Cynical View Research Articles

No effects in independent prevention trials: can we reject the cynical view?

Recent studies suggest that the reported effect sizes of prevention and intervention trials in criminology are considerably larger when program developers are involved in a study than when trials are conducted by independent researchers. This paper examines the possibility that these differences may be due to systematic bias related to conflict of interest. A review of the evidence shows that the possibility of a substantial problem cannot be currently rejected. Based on a theoretical model about how conflict of interest may influence research findings, the paper proposes several strategies to examine empirically the extent of systematic bias related to conflict of interest. It also suggests that, in addition to improved standards for conducting and publishing future experimental studies, more research is needed on the extent of systematic bias in the existing body of literature.

What's wrong with IVR self‐service

PurposeReports in the popular press suggest much consumer frustration with interactive voice response (IVR) self‐service. The present study aims to conceptualize why frustration might occur and measures attitudes toward IVR.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaire responses were obtained from a quota sample approximately equally divided among men and women and three age groups (18‐28, 29‐48, 49 and older).FindingsCompared to a human operator, consumers perceive that transactions conducted through IVR take longer and are less customizable. Respondents strongly prefer a human operator, believe that IVR was implemented to benefit the company more than customers, and are bothered by not having an initial choice of a human operator versus IVR. Despite these negative views, satisfaction with IVR was primarily driven by transaction speed rather than concerns with these other issues. Compared to younger consumers, older respondents held a more cynical view of IVR and the companies that employ the technology.Research limitations/implicationsOnly inbound (and not outbound) IVR calls were studied and only customers (and not employees) were surveyed.Practical implicationsFrustration with IVR resulted in a “spillover” effect, lowering overall regard for the firm. Five managerial recommendations are suggested that may help recapture lost goodwill.Originality/valueThis is believed to be the first study to offer a theoretic explanation for consumer frustration with IVR. Also, the comparison of age groups on attitudes toward IVR in the present study may be novel.

The Man Behind the Slam

This interview highlights one librarian's creative approach to marketing librarians' services. The goal of the Slam the Boards project, initiated by Bill Pardue, is to increase public awareness of the assistance that librarians can provide.--Editor Bill Pardue is a virtual services librarian at Arlington Heights Memorial Library, a public library in Illinois. He recently spear-headed an innovative grassroots campaign, Slam the Boards, which encourages librarians from around the world to visit online answer such as Yahoo! Answers on a given day for the purpose of providing accurate and reliable services. By identifying themselves as librarians on these boards, the participants hope to make the public aware of the services that information professionals can provide. The first Slam the Boards was held on September 10, 2007, and has turned into a monthly event. Pardue has created a wiki with detailed information about the event, found at http://answerboards.wetpaint.com. Tell me about how Slam the Boards was conceived. It started as a loose idea that became firmer over time. I had been hearing that a lot of people were going to sites such as Yahoo! Answers, so I decided I needed to look into it to see what kind of opportunities were there. I thought it would be a good idea for librarians to go in, identify themselves as librarians and let people know we can help. One of my colleagues suggested we should have a lot of librarians doing this, not just a trickle. Then Caleb Tucker-Raymond [a virtual librarian in Oregon] had the idea to pick one day when this would happen. What does the name signify? It's a basketball term that refers to going for a rebound. I wanted to find a name that incorporated the word boards and reflected the idea that we were taking aggressive action. What did you hope to achieve with Slam the Boards? I wanted to achieve two things. First, I wanted to get librarians more involved. We need to figure out how we can get ourselves where the patrons are. Second, I wanted to let the public know what we do. There's a lack of awareness that librarians answer these questions every day. OCLC did a study in 2005 that found the public's perception is that libraries equal books. Reference services are not even on the public's radar screen. People know about libraries, but not librarians. We all believe there's a role for us but we've failed to market ourselves appropriately. I have no illusions that this will change the world but it's one way of doing it. Let's go out there and find questions, look for opportunities, go out in the community and show off our services. I like to call it proactive reference or [laughing] predatory reference. How did you spread the word and elicit support? This was strictly a grassroots effort. I put the word out through discussion that I belong to, and then people started mentioning it in their blogs. Then there was an item in American Libraries Direct, and some newsletters picked it up. What was the response from fellow librarians? The majority of people I heard from were really excited about it and thought it was a fun idea. There were a few naysayers. At least one librarian/blogger took a more cynical view and said, Oh right, we should give away skills for free to people who don't appreciate us. …

Integrative Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder

Integrative Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder

Shelley and the Development of Don Juan

One of the most exciting encounters in the history of English poetry is that between Percy Shelley and Lord Byron in Venice in the late summer of 1818. For the literary critic, this meeting is more compelling than its famous predecessor, the dark Frankenstein summer of 1816, because both poets were maturing into their great periods and this meeting provided a vital spark. Most directly it produces Shelley's first great poem, Julian and Maddalo, which requires little scholarship to identify as a result of the poets' meeting. Less obvious is the impact on Byron's poetry. He had begun Don Juan earlier that summer, but Shelley, who enthused about the poem, must have encouraged and influenced Byron in a work that would evolve and deepen in the following years. This essay will attempt to cast some light on the processes of that influence. I will propose that Don Juan alters significantly in tone and style in the wake of Shelley's visit and suggest ways in which these changes might be part of a response to Shelley's reappearance on Byron's intellectual map. Byron began drafting the Dedication to Don Juan continuously with Canto I on 3 July 1818. The final page of the draft is dated 6 September and the fair copy was started on 16 September, suggesting that Byron had more or less finished Canto I by then, although we know he was still adding stanzas to the start of the canto as late as 8 December. Shelley arrived in Venice on 22 August and remained in the area until early November. The day after Shelley's arrival the poets rode together on the Lido, the event immortalised in Julian and Maddalo; at this point Byron was probably still drafting Canto I. Canto II was mainly drafted between 13 December and the middle of the following January, in the wake of Shelley's visit. In a letter dated 8 October (but looking back to August) to Thomas Love Peacock, Shelley reveals that Byron 'read me the first canto of his Don Juan, a thing in the style of Beppo, but infinitely better'.1 It sounds like this was his first encounter with the poem and also that most - if not all - of the work for Canto I was complete before Shelley arrived.2 Based on this evidence it seems most likely that any Shelleyan influence would have flowed into Canto II. Looking at the poem, this speculation seems plausible: there is a marked difference between key aspects of the first two cantos, especially in the contrast between Juan's first two amorous encounters. The Julia episode is largely continuous with the cynical view of human relationships found in Beppo; the descriptions of Haidee, however, without jettisoning these Byronic fundamentals, are voiced less certainly - the satire merges into more earnest, beautiful and even transcendental imagery, which is not present simply to be undermined. This change in the poem matches Shelley's view of its development. Shelley was uncertain about Beppo and the first parts of Don Juan, which he considered inconsistent with a positive view of 'human dignity', but seems to have seen the end of the second canto - and the appearance of Haidee - as a watershed, after which his praise is unstinting.3 What kind of thinking did Shelley bring with him to Venice? Certainly his mind was full of Plato, having recently completed an excellent translation of the Symposium during his time at Bagni di Lucca, where he stayed prior to linking up with Byron in Venice. As James A. Notopoulos has pointed out, it is likely that 'Shelley's Ficino-like enthusiasm for Plato had a very real influence on Byron'.4 But Shelley's response to Plato was complex and critical as well as enthusiastic; it is everywhere inflected by his wider reading in philosophy. His most striking philosophical utterances bring together a variety of sources, while remaining uniquely Shelleyan. Perhaps most remarkable of all is this from his essay 'On Life', which he probably wrote shortly after the visit to Byron: the existence of distinct individual minds similar to that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is [. …

The American Jeremiad Twice Revisited

The American Jeremiad Twice Revisited David W. Noble (bio) Americanism: New Perspectives on the History of an Ideal. Edited by Michael Kazin and Joseph A. McCartin. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 288 pages. $29.95 (cloth). Uniting America: Restoring the Vital Center to American Democracy. Edited by Norton Garfinkle and Daniel Yankelovich. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. 304 pages. $32.00 (cloth). In 1978, Sacvan Bercovitch's The American Jeremiad was published.1 He proposed that the Puritans coming to North America believed that they were working with a divine promise. Their new society would escape the instability of all previous societies. It would be the end of history. But they did not achieve a timeless space. And they defined their experience with timeful change as a declension from the perfection embodied in the promise. The jeremiad, then, was a warning to stop the corruption associated with the declension into meaningless time and to return to the eternal virtue associated with the original promise. Younger generations of Puritans began, for Bercovitch, to complete the ritual by prophesying the end of the declension and a transcendent return to the promise. For Bercovitch, when the nation was created in 1789, this explicitly religious ritual of Presbyterians and Congregationalists became a secular ritual of a national civil religion. Generation after generation of American citizens defined timeful change as a fall from a timeless promise and prophesied a transcendence of profane time as the sacred eternal promise was restored. I believe these two recent books—Americanism: New Perspectives on the History of an Ideal and Uniting America: Restoring the Vital Center to American Democracy—embody the characteristics of the jeremiad as defined by Bercovitch. The editors of both these collections of essays see the American nation as a fulfillment of a timeless promise. It is the end of history. They then see a declension from that promise, but they too are able to make a prophecy that the declension will end with a triumphant return to the original promise. The editors of Americanism, Michael Kazin and Joseph McCartin, are historians at Georgetown University. The national promise, for them, is a set [End Page 191] of "canonic ideals—self-government, equal opportunity, freedom of speech and association, a belief in progress . . . first proclaimed during the era of the Revolution" (1). All Americans in 1776, however, did not share these ideals, but the number of the faithful increased into the 1960s. The first set of essays in the book, titled "Whose America?" moves chronologically from the Revolution toward the present. The essay by Mae M. Ngai, "The Unlovely Residue of Outworn Prejudice: The Hart-Celler Act and the Politics of Immigration, 1945–1965," seems, however, to challenge the thesis presented by Kazin and McCartin. For them there was a virtuous national identity in the 1960s, liberal nationalism, that began to be confronted by a false American promise, that of conservative nationalism. But, for Ngai, the Hart-Celler Act was not a fulfillment of liberal pluralism, because it continued to express implicit patterns of racism. And in the second group of essays, "Americanism in the World," Alan McPherson seems to question the jeremiad as a usable past in his essay "Americanism Against American Empire." He criticizes the legacy of both black and white anti-imperialists because of their inability to relate their critiques to patterns of anti-imperialism that existed outside the nation's borders. But, for Kazin and McCartin, declension from liberal nationalism came in the 1960s. The politics of the Vietnam War played a critical role in this change. "In a decisive break with tradition, leading activists in the protest movements of the era took issue not just with government policies but also with the ideals from which those policies were supposedly drawn. Young radicals did not seek to draw attention to the distance between America's promise and its reality as much as to debunk the national creed as inherently reactionary and destructive" (6). As Kazin and McCartin reinvent the jeremiad, "that cynical view" (6), continued today by such important younger scholars as Amy Kaplan and Matthew Frye Jacobson, has allowed conservative nationalists to capture Americanism and give it...

Um moralista nos trópicos: O visconde de Cairú e o Duque de la Rochefoucauld

Reviewed by: Um moralista nos trópicos: O visconde de Cairú e o duque de La Rochefoucauld Roderick J. Barman Monteiro, Pedro Meira . Um moralista nos trópicos: O visconde de Cairú e o duque de La Rochefoucauld. São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial, 2004, 326 pp. The eighteenth century was, among other things, the age of the maxim. Maxims often analyzed the behavior and the character—virtues and vices—of human beings, as with "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue." The most celebrated writer of maxims was François, duke of La Rochefoucauld, who died in 1680. By 1695 the sixth edition of his maxims, originally published anonymously, had appeared. The eighteenth century saw the publication of no less fourteen works, based on La Rochefoucauld but reorganizing and amending his maxims, commenting on them, and incorporating the aphorisms of other writers. In the 1820s, almost a century and a half after La Rochefoucauld's, there appeared in Rio de Janeiro a work, Constituição moral, e deveres da cidadão, by José da Silva Lisboa (future viscount of Cairu) with an appendix containing La Rochefoucauld's maxims. Pedro Meira Monteiro is enamoured by La Rochefoucauld. A major theme of his wide ranging study, composed of three disparate parts, is the contrasting perceptions of human nature and behavior presented by La Rochefoucauld and [End Page 167] by Silva Lisboa. For Meira Monteiro the most revealing of La Rochefoucauld's sayings are "our virtues are generally no more than our vices in disguise" (26) and "nobody merits being praised for goodness, if he does not possess the power and the boldness to be wicked" (78). Maxims such as these indicate a detached, almost cynical view of existence. Virtue and vice are so interrelated that moral perfection is an illusion. To Silva Lisboa such an attitude was the first step on the downward path to the French Revolution, the font of all evil. Maxims in Silva Lisboa's view had to guide, direct, and uplift, instilling the virtues proclaimed in both Natural Religion and the Catholic faith, which he did not perceive as incompatible. Understandably, given the Brazilian's didactic style, his aphorisms do not figure in Meira Monteiro's text. The book's first and briefest part reviews the perception of human character, nature, and culture appearing in the Júbilos da América, a collection of prose and poems produced in 1754 by the Acadêmia dos Seletos at Rio de Janeiro. Silva Lisboa made use of this bombastic and self-laudatory work in his Constituição moral, and he did so, Meira Monteiro suggests, because the panegyrists agreed with him in ignoring nature and equating civilization solely with European culture. The author's motive for including this first section may in part be to discover some utility in the Júbilos and so rehabilitate it as an element an incipient Brazilian literature. The second, longest, and perhaps ablest section is devoted to an analysis of the reception of La Rochefoucauld's maxims after 1700. During his own lifetime the duke's perception of morality and human nature aroused unease, often distaste. The passage of time confirmed the perspicacity and literary merit of the maxims but intensified unhappiness over their view of humanity. Meira Monteiro demonstrates how a virtual industry grew up to make, through reordering, reinterpretation, and even rephrasing, La Rochefoucauld's aphorisms palatable both to a specific public's emotional and intellectual expectation. Silva Lisboa, for example, reproduced some of La Rochefoucauld's maxims, as "Worldly Morality," with his own precis of Catholic doctrines, "Christian Morality," thereby sanitizing the duke's aphorisms. The final section reviews Silva Lisboa's many publications, seeking to understand his vision of humanity and the world. Whereas physical ruins, decline, and decadence fascinated authors such as Edward Gibbon, the Brazilian saw the world in terms of constructing a coherent and beneficent order, an order Silva Lisboa identified with European culture and Catholicism. Belonging to a new nation state, Silva Lisboa necessarily sought to shape through his writings model citizens, but he was also, despite his clamor against "the libertines," a product of the Enlightenment and shared its assumptions about the capacity...

Tuberculosis patient adherence to direct observation: results of a social study in Pakistan

A randomized controlled trial was carried out in Pakistan in 1999 to establish the effectiveness of the direct observation component of DOTS programmes. It found no significant differences in cure rates for patients directly observed by health facility workers, community health workers or by family members, as compared with the control group who had self-administered treatment. This paper reports on the social studies which were carried out during and after this trial, to explain these results. They consisted of a survey of all patients (64% response rate); in-depth interviews with a smaller sample of different types of patients; and focus group discussions with patients and providers. One finding was that of the 32 in-depth interview patients, 13 (mainly from the health facility observation group) failed to comply with their allocated DOT approach during the trial, citing the inconvenience of the method of observation. Another finding was that while patients found the overall TB care approach efficient and economical in general, they faced numerous barriers to regular attendance for the direct observation of drug-taking (most especially, time, travel costs, ill health and need to pursue their occupation). This may be one of the reasons why there was no overall benefit from direct observation in the trial. Provider attitudes were also poor: health facility workers expressed cynical and uncaring views; community health workers were more positive, but still arranged direct observation to suit their, rather than patients', schedules. The article concludes that direct observation, if used, should be flexible and convenient, whether at a health facility close to the patient's home or in the community. The emphasis should shift in practice from tablet watching towards treatment support, together with education and other adherence measures.

ZIMBABWE'S MARCH 2005 ELECTIONS: DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES

On 31 March 2005, Zimbabwe held its parliamentary polls, the sixth since the country gained independence in 1980. These elections were widely viewed by analysts as representing a rare chance to end political tensions and pull the country back from the brink of instability by breaking the political deadlock that has dominated it since the controversial presidential elections in 2002. In recent years, a great deal has been published on what has come to be known as the ‘Zimbabwe crisis’, a classic case that has reinforced cynical views about the weakness or failure of post-colonial states in Africa. The current situation is deeply rooted in President Robert Mugabe's politicisation of land-related historical injustices and tensions. Arguably, he did this to stem the tide of the pro-democracy movement and to sustain his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government in power, in the wake of the seizure of white commercial farms from 2000 onwards and the resultant downward plunge of the economy. Although it is obvious that Zimbabwe's political future hinged on these elections, it is now clear that the outcome has been judged to be unacceptable to the parties contesting it, especially the MDC, which has constantly pointed out the lack of a level playing field. Since these elections have failed to gain a degree of national, regional and international acceptability, this paper will question whether this event has given Zimbabwe another opportunity to resolve the political impasse. Current assessments wouldsuggest that this is not so and that Zimbabwe will return to its previous state of political paralysis

Euthanasia Is Out of Control in The Netherlands

Euthanasia Is Out of Control in The Netherlands Stephen Drake (bio) The March 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine featured an article by two Dutch doctors defining a "problem" and a "solution." Drs. Verhagen and Sauer announced that a survey had found that, contrary to Dutch law, some infants with severe disabilities have been euthanized. In an effort to end "uncontrolled" euthanasia, they proposed adoption of a set of protocols, known as the "Groningen protocol," for legally euthanizing infants with disabilities and serious medical conditions. It's hard to believe anyone could be surprised by the news of this latest effort to expand the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands. For the sake of brevity, one might compare Dutch euthanasia practices to a highway system. In this system, drivers are responsible for monitoring their own speed. As long as they tell officials how fast they're driving, the authorities generally won't issue tickets for speeding. Here's the hitch: the problem of speeding has become so problematic that every few years a driver is actually issued a ticket. In every reported case, the offender was given a slap on the wrist, and the speed limit was raised. Predictably, this just results in a general rise in the speed of traffic and further requests to raise the speed limits. This is, in effect, what happened in 1994 when Dr. Boudewijn Chabot was convicted of aiding the suicide of a woman in despair over the death of her two sons. It happened again in 2001 when Dr. Wilfred van Oijen was tried and convicted for "euthanizing" an elderly woman without her permission. The main difference between the Dutch system and the American system, I'd suggest, is one of degree. We've set the speed limits at a lower level and mostly resisted requests to raise them. However, there is significant evidence that at least some medical professionals in the United States would embrace legalization of infanticide based on disability. It wasn't that long ago that passive euthanasia of infants with Downs Syndrome and spina bifida was an accepted practice here, and it's still unclear to what extent the practice persists. The sentiment for facilitating the deaths of infants with disabilities is evident in numerous research studies. For example, in 2001, Streiner and colleagues published a study in Pediatrics comparing the attitudes of parents and health care professionals in "quality of life" assessments of premature infants. The study found that neonatologists and neonatal nurses were both more pessimistic about pediatric outcomes, and also more likely to judge death to be the best outcome, than were the parents or siblings of the same children. This study, conducted in Canada, is consistent with earlier U.S. studies that have demonstrated a bias on the part of medical professionals in devaluing the lives of infants with severe disabilities. No one should mistake this bias for anything other than what it is—an over-valuation of physical and mental norms, which is bigotry. That prejudice is often mistaken for objectivity in bioethics discussions. It's one reason most public discussion of euthanasia is tainted by misinformation. For example, the Associated Press story on the Groningen protocol misinformed readers that the protocol applied to "euthanizing terminally ill newborns." This is a gross distortion: Verhagen and Sauer made no attempt to hide that they were talking about newborns with "serious medical conditions." It's both puzzling and disturbing that this misinformation was met with total silence from the bioethics community. You would think that bioethicists, eager to claim expertise and promising to bring clarity to public debates, would have jumped all over the Associated Press report. This silence reinforces the cynical view that the righteous anger bioethicists express at outspoken disability advocates has less to do with providing clarity than with protecting turf. Bioethicists who appear in popular media often decry the simplistic way in which complex issues are addressed. On behalf of Not Dead Yet and other disability rights organizations, I have a not-so-respectful request: admit your failure to promote a complex and accurate public discussion of bioethical issues and make room for those of us who seem more...

Trust, cynicism and populist anti‐politics

The overall focus of this paper is on developing a framework to explain support for alternative politics of a populist type. It has often been argued that the increasing focus on scandals and corruption has done much to alienate voters from traditional politics and that this alienation has, in turn, been reflected in what might be termed a ‘soap‐operatisation’ of politics, with an attendant diminution of trust in political institutions. We contend that, while reducing political events to variants of soap‐operas (with the demystification and banalisation of politics to which this gives rise) has had profound effects on the public perception of the political and political institutions, the result may not be simply a lack of, or diminution of, trust in politicians and political institutions, but rather a parallel growth in cynicism. The paper argues that while cynicism is often assumed to be a component of the decline in trust in institutions the two are, in fact, different and can give rise to different manifestations. We address the difference between the two concepts and develop a hypothesis that contends that supporters of populist alternatives can be located within two attitudinal clusters. We argue that, with respect to populist politicians and populist political parties, a cynical view of politics and political institutions will tend to produce individuals who support what we term ‘political entrepreneurs’, while a real distrust in institutions will translate into support for a more traditional populism of the radical right.

Duties of Care--Do they Really Exist?

It is popularly believed that if A owes B a duty of care in negligence, A will not actually have a legal duty to be careful: A will merely be required to pay damages to B if she suffers loss as a result of A's being careless. We can call this the cynical view of duties of care and those who adopt it, cynics. However, it is possible to take a different view of duties of care in negligence, according to which if A owes B a duty of care of some description, A will actually have a legal duty to be careful. We can call this the idealistic view of duties of care in negligence and those who adopt it, idealists. This article explains the importance of the debate between idealists and cynics over the nature of duties of care in negligence and goes on to argue that the cynical view of duties of care in negligence is, in fact, wrong and that the idealistic view of such duties should be preferred.

The precautionary principle and/or risk assessment in World Trade Organization decisions: a possible role for risk perception.

Risk analysis has been recognized and validated in World Trade Organization (WTO) decision processes. In recent years the precautionary principle has been proposed as an additional or alternative approach to standard risk assessment. The precautionary principle has also been advocated by some who see it as part of postmodern democracy in which more power is given to the public on health and safety matters relative to the judgments of technocrats. A more cynical view is that the precautionary principle is particularly championed by the European Community as a means to erect trade barriers. The WTO ruling against the European Community's trade barrier against beef from hormone-treated cattle seemed to support the use of risk assessment and appeared to reject the argument that the precautionary principle was a legitimate basis for trade barriers. However, a more recent WTO decision on asbestos contains language suggesting that the precautionary principle, in the form of taking into account public perception, may be acceptable as a basis for a trade barrier. This decision, if followed in future WTO trade disputes, such as for genetically modified foods, raises many issues central to the field of risk analysis. It is too early to tell whether the precautionary principle will become accepted in WTO decisions, either as a supplement or a substitute for standard risk assessment. But it would undermine the value of the precautionary principle if this principle were misused to justify unwarranted trade barriers.

Alaska Gives Ninth Circuit the Cold Shoulder: Conflicts in Campaign Finance Jurisprudence

The costs associated with mounting a full-fledged political campaign for federal, state, and local offices have increased tremendously over the past few decades.' As costs have skyrocketed, so has the need for campaign contributions to cover them. For most candidates, the preferable and most efficient way to raise campaign funds is to solicit large contributions from wealthy donors.2 The alternative would be to spend greater time and effort soliciting thousands of small contributions from a larger pool of donors.3 While the first approach is attractive, its main criticism has been the conflict of loyalties it can create for the candidate. While she is elected by the majority in her district and therefore is at least nominally answerable to her constituents, a cynical view dictates that she owes her victory to those few who funded her campaign.4 Once she is elected, this cynical view continues that

Mapping Cultural Diversity within India: A Meta-analysis of Some Recent Studies

Cross-cultural comparative studies mostly have been based on the assumption of cultural homogeneity that equates culture with nation. This assumption overlooks the cultural diversity that might exist within a nation. This article is based on the review of four empirical studies conducted by J.B.P. Sinha and his associates focusing on cultural diversity within India. A review of these studies revealed seven pan-Indian cultural preferences: (a) collectivist orientation; (b) respect for status and power; (c) primacy of personalized relationship; (d) desire to be embedded in an in-group; (e) familism; (f) context-sensitive (situational) behaviour; and (g) cynical view about others. However, it also revealed location-specific cultural preferences. The authors have analyzed these preferences, extracted from the findings of these studies for those locations which have been covered in more than one study, to present an holistic picture of the culture of each location. Sinha and his associates view cultural differences among various locations as a consequence of different degrees of infrastructural development in those locations. The authors are inclined to argue that cultural change is context sensitive and depends on the historical and cultural legacy inherited by a location. They argue for an evolutionary-emic approach to study cultural diversity within India.

Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England by Rebecca Krug (review)

REVIEWS 237 oped sense of how these practices relate to one another. For example, the concept of subject formation comes up several times, but since Kobialka never explores the interplay between medieval representation and subject formation in any systematic way, these references are both distracting and frustrating. In his introduction he states that “in the process of establishing links, patterns, and developments, an object is marginalized by the system of structures that organize its meaning” (26). While I appreciate the corrections to previous scholarship that Kobialka’s approach allows him to make, I found myself wishing he had allowed himself more leeway to establish just such “links, patterns and developments .” NORA RYAN, Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2002) ix + 238. As citizens of an industrialized nation, our relationship to the written word is largely taken for granted. Many of us, I presume, additionally tend to forget that access to literate culture was, and in some places still is, not a universal right. This naiveté consequently distorts our understanding of particular social artifacts and practices, both past and present, on a frequent basis. Perhaps the acknowledgment of this shortcoming is what makes Rebecca Krug’s study of women and literacy all the more interesting as it carefully challenges assumptions about literacy and literary production in the late Middle Ages. In Reading Families, Krug applies the anthropological concept of practice theory to the subject of women and textual culture in fifteenth century England in order to approximate better the more common, routine interactions women had with written word. In the process, she discovers the advent of female literacy in the collision of two cultural phenomena: the definition of self and world through family connections and the expanding textualization of medieval society. Medieval people, Krug writes, watched their immediate surroundings become increasingly delineated by the written word. As a result, women were compelled to engage literate society if only to further the practical interests of the household. To illuminate her line of reasoning, Krug presents hard evidence of feminine literate practice culled from four different, but analogous “family units.” These case studies introduce individuals working within and eventually reconstructing larger cultural frameworks, both literal and figural. In each instance , Krug finds that ultimately, family concerns prompt and shape feminine interactions with written texts. This sort of literate practice evolves with age and experience, and in time, comes to impact not only these women’s selfidentities , but ties with parents, husbands, in-laws, and children. Chapters 1 and 2 consider the literate practices and family standing of two women, one gentry, one aristocratic. Krug begins her examination with Margaret Paston’s letters to her husband and son. In them, she determines that Margaret ’s understanding of writing is influenced primarily by her husband John’s legal profession and secondarily by effort to confirm the Paston family’s gentle status by mean of written documents. Both instill a heightened belief in the written word’s power to convey and record for posterity truth and/or history. As a result, Margaret thinks of her letters to John as receipts of daily household affairs. When John accepts and validates her letters as accurate representations REVIEWS 238 of events, Krug notices that Margaret’s position of authority and agency within the family increases, as does her faith in her own literate identity. As the chapter progresses, Krug outlines the ways in which Margaret’s unwavering credence in written text creates conflict with her son, one of a generation who holds a much more cynical view of the trust placed in physical documents. John II, doubtful of textual objectivity, rejects his mother’s literate and thus familial position of influence, forcing her to reinvent an effective mode textual interaction between the two. In the case of Margaret Beaufort, Krug’s chapter tempers past judgments of her involvement with printing presses by more closely considering the larger tradition of literary practice that shaped her. The grounds for female literacy in the aristocratic family were as equally pragmatic as they were among the gentry. Women’s relationship with the written word above all...

Arthur Miller's Ironic Resurrection

Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues (2002) is a political satire that attacks the combination of government, business, and the media that arrogates so much social power in the contemporary world. Expressed through his plays, essays, and testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956, MillerÕs politics and activism are complex and sometimes contradictory, and in this play, he takes the cynical view that belief, aspiration, and revolution are no longer tenable. In the end, MillerÕs is the theatre of irony, and his trust in the individual and liberalism is equivocal, so he offers grim laughter as the only viable response to experience.

Medical students' attitudes in a PBL curriculum: trust, altruism, and cynicism.

Studies have shown that medical students become more cynical and less altruistic as they advance in training. However, these studies were conducted in traditional medical schools, and many used unvalidated tools. This study examined students' attitudes in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum using reliable and valid measures. Medical students and PGY-1 residents at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia, completed Wrightsman's Philosophies of Human Natures Scale (PHNS) in 1999 and 2000. Chronbach's alpha assessed internal reliability among subscales, and test-retest reliability coefficients confirmed acceptable reliability. For 114 students who completed both surveys, changes in PHNS scores were analyzed, with particular attention to the subscales of trustworthiness, altruism, and cynicism. Students assessed at the beginning of their second year increased the extent to which they believed people are trustworthy and increased their beliefs in how altruistic people are. They also showed a significant decrease in cynicism. There was not a significant change in trustworthiness, altruism, or cynicism among the participants beyond first year. In general, female students held less cynical views about others and believed people to be more trustworthy. Contrary to prior reports, this study found that more advanced trainees were not more cynical or less altruistic than their more junior counterparts. Indeed, a significant and positive change of attitudes among the participants during their first year of medical school refuted earlier reports. Thus, results of earlier studies and the effect of a PBL curriculum on attitudes of medical students need to be re-examined.

Anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: A cynical view from the British Isles on the indications for surgery

Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic and Related Surgery, Vol 19, No 2 (February), 2003: pp 203–209

British television satire

Satire is a regular feature of British television, both in fiction and topical comedy. Its contribution to contemporary culture and politics deserves to be taken seriously but it has attracted little academic interest. An exception is Wagg’s analysis of post-war British satirical comedy (1992) where he argues that satire has had a negative effect on political life by encouraging a cynical view of politics. This research discusses satire on contemporary British television, specifically topical news satire in the news quiz. Drawing on literary theory it seeks to illuminate how such satire works as a communicational form and what we might expect of it politically. Extracts are analysed of the news quiz Have I Got News For You? It is argued that topical news satire offers some examples of the traditional version of satire as a moral and pedagogic form identifying vices and urging their correction but it is found to be more likely to involve less conclusive features such as (following Griffin 1994) inquiry, provocation, play and display and to be dedicated to pleasure as much as moral and political persuasion. Whilst contemporary tv satire provides plenty of evidence to support the claim that it abuses politics in general and encourages cynicism, it can equally be argued that it is part of an established tradition of public complaint and mockery which is useful to a healthy democracy.