Penn & Teller

Penn & Teller (Penn Jillette and Teller) are American magicians and entertainers who have performed together since the late 1970s, noted for their ongoing act which combines elements of comedy with magic. The duo, having been featured in numerous stage and television shows, currently headline in Las Vegas at The Rio. Penn Jillette serves as the act's orator and raconteur. Teller, however, generally does not speak while performing, and instead communicates through mime and nonverbals, although his voice can occasionally be heard during their live shows and television appearances. Besides magic, the pair have become associated with the advocacy of atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism, particularly through their television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Career

Penn Jillette and Teller were introduced to one another by Wier Chrisimer, and performed their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on 19 August 1975. From the late 1970s through 1981, Penn, Teller, and Chrisimer performed as a trio called "The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society" which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater. Chrisimer helped to develop some bits that continued, most notably Teller's "Shadows" trick, which involves a single red rose. The group disbanded in 1981 after Chrisimer quit show business, leaving Penn Jillette and Teller to work as a pair on a show called "Mrs. Lonsberry's Seance of Horror".

Penn

Penn may refer to:

Places

England

United States

Education

People

Business

A business, also known as an enterprise, agency or a firm, is an entity involved in the provision of goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are prevalent in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and provide goods and services to customers in exchange for other goods, services, or money. Businesses may also be social not-for-profit enterprises or state-owned public enterprises targeted for specific social and economic objectives. A business owned by multiple individuals may be formed as an incorporated company or jointly organised as a partnership. Countries have different laws that may ascribe different rights to the various business entities.

Business can refer to a particular organization or to an entire market sector, e.g. "the music business". Compound forms such as agribusiness represent subsets of the word's broader meaning, which encompasses all activity by suppliers of goods and services. The goal is for sales to be more than expenditures resulting in a profit.

Ivy League

The Ivy League is a collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group. The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. The term Ivy League has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism.

While the term was in use as early as 1933, it only became official after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference in 1954. Seven of the eight schools were founded during the United States colonial period; the exception is Cornell, which was founded in 1865. Ivy League institutions account for seven of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution, the other two being Rutgers University and College of William & Mary.

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (also known as the Wharton School, the Wharton School of Business, or simply Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League university located in Philadelphia. Wharton was established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton. It is the first business school in the United States.

The Wharton School awards Bachelor of Science in Economics degrees at the undergraduate level and Master of Business Administration degrees at the postgraduate level, both of which require the selection of a major. Wharton also offers a PhD program and houses or co-sponsors several diploma programs either alone or in conjunction with the other schools at the university.

History

Joseph Wharton, a native Philadelphian, was a leader in industrial metallurgy who built his fortune through the American Nickel Company and Bethlehem Steel Corporation. As Wharton's business grew, he recognized that business knowledge in the United States was only taught through an apprenticeship system, and such a system was not viable for creating a wider economy during the Industrial Revolution. After two years of planning, Wharton in 1881 founded the Wharton School of Finance and Economy through a $100,000 initial pledge, making it the first business school established in the United States. (ESCP Europe, established in 1819, and a few other business schools were established in Europe prior to Wharton's founding.) The school was meant to train future leaders to conduct corporations and public organizations in a rapidly evolving industrial era. Wharton was quoted as saying that the school was meant to "instill a sense of the coming strife [in business life]: of the immense swings upward or downward that await the competent or the incompetent soldier in this modern strife".