Tayler Adigun Essays - Economy, Unemployment, Economics, Structure

Tayler Adigun Essays - Economy, Unemployment, Economics, Structure Tayler Adigun Professor Denelane Principles of Economics Due: December 6 th 2016 Extra credit Economy assignment In this economy it can be quite puzzling to determine what exactly is beneficial and what classifies as bad for a consumer budget as well as the general economy. There is so many varying factors that can affect how money, goods and services are viewed, distributed and valued and what affect these goods and services have on the economy as a whole. Macroeconomics dives into the broader forms of what affects the economy in a positive and adverse manner. While Microeconomics hones in on one specific type of economic concept and it affects. Some of the bigger ones studied in broad detail in macro economics are ; unemployment, GDP and inflation are some of the factors that serve as building blocks for the economy. Inflation is when the value of our dollar becomes less valuable and it takes more dollars to purchase the same amount of goods. Inflation doesn't always occur equally though. For example there can be inflation in gas prices and deflation in home prices like in the financial crisis of 2008. Oil prices increased to an all time high of 148 a barrel, which then had a snowball, affect as it increased job prices in a time where many people weren't even working. As of October of 2016 however the inflation rate has been at .12%-1.6 %, which is an outstanding difference from 2008's inflation rate of 4.3%. Inflation imposes the biggest barrier on those who have hold bonds or treasury notes because the value of that money decreases and so people rush to sell them, which also decreases their value. The government must accommodate this by offering higher treasury yields, which generally increases the cost of mortgages. Inflation affects everyone differently but as a common rule the outcome is neg ative. Thankfully it has been declining or staying stagnant since 2008 which was when it reached alarming heights Unemployment is also one of the negative sides of the economy that is a slippery slope into a plethora of other financial issues for the greater economy. There are 3 different types of unemployment: cyclical, frictional and structural. Cyclical unemployment happens because of the ups and downs of the economy overtime. Frictional unemployment occurs because of the job market turnover. That is essentially the time it takes to get a new job after graduating from a college or trade school as ell as the time it takes for people in the labor force to give up their jobs as they retire. The final is structural which is when innovative technologies take the place of humans in the job market or your experience as a worker becomes obsolete to the company at hand. All of these combine are the varying types of unemployment. Since Obama came into term in 2008 there has been a drop in unemployed Americans by 614,000 people which is very significant but there are still way more people unemployed rig ht now than there were before the great recession in 2008. It is important to remember that unemployment only includes people who are in the labor force. The labor force is only compiled of people who are actively seeking employment and are above 16 and does not include people who do not actively seek a job. They are unemployed by choice rather it be parents staying home to take care of children or college students who typically are not considered a part of the labor force even though a good bit of college students have to work in college. This is due to inflation increasing and the cost to attend a university rather it be public or private has increased dramatically. The gross domestic product or GDP is one way a country can calculate the size of its economy. Its how much the country produces in one calendar year. This includes all final goods and services produced as well as the intermediate goods that are produced during the in between stages of production. To gauge if ones economy is healthy or not there are a few general staples. One of them is that net exports should be greater than net imports. In addition the

Is AP US History Hard Expert Discussion

Is AP US History Hard Expert Discussion SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips AP classes are typically more challenging than regular high school classes, but some are harder than others. Based on testing statistics and an examination of the curriculum, we can come up with accurate assessments of the true difficulty level of each AP class. In this article, I'll analyze AP US History exam scores, student testimonials, and course content to give you a clear picture of how hard the class really is! What Factors Go Into Determining the Difficulty of an AP Class? There are five factors that we will consider when deciding whether AP US History is a difficult class compared to other APs. I'll give you a quick rundown on all of them before we dive into answering our main question: isAP US History hard? Factor #1: Passing Rate This is the percentage of students who earn a 3 or above on the exam.Lower passing rates may indicate a more difficult class.However, sometimes, passing rates in the hardest subjects are unexpectedly high because only the most dedicated students take those classes.A smaller group of more serious students makes for a larger percentage of passing scores overall. Factor #2: Five Rate The 5 rate is the percentage of students who earn 5s (the highest possible score) on the AP test.If the 5 rate is on the lower side, it may indicate that the material is more difficult to master.A low 5 rate can also sometimes happen with very popular classes.The proportion of students who are prepared for an AP test tends to decrease as the total number of students taking it increases. Factor #3: Content Difficulty This boils down to the amount of material the course covers and how advanced that material is.Some courses have high 5 and passing rates because their content is extremely challenging, and only very driven students will take them, not because they are easy classes. Factor #4: Student Testimonials What do students say about the class? There should be some consistency based on the fact that everyone learns essentially the same curriculum, and everyone ends up taking the same test.Student feedback can provide more information about the day to day challenges of the class and the nature of the workload. Factor #5: Timing of the Class A final factor to consider is when students usually take the class.Classes that students take later in high school will be more difficult overall, although some students perceive them as being easier than other AP classes that they took when they had less experience.The reverse is true of classes that students take as underclassmen. When you've taken too many AP testsin your time. What Do Statistics Say About the AP US History Exam? To start off, I’ll examine the statistics for passing and 5 rates on the AP US History exam in 2015. Passing Rate The 2015 passing rate was 50.7 percent.Only three other tests have lower passing rates: AP US Government and Politics, AP Environmental Science, and AP Physics 1.This comparatively low passing rate would suggest that the test is difficult, but we can’t say that for sure yet. AP Environmental Science, for example, is a test with an even lower passing rate, but that class isn’t considered particularlydifficult.It’s low because more people who have little to no experience with other high-level classes tend to take AP Environmental Science as a one-off AP for their transcripts.A high volume of under-preparedstudents skews the passing rate lower, so the low passing rate means less about the difficulty of the class in this case. For AP US History, since it’s one of the most popular AP classes (the number of students enrolled was second only to English Language and Composition in 2015), the passing rate may likewise be skewed slightly lower because there are so many students at different levels of preparation who take it.However, students who take AP US History also tend to be students who are better prepared and have probably taken other AP/honors classes as well.The low passing rate might be slightly illusory because of the sheer number of people taking the test, but students who take it are (overall) high-achieving, so the data still points to the test being pretty hard.This fact is strongly linked to the difficulty of the content and intensity of the workload in AP US History, which I'll describe in more detail later in this article. Five Rate The 5 rate for AP US History in 2015 was 9.3 percent.Only seven other AP assessments had lower 5 rates than AP US History, as compared to the 27 with higher 5 rates.This would again suggest that the test is more difficult compared to other AP tests.However, five rates can also be skewed high or low depending on the popularity of the class and the types of students who take it. Some objectively difficult classes have high five rates because they’re less popular, and the students who do take them are more well-prepared and dedicated to the subject (Chinese Language, for example).AP US History is a popular class, so there may be a wider spectrum of preparedness amongstudents, bringing down the five rate.But, as I mentioned in the first part of this section, it’s also a class that is usually taken by the most high-achieving students, so there shouldn’t be wide-ranging problems with a lack of preparation.The low five rate combined with the types of students who take AP US History suggest that it is a difficult test. So far, based on testing statistics, we’re leaning towards the conclusion that AP US History IS hard.Let’s take a look at the otherfactors to see if they line up. Besides being the best AP score, five is also the ideal number of fingers for a human. What a kooky koincidence! Is the APUSH Content Difficult? AP US History covers the past few hundred years of history in this country, so there’s a lot to remember for the exam.However, memorization isn’t the main challenge.Throughout the test, you’re asked to analyze historical documents, demographic and other charts, and political illustrations from various periods in history.You have to apply your background knowledge to these sources and draw conclusions by blending skills of factual recall and deeper analysis. The free-response section is particularly challenging in this regard.Writing a coherent, well-supported argumentative essay on such a high-pressure test isn’t easy.And for the document-based question, you also have to incorporate at least six of the seven sources into your essay while using outside knowledge to bolster whatever point you’re making. I would argue the content is challenging because of the way you’re asked to synthesize what you’ve learned and relate it to themes that span multiple periods in history.These types of assessments are usually reserved for college classes because of the high-level thinking skills required.You have to look beyond the facts to draw larger informed conclusions. You want me to synthesize the what now? Do Students Think AP US History Is Hard? History was my best subject in high school, but I definitely didn’t think AP US History was an easy class.The tests were always challenging because my teacher had us take them with the same time constraints as the real AP exam.We would have one 50-minute class period to answer a bunch of multiple-choice questions and write a long essay.I remember the tests being stressful, but most people did well on the AP test because they knew what to expect. APUSHwas time-consuming outside of class because of the number of textbook reading assignments and other outside projects.We had â€Å"seminars† every couple of weeks where we were assigned to different sides of a historical issue and had a class-wide debate.We had to do write-ups of each seminar and were graded for participation during the debate.There were also quizzes on the nightly readings at the beginning of every class, so your grade would suffer if you didn’t do the homework. The consensus among other students (based on what I’ve seen in online forums) is reflective of my experiences.Most say that AP US History is a lot of work. Not all of it is difficult, and much of it is interesting, but it will take up a big chunk of your time.You have to be prepared to put in the effort, especially if you prefer science and math to the humanities,and the type of work you do in the course doesn’t come as naturally to you. I'd also like to consider briefly the last of the five factors I mentioned in the first section, which is when students tend to take this class.AP US History is typically taken later in high school (during junior or senior year).Many students have already experienced other AP classes, and all are familiar with the high school workload. Still, they find AP US History to be challenging in comparison to other classes.Our theory in the section on testing statistics has held true here as well - seems like this is a tough class from any angle. You're required to use authentic study materials and methods from each period. Sorry, electricity didn't go mainstream until the 1920s. Will AP US History Be Hard for YOU? It seems like APUSH is a hard class overall, but every student is different.You may have to do more research and self-reflection before you decide definitively whether this class will fit comfortably into your schedule.Here are a couple of measures I’d recommend taking if you want to get a clearer picture of what your experience with APUSH might be like: Ask Teachers and Past Students About the Class The most reliable way to decide whether AP US History will be difficult for you is to ask students and teachers who are familiar with it to give you their perspectives.If you know any older students who have similar academic records to you, ask them what they thought of the class and the workload.You can also ask your current history teacher if he or she thinks you’ll be able to handle AP US History based on your performance this year.You can even ask your guidance counselor what his or her opinion is of the class based on the performance of past students. Every AP US History class is slightly different because teachers have the freedom to design their own curriculum within the course framework. Be Aware of Your Academic Strengths and Weaknesses Which subjects challenge you the most? If you’re better at quantitative subjects like math and science and struggle with subjects that require lots of reading, writing, and memorization of facts, you can assume that AP US History will be difficult for you.On the other hand, if you prefer subjects that incorporate critical reading skills and essay writing (and have some interest in history), the class will probably be much easier. Keep in mind that this might be different from other history classes you took earlier in high school. Lower-level history classes are about factual recall, whereas the skills you need for AP US History are more analytical.It’s about applying your knowledge rather than just restating it. Check Your Class Schedule AP US History is a time-consuming class, so you should consider your schedule to make sure you aren’t overloading yourself by adding it into the mix.If you’re taking other challenging AP classes at the same time, you should be prepared for a daunting workload. Don’t take on too much, or you'll end up sacrificing your sanity and/or GPA. Pay attention to warning signs that your eyes may be bigger than your academic stomach. Conclusion: So, Is AP US History Hard? Based on all the factors I’ve examined in this article, AP US Historyis a hard class compared to most other APs.It has low passing and 5 rates, the content is challenging, students testify to a heavy workload, and most people don’t take it until junior or senior year.You should think carefully before you decide to enroll, but don’t underestimate yourself.Even if it’s a challenge, most students also think it’s an engaging and interesting class, and you’ll learn valuable analytical skills that will come in handy later in your academic career! What's Next? Looking for resources to help you get through this class with minimal suffering?Check out our list of the best review books available for AP US History this year. You can also read my ultimate study guide for AP US History for advice and links to tons of online practice questions! US History is on the more difficult end of the AP spectrum. Are there any easy AP classes to balance out your schedule? Read this article to find out which AP classes will be easiest for you. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Make up Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Make up - Essay Example Moreover, the plan requires all businesses and workers to abide by these rules. For a long time Republican and Democratic presidents used legal authority in dealing with the issue. However, President Obama took a commonsense approach. The approach by the President relies on his executive authority to ensure everyone is accountable and capable of following the law in contributing to the US. The president took the approach as the country anticipates for the Congress and Republicans to act. No hindrances exist that can affect the president’s decision since US constitution as well as Immigration and Naturalization Act offer the Executive authority to come up with enforcement priorities that improve the way agencies apply the law. US Supreme Court agrees on this. The executive authority allows both Democrat and Republican presidents to act on immigration. All presidents after President Eisenhower have legal authority that enables them to deal with immigration (The White House). For a long time, the US immigration system has been broken making it pointlessly difficult for the country to draw the best talent around the globe. Skilled workers usually wait for years or even decades before obtaining green cards to allow them contribute fully to the country’s economy and gain citizenship with time. Entrepreneurs lack devoted immigration corridor to allow them develop their enterprises and create jobs in the country. Every year, the country’s universities educate a number of well talented students only to coerce them to return to their country of origin and compete against the US. Through the executive action by the President, the immigration system is set to enhance immigration of highly skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and graduates (The White House). In the past, skilled immigrants got temporary work visas. Only in cases where no American employees available to

Analogue-digital and Digital-analogue conversion Essay

Analogue-digital and Digital-analogue conversion - Essay Example music record (Dallet and Silva, 2005). Analogue signals are usually continuous and variable in nature are they can be represented by a variable wave. On the other hand, digital signals are multi-level in the sense that it only varies after some predetermined time hence it is easier to predict its future processes. The essence of analogue to digital is to convert the data contained in an analogue signals into a more presentable form without altering the initial content (Pelgrom, 2013). There are numerous methods that are in use when it comes to analogue to digital conversion the type of techniques that is chosen depends on the requirements of the user. For instance, is the user wants a quick conversion technique then he/she will opt for a faster ADC, alternatively if he/she wants an accurate conversion process then he will indeed opt for an accurate ADC. However, in all case the same principle is utilised to conduct the conversion process. The sequence of bits in a typical digital representation infers a number that whereby each bit has twice the weight of the next bit in the sequence, for instance; bn-1, bn-2†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦b0 (Shoop, 2001). There are different procedures for A/D transformation, including flash, half blaze, integrator, delta sigma or modulator, progressively rough guess, and voltage-to-recurrence. A flash ADC applies the info in parallel to numerous quick comparators whose edges are just as dispersed all through the sought data voltage range, ordinarily 1V. At any minute, all the comparators that have edges underneath the info voltage are on, and the rest are off. Half-streak simple to advanced converters focus their yield code by digitally joining the aftereffects of two successively performed lower-determination streak changes. An integrator is an ADC whose return system speaks to the standard estimation of the voltage information more than a given time

Avoiding Groupthink Essay Example for Free

Avoiding Groupthink Essay The case study we are addressing this week involves how a team and Project Manager avoid Groupthink and its pitfalls. In order to understand what group think is you have to refer to Irving Janus who coined the phrase back in 1972. He related that Group Think is when a group makes a decision based on group pressure; it can lead to faulty decisions. Janus, 1972) Some of the symptoms that Irving Janus documented of group think are Illusion of invulnerability, Collective rationalization, Belief in inherent morality, Stereotyped views of out-groups, Direct pressure on dissenters, Self-censorship, Illusion of unanimity, and Self-appointed ‘mind guards’. (Janus, 1972) In our book, Making the Team: A Guide for Managers states that there are three (3) key symptoms that take root and they are Over Estimation of the Group, Closed Mindedness and Pressure towards Uniformity. These will be the 3 areas I am going to focus on. Over Estimation of the Group Now that we know what group think is we can move on to how a team and Project Manager might avoid the mistakes and downfalls of Group Think situations. (Thompson, 2008) When a team is falling into a group think methodology a Project Manager must be able to recognize the signs before any decisions are made and set in motion. If the group is making statements that start with we feel, we think, or we suspect it is a good indicator that they just don’t know or are just following along with the consensus of the group. Group think can cause problems when everyone goes with the flow especially on a wrong decision. In using group think methodology management has to weigh the pros and cons of the group’s decision from all sides. Sometimes a little more research prior to implementing a group think decisions should be done or a devil’s advocate should be assigned into the group think matrix in order to prevent team members from being led down a garden path. The one thing I have noticed when in a group think situation, the group always looks for someone to be the mouthpiece for the group, this person usually has strong leadership skills but can be short sited and very opinionated which rubs off on the group as a whole. Some team members tend to have difficulty explaining or relating what is on their mind in a group setting, they rather tell their ideas one on one because they are an introvert by nature! They would rather have the extrovert take charge and be the one who voices the opinions or decisions of the group. They tend to stay out of the lime light. Project Managers should encourage team members to bring out concerns or objections to issues that are being discussed and/or considered, he/she should not influence the team with his or her own preferences to the issue, he/she should play the devil’s advocate and guide conflict in a positive manner, the group should be allowed to be evaluated by other groups and critiqued in an unbiased manner, splitting the group into different sub groups to bring out and investigate different alternative solutions or methods that could be used, call meetings with the group to discuss and evaluate any decisions prior to instituting them and develop alternatives for each methodology prior to giving final approvals. (Thompson, 2008) A good Project Manager should keep his group focused on the project at hand, have weekly meetings to check progress of his team to ensure that discussions are being conducted that is giving the group the necessary conflict for them to evaluate potential risks and dangers involved with the decisions they are recommending. The Project Manager should make the team aware that they can bring up ideas or doubts about any issue without the fear of being ridiculed or rejected by other team members. The ultimate goal is for the Project Manager to make his team work as a team through having all members contributing their knowledge and skills in making the project a success.

Divorce is a Life Changing Experience Essay -- essays research papers

Divorce: a personal life changing experience   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  With this ring I thee wed†¦. For better or worse, for richer or poorer†¦. Traditionally, two people speak these words on their wedding day, the day that two become one, the day that two people begin a life together and share an unbreakable union. This may be so in some cases but not all. Divorce among Americans is rampant. In society today divorces are as common as marriages themselves. Couples meet, date, fall in love, marry, and have children and then one day: Wham! Something is just not right with the relationship anymore, so they opt for the easy way out, the big "D". They get a divorce, is this really the easy way? The legalities and dissolution of the union may be easy and painless, but what about the emotions that are still in tact? Although a divorce may be hard on the adults involved, what about the children? What happens to the kids of these broken marriages?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Some parents who are going through a divorce wonder what the effects of their decision to dissolve the marriage will be on the children. Parents worry that their divorce will cause their children emotional problems that will last a lifetime. These worries are not unsubstantiated. Depending on the reasons that led up to the divorce the effects can vary.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Being a product of a broken home, and having my own child which is also a product of a broken home I can relate personally to the lasting effects that divorce has on a child.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My family consists of five children, which today is considered a large family. Of the five I am the youngest by six years. My parents were married for twenty-eight years before they decided that divorce was the only solution. I was fourteen years old and the one child that suffered the most emotional damage. Because of the many years my parents were married and the wide age difference between my siblings and myself I was the only child still living at home with my parents. The day my dad decided to move out was the day my life changed forever.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My parents did not discuss their reasons for the divorce with me, they didn't have to, and I knew the reasons. I had lived the reasons for as long as I was old enough to remember. The arguments, the name calling, the accusations, the past threats to move out. I was well aware of the reasons. Although there was never any physical violence there was enough screa... ...stances but they are all just personal ones and my not be traits of children in every situation. I do know that every child of divorce is overwhelmed with everlasting emotions. I do know that every child of divorce has individual feelings depending on the situation that led up to the divorce and I do know that almost every child of divorce that I know personally, is now or has been divorced as well. I try to structure the teachings of my son about love and life in a way that he will be able to relate when he is older and ready to marry. I want his choice for a partner in life to be just that, his partner for life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Although almost all children from broken homes are survivors, they often have lifelong emotional scars. It would be impossible for a child of any age to come through a divorce no matter how civil without some sort of emotional damage. That is why it is so important for the parents of these children to make extra efforts to be a part of their kid's lives. It is vital at any age that these parents stress to their children that even though they (the parents) may not love each other anymore the love they have for them (the children) is unconditional and never ending.

Death Penalty in Philippines Essay

During Spanish colonial rule, the most common method of executions were shooting by the firing squad (especially for treason/military crimes, usually reserved for independence fighters) and garrotte (a notable case would be the Gomburza). A prominent example is the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal, who was executed by firing squad on the morning of December 30, 1896. In 1926, the electric chair was introduced, by the United States colonial government. This made the Philippines the only country besides the United States to employ this method. The last colonial-era execution took place under Governor-General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. in February 1932. There were no executions under Manuel L. Quezon, the Commonwealth’s first President.[2] 1946 to 1986 The capital crimes after regaining full independence were murder, rape and treason. Notable cases includes Julio Gullien, executed on for attempting to assassinate President Manuel Roxas, or Marcial â€Å"Baby† Ama, electrocuted at the age of 16 on October 4, 1961. â€Å"Baby† Ama became a subject of a famous 1976 film Bitayin Si baby Ama. Totally, 51 people were electrocuted until 1961. Another famous death penalty case was of former powerful Governor of Negros Occidental Rafael Lacson and 22 of his allies, condemded to die in August 1954 for murder of a political opponent.[6] Ultimately, Lacson was never executed. Executions number climbed under President Ferdinand Marcos. Ironically, Marcos himself was sentenced to death in 1939 for murder of his father’s political opponent, although he was accquited during appeal. A well-publicised triple execution took place in May 1972, when Jaime Josà ©, Basilio Pineda, and Edgardo Aquino were electrocuted for the 1967 ab duction and gang-rape of the young actress Maggie dela Riva. Under the Marcos regime, drug trafficking also became punishable with death by firing squad. A notable execution was that of drug trafficker Lim Seng, whose death in December 1972 was broadcast on national television. Future President and then Chief of the Philippine Constabulary, GeneralFidel V. Ramos, was present at the scene. The electric chair was used until 1976, when execution by firing squad eventually replaced it as the sole method of execution. During the Marcos regime, however, countless more people were summarily executed, tortured, or simply disappeared for opposition to his rule. neutrality is disputed After Marcos was deposed in 1986, the newly-drafted Constitution limited the application of the death penalty to a certain few crimes. This in effect meant that it was totally abolished, making the Philippines the first Asian country to do so. Reinstatement and moratorium President Fidel V. Ramos promised during his campaign that he would support the reintroduction of the death penalty in response to increasing crime rates. The new law, drafted by Ramos, restored capital punishment by defining â€Å"heinous crimes† as everything from murder to stealing a car. This law provided the use of the electric chair until the gas chamber (chosen by the government to replace electrocution) could be installed. The first execution by lethal injection took place under Ramos’ successor, Joseph Estrada, following on a personal appeal by his spiritual advisor, Bishop Teodoro Bacani. Estrada called a moratorium in 2000 to honour the bimillenial anniversary of Jesus’ birth. Executions were resumed a year later. Estrada’s own successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was a vocal opponent and also approved a moratorium, but later permitted executions and denied pardons. Second abolition On 15 April 2006, the sentences of 1,230 death row inmates were commuted to life imprisonment, in what Amnesty International believes to be the â€Å"largest ever commutation of death sentences† Capital punishment was again abolished via Republic Act No. 9346, which was signed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on 24 June 2006. The bill followed a vote held in Congress earlier that month which overwhelmingly supported the abolition of the practice . The penalties of life imprisonmentand reclusion perpetua (indeterminate sentence, 30-year minimum) replaced the death penalty. Critics of Arroyo’s initiative called it a political move meant to placate the Roman Catholic Church, some sectors of which were increasingly vocal in their opposition to her rule. Aftermath President Arroyo controversially pardoned many prisoners during her presidency, including a 2009 pardon for all remaining felons convicted for the 1983 assassination of former Senator and opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. Methods The Philippines was the only country aside from the United States that used the electric chair. Until its first abolition in 1987, the country reverted to using death by firing squad. After re-introduction of the death penalty in 1993, the country switched to lethal injection as its sole method of execution.

Art After Philosophy (1969) Joseph Kosuth Essay

The fact that it has recently become fashionable for physicists themselves to be sympathetic toward religion . . . marks the physicists’ own lack of confidence in the validity of their hypotheses, which is a reaction on their part from the antireligious dogmatism of nineteenth-century scientists, and a natural outcome of the crisis through which physics has just passed. –A. J. Ayer. . . . once one has understood the Tractatus there will be no temptation to concern oneself anymore with philosophy, which is neither empirical like science nor tautological like mathematics; one will, like Wittgenstein in 1918, abandon philosophy, which, as traditionally understood, is rooted in confusion. –J. O. Urmson. Traditional philosophy, almost by definition, has concerned itself with the unsaid. The nearly exclusive focus on the said by twentieth-century analytical linguistic philosophers is the shared contention that the unsaid is unsaid because it is unsayable. Hegelian philosophy made sense in the nineteenth century and must have been soothing to a century that was barely getting over Hume, the Enlightenment, and Kant.1 Hegel’s philosophy was also capable of giving cover for a defense of religious beliefs, supplying an alternative to Newtonian mechanics, and fitting in with the growth of history as a discipline, as well as accepting Darwinian biology.2 He appeared to give an acceptable resolution to the conflict between theology and science, as well. The result of Hegel’s influence has been that a great majority of contemporary philosophers are really little more than historians of philosophy, Librarians of the Truth, so to speak. One begins to get the impression that there â€Å"is nothing more to be said.† And certainly if one realizes the implications of Wittgenstein’s thinking, and the thinking influenced by him and after him, â€Å"Continental† philosophy need not seriously be considered here.3 Is there a reason for the â€Å"unreality† of philosophy in our time? Perhaps this can be answered by looking into the difference between our time and the centuries preceding us. In the past man’s conclusions about the world were based on the information he had about it – if not specifically like the empiricists, then generally like the rationalists. Often in fact, the closeness between science and philosophy was so great that scientists and philosophers were one and the same person. In fact, from the times of Thales, Epicurus, Heraclitus, and Aristotle to Descartes and Leibnitz, â€Å"the great names in philosophy were often great names in science as well.†4 That the world as perceived by twentieth-century science is a vastly different one than the one of its preceding century, need not be proved here. Is it possible, then, that in effect man has learned so much, and his â€Å"intelligence† is such, that he cannot believe the reasoning of traditional philosophy? That perhaps he knows too much about the world to make those kinds of conclusions? As Sir James Jeans has stated: . . . When philosophy has availed itself of the results of science, it has not been by borrowing the abstract mathematical description of the pattern of events, but by borrowing the then current pictorial description of this pattern; thus it has not appropriated certain knowledge but conjectures. These conjectures were often good enough for the man-sized world, but not, as we now know, for those ultimate processes of nature which control the happenings of the man-sized world, and bring us nearest to the true nature of reality.5 He continues: One consequence of this is that the standard philosophical discussions of many problems, such as those of causality and free will orof materialism or mentalism, are based on an interpretation of the pattern of events which is no longer tenable. The scientific basis of these older discussions has been washed away, and with their disappearance have gone all the arguments . . .6 The twentieth century brought in a time that could be called â€Å"the end of philosophy and the beginning of art.† I do not mean that, of course, strictly speaking, but rather as the â€Å"tendency† of the situation. Certainly linguistic philosophy can be considered the heir to empiricism, but it’s a philosophy in one gear.7 And there is certainly an â€Å"art condition† to art preceding Duchamp, but its other functions or reasons-to-be are so pronounced that its ability to function clearly as art limits its art condition so drastically that it’s only minimally art.8 In no mechanistic sense is there a connection between philosophy’s â€Å"ending† and art’s â€Å"beginning,† but I don’t find this occurrence entirely coincidental. Though the same reasons may be responsible for both occurrences, the connection is made by me. I bring this all up to analyze art’s function and subsequently its viability. And I do so to enable others to understand the reasoning of my – and, by extension, other artists’ – art, as well to provide a clearer understanding of the term â€Å"Conceptual art.†9 THE FUNCTION OF ART The main qualifications to the lesser position of painting is that advances in art are certainly not always formal ones. –Donald Judd (1963). Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture. – Donald Judd (1965). Everything sculpture has, my work doesn’t. –Donald Judd (1967). The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. –Sol LeWitt (1965) The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art as art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art. –Ad Reinhardt (1963). The meaning is the use. –Wittgenstein. A more functional approach to the study of concepts has tended to replace the method of introspection. Instead of attempting to grasp or describe concepts bare, so to speak, the psychologist investigates the way in which they function as ingredients in beliefs and in judgments. –Irving M. Copi. Meaning is always a presupposition of function. –T. Segerstedt. . . . the subject matter of conceptual investigations is the meaning of certain words and expressions – and not the things and states of affairs themselves about which we talk, when using those words and expressions. –G. H. Von Wright. Thinking is radically metaphoric. Linkage by analogy is its constituent law or principle, its causal nexus, since meaning only arises through the causal contexts by which a sign stands for (takes the place of) an instance of a sort. To think of anything is to take it as of a sort (as a such and such) and that â€Å"as† brings in (openly or in disguise) the analogy, the parallel, the metaphoric grapple or ground or grasp or draw by which alone the mind takes hold. It takes no hold if there is nothing for it to haul from, for its thinking is the haul, the attraction of likes –I. A. Richards. In this section I will discuss the separation between aesthetics and art; consider briefly formalist art (because it is a leading proponent of the idea of aesthetics as art), and assert that art is analogous to an analytic proposition, and that it is art’s existence as a tautology that enables art to remain â€Å"aloof† from philosophical presumptions. It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with opinions on perception of the world in general. In the past one of the two prongs of art’s function was its value as decoration. So any branch of philosophy that dealt with â€Å"beauty† and thus, taste, was inevitably duty bound to discuss art as well. Out of this â€Å"habit† grew the notion that there was a conceptual connection between art and aesthetics, which is not true. This idea never drastically conflicted with artistic considerations before recent times, not only because the morphological characteristics of art perpetuated the continuity of this error, but as well, because the apparent other â€Å"functions† of art (depiction of religious themes, portraiture of aristocrats, detailing of architecture, etc.) used art to cover up art. When objects are presented within the context of art (and until recently objects always have been used) they are as eligible for aesthetic consideration as are any objects in the world, and an aesthetic consideration of an object existing in the realm of art means that the object’s existence or functioning in an art context is irrelevant to the aesthetic judgment. The relation of aesthetics to art is not unlike that of aesthetics to architecture, in that architecture has a very specific function and how â€Å"good† its design is is primarily related to how well it performs its function. Thus, judgments on what it looks like correspond to taste, and we can see that throughout history different examples of architecture are praised at different times depending on the aesthetics of particular epochs. Aesthetic thinking has even gone so far as to make examples of architecture not related to â€Å"art† at all, works of art in themselves (e.g., the pyramids of Egypt). Aesthetic considerations are indeed always extraneous to an object’s function or â€Å"reason-tobe.† Unless of course, that object’s reason-to-be is strictly aesthetic. An example of a purely aesthetic object is a decorative object, for decoration’s primary function is â€Å"to add something to, so as to make more attractive; adorn; ornament,†10 and this relates directly to taste. And this leads us directly to â€Å"formalist† art and criticism.11 Formalist art (painting and sculpture) is the vanguard of decoration, and, strictly speaking, one could reasonably assert that its art condition is so minimal that for all functional purposes it is not art at all, but pure exercises in aesthetics. Above all things Clement Greenberg is the critic of taste. Behind every one of his decisions is an aesthetic judgment, with those judgments reflecting his taste. And what does his taste reflect? The period he grew up in as a critic, the period â€Å"real† for him: the fifties.12 How else can one account for, given his theories – if they have any logic to them at all – his disinterest in Frank Stella, Ad Reinhardt, and others applicable to his historical scheme? Is it because he is â€Å". . . basically unsympathetic on personally experiential grounds†?13 Or, in other words, â€Å"their work doesn’t suit his taste?† But in the philosophic tabula rasa of art, â€Å"if someone calls it art,† as Don Judd has said, â€Å"it’s art.† Given this, formalist painting and sculpture can be granted an â€Å"art condition,† but only by virtue of their presentation in terms of their art idea (e.g., a rectangular-shaped canvas stretched over wooden supports and stained with such and such colors, using such and such forms, giving such and such a visual experience, etc.). If one looks at contemporary art in this light one realizes the minimal creative effort taken on the part of formalist artists specifically, an d all painters and sculptors (working as such today) generally. This brings us to the realization that formalist art and criticism accepts as a definition of art one that exists solely on morphological grounds. While a vast quantity of similar looking objects or images (or visually related objects or images) may seem to be related (or connected) because of a similarity of visual/experiential â€Å"readings,† one cannot claim from this an artistic or conceptual relationship. It is obvious then that formalist criticism’s reliance on morphology leads necessarily with a bias toward the morphology of traditional art. And in this sense their criticism is not related to a â€Å"scientific method† or any sort of empiricism (as Michael Fried, with his detailed descriptions of paintings and other â€Å"scholarly† paraphernalia would want us to believe). Formalist criticism is no more than an analysis of the physical attributes of particular objects that happen to exist in a morphological context. But this doesn’t add any knowledge (or facts) to our understanding of the nature or function of art. And neither does it comment on whether or not the objects analyzed are even works of art, in that formalist critics always bypass the conceptual element in works of art. Exactly why they don’t comment on the conceptual element in works of art is precisely because formalist art is only art by virtue of its resemblance to earlier works of art. It’s a mindless art. Or, as Lucy Lippard so succinctly described Jules Olitski’s paintings: â€Å"they’re visual Muzak.† 14 Formalist critics and artists alike do not question the nature of art, but as I have said elsewhere: Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.15 The strongest objection one can raise against a morphological justification for traditional art is that morphological notions of art embody an implied a priori concept of art’s possibilities. And such an a priori concept of the nature of art (as separate from analytically framed art propositions or â€Å"work,† which I will discuss later) makes it, indeed, a priori: impossible to question the nature of art. And this questioning of the nature of art is a very important concept in understanding the function of art. The function of art, as a question, was first raised by Marcel Duchamp. In fact it is Marcel Duchamp whom we can credit with giving art its own identity. (One can certainly see a tendency toward this self-identification of art beginning with Manet and Cà ©zanne through to Cubism,16 but their works are timid and ambiguous by comparison with Duchamp’s.) â€Å"Modern† art and the work before seemed connected by virtue of their morphology. Another way of putting it would be that art’s â€Å"language† remained the same, but it was saying new things. The event that made conceivable the realization that it was possible to â€Å"speak another language† and still make sense in art was Marcel Duchamp’s first unassisted Ready-made. With the unassisted Ready-made, art changed its focus from the form of the language to what was being said. Which means that it changed the nature of art from a question of morphology to a question of function. This change – one from â€Å"appearance† to â€Å"conception† – was the beginning of â€Å"modern† art and the beginning of conceptual art. All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually. The â€Å"value† of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art; which is another way of saying â€Å"what they added to the conception of art† or what wasn’t there before they started. Artists question the nature of art by presenting new propositions as to art’s nature. And to do this one cannot concern oneself with the handed-down â€Å"language† of traditional art, as this activity is based on the assumption that there is only one way of framing art propositions. But the very stuff of art is indeed greatly related to â€Å"creating† new propositions. The case is often made – particularly in reference to Duchamp – that objects of art (such as the Ready-mades, of course, but all art is implied in this) are judged as objets d’art in later years and the artists’ intentions become irrelevant. Such an argument is the case of a preconceived notion ordering together not necessarily related facts. The point is this: aesthetics, as we have pointed out, are conceptually irrelevant to art. Thus, any physical thing can become objet d’art, that is to say, can be considered tasteful, aesthetically pleasing, etc. But this has no bearing on the object’s application to an art context; that is, its functioning in an art context. (E.g., if a collector takes a painting, attaches legs, and uses it as a dining table it’s an act unrelated to art or the artist because, as art, that wasn’t the artist’s intention.) And what holds true for Duchamp’s work applies as well to most of the art after him. In other words, the value of Cubism – for instance – is its idea in the realm of art, not the physical or visual qualities seen in a specific painting, or the particularization of certain colors or shapes. For these colors and shapes are the art’s â€Å"language,† not its meaning conceptually as art. To look upon a Cubist â€Å"masterwork† now as art is nonsensical, conceptually speaking, as far as art is concerned. (That visual information that was unique in Cubism’s language has now been generally absorbed and has a lot to do with the way in which one deals with painting â€Å"linguistically.† [E.g., what a Cubist painting meant experimentally and conceptually to, say, Gertrude Stein, is beyond our speculation because the same painting then â€Å"meant† something different than it does now.]) The â€Å"value† now of an original Cubist painting is not unlike, in most respects, an original manuscript by Lord Byron, or The Spirit of St. Louis as it is seen in the Smithsonian Institution. (Indeed, museums fill the very same function as the Smithsonian Institution – why else would the Jeu de Paume wing of the Louvre exhibit Cà ©zanne’s and Van Gogh’s palettes as proudly as they do their paintings?) Actual works of art are little more than historical curiosities. As far as art is concerned Van Gogh’s paintings aren’t worth any more than his palette is. They are both â€Å"collector’s items.†17 Art â€Å"lives† through influencing other art, not by existing as the physical residue of an artist’s ideas. The reason that different artists from the past are â€Å"brought alive† again is because some aspect of their work becomes â€Å"usable† by living artists. That there is no â€Å"truth† as to what art is seems quite unrealized. What is the function of art, or the nature of art? If we continue our analogy of the forms art takes as being art’s language one can realize then that a work of art is a kind of proposition presented within the context of art as a comment on art. We can then go further and analyze the types of â₠¬Å"propositions.† A. J. Ayer’s evaluation of Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic is useful to us here: â€Å"A proposition is analytic when its validity depends solely on the definitions of the symbols it contains, and synthetic when its validity is determined by the facts of experience.†18 The analogy I will attempt to make is one between the art condition and the condition of the analytic proposition. In that they don’t appear to be believable as anything else, or be about anything (other than art) the forms of art most clearly finally referable only to art have been forms closest to analytical propositions. Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information whatsoever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art. Thus, that it is art is true a priori (which is what Judd means when he states that â€Å"if someone calls it art, it’s art†). Indeed, it is nearly impossible to discuss art in general terms without talking in tautologies – for to attempt to â€Å"grasp† art by any other â€Å"handle† is merely to focus on another aspect or quality of the proposition, which is usually irrelevant to the artwork’s â€Å"art condition.† One begins to realize that art’s â€Å"art condition† is a conceptual state. That the language forms that the artist frames his propositions in are often â€Å"private† codes or languages is an inevitable outcome of art’s freedom from morphological constrictions; and it follows from this that one has to be familiar with contemporary art to appreciate it and understand it. Likewise one understands why the â€Å"man in the street† is intolerant to artistic art and always demands art in a tr aditional â€Å"language.† (And one understands why formalist art sells â€Å"like hot cakes.†) Only in painting and sculpture did the artists all speak the same language. What is called â€Å"Novelty Art† by the formalists is often the attempt to find new languages, although a new language doesn’t necessarily mean the framing of new propositions: e.g., most kinetic and electronic art. Another way of stating, in relation to art, what Ayer asserted about the analytic method in the context of language would be the following: The validity of artistic propositions is not dependent on any empirical, much less any aesthetic, presupposition about the nature of things. For the artist, as an analyst, is not directly concerned with the physical properties of things. He is concerned only with the way (1) in which art is capable of conceptual growth and (2) how his propositions are capable of logically following that growth.19 In other words, the propositions of art are not factual, but linguistic in character – that is, they do not describe the behavior of physical, o r even mental objects; they express definitions of art, or the formal consequences of definitions of art. Accordingly, we can say that art operates on a logic. For we shall see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions (of art) and not with questions of empirical fact.20 To repeat, what art has in common with logic and mathematics is that it is a tautology; i.e., the â€Å"art idea† (or â€Å"work†) and art are the same and can be appreciated as art without going outside the context of art for verification. On the other hand, let us consider why art cannot be (or has difficulty when it attempts to be) a synthetic proposition. Or, that is to say, when the truth or falsity of its assertion is verifiable on empirical grounds. Ayer states: . . . The criterion by which we determine the validity of an a priori or analytical proposition is not sufficient to determine the validity of an empirical or synthetic proposition. For it is characteristic of empirical propositions that their validity is not purely formal. To say that a geometrical proposition, or a system of geometrical propositions, is false, is to say that it is self-contradictory. But an empirical proposition, or a system of empirical propositions, may be free from contradiction and still be false. It is said to be false, not because it is formally defective, but because it fails to satisfy some material criterion.21 The unreality of â€Å"realistic† art is due to its framing as an art proposition in synthetic terms: one is always tempted to â€Å"verify† the proposition empirically. Realism’s synthetic state does not bring one to a circular swing back into a dialogue with the larger framework of questions about the nature of art (as does the work of Malevich, Mondrian, Pollock, Reinhardt, early Rauschenberg, Johns, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Andre, Judd, Flavin, LeWitt, Morris, and others), but rather, one is flung out of art’s â€Å"orbit† into the â€Å"infinite space† of the human condition. Pure Expressionism, continuing with Ayer’s terms, could be considered as such: â€Å"A sentence which consisted of demonstrative symbols would not express a genuine proposition. It would be a mere ejaculation, in no way characterizing that to which it was supposed to refer.† Expressionist works are usually such â€Å"ejaculations† presented in the morphological language of traditional art. If Pollock is important it is because he painted on loose canvas horizontally to the floor. What isn’t important is that he later put those drippings over stretchers and hung them parallel to the wall. (In other words what is important in art is what one brings to it, not one’s adoption of what was previously existing.) What is even less important to art is Pollock’s notions of â€Å"self-expression† because those kinds of subjective meanings are useless to anyone other than those involved with him personally. And their â€Å"specific† quality puts them outside of art’s context. â€Å"I do not make art,† Richard Serra says, â€Å"I am engaged in an activity; if someone wants to call it art, that’s his business, but it’s not up to me to decide that. That’s all figured out later.† Serra, then, is very much aware of the implications of his work. If Serra is indeed just â€Å"figuring out what lead does† (gravitationally, molecularly, etc.), why should anyone think of it as art? If he doesn’t take the responsibility of it being art, who can, or should? His work certainly appears to be empirically verifiable: lead can do, and be used for, many physical activities. In itself this does anything but lead us into a dialogue about the nature of art. In a sense then he is a primitive. He has no idea about art. How is it then that we know about â€Å"his activity†? Because he has told us it is art by his actions after â€Å"his activity† has taken place. That is, by the fact that he is with several galleries, puts the physical residue of his activity in museums (and sells them to art collectors – but as we have pointed out, collectors are irrelevant to the â€Å"condition of art† of a work). That he denies his work is art but plays the artist is more than just a paradox. Serra secretly feels that â€Å"arthood† is arrived at empirically. Thus, as Ayer has stated: There are no absolutely certain empirical propositions. It is only tautologies that are certain. Empirical questions are one and all hypotheses, which may be confirmed or discredited in actual sense experience. And the propositions in which we record the observations that verify these hypotheses are themselves hypotheses which are subject to the test of further sense experience. Thus there is no final proposition.22 What one finds all throughout the writings of Ad Reinhardt is this very similar thesis of â€Å"artas-art,† and that â€Å"art is always dead, and a ‘living’ art is a deception.†23 Reinhardt had a very clear idea about the nature of art, and his importance is far from recognized. Because forms of art that can be considered synthetic propositions are verifiable by the world, that is to say, to understand these propositions one must leave the tautological-like framework of art and consider â€Å"outside† information. But to consider it as art it is necessary to ignore this same outside information, because outside information (experiential qualities, to note) has its own intrinsic worth. And to comprehend this worth one does not need a state of â€Å"art condition.† From this it is easy to realize that art’s viability is not connected to the presentation of visual (or other) kinds of experience. That that may have been one of art’s extraneous functions in the preceding centuries is not unlikely. After all, man in even the nineteenth century lived in a fairly standardized visual environment. That is, it was ordinarily predictable as to what he would be coming into contact with day after day. His visual environment in the part of the world in which he lived was fairly consistent. In our time we have an experientially drastically richer environment. One can fly all over the earth in a matter of hours and days, not months. We have the cinema, and color television, as well as the man-made spectacle of the lights of Las Vegas or the skyscrapers of New York City. The whole world is there to be seen, and the whole world can watch man walk on the moon from their living rooms. Certainly art or objects of painting and sculpture cannot be expected to compete experientially with this? The notion of â€Å"use† is relevant to art and its â€Å"language.† Recently the box or cube form has been used a great deal within the context of art. (Take for instance its use by Judd, Morris, LeWitt, Bladen, Smith, Bell, and McCracken – not even mentioning the quantity of boxes and cubes that came after.) The difference between all the various uses of the box or cube form is directly related to the differences in the intentions of the artists. Further, as is particularly seen in Judd’s work, the use of the box or cube form illustrates very well our earlier claim that an object is only art when placed in the context of art. A few examples will point this out. One could say that if one of Judd’s box forms was seen filled with debris, seen placed in an industrial setting, or even merely seen sitting on a street corner, it would not be identified with art. It follows then that understanding and consideration of it as an artwork is necessary a priori to viewing it in order to â€Å"see† it as a work of art. Advance information about the concept of art and about an artist’s concepts is necessary to the appreciation and understanding of contemporary art. Any and all of the physical attributes (qualities) of contemporary works, if considered separately and/or specifically, are irrelevant to the art concept. The art concept (as Judd said, though he didn’t mean it this way) must be considered in its whole. To consider a concept’s parts is invariably to consider aspects that are irrelevant to its art condition – or like reading parts of a definition. It comes as no surprise that the art with the least fixed morphology is the example from which we decipher the nature of the general term â€Å"art.† For where there is a context existing separately of its morphology and consisting of its function one is more likely to find results less conforming and predictable. It is in modern art’s possession of a â€Å"language† with the shortest history that the plausibility of the abandonment of that â€Å"language† becomes most possible. It is understandable then that the art that came out of Western painting and sculpture is the most energetic, questioning (of its nature), and the least assuming of all the general â€Å"art† concerns. In the final analysis, however, all of the arts have but (in Wittgenstein’s terms) a â€Å"family† resemblance. Yet the various qualities relatable to an â€Å"art condition† possessed by poetry, the novel, the cinema, the theatre, and various forms of mus ic, etc., is that aspect of them most reliable to the function of art as asserted here. Is not the decline of poetry relatable to the implied metaphysics from poetry’s use of â€Å"common† language as an art language?24 In New York the last decadent stages of poetry can be seen in the move by â€Å"Concrete† poets recently toward the use of actual objects and theatre.25 Can it be that they feel the unreality of their art form? We see now that the axioms of a geometry are simply definitions, and that the theorems of a geometry are simply the logical consequences of these definitions. A geometry is not in itself about physical space; in itself it cannot be said to be â€Å"about† anything. But we can use a geometry to reason about physical space. That is to say, once we have given the axioms a physical interpretation, we can proceed to apply the theorems to the objects which satisfy the axioms. Whether a geometry can be applied to the actual physical world or not, is an empirical question which falls outside the scope of geometry itself. There is no sense, therefore, in asking which of the various geometries known to us are false and which are true. Insofar as they are all free from contradiction, they are all true. The proposition which states that a certain application of a geometry is possible is not itself a proposition of that geometry. All that the geometry itself tells us is that if anything can be brought under the definitions, it will also satisfy the theorems. It is therefore a purely logical system, and its propositions are purely analytic propositions. –A. J. Ayer26 Here then I propose rests the viability of art. In an age when traditional philosophy is unreal because of its assumptions, art’s ability to exist will depend not only on its not performing a service – as entertainment, visual (or other) experience, or decoration – which is something easily replaced by kitsch culture, and technology, but, rather, it will remain viable by not assuming a philosophical stance; for in art’s unique character is the capacity to remain aloof from philosophical judgments. It is in this context that art shares similarities with logic, mathematics, and, as well, science. But whereas the other endeavors are useful, art is not. Art indeed exists for its own sake. In this period of man, after philosophy and religion, art may possibly be one endeavor that fulfills what another age might have called â€Å"man’s spiritual needs.† Or, another way of putting it might be that art deals analogously with the state of things â€Å"beyond physics† where philosophy had to make assertions. And art’s strength is that even the preceding sentence is an assertion, and cannot be verified by art. Art’s only claim is for art. Art is the definition of art. NOTES * Reprinted from Studio International (October, 1969). 1 Morton White, The Age of Analysis (New York: Mentor Books), p. 14. 2 Ibid., p. 15. 3 I mean by this Existentialism and Phenomenology. Even Merleau-Ponty, with his middle-of-the-road position between empiricism and rationalism, cannot express his philosophy without the use of words (thus using concepts); and following this, how can one discuss experience without sharp distinctions between ourselves and the world? 4 Sir James Jeans, Physics and Philosophy (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press), p. 17. 5 Ibid., p. 190. 6 Ibid., p. 190. 7 The task such philosophy has taken upon itself is the only â€Å"function† it could perform without making philosophic assertions. 8 This is dealt with in the following section. 9 I would like to make it clear, however, that I intend to speak for no one else. I arrived at these conclusions alone, and indeed, it is from this thinking that my art since 1966 (if not before) evo lved. Only recently did I realize after meeting Terry Atkinson that he and Michael Baldwin share similar, though certainly not identical, opinions to mine. 10 Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language. 11 The conceptual level of the work of Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, Ron Davis, Anthony Caro, John Hoyland, Dan Christensen, et al., is so dismally low, that any that is there is supplied by the critics promoting it. This is seen later. 12 Michael Fried’s reasons for using Greenberg’s rationale reflect his background (and most of the other formalist critics) as a â€Å"scholar,† but more of it is due to his desire, I suspect, to bring his scholarly studies into the modern world. One can easily sympathize with his desire to connect, say, Tiepolo with Jules Olitski. One should never forget, however, that a historian loves history more than anything, even art. 13 Lucy Lippard uses this quotation in a footnote to Ad Reinhardt’s retrospective catalogue, January, 1967, p. 28. 14 Lucy Lippard, â€Å"Constellation by Harsh Daylight: The Whitney Annual,† Hudson Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1968). 15 Arthur R. Rose, â€Å"Four Interviews,† Arts Magazine (February, 1969). 16 As Terry Atkinson pointed out in his introduction to Art-Language (Vol. 1, No. 1), the Cubists never questioned if art had morphological characteristics, but which ones in painting were acceptable. 17 When someone â€Å"buys† a Flavin he isn’t buying a light show, for if he was he could just go to a hardware store and get the goods for considerably less. He isn’t â€Å"buying† anything. He is subsidizing Flavin’s activity as an artist. 18 A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover Publications), p. 78. 19 Ibid., p. 57. 20 Ibid., p. 57. 21 Ibid., p.90. 22 Ibid., p. 94. 23 Ad Reinhardt’s retrospective catalogue (Jewish Museum, January, 1967) written by Lucy Lippard, p. 12. 24 It is poetry’s use of common language to attempt to say the unsayable that is problematic, not any inherent problem in the use of language within the context of art. 25 Ironically, many of them call themselves â€Å"Conceptual Poets.† Much of this work is very similar to Walter de Maria’s work and this is not coincidental; de Maria’s work functions as a kind of â€Å"object† poetry, and his intentions are very poetic: he really wants his work to change men’s lives. 26 Op. cit., p. 82.

Free Essays on Miss

INTRODUCTION AUCTIONS Auctions are a good way to sell a commodity that doesn’t have a fixed or determined value – i.e. when the seller is unsure of the price that can be achieved (As the goods are of undetermined quality). So the on-line auction can simply be a process of putting buyers and sellers in touch with each other, with the seller then transporting the goods to the successful bidder, and the bidder making payment. Usually Auction sites act as forums through which internet users can log-on and assume the role of either bidder or sellers. As sellers, you are able to post items you wish to sell, the minimum price that you require to sell an item and a deadline to close the auction. Some sites allow you to add features, such as a photograph or a description of the item’s condition. As a bidder, you may search the site for availability of the item you are seeking, view the current bidding activity and place a bid (bids are usually in designated increments). Some sites allow you to submit a maximum bidding price and will continue bidding for you. Although auction sites usually require a commissions on sales, these sites are only a forum for online buying and selling. They do not involve themselves in payment or delivery. After the auction has been completed, both the seller and the bidder are notified, and the methods of payment and the cost of delivery is then worked out between the two parties. SUMMARY OF eBAY On eBay, people can buy and sell just about anything. The company collects a submission fee plus a percentage of the sale amount. The submission fee is based on the amount of exposure you want your item to receive, with a higher fee required if you would like the â€Å"featured actions† in your specific product category, and an even higher fee if you want your item to be listed on the eBay home page under â€Å"Featured items†. This listing will not appear every time you go to the home page, but it will... Free Essays on Miss Free Essays on Miss INTRODUCTION AUCTIONS Auctions are a good way to sell a commodity that doesn’t have a fixed or determined value – i.e. when the seller is unsure of the price that can be achieved (As the goods are of undetermined quality). So the on-line auction can simply be a process of putting buyers and sellers in touch with each other, with the seller then transporting the goods to the successful bidder, and the bidder making payment. Usually Auction sites act as forums through which internet users can log-on and assume the role of either bidder or sellers. As sellers, you are able to post items you wish to sell, the minimum price that you require to sell an item and a deadline to close the auction. Some sites allow you to add features, such as a photograph or a description of the item’s condition. As a bidder, you may search the site for availability of the item you are seeking, view the current bidding activity and place a bid (bids are usually in designated increments). Some sites allow you to submit a maximum bidding price and will continue bidding for you. Although auction sites usually require a commissions on sales, these sites are only a forum for online buying and selling. They do not involve themselves in payment or delivery. After the auction has been completed, both the seller and the bidder are notified, and the methods of payment and the cost of delivery is then worked out between the two parties. SUMMARY OF eBAY On eBay, people can buy and sell just about anything. The company collects a submission fee plus a percentage of the sale amount. The submission fee is based on the amount of exposure you want your item to receive, with a higher fee required if you would like the â€Å"featured actions† in your specific product category, and an even higher fee if you want your item to be listed on the eBay home page under â€Å"Featured items†. This listing will not appear every time you go to the home page, but it will...

Cultural Identity Essay Make Your Motherland Known

Cultural Identity Essay Make Your Motherland Known Cultural Identity Essay: Share Your Emotions about Your Motherland â€Å"Despite the fact I was living in the United States for over five years already, I feel I belong to Chinese culture and its traditions.† This line is the part of a cultural identity essay that can sometimes look like a sentence from a philosophical essay. In case you’ve never dealt with this kind of essay paper, here you will find enough useful tips and guides to help you perform an excellent cultural identity essay. This article is aimed at revealing the main secrets of completing a cultural identity essay, its organization moments, and proper formatting. If you want to get extra useful tips, you can contact an expert writing service online. Cultural Identity Essay: Main Purposes and Definition It is important to find out what the exact meaning of the cultural identity essay is before starting to perform a paper. This type of essay is an exceptional writing piece aimed at expressing personal feelings and experience of belonging to a particular nationality. It is preferable to write down how this nationality has influenced your life choices, the process of becoming an adult, and the way you take your decisions. This paper shows how the person develops with a certain nationality background and reveals its personality traits, customs, and traditions. Cultural identity essay mostly focuses on the following elements: Religion; Location; Native Language; Nationality; Gender; The structure of the essay is similar to the most popular essay types. Thus it is easy to figure out how to organize the main elements of the paper. The main difference between this type of essay and other ones is the need to use the first person when performing a paper. Since in the essay you reveal your personal experiences, feelings, and knowledge, there is no need to provide any sources. There is no need for research work either. You simply have to be good at performing the papers according to the assigned formatting style. For example, MLA style, which is mostly used in this kind of essays, can be easily followed once checking its guidelines and standards. It is great to use famous writers’ quotes in your final paper. In such a case, you need to provide a source of the quote in the reference list. Cultural Identity Essay: Top Ideas to Reveal Choose a concise topic for your essay, and better avoid too broad issues. Use the following five top things to discuss when selecting a topic for an essay: The issue of your own imagination; The real-life experience; Personal memories and memorable events; An authoritative person; Memorable places and traditions. It is great when you have a lot of personal experience, for example working in voluntary groups or helping other people. This can be a great topic to reveal. In case you have no such experience, you can always write about national traditions and customs, and the way you follow them nowadays. You can write an essay about your favorite place in your Motherland or about the people who inspire you the most. You can write about both good and bad experience in your life since even the worst situations can eventually become valuable life lessons. Besides, you can help people to deal with their problems once revealing your own bad situations and their solutions. The cultural identity essay can also be written about people who have influenced your way of thinking and the way you make your life decisions. Show how greatly national traditions and customs inspired you. Reveal other exceptional things, which made you the person you are now. Cultural Identity Essay: How to Start It Properly The best start is the selection of the proper topic for an essay paper. With a good topic, first, write an outline to make the entire writing process more organized. You must present your ideas and personal experience in a simple and clear language. You will be telling a story to people of other nationalities, thus make your story really useful and informative. You can conduct research if you want to describe some people or events in more details. Expert Advice: â€Å"First you must decide on the exact topic of your essay paper. Only after dealing with the topic selection, start to organize your ideas. This is the right order for performing a great final paper. Brainstorming will be very useful in the first stages of the writing process. You need to list every interesting idea. Make sure to perform a paper for a certain target audience. Provide a powerful introduction and a strong thesis statement.† You can use a broad thesis statement for a cultural identity essay. For example: â€Å"The cultural identity influences the way we take the life decisions, and the way we see ourselves in the world.† The body paragraphs need to provide a detailed meaning of the main thesis statements. Cultural Identity Essay Body Paragraphs It is preferable to provide a standard essay of five paragraphs. Therefore, write a powerful introduction, three detailed main body paragraphs, and a practical conclusion. Make the body paragraphs of the same length. The outline will help you to organize the entire writing process. Use the list of your interesting ideas and experiences. The following guides will help you to deal with writing process successfully: Use unified arguments to start every new paragraph. Use real-life experience once providing evidence. Use transitions to connect the interesting ideas in one piece. Try to organize the writing process properly and you will get a perfect essay paper eventually. Essay Example Extract of a Cultural Identity Essay â€Å"My mother is Indian, and she belongs to a very educated Indian family. My mother’s religion is Hinduism. My dad is Spanish who has been living in the US for the biggest part of his life. My mother and my dad met in India. Their decision to move to the United States was mostly based on the importance of my dad’s work in the US. In spite of the fact that my dad is an atheist, my parents rarely have conflicts on their religions. It is great they let me become a part of any religion, or remain an atheist as my dad is. I adore their cultural differences since they both give me exceptional experience and knowledge I can use in my own life.† Using this essay example, you can realize better how to perform your cultural identity essay. Yes, it will not be easy to write an inspiring essay. If you want to get a brilliant cultural identity essay, you can order a paper at an expert writing service. This way you will get your essay written by the best writers who know and appreciate the exceptional academic writing.

Argument Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 6

Argument - Essay Example It reflects the realities they face on a daily basis and their struggle to come to terms with the world around them. Far from encouraging young people into a life of drug addiction and gun crime, hip-hop can actually save them from it by proving a form of expression which can release their anger, stress and anxieties. This essay will explore the two sides to this hotly debated topic and attempt to understand just what role hip-hop plays in modern society. Jennifer McLune is a supporter of the idea that hip-hop is a damaging influence on modern society. Her focus is particularly on females, since she argues that hip-hop betrays its black women listeners by objectifying them. The basic premise for her argument is that far from offering an outlet for young black females, it actually encourages them to conform to roles delimitated along the lines of ‘baby mommas’, ‘chickenheads’ or ‘bitches’. Rather than offering positive role models for women, this music instead attempts to limit the role that women play in a society where men set the rules. This is an often levied criticism. At first listen lyrics to many hip-hop songs appear to have little respect for women beyond pure sexuality. McClure takes this point and develops it, in a distinctly feminist tone. McLune argues against Powell’s idea that the overt misogyny in hip-hop comes from socio-economic factors which have encourages this approach. She argues this point by indicating that women, too, have been raised in the exact same socio-economic conditions. Further, rich white males are just as capable as poor black ones of sexist slants. Her approach is an overtly feminist one which argues that women should not accept this war which men are waging on them. She argues that hip-hop culture is driven by sexism and that even artists which are opposed to this do not openly publicise the fact. It is so mainstream to hate women, it would