International Business Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

International Business - Coursework Example For example, in Western cultures, ordinary employee can speak with the director of the company equally while in Eastern cultures it is almost impossible that the opinion of the ordinary employee would be considered seriously. In other words, cultures with high score of power distance believe that every person has its place and they should act in accordance with their role in society. Uncertainty avoidance is a dimension that identifies peoples attitude to their inability to predict future. Some cultures let things happen in their natural flow; others tend to control the future. Pragmatic cultures with high uncertainty avoidance scores tend to pay more attention to planning than those cultures where the score is low. This score helps to predict peoples attitude to planning and define the best way to build long- and short-term relationships with them. Also, pragmatic cultures rely on planning, experts and analysts who try to define future obstacles and prepare people and organizations for changes. Overall, power distance and uncertainty avoidance are really important for successful cross-cultural business. If people ignore these cultural dimensions, they can fail to build good relationships with representatives of the opposite culture. On the contrary, they succeed if they pay enough attention to features of every culture they deal with. 2. Conflict and violence, terrorism and kidnapping, property seizure, police changes and local content are 5 main types of political risk. Out of these 5 types, conflict and violence and policy changes affect international business directly. In case of external and internal political conflicts, any society experiences crisis related to unstable political and economic situation. All international companies suffer from this instability and it results in a sequence of unwanted consequences for any organization. Business becomes dangerous in terms of safety; in many cases the best solution to the issue is to ship the

The affect of the Mexican Revolution Essay Example for Free

The affect of the Mexican Revolution Essay Francisco Bollain y Goitia Garcia (1882-1960) is a prominent Mexican artists of the XX century, who has been almost forgotten for decades and is now rediscovered. His works are rather complicated for perception and they can hardly be called pleasant, for Goitia concentrated on the most homely aspects of the world around him, demonstrating the fatality of revolution and violent changes in the most shocking way. This paper is to investigate two of his famous paintings – Zacatecas Landscape with Hanged Men I and Zacatecas Landscape with Hanged Men II. The paper is to demonstrate the style and manner of painting, as well as compare those pictures with works of other Mexican painters of the time such as Jose Clemente Orozco and Victor Augustin Cassasola. Some biographical data about Goitia is necessary to understand his works, so the paper shall open with a short biographic reference about the artist. Francisco Goitia was born in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. Being a talented artist since his early years he studied in the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City and than in Barcelona with the Spanish artist Francisco Gali. Upon return to his home country in 1912 he has found it being wasted by the revolution. Having occupied the position of official painter for General Angel of Pancho Villas army he had an ability to observe war and it’s consequences with his own eyes. The experience influenced Goitia’s works greatly and his paintings are now examples of uncovered brutality and dread. There were even claims that Goitia ordered to exhume executed soldiers and hang them on cactuses as models for his pictures so it is hard to say how much in his paintings comes from real facts and how much from artificial staging of his morbid fantasies. Goitia has never worked with monumental forms so characteristic for Mexican art of the time. His canvases remained inside realism, impressionism and to a great extent symbolism, so he never became so popular as Diego Rivera or Jose Orozco. His last years passed in self-imposed poverty, but still he was quite a famous painter inside Mexico since early 20-s. In recent years his works became of interest for scholars outside Mexico as well. Both landscapes of Zacatecas (I and II) were painted most probably in 1914, although the exact date is unknown. They are both variations about the same topic: a bleak depressive landscape with half-dissolved corpses of hanged men on the trees. Both pictures were drawn from nature. Goitia knew this terrain well since he himself was born in Zacatecas, so he takes almost an intimate and affected position towards the scene. The landscape is typical for northern Mexico – it includes grey and yellow desert land with hills on the horizon and yuccas growing everywhere. The men hanged on the trees seem to their parts – so â€Å"naturally† they are tied to the branches. Most of the researchers point biblical analogies in the first painting for the landscape is so bleak that it reminds Golgotha. The analogy becomes even stronger for Goitia called his series of paintings about revolution â€Å"martyrdoms†. Goitia has been in the army of Pancho Villa in 1914 when he has captured the capital city of Zacatecas. Being both fascinated and frightened by that what he has seen he started feeling that his mission was to record the epic events of the revolution for history. As he himself put it â€Å"I went everywhere with the army, observing. I did not carry any weapons because I knew that the mission of killing was not mine† . Among the things Goitia has witnessed was death of general Lazaro Gomez, who has been repulsing enemy attacks auntill he ran out of ammunition and shot to his back after being taken prisoner. The body of the general has been beheaded and hanged on a tree with his head replaced with the head of a steer. It is believed that exactly death of Gomez inspired Goitia to paint his Zacatecas Landscape with Hanged Men I, although he used bodies of simple soldiers as â€Å"models†. So the first variant of the painting can really be considered a record of actual events, although Goitia did not concentrate on the death of a particular man, but aimed to show the series of deaths in Zacatecas. The most obvious difference between two variants of paintings is the manner in which they are drawn and involvement of the spectator. Zacatecas I still looks like a â€Å"real† classical painting with obvious elements attributable to artistic form including shape, symmetry, movement and rhythm. The background plays an active role in the picture and the bodies of the hanged look simply like the bodies of the hanged. They are horrible and shocking, but at least â€Å"natural†. Perhaps Goitia was not satisfied with the artistic effect of the first painting, so in the second variant he made it more impressive and less realistic . This was necessary to strike the audience in the necessary way. In the second painting two dead bodies are absolute centre of the compositions, and their empty eyeholes are pointed directly ad the spectator, as if they were looking at him. The position of the bodies creates an impression of surrealistic â€Å"gates† to the dreadful reality of death and grief. Death and it’s triumph are key points of the picture. The first variant is painted with oil on canvas and the second one looks more like a touchy pencil drawing, which has later been colored. To make his second painting even more symbolic Goitia replaced usual terrain of Zacatecas with surrealistic vision of deadly symbolism. In Zacatecas Landscape with Hanged Men II the trees seem to come out from gothic descriptions of Poe as they are gnarled and lifeless being painted with pale cold colors. Skulls of animals on the ground once more stress that death is a true master of the stage. The only living creatures on the second painting are owls – traditional symbols of night and forerunners of death. They create a ghostly atmosphere of the scene. Bodies are waved to different sides paralleling the braches they hang on, so they seem to be blown by different winds. White sun in the grey skies creates an image of omen. The general impression from the first picture is that Goitia painted that what he has seen and the second picture is undoubtedly a manifesto of his views, in which he tried to impress the observers by shocking view of horrifying images. As it has been already mentioned, the paintings belong to Goitia’s revolutionary period when he worked as a painter of Mexican federal army. The revolution in Mexico lasted from 1910 till 1917. Some scholars believe that Cristero rebellion of 1926-1929 was also a part of the revolution, so revolutionary events lasted in Mexico for almost two decades. Goitia’s paintings are images of that what virtually every Mexican of the time has once experienced, and this is perhaps the main reason why Goitia is so popular in Mexico and less famous outside its borders. It is hard to say for sure whether Goitia was an active supporter of the revolution or just followed the army as a chronicler. His later memoirs seem to support the second point of view – Goitia remained an artist but not a revolutionary throughout his travels after the army. The manner of paintings and their impression also correspond to the version. He has never painted any picture in which he would admire revolution, but both paintings seem rather to blame its barbarity. The manner of Goitia’s painting reminds the most famous apocalyptic pictures such as Triumph of Death by Peter Breugel, descriptions of war by Goya or Picasso’s Guernica. Most of the revolutionary painters glorify its triumphs and view it as a way to the new world. Goitia has chosen to demonstrate the horrifying â€Å"side effects† of progressive social upheavals. This was enough for him to be considered one of the sharpest critics of revolution in art. He explained that: â€Å"You see that it is natural that circumstances have made my temperament more inclined to the profound. There is a great deal of sadness in this country and I have tried to sum a certain phase of it† . Such Goitia’s insights are rather unusual for Mexico of the time, where revolution became almost a national idea, reflected in numerous artworks. This includes frescos by Diego Rivera or monumental modernist paintings of Jose Clemente Orozco. Mexican artists of the time shared different views of the revolution but there was one common thing for all of them – for them revolution was a magnificent event, a high tide of spirit and will, but in no way a vision of death and destruction. For example Diego Rivera was an incandescent Trotskyist, absolutizing the idea of global revolution and idealizing Trotsky as its dramatic leader. Orozco is a more complicated case for he was interested more in changes that revolution would cause in human minds and in the society. Still his art stands closer to the supporters of revolution as he used expressive modernist techniques being a revolutionary artist by his mere nature. And another common point of Rivera and Orozco is that they both are working with â€Å"objective reality† using artistic means to make the spectator impressed by this reality . In contrast, Goitia’s paintings are full of his own attitudes and they allow the spectator to make his. Revolutionary artists provided only one view, Goitia allowed the audience to chose. Although it is hard to find a â€Å"colleague† for Goitia between painters, such â€Å"colleague† still existed among photographers. Augustin Casasola in fact worked for the newspapers, but he would remain a usual reporter in case his pictures were not full of artistic sense, making them close to Goitia’s graphic works. As the revolution spread along Mexico Casasola established his own agency to provide home and foreign press with photographs of the event. Working as an independent photographer he was able to use his talent in full. he concentrated on all aspects of the revolution showing both victories and, like Goitia, the unattractive sides. He has also gathered a large collection of images of revolutionary individuals – from officers to peasants in their surroundings. Like Goitia his manner has been characterized by psychological dramatics and involvement of the spectator to the picture . Warlike and revolutionary art is always popular because there are always lots of people who are ready to admire the triumph of spirit and epic deeds. Less popular is art that shows the another side of war and revolution – death and destruction. To show this side the painter needs to be much more talented and avoid being just a thrilling entertainment. For this reason only a few painters became great after painting atrocities of war. Goitia is perhaps not so famous as Goya, but his works are deeply original.For this reason he is now being rediscovered and investigated by art historians worldwide. Works Cited: 1. Dore Ashton. (1999) Mexican Art of the Twentieth Century. In The 20th Century Art Book. ed. by Editors of Phaidon Press 2. Jacqueline Barnitz (2001) Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America University of Texas Press 3. Latin American Painting available at: http://www. chicagomanualofstyle. org/tools_citationguide. html (last accessed: November 19, 2007) 4. Viva Casasola! http://emiliobrizzi. blogspot. com/2007/03/viva-casasola. html (last accessed: November 19, 2007)

The Physics of Boomerangs Essay -- Science Toys Essays

The Physics of Boomerangs The successful flight of a boomerang looks as though it never should happen. Its more or less circular flight path comes from the interaction of two physical phenomena: the aerodynamic lift of the arms of the boomerang and the spinning boomerang’s maintenance of angular momentum. Briefly put, the airfoil at the boomerang’s forward rotating edge provides more lift than its rearward rotating edge. This elevates one side of the boomerang. The spinning object maintains angular momentum by turning at a right angle to its axis of rotation. When the spin and the velocity of boomerang are just right, it flies away and returns in an aesthetically satisfying circle. The boomerang’s distinctive flight starts with its aerodynamic properties. Boomerangs come in a variety of shapes. The traditional forms are variations on an L with equally long arms. There are also boomerangs with three or even four arms radiating from a center. And there are delta boomerangs.1 Whatever the configuration, every boomerang has airfoils at its extremities. Looking outward from the center of rotation of the boomerang, the left side of the blade is the leading edge of the air foil for right-handed throwers.2 As the boomerang spins, the airfoils at its perimeter create lift. Our text, Physics: A World View, discusses aerodynamics and Bernoulli’s principle. It explains the relationship between the velocity of a fluid and the pressure that the fluid exerts. A fluid gains energy when it speeds up as, for example when it goes through a constricting area in a pipe or passes around an airfoil. Since the gravitational potential energy is constant, the change is in kinetic energy. Since there is an acceleration of the fluid, the press... ...d San Francisco. McGraw-Hill Company Limited, 1982. 20-21. 5http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/bern.html. I also visited several Google sites, â€Å"boomerang,† though I did not draw on them for this project. They generally have a bit of (undocumented) history/anthropology, some physics, and throwing instructions. For example: http://www.gel-boomerang.com/, and http://www.boomerangs.org/ (pictures of some odd shapes). This is consistent with my experience. Trying to put more spin on the boomerang mainly has the effect of making a throw unnatural and therefore prone to fly into the ground. 7When in college, my daughter would often suggest â€Å"going to throw a boomerang† as a first date. Her idea was that she learned a lot about a guy seeing him cope with failing miserably--a certainty the first time out with a boomerang--at a seemingly simple athletic activity. The Physics of Boomerangs Essay -- Science Toys Essays The Physics of Boomerangs The successful flight of a boomerang looks as though it never should happen. Its more or less circular flight path comes from the interaction of two physical phenomena: the aerodynamic lift of the arms of the boomerang and the spinning boomerang’s maintenance of angular momentum. Briefly put, the airfoil at the boomerang’s forward rotating edge provides more lift than its rearward rotating edge. This elevates one side of the boomerang. The spinning object maintains angular momentum by turning at a right angle to its axis of rotation. When the spin and the velocity of boomerang are just right, it flies away and returns in an aesthetically satisfying circle. The boomerang’s distinctive flight starts with its aerodynamic properties. Boomerangs come in a variety of shapes. The traditional forms are variations on an L with equally long arms. There are also boomerangs with three or even four arms radiating from a center. And there are delta boomerangs.1 Whatever the configuration, every boomerang has airfoils at its extremities. Looking outward from the center of rotation of the boomerang, the left side of the blade is the leading edge of the air foil for right-handed throwers.2 As the boomerang spins, the airfoils at its perimeter create lift. Our text, Physics: A World View, discusses aerodynamics and Bernoulli’s principle. It explains the relationship between the velocity of a fluid and the pressure that the fluid exerts. A fluid gains energy when it speeds up as, for example when it goes through a constricting area in a pipe or passes around an airfoil. Since the gravitational potential energy is constant, the change is in kinetic energy. Since there is an acceleration of the fluid, the press... ...d San Francisco. McGraw-Hill Company Limited, 1982. 20-21. 5http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/bern.html. I also visited several Google sites, â€Å"boomerang,† though I did not draw on them for this project. They generally have a bit of (undocumented) history/anthropology, some physics, and throwing instructions. For example: http://www.gel-boomerang.com/, and http://www.boomerangs.org/ (pictures of some odd shapes). This is consistent with my experience. Trying to put more spin on the boomerang mainly has the effect of making a throw unnatural and therefore prone to fly into the ground. 7When in college, my daughter would often suggest â€Å"going to throw a boomerang† as a first date. Her idea was that she learned a lot about a guy seeing him cope with failing miserably--a certainty the first time out with a boomerang--at a seemingly simple athletic activity.

Interpersonal relationship Essay

Interpersonal Communication September 15, 2013 Interpersonal communication reflection: When Harry Met Sally When Harry first meets Sally, they look really different. From the very beginning scene, they argue as they have different perspectives on the opposite-sex friendships. Nonetheless, they eventually become good friends after they self-disclose their intimate information to each other. However, after their unexpected sex, their relationship becomes awkward. In the end, Harry finally finds out that he loves Sally and reveals his feelings. Over the course of their relationship in the movie When Harry Met Sally, Knapp’s stages of interpersonal communication develop and change. Knapp defines the stage of initiation as conversation openers. Harry and Sally encounter each other in an unpleasant way. Sally finds him kissing his girlfriend. Obviously, they are not interested in each other at first as Harry has a girlfriend and Sally is a good friend of her. As a result, they do not really greet in the car. Sally tells Harry th at they are just carpool partners. While driving to New York City, they discuss about opposite-sex friendship. This scene falls into the experimenting stage. From this scene, Harry and Sally get to know better of each other’s different characteristic. Harry thinks that it is impossible to establish a true opposite-sex friendship because sex part always gets in the way. Sally argues him that she does not have sexual interest to her male friends. One of Knapp’s four purposes of experimenting stage is that it can be an audition for a future friendship or a way of increasing the scope of a current relationship. Harry and Sally’s relationship does not develop further because they do not find each other attractive in the experimenting stage After five years, they meet in the airport and take same plane. At this time, Harry is going to get married and Sally is in a relationship. When Harry asked Sally, she refuses to have dinner with him. Another five years later, they meet in the book store. Both of them are not in the relationship anymore. As they share the news, their relationship starts in the experimenting stage again. At this time, they are really getting closer and  their relationship proceeds further. Self-disclosure plays a major role in the development of their relationship. When they met at the airport, Sally did not want to talk to him. However, when they met in the bookstore, they disclosed their intimate information, Sally’s breakup with her boyfriend and Harry’s separation, to each other. They could understand each other as they shared their feelings and wounded hearts. From this point of view, Self-disclosure really helped their relationship to develop further. However, their relationship jumps around to avoiding stage because they misunderstand their feelings toward each other. At New Year’s Eve party, Harry dances with Sally. Until this point, they are really good friends to each other. Eventually, they find out themselves in a relationship mood. However, being a good friend to each other makes them hesitant as they do not want to lose each other. Later the movie, Sally asks Harry to come over her house because her previous boyfriend is getting married. They suddenly have unexpected sex and they feel uncomfortable. Sally does not want to spend time with him anymore as sex part really gets in the way and it is hard for them to be friends again. Sally keeps trying to avoid him afterward. Finally, their relationship develops to the bonding stage. Harry goes through difficult times as Sally tries to avoid him. During this hardship, Harry realizes that he loves her. He reveals his feelings at the New Year’s Eve party, and Sally accepts him. Their relationship becomes official as they get married. Overall, it was hard for me to exactly identify the Knapp’s stages of interpersonal communication fro m Harry and Sally’s relationship throughout the movie. Since their relationship does not develop in a typical manner, going back and forth, it also does not follow the Knapp’s stages of interpersonal communication. Nonetheless, I really think that the film is very well made because it clearly shows how man and woman have different perspectives. After watching this movie, I personally think that being honest is the answer for any relationship.

Literature that Wouldn’t Die Essay

My old-maid aunt loaned me the first book when I was eight. Of course, I didn’t think of her as my old maid aunt then. She was just my aunt, who was way older than my mom and drove a cool car and lived at home with my grandparents. She had the best records and still played them—vinyl records. But it was the books that made me seek her out. She had every Hardy Boys book ever written. As soon as I proved I could read the first one, then I got to read a new one every time we visited and we visited at least once a week. I can’t say that I really understood them in second-grade, and I surely didn’t know what a mansion was, but I figured out that it was a big, old house and went from there. By my next birthday, the books were officially mine. All of them, hardcover, many original printings, were given to me because my aunt believes that children should read. That was the first one I actually remember, but my mother said it dates backs further; every holiday or birthday my aunt sent books. Through her I met Flicka and Big Red and Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but the love affair was with the detective novels, started by those Hardy Boys novels. As a teenager, I moved on to James Patterson. Then, it was â€Å"The Maltese Falcon† and Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. For a long time, I was alone in my fascination with a good â€Å"Who dun it? †, but as time progressed, I found that society is obsessed with figuring out the crime, finding the bad guy. My weirdness was that I was reading them instead of watching them on television. And, the modern whodunit is not merely a tale of murder and intrigue; it was a modified look at the forensic clues and figuring it out before the people on the television due. Take for example, the third week in November, 2007. According to Nielsen Media Research six of the top 20 shows on broadcast television were detective shows, four of them directly related to the use of forensic evidence to solve a crime (Nielsen, 2007). Americans are obsessed with the crime drama, the modern variant of the detective novel that my aunt introduced me to. In short order, I can name a dozen of these shows, all virtually identical to those bright blue books I read as a boy. As I got older, it became clear that America has a fascination with the whodunit novel, or television series, as the case may be. From the Hardy Boys to â€Å"Colombo†, Americans are fascinated with the detective story. Like many kids my age, I grew up thinking it might be fun to be a hard-nosed detective. The books in my life gave way to television and the books in general became television shows or movies and gaining a life the author never foresaw as he wrote the opening scene of death or mayhem. In fact, in 2007 the novel once again became the television series as James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club became Angie Harmon’s new show. The novel series, which began with â€Å"First to Die†, is about a San Francisco homicide detective and one of my recent favorite reads. Harmon, who once starred in one of the Law & Order franchise crime dramas, stars as the lead detective. This movement of book to television and the continuation of the detective novel is remarkable, but not unique to the modern age. Of course, this wasn’t the first of Patterson’s to go main stream. Years ago, other young men and I were impressed with Detective Alex Cross as brought to life by Morgan Freeman in â€Å"Kiss the Girls† and â€Å"Along Came A Spider†. In his 1970 essay, â€Å"Murder and Manners: The Formal Detective Novel†, George Grella puts it this way,†The formal detective novel, the so-called ‘pure puzzle’ or ‘whodunit’, is the most firmly established and easily recognized version of the thriller† (30). And, he says, we are fascinated by the genre. It has become an icon onto itself and holds its own against other genres of literature quite well through the years. Dating back to Edgar Allen Poe, the detective novel has been through changes, but it is still basically the same, a comfort to most people. â€Å"And almost since its inception, critics have been denouncing the rise, and announcing the demise, of the whodunit. † (30). But while they were uniformly criticized by those â€Å"in the know†, the detective novel built up a strong following in modern American society, cleverly disguised as the crime drama on television and in the movies. The simple fact of the matter is that it is not supposed to be great fiction, but sometimes, it is. It is supposed to let people feel like they figured something out, outsmarted the author by figuring out the answer before the end of the book. The author has to give the reader all the information and though they can tease a bit, directly tricking the reader is completely unfair (Grella 31). Misdirection is fine; lying is not. But the reality is that most readers are not equipped with the obscure knowledge that the detective use to solve the crimes and so the love of the mystery might be based more on a fascination not unlike our fascination with magicians. We want to see if we can figure it out and then revel in the fact that the really good ones were able to keep us from figuring it out. And, Grella points out, it is formulaic. Good or bad, the formal detective novel is predictable. It is one of the curiosities of literature that an endlessly reduplicated form, employing sterile formulas, stock characters, and innumerable cliches of method and construction, should prosper in the two decades between the World Wars and continue to amuse even in present day. More curious still, this unoriginal and predictable kind of entertainment appealed to a wide and varied audience, attracting not only the usual public for popular fiction, but also a number of educated readers†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (32) The modern television whodunit has followed the same basic formula, but with the twists and turns of modern forensics thrown in for good measure. Instead of an obvious clue like a matchbook or lipstick smeared on a tea cup, the modern story has DNA and fingerprints but the story remains basically the same: Bad guy kills (maims, mutilates, rapes, etc. ) someone and the detectives strive to gather the evidence and figure it out before the reader, or in the case of television, the viewer, figures it out. Forty-five minutes into the show, whether we are ready and have solved it or not, comes the great reveal, the modern equivalent of the meeting in the study to show how it was done, by whom and why. This is the world that my aunt unwittingly introduced me to and I am not alone. In the modern era this has translated to the crime drama on television. Shows including any of the CSI variants, any of the Law & Order shows, â€Å"Cold Case Files†, â€Å"Without a Trace† and several others follow this tried and true recipe. The newest of these, Spike TV’s â€Å"Murder† takes the concept to a whole new level—real people, solving recreations of real crimes, all neatly wrapped up in an hour long show. And, â€Å"Murder† even follows the rules that Grella identifies for formal detective fiction (31). It shows all the clues that reader/viewer needs to solve the crime and challenges them to do it before the contestants do â€Å"With â€Å"every pertinent detail† being recreated, the groups will assess the crime scene, collect evidence and even meet with an actual coroner who reviews the findings of the original autopsy. † (Rocchio 2007) The show combines America’s current love of reality television with the tried and true formula of the detective novel. â€Å"For the viewer, Murder fuses the authenticity of a real-life crime scene with the suspense of trying to solve the murder before the contestants on the show,† Bunim-Murray co-founder Jon Murray stated. â€Å"We are excited to be working with Spike TV on such a cutting-edge series and hope the audience will take away a sense of how strategic and meticulous crime detectives must be on a daily basis. † The show even features its own version of the great reveal. After 45 minutes of show time, the contestants are required to set forth their version of the crime to the real-life detective who hosts the show. Then, helike a good author, points out the flaws in their logic and evidence collection and gives a narrative about what really happened. This movement toward more realism in the detective novel has taken it away from its farcical leanings (Grella 35), but continues to lead it in the tradition of the formal detective novel. Writers must put all the clues together, visually at the very least, in the 53 minutes or so of an hour long television show without making it obvious to everyone whodunit. The element of besting the writer has again become the goal. Grella had argued that this theory of outsmarting the writer might not be the actual explanation for society’s fascination with detective novels, pointing out that detectives in the novels have access to obscure knowledge the reader would not have making it virtually impossible to figure out the end without an intuitive leap (33). His conclusion was that the puzzle aspect of the novel is not in fact the motivation of viewers/readers to seek out detective novels. However, what he failed to take into consideration was that viewers/readers need an excuse to be wrong. When the villain is revealed at the end of the show or in the huge scene at the end of the novel, the reader needs an excuse to be wrong. Sure, we want to be right, but if we aren’t, we need it to be because we didn’t know the flight speed of an African swallow or some equally relevant but obscure piece of trivia. Perhaps it is because of a sense of pride in the viewer, but we need an excuse to be wrong. That way, the reader still wins. The guess about the guilty party being wrong doesn’t mean that we were outsmarted by the writer, but rather than the novelist came up with a piece of information that we did not know. And, with as much of society as is interested in random trivia, finding that obscure piece of information that the average reader will not know becomes more difficult. It is any many ways the gauntlet those readers thrown down before their favorite authors: â€Å"Fool me if you can. † The most modern of the new detective stories fool us with science, proving to us that even what our eyes see can be wrong. Authors like Patricia Cromwell and Kathy Reichs show us that the things we see may not be all there is to be seen (Palmer 2001). The reality is that the puzzle is still the name of the game and so television shows must now explain the rules of the game as they go, showing the fingerprints of the DNA evidence and finding new ways to throw in the twist. Again, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, the game is afoot, and writers are challenged to find new ways to twist the evidence and manipulate the science to keep our interest. Grella and others have complained that the detective novel is formulaic and bordering on boring, but the reality is that we like them because they are so challenging to the writer. A poorly written detective novel will bore us all to tears. We will see the buffoon of a police officer and the unsuspecting detective and even the misdirection a mile away. But a well done novel which takes what we know, what we have seen with our own eyes and forces us to see that it might not be the case is a masterful work of art. And, that is what we are looking for. We have leveled the playing field with a formulaic story and are expecting to be blow away by the puzzle. WORKS CITED: Grella, George. â€Å"Murder and Manners: The Formal Detective Novel† NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn, 1970), pp. 30-48. < Stable URL: http://links. jstor. org/sici? sici=0029-5132%28197023%294%3A1%3C30%3AMAMTFD%3E2. 0. CO%3B2-H>, November 30, 2007. Nielsen Media Research, November 30, 2007. Palmer, Joy. â€Å"Tracing Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Forensic Detective Fiction† South Central Review, Vol. 18, No. 3/4, Whose Body: Recognizing Feminist Mystery and Detective Fiction. (Autumn – Winter, 2001), pp. 54-71. , November 30, 2007. Rocchio, Christopher. â€Å"Spike TV Announces new ‘CSI’-like ‘Murder’ Reality Series† Feb. 21, 0027. November 30, 2007. Wing, George. ‘Edwin Drood and Desperate Remedies: Prototypes of Detective Fiction in 1870† Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 13, No. 4, Nineteenth Century. (Autumn, 1973), pp. 677-687. , November 30, 2007.