that some other guys are copypasting instead of actually writing a homework.. I though that sometimes I could do that as well. (:

Sociology homework. Topic 2.

Explain the Feminist view of housework

If we are talking about socialist and marxist feminisms, they say that housework devalues women as a part of society and enables them to fully realise themselves as sufficient individuals.  Women are doomed to do housework, look after children and be dependent on men because of a patriarchal system of views existing in the society, which doesn't let them work and make a career. Social inequality between men and women is clearly seen and undeniable because even nowadays the so called 'traditional family' consists of a male-breadwinner and a dependent wife. However, the situation has improved a lot since 20s when women didn't even have rights to vote and take part in a variety of social activities. 

We cannot blame any particular system/religion for promoting inequalities between men and women, because this promotion existed even in ancient times. Women were doing housework and were exploited a lot by men, so this has continued through the centuries, having some changes but still carrying the main idea: men are working, women are doing dumb housework.

In some societies inequalities in rights for men and women still exist, but these inequalies are mostly based on religious reasons. The idea 'women were created to do housework and look after children' is just a stereotype which is very difficult to destroy. Feminists are still trying to do it, though.

ps, I hate housework. If I ever going to get married (I doubt a lot, hehe), my husband will have to hire someone to do the housework.

Sociology homework. Topic 1.

ok, lets start with my blog topics (I have 11 of them)

Explanation of Talcott Parsons' (1955) functionalist model of the family.

Talcott Parsons is a famous American sociologist and functionalist, as he has produced a general system for analysis of society, the so called structural functionalism.

He also wanted to create the so called 'grand theory' of society. He started examinating people and their actions and behaviour. Not surprising that when invistigating those, he created a functualist model of the family.

According to Parsons, people tend to get along with each other and cooperate because they want to contribute to the functions of the society. As a family is one of the society's most important institutions, people create families to feel more secure and make sure that socium functionalises well. The functionalist model of the family by Talcott Parsons presents a family as a part of a big system, society, where every part must perform well otherwise a failure appears. To perform well, any part os the system should come to a consensus, that explains why people DO actually cooperate and create new families, cultures etc.

However, some critics say that there is nothing perfect in the world, so the ideal functionality of society according to Parsons cannot be achieved as well as a consensus. To me, not achieving a full consensus in a functionalist model of the family means divorce (late stage) or a break up (early stage).  

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - parts 24-28 out of 28

Homework (Economics). Parts 1-4 out of 4.

Part 1:

Government policy homework will be presented on our economics lesson on 23rd of January, this Friday

Part 2:

it is here

Part 3:

was done in Unit 2 Economics class together with Dima and David week ago or so

Part 4:

My dipity timeline

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - parts 14-24 out of 28

Homework (Sociology). Parts 1-11 out of 11.

What I've done:

- read the following articles:

• Pets as Kin 

This was an extract from some study about human-pets relationships, or, in other words, a kinship of pets. The results of the carried research has shown that people tend to call pets a part of their families. Pets are also substitutes of children for some people. This research studied socially constructed boundary between nature and culture.

• Goths as a subculture

uh, I thought that this one would be unteresting.. I was wrong. So, according to the research of people referring to any subculture, their being involved in a subculture affects their individuality, tastes and style. The goth example is music tastes, as goths prefer to listen to some 'dark' depressive music. 

However, goth tend to exaggerate different things such as the importance and extent of their stylistic difference from the others and the matters of social pressures on an individuality. 

Some features of the subculture:

1) it has a range of acceptable artefacts

2) an adaption from beyond the established stylistic boundaries

3) the importance of time and place

• To Buy or Not to Buy

This is a study of children from high income families and low income families. The main idea of the extract: social changes contribute to new forms of consumption and new experience in childhood

- read through GCSE and GCE Sociology notes. helpful.

- looked at the site internet sociologist, which explains how to use the internet effectively to get an access to more sociology data and how to apply your internet surfing skills to simplify the process of looking for some sociological data.

I liked the tour, as I found some helpful sites ('Electronic Journal of Sociology' and 'Economic and Social Data Service' are quite nice)

- looked through some sites on Economics + Sociology, really liked globalisationguide.org - a very interesting topic.

- looked at 6 sociology forums. My analisys of their capacity:

1) a medium size forum/has a wide range of different topics, though quite poor in sociology/small audience (<700)/undeveloped>

2) badly structurised/totally undeveloped/ almost impossible to find information/ very small and the average replies number per post is not more than 10

3) society for applied Sociology. hey, is this a forum? I think that's just a set of articles on sociology

4) really interesting one, with a developed section for sociology - people DO reply and discuss, exchange links and latest news, give each other advice

5) link doesn't work

6) I love TSR not only for its Sociology section. But it's very good, yes. It has many people who contribute and owns a great database on every subject (not only sociology!) gathered by the users. very gooooood.

- looked through powerpoints (they are boring, I hate powerpoints)

- now I will be daily reading one sociology blog (the osl one)

- wathed the videos (what is sociology, the experiment)

- prepared the 4 topics for tomorrow's test.

YEEEEEES I FINALLY FINISHED IT!

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - parts 11, 12 and 13 out of 28

Homework (Business Studies). Parts 11, 12 and 13 out of 13.

Part 11:

Evaluation questions on my blog:

1

2

3

4

5

Part 12:

did a dipity timeline :)

Part 13:

So, something must be done. The question is - what?

Just put the hardworking ones in one group and lazy loosers in another, and everything will be ok. If someone 'gifted' starts to bring the dynamic group down, just send him to Torquay the second group. If someone realises how miserable he is and starts to work hard, he can be moved to the enthusiastic group. ^^

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - parts 8, 9 and 10 out of 28

Homework (Business Studies). Parts 8, 9 and 10 out of 13.

Part 8:

I have looked through the one of the Business and Management introduction topics and read about business culture here.

12 factors that affect business culture:

- the influence of a dominant leader – the vision, management style and personality of the founder or leader in a business often has a significant influence on the values that the business tries to promote; 
- the history and tradition of the business – how things have always been done (and why); 
the type of technology used by the business and the types of goods and/or services it produces; 
- which industry or sector the business is in, and how much and what type of competition it faces; 
- the customers of the business – who they are and what they expect; 
- company expectations – based to a large extent on past performance; 
- the types of information and control systems used; 
- the legislation and wider business environment; 
- the procedures and policies within the business – ever-evolving, but often a good indicator of underlying values;
- the reward systems and the measurement of performance; 
- how the business is organised and resourced; 
- goals, values and beliefs – reflected in objects, actions and language, that is, in Trice and Beyer's symbols.

Part 9:

check this out

and this

and this

Part 10:

Question 29 from (RRRBRB) Robin Rinat Red Bull Revision Blog:

What is the percentage difference between the £12,000 a week asked for and the average Championship wage?

they usually get 3.000-4.000, which are 25-33.3% of 12.000. therefore, the difference is 67.7-75%

What is the annual salary of someone on £12,000 a week?

52 weeks. 52x12.000 = 624.000

Calculate the hourly wage of someone on £3000 a week assuming a 24-hour day.

7x24=168

3000/168 = 17.85 per hour

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - parts 4, 5, 6 and 7 out of 28

Homework (Business Studies). Parts 4, 5, 6 and 7 out of 13.

Part 4: 

I have read this aricle about using an alternative of factoring - invoice discounting, where debts to supplier are paid but under the supervision of a bank manager. I didn't quite get it, but, as I see it, banks buy supplyer's goods with a discount and then sell it to a consumer at a full price. So, if a consumer doesn't pay, suppliers will still get money.. something like this. 

Part 5:

i dun like giving my coordinates to unknown websites like this.

Part 6:

I have tried listening to 49 minutes (!!!) podcast, but then understood that it's not necessary as I got the main idea right. So, this podcast was an interview with a successful blogger Alborz Fallah, who started with nothing, but now his blog is valued more than 5 million dollars. His CarsAdvice blog is really popular in Australia and even competes with some australian media giants! This guy earns a lot of money on this blog, and he does his blog despite he has a full-time job.

So, in this interview he was talking about differents things: what topic for blog to choose, how to blog successfully, some details and general advice..

but seriously, that guy earned some money just because he was paid by the guys who placed advertisements on his blog. I mean come on - car advice blog.. hey, it's just because all men are crazy about cars.. pff.

Part 7:

revised all the AQA BS Unit 1 on tutor2u BS blog here.

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - part 3 out of 27..uh, now 28!

Homework (Business Studies). Part 3 out of 12.

Mnemonics

S - PPP - LL (types of pricing) - SPPP(E)LL

Skimming - penetration - predatory - psychological - loss leader

 

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - part 2 out of 27

Homework (Business Studies). Part 2 out of 12.

Generation Y and their motivation. 

Times are changing, so do people and their views on this world. Uh, and the world never stays the same! Your mental priorities and stereotypes depend on the enviroment that brought you up. People who were born between 1977 and 1994 are now ready to help Generation X and are slowly becoming the main body of the process of the world's development. They are 20% of the world's population and they were born in the times of global changes, new technolgies and new philosophies. They will never be the same as their parents and it's natural - as their parents never were simlar to previous generation.

This generation Y, or the Millenials, are now looking for a job and seeking ways to express themselves in the society. They value their time, their technology and will never deal with something that does not match with their opinion. As Generation X is still having the main top jobs, they need to motivate and help the Generation Y.

This article presents the analisys of the Generation Y. Their main characteristics are enthusiasm, creativity, intelligence, ambitious and hign motivation. It's very important for them to be accepted by the socium and elder people, and, as they believe that they are very gifted and talented, they should be higly valued to be motivated.

The main rules of managing the Gen Y are:

- let them feel being involved in the main process (in other words, level 4 of Maslow's hierarchy of needs)

- motivation should be simple

- give more responsibility (as it shows that you trust and value them)

- reward them (by more responsibility given, I suppose)

- create comfortable enviroment (Hertzberg's motivators/demotivators)

Small notes that I did listening to the podcast about the Gen Y:

They had very interesting teenagehood. That's very important because most of the concepts are set up at this age stage. They grew up getting different kinds of unexpected and absolutely rendom information, and heard a lot about terrorism and things like that - that's why they have this phrase in mind - "live today". They are impatient and everything that they do should be meaningful and enjoyable.

The one of the differences between gen Y and gen X is their relationships with relatives. Gen X are more independent and gen Y tend to listen to what their parents say (but parents of gen Y don't know that hehehe))) That's why when a gen Y is applaing for a job it is also important to impress her or his parents. The company should provide career opportunities for that gen Y representative, to show the parents that their child will have an opprtunity of growing and developing as a working and independent individium. As for the gen Y themselves, they like to be challenged, their favourite job is the one that they have no idea how to do. They like to figure things out. DO NOT overstructure their work - it will make it boring. Just give them the goal and a few tools, you will be surprised. There should be a feedback, it's very important for gen Y - they like to be taught something new, how to do even better than they do now? However, they are VERY ambitious - they need and money, and prestige, and promotion! 

Their advantages - advanced and developed view on all. It's because of their time spent near the technologies like cell phones and computers, they made gen Y to think and act differently.

Their main disandvantage - they can be totally unmanagable!

And as for me, I can't stop thinking that when McGregor was creating his X-Y theory, he based on these two generations. As gen Y needs responsibily as well as an Y-worker in McGregor's administration theory.

Outstanding homework BS, Economics and Sociology - part 1 out of 27

watch and learn)

Homework (Business Studies). Part 1 out of 12.

Is Internet Explorer a monopoly?

Monopoly is when a company owns more than 25% of the market. Yes, Internet Explorer is a browser monopoly, as in this article it is said that IE dominated 80% of the market.

How do Firefox compete?

Firefox is a creation of Mozilla company, which has a very strong companion and investor - Google inc. Google supported Firefox as a browser, and up to 85% of Mozilla's revenue was due to its partnership with Google. However now, when Google introduced its own browser, Chrome, Mozilla and Google inc still have a new agreement and  Google will do further investments in Mozilla.

Hey yeah, Google Chrome is a good competitor which will easily overcome the barriers to entry in the browser market, however, I doubt in its ability to beat IE's monopoly.

PS, Opera is the best!!!

What are they going to do with no-so-improving economic situation in the UK?

Yes, it's time to update my blog.

No, I haven't come back to Russia. 

So..

I have read both articles on which we should comment as a homework.

The UK, as well as many other countries in the world, felt the whole destroying power of credit crunch on it's economy. The UK Government is trying to fix the situation, and even said in November that the situation will be stabiliased in the second half of 2009. Now it's obvious that it won't happen.

The government is trying to somehow control all those things that happen because of credit crunch but not so successfully. People are still loosing jobs, every week companies are collapsing (my favourite Zavvi!!! :((((( ), banks have no idea what to do.

A variety of methods that were supposed to help have been introduced not so long ago, some of them have already been put in action (the ad valorem tax cut from 17.5% to 15%). The chancellor, Mr Darling, cannot deny that the times are 'difficult'. A number of fiscal policies has worked very well, taxes seem to help the situations, but what is happening about monetary policies?

The interest rates have been cut recently and now they are at the point of 1.5% - the lowest rate in the whole history of Bank of England (established in 1694). Many economists comment on this action negatively, telling that it will bring the UK's economy into the new level of disaster. Seriously, I cannot see the point it this critical cuts of the rate of interest! Yes, people need to be encouraged to spend more as now they seem to save all that they have. But what about confidence? What about revenue for banks? 

Or another idea - printing more money. First of all, this will have a huge affect on the pound competitiveness in the international trade. No doubt that the pound is really weak now - more currency printed means even a weakier position. In the nearest future euro will be more expensive then pound.. hey, how the UK's goverment can be talking about improving the situation?

A well-planned regulation is needed. Fiscal policy is working, but those manipulations with interest rates and money printing should be reviewed or.. who knows what will happen tomorrow.

In 6 hours I will be in Oxford.

At the moment I'm waiting for the boarding on my plane.

goodbye, Russia.