The Toyota’s Culture

Toyota culture : Toyota Motor Corporation is considered as the world's largest automobile manufacturer . And Toyota’s culture is consider as one of the determinants of its success. Therefore Toyota culture is very famous. Specific Toyota’s culture is condensed The Toyota Way. The Toyota Way is a set of principles and behaviors that underlie the Toyota Motor Corporation's managerial approach and production system. It has two parts : 1 – The first part is called â€Å" The Toyota Way 2001†. It consists of 5 principles in two key areas: continuous improvement, and respect for people. The Toyota Way 2001† is illustrated by the following house : The Toyota Way 2001 We can realize that the Toyota Way 2001 house has two pillars are Continous Improvement and Respect for People. All Toyota members, at every level, are expected to use these values in their daily work and interactions. 1. 1 – Respect for People is a broad commitment. It means respect for all people touched by Toyota including employees, customers, investors, suppliers, dealers, the communities in which Toyota operates and society at large.It has two sub-calegories : – Respect : we respect others, make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and do our best to build mutual trust. – Teamwork : we stimulate personal professional growth, share the opportunities of development and maximize individual and team performance. 1. 2 – Continuous Improvement is defined as â€Å"we are never satisfied with where we are and always improve our business by putting forth our best ideas and efforts†.It has three sub categories to complete the house : – Challenge : we form a long-term vision meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realize our dream. – Kaizen : we improve our business operations continuously, always driving for innovation and evolution. – Genchi Genbutsu : we believe in going to the source t o find the facts to make correct decisions, build consensus and achieve goals at our best speed. 2 –The second part includes 14 principles that are found out by experts, and are divided into 4 section : 2. 1 Section I : Long-Term Philosophy is Principle 1 : Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals. 2. 2 Section II — The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results includes from principle 2 to principle 8. – Principle 2 : Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface. – Principle 3 : Use â€Å"pull† systems to avoid overproduction. – Principle 4 : Level out the workload ( heijunka ). ( Work like the tortoise, not the hare ). – Principle 5 : Build a culture of stopping the production line to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. Principle 6 : Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empow erment. – Principle 7 : Use visual control so no problems are hidden. – Principle 8 : Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.2. 3 Section III — Add Value to the Organization by Developing Your People includes from principle 9 to principle 11 : – Principle 9 : Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others. Principle 10 : Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy. – Principle 11 : Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve. 2. 4 Section IV — Continuously Solving Root Problems Drives Organizational Learning includes from principle 12 to principle 14 : – Principle 12 : Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation ( Genchi Genbutsu ). – Principle 13 : Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement de cisions rapidly ( nemawashi ). Principle 14 : Become a learning organization through relentless reflection ( hanse i) and continuous improvement ( kaizen ). Beside â€Å" The Toyota Way 2001† and 14 principles that is covered above, the Toyota culture is also dominated by Japaneses working culture. For example, they favor senior ; they work hard and play hard, they venerate the business card†¦. All of them make success of Toyota Motor Corporation. They are values gold principle that we should study.

Anthony Burgess’s novella Essay

Anthony Burgess’s novella â€Å"A Clockwork Orange†, written in 1962, explores the destruction of the lives of the protagonist’s private worlds and presents a potential nightmarish society. The reader sees the mindless violence preformed by Alex and the Droogs during the scene in which they destroy the writer, F Alexander, and ravage his wife. The lives of the gang seem to create a contradiction as they are trying to create an alternative society with those who he decides are acceptable, it appears to the reader as a dystopian one. A question seems to arise as to whether the protagonists have free will, or whether their actions are pre determined by fate. Alex believes that every one is born evil and therefore capable of wicked things. The evilness in the world is inevitable; he does not view this of his own actions. Burgess’ novella poses the question; is a man who chooses the destruction of others perhaps in some way better than a man who has the traditional ways imposed upon him? This is a dilemma that is never solved in Alex’s private world. Burgess created a character that has to go to the furthest extent to feel free; it seems that he was made evil by the government, perhaps presenting an artist, as he approaches the ultra violence as though it was a piece of art to be admired, the â€Å"malenky cri ches† from the wife with the beating of â€Å"Dim’s fisty work† seem like music to Alex, Emphasised by the â€Å"dancing around† Dim did at the same time. This scene can be eluded with the real life experience of the author’s wife’s brutal attack, where she was beaten and raped in the early 1940†². Burgess states -â€Å"it was certainly no pleasure to write†. Burgess uses the experience of his wife to the destruction of the protagonist, â€Å"While I ripped away at this and that. † shows the violence. Even if it was in simple words, make the act itself seem like a simple one to Alex. The act of rape itself is a primitive, atavistic act, a nightmarish vision celebrated by Alex and the Droogs and it is more like an animal act as they were â€Å"roaring like some animal† before it began While the book itself is a prophetic tale where bands of adolescent hooligans roam, and rule over the towns at night. Although this is ironic due to the violent nature of the protagonists and it shows Alex as an atavistic There seems to neither be aspects of the bystander effect especially in this scene, as the violence is known but the government does not get in the way to prevent from happening. Alex has a robotic quality, like the title he is also â€Å"clockwork,† linking to the â€Å"malenky toys. † toys usually being for children, showing Alex’s young age of 15 when he describes the crime in this passage. We can say Alex exercises his free will here. He choose to some extent evil, and is then robbed of his free will when sent to prison and used as an experiment, thus making him nothing more then a shell of who he was. It’s not free will as the drugs enhance their experience showing it as bought on by drugs within the milk instead of his decisions although we can see he would want to commit the violence anyway although it makes it difficult to view his actions as free. He does think he is choosing to be free by not conforming to the government and doing what he wants as he tries to rebel against this society. This is viewed as more of a rebellion to free him as is felt to be based on Russia’s political state which had a communist government and this scared most western countries giving the novel poor reviews when it was originally published and it became banned from many countries. The title originated from an English pub, from the phrase â€Å"As queer as clockwork orange† presenting something as natural, organic on the outside nevertheless working as a mechanical object. Indicating the twisted actions performed by Alex. Also through the Russian political movement at the time, it is present as nihilistic as Russia sought to bring a new society by destroying the old one through terrorism and assassination. â€Å"Oh Brother† is repeated, Alex acknowledges the reader, this cohesive device links Alex’s destruction he even shows this through the passage, making it more emotive to the reader with â€Å"and I began to feel like in distress, o my brothers†, To show us his discomfort, here is a dystopian theme of humiliation which also features when he is in prison he is the figure of everyman, there are many more like him in this society and this is where they will end up sooner or later. Burgess intentionally put 21 chapters as a subtle nod that this was the age of adulthood as he looks back on his life, reflecting on what he wants his child to then be like. The violence seems to be part of a dystopian fantasy and is mirrored to the violence of the sixties, the â€Å"Mods and Rockers† giving the book relations not only to the Russian revolution but to English problems around the time. He also writes the book in such a way that he adds words that have no relation to the English language called Nadsat which is a mixture of cockney English and Russian. This in effect provides us the choice as to whether or not we wish to engage and understand the violence actions as the words make it seem less violence. In this nightmarish vision the protagonist has lost something, due to monstrous force, additionally in the sacrifice of Alex later in the book where the government use him in the experiment for a new treatment, Or when F Alexander uses him as a guinea pig for his own exploits to hold against the government, and having the feeling of displacement as they can not overcome why this is happening in their place of safety, and in ruining the home. It also suggests there is a lack of justice, Alex views his way of living as Utopian â€Å"dream† from the effects of Milk Plus and â€Å"Cancers†. Emphasising how Burgess uses the word â€Å"Cancers† instead of cigarettes to emphasize the negative connotation of the word, implying that it always brings death in the end, also it makes Alex seems uncaring that he can use the word so often, not caring about what is actually means. A society itself is meant to change over time but as this is a dystopian one it has no progression. Burgess didn’t like the idea that society could become mindlessly totalitarianism where the â€Å"laws and conditions appropriate to the mechanical creation† and the mechanical creation being the â€Å"Clockwork Orange. † He expresses that one of the main themes in the book is the danger of a totalitarianism society in the belief that Alex and the Droogs are trying to create a new society through destruction. In conclusion, the rules of the government dehumanise Alex, and others of his age to the extremes they go to so they can feel free. In this extent they deliberately dehumanise others. The passage presents this horror with a scene in which there is a death but no justice making the dystopian theme for a place lacking justice ring true. Burgess set out in this iconic novella to express a system of social disarray through the eyes of a protagonist, immersed in a world of double standards and duality.

Advantages Of Effective Communication

Advantages Of Effective Communication Effective communication is the act of using correct word in order to get your message across and keep in mind who is receiving it. For example most people often use up to date slang when with friends as a mean of talking effective considering the best way to get their message to that person. Advantages of effective communication The fact is that while you already know how to communicate, learning a some simple principles that can be used at once will make you an effective communicator and give you enormous advantage in today’s extreme competitive business world. Conflict is reduced. Conflict can arouse from the smallest word or action and can cause destructive responses and behaviours .Unsolved or poorly navigated conflict can harm and even ruin relationships.   Most conflict is cause by misunderstood communication. When you turn out to be an effective communicator, you can solve conflict and create harmony by bridging the communication gaps that create conflict. You can ev en use your skills to resolve conflict between other people. Effective communication skills provide a key role in successfully resolving conflict, both in the home and in the workplace. Help people  to  adopt your ideas.   Knowing how to persuade and getting people adopted to your idea require you to nudge hard and do things that will piss people off to make them adopt your ideas. Effective communication is not about â€Å"you† and getting what you want†¦ it is about becoming aware of what other people want and need and then adapting your presentation to match their needs. As you practice and develop your skills, you will find that people easily  adopt your ideas because you have cleverly helped them to notice them for themselves rather than telling them about them. Have stronger relationships. A keen, healthy relationship can be best achieves in your life. Good relationships enhance every part of your life, supporting your health, mind, and your connections with others. Some relationships are special and people often come all together for several reasons. Effective communication builds strong business and personal relationships and allowing you understand exactly what people want  and how to give it to them. At the same time, it allows you know how to communicate your thoughts and emotions in ways that people we automatically understand at an unconscious level. Lead to successful career. Effective communication provides people great advantage in getting good jobs which they had passion for, balancing their mood of life both in academic, moral aspect and bring out the out of life. People will like you better. People grow very accustomed to a certain manner in life. We like to celebrate individuality in the world and also discriminate against to that are dissimilar to us. Gratefully, effective communication shows us that we don’t need to decide between these two polarities. We can communicate in a way which is similar to other peopl e while still keeping the honour of our individuality. In order to be unique easily express what you want to express (say what you want to say and do what you want to do but in a way which is familiar and understandable to other people. Using effective communication will aid you to understand other people well and when you understand them, you will relate to them well. When you relate well, people will like you more.

Cost and Benefit Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Cost and Benefit Analysis - Essay Example However, Lord Heseltine claimed in public forum on 12th November 2013 that though the money to be invested in the project high, the investors should not take account of it. He further indicated that the project was lucrative as it was ‘really imaginative’ and its nominal investment requirement is worth the benefits. Nonetheless, other ministers claimed that if this project would be indeed funded, then it would substantially increase the incidence of taxation on the general taxpayers in Britain. So, they requested to cut down the investment fund of the project by at least 10 billion. They also recommended that the government of the country should try to increase contributions of the private sector in the project. On the contrary, Heseltine claimed that the money invested through huge in the project would bring greater economic growth in the country, as it would augment the overall wellbeing of the northern and southern regions of the nation. He also claimed that with grea t risks come great opportunities and thus, it is highly economic to invest in the concerned project. It was stated by Lord Heseltine that through monetary investment value for the HS2 project was high, it was highly rational to invest such huge amounts in the project; as it was productive and imaginative and could generate large returns in the long run. Even so, the economists always considered monetary benefit and cost analysis to estimate the worth of making an investment. This is because; in the real world, the business operates are subjected to different fluctuations in market conditions generated by internal and external externalities. The economists regard the three above factors to examine cost-benefit analysis of a government project.

Career Self-Efficacy Theory Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Career Self-Efficacy Theory - Research Paper Example A new part of my entrepreneurial careers commenced as I opened a daycare center at home so I could both earn a living and also be near my children. When they finally were old enough to go to school, I resumed my IT career but I realized that I had been out for too long, and I needed to hone my skills so as to catch up, I worked part-time in computer maintenance, until I got a realtors license and started a new career. I have so far managed to juggle family, education and my realtor job and am finally at a point where I am about to complete my degree; I could either look for a job in the computer sector again or use my IT skills to develop my realtor career and possible strike out on my own. From my career trajectory, I can examine myself through several theoretical viewpoints that are concerned with work and career, Donald Super’s theory of living space and lifespan is particularly applicable since it describes a career trajectory in stages of occupational preferences and comp etencies that change as one grows (Savickas, 1997). His theory is founded on the concept of vocational maturity which can correspond to one’s chronological age since people move through a variety of stages throughout their professional life. The first stage is growth which involved the development of a self-concept as one adjusts to their needs and figures out their environment, the stage is normally from self-awareness to when one is around 14. In my case, I had already decided I wanted to be independent which is why I started working at age 12.   The second step is exploration between 15 and 24 where one tries out various concepts before they decide which they will settle for; this was true in my case as I worked various jobs throughout high school and college before I decided to pursue computer studies.

Are hospital consent forms being completed to government guidlines Essay

Are hospital consent forms being completed to government guidlines - Essay Example One such place where such government guidelines are adopted is in the case of obtaining the consent of a patient. ‘Consent’ is the right given by a patient to the concerned authority in the hospital, permitting them to implement the necessary procedures as defined by that consent. This process is formalized using a consent form, wherein a patient is required to sign a document that details about the procedures that are to be adopted in order to serve the patient. Some common situations wherein a patient is required to fill up a form is in the case of an operation, wherein the consent form details the possible dangers that exist, the procedure proposed to be adopted etc. the operation commences only when the patient has given his consent that the operation procedure be adopted, by signing the consent form. As such, it can be seen that most tasks within a hospital environment revolve around the consent form. Any consent form is governed by a set of government guidelines that specify various aspects of what a for should contain and the manner in which one is supposed to fill them. However, doubts are being raised from various quarters on the manner in which these forms are being filled up. People have been raising numerous questions such as whether these forms are really being filled up in the way they should be, whether hospitals do indeed stick to the specified guidelines, whether the filled consent forms are properly verified, whether the consent has been taken voluntarily or by compulsion etc. therefore, there needs to be a study conducted in this regard that provides answers to all these queries. For the purpose of the proposed research, a number of options were available. However, the most suitable method deemed appropriate in the context of the current dissertation is to use quantitative research methods for the purpose of performing analysis. This is due to the reason that there is a large amount of information as

Global marketing ethic and culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Global marketing ethic and culture - Essay Example hese two giants turned into a contentious issue that included business rivalry, questions over ethics, loss of jobs and nationalistic feelings, to boot. This paper examines the issue from the above mentioned angles and applies management theory to the case where relevant to establish linkages between theory and practice. The first and foremost issue that was raised by the proposed takeover is the fact of monopolistic tendencies arising out of a conglomeration of two business giants. The next issue is that of undervaluation and the correct pricing structure to be applied in such a case. Further, the interests of stakeholders have to be considered as well. Finally, the issue of job losses and nationalistic sentiment playing upon the emotions of the parties involved in the debate has to be considered as well. The proposed takeover and the aftermath of the proposal turned into a business saga replete with all the action and drama one would normally associate with a business thriller. When Kraft first approached Cadbury with an intention to purchase it at a valuation of $16.2 Billion in late 2009, the offer was rejected outright by Cadbury which claimed that at this price Cadbury was undervalued. Subsequently, the offer bid was revised and Kraft even went to the extent of mounting a hostile takeover bid. After a corporate battle that lasted well over two months, both parties announced in January this year that they have agreed to a merger between the two at a valuation for Cadbury at $18.9 Billion. As one of the trade journals put it, â€Å"The historic acquisition of Cadbury International by Kraft Foods Inc. of US has just been concluded. After a five-month siege, Kraft Foods on the 19th of January, 2009 won the highly-publicised battle for Cadbury, turning its hostile approach friendly and securing the support of the UK confectioner’s board in its takeover bid. As the dust settles, industry watchers are asking what this remarkable development holds for the global

Bancassurance and assurancebank strategie Essay

Bancassurance and assurancebank strategie - Essay Example Hence, an opening up of the markets eventually led the production houses to operate in an environment saturated with stringent competition. The companies worldwide have responded to this change by adapting themselves into newer strategies while designing their financial plans. Many firms have introduced added features in their operations so that they are able to meet more of the people’s demands and thus are able to capture a higher fraction of the market. Since it becomes easier for people to shop or transact under the same roof, this introduced feature is enough to lure them (Staikouras, 2009). One such move that was simultaneously embraced by the insurance as well as the banking sector was that of indulging themselves in each other’s activities. Hence, two new strategies of ‘bancassurance’ and ‘assurancebank’ were introduced in some of the units in the banking and the insurance sectors respectively (Nurullah & Staikouras, 2008). For instance, in Europe, there is the HSBC Bank which has adopted the strategy of ‘bankassurance’ while there is the ING Group which has embraced the other strategy. The strategy of bancassurance implies an embedding of the insurance sector in the activities of the banking sector (Ennew & Waite, 2007). The advantage to the customers in case such a strategy is introduced are, firstly, they are able to transact under a single roof which is time as well as cost-saving, and secondly, the moment that a customer takes some loan, he automatically is entitled to the insurance benefit that accompanies it. Thus, if the loan is meant for some investment and it fails to reap the returns it is expected to yield after a specified time period, then an insurance coverage will help him to forgo the loan and thus the person’s tremor is reduced by a great extent. The HSBC Group adopted the

Cyber Attacks and Politics from a technological and security Essay

Cyber Attacks and Politics from a technological and security perspectives - Essay Example The act of cyber attack is commonly known as the computer network attack (CNA). Politics encompasses the manner in which a nation or political entity is being governed. The term is primarily concerned with the controlling and the administration of the internal and the external affairs of that particular entity. In addition, this term is also applicable in other institutions such as religious or academic with regards to how authority and power is exercised within them and the tactics as well as the methods applied in the formulation and application of policies for the organization. This paper will focus on establishing the cyber attacks acts and politics from either the technological or security point of view. The government of all nations should put in place effective cyber security measures. These should be specifically aimed at detecting and combating all acts of cyber attacks, especially cyber terrorism. This can be done by governments allotting adequate funds to the relevant entities such as the ministry of defense to enable it counter attacks such acts. Cyber security deals with the protection of information and information systems against the significant threats that global computer networks face. Some of these threats include cyber terrorism, cyber espionage and cyber warfare (Czosseck & Geers, 2009). These threats are mainly targeted towards the political, infrastructure and military assets of the nation or at other time people within it. Cyber security is a highly critical issue that nation’s government should enact appropriate strategies of security to handle (Macaulay, 2009). For instance, the federal government of the United State embarked on allotting more than $ 13 billion each year from the year 2010 to cater for the Cyber security. The reason why governments should be concerned with the issue of cyber security with regards to terrorism is because terrorists groups use the

Operations and logistics management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Operations and logistics management - Essay Example This makes the task easier since payments are made online and the registration process is simple and very easy to understand. Since the data is usually fed into the client side computer, the aspect of reaching out to the already registered customers through the database helps the company in spreading its message, getting their point across to the relevant target audiences and so on and so forth. (Cade, 1996) The negative aspects include the manner in which verification still needs to be done through the physical presence of a person, especially at the airport terminal where the online booking is re-confirmed and there have been instances when the travelers have returned due to missing information, all of which cannot be made available online. This is a very cumbersome process for the traveler and he undergoes agony and distress at the hands of the authorities. At other times, visa restrictions and incomplete data has accounted for a number of different problems as well. However this style of service (online booking) has been on the development side and more and more travelers are booking their tickets online, so as to save on fuel and time constraints. This is a busy world where business people have issues dealing with certain problems and hence they find it best to book tickets online and earn rewards as well. (Griffin, 2002) On the flip side, for a newbie traveler this can pose problems since he might encounter different problems at the hands of the online booking form, the agent or the whole service in essence. Hence there could be a number of improvements made within the related circles. For one, they could adopt a more comprehensive cover for the potential customer who is the traveler at the end of the day. They could offer services which are readily available when the customer makes a physical appearance at the travel agent’s office. (Molina, 2001) They can avoid the litigation measures and

The Modern Era Essay Example for Free

The Modern Era Essay Early Modern World Historians sometimes refer to the era between the premodern (or medieval) and late modern eras as the â€Å"early modern world.† The world during this era was increasingly united by the projection of European power abroad, especially in the Americas. Although early modern Europeans still had little knowledge of, let alone hegemony (influence) over, the inland regions of Africa and Asia, the links created and dominated by Europeans made the entire world a stage for fundamental historical processes. Historians debate, or pass over in silence, the problem of determining the precise starting and ending dates of the early modern world and have produced only the vaguest consensus. Roughly, the era of the early modern world began during the fifteenth century with the Timurid (relating to the Turkic conqueror Timur) and Italian cultural renaissances. The year 1405 serves as a convenient starting date because it marks not only the death of Timur, the last great central Asian conqueror to join farmers and nomads into a single empire, but also the first of the Chinese admiral Zheng He’s (c. 1371–1435) naval expeditions to the â€Å"Western Oceans.† The era might be taken to end in the late eighteenth century with the French and Industrial revolutions, both European events of global consequence in the late modern world. The uncertainty of this periodization derives in part from the concept of an early modern Europe, with its own uncertain chronological boundaries, and in part from the unconsidered way in which both phrases entered historical scholarship. Origins of the Concept Although conceptually the phrase early modern world is an extension of the phrase early modern Europe, the initial histories of both phrases have some surprises. The earliest known appearance of the phrase early modern world occurs in Willard Fisher’s â€Å"Money and Credit Paper in the Modern Market†Ã‚  from The Journal of Political Economy (1895). Although Fisher writes, â€Å"We all know that the system of bank credits and bank money, which was introduced into the great commercial centers of the early modern world, has now attained a quite marvelous development† (1895, 391), the geographical sense of his statement is strictly, if implicitly, European. On the other hand, the phrase early modern Europe first shows up twenty years later, in Dixon Ryan Fox’s â€Å"Foundations of West India Policy† in Political Science Quarterly (1915). Fox remarks, â€Å"It was now realized by students of colonial history that in the Caribbean [the â€Å"West India† of the article’s title] might best be traced the application of those principles which formed the working basis for the old empires of early modern Europe† (1915, 663). Ironically, the phrase early modern Europe first appeared in the Caribbean, in the global context of colonialism, in an article advocating trans-Atlantic history. In their debu ts each phrase bore something of the other’s sense. Fox’s usage was an anomaly, and when the phrase early modern Europe arrived in Europe, it had come to stay. The phrase early modern world, however, for decades would imply world to mean, in an indefinite way, immediate rather than global surroundings; because this historical scholarship dealt with European subjects, the â€Å"early modern world† was in fact â€Å"early modern Europe.† The early modern world became global only with C. F. Strong’s grammar school textbook The Early Modern World (1955) and S. Harrison Thomson’s 1964 review of J. H. Parry’s The Age of Reconnaissance, in which Thomson uses the phrase to describe the â€Å"story of the successive expansion of European venture, from Africa to the reaches of the Indian Ocean by Arabs and Portuguese by sea, the movement westward to the Americas and the early transition from discovery to fishing, trading, and exploitation†(1964, 188). The first considered analysis of the early mo dern world came after the posthumous publication of Joseph Fletcher’s article â€Å"Integrative History† in 1985. Such analysis has tended to adopt either a deductive or an inductive approach. Deductive Approach A deductive approach to the early modern world compares premodernity and late modernity, devises the characteristics necessary to bridge the two stages, and only then seeks confirmation in the historical record. This approach assumes the existence of a modernizing trajectory, which the early modern world shared with (and perhaps inherited from) early modern Europe. Informed by a Marxist perspective, the essentials of the early modern world would highlight transitions from feudal to bourgeois, from serfdom to wage-earning proletariat, and from local subsistence to regional market economies. A functionalist understanding of modernity, of the sort theorized by the German sociologist Max Weber, the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons, or the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, explains social phenomena in terms of their ability to fulfill social needs and broadens this base beyond the mode of production. Here the critical shifts would be from belief in miracles to belief in science, from household-based craft production powered by muscle, dung, water, and wood to factory-based mass production powered by electricity and fossil fuels, and from government justified by tradition to government consciously invented. Even in the context of early modern Europe critics challenge the effectiveness of a deductive approach by condemning its implication of an inevitable progress from premodernity to modernity. A deductive approach takes little cognizance of the possibilities of various starting points, different destinations, and particular paths. In some twentieth-century cases the transition to modernity was less a progression than a violently dramatic change. When expanded to a global context this approach becomes not only teleological (assuming a design or purpose in history), but also artificially Eurocentric. Inductive Approach Rather than specify theoretical factors to be sought in the time period, an inductive approach examines what happened in different places and extracts from what happened a set of common features. Although such an approach removes the theoretical obstacle of a modernizing trajectory, the historian is left with the Herculean task of specifying processes that united all,  most, or many of the world’s peoples. Such an approach need not focus on Europe, nor need it measure the success of various regions in terms of their progress along Europe’s path. How closely do the rough chronological parameters suggested here match the conventional historiographies (the writings of history) of the various regions outside Europe?  Traditional periodizations in African and American history are directly linked to European expansion. Marked by a European presence that could not yet dominate the continent, an early modern Africa might last from the Portuguese capture of Ceuta, a port on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar (1415), until the development of quinine and steamships in the nineteenth century. The first Niger steamship expedition returned without casualties in 1854. An early modern America might stretch from the encounters of 1492 until the period of independence movements, from 1776 to the independence of Brazil in 1822. An early modern India might begin with the fifth generation descendant of Timur, Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, whose ancestry inspired him to conquer northern India. The Mughal dynasty he founded (1526) would rule effectively for two centuries; the British would take charge of its Delhi nucleus in 1803. An early modern Japan stretches from the unification efforts of Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) to the end of the Tokugawa shogunate (the dictatorship of a Japanese military governor) in 1867. Other regional historiographies fit less naturally. Although the Ottomans’ 1453 conquest of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) was timely, the Chinese Ming dynasty began too early (1368) and ended inconveniently in the middle of our early modern period (1644). Worse, key modernizing revolutions came late relative to the western European timetable the Chinese Revolution in 1911, the Russian Bolshevik revolution in 1917, and the Kemalist (relating to the Turkish soldier and statesman Kemal Ataturk) revolution in Turkey in 1923. The actual use of the phrase early modern in the periodization of regional histories varies. Outside of Europe, it is most commonly used in Asia, especially in works on China, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, India. Historians of China sometimes extend the period into the twentieth century. Far fewer historians write of an â€Å"early modern Africa† or an â€Å"early modern Brazil.† This fact is due in part to the power of the word colonial to identify these time periods. Latin American periodization is so consistently divided into pre-Columbian, colonial, and national periods that there is no need for the phrase early  modern, which should correspond to the middle, colonial period. In fact, the phrase early modern Mexico sometimes refers to the period immediately after independence. The divergence of these traditional periodizations of regional histories, so often linked to high-level political history, should not surprise. The global historian in search of an early modern world can look beyond these periodizations to seek processes that enveloped wide swaths of the planet. Development of Global Sea Passages Nothing is more characteristic of the early modern world than the creation of truly global sea passages. Before 1492 the Americas remained essentially isolated from Eurasia. In 1788 the last key sea passage was completed by the first permanent settlement of Europeans in Australia. This passage also concluded the integration of the Pacific Ocean as a geographical concept, a process that began when the Spanish explorer Vasco Nuà ±ez de Balboa became the first European to see the Pacific from America in 1513. During the early fifteenth century the Europeans were unlikely candidates to fill the key role in this process of exploration. Portuguese exploration of the African coast was declining, and mariners were reluctant to sail out of sight of land. Even the overland excursions undertaken by Europeans had become more modest. Muslims still controlled southern Iberia, and in 1453 the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. Smart money would have looked rather at the Chinese admiral Zheng He, whose seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433  reached even the shores of eastern Africa. A change in Chinese imperial policy halted these expeditions, and the voyages that finally connected the world were directed by Europeans. In 1522 the survivors of the expedition of the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. During the following centuries a skilled captain and crew could navigate a ship from any port to any port and reasonably expect to arrive. In 1570 the Flemish cartographer Ortelius published what has been described as the first modern atlas, the Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theater of the World); this comprehensive yet handy and inexpensive work enjoyed immediate success. By the end of the period the best mapped region of the world would be China. Global Demographic Interconnections The world’s population doubled during the early modern period, from approximately 374 million (1400) to 968 million people (1800). Although demographic data are limited, some patterns emerge. Rapid growth was punctuated by a seventeenthcentury decline in Europe, Russia, Iran, Central Asia, China, and Korea and recovery from this decline occurred globally, even in the Americas. The more populous regions tended to grow more rapidly. The new global sea passages set the stage for a transatlantic â€Å"Columbian exchange† (the biological and cultural exchange between the New World and the Old World that began with the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus) and for a transpacific â€Å"Magellan exchange† of crops and disease pathogens that put the peoples of the world in a more direct demographic relationship than ever before. The arrival of American maize and potatoes in Eurasia, and later in Africa, facilitated an intensive agricultural, and thus demographic, growth, and the appearance of tomatoes in Italy and chili peppers in India had important dietary and culinary consequences. Disease also became a global phenomenon. First appearing in Europe in 1494, venereal syphilis reached India four years later, and by 1505 it had  outraced the Portuguese to China. The New World’s isolation and limited biodiversity (biological diversity as indicated by numbers of species of plants and animals) did not afford its indigenous peoples the same immunities enjoyed by Europeans, who as children were exposed to a multiplicity of infections. Measles, smallpox, and other diseases brought by Europeans triggered a long-term demographic catastrophe. The indigenous population of central Mexico declined from 30 million in 1518 to 1.6 million in 1620 a genocide unintended, misunderstood, and undesired by the Spanish who sought souls for salvation and laborers for their mines. Contact with the wider world wrought similar demographic calamities on other isolated peoples, including Pacific Islanders, Siberian tribes, and the Khoikhoi of southern Africa. Increased contacts distributed pathogens more evenly throughout the world and generally reduced susceptibility to epidemic disease. Development of a Global Economy The development of global sea passages integrated America into a truly global economy. Rapidly growing long distance commerce linked expanding economies on every continent. Dutch merchants in Amsterdam could purchase commodities anywhere in the world, bring them to Amsterdam, store them safely, add value through processing and packaging, and sell them for profit. Intensive production fueled by the commercialism of an increasingly global market gave new importance to cash crops and sparked an unprecedented expansion in the slave trade. The movement of manufactured goods from eastern Asia toward Europe and America created a chain of balance-of-trade deficits, which funneled silver from American mines to China. Regular transpacific trade developed during the decades after the founding of Manila in the Philippines in 1571 and followed the same pattern: Exports of porcelain and silks from China created a trade imbalance that sucked silver from the Americas and from Japan. Through military-commercial giants such as the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602), European merchants disrupted traditional trading  conditions in Africa and Asia to muscle into regional â€Å"country trade.† The expansion of settled populations, as well as the new ocean trade route alternatives to the Silk Road that linked China to the West, contributed to the decline of nomadism. The agriculture of settled peoples supported large populations and tax bases that an efficient state could translate into permanent military strength. Development of Large and Efficient States The global trade in firearms and similar weapons contributed to the growth of large and efficient states, known as â€Å"gunpowder empires.† Expensive and complex, the most advanced weapons became a monopoly of centralized states, which employed them to weaken local opposition. During the mid-fifteenth century the king of France used artillery to reduce some sixty castles annually. Administrative procedures also became increasingly routinized and efficient. Ever more abstract notions of state authority accompanied the evolution of new  sources of legitimacy. From the Irrawaddy River in Asia to the Seine River in Europe, religious uniformity served to reinforce and confirm centralized rule. The ideal of universal empire was native to America, Africa, and Eurasia. The early modern unification of England with Scotland and Ireland was paralleled throughout Europe. If in 1450 Europe contained six hundred independent political units (or more, depending on the criteria), in the nineteenth century it contained around twentyfive. About thirty independent city-states, khanates (state governed by a ruler with the Mongol title â€Å"khan†), and princedoms were absorbed into the Russian empire. By 1600 the Tokugawa shogunate had unified Japan. Fourteenth century southeastern Asia had two dozen independent states that evolved into Vietnam, Siam (Thailand), and Burma (Myanmar) by 1825. The Mughals unified India north of the Deccan Plateau for the first time since the Mauryan empire (c. 321–185 BCE). Unification was also an overture to expansion. In addition to an increasing European presence worldwide, Qing China (1644–1912) invaded Xinjiang,  Mongolia, Nepal, Burma, and Formosa, and during the seventeenth century Romanov Russia stretched out to the Pacific. The new unities led relentlessly to new fragmentations and hierarchies, and resistance to such centralizing political forces was equally universal. During the century between 1575 and 1675, for example, uprisings occurred in China, Japan, India, Armenia, Georgia, Kurdistan, Ukraine, the Balkans, the German lands, Switzerland, France, Catalonia, Portugal, England, Ireland, and Mexico. At the end of the period, the French Revolution (1789) would enjoy global influence as the first revolution modern in its progressive, absolute, and sudden nature. Intensification of Land Use The concurrence of population growth, global markets, and aggressive states led to wider and more intensive use of land. Displacing or subordinating indigenous peoples, pioneers backed by aggressive states drained wetlands and cleared forests to create new lands for intensive commercial, agricultural, and pastoral regimes. (Similarly, commercial hunters pursued various species of flora and fauna to extinction for sale on a global market.) Oblivious to any land claims held by indigenous peoples, states would offer pioneers low taxes in exchange for settlement and land rights. For example, the Mughal Empire provided land grants, Hindu merchants provided capital, and Sufi (Muslim mystic) brotherhoods provided leadership for the communities of Muslim pioneers who transformed the Bengal wetlands into a key rice-producing region. These efforts compensated for the extended disobliging weather patterns that plagued temperate zones throughout the Northern Hemisphere a â€Å"little ice age† affecting climate throughout the early modern world. Religious Revival The most distinctive religious characteristic of this era was the global  expansion of Christianity. Indeed, the impetus driving the creation of global sea passages was religious as well as commercial. The efforts of Catholic religious orders predominated the great Protestant missionary societies would be founded only in the 1790s. Sufi brotherhoods such as the Naqshibandiyah expanded Islam in Africa, India, China, and southeastern Asia.Tibetan Buddhism pushed into northwestern China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Buryatia, and to Kalmikya, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, which remains today the only Buddhist republic in Europe. The increased emphasis on orthodox and textual conventions of Latin Christendom’s Reformation had a parallel in the Raskol schism of the Russian Orthodox Church during the 1650s. Elsewhere, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703–1792) founded the Wahabbi movement to reform Sunni Islam under strict Quranic interpretation. Many people believed that the era that historians call â€Å"early modern† would be the last. Franciscan apocalyptic thought inspired Columbus, and the belief that the god Quetzalcoatl would return from the East in a One Reed year led the Aztec sovereign Montezuma II to regard the Spanish conqueror Hernà ¡n Cortà ©s and his comrades as divine envoys. A Jesuit at the court of Akbar in 1581 found the Mughal ruler open to the idea of the imminent end because that year was eleven years from the thousandth anniversary of the Hijra, which was the journey the Prophet Muhammad took from Mecca to Medina in  622 CE. The Jewish Sabbatian movement expected the end of the world in 1666. In late eighteenth-century central China the White Lotus Society awaited the return of the Buddha to put an end to suffering. All these developments might best be understood in the context of notions of history in which significant change was either absent or sudden and awesome. Outlook Neither a deductive nor an inductive approach to the early modern world is  entirely satisfactory. A deductive approach expects to see the entire world following a Eurocentric roadmap to modernization (one that Europe itself might not have followed). An inductive approach respects the diversity of historical experience, but this diversity itself can frustrate attempts to delineate a discrete list of unifying features. If historians can tolerate the inconveniences of regional exceptions to every â€Å"global† process, the idea of an early modern world has its attractions. Although a perspective that twists the world around a European center is unproductive, the regions of the early modern world were increasingly named (in America) and mapped (as in China) by Europeans. Nevertheless, in its application beyond Europe the idea of an early modern world redresses the distortions of the Orientalist assumption of parochial, timeless, and conservative inertias unaltered by European expansion. It recognizes that peoples of the early modern era in some ways had more in common with each other than with their own ancestors and descendents that time unites just as powerfully as place. It facilitates comparative analysis and abets inquiry that trespasses across national boundaries. It sees the entire world as a stage, not only for comparative study, but also for the broadest possible analysis for a historian’s scrutiny. Further Reading Benton, L. (2002). Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400– 1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Black, J. (Ed.). (1999).War in The Early Modern World, 1450–1815. London: UCL Press. Fisher,W. (1895). Money and Credit Paper in the Modern Market. The Journal of Political Economy, 3, 391–413. Fletcher, J. (1985). Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800. Journal of Turkish Studies, 9, 37–57. Flynn, D. O., Giraldez, A. (1995). Born with a Silver Spoon: World Trade’s Origins in 1571. Journal of World History, 6(2), 201–221. Fox, D. R. (1915). Foundations of West India Policy. Political Science Quarterly, 30, 661–672. Frank, A. G. (1998). ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goldstone, J. A. (1991). Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goldstone, J. A. (1998). The Problem of the â€Å"Early Modern† World. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 41, 249–284. Huff,T. E. (1993). The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lieberman,V. (1997). Transcending East-West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas. Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), 463–546. Mousnier, R. (1970). Peasant Uprisings in Seventeenth-Century France, Russia, and China (B. Pearce,Trans.). New York: Harper and Row. Parker,G. (1996). The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pomeranz, K.(2001).The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Richards, J. F. (1997). Early Modern India and World History. Journal of World History, 8, 197–209. Richards, J. F. (2003). The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Starn, R. (2002). The Early Modern Muddle. Journal of Early Modern History, 6(3), 296–307. Strong, C. F. (1955). The Early Modern World. London: University of London Press. Subrahmanyam, S. (1997). Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia. Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), 735– 762. Thomson, S. H. (1964). The Age of Reconnaissance, by J. H. Parry. The Journal of Modern History, 36(2), 187–188. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System. New York: Academic. Wiesner-Hanks, M. (2000). Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating desire, reforming practice. London: Routledge. Wills, J. E., Jr. (2001). 1688: A Global History. New York: Norton. The Modern Era The modern era is the briefest and most turbulent of the three main eras of human history. Whereas the era of foragers lasted more than 200,000 years and the agrarian era about 10,000 years, the modern era has lasted just 250 years. Yet, during this brief era change has been more rapid and more fundamental than ever before; indeed, populations have grown so fast that 20 percent of all humans may have lived during these two and a half centuries. The modern era is also the most interconnected of the three eras. Whereas new ideas and technologies once took thousands of years to circle the globe, today people from different continents can converse as easily as if they lived in a single global village. History has become world history in the most literal sense. For our purposes the modern era is assumed to begin about 1750.Yet, its roots lay deep in the agrarian era, and we could make a good case for a starting date of 1500 or even earlier. Determining the end date of the modern era is even trickier. Some scholars have argued that it ended during the twentieth century and that we now live in a postmodern era. Yet, many features of the modern era persist today and will persist for some time into the future; thus, it makes more sense to see our contemporary period as part of the modern era. This fact means that we do not know when the modern era will end, nor can we see its overall shape as clearly as we might wish. The fact that we cannot see the modern era as a whole makes it difficult to specify its main features, and justifies using the deliberately vague label â€Å"modern.† At present the diagnostic feature of the modern era seems to be a sharp increase in rates of innovation. New technologies enhanced human control over natural resources and stimulated rapid population growth. In their turn, technological and demographic changes transformed lifeways, cultural and religious traditions, patterns of  health and aging, and social and political relationships. For world historians the modern era poses distinctive challenges. We are too close to see it clearly and objectively; we have so much information that we have difficulty distinguishing trends from details; and change has occurred faster than ever before and embraced all parts of the world. What follows is one attempt to construct a coherent overview, based on generalizations that have achieved broad acceptance among world historians. Major Features and Trends of the Modern Era The modern era is the first to have generated a large body of statistical evidence; thus, it is also the first in which we can quantify many of the larger changes. Increases in Population and Productivity Human populations have increased faster than ever before during the modern era, although growth rates slowed during the late twentieth century. Between 1750 and 2000 the number of men and women in the world rose from approximately 770 million to almost 6 billion, close to an eightfold increase in just 250 years. This increase is the equivalent of a growth rate of about 0.8 percent per annum and represents a doubling  time of about eighty-five years. (Compare this with estimated doubling times of fourteen hundred years during the agrarian era and eight thousand to nine thousand years during the era of foragers.) An eightfold increase in human numbers was possible only because productivity rose even faster. The estimates of the economist Angus Maddison suggest that global gross domestic product rose more than ninety fold during three hundred years, whereas production per person rose nine fold. These astonishing increases in productivity lie behind all the most significant changes of the modern era. Productivity rose in part because new technologies were introduced. In agriculture, for example, food production  kept pace with population growth because of improved crop rotations, increased use of irrigation, widespread application of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, and the use of genetically modified crops. However, productivity also rose because humans learned to exploit new sources of energy. During the agrarian era each human controlled, on average, 12,000 kilocalories a day (about four times the energy needed to sustain a human body), and the most powerful prime movers available were domestic animals or wind-driven ships. During the modern era humans have learned to harvest the huge reserves of energy stored in fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas and even to exploit the power lurking within atomic nuclei. Today each person controls, on average, 230,000 kilocalories a day—twenty times as much as during the agrarian era. A world of planes, rockets, and nuclear power has replaced a world of horses, oxen, and wood fires. City Sprawl As populations have increased, so has the average size of human communities. In 1500 about fifty cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, and none had more than a million. By 2000 several thousand cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, about 411 had more than a million, and 41 had more than 5 million. During the agrarian era most people lived and worked in villages; by the end of the twentieth century almost 50 percent of the world’s population lived in communities of at least five thousand people. The rapid decline of villages marked a fundamental transformation in the lives of most people on Earth. As during the agrarian era, the increasing size of communities  transformed lifeways, beginning with patterns of employment: Whereas most people during the agrarian world were small farmers, today most people support themselves by wage work in a huge variety of occupations. Innovations in transportation and communications have transformed relations between communities and regions. Before the nineteenth century no one  traveled faster than the pace of a horse (or a fast sailing ship), and the fastest way to transmit written messages was by state-sponsored courier systems that used relays of horses. Today messages can cross the world instantaneously, and even perishable goods can be transported from one end of the world to another in just a few hours or days. Increasingly Complex and Powerful Governments As populations have grown and people’s lives have become more intertwined, more complex forms of regulation have become necessary, which is why the business of government has been revolutionized. Most premodern governments were content to manage war and taxes, leaving their subjects to get on with their livelihoods more or less unhindered, but the managerial tasks facing modern states are much more complex, and they have to spend more effort in mobilizing and regulating the lives of those they rule. The huge bureaucracies of modern states are one of the most important byproducts of the modern revolution. So, too, are the structures of democracy, which allow governments to align their policies more closely with the needs and capabilities of the large and varied populations they rule. Nationalism—the close emotional and intellectual identification of citizens with their governments—is another by-product of these new relationships between governments and those they rule. The presence of democracy and nationalism may suggest that modern governments are more reluctant to impose their will by force, but, in fact, they have much more administrative and coercive power than did rulers of the agrarian era. No government of the agrarian era tried to track the births, deaths, and incomes of all the people it ruled or to impose compulsory schooling; yet, many modern governments handle these colossal tasks routinely. Modern states can also inflict violence more effectively and on a larger scale than even the greatest empires of the agrarian era. Whereas an eighteenth century cannon could destroy a house or kill a closely packed group of soldiers, modern nuclear weapons can destroy entire cities  and millions of people, and the concerted launch of many nuclear weapons could end human history within just a few hours. A subtler change in the nature of power is the increased dependence of modern states on commercial success rather than raw coercion. Their power depends so much on the economic productivity of the societies they rule that modern governments have to be effective economic managers. The creation of more democratic systems of government, the declining importance of slavery, the ending of European imperial power during the twentieth century, the collapse of the Soviet command economy in 1991, and the ending of apartheid (racial segregation) in South Africa in 1990 and 1991 all reflected a growing awareness that successful economic management is more effective than crudely coercive forms of rule.

Product Quality Essay Example for Free

Product Quality Essay List some important physical properties of the fabric. The properties of textile fabrics are important for the control of quality, as well as for end use determination. There are several physical properties of fabric which affecting the performance and aesthetic of fabric. The first one is fabric count, it influences thickness of the fabric. It is the number of ends or picks per inch for woven fabrics, or the number of wales or courses per inch for knit fabrics. Variation occurs because of the weaving or knitting process and from finishing processes. Usually the higher the fabric count, the better the quality and the higher the cost. The second is fabric unit weight. It is the mass per unit area. It is expressed in one three ways; ounces per square yard, ounces per linear yard, and linear yards per pound. It is significant in determining both end use and quality. Moreover, it is fabric width. It means the distance from one edge to the other. Measurement is made perpendicular to the fabric edge, usually including the selvage area. The width is expressed in inches and is usually an average number of measurements taken at evenly spaced interval along the fabric pieces. Next one is fabric shrinkage. It is the process in which a fabric becomes smaller than its original size, usually through the process of laundry. It is undesirable property to the apparels. So the material has to be either shrink resistant or shrink recoverable, such as anti-shrink finish is to keep the fabric smooth and free from undesirable shrinkage. The last one is fabric thickness. It is the distance between the upper and lower surfaces of the material. It is measure under a specific pressure. Warmth and bulk properties depend on the fabric thickness- to-weight ratio. It can also be used as a performance indication of abrasion resistance or shrinkage tests. Generally speaking, the thicker the fabric is, the more comfortable in wearing. 6. What is the commonly used fabric inspection system? Mainly, two industry methods used are the Ten point and Four point systems. The most commonly used is four-point system. A minimum of 10% inspection of fabrics is required. The four-point system derives its name from the basic grading rules that a maximum of four penalty points can be assessed for any single defect. Normally, we inspect 10% of the rolls we receive and evaluate them based on this system. This way, we can avoid fabric related quality problems before it is put into production The following table shows the point system. Size of Defect| Penalty Points| Length of defects in fabric (either length or width)| Defects up to 3 inches| 1| Defects gt; 3 inches lt; 6 inches| 2| Defects gt; 6 inches lt; 9 inches| 3| Defects gt; 9 inches| 4| Holes and openings(largest dimension)| 1 inch or less| 2| Over 1 inch| 4| After inspection, the inspector will add up the defects points and then use the following formula to determine the rate of points per 100 yards. There are some common fabric faults, such as bow, skew, hole, mispick etc. Fabric checker should know common defects found in fabrics and he must recognize defects on the fabric at the time of fabric inspection. For the acceptance criteria and calculation, 40 points per 100 yards is the acceptable defect rate. The ten point system for piece goods evaluation was approved by the Textile distributors institute and the National Federation of Textile, in 1955. It is designed to identify defects and to assign each defect a value based on severity of defect. The system assigns penalty points to each defect depending on its length and whether it is in the warp (ends) or weft (fill) direction. The following table shows the point system.

Explanation of Human Resource Planning in the workplace

Explanation of Human Resource Planning in the workplace These reasons have made Human Resource Planning to become a major objective in organizations. The process of Human Resource Planning include analysis of level of skill in the organization (skill inventory) analysis of current and expected vacancies due to retirement, discharges, transfers, prootions; sick leaves, leaves of absence or other reasons and analysis of current and expected expansions as pointed out by This also indicates that plan has to be made internally by the Human Resources for training and development of present employee, for advertising job opening recruiting and hiring new people. A good Human Resource Planning must respond appropriately to the rapid changing in the society and must go beyond forecasting to all aspect of Personnel Management. Human resource or manpower planning is of great important in the general development and growth of organizations. Thus personnel and Human resources experts, managers and practitioners have now made it known to management that adequate attention be given to it with a view to ensuring better use of other resources especially capital. Organisations have also realized that with increasing competition and complexity in business, more time should be devoted to effective human resources planning to achieve desired goals. Furthermore organisations have known that not only is the overall cost of human resources high , that human element is complex, unpredictable and sometimes difficult to develop or change unlike capital that is relatively easier to acquire, manager or control. Definition Human Resources Planning is defined as the process of assessing an organizations human resources needs in the light of organizational goals and changing condition and making plans to ensure that a competent, stable workforce is employed. The actual planning process will vary a great deal from organization to organization According to Walker, effective human resources planning is a process of analyzing an organization human resources needs under changing condition and development of the activities necessary to satisfy those needs. Walker sees human resources planning as two step processes, planning as they pertain to all aspects of personnel management. This will include for example planning with respect to desired organizational climate and development of staff reward and appraisal system appropriate to short range and long range organizational goals. This implies that help must be proactive and as well as reactive. Pattern states that Human Resource Planning is the process by which a firm ensures that it has the right number of people and the right kind of people in the right place at the right time doing things for which they economically most useful. Fayana (2002) emphasized that human resource planning deals with the systematic and continuing process of analyzing a firms human resources needs under mutating conditions and developing workforce policies suitable to the long-term effectiveness of the organization. It is a vital part of corporate planning and budgeting procedure since human resources costs and forecasting both effect and are affected by long-term corporate plans. Characteristics : Dynamic Activity : Manpower planning is a continuous or never ending process because the demand and supply of manpower are subjectto frequent change. It is dynamic activity. Development of Policies : It resultsin the development of policies, programmes and procedures for the acquisition, development, preservation and utilization of the organizations human assets. Inventory of Human : It includes the inventory of present human in the organization. The manager should know the persons, who will be available to him, for undertaking higher responsibilities in the near future. Objectives : Human resources in object should be most important aspect for the orabisation. Without object organization or company do not run and do not achieve target, market or goal. Objectives : Economic Development : At the national level, manpower planning is essential for economic development. It is particularly helpful in the generation of employment in educational reforms and in geographical mobility of talent. Helps fill the gap : Manpower planning identifies the gaps in existing manpower so that suitable training programmes may be developed for building specific skills, required in future. Promoting New Employees : The database available provides a comprehensive skill repertoire, which facilties for decision making as to the promotional opportunities to be made available for the organization. Forcasting on future : Human requirement must be important an effective for any organization of department. Without human resource organization do not run and other factor are useless. Focus of Human Resource Planning According to Bramham, Torrington and Hall, the process of matching future organizational requirement with the supply of properly qualified, committed and experience staff in the right place at the right time. These staff can be drawn from both the internal and external labour market This requires a focus on the following: An assessment of future product market trends and requirement. A specification of the type and numbers of staff required to satisfy these product market trends and requirement. An estimate of the type and number of staff likely to be employed by the organization in five years. A specification of the number/type of staff to be recruited or made redundant. A development plan for restraining and re-focusing existing staff and, if appropriate, for recruiting additional staff from the external analysis. A re-examination of broader business strategies in the light of this analysis. Need of Manpower Planning Manpower Planning is a two-phased process because manpower planning not only analyses the current human resources but also makes manpower forecasts and thereby draw employment programmes. Manpower Planning is advantageous to firm in following manner: Shortages and surpluses can be identified so that quick action can be taken wherever required. All the recruitment and selection programmes are based on manpower planning. It also helps to reduce the labour cost as excess staff can be identified and thereby overstaffing can be avoided. It also helps to identify the available talents in a concern and accordingly training programmes can be chalked out to develop those talents. It helps in growth and diversification of business. Through manpower planning, human resources can be readily available and they can be utilized in best manner. It helps the organization to realize the importance of manpower management which ultimately helps in the stability of a concern. Human Resources Planning Process The stating point of human resource planning process (HRPP) is the determination of corporate or organizational goals. This will now help us to have a clear vision of the future aspiration of the organization and plan towards the realization of its objects. Identify the direction the organistion wants to take to achieve those goals e.g through the introduction of new technology, a new project of by diversification. This will then be translated into human elements needed for the actualization of the set objectives. Take inventory of current manpower position to determine future needs.Information such as educational qualification, skills , experience, type of job, sex, age and geographical location should be considered in planning manpower needs. In other words, we have to take stock of our current manpower to enable us forecast what we need in future. This involves job analysis, job description and job specification A manpower audit is equally important: This will show the actual number of employees on the establishment which will form the basis of operations. For instance, if there is manpower deficiency, the organization could correct the situation through its personnel/administrative programmes. This could be achieved through the following means. Recruitment Training and staff development Promotion and transfer etc The purpose, then, for establishing a human strategic plan is to: Decide where your department is going over the next three to five years Establish an action plan (tactics) to get where you want to go Help your staff focus on the truly important activities Define the resources youll need to accomplish your objectives Create a plan to acquire necessary resources Advantages : There are many advantages of human resource in an organization some of them include: Human resource helps in employee management: There are many advantages that human resource provides in an organization but the foremost advantage of human resource in an organization is the assistance it provides in Recruiting staff and in training employee. The human resource department is mostly responsible to develop the systematic plan according to which they hire the staff and help to build a professional work team. There are series of strategies that the human resource system implements in employment appointing which includes: Allocated training sessions for employees Develop test plans for employee To manage and analyze employee interviews To create internship opportunities Human resource provides consultancy: There are many issues that the employee or work-team of an organization faces. The advantage of human resource is that its a medium which provide all the consulting that a employee needs and also answer general queries. Human resource is very effective in an organization to settle down any managerial dispute or employee problem in a professional and proficient manner. Building business plan : On more advantage of human resource is that these departments actively participate in business and marketing decision. The human resource system comprises of highly dedicated professionals who have the ability to devise new plan and implement marketing strategies that would bring more business and capital to the organization. Forethought of business : Human resource also deals with the long-term management of the business. This department evaluates the future scope of the business and devises strategies which would be profitable to the organization in the longer run and bring in stability to the business and provide it an established medium to stand on in the future. Building public relations : Human resource also helps the business and commerce to make public relations and built a proper referral system. It is very necessary that the business develops an association with other businesses in the market so it could propel its earning through collaboration with other business sectors. The human resource department arranges seminars, business meetings and official gathering for the company so that it gets acquainted with the market and other businesses. These advantages therefore clearly illustrate how important the human resource is for an organization. Whether the business is small or its a big budget industry, building and maintaining a high profile human resource system is very necessary if the business wants to avoid disputes and problems in the longer run. The human resource can be deployed in a small organization at a low scale by hiring minimal staff and growing it gradually as the business progress. Disadvantages : More Time Consuming Future Uncertainity Coordination with other managerial function Management Information System Resistance from employees It is depend on company future activity and current activity. Future is uncertain then manager have a problem to make a best alternative. Summary : Delphi system involves the use of large number of experts and managers who are required to present their own idea of future manpower or human resources requirement for a particular time. They are expected to fill questionnaires on human resources needs in each unit, section or department within the organization. These statements and assumptions are passed anonymously to others by an intermediary. These inputs are reviewed and analyzed by different experts and managers until a final forecast paper on human resources needs qualification, skill, experience etc, is acceptable by the experts/managers. It is the belief that inputs and criticism of experts before a consensus forecasts was accepted would make it more accurate for implementation in the organization. This method has been shown to produce better one year forecast than the linear regression analysis. It is m mostly used to generate predictions. It is however criticized because of the problem of synchronizing or integrating the opinions of experts. Nominal grouping technique: This is another type of expert forecast. With this system, managers/experts are brought together to discuss for about 10-20 minutes. Their views ,ideas or criticisms are listed on a sheet of paper before a consensus is reached. This system is advantageous in that experts are brought together to discuss unlike the Delphi technique. It is also use to identify orgnaisation problems and proffer solutions to them. This system is similar to managerial judgment forecasting method used in small organizations that are not rich enough to have data banks for their human resources information and job analysis

Factors that Affect Profitability Essay -- Business, Exporting, Forei

Procedures that you need to follow when exporting After establishing that South Korea is an economy with an increasingly more liberal economy, there are some problems for foreign direct investment, mainly through non-transparency and burdensome regulations (Heritage Foundation). In order to take it a step further and to perform a complete analysis of the business environment, it is necessary to compare the business procedures when doing business. As an industry, the imports of foreign goods procedure will be analyzed and contrasted with neighboring countries in order to have a complete snapshot of the business environment. Firstly, The country of interest: South Korea. In what the import of foreign goods is concerned, South Korea has a relatively quick and easy process. Importing procedures are estimated to take 7 days, (2 days for each: preparation of documents, port handling and inland handling and approximately 1 day for customs clearance). The cost of the procedures for the 7 days is estimated to be $790 (World Bank Doing Business, 2011). This information, at first glance seems positive. The procedures are fairly quick and the $790 cost is not an absurd amount of money paid in order to import goods. The bureaucracy is simple. The documents needed are: the bill of lading, customs import declaration and terminal handling receipts (World Bank Doing Business, 2011). Corruption Perception Index The latest corruption perception index by transparency international in 2008 includes five sets of data. These include: the 2008 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) score, the amount of surveys used, the standard deviation, the high low range and the confidence range. Before the analysis of the data, it is important to understand what ea... ...). The Heritage Foundation has ranked South Korea with a very low score of 55 out of 100, which might imply that corruption is widespread and there is still a long way to go to have a positive rating. (Heritage Foundation, 2011) 10) Labor Freedom Labor freedom has the lowest score of 46.5 out of 100. This shows that there are various problems regarding labor, a clear example is the very high cost of firing an employee whilst the non salary cost of employing a worker are moderate (Heritage, 2011). In conclusion, the overall freedom of the country is relatively positive. The ratings of the Heritage Foundation are fairly high, above the world average for the most part. Additionally, the government involvement in business is quite low compared to other countries and at least it is not widespread to a degree to which investors would be fearful to engage in business.

Revelation :: essays research papers

No part of the Bible and its interpretation is more controversial than the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is the last profound book in the New Testament. It conveys the significant purpose of Christianity by describing God’s plan for the world and his final judgment of the people by reinforcing the importance of faith and the concept of Christianity as a whole. This book was written by John in 95 or 96 AD. What is, what has been, and what is to come is the central focus of the content in Revelation. Literalist fundamentalists read Revelation’s multivalent visions as predictions of doom and threat, of punishment for the many and salvation for the elect few. Scholarly scientific readings seek to translate the book’s ambiguity into one-to-one meanings and to transpose its language of symbol and myth into description and facts. In Elisabeth Schà »ssler Fiorenza’s The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment, a third way of reading Revelation is depicted. The collection of essays in this book seeks to intervene in scholarly as well as popular discourses on the apocalypse from a liberationist feminist perspective.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The first two parts of the book discuss the kind of theological-historical perspective and ecclesial situation that determines the form-content configuration of Revelation. The first section attempts to assess the theological commonality to and differences from Jewish apocalypticism. Fiorenza focuses of the problem that although Revelation claims to be a genuinely Christian book and has found its way into the Christian canon, it is often judged to be more Jewish than Christian and not to have achieved the â€Å"heights† of genuinely early Christian theology. In the second part of the book, Fiorenza seeks to assess whether and how much Revelation shares in the theological structure of the Fourth Gospel. Fiorenza proposes that a careful analysis of Revelation would suggest that Pauline, Johannine, and Christian apocalyptic-prophetic traditions and circles interacted with each other at the end of the first century C.E in Asia Minor. She charts in the book the structural-theological similarities and differences between the response of Paul and that of Revelation to the â€Å"realized eschatology†. She argues that the author of Revelation attempts to correct the â€Å"realized eschatology† implications of the early Christian tradition with an emphasis on a futuristic apocalyptic understanding of salvation. Fiorenza draws the conclusion that Revelation and its author belong neither to the Johannine nor to the Pauline school, but point to prophetic-apocalyptic traditions in Asia Minor.

Domus Aurea, Golden House Of N :: essays research papers fc

The Domus Aurea, Golden House of Nero In AD 64, Nero set fire to the city of Rome. The exact reasons he did it are not fully known. It is thought that he partly did for poetic or artistic purposes, or for the purpose of clearing away a city that had currently dissatisfied him. In its place however he did rebuild a better Rome, for the most part that is. A large portion, and arguably too large of a portion, was expropriated for the use of his own residence to be called the Domus Aurea. This is translated: The Golden House, and so, the residence is called: The Golden House of Nero. While the Domus Aurea had rather unjustified reasoning behind it, it is one of the greatest architectural achievements of the ancient world. Nero’s residence before his Golden House, was the Domus Transitoria. This was by now means any small living space. It was considered to be a mansion in itself. This palace linked to the Imperial Gardens of Maecenas on the Esquiline hill. It also spanned up the Velian slope beside the Forum (Grant 164). However this structure was not destroyed in the fire of 64. However it did clear out a valley behind it making room for Nero’s future house. Promptly after the fire construction was begun on Nero’s Golden House. It would continue until AD 68 (Wheeler 142). In fact the Domus Transitoria would soon become part of the new Domus Aurea. The architects of this great project were more engineers than they were architects. Their names were Severus and Celer (Picard 116). They were more like Italian bosses heading up a team of technicians who came to Rome in hordes due to their recent fire. However, these engineers main goal was to make the estate look bigger and be bigger without actually expanding. They accomplished by working on it from the inside out, utilizing paintings on walls that gave the impression of going on for infinity. It is an under statement to refer to these buildings as houses at all though. They were clearly much more than this, in even their smallest proportions. The Domus Aurea itself was a series of buildings and landscapes designed to give the impression of a vast park in a relatively small area for such a thing (Picard 116). The idea behind this was that you would create something more beautiful for the beholder if your creation was beautiful for how you used the earth.

A Game of Thrones Chapter Thirty

Eddard I stood last vigil for him myself,† Ser Barristan Selmy said as they looked down at the body in the back of the cart. â€Å"He had no one else. A mother in the Vale, I am told.† In the pale dawn light, the young knight looked as though he were sleeping. He had not been handsome, but death had smoothed his rough-hewn features and the silent sisters had dressed him in his best velvet tunic, with a high collar to cover the ruin the lance had made of his throat. Eddard Stark looked at his face, and wondered if it had been for his sake that the boy had died. Slain by a Lannister bannerman before Ned could speak to him; could that be mere happenstance? He supposed he would never know. â€Å"Hugh was Jon Arryn's squire for four years,† Selmy went on. â€Å"The king knighted him before he rode north, in Jon's memory. The lad wanted it desperately, yet I fear he was not ready.† Ned had slept badly last night and he felt tired beyond his years. â€Å"None of us is ever ready,† he said. â€Å"For knighthood?† â€Å"For death.† Gently Ned covered the boy with his cloak, a bloodstained bit of blue bordered in crescent moons. When his mother asked why her son was dead, he reflected bitterly, they would tell her he had fought to honor the King's Hand, Eddard Stark. â€Å"This was needless. War should not be a game.† Ned turned to the woman beside the cart, shrouded in grey, face hidden but for her eyes. The silent sisters prepared men for the grave, and it was ill fortune to look on the face of death. â€Å"Send his armor home to the Vale. The mother will want to have it.† â€Å"It is worth a fair piece of silver,† Ser Barristan said. â€Å"The boy had it forged special for the tourney. Plain work, but good. I do not know if he had finished paying the smith.† â€Å"He paid yesterday, my lord, and he paid dearly,† Ned replied. And to the silent sister he said, â€Å"Send the mother the armor. I will deal with this smith.† She bowed her head. Afterward Ser Barristan walked with Ned to the king's pavilion. The camp was beginning to stir. Fat sausages sizzled and spit over firepits, spicing the air with the scents of garlic and pepper. Young squires hurried about on errands as their masters woke, yawning and stretching, to meet the day. A serving man with a goose under his arm bent his knee when he caught sight of them. â€Å"M'lords,† he muttered as the goose honked and pecked at his fingers. The shields displayed outside each tent heralded its occupant: the silver eagle of Seagard, Bryce Caron's field of nightingales, a cluster of grapes for the Redwynes, brindled boar, red ox, burning tree, white ram, triple spiral, purple unicorn, dancing maiden, blackadder, twin towers, horned owl, and last the pure white blazons of the Kingsguard, shining like the dawn. â€Å"The king means to fight in the melee today,† Ser Barristan said as they were passing Ser Meryn's shield, its paint sullied by a deep gash where Loras Tyrell's lance had scarred the wood as he drove him from his saddle. â€Å"Yes,† Ned said grimly. Jory had woken him last night to bring him that news. Small wonder he had slept so badly. Ser Barristan's look was troubled. â€Å"They say night's beauties fade at dawn, and the children of wine are oft disowned in the morning light.† â€Å"They say so,† Ned agreed, â€Å"but not of Robert.† Other men might reconsider words spoken in drunken bravado, but Robert Baratheon would remember and, remembering, would never back down. The king's pavilion was close by the water, and the morning mists off the river had wreathed it in wisps of grey. It was all of golden silk, the largest and grandest structure in the camp. Outside the entrance, Robert's warhammer was displayed beside an immense iron shield blazoned with the crowned stag of House Baratheon. Ned had hoped to discover the king still abed in a wine-soaked sleep, but luck was not with him. They found Robert drinking beer from a polished horn and roaring his displeasure at two young squires who were trying to buckle him into his armor. â€Å"Your Grace,† one was saying, almost in tears, â€Å"it's made too small, it won't go.† He fumbled, and the gorget he was trying to fit around Robert's thick neck tumbled to the ground. â€Å"Seven hells!† Robert swore. â€Å"Do I have to do it myself? Piss on the both of you. Pick it up. Don't just stand there gaping, Lancel, pick it up!† The lad jumped, and the king noticed his company. â€Å"Look at these oafs, Ned. My wife insisted I take these two to squire for me, and they're worse than useless. Can't even put a man's armor on him properly. Squires, they say. I say they're swineherds dressed up in silk.† Ned only needed a glance to understand the difficulty. â€Å"The boys are not at fault,† he told the king. â€Å"You're too fat for your armor, Robert.† Robert Baratheon took a long swallow of beer, tossed the empty horn onto his sleeping furs, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said darkly, â€Å"Fat? Fat, is it? Is that how you speak to your king?† He let go his laughter, sudden as a storm. â€Å"Ah, damn you, Ned, why are you always right?† The squires smiled nervously until the king turned on them. â€Å"You. Yes, both of you. You heard the Hand. The king is too fat for his armor. Go find Ser Aron Santagar. Tell him I need the breastplate stretcher. Now! What are you waiting for?† The boys tripped over each other in their haste to be quit of the tent. Robert managed to keep a stern face until they were gone. Then he dropped back into a chair, shaking with laughter. Ser Barristan Selmy chuckled with him. Even Eddard Stark managed a smile. Always, though, the graver thoughts crept in. He could not help taking note of the two squires: handsome boys, fair and well made. One was Sansa's age, with long golden curls; the other perhaps fifteen, sandy-haired, with a wisp of a mustache and the emerald-green eyes of the queen. â€Å"Ah, I wish I could be there to see Santagar's face,† Robert said. â€Å"I hope he'll have the wit to send them to someone else. We ought to keep them running all day!† â€Å"Those boys,† Ned asked him. â€Å"Lannisters?† Robert nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. â€Å"Cousins. Sons of Lord Tywin's brother. One of the dead ones. Or perhaps the live one, now that I come to think on it. I don't recall. My wife comes from a very large family, Ned.† A very ambitious family, Ned thought. He had nothing against the squires, but it troubled him to see Robert surrounded by the queen's kin, waking and sleeping. The Lannister appetite for offices and honors seemed to know no bounds. â€Å"The talk is you and the queen had angry words last night.† The mirth curdled on Robert's face. â€Å"The woman tried to forbid me to fight in the melee. She's sulking in the castle now, damn her. Your sister would never have shamed me like that.† â€Å"You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert,† Ned told him. â€Å"You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee.† â€Å"You too?† The king frowned. â€Å"You are a sour man, Stark. Too long in the north, all the juices have frozen inside you. Well, mine are still running.† He slapped his chest to prove it. â€Å"You are the king,† Ned reminded him. â€Å"I sit on the damn iron seat when I must. Does that mean I don't have the same hungers as other men? A bit of wine now and again, a girl squealing in bed, the feel of a horse between my legs? Seven hells, Ned, I want to hit someone.† Ser Barristan Selmy spoke up. â€Å"Your Grace,† he said, â€Å"it is not seemly that the king should ride into the melee. It would not be a fair contest. Who would dare strike you?† Robert seemed honestly taken aback. â€Å"Why, all of them, damn it. If they can. And the last man left standing . . . â€Å" † . . . will be you,† Ned finished. He saw at once that Selmy had hit the mark. The dangers of the melee were only a savor to Robert, but this touched on his pride. â€Å"Ser Barristan is right. There's not a man in the Seven Kingdoms who would dare risk your displeasure by hurting you.† The king rose to his feet, his face flushed. â€Å"Are you telling me those prancing cravens will let me win?† â€Å"For a certainty,† Ned said, and Ser Barristan Selmy bowed his head in silent accord. For a moment Robert was so angry he could not speak. He strode across the tent, whirled, strode back, his face dark and angry. He snatched up his breastplate from the ground and threw it at Barristan Selmy in a wordless fury. Selmy dodged. â€Å"Get out,† the king said then, coldly. â€Å"Get out before I kill you.† Ser Barristan left quickly. Ned was about to follow when the king called out again. â€Å"Not you, Ned.† Ned turned back. Robert took up his horn again, filled it with beer from a barrel in the corner, and thrust it at Ned. â€Å"Drink,† he said brusquely. â€Å"I've no thirst—† â€Å"Drink. Your king commands it.† Ned took the horn and drank. The beer was black and thick, so strong it stung the eyes. Robert sat down again. â€Å"Damn you, Ned Stark. You and Jon Arryn, I loved you both. What have you done to me? You were the one should have been king, you or Jon.† â€Å"You had the better claim, Your Grace.† â€Å"I told you to drink, not to argue. You made me king, you could at least have the courtesy to listen when I talk, damn you. Look at me, Ned. Look at what kinging has done to me. Gods, too fat for my armor, how did it ever come to this?† â€Å"Robert . . . â€Å" â€Å"Drink and stay quiet, the king is talking. I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I've won it. And Cersei . . . I have Jon Arryn to thank for her. I had no wish to marry after Lyanna was taken from me, but Jon said the realm needed an heir. Cersei Lannister would be a good match, he told me, she would bind Lord Tywin to me should Viserys Targaryen ever try to win back his father's throne.† The king shook his head. â€Å"I loved that old man, I swear it, but now I think he was a bigger fool than Moon Boy. Oh, Cersei is lovely to look at, truly, but cold . . . the way she guards her cunt, you'd think she had all the gold of Casterly Rock between her legs. Here, give me that beer if you won't drink it.† He took the horn, upended it, belched, wiped his mouth. â€Å"I am sorry for your girl, Ned. Truly. About the wolf, I mean. My son was lying, I'd stake my soul on it. My son . . . you love your children, don't y ou?† â€Å"With all my heart,† Ned said. â€Å"Let me tell you a secret, Ned. More than once, I have dreamed of giving up the crown. Take ship for the Free Cities with my horse and my hammer, spend my time warring and whoring, that's what I was made for. The sellsword king, how the singers would love me. You know what stops me? The thought of Joffrey on the throne, with Cersei standing behind him whispering in his ear. My son. How could I have made a son like that, Ned?† â€Å"He's only a boy,† Ned said awkwardly. He had small liking for Prince Joffrey, but he could hear the pain in Robert's voice. â€Å"Have you forgotten how wild you were at his age?† â€Å"It would not trouble me if the boy was wild, Ned. You don't know him as I do.† He sighed and shook his head. â€Å"Ah, perhaps you are right. Jon despaired of me often enough, yet I grew into a good king.† Robert looked at Ned and scowled at his silence. â€Å"You might speak up and agree now, you know.† â€Å"Your Grace . . . † Ned began, carefully. Robert slapped Ned on the back. â€Å"Ah, say that I'm a better king than Aerys and be done with it. You never could lie for love nor honor, Ned Stark. I'm still young, and now that you're here with me, things will be different. We'll make this a reign to sing of, and damn the Lannisters to seven hells. I smell bacon. Who do you think our champion will be today? Have you seen Mace Tyrell's boy? The Knight of Flowers, they call him. Now there's a son any man would be proud to own to. Last tourney, he dumped the Kingslayer on his golden rump, you ought to have seen the look on Cersei's face. I laughed till my sides hurt. Renly says he has this sister, a maid of fourteen, lovely as a dawn . . . â€Å" They broke their fast on black bread and boiled goose eggs and fish fried up with onions and bacon, at a trestle table by the river's edge. The king's melancholy melted away with the morning mist, and before long Robert was eating an orange and waxing fond about a morning at the Eyrie when they had been boys. † . . . had given Jon a barrel of oranges, remember? Only the things had gone rotten, so I flung mine across the table and hit Dacks right in the nose. You remember, Redfort's pock-faced squire? He tossed one back at me, and before Jon could so much as fart, there were oranges flying across the High Hall in every direction.† He laughed uproariously, and even Ned smiled, remembering. This was the boy he had grown up with, he thought; this was the Robert Baratheon he'd known and loved. If he could prove that the Lannisters were behind the attack on Bran, prove that they had murdered Jon Arryn, this man would listen. Then Cersei would fall, and the Kingslayer with her, and if Lord Tywin dared to rouse the west, Robert would smash him as he had smashed Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He could see it all so clearly. That breakfast tasted better than anything Eddard Stark had eaten in a long time, and afterward his smiles came easier and more often, until it was time for the tournament to resume. Ned walked with the king to the jousting field. He had promised to watch the final tilts with Sansa; Septa Mordane was ill today, and his daughter was determined not to miss the end of the jousting. As he saw Robert to his place, he noted that Cersei Lannister had chosen not to appear; the place beside the king was empty. That too gave Ned cause to hope. He shouldered his way to where his daughter was seated and found her as the horns blew for the day's first joust. Sansa was so engrossed she scarcely seemed to notice his arrival. Sandor Clegane was the first rider to appear. He wore an olive- green cloak over his soot-grey armor. That, and his hound's-head helm, were his only concession to ornament. â€Å"A hundred golden dragons on the Kingslayer,† Littlefinger announced loudly as Jaime Lannister entered the lists, riding an elegant blood bay destrier. The horse wore a blanket of gilded ringmail, and Jaime glittered from head to heel. Even his lance was fashioned from the golden wood of the Summer Isles. â€Å"Done,† Lord Renly shouted back. â€Å"The Hound has a hungry look about him this morning.† â€Å"Even hungry dogs know better than to bite the hand that feeds them,† Littlefinger called dryly. Sandor Clegane dropped his visor with an audible clang and took up his position. Ser Jaime tossed a kiss to some woman in the commons, gently lowered his visor, and rode to the end of the lists. Both men couched their lances. Ned Stark would have loved nothing so well as to see them both lose, but Sansa was watching it all moist-eyed and eager. The hastily erected gallery trembled as the horses broke into a gallop. The Hound leaned forward as he rode, his lance rock steady, but Jaime shifted his seat deftly in the instant before impact. Clegane's point was turned harmlessly against the golden shield with the lion blazon, while his own hit square. Wood shattered, and the Hound reeled, fighting to keep his seat. Sansa gasped. A ragged cheer went up from the commons. â€Å"I wonder how I ought spend your money,† Littlefinger called down to Lord Renly. The Hound just managed to stay in his saddle. He jerked his mount around hard and rode back to the lists for the second pass. Jaime Lannister tossed down his broken lance and snatched up a fresh one, jesting with his squire. The Hound spurred forward at a hard gallop. Lannister rode to meet him. This time, when Jaime shifted his seat, Sandor Clegane shifted with him. Both lances exploded, and by the time the splinters had settled, a riderless blood bay was trotting off in search of grass while Ser Jaime Lannister rolled in the dirt, golden and dented. Sansa said, â€Å"I knew the Hound would win.† Littlefinger overheard. â€Å"If you know who's going to win the second match, speak up now before Lord Renly plucks me clean,† he called to her. Ned smiled. â€Å"A pity the Imp is not here with us,† Lord Renly said. â€Å"I should have won twice as much.† Jaime Lannister was back on his feet, but his ornate lion helmet had been twisted around and dented in his fall, and now he could not get it off. The commons were hooting and pointing, the lords and ladies were trying to stifle their chuckles, and failing, and over it all Ned could hear King Robert laughing, louder than anyone. Finally they had to lead the Lion of Lannister off to a blacksmith, blind and stumbling. By then Ser Gregor Clegane was in position at the head of the lists. He was huge, the biggest man that Eddard Stark had ever seen. Robert Baratheon and his brothers were all big men, as was the Hound, and back at Winterfell there was a simpleminded stableboy named Hodor who dwarfed them all, but the knight they called the Mountain That Rides would have towered over Hodor. He was well over seven feet tall, closer to eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick as the trunks of small trees. His destrier seemed a pony in between his armored legs, and the lance he carried looked as small as a broom handle. Unlike his brother, Ser Gregor did not live at court. He was a solitary man who seldom left his own lands, but for wars and tourneys. He had been with Lord Tywin when King's Landing fell, a new-made knight of seventeen years, even then distinguished by his size and his implacable ferocity. Some said it had been Gregor who'd dashed the skull of the infant prince Aegon Targaryen against a wall, and whispered that afterward he had raped the mother, the Dornish princess Elia, before putting her to the sword. These things were not said in Gregor's hearing. Ned Stark could not recall ever speaking to the man, though Gregor had ridden with them during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion, one knight among thousands. He watched him with disquiet. Ned seldom put much stock in gossip, but the things said of Ser Gregor were more than ominous. He was soon to be married for the third time, and one heard dark whisperings about the deaths of his first two wives. It was said that his keep was a grim place where servants disappeared unaccountably and even the dogs were afraid to enter the hall. And there had been a sister who had died young under queer circumstances, and the fire that had disfigured his brother, and the hunting accident that had killed their father. Gregor had inherited the keep, the gold, and the family estates. His younger brother Sandor had left the same day to take service with the Lannisters as a sworn sword, and it was said that he had never returned, not even to visit. When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and he heard Sansa's fervent whisper, â€Å"Oh, he's so beautiful.† Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots. The commons realized in the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires; a gasp went up from a thousand throats. Across the boy's shoulders his cloak hung heavy. It was woven of forget-me-nots, real ones, hundreds of fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen cape. His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor's huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his arm. â€Å"Father, don't let Ser Gregor hurt him,† she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her yesterday. Jory had told him about that as well. â€Å"These are tourney lances,† he told his daughter. â€Å"They make them to splinter on impact, so no one is hurt.† Yet he remembered the dead boy in the cart with his cloak of crescent moons, and the words were raw in his throat. Ser Gregor was having trouble controlling his horse. The stallion was screaming and pawing the ground, shaking his head. The Mountain kicked at the animal savagely with an armored boot. The horse reared and almost threw him. The Knight of Flowers saluted the king, rode to the far end of the list, and couched his lance, ready. Ser Gregor brought his animal to the line, fighting with the reins. And suddenly it began. The Mountain's stallion broke in a hard gallop, plunging forward wildly, while the mare charged as smooth as a flow of silk. Ser Gregor wrenched his shield into position, juggled with his lance, and all the while fought to hold his unruly mount on a straight line, and suddenly Loras Tyrell was on him, placing the point of his lance just there, and in an eye blink the Mountain was failing. He was so huge that he took his horse down with him in a tangle of steel and flesh. Ned heard applause, cheers, whistles, shocked gasps, excited muttering, and over it all the rasping, raucous laughter of the Hound. The Knight of Flowers reined up at the end of the lists. His lance was not even broken. His sapphires winked in the sun as he raised his visor, smiling. The commons went mad for him. In the middle of the field, Ser Gregor Clegane disentangled himself and came boiling to his feet. He wrenched off his helm and slammed it down onto the ground. His face was dark with fury and his hair fell down into his eyes. â€Å"My sword,† he shouted to his squire, and the boy ran it out to him. By then his stallion was back on its feet as well. Gregor Clegane killed the horse with a single blow of such ferocity that it half severed the animal's neck. Cheers turned to shrieks in a heartbeat. The stallion went to its knees, screaming as it died. By then Gregor was striding down the lists toward Ser Loras Tyrell, his bloody sword clutched in his fist. â€Å"Stop him!† Ned shouted, but his words were lost in the roar. Everyone else was yelling as well, and Sansa was crying. It all happened so fast. The Knight of Flowers was shouting for his own sword as Ser Gregor knocked his squire aside and made a grab for the reins of his horse. The mare scented blood and reared. Loras Tyrell kept his seat, but barely. Ser Gregor swung his sword, a savage two-handed blow that took the boy in the chest and knocked him from the saddle. The courser dashed away in panic as Ser Loras lay stunned in the dirt. But as Gregor lifted his sword for the killing blow, a rasping voice warned, â€Å"Leave him be,† and a steel-clad hand wrenched him away from the boy. The Mountain pivoted in wordless fury, swinging his longsword in a killing arc with all his massive strength behind it, but the Hound caught the blow and turned it, and for what seemed an eternity the two brothers stood hammering at each other as a dazed Loras Tyrell was helped to safety. Thrice Ned saw Ser Gregor aim savage blows at the hound's-head helmet, yet not once did Sandor send a cut at his brother's unprotected face. It was the king's voice that put an end to it . . . the king's voice and twenty swords. Jon Arryn had told them that a commander needs a good battlefield voice, and Robert had proved the truth of that on the Trident. He used that voice now. â€Å"STOP THIS MADNESS,† he boomed, â€Å"IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING!† The Hound went to one knee. Ser Gregor's blow cut air, and at last he came to his senses. He dropped his sword and glared at Robert, surrounded by his Kingsguard and a dozen other knights and guardsmen. Wordlessly, he turned and strode off, shoving past Barristan Selmy. â€Å"Let him go,† Robert said, and as quickly as that, it was over. â€Å"Is the Hound the champion now?† Sansa asked Ned. â€Å"No,† he told her. â€Å"There will be one final joust, between the Hound and the Knight of Flowers.† But Sansa had the right of it after all. A few moments later Ser Loras Tyrell walked back onto the field in a simple linen doublet and said to Sandor Clegane, â€Å"I owe you my life. The day is yours, ser.† â€Å"I am no ser,† the Hound replied, but he took the victory, and the champion's purse, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, the love of the commons. They cheered him as he left the lists to return to his pavilion. As Ned walked with Sansa to the archery field, Littlefinger and Lord Renly and some of the others fell in with them. â€Å"Tyrell had to know the mare was in heat,† Littlefinger was saying. â€Å"I swear the boy planned the whole thing. Gregor has always favored huge, ill-tempered stallions with more spirit than sense.† The notion seemed to amuse him. It did not amuse Ser Barristan Selmy. â€Å"There is small honor in tricks,† the old man said stiffly. â€Å"Small honor and twenty thousand golds.† Lord Renly smiled. That afternoon a boy named Anguy, an unheralded commoner from the Dornish Marches, won the archery competition, outshooting Ser Balon Swann and Jalabhar Xho at a hundred paces after all the other bowmen had been eliminated at the shorter distances. Ned sent Alyn to seek him out and offer him a position with the Hand's guard, but the boy was flush with wine and victory and riches undreamed of, and he refused. The melee went on for three hours. Near forty men took part, freeriders and hedge knights and new-made squires in search of a reputation. They fought with blunted weapons in a chaos of mud and blood, small troops fighting together and then turning on each other as alliances formed and fractured, until only one man was left standing. The victor was the red priest, Thoros of Myr, a madman who shaved his head and fought with a flaming sword. He had won melees before; the fire sword frightened the mounts of the other riders, and nothing frightened Thoros. The final tally was three broken limbs, a shattered collarbone, a dozen smashed fingers, two horses that had to be put down, and more cuts, sprains, and bruises than anyone cared to count. Ned was desperately pleased that Robert had not taken part. That night at the feast, Eddard Stark was more hopeful than he had been in a great while. Robert was in high good humor, the Lannisters were nowhere to be seen, and even his daughters were behaving. Jory brought Arya down to join them, and Sansa spoke to her sister pleasantly. â€Å"The tournament was magnificent,† she sighed. â€Å"You should have come. How was your dancing?† â€Å"I'm sore all over,† Arya reported happily, proudly displaying a huge purple bruise on her leg. â€Å"You must be a terrible dancer,† Sansa said doubtfully. Later, while Sansa was off listening to a troupe of singers perform the complex round of interwoven ballads called the â€Å"Dance of the Dragons,† Ned inspected the bruise himself. â€Å"I hope Forel is not being too hard on you,† he said. Arya stood on one leg. She was getting much better at that of late. â€Å"Syrio says that every hurt is a lesson, and every lesson makes you better.† Ned frowned. The man Syrio Forel had come with an excellent reputation, and his flamboyant Braavosi style was well suited to Arya's slender blade, yet still . . . a few days ago, she had been wandering around with a swatch of black silk tied over her eyes. Syrio was teaching her to see with her ears and her nose and her skin, she told him. Before that, he had her doing spins and back flips. â€Å"Arya, are you certain you want to persist in this?† She nodded. â€Å"Tomorrow we're going to catch cats.† â€Å"Cats.† Ned sighed. â€Å"Perhaps it was a mistake to hire this Braavosi. If you like, I will ask Jory to take over your lessons. Or I might have a quiet word with Ser Barristan. He was the finest sword in the Seven Kingdoms in his youth.† â€Å"I don't want them,† Arya said. â€Å"I want Syrio.† Ned ran his fingers through his hair. Any decent master-at-arms could give Arya the rudiments of slash-and-parry without this nonsense of blindfolds, cartwheels, and hopping about on one leg, but he knew his youngest daughter well enough to know there was no arguing with that stubborn jut of jaw. â€Å"As you wish,† he said. Surely she would grow tired of this soon. â€Å"Try to be careful.† â€Å"I will,† she promised solemnly as she hopped smoothly from her right leg to her left. Much later, after he had taken the girls back through the city and seen them both safe in bed, Sansa with her dreams and Arya with her bruises, Ned ascended to his own chambers atop the Tower of the Hand. The day had been warm and the room was close and stuffy. Ned went to the window and unfastened the heavy shutters to let in the cool night air. Across the Great Yard, he noticed the flickering glow of candlelight from Littlefinger's windows. The hour was well past midnight. Down by the river, the revels were only now beginning to dwindle and die. He took out the dagger and studied it. Littlefinger's blade, won by Tyrion Lannister in a tourney wager, sent to slay Bran in his sleep. Why? Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? Why would anyone want Bran dead? The dagger, Bran's fall, all of it was linked somehow to the murder of Jon Arryn, he could feel it in his gut, but the truth of Jon's death remained as clouded to him as when he had started. Lord Stannis had not returned to King's Landing for the tourney. Lysa Arryn held her silence behind the high walls of the Eyrie. The squire was dead, and Jory was still searching the whorehouses. What did he have but Robert's bastard? That the armorer's sullen apprentice was the king's son, Ned had no doubt. The Baratheon look was stamped on his face, in his jaw, his eyes, that black hair. Renly was too young to have fathered a boy of that age, Stannis too cold and proud in his honor. Gendry had to be Robert's. Yet knowing all that, what had he learned? The king had other baseborn children scattered throughout the Seven Kingdoms. He had openly acknowledged one of his bastards, a boy of Bran's age whose mother was highborn. The lad was being fostered by Lord Renly's castellan at Storm's End. Ned remembered Robert's first child as well, a daughter born in the Vale when Robert was scarcely more than a boy himself. A sweet little girl; the young lord of Storm's End had doted on her. He used to make daily visits to play with the babe, long after he had lost interest in the mother. Ned was often dragged along for company, whether he willed it or not. The girl would be seventeen or eighteen now, he realized; older than Robert had been when he fathered her. A strange thought. Cersei could not have been pleased by her lord husband's by-blows, yet in the end it mattered little whether the king had one bastard or a hundred. Law and custom gave the baseborn few rights. Gendry, the girl in the Vale, the boy at Storm's End, none of them could threaten Robert's trueborn children . . . His musings were ended by a soft rap on his door. â€Å"A man to see you, my lord,† Harwin called. â€Å"He will not give his name.† â€Å"Send him in,† Ned said, wondering. The visitor was a stout man in cracked, mud-caked boots and a heavy brown robe of the coarsest roughspun, his features hidden by a cowl, his hands drawn up into voluminous sleeves. â€Å"Who are you?† Ned asked. â€Å"A friend,† the cowled man said in a strange, low voice. â€Å"We must speak alone, Lord Stark.† Curiosity was stronger than caution. â€Å"Harwin, leave us,† he commanded. Not until they were alone behind closed doors did his visitor draw back his cowl. â€Å"Lord Varys?† Ned said in astonishment. â€Å"Lord Stark,† Varys said politely, seating himself. â€Å"I wonder if I might trouble you for a drink?† Ned filled two cups with summerwine and handed one to Varys. â€Å"I might have passed within a foot of you and never recognized you,† he said, incredulous. He had never seen the eunuch dress in anything but silk and velvet and the richest damasks, and this man smelled of sweat instead of lilacs. â€Å"That was my dearest hope,† Varys said. â€Å"It would not do if certain people learned that we had spoken in private. The queen watches you closely. This wine is very choice. Thank you.† â€Å"How did you get past my other guards?† Ned asked. Porther and Cayn had been posted outside the tower, and Alyn on the stairs. â€Å"The Red Keep has ways known only to ghosts and spiders.† Varys smiled apologetically. â€Å"I will not keep you long, my lord. There are things you must know. You are the King's Hand, and the king is a fool.† The eunuch's cloying tones were gone; now his voice was thin and sharp as a whip. â€Å"Your friend, I know, yet a fool nonetheless . . . and doomed, unless you save him. Today was a near thing. They had hoped to kill him during the melee.† For a moment Ned was speechless with shock. â€Å"Who?† Varys sipped his wine. â€Å"If I truly need to tell you that, you are a bigger fool than Robert and I am on the wrong side.† â€Å"The Lannisters,† Ned said. â€Å"The queen . . . no, I will not believe that, not even of Cersei. She asked him not to fight!† â€Å"She forbade him to fight, in front of his brother, his knights, and half the court. Tell me truly, do you know any surer way to force King Robert into the melee? I ask you.† Ned had a sick feeling in his gut. The eunuch had hit upon a truth; tell Robert Baratheon he could not, should not, or must not do a thing, and it was as good as done. â€Å"Even if he'd fought, who would have dared to strike the king?† Varys shrugged. â€Å"There were forty riders in the melee. The Lannisters have many friends. Amidst all that chaos, with horses screaming and bones breaking and Thoros of Myr waving that absurd firesword of his, who could name it murder if some chance blow felled His Grace?† He went to the flagon and refilled his cup. â€Å"After the deed was done, the slayer would be beside himself with grief. I can almost hear him weeping. So sad. Yet no doubt the gracious and compassionate widow would take pity, lift the poor unfortunate to his feet, and bless him with a gentle kiss of forgiveness. Good King Joffrey would have no choice but to pardon him.† The eunuch stroked his cheek. â€Å"Or perhaps Cersei would let Ser Ilyn strike off his head. Less risk for the Lannisters that way, though quite an unpleasant surprise for their little friend.† Ned felt his anger rise. â€Å"You knew of this plot, and yet you did nothing.† â€Å"I command whisperers, not warriors.† â€Å"You might have come to me earlier.† â€Å"Oh, yes, I confess it. And you would have rushed straight to the king, yes? And when Robert heard of his peril, what would he have done? I wonder.† Ned considered that. â€Å"He would have damned them all, and fought anyway, to show he did not fear them.† Varys spread his hands. â€Å"I will make another confession, Lord Eddard. I was curious to see what you would do. Why not come to me? you ask, and I must answer, Why, because I did not trust you, my lord.† â€Å"You did not trust me?† Ned was frankly astonished. â€Å"The Red Keep shelters two sorts of people, Lord Eddard,† Varys said. â€Å"Those who are loyal to the realm, and those who are loyal only to themselves. Until this morning, I could not say which you might be . . . so I waited to see . . . and now I know, for a certainty.† He smiled a plump tight little smile, and for a moment his private face and public mask were one. â€Å"I begin to comprehend why the queen fears you so much. Oh, yes I do.† â€Å"You are the one she ought to fear,† Ned said. â€Å"No. I am what I am. The king makes use of me, but it shames him. A most puissant warrior is our Robert, and such a manly man has little love for sneaks and spies and eunuchs. If a day should come when Cersei whispers, ‘Kill that man,' Ilyn Payne will snick my head off in a twinkling, and who will mourn poor Varys then? North or south, they sing no songs for spiders.† He reached out and touched Ned with a soft hand. â€Å"But you, Lord Stark . . . I think . . . no, I know . . . he would not kill you, not even for his queen, and there may lie our salvation.† It was all too much. For a moment Eddard Stark wanted nothing so much as to return to Winterfell, to the clean simplicity of the north, where the enemies were winter and the wildlings beyond the Wall. â€Å"Surely Robert has other loyal friends,† he protested. â€Å"His brothers, his—† â€Å"—wife?† Varys finished, with a smile that cut. â€Å"His brothers hate the Lannisters, true enough, but hating the queen and loving the king are not quite the same thing, are they? Ser Barristan loves his honor, Grand Maester Pycelle loves his office, and Littlefinger loves Littlefinger.† â€Å"The Kingsguard—† â€Å"A paper shield,† the eunuch said. â€Å"Try not to look so shocked, Lord Stark. Jaime Lannister is himself a Sworn Brother of the White Swords, and we all know what his oath is worth. The days when men like Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight wore the white cloak are gone to dust and song. Of these seven, only Ser Barristan Selmy is made of the true steel, and Selmy is old. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn are the queen's creatures to the bone, and I have deep suspicions of the others. No, my lord, when the swords come out in earnest, you will be the only true friend Robert Baratheon will have.† â€Å"Robert must be told,† Ned said. â€Å"If what you say is true, if even a part of it is true, the king must hear it for himself.† â€Å"And what proof shall we lay before him? My words against theirs? My little birds against the queen and the Kingslayer, against his brothers and his council, against the Wardens of East and West, against all the might of Casterly Rock? Pray, send for Ser Ilyn directly, it will save us all some time. I know where that road ends.† â€Å"Yet if what you say is true, they will only bide their time and make another attempt.† â€Å"Indeed they will,† said Varys, â€Å"and sooner rather than later, I do fear. You are making them most anxious, Lord Eddard. But my little birds will be listening, and together we may be able to forestall them, you and I.† He rose and pulled up his cowl so his face was hidden once more. â€Å"Thank you for the wine. We will speak again. When you see me next at council, be certain to treat me with your accustomed contempt. You should not find it difficult.† He was at the door when Ned called, â€Å"Varys.† The eunuch turned back. â€Å"How did Jon Arryn die?† â€Å"I wondered when you would get around to that.† â€Å"Tell me.† â€Å"The tears of Lys, they call it. A rare and costly thing, clear and sweet as water, and it leaves no trace. I begged Lord Arryn to use a taster, in this very room I begged him, but he would not hear of it. Only one who was less than a man would even think of such a thing, he told me.† Ned had to know the rest. â€Å"Who gave him the poison?† â€Å"Some dear sweet friend who often shared meat and mead with him, no doubt. Oh, but which one? There were many such. Lord Arryn was a kindly, trusting man.† The eunuch sighed. â€Å"There was one boy. All he was, he owed Jon Arryn, but when the widow fled to the Eyrie with her household, he stayed in King's Landing and prospered. It always gladdens my heart to see the young rise in the world.† The whip was in his voice again, every word a stroke. â€Å"He must have cut a gallant figure in the tourney, him in his bright new armor, with those crescent moons on his cloak. A pity he died so untimely, before you could talk to him . . . â€Å" Ned felt half-poisoned himself. â€Å"The squire,† he said. â€Å"Ser Hugh.† Wheels within wheels within wheels. Ned's head was pounding. â€Å"Why? Why now? Jon Arryn had been Hand for fourteen years. What was he doing that they had to kill him?† â€Å"Asking questions,† Varys said, slipping out the door.