Mission Statement

The Rant's mission is to offer information that is useful in business administration, economics, finance, accounting, and everyday life.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Tuesday and Mars Worship

Dedicated to Ares

Click to see the secret story of Planet Mars.

Ares

Ares
God of War
Ares Canope Villa Adriana b.jpg
Statue of Ares from Hadrian's Villa
AbodeMount OlympusThrace,MacedoniaThebes, GreeceSparta & Mani
Symbolsswordspearshield,helmetchariotflaming torchdogboarvulture
ParentsZeus and Hera
SiblingsErisAthenaApollo,ArtemisAphrodite,DionysusHebeHermes,HeraclesHelen of Troy,HephaestusPerseus,Minos, the Muses, theGracesEnyo, andEileithyia
ChildrenErotes (Eros and Anteros),PhobosDeimos,PhlegyasHarmonia, andAdrestia
Roman equivalentMars




Ares (/ˈɛərz/Ancient GreekἌρης [árɛːs]) is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus andHera. In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war, in contrast to his sister the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and generalship.
The Greeks were ambivalent toward Ares: although he embodied the physical valor necessary for success in war, he was a dangerous force, "overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive, and man-slaughtering." His sons Fear (Phobos) and Terror(Deimos) and his lover, or sister, Discord (Enyo) accompanied him on his war chariot. In the Iliad, his father Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him. An association with Ares endows places and objects with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality.His value as a war god is placed in doubt: during the Trojan War, Ares was on the losing side, while Athena, often depicted in Greek art as holding Nike (Victory) in her hand, favored the triumphant Greeks.

God of War

5:10 PM

Tuesday

The god Týr or Tiw, identified withMars, after whom Tuesday is named.
Tuesday is a day of the week occurring after Monday and before Wednesday. According to some commonly used calendars (esp. in the US), it is the third day of the week. According to international standard ISO 8601, however, it is the second day of the week. The English name is derived from Old English Tiwesdæg and Middle English Tewesday, meaning "Tīw's Day", the day of Tiw or Týr, the god of single combat, victory and heroic glory in Norse mythology. Tiw was equated with Mars in the interpretatio germanica, and the name of the day is a translation of Latin dies Martis.

Middle

Securing Competitive Advantage

Satisfaction and Stress in The Work Environment

Every executive recognizes the need for satisfied and loyal customers. If the firm is publicly held, it is also safe to assume that every executive appreciates the need to have satisfied and loyal investors. Customers and investors provide the financial resources that allow the organization to survive. However, not every executive understands the need to generate satisfaction and loyalty among employees. Retention rates among employees are strongly related to retention rates among both customers and investors. Executives have been slow to pick up on this linkage. This provides yet another area in which one firm can gain a competitive advantage over others in the marketplace.That is the best firms are able to convert employee satisfaction and loyalty, on the one hand, into investor and customer satisfaction and loyalty on the other.


Sales agents at State Farm Insurance stay with the company on average 18 to 20 years. This is two to three times the average tenure in this industry. This kind of tenure allows the average State Farm agent to better learn the job and to develop long-term customer relations that cannot be matched by competitors who may lose half of their sales staff each year. State Farm also draws benefits from this experienced staff by systematically surveying its agents to get their views about where customer satisfaction is high, where it is low and what can be done to improve service. The result in terms of the bottom line is that State Farm agents achieve forty percent higher sales per agent as compared to the competition. As an indicator of quality of service the retention rates among State Farm agents and customers exceed 95%.
USAA is a company that sells financial services primarily to military personnel. It is another firm that has 95% retention rates among both employees and customers resulting in one of the highest annual-earnings-per-employee ratios in the industry.

Image result for ares

The End

Monday, May 30, 2016

Monday

Memorial Day

Introduction

The Beginning:

Click to see Delray Misfits, Episode 66

Mirror Image Fallacy: Managers who fail to manage diversity successfully inevitably fall into one of two traps. On the one hand they may have a personal tendency to assume that all people are basically the same. This belief that the whole world "is just like me" has been referred to as the mirror image fallacy. It is attractive because it makes the world seem much easier to comprehend. If owners of a firm believe that everyone in their company shares their abilities, interests, beliefs and values, they will consider it an easy task to organize their employees and encourage them to pursue a common goal. Because the mirror image fallacy is a fallacy, the owners will soon find hat the myriad differences among the people they employ will make their task far from easy.
Monday is the day of the week between Sunday and Tuesday. According to the traditional ChristianIslamic and Hebrew calendars, it is the second day of the week, and according to international standard ISO 8601 it is the first day of the week. In the West, it is the first day of the work week, whereas in most Muslim countries and Israel, it is the second day of the work week. The name of Monday is derived from Old English Mōnandæg and Middle English Monenday, which means "moon day".

Selene

Selene
Goddess of the Moon
Detail of Selene from a Roman sarcophagus
Detail of Selene from a Roman sarcophagus
AbodeSky
SymbolCrescent, raised cloak, bull, rooster, dog, and torch
ConsortEndymion
ParentsHyperion and Theia
SiblingsHelios and Eos
ChildrenFifty daughters to Endymion; Pandia andErsa to Zeus
Roman equivalentLuna
In Greek mythologySelene (/sˈlni/; Greek Σελήνη [selɛ̌ːnɛː] 'moon';) is the goddess of the moon. She is the daughter of the TitansHyperion and Theia, and sister of the sun-god Helios, and Eos, goddess of the dawn. She drives her moon chariot across the heavens. Several lovers are attributed to her in various myths, including ZeusPan, and the mortal Endymion. In classical times, Selene was often identified with Artemis, much as her brother, Helios, was identified with Apollo. Both Selene and Artemis were also associated with Hecate, and all three were regarded as lunar goddesses, although only Selene was regarded as the personification of the moon itself. Her Roman equivalent is Luna.

The Middle

 Organizational Behavior

Securing Competitive Advantage

Some managers fail because they hold prejudicial stereotypes about people based upon sex or membership in a racial, ethnic or age group. There is a certain irony in the fact that many diversity training seminars, in their attempt to dispel the mirror image fallacy go too far and imply that all woman or all Asians or all African Americans differ from white males in one consistent manner or another. In most dimensions of ability and personality, there is wide variation within groups (among Hispanics or the disabled, for example), and these differences are often much more important than the sometimes trivial differences between groups, Managers who fail to pay attention to differences between people within these groups inevitably do damage to their employees, their companies and their own careers.

Names

The etymology of Selene is uncertain, but if the name is of Greek origin, it is likely connected to the word selas (σέλας), meaning "light".
Just as Helios, from his identification with Apollo, is called Phoebus ("bright"), Selene, from her identification with Artemis, is also commonly referred to by the epithet Phoebe (feminine form). The original Phoebe of Greek mythology is Selene's aunt, the Titaness mother of Leto and Asteria, and grandmother of Apollo, Artemis, and Hecate. Also from Artemis, Selene was sometimes called "Cynthia".
Selene was also called Mene. The word men (feminine mene), meant the moon, and the lunar month. It was also the name of the Phrygian moon-god Men.

Origin

The usual account of Selene's origin is given by Hesiod. In the Theogony, the sun-god Hyperion espoused his sister Theia, who gave birth to "great Helios and clear Selene and Eos who shines upon all that are on earth and upon the deathless Gods who live in the wide heaven." The Homeric Hymn to Helios follows this tradition: "Hyperion wedded glorious Euryphaëssa, his own sister, who bare him lovely children, rosy-armed Eos and rich-tressed Selene and tireless Helios." Here Euryphaëssa ("wide-shining") is probably an epithet of Theia.
Other accounts make Selene the daughter of Pallas, the son of Megamedes (possibly identified with Titan Pallas or of Helios.

"The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradiation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature... The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose that every man is as every other man." 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

2:40 PM:

That statement captures the essence of managing diversity. Information on these differences can be used to secure competitive advantage for any organization.


Lovers and offspring

Endymion

Endymion and Selene, bySebastiano Ricci (1713), Chiswick House, England
Selene is best known for her affair with the beautiful mortal Endymion. The late 7th-century – early 6th-century BC poet Sappho apparently mentioned Selene and Endymion. However, the first direct account comes from the third-century BC Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, which tells of Selene's "mad passion" and her visiting the "fair Endymion" in a cave on Mount Latmus:
"And the Titanian goddess, the moon, rising from a far land, beheld her [Medea] as she fled distraught, and fiercely exulted over her, and thus spake to her own heart: 'Not I alone then stray to the Latmian cave, nor do I alone burn with love for fair Endymion; oft times with thoughts of love have I been driven away by thy crafty spells, in order that in the darkness of night thou mightest work thy sorcery at ease, even the deeds dear to thee. And now thou thyself too hast part in a like mad passion; and some god of affliction has given thee Jason to be thy grievous woe. Well, go on, and steel thy heart, wise though thou be, to take up thy burden of pain, fraught with many sighs.' "
Quintus SmyrnaeusThe Fall of Troy tells that, while Endymion slept in his cave beside his cattle, "Selene watched him from on high, and slid from heaven to earth; for passionate love drew down the immortal stainless Queen of Night." The eternally sleeping Endymion was proverbial, but exactly how this eternal sleep came about and what role, if any, Selene may have had in it is unclear. According to theCatalogue of Women, Endymion was the son of Aethlius (a son of Zeus), and Zeus granted him the right to choose when he would die. A scholiast on Apollonius says that, according to Epimenides, Endymion, having fallen in love with Hera, asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep. However, Apollodorus says that because of Endymion's "surpassing beauty, the Moon fell in love with him, and Zeus allowed him to choose what he would, and he chose to sleep for ever, remaining deathless and ageless". Cicero seems to make Selene responsible for Endymion's sleep, so that "she might kiss him while sleeping".
From Pausanias we hear that Selene was supposed to have had by Endymion fifty daughters, who possibly represented the fifty lunar months of the Olympiad Nonnus has Selene and Endymion as the parents of the beautiful Narcissus, but in other accounts, including Ovid's Metamorphoses, Narcissus was the son of Cephissus and Liriope.


Video for the moon

The End


WRITING AND USING A PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT

  Day 82 of The X Proactive Test (Year 1): WRITING AND USING A PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT:   A personal mission statement is a declaration o...