Exercise 11 - 15

Exercise 11

a.     Blood pressure (BP) is a force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels, and is one of the principal vital signs. During each heartbeat, BP varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure. The mean BP, due to pumping by the heart and resistance in blood vessels, decreases as the circulating blood moves away from the heart through arteries. It has its greatest decrease in the small arteries and arterioles, and continues to decrease as the blood moves through the capillaries and back to the heart through veins.[1] Gravity, valves in veins, and pumping from contraction of skeletal muscles, are some other influences on BP at various places in the body.

b.     The crime rate is measured by the number of offenses being reported per 100,000 people. While the crime rate had risen sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s, bringing it to a constant all-time high during much of the 1980s, it has drastically declined ever since 1993. One hypothesis suggests there is a causal link between legalized abortion and the drop in crime during the 1990s.[2] Another possibility is the introduction of the Three Strikes Law in 1993 by state governments which saw felony offenders who committed a third offence receive life imprisonment.

Exercise 12

Human Right and Democracy

It is intellectually fashionable to observe that due to the end of the cold war the promotion of human rights and democracy will be restored to the front burner, will be placed high in the hierarchy of priorities of the International community. After all, the argument goes, soviet totalitarianism is dead and the United States and the West no Communist virus, in order to ‘protect’ the free world. The advancement in the telecommunications and technologies also makes it more difficult, we are thus in a completely new era- a New Order as it proverbially called-that has no historical precedent: the lessons and patterns of the past no longer apply in the present. Yes, its is regrettable that democracy and human inevitable. However assured that future would be distinctly different.

           

In my view, such a conviction suffers from historical amnesia and intellectual shallowness. It is more the product of the intricate western ideological control systems than of any rigorous analysis or understanding of the past and present. In one stroke, the crime perpetrated by the United States and the West during the cold war are absolved, and their tarnished image is polished and redeemed Hence, the unjust Western dominated global order is – and has for centuries been – represented as benign and benevolent. Examining the second half of the twentieth century, Edward said, a leading scholar of culture and justify domination in culture terms that has been the case in the wet since the ninetieth century, and even earlier Simply put, the complete-break-with-the-past scenario is a deception, a great and global one indeed! Continuities between the old and the ‘new’ world orders are rife, and it takes a great deal of intellectual and ideological obfuscation to miss them A closer look reveals that the new global order is in essence the old wine in a new bottle.

           

It is widely assumed that the Persian Gulf War parted the curtain to the New World Order, to an order where the principle of non-aggression and international norms of decency such as human rights are seriously observed. At least this what was then US President George Bush jubilantly told the world. And this from a man who, prior to the war against Iraq, had ordered the invasion of Panama, an act which many renown international lawyers see as illegal. For any lawful purposes, and that invasion by 24,000 troops inflicting several hundred causalities and much property damage, and overthrowing an incumbent government- was out of any proportion to the attacks on US personnel cited, to the desire to bring Nireiga to trial, or to anything else in the circumstances that might remotely contribute to a right to use force in self-defense.

Exercise 13

What Is Science?

Science refers  to the logical, systematic methods by which Knowledge is obtained and to the actual body of knowledge produced by these methods. The sciences are usually divided into two main branches : the natural sciences, which study physical and biological phenomena, and the social sciences, which study various aspects of human  behavior. There are important differences between  the two branches, but both have  the same commitment to the scientific method. All science, natural and social, assumes that there is some underlying order in the universe. Event, whether they involve molecules or human beings, are not haphazard. They follow a pattern that is sufficiently regular for generalization  to be made about them. It is possible to generalize, for example, that hydrogen and oxygen will always form water if they are combined at an appropriate temperature. Similarly, it is possible to generalize that all human societies Will create some system of marriage and family. Generalizations are crucial to science because they place  isolated, seemingly meaningless events in patterns we can understand. It then becomes possible to analyze relationships of cause and thus to explain why  some thing happens and to predict that is will happen again under the same  conditions in the future.

Science relies for its generalization, explanation, and predictions on careful, systematic  analysis of verifiable evidence – that is, evidence that can be checked by others and will always yield the same results. Nonscientific, common –sense explanations, on the other hand, are based  on belief. The ancient Romans, for example, believed the sun is drawn across the skies each day by a god in a chariot, although none  of them had actually seen this happen. Scientists have since observed, of course, that the apparent movement of the sun is caused by the daily rotations of the earth, an observation any competent scientific approach gives a more reliable interpretation of reality than common – sense assumptions.

This does not mean that  common sense cannot provide accurate  explanations and predictions ; it can, and often does. However, the problem is that without using methods of science, there is  no way to tell whether common sense is correct. For centuries common sense told people that  the world is the center of the universe and that the earth is flat.  Using scientific methods, Copernicus found that the world is simply one planet among others; and the investigations of Columbus and other geographers proved that the earth is round. In making their factual investigations, these men and others  like them risked their reputations and sometimes even their lives, for their findings contradicted important social beliefs of the time. But their challenge to ideas held dear  by their societies tells us some thing else about science:  there are no areas so sacred that science cannot explore them.  Any question that can be answered  by the scientific method is, in principle, an appropriate subject for scientific inquiry-even if the investigation  and the findings outrage powerful interests or undermine cherished values. Yet science is not arrogant: it recognizes no ultimate, final truths. The body of scientific knowledge at any particular moment represents nothing more than the most logical interpretations of the existing data. It is always possible that new facts will come to light or that the available data will be reinterpreted in a new way, shattering the existing assumptions. Science therefore takes nothing for granted: everything is always open for further testing, reinterpretation, correction, and even refutation. That is why scientists, and especially sociologists, are so often “the destroyers of myths” (Elias, 1978). And sometimes the myths they destroy are their own.

Exercise 14

a.     Special meetings of the shareholders may be called, for any purpose or purposes, by the President of Board of Directors of the Company, and shall be held at such time, such place or on such date, as the President, as the case may be, shall fix.

b.     Human development has two sides; One is formation of human capabilities, such as knowledge and skills, and the other is, the use people make of their capabilities themselves, for productive purposes, leisure or being active in social, cultural and political affairs as a whole.

An Overview of the Training Process

“We must lead to the particulars themselves, and their series and order; while men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and….familiarize themselves with facts.”

-----FRANCIS BACON

“……any change in any of the factors, independent of the way in which it is brought about, will, by the aggregate weight of the cumulative effect running back and forth between them all, start the whole system moving…..with a speed depending upon the original push and the functions of causal interrelation with the system.”

---GUNNAR MYRDAL

THE FOCUS of training right at the very  outset is on a person- on- the- job-in-the-organization—all of this whole amalgam. Wherever it moves during the training process, the same starting point becomes the focus again at the end, hopefully with a difference. The difference lies in what-the-person-has-learned-that-he-now-applies. That difference, in terms of actually more effective behavior, is the measure of the effectiveness of training. It is essential to insist on this starting point and goalpost, and on this measure. Complicated as it is, and much as we may wish to reject the complication, nothing less will do.

We will separate the process into there phases: pre-training, training, and post-training. “preparation”, and “follow up” would be more graceful words to use. But they would hide the important fact that each phase has preparatory and follow-up parts, not the training phase alone.

Exercise 15

DRAWN BREAKS OVER Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku subway station. Groups of homeless men roll up their blue tarpaulins and begin rummaging through garbage cans for food. Not for away, trendy restaurant are throwing out the night’s uneaten dinners, part of the 6,000 tonnes of food that-according to some estimates-is dumped every day in Asia’s wealthiest city.

Unavoidable waste? Charles McJilton, an American Activist working with Tokyo’s homeless, doesn’t think so. McJilton heads Food Bank Japan, a nonprofit organization that collects unsold food from stores, restaurants and food manufacturers in Tokyo and distributes it to the homeless, elderly victims of domestic violence and others in need.

“Hunger in Japan isn’t a problem of scarcity; it’s a problem of distribution,” says McJilton. Since September 2002, when Food Bank began systematically taking donations, it says it has shifted over ¥10 million ($84,380) worth of food.

The handouts mean a lot to Noriko Ishii, a 60-year-old women who’s lining up with almost 100 homeless people on a freezing winter evening in Ueno Park. “This food really makes a difference to me”, she says, clutching a small package of buns.

FOOD RUN: Charles McJilton (left) believes hunger is a question of distribution, not scarcity