ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Introduction A fair number of countries around the world have been criticised for poor human rights implementation. It is essential to study them and determine why these nations have not embraced universal human principles because behind every observation is an underlying ideological or philosophical premise. At this point, one must recognise that there are two divergent ideas that exist in this matter; universalism and relativism (Freeman, 2002). Critics often argue that universal human rights contravene multicultural societies and should therefore be abandoned. However, proponents of universalism argue that humans need to constantly understand each other and also need to seek for ways of improving themselves. To abandon the very notion of universal human rights would be to accept the status quo. These diverse notions have therefore complicated the human rights agenda and need to be critically analysed. Women’s rights and circumcision The issue of female rights as analysed through female genital mutilation (FGM) in various parts of the world provides a unique platform for understanding how challenging universalism of human rights can be. Many societies in Africa and the Middle East engage in this practice; which is a fact that has generated a lot of debate around the issue. Proponents of this practice base their standpoints on three major grounds. They assert that it suppresses sexuality in women thus propagating monogamy. Conversely, it can be understood as a distinct representation of one’s cultural identity. Most individuals who hold this view are actually women who are expected to or who have gone through the practice themselves. Girls in these societies are socialised to respect marriage, so female genital mutilation becomes an important precursor to eligibility for marriage. These women cannot be opposed to the act because if they choose to do, they may be alienated and condemned to a life of loneliness. Circumcision is a platform for identification with one’s community or kinsmen. Other supporters of the practice think of it as a symbol of beauty. The clitoris is perceived as a masculine trait so its removal would reinforce their femininity (Abusharaf, 2001). On the other hand, this practice puts its participants at serious risk of infections, infertility or even tetanus. Those who do it for religious purposes may not find support for it in their holy books such as the Quran. Female genital mutilation can also lead to painful sexual relations, death and very difficult (if not fatal) childbirths. All these effects makes it a seemingly vicious and even torturous act. It is no wonder that the United Nations considers FGM a violation of female rights (More, 2006). Such human rights groups have sought to repress or wipe out the practice altogether (Shute & Hurley, 1993) However, the problem is that making it illegal d
Introduction Odenton, which is in Anne Arundel, Maryland, has experienced a 28.11% population growth rate in the past 10 years. The city is comprised of diverse ethnic groups, the whites being the largest ethnic group, making up to 72.3% of the entire population, while the blacks, the Asian, the Hispanic, and the mixed races make up 27.7% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). An increase in demographic data, however, goes hand in hand with an increase in social amenities, including amenities related to traumatic events. This paper will determine the special needs that infants aged 0-5 years in Odenton would have in time of disaster, and then provide an overview of the current community resources available in Montgomery County to help these infants. Special Needs That Children Aged 0 to 5 Years Would Have In Time of Disaster The rate of population growth for children aged 0 to 5 years in Odenton is highly increasing over the years, as it cur
Amazon.com is an international company which has been in operation for about fifteen years specializing in retail internet marketing. The company has grown by leaps and bounds, from a small corporation to an international master offering a myriad of services in retail sector. Its corporate culture has been focusing on two main areas: customer and shareholder satisfaction as well as rigorous marketing skills of its products to boost its corporate growth. This term paper focuses on the marketing strategies of Amazon.com and how it has contributed to its continual growth in the competitive e-Commerce. As the founder and Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Bezos initially established Amazon.com Inc. as a bookstore in 1994. After one year of operation, the company went online and soon expanded its operations by offering an assortment of products beyond books such as music media (MP3s, DVDs and CDs), electronics, toys and other household goods. The company became the “Earth’s Largest Selection” meeting the needs of customers from diverse cultural and social background (Qin, 2009). In 1997, Amazon.com Inc announced it Initial Public Offering shareholding. Since then, the corporate culture at Amazon.com has been obsession with customer demands hence the need to develop vibrant marketing alongside innovating on behalf of customers. Its customer base now stands at about 45 million. Amazon uses various marketing strategies in its international business. At present, there are six pillars of strategic marketing which Amazon.com has embarked on. The first pillar is the free offering of products and services. Secondly, it has an interface that is customer friendly at all times since according to its business philosophy, the customer is the most important asset the company owns. Additionally, the company has the ability to scale its products and services depending on the desired amount i.e. from large to small and vice versa. Further, Amazon.com largely explores and makes use of products and services that are affiliated to it. This is achieved through the use of the existing infrastructural systems needed in running the business such as communication (Plant, 2000). Finally, the company has laid much emphasis of psychological marketing through the utilization of mentalities and behavioural patterns that are universally accepted. Contrary to the normal modes of international marketing strategies, Amazon.com Inc. does not directly market its products to the target customers. Its marketing strategy is more subliminal or hidden owing to the fact that it does not spend millions of dollars in buying advertising space such as billboards, TV ads or making use of flyers in public places. The company depends heavily on online ploys, viable relationship development with its partners alongside continual improvement on the quality of its products and services that eventually attracts customers. Amazon.com Financials The chart below shows Amazon.com financial statement on the vol
Global strategy involves the ability of a company to use different productive approaches in order to remain competitive in the present dynamic business environment. A company, therefore, should have a large capital base or high liquidity so that it can survive the fluctuations in the market trend. In employing strategic management in their operations, companies formulate, implement, and evaluate various decisions in order to facilitate achievement of the set goals and objectives. These companies have to take command or control of the functions such as managing their Working Capital (WC) and engaging in an effective cash flow forecasting. The management should invent new sources of funds that are mostly internal or externals that attract minimal interests (Sagner 2011). In avoiding external sources of business finance, organizations try to maintain their high liquidity. The cash flow trend enables organizations to plan into the future on how they intend to navigate various hurdles and tap existing opportunities. For instance, if an organization predicts that there are times when there will be more cash inflow than outflow, it can develop avenues in which the funds will give good returns to the business other than remaining idle. Organizations also monitor avenues where they commit their funds. This vivid follow up will enable organizations to avoid engaging in activities that were not planned for at the beginning. A properly managed WC can also enable an organization to make quick decisions in the products to continue supplying to their customers and those that should be withdrawn from the inventory. This process gives the management the opportunity to study the inventory and stock products that do not hold cash for a longtime. The customers’ satisfaction remains guaranteed hence their retention. This makes the firm to get profit over a continuous period. Consequently, the firm maintains a competitive advantage over others. The readily available funds can enable the orga
Moving into action was the next step and a new realm of modern art. It received a new understanding and became interdisciplinary. The relationship between the audience and a work of art was drastically transformed from observation to involvement as for the first time the viewer was placed in the art context. It managed to encompass time, space, the performer, and the observer as pieces of one whole. Joseph Beuys, whose work is associated with the Fluxus movement, managed to cover all possible media including sculpture, painting, drawing, and action art in various combinations. The subjects ranged from political and social to psychological issues and the material usually united the organic with the synthetic to symbolize inseparability of nature and civilization. This idea is especially evident in How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare – a performative piece uniting the artist, honey, gold, metal, felt, and music. Every item is symbolic: honey stands for life, gold – for riches, hare – for death, metal is perceived as a means of conducting spiritual energy whereas felt is associated with safety. Bruce Nauman attempted to unite Conceptualism, Minimalism, performance, and video arts with the purpose to create a unique ironical and often absurd artistic space based on his interest in political and philosophic issues. Political performance can be found in the South American Triangle depicting a suspended chair that is being tortured. It was aimed to criticize the totalitarian regime of South Africa and South America. One of the works featuring philosophic implications is One Hundred Live and Die that consists of four columns with 100 words connected with life and death (associated with different emotions and colors). Yoko Ono was the pioneer of Conceptual Art. Her legacy marked a new step of performance: involvement of the viewer in the process of work completion. Since she rejected the idea that art had to be an object, many of her pieces were processes: e.g. Cloud Piece suggests the audience imagine digging a hole in the ground and filling it with clouds. In Cut Piece , she invited viewers to cut pieces of her garment to address the topics of materialism, gender, and class.
Ten years prior to George W. Bush was sworn into office as the US President, there was hardly a common position on matters related to foreign policy. In other words, most of the officials who were later absorbed as part and parcel of president’s advisers had separate views on delicate and sensitive foreign issues should be handled. According to Mazaar, the policy window that was opened immediately after George W. Bush got into office was a major step towards establishing strong foreign policy of the United States (12). The author asserts that the new regime had a deep desire to establish its authority in foreign nations that were particularly defying international law and order. There was also need to enhance the state of global peace and co-existence due to the weakening relations between the East and the West. The Post Cold War era was undergoing difficult times and therefore, the Bush administration wanted to create a new face through which the world would be a secure place. One of the top agendas for the Bush government was to out Saddam Hussein from power. The Iraq president was deemed to be a real threat to US interest abroad and also to the world at large. The US authorities under President George W. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was actively manufacturing chemical weapons that could be used any time to launch attacks to suspected hostile nations (Woodward, ‘Plan of Attack’ 26). While the above foreign objectives were crucial in the working agenda of the Republican officials, it is imperative to mention that there had been plans to execute these agendas even ten years before George W. Bush came into power. Mazaar is quite emphatic that the Defense Policy Guidance of 1992 mapped out the Iraq war in a broad manner (16). Therefore, the 2003 invasion of Saddam’s government was not anything new among the Republicans. Before the invasion of Iraq, the military prowess and funding of the American army was probably given priorit
Introduction Topic Description Homelessness is a major problem affecting many people in the United States. Isogai (2016) indicates that over 3.5 million US citizens become homeless in the country. This fraction includes around 0.3 million children. Studies have indicated that most of the homeless people have faced one or more life altering occurrences or events. Experts have gone further to indicate that homelessness is caused by a wide range of forces such as domestic violence, job loss, loss of family heads, and domestic disputes (Diebacker, Arhant, & Harner, 2015). Individuals who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), drug abuse, mental illness, and disability will have increased chances of becoming homeless. These factors force many individuals to leave their homes and eventually become homeless. The problem is also known to have numerous effects and impacts on the lives of many people. Human service professionals have been providing suitable support to many individuals in order to get temporary shelter. Although these measures have not delivered permanent solutions to the predicament, the agreeable fact is that they have supported a fraction of the affected people. Relevance to Social Work The statutory sector has implemented a wide range of strategies and initiatives to deal with various social problems such as homelessness and poverty. The sector uses adequate financial resources to set up temporary structures for many homeless citizens. The practice has attracted a small number of professionals such as psychologists, public health experts, and social workers to support the implemented programs. However, the role of social workers has not been exhausted (Isogai, 2016). This process has made it impossible for many children and homeless adults to lead quality lives. Social work skills have been unavailable to more people in the society. These complexities explain why the level of homelessness has continued to increase steadily in the country. The new study will analyze how different programs such as the Housing First have managed to minimize the impacts of homelessness. It will also examine the initiatives taken up by the social work function to deal with the problem of homelessness in the country. Reasons for Selecting the Topic Some agencies such as the Salvation Army, Rescue Missions, Volunteers for America, and HomeAid have been implementing different programs to deal with the problem of homelessness (Diebacker et al., 2015). The roles and duties undertaken by these organizations have delivered viable solutions to the homelessness quandary. Although these agencies have constructed and renovated multi-unit apartments or shelters to house many people, the agreeable fact is that many people are still affected by the current problem. The purpose of selecting this topic was to understand the unique gaps that were affecting the major strategies aimed at tackling the issue of homelessness. The completed study will be aimed at analyzing the effectiveness of the Housing Firs
Introduction A counseling theory that focuses on wholeness of a person is Gestalt Therapy. It offers so much to prospective clients in search of understanding their present circumstances. It is concerned with the whole well-being of a person – emotional, cognitive and even the physical manifestations of an individual’s problems. Gestalt Therapy is an existential-phenomenological approach which aims for clients to gain awareness of what they are experiencing and how they are doing it. It is existential because it is grounded on the notion that people are always in the process of becoming, remaking and rediscovering themselves. It is phenomenological because it focuses on the client’s perceptions of reality. To fully understand his conflicts, a client needs to re-experience significant scenes in his life that are responsible for it. The therapist is a trusted companion in the experience who helps him gain a better understanding of the consequences of such experience. It is believed that no matter how painful that experience is, the client needs to confront it with the help of creative techniques or experiments facilitated by a skilled therapist who uses his wise judgment and perfect timing in the choice of a productive experiment. The client needs to go through the painful experience again with more objective and sensitive thinking in the able company of the therapist. It is like gold going through fire so that it can be refined and polished. The therapist needs to be thoroughly trained in reading and interpreting a client’s verbal and more importantly, non-verbal communication and adept enough in bringing out the real feelings and thoughts of the client out in the open. Gestalt theories seem to have borrowed ideas from Psychoanalytic theories and modified it to suit its own theories. Its “channels of resistance to contact” parallels Freud’s “defense mechanisms”. Likewise, it delves deep into an individual’s dreams. Such focus on deep, underlying meanings behind a person’s actuations and speech entails thoroughness and depth in the study of the unconscious. The wisdom expected of a Gestalt therapist is reminiscent of the biblical Joseph the dreamer who has used his gift of interpreting dreams accurately to win the favor of men while giving glory to God, as he always acknowledged that the interpretation of the dreams came from Him. Joseph was humble enough to admit that God was only using him as an instrument to uncover truths. If Joseph’s ability for dream interpretation is natural, a Gestalt therapist’s is acquired through careful study and training. Aside from that, he should learn various techniques that require a client to act on his resistance to uncomfortable truth
UK Tort Law: Contributory Negligence, Voluntary Assumption, Illegality, and Limitation Contributory negligence is a term that is dual in its meaning: it can either refer to a contribution an individual has made to an accident or when several parties have been responsible for causing an accident in which another party experienced a loss or an injury. For instance, in Anthony Phee v. James Gordon and Niddry Castle Golf Club, CSIH (2013), the first party was found to hold 70% of the blame while the second was accountable for 30% of the blame. Voluntary assumption of risk refers to the cases in which a plaintiff was aware of a possible risk; however, it still puts him or herself in a position in which such a risk can cause damage. The voluntary assumption of risk usually has two components: the knowledge of risk and voluntary action to proceed with the risk. In UK law, the illegality of a transaction (because of legislation or public policy) means that no action that is directly associated with the deal will be considered and reviewed in the court. The key issue regarding illegality occurs when the court does not enforce an agreement in which an innocent party can recover its property that was transferred to another one through a transaction. Limitation refers to a period of time during which a contract’s party is obliged to bring a claim. Limitation periods have been defined by the Limitation Act of 1980, which allowed actions for torts and contract breaches (e.g., negligence). In McHugh v. Gray, EWHC 1968 (QB) (2007), the claimant sought damages for “personal injuries by a consultant psychiatrist who had a moderate degree of post-traumatic stress disorder” (para. 1). The claimant made an allegation that the diagnosis was not right, which contributed to the damage of his relationships and increased abuse of drugs. As a result, in order not to apply the limitation period under the Act, the judge used discretion even in cases where the prejudice directed at the defendant was minor (McHugh v. Gray, EWHC 1968 (QB), 2007). Oil and Gas Law: Implied Covenants in Gas and Oil Leases The term “covenant” refers to an agreement established between two or more parties. An implied covenant is the one that can be reasonably “inferred from the whole agreement and the conduct of parties” (Hall, 2010, p. 313). It is generally recognized that implied covenants exist in any contract, with the most commonly reviewed covenants being implied covenants of fair dealing or hood faith (Hall, 2010). It has been found (in courts) that such an implied duty of good faith can also exist within the context of gas and oil leases. Furthermore, at present, the existence of implied covenants in gas and oil leases is universally accepted, although they are generally not accepted in the transfers of real estate. While regulations regarding implied covenants can vary between jurisdictions, the most recognized ones are duties of reasonable development, drainage p
Introduction Researchers, child psychologists, policy makers and other theorists have demonstrated increased interest in the broad topic of drinking alcohol during pregnancy and the health risks associated with this behavior. Indeed, some of the available literature has focused attention to not only evaluating the unnecessary risks posed to the unborn child by engaging in drinking while pregnant, but also providing a framework through which women can understand how they could contribute to long-term health, behavioral and personality problems of their children by drinking during pregnancy (Zammit et al., 2008). It has, however, proved difficult to occasion a positive behavior change in women who drinks during pregnancy due to the reason that drinking as a social behavior is culturally defined, thus different cultures perceives the issue differently in the absence of a standardized yardstick to guide and direct policy interventions (Alvik et al., 2006). This paper purposes to critically discuss the issue of drinking during pregnancy with a view to explain why it poses unnecessary risks to the development of the unborn baby. Nearly all civilizations across the world have some recorded episodes of alcohol use as a social unifier, and hence its dependence to maintain the social fabric (Alvik et al., 2006). This cultural orientation have served to entrench to people some misguided perceptions about drinking habits to a point where alcohol has become a national problem in some countries, especially in the developed world. The long-drawn court battles between beer-manufacturing congl