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Twilight Of The Elites
''Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy'' is a 2012 nonfiction book written by Christopher Hayes, discussing examples of how meritocracy is exploited in modern America. He argues that there are many competing forces working within America that are causing the financial crisis, elite crisis, media crisis, and, what he sees as the most ominous problem facing the globe, the environmental global warming crisis. ''Kirkus Reviews'' called the book "forcefully written" and "provocative". Aaron Swartz described the book as "compellingly readable, impossibly erudite, and—most stunningly of all—correct". The book has been reviewed by sources such as ''The New York Times'', ''Rolling Stone'', and ''Slate''. Main arguments * The book argues that the concept of and movement towards meritocracy which initially stemmed from a desire to subvert and democratize the East Coast WASP aristocracy resulted in a widening of the pool eligible to become elites but ultimately reproduced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Flint
David Edward Flint (born 1938) is an Australian legal academic, known for his leadership of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and for his tenure as head of the Australian Broadcasting Authority. Early life and education David Flint was born in 1938 and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Waverley. His mother was Indonesian. She enjoyed music and dancing, and Flint took her out dancing every week until she died aged 90. That was always disapproved of by his father, a public servant, champion amateur boxer, and member of a puritanical religious organisation. Flint attended Sydney Boys High School, before studying law, economics and international relations at the Universities of London, Paris, and Sydney, leading to a career in the law and academia. He states that he was "a socialist in his student days". Career Admitted as a lawyer in New South Wales and England and Wales, he practised for a number of years, lecturing in several university business and law schools. That i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial District, and lasted for fifty-nine days—from September 17 to November 15, 2011. The motivations for Occupy Wall Street largely resulted from public distrust in the private sector during the aftermath of the Great Recession in the United States. There were many particular points of interest leading up to the Occupy movement that angered populist and left-wing groups. For instance, the 2008 bank bailouts under the George W. Bush administration utilized congressionally appropriated taxpayer funds to create the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which purchased toxic assets from failing banks and financial institutions. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in '' Citizens United v. FEC'' in January 2010 allowed corporations to spend unlimi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2012 Non-fiction Books
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sports, where it commonly denotes the first, leading, or top thing in a group. 1 is the unit of counting or measurement, a determiner for singular nouns, and a gender-neutral pronoun. Historically, the representation of 1 evolved from ancient Sumerian and Babylonian symbols to the modern Arabic numeral. In mathematics, 1 is the multiplicative identity, meaning that any number multiplied by 1 equals the same number. 1 is by convention not considered a prime number. In digital technology, 1 represents the "on" state in binary code, the foundation of computing. Philosophically, 1 symbolizes the ultimate reality or source of existence in various traditions. In mathematics The number 1 is the first natural number after 0. Each natural numb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Institutional Corruption
Institutional corruption is the phenomenon in public bodies of placing the protection of reputation above fidelity to the truth, especially in the context of an independent or public inquiry. Institutional corruption is differentiated from corruption by the institution's willingness to frustrate or slow the work of independent formal inquiries, even after official reports and documentation recognise that such an inquiry is necessary. Institutional corruption is not limited to national-scale institutions. It can be as small as a single recommendation of a report rejected because an institution wishes not to admit meaningful change, or the misreporting of statistics in the Stafford Hospital scandal. Examples United Kingdom * Independent Inquiry into the Murder of Daniel Morgan—2021 report, criticizing the Metropolitan Police. * Windrush scandal—2020 report, criticizing the Home Office * Hillsborough disaster—reports in 2012, 2016 and 2017, criticizing South Yorksh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self Similarity
In mathematics, a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself (i.e., the whole has the same shape as one or more of the parts). Many objects in the real world, such as coastlines, are statistically self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. Self-similarity is a typical property of fractals. Scale invariance is an exact form of self-similarity where at any magnification there is a smaller piece of the object that is similar to the whole. For instance, a side of the Koch snowflake is both symmetrical and scale-invariant; it can be continually magnified 3x without changing shape. The non-trivial similarity evident in fractals is distinguished by their fine structure, or detail on arbitrarily small scales. As a counterexample, whereas any portion of a straight line may resemble the whole, further detail is not revealed. Peitgen ''et al.'' explain the concept as such: Since mathematically, a fractal may show s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fractal
In mathematics, a fractal is a Shape, geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set. This exhibition of similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales is called self-similarity, also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge, the shape is called affine geometry, affine self-similar. Fractal geometry lies within the mathematical branch of measure theory. One way that fractals are different from finite geometric figures is how they Scaling (geometry), scale. Doubling the edge lengths of a filled polygon multiplies its area by four, which is two (the ratio of the new to the old side length) raised to the power of two (the conventional dimension of the filled polygon). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunter College High School
Hunter College High School is a public academic magnet secondary school located in the Carnegie Hill section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is administered and funded by Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY) and no tuition is charged. According to Hunter, its 1,200 "students represent the top one-quarter of 1% of students in New York City, based on test scores." History 19th century Hunter was established in 1869 as "The Female Normal and High School", a private school to prepare young women to become teachers. The original school was composed of an elementary and a high school. A kindergarten was added in 1887, and in 1888, the school was incorporated into a college. 20th and 21st centuries The high school was separated from what would become Hunter College in 1903. In 1914, both schools were named after the Female Normal School's first president, Thomas Hunter. The school was almost closed by Hunter College President Jacqueline Wexler in the earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-Americans
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S. African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. They were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were able to achieve freedom through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationale For The Iraq War
There are various Explanation, rationales that have been used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Iraq War, and subsequent hostilities. The Presidency of George W. Bush, George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationalization for the Iraq War was articulated by a joint resolution of the United States Congress known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, Iraq Resolution. The United States intent was to "disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people". In the lead-up to the invasion, the United States and the United Kingdom falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations, covertly supporting al-Qaeda, and that he presented a threat to Iraq's neighbors and to the world community. According to the Center for Public ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sexual Abuse By Catholic Priests
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the cases have involved several allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enron Scandal
The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal sparked by American energy company Enron, Enron Corporation filing for bankruptcy after news of widespread internal fraud became public in October 2001, which led to the dissolution of its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, previously one of the Big Four auditors, five largest in the world. The Bankruptcy in the United States#Largest bankruptcies, largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure. Enron was formed in 1985 by Kenneth Lay after merging Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth. Several years later, when Jeffrey Skilling was hired, Lay developed a staff of executives that – by the use of accounting loopholes, the misuse of mark-to-market accounting, special purpose entity, special purpose entities, and poor financial reporting – were able to hide billions of dollars in debt from failed deals and projects. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and other executives misl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tea Party Movement
The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2007, catapulted into the mainstream by Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign. The movement expanded in response to the policies of Democratic President Barack Obama and was a major factor in the 2010 wave election in which Republicans gained 63 House seats and took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Participants in the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. It urges the return of government as intended by some of the Founding Fathers. It also seeks to teach its view of the Constitution and other founding documents. Scholars have described its interpretation variously as originalist, popular, or a unique combination of the two. Reliance on the Constitution is selective and inconsistent. Adherents cite it, yet do so more as a cultur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
