How to Draw Characters

High placement in a search engine is critical for the success of any online business. Pages appearing higher in the search engine results to queries relevant to a site’s business will get higher targeted traffic. To get this kind of competitive advantage Internet companies employ various SEO techniques in order to optimize certain factors used by search engines to rank results.

In the best case SEO specialists create relevant well-structured keyword rich pages, which not only please the eyes of a search engine crawler but also have value to the human visitor. Unfortunately it takes months for this strategic approach to produce feasible results, and many search engine optimizers use so-called “black-hat” SEO.

‘Black Hat’ SEO and Search Engine Spam

The oldest and simplest “black SEO” strategy is adding a variety of popular keywords into web pages to make them rank high for popular queries. This behavior is easily detected since generally such pages include unrelated keywords that lack topical focus. With the introduction of the term vector analysis search engine became immune to this sort of manipulation. However “black-hat’ SEO went one step further creating the so-called “doorway’ pages – tightly focused pages consisting of a bunch of keywords relevant to a single topic. In terms of keyword density such pages are able to rank high in search results but never seen by human visitors as they are redirected to the page intended to receive the traffic.

Another trend is the abusing the link popularity based ranking algorithms, such as PageRank with the help of dynamically-generated pages. Such pages receive the minimum guaranteed PageRank and the small endorsements from thousands of these pages are able to produce a sizeable PageRank for the target page. Search engines constantly improve their algorithms trying to minimize the effect of “black-hat”‘ SEO techniques, but SEOs also persistently respond with new more sophisticated and technically advanced tricks so that this process bears a resemblance to an arms race.

“Black-hat” SEO is responsible for the immense amount of search engine spam-pages and links created solely to mislead search engines and boost rankings for client web sites. To weed out the web spam search engines can use statistical methods that allow computing distributions for a variety of page properties. The outlier values in these distributions can be associated with web spam. The ability to identify web spam is extremely valuable to search engine not just because it allows excluding spam pages from their indices but also using them to train more sophisticated machine learning algorithms capable to battle web spam with higher precision.

Using Statistics to Detect Search Engine Spam

An example of an application of statistical methods to detect web spam is presented in the paper “Spam, Damn Spam and Statistics” by Dennis Fetterly, Mark Manasse and Marc Najork from Microsoft. They used two sets of pages downloaded from the Internet. The first set was crawled repeatedly from November 2002 to February 2003 and consisted from 150 million URLs. For each page the researches recorded HTTP status, time of download, document length, number of non-markup words, and a vector indicating the changes in page content between downloads. A sample of this set (751 pages) was inspected manually and 61 spam pages were discovered, or 8.1% of the set with a confidence interval of 1.95% at 95% confidence.

Another set was crawled between July and September 2002 and comprises 429 million pages and 38 million HTTP redirects. For this set the following properties were recorded: URL, URLs of outgoing links; for the HTTP redirects – the source and the target URL. 535 pages were manually inspected and 37 of them were identified as spam (6.9%).

The research concentrates on studying the following properties of web pages:
– URL properties, including length and percentage of non-alphabetical characters (dashes, digits, dots etc.).
– Host name resolutions.
– Linkage properties.
– Content properties.
– Content evolution properties.
– Clustering properties.

URL Properties

Search engine optimizers often use numerous automatically generated pages to massively distribute their low PageRank to a single target page. Since the pages are machine generated we can expect their URLs to look differently from those created by humans. The assumptions are that these URLs are longer and include more non-alphabetical characters such as dashes, slashes or digits. When searching for spam pages we should consider the host component only, not the entire URL down to the page name.

The manual inspection of the 100 longest hostnames had revealed that 80 of them belong to adult site and 11 refer to the financial and credit related sites. Therefore in order to produce a spam identification rule the length property has to be combined with the percentage of non-alphabetical characters. In the given set 0.173% of URLs are at least 45 characters long and contain at least 6 dots, 5 dashes or 10 digits-and the vast majority of these pages appear to be spam. By changing the threshold values we can change the number of pages flagged as spam and the number of false positives.

Host Name Resolutions

One can notice that Google, given a query q, tends to rank a page higher if the host component of the page’s URL contains keywords from q. To utilize this search engine optimizers stuff pages with URLs containing popular keywords and keyphrases and set up DNS servers to resolve these URLs to a single IP. Generally SEOs generate a large number of host names to rank for a wide variety of popular queries.

This behavior can also be relatively easy detected by observing the number of host name resolutions to a single IP. In our set 1,864,807 IP addresses are mapped to only one host name, and 599,632 IPs-to 2 host names. There are also some extreme cases with hundreds of thousands host names mapped to a single IP, and the record-breaking IP referred by 8,967,154 host names.

To flag pages as spam a threshold of 10,000 name resolutions was chosen. About 3.46% of the pages in the Set 2 are served from IP addresses referred by 10,000 and more host names and the manual inspection of this sample proved that with very few exceptions they were spam. Lower threshold (1,000 name resolutions or 7.08% pages in the set) produces an unacceptable amount of false positives.

Linkage Properties

The Web consisting of interlinked pages has a structure of a graph. Therefore in graph terminology the number of outgoing links of a page can be referred to as the out-degree, while the in-degree equals to the number link pointing to a page. By analyzing out- and in-degrees values it is also possible to detect spam pages which would represent the outliers in the corresponding distributions.

In our set for example there are 158,290 pages with out-degree 1301, while according to the overall trend only 1,700 such pages are expected. Overall 0.05% of pages in the Set 2 have out-degrees at least three times more than suggested by the Zipfian distribution, and according to the manual inspection of a cross section, almost all of them are spam.

Similarly the distribution for in-degrees is calculated. For example 369,457 pages have the in-degree of 1001, while according to the trend only 2,000 such pages are expected. Overall, 0.19% of pages in the Set 2 have in-degrees at least three times more common than the Zipfian distribution would suggest, and the majority of them are spam.

Content Properties

Despite the recent measures taken by search engines to diminish the effect of keyword stuffing, this technique is still used by some SEOs who generate pages filled with meaningless keywords to promote their AdSense pages. Quite often such pages are based on a single template and even have the same number of words which makes them especially easy to detect using statistical methods.

For Set 1 the number of non-markup words in each page was recorded, so we can draw the variance of word count in pages downloaded from a given host name. The variance is plotted on the x-axis and the word count is shown on the y-axis, both axes are drawn on a logarithmic scale. Points in the left side of the graph marked with blue represent cases where at list 10 pages from a given host have the same word count. There are 944 such hosts (0.21% of the pages in Set 1). A random sample of 200 these pages was examined manually: 35% were spam, 3.5% contained no text and 41.5% were soft errors (a page with a message indicating that the resource is not currently available, despite the HTTP status code 200 “OK”).

Content Evolution

The natural evolution of the content in the Web is slow. In a period of a week 65% of all pages will not change at all, while only 0.8% will change completely. In contrast many spam SEO web pages generated in response to an HTTP request independent of the requested URL will change completely of every download. Therefore by looking into extreme cases of content mutation we search engines are able to detect web spam.

The outliers represent IPs serving the pages that change completely every week. Set 1 contains 367 such servers with 1,409,353 pages (97.2%). The manual examination of a sample of 106 pages showed that 103 (97.2%) were spam, 2 were soft errors and 1 adult pages counted as a false positive.

Clustering Properties

Automatically generated spam pages tend to look very similar. In fact, as already said above, most of them are based on the same model and have only minor differences (like inserting varying keywords into a template). Pages with such properties can be detected by applying clustering analysis to our samples.

To form clusters of similar pages the ’shingling’ algorithm described by Broder et al. [2] will be used. Figure 7 shows the distribution of the cluster sizes on near duplicate pages in Set 1. The horizontal axis shows the size of the cluster (the number of pages in the near-equivalence class), and the vertical axis shows how many such clusters Set 1 contains.

The outliers can be put into two groups. The first group did not contain any spam pages, pages in this group are more related to the duplicated content issue. In the same time the second group is populated predominantly by spam documents. 15 of 20 largest clusters were spam containing 2,080,112 pages (1.38% of all pages in Set 1)

To Sum Up

The methods described above are the examples of a fairly simple statistical approach to spam detection. The real life algorithms are much more sophisticated and are based on machine learning technologies which allow search engine to detect and battle spam with a relatively high efficiency at an acceptable rate of false positives. Applying the spam detection techniques enables search engine to produce more relevant results and ensures a more fair competition based on the quality of web resources and not on technical tricks.

References:

1. Dennis Fetterly, Mark Manasse, Marc Najork. “Spam, Damn Spam, and Statistics: Using statistical analysis to locate spam web pages” (2004). Microsoft Research.

2. A. Broder, S. Glassman, M. Manasse, and G. Zweig. “Syntactic Clustering of the Web”. In 6th International World Wide Web Conference, April 1997.

Oleg Ishenko

drawing aliens,graffiti characters

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Romance writing has always been a popular genre of literature. This is because it is a subject that is very close to people’s hearts. Romance writing has always been undertaken by people who feel they have a passion for setting the stage and directing the drama all in writing romance. It is a field that has very many players and, the results have been very impressive. Writers have been able to draw an audience from dry readers with their juicy narrations which can only be described as captivating; many writers have achieved this. The bar was set very high by writers who are long gone. Their creative tales of the past romance is covered with an erotic innocence that will not fade away soon. Writers like William Shakespeare were known for their artistic seventh sense as they ventured into the world of fiction and reality combined. There is so much history to look at when it comes to writing. For any writing to progress, it is vital to look at history for the purpose of judging how far we have come. We have come from far and, the good news is that romance gets better with age.

Contemporary romance writing has taken center stage. This is becoming the specialty of all age groups and genders. The diversity has only brought progress to the world of romance fiction. There are writers who have decided to use that historical edge to totally bring out real life characters who are able to make a better impression. Writers like Virginia Henley have done this perfectly. She is known to blend her work and set the romance with a historical theme and influence. If you are the kind of person who enjoys this kind of realism, the romance writing is for you. There are so many categories of subgenres that come with this kind of writing. As I have just mention, historical romance is still very popular in the modern day. We also have the modern or contemporary genres which are becoming more and more dynamic. Erotic romance is another form of writing that mainly focuses of the strong sexual urge between main characters. Many really appreciate this kind of writing because it is considered more practical.

Paranormal romance literature and science fiction romance are other categories of the writing. They literally feature extra ordinary stuff which is all intertwined in a romantic story. In the modern world, people are becoming more and more interested in the paranormal. The twists have definitely brought romance writing to another level. There are very many categories to choose from and, you can be assured of amazing reads. Get to know the kind of writing you are more interested in. This ay, you will be able to cut to the chase and know the kind of story you want to read. For more insight or guidance on reading such writings, you can join a book club. If you do not have time to meet, you can join an online book club which will provide you with the support and guidelines you need to start reading.

Francis Githinji

Drawing graffiti letters can be done in hundreds of different ways, but drawing on graph paper helps the letters stay to scale, and using a brush pen creates a flared effect. Draw a few different types of graffiti letters with a demonstration from an experienced artist and art supply store employee in this free video on drawing

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Learn how to give your cartoon drawing some legs with expert artist advice in this free online drawing and cartooning lesson video clip. Expert: Danny Page Bio: Danny Page is a professional cartoonist and illustrator. Filmmaker: Nathan Boehme

One of the more fascinating things you can think about when you’re bored is why the spam is so different depending on where you have accounts. Perhaps I’m just lucky, but I get very little spam through my ISP. Mostly, it’s just to persuade me to buy viagra and other more obviously fake ways of producing sexual enhancement. I suppose the way I trawl the web to find stories to write about here sells my name as someone desperate to find a way of overcoming sexual inadequacy. But, when it comes to Gmail, my inbox is more evenly divided between viagra and gambling sites. And then come the yahoo accounts (I have several for different purposes). Almost without exception, I am flooded by the Nigerian scam mail. It seems the spammers target different user groups depending on the mail servers they use. A research team based at the University of California has been digging into the problem — it’s completely fascinating to see how some research teams spend their time. Anyway, this team decided to try estimating how much money the spammers made out of persuading people to buy viagra. Their guess? $3.5 million a year. How did they come up with this number? Well, like cunning hackers, they wormed their way into the Storm botnet. For the uninitiated among you, this is one of the control centers for all those hacked computers around the world. Storm lets you send out millions of e-mails. To monitor responses, they set up two websites of their own to promote. One offered to sell viagra. The other was designed to mimic infecting the users with trojans — the same little bits of code that allow spammers to hijack machines in the first place. Both were actually harmless but counted the traffic and downloaded benign bits of code. Now comes the exciting bit. They sent out almost 470 million e-mails. There were 350 million to promote the viagra site with 10,500 people responding and 28 people attempting to buy viagra in quantities worth more than US$100. So the low conversion rate did not mean low profits. By scaling up this hit rate, the research team arrived at their annual estimate for gross revenue. But it’s actually quite expensive to send out all this spam so the only way the operation pays is if the spammers also run the sites they promote. The infection site was more efficient, converting an average of 6,000 PCs a day to clones. OK, so now you know who to blame for some of that spam you have been receiving, you can all get your own back by e-mailing the research team which is based at the campuses at Berkeley and San Diego. The dog that didn’t bark during the night One of the very best throwaway lines from Sherlock Holmes comes in The Silver Blaze. Asked what is significant about the way in which the horse was stolen, he identifies the failure of the dog to bark as the most important clue. I have always liked the idea of the answer to mystery novels turning on some simple insight. Too often, an author gets so caught up in his or her own cleverness that plot becomes too complicated and characters less interesting as they do increasingly odd things just to fit in with the need to arrive at the solution. So it is, when people like me come to write about why to buy viagra. We beat out our brains trying to find something new and exciting to say when all the new and exciting things have already been said. Then we remember the simple rule. If in doubt, talk about an animal. By now almost everyone on the planet knows that viagra is the best thing since the invention of sliced bread when it comes to a cure for erectile dysfunction. As an aside, I should note that sliced bread is completely useless as a remedy for impotence. Anyway, what is slightly less well known is that viagra is also used under a different brand name for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension. This affects the main arteries and veins in the chest, through the lungs and leading to and from the heart. If blood pressure rises too high, it can cause dizziness and difficulty in breathing. Unchecked, it leads to the risk of heart failure, particularly during exertion. In treating erectile dysfunction, viagra works by dilating the arteries leading into the penis. The same qualities make it a vital way of relieving high blood pressure in the chest. So how do we draw all this together into the big reveal at the end of this little mystery? Well, for that, you have to travel with me to Highgate in London. Look around and ask for Bentley. He’s quite a local character. You see, he got problems with his pulmonary arteries and was prescribed viagra. Now, he’s back on his feet again, chasing rabbits and doing all the doggy things that Springer spaniels do when they are fit again. The local veterinarian was absolutely correct in his diagnosis. The failure to bark probably indicated an imminent heart attack. The use of viagra dilated the arteries and allowed the blood to flow more smoothly. He was “cured”. Unfortunately, Bentley was neutered when young so we are unable to report if his sexual prowess also improved. Other than that, take this story to heart. Even dogs sing the praises of viagra! Buy viagra online right now!

John Scott

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An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Getting Noticed in a Noisy Marketplace

My daughter, the one I affectionately call Daughter Number 2, recently challenged herself to participate in a high school Debate Tournament, following in her mother’s footsteps. The topic? Be It Resolved that Santa Claus is a Dangerous Concept Which Should be Abolished. So, 6 AM, the morning of the debate, I’m surfing the net for stories of bank robberies and kidnappings by men in Santa suits. It didn’t take long before I got sidetracked onto something even better― a bunch of articles on The Santa Brand. (Let the kid do her own research!)

Gotta admit, it never occurred to me before, but Mr. Claus fits most of the criteria I set out in my upcoming book “Step Into The Spotlight! -’Cause ALL Business is Show Business!” (Publication Date: April 2008), criteria for developing a dynamic business persona using showbiz techniques.

In show business, actors, directors and playwrights spend a lot of time on character development. In business, we call this building a brand. A business persona, just like a character in a play, needs a unique look (white beard, rosy cheeks, an enlarged perimeter), a unique costume (Red Suit, much better for branding than Banker Blue), a unique name (Santa Claus), a clearly defined personality (Jollier than the Jolly Green Giant), a strong philosophy (You gotta be nice, not naughty) and the guy’s gotta know his lines and stick to the script (”Ho, Ho, Ho!”).

Santa does all that. And the guy’s consistent. You never see him in a blue Hawaiian shirt, even if he’s hanging out at the Honolulu Hilton in December. Try leaving your scarf or gloves or umbrella at a Chamber of Commerce Networking Breakfast. Would everyone immediately know to whom it belonged? They would if you forgot your red velvet hat with a dangling white pom-pom!

The Pillsbury Dough Boy, The Maytag Repairman and The Man from Glad also each have a consistent look and OK, the Dough Boy is irresistible. But none of these characters have the emotional connection with their audience that Santa has. And it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen Santa’s show, you’ll be sitting in the front row again next December. The Maytag and Glad guys stand for dependability, but Santa’s not only dependable, he stands for hope as well, ask any kid on December 24.

Speaking of kids, why is it that we let our kids sit on the laps of strange men in department stores? Why is it that year after year, chubby red suited guys get away with “naughty” deeds like robbing banks and kidnapping kids? Why? Because Santa is such a strong brand that not only kids, but adults, lower their guard and trust the guy. We even leave the guy milk and cookies by the fireplace and encourage him to break into the house when we’re all asleep. Even the Grinch Who Stole Christmas eventually succumbed to his charm as did the journalist who wrote “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”. What does he stand for? Goodness and kindness and “pull out your wallet”.

Santa even knows how to work publicity. Many would disagree, but my philosophy has always been that it’s hard to burst onto the scene if you’ve been hanging around on stage all along! Santa doesn’t try to get ink 365 days a year. He lets Cupid have Valentine’s Day, lets the chicks and bunnies arm wrestle over Easter, leaves Thanksgiving to the turkeys and only then, bursts onto the scene after the stuffing’s been stuffed away.

But we’re talking business. You’re probably thinking, “Yeah Tsufit, but can the guy make money?” Yah Man! Actors are always asking their director “What’s my motivation?” and the classic joke answer is “To get paid”. Santa knows how to bring in the bucks as well as the next guy, better even. But there’s one question nobody seems to be asking. Who’s he making money for?

The major downside of the Santa Brand is that, unlike the Pillsbury Dough Boy or the Man from Glad or the Maytag Repairman, Santa will work for anyone. (You’d never catch the Maytag guy hawking computers on the side.)

I recently snuck out of a marketing seminar to visit the Coca Cola Museum in Atlanta and learned that although the Claus-ster’s been around for ages, Coke gave the guy his current look, Coca Cola Red suit and all, way back in the 1930’s and put him to work selling The Real Thing. But like Kleenex became just another tissue and Zipper became just another fastener, Generic Red Suit Santa started raking it in for anyone who wanted a piece of the action.

It’s nice that he lends his name to charity and stands on street corners pulling in bowls of dollars for the Salvation Army and unwrapped new toys for unfortunate kids. But that’s where I’d draw the line if he were my brand. In Showbiz, unique characters are the show’s best currency. If the character of Ugly Betty started showing up on Grey’s Anatomy and The Gilmore Girls and Desperate Housewives, it wouldn’t be long before she’d lose her draw.

The lesson here? Develop a clear living breathing persona for your business, but make sure it’s your brand, one that has a unique look, philosophy and connection with the crowd so people will pull out their wallets for you too. Before you know it, you’ll be rolling in more dough than the Doughboy!

iS

TSUFIT

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In the Star Wars movie’s famous bar scene you knew, by appearance, what zany character was sitting beside you. Each character had a distinctive look. Yet in today’s meetings you may have no idea the constellation of characters that you’re meeting with. That’s because their normal outward appearances belie often-troublesome behavior. Use this article as your guide to the crazy cast of characters you’re likely to encounter in your meetings. Whether or not you’re armed with a light saber, you’ll nevertheless be equipped to do battle with these oft-destructive forces who subvert meetings with their bothersome behavior.

The Monopolizer: This person thinks he or she is the only one with wisdom on subjects. The monopolizer believes everyone else is there to hear him or her speak, and so they do, incessantly. They d
Drawing Popular Cartoon Characters : How to Draw Naruto

on’t appreciate that meetings offer an opportunity to hear from many. They prattle on and on, arrogantly acting as though their ideas or beliefs are inherently more important than others. Sadly other people shy away from contributing, intimidated by the monopolizer’s stranglehold on the meeting. When facilitators allow this it sends a message their rudeness is sanctioned. The facilitator or even other meeting participants should indicate an interest in hearing from others in the meeting, to remind the monopolizer that others can speak as well as listen.

The Tangent Talker: This person hijacks the topic of the group by taking discussions off on tangents — topics unrelated to the issue at hand. One minute you’re on topic and the next minute you’re in “left field” as your agenda topic has been taken to a tangent. Your meeting chair’s ability to recognize and refocus is essential to a productive meeting. “Let’s remember to confine ourselves to the topic at hand” is a good way to get back on track. Alternately saying, “Let’s try to avoid tangents” also labels such behavior as contrary to the group’s aims. As well, you can “park” extraneous items in a “parking lot” list where they’re noted, if only to be addressed later.

The Devil’s Advocate: Let’s face it, there’s one in every crowd and most meetings too. This person seems to relish taking the opposite tack. Whatever the argument being put forth, this person delights in taking an opposing view. It’s sport for them, an exercise in opposition. The more unpopular the stance the more exciting their challenge. Often they begin by saying “just for the sake of argument…I believe the opposite is true….” While there’s value in looking at issues from multiple points of view and avoiding groupthink, the Devil’s Advocate applies their technique to every issue, every argument and every conversation. Hold on to your Agenda and get comfortable. This could take a while! A good chair can praise this person’s ability to do this while simultaneously indicating its inappropriateness given time parameters or previously agreed issues.

Thy Cynic: The ultimate naysayer, this person has a Masters degree in negativity. Adroit at the phrase “it won’t work” they are skilled at deflating and defeating whatever motion is in motion. “Can’t be done.” “They’ll never buy it.” “We tried it once and it was a failure.” Their motto: just say no.

Challenge these people to think like The Devil’s Advocate and suppose for that things could work. Use the common conflict resolution tool of asking them to embrace the other side’s view as if it were their own, and argue that side’s position.

The Fence Sitter: Known for their paralysis by analysis, these characters are unable to make decisions. Despite being in a deliberative body, they are conflicted by multiple arguments, and can’t “pull the trigger” when it’s time to make a decision in a meeting. They provide fodder for the Devil’s Advocate, the Cynic and other characters with their ambivalence. Whether they are afraid of being wrong, or of disagreeing with someone else, or just going on record, they are a meeting monster for their inability to move the action forward. Try to cajole them to action. Remind them they have a vote and were invited to use it. Ask them their opinions on matters to draw them out and get them on record.

The Brown Noser: There’s likely one in every meeting. The person who is so obsequious, bending over backwards to ingratiate himself or herself to the boss, the meeting leader or other power broker. They’re so busy currying favor with others they subvert whatever true feelings they have about issues to “kiss butt.” They are seen to be in the pocket of the person they’re cow-towing to. Ultimately they are seen for who they are and become predictable. Try to elicit their ideas and preferences before asking others as a way of drawing them out.

The Pandora’s Box Opener: These meeting monsters just have to tackle issues that are emotional, touchy or are “hot buttons” for others in the meeting. In every meeting there are topics sure to strike a nerve, to provoke an emotional reaction or enter the group into a quagmire. These people lead the entire meeting into areas that provoke frustration, animosities and often resentment too. Once this box is opened, it’s hard to get its issues back in the box. Discussions of salaries, promotions or personal styles often stir up issues that hijack meetings. Even worse, some culprits reopen issues from earlier in the meeting that have already been resolved. The best cure: a firm “let’s not go there’ from the meeting’s facilitator. Other phrases like “let’s cross that bridge when we get there” or “that’s a hornets nest we don’t need to disturb” labels certain subjects out of bounds.

The Attacker: As children these people were bullies. Some haven’t grown up! The attacker deftly mixes negativity with personal attacks, challenging others’ ideas with vigor. Without regard to hurting others’ feelings, the attacker uses a confrontational style to object to others’ ideas and go against the flow. Sadly, sometimes they don’t even realize they’re attacking. A good facilitator can refocus them to be positive, to remove the sting from their words and avoid an adversarial approach. All meeting participants are entitled to stop the meeting when attacked personally. Ad hominem attacks are attacks against one’s person. People can criticize your actions or beliefs, but you don’t have to tolerate attacks against who you are as a person.

The Joker: Don’t let their good nature fool you, Jokers can be meeting monsters. Their constant joking has the effect of diminishing others’ serious ideas or suggestions. Their infusion of humor can belittle others’ motions and makes it difficult for some to be taken seriously. There is a time and place for joking. While we all like a good laugh, constant joking disrupts a meeting and distracts attention from where it should be. A meeting chair can designate several minutes at the start or middle of a meeting specifically for humor. When it crops up elsewhere and is deemed disruptive, the chair can remind people the time for humor is passed or forthcoming, so as to control it.

The Robots: Yep, these meeting monsters are actually cell phones, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDA’s) and laptops. Each distracts their owner and others too as they intrude on participants’ attention spans during meetings. It’s gotten so bad now cell phones contain cameras within them…just what meetings need. A good meeting chair will create ground rules for meetings, including turning off these gadgets at their outset. It’s hard to compete with human distractions, let alone electronic ones as well.

As you can see, meetings are full of characters. You should study the behavior in meetings, including your own, to better understand your style of interaction. The character of your meetings will surely be affected by the characters in your meeting. May the force be with you.

Craig Harrison

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The Application of Gender Roles within “Much Ado About Nothing” and
“The Taming of the Shrew”
In his works William Shakespeare exploits many different themes to uncover the message of the works, impress reader and make a narration more vivid and colorful, sophisticated and interesting. The treatment of gender roles plays an important role in the plays under analysis being an integral part of plot and characters development. In Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare attempts to portray a more positive and accepting view of how women should be regarded and treated.
Shakespeare constructs gender role according to characters functions in the play. “In Much Ado About Nothing”, most of the male characters is depicted as brave soldiers. Leonato, Claudio and Benedick. They are courageous and clever men. For all their concentration on mundane details, Shakespeare’s novels depicts survival, heroic adventures of social mobility in which individuals single-handedly confront and conquer a host of adverse circumstances. In “The Taming of the Shrew”, the major characters Petruccio and Lucentio are joined by friendship. Despite the apparent crudity of their narratives, Shakespeare’s novels are animated by a quality more usually identified with a more self-consciously sophisticated form of gender relations. In both plays, women characters are depicted loving and sympathetic, nevertheless very proud and ambitious.
In spite historical epoch and predetermined gender roles of woman as subordinate, Shakespeare underlines that gender role between women and men are not so important as considered to be.
“Now Kate, I am a husband for your turn,
For by this light, whereby I see thy beauty
Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well” (The Taming of the Shrew, p.272).

In contrast to men, the function of women is to be a good wife and mother. In “Much ado about nothing” he writes that: “They say the lady is fair. ‘Tis a truth, I can bear them witness. And virtuous’tis so, I cannot reprove it. And wise, but for loving me. By my troth, it is no addition to her witnor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her” (Much ado about nothing, p.204).
Gender roles are stable in the plays in spite of the changes in appearance of the characters. From the very beginning in “The Taming of the Shrew”, Shakespeare portrays changes in the statuses of the hero. Sly is dressed as a lord, and a pageboy dressed in women’s clothing: “Am I a lord and have I such a lady? Or do I dream? Or have I dreamed till now? I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak”. (The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Scene 2, lines 28-30). In the other play, Claudio and Hero decide to play a game, and force Beatrice and Benedick to fall in love. Their changes in appearance are successful helping Beatrice and Benedick to stop arguing. In “Much ado about nothing” the main hero says “What should I do with himdress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him” (Much ado about nothing, p.28). Contradictions like these – and there are many other celebrated examples in the plays – have often been taken as evidence of a slap-dash approach to the gender roles. Yet the pattern of these contradictions, in which characters preach like moralists yet act like ruthless opportunists, goes to the heart of Shakespeare plays. In any case, these heroes preserve their identity as males and females. These changes in the appearance, do not influence the status of woman in the society and do not humiliate them. Judgements like these derive from the tendency to identify Shakespeare with the narrators of his plays.
Exploiting the ambiguities of female function, a subdued creature and a strong and loving person, Shakespeare portrays complex female characters from positive side. For instance, in “The Taming of the Shrew” ill-tempered Katherine is contrasted to her “lovely” and calm sister Bianca. ‘Katherine the Curst’ A title for a maid, of all titles the worst” (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1, Sc. 2, Lines 130-131). Shakespeare portrays Bianca as: “‘Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both hat can assure my daughter greatest dower
Shall have my Bianca’s love.” (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Sc. 1, Lines 361-365).
In general, Shakespeare’s reputation contributed to the stereotype of the moral author.
Plays which conformed to social mores were more widely acceptable as serious literary plays. The strong gender roles system made a clear distinction between the aristocratic lady as a graceful accomplishment, and the woman who went against the nature of sex.
Although the terms of the relative judgement has sometimes altered, the temptation to draw comparisons between male and female. High morality of women is underlined throughout the plays. The morality of Shakespeare is based on a simple antithetical contrast; natural instinct versus social hypocrisy, goodness of heart versus cunning of head. Part of the satisfaction of the plays comes from the combination of the formal symmetry of role structure with the apparent freedom and randomness of some episodes. At the end of the play, Katherine declares, “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee, And for thy maintence commits his body To painful labor both by sea and land” (Act 5, Sc. 2, 162-180). Using this episode, Shakespeare contrasts female characters underlining that women are treated according to their behaviour and character, which has little to do with gender roles. “I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.” (Much ado about nothing, p. 224).
In both plays, women voices construct great psychological complexity. In its treatment of the contradictions between ‘virtue’ as reputation and virginity as an extension of moral integrity, Shakespeare highlights the social hypocrisies where the marriage market puts a price on maidenhood. Shakespeare urges the conventional solution of marrying the seducer, but Katherine follows the path of self-imposed martyrdom. The play depicts simplistic morality, based on eternal virtues and justice.
“I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace” (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 5, Sc. 2, Lines 361-365).
This quote provides a notable contrast to the male treatment of female characters. It was the development of the female characters. By creating an distance between the heroines and the heroes, Shakespeare uses this theme to make a social comment on women’s nobles focusing on their good and bad sides.
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,-
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never” Much ado about nothing, p.101).
Shakespeare uses the narrative of a woman asking readers to decide what is good and what is bad. He shows an intelligent but naive men tricked out of a woman virtue (Bianca). In drawing attention to the dangers faced by the good- natured but ill-advised heroine contributes to the social debate on the status of women, using the play as an entertaining medium of discussion. This is the way to kill a wife with kindness (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Sc. 1, Lines 201).
Attempting to portray positive image of women, Shakespeare underlines that it is a man who helps women to survive. Women do not have a possibility to interfere into life of men, nevertheless they do so in the plays. Women decide what is good for them and choose the ways to “reach a man”. For instance, Bianca ask Lucentio to be her tutor. Also, Claudio impulsive vitality is made acceptable by the artful manipulations of the narrator’s tone.
Women’s life, their destiny defined and depended upon the men, and, particularly, upon the their marriage. Although men had an influence on women’s behavior and exaggerated them in many life situations: “”That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks; but that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me.” (Much ado about nothing, p. 221).
Shakespeare describes that female characters are strong, as physically so mentally, because their life status requires a masculine strength, but all female characters copes with it perfectly. Shakespeare uses mainly masculine adjectives to underline thier strength.
And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire? (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1, Scene 2, lines 200-209).
The main characteristics outlined are not independent, separate qualities of women but are all mutually interrelated while having an inter-dependent essence in each case. They serve to summarise and unify all characteristics inherent to women. Their character features appear as a guideline or norm that helps women to judge what is or is not right or good in their life. Feeling and practicising care, seeking peace of mind, holding to truth and desiring justice are intrinsic aims. That is, the degree of realisation of positive values in thought and action depend on the nature of the accumulated tendencies of a person interacting with others.
“Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband” (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 5, Scene 2, lines 12-13).
With the help of Hero, Shakespeare points out the readers’ attention to virtues of conciseness, strong, clear imagery, symbolism, understatement, humor, and irony. These fluctuations reflect the tragic tension within males: Claudio is at once too ambitious to allow his conscience to stop behaving his way and too conscientious to be happy with himself. At the end, Shakespeare depicts Claudio as a man whose character lacks strength, because of ambition. Women attempt to prove that their are strong enough to live in a masculine world, but they reach this through men’s love:
“O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been
For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love,
And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang
To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,
And never shall it more be gracious” (Much ado about nothing, p. 271).
Even if Shakespeare portrays women from a positive side gender roles in the plays are limited. Wmen’s life and their destiny will be defined and depended upon the men, and, particularly, upon the their marriage. Although men will have an influence on women’s behavior and exaggerate them in many life situations. To look deeply into the problem it is possible to say that women have fought to be independent and be equal to men, but they have no rights. On the one hand marriage connects with ideology and sees as the state intervention in marriage and a abuse of rights. Women are treated as wives and mothers primarily.
“Lord! I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I hath rather lie in the woolen” (Much ado about nothing, p. 211).
In any case, woman represented in the plays of Shakespeare do not suffers because their role as wives. This a positive moments in treatment women. The old-new conservative approach to marry a prosperous person (a man or a woman) comes to nothing when the love is taken into account. In contrast to epoch represented by Shakespeare, marriage means love and happiness. Nevertheless, the existence of institution of marriage, in which men played the dominant role and wielded control, determine the gender roles, and placed women at the mercy of their male counterparts. Katherine says:
“My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws” (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 5, Scene 2, lines 140-144).
Some day women attempt to put an end to the long-established meaning of women’s roles and became feminists who were ready to fight against men. Women could move beyond the constrictions of the ideology.
It is possible to conclude that both plays embody functional division of gender roles: women are wives and men are husbands. Nevertheless, Shakespeare goes far beyond this simplistic representation of genders portraying that women can perform men’s functions successfully. This style of writing revels in its own vivacity and wit, offering its readers a rich and varied interpretation of gender roles and gender relations together with literary sophistication. Gender roles are based on moral introspection and psychological insight dramatizing the dilemmas of individual social choice. Love as care does not refer to an emotion or a state of mind so much as to a human faculty of identification with others, sympathy with all beings. Female’s sympathy seeks many and various channels of realisation. It is developed through experience and gradual self-realisation. Women’ poetic nature helps the reader to understand that female characters have a natural charm so attractive to others.
With its tone, both plays are a brilliant indictment of a society in which gender roles has abnegated the natural ties of humanity and love.
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Andrew Sandon

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