Consolation Prize Research Articles

Fusion 'Consolation Prize' Gears Up for Show Time

A unique particle accelerator and the fastest supercomputer in Japan are part of a plan to bring fusion energy a step closer to reality. They are proceeding in parallel with the single most important experiment for the future of fusion power, the $12 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

No Consolation Prizes

No Consolation Prizes

Infinite Hope—and for Us; or, Come on in, the Real World is Fine

Infinite Hope—and for Us; or, Come on in, the Real World is Fine Kel Morin-Parsons (bio) I have never been particularly iconoclastic, as unfashionable as it may be to admit it. While in graduate school during the 1990s, however, I found myself more than once speaking in hushed tones with certain professors on a topic in which I found myself increasingly interested: working outside the academy with a doctorate. Doing so is, of course, not that unusual in itself. What was, and is, unusual is choosing to do so—or at least discovering that a road ending outside the academy is not just a consolation prize. I was, as a graduate student, as focused as any of my colleagues on a tenured teaching position. I did conferences, I lined up a publication, and I worked for and was fortunate enough to get scholarships. I had the world’s most supportive thesis advisor, who was appropriately exacting, and I loved every minute of it. I tried to do everything right. After a particular teaching experience, however—with, I should emphasize, a number of enthusiastic students and wonderful material—I began to realize that the professor’s life was, for various reasons, probably not for me. It had been emphasized to me from the beginning that I had entered a program designed to train scholars for the academy. That, of course, was proper and laudable. But as my own situation changed, I made a number of [End Page 7] discoveries about the abilities and skills nurtured by graduate school and, I would find, valued by the so-called real world—and they were all good. I wanted to explore other options, but I genuinely wasn’t sure what they might be. I had been used to thinking of the skills I was acquiring solely in terms of their application within an academic setting. Then a friend asked me to take on the job of administrator for a small non-profit organization on whose board he sat. He himself held a phd in political economy and had worked both in and out of the academy for two decades; he told me later that he saw clear abilities and inclinations in me for which I didn’t seem to have a context and felt that I just needed a shove to start the process of thinking differently about my training and its application. At the time, however, I was still in graduate school, and while I did take on the job I was slow to think differently—the nature of work meant that I was still dealing largely with people with scholarly backgrounds, and it seemed they just needed someone to sort out certain aspects of communication and organization; it never occurred to me that the ability to do those very things was a skill set in itself and one to which an academic background might have contributed. After having worked at this non-profit for a while, I applied to a placement agency specializing in administrative positions. It was then that I truly began to realize surprising things about my graduate education. A manager at the placement agency, who had contacted me after having seen my (slightly modified academic) cv, made it clear that I possessed tremendously valuable skills—I was “marketable,” in that language of the commercial at which we’re all supposed to wince. As I worked with her and considered my cv, I realized that the graduate programs made demands on us that developed tremendously applicable capacities. As most of us not only took seminar courses but taught or assisted with undergraduate courses, we all had experience in organizing teaching material, developing it and presenting it as lectures, managing people, and managing time. Added to this experience were the skills developed by all graduate students as they learn to conduct research—the gathering and analyzing of information and the transformation of that raw data into coherent pieces of writing. On top of all of this is the fact that those of us trained in literature can, as a rule, write well—something not always a given—and tend to understand the basics of good communication. In a world...

They Save Themselves Alone: Faith and Loss in the Stories of Abraham and Job

In the stories of Abraham and Job, Yahweh’s favor is an ambiguous blessing that comes at great cost to the favored one and those closest to him. Yahweh professes his confidence in Abraham’s and Job’s faith, but tests that faith with devastating loss of family members. The deity then rewards the men with a ‘consolation family’. The intent appears to be blessing, but, like most consolation prizes, the arrival of the new families fails to console either the main characters or the reader. They are essentially objects, empty of personal value, and serve to emphasize the original loss and the patriarchs’ solitude. Yahweh’s limitless power renders any affectionate bond with him inconceivable, but his demanding attention crowds out the possibility for the men to preserve bonds of affection with their families. Faithful Abraham and Job, deemed most blessed by God, ultimately suffer deepest isolation and loss.

Informal firms in developing countries: entrepreneurial stepping stone or consolation prize?

The potential dynamic benefits of a firm having the option to adopt informal status are analysed. Informality may be a stepping stone, without which formality may never be achieved. This result is obtained for a broad range of realistic parameter values, suggesting a potential dynamic case for government support of informal firms. Informality may alternatively play a converse role as a consolation prize, with a firm only entering an industry (formally) because it recognizes that if profitability is disappointing, it can switch to informality. However, this result is obtained for a range of parameter values so narrow as to be of no practical significance.

Designing Architect’s Brief for a Faculty of Engineering

A team of academics produced a Design Brief (DB) to assist architects design a scholarly physical environment for modern engineering education and research. The information gathered from external and internal sources was used to define important themes that the buildings should reflect and hence to arrive at a list of the required spaces. Critical internal and external reviews and budget constraints led to a series of successive refinements of the DB. A design competition was organised for all interested architects in the country to select the architect for the project and consolation prizes were awarded to second and third finalists. The planned development will provide 17900 m2 and 25200 m2 net usable space and estimated gross building area respectively.

Giving Polity An International Flavor

I was the fourth editor of Polity, serving from 1979 until 1981. After the 1980 election, recently named United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick had asked me to join her UN staff with the rank of ambassador, responsible for dealing with Third World issues. Although 1 didn't know Jeane well at the time, we accepted the assignment, the FBI came around to check on my loyalty with neighbors and colleagues, and we prepared with some trepidation to move to pre-Giuliani New York. But a few weeks later Jeane called back and said, Howard, I'm terribly sorry but I've offered more ambassadorships than I have available. And since I was not as close to her as some others on her team, mine was the offer that had to be retracted. However, she brightened, why don't you instead come to AEI [American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research] and help run the foreign policy program there. In those days AEI was more diverse and committed to the competition of ideas than it is now as a chiefly neocon institution; my position there thus came to me as a consolation prize for not getting the UN post. But since I couldn't run Polity from long distance and would be absent from New England for many years, I decided with great reluctance that I should resign the Polity editorship. My predecessors as Polity editors had been Loren Beth (1968-1971), Lewis Mainzer (1972-1975), and Peter Fliess (1975-1979). But the real founding editor and chief inspiration for Polity had been then University of Massachusetts Department of Political Science Chair William Havard. Bill was a specialist in American politics, especially Southern politics, but he also had a strong interest in political theory and British politics. Above all, Bill, who had had a lifetime association with the Journal of Politics (the JOF), was a firm believer in good writing, strong analysis, understandable prose, and elegant style. He deplored the trend toward quantitative research and, not coincidentally bad writing that he found in the American Political Science Review (ASPR). Bill, and all of us early editors, found the APSR virtually unreadable and quite worthless as a journal presumably representing the best work in Political Science. Even now I rarely read past the three-four sentence abstracts in the APSR.

MASTERS OF INDUSTRY

FOR MORE THAN a decade, proponents of the professional science master’s degree (PSM) have sought to change the perception of master’s degrees as nothing more than a consolation prize or a stepping stone on the way to a doctorate. This new type of degree has spread, and there are now more than 120 programs at more than 60 institutions. The PSM has found its way onto government radar screens. It was featured by name in the America Competes Act as a way to expand the scientific workforce. The Department of Education is getting into the game, providing grants to improve existing PSM programs and help to start new ones. The PSM prepares students for professional careers in scientific industries and the nonprofit sector. Many jobs in these sectors, especially those outside the lab, require more than a bachelor’s degree but not a Ph.D. PSM curricula at schools across the country incorporate scientific content and business-related ...

Moniker Maladies

In five studies, we found that people like their names enough to unconsciously pursue consciously avoided outcomes that resemble their names. Baseball players avoid strikeouts, but players whose names begin with the strikeout-signifying letter K strike out more than others (Study 1). All students want As, but students whose names begin with letters associated with poorer performance (C and D) achieve lower grade point averages (GPAs) than do students whose names begin with A and B (Study 2), especially if they like their initials (Study 3). Because lower GPAs lead to lesser graduate schools, students whose names begin with the letters C and D attend lower-ranked law schools than students whose names begin with A and B (Study 4). Finally, in an experimental study, we manipulated congruence between participants' initials and the labels of prizes and found that participants solve fewer anagrams when a consolation prize shares their first initial than when it does not (Study 5). These findings provide striking evidence that unconsciously desiring negative name-resembling performance outcomes can insidiously undermine the more conscious pursuit of positive outcomes.

The Trouble with Ownership: Literary Property and Authorial Liability in England, 1660-1730 (review)

Reviewed by: The Trouble with Ownership: Literary Property and Authorial Liability in England, 1660-1730 Susan Paterson Glover Jody Greene . The Trouble with Ownership: Literary Property and Authorial Liability in England, 1660-1730. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. US$49.95; £32.50. ISBN 978-0-8122-3862-4. Towards the close of Daniel Defoe's novel The Fortunate Mistress, the narrator's increasingly desperate daughter pleads with the Quaker woman for assistance in identifying her mother : "she is my Mother! and will not own me." This multiple signification of owning—to declare something one's property (dating back to Anglo-Saxon law), to acknowledge a possessory relationship in relation to kinship or authorship (OED), and to confess or admit something to be true—is at the centre of Jody Greene's ambitious study of ownership and authorship in Restoration and early eighteenth-century England. The received history of copyright situates its origin in the transfer of "ownership" from the printer or publisher, with the entrance of the copy in London's Stationers' Register, to the author, whose property [End Page 124] in a printed work remains protected during and following his or her lifetime. This history cites the Act for the Encouragement of Learning by Vesting the Copies of the Printed Books in the Authors, or Purchasers, of such Copies, during the Times therein Mentioned (8 Anne c.19), which came into effect 10 April 1710, as the first legal recognition of the author's rights in his or her work. Greene claims that this narrative fails to consider adequately the Faustian bargain made by early writers in order to have their property recognized by the 1710 statute. Her argument is presented in two parts: the first traces the efforts of the English state, beginning with the Tudors, to regulate and control the output of the presses. As print historians have made increasingly clear, liability for "authorship" in the early modern period is spread across a network of writers, typesetters/compositors, printers, and booksellers, and the "author" is simply primus inter pares; the state regulators will be pleased to lay hands on him (and occasionally her, as in the case of Elizabeth Cellier), but any of the others will do in the author's stead. Greene teases out the historical process whereby the author function is increasingly hived off from the collectivity of production and distinguished with an originary liability for the printed text. Against the analysis that sees the 1710 Act as the visible and historic separation of licensing and surveillance from an author's property rights, Greene adjusts the balance by suggesting that the price for the protection of property was the concomitant burden of liability. Citing Foucault's observation that the emergence of "the author" is contingent upon his or her vulnerability to punishment, Greene links the recognition of the author's property (the author either entered his/ her own copy into the Register or assigned title to a printer or bookseller) with the government's increased capacity to fix liability. In part 2, "The Dangerous Fate of Authors," Greene turns not to a parallel exploration of prosecutions and trials in the print trade subsequent to 1710, but to several authorial test cases. The salient exemplum here is Daniel Defoe, an obvious but perhaps problematic choice. Having been pilloried for anonymous work that other printers hawked and profited from, Defoe supported vigorously in the Review and his Essay on the Regulation of the Press (1704) the public identification of the author with his or her work ; the property right would serve at least as a "consolation prize," as Greene puts it, in return for accountability (22). But the chameleon-like Defoe proves a slippery example; despite his righteous assertions that he writes nothing but what he publicly "owns," his staggering oeuvre of anonymous texts has ensured that the scholarly determination of his canon remains a work in progress. To be both anonymous and exempt from liability was merely a reflection of Defoe's modus operandi. Greene's exclusive focus on Defoe prior to the passage of the 1710 statute leaves unaddressed the degree to which Defoe suffered under its provisions. [End Page 125] Greene's...

Experiences of children in hospital: BJN 100 years ago

The BJN awarded a prize of ‘half-a-crown for a little essay’ by a child in hospital in April 1907. There were also two consolation prizes of ‘one shilling each’ to the runners up. Enclosed are extracts from all of these essays with remarks from the judges. First, the winner who was Cissie Herridge was awarded the prize because, ‘though ill herself, her little paper showed so much affection for her fellow creatures’:

Moniker Maladies: When Names Sabotage Success

People like their names enough to unconsciously approach consciously-avoided name-resembling outcomes. Baseball players avoid strikeouts, but players with strikeout-signifying K-initials strike out more than others (Study 1). All students want A's, but C- and D-initialed students find initial-resembling outcomes less aversive and achieve lower GPAs (Study 2), particularly if they like their initials (Study 3). Because lower GPAs lead to lesser graduate schools, C- and D-initialed students go to lower ranked law schools than their A- and B-initialed counterparts (Study 4). Finally, in an experimental design, participants perform worse when a consolation prize shares their first initial (Study 5). These findings provide striking evidence that unconscious wants can insidiously undermine conscious pursuits.

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears: From Oscar to consolation prize

The article traces the changing status of Vladimir Men'shov's Oscar-winning film, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979). This film, lauded by Hollywood for its ‘apolitical’ celebration of three women in Brezhnev's Russia, has nonetheless gone through various, more complex interpretations by various audiences, both at home and abroad. A movie known in the West as a Soviet success on the red carpet, this film has today inspired a new, very different generation of Russian television heroines in serialized dramas. What appears to us a Cinderella story is now seen at home as the foundation for sadder, ‘consolatory’ tales. Ironically, the ability to forge a career and find a husband has become so difficult in modern Moscow that Men'shov's film is today endlessly, ironically referenced as a tale that should come true — but. never does.

The Global Reach of Empire: Britain's Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans (review)

Reviewed by: The Global Reach of Empire: Britain’s Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 1764–1815 by Alan Frost Robert Travers The Global Reach of Empire: Britain’s Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 1764–1815. By Alan Frost. Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2003. Around 1740 the British empire was confined mainly to the Atlantic and Mediterranean spheres, with thinly scattered outworks in Asia. By 1815, however, the British had forged an extensive network of territories and naval bases in the Indian and Pacific Oceans; British naval squadrons were permanently maintained in the Cape Colony and in India; and British ships regularly patrolled the eastern coast of South America and the eastern Pacific. In The Global Reach of Empire, Alan Frost describes the twists and turns of British maritime expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans in a lively narrative account, drawing on a wealth of printed and archival sources (especially from the India Office Records and the Public Records Office). His book has been beautifully produced by the Miegunyah Press, with colored prints and excellent maps. Frost tells us that he grew up on the edge of the Pacific Ocean outside Brisbane, and his writing displays a feel for the technical achievements and hard graft of eighteenth century sailors. For the many other historians who are navally challenged, this book will provide an admirable survey of an important subject in British, imperial and world history, leavened with a profusion of telling details and quotations. Frost’s grand narrative style is a throw back to an earlier era of imperial history, and its explanatory devices are unfashionably straightforward. Britain’s maritime expansion, in his view, was the consequence of purposive, even heroic, planning and execution by far-sighted and courageous Britons. His introduction singles out three groups for special mention: explorers and geographers gripped by the encyclopedic appetites of the enlightenment and a taste for adventure; politicians (especially the circle around Pitt the Younger and Henry Dundas from the mid 1780s) armed with new maps and awakening to a global consciousness of the possibilities of trade and empire; and finally traders, especially the Southern whalers, who ‘like the Phoenicians of old’ (12), ventured forth into new horizons of wine dark sea. The following chapters trace British maritime expansion in the context of intense commercial and military competition between European empires in the later eighteenth century. European adventurers had long been enthralled by the mirage of a new continent (Terra Australis) apparently awaiting discovery in the southern seas, and the elusive prospect of a ‘north west passage’ into the Pacific. Since the sixteenth century, British sailors had sniffed around the southern Atlantic trying to steal scraps from the Iberian empires. But Frost makes a good case that the Seven Years War (1756–63) was a crucial turning point in the history of maritime expansion, when the aggressive colonial and naval strategy pursued by Britain focused European attention more intensively on maritime power. In the aftermath of this war, British politicians forged new alliances with naval adventurers with the goal of breaking into markets in Spanish America and northern Asia, and penetrating the mysteries of the uncharted Pacific Ocean. This was the context for James Cook’s famous voyages, in which the great explorer faced off in wooden ships against Antarctic ice packs, finally dismissing the notion of Terra Australis, and probing Australia as a potential consolation prize. Yet Frost shows that British maritime ambition drew powerful responses from France and Spain. French naval rebuilding after the Seven Years War initiated a new naval arms race which lasted into the nineteenth century. The build up of French forces in Mauritius in the 1760s forced the British to strengthen their naval presence in the Indian Ocean, and sparked a search for new naval bases during and after the American war. One of the most interesting sections of Frost’s account demonstrates the sense of vulnerability experienced by British naval commanders east of the Cape of Good Hope. The British possessed no good half-way house for the Asian trade until the capture of the Cape from the Dutch in 1806. Moreover the lack of a good naval base on...

The Journalist as Historian: Anthony Lewis, Civil Liberties, and the Supreme Court

The genesis of the column that Anthony Lewis wrote for The New York Times between 1969 and 2001 was a red face—not Lewis's, but that of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. The Times' publisher offered Lewis the column as a consolation prize after outgoing executive editor James Reston mistakenly informed Lewis that the job of deputy to A. M. Rosenthal, the new executive editor, was open and that Lewis was a logical candidate.1

The Journalist as Historian: Anthony Lewis, Civil Liberties, and the Supreme Court

The Journalist as Historian: Anthony Lewis, Civil Liberties, and the Supreme Court PHILIPPA STRUM* The genesis ofthe column that Anthony Lewis wrote for The New York Times between 1969 and 2001 was a red face—not Lewis’s, but that ofArthur Ochs Sulzberger. The Times’ publisher offered Lewis the column as a consolation prize after outgoing executive editor James Reston mistakenly informed Lewis that thejob ofdeputy to A. M. Rosenthal, the new executive editor, was open and that Lewis was a logical candidate.1 Content with thejob ofchiefofthe Times’ London bureau to which he had moved after years of reporting about the Supreme Court, Lewis was nonetheless aware that a column would give him a freedom that he lacked as a reporter. He of course knew that reporting is scarcely value-free; journalists choose what to report and how to report it. Good reporters, however, make an honest attempt to keep their values out oftheir writing; in contrast, colum­ nists are not only free toputthem inbut encour­ aged to do so. Moving from the news section to the op-ed page would enable him to write about things he considered important, whether or not the editors thought them newsworthy; and he could, ifhe chose, protect the Supreme Court when it came under strong criticism.2 That was an important consideration, given Lewis’s long love affair with the nation’s highest tribunal. He acknowledged it in 1990, more than two decades after he began produc­ ing the column. “I confess to being a roman­ tic about the Supreme Court,” he wrote. He had suggestedthe reason forthe romance some years earlier: By the standards of the world Americans enjoy extraordinary free­ dom. We do, I believe, in good part because of the institution of the Supreme Court. Through the strains of our turbulent history the Court has given concrete meaning to the Constitution’s promises of liberty, its 192 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (above), the publisher of The New York Times, offered Anthony Lewis a column as a consolation prize after outgoing executive edi­ tor James Reston misinformed Lewis that he was a candidate for the job of deputy editor to A. M. Rosen­ thal, the new executive editor. provisions against concentrated offi­ cial power.3 The genesis of the romanticism, then— if indeed it was romanticism, rather than realism—was Lewis’s view ofthe Court as the primary guardian of the liberties he saw em­ bodied in the Constitution. The Court’s role in interpreting the Constitution “has given hope to the powerless; it has nurtured faith in the American system.” Thejob was one that could not be left to a legislature, for such a body “tends to deal with power rather than princi­ ple,” and “the rights of minorities are too im­ portant to be trusted to the passions ofpassing majorities.” He recalled Felix Frankfurter, one of the people most frequently quoted in the columns, “warnjing] against relying onjudges to save our freedoms. But,” Lewis asked, “in the modern state, with power tilted toward the executive, where else are we to look?”4 His love affairwiththe Court did not, how­ ever, blind him to its lapses. He lambasted the Court when he disagreed with it. Indeed, through the 1980s and early 1990s, he excori­ ated the Court as “statist” in its willingness to endorse the increasing power exercised by the executive branch. He could be caustic in dis­ cussing decisions he saw as gravely mistaken, which was his view of Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio and other Equal Protection Clause holdings of the late 1980s. Yet he was con­ sistent in his assertion that the Supreme Court, “the unique American contribution to the art of democratic government... has held a diverse continental country together by nourishing the gradual change in institutions needed for sur­ vival” and that the Justices, “in the process of expounding the Constitution, have done a fair job of helping to keep this country stable and free.” “The courts have hardly been consistent defenders of individual liberty,” he conceded, “but the United States would surely have been much less free without them. Judges have been especially important in protecting the rights...

I Was So Much Older Then (review)

the low-grading rather than high-grading of timber. (Low-grading is also called "restoration forestry" since it takes out the worst trees and leaves the best ones in place to reproduce.) We soon learn through Bolgiano that not all foresters are "cut from the same board" anymore. Another of Bolgiano's themes is the non-depleting use of Appalachian forests. She takes us along in tow as she visits old-timers who show her their secret ginseng patches; we learn not only how to find but how to make ginseng patches and how to market ginseng. Legal forestland preservation is another Bolgiano theme, and it's a block she's personally been around. Here again both economic and personal questions impinge as she leads us through options like land trusts, easements, and entails. Not all her themes are pleasant, though. With her we visit a chipmill and a strip-mine. We see the pathetic use of strip-mines in southwestern Virginia as sites for newly-introduced western elk, apparently as a consolation prize to local hunters. (Old Olaus Murie must be turning over in his grave.) Withal, Bolgiano has written another fine book. It's good forestry, good history, and good writing. —Paul Salstrom Ed Davis. J Was So Much Older Then. Santa Fe: Disc Us Books Inc., 2001. Trade paperback. $17.95. Princeton native Ed Davis should be a somewhat familiar name to enthusiasts of Appalachian literature, as his poetry is included in Wild Sweet Notes, the West Virginia poetry anthology published in 2000. It turns out that Davis is also a fine, if late blooming, writer of prose fiction as well. Í Was So Much Older Then is a remarkably clear and compelling snapshot of southern West Virginia as seen through the eyes of a young boy in the late fifties and through most of the sixties. Davis establishes his socio-economic context in a beautifully laconic opening paragraph, which surely but subtly hints at the emotional trauma to come: Kersey, West Virginia, was a dirty town in 1959. In September of that year I was seven, and Mom, Dad and I lived in a room in the old hotel near the Trailways Bus Station across from the Norfolk and Western Railway yard where idle cars sat, their black coal glittering in the 80 sunshine. The taxi dispatcher's office was in the hotel; my dad drove for Coalfield Cab that year. He'd driven for Trailways, Greyhound and even the local bus line, so with taxis, he was on his way down. Though the circumstances of his life could easily lead to a sensationalized characterization, Davis's portrait of young Danny Cahill is winningly understated. He lives in a roach-infested dump with his mother, who frequently endures savage beatings from his errant father. His closest friend is an old, boozy prostitute. Yet Davis steadfastly refuses to reduce Danny to victim-hood. He is sensitive and intelligent, and more than capable of making the kind of vigilant observations that amount to a self-education. As Danny moves hesitantly toward adolescence he is equal turns romantic and realistic. Davis deserves much credit for having both sides of Danny emerge naturally from Danny's own eager yet timorous encounters with the world: I was really getting hot; she was, too. Sweat trickled down her cheeks, but I didn't think it was just the attic that was making me want to run back down the stairs. Her dance was making me feel like I was supposed to do something—but what? Then she stopped. Her arms came down like a butterfly's wings shutting up, and as she looked at her feet, I saw she was more pigeon-toed than I was. And her dress was worn out from a zillion washings, and her neck had dirt-circles on it ... Danny Cahill, despite his inopportune surroundings, grows into a thinking, caring individual, with a little help from a friend. Like a great many teenage boys in the sixties, he stumbles upon a guitar, which alters his destiny forever. Danny sees the Beatles on TV, joins some junior-high talent show bands, and then finds himself a real, working musician...

Frederick Cook and the Forgotten Pole

In 1909, Dr. Frederick A. Cook created a worldwide sensation when he announced that he had reached the North Pole. Although the debate about Cook's expedition still rages in some circles and new books are published on the controversy each decade, most polar historians and editors of encyclopedias agree that Cook never went out of sight of land, let alone to the North Pole. Robert E. Peary is generally credited with being first at the North Pole, although even his claim has detractors .... For those who accept the Peary version of Cook's travels, there are indeed several intriguing mysteries to explain. Why did Cook risk an unnecessary journey that added hundreds of kilometres and nearly a year to his expedition? Why did he lie about where he'd travelled after returning from the Arctic Ocean, when it seemed there was no reason to lead inquiry away from this area? And why did he fail to claim discovery of at least one large, previously unknown island that his companions charted seven years before it was officially discovered? Was there something about these places that attracted Dr. Cook and required this cover-up? In the last few years I have explored a simple but surprising explanation for Cook's apparently aimless wanderings. I have unearthed an arcane goal that might have been Cook's objective on the east coast of Amund Ringes Island. It is another pole, one that the world has forgotten. Perhaps Cook saw it as a consolation prize after failing to reach the North Pole. I believe that this forgotten pole is the key to understanding the enigmatic Dr. Cook. What follows is a brief account of my journey towards what I hope is true understanding, and not delusion. ... I believe that Cook's movements in the late winter of 1908 were related to his interest in Verne's fictional polar expedition and that his account of reaching the North Pole is based on his conquest of Verne's fictional pole. After returning to land at Cape Thomas Hubbard, he had time to kill and the means to sledge south to Verne's landscape firsthand, .... One contemporary anonymous review of a new Verne book, probably written by Verne himself, stated: "M. Jules Verne ... knows how to link fiction to reality in proportions so exact that one does not know where one begins and the other leaves off" (Evans, 1996:178). Fredrick Cook was clearly from the same school of writers. The author of a narrative of an expedition to this lesser pole, who claimed the much greater prize, would surely have wished to avoid comparison with Verne's fictional expedition. To that end, he might have sacrificed any minor discoveries made on that route. He needn't have bothered, as it turned out. Although Cook's actual route was widely published by Peary in 1909, the Verne connection was not suspected for another 90 years.

Restructuring Top Management: Evidence from Corporate Spinoffs

We examine corporate spinoffs as events through which top management is restructured. Our main findings are: (1) firm‐specific human capital and human capital, in the form of governance expertise and top management experience, affect the composition of spinoff firms’ top management; (2) spinoff top management structure is related to the value created by a spinoff; and (3), for a subsample of firms, spinoffs serve as a form of management dismissal, with the opportunity to manage a smaller, weaker spinoff firm serving as a “consolation prize.”

Tests of fairness models based on equity considerations in a three-person ultimatum game

Two recent models incorporating fairness considerations into the economics literature based on agents' concerns about the distribution of payoffs between themselves and others (Fehr-Schmidt, 1999, Quarterly Journal of Economics. 114 (3), 769–816; Bolton-Ockenfels, 2000, American Economic Review. 90, 166–193) are investigated using a new three-person ultimatum game: One person allocates a sum of money to two others, one of which is randomly chosen to accept or reject the offer. Rejection gives both the responder and the proposer zero income and a positive consolation prize for the non-responder. The data show essentially no reductions in rejection rates, holding offers constant, with and without consolation prizes, contrary to both models' predictions.