ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
The Lushan rebellion was a fierce uprising against the Tang Dynasty between the years 755 and 763 CE (Hansen 63). An unsatisfied army general who served in the army of the Tang Dynasty started the rebellion which led to the collapse of the dynasty. It started as a small revolt but gradually expanded and spread to other parts of China. It is one of the longest rebellions in China because it lasted for more than ten years. Its consequences were severe because it nearly led to collapse of some of the most powerful dynasties in China. It is considered a turning point of the history of the Tang Dynasty and the whole pre-modern Chinese history. This is because it weakened Tang Dynasty, led to massive deaths, and had significant influence on Tang’s culture and Chinese culture (Hansen 63). First, the rebellion led to deaths of millions of people that belonged to the Tang Dynasty. It also led to severe destruction of the dynasty’s economic and social systems, cause starvation, and encouraged combats that killed many civilians (Hansen 69). In addition, the period of the rebellion was characterized by diseases that caused many deaths. The most affected regions were north and middle china. The death toll affected the Tang Empire and the whole of china severely because it reduced population and affected economic and social systems (Hansen 73). Secondly, the rebellion weakened the Tang Empire significantly. The influence of Tang’s emperor was compromised by establishment of independent provinces within the empire by rebel army generals. This reduced the political influence of the government. In addition, after the rebellion arose, many army members were deployed to crush the rebellion in areas that experienced revolts and attacks. This left the empire at risk of attack, which weakened regions such as the Western parts of the dynasty. The government was in desperate need of stability owing to effects of the rebellion. As a strategy to improve political stability, it pardoned many rebels and even made some of them army generals and commanders (Hansen 81). This strategy contributed to weakening of the army because the rebels were not conversant with the operations of the army and some of them formed alliances with barbarians. Continued erosion of the army’s credibility and economic depression led to power loss by the Tang government. Political weakness consequently led to economic weakness. The effect of the rebellion spilled to other parts of China. For example, by the year 790, China had lost control of the Tarim Basin due to a weak army and political system. Tang Dynasty had borrowed money and army troops from the Uighurs in order to stop the rebellion. However, due to their weak economy, they were unable to pay and had to relinquish control of Tarim basin to Uighurs. In addition to political and economic effects, the rebellion also changed the intellectual culture
Quantitative researches which are positivist in their nature are often developed with the help of statistical methods to respond to a certain research question. Statistical methods are important to interpret the quantitative data correctly and conclude what the discovered numbers mean for the development of the definite process or strategy. The article “Unprofitable Cross-Buying: Evidence from Consumer and Business Markets” written by Shah, Kumar, Qu, and Chen and published in Journal of Marketing in 2012 can be discussed as an example of the positivist research in which statistical methods are used to analyze and interpret the collected data associated with the topic of investigation (Shah et al.). This paper aims to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of Shah, Kumar, Qu, and Chen’s research. Conducting the positivist research, Shah, Kumar, Qu, and Chen present the hypothesis basing on the analysis of the previous researches and literature review that cross-buying realized by customers is influenced by the notion of customer profitability (Shah et al.). The researchers test their hypothesis with references to the data provided by five firms. The main numerical data used in the research is associated with the number of customers performing or not according to the stated hypothesis. The results of the research based on statistical techniques do not support the provided hypothesis. The number of customers whose cross-buying behavior depends on profitability issues can be influenced by a lot of associated factors. The weakness of the research is in the fact this possibility is not discussed or explained basing on the literature review (Abrams; Chan and Mauborgne). The strength of the research is in the fact that the researchers used statistical techniques to measure and analyze the number of customers performing definite cross-buying behaviors basing on their profitability or unprofitability. It was stated that 10%–35% of customers involving in cross-buying are unprofitable. From this point, the cross-buying phenomenon is discussed with references to the statistical data provided (Shah et al.). One more strength of the research is in the fact the authors focus on the specific two-stage framework to analyze the numbers and discuss strategies for managers (Jorgensen; Kotler and Armstrong; Scott). Nevertheless, there is also a significant weakness that is associated with the interpretation of the statistical data. Using the statistical analysis, researchers provide themselves with unique opportunities to discuss the meaning of the numbers observed
Introduction Globalization has a great impact on social-economic relations between people and their location. Critics admit that globalization leads to a new division of labor and increased number of urban poor around the world. The slums of global cities are not uniform; in some, dwellings are constructed from brick and have proper windows and doors and tiled or corrugated iron roofs; in others, they are shacks made from whatever materials come to hand. In the settlements of the rag-pickers, the hutments merge into the piled-up refuse for recycling and into the tips themselves. The close proximity of dwellings and the presence of inflammable materials make them dangerous fire risks. Globalization and social changes in rural areas lead to increased number of urban poor and slums in megacities. Discussion section Globalization and urban poor The combination of poverty of diet, overcrowding, unclean water, lack of sewerage and often also industrial pollution, means that the people of the slums are prey to disease. Annually there are reports of widespread fires in the slums and high death tolls. With narrow lanes and lack of proper water supplies, fire fighting is difficult Mosquitoes breed in fetid water and spread malaria; cholera, hepatitis and typhoid break out periodically (Stiglitz, 2002). Tuberculosis is common. It is only when the slums are seen as a source of epidemics in the wider community that any of this becomes an outrage. Ill health of the slums is not regarded as being newsworthy, but that the relatively small number of plague cases were given massive publicity which galvanized the municipal authorities into programs of clearance (MacGillivray, 2005). Globalization increases number of poor and marginalized people deprived a chance of employment. Many of the inhabitants of the slums are ‘ecological refugees’, those people forced from the land by ‘development’ or environmental degradation. There are 50 million people in China who have been displaced from their homes by ‘development’ projects. Given that there is a shortage of cultivable land for ‘oustees’, a significant but unknown proportion of these come as destitutes to the urban centers with few relevant skills and only their labor to sell, refugees in their own country (Stiglitz, 2002). Everything that is consumed in the towns has to be paid for – there is no subsistence sector; every scrap of land for a shack has a rent attached; there is no space to cultivate, no wild products or common grazing, no source of free fuel. Even water may be charged for. Often men who come to the towns in search of a cash income will try to leave their dependants in the rural areas in order to cut living costs, but also to protect them from the conditions of the towns. The very poorest families will need to mobilize the labor of all their members who may well work as a unit, for example on construction sites. There are also the children who have run away from home, been orphaned or deserted who l
Introduction It is worth noting that, in the novel Maps by Nuruddin Farah, the writer examines the problems of national identity through a gender-oriented interpretation of the history of Somalia. In particular, the author portrays the country through the image of a woman who is persecuted by several men, from whom she later gets pregnant but experiences miscarriages in three cases (Farah, 2012). It is important that this allegory represents the five lands of Somalia. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of national self-identification raised in the novel. Discussion The author builds an interesting line of narration in which the general story is transformed into a personal one, and topographical features are narrated at the physiological level. One of the heroines, Misra, is followed by five men and, in consequence, they betray her, and the woman becomes a victim of patriarchal tyranny (Farah, 2012). Through the biological rhythms of the heroine, the reader can draw conclusions about the fate of the nation. Meanwhile, Askar (the main character of the novel and Misra’s son) can interpret the political destiny of the nation through the behavior of his mother. Interestingly, Askar is the son of Somali patriots who gave their lives for the freedom of Ogaden, and his character embodies the striving for nationalism and independence. Moreover, he is a symbol of the liberation of the country from colonialism; however, it is crucial to understand the context in which this symbol is developed. Askar forms his national aspirations in the camp of the enemy. When he was a child, he lost his mother, and Misra decided to take care of him (Farah, 2012). Notably, she was neither his biological mother nor did she belong to the same ethnos as he did. The national identity of the woman is also quite complicated since she was the daughter of an Amhara nobleman and an Oromo woman. She lived in Ethiopia in a Somali family and was perceived by Somalis as Ethiopian. Nonetheless, Misra had more in common with people living on the captured land rather than with the invaders (Farah, 2012). The complexity of her identification was aggravated by the fact that she felt herself a prisoner in the country and, at the same time, in Ethiopia, she was a slave in sexual and social terms. At the end of the book, Misra was brutally murdered, and her body was dismembered into five parts, just like the territory inhabited by Somali tribes. In his book, Farah touched upon an important issue, which is the clash of the morality of the patriarchal society with the new worldview (Farah, 2012). The fate of the main characters reflects the writer’s attempt to comprehend the peculiarities of the collective consciousness and the individual behavior of people who belong to different social categories in a changing socio-cultural environment. Through the fate of Misra and Askar, the author seeks to explain both to the reader and himself what is happening in the country. Conclusion Thus, it can be concluded that
Introduction The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association outlines the guidelines for APA referencing style. The manual offers a valuable aid for writing with ease, power, and conciseness. The APA style has been accepted by various disciplines and is commonly used by writers around the globe. An APA formatted paper is comprised of various sections and sub-sections. Analyzing these sections would be an effective way of understanding the citation style. General Paper Guidelines APA style commences with the general rules that must be followed in formatting an APA-style paper. These guidelines are: the margins of the paper are set at one inch at the sides of the paper, the whole paper is double spaced, single space should be used after all punctuations within a sentence while a double space should be left for punctuation marks used at the end of a sentence, the entire paper is aligned to the left and all the paragraphs indented, page numbers are inserted at the first line of the paper on the right edge of the page, the Running Head; a short title of the paper is inserted at the top of the paper and is flush with the left top of all pages, and as a general rule APA requires that paper be written in an active voice. APA style requires that all papers be ordered as follows: Title Page, Abstract, Body, References, Footnotes, Tables, Figures, and lastly Appendixes (American Psychological Association, 2009). Title Page The title page should always fall on page one. The components of the title page include the Running Head, paper’s title, author or author’s names, institutional affiliation, and the author’s note. All the components of the title page except the Running Head should use both small case and upper case letters and should be centered; the Running Head is flush with the left margin and utilizes the upper case letters only. The author’s note is an optional requirement in APA style and is only used to acknowledge any form of support, provide correspondence address, or the author’s departmental affiliation. Abstract This is an entirely optional section of an APA style paper; however, the guidelines for writing an abstract are provided in the APA style manual. The abstract should be a one-paragraph summary outlining the most significant sections of the paper. The abstract starts from a new page from the title i.e. page two of the paper. The title Abstract is centered just a single line after the Running Head and the abstract commences on the line that falls below the Abstract title. Though specific journals set the limits for the number of words in the Abstract, the limit should an average of 150 to 250 words (American Psychological Association, 2009). Additionally, every number that is contained in t
The video describes a situation of an unjustified treatment of four black men by white police officers ( Four Black Males 2015). As for me, this is a clear example of racism. In my glossary, I define this phenomenon as “unfair, biased, or violent treatment of people on the basis of their belonging to a race different from one’s own.” With this definition in mind, it becomes evident that police officers in the video were not behaving correctly. They stopped a car and made everyone go out of it merely because the driver and all the passengers were black. The officers had no grounds to do so, and it seems that their conduct was driven only by racial views rather than professional opinions. Therefore, this YouTube video of stopping black men in Hannahan County, South Carolina, is an example of such racial practice as the biased behavior of police officers, and it demonstrates that being black serves as an obstacle to receiving fair treatment and be considered as an equal member of society. Such cases harm people psychologically and make them feel limited in actions. In the context of police brutality, officers deprive black men of their humane features and treat them as the ones posing a threat to other members of society. The question raised in this piece of media is that of race discrimination. It is not new, but, sadly, the cases like the one captured in the video occur too frequently in modern society. It seems that it is high time for people to realize that no matter what someone’s skin color is, they are just as much people as anyone else is. In the video, police officers ask people from the car many irrelevant questions and cannot even explain why they are so suspicious about the men ( Four Black Males 2015). Such behavior makes one think of why the officers believe that they are allowed to behave like that. The men in the car did not violate any rules. They did not behave in a way that put anyone under threat. Neither did they express any disrespect towards the officers. Taking into consideration the black men’s manner of conduct and the officers’ reaction, it looks as if the police considered the very fact of being black as something illegal and threatening. Such an attitude cannot be justified and should not be ignored. Every person deserves to be treated equally, irrespective of their skin color. People’s attitudes should be based not on one’s race but on correspondence to social norms and legislation. The video demonstrates that there were no legal premises for making the men walk out of the car and have it checked by a dog. Unfortunately, such events are not rare. In her article, Morales (2015) discusses the same issue that is showed in the video. The author remarks that cases of police departments being biased against black people are too frequent and unexplained (Morales 2015). Moreover, Morales (2015) mentions the instances when police killed black people merely because of suspecting them of being dangerous even though there was no proof of that. Therefore, it is crucial to raise the question of racial equality more and more often. Despite d
It now became a commonplace practice with mainstream Western Media to refer to the participants of the ongoing civil war in Syria in terms of ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’. That is, while covering the recent events in Syria, these Media’s news anchors most commonly refer to the armed insurgents that strive to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad as ‘fighters for freedom’, and to the members of Syrian Armed Forces and Syrian law-enforcing organizations that oppose ‘fighters for freedom’, as the ‘supporters of al-Assad’s criminal regime’. Nevertheless, the validity of such tendency, on the part of Western Medias, is becoming increasingly deprived of any rationale, whatsoever – especially in light of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) recent decision to recognize the ongoing armed violence in Syria as such that represents the classical example of a ‘non-international armed conflict’. 1 The reason for this is apparent – the provisions of International Law, concerned non-international armed conflicts, are being procedurally ‘neutral’. That is, according to these provisions, the extent of a particular combat-action’s legal appropriateness, on the part of either of opposing parties, represents an essentially ‘thing in itself’. In its turn, this implies that the legality/non-legality of combat-actions, as the integral part of non-international armed conflicts, is not being affected by whether these actions serve the cause of ‘promoting democracy’, on the one hand, or the cause of ‘preserving dictatorship’, on the other. In my paper, I will aim to substantiate the validity of this suggestion at length, while also arguing that: a) The ICRC’s classification of the ongoing armed clash in Syria in terms of a ‘civil war’ is not being fully adequate; b) The definition of a ‘non-international armed conflict’ must be adjusted to the realities of a post-industrial/Globalized living; c) The very concept of International Law can no longer be thought of as such represents an undisputed discursive value. The foremost controversial aspect of ICRC’s classification of the currently ongoing armed confrontation between the members of the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’, on the one hand, and the supporters of President Bashar al-Assad, on the other, is the fact that it does not take into account all of this confrontation’s qualitative factors. For example, the classical (accepted by U.N.) definition of a ‘non-international armed conflict’ suggests that, within the context of pro-governmental and anti-governmental combatants indulging in hostilities (civil war), there can be no third-party combatants, which either directly or indirectly represent the interests of foreign states/organizations: Non-international armed conflicts are armed confrontations occurring within the territory of a single State and in which the armed forces of no other State are engaged against the central government… should a foreign State extend military support to an armed group acting against the government, the conflict will become international in character. 2 Nevertheless, there is a plenty of evidence as to the fact that the armed conflict in Syri
Abstract The present paper represents a literature review on the subject of own-race bias – a set of scientific articles reporting about empirical and theoretical studies in the sphere are analyzed to estimate the present-day progress of the research and outline the possible directions of future research that may be undertaken in the discussed sphere. The articles discussed concern the biological, psychological, and societal origins of the ORB effect, examination of its application by representatives of different races in the face recognition of similar-race or cross-race faces. Another sphere that is given a proper account is the investigation of age differences in the expression of the ORB effect as well as consideration of other individual characteristics such as cognitive functioning, racial attitudes, social experiences, etc. Introduction The issue of racial biases has acquired vital importance within the past decade since the debates over racial discrimination have been resumed with greater force and severity. It has always been a proven fact that people have different implicit attitudes towards different categories of people and reveal them in a set of life situations with a frequency that allows speaking about a certain sort of statistics. It is a social and, at the same time, psychological phenomenon that helps understand how people subconsciously treat people and what attitudes and reactions they may cause in them. An individual’s attitude and perception are based on a set of biases that have been formed either historically, culturally, socially, or deliberately by means of education and upbringing outer influence of certain authorities. The biases may be traced to ethical preferences of the young to the old, of people of one race to people of another one, etc. In addition, it is important to note that the racial bias that will be discussed in the present paper is one of the most evident and outlined ones. It is revealed in preferences, better attitudes, and antipathy expressed by people of one race towards representatives either of their ethnicity or of another one. Racial biases have become more important because of the intensifying tempos of globalization and overall social integration: human resources are becoming mobile, people move from one country to another, and big cities are gradually turning into metropolitan areas that host representatives of nearly all countries