Mark Twain1 essays

Mark Twain1 essays Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, or None of the Above? Mark Twain was one of the most popular and well-known authors of the 1800s. He is recognized for being a humorist. He used humor or social satire in his best works. His writing is known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and oppression (Mark Twain 1). Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. He was born on the Missouri frontier in a small log village called Florida. His parents had come to Florida from their former home in Tennessee (Unger 192). When Clemens was four, he moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, a port on the Mississippi River (Mark Twain 1). His father, who had studied law in Kentucky, was a local magistrate and small merchant (Unger 193). When Samuel was twelve, his father died. He was then apprenticed to two local printers (Unger 193). When he was sixteen, Clemens began setting type for the local newspaper Hannibal Journal, which his older brother Orion managed (Mark Twain 1). In 1853, when Samuel was eighteen, he left Hannibal for St. Louis (Unger 194). There he became a steam boat pilot on the Mississippi River. Clemens piloted steamboats until the Civil War in 1861. Then he served briefly with the Confederate army (Mark Twain 1). In 1862 Clemens became a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada. In 1863 he began signing his articles with the pseudonym Mark Twain, a Mississippi River phrase meaning two fathoms deep (Bloom 43). In 1865, Twain reworked a tale he had heard in the California gold fields, and within months the author and the story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, had become national sensations (Bloom 47). In 1867 Twain lectured in New York City, and in the same year he visited Europe and Palestine. He wrote of these travels in The Innocents Abroad. This book exaggerated ...

Greek Idiots - Democracy and Voting - Myth vs Fact

Greek Idiots - Democracy and Voting - Myth vs Fact In ancient Greece, the inventors of democracy set up a law that required every person to vote, regardless of who they voted for. If anyone was found not voting, the person would be publicly marked and labeled an idiot, someone who thought their own personal needs trumped those of the society around them, and over time, the word idiot has evolved into todays usage. -Â   Isaac DeVille, Michigan State columnist It just isnt true that all Greeks or even all citizens of Athens were required to vote, and its not true on many levels. Only males (free and, originally, propertied; later, also born to two Athenian-born parents) could become citizens.Only citizens could vote.These potentially voting citizens were limited to those without a personal or inherited mark (atimia) against them.In addition, whats true about one period of democracy is not necessarily true of another. 1275a: 22-23: A citizen defined in simple terms is someone who can participate in judging [that is, serve as a juror in the court system] and in governing [that is, serve in public office, which here means not just magistracies but also serving in the assembly and on the council in systems of government that have these institutions]. Stoa Project Aristotle www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_aristotle_democracy?page8greekEncodingUnicodeC Politics Male Athenian citizens actively participated, but voting was only a part of what was meant by democracy. Speaking well and being physically present in the communal life were crucial.The Athenian assembly, which held 6000 citizens, decided most of the issues.Citizen-orators persuaded their fellow citizen-voters.The voting itself could be conducted by a show of hands, as is seen Aristophanes comedy Ecclesiazousai, where Praxagora describes the voting in the Assembly:Its difficult; yet it must be done, and the arm shown naked to the shoulder in order to vote.Officials chose the winner based on a visual estimate of the majority of hands. They certainly werent counting exactly enough to make sure there were 6000 hands on 6000 discrete bodies. Sometimes more secretive ballots were used small, colored balls placed in urns. 6000 was not the entire citizen body, although it was a hefty portion.A body of 6000 citizens served as juries, meeting about half the days of the year, with each of the ten tribes providing its required share.A lottery selected the 400 or 500 men for the third governmenta l group, called the boule. Steven Kreis The Athenian Origins of Direct Democracy explains the idiot reference in the student newspaper: At Athens, a citizen who held no official position or who was not a habitual orator in the Assembly was branded as idiotai. This is a far cry from calling the non-voter an idiot. Idiotai is also used to distinguish the common people from the poor (penetes) and the more powerful (dynatoi). Idiotai is also used for unskilled worker. While we dont know what the population figures are for ancient Athens, and it changed over time, if there were say, 30,000 male citizens, more than a third of them were actively involved in politics at times. If we followed the Athenian example, who would feed, house, clothe, educate, and medicate the families of the politicians? Pay for time spent fulfilling the civic obligation was at first non-existent. Aristotle has several passages in his Politics explaining why. Here is one: 1308b: 31-33: It is of the greatest importance in all systems of government to have laws and the rest of governmental administration so arranged that magistrates cannot profit financially from their offices. There is a passage from a work ascribed to Aristotle in a section about Solon that probably led to the columnists idea. It comes from Constitution section 8: Further, [Solon] saw the state often engaged in internal disputes, while many of the citizens from sheer indifference accepted whatever might turn up, he made a law with express reference to such persons, enacting that any one who, in a time civil factions, did not take up arms with either party, should lose his rights as a citizen and cease to have any part in the state. Although not the last word that could be said on the issue, modern Americans are not like classical Athenians. We neither live our lives in public nor do we all want to be politicians (although neither did Socrates, even though he sat on the Athenian Boule). Requiring us to be penalized for failing to go to the polling booths andmake choices on the ballot once every 4 years because thats what they did in the birthplace of democracy misses the point of the ancient Greek democratic process. Further Reading on Greek Voting and Idiots The Tradition of the Athenian Democracy A. D. 1750-1990, Mogens Herman Hansen Greece Rome, 2nd Ser., Vol. 39, No. 1. (Apr., 1992), pp. 14-30.The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes, Mogens Herman Hansen. Review author: Phillip Harding Phoenix, Vol. 44, No. 2. (Summer, 1990), pp. 199-200.The Ten Archontes of 579/8 at Athens, Thomas J. Figueira Hesperia, Vol. 53, No. 4. (Oct. - Dec., 1984), pp. 447-473.The Duration of a Meeting of the Athenian Ecclesia, Mogens Herman Hansen. Classical Philology, Vol. 74, No. 1. (Jan., 1979), pp. 43-49.Christopher W. Blackwell, The Assembly, in C.W. Blackwell, ed., DÄ“mos: Classical Athenian Democracy (A. Mahoney and R. Scaife, edd., The Stoa: a consortium for electronic publication in the humanities [www.stoa.org]) edition of March 26, 2003. More of Democracy Then and Now Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: AristotlePart 3: ThucydidesPart 4: PlatoPart 5: AeschinesPart 6: IsocratesPart 7: HerodotusPart 8: Pseudo-XenophonPart 9: Q. Were All Ancient Greeks Required to Vote or Risk Being Labeled Idiots?

Family Belief Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Family Belief Systems - Essay Example They also remind them the meaning behind the adversities they face thus making it easy for them to face the difficulties as a family. Additionally, rules that families comply with create and encourage a sense of unity within the family unit. The laws dictate the family beliefs and family members are expected to follow. Parents dictate various concepts to children which consequently the children follow to be true. Family laws are not necessary developed and encouraged by the authorities but rater by the leaders in a family. Loyalty in the family is also encouraged based on the fact that it promotes and provides the family with a positive outlook. Family members use verbal or non verbal communication to explain the right or wrong choices made by other family members. Resilience is inhibited in case one family member goes against what is expected of them. It is therefore mandatory to encourage family

A Research on Case Study of ARM Holdings Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

A Research on Case Study of ARM Holdings - Essay Example It operates in a moderately high competitive industry with strong players such as Intel, Toshiba, Samsung, and others (Tibken, 2011). The Industry Life cycle indicates that it is still enjoying growth and would continue to do so for the next decade or so. ARM Holdings tends to follow a market penetration strategy in order to increase the number of ARM chips in most of the consumer electronics items. The company has appeared to be following a narrow differentiation strategy but it is not trying to appeal to broader segments. Its intelligent positioning in the market with its unique business model has allowed ARM to generate a stable stream of cash flows with royalties and remain at an advantage in the future of economic uncertainty. Furthermore, its competitive advantage of being designing energy efficient chips is most likely to provide ARM much advantage as energy efficiency and ethical consumerism become topics that are more prominent (Crossan, et al., 2011, p. 241). Introduction S ince the year 1990, the year in which it was founded, ARM Holdings has shipped over 25 billion chips to companies and customers all over the world with the help of its 250 partners. ARM has licensed them its chips over 750 times. With design centers in India, US, UK, Sweden, Norway, Japan, France and other countries, the company now distinguishes itself as the world’s leading semiconductor intellectual property supplier (ARM Holdings, 2012a). This paper is an attempt to conduct a strategic analysis of ARM Holdings by looking at its industry structure and strategies employed. The paper would do the same with the help of different tools and frameworks such as Porter Five Forces Model, Industry Lifecycle Model, Porter Generic Strategies, and others. This section of the paper introduced ARM Holdings and explained the rationale of the paper. The second section of the paper would conduct a brief analysis of the semi conductor industry in order to capture a glance of the industry en vironment. The third section or chapter would aim to explore the strategy or strategies employed by ARM Holdings and the degree to which they are a perfect match. Furthermore, the section would also present a few recommendations for future strategies that could be employed by ARM Holdings. The paper would conclude by commenting on the sustainability and viability of ARM Holdings’ strategy and business model in the future. Analysis of the Industry structure of Semiconductor Industry The semiconductor industry enjoys an interesting industry life cycle, which has been going back and forth between the growth and maturity stage. The semiconductor industry is such that new chips, designs, and models become obsolete or out of demand very quickly, sometimes that is only a few weeks (Kipley and Lewis, 2011, p. 36). Therefore, whenever companies launch a new model, they attain quick growth however; the model soon dies in terms of demand pushing the industry to maturity. However, just w hen the industry is about to be pushed towards decline, the players would come up with new designs or models in order to bring back

McDonald and the Stella Liebeck Scalding Case Study

McDonald and the Stella Liebeck Scalding - Case Study Example McDonalds further maintained that this temperature was essential in maintaining optimum taste in the coffee, a feature most customers â€Å"prefer† to their safety. The court, while holding that McDonalds was largely responsible for the burns Stella Liebeck received from the scalding coffee moved to acknowledge that the plaintiff was partly responsible for her injuries. They based this decision on comparative negligence and the fact that the warning on the coffee was not sufficient. A company should be responsible for most but not all of the consequences of consumers using its products. The first reason why any company should be ware of consumers’ affairs is the fact that consumers are also stakeholders. In the realm of business, in most cases, consumers are secondary stakeholders. However, consumer’s intermittent ability to affect the running of a company (Gibson 245) should not be underestimated, case in point, the Stella Liebeck law suit. As such, accepting th e consequences of its goods and services, a company builds a foundation on which it can make profits while satisfying its customers. Secondly, accepting liability in regard to consumers ensures that the company gains the trust of its consumers. Gaining trust is instrumental when a business seeks a market niche and also to apply strategies such as cost leadership. From the actions of McDonald’s one can see that there is a clear need to fulfill customer needs for profit maximization. An excellent example is keeping the coffee extremely hot to maintain its taste. However, an intriguing concept is the aspect of duty and fiduciary relationship. Scholars hold that the interactions between a consumer and company should not reflect â€Å"a means to an end† character. Therefore, a company should pursue a fiduciary relationship rather than a duty oriented strategy. Fear of lawsuits and a dwindling market position should not be the only reason why a company strives to accept liab ility for its actions. Scholars such as Goodpaster argue that strategic thinking favors prudence rather than moral obligation. Society today is ablaze with ethical debates ranging from euthanasia to the rights of terrorists. The business world is not dormant on issues of ethics. A company by law and social stratification should consider the welfare of all its consumers regardless of the monetary ramifications. Philosophical ethics will argue against the actions of businesses with the claim that the self interest that causes them to pursue moral acts renders the act immoral. Gibson postulates that a company should treat its consumers as more than profit maximization tools thus the deontological approach. At this point, it is imperative to examine a moral act by the company Johnson & Johnson. In 1982, cyanide contaminated batch of its capsules killing more than half a dozen individuals. This led them to acknowledge fault, pull out 32 million bottles of the presumed contaminated produc t from the market and face crippling loses. However, after a while the company built its name again and regained its market position. This is what Gibson christens the bottom line. Despite the motive behind an action, the result is that both stakeholders were happy. McDonald fails in that it fails to accept rightful responsibility especially when the plaintiff requested medical

Building on the Work of Others as an Integral Part of Originality Essay - 4

Building on the Work of Others as an Integral Part of Originality - Essay Example According to the research findings, the definition of original could be something like â€Å"builds off of previous works in the field to make something new in some important way.† The reason creating a definition of original has to focus on using other people’s ideas is that using someone else’s ideas *has* to be part of creating anything new. Otherwise, creation will just be a constant process of reinventing the wheel. This is a problem in several important ways. Firstly, creating something new, that is not based on someone else’s ideas, takes a lot more time and effort – imagine what the world would be like if every single person who wanted to use the computer had to invent their own language for programming it, their own operating systems and so on. So the process of progress, of creating new thing has to use other people’s ideas to save time and energy, and actually, have time to do something new or original with it. Without this time sa ving it would be nearly impossible to actually spend any time on a true invention. Not only does creating something from scratch take a great deal more time than using other people’s ideas and building off of them, but it also actually helps promote original things (that is, things that look different or operate differently from what came before them). If someone was trying to design a car, for instance, without ever having looked at a car before, they would probably create something that looked a great deal like early automobiles, because those were simple and natural designs. But if someone were to look at cutting-edge designs like a 2012 Porsche or Cadillac, use those as a starting point, and then move forward by adding or subtracting features, streamlining here or making more elegant there, then the work would look different than what came before.

Stronger legislatures bring stronger and more stable democracy Essay

Stronger legislatures bring stronger and more stable democracy - Essay Example It is extremely difficult to achieve all three dimensions, and this explains its evasiveness. This essay will first introduce the concept of a stable democracy and then explain the role of a strong legislature in its existence. The essay will then use the UK and US legislatures as examples of the effect of strong legislatures on stable democracies and explain how these countries’ legislatures have contributed to their sound democracies. Finally, the essay will reaffirm the stance adopted by stating that stronger legislatures are vital for stable democracies. To understand the impact of legislatures on democracy, it is first necessary to understand that legislatures are, in most countries, branches of the executive (Saathoff, 2012:48). Their common role of making laws means that they are one of the ruling arms of any governments in which they exist. In addition, in most countries, legislatures are tasked with checking the powers and actions of heads of state. These two roles (law making and power checking) are key to gaining a critical perspective of the impacts of legislatures on democracy and stable democracies, in particular (Lelan, 2012:29). Let us consider two countries that often come to mind whenever the subject of stable democracies comes up: the United Kingdom and the United States. In the United States, the modern world’s beacon of democracy, Congress is the legislating body. Looking at the history of America, it is easy to see that Congress has been at the heart of most laws that have defined the country’s democr atic leadership and its institutional strengths. As a matter of fact, the US Congress is the perfect example of a well-oiled, purpose-driven, and powerful legislature (Roper, 2013:37). The powers of the Congress, and the manner in which it exercises them have made it both a representative of the American public in the government and a formidable critic of the same government (Barkan, 2008:131). Congress checks