ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
The theme of war was always the most troubling theme of human existence. In general, it is considered to be a disaster, an action disapproved by human minds and reality perception. As Colman McCartny pointed out, “warmaking doesn’t stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago” (Lewis). However, there are people for whom war is like an obsession, a drug they do not want to reject. The confirmation of this statement is presented in the film The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow. Our essay is devoted to the investigation of a question: was the war an obsession and a drug for Sergeant James, the main character of the movie? The movie depicts the post-invasion period in Iraq in 2004. The plot tells about the special detachment of the American army which task was to make 38 days operation of making bombs safe. At the beginning of The Hurt Locker, there is a phrase: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug” (Hedges, 3). Thus this theme, that a war is like a drug is the central aspect of the movie. Sergeant William James is the personage who embodied this idea. The first scene that proves this opinion is when James’s task was to make safe a bomb in the car during Bravo’s company. Even though the conditions of bomb neutralization were more than dangerous, James took off his special uniform, threw away headphones, and continued his work. Though his methods of acting were considered to be unorthodox by Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge, it did not stop Sergeant James to complete his challenge. For a person who made safe 873 bombs, that task was a point of honor. Thus, we can see that such operations for Sergeant James were like additional portions of adrenaline he could not live without. The second scene giving more evidence that war was a drug for Sergeant James is when Sergeant James, Sergeant J.T. Sanborn, and Specialist Owen Eldridge drank alcohol and relaxed after the hard operation to eradicate terrorists. In this scene, Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge found a box of James’s things. While watching them they discovered that among son photos there were parts of different bombs. At this moment Sergeant James began to tell them in what operations were those parts obtained. But the most important fact worth our attention is his remark when he said that the box contained all things that threatened his life. From this scene, we can conclude that the war for Sergeant James was not the source of adrenaline, but the goal of his life. James is a person who likes to play with fire and walk on the razor’s edge. Adrenaline for the sake of adrenaline was his aim. The third scene that influenced his attitude to life and people and of course the scene that proved our theory as well, was when James found a dead body of a boy while a raid on a warehouse. It was an areal shock for him because, on the one hand, he thought it was “Beckham”, a boy that sold him DVDs. On the other hand, James had a son in America. The tragic episode al
Introduction The feminist movement is spread all over the world, and more and more people are sharing their values. In the context of the modern era, the position of women has changed. Discrimination based on gender is slowly vanishing from our reality, though it is still an issue in emerging countries. The patriarchal type of relations has almost disappeared, and household duties are usually shared by family members. Such positive changes would be impossible without the influence of passionate women, who stand for their rights. Although the feminist movement is still making a huge impact on global society, some of its aspects have changed throughout time, and this paper is focused on observing the present-day agenda in comparison with previous goals and achievements of feminism. Liberal Feminism Liberal Feminism The definition of liberal feminism is the following: “a particular approach to achieving equality between men and women that emphasizes the power of an individual person to alter discriminatory practices against women” (“Liberal Feminism: Definition & Theory” par. 2). In other words, it is based on the idea that in a democratic system women can create an equal society where law and men respect them. It should be noted that democratic institutions have developed significantly, so nowadays women have more opportunities for action. However, every movement has different directions, and liberal feminism can be addressed from two points of view: middle-class and working-class feminism. Middle-class Feminism The division by class here is for a reason. A famous activist bell hook claims that in the US middle-class white women had more opportunities to fight for their interests than women from other class and race (hooks 6). It means that privileged women had access to media, universities, and other public institutions, unlike others, so they could easier address the large audience. The problems that middle-class feminists were highlighting mostly concerned about their isolation and inequality in the labor market. “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan, which illustrated the sad truth about the life goals of women, provoked a massive reaction and protest. Friedan disagreed with the nationwide promotion of early marriages and family as the only goal for women and revealed the problem of never questioning. It was torturing women, who did not even realize their true state of mind (Friedan 54). Hence, the movement became focused on highlighting women’s individuality and abilities to make an impact in society along with men. Working-class Feminism The status of working-class women was always vulnerable and open to debate. Firstly, as workers, they had to face the dehumanizing nature of labor and suffered from poverty daily. Furthermore, they were suspicious about middle-class women’s attempts to get a place at the labor market and knew that this liberation movement threatened their jobs (hooks 98). Therefore, the main struggle for them was to get decently paid and to avoid total discrimination. All in all, liberal feminism was reflected in massive protests and public speeches, which finally reached many of its primary goals. In 1920
The Qing dynasty, also known as the Manchu, ruled the Imperial China between 1611 and 1911. Not only did the dynasty perfect imperialism in China, but also went on to extend the borders of China during the 267 years (Historical Legacies). After witnessing numerous successes in the 18 th century, the Qing dynasty began to experience both internal and external problems that led to its disintegration in the 19 th century. Western pressure, economic debacles, overpopulation, revolts, a complicated governance system, the rise of Sun Yat-Sen, and peasant upheavals are some of the changes that made it difficult for the Qing dynasty to respond to confrontations of the 19 th century and effectively reform China. The court’s decision to cut-off China from the rest of the world led to a decline in radicalism in technological developments and enhancements, thus preventing it from becoming a world superpower. The cut-off made it easier for Europeans to conquer China and other less fortunate nations, making China fall under European colonization. The extraordinary invasion of their nation infuriated the Chinese, who demanded immediate evacuation of their land. The Europeans took advantage of the situation to demand compensation for their efforts, and they ended-up reaping Chinese land and tones of silver. When they went to war in the 1800s, Europeans effortlessly overcame the resistance by the Qing navy and army. Foreign advancements and attacks continued from countries like France, Britain, Germany, and Japan. The isolation policy by the colonial court proved to be a great undoing for the Qing dynasty. Attempts by some organizations like Boxers to apply guerilla tactics in repelling the Europeans were futile given the superior nature of weapons that the Europeans possessed. Of great surprise was the Boxers’ rebellion to the ruling Qing dynasty. The opposition by the Chinese peasants weakened the dynasty, such that it was unable to address the challenges of the 19 th century and reform China as well. Historical Legacies held that “…massive peasant uprisings…” distorted the plans of the Qing dynasty to effectively reform China. These numerous internal and external wars provided a weak platform for the Qing dynasty to counter the 19 th century’s challenges and reform China. Clearly, the focus to guard their borders against invasion by foreigners coupled with the inferior weapons made it difficult for the Qing dynasty to address numerous challenges that it faced in the 19 th century. Moreover, the exclusion of China from the rest of the world brought backwardness in improvements, which resulted in inabil
Introduction The present paper provides an example of statistical analysis using IBM’s Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The dataset under analysis was provided by the Ohio Department of Education. It includes information on ten variables from 25 school districts. This paper focuses on the analysis of two variables, which are the Percentage of Disadvantaged Students and Total Expenses per Student. The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate how SPSS can be used to gain valuable financial information from a set of data. Variables The first variable under analysis is the Percentage of Disadvantaged Students in the selected districts. It is labeled “DisadvanStud(%)” and includes continuous numeric data that can vary from zero to 100. The Total Expenses per Student is labeled TotExpensePerStud is also includes continuous currency data that can meaningfully accommodate values from $0 to infinity. Both variables are ratio measurement scales with meaningful zeros, as the variables are named, ordered, with proportionate intervals between variables, and with meaningful zero values (Pyrczak, 2016). There is no missing data about these variables, which helps to avoid bias in the inferential analysis. SPSS SPSS is a software package used by a wide variety of researchers to analyze statistical data of various types. It was created in 1968 by SPSS Inc., which was later acquired by IBM (Foley, 2018). SPSS is valued for its straightforward command language and a thorough user manual (Foley, 2018). Even though the package is rather expensive and has free analogs, such as R Studio, SPSS is considered a gold standard for data analysis in social science, which makes if a very successful product (Foley, 2018). While the software package has a wide variety of functions, the present paper will use it only for computing descriptive statistics of two variables and visualizing the findings. Descriptive Statistics Descriptive statistics are used to summarize the information on the variables included in a dataset. This type of statistics can be used to describe an entire population or a sample from the population of interest (Kenton, 2019). Descriptive statistics can be divided into central tendency and variability measures (Kenton, 2019). The descriptive statistics of the two variables is provided in Table 1 below. The test results will be discussed in the following subsections. Table 1. Descriptive statistics. Central Tendency Central tendency measures include mean, median, and mode values. The mean value is commonly known as the average value, and it can be calculated by adding all the values and dividing them by the number of values (Pyrczak, 2016). The median is the middle value of the entire dataset when arranged in ascending or descending order (Pyrczak, 2016). The mode is the most frequent score in the dataset (Pyrczak, 2016). As seen in Table 1, the mean of the Percentage of the Disadvantaged Students is 42.35%, the median is 30.9%, and the mode is 100%. The mean of the Total Expense per Student was $13,055, the median is $12,212, and the mode is $9,040. While all of the central tendency measures have th
Introduction Management is the process where activities are coordinated in a business to meet an organization’s goals and objectives. In the changing world with competition, there is need to adopt policies and strategies that facilitate efficiency and effectiveness in all processes. Total quality management is a management tool which aims at ensuring that all processes in a business contribute positively to the overall conduct of the business. TQM has both hard and soft parts. Soft parts consider the contribution of employees and the relations that they have with their employer. On the other hand, hard policies are more focused on physical assets which are used for production of goods and services (Paley 19). This paper will compare and contrast TQM policies adopted by Toyota Motor Company and Emirates Airlines. Brief history of the Two Companies Both Toyota and Emirates Airlines are more or less in the same industry; transport industry. Emirates Airline is an international airline company that is spreading to various countries. Currently, it has over 100 destinations. It is the major airline in Middle East and the national airline for Dubai, Unites Arabs emirates. It is a sub-subsidiary of Dubai Investment Company, through The Emirates Group. The company was incorporated in the year 1985 as an international flight company and made the first flight to Dubai-Karachi on 25 October 1985. It was incorporated with the assistance of the government of Dubai’s royal family but the intervention of the government was limited. Toyota is a multinational company found in Japan and it is the leading automobile car makers and seller in the world. It was incorporated in 1937; its founder is Kiichiro Toyoda. According to fortune global survey 500 of 2008, it was the fifth largest company in the world. The company is structured in a no extra ordinary way and has departments like any other multinationals in the world; however the achievement of the company has made it different in performance a thing that proves that something extra happens. In 2008, it was able to surpass General motor company as the world largest automobile seller in the world. What has made the company go this far? The answer is in the quality of its management and the interaction of brand as well the loyalty that it derives from its customers. The number of employees in the company stands at 320,590 distributed in different parts of the world (Black 20). Hard T.Q.M. Emirate Airlines operate in a fast changing air line industry where there has been an increased competition. One of the most recent is low cost services. On the other hard, due to globalization, there has been an influx of international airline companies fighting for the same market. In the efforts of ensuring that the company has remained competitive, it has embarked on massive capital investments. By the year 1987, the company had expanded its destinations to reach eleven in total. It is one of the few start ups that recorded a break even at th
In a considerate and inspiring participation in the existing argument as regards to the meaning of extensive culture and multiculturalism, Gary Okihiro investigates the importance of Asian Americans in history and civilization. In a few confrontational and charming articles, he scrutinizes the Asian American experience from the viewpoint of historical awareness, ethnicity, sex, societal rank and background. The ongoing debate pertains to the concept of mainstream in relation to American history and tradition, as well as risks of moving away from original establishments that have made America a great nation. Okihiro argues that pluralism and multiplicity only exist to segregate and fracture the country. The society uses Western civilization as a yardstick for measuring other cultures. The ongoing debate demands that the principle of “great books” should be regained and conserved and individuals on the margins, particularly the culturally marginalized, should be encouraged to join the majority. In fact, Okihiro posits in his works ‘Margins and Mainstreams’ that the central principles and standards of the country in the modern society come not from the supposed majority but from the minorities that is, from amongst Asians, Africans, Latinos, Indians and probably women. These groups, in their efforts towards egalitarianism, have facilitated protection and advancement of the founders’ principles and have made America a more liberal place for each person to exercise his/her rights. While unearthing extra meanings of Asian American public history, Okihiro digs deeper into the academic basics and postulations of the discipline of Asian American. Through analysis, the writer describes the supremacy of Euro centrism and other pecking orders in the key premises that enlighten the discipline. His writings compare the Asian American tribulations with those of African Americans, as well as Latinos. Although Okihiro agrees that the major problem in America is discrimination against the black race, other aspects call for attention among history scholars. The Asian race has suffered a lot from stereotyping and labeling. The Chinese have frequently been termed as pirates because of producing reprints while Japanese are viewed as smugglers and gamblers. This kind of treatment has caused sufferings to the victims but studies have not paid much attention on the issue. Latinos are accused of drug trafficking and engaging in illegal trades. Some laws have been passed to minimize the influence of Mexicans in America. The Arizona bill threw out most foreigners from Mexico. Throughout history, women have never enjoyed civil liberties mainly because of male patriarchy. This has been a major issue but scholars have not considered it to be much serious than racism. Women are expected to take care of the home while men enjoy other important societal activities such as employment and freedom to associat
Introduction It is imperative to note that both “Memex Revisited” and “Personal dynamic media” have been incredibly important, and authors have discussed the concepts that would later lead to the creation of the Internet. It is paramount to say that several similarities and differences between the devices that are proposed are present. Discussion Comparisons One of the most important aspects that need to be discussed is that both these articles have focused on the flexibility of the devices. The authors have mentioned that a broad range of functions is necessary, and it is paramount to make sure that a user can use them to their full potential. Another important aspect that needs to be discussed is that a significant similarity between the purposes of the proposed devices is certainly present. Kay & Goldberg (1977) suggested that it is important to focus on entertainment aspects of computer systems that were previously not explored (p. 173). Another similarity that is worth mentioning is that it is mentioned how an ability to edit records is essential in both of these works. This fact is so important because authors realized the potential to make changes to photos and music that such devices may have. It needs to be said that this aspect was not mentioned that often and was not fully utilized at that time. Contrasts The biggest difference that needs to be noted is that user interface is viewed as one of the most important factors that are considered during the design process of Dynabook. On the other hand, it is mentioned only briefly in the second article and this aspect should not be disregarded. It is imperative to note that this fact is essential because a significant improvement in the convenience is quite noticeable. Another dissimilarity that needs to be noted is that Bush (1967) has mentioned how compression is an important aspect that needs to be considered during the creation of the device to reduce the costs (p. 204). On the other hand, the authors of the second article did not view it as a significant constraint and mostly have focused on functions that the device may be able to perform. It needs to be said that the way some of them are described is truly astounding. An enormous dissimilarity between the suggested sizes of these devices also needs to be noted. This facto
Introduction A Description of the Chosen Area of Practice The chosen area of practice is potential drug usage among female athletes and if there is any relation between drug usage and ethnicity. To my mind, this is a very urgent topic, as a lot of people are drug addicts now, and many of them are athletes and the majority are females. And this causes great trouble in the world of athletes. These girls and women need help, as well as men do. But it is much harder to cure a woman of a drug addict than a man. Another topic that interests me as well is the existence of any kind of relationship between drug usage and ethnicity. Do people of different races and nationalities get used to drugs faster than others? It is also a very interesting and sufficient topic to research. Do some genes or social motivations and factors influence people’s minds, making them get used to drugs faster? All these are the topics to research. A Description of the Significance of This Application The significance of this application is at its core. Drugs are one of the main problems in contemporary society. Too many people are addicts to them. The first point, that interests me, is female drug addicts. It is widely known, that it is harder to cure a woman of any kind of addiction than a man. It is due to the different psychology of men and women. Women are more impressible and sensitive, that is why the first try of any kind of substance causing addiction is the first step to becoming an addict. Concerning sport, it is also widely known that women are more enthusiastic about their wins and prizes and they want to show themselves in a better way as they can. And in this order, they train a lot, and sometimes they decide to use drugs to improve their achievements. Drugs give some certain results though they damage health and mind a lot and a woman or a girl needs immediate help. The second point that interests me and is of great significance is drug usage. Frankly speaking, I’m speaking of any relations between drug usage and ethnicity. It is known that the majority of drug addicts live in Africa and South America. So why do people take drugs here? What caused this? What influences peoples’ minds making them take prohibited pills and substances? I’m rather interested in this topic. Literature Review In Women’s Sports Foundation, I have found an article, confirming my idea of why female athletes take drugs: The Foundation is against any unreasonable invasion of privacy and believes that drug testing is an intrusion into the physical person that constitutes an unreasonable search when drug testing is conducted without cause. However, the Foundation believes that the pressure to win in the elite level sport is cause to suspect drug use in sport. Therefore