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Noting that metaphysics is the philosophical study of the nature of reality, Blackburn (2007: 2-23) states that a key question in metaphysics is whether reality contains any absolute truths. The phrase 'absolute truth' is said to refer to an unalterable, unchanging, and permanent fact. An absolute truth is valid in all times and in all spaces. Absolute truth can be contrasted with a relativistic idea of truth in which truth is viewed as something that is relative to the individual or individuals believing it. In other words, relativism holds that reality is such that there is no one particular understanding of truth, no structure of truth, and no system of truth that is more valid than another one because there is no objective standard of truth. In attempting to delineate and discuss my personal metaphysical perspective, I had to ask myself one question. This was, do I believe in any absolute truths and, if so, what are they? The foregoing question was not difficult for

841

The origin of Los Angeles as a New World settlement was ethnic and racist in conception and execution due to the fact that the Spanish Empire, under the direction of explorers commissioned by Spain and abetted by the Roman Catholic Church, formally claimed California as Spanish territory in the 18th century, in the process subduing the indigenous population with varying degrees of force. That distant fact is relevant to the present research because it set a tone that, as an abundance of evidence demonstrates, has not changed appreciably over the centuries. The autobiography of a Mexican-American, Dionicio Morales, born in this country to a migrant farm worker in the early 20th century, vividly illustrates the legacy of unequal social standing between ethnic groups in Los Angeles. As a boy, Morales had a growing consciousness of the "silent rules about being an American that had nothing to do with being born in this country" (Morales 56). He was ignored by some teachers,

1615

Two of the world's oldest civilizations are China and India. For centuries characterized by stagnant economies and low quality of life, today Southeast Asia, India, and China are experiencing rapidly growing economies and neoliberal economic reforms that are rapidly integrating the nations into the global marketplace. Due to religion, trade, geography, warfare, and other aspects of society, classical China and India played a major role in shaping the societies or social structures of other nations like Malaysia and the Philippine Islands. Classical China and classical India can also be viewed as an influence in modern China and India, with factors like agriculture continuing to play a major role in the burgeoning economies of each nation. This analysis will discuss how factors like geography, social organization, government, and religion in classical India and China helped shaped other nations, as well as modern India and China themselves. This paper will argue that differ

1958

Major characters in the book, Animal Farm, by Orwell (1996) include Mr. Jones, Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer. Boxer, is a minor character in the story; Boxer is a cart-horse. From the perspective of Boxer, this story is about how animals defeated the farmer, Mr. Jones, and claim the property renamed as Animal Farm. Boxer was very dedicated to the leaders of Animal Farm and used his strength to help them defeat all odds. This character is very loyal and dedicated to authority, which in this case was the animals. While Boxer was not one to lead the fight for ideals, he was able to put his trust in those who did lead the fight. He died while working hard for this cause. Boxer was one to notice that Animal Farm prospered at fir

506

The central theory of leadership in nursing which informs my own personal philosophy is known as relational leadership, developed by Marilyn Klakovich, who theorized that leadership is a process-oriented set of activities (Sullivan & Decker, 2004). This theory of leadership calls for empowering others, an emphasis on ethics, a value driven approach to purposeful activities and inclusion of all and their points of view. Klakovich (in Sullivan & Decker, 2004) considers relational leadership as a model or perspective that focuses on the idea that leadership effectiveness has to do with the ability of a leader to create positive relationships within the organization. In nursing, relations between professionals and their patients are based on the concept of care (Willmer, 2007). Nursing leaders are those who see themselves as role models and mentors who want to empower others to become effective participants in a continuum in which high quality patient care is delivered. Nurse lea

818

Does cognitive psychology ignore reinforcement and motivation in its stipulations and descriptions of how one thinks, learns, and remembers? The answer is "Yes" and "No." This is because there are really two schools of thought when it comes to cognitive psychology. One of these does indeed place its primary emphasis upon thought, even to the extent of asserting that thought and associated brain processes is really the predominating causal factor in motivation (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2007). Clearly, this bran

344

Introduction The following presents the topic of early childhood interventions for children with cerebral palsy with a description and review of prevalence, contributing factors, complications, and relevance to pediatric nursing. Applications of the topic presented include an integration of information in practice, the important support to offer, future research and nursing implications, and a synthesis of data. This is followed by a conclusion. Cerebral Palsy Description of Cerebral Palsy Cerebral palsy, or static encephalopathy, is a term that is used to describe a condition in which trauma to the brain trauma affects the motor abilities to varying degrees ranging from slight to extreme. Cerebral palsy includes the following four categories: Spastic, Athetoid (or dyskinetic), Ataxic, and Mixed. Spastic cerebral palsy is found in up to 80% of cerebral palsy patients. Spastic cerebral palsy includes the characteristics of stiff muscles or mu

1812

(1) According to an essay published online on the team builders.com website, a change agent is an individual recruited or nominated to lead the implementation of a change. A change agent must understand the reason for making the change, and help communicate the details of the change to others within the organization. The change agent's enthusiasm and interpersonal skills have a major impact on success or failure of the change being implemented (2008). Based on this definition, it seems unlikely that any organization would expect every employee to be a change agent. A more realistic expectation would be that ever employer would hope and expect that every employee would be open to change, or a least open the possibility that change is necessary. (2) There is an odd but old expression: "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It." A question is whether this advice applies to every organization including one experiencing gre

625

TABLE OF CONTENTS The American Credit Crunch 1 Executive Summary 1 Introduction 1 Research Description and Objectives 2 Results 2 Recommendations 5 Works Cited 7 The American Credit Crunch Executive Summary The American economy is currently in a credit crunch, meaning that credit is very difficult and expensive for consumers to obtain. The key causes of the credit crunch include making loans to consumers who previously would not have qualified (sub-prime loans), falling home prices, and easy access to an excess of credit. A chief consequence of the credit crunch includes investors moving away from mortgage-backed and credit card-backed securities. To avoid a similar situation in the future, creditors need to re-examine and modify their lending practices and consumers need to understand their financial situation better, including the terms of their loans and their actual ability to repay their obligations. Int

1710

Introduction This chapter will provide an overview of the case study project focusing on two works of drama: George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession and Bertolt Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan. The main issue to be explored is one that is common to both of these literary works: In societies dominated by men the morality of women is dictated by patriarchy and economics. Both authors also explore if it is possible for a woman living in such a society to be a "good" woman by conventional standards in a society that is not so "good." The chapter will provide an in-depth background of the study, including various issues regarding the plays and the respective societies they illustrate as they pertain to the main issue of exploration. The aims and objectives of the study will also be provided, including a greater understanding of how economic systems dictate lifestyle and morality on poor women. The significance of the study to contemporary society an

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The auction rate securities market is currently undergoing "one of the costliest mis-selling scandals of the credit crisis to date. Thousands of individuals...have been left holding bonds that they cannot sell, despite being told that these investments were the equivalent of cash" (Foley, 2008). Until recently, Wall Street would step in to "buy the bonds at auction if demand was weak, so that holders could cash out," but "amid the spiraling credit crisis, they stopped acting as buyers of last resort and since then almost 60 per cent of auctions have failed" (Foley, 2008). Jonathan Levine, attorney at San Francisco's Girard Gibbs law firm, states, "We think this is one of the biggest frauds on Wall Street in years...People can't retire, small business owners cannot pay payrolls, it is affecting people's

549

Introduction The creation of a national approach to drug policy has become as much of a controversy as drugs themselves. There is no doubt that the illicit use of controlled substances in the United States represents a significant problem and cause for concern. Drug abuse permeates all layers of American society, "cutting across income, age, gender, educational, racial, and class barriers" (Nicholson 280). Because of significant increases in the sale, possession and use of drugs in the U.S., a wave of harsher punishment through legislation increased the severity of criminal sanctions for drug users. Such sanctions have created moral controversy over those who favor rehabilitation rather than criminal sanctions against drug users. Lynch and Blotner (5) argues that most "control laws" are not aimed at drugs, but are aimed at protection a set of "moral standards" which reject drugs as contributing to the emotional, physical and psychological ill health of t

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The "Six-Day War" between the Arabs and Israelis is also known as the "1967 Arab-Israeli War," the "Third Arab-Israeli War," and in Arabic, "an-Naksah" or "The Setback" (Six 1). The Arabs refer to the Six-Day War and "The Setback" for good reason. At the end of the war Israel has won possession of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, largely accomplished by out-powering the Arab air forces with their own (Six 1). Control of these areas remains a significant factor in the Arab-Israeli conflict that continues to this day. This analysis will discuss the personalities and events leading up to the Six-Day War and its impact on geopolitics of the time and to the present. The main event precipitating the Six-Day War occurred in 1956 and is known as the Suez Crisis. The incident represented a military defeat for Egypt, but the nation won a political victory in that Israel, under heavy diplomatic pressure from the U.S.

1250

The themes of racism and identity formation in America are addressed in three different works by the playwright August Wilson (1998), Maya Angelou (1970), and Gunnar Myrdal (2002). Each of these writers uses familiar literary devices such as cause and effect, comparison and contrast, and narration and persuasion to tell the story of how minorities, particularly African-Americans, experience life in America. Whereas Wilson (1998) offers a play and Angelou (1970), an autobiographical memoir, Myrdal (2002) presents a sociological commentary on his observations of race and identity issues in a pluralistic society. Wilson's (1998) play, Fences, focuses on the lives of two young African-American men, Troy and Bono, who approach manhood by separating from their fathers and assuming the responsibilities of adulthood. These men are at odds in the ways that they deal with the past and approach the future. Their choice is between pragmatism and illusion as survival mechanisms. Wilson (1998) uses narration and references to external

698

Introduction: According to an essay by Gary Vocke published online by the United States Department of Agriculture, after years of rapid growth, poverty reduction, and political stability, Indonesia slipped into a deep economic crisis in 1997-1998. The financial crisis in Indonesia was triggered by a larger regional financial crisis that began in Thailand in July of 1997. Indonesia's sudden economic collapse had several contributing factors. These included a rapid increase of short-term private debt and a weakly regulated banking system. The Indonesian economy was especially hard hit because of the borrowing practices of Indonesian companies. For a number of years, private firms were saving 9 percent to 11 percent on the cost of loans by borrowing in foreign currencies without hedging against currency devaluation. These companies assumed that the Indonesian government's exchange rate controls would protect them from this risk, but these controls did not work as hoped (Vocke).

985

Introduction The far southern United States, along the eastern seaboard and the Gulf Coast, has a high incidence of hurricanes and a history of substantial hurricane-related damage. Hurricanes, "revolving storms originating near the equator that are accompanied by torrential rain and wind speeds exceeding 74 mph," are a potent threat in this area that need to be prepared for in advance to minimize potential destruction of property by wind and water, as well as loss of power and other utilities due to destruction of electrical lines ("Hurricane Hazards( A National Threat," 2005). Occurring as a system within itself, a hurricane forms from a tropical low-pressure system in which warm ocean water builds rain clouds around its center, with prevailing winds and the jet stream pushing the system farther out into the ocean ("Weather Safety," 2002). It becomes first a "wave," then a "depression," and finally, when its winds reach 39 to 74 mph, it is called a "storm" ("Weather Safe

3070

A few years ago, people would have called Lennie "retarded." Today, he would be considered "mentally challenged." Nevertheless, there is something about Lenny that many of us may wish to hide behind- a child-like mind, a love for animals and simple things, and complete unawareness of reality. Big and powerfully built, yet for the most part meaning no harm, even when he takes a newborn puppy and tries to hide him in order to keep him. When accosted by George, he says, "I'll take 'um back. I didn't mean no harm, George. Honest I didn't. I jus' wanted to pet 'um a little" (Steinbeck 43). In a way, of course, being childlike is a benefit during the hardscrabble depression era days that Steinbeck writes about. George and Lennie were lucky to find work. Lennie would do the hard chores, and George was there to rescue him from any tr

562

During their formative years, children are exposed to a variety of environmental influences that are extremely important in shaping their entire development. Children learn, literally as well as figuratively, from the adult and peer role models with whom they regularly interact (Ramey & Ramey, 1999). At issue in this brief essay is an analysis of how the home environment of children influences their development and shapes their learning. The issue is firmly positioned within what Ramey and Ramey 9199) have called the "nature vs. nurture" debate. Social scientists and educators use the term socialization to refer to the lifelong social experience by which individuals develop their human potential and learn culture (Macionis, 115). Theorists distinguish between the role of nature and nurture in shaping personality. Nature generally refers to biological or physiological qualities or traits. Nurture, in contrast, refers to environmental factors that are at work in shaping behavi

947

Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable is deceptively simple. It is simple because the author provides commonsense explanations of the natural world in an almost systematic fashion. He uses the metaphor of a mountain that is very gradually and very slowly building up and becoming "itself" over thousands of years, yet throughout the process is changing all the time. That is an easy concept to grasp. Yet the book is deceptive because underneath the commonsense explanations are extremely complex ideas about how the natural world as the modern period knows it evolved over millions of years. Through those years multiple species and land forms constantly emerged, changed, and went extinct and are still doing so, in ways that seem to be only partly understood, given the present-day persistent controversy surrounding evolution and natural selection. As Dawkins notes early on (1996, p. 4), DNA develops in some 30 million ways. The presentation of the text is a re-presentation of Darwin's

902

Introduction In Ralph Glasser's (20) Growing Up in the Gorbals, the author provides an account of his years growing up in a Jewish community during the 1920s in a Glasgow tenement, a working class region known as the "Gorbals." In a similar manner, in Bad Blood, Lorna Sage (6) provides an account of her childhood and adolescence growing up in 1950s rural Hanmer, Wales, a town she describes as a "dead-alive dump...a muck heap" where women are rigidly controlled by their husbands or fathers. In both of these societies we see that social roles for women were restricted primarily to the domestic sphere and in their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers. Despite the restricted social roles on women, we see that Sage's family does not adhere to the norms of mainstream culture in Hanmer. Sage's grandfather, a vicar in the Anglican church, repeatedly commits infidelity. His wife has nothing but scorn for men and tries to thwart her husband at every turn. Sage'

1776

Hispanic culture affects efforts to teach Hispanic children about diabetes. Lorena Drago, certified diabetes instructor and nutritionist at New York's Lincoln Hospital serves as a national volunteer of ADA's Por Tu Familia Latino Initiative and notes that "Many of the behaviors needed to prevent type 2 diabetes and diabetes-related complications-behaviors such as meal planning and physical activity-are shaped by an individual's culture and values" (American Diabetes Association, 2007, p. 1). Thus, it is vital to d

352

In her book Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work, Rhacel Parrenas examines the role that Filipina domestic workers have played in our increasingly globalized economy. Parrenas focuses her study on the experiences of Filipina domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles, expecting that the women studied would have significant differences in their experiences given the differences between the two cities. However, Parrenas concluded that, for the most part, the experiences of Filipina domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles were strikingly similar. Both shared "the experience of quasi-citizenship," which was marked by segregation and a number of other challenges (Parrenas, 2001, p. 244). Both experienced the pain o

501

Self-reliance is a strong part of the American dream, and owning your own business can be a large part of it. The dream takes on a special manifestation, both for the better or the worse, when the whole family is involved. But lack of communication, personality clashes, and the inability to separate work and family life can add stress to the already risky world of business. SWOT Analysis Working in a family-owned business can have many rewards. The best advantage of a family-run business is a reduction of the agency problem. This occurs when an employee does not have the same priorities as the owner, and there is a cost involved in keeping everyone pointed in the same direction. Even the owner is the president, they still must contend with other managers. But if everyone is related, and they have each other's best interests in mind, this is less of a problem. The second is ability to raise their children in the business. Some areas of commerce do not cater well to

1963

Despite two world wars, a host of small and midsize wars, and the persistence of cultural and ideological disputes and geopolitical rivalries, the 20th century was in significant part marked by an internationalism consistent with the coordination of foreign trade and the rule of international law (law of nations), i.e., "the body of legal rules that apply between sovereign states and such other entities as have . . . status acknowledged by the international community" (Schwarzenberger & Cheng, 2001). Periodically renegotiated and expanded in meetings known as "rounds" since World War II, the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, or GATT, fostered the cross-national principle of trade without discrimination for signatories. Under that principle, member nations opened their markets equally and unconditionally to one another and agreed to deploy tariffs systematically (GATT). In the mid-1990s, at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, signatories agreed to be bound by trade rules de

1911

Had the Spanish Armada won the battle with England in 1588, Europe would have developed differently in cultural terms, but ultimately, for reasons having to do with Spain's internal culture, the political configuration of Europe might have evolved in ways more or less similar to the way it in fact did develop. Why that is so can be seen in the complex geopolitical, cultural, and religious dynamics of late-16th-century Europe. Religion was the most hotly contested arena among Europe's nation-states and within them by the middle of the 16th century. In England, events in that context turned on the behavior of Mary Queen of Scots, whose kinship, religious, and political ties stretched from France to Scotland to Spain to England and in whose name a series of aggressive claims to the throne of England and conspiracies against Elizabeth were mounted between 1560, when Mary, a Catholic, assumed the throne in Scotland, and 1587, the year of the so-called Babington Plot, a consp

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