The Origin of Samuel Clemens as Mark Twain

The Origin of Samuel Clemens as Mark Twain Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens used the pen name Mark Twain and a couple other pseudonyms during his writing career. Pen names have been used by authors throughout the centuries for purposes such as disguising their gender, shielding their personal anonymity and family associations, or even to cover up past legal troubles. However, Samuel Clemens didnt appear to choose Mark Twain for any of those reasons. Origin of Mark Twain In Life on the Mississippi,  Mark Twain writes about Captain Isaiah Sellers, a riverboat pilot who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain, The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them MARK TWAIN, and give them to the New Orleans Picayune.  They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison. The term mark twain is for a measured river depth of 12 feet or two fathoms, the depth that was safe for a steamboat to pass. Sounding the river for depth was essential as an unseen obstruction could result in tearing a hole in the vessel and sinking it. Clemens aspired to be a river pilot, which was a well-paying position. He paid $500 to study for two years as an apprentice steamboat pilot and earned his pilots license. He worked as a pilot until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. How Samuel Clemens Decided to Use the Pen Name After a brief two weeks as a Confederate enlistee, he joined his brother Orion in Nevada Territory where Orion served as secretary to the governor. He tried mining but failed and instead took up as a journalist for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. This is when he began to use the pen name of Mark Twain. The original user of the pseudonym died in 1869. In Life on the Mississippi,  Mark Twain says: I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariners discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say. Further, in his autobiography, Clemens noted that he wrote several satires of the original pilots postings that were published and caused embarrassment. As a result, Isaiah Sellers stopped publishing his reports. Clemens was penitent for this later in life. Other Pen Names and Pseudonyms Before 1862, Clemens signed humorous sketches as Josh. Samuel Clemens used the name Sieur Louis de Conte for Joan of Arc (1896). He also used the pseudonym Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for three humorous pieces he contributed to Keokuk Post. Sources Fatout, Paul. â€Å"Mark Twains Nom de Plume.† American Literature, vol. 34, no. 1, 1962, p. 1., doi:10.2307/2922241.Twain, Mark, et al. Autobiography of Mark Twain. University of California Press, 2010.Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi. Tauchnitz, 1883.

A Brief History of the Cuban Revolution

A Brief History of the Cuban Revolution In the final days of 1958, ragged rebels began the process of driving out forces loyal to Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. By New Year’s Day 1959, the nation was theirs, and Fidel Castro, Chà © Guevara, Raà ºl Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, and their companions rode triumphantly into Havana and history. The revolution began long before, however, and the eventual rebel triumph was the result of many years of hardship, guerrilla warfare, and propaganda battles. Transcendental Graphics / Getty Images Batista Seizes Power The revolution began in 1952 when former Army Sergeant Fulgencio Batista seized power during a hotly contested election. Batista had been president from 1940 to 1944 and ran for president in 1952. When it became apparent that he would lose, he seized power before the elections, which were canceled. Many people in Cuba were disgusted by his power grab, preferring Cuba’s democracy, as flawed as it was. One such person was rising political star Fidel Castro, who would likely have won a seat in Congress had the 1952 elections taken place. Castro immediately began plotting Batista’s downfall. Assault on Moncada On the morning of July 26, 1953, Castro made his move. For a revolution to succeed, he needed weapons, and he selected the isolated Moncada barracks as his target. 138 men attacked the compound at dawn: it was hoped that the element of surprise would make up for the rebels’ lack of numbers and arms. The attack was a fiasco almost from the start, and the rebels were routed after a firefight that lasted a few hours. Many were captured. Nineteen federal soldiers were killed; the remaining ones took out their anger on captured rebels, and most of them were shot. Fidel and Raul Castro escaped  but were captured later. 'History Will Absolve Me' The Castros and surviving rebels were put on public trial. Fidel, a trained lawyer, turned the tables on the Batista dictatorship by making the trial about the power grab. Basically, his argument was that as a loyal Cuban, he had taken up arms against the dictatorship because it was his civic duty. He made long speeches and the government belatedly tried to shut him up by claiming he was too ill to attend his own trial. His most famous quote from the trial was, â€Å"History will absolve me.† He was sentenced to 15 years in prison  but had become a nationally recognized figure and a hero to many poor Cubans. Mexico and the Granma In May 1955 the Batista government, bending to international pressure to reform, released many political prisoners, including those who had taken part in the Moncada assault. Fidel and Raul Castro went to Mexico to regroup and plan the next step in the revolution. There they met up with many disaffected Cuban exiles who joined the new â€Å"26th of July Movement,† named after the date of the Moncada assault. Among the new recruits were charismatic Cuban exile Camilo Cienfuegos and Argentine doctor Ernesto â€Å"Chà ©Ã¢â‚¬  Guevara. In November  1956, 82 men crowded onto the tiny yacht Granma and set sail for Cuba and revolution. In the Highlands Batista’s men had learned of the returning rebels and ambushed them. Fidel and Raul made it into the wooded central highlands with only a handful of survivors from Mexico; Cienfuegos and Guevara were among them. In the impenetrable highlands, the rebels regrouped, attracting new members, collecting weapons, and staging guerrilla attacks on military targets. Try as he might, Batista could not root them out. The leaders of the revolution permitted foreign journalists to visit and interviews with them were published around the world. The Movement Gains Strength As the July 26th movement gained power in the mountains, other rebel groups took up the fight as well. In the cities, rebel groups loosely allied with Castro carried out hit-and-run attacks and nearly succeeded in assassinating Batista. Batista decided on a bold move: he sent a large portion of his army into the highlands in the summer of 1958 to try and flush out Castro once and for all. The move backfired: the nimble rebels carried out guerrilla attacks on the soldiers, many of whom switched sides or deserted. By the end of 1958, Castro was ready to deliver the knockout punch. Underwood Archives / Getty Images Castro Tightens the Noose In late 1958 Castro divided his forces, sending Cienfuegos and Guevara into the plains with small armies; Castro followed them with the remaining rebels. The rebels captured towns and villages along the way, where they were greeted as liberators. Cienfuegos captured the small garrison at Yaguajay on Dec. 30. Defying the odds, Guevara and 300 weary rebels defeated a much larger force at the city of Santa Clara on December 28–30, capturing valuable munitions in the process. Meanwhile, government officials were negotiating with Castro, trying to salvage the situation and halt the bloodshed. Victory for the Revolution Batista and his inner circle, seeing that Castro’s victory was inevitable, took what loot they could gather up and fled. Batista authorized some of his subordinates to deal with Castro and the rebels. The people of Cuba took to the streets, joyfully greeting the rebels. Cienfuegos and Guevara and their men entered Havana on January 2nd and disarmed the remaining military installations. Castro made his way into Havana slowly, pausing in every town, city, and village along the way to give speeches to the cheering crowds, finally entering Havana on January 9th. Aftermath and Legacy The Castro brothers quickly consolidated their power, sweeping away all remnants of the Batista regime and muscling out all of the rival rebel groups that had aided them in their rise to power. Raul Castro and Chà © Guevara were put in charge of organizing squads to bring to trial and execute Batista era war criminals who had engaged in torture and murder under the old regime. Although Castro first positioned himself as a nationalist, he soon gravitated toward communism and openly courted the leaders of the Soviet Union. Communist Cuba would be a thorn in the side of the United States for decades, triggering international incidents such as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States imposed a trade embargo in 1962 that led to years of hardship for the Cuban people. Under Castro, Cuba has become a player on the international stage. The prime example is its intervention in Angola: thousands of Cuban troops were sent there in the 1970s to support a leftist movement. The Cuban revolution inspired revolutionaries throughout Latin America as idealistic young men and women took up arms to try and change hated governments for new ones. The results were mixed. In Nicaragua, rebel Sandinistas eventually did overthrow the government and come to power. In the southern part of South America, the upswing in Marxist revolutionary groups such as Chiles MIR and Uruguays Tupamaros led to right-wing military governments seizing power; Chilean dictator  Augusto Pinochet is a prime example. Working together through Operation Condor, these repressive governments waged a war of terror on their own citizens. The Marxist rebellions were stamped out, but many innocent civilians died as well. Cuba and the United States, meanwhile, maintained an antagonistic relationship well into the first decade of the 21st century. Waves of migrants fled the island nation over the years, transforming the ethnic makeup of Miami and South Florida; in 1980 alone, more than 125,000 Cubans fled in makeshift boats in what came to be known as the Mariel Boatlift. After Fidel In 2008, the aging Fidel Castro stepped down as president of Cuba, installing his brother Raul in power. During the next five years, the government gradually loosened its tight restrictions on foreign travel and also began allowing some private economic activity among its citizens. The U.S. also began to engage Cuba under the direction of President Barack Obama, and by 2015 announced that the long-standing embargo would gradually be loosened.   The announcement resulted in a surge of travel from the U.S. to Cuba and more cultural exchanges between the two nations. However, with the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, the relationship between the two countries is in flux. Fidel Castro died on Nov. 25, 2016.  Raà ºl Castro announced municipal elections for October 2017, and Cubas National Assembly officially confirmed Miguel Dà ­az-Canel as Cuba’s new head of state.

Discrimination and the Role of Business Research Paper

Discrimination and the Role of Business - Research Paper Example However, the commonness of the term in our societies, there has been no stable and neutral definition of the feud. In an attempt to define the term, Altman (2011) views discrimination as the means of treating groups of people in distantly different ways. Discrimination in the workplace occurs when an individual employer or employee treats one group of employees with less consideration than others. All the same, Altman (2011) admits that not all unequal handling of employees constitutes discrimination considering the fact that various people in an employment set up perform different kinds of duties. Employment discrimination practices as comprising issues like biased hiring of workers, selective promotion, unequal job assignment, unreasoned termination of ones duties and unfair compensation. Furthermore, discrimination can be defined as the use of ones power to induce legal and behavioral restrictions on the impoverished societal members to with a vision to maintaining the inequality and desires of particular individuals. In addition, discrimination refers to the unfair treatment of a particular society or group having different believes and views on concerning particular issues. Workplace place discrimination does not just result from the specific work place but the established social relations mostly influence it. The elements of social discriminations are influenced by the varying relationship between groups, which later dictates power and participation in various issues. The hostile existence between groups and social prejudice can lead to development of bullying and stereotyping among various employees in the working organization. Discrimination in an organization may also result as a way of reiterating against past discriminatory acts to previously low ranking employees. Discrimination takes various dimensions that include race, gender, age, ethnicity, or disability among other natures of discrimination. Discrimination classifies under two major forms that include direct and indirect discrimination. Direct discrimination involves the act of treating particular individuals in a disfavored manner with consideration to specific traits such as of gender, race, disability, nationality, disability, and culture (Altman 2011). Indirect discrimination on the other hand refers to the policies that tend to be transparent and fair from the outlook but appears opposite when critically investigated. Indirect discrimination can involve blockade of job applicants on the grounds of petty reasons such as age and unreasonable requirements. In most cases, indirect discrimination persists in organization since it is never for an individual to identify and disclose it on the open. Indirect discrimination have been problematic to certain individuals especially women and the disabled groups (Altman 2011). The general concept of discrimination involves unethical treatment of specific individuals in ways of harassment, bullying, and prejudices that finally ma y have negative impacts on the victims’ concentration. The impacts of discrimination are usually borne by the society as well as the organization in which the act is pursued. The gender form of discrimination has been problematic and with great influence to the society and job organization as well. Gender discrimination in the societies has seen women being viewed as the minority members of the particular families (Glucks 2011). Gender discrimin

Information Overload Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Information Overload - Essay Example On a day to day basis, the info-rich obtain information from the internet, newspapers, emails, television, faxes and telephone calls. In the midst of all the clatter, the info-rich are conscious that essential and valuable information is being conveyed (Miller, 2009). The challenge now lies in separating the unnecessary, uninteresting, and outdated information from the up-to-date, relevant, and vital (Miller, 2009). This is achievable by any organization if it changes its technical system or its social system or even both (Klingberg, 2008). Initially, when network technologies were introduced, their aim was to bring considerable improvements to the productivity of workers; however, these productivity benefits are yet to materialize (Klingberg, 2008). As a result, empirical scrutiny of the data has failed so far in establishing a considerably positive relation between information technologies and productivity growth (Klingberg, 2008). Moreover, some people have even begun to wonder if the introduction of computers and other kinds of information technology has had a negative impact on productivity levels, since companies waste resources to generate, distribute, process and store paperwork, which, though adds up no value to the business, deflects people's attention afar from productive work (Klingberg, 2008). ... Indeed, a wealth of precious information has been made accessible; the remaining problem is to learn to manage that flood of information. Considering current technological and human constrictions, decision-makers are incapable of processing all the information which they receive (Klingberg, 2008). A number of managers complain that important issues are neglected due to the growing heaps of information which they have to review (Klingberg, 2008). Additionally, many companies are downsizing the assumption that computers are capable of effectively replacing people (Klingberg, 2008). However, information technologies happen to be best used as supplements; they cannot alternate human skills as far as processing complicated information flows is concerned (Klingberg, 2008). When it comes to business models, content providers focus on selling information straight to consumers (Grochow, 1997). However, there some instances when attention, and not information, is scarce (Grochow, 1997). Busine sses should contend for people's time; therefore, various successful business models of the future will have their basis in the economics of attention, which implies focusing on bringing out quality information to the people in a context that is meaningful (Grochow, 1997). Information production will still get motivation from profit incentives, with competition among substitutable information sources reducing the prices of the content of information itself (Grochow, 1997). Rather than expecting direct payment for the creation of information, it is crucial for content providers to run their business as though it were gratis, and then figure out how to enhance relationships or come up with ancillary products and

Spanish Resistance to Napoleon Essay -- essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Napoleon and the Spanish Resistance   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Throughout time, the military has been considered one of the key features in a civilization. It has been considered the heart and soul of many countries and empires and has been the center of many cultures. Throughout history we have seen many military leaders and military powers. We have seen military techniques and technology change as we progress. Our schools are filled with legends of great war heroes and hard-fought battles. One such hero is Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps one of the greatest generals who ever lived. In his adventures and conquest, as general of the French army, he warred against many lands. These included Spain, in which Napoleon met a strong resistance. The Spaniards were using a new military strategy called guerilla warfare, one that Napoleon had no experience against. Guerilla warfare is the use of unconventional war tactics, such as ambush and sabotage, coined by the Spanish rebellion to Napoleon Bonaparte, resulting in an uprising that even he couldn’t put to rest.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To understand why these tactics were so effective, you must first understand the tactics themselves. Before guerilla warfare was popularized, war was mainly a head-to-head meeting between two armies. This idea of mass confrontation was considered a formal and more manly way to conduct war. However, the Spanish noticed drawbacks to this idea. They had far fewer numbers than the French and by using traditional war methods they were destined for failure. The Spanish started to use guerilla tactics.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Traditional wars at the time were decided, often, just by a couple of mass confrontations between the two opponents. Each battle would usually consist of a significant number of soldiers going straight towards each other until they forced the other to retreat. Guerilla warfare on the other hand doesn’t rely on this premise. In order to successfully defeat your opponent using guerilla tactics, you must rely instead on a series of smaller confrontations (Free Dictionary). By using these â€Å"hit-and-run† strategies, guerilla fighters can quickly tire they’re opponents and not lose as many men. Another difference, is that guerilla war relies heavily on ambush. Ambush is when the ambushing force uses concealment to attack an enemy ... ...oleon returned and heard of the defeat he knew it was the end. Finally realizing that his unstoppable armies had been stopped for good he abdicated on April 11th, 1814. The Peninsular War has helped diminish Napoleon’s armies and expose his weaknesses. His enemies had finally caught on and in the end it was the great Napoleon who finally gave up.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Guerilla warfare is the use of unconventional war tactics, such as ambush and sabotage, coined by the Spanish rebellion to Napoleon Bonaparte, resulting in an uprising that even he couldn’t put to rest. Guerilla warfare, more in depth, is the use of tactics that don’t involve mass confrontation. They rely more on long drawn out smaller confrontations, slowly but surely weakening the enemy. The most prominent of these was the Peninsular War, fought between the French and the British and the Spanish guerillas. The British were able to keep a strong defensive position and with help from the guerillas eventually drove out the French regime. This loss brought Napoleon closer to defeat and his enemies realized it, causing them to go on the offensive and sack Paris, the final blow to the great Napoleon Bonaparte.

Reaction Paper on the Film “A Beautiful Mind”

A Beautiful Mind is a movie about John Forbes Nash Jr. who is notable for his contributions in Economics and Mathematics. It was evident in the film that he has an outstanding talent and showed it by performing at a remarkably high level of accomplishment. With a superior intelligence, I can say that Nash is truly a brilliant man.Despite the fact he is a genius, everything still wasn't perfect — he's suffering from a mental illness called schizophrenia without his awareness. While he has a beyond average aptitude in logical and mathematical aspects, he had problems with his interpersonal relationships. This affliction slowly eats up his mind, destroying his bond with the people around him. With this illness, he wasn't able to separate the imaginary world from the real world he is living in, with all the hallucinations and nonexistent friends he has.I strongly believe that these delusions are from the feelings and memories he repressed in his subconscious that liberates in the form of imaginary friends and such. Lucky for him that he has understanding wife, because if it wasn't for her love and support, he wouldn't be able to get through one of the hardest trials in his life. Although she nearly lost her faith, Alicia didn't give up the hope that Nash will someday overcome his disease. This quality of Alicia is something I admired: standing by and staying committed to the person she loves the most.Granted all the struggles, Nash didn't give up the passion to learn and share his learnings as well. He came out on top of this illness by declining therapy, living a normal life with Alicia and his child, and also by persisting in educating eager young minds.After watching this film, I am in stack of awe with the way Nash conquered everything that stood in the way for achieving his dreams. I guess, the learning we can take from his story is that we should see our disabilities not as hindrances rather, as challenges to make us strive for more. There  may be ti mes that we trip a little, we may even fall, but we must stand up and continue walking towards fulfilling our goals.

Finding and Harvesting the American Ginseng Plant