History and Political Science; A Response to Historical Cases Essay

History and Political Science; A Response to Historical Cases - Essay Example Of particular interest is to understand the implications of the Pericles’ oration (Thucydides 34) with respect to what is known of Athens. In evaluating Pericles’ speech, it is imperative to decipher the underpinning points in the speech, as depicted by Thucydides (pp 34-46). First, Pericles begins by acknowledging the need to hold ceremonies for those who dead for the country. He proceeds to assert that all that had happened was necessary. He was in line with the law, as well as the democracy requirements. In elucidating his point, he pays tribute to the ancestors, acknowledging them for creating a worth-celebrating history for the Athenians. He cites how the empire and its possession would have been without the sacrifice of the ancestors and that it was only justified for him to uphold the legacy. Pericles presents Athens as exceptional, in terms of its laws, justice, social equality, mobility and inclusivity of migrants, and that everyone had an equal opportunity to serve the nation. The aspect of Athens to offer social refreshment, such as games is not also overlooked. He affirms Athenian determination to shun all the challenges, as well as respecting the neighbors. He eventually justifies the point that the fallen men should not be the cause of any consolation. Instead, such a point brings comfort to the Athenian community. The crucial question is whether Pericles’ insight holds any validity. In particular, does Athens fit into the doctrine of exceptionalism, as presented? Moreover, is Pericles’ point about the fallen justified? In my view, whereas there are certain aspects of exceptionalism that could be justified about the historical Athenian society, others cannot. For instance, it is agreeable that the ancestors had a crucial role in creating history for posterity, considering that imperialism was the order of the time. The affirmation of respect of law and democracy also reflect the historical nature of Athens. This is beca use Athens historical government is widely cited as the mother or even the correlate of the sophisticated and desired contemporary democracy. Indeed, one avenue of viewing at Pericles’ forefather reference could act as a base the role which Athens played in Greek history. Perhaps he was referring to the growth of the government of Athens as well as the role which the forefathers played. Pericles next statement is that the city of Athens was great and served as a symbol of inspiration as the pioneer of true democracy (Halsall 39). Thucydides uses parallelism whereby Pericles talks of Athenian s’ reputation compared to other armed forces, as well as the Athenian self belief. However, the theme of imperialism cannot be left out of his speech. One questions whether this could also be an aspect of exceptionalism. Doesn’t it contravene the affirmation to respect the autonomy of the neighbors? I infer that whereas Pericles stand reflect the interest of the Athenians, i t is advanced on the basis of nationalism, which can be dismissed as a thesis of societal selfishness. Response to part two: Robert, the Monk's account of Pope Urban II's call to crusade During the 11th century, when states like France and Britain had not emerged, Christianity united the states of Europe. All European states took part in religious wars against Muslims in what was known as the Crusades. Both Christians and Muslims committed atrocities against human beings although each side claimed to be fighting for a just course. At the

The Intranet Technology Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Intranet Technology - Case Study Example He focused on the four major points of IT responsibilities: Keeping these points in mind, Mr Goody gave me a comprehensive view on the various applications that were being currently used in the bank and the optimization methods required to develop the business functioning and achieve faster deadlines. The main application that Mr Goody explained needed improvement was the Intranet website that had to be made more efficient and user friendly. - Conventional format: The Intranet website of the bank, as I saw it, was just a lot of text information about the bank from the web developers. It looked very conventional with some introduction about the bank along with some highlights on the main page. The other web pages were organized department wise such as IT, Wholesale banking, Consumer Banking, Human Resource, Transaction Banking, CEO , all displaying their latest achievements, current affairs and future plans in their respective pages. - Distributed information: The information on the website was not properly centralized and composed, for e.g. Every department website had their training and elearning documents displayed on their respective pages but instead, these documents should have been organized under one banner "Training" or "E learning" so that it would be easier to access to any kind of training material. - Restricting User right: The web developer was only responsible for any website text addition, modification and deletion which had both its positive and negative aspects. Positively, the website would be safe and secure without allowing any user to add some malicious content that could compromise the intranet thus threatening the network. Negatively, the users cannot publish any of their informative and important documents, so which has to be done only through the web developer. But then a lot of times we need to make changes in our documents and due to the restricted rights, publishing those changes cannot be done time to time. - Unimpressive design: The feedback from the bank employees indicated that a lot of flashy images of the bank logo and improper navigation tools made the website quite unattractive and boring for the users to bother visiting. A company website can convey its Hamid, 3 message strongly if the website has organized information and more navigation bars which can allow the users to visit the website more frequently and participate in the bank online activities. Solution Proposed: Understanding the requirements of the bank's intranet needs, I knew that I had to propose a solution that can not only help in centralizing the information but also allow the employees to interact with each other on a common platform for business needs. Microsoft Share point server 2003 application is a reliable, scalable and easy to deploy platform, designed to organize the distributed data from various sources and provide a common portal for the users to interact and share tasks. Following are the main