Analysis of Shakespeares The Tempest - The Epilogue :: Shakespeare The Tempest

The Epilogue of the Tempest The Epilogue of the Tempest by William Shakespeare is an excellent -- if not the best -- example of Shakespeare's brilliance. In 20 lines Shakespeare is able to write an excellent ending to his play, while speaking through his characters about Shakespeare's own life and career. Even more amazingly, he seemlessly ties the two together. In the context of the story Prospero's monologue makes perfect sense. He has lost his magical power, so his "charms are o'erthrown, and what strength [Prospero] have's [his] own, which is most faint." He is now "confined" on the Island, for his other choice would be to go to Naples and reclaim his dukedom, but he doesn't want to do that because he has already "pardoned the deceiver" who took his position many years ago. Prospero then says something a little strange, but it makes sense in the context of the story, he ask us to "release [him] from [his] bands with the help of your good hands." In other words, clap so that the sails of the boats his friends are riding in will be safely returned and Prospero can be "relieved by prayer" of the audience. All of what Prospero has said is very nice cute, but the most interesting part of this monologue is what Shakespeare himself is saying. "Now that my charms are all o'erthrown, and what strength I have's mine own" means, now my plays are over, and it's no longer my characters speaking. The "Island" or stage Shakespeare is on is now "bare" and it is time for "you" the audience to release Shakespeare and his actors from this play with the "help of [y]our good hands." Shakespeare was not only being released for the performance of the play, he was being release from his career as a playwright. But there are more reasons to clap besides the obvious reason that the play is over, Shakespeare could not allow his final play to be bad, his project "was to please." He reiterates this point by saying "and my ending is despair unless I be relieved by prayer", or the clapping of the audience and it frees "all faults" and allows Shakespeare to indulge the clapping and joy of the au dience. Finally, after we seperate the two different perspectives, we can step back and see how Shakespeare magically works them together.

Health Care System Budgeting Procedures

Larry Scanlan, in his article about hospital budgeting, presents seven keys to a successful budget. These â€Å"reality keys†, as he calls them, are designed to help insure that the CFO and CEO are able to navigate through a difficult process. The first of these is accountability. He recommends communicating about the status of financial performance in all areas, and instituting a compliance plan that monitors and responds quickly to problems. Teamwork and a high sense of management integrity are essential. The budget is everyone's responsibility, not just management. The second key is to know your market. The budget process should mesh seamlessly with the strategic plan. Management should have a clear enough understanding of their market, so that they can respond to changes quickly and accurately. The third key is to know how the institution's revenue is generated. Physicians are the key to revenue, and management should be actively involved in physician service, retention, and recruitment. This will allow management to accurately predict volume from admissions and subsequent revenue. The fourth key is to base the budgets on reasonable objectives. Scanlan discusses basing budget numbers on realistic achievements, rather than â€Å"what the boss wants.† The budget should have specific action steps, responsibility, and timelines and milestones so that progress can be monitored and corrective action taken when needed. The fifth key deals with keeping the operating margin healthy. The margin must be realistic and as accurate as possible. â€Å"Without a rigorous approach to establishing a realistic operating margin, the CEO, CFO, and management team may face a daunting shortfall of budgeted margin to meet cash requirements.†1 The sixth key is to monitor the process. Actual results must be captured and variances generated when there is a difference between the budget and the actual results. It makes absolutely no sense to create a budget if the institution is not going to monitor results against it. The variances can point out corrective action that is required. Finally, the last key is to have a contingency plan in effect to cover adverse occurrences. While it is impossible to plan for every contingency, some occurrences can be foreseen. Labor costs and equipment expenses can be estimated with some accuracy. Scanlan argues that it is important for the CEO and CFO to set the tone and direction for the planning and execution of the budget process. It is their responsibility to keep the budget grounded in reality. â€Å"By using the keys to budget reality, you can monitor performance, identify trends, and make course adjustments in a timely manner.†2

How to Add Items to a TPopUp Delphi Menu

When working with Menus or PopUp menus in Delphi applications, in most scenarios, you create the menu items at design-time. Each menu item is represented by a TMenuItem Delphi class. When a user selects (clicks) an item, the OnClick event is fired for you (as a developer) to grab the event and respond to it. There may be situations when the items of the menu are not known at design time, but need to be added at run-time (dynamically instantiated). Add TMenuItem at Run-Time Suppose there is a TPopupMenu component named PopupMenu1 on a Delphi form, to add an item to the popup menu you could write a piece of code as: var   Ã‚   menuItem : TMenuItem; begin   Ã‚  menuItem : TMenuItem.Create(PopupMenu1) ;   Ã‚  menuItem.Caption : Item added at TimeToStr(now) ;   Ã‚  menuItem.OnClick : PopupItemClick;   Ã‚  //assign it a custom integer value..   Ã‚  menuItem.Tag : GetTickCount;   Ã‚  PopupMenu1.Items.Add(menuItem) ; end; Notes In the above code, one item is added to the PopupMenu1 component. Note that we assigned an integer value to the Tag property. The Tag property (every Delphi component has it) is designed to allow a developer to assign an arbitrary integer value stored as part of the component.The GetTickCount API function retrieves the number of milliseconds that have elapsed since Windows was started.For the OnClick event handler, we assigned PopupItemClick - the name of the function with the *correct* signature. procedure TMenuTestForm.PopupItemClick(Sender: TObject) ; var   Ã‚   menuItem : TMenuItem; begin   Ã‚   if NOT (Sender is TMenuItem) then   Ã‚   begin   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ShowMessage(Hm, if this was not called by Menu Click, who called this?!) ;   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ShowMessage(Sender.ClassName) ;   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   exit;   Ã‚   end;   Ã‚   menuItem : TMenuItem(sender) ;   Ã‚   ShowMessage(Format(Clicked on %s, TAG value: %d,[menuItem.Name, menuItem.Tag])) ; end; Important When a dynamically added item is clicked, the PopupItemClick will be executed. In order to differentiate between one or more run-time added items (all executing the code in PopupItemClick) we can use the Sender parameter: The PopupItemClick method first checks if the Sender is actually a TMenuItem object. If the method is executed as a result of a menu item OnClick event handler we simply show a dialog message with the Tag value being assigned when the menu item was added to the menu. Custom String-In TMenuItem In real-world applications, you might/would need more flexibility. Lets say that each item will represent a web page - a string value would be required to hold the URL of the web page. When the user selects this item you could open the default web browser and navigate to the URL assigned with the menu item. Heres a custom TMenuItemExtended class equipped with a custom string Value property: type    TMenuItemExtended class(TMenuItem)    private   Ã‚  Ã‚   fValue: string;    published   Ã‚  Ã‚   property Value : string read fValue write fValue;    end; Heres how to add this extended menu item to a PoupMenu1: var   Ã‚   menuItemEx : TMenuItemExtended; begin   Ã‚   menuItemEx : TMenuItemExtended.Create(PopupMenu1) ;   Ã‚   menuItemEx.Caption : Extended added at TimeToStr(now) ;   Ã‚   menuItemEx.OnClick : PopupItemClick;   Ã‚   //assign it a custom integer value..   Ã‚   menuItemEx.Tag : GetTickCount;   Ã‚   //this one can even hold a string value   Ã‚   menuItemEx.Value : http://delphi.about.com;   Ã‚   PopupMenu1.Items.Add(menuItemEx) ; end; Now, the PopupItemClick must be modified to properly process this menu item: procedure TMenuTestForm.PopupItemClick(Sender: TObject) ; var   Ã‚   menuItem : TMenuItem; begin   Ã‚   //...same as above   Ã‚   if sender is TMenuItemExtended then   Ã‚   begin   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ShowMessage(Format(Ohoho Extended item .. heres the string value : %s,[TMenuItemExtended(Sender).Value])) ;   Ã‚   end; end; Thats all. Its up to you to extend the TMenuItemExtended as per your needs. Creating custom Delphi components is where to look for help on creating your own classes/components. Note To actually open up the default Web Browser you can use the Value property as a parameter to a ShellExecuteEx API function.