The Cult of True Womanhood and The Yellow Wallpaper :: Yellow Wallpaper essays

The Cult of True Womanhood and The Yellow Wallpaper Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles.   Although all women were effected by men determining women’s behavior, largely middle class women suffered.   Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women.   This ideology, called the Cult of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women.   The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. Laboring under the seeming benevolence of the Cult of Domesticity, women were imprisoned in the home or private sphere, a servant tending to the needs of the family.   Furthermore, the Cult of Purity obliged women to remain virtuous and pure even in marriage, with their comportment continuing to be one of modesty. Religious piety and submission were beliefs that were more peripheral components of the ideology, yet both were borne of and a part of the ideology of True Womanhood. These were the means that men used to i nsure the passivity and docility of women.   Religion would pacify any desires that could cause a deviation from these set standards, while submission implied a vulnerability and dependence on the patriarchal head (Welter 373-377). The medical profession’s godlike attitude in â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† demonstrates this arrogance.   The Rest cure that Dr. Weir Mitchell prescribed, which is mentioned in Gilman’s work, reflects men’s disparaging attitudes.   His Rest cure calls for complete rest, coerced feeding and isolation.   Mitchell, a neurosurgeon specializing in women’s nervous ailments, expounded upon his belief for women’s nervous conditions when he said, American woman is, to speak plainly, too often physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is perhaps of all civilized females the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man.   She is not fairly up to what nature asks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which nowadays she is eager to share with the man? (Mitchell 141) On the other hand, the male sector of society enjoyed mobility.   Men reaped benefits from not only the private domain, but they were also free to leave and enter the public sphere.  Ã‚   They received nurturing from women in the private arena.   The public sphere was where men enjoyed the competition engendered in the market place through which they gained their identity.

Essay Contrasing Gertrude and Ophelia of Shakespeares Hamlet

Contrast of Gertrude and Ophelia in Hamlet  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Queen Gertrude and Ophelia, the main female characters in Shakespeare’s dramatic tragedy Hamlet, have a variety of contrasting or dissimilar personal qualities and experiences. This essay, with the help of literary critics, will explore these differences.    John Dover Wilson in his book, What Happens in Hamlet, discusses what is perhaps the greatest dissimilarity between Ophelia and Gertrude – their morality:    His [Hamlet’s] mother is a criminal, has been guilty of a sin which blots out the stars for him, makes life a bestial thing, and even infects his very blood. She has committed incest. Modern readers, living in an age when marriage laws are the subject of free discussion and with a deceased wife’s sister act upon the statute-book, can hardly be expected to enter fully into Hamlet’s feelings on this matter. Yet no one who reads the first soliloquy in the Second Quarto text, with its illuminating dramatic punctuation, can doubt for one moment that Shakespeare wished here to make full dramatic capital out of Gertrude’s infringement of ecclesiastical law, and expected his audience to look upon it with as much abhorrence as the Athenians felt for what we should consider the more venial, because unwitting, crime of the Oedipus of Sophocles (39).    Quite opposite the criminality of the king’s wife is the innocence of Ophelia, who might be called a â€Å"broken lily† (O’Donnell 241). In the Introduction to Twentieth Century Interpretations of Hamlet, David Bevington enlightens the reader regarding this dissimilarity between the two ladies:    Characters also serve as foils to one another as well as to Hamlet. Gertrude wishfully sees in Ophelia the b... ...ffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.    Boklund, Gunnar. â€Å"Hamlet.† Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.    Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets. London : George Bell and Sons, 1904. p. 342-368. http://ds.dial.pipex.com/thomas_larque/ham1-col.htm    O’Donnell, Jessie F. â€Å"Ophelia.† The American Shakespeare Magazine, 3 (March 1897), 70-76. Rpt. in Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900. Ed. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts. New York: Manchester University Press, 1997.    Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nos.    Wilson, John Dover. What Happens in Hamlet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.      

Leadership in a time of complexity

Introduction A true and effective leader reacts to critical incidents especially in times of stress  and challenge. He sets an example and is clear about the â€Å"rules of the road† and then adheres to them along the journey. Clarity, consensus and intensity are three essential factors for aligning values of leaders with those of the followers. The importance of shared values is that they channel and focus people’s energies and commitments. Leadership during a Crisis Leadership in critical times was clearly seen in the Hurricane Katrina which hit the Gulf Coast. The U.S. government agencies tasked with relief and rehabilitation operations seem to remain in limbo.   One of which is Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which reportedly delivered a mere 15 percent of the travel trailers and mobile homes that it hurriedly purchased for temporary housing. The Chicago Tribune reported that FEMA ordered 125,000 travel trailers or mobile homes after Katrina struck in order to provide housing for the estimated 600,000 people who have been displaced by that storm and Hurricane Rita, which hit eastern Texas and western Louisiana three weeks later. However, FEMA was only able to install 18,834 travel trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi and 494 more mobile homes in the two states.[1] Repercussions of the Hurricane There were also reports that a year before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, information technology utilized by the Homeland Security Department to support disaster management was so disconnected and inadequate that it was necessary for employees to develop ad hoc alternatives to supplement them. This was revealed by DHS' inspector general in a derisive report. Conclusion Thus, to point our fingers to a single cause or leadership may be overly simplistic.   The slow and inefficient disaster response may properly be viewed as the effect of various factors, including, but not exclusively, the inadequacies of the FEMA officials.[2]   All these spread far and wide, up to the very top of the government and down to the local government officials. It is sad that there was no strong leadership to have prevented this disaster. In sum, we conclude that leaders do not achieve success by themselves. Exemplary leaders enlist the support and assistance of all those who must make the project work. They involve, in some way, those who must live with the results, and they make it possible for others to do good work. BIBLIOGRAPHY Martin, A. Hitches Show in FEMA Trailer Plan. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved May 19. 2007 at: Memo: FEMA had problems before Katrina. USA Today. Retrieved May 19. 2007 at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/executive/2005-10-17-fema-memos_x.htm ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; [1] Martin, A. Hitches Show in FEMA Trailer Plan. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved May 19. 2007 at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0511060220nov06,1,4411564.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed [2] Memo: FEMA had problems before Katrina. USA Today. Retrieved May 19. 2007 at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/executive/2005-10-17-fema-memos_x.htm ; ;

Journals of Major Robert Rogers

Robert Rogers was born in Londonderry, New Hampshire, (or Methuen Massachusetts), in 1727. His parents, James and Mary McFatridge Rogers were Scotch-Irish, also had three other sons James, Richard, and John. 1 They lived in a small town in Massachusetts, which was a frontier town with log houses along the Merrimack valley. Robert was fourteen or fifteen years of age when his father founded a settlement in the wilderness on 2,190 acres of land, which he named Munterloney. From his youth, he was inured to the hardships of the frontier, acquiring character traits of decisiveness, self-reliance and boldness, which distinguished him later in life. Rogers, acquired his scanty stock of â€Å"book –learning,† as he termed from a log school house that was sixteen feet long and twelve feet wide. 3 Most of his knowledge came from his father’s farm, where he learned to hunt, trap, and fish which he earned a small living from. While he was on hunting excursions he mingled with the Indians and learned some of their language, hunting methods and their habits. 4 He was six feet in statute, well proportioned, and one of the most athletic men of his time, well known in all the trials of strength and activity among the young men of his vicinity, and for several miles around. About six years after they moved, Robert’s father James was walking through the woods on his way to visit a friend, when he was shot by the far away neighbor, thinking that he was a bear. He died later that night from his wound. Robert told some locals at a town tavern, that his mother was also killed by some hunters that thought her tracks were a bear. Everyone in the tavern thought he was telling a huge lie and tallest tale so they bought him a drink for the greatest lie. Robert was not lying; he di d lose both of his parents. Robert joined the military service when he was twenty-eight. In 1746, when King George’s War broke out, Robert joined the New Hampshire militia as a private in Captain Ladd’s Scouting Company and then again later (1747) in Eastman’s Company, to guard the New Hampshire frontier. 7 there were ample details given of his adventures; most of them were given by himself in his journals. He wrote a book ‘A Concise Account of North America†, which was a success and attracted royal attention. 8 In 1754 Robert became involved with a gang of ounterfeiters; he was indicted, but never brought to trial because the war broke out. 9 In 1755, France and Britain had declared war on each other, and conflict was spreading to the colonies of Europe. They were fighting over the right of discovery and occupation, each one wanting more of America. Since Rogers was an experienced frontiersman, the colonial government dropped the counterfeit charges against him, meanwhile he was appointed as an official recruiter for Colonel John Winslow. 10 In 1756, Rogers started recruiting soldiers for his militia. Rogers had an unusual talent for training his men in the most dire circumstances. He trained them in live fire, they learned to handle the extreme cold, how to live off of very little food. 11 By the end of 1756, Rogers had raised four regimens of rangers. He himself commanded one of them, and they were known as Rogers Rangers. He wrote a guide for the Rangers to follow that had twenty eight rules for ranging. This guide later became famous, and was called Robert Rogers’ 28 â€Å"Rules of Ranging†. 12 Robert’s brothers all served in a regimen of the Rangers. His brother Richard died in 1757 of small- pox at Fort Henry, his body was dug up and found mutilated and scalped by hostile natives. 13 His brother James stayed on with the King’s Rangers and assumed Robert’s post after the American Revolutionary War ended. Not much is known about brother John after the war was over. Rogers was personally responsible for paying his soldiers, He went deeply in debt, and had to take out loans when their payroll was raided while in transport. Rogers was never reimbursed for his expenses by the government or the British Army. 4 Over the next three years the Rangers served under a series of unsuccessful British commanders. The Rangers slowly grew to twelve companies as well as several additional contingents of natives who had pledged their allegiance to the British cause. The Rangers were kept separate from the British regulars. 15 In 1758 Rogers went to Lake George with about one hundred and eighty men, and had a battle with the French and Indians, he lost one hundred and fourteen of his men. After that battle, General Abercrombie presented him with a commission of Major of the Rangers. 6 In 1759 Major General Amherst sent Rogers with 200 men to attack St. Francis, they had been terrorizing the New England frontiers for centuries. They had been killing their cattle, burning their buildings, and killing the men and children and kidnapping the women. Rogers was to destroy the village but not harm any women and children. After it was over 200 Indians had been killed and they set the village on fire, because when morning came Rogers had seen over 600 scalps strung upon poles and doorways, which were mostly English. 7 In 1760, Rogers and 600 Rangers and seventy Indians, in whale boats left for Montreal. He met up with Pontiac, the next morning they talked and smoked the peace-pipe. Pontiac gave him and his men provisions for his journey, and a few Indian braves for escort. 18 In 1764, he married Elizabeth Brown, daughter of Reverend Arthur Brown. 19 Between 1762 and 1765, he bought and sold land, some of it was very expensive. Some of them he purchased and some of them he received in consideration of military services. 0 Major Rogers wasn’t a good husband, after seventeen years Elizabeth divorced him on the grounds of desertion and infidelity. 21 In 1764, after many failed business ventures, trying to recoup money that he had spent trying to equip the Rangers, he could not pay his debtors. He suffered financial ruin. His creditors had him put in a New York prison for his debts, but he escaped. 22 In 1765, his journals and A Concise Account of North America were published; this work was a description of several British Colonies on that Continent, their population, their religion, boundaries, and their situations. It also included several accounts of Nations and Tribes of Indians residing in those parts; it took into account their customs, manners, government, and the population. 23 Immediately after that publication, Rogers wrote a stage play that memorialized Pontiac and his rebellion. 24 He gained some success for his publications, and simultaneously attracted royal attention. His name and fame became familiar through the country and among both armies. 25 Rogers went to King George III to propose an expedition to find the Northwest Passage. In 1766, Rogers was bestowed an appointment as Commandant at Michilimickinac. After the conquest of Canada, this had become the most important military and trading post in the interior. 26 Rogers and his wife Elizabeth moved to Fort Michilimickinac where he began his duties as royal governor. This appointment was an office of great responsibility, a rare opportunity for Rogers, who took advantage of it. While the Governor, he was not supposed to incur expenses without authority; Rogers did so, was arrested and taken to Montreal, but he managed to get himself acquitted of the charges. 7 In 1769 Rogers returned to England where he reported to the King. Rogers remained there until 1775, while there, he served as a soldier for awhile for Algerine, which was a job he performed very well, even though Rogers was approaching age fifty. 28 One day while Rogers was a passenger in a mail coach, a highway robber stopped the coach, and stuck a gun through the window and demanded that everyone give him their valuables; Rogers drew the thief through the window by his collar, and told the coachman to drive on. The robber had a reward offered for him of L50 sterling, which Rogers collected. 28 While Rogers was away, his friend Amherst was replaced as commander of the British forces in America by Sir Thomas Gage. Gage hated Rogers because of his friendship with Amherst, and the fact that he was a colonial. Gage set out to destroy Rogers, he wanted him removed as royal governor, however had to be careful because Rogers was appointed by the King. 29 In 1776 Rogers fought his last war in America. He seemed to have slowed down; he did not display his usual leadership, which he had always showed in the previous years. 30 In 1777 he returned to England where he was not heard much about, I know he started frequenting the local taverns, I am sure telling his tales of adventures. He will always be known for the manual that he had written for surviving while ranging. To this day his writings â€Å"Rogers 28 rules of Ranging† 31are given to every Ranger that joins the service as a Ranger. Robert Rogers died in 1799. He will be sadly missed and his stories will go on forever.

Mendocino Triple Junction

The deformational chronicles of the tectonic plates is examined from the standpoint of movement of the numerous faults bounded by the structural topography and environment and by the fault kinematics connected with the lately industrialized San Andreas transform margin. Accumulation and subduction are continuing underneath the continental margin north of the Mendocino fracture zone, with the linkage from the San Andreas fault system from the south. The continuous deformation due to the interactions among the Gorda, Pacific, and North American plates are collectively called the Mendocino Triple Junction. The Mendocino Triple Junction stands for the setting of extreme change in plate tectonic processes from the convergence in the Cascadia subduction (north of the Mendocino Triple Junction) and the translation in the San Andreas system (south of the Mendocino Triple Junction. The abrupt changes form this tectonic processes resulted in the dramatic change in the thermic region in North America and the evolution in the lithosphere formation in the said region (Dickinson and Snyder, 561; Lachenbruch and Sass, 195-197; Zandt and Furlong, 377-378). The unstable intersection of the fault zones called the Mendocino Triple Junction divided the Pacific region, and North America, including North California. The meeting point The Mendocino Triple Junction is an unstable triple junction located in the North California west coast that is comprised of the intersection of the Pacific Plate, the North American Plate, and the Gorda Plate (Oppeheimer et al. 1666). The junction has complex plate activities due to seismic destructive above 6.5 in magnitude earthquakes that occurred over the past 100 years (Dengler et al., 48-50). The positioning of the Mendocino Triple Junction has transferred from its original location in the Los Angeles latitude to Cape Mendocino over the last decades. (Jachens and Griscom, 9380-9385).    One of its junctions, the San Andreas Fault, is located in the northwest-southwest portion of North America and the Pacific. The Pacific Plate moves northward simultaneously as the North American Plate moves to another region to collide with the Pacific Plate (Henstock, doi:10.1029/2001JB000902). The precise location of the San Andreas Fault is not established because of the complexities of the area (Simlila, 1402). Since the year 1800, statistics have shown that seven earthquakes have taken place with the least of magnitude four in the scale (Kelsey and Carver, 4799-4811). Another junction in the Mendocino group is the Cascadia subduction zone that is located north of the Mendocino Triple Junction. The 15-degree subduction angle continues to escalate as the depth of the subducting plate increases (Dengler et al., 45). Earthquakes in this area occur after 300 to 560 years, depending upon ruptures if the zone crossing point (Clarke and Carver, 190). The last area to be included in the Mendocino Triple Junction is the Gorda plate. The eastward movement of the Gorda Plate caused a clockwise movement in the Juan de Fuca plates, a plate formerly part of the Gorda region. The Mendocino zone remained still while the Gorda Plate repositions itself and interacts simultaneously with the Pacific Plate, therefore, increasing its deformation over time (Stoddard, 11527-11529). The Mendocino Fault is a zone located between the Pacific Plate in the south and the Gorda Plate in the north. The lateral movement of this fault contributed to seismic activities in Cape Mendocino, extending to the coast of the Gorda Plate. Earthquakes have been reported along the Mendocino Fault in 1994 as the most recent and massive tectonic plate movements with an intensity of 7.4 (Dengler et al., 45-50). In this actively deforming area, imbricate thrusts and the axes of folds overlying blind thrusts in the accretion prism offshore are oriented west-northwest and project southeastward  to align with several moderately low- to steep-dipping faults onshore. In the onshore region, the rocks bounded by these faults correspond to increasingly more distal parts of the uplifted accretion margin from northeast to southwest. The underlying problem is then rooted in the steep-dipping Pacific-North American plate boundary and to be related to ongoing northward propagation of the San Andreas movement. The area south of Cape Mendocino is significantly associated with the Pacific-North American faulting and the transformation of the plate boundary. The Future of Mendocino Triple Junction: The history of the activities in the Mendocino Triple Junction can be a potential benchmark for the cause and intensity of future earthquakes, tectonic plate ruptures, and ground breakdown. The rupture in the plates is the immediate effect of the activities happening in the Mendocino Triple Junction. Ground shaking can deliberately have an effect to structures, which is measured in the logarithmic scale to determine the intensity of the earthquake. Ground shaking is accountable for most loss of life and man-made property destruction throughout an earthquake so the importance of historical evaluation and earthquake assessment can help in the improvement of building and architectural designs and standards. The shaking intensity during an earthquake is dependent on the position of the land area hit by the massive ground activity, the type of soil and the slope of the vicinity, and its distance from the earthquake’s epicenter. Seismologists have monitored that a number of regions tend to repetitively encounter robust seismic trembling than other zones. This is due to the ground beneath these regions is comparatively soft than the other parts of the district. Soft soils intensify and amplify ground Soft soils also intensify shear waves, creating a more hazardous and damaging effects on any structure lay on the ground. Individuals living in the area that have experienced strong earthquakes will be likely to suffer strong earthquakes in the future depending upon the distance of the region to the epicenter (source) of the massive ground shaking. Amplification is caused when a seismic wave moves through subsurface materials and is amplified to produce relatively higher horizontal and vertical motion. In contrast, bedrock has a tendency to dampen seismic waves and therefore reduce ground motion. About one-quarter of the entire earthquake energy released in California during historic times has occurred along the Humboldt County coast. The size, location, and frequency of past earthquakes give an indication of what to expect in the future. Strong earthquakes with epicenters onshore have recurred about every 20 years. Since the 1870s, the largest of the historic seismic activity in the area of the Mendocino Triple Junction reached a magnitude of 7.2, which took place in 1923. The Northern Coast affected areas have been the focal point in the Gorda Plate activity. The recurrence of the earthquakes in this area occurs every two years.   Neighborhood in the coastal expanse from Cape Mendocino to Eureka has been smashed into frequent ground shaking than the remainder of the Humboldt County. Earthquakes have hardly ever affected Northern Humboldt County in history. On the other hand, because the historic documentation is comparatively transitory, regions not distressed in the past may even be at danger. Massive and huge earthquakes have been a part of the lives on the north coast so residents ought to take measures to get ready for any earthquakes to come. Up to date earthquake activity consists of several large-scale happenings in the Cape Mendocino district. Three powerful earthquakes hit Cape Mendocino area, with magnitudes  of 7.1, 6.6, and 6.7, respectively , in 1992. A strong upheaval set upon the north coast in the Cape Mendocino area with a magnitude of 5.6 last January 1997. The earthquake was situated on the Mendocino fault extremely close to the Mendocino Triple Junction. The United States Geological Service (USGS) set up new building codes in preparation for the severe earthquakes in the Mendocino Triple Junction belt. â€Å"Building codes provide the first line of defense against future earthquake damage and help to ensure public safety,† said the USGS.   According to the records of USGS, historical accounts provided a â€Å"firm basis for revising building codes to more fully reflect the need for extra strength in structures built on soft ground.† â€Å"Designing and building large structures is always a challenge, and that challenge is compounded when they are built in earthquake-prone areas. More than 60 deaths and about six billion dollars in property damage resulted from the Loma Prieta earthquake (caused by the San Andreas Fault). As earth scientists learn more about ground motion during earthquakes and structural engineers use this information to design stronger buildings, such loss of life and property can be reduced.† Earthquake-resistant plan and construction are necessary to plummeting earthquake losses. These code amendments are a major step toward better earthquake safety to withstand large earthquakes can be further improved with groundwork bolts, cut off walls, and additional strengthening strategies. References Clarke S. H. Jr. and Carver G. A., Late holocene tectonics and paleoseismicity, southern Cascadia subduction zone, Science, 255:188-192, 1992. Dengler, L., G. Carver, and R. McPherson, Sources of north coast seismicity, Calif. Geol. 48, 43-53, 1992. Dengler, L., Moley, K., McPherson, R., Pasyanos, M., Dewey, J., and Muray, M, 1995, The September 1, 1994 Mendocino fault earthquake, California Geology, v. 48, p 43-53, 1995. Dickinson, W. R. and W.S. Snyder, Geometry of Triple junctions related to San Andreas transform, J. Geophys. Res., 84(#B2), 561-572, 1979. Henstock, T.J., and A. Levander, Structure and seismotectonics of the Mendocino Triple Junction, California, J. Geophys. Res., 108(B5, 2260), doi:10.1029/2001JB000902. Jachens, R.C. and A. Griscom, Three-dimensional geometry of the Gorda plate beneath northern Californa. J. Geophys. Res. 88, 9375-9392, 1983. Kelsey, H.M. and G.A. Carver, Late Neogene and Quaternary tectonics associated with northward growth of the San Andreas fau lt, northern California. J. Geophys. Res., 93, 4797-4819, 1988. Lachenbruch, A. H. and Sass, J. H., Thermo-mechanical aspects of the San Andras, in Proc. Conf. On the Tectonic Problems of the San Andreas Fault System, edited by R. Kovach and A. Nur, 192-205, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, Calif., 1973. Oppenheimer, D., G. Beroza, G. Carver, L. Dengler, J. Eaton, L. Gee, F. Gonzalez, A. Jayko, W.H. Li, M. Lisowski, M. Magee, G. Marshall, M. Murray, R. McPherson, B. Randall, G.R., Ammon, C.J, and Owens, T.J., Moment tensor estimation using regional seismograms from a Tibetan Plateau portable network deployment, Geophys. Res. Lett., 22, 1665-1668, 1995. Simila, G.W, Peppin, W.A., and McEvilly, T.V., Seismotectonics of the Cape Mendocino, California, area. Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 86, 1399-1406, 1976. Stoddard, P.R., A kinematic model for the evolution of the Gorda plate, J. Geophys. Res., 92, 11524-11532, 1987. Zandt, G. and K. Furlong, Evolution and Thickness of the lithosphere ben eath coastal Caifornia, Geology, v. 10, 376-3

Albert Einstein- the 20th Century Science Hero Essay

Albert Einstein is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century. He is known for developing the theories of relativity. He is also noted for his mathematical formula of E = mc? (David Bodanis). Although he was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project, which was responsible for creating the atomic bomb, but he is still considered the mastermind because of his breakthrough formula. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect (A.  Calaprice & T. Lipscombe). The Einstein’s were a secular, middle class Jewish family. Albert’s father Hermann Einstein was a salesman and an engineer who owned a company that manufactured electrical equipment and his mother Pauline Koch was a house wife. They were living in Ulm, in Wurttemberg, Germany, when Albert was born on March 14, 1879 (Whittaker). In 1894, Hermann Einstein’s company failed to get an important contract to electrify the city of Munich and he was forced to move his family to Milan, Italy. Albert was left at a boarding house in Munich to finish his education (A. Calaprice & T. Lipscombe). It was at this location, that Albert began elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he excelled in his studies. He enjoyed classical music and played the violin. However, he was not fond of formal education and made it his business to teach himself math and science (Whittaker). One of the books Albert was intrigued with was a children’s science book in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph wire. Einstein began to wonder what a light beam would look like if you could run alongside it at the same speed. If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Yet, in reality, the light beam is moving. This paradox led him to write his first â€Å"scientific paper† at age 16, (Whittaker). â€Å"The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields. † This question of the relative speed to the stationary observer and the observer moving with the light was a question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years (A.  Calaprice & T. Lipscombe). While his parent remained in Italy, Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland. In 1896 Einstein attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics (Whittaker). Five years later, he earned his diploma, and acquired Swiss citizenship. Also at this time he was unable to find a teaching post, so he accepted a technical assistant position in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor’s degree (A. Calaprice & T. Lipscombe). During his stay at the Patent Office, Einstein had a lot of down time. This is noteworthy because it was in this spare time, that he produced much of his remarkable work. Some of these great accomplishments included being appointed Privatdozent in Berne, becoming Professor Extraordinaire at Zurich, also Professor of Theoretical Physics in Prague, and returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post (Whittaker). In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. Einstein’s accomplishments were on the rise and became very important works which include the Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important (A. Calaprice & T. Lipscombe). Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920’s he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935 (Whittaker). He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945 (Whittaker). While Einstein was touring much of the world speaking on his theories in the 1920s, the Nazis were rising to power under the leadership of Adolph Hitler. Einstein’s theories on relativity became a convenient target for Nazi propaganda. In 1931, the Nazi’s enlisted other physicists to denounce Einstein and his theories as â€Å"Jewish physics (A. Calaprice & T. Lipscombe) . † At this time, Einstein learned that the new German government, now in full control by the Nazi party, had passed a law barring Jews from holding any official position, including teaching at universities. Einstein also learned that his name was on a list of assassination targets, and a Nazi organization published a magazine with Einstein’s picture and the caption â€Å"Not Yet Hanged† on the cover (A.  Calaprice & T. Lipscombe). In December, 1932, Einstein decided to leave Germany forever. He took a position a the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, which soon became a Mecca for physicists from around the world. It was here that he would spend the rest of his career trying to develop a unified field theory—an all-embracing theory that would unify the forces of the universe, and thereby the laws of physics, into one framework—and refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physics. Other European scientists also fled various countries threatened by Nazi takeover and came to the United States. Some of these scientists knew of Nazi plans to develop an atomic weapon. For a time, their warnings to Washington, D. C. went unheeded (David Bodanis). In the summer of 1939, Einstein, along with another scientist, Leo Szilard, was persuaded to write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility of a Nazi bomb. President Roosevelt could not risk the possibility that Germany might develop an atomic bomb first. The letter is believed to be the key factor that motivated the United States to investigate the development of nuclear weapons. Roosevelt invited Einstein to meet with him and soon after the United States initiated the Manhattan Project (M. Talmey). Not long after he began his career at the Institute in New Jersey, Albert Einstein expressed an appreciation for the â€Å"meritocracy† of the United States and the right people had to think what they pleased—something he didn’t enjoy as a young man in Europe (David Bodanis). In 1935, Albert Einstein was granted permanent residency in the United States and became an American citizen in 1940. As the Manhattan Project moved from drawing board to testing and development at Los Alamos, New Mexico, many of his colleagues were asked to develop the first atomic bomb, but Eisenstein was not one of them. According to several researchers who examined FBI files over the years, the reason was the U. S. government didn’t trust Einstein’s lifelong association with peace and socialist organizations. FBI director J.  Edgar Hoover went so far as to recommend that Einstein be kept out of America by the Alien Exclusion Act, but he was overruled by the U. S. State Department. Instead, during the war, Einstein helped the U. S. Navy evaluate designs for future weapons systems and contributed to the war effort by auctioning off priceless personal manuscripts (David Bodanis). One example was a handwritten copy of his 1905 paper on special relativity which sold fo r $6. 5 million, and is now located in the Library of Congress (M. Talmey). On August 6, 1945, while on vacation, Einstein heard the news that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. He soon became involved in an international effort to try to bring the atomic bomb under control, and in 1946, he formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists with physicist Leo Szilard. In 1947, in an article that he wrote for The Atlantic Monthly, Einstein argued that the United States should not try to monopolize the atomic bomb, but instead should supply the United Nations with nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of maintaining a deterrent. At this time, Einstein also became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He corresponded with civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois and actively campaigned for the rights of African Americans (Whittaker). After the war, Einstein continued to work on many key aspects of the theory of general relativity, such as wormholes, the possibility of time travel, the existence of black holes, and the creation of the universe. However, he became increasingly isolated from the rest of the physics community. With the huge developments in unraveling the secrets of atoms and molecules, spurred on by the development to the atomic bomb, the majority of scientists were working on the quantum theory, not relativity. Another reason for Einstein’s detachment from his colleagues was his obsession with discovering his unified field theory. In the 1930s, Einstein engaged in a series of historic private debates with Niels Bohr, the originator of the Bohr atomic model. In a series of â€Å"thought experiments,† Einstein tried to find logical inconsistencies in the quantum theory, but was unsuccessful. However, in his later years, he stopped opposing quantum theory and tried to incorporate it, along with light and gravity, into the larger unified field theory he was developing (Whittaker). In the last decade of his life, Einstein withdrew from public life, rarely traveling far and confining himself to long walks around Princeton with close associates, whom he engaged in deep conversations about politics, religion, physics and his unified field theory.

Pursa Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Pursa - Essay Example What can explain this drop in voter interest? It just might be that the educated masses of this country, among them the large middle class, are just tired of seeing new faces but no change in policy. Hence they decide that it does not make a difference, and it is better just not to vote. It matters not whether the elected Presidents are Republican or Democrat, they continue making the same noises and go through the same motions, when the truth is that the only needs that are being served are those of the capitalists and the corporations they own. Among the many critiques of democracy as a system of Government are that it just counts the number of votes, and does not weigh them. Thus the vote of a poor illiterate farmer would be equal in importance to that of a college educated graduate (Dahl, 1989, 12). Secondly, the corporations and the capitalists have so ruined the transparency of the system that it does not matter who gets elected to the Presidency, the funding of both participan ts ensures that the interests of the big corporations and their owners are kept uppermost. For all his rhetoric about change, President Obama has not managed to get us out of the financial crisis that has enveloped America due to the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and risk exposures that resulted in the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and others. Despite the bailout packages that rescued some banking institutions and the automobile industry in Detroit, the major loss was still to the American public who lost their homes, cars and jobs in an economic downturn that still persists. Unemployment is still at 9 percent in some States and public confidence at an all time low. The real problem lies in the system itself. If bankers can go on robbing the public through first making loans to clients with high default risks, pocketing fees and commissions in the