Ecomomics

In the social sciences, economics is the study of human choice behavior and the methodology used to make associated investment and production decisions; in particular, though not limited to, how those choices and decisions determine the allocation of scarce resources and their effect onproduction, distribution, and consumption. The word "economics" is from the Greek words οἶκος [oikos], meaning "family, household, estate", and νόμος [nomos], or "custom, law", and hence literally means "household management" or "management of the state". An economist is a person using economic concepts and data in the course of employment, or someone who has earned a university degree in the subject. Economics undergraduate courses always cover at least the two main branches:

• Microeconomics studies the behavior of individual households and firms in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources. Microeconomics applies to markets where goods or services are bought and sold. It examines how decisions and behaviors affect the supply and demand for goods and services, which determines prices, and how prices, in turn, determine the quantity supplied and quantity demanded of goods and services.
• Macroeconomics deals with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole, rather than individual markets. This includes national, regional, and global economies.

However, there are also others sub-field of economics (see JEL classification codes).

In economics, economic systems is the study and analysis of organizing production, distribution, consumption and investment and the study of optimal resource allocation and institutional design. Traditionally the study of economic systems was based on a dichotomy between market economies and planned economies, but contemporary studies compare and contrast a number of different variables, such as ownership structure (Public, Private or Collective), economic coordination (planning, markets or mixed), management structure (Hierarchy versus adhocracy), the incentive system, and the level of centralization in decision-making. A business, also known as an enterprise or afirm, is an organization involved in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are prevalent in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and provide goods and services to customers in exchange of other goods, services, or money. Businesses may also be not-for-profit or state-owned. Managementin business and organizations is the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing,staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization or initiative to accomplish a goal. Management is also an academic discipline, and is traditionaly taught at business schools. An economy can be analyzed in terms of itseconomic sectors, the classic breakdown being into primary, secondary and tertiary. Economic policy refers to the actions that governments take in the economic field. It covers the systems for setting interest rates and government budget as well as the labor market regulations, national ownership, trade policy, monetary policy, fiscal policy,regulatory policy, anti-trust policy and industrial policy. In economics, sustainable development refers to development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

El-al: Not just an airline

You don’t need to book a ticket with an Israeli airline in order to fly el-al.

Even the Pope Francis flew El Al.

If you’re planning a trip to the Holy Land this summer, you may be considering flying the airline most closely identified with Israel; after all,even the pope flew El Al (though you can be pretty sure he had more legroom than you will).

But El Al is not just the name of Israel’s flagship airline. In September 1948, when Israel was a fledgling state and the airline had yet to take off, the government borrowed a four-engine Israel Air Force plane to bring Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, home from a meeting in Geneva. The biblical phrase el-al, meaning “upward,” “heavenward,” “aloft” or, most fittingly, “skyward,” was painted on the body of the C-54 and an Israeli flag on its tail, and the plane was loaded with an air force crew and kosher food from a restaurant. In company lore, this came to be considered El Al’s inaugural flight.

The phrase comes from Hosea 11:7, which reads: “And my people are in suspense about returning to me; and though they call them upwards [el-al], none at all will lift himself up.”

On a literal level, the term can be read as “toward up,” with el meaning “to” or “toward” and al in this sense meaning “height” or “uppermost,” from the same root as lemala (“up”) and la’alot (“to rise” or “to climb”).

Five Ws

The Five Ws and H are questions whose answers are considered basic in information-gathering. They are often mentioned in journalism (cf. news style), research, and police investigations.^[1] They constitute a formula for getting the complete story on a subject.^[2] According to the principle of the Five Ws, a report can only be considered complete if it answers these questions starting with an interrogative word:^[3]

• Who is it about?
• What happened?
• Where did it take place?
• When did it take place?
• Why did it happen?
• How did it happen?

Each question should have a factual answer — facts necessary to include for a report to be considered complete.^[4] Importantly, none of these questions can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no".

In British education, the Five Ws are used in Key Stage 3 lessons.^[5]

History

This section focuses on the history of the series of questions as a way of formulating or analyzing rhetorical questions, and not the theory of circumstances in general.^[6]

The rhetor Hermagoras of Temnos, as quoted in pseudo-Augustine's De Rhetorica^[7]defined seven "circumstances" (μόρια περιστάσεως 'elements of circumstance'^[8]) as the loci of an issue:

Quis, quid, quando, ubi, cur, quem ad modum, quibus adminiculis.^[9][10]

(Who, what, when, where, why, in what way, by what means)

Cicero had a similar concept of circumstances, but though Thomas Aquinas attributes the questions to Cicero, they do not appear in his writings. Similarly, Quintiliandiscussed loci argumentorum, but did not put them in the form of questions.^[9]

Victorinus explained Cicero's system of circumstances by putting them into correspondence with Hermagoras's questions:^[9]

Julius Victor also lists circumstances as questions.^[9]

Boethius "made the seven circumstances fundamental to the arts of prosecution and defense":

Quis, quid, cur, quomodo, ubi, quando, quibus auxiliis.^[9]

(Who, what, why, how, where, when, with what)

The question form was taken up again in the 12th century by Thierry de Chartres and John of Salisbury.^[9]

To administer suitable penance to sinners, the 21st canon of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) enjoined confessors to investigate both sins and the circumstances of the sins. The question form was popular for guiding confessors, and it appeared in several different forms:^[11]

Quis, quid, ubi, per quos, quoties, cur, quomodo, quando.^[12]

Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando.^[13]

Quis, quid, ubi, cum quo, quotiens, cur, quomodo, quando.^[14]

Quid, quis, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando.^[15]

Quid, ubi, quare, quantum, conditio, quomodo, quando: adiuncto quoties.^[16]

The method of questions was also used for the systematic exegesis of a text.^[17]

Later, Thomas Wilson wrote in English verse:

Who, what, and where, by what helpe, and by whose:
Why, how, and when, doe many things disclose.^[18]

In the 19th century US, Prof. William Cleaver Wilkinson popularized the "Three Ws" – What? Why? What of it? – as a method of Bible study in the 1880s, though he did not claim originality. This became the "Five Ws", though the application was rather different from that in journalism:

"What? Why? What of it?" is a plan of study of alliterative methods for the teacher emphasized by Professor W.C. Wilkinson not as original with himself but as of venerable authority. "It is, in fact," he says, "an almost immemorial orator's analysis. First the facts, next the proof of the facts, then the consequences of the facts. This analysis has often been expanded into one known as "The Five Ws:" "When? Where? Who? What? Why?" Hereby attention is called, in the study of any lesson: to the date of its incidents; to their place or locality; to the person speaking or spoken to, or to the persons introduced, in the narrative; to the incidents or statements of the text; and, finally, to the applications and uses of the lesson teachings.^[19]

The "Five Ws" (and one H) were memorialized by Rudyard Kipling in his "Just So Stories" (1902), in which a poem accompanying the tale of "The Elephant's Child" opens with:

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

This is why the "Five Ws and One H" problem solving method is also called as the "Kipling Method", which helps to explore the problems by challenging them with these questions.

By 1917, the "Five Ws" were being taught in high-school journalism classes,^[20] and by 1940, the "Five Ws" were being characterized as old-fashioned and fallacious:

The old-fashioned lead of the five Ws and the H, crystallized largely by Pulitzer's "new journalism" and sanctified by the schools, is widely giving way to the much more supple and interesting feature lead, even on straight news stories.^[21]

All of you know about — and I hope all of you admit the fallacy of — the doctrine of the five Ws in the first sentence of the newspaper story.^[22]

References

1. Jump up^ "Deconstructing Web Pages of Cyberspace".MediaSmarts. Retrieved December 4, 2012.
2. Jump up^ [1] Journalism website. Press release: getting the facts straight. Work by Owen Spencer-Thomas, D.Litt. URL retrieved 24 February 2012.
3. Jump up^ "The Five Ws of Online Help". by Geoff Hart, TECHWR-L. Retrieved April 30, 2012.
4. Jump up^ "Five More Ws for Good Journalism". Copy Editing, InlandPress. Retrieved September 12, 2008.
5. Jump up^ "The Five Ws of Drama". Times Educational Supplement. 4 Sep 2008. Retrieved 10 Mar 2011.
6. Jump up^ For which, see e.g. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts, 1995. ISBN 0-521-48365-4, p. 66ff as well as Robertson
7. Jump up^ Though attributed to Augustine of Hippo, modern scholarship considers the authorship doubtful, and calls him pseudo-Augustine: Edwin Carawan, "What the Laws have Prejudged: Παραγραφή and Early Issue Theory" inCecil W. Wooten, George Alexander Kennedy, eds., The orator in action and theory in Greece and Rome, 2001.ISBN 90-04-12213-3, p. 36.
8. Jump up^ Vollgraff, W. (1948). "Observations sur le sixieme discours d'Antiphon". Mnemosyne. 4th ser. 1 (4): 257–270. JSTOR 4427142. Retrieved 2014-03-19.
9. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f} Robertson, D.W., Jr (1946-01). "A Note on the Classical Origin of "Circumstances" in the Medieval Confessional". Studies in Philology 43 (1): 6–14.JSTOR 4172741. Retrieved 2014-03-19.
10. Jump up^ Robertson, quoting Halm's edition of De rhetorica; Hermagoras's original does not survive
11. Jump up^ Citations below taken from Robertson and not independently checked.
12. Jump up^ Mansi, Concilium Trevirense Provinciale (1227), Mansi,Concilia, XXIII, c. 29.
13. Jump up^ Constitutions of Alexander de Stavenby (1237) Wilkins, I:645; also quoted in Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica I-II, 7, 3.
14. Jump up^ Robert de Sorbon, De Confessione, MBP XXV:354
15. Jump up^ Peter Quinel, Summula, Wilkins, II:165
16. Jump up^ S. Petrus Coelestinus, Opuscula, MBP XXV:828
17. Jump up^ Richard N. Soulen, R. Kendall Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, (Louisville, 2001, ISBN 0-664-22314-1)s.v. Locus, p. 107; Hartmut Schröder, Subject-Oriented Texts, p. 176ff
18. Jump up^ Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique Book I. full text
19. Jump up^ Henry Clay Trumbull, Teaching and Teachers, Philadelphia, 1888, p. 120 text at Google Books
20. Jump up^ Leon Nelson Flint, Newspaper Writing in High Schools, Containing an Outline for the Use of Teachers, University of Kansas, 1917, p. 47 at Google Books
21. Jump up^ Mott, Frank Luther (1942). "Trends in Newspaper Content". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 219: 60–65. JSTOR 1023893. Retrieved 2014-03-19.
22. Jump up^ Griffin, Philip F. (1949-04). "The Correlation of English and Journalism". The English Journal 38 (4): 189–194.doi:10.2307/806690. JSTOR 806690. Retrieved 2014-03-19.