Condorcet Essays (247 words) - Philosophes, Girondists,

Condorcet Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, better known as Marquis de Condorcet, was born in Ribemont, Paris. He studied at Jesuit schools and the college de Navarre and later became a French philosppher, political leader, and mathmatician. He published a book titled Essai sur le calcul integral and in 1769 he was elected to the Academie des Sciences. He was very fasinated by probality and the philosophy of mathematics and this is where most of his famous work evolved from. He wrote Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probabilty Majority Decisions which was very important work in the development of probablity. Condorcet was very opposed to the church and to show his opinions on this he wrote Vie de M Turgot and Vie de Voltaire. Both of these works showed how he agreed with the economic ideas of Turgot and the ideas of Voltaire, who was also opposed to the church. He is most known for his method for electing people in single-seat elections. His method Marquis de Condorcet became involved in politics and was in great favor of the French Revolution. He became the president of the Legislative Assembly. During the revolution he fled due to his strong disagreement with the Girondists. While he was hiding he wrote Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain. He used nine stages to show the progress of the human race. He also showed another stage which showed the human perfection can be established with the help of education. He was soon discovered and was found dead the following day. Mathematics

Health Fair Essays

Health Fair Essays Health Fair Paper Health Fair Paper It is true that not everything we learn comes from the four corners of the classroom. Just last week, we conducted a health fair to a nearby community, and it was both fun and a great learning experience for me. Both the seniors and the people in the community were benefited from the activity, as the health fair served as a tool for us senior students to learn and impart learning as well. I was personally moved by the health fair because the second Nursing Home/Independent living facility that we visited housed a mostly queer community. For me, it felt closer to home since I am gay. One of the benefits that we seniors got from the fair is when we were given a chance to teach the people about blood pressure, immunization, fall risks, and nutrition. For some, the ones who would benefit from this would be the people in the community, but for use seniors, we were able to interact with other people and teach them what we know. Somehow, this simulates the life outside school, wherein we would have to deal with different people and try to teach them technical concepts, where we should make sure that they are able to understand what we’re saying. This health fair actually prepares us for the things to come, and equips us with the experience of dealing with people in similar instances. On a more personal level, I was touched when a lesbian couple introduced themselves to me as â€Å"partners†. I thought, â€Å"Wait, do they mean lovers?† And yes they did. We talked a lot and out conversation included things about the health fair, and other personal matters. Standing on the same footing, we compared the opportunities that I have and the opportunities that they didn’t have. It was very relaxing to know that more people are open to these things nowadays as compared to how the society view people like us before. It was such a great experience, and I feel very satisfied because I was able to share some of the things that I know. I am also glad that I was able to interact with different kinds of people, something which I have to face after school. Personally and academically, the health fair was really satisfying for me.

Personal case study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Personal - Case Study Example Most human being are unique in many ways hence psychology tends to explains the similarities through understanding of their respective societal ethics. In understanding different human traits, personality psychology explains how human differ from others. This school of psychology also explains why some of aspects contradict or complement on human life. According to research, this field of discussion came later after all other schools had been discussed by psychologists. Stages of Development According to Freud’s explanation on the theory of psychodynamic, personality is structured in three major categories namely; Id, Ego and Superego and psychosexual stages of development. Whereby Id explains the basic instincts of all human beings, Ego refers to the stage which connects an individual’s Id and superego. Superego depicts human morals acceptable behaviors while psychosexual stage is the last stage in this theory which paves way for behavioral stage. The first stage of de velopment starts immediately after birth to 1 year of age. This is the stage where infants tend to acquire pleasure from sucking. At this stage, the infant may be at a position of chewing pencils, rubbers, thumbs, finer nails biting as an affixation. The next stage is the anal stage (1-3years). At this stage, young children enjoy releasing urine and other waste products from the body. Parent have difficult work in training their children how to use toilets because if they are not well trained they will end up becoming anal retentive. Cleanliness is the major affixation at this stage or messiness. In that a child may hold urine for quite sometime and release it at his or her own will. The enjoyment at this stage is crucial to parents for the development of their children. Between the years of 3 to 6 refers to as the phallic stage. At this stage, the Id of an individual focuses on the genital impulse which explains why children find pleasure from their genital stimulation. Parentsâ₠¬â„¢ major worry is the Electra conflict and oedipal conflict for both girls and boys respectively. The child tries to explore his or her body needs with the opposite sex hence may result to wrong sex forcing the parent to have anger towards them. Parents tend to take much time with their children so as to teach them on the various life outcomes but not in depth since they fear they are not grown enough to follow their parents’ restrictions. At the latency stage, the child’s superego develops. At this stage it is believed that there is no much change as of developmental happenings. Lastly is the genital stage of development. It also takes place at the adolescent stage where the child tries to find pleasure through sex or they may have the need for sex. Parents have enormous task of advising their children intensively so as not to indulge in unwanted pregnancies and unhealthy relationships which may affect their later lifestyles. Bandura explains cognitive theory as a s chool of thought which gives an individual the right to socialize free within the given environment which helps in the developmental learning due to the immediate environment. The psychologist believed this theory is the connector between the environment and the human behavior. The theory focuses most on the observations or imitation of others behavior thus triggers an individual to behave the same. For example

What does the bible mean to me Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

What does the bible mean to me - Essay Example w the bible differently but I believe it to be a sacred collection of books that Christians use as a reference to God’s command during their worship as well as in their lifestyles. It provides the means of communication with God the creator who Christians believe is supernatural and whom they revere. The bible directs man on the kind of life that he should live. It is God’s way of instructing, encouraging and correcting Christians, as well as making his plan known to them. Moreover, it explains the destiny of man in the life after death, consistent with the life that one lived. The bible connects the reader with God at a deeper level so that the communication is one on one with the help of the Holy Spirit who is described in the bible as Christians’ intercessor before God. In order for the fellowship of man with God to manifest fully, it is essential to have the Holy Spirit’s intervention since the sinful nature of man separates him from God who in His nature is Holy. This is well outlined in the scripture in Isaiah 59:1-12. I consider the bible to be a very vital holy book in the life of a Christian since it gives him/her reference for their lives and enables them to connect to God and this way, they are able to know His will and purpose for their lives. As mentioned earlier, the bible clearly states the kind of life that man should live while on earth and his ultimate fate after death consistent with the life that he chose to live. Everyone should therefore seek to know the bible and obey the commands

Racism in America Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Racism in America - Research Paper Example The history of racism faced by the African American population in America is interconnected with colonization of Africa by different European nations and slave trade from the African mainland to the different parts of America. In the initial stages, the African Americans served the European settlers in America as ‘sharecroppers’. Later, some of them were allowed to own property. Besides, most of the African Americans served in vast agricultural lands in America. So, the low social status of the African Americans in the earlier days limited them from entering the public domain of the American society. Later, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 helped the African Americans to gain political rights in the American society. Till 1865, slavery prevailed in America. For instance, the 13th Amendment, which was against slavery in America, helped the African Americans to extend their struggle for equality in the mainstream society. The Emancipation Proclamation helped the African American slaves to be free but it did not help them to gain equal status in the society. Martin (2009), makes clear that â€Å"During the early 1950s, the movement –at first led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People- forced an end to segregation on trains and interstate buses by successfully appealing several federal lawsuits to the U.S. Supreme Court† (419). The Civil Right Movement was another innovative step taken by the African Americans to gain equality in the mainstream society. ... Martin (2009), makes clear that â€Å"During the early 1950s, the movement –at first led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People- forced an end to segregation on trains and interstate buses by successfully appealing several federal lawsuits to the U.S. Supreme Court† (419). The Civil Right Movement was another innovative step taken by the African Americans to gain equality in the mainstream society. Nenty (2008), states that â€Å"The Civil Right Act of 1964 achieved a substantial number of rights for African Americans since the 19th century’s Reconstruction† (68). One can see that racism and discrimination based on skin color still prevail in the American society. This eventually drags the African American community to educational disparities and criminal acts. For instance, the origin and growth of groups like Ku Klux Klan put forth racial supremacy and eventually led to large scale violence against the members of African Americ an community. So, the African American population was forced to face racial riots, discrimination and segregation. This hindered the economic development of the African American population in America. B. Hispanic Americans The racial problem faced by the Latin Americans (generally known as Hispanic Americans) is interconnected with the history of Mexico. To be specific, the Mexican-American War led to the annexation of some of the areas of Mexico by the American forces and this eventually led the Mexicans to face racism and discrimination. Later, the after effects of the Great Depression forced the Mexicans to return to their native place (say, Mexico). This did not solve the problem of discrimination

Banking, Corporate Governance and the 2007 Financial Crisis

Banking, Corporate Governance and the 2007 Financial Crisis Throughout the world, by the end of 2008, many banks had seen most of their equity destroyed by the crisis that started in the US subprime sector in 2007. Yet, not all banks across the world performed equally poorly. In this paper, we investigate how banks that performed better during the crisis, measuring performance by stock returns, differed from other banks before the crisis. Academics, journalists, and policy-makers have argued that lax regulation, insufficient capital, excessive reliance on short-term financing, and poor governance all contributed to making the crisis as serious as it was. If these factors did contribute to making the crisis worse, we would expect that banks that were more exposed to these factors performed more poorly during the crisis. We investigate the relation between these factors and the stock return performance of large banks during the crisis, where large banks are defined as banks with assets in excess of $50 billion in 2006. With our definition of la rge banks, 32 countries had at least one large bank and our sample includes 164 large banks from these countries. Many analyses of the crisis emphasize the run on the funding of banks that relied on short-term finance in the capital markets for a substantial fraction of their financing (see, for instance, Adrian and Shin, 2008, Brunnermeier, 2009, Gorton, 2010, and Diamond and Rajan, 2009). We would expect banks that rely on short-term finance before the crisis to perform worse during the crisis. We find that this is the case with two different approaches. First, we find strong evidence that banks that relied more on deposits for their financing in 2006 fared better during the crisis. Second, following Demirg ¨ ucKunt and Huizinga (2010), we use a measure of short-term funding provided by sources other than customer deposits. We show that performance is strongly negatively related to that mea-sure both for the sample of large banks and the sample extended to include large financial institutions that are not depository banks, such as investment banks. These analyses also emphasize how losses fo rce banks to reduce their leverage, perhaps through fire sales of securities, and how this effect is greater for banks with more leverage. We find that large banks with less leverage in 2006 performed better during the crisis. An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report argues that ‘‘the financial crisis can be to an important extent attributed to failures and weaknesses in corporate governance arrangements’’ (Kirkpatrick, 2008). More recently, the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States concluded that ‘‘dramatic failures of corporate governanceyat many systematically important financial institutions were a key cause of this crisis.’’ (The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, pp. xvii). Some academic studies also emphasize that flaws in bank governance played a key role in the performance of banks (Diamond and Rajan, 2009, and Bebchuk and Spamann, 2010). The idea is generally that banks with poor governance engaged in excessive risk taking, causing them to make larger losses during the crisis because they were riskier. We use two proxies for governance. The first one is the ownership of the controlling shareholder in 2006. The second one is whether the bank had a shareholder-friendly board. To the extent that governance played a role, we would expect banks with better governance to have performed better. It is generally believed that greater ownership by insiders aligns their incentives more closely with the interests of shareholders. However, a powerful controlling shareholder could use control of a bank to benefit other related entities, so that it is not necessarily the case that greater ownership by the controlling shareholder means better alignment of interests of management with shareholders. Some limited evidence shows that banks with higher ownership by the control-ling shareholder performed better. In contrast, a strong and unambiguous relation exists between the extent to which a board was shareholder friendly in 2006 and a bank’s performance during the crisis. Banks with a share-h older-friendly board performed worse during the crisis. The hypothesis that the crisis resulted from excessive risk taking made possible by poor governance would imply the opposite result, so that our evidence poses a considerable challenge to the proponents of that hypothesis. We also investigate whether banks with better governance were less risky in 2006 and find no evidence supportive of that hypothesis either. Banks with more shareholder-friendly boards had a lower distance to default in 2006 but did not have higher idiosyncratic risk or higher leverage than other banks. Like Laeven and Levine (2009), we find that banks with higher controlling shareholder ownership are riskier, as these banks had greater idiosyncratic risk and a lower distance to default before the crisis. Governance and board characteristics are endogenously determined (see, e.g., Hermalin and Weisbach, 1998). In the context of our study, an important form of endogeneity stressed in the literature seems to have little relevance. Though taking into account the possibility that good governance could be caused by expectations about future outcomes generally is important, the banks with more shareholder-friendly boards are highly unlikely to have had such boards because they anticipated the crisis and expected to require better governance during it. At the same time, the concern that governance is significantly related to performance because it is associated with unobserved bank characteristics is important in the context of our study. In fact, the existence of such a relation is the only way to explain the results we find. In other words, shareholder-friendly boards created more value for shareholders through their decisions before the crisis, but during the crisis these decisions were associated with poor outcomes that could not be forecasted. For this explanation to work, these risks must not have been captured by traditional measures because accounting for these measures does not eliminate the relation between governance and performance we document. An example that could explain what we find is that banks with more shareholder-friendly boards invested more aggressively in highly-rated tranches of subprime securitizations. Such investments did not appear risky in 2006 by traditional risk measures, but they did work out poorly for the banks that made them. An alternative explanation for our results is that certain banks optimally chose more shareholder-friendly governance before the crisis because they were exposed to risks that required more independent board monitoring. With this view, the risks were not chosen by the board but instead led to the choice of a shareholder-friendly board. These risks had adverse realizations during the crisis, but because the banks had a shareholder-friendly board, they performed better than they would have had otherwise. With this explanation, banks with good governance had poor returns because of the risks they had, but they would have had even lower returns had they had worse governance. Governance is negatively related to performance in this case because it is correlated with risks that had adverse realizations, but it led to better performance nevertheless. Though we find some support for the latter explanation, neither explanation is consistent with the view that po or bank governance was a first-order cause of the crisis. We use the 2008 World Bank survey on bank regulation to examine the hypothesis that lax regulation led banks to take excessive risks that caused large losses during the crisis (see, e.g.,Dooley, Folkerts-Landau, and Garber (2009), Stiglitz (2010)). We use indices for the power of the regulators, oversight of bank capital, restrictions on bank activities, and private monitoring of banks. There is no convincing evidence that tighter regulation in general was associated with better bank performance during the crisis or with less risky banks before the crisis. In all our regressions, only the index on restrictions of bank activities is positively related to the performance of banks during the crisis.Barth, Caprio, and Levine (1999) show that the banking system is more fragile in countries where banking activities are more restricted. However, some observers, perhaps most visibly the former chair-man of the Federal Reserve System Paul Volcker, have blamed the difficulties of banks during the crisis on their activities not related to making loans and taking deposits. Though we find that large banks in countries where bank activities were more restricted suffered less from the crisis, no evidence exists that such restrictions made banks less risky before the crisis using common measures of risk. Most likely, therefore, to the extent that restrictions on bank activities are associated with better performance of banks during the crisis, it is because traditional bank activities were less exposed to the risks that turned out poorly during the crisis than were newer or less traditional bank activities. In addition, we find that stronger regulations for bank capital were associated with less risk before the crisis. Given the attention paid to the moral hazard resulting from deposit insurance, we investigate whether banks in countries with a deposit insurance scheme performed worse and find no evidence supportive of this hypothesis. However, banks in countries with formal d eposit insurance schemes had higher idiosyncratic risk before the crisis. If banks are impeded from making loans because of poor financial health, economic growth is weaker. It is therefore important to understand whether the variables that help predict returns during the crisis also help explain loan growth. In a related paper,Cornett, McNutt, Strahan, and Tehranian (2011)find that US banks with more exposure to liquidity risk experienced less loan growth during the crisis. We have a much smaller sample than they have, so that our tests do not have as much power as theirs and are less definitive. Nevertheless, we find evidence that is supportive of their results on an international sample composed of much larger banks than the typical bank in their study. Banks with more shareholder friendly boards have lower loan growth during the crisis. Finally, a strong positive relation exists between loan growth and restrictions on bank activities. We also estimate regressions excluding US banks. With these regressions, we can evaluate whether the worse performers were banks from countries where the banking system was more exposed to the US according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) statistics. These regressions allow us to assess whether holding US exposures was a contagion channel [see, e.g.,Eichengreen,Mody, Nedeljkovic, and Sarno (2009)for the view that assets were a contagion channel]. We find that banks from countries where the banking system was more exposed to the US performed worse. Our main results hold up in a variety of robustness tests. Our study is limited by the data available. Ideally, we would like to have data on the nature of holdings of securities by banks. However, such data are generally not available. Another limitation of our study is that, in the fall of 2008, countries stepped in with capital injections and other forms of support of banks. Such intervention might have distorted returns. Yet, our results generally hold for returns measured from mid-2007 to just before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008. Moreover, Panetta, Faeh, Grande, Ho, King, Levy, Sigboretti, Taboga, and Zaghini (2009) show that the announcement of rescue packages did not have a positive impact on bank stock prices across countries. We estimate our regression that includes the indicator variable for whether the board is shareholder-friendly for a sample that includes investment banks and other financial institutions not subject to the Basle Accords (i.e., financ ial institutions that do not report Tier 1 capital and are not subject to the regulations forming the basis for our regulatory variables). We find that our results hold for that sample. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2,we introduce the data that we use. In Section 3, we examine how the performance of banks during the crisis relates to governance, regulation, balance sheet composition, and country characteristics other than regulation. We also show how these attributes are related to bank risk before the crisis. We conclude in Section 4.

William Wordsworth and Robert Frost - Views on nature. Essay -- Englis

William Wordsworth and Robert Frost - Views on nature. To many people Nature is something of little thought, but when we take time to "stand back" and acknowledge it we can actually see its beauty. Until now a meadow or a tree in a forest to me, was little more than something of everyday life. Now having come to realise the power and force it has upon mans emotions and actions, I realised the thoughts of other people when studying the work of William Wordsworth and Robert Frost. Both poets see Nature in different ways although there are some aspects of the subject which are clearly the same. This view is such a vast subject which is an always changing thing. From the changing seasons to the day- to- day weather Nature never ceases to amaze. For both poets Nature brings the same thing, yet in very different ways. For Robert Frost, the simple scene of a wood (forest) filling slowly up with snow. As for Wordsworth the scene is very much a more vibrant picture as he describes the daffodils in their 'sprightly dance'. To you or me, to see these things is just something that happens and we don't notice it. In today's society such events are not even acknowledged, and there fore people don't normally take the time to experience the occasion. We realise that both Wordsworth and Frost where alone as Wordsworth states 'I wandered lonely' and Frost states-: 'Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though;' Both quotes indicate a sense of loneliness and isolation. Frost looks very deep into Nature as does Wordsworth. Frost sees an escape from life, and Wordsworth sees an escape from feeling down and 'pensive'. For Wordsworth his encounter with Nature gives him a constant thought ... ...nd company' we see a sense of communion here. The use of onomatopoeia makes both poems more homely. 'Fluttering' the delicate movement of the flower. 'Gazed' long sound to emphasise his movement. 'Glance' a swift sound to indicate a quick look. 'Sprightly' energetic and lively sounding. 'Bliss' relaxing sounding. In 'stopping by woods' Frost uses the word 'sweep' to give the soft feeling of how the snow drifts through the trees. 'Downy' indicates again how the flakes slowly drifted down. The word 'down' could refer to the movement of duck down as it falls to the ground. The phrase 'sounds the sweep' make me think of how the wind whispered through the trees carrying the snow. 'sounds the sweep' is also a perfect example of assonance and soft alliteration. There are a few more points I would like to add to this essay after the first draft has been marked.