Customs Inspectors Research Articles

Protecting the life and health of customs officials from the harmful impact of radiation materials

Radiation materials pose a serious danger to human life and health, especially for personnel who interact with such materials in the performance of their duties. The effect on the human body of ionizing radiation that emits radiation material manifests itself in the form of «radiation sickness», when all human organs are affected, and radioactive rays can cause gene mutations that can be inherited in the form of deformities or serious diseases. For this reason, it is very important to ask whether the radiation safety of officials of customs authorities is ensured at a sufficient level, who, when carrying out customs control of such materials, endanger their lives and health. The analysis carried out in the study testifies to the disparity in the requirements and established rules for ensuring the safety and protection of the health of customs officials working with radioactive materials. In this regard, this article studied the risks of the negative impact of radiation materials on the health of a customs inspector during customs control, studied in detail the process of organizing the work of group «A» personnel who have access to work with such materials, and formulated appropriate conclusions and recommendations for eliminating imperfections in ensuring the radiation safety of customs officials from the harmful effects of radioactive materials in order to protect the life and health of the inspector from the radiation threat in the performance of his duties.

SYSTEM ANALYSIS OF QUALITY ASSURANCE OF CUSTOMS AND LOGISTICS SERVICE OF GOODS OF DIFFERENT NOMENCLATURE DURING INTERNATIONAL TRANSPORTATION

Aim. The study intends to optimize customs clearance formalities for goods of various nomenclature in the territory of customs checkpoints of freight customs complexes. The proposed development will allow customs authorities to plan the staffing level of inspectors capable of ensuring the uninterrupted operation of the infrastructure facility, taking into account the utilized capacity and the cargo flow structure. Methods. The quality assessment of the customs and logistics service of goods of various nomenclature in the organization of international transportation is carried out on the basis of a simulation model developed in the GPSS software environment. Results. The practical experience of customs authorities shows that the customs regime in which the goods are moved and their nomenclature bring about changes in how long customs formalities take. Accordingly, the procedures related to customs clearance and customs control by the types of goods will differ in their complexity, and therefore will affect the customs inspector`s workload. In turn, customs authorities` working efficiency will shape the capacity of the freight customs complex and its structural subdivisions. The main segment of customs and logistics service customers chooses infrastructure facilities, where there are small waiting lines and minimal procedure time without the loss of service quality. Scientific novelty. The developed simulation model of customs inspectors` work in the territory of the freight customs complex makes it possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the customs checkpoint as well as to determine the optimal staffing level to ensure the operation of the infrastructure facility. Practical implications. The practical implications of the work lie in the fact that the proposed model makes it possible to assess customs inspectors` workload taking into account the structure of the cargo flow, which may include goods of different nomenclature that are moved in different customs regimes by large-, medium-, small- and micro-sized enterprises. Based on the results of the simulation, the owner of a freight customs complex will have the opportunity to plan its material, technical and staffing support in order to provide high-quality customs and logistics services, and accordingly, the State Customs Service will organize the work of the customs checkpoint taking into account the demand of entities engaged in foreign economic activities for completing customs formalities.

Do pro-social video games promote moral activity?: an analysis of user reviews of Papers, Please

Video games are the digital entertainment resource most in demand by young people, which has led an increasing number of education experts to study their possible benefits. In particular, in this research, we set out to identify the potential of ‘Papers, Please’ to promote moral learning. Thus, we have tried to identify those objectives that go beyond the success in the video game and could favor moral learning. For this purpose, we have investigated what types of moral discourses arise from playing ‘Papers, Please’, a video game where you adopt the role of a customs inspector in a totalitarian state who must obtain the necessary money to fund their family. To do this, we analyzed the moral content of 1,560 player reviews. Results showed that only 4.94% of the reviews presented Moral Intuitions (moral content), which occurred more in the players who had played longer and had declared more Negative Emotions. As for the analysis of the Moral Intuitions, results showed that the players mainly made references to Care for both Family and Immigrants and point out the Authority of the State. However, Fairness/Cheating is less represented, despite the many events related to Immigrant discrimination. Through Exploratory Factor Analysis, we identified three dimensions, one of them pragmatic, oriented to success in the video game, and the others aimed at epistemic aspects beyond the objectives of the video game and that delve into the moral aspects of the game events. Hence, although spontaneous video game use is oriented toward pragmatic goals, ‘Papers, Please’ can guide players to think about the morality of the video game. Nevertheless, if we want to favor moral learning with ‘Papers, Please’, it is necessary to promote epistemic goals aimed at the explicitation of the morality that underlies the video game. To this end, we propose the application of scaffolding that favors these objectives.

The Mode of Trust and Experience of Stress in Customs Officers in Ukraine

The article presents the author’s position of studying organizational trust in customs service and specific experience of workplace stress that influences its formation. The study sample involved 77 customs officers in the following categories of customs personnel: customs inspectors and passenger inspectors. The scientific value of this study lies in establishing the empirical referents of the relationship between organizational trust and relief of organizational stress in customs officers at different organizational levels. The article proves that the empirical referents of the interrelation of organizational trust and experience of workplace stress in the customs group 3 are at the mezzo-level of organizational trust (concern from management, supported by indicators of organizational culture in the field of communication and management) and at the micro-level (increasing organizational stress in the forms of activity and productivity, the flexibility of behaviour, acceptance of others’ values and indicators of job satisfaction due to the expressed emotional commitment of these employees to their organization). The practical value of the obtained results allows one to understand the nature and the impact of organizational stress and the level of organizational trust on the effectiveness of customs officers’ professional activities. It also makes it possible to develop a further programme of psychological support for this professional group to improve psychological safety and well-being in the workplace.

From The History Of Customs And Customs Taxes In Uzbekistan

This article is dedicated to the history of customs and customs tariffs in Central Asia. It also describes the importance of caravan routes, caravanserais, the activities of the customs inspector of XII-XIX centuries, and how the revenue from customs duties was distributed.

Deyatel'nost' tamozhennyh dosmotrshchikov i korchemnyh strazhnikov v kachestve vypolneniya policejskih funkcij na vostoke strany v gody Pervoj mirovoj i Grazhdanskoj vojn

The article aims to study the activities of customs inspectors and korchem guards as police units of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire during the First World War, as well as to trace the subsequent transformation of this law enforcement unit during the Civil War. The object of the study in the article was the operational services of the Ministry of Finance of Russia (customs inspectors, korchem guards) who performed directly police functions during the protection of the customs border of Russia.

SIMULATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF FREIGHT CUSTOMS COMPLEXES` BASED ON QUEUEING SYSTEMS

The purpose of the article is to create a simulation model for the study and optimization of a freight customs complex`s structure when performing export and import operations, comprehensive service provision, and the stowage of goods in a customs warehouse or a temporary storage warehouse. Methodology is the simulation modeling of queuing systems. The mathematical model of the freight customs complex (FCC) is presented as a queuing system. The simulation model of the freight customs complex has been developed in the GPSS World simulation automation package. The simulation model was tested including two stages –verification and validity check. Studying the properties of the model, simulation accuracy was estimated; the length of the simulation transition period was determined; the stability of simulation model responses was evaluated; the sensitivity of model responses to changes in the number of vehicles requiring service was determined. Findings. Based on the developed simulation model, it was conducted the study on customs and logistics service operations provided for freight owners in the export and import of goods, comprehensive servicing, and freight storage in a customs warehouse and a temporary storage warehouse. The simulation model validation results at one of freight customs complexes in the Kyiv region are presented. Originality consists in the opportunity to research the processes at freight customs complexes using simulation modeling with the different degrees of detail and over time optimizing its structure. Practical value. The developed simulation model of the freight customs complex provides an opportunity to identify the average time spent by vehicles on the territory of the freight customs complex when performing export and import operations, comprehensive service provision, and the stowage of goods in a customs warehouse and a temporary storage warehouse; the probability of service refusal due to the lack of parking spaces for vehicles in the customs control zone; the optimal number of customs inspectors and vehicle parking spaces; the optimal sizes of warehouse space for placing freight in a customs warehouse or a temporary storage warehouse. This will make it possible not only to analyze the operation of the freight customs complex but also to optimize its structure, to determine measures that will increase the throughput capacity of the freight customs complex.

Melville's New York Life

Melville's New York Life John Rocco Click for larger view View full resolution John Rocco. Photo courtesy of John Rocco. But that was so far distant, that it seemed it could never be.No, never, never more would I see New York again. —Wellingborough Redburn in Melville's Redburn Herman Melville had a complicated relationship with New York City. New York was Redburn's dream return and Bartleby's Tombs. It was Melville's birthplace on Pearl Street and his family's home on 26th Street, today called Herman Melville Square. [End Page 176] New York was the city his father fled in terror and fever. It was the greatest port in the country when he sailed from it as a "boy" aboard the St. Lawrence in 1839. It was the city he served with professional dedication as a Customs Inspector for nineteen years. Melville spent much of his later life in New York in obscurity. When Julian Hawthorne met him in the city in 1884, he described the old family friend as "pale, sombre, nervous, but little touched by age." After having grown up with Melville's presence, he observed, "There was a vivid genius in this man, and he was the strangest being that ever came into our circle" (Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Circle, in Melville in His Own Time, ed. Steven Olsen-Smith [Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2015], 134). New York City is Melville's city. New York was where Melville published all his poetry from Battle-Pieces to Timoleon. It is the city where he created Billy Budd from "Billy in the Darbies." And it is where Melville is buried: Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The Twelfth International Melville Society Conference at New York University (June 17–20, 2019) brought home the importance of New York City to Melville in one of the largest and most diverse conferences ever sponsored by The Melville Society. The conference was four days long and packed with interesting panels, talks, and trips around the city to locations with important Melville and maritime connections. It was also the 200th anniversary of Melville's birth and it was a return to origins, roots, family, city streets, and Ishmael's "Old Manhatto." Wyn Kelley began it all with a fascinating keynote on the Brazilian writer Adolfo Caminha and the question: "Is there a Brazilian Billy Budd?" Her talk brought us back to Melville's New York of 1886 when Caminha visited as a member of the Brazilian navy. Melville was then probably at work on Billy Budd. Melville's post-Moby-Dick career was also invoked in Rodrigo Lazo's keynote "Israel Potter Deported" as were issues such as immigration and cultural identity. Other topics raised throughout the four days included "Digital Melville," "Mapping Melville and Martí in Manhattan," and "Melville and Spanish America." Two wonderful Melville-inspired films were also shown: David Shaerf's Call Us Ishmael and Daniel Emond's Kill the Whale. New York City itself became the background to the conference with trips to the New York Public Library for a viewing of their extensive collection of Melville books, manuscripts, and letters. A poetry reading was held in the Rare Books Room at Strand Books, during which John Bryant also read from his forthcoming biography, Herman Melville: A Half-Known Life. The final day ended with a tour of South Street Seaport Museum and a reception aboard the [End Page 177] Wavertree, a nineteenth-century merchant ship similar to Melville's St. Lawrence (the Highlander in Redburn). Melville dedicated Redburn to his youngest brother Thomas, "Now a Sailor on a Voyage to China." It is the only novel of Melville's where he mentions a famous old sailor home on Staten Island: "I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and snug with a handsome pension in the 'Sailors'-Snug-Harbor' on Staten Island" (NN Redburn 116). Thomas Melville became Governor of Sailors' Snug Harbor in 1867, eighteen years after the publication of Redburn and arguably the worst year in Herman Melville's New York life, when his oldest son Malcolm shot and killed himself. Tom ran...

The U.S.-Mexico Border and the 1947 Foot-and-Mouth-Disease Outbreak in Mexico

The U.S.-Mexico Border and the 1947 Foot-and-Mouth-Disease Outbreak in Mexico C. J. Alvarez (bio) The day after Christmas, 1946, a Mexican veterinary laboratory confirmed that cattle in the gulf coastal state of Veracruz were infected with foot-and-mouth disease, or fiebre aftosa in Spanish. Within days, the U.S. Bureau of Animal Industry, a division of the Department of Agriculture, shut down the entire U.S.-Mexico border to all animal traffic and animal products that could be contagious. Within two months, the U.S. Congress had passed a bill authorizing a bilateral commission to contain the outbreak. Over the next nine months, until late November, 1947, the Bureau of Animal Industry, alongside its Mexican counterpart, the Secretaría de Agricultura y Ganadería, embarked on a slaughter campaign in central Mexico to "stamp out" the disease.1 A year after the first outbreak, the commission had killed nearly 1 million animals, roughly half of which were cattle.2 This was the interior quarantine. As B. T. Simms, the chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, put it, "we feel very strongly that it is better for us to fight the battle on Mexican territory than it is on our territory. The land boundary has never held foot-and-mouth disease. It either moves up or you move it back."3 After many people in the Mexican countryside resisted and protested against the deaths of their animals, the commission shifted to a vaccination program instead, but in both instances the quarantine line was guarded and enforced by the Mexican military. And despite Simms's preference for concentrating the violence in Mexico, the Bureau of Animal Industry also began patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border soon after the outbreak as a backup measure. This was the border quarantine. It was enforced by Customs inspectors at the official ports of entry, by armed officials of the Bureau of Animal Industry on horseback crisscrossing the vast open spaces of ranchland and desert between the ports, and by physical infrastructure, a [End Page 691] reinvigorated border fence building project. Over the course of three years, the Bureau of Animal Industry, in collaboration with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, worked together to complete 237 miles of fencing on the land border between the Pacific Ocean and the Rio Grande. This fence construction dwarfed all previous fence building projects; it was over five times longer than anything that had been built before along the international divide, and remained the most substantial border fencing construction until the Secure Fence Act barrier system of 2006. It was different than previous fence projects not only because of its length, but also because it was a collaborative project between both animal and immigration inspectors, and because it included a military component in Mexico, over 200 miles south of the border.4 I argue that this episode amounted to a signal transition in border history because it simultaneously reshaped the built environment of the western boundary and projected U.S. border controls deep into Mexico, thereby altering the geography of border policing that had previously been largely concentrated along the proverbial line in the sand. My analysis draws on several historiographic traditions, including histories of policing institutions, quarantines, agriculture, the Mexican military, and of the episode itself. By the time of the border closure, as several studies have shown, the development of federal law enforcement on the U.S. side had been underway for over a generation, and the U.S.-Mexico guest worker program (Bracero Program) between 1942 and 1964 had occasionally prompted Mexico to use its military to prevent unauthorized exit as millions of laborers traveled back and forth across the border.5 This scholarship focuses mainly on how the U.S.-Mexico border was politically, institutionally, and racially "constructed," but largely ignores the built environment of the international divide itself, as well as the nonhuman kinds of movement that helped structure U.S.-Mexico relations. The few studies that have examined the outbreak in terms of the border have either ignored or underestimated the scale and significance of the built...

Risky Work, Fateful Play: Chinese Customs Inspectors and the Compossibility of Fortune

ABSTRACTThis article examines how customs inspectors in contemporary China manage the ongoing suspicions of their bureau and their own moral careers through two distinct models for dealing with uncertainty: risk management and fortunetelling. While risk management has become a key sign of the ‘modernising’ professional ethos of the Chinese Customs Administration since the early 2000s, curiously fortunetelling has also emerged as a popular pastime among many officials eager to grasp the cosmic signs of mis/fortune in their midst. By attending to the distinctive chronopolitics and calculative logics at play in models of risk management and fate calculation, I analyse the ways in which customs inspectors try to hone an ethics of timely response in a globalising world imagined as irreducibly opaque and polyrhythmic in its patterns. This is a world especially open to compossible renderings of ‘fortune’ as a cosmo-economic force that resonates across systems of speculation.

Going Beyond Analysis of Internal Data to Support Customs Modernization: A Case Study in Gabon

Customs administrations in developing countries increasingly use risk-based techniques relying on data mining and statistical scoring. By demonstrating the value of using data analysis techniques to orient frontline controls so as to facilitate legal trade and combat fraud more effectively, these projects have helped promote a cultural change in these organizations. However, these risk management techniques may prove to be ineffective in assessing fraud risks based only on frauds detected by customs inspectors. In a context of moral hazard and low-performing customs administration, one way to address this weakness is to expand the approach by relying on other sources of information such as discrepancies in bilateral trade statistics. Several studies use these statistical discrepancies (mirror data) to identify fraudulent declarations and estimate their effects. By comparing Gabon's import customs data with discrepancies in its bilateral trade data, this paper stresses the usefulness of simultaneously analyzing customs fraud records and mirror trade statistics data. Such an analysis helps quantifying undetected fraud and therefore constitutes a valuable tool to target ex post audits. Then, based on the combination of these databases, the paper defines indicators to monitor the performance of customs controls.

Hidden foreign trade and corruption on customers

According to the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the volume of the "shadow" economy in Ukraine is 1.1 trillion hryvnias or 45.1 % of the gross domestic product. Estimates of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine show that only 50 % of payments to the state budget comes from the clearance of goods, while the rest comprise a corruption component of 40 billion UAH for a year. Much of the large companies move non-declared goods across the state border and do not pay taxes. However, at the official level in Ukraine, it is still not accepted to talk about the servicing of the shadow foreign trade by the customs administration and the collection of corrupt rents from illegal trade in the state.Understanding the essence of the problem gives grounds to assert that the corruption risks in the work of customs are laid down in imperfect customs legislation, high tariff rates of duties and taxes, discrete powers of customs inspectors, the regime of customs procedures in the customs control zone, low level of their automation and physical contact of declarants from customs officers. In the customs case, the main type of corruption is bribery and abuse of influence related to the assistance of illegal and criminal activity in the foreign economic sphere. Subjects of foreign economic activity reduce costs and receive revenues through customs fraud or smuggling. Without corruption, this activity is impossible. On the illegal movement of goods and vehicles, smuggling and counterfeiting through the customs border, a criminal corruption business was created for all bodies and services that carry out various types of state control and law enforcement activities in the customs sphere.The most profitable are corruption schemes related to the illegal import / export of three groups of highly liquid products: tobacco products, counterfeit IT products, petroleum products, cars with foreign registration. For an independent study, illegal migration through the customs border of amber and wood, the manipulation of exports of grain and other highly liquid products deserve.Summarizing, we draw the following conclusions. Customs corruption is based on providing shadow foreign trade and covering economic crime on a transnational or transboundary scale. It is in violation of customs legislation by both parties in customs matters for the purpose of illegal enrichment. In corruption practices, all bodies and services that provide state control over the movement of goods through the customs border of Ukraine and carry out law-enforcement activities in this area participate. The level of corruption in the sphere of foreign economic activity depends on the volume of illegal export-import operations with raw materials and highly liquid products, as well as the ratio of official taxes and the cost of corruption services to economic entities. It was clarified that in parallel with "centralized corruption" in customs authorities there is "competitive corruption" between regional customs and their structural divisions for providing corruption services at lower prices. Measures to prevent corruption and crime should be aimed at reducing the profitability of shadow foreign trade by liberalizing the tax burden at the same time while strengthening control over transfer pricing, including the customs service into an integrated security system throughout the supply chain, implementing common customs control, managing risky operations.

Papers, Please and the systemic approach to engaging ethical expertise in videogames

Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope (2013), explores the story of a customs inspector in the fictional political regime of Arstotzka. In this paper we explore the stories, systems and moral themes of Papers, Please in order to illustrate the systemic approach to designing videogames for moral engagement. Next, drawing on the Four Component model of ethical expertise from moral psychology, we contrast this systemic approach with the more common scripted approach. We conclude by demonstrating the different strengths and weaknesses that these two approaches have when it comes to designing videogames that engage the different aspects of a player's moral expertise.

Melville’s Retirement

This essay provides an alternative account of Melville’s later career, one that resists the implicit Romantic privileging of literary labor over other forms of work and complicates the familiar late-Melvillean narratives of disillusionment, withdrawal, nostalgia, and transcendence. Contrary to any perceived professional disappointments, Melville the writer and retired District Customs Inspector continued to experiment across a variety of formal approaches, personas, and geographical settings, working through his retirement to develop late writings that were not solely reacting to the indifferent world “out there,” but actively engaged in responding to the contingencies of his immediate social and political environment. Melville approached literary composition and revision, in his later years, as an extension of (rather than a release from) other forms of work, an approach that makes his writings remarkably imbricated and coextensive with one another. Emerging from these later works is not any programmatic political or aesthetic testimony or attitude, but rather a sustained experimental exploration of alternative textual interdependencies, of an ongoing and vital entanglement in the world.

Seizures of inconvenience? Policy, discretion and accidental discoveries in policing the illegal wildlife trade at the Norwegian border

The illegal wildlife trade is among the fastest growing categories of transnational crime and is increasingly characterized as a problem by law enforcement authorities internationally and in Norway. This article examines the policing of illegal trade in wildlife at the Norwegian border. Wildlife trade is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Observations and interviews with Norwegian customs inspectors show that the detection of wildlife is not a priority when inspectors make risk assessments of control objects. I argue that this is largely because the Norwegian Customs and Excise’s organizational strategies and distribution of resources are directed towards other flows of illegal goods at the expense of wildlife. The considerable professional discretion the inspectors are allowed to exercise does not promote the enforcement of CITES. The inspectors see such cases as complicated, time consuming and unrewarding in terms of penalties upon prosecution. Seizures of wildlife are often accidental rather than planned. The findings indicate a need to reinforce and fully implement existing legislation on illegal wildlife trade at both the policy and on-site levels.

Hawthorne the Unreliabilist: His Epistemology in “The Custom-House” and Other Prefaces

Hawthorne the Unreliabilist: His Epistemology in “The Custom-House” and Other Prefaces Zachary Turpin (bio) Jesus answered,‘ . . . For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth . . . ’ Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:37–8) In a letter dated 4 February 1850 and addressed to his friend Horatio Bridge, Nathaniel Hawthorne offers a brief explanation for the inclusion of a prefatory sketch, “The Custom-House,” in his latest novel, The Scarlet Letter. “There is an introduction to this book,” he writes, “giving a sketch of my custom-house life, with an imaginative touch here and there, which may, perhaps, be more widely attractive than the main narrative. The latter lacks sunshine, etc.”1 The novel’s gloominess is unquestionable, making it tempting to take Hawthorne entirely at his word (his remarks are made in a private communication, after all) and to assume that the sketch’s sole purpose is to enliven an otherwise dreary narrative. However, considered in light of the shifting epistemological ground of “The Custom-House,” Hawthorne’s brief allusion to “an imaginative touch here and there” gains a wry added significance. The author of this sketch does, of course, play somewhat loosely with the facts of his tenure as a customs inspector. But, more generally, he expends a great deal of energy on both establishing and undercutting the “truth” of “The Custom-House.” I enclose the word truth in quotes because Hawthorne’s frequent insistence on verisimilitude gradually loses the ring of [End Page 487] sincerity, given his increasing reliance on imagination as a gap-filler. The “truths” of the “Custom-House”—that it recounts real events as experienced by the narrator; that it presents the contents of a discovered document; that it adheres as closely to historical fact as can be expected—become complicated by Hawthorne’s exploration of the interplay between truth and belief, history and memory, fact and imagination. Explorations of this type are today categorized within the term epistemology, with which discipline, I will argue, Hawthorne repeatedly flirts in “The Custom-House.” However, I will further suggest that Hawthorne writes his prefatory remarks less in the service of epistemological transparency than as a method of demonstrating that truth may be found even in the absence of clarity. Nineteenth-century epistemology had already covered a great deal of ground by the time Hawthorne had reached maturity, but I will suggest that in his prefaces, and particularly in “The Custom-House,” he effectively creates a new theory of knowledge. This novel epistemology is founded on the belief that all truth-justification processes are unreliable but that one may still derive meaning and value from human relationships. The term epistemology derives from the Greek ἐπιστήμη (épistéme), meaning “knowledge,” hence the field’s older and still quite serviceable name, the theory of knowledge.2 Though the subject itself has been around for at least 2,500 years, the word “epistemology” first appeared just four years after the publication of The Scarlet Letter (1850), coined by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier in his Institutes of Metaphysic.3 At its most basic, epistemology is a philosophical discipline dedicated to questioning how we know what we know. Common queries in epistemology include What is truth?, What can be known?, How do we know anything?, and What comprises knowledge? Pontius Pilate, quoted in this essay’s epigraph, thus qualifies as a rather sarcastic epistemologist. [End Page 488] One of the first philosophers to address these preoccupations at length is Plato (ca. 428–347 BCE), whose answers to the problem of knowledge vary, like Hawthorne’s, and are at times incompatible. In his Phaedo, for example, Plato famously posits that we do not know the things of this world so much as we sense their purer counterparts, known as “Forms,” on the intangible plane of abstraction. However, he notes that only the true philosopher may view the Forms, via his higher intellect. But, if ideas exist on an inaccessible plane of abstraction, how could such a person possibly access them? This is perhaps the first epistemological stumper, and Plato’s answer is less than satisfactory: the knowledge of the Forms, he says...

A method for automatic manifest verification of container cargo using radiography images

This paper evaluates a new and useful tool which can be used to facilitate trade while simultaneously enhancing supply-chain security. It describes a simple algorithm to characterize regularities in the appearance of particular cargo types in radiography images and verify that new images with the same cargo type match the earlier characterization. We find that it is possible to identify containers inconsistent with their label to a substantial degree of confidence. This evaluation was made possible by analyzing a novel data set consisting of radiography images of real stream-of-commerce container cargo which is labeled with the contents from the shipment manifest. These data were gathered from containers passing through U.S. ports of entry and from customs data filed by importers. The pairing of radiograph and manifest data is shown to hold great potential for assisting human customs inspectors and detecting anomalous shipments.

Pinacate Campmates

Pinacate Campmates Bill Hoy and Bill Broyles As in great fiction and film, many of life’s supporting cast prove to be memorable in their own right. We may find Queequeg in Moby Dick, Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, the bandit leader in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or Mammy in Gone with the Wind as interesting as we do the central characters. Here’s a second look at some of the role-players in William T. Hornaday’s Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava and Carl Lumholtz ’s New Trails in Mexico. Even though they had secondary roles in the expeditions, they were locally prominent, sought out for their knowledge, or selected for their abilities. Hornaday’s trip included Jeff Milton, Godfrey Sykes, Frank Cole, Rube Daniels, and John Phillips. Among others, Lumholtz met Juan Caravajales, Queléle, “Doctor” Pancho, Alberto Celaya, Clemente, Judge Traino Quiroz, and José Juan. Here, in hopes of according these characters a more respected place in Pinacate history, we share what we’ve subsequently learned about them, even though much of it remains fragmentary. Celaya has his own chapter elsewhere in this journal, and Sykes his in the summer issue. Hornaday Expedition Jefferson Davis Milton Jeff Milton may be the most revered lawman in the history of Arizona. Wyatt Earp may have been more famous, or infamous, but Milton was everything a model officer should be. Jeff once boasted, “I never killed Bill Hoy served the National Park Service for thirty-three years, including Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where he interviewed many local people and chronicled their histories. He is now retired, living near Fort Bowie, Arizona, and studying Apache lifeways. Bill Broyles is a perennial freshman at the desert schoolhouse, where he has been educated by the spine of a cactus, the call of a quail, and the words of patient sages. His latest homework includes Sunshot: Peril and Wonder in the Gran Desierto, and he had a hand in Dry Borders: Great Natural Reserves of the Sonoran Desert. Journal of the Southwest 49, 3 (Autumn 2007) : 323–355 324 ✜ Journal of the Southwest a man that didn’t need killing and I never shot an animal except for meat” (Haley 1948:411). He was born November 7, 1861, on a Florida plantation to wealthy parents who traced their lineage to poet John Milton , but the Civil War reduced them to poverty, and at age sixteen Jeff wandered to Texas and drifted across the Southwest from job to job as a cowhand, Texas Ranger, deputy sheriff, livestock inspector, mounted customs inspector, railroad courier and special agent, immigration inspector , and Border Patrol agent. Jeff was forty-three years old when he undertook his strenuous desert patrols. In 1904 the U.S. Immigration Service set up “Chinese inspectors ,” hiring line riders who would patrol the border for illegal entrants, Jeff Milton. Pinacate, November 1907. (John M. Phillips stereo, Arizona Historical Society—Tucson, Photo Number 71879.) Pinacate Campmates ✜ 325 including the Chinese. The Immigration Service assigned Jeff to the job of “Chinese agent for the United States in a foreign country.” His border “beat” ran west nearly three hundred miles from Nogales, Arizona, to the Colorado River. His duty station would be “at large,” and he would work “entirely on his own initiative and responsibility.” Occasionally, he scrawled monthly activity reports to his supervisor—when he thought the events warranted. For twelve to fourteen hours a day or more, often seven days a week, Jeff and other line riders searched for tracks, chased violators, and apprehended them. Jeff Milton became the foremost of these men. He earned five dollars a day plus $3.50 per diem for himself and his horses. His transportation consisted of a saddle horse, pack animals, or sometimes a mule‑drawn spring wagon adapted to desert terrain. His arsenal was a shotgun, Winchester carbine, and two six-shooters, plus he carried three‑gallon canteens hung from either side of his mules. He felt comfortable in the wild. Milton possessed an uncommon respect for wild creatures. He tossed his food scraps to them. He never killed rattlesnakes and remarked, “If I was running the government, I’d make it a...

Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 2, 1851-1891 (review)

R E V I E W S a background significance by Wallace and related to the “chapter”to which they apply. Stella’sseries is not a genre or general idea. His setting in “relation” to a specific great literary work of Melville-Moby-Dick-calls forth a Melville expert to dialogue with it for all of our enrichment. So it has happened in this book. Aileen Callahan Boston College Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 2,1851-1891 HERSHEL PARKER Baltimore and London:Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 997 Pages t last, a real scandal. It turns out that Melville “made an expedient, emotional decision that does not look wholly honest” (210). He had Aarranged to have his tortoise sketches published as a book by Harpers and, after receiving an advance, he was paid again to publish selections of what would become The Encantadas in Putnam’s Magazine. Many have been fishing for a personal scandal for some time, and now this case of double-dipping looks like the greatest -but perhaps only -catch. Indeed, Hershel Parker demonstrates that Melville was impossible to live with -especially when in the midst of creative ferment -and relatives did contemplate that he may have been as crazy as the newspapers declared, and they did make plans for wife Lizzie to flee in 1867. But Parker finds no evidence of Melville physically abusing his wife, despite twentieth-century rumors, although “he ill treated her by borrowing a great sum of inoney in secret and not being able to pay it back” (631),much of that money going to the extravagance of buying books, and he may have been (probably was) psychologically abusive. But even Malcolm’sstrange death the same year does not seem much of a scandal. It followed no arguments, no rage even at the young man staying out too late -although it’s true that the family was aghast at the shame that the label of suicide brought and hastily modified the account. Truly, Melville was pushed to psychological extremes -but that was all. Still, Volume 2 of Parker’s compendious biography does reveal a scandal, although one utterly different, and far more troubling, than what many seem to have been fishing for recently. Melville may have first won fame because of 9 0 L E v I A T H A N R E V I E W S his ability to survive -and spin yarns about -his captivity on Nuku Hiva, but in this volume we come to understand how his life and, consequently, so much of his art, particularly after Moby-Dick, remained a captivity tale -or, rather, many overlapping captivity tales. We get a sense as never before of how much he was a captive of family demands, workaday life, and money woes of suffocating complexity. With so many obligations, cultural pressures, and debts, it seems a wonder he was able to write at all: his mother’s conservative religious orthodoxy, the smug complacency of his wife’s upper-class Unitarianism, and the weary years walking the docks as customs inspector are just a few examples. Lizzie seemed just as difficult to live with, in her own conventional way, and she joined the rest of the family who, with notable exceptions, recoiled at his literary ambitions once initial fame turned to derision. She would change her mind late in life, but only after others sanctioned the opinion. He did seem to browbeat his wife and daughters into helping him prepare and proofread manuscripts. Yet the whole fascination with discovering his flaws -which are actually fairly obvious is questionable. Herman has his humanities. More importantly, Parker documents the tensions of Melville’s experiences and consciousness, as fallen patrician, sailor, genius, cultural relativist, failed farmer, middle-class office seeker. In particular, we come to understand the development of his intellect, the intense literary and intellectual “to-andfro ” between belief and unbelief, as Hawthorne recorded of their conversation in Liverpool. In that context, the milieu of respectability which held him captive only makes the interior oscillations even more astonishing and poignant. We also get a sense of how much Melville was a captive of his own incredible bad luck and self-defeating...

On the inspection game

The Inspection Game is a multistage game between a customs inspector and a smuggler, first studied by Melvin Dresher and Michael Maschler in the 1960s. An extension allowing the smuggler to act more than once, treated by Sakaguchi in a special case, is solved. Also, a more natural version of Sakaguchi's problem is solved in the special case where the smuggler may act at each stage.