Walt Disney Biography

Table of contents

Walter Elias Disney was born on the 5th of December, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. His father Elias Disney was of Irish/Canadian descent and his mother Flora Call Disney was of German/American descent. Walt Disney had three brothers and one sister. The Disney family were raised on a farm in Missouri, USA where the young Walter developed an interest in drawing and trains. The Disney family moved back to Chicago where Walt attended the McKinley High School and took night classes at the Chicago Art Institute. At sixteen years of age Walt Disney dropped out of school to join the army but was knocked back because of his age.

Instead, he joined the Red Cross and was shipped to France for one year, where he drove an ambulance. When Walt Disney returned from France he moved to Kansas City where his brother Roy Disney was working at a bank. He began his career as an advertising cartoonist at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio where he created commercial works for magazines, newspapers, and movie theaters. But he was keen to have his own business. Disney briefly started a company with the cartoonist Ub Iwerks, called “Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists”. The venture did not take off and the pair were forced to seek alternative paths to put food on the table.

Disney and Iwwerks would later work together in creating some of the earliest popular Disney cartoon characters, including “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” and “Mickey Mouse”. Walt became a pioneer of the animation industry, working his way through from silent cartoons, to sound, from black and white to Technicolor. He created the first full length animated musical and went on to combine cartoons with live action. A surprising switch of focus led to the creation of Disneyland in 1955, the first theme park the world had ever seen. It was a squeaky sounding mouse with big ears that would go on o be Walt Disney’s biggest success. “Mickey Mouse” was born on the 18th of November, 1928. Mickey first appeared in a silent short called “Plane Crazy”, but it would be the “Steamboat Willie” cartoon with sound that made Mickey Mouse famous. Even though Walt Disney gets much of the credit and acknowledgment for creating the famous mouse, it is believed that his friend Ub Iwerks actually created Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney was the voice of Mickey Mouse up until 1946. Mickey Mouse would go on to become a symbol for the Walt Disney Company.

The little mouse that started the company appeared in many cartoons, full feature films, comic strips, books, video games, toys, and was made into every piece of merchandise imaginable. Mickey Mouse became bigger than just the Walt Disney Company, and even came to symbolize the country of America. The mouse went on to become a cultural icon. Other popular cartoon characters that the Walt Disney Company went on to create include Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, Butch the Bulldog, Scrooge McDuck, Clarabelle Cow, and many more.

The company also animated other characters like Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Dumbo, Hercules, and more. The Walt Disney company received many Academy award nominations and was nominated for seven Emmys while Walt was alive. Disney’s company had to overcome challenges like the workers strike in 1940, but the company mostly grew forward in leaps and bounds. The company went public in 1957 and continues to be a listed company on the New York Stock Exchange to this day. Disney was working on plans for a theme park when he died from lung cancer complications in 1966.

His brother Roy would follow his plans through and the Walt Disney World theme park was opened to the public in 1971. The company continued to grow after the death of Walt Disney and is now one of the largest media and entertainment conglomerates in the world.

Problem

During his working animated through from silent cartoons, to sound, from black and white to Technicolor and also created the animated musical and went on to combine cartoons with live action, there were some problem that he had faced it. When he started a company with the cartoonist Iwerks, the Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artist was failure. With all his high employee salaries unable to make up for studio profits, Walt was unable to successfully manage money. As a result, the studio became loaded with debt and wound up bankrupt. Disney then set his sights on establishing a studio in the movie industry’s capital city, Hollywood, California. By 1927, the new series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was an almost instant success, and the character, Oswald drawn and created by Iwerks became a popular figure. The Disney studio expanded, and Walt hired back Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng from Kansas City.

In February 1928, Disney went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short from Mintz who was the distributor animated to Universal Pictures. Disney was shocked when Mintz announced that not only he wanted to reduce the fee he paid Disney per short but also that he had most of his main animators (notably, except Iwerks, who refused to leave Disney) under contract and would start his own studio if Disney did not accept the reduced production budgets. Universal, not Disney, owned the Oswald trademark, and could make the films without Disney. Disney declined Mintz’s offer and lost most of his animation staff.

Analysis

There are several things that made Walt became success. Along his journey to make his dream came true, he through up and down in the business. But Disney has a spirit and believes that he could make his dream come true. And there were some character he had that brought Disney become big today and it described as below.

Personality of Leadership

Walt Disney was a leader who exemplified many leadership capacities throughout his 43-year Hollywood career. He demonstrated a strong moral purpose and worked hard to make a difference in the lives of everyone who had interactions with Walt Disney Productions.

His moral convictions were instilled in him by his parents at a young age. Walt was always striving to make people happy. His first priority was always to his family. Although he struggled to balance work and family at times, he was always there for his wife and daughters. Walt also had a strong commitment to his employees. He knew each person by name and insisted that everyone call him Walt. Throughout his life, and since his death, Walt Disney did more to touch the hearts and minds of millions of Americans than any other person in the past century.

Knowledge of the Business

After the failure of the Iwwerks-Disney Commercial Artists venture, Walt did not give up and went to Hollywood. Walt realized that creativity and enthusiasm were not enough in the business world and then he went into partnership with his brother Roy and started what would eventually become the Walt Disney Company. His friend and previous business partner Ub Iwerks also came to Los Angeles and played an important role in the success of the company.

Self Concept

Walt Disney developed a philosophy that anyone who wants more success would do well to adopt. He was growing through self-criticism and experiment. He admitted that this is not a genius or even remarkable. It is the way people build a sound business of any kind, through sweat, intelligence and the love of the job. Thing that made him success was his ability to come at a problem from different mental perspectives. He developed three distinct mental methods and gave them name that is the Dreamer, the Realist and the Spoiler. The dreamer represents unrestrained creativity that exemplified what he loved to do. Walt Disney saw the creative dreamer as the starting point for his success. He could never stand still when the ideas come.

He might explore and experiment and never satisfied with his work. Walt Disney was motivated by creative achievement and was comfortable in an uncertain business environment. o The realist represents how he made ideas as a concrete reality. And he could be as hard-deaded as any accountant when do something. Walt Disney was aware about technology changed and he was ready to evolve with it. He thought that his business will grow with technical advances. And should the technology advance come to a stop, prepare the funeral and they need new tools and refinements.

He was aware of the human factors that drove his commercial success. His success was built by hard work and enthusiasm, clarity of purpose, a devotion to his art, confidence in the future and above all, by a steady, day-by-day growth. o And the last but not the least, is the spoiler. Walt Disney was a critical thinker and perfectionist person. He needed to be because he knew his audience would see the errors from the cartoon movies. He never spared feelings because his interest was in product. If a fellow went off on his own developing an idea that had not been approved, he was asking for trouble, and got it.

The spoiler critically evaluated the work of the realist and the dreamer.

Cognitive and practical intelligence

Walt Disney understood and embraced the process of change. He knew that in order to continue to progress and find success, he needed to be one step ahead of change. This was evident through his willingness to take chances on innovative technologies as they developed in his field. When others expressed concern over perceived risks, Walt was always optimistic and had faith in his convictions.

Drive Integrity

Walt offered the chance for his employees to attend art school, at his expense. Many of his animators took advantage of Walt’s offer, and as a result, their work improved greatly. They were enthusiastic about this opportunity and were grateful to Walt for taking an interest in their futures. Walt always shared his ideas and concerns with his employees. He believed that the company would work best in an environment where a company worked together in all aspects of the business.

Emotional Intelligence

Walt had a good Emotional Intelligence. His Relationship Management’s personality could bring him managing other people emotion. Walt worked hard to build relationships, especially with his employees. He wanted his employees to be happy and he worked closely with everyone in his company. One of the best examples of his willingness to develop relationships is evidenced by his eagerness to help his employees learn more about animation.

Leadership Motivation

Walt had a profound effect on the people he worked with. His particular leadership skill lay in convincing people they could do thing far above what they thought they could do. Developing talent for the future was Walt’s passions. He himself held evening classes to train employees, teaching his team to embrace the future and strive for perfection. The culmination of his ideas was realized in the creation of the California Institute of Arts, a project he believed would ensure a whole new approach to arts training.

Conclusion

Coherence making is possibly the strongest leadership capacity that Disney possessed. He was constantly able to bring things together to stimulate conversation. Walt knew how to prioritize and focus his work as a result of his moral purpose. He exemplified all of the capacities needed to be considered a true leader. Perhaps the best example of Walt’s leadership is the fact that over forty years after his death, his company has continued to be a pioneer in the field of animation. After Walt died at the age of 65, his brother Roy promised that all of the plans Walt had for the future would continue to move ahead. As stated by Thomas in 1966, Mickey Mouse will continue to endear himself to children everywhere with his lovable antics, Donald Duck will go on delighting them with his squawks and flurry of feathers; and millions of people the world over will, in Walt Disney’s own words, “know he has been alive. ”

Read more

Biography Of Alvin Ailey

Despite ballet’s winning the dominant place in American concert dance in a changed political environment, the concurrent emergence and success of Alvin Ailey points to changing social dynamics in modern dance as well. Ailey made his choreographic debut in New York City at the 92nd Street Y. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, formed in 1958, fused in movement and theme the nationalist political focus of the 1930s with the racial heritage of America—thus embracing and altering American modern dance. The roots of the Black Arts Movement are easily traced to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

That earlier movement was the first attempt by African American artists to produce work consciously grounded in their folk heritage and to utilize that work for the social advancement of the race. The emergence of Ailey in the course of modern dance illuminates how social dimensions of bodies shaped artistic movements in the United States in the twentieth century. In the 1930s dancing pictures of America remained white; the depictions of Africa and the Caribbean by African American dancers only reinforced the whiteness of physical portraits of America.

Racial integration in the dance world occurred slowly and correlated to increasing political activism for civil rights. But the rise of Ailey was definitive. His success occurred at a time of political liberalism and redefinition of the United States as fundamentally ethnically diverse. He formed his own company, called it American, and proceeded to choreograph America. The U. S. government’s choice of Ailey to represent America’s concert dancing prowess abroad as cultural envoy in the John F. Kennedy International Exchange Program in 1962 finally sanctioned African Americans’ rightful place as practitioners in, and creators of, modern dance.

Alvin Ailey was born in Texas in 1931 just as Martha Graham and others were solidifying the new modern dance. “Ailey grew up amid fierce racial segregation; when he was five, his mother was raped by a white man. ” (Foulkes, 2002 p179) Modern dance gathered momentum in the 1930s because a focus on bodies coalesced with the search to find an American way in the arts that favored an experiential approach, attention to the polyglot nature of the country’s population, and revivification of the democratic tradition in the midst of an economic depression and an impending crisis in Europe.

This progress was made in spite of a desperate time in which most social roles were defined for people as they struggled to find ways to survive. In modernism “opportunity” allowed for the emergence of an art form filled with women striving to compose serious and meaningful statements with their bodies. Modern dancers figured out ways to combine their ardent embrace of individualism with group movement and communal ventures, primarily in dances of America.

The Alvin Ailey Dance Theater’s arrival on the New York dance scene in the late 1950s coincided with a rise in government-sponsored cultural exportation. In 1962 the Ailey Company undertook an unprecedented thirteen-week engagement in Southeast Asia and Australia sponsored by the President’s Special International Program for Cultural Presentations under the Kennedy administration. Ailey made dances that were important to him, and the performances made the audience look to the particular cultural processes and social realities that inspired him.

Ailey’s dances may speak to a wide, global audience, but they speak from an African American ethos that remains insubstantially documented. (Defrantz, 2004, pvii) No single or indeed double way of looking at performances by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater sustains primacy for long. For example, just when Revelations seems to be telling a story of ethnic faith as movement abstraction in its first section, the work shifts to physically enact a waterside baptism, explicitly Christian in principle but AfroCaribbean in practice.

Along this line of progression, gender emerges as a sure organizing feature of the dance, as a female devotional leader with an umbrella orchestrates the baptism, but the theatricality of expansive blue silk “waterways” intrudes on the reading of the sexes. For a time, the audience is asked to consider the global circulation of theatrical convention, as the silk streams, clearly borrowed from certain Asian theater traditions, reflect Ailey’s initial theater training in California.

Visionary and indicative of Ailey’s performances, the dancer’s body has become a place for political statement in itself and all of today’s dance now at the very least recognize that the body cannot be neutral and neither can the dancer, both are charged with political implications. “Implicit within this is a new ontological status for dance itself—as collaborative art. ” (Grau et al, 2000, p203) The arts, including dance, can reflect, reinforce, prompt, challenge as well as be appropriated in the quest for identity.

They are never politically innocent: they operate in dialogue with both exclusive and inclusive ideologies. (Grau et al, 2000, p4) In the 1960’s television broadcasting giant CBS, televised a religious series of dance pieces. In one memorable instance, Alvin Ailey, whose Revelations received its TV debut on Lamp Unto My Feet in 1962, just a few years after its stage premiere. “This first TV production of Ailey’s powerful ballet (there would be three others in the years to follow) captured the work in its early, chamber like incarnation, before it had become more populated and more explosively theatrical.

“(Rose, 1986, p44) “Dance movement and ritual is basic to being a human being–from expressing deeply felt emotions, to the physical expression of music, to just the joy in movement itself. Dance can reflect and validate social organization and preserve cultural values. As an art form it reflects humanity’s quest for excellence and achievement. ” (Riddle, 1993, p22) Anthropological study of dance is valuable and valid, with specific areas of investigation and inquiry, but it must be inclusive of all dance forms and not exclusive on the basis of cultural hierarchy.

Pearl Primus’ work, “Impinyuza,” a paean to the royal dancers of the Watusi ethnic group of Ruanda was performed by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a Sunday New York Times review described is as anthropological. (Asante, 1993, p48) The debate between the freedom and distinctiveness of the individual and the need for and belief in collective harmony is formed in the creative tension of modern dance. In bringing insights on this question from the Caribbean and Africa, Alvin Ailey shed light on the social dimensions that structured the concert stages and neighborhoods of the United States.

His interpretations insisted upon a broadened definition of art and culture and a loosening of rigid social categories of race, gender, sexuality, and class. The history of modern dance reveals the limitations that remained despite their push: divisions of art into high and low went largely unchallenged and perpetuated class and racial prejudices. But the revelations of Alvin Ailey show that these bodies could indeed rearrange the “headlines that make daily history” and move the world.

African dance has been described as a repository of communal wisdom, a mnemonic device for effective communication, and an educational tool. Because dances have their origin in specific communal experiences and are reproduced by a memory, their epistemological basis may give us insight into the African-American creative mode. Dance history courses highlight the masterworks that have defined modern dance and the artists who created them, as well as their significance.

Alvin Ailey’s “Take Me to the Water” section from Revelations, and Donald McKayle’s Games are representative works that inspired the creation of lessons. (Hubbard et al, 1998) Performance as a whole yields insight into political activity in the way it focuses our attention on the weight and value of the actions we take. Dance suggests an alternate measure of the worth of politics. “If a sense of the body can enter the realm of talk about politics, then the entrances and exits to such conversations could be greatly facilitated.

” (Martin, 1990, p xi) In essence, the intention in this narrative is to show the metaphor of performance as seriously enough so that it ceases to be a metaphor and becomes a way of experiencing, enacting, and embodying political activity. The strategy for the passage from metaphor to thing-in-itself, from something signed to something signified, from something conscious to something sentient will be to look closely at a particular theatrical performance to develop a model for the social stage.

By examining two performing arts, dance and theater, the hope is to compose a method of analysis not based upon literature, language, and the analysis of symbols. (Martin, 1990, p9) The pervasive emphasis on the discursive aspects of texts and practices, on social construction and representation, meant that issues of ideology and of political economies of social distinctions came to the fore. (Desmond, 1997, p4) Here, in the movement of Ailey’s social dance forms, the rural/urban tensions are acted out.

The adoption of a more European style verticality, for instance, formed part of a whole complex of behaviors, including dress that differentiated the urban population from rural ones. “The “urbanization””modernization”-“Westernization” ideology was being carried on here, acted out as a bodily trope which gradually ‘slipped away as the night went on’. ” (Desmond, 1997, p40) What the prominence of Ailey shared with postmodernists was the continued leading role of gay men in modern dance begun in the late 1940s.

While women, both white and African American, had led the movement in the 1930s, by the 1960s men, both white and African American, led the art form, even though it continued to attract far more women than men. The achievement and influence of Alvin Ailey as a choreographer demonstrated that the modern dance offered a welcoming place for women leaders, and still more so than ballet. But the continued prominence of men in modern dance, particularly relative to their small numbers, suggests that men still retain an advantage in this female-dominated profession.

The models of Alvin Ailey pioneering are integrating their companies and nurturing an integrated, though predominantly black, audience base. Each of these groups turned to the emergent black middle class as their ideal audience members; that middle class had less interest in blatant social protest ideology. “…however still, artists of the Black Arts Movement are profoundly helped toward the alteration of the dance world status quo. Like their literary kin, these artists drew attention to unresolved questions of cultural aesthetics and mythologies surrounding black bodies in concert dance.

.” (Bean, 1999, p92) African-American concert dancers made a significant impact on all aspects of American modern dance. Dancers, such as Katherine Dunham, evolved new ways of moving that directly referenced their experiences in African dance forms to create new works based on rich nonwestern resources. These important contributions to American cultural life needed to have a place alongside the new dance styles and choreography made by European Americans during the 20th century.

Because available textbooks do not present a complete picture, it is necessary to find ways to incorporate the work of African-American pioneers and second-generation modern dancers into 20th-century dance history. This means that, from an historical and cultural view, all contributing work defined as modern dance is discussed together so that the developing art form, with all its influences, may be described completely.

To accomplish this, traditional course content is supplemented, and the course syllabus now incorporates the African-American dance pioneers simultaneously with European- American choreographers. It might be possible to agree with these critics about what constitutes bad political art and to note the particular difficulties dance encounters when it seeks to narrate politics. But these formulations seem to suggest something different: that it is the presence of politics itself that is excessive in dance, a surplus generated elsewhere and somehow uneasily grafted onto the otherwise autonomous aesthetic.

If one grants that along with dance, politics cannot have a solitary form or unitary object, if neither can be one thing or about one thing, it becomes possible to notice a proliferation of political activity throughout the social fabric and not simply confined to what are formally considered to be political institutions. When politics is treated merely as an idea or ideology, it occurs in stillness, awaiting something that will bring people to action or mobilize them.

But this presumed gap between a thinking mind and an acting body makes it impossible to understand how people move from a passive to an active state. The presumption of bodies already in motion, what dance takes as its normative condition, could bridge the various splits between mind and body, subject and object, and process and structure that have been so difficult for understandings of social life to negotiate. Many observers of the current political scene have claimed that political action has shown itself to be futile, at least when judged by standards posed by past attempts to improve society.

Others have suggested that existing politics, such as it is, requires an absolutely new set of historical and theoretical criteria for assessing the efficacy of any movement for social change. Not only must dance be specified as a cultural practice, but both its resources and its limitations as a reference for supplementing the vocabulary of political theory need to be acknowledged as well. Finally, performance theory invites an evaluation of Ailey’s choreography not simply as dance artifact, but as the focus of a larger experience.

Ailey’s performance has always infused the Western-defined concert dance event with African-inspired participation. Different audiences experience Ailey’s work in substantially different ways, and in much of his choreography Ailey exploited the tension between his audience’s expectations and his dancers’ abilities. Ailey’s choreographic themes, phrase structuring, uses of music, character, and narrative can be understood in terms of their efforts to create a multifaceted representation of African American experience.

This compositional strategy emerged as a key component of his performance that challenged both a core African American audience and cultural outsiders. As if by design The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center has celebrated over 50 years of work performing to an estimated 18 million people in more than 67 countries and has trained more than 3,000 students annually from all over the world. Reference(s) Julia L. Foulkes, 2002 Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey Publisher: University of North Carolina Press.

Place of Publication: Chapel Hill, NC. Page Number: 179. Thomas F. Defrantz, 2004 Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Page Number: vii. Andree Grau, Stephanie Jordan, 2000 Europe Dancing: Perspectives on Theatre Dance and Cultural Identity. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Page Number: 203. Brian G. Rose, 1986, Television and the Performing Arts: A Handbook and Reference Guide to American Cultural Programming. Publisher: Greenwood Press.

Place of Publication: New York. Page Number: 44. April Sgro Riddle, 1993, Article Title: Corporate Support of Dance Education. Journal Title: Arts Education Policy Review. Volume: 94. Issue: 4. Page Number: 22. Kariamu Welsh Asante, 1993, Article Title: African-American Dance in Curricula: Modes of Inclusion. Journal Title: JOPERD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance. Volume: 64. Issue: 2. Page Number: 48+. Randy Martin, 1990 Performance as Political Act: The Embodied Self. Publisher: Bergin & Garvey. Place of Publication: New York. Page Number: xi. Jane C.

Desmond, 1997, Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance. Publisher: Duke University Press. Place of Publication: Durham, NC. Page Number: 4. Annemarie Bean, 1999, A Sourcebook of African-American Performance: Plays, People, Movements. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Page Number: 92 Karen W. Hubbard, Pamela A. Sofras, 1998 Journal Article Title: Strategies for Including African-American Culture in an Historically Euro-Centric Dance Curriculum. Title: JOPERD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance. Volume: 69. Issue: 2. Page Number: 77+.

Writing Quality

Grammar mistakes

F (47%)

Synonyms

A (96%)

Redundant words

F (58%)

Originality

100%

Readability

F (32%)

Total mark

D

Read more

Biography of Carl Jung

Carl Jung is known to be one of the most famous psychological theorists of twentieth century. For sixty years, he developed him self with a singularity of purpose to analyzing the far flung and deep lying process of human personality. An exceptional and prominent approach of Jung in the field of psychology highlighted understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. The present paper focuses on Carl Jung’s biography and his major involvement in the area of psychology and art.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Swiss psychiatrist, initiator of analytical psychology, was born in Kesswil, Switzerland on 26 July 1875. Jung was the only son of the village pastor, the Reverend Paul Achilles Jung, and Emilie Jung, nee Preiswerk. His grandfather, Carl Gustav Jung (1794–1864), after whom he was christened, was a much-respected physician, who became Rector of Basel University and Grand Master of the Swiss Lodge of Freemasons. He was supposed to be the illegitimate son of Goethe. Though he bore a strong physical resemblance to the great poet, this is probably a legend and not fact.

Childhood ritual prepared him for his later insights into the importance of projection in psychology. Jung’s adult delight in solitude, his alchemical studies, and his research into the dynamics of psychic transformation were also foreshadowed in an adolescent fantasy (Anthony Stevens, 2001). He discovered philosophy and read widely during his teens, and this, together with the disappointments of his boyhood, led him to renounce the strong family tradition and to study medicine and become a psychiatrist. During his youth time, he studied extensively in philosophy and theology.

After attaining his medical degree (1902), he worked in Zurich with Eugen Bleuler in the field of mental illness. At Burgholzli, Jung began, with outstanding success, to apply association tests initiated by earlier researchers. He studied, especially, patients’ peculiar and illogical responses to stimulus words and found that they were caused by emotionally charged clusters of associations withheld from consciousness because of their disagreeable, immoral (to them), and frequently sexual content. He used the now famous term complex to describe such conditions.

Jung was mainly interested in parapsychology during his career. He came in contact with Sigmund Freud as a close collaborator and most likely successor between 1907 and 1912, but he had disagreement with Freud over the issue of the sexual basis of neuroses. Jung theory of personality is usually identified as psychoanalytical theory because it emphasizes the unconscious processes. He gave more weight on people’s aim and plans and less to instincts (Morgan, 1981). Jung was listed president of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy in 1933.

This organization had Nazi connections. Jung was severely criticized for his activities with the organization and his writings about racial differences in the magazine Zentralblatt fur Psychotherapie. Jung died on June 6, 1961. The most distinctive and prominent feature of Jung view of human is that human behavior is conditioned not only by individual and racial history but also by aims and aspiration. Both the past as actually and future as potentially guides one’s present behavior. Jung theory emphasizes the social and phylogenetic foundation of personality.

He explained that the foundations of personality are archaic, premature, innate, unconscious and probably universal. Jung emphasized the racial origin of personality. According to him, an individual personality is a resultant of inner forces acting upon and being acted upon by outer forces. The total personality or psyche consists of differentiated but interacting system. The principal feature of his theory of personality is ego, the personal unconscious and its complexes, the collective consciousness and its archetypes, the persona, the anima and animus and the shadow.

He explained ego is the conscious mind. It is made up of conscious perception, memories, thoughts and feeling. The ego is responsible for one’s feeling of identity. The personal unconscious is a region adjoining to ego. It consists of experiences that were one’s conscious but which have been repressed, suppressed, forgotten or ignored. A complex is an organized group of feeling, thoughts, perceptions and memories that exists in personal unconscious. Jung described the complexes may behave like an autonomous personality that has a mental life (Hall and Lindzey, 1978).

The concept, for which Jung is best known, is the collective unconscious. It has had a profound influence not only on psychology but also on philosophy and the arts. The collective consciousness is the storehouse of unconscious archetypes (primordial images), concept that represents the primitive and ancestral experiences of human race. One acquires these unconscious images automatically as a part of one’s genetic heritage. An archetype is a universal thought form that contains large elements of emotions.

This thought form creates images or vision that corresponds to normal waking life to some aspect of conscious situation. Examples of archetypes are God, rebirth, the wise old man and the devil. In the collective unconscious, one finds the sources of myth and memory of universal realities such as mothers and fathers, the sun and storms, masculinity and femininity (Morgan; 1981). The concept of collective unconscious is of the most original and controversial feature of Jung personality theory. It is most powerful and influential system of psyche and in pathological cases over shadow, the ego, and the personal unconscious.

Another principal feature of Jung‘s theory of personality is persona. It is mask adopted by the person in response to the demands of social convention and tradition and to his or her own archetype needs. If the ego identifies with persona, as it frequently does, the individual become more conscious of the part that he is playing (Hall and Lindzey; 1978). Jung intends synchronistic occurrences are neither provable nor disprovable in the hard, rigorous sense we traditionally associate with the natural sciences, and with mathematics.

Jung’s notion of synchronicity is associated inextricably with his notion of archetypes, those elusive, quasi- instinctual entities which Jung employs to explain just about everything that has to do with the dynamics of human psychology. So-called archetypes are the genetically based tendencies which steer or govern our behavior at the unconscious level, including the psychosomatic level, and which characteristically express themselves in powerful, timeless images usually connected to myths, religious rituals, and magic: the gods of antiquity, the pentagram, the mandala, the cross, the philosopher’s stone (M. D. Faber, 1998).

In addition to a balance of conscious and unconscious forces, Jung emphasized other balances in one’s nature. Some modes of experiencing and dealing with the world may be prominent in one’s conscious personality, while opposite modes may dominate the unconscious side. He theorized that human is essentially a bisexual animal on the psychological level. Sexuality is the basic driving urge for people was denied by Jung. Jung ascribed the feminine side of man’s personality (anima) and masculine side of women’s personality to archetypes (animus). These archetypes are product of the racial experiences of man with women and women with man.

In the view if Jung, shadow archetype consists of the animal instincts that humans invented in their evolution from their lower forms of life. Shadow is responsible for our conception of original sin. When it is projected outwards, it becomes devil or energy. Jung pioneered the notion of individuation. The process of individuating consists of a series of metamorphoses such as birth/infancy, puberty, adulthood, and midlife. If one can individuate at midlife, the ego is no longer at the center and the individual makes some sort of peace with her/his mortality (Ellenberger, 1970).

Before the self can emerge, it is necessary for the various components of the personality to become fully developed. Jung formulated the concept of introversion and extroversion that is turning inward toward contemplation or outward toward others (Morgan; 1981). Jung assumes that personality contains polar tendencies that may come into conflict with one another. He believes that the psychological theory of personality must be formed on the principal of opposition or conflict because the tension created by conflicting element is the essence of life itself. Without tension there would be no energy and consequently no personality.

All the creative art psychotherapies have their roots to C. G. Jung’s early work on active imagination. Jung learned to develop an ongoing affiliation with his lively creative spirit through the power of imagination and fantasies. He phrased this therapeutic method “active imagination. ” Jung started many expressive techniques to “dream the dream onward. ” Active imagination practice developed by Jung cheers patients to create fantasies, paint pictures, sculpt forms in clay, write poems and stories, dance or move the body expressively, and construct scenes in sand trays in order to foster a relationship with the unconscious.

Many of these forms of creative expression have engendered particular therapeutic practices such as art therapy, movement therapy, drama therapy and role-playing. Jung’s view of literature was undecided. He had a particular concern in trivial literature. Jung found a personification of the anima in H. Rider Haggard’s novel She. Jung was fascinated in the mythic and archaic elements in literature. His Symbols of Transformation (1912) contains a lengthy discussion of Longfellow’s Hiawatha, which is regarded as a poetic compilation of mythical motifs.

The old Chinese text, The Secret of the Golded Flower, awakened Jung’s interest in alchemy. In 1944, his major study in this field, Psychologie und Alchemie, was published in German. For Carl Jung, yoga is a general term indicating all of Eastern thought and psychological practice. In his writings yoga is used to designate Eastern traditions as diverse as Hinduism, Indian Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism and Chinese Taoism (J. Borelli, 1985). Jung was a fanatical, gifted thinker committed to knowledge and fearless in his pursuit of the truth.

Though the theory postulated by Jung is somewhat shrouded in mystism, Junganian psychology has a number of devoted admirers and proponents. Many of these are practicing Jung’s method of psychotherapy and have accepted his fundamental postulates regarding personality. References: 1) Hall, C. S. , and Lindzey G. 1978. Theories of personality (3rd ed. ). New York: Wiley. 2) Faber, M. D. 1998. Synchronicity: C. G. Jung, Psychoanalysis, and Religion; Publisher: Praeger Publishers. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Page Number: 3. 3) Morgan Clifford T, King Richard A. , Robinson Nancy M. 1981.

Introduction to Psychology; Sixth Edition; Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited. 4) Ellenberger, Henri F (1970). “Carl Gustav Jung and Analytical Psychology”, a chapter in The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. BasicBooks, Perseus Books Group. 5) J. Borelli. 1985. Jung and Eastern Thought. Harold Coward – author. Publisher: State University of New York Press. Place of Publication: Albany, NY. 6) Anthony Stevens. 2001. Jung: A Very Short Introduction; Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford, England.. Page Number: 7.

Read more

Historical Biography of Archimedes

The presented text is a summary biography of Archimedes of Syracuse. Known as one of the greatest mathematician, scientist, and inventor; Archimedes’ notoriety has been maintained over centuries by the scientific discoveries and technological inventions he brought during his lifetime. This text relates of his many accomplishments in a semi-chronological order, in attempting to retrace the marking facts of Archimedes’ life. Archimedes was born in 287BC in Syracuse, Sicily. He was the son of astronomer Phidias (Crystalinks, 2008). Presently, there is no information specifying of the work accomplished by Phidias.

Similarly, there is little detailed information concerning Archimedes life as a child and adolescent. According to history, Heracliedes wrote a biography of Archimedes which is subjected to have had detailed information about various aspects of Archimedes private life. Unfortunately, the biography was destroyed and many aspects of Archimedes personal were lost in the process. It seems that the p of the years has erased the memories of his childhood upbringing. In fact so little is known of his personal life, that there exists no specifics on his coupled life. Whether he had a wife and children remains unknown to the present day.

In comparison, his professional adult life has been studied and retraced century after century, relating of his incredible prowess with Mathematics, and of its unusual genius for technological inventions; some of which are still being used today, two millennia after his death. Historical texts mention his relation to King Hiero II, then the King of Syracuse and presumed uncle of Archimedes (Crystalinks, 2008). The validity of this relation to the Royal Family of Syracuse comes again and again in writings concerning Archimedes, and the few elements of his young adult life seem to confirm his privileged ranking in Syracusian society.

In fact, Archimedes was schooled in Alexandria, Egypt where he traveled to as a teenager to study mathematics (University of St Andrews, 1999). The many counts of his spectacular professional life as a mathematician, scientist, and inventor seem to retrace an origin to that period of his life. Certainly the ability to pursue university study confirms of his family ties to the Aristocratic society of Syracuse. He would later in his life collaborate closely with King Hiero II to come up with inventions to prevent Roman invasion of Syracuse.

Some of those inventions of warfare are reviewed in further detail in the portion of this text dedicated to Archimedes technological inventions and innovations. Archimedes began study in Alexandria at the age of 18. He was then brought to study mathematics along with Conon of Samos, and Eratosthenes (Crystalinks, 2008). As a scholar in Alexandria, he was allowed to study both the theoretical and practical aspects of science and technology, that he often retransmitted back to Greece via letters of correspondence he wrote. It is believed that Archimedes spent five to six years in Alexandria at study.

There are no other accounts during the life of Archimedes where he would have spent a comparable amount of time being educated in the formal sense. Following his study, he returned to Syracuse to become one of the most prolific scientist and inventors known to mankind. History tells that Archimedes invented the Archimedes screw while at study in Alexandria. The famous screw used to carry water from a low lying position to a higher position would found many useful applications and is presently used in modern day sewage plants. An amazing feat indeed.

His ingenuity continued after he returned home to Syracuse, and was fueled by the desire to find adequate solutions in order to protect the city from Roman invasion. In fact, often under the demand of the King, he undertook and completed several inventions targeted at warfare. For so doing, he used mechanisms of destruction and others of dissuasion that proved efficient as they held the roman invader, General Marcus Claudius Marcellus, from entering the city of Syracuse for two consecutive years. Archimedes died in 212BC, while Syracuse was under siege by the Roman invaders.

The story tells that he was killed by a roman soldier during the attack of Syracuse (Crystalinks, 2008). His mathematical Genius Archimedes of Syracuse is particularly known the world over for his stunning ability with mathematics, and in particular with geometry. In this section of the biography, we are to retrace the most important theorems he came up with, and relate of his most impressive scientific discoveries. On the contrary to most mathematicians, Archimedes mathematical inspirations often came from his work on Mechanics, thereby suggesting of an influence he brought to mathematics by making hypothesis based in the practical world.

This is a very interesting practice which is peculiar and certainly differentiates his work from other mathematicians who mostly would come up with a mathematical theorem and then attempt to verify it in the physical world. Archimedes wrote extensively on his work, although most of his work vanished over the years. In particular, he wrote a treatise on mechanics and hydrostatics entitled the “Method Concerning Mechanical Theorems”, which according to history often inspired his work as a mathematician. As he seemed to find his inspiration in the physical mechanical world, Archimedes excelled in the field of Geometry.

One of his famous discoveries was in relation to the comparable volume of a sphere and that of a cylinder. Archimedes was able to prove that the volume of a sphere equaled two-thirds of the volume of a cylinder for which the height equaled the diameter of the sphere (University of St Andrews, 1999). Archimedes was so proud for having found that mathematical reality that he insisted on having it carve on his tomb. Although Archimedes is often thought of as more of an inventor than a mathematician, he participated in several key developments in mathematics.

Archimedes often made use of infinitesimal sums to arrive at proving his hypotheses (Crystalinks, 2008). The method is often compared to modern day integral calculus which is very similar to the methods he employed then. One of his famous mathematical proofs was the approximation of Pi. Archimedes often used his ingenious notion of the mechanical world to arrive at more conclusive mathematical realities. In order to estimate the value of pi more accurately, he designed a circle. He placed a polygon on the outside and on the inside of the circle (University of Utah, 1999).

As he would raise the number of sides of each polygon, he came closer and closer to having a circle; effectively made of a series of small and connecting distances. As he reached 96 sides for the inner and outer polygons, he measured them to obtain a higher and lower boundary limit of the approximation of Pi. Archimedes concluded from the experiment that the value of pi was contained between 3+1/7 and 3+10/71 (Crystalinks, 2008). A remarkable feat leading to an impressive conclusion, which we consider today one of the most important proofs of mathematics.

The formula for the area of a circle is also attributed to Archimedes who came up with the fact that the area was equal to the square root of the radius of the circle multiplied by Pi. His interest for arriving at mathematical truths based on geometrical realities as we can perceived them in a multi-dimensional system, led him to prove more theorems often relating to infinite series or infinite sums. Archimedes is known for determining the equivalency of certain rational numbers by determining their infinite sum.

A rational number differentiates itself from a whole number (an integer for instance), as it has an integer portion and a decimal portion. The infinite sum approximation is often used in mathematics today to estimate areas and volumes in two dimensional and three dimensional spaces primarily. The technique he employed in his infinitesimal related theorems are commonly called method of exhaustion in modern day mathematics (University of St Andrews, 1999). As impressive as his ability for arriving at mathematical reality was, it made even more physical sense when he applied it to the physical world in which we live.

Many of Archimedes theories relating to physics are closely relating to the fields of geometry and physics in general. Often the geometrical mystique of an object would eventually lead to a physical mathematical reality of our world. It is seemingly in such proceeding that Archimedes came up with several theorems of mechanical nature. In fact, Archimedes discovered several theorems on the center of gravity of planes, and solids, and on the mathematical tools and methods to approximate those.

It is interesting to mention that his work, whether in theory or practice was often commanded by the search of the infinite in the mundane reality of the finite. Archimedes is known to have worked on the mathematical theories of spirals, where he helped to determine the mathematical formulation to describe spirals based on polar geometry. The work was compiled in a treatise called the Archimedean Spiral. The treatise describes in mathematical terms the function of a point moving away from a fixed coordinate at a constant speed and with constant angular velocity.

The function described in the treatise corresponds to the geographical representation of a spiral, which in the treatise is the result of moving set of points in a given pattern, that of a spiral (University of St Andrews, 1999). Several of his written theoretical work came as correspondence letters, in particular to a person of the name of Dositheus, who was a student of Conon (Crystalinks, 2008). In some of his letters, Archimedes referred to the calculation of the area enclosed in a parabola and determined by a line secant to the parabolic curve.

In the letters to Dositheus, Archimedes was able to prove that such area would equal to four thirds the area of an isosceles triangle having for base and height the magnitude of the intersecting line in the parabola. He arrived at the result using an infinite summation of the rational number one fourth. This particular mathematical demonstration would later prove invaluable in calculating the areas and volumes of various objects in using integral calculus, a modern form of Archimedes infinite expansion.

One of his most famous scientific discoveries relates to the buoyancy effect of a liquid on a given object: often referred to as Archimedes’ principle. The principle explains that any body immersed in a fluid experiences a force of buoyancy which is equal to the magnitude of the equivalent gravitational force of the liquid displaced during immersion. In other words, Archimedes arrived at the reality that any object plunged in a liquid plentiful enough to maintain such object in equilibrium, would experiment a force in reality equal to the body of water displaced to maintain such equilibrium.

There is a famous anecdote on how Archimedes came up with the physical theorem. Legend has it that it was during a bath that he came up with the concept for the buoyancy theorem. According to history, he came up with the answer to the buoyancy theorem in wanting to help his uncle, King Hiero II, to solve the Golden Crown Mystery. In fact, the story relates that the King, Hiero II, sent a certain amount of gold to his goldsmith to be made into a crown. When the crown returned from the goldsmith, the King apparently noticed that it was lighter than the presumed amount of gold that was given to the goldsmith.

King Hiero II presented the dilemma to his nephew Archimedes of Syracuse, who supposedly came up with an answer to the problem that very night. The legend states that Archimedes came up with the buoyancy theorem by filling his bathtub to the top. When he entered the bath, a certain amount of water poured out of the bath. He later on realized that the mass of the amount of water dispersed from the bathtub was equivalent to the mass of his own body. From arriving at this discovery, the story claims that Archimedes ran the streets of Syracuse naked and screaming “Eureka”, which means “I have found it”.

The next day he reiterated the experiment with the Golden Crown and the same amount of gold that was initially given to the goldsmith, when he was able to confirm King Hiero’s assumption that not all the gold given to the goldsmith was used in making the Golden Crown (Andrews University, 1998). This amazingly simple proof carries one of the most important theoretical truths of physics. The principle of buoyancy is better known today as the Law of Hydrostatics, and is directly attributed to Archimedes of Syracuse.

The above anecdote is a classic example of Archimedes’ability to confront complex theoretical problems by transcribing them into practical life. A considerable number of his experiments and scientific theorems were similarly found through empirical and methodical practical proceedings. Archimedes Inventions As a keen mathematician, Archimedes was particularly talented in determining physical solutions to various problems encountered in his life. Often, the mechanical tools that he devised were a direct projection of a theorem he wanted to prove or vice versa. One of his most famous inventions was the Archimedes screw.

Sometimes referred to as Archimedes water pump, the device was created by the Greek mathematician during his study in Alexandria. Archimedes screw is a machine made to pump water from a lower level to a higher level. In short, an ingenious method for carrying water over distances thereby apparently defeating the law of gravity. The screw is made of a cylindrical pipe angled at fourty five degrees and containing a helix. When the bottom end of the device is plunged into water and set to rotate, the helix’s rotation carries water from the bottom end of the cylinder to the top end (Crystalinks, 2008).

Archimedes according to historians, devised another form of the screw in a comparable yet dissimilar shape. In our day, the system is being used primarily in waste-water treatment plants to pump sewage waters. There is little account however on the applications for which the Archimedes screw may have served during Archimedes life, other than its use for irrigation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and for removing water in the hull of ships. In fact, most counts of using the technique point to its modern day utilization.

Other inventions brought by Archimedes received a considerable amount of attention, and found direct applications during his lifetime. From his close relationship with the King Hiero II, Archimedes was requested to build machines to keep the Roman assailant at bay. Archimedes successfully created several weapons of war that held the Roman invader several years. Archimedes is in fact known for inventing the catapult for that purpose. The catapult is a device based on the principle of the lever, which is capable of carrying an object several times its weight.

When the catapult is fired, the object “flies” in describing a parabolic curve, prior to hitting its target. The catapult was often used during warfare as a defensive method to protect a territory from invaders. He would later on be used as on offensive weapon for attacking protected areas or castles. The catapult can be assimilated as the early form of a canon, which solely relied on mechanical means to operate. The device served Syracuse of Sicily well during the Punic wars of Rome vs. Carthage. Archimedes, at the King’s request, created several weapons to defend the city (Biography Shelf, 2008).

Among such weapons were the catapult, the crossbow, and the claw; which could be used to cover several ranges. These various methods of defense allowed Archimedes to keep the Roman assailants at shore for two long years, according to historical reports. Archimedes also came up with the Archimedes ray, a device which was created to set invading ships on fire at a large distance. The device is made up of several mirrors forming a parabolic shape where the rays are reflected to subsequently interfere at a point which can be considered the focus of the parabolic shape.

By aligning the mirrors adequately, it was then feasible to set ships on fire by focusing light reflected from the mirrors directly onto the ships. However, not all of Archimedes inventions were meant for warfare. The Greek mathematician and inventor came up with several devices to assist sailors to carry large objects from the water. Most of those devices operated based on the principle of the lever that was also used in the conception of the catapult. Off all of his work both in theory and in practice, only his writing remained to this day.

In fact several of his correspondence letters were compiled into a repository of treatise commonly called the Archimedean Palimpsest (Cryslalinks 2008). According to ancient history, a palimpsest is a literal compilation of writings that were transcribed onto parchments and contained several layers of text on a given page. It seems evident to modern day historians and archeologists that the multiple writings on a single page indicated that parchment were expensive and hard to come by, and thus demanded that the author writes several times on the same page in order to conserve the precious parchment.

The Archimedean palimpsest was made of the following treatises: 1- On the Equilibrium of Planes The treatise was focused on the principle of the lever and its various applications. The document describes how the principle of the lever can be applied to the calculation of the center of gravity of various bodies including parabola, hemispheres, and triangles. 2- On spirals The treatise “On Spirals” describes the mathematical function of point moving in a curvilinear direction in a three dimensional setting. The work is better known under the appellation of the Archimedean Spiral. 3- On the Sphere and the Cylinder

The treatise describes the mathematical derivation on the relationship between a given sphere and a cylinder having for height the diameter of the sphere. Archimedes was able to mathematically prove that in that very context, the volume of the sphere equaled two thirds to that of the cylinder. 4- On Conoids and Spheroids In this treatise, Archimedes demonstrates how to calculate the areas and volumes of conical sections, spherical sections, and parabolic sections. 5- On Floating Bodies Probably one of the most famous works of Archimedes, the “On Floating Bodies” treatise describes the theorem of equilibrium of fluidic materials.

In this document, Archimedes proved that a body of water would take a spherical form around a given center of gravity. In the second volume of the treatise, he describes the equilibrium states of parabolic sections partially immersed in a body of water. 6- The Quadrature of the Parabola This treatise corresponds to the mathematical derivation that the area made by the intersection of a line with a parabola equals four thirds of a triangle having a base and height both equal to the segment of the line intersecting the parabola. 7- Stomachion

The treatise describes a problem in which Archimedes attempted to estimate the number of strips of paper of various shapes and quantities that would be necessary to reconstruct a square. The method is said to be an early version of the field of combinatorics. The Archimedean palimpsest was conserved over two millennia, and his now conserved at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD. It is the only remaining work directly written by Archimedes himself to be existing today. Unlike the mathematician’s writings which were compiled in the Archimedean palimpsest, there are apparently no remains or originals of his practical inventions.

The Archimedean palimpsest is direct testimony of Archimedes’ inclination for mathematical prowess, in particular when it concerned geometry. Most of his work that was conserved in the redaction of the palimpsest describes some very important rules and theorems for Mathematics. Among those, the approximation of pi and the use of the method of exhaustion to estimate areas, volumes, and surface areas of solids of varying forms were key elements leading to modern day mathematical practice.

Some of his inventions are in use today, yet his name is most often associated in our era with the buoyancy theorem also known as Archimede’s Principle. References Andrews University, 1998, Biographies of Mathematicians – Archimedes, website available at http://www. andrews. edu/~calkins/math/biograph/bioarch. htm Biography Shelf, 2008, Short Biography of Archimedes, website available at http://www. biographyshelf. com/archimedes_biography. html Crystalinks, 2008, Archimedes, Biographical Sketch of the Mathematician, available at http://www.

crystalinks. com/archimedes. html Trebuchetstore, 2008, Archimedes: A biography, website available at http://www. redstoneprojects. com/trebuchetstore/archimedes_1. html University of St Andrews, 1999, Archimedes of Syracuse, School of Mathematics and Statistics, available at http://www-groups. dcs. st-and. ac. uk/~history/Biographies/Archimedes. html University of Utah, 1999, Archimedes and the Computation of Pi, website available at http://www. math. utah. edu/~alfeld/Archimedes/Archimedes. html

Read more

Biography of Alan Greenspan

It is somewhat inconceivable that a man often dubbed as the “second most powerful man in the United States next to the president himself”, was an undergraduate at the Juilliard School, studying the clarinet. A former member of a jazz band and perfectly capable of playing the saxophone, Alan Greenp is a name known in every American household, where a staggering statistic of 9 out of 10 American adults are acquainted with who Greenp is, as opposed to knowing who the Vice President of the United States is.

Born to a Hungarian Jewish family on March 6, 1926, Alan Greenp spent his formative years in Washington Heights, New York. Having an aptitude for numbers, Greenp was the one who was often left with the bands bookkeeping and his natural inclination towards business was what prompted his transition from studying musical arts to studying economics. Thus, enrolling at the New York University on September 1944, he went on to earn two degrees in economics, graduating summa cum laude in 1948 and attaining his MA in 1950.

Although he was never able to finish his PhD at Columbia University owing to a lack of a dissertation, he attained it later on at NYU in 1977 without having to make the particular requirement as well as honorary Doctor of Commercial Science on December 14, 2005. Almost 40 years before his appointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenp’s professional career began as an economic analyst at the National Industrial [Insert Last Name 2] Conference Board, where he stayed on from 1947 to 1953.

He then proceeded to open, along with William Townsend, Townsend, Greenp & Company, an economic consulting firm in New York City where he served as the firm’s president and chairman for a little over 33 years. Having accepted the job as a coordinator on domestic policy under Richard Nixon during the presidential campaign in 1968 and later as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in 1974 to 1977 under Gerald Ford, the company was seen to be dwindling down from success.

Successors to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve that was being vacated by Paul Volcker were being nominated and Alan Greenp’s name was among those in mind. Nominated by Ronald Reagan, Greenp’s nomination hearing went through on July 21 1987 and confirmed by the Senate on August 11, 1987. He was faced with his first ever crisis; the 1987 stock market rash which was one of the biggest crashes in the history of Wall Street.

His period serving at the Fed has allowed him to build credibility and flexibility in affecting the economy, combating recession by lowering the interest rates without so putting so much of a shock on the bond market. Serving as the chairman of the Federal Reserve for four terms under past presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Greenp was nominated by President George Bush to serve his fifth tem on May 18, 2004, an extraordinary feat that has yet to be surpassed.

Among his many awards and titles that he received during his service was the Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowed upon him by President George W. bush in November 2005, Knight Commander of the British Empire in 2002 and Commander of the Legion of Honor. Having appointed another successor in the person of yet another former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to ensure a [Insert Last Name 3] smooth changeover, Greenp’s stay as a member of the board officially reached a close on January 31, 2006. Converted from being a logical positivist, he became an advocate of Objectivism due to the influence of Nathaniel Branden.

He was introduced to Ayn Rand, the Objectivist author who was to become his mentor and friend, by his first wife, Joan Mitchell. A supporter of Rand’s philosophy, Greenp wrote several literary pieces for the Objectivist newsletters as well as contributions for Capitalism; the Unknown Ideal, Rand’s book published in 1966 among which was an essay supporting the gold standard. A known advocate of laissez faire capitalism, a number of Objectivists find irony in the way that Greenp supports the gold standard in spite of the Federal Reserve’s role in America’s fiat money system and endogenous inflation.

Harry Binswanger claims that Greenp falls short of his support of the Objectivist and free market principles as evinced by his publicly expressed opinions and actions while working for the Federal Reserve. Following his retirement from the Federal Reserve, Greenp has a new company; the Greenp Associates LLC, working as an advisor, making speeches and offering consulting for other firms. He has written his own memoir.

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, which was published on September 17, 2007. In it, he tells of his history in the service of the U. S.government as well as issues, present and future, concerning global economy, where he voices out his criticisms of President George Bush, VP Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress. Having been given his third stint as a private adviser, Greenp was hired by Paulsen &Co in the middle of January 2008 to get his input on economic issues and monetary policies. As such, he will be advising them on issues the U. S. economy and the world financial markets.

Works Cited

  1. Sheehan, Fred. “Alan, We Hardly Know You’. 20 July 2007. Safehaven. 12 April 2008. < http://www. safehaven. com/article-8006. htm>
Writing Quality

Grammar mistakes

F (52%)

Synonyms

A (100%)

Redundant words

D (66%)

Originality

94%

Readability

F (43%)

Total mark

C

Read more

Biography of al Capone

The most interesting man in the history of Chicago’s underworld would most probably be the man nicknamed “Scarface”. This “scarface” gained notoriety because of his exploits and violence in the streets of Chicago. A man who started as a mediocre Italian boy growing up in Brooklyn and becoming arguably the most popular Mob boss in the whole of the United States, Al Capone was a superstar of the crime world. Producing magnanimous amounts of money all the way up, his richness was unparalleled during his time. It is his wealth, criminal activities, fame and fortune that put Al Capone on the international map.

Up until today, he has been an interesting subject due to his controversial actions and enviable wealth that was produced by illegal business activities. Al Capone’s rap sheet goes on and on. He was arrested for violating traffic rules, owning a prostitution den, and also for disorderly conduct which were all dismissed. Capone was also arrested for voting fraud, and twice for a suspicion of murder where hew was discharged. He also served time in Pennsylvania for carrying a concealed weapon and was fined in Illinois for the same accusation. (Lorizzo, 2003).

But the crime that convicted this infamous crime boss was tax evasion. His yearly income is interesting enough to discuss. AL CAPONE To further understand Al Capone, this paper includes a background about the man. The following paragraphs discusses the life and times of the infamous scarface, Al Capone. Named Alphonse Capone, he was given birth in Brooklyn, New York during the year 1899. Being born with Italian parents namely Gabriele and Teresa, Al was brought to the United States due to his parents migrating from Italy. During 1917, he was hired as a bouncer in Coney Island’ Harvard Inn.

He was caught in a fight. This was the cause of the three scars on his face which earned him his nickname. After quitting his job a couple of years later, during 1921, Capone went to Chicago and worked for Johnny Torrio. He was 22 and recruited as a bootlegger. After the passing of the National Prohibition Act during the year 1920, Torrio became one of the persons who set up an illegal alcohol business. Capone’s first job was to persuade people to but the illegal alcohol of Torrio. After three years, Al Capone was promoted as manager and became a business partner of Johnny Torrio.

After a while, he took over the business. Capone operated 161 illegal drinking establishments and grew into a policy of using violence just to seize the competition. The wealth he had conquered due to these illegal activities and killings made Al Capone a superstar in the crimeworld, almost feared by most men. A series of massacres was undertaken by Capone’s gang. One of which was the most notorious St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. During February 14, 1929, dressed in police uniforms, Capone’s men created a diversion as if they were really police officers.

The place was a building and headquarters of George “Bus” Moran, who is also a bottlegger, and his North Side gang. It was reported that two machine guns and two shotguns were used to kill the men. 150 bullets was the total that Capone fired into the victims. Killed were six from Moran’s gang and one was an unlucky friend. Capone having an alibi, said that during the massacre he was in Florida. Just a few were convicted and arrested of the murderers during the period of Capone. The likes of him were capable to manipulate people especially the police and also the potential witnesses by using bribery.

Many cases were evaded by Capone but during June 5, 1931 he was indicted 22 counts of tax evasion. During the October 6, he was found guilty on 5 counts of tax evasion. His appeals were denied during May 3 of 1932 and by that year also, he began to serve his time in the Atlanta Penitentiary. After a few years, exactly August 19, 1934, Capone was transferred to Alcatraz. During 1939, he was also moved to Terminal Island, south of Los Angeles. On the 8th of November the same year, Capone was transferred to Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He paroled on the 16th of November. During 1939, Capone was diagnosed with Syphilis.

In January of 1945, Al Capone became as one of the initial civilians who got penicillin treatment due to syphilis. During the twenty-fifth of January, 1947, Alphonse Capone died. (Lorizzo, 2003). Al Capone became a very affluent man. It was believed that during the 1920s’ Capone payed $20,000 for an automobile, which during that time was a huge amount of money. His wealth and notoriety launched his popularity but it was also the cause of his demise. “After pouring over his outlays for foods and services from 1926 to 1929 and adding in his fixed possessions, they cam up with about $165,000 of taxable income.

Given the assumption that Capone was taking in up to $100 million some years, the amount seemed trivial. Yet it made the case against Capone possible. The legality of such a net worth case was still to be decided by the Supreme Court. ” (Lorizzo, p. 76, 2003). CONCLUSION Al Capone was a man who changed the scene of the underworld of crime and violence. He walked the earth as a notorious and feared man of high rank. There was even an estimation that he had incomes of $60,000,000 for alcohol, $25,000. 000 from gambling establishments, $10,000,000 from other rackets and another $10,000,000 for vices.

It was also claimed that “Scarface” employed over 600 gangsters just to defend his business from other counterpart gangs. A lot can be said about Capone, affluent, violent, intelligent and a lot more. But the most appropriate definition of Al Capone would be, is that he was a man of character. Whether a bad guy, he rose to fame and still is an interesting personality until today. WORKS CITED Lorizzo, Luciano. Al Capone: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. http://foia. fbi. gov/foiaindex/capone. htm http://www. chicagohs. org/history/capone. html http://www. umich. edu/~eng217/student_projects/nkazmers/thelaw1. html

Read more

Andrew Carnegie – Autobiography by David Nasaw

A businessman, a Scottish industrialist, a philanthropist, and the man who founded the Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Steel Company which eventually became U.S. Steel, Andrew Carnegie was known for establishing one of the most influential and powerful corporations in the United States and then later on donated his wealth to establish many schools, libraries, and Universities in Scotland as well as in the U.S. and to some countries throughout the continent. His humble beginnings as a poor boy in Scotland, armed with a fierce devotion to hard work, self-improvement, strong ambition, spiced with a pleasant personality, contributed much to his success and accomplishments. Starting as a telegrapher, he then work his way to the top by investing in bridges and oil derricks, railroads and railroad sleeping cars, and eventually was able to build a wealth as a bond salesman raising huge amount of investments in American and European enterprise. His belief that the rich should use their wealth to help enrich the society served as his vision and later was instrumental in his undertakings and contributions in the field of philanthropy, with great emphasis on scientific research, local libraries and world peace.

Born on the 25th of November 1835 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, living in an impoverished family, his early life was considered to be a self-educated one. His father, William Carnegie, made to a point that his children will receive an education to the utmost of his resources. Being a politically inclined person, his father was an activist and politically involved in the demonstrations against the Corn Laws, the abolition of the rotten boroughs, British House of Commons reforms, Catholic Emancipation, and the laws governing safety at work which was then later became the Factory Acts. His father was also a contributor in a radical pamphlet, the Cobbett’s Register. Another big influence in his early life aside from his father was his Uncle, George Lauder, who introduced him to Scottish Historical heroes such as William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Rob Roy. He was also introduced to the great writings of Shakespeare and Robert Burns. He influenced the young Carnegie towards his idea in the United States of America as a role model for Democratic Institutions, which later in his life was seen towards his views regarding America. Another influence in his early life was his other uncle, Tom Kennedy, who was able to stir in his young mind his radical sentiment.

Though the early influences made the first mold in Andrew Carnegie’s life, his personal desire to learn through readings established his intellectual capabilities. Colonel James Anderson gave him that opportunity by opening his personal library of around 400 volumes and Carnegie was his consistent borrower.  This made him a self-made man in terms of intellectual and economic development.

His first job was a telegraph messenger in a Pittsburgh Office in 1851. It was by this time he developed his love for Shakespeare’s works. He then quickly learned how to identify the sounds of the incoming signals being produced and eventually learned how to transcribe the signals without even writing them. In 1853, he was then employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company as a secretary/ telegraph and later on promoted to superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division. His appointment helped him in his first investment named Adams Express. He then later on decided to invest money on the sleeping cars for the Railroad Company of Pennsylvania which turned out to be another profitable investment. He also Reinvested his money in the related railroad industries such as bridges, irons, and rails from which again proved to be very profitable for him. Through this he was able to gather his first big capital which served as a starting point for his success.

During the Civil War, he was appointed as a Superintendent of the Union Government’s telegraph lines and of the Military Railways. He was instrumental on bridging the rail lines towards Washington which the rebels had cut. He pioneered the Union troop’s First Brigade towards Washington and when the rebels were defeated at Bull Run, he personally supervised their transfer.  His leadership eventually proved significant in the success of the Union through his telegraph service during the war.

He then proceeded to increase his wealth through strategic and careful investments.In 1864; he invested in a $40,000 Storey farm on Oil Creek located at Venango County, Pennsylvania, which after one year yielded $1,000,000. He was also associated in establishing a steel roller mill, an investment in the iron industry which he started before the war, and later devoted his energies in the ironworks trade. He then established the Keystone Bridge Works and the Union Ironworks in Pittsburgh.  In 1880, his company – Carnegie Steel was considered the largest manufacturer of steel rails, coke, and pig iron in the world. He bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which has a vast plant of iron fields and tributary coal, a line of lake steamships, and a 425-km long railway. In 1882, he established the Carnegie Steel Company, and later expanded his empire that included the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the Lucy furnaces, the Union Mill, Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works, Hartman Steel Works, Scotia Ore Mines and the Frick Coke Company (Livesay, 1999).

Aside from establishing his steel empire, Andrew Carnegie was also a scholar and an activist. He was able to make many friends in the political and literary worlds. He was also a correspondence of notable statesmen, writers, and had acquaintances with most of the United States Presidents. In 1881, his mother laid the foundation stone of the Carnegie Library at Dunfermline. Carnegie was also an advocate in the establishment of the British Republic and insisted on the abolition of the monarchy. He also wrote a book based on his personal experiences entitled An American Four–in-hand in Britain; he was also a regular article contributor to several magazines such as the Nineteenth Century and the North American Review. His most radical work, the Triumphant Democracy, discussed argumentatively his view between the British Monarchial System against the American Republican System. The book gave an idealized and a favorable view of the American progress and contained delicate criticisms over the British Royal Family. Though it made a considerable controversy in his Country, it was a successful in the United States selling almost 40,000 copies. In 1889, he published an article in the North American Review entitled “Wealth” that emphasized Carnegie’s life should consist of two parts: the accumulation of his wealth, and the distribution of it through charities (Nasaw, 2006).

After his retirement, he decided to spend the remaining of his life as a philanthropist. From an image of a business magnate he was slowly known to be of a public-spirited individual utilizing his vast resources on philanthropic activities and objects. His views on social responsibilities and subjects were already known in his books such as the Triumphant Democracy and the Gospel of Wealth. He settled his home partly in Skibo Castle, Sutherland, Scotland and partly in New York where he then later devoted his life towards providing necessary capital funds for the interests of the public and for educational and social advancement. Among his accomplishments were: a supporter of the spelling reform which aimed to promote the English language; established public libraries, most commonly called Carnegie Libraries, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, and in other English-speaking Countries, A total of around 3,000 libraries were founded in 47 States;  He helped in the establishment of the University of Birmingham in 1889; reformed both library design and library philanthropy which gave the way for free access; he donated $2,000,000 to establish the Carnegie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh which later became part of the Carnegie Mellon University; established a trust fund to provide education at Scottish University; funded the construction of around 7,000 church organs; a trust fund for his employees; he also established the Carnegie Laboratory, Carnegie Hall in New York, and  the Carnegie Hero Fund.

On October 14, 1917, he was honored for his philanthropic works by an initiation of the Phi MU Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity as an honorary member. The mission of the fraternity reflects Carnegie’s views and values towards developing young men and making the world a better place by consciously sharing their talents.

It was approximated that he gave away $350, 000,000 during his lifetime and an approximate of $30 Million was given to charities, pensioners, and foundations after his death on August 11, 1919.

Andrew Carnegies life, illustrated his tremendous hope for humanity resembling a humanistic view on life. He kept himself secluded from any organized religion thus becoming a positivist. His humanistic point of view towards achieving a better world manifested on his contributions to humanity. Based on his ideals that wealth should be distributed towards benevolent causes, his goals were realized and continuously being benefited by human kind.

References

Nasaw, David (2006). Andrew Carnegie. New York : The Penguin Press.

Livesay, Harold C (1999). Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business, 2nd Edition.

Read more
OUR GIFT TO YOU
15% OFF your first order
Use a coupon FIRST15 and enjoy expert help with any task at the most affordable price.
Claim my 15% OFF Order in Chat
Close

Sometimes it is hard to do all the work on your own

Let us help you get a good grade on your paper. Get professional help and free up your time for more important courses. Let us handle your;

  • Dissertations and Thesis
  • Essays
  • All Assignments

  • Research papers
  • Terms Papers
  • Online Classes
Live ChatWhatsApp