The Special Language Site

As the ancient Chinese proverb said: “It’s a privilege to live in exciting times.”

I don’t have any “techno skills”; yet we work in a “synergetic relationship ” (big words to impress you, but which simply means “1 + 1 = 3 – the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts/persons”). We are working together towards a common goals in a business vision, whereby we all help and complement each other with our particular strengths (and attempt to cover weaknesses…and I’ve got plenty of those!).

The successful cyber entrepreneur of today could well be the equivalent of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Kennedy’s, Paul Getty’s and Henry Ford’s of yesteryear, especially in the new ENTREPRENEURIAL (nice big word) AGE, which I believe, is even more important (and a more appropriate term) than the information age (not that I’d like to be one of them, a business “tycoon”, btw!).

I believe it is essential to have a vision of the future to achieve success in business (as in life itself)…because putting the vision into words keeps you on track through imprinting on the sub-conscious mind. Then total focus + EFFORT (ie. ACTION) breeds an absolute commitment to achieving the goal, the “impossible dream”.

My associate, Bill and I here have an ultimate vision (or dream) of Gisborne on the East Coast of the North Island of scenic and tranquil New Zealand one day being a “recognised” centre of electronic, as well as conventional publishing, a world-renowned centre in providing quality courses in distance education and adult online teaching. Perhaps one day even becoming a centre of excellence in developing technology in the South Pacific. Fools, dreamers, “those guys”!

Thanks to my “technogeek” associates, Bill Rosoman in Gisborne, Stephan Van Lingen in South Africa, my former country (http://www.bridgeniche.com) and Erich Licht of Rapture Web design in Ohio, USA (http://www.rapturewebservices.com) for all their hard work, help, drive, talent and vision, as I don’t understand much of modern technology – “a total non-techno”, who couldn’t even turn on a computer four years ago!).

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As I mentioned (stop repeating yourself – bad writing, Craig!), I believe an idea, a big helping of enthusiasm, together with a great deal of time and effort in implementing it, belief/ faith in yourself and your product or service, plus persistence (not necessarily in that order) is the key to marketing success and seeing one’s vision turn into reality.

That is our ultimate vision and something we at Eagle Productions in association with Bill Rosoman of Nugrow Technologies here in Poverty Bay (oops er sorry, Eastland), Stephan and Erich are daily striving towards with all our energies and creative endeavours.

And then dreams and “fairy tales” do sometimes come true.

What you do today could repay you a hundred-fold tomorrow and there is just one rule: As the Nike ad says,

“Just go for it following your entrepreneurial dream…

and just DO it with all you’ve got!”

Craig Lock

” Whatever the mind can conceive, can be achieved.”

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

.. and absolutely ANYTHING is possible.”

As Jesus Christ said 2000 years ago, “Total faith can even move a mountain”.

“Without a vision, the people perish” – the Bible

“We can all use the internet to reach out to the ‘global community’ and build a better world in this new “Information Revolution” that is upon us. Just make a SMALL DIFFERENCE. Let’s use it wisely, respect our diversity and unique cultures; yet celebrate a new world in union. One where, like your founding forefathers in America, you can first celebrate the Independance Day of the strong burning creative spirit that lies within each one of us. If set alight, it is a flame that will burn brightly for future generations on this planet… and perhaps even make your personal VISION of the future a REALITY.”

P.S:

What will your grand-children one day be saying about you and what you were doing in the early days of the INFORMATION AGE?

Could that perhaps be your “unique destiny” and the legacy that you leave on this planet?

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A bank in Memphis Tennessee or so may have a total totally different actual rate for a 27500 dollar loan then a merchant bank in Napa California and that makes a huge clear difference in your yearly costs. 8.4 percent rate of interest may appear so fair but will that be unalterable after you’re going to return your credit loan. You should be brilliant today to check out if you have a nice offer or if you don’t with the moneylender that offers you a money loan.

Translated it says: Woon je in Oostzaan of Bergen en heeft u BKR codering. Lenen met zonder BKR registratie is nog nooit zo gemakkelijk geweest. Verwen jezelf met een nieuwe caravan met negatieve bkr registratie met lenen, 337200 euro is altijd mogelijk om te lenen. Van Heemskerk tot Middelharnis, geld lenen met een BKR notering is altijd mogelijk.

Lots of of the merchant banks wil show you a interest rate that is looking middling but feels severely or so after a while. It doesn’t matter if you live in Beaverton Oregon or in Chesapeake Virginia a safe online check up will save you often lots of discommode. Inspect to see if the bank who is willing to give you a loan is fine. Nowadays you can look into interest rates quickly online and discover if there are other conditions you should be aware of. This is why now you need to look into and consider if you can have a bank loan at a dependable percent loan rate.

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Engineer-to-order (ETO) and project-based manufacturers face business challenges that simply cannot be resolved by traditional manufacturing systems. Engineer-to-order companies need to be able to provide accurate cost estimates to customers, manage all aspects of complex projects, deliver on time and on budget–all while keeping a close eye on cash flow. There is intense pressure to reduce costs, shorten cycle times, while maintaining high quality. Finally, engineer-to-order companies need an accurate picture of the profitability of each project in order to comprehend the impact on the business.

Pattern Equipment & Prototype (PEP) in Windsor, Ontario, is a division of Tooling & Equipment International (TEI), Livonia, Michigan. TEI is a leader in Design, Engineering and Manufacturing of Tooling, Prototype, Pre-Production and Mass Production Equipment for the Metal Casting Industry.

PEP selected Encompix (www.encompix.com) ETO ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software because it has filled the manufacturing software requirements of Engineer-to-Order companies since 1992. The company name reflects the commitment to developing business application solutions that encompass the complex areas of project-based and job-based manufacturing.

According to Thomas R. Cutler, spokesperson for the ETO Institute (www.etoinstitute.org), “Encompix has experienced strong levels of success because this year few other manufacturing software companies truly understand the specific issues and nuances facing the engineer-to-order segment of the manufacturing market.” Encompix provides ETO manufacturers with a competitive advantage by improving bottom line results.

In the increasingly competitive world of engineer-to-order and project-based manufacturing, companies have to operate at maximum efficiency to compete with not only domestic firms, but also the growing number of overseas competitors. The companies that will thrive in this environment are those that are continually looking for improvement.

Encompix www.encompix.com Roger Meloy 513-733-0066

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Introduction In our opinion IT Support for Small and Medium Business is about to undergo a major change in the way it is delivered to customers. With the availability of reliable affordable broadband we are seeing the role of the IT Support Provider converging with the Internet Service Provider to give Small and Medium Business more value than they are currently getting from separate IT Support and Internet Service Providers.

We believe that this change will provide a far higher level of support for this market and at the same drive down their support costs.

Current Situation To understand the changes that are underway, we really need to have a look how many Small to Medium Businesses currently handle their IT Support.

In our experience the vast majority of customers under 50 users that don’t have their own internal IT staff are being serviced by individual IT contractors that are typically operating alone without other staff members and with very little infrastructure to support their operations. Australian Bureau of Statistics suggests that 85% of Small and Medium businesses are being serviced by these individuals.

In our opinion IT Support is still a cottage industry characterized by one man bands with little training or qualifications, standards or process.

This has resulted in what we call the “PC Guy” syndrome (some of this may start to sound familiar), where a business is reliant on a single external contractor to support their IT operations.

This is fine when first starting out, as the “PC Guy” gives great personalised service during the early stages of the relationship. Where this starts to cause issues for the SMB is when the “PC Guy” takes on a few more customers and starts to lose the ability to service them all in a timely manner.

Typically operating from home or by mobile phone the PC Guy is constantly running from one customer site to another, they may have had formal training at some stage, but many of them have simply started computing as a hobby which has lead to them becoming reasonably proficient at desktop support.

Some of them make the jump to becoming proper support businesses with the infrastructure and staff to support networks, however most remain in the single person reactive mode, and as such most of their customers are put in the same position. Many of them end up going back to full time employment when they run out of energy or customers.

What we typically find when we go into a new customer site, is a network that has grown as rapidly as the business, but quite often without the same level of planning or systematic approach. Many times we have been called in to fix networks that are struggling to support the business and are constantly in crisis mode.

The main complaints we hear when going into a new customer is that they say their “PC Guy”

Doesn’t really have the level of expertise they need and therefore spends a lot of time learning on the job at the customers expense.

Can never get to their site when they need them and therefore have difficulty getting issues solved in a timely manner.

They need to go out on-site for the vast majority of problems and bill accordingly i.e. 1-2 hours minimum plus traveling time.

When they go on holidays or are ill, there is no one to back them up and the customer has to try to fix it themselves or get someone else.

They are constantly lurching from one crisis to another and always in reactive mode with problems coming up that were easily foreseeable.

Over the last few years as we were building the IT Support area of our business one of the key issues I foresaw was an issue with scalability of the IT Services and Support business model for Small and Medium Businesses.

It seemed to me that unless we could work out someway to handle support for a large number of customers very efficiently and quickly we could never get the scale and efficiency required to build a significant business.

I looked at some of the issues with running business in the “PC Guy” model and realised that they lacked both the infrastructure and processes to turn from self employed contractors into real businesses that could provide repeatable high quality support to many customers.

After much thought on the issue I realised that the two main enemies of both the customer and the “PC Guy” was the onsite visit and taking a reactive approach to supporting their customers.

Out of the all the things that IT Support companies did this these were the most inefficient.

Firstly if the customer is more than walking distance you waste at least an hour of traveling time. This made it more expensive for the customer who partially paid for this but still left an unrecoverable amount that the support company had to absorb. Many times, you needed to bill an hour to recover the costs of going out on-site even for a very short job.

Likewise if you waited until there were problems instead of taking a proactive consultative approach, you spent your time fighting fires and rescuing customers which is always more wasteful and expensive than handling things in a planned manner.

Two years ago Nicholls-Price put a lot of research and development time into finding ways to reduce this wasted time using both monitoring/alert systems and remote management systems.

Recently we have added to this by creating the Nicholls-Price Proactive Account Management Plan that identifies areas of our customers networks that need attention and bringing these to the attention of our new customers.

As a result of this work, we implemented a number of Network Management tools that monitored our customers networks to provide a Proactive capability that was beyond the capability of the PC Guy and would allow us to more efficiently service our customers and provide a faster response time.

These Network Management tools gave us two things that were important to our customers:

The ability to proactively know that customers are experiencing a problem with their network, often before they have realised and to proactively do something about it for them.

The ability to remotely connect to the network server/router/PC and to be able to make changes or carry out fault finding work to ascertain the problem in real time without having to send an engineer out on site to fault find.

I will give two real examples of customer problems and the conversation the customer “would” have had with a PC Guy and the actual conversations they had with us.

Example 1.”PC Guy” Way

Situation: Customer has just hired a new employee to replace an employee who has just left the company and needs to get the old staff member deleted and the new one setup.

PC Guy: I can get there tomorrow afternoon or Thursday morning. Customer: But my new staff member has just started I can’t get them working until I have them setup on the network. PC Guy: I can try to talk you through this on the server Customer: I don’t have access to the server and don’t really feel comfortable doing this. PC Guy gets out on site in 1-2 days time, spends 20 minutes doing the job then bills for at least an hour and also bills for traveling time.

Total Cost $150-200 plus new employees wasted time. Nicholls-Price Way

Situation: Customer has just hired a new employee to replace an employee who has just left the company and needs to get the old staff member deleted and the new one setup. Nicholls-Price Engineer: Bear with me a moment while I remotely log onto your server. Ok, who has left the company and who is replacing them? Customer: Bob Smith has left and John Jones is replacing him. Nicholls-Price Engineer: Bob Smiths account has now been disabled on your server. Do you want any incoming email for him diverted to your account? We have just created a new user for John Jones, here is his password, this has been set so that he will need to change this immediately when he logs on. His email address is jjones@xyzcorp.com.au and his email password is xxxx. Get John to log on, ok enter your name and password in Outlook. Your account and email is now setup. Is there anything else that I can help you with today? Customer: Great thanks very much, see you later.

All of this happens in real time from when a customer calls. Also as we didn’t need to send out an engineer on site we have been more efficient with our engineers time saving us and the customer money. The result. The customer gets a bill for 15 minutes of support time, a saving of an hour or more, which over the period of a year of support work provides a significant saving to the customer. Problem solved immediately. Total Cost $37

Example 2. “PC Guy” Way Situation: Customer can’t get access to email and the internet. Customer: Hi, my internet connection isn’t working and I have important email to send. PC Guy: It’s probably your Huge ISP DSL connection. Call your Huge ISP and get them to fix it. Customer: Hi Huge ISP, my internet connection isn’t working, Huge ISP: Everything is OK here, sounds like there is a problem with your network or server talk to your PC Guy. Customer: I have and he said it is your problem. Huge ISP: No problems on our end, definitely your network. Customer (with extreme frustration in voice): I can’t seem to find anyone to take responsibility, everyone is pointing the finger at someone else and I cant send this email. Customer spends the day in frustration without connection until the PC Guy can come onsite and fault find. (gets billed for 1-2 hours and travel time). Internet mysteriously starts working with no conclusive proof as to the problem. Total Cost $200 plus lost productivity Nicholls-Price Way

Situation: Customer cant get access to email and the internet.

Nicholls-Price Engineer: Proactively calls Customer; Hi Barry, we just got an alert that shows there is a problem with your network and your router isn’t responding. Can you please let me know if you have been experiencing any problems with power, phones or your network equipment. Customer: Oh… (surprised), thanks for your call, no, we just noticed we couldn’t get to the internet a few moments ago. Nicholls-Price Engineer: Could I please get you to check if your Router has Power and CD lights and if your Server has power. A few moments pass…… Customer: (with grin on face) Looks like someone kicked out the power pack for our router, I have plugged it in and the lights have come back on. (don’t laugh this is an actual conversation on Friday night before a long weekend earlier in the year with one of our customers). Nicholls-Price Engineer: Yes, we can see it has just come back up on our Network Monitor. Can you access the internet now? Customer: Yes, it seems to be fine, thanks very much for your help. Customer didn’t receive any support billing for this at all, it was included as fault finding on their Nicholls Price DSL service.

Total Cost $0

A few points to note from these examples:

Until we started providing remote support, customers didn’t actually realise that there was an alternative way of solving their IT problems and Nicholls-Price Proactive Support service is faster and cheaper than the old alternative.

Our engineers estimate that more than 80% of the problems we solve are being completed by remote management or phone without visiting the customer. Therefore the customer is only being billed for a fraction of the time that they would have if they had an onsite visit.

When your IT Support provider has control and is responsible for your DSL line, Server and router, problem solving is much quicker and easier and therefore less costly for you.

We are now doing this for customers around the country and in one case for a customer with a site in the UK and the USA that don’t want to go through the effort of hiring a support company for their small branch office.

Using these techniques we have managed to fully pre-configure whole networks of PCs, Servers and Routers and ship them interstate, plug them in and they start operating and run full remote support on them after that.

The conclusion that we have reached is that the value created for our customers by getting DSL, Remote IT Support, Proactive Management from one company is far greater than the value they get from the individual services and products purchased independently.

To make it easier for our customers we have implemented a new combined Proactive Support Bundle which includes Proactive Server Management to identify problems and a 512k Business Grade DSL connection starting for $250 per month. We estimate that this will save the average 10 person network more than $200 per month in onsite support calls.

Conclusion

Our predictions are that over the next few years, ourselves and other companies with similar philosophies will take over a lot of the customers that the PC Guys look after as their customers IT infrastructure matures and their requirements increase beyond what the PC Guy can deliver.

We envisage that Support Providers such as ourselves will consolidate the market to 5-10 main competitors covering more than 50% of the SME market and drive out the “PC Guys” in all but the sub 5 staff market.

If you think these services can provide a better solution for your business than what you are currently doing please feel free to call myself, or one of the sales team, to see if these services are suitable for your requirements.

How to contact Nicholls-Price

Sales: sales@nph.com.au Support: support@nph.com.au

You can log both support calls and sales enquiries at our Website http://www.nph.com.au

Or call us in Australia on (02) 9222 9155

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Chamonix Haute Savoie is a unique alpine town with the towering Monte Bianco as well as majestic glaciers. Each of us enjoy going walking or sometimes taking the tourist train. I normally fly from Miami and stay at a Chamonix catered chalet during my vacation.

We previously visited Econo Lodge Wormleysburg however it sometimes didn’t live up to its its advert: Econo Lodge Wormleysburg is near Susquehanna River, across the river bridge from Harrisburg, and approximately 12 miles from Harrisburg International Airport. This location is also a mile from the Pennsylvania State Capitol, five miles from the Pennsylvania State Farm Show Complex, 15 miles from Hershey and Carlisle Fairgrounds, 35 miles from the Battlefield at Gettysburg, and 40 miles from Lancaster. The property’s amenities include the complimentary continental breakfast. Small pets are welcome (prior approval and/or fees may apply).

In comparison in Chamonix Haute Savoie France the luxury chalet is nearly always fine. Furthermore eating out in our favorite bar, Gigis, eating Praline Coffee Muffins is a delight. Chamonix is a big enough destination to make sure that there is lots of things for the visitor to do. Amongst other things it includes a ice rink and a number of restaurants, Chamonix provides a mix of climbing, French alpine charm and shopping which barely any resorts can hope to rival.

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A professionally made corporate video production can greatly enhance your company profile and can be used in a variety of applications. Listed below are a number of the most common uses for corporate video.

Promotional Video Production

A promotional video is a dynamic, fast moving commercial, often with a musical accompaniment, and can be used to promote any of the services or products that your company has to offer.

Promotional videos are used for a variety of purposes. They can be used to engage the audience at the introduction to a multimedia sales presentation, conference, or training seminar and are also very often used running on a loop on exhibition stands and in company reception areas. These promotional videos can also be incorporated into CD ROMs and DVDs as an introductory piece.

Promotional videos can be highly effective and powerful at communicating your company’s strengths in a dynamic and exciting way. The same video promo can also be used for a variety of applications, thus reducing filming expenses.

Executive Broadcast Video Production

One of the biggest problems facing directors of large multi-national companies or plc’s is attempting to communicate on a personal level with their immense and geographically diverse audiences. Executive broadcast corporate videos enable the senior member, or members, of a company to dedicate a couple of hours of their time to being interviewed, and tackling any major questions or issues which may have come to light. By using a corporate video, they save themselves the huge cost, and time, of travelling from place to place attending conferences in order to achieve the same result.

An Executive Broadcast can be used for a multitude of corporate and training video applications, from welcoming new employees to a company, to communicating new management strategies or simply sharing your vision of the companies’ future with your staff. Corporate video production can provide the ideal means of explaining your businesses core values to the customers, and can even be the perfect medium for communicating price sensitive announcements to city institutions and the press etc. There are many other uses for executive broadcasts and video production companies will work with your business to create tailor made executive broadcasts to suit your company.

Customer Testimonial Video Production

Customer testimonial videos are recorded interviews where a customer is asked to give their feelings on a product or on a company’s service. Customer testimonial video production is becoming increasingly essential in the current business climate. Customers often like to hear the opinions of their fellow consumers, and customer testimonial corporate videos can be the ideal way to communicate this information.

Customer testimonial corporate video can be in the form of short clips of customers describing their reaction to a product or company, or maybe longer interviews of customers dealing with specific or more in depth viewpoints.

Customer testimonial video production can be used for a variety of purposes, from forming part of a video promotion, as an endorsement on exhibition stands, as part of a general sales presentation, or even to be used on an e-business card, and then given out at events, exhibitions, meetings etc. Customer testimonial videos can even be useful when assessing one’s own business, as they can be used to create video case studies of customers, and thereby assess the product from the customer’s side.

Conference and exhibition Video Production

Conference and exhibition video production can take the form of entire programmes of their own, or just as short clips to be incorporated into another, longer corporate videos that report on conferences or exhibitions that companies have held.

When a company has a large event, or exhibition, it is not always possible for all the people who need to attend to be there, but with so many issues being discussed and products being demonstrated, with conference and exhibition videos, these events can reach a much broader audience. The relaxed environment at these type of events, enable a much more laid back attitude to come across from the people being interviewed, and it is easier to get an honest opinion, something which can never be undervalued in any business.

Once filmed, conference and exhibition videos can either be put onto DVD for video presentations, or distributed on CD-ROM, through the internet or via your company’s intranet.

Once an event has been filmed, it can be put to a variety of applications, from the obvious use of providing a record of the event for all who were unable to attend, to taking simple sound bites of interviews for incorporation into sales and marketing presentations. Conference and exhibition corporate videos also provide a great opportunity to capture presentations from guest speakers that the people who couldn’t make it to the event would miss out on. A good corporate video production will reflect the atmosphere at the event, and can be an excellent way to encourage staff and/or customers to come to these events in the future.

Video Production for Tourism

The medium of video is unequalled in promoting the full tourist experience to potential visitors, with video production being an ideal way of marketing the amenities, attractions, and individuality of a city or tourist destination on an individual, local or even international level.

In the form of a CD ROM or DVD, the potential scope for video production for tourism is immense. A video will allow viewers to interactively explore a given destination, take a virtual tour around a hotel or enjoy a guided trip around a city with a well known presenter.

Most reputable video production companies will offer to create a tourism video, DVD or CD ROM as part of a larger marketing package, creating eye-catching packaging and inserts to complement the promotional programme.

About the Author

I-MOTUS is one of the UK’s leading corporate and training video production companies. Our team uniquely combines proven business savvy with some of the television industry’s brightest creative talent to provide a fresh approach to the most challenging of marketing and communication briefs. http://www.i-motus.com/?referrer=IM01GO

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“Anthropologists report enormous differences in the ways that different cultures categorize emotions. Some languages, in fact, do not even have a word for emotion. Other languages differ in the number of words they have to name emotions. While English has over 2,000 words to describe emotional categories, there are only 750 such descriptive words in Taiwanese Chinese. One tribal language has only 7 words that could be translated into categories of emotion… the words used to name or describe an emotion can influence what emotion is experienced. For example, Tahitians do not have a word directly equivalent to sadness. Instead, they treat sadness as something like a physical illness. This difference has an impact on how the emotion is experienced by Tahitians. For example, the sadness we feel over the departure of a close friend would be experienced by a Tahitian as exhaustion. Some cultures lack words for anxiety or depression or guilt. Samoans have one word encompassing love, sympathy, pity, and liking – which are very different emotions in our own culture.”
“Psychology – An Introduction” Ninth Edition By: Charles G. Morris, University of Michigan Prentice Hall, 1996

Introduction

This essay is divided in two parts. In the first, we survey the landscape of the discourse regarding emotions in general and sensations in particular. This part will be familiar to any student of philosophy and can be skipped by same. The second part contains an attempt at producing an integrative overview of the matter, whether successful or not is best left to the reader to judge.

A. Survey

Words have the power to express the speaker’s emotions and to evoke emotions (whether the same or not remains disputed) in the listener. Words, therefore, possess emotive meaning together with their descriptive meaning (the latter plays a cognitive role in forming beliefs and understanding).

Our moral judgements and the responses deriving thereof have a strong emotional streak, an emotional aspect and an emotive element. Whether the emotive part predominates as the basis of appraisal is again debatable. Reason analyzes a situation and prescribes alternatives for action. But it is considered to be static, inert, not goal-oriented (one is almost tempted to say: non-teleological – see: “Legitimizing Final Causes”). The equally necessary dynamic, action-inducing component is thought, for some oblivious reason, to belong to the emotional realm. Thus, the language (=words) used to express moral judgement supposedly actually express the speaker’s emotions. Through the aforementioned mechanism of emotive meaning, similar emotions are evoked in the hearer and he is moved to action.

A distinction should be – and has been – drawn between regarding moral judgement as merely a report pertaining to the subject’s inner emotional world – and regarding it wholly as an emotive reaction. In the first case, the whole notion (really, the phenomenon) of moral disagreement is rendered incomprehensible. How could one disagree with a report? In the second case, moral judgement is reduced to the status of an exclamation, a non-propositional expression of “emotive tension”, a mental excretion. This absurd was nicknamed: “The Boo-Hoorah Theory”.

There were those who maintained that the whole issue was the result of mislabeling. Emotions are really what we otherwise call attitudes, they claimed. We approve or disapprove of something, therefore, we “feel”. Prescriptivist accounts displaced emotivist analyses. This instrumentalism did not prove more helpful than its purist predecessors.

Throughout this scholarly debate, philosophers did what they are best at: ignored reality. Moral judgements – every child knows – are not explosive or implosive events, with shattered and scattered emotions strewn all over the battlefield. Logic is definitely involved and so are responses to already analyzed moral properties and circumstances. Moreover, emotions themselves are judged morally (as right or wrong). If a moral judgement were really an emotion, we would need to stipulate the existence of an hyper-emotion to account for the moral judgement of our emotions and, in all likelihood, will find ourselves infinitely regressing. If moral judgement is a report or an exclamation, how are we able to distinguish it from mere rhetoric? How are we able to intelligibly account for the formation of moral standpoints by moral agents in response to an unprecedented moral challenge?

Moral realists criticize these largely superfluous and artificial dichotomies (reason versus feeling, belief versus desire, emotivism and noncognitivism versus realism).

The debate has old roots. Feeling Theories, such as Descartes’, regarded emotions as a mental item, which requires no definition or classification. One could not fail to fully grasp it upon having it. This entailed the introduction of introspection as the only way to access our feelings. Introspection not in the limited sense of “awareness of one’s mental states” but in the broader sense of “being able to internally ascertain mental states”. It almost became material: a “mental eye”, a “brain-scan”, at the least a kind of perception. Others denied its similarity to sensual perception. They preferred to treat introspection as a modus of memory, recollection through retrospection, as an internal way of ascertaining (past) mental events. This approach relied on the impossibility of having a thought simultaneously with another thought whose subject was the first thought. All these lexicographic storms did not serve either to elucidate the complex issue of introspection or to solve the critical questions: How can we be sure that what we “introspect” is not false? If accessible only to introspection, how do we learn to speak of emotions uniformly? How do we (unreflectively) assume knowledge of other people’s emotions? How come we are sometimes forced to “unearth” or deduce our own emotions? How is it possible to mistake our emotions (to have one without actually feeling it)? Are all these failures of the machinery of introspection?

The proto-psychologists James and Lange have (separately) proposed that emotions are the experiencing of physical responses to external stimuli. They are mental representations of totally corporeal reactions. Sadness is what we call the feeling of crying. This was phenomenological materialism at its worst. To have full-blown emotions (not merely detached observations), one needed to experience palpable bodily symptoms. The James-Lange Theory apparently did not believe that a quadriplegic can have emotions, since he definitely experiences no bodily sensations. Sensationalism, another form of fanatic empiricism, stated that all our knowledge derived from sensations or sense data. There is no clear answer to the question how do these sensa (=sense data) get coupled with interpretations or judgements. Kant postulated the existence of a “manifold of sense” – the data supplied to the mind through sensation. In the “Critique of Pure Reason” he claimed that these data were presented to the mind in accordance with its already preconceived forms (sensibilities, like space and time). But to experience means to unify these data, to cohere them somehow. Even Kant admitted that this is brought about by the synthetic activity of “imagination”, as guided by “understanding”. Not only was this a deviation from materialism (what material is “imagination” made of?) – it was also not very instructive.

The problem was partly a problem of communication. Emotions are qualia, qualities as they appear to our consciousness. In many respects they are like sense data (which brought about the aforementioned confusion). But, as opposed to sensa, which are particular, qualia are universal. They are subjective qualities of our conscious experience. It is impossible to ascertain or to analyze the subjective components of phenomena in physical, objective terms, communicable and understandable by all rational individuals, independent of their sensory equipment. The subjective dimension is comprehensible only to conscious beings of a certain type (=with the right sensory faculties). The problems of “absent qualia” (can a zombie/a machine pass for a human being despite the fact that it has no experiences) and of “inverted qualia” (what we both call “red” might have been called “green” by you if you had my internal experience when seeing what we call “red”) – are irrelevant to this more limited discussion. These problems belong to the realm of “private language”. Wittgenstein demonstrated that a language cannot contain elements which it would be logically impossible for anyone but its speaker to learn or understand. Therefore, it cannot have elements (words) whose meaning is the result of representing objects accessible only to the speaker (for instance, his emotions). One can use a language either correctly or incorrectly. The speaker must have at his disposal a decision procedure, which will allow him to decide whether his usage is correct or not. This is not possible with a private language, because it cannot be compared to anything.

In any case, the bodily upset theories propagated by James et al. did not account for lasting or dispositional emotions, where no external stimulus occurred or persisted. They could not explain on what grounds do we judge emotions as appropriate or perverse, justified or not, rational or irrational, realistic or fantastic. If emotions were nothing but involuntary reactions, contingent upon external events, devoid of context – then how come we perceive drug induced anxiety, or intestinal spasms in a detached way, not as we do emotions? Putting the emphasis on sorts of behavior (as the behaviorists do) shifts the focus to the public, shared aspect of emotions but miserably fails to account for their private, pronounced, dimension. It is possible, after all, to experience emotions without expressing them (=without behaving). Additionally, the repertory of emotions available to us is much larger than the repertory of behaviours. Emotions are subtler than actions and cannot be fully conveyed by them. We find even human language an inadequate conduit for these complex phenomena.

(continued)

About the Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam’s Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

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[Herndon, VA]— gomembers, Inc. released version 1.2 of Q, the comprehensive enterprise membership management software built using the Microsoft .NET architecture. Q provides an open, scalable platform with increased performance, lower cost and easy deployment. A browser-based solution, Q provides the ability for users to access their data from virtually anywhere via the Internet.

Version 1.2 offers many enhancements to the product, including increased functionality of the search and entry functions for the membership database, which allows members to update their information via the web. Other improvements are seen in the home page capabilities, improving the individualized user options for their home page function and connectivity with external sources.

Q, its reporting module QRD (Query, Reporting and Data Extraction) and Q-commerce provide a powerful solution for your member driven organization that lets you be more customer-centric with easy-to-use, well-organized web capabilities. Using the latest .NET architecture, Q connects you to companies and entities with different systems and maximizes the technology for all membership functions.

For more information on gomembers’ solutions, please visit the Products section of our website. www.gomembers.com

For any questions, please do not hesitate to contact gomembers via email at: gomembers-inc@gomembers.com

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gomembers, Inc.
gomembers is a leading provider of software solutions for membership, meetings and management of member-based organizations. gomembers’ software and technology enable its customers to automate a number of enterprise resource planning, member relationship management, transaction processing and member-to-member communications functions in a single software platform with seamless inter-processing of data across all applications.

gomembers’ membership, meeting, event planning and related solutions are used to improve operating efficiencies, enhance member services and enable interaction with and between members. Meeting and convention planning software products enable customers to coordinate virtually all of the required functions for complete event management. All gomembers’ products are built using the latest technology including Microsoft’s .NET framework.

gomembers sells its solutions through a direct sales force and provides a wide range of customizations, training and support service to their customers.

About the Author

None

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Your Bible At Your Fingertips

It is fairly easy to find a pda Bible free download online. Your pocket pc can become your own private spriritual asset for daily scripture readings and further Bible study. A variety of Bible software free downloads are available on a variety of sites, for free and as shareware, which costs a nominal amount.

Many people feel that their life is not complete without a copy of the Bible at their fingertips, and a pda makes it a reality. A free download of Bible software to your palm pilot is easy, and the bible software downloads are simple to operate and very user-friendly.

There are many versions of free Bible downloads, so that you can have the version that you like best or that best suits your needs. While the standard edition is the easiest to find for free online, other version can be located. For instance, you can get a free download of Bible software in any of these versions, Modern King James version, Old English King James version, revised version, BBE or Bible in Basic English version, and the NIV version, which is tailored to both lay and ordained ministers.

Many free download sites offer companion Bible software, too. You can download Bible games that test your knowledge and other types of Bible software to help you interpret the Bible and understand how it applies to your daily life. It only makes sense in today’s high-tech world to use your pocket pc to improve your life in any way you choose.

About the Author

Dan Ayala is webmaster and publisher of PDA-Review-Online.com, offering reviews on PDAs, Palm Pilots, Pocket PC’s, software and accessories. PDA Review Online provides free information and recommendations for your online resources that you can download anytime or anywhere.

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Relate men’s topmost quests and you’re certain to track down something named a sportsbook wagering web property. What could be more imaginative? If you see a set of buddies cheering a given chosen favorite players, and regularly antes are computed alongside the racket. Because they want to get their share of the exhilaration, onlookers will ordinarily seek to figure who will win in the upcoming fight. This all eventually develops into a little affable fight titled sportsbook wagering web property.

No doubt it may well appear to be uncontrollable, nevertheless sportsbook wagers is really solely for fun and to team up with fellow sports devotees. You can bet a a piddling sum of kitty and yet enjoy an ultra cool time. Read on for a group of basic suggestions to help everyone get started sportsbook wagers.

If you want to place your bet, you’ll probably want to go to a sportsbook wagering web property, that’s to say a place which offers sportsbook wagering web property. In the USA, you can find no less than four states where to go for sportsbook wagers officially, but inofficially you can attempt it anyplace assuming you locate a bookie AND you’re legally of age. The sports events you have a choice of betting on are professional and, furthermore, college basketball as well as football, professional hockey, professional hockey, and, furthermore, betting on both dog and horse racing. Punters may bet money on the complete tally of a contest or game, in what round a given opponent will be defeated, and even if a tossed coin in a contest or game will come down either heads or tails.

The sportsbook company depend on their figures to assist you discern which players you may deem will win. First of all, there is the chances, meaning specific leverage in terms of points assigned to a disadvantaged contestor that is anticipated to go under by a specific number points. Of course there are different types of bets– parlay lays, straight bets, where all you have to do is to guess the side which you think is the likeliest to win or go under, over/under bets, teaser stakes and more, the straight bets being the most typical in sportsbook wagers.

So, why not take a stab at it, and relax at one go? Only be sure that you won’t get overwhelmed and kill your complete retirement income on a quirk! Because could be you will end up full of misgivings all life long! Wow your friends: Learn to play sports betting and wagering like the pros!

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