Dare Say Research Articles

Militarism and Ethnicity in the Sierra de Puebla, Mexico

Perhaps the most enduring image of the Zapatista uprising, which began in Chiapas on 1 January 1994, is the masked figure of Subcomandante Marcos. Running a close second, however, would be the sight of this makeshift army filing past delegates at the opening of the Conventión Nacional Democrática in the Lancandona later the same year. Men, women and youths with their wooden rifles for weapons, dignity and silent determination as ammunition. They were not the first, and I dare say will not be the last, indigenous movement in Mexico to be driven to violence in defense of their rights. The state's firm response to the uprising was predictable and illustrates the most common reaction to the specter of an Indian with a gun in his hand. Ironically, the Mexican army has carried out such repression with a rank and file comprised largely of youths from indigenous backgrounds. These young men see enlistment as one of the few escapes from the rural poverty that did much to foster the Zapatista rebellion in the first place. Thus, an armed Indianper seis not a problem; it is merely when this person acts autonomously that the trouble begins.

A Call for Tutorials on Alternative Approaches to the Study of Verbal Behavior

In conversations with Hank Schlinger, the new editor of The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, concerning the future of the journal, I suggested that he solicit special tutorial articles on topics in related fields to supplement the empirical and theoretical articles that are the mainstay of the journal. He requested that I submit a written proposal to that effect, to be shared with the readership. Most of the readers of this journal are professional behavior analysts with a general interest in the extension of fundamental principles to all behavioral phenomena; only a handful, I dare say, are specialists in verbal behavior. Consequently, few of us are well read in the vast literature of closely allied fields, to say nothing of traditional linguistics, psycholinguistics, or developmental psychology. Because our approach differs so fundamentally from that of traditional scholars, much of this literature will be of little use to us. But not all: I have commonly found that, if one sets aside the theoretical interpretation of an article in, say, psycholinguistics or cognitive psychology, what remains is a kernel of useful or at least provocative data. If we, collectively, are to provide a comprehensive interpretation of verbal behavior, we must avail ourselves of all of the relevant data. Of secondary importance, if we are to persuade those outside our field of the validity of our approach, we must at least know the kinds of questions that trouble them. Because it

Introduction

Introduction Ifhuman beings were not divided into two biological sexes there would probably be no need for literature. And ifliterature could truly say what the relations between the sexes are, we would doubtless not need much of it then either. —BarbaraJohnson Towards the conclusion of Malory's Morte d'Arthur, after Lancelot and Guinevere have been captured together in the queen's chamber, after Lancelot has killed the king's nephew, Aggravane, his great nephews Florens and Lovell, and thirteen other knights in order to make his escape, after the queen, sentenced to death, is rescued by Lancelot, who this time murders Sir Belyas Ie Orgulus, Sir Segwardes, Sir Gryfflet, Sir Braundyles, Sir Agglovale, Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gyllymer, Sir Raynold, Sir Damas, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay Ie Straunge, Sir Dryaunt, Sir Lambegus, Sir Hermynde, Sir Pertolyp, Sir Perymones, and, most important, the king's nephews Gareth and Gaheris, Arthur laments: . . . wyte you well, my harte was never so hevy as hit ys now. And much more I am soryar for my good knyghtes losse than for the losse ofmy fayre quene; for quenys I might have inow, but such a felyship ofgood knyghtes shall never be togydirs in no company. And now I dare say . . . there was never Crysten kynge that ever hylde such a felyshyp togydyrs. And alas, that ever sir Launcelot and I shulde be at debate. (Malory, III, 1183-84) This lament has been a source of consternation for critics who, having idealized Arthur much the wayTennyson did, are at a loss to explain the ease with which the king dismisses the queen and the difficulty he has blaming Lancelot for the carnage that has taken place. It strikes us that the concerns voiced by the critics mask what truly disturbs them about Arthur's statement. In Arthur's lament we catch a glimpse of a sexual economy in which the bodies ofqueens and knights are seen as goods which maybevalued, compared, and exchanged. Furthermore, the hypermasculine world oftheArthurian court operates within a sexual economy of homosocial desire which attributes far greater value to relationships between men than it does even to the marriage ofthe king and queen. This sexual economy—the term we will use to designate the imbrication ofwealth, power, patriarchy, exchange, sexuality, and history ARTHURIAN* 8.2 (1998) ARTHURIANA in any social formation (Clark 71)—has been in place from the beginning of the Morte d'Arthur, silently negotiating Arthur's ascent to power. It is understood both by the subjects of Malory's narrative and by Malory's fifteenth-century audience, even ifit cannot be openly discussed. When it is, as it is in this passage, theeffect is jarring. Modern critics ofArthurian romance have not, until quite recently, vigorously pursued these intersections between sexuality and economy, apparently unwilling to give up their nostalgia for an idealized, hypermasculine—and heterosexual—society ofthe Round Table.1 It is, however, these intersections, the ways in which social constructions of gender are imbricated in the economic production and reproduction of culture that bring together the five essays in this special issue on 'Symbolic and Sexual Economies in Arthurian Romance.' These essays explore the sexual economies ofFrench and English aristocratic culture between the twelfth and fifteenth century, the culture that monopolized thewealth and patronage that enabled the production and dissemination ofthe Arthurian histories produced by Geoffrey ofMonmouth, Wace, and Lagamon and the romances produced by poets from Chrétien de Troyes to Thomas Malory. These histories and romances both reflected and refracted the cultural anxieties of this class—its nostalgia for a legendary past that never existed and its desire to maintain political and economic hegemony through fictions of aristocratic value and unbroken patrilineage—that were increasingly threatened by the Church and by the emergence ofa wealthy mercantile class. At the center of any sexual economy (as Gayle Rubin argues in her now classic essay, 'TheTraffic in Women') is sexual difference, which both produces and is produced by the sexual economy. Indeed, we use term 'sexual economy' to describe what Rubin calls 'the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products ofhuman activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied...

Helfgott's Musical Offerings

Helfgott’s Musical Offerings Renée Cox Lorraine Many music critics are perplexed at the phenomenal popularity of pianist David Helfgott. In view of Helfgott’s inconsistent performances and erratic concert behavior, more than a few critics have opined that this popularity is undeserved. While Helfgott’s appeal is a complex phenomenon that will probably remain at least partially mysterious, my own view is that Helfgott’s musical offerings are of considerable interest from both psychological and musical perspectives. Perhaps a central aspect of his appeal is that Helfgott has emerged from a relatively unknown psychological realm, bringing with him information, interpretations, and aspirations that can tantalize and illuminate. Some of the reasons for Helfgott’s sold-out performances are clear enough. An obvious one is that many people admired the film Shine (which recounted Helfgott’s promise as a young pianist, his mental collapse followed by years in an asylum, and his eventual return to the concert stage) and want to extend in any way they can the experience that the film evoked for them. Narratives that deal with someone down-and-out-who overcomes great adversity to achieve fame and fortune have always been popular, especially among those of us who can identify with being down and out or with overcoming adversity. (That, I dare say, includes a lot of us.) And Helfgott has fallen particularly hard and re-emerged in a particularly dramatic way; it is as if Icarus has emerged from the depths of the sea and managed to fly again in spite of somewhat melted wings. Another reason for Helfgott’s magnetizing effect on concert-goers is that he puts on one hell of a show. One concert-goer, in response to an inquiry about her choice to attend a Helfgott performance, responded that she didn’t expect brilliant piano playing, but that she did expect to have an experience. What with Helfgott’s rhapsodic vocalizing and unorthodox bodily movements taking place as he plays, such listeners are doubtless granted at least as much as they bargain for. And even if slightly embarrassed or amused by Helfgott’s unusual performance practices, most of his audience genuinely admire his achievement and wish him the best. Helfgott’s “show” is not a carefully manufactured one like Liberace’s, but one in which no one—no doubt including Helfgott himself—knows [End Page 346] exactly what is going to happen next, musically or otherwise. The experiences of uncertainty and immediacy have always been good reasons to attend live performances (in spite of the availability of excellent recordings), and Helfgott’s performances give rise to such experience in abundance. Perhaps the excitement of a live performance generally comes largely from a hope that the performance of a difficult piece will ensue without error, and that the interpretive concentration and inspiration of the performer will remain consistent throughout. With Helfgott, in contrast, one hopes for as few errors as possible, and is particularly impressed when flashes of technical brilliance or interpretive inspiration occur. Yet even though general performance expectations may be lowered when listening to Helfgott play, an excitement in anticipation nonetheless exists for many listeners. A resurrected Icarus may not fly as well as he did before he fell, or ever achieve status as one of the world’s best flyers. But it would still be a joy to see him fly again, and the uncertainty and immediacy one would experience in watching his attempts would be intense. Whatever the reasons for Helfgott’s popularity with the public, it has been suggested that this popularity has little to do with the music he plays. I disagree. The Helfgott phenomenon could be regarded, for instance, as an example of the remarkable power and potential of music therapy. (We should heed more carefully, I believe, the wisdom of ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Asian thinkers in this area.) Any significant achievement, along with recognition or adulation offered for that achievement, can affirm the achiever and help heal the achiever’s past or present wounds. That Helfgott’s achievement involves some of the finest works of music written in the history of Western culture may be particularly beneficial for him. This is not...

A Word from Helen

</br>![][1]</img> Hello again and welcome to our readers. We are now in the second part of the year and I dare say getting ready for the ISHRS meeting in Barcelona in October. Deborah Elliott tells me that the program is coming together nicely and we look forward to meeting and hearing from the

Two Paradoxes In Heidegger

Martin Heidegger committed two magisterial blunders in the full span of his philosophical work. They join the ends of his career and illuminate the connection between his philosophy and his politics but are of unequal weight and promise. They are closely linked, conceptually, with one another. Neither is easily corrected. But the first is corrigible and worth correcting; the second is philosophically hopeless-desperate in fact, even self-destructive. Such was Heidegger's literary sorcery, however, that self-defeat and self-deceit were made to appear a consummate victory of the boldest sort. It would now be very difficult to deny that, linked as they are, both blunders share the honor of housing Heidegger's idealized Nazism: the first, perhaps only incipiently but still adventurously-in a way that encouraged a great conceptual fault; the second, brilliantly but benightedly contrived-in a way that was to lead those willing to follow, by the light of a false revelation that could promise only the death of philosophical thought, possibly the death of all serious discourse. I realize that this is a fashionably purple thing to say. But I mean to recover the positive importance of Heidegger's philosophical work: the importance that remains after what is genuinely despicable in Heidegger is discounted (even though it cannot be excised). I say, well in advance of actually attempting to correct the first error-which, now, after a generation ofnew philosophers has sprung up to hear (and heed) Heidegger's siren song-confirms the honest impression that it still deserves to be analyzed and pondered. For, to put the matter bluntly, there has hardly been another figure in twentieth-century philosophy who has inspired so many serious thinkers, who continues to exert a philosopher's fascination even on those who would now be willing to acknowledge Heidegger's spectacular self-deception double deception, remember: that of the confusion of philosophical viability with political correctness, and that of the misperception of a conceptually impossible feat masquerading as the saving revelation of philosophy itself. Well, there's the grand theme I mean to lay before you. Both mistakes are obsessed with the question of Being. That huge question opens Being and Tme' and expands intriguingly in the Kehre marked by the Letter on Humanism. The latter is a wickedly clever but utterly preposterous rereading of the first. I don't think the full philosophical significance of that turning (there may well have been many turnings in Heidegger's career) has been satisfactorily dissected. For the point of doing so is to grasp the signal importance of Heidegger's salvageable contribution for the future of Western philosophy. I am aware that many auditors will think: why does he bother? and others will say: why does he think he has the right to insult Heidegger's genius? and perhaps still others will confess: it doesn't really matter any more. I honestly believe all these forms of philosophical fatigue are simply misguided and premature. Heidegger did make important discoveries, which (I dare say) others made before him and others, after him, independently. I don't think it is worth quarreling about the distribution of exclusive honors here. Generally, contributions of the large sort I have in mind are marked by the evidence that they were plainly dawning among diverse perceptive minds, and that their full realization required a certain collective correction of each. For my part, I am willing to concede that the best of Heidegger's discoveries are grounded in the post-Kantian Idealist challenge to the paradoxes of Kant's apriorism, which Husserl had originally grasped but then deformed, which (in turn) Heidegger clearly grasped (as the spat about Husserl's Britannica article betrays).2 I hardly think Heidegger has persuaded us that the Presocratics were Heideggereans about Being: certainly not Anaximander or Parmenides or Heraclitus. He has hardly persuaded us that he corrected Nietzsche's slippage back to canonical metaphysics. …

Nietzsche Contra Postmodernism

Is there today indeed enough pride, daring, courage, self-assurance, intellectual energy, responsibility,freedom of will so that in reality philosophy is now even possible on this earth?1 Apparently not, at least if one judges from the chorus of postmodernist and deconstructionist voices heard in our world today. It is not selfassurance, intellectual energy, and courage to think that greets our ears but a sometimes strained and sometimes shrill chorus of claims not merely to have overcome metaphysics, as Nietzsche had sought, but to have gone beyond and to have overcome philosophy itself. Where is one, once one has left behind the love of wisdom? What does this loud trumpeting signify? What do these brash pronouncements of the end of philosophy mean? Since Nietzsche is often regarded as an inspiration for or, if one dare say so, a source of such opinions, I thought it would be instructive to borrow his hammer and do a little philosophizing of my own, sound out a few idols. What do I hear? Not very delicate sounds, but then a hammer is a somewhat crude instrument. Which is not to say it is not entirely appropriate. If my ear is attuned aright, what do I hear? Inharmonious, illtempered wrangling, vengeance, spite, rancor, a chorus of no say-ers, renouncers of all values and despisers of all creators of value, refusers of all that life has offered and has to offer. so hard? the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. After all, are we not close relatives? Why so soft, O my brothers, thus I ask you. Are you not my brothers? Why so soft, so pliant, so yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?2 Indeed, why so hard, for we are brothers and sisters, we philosophers and you postmoderns, deconstructionists, and assorted fellow travelers. So hard because I hear emptiness, the resonance of the void, in the hollow ring that answers from my hammer blows. A chorus of raucous, discordant voices, voices of spirits out of tune with themselves, stealth priests whose loud chanting is cover for rejection of life. The priestly crafts are as enchanting and as toxic to the human spirit as ever they were. These clever priests mask their service to the void, to the ascetic ideal, in cloaks of illusion woven of discourses of freedom, play, otherness, and difference. Cross-dressers of the intellect, they, like those of other eras, set traps for unwary but venturesome spirits. How cunning of the ascetic ideal to mask itself, disguise itself once again, and appear in the guise of the free spirit. Clearly all this is very unclear. But then, to deconstruct deconstruction, even for the sake of the love of wisdom, does not necessarily entail enlightenment. Nietzsche's recurring insistence that all truth is perspectival, all seeing interpretive, all knowing interested, perspectival, and interpretive, is itself open to more than one reading. His thinking is complex, multilayered, and diverse. The result is that at times the various themes produce what is a difficult harmony at best. He vacillates between two ontologies and what the perspectival character of knowing means varies depending on which ontology is at the moment the interpretive stance. One ontology produces the reading that it is the human role to be the creator of values. It entails a self-assured, active confidence and self respect. The other leads to the ascetic ideal. They share the insistence that truths, values, convictions, are prisons, that one must be free not only of Eternal Truth but eternal truths and finally of truth itself. To see how vastly different in meaning the perspectival character of knowing can be, let us sound out two of Nietzsche's strongly drawn images, his Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit from Zarathustra and his image of lambs and birds of prey from The Genealogy of Morals. Herr Nietzsche, your hammer, please. In the Zarathustra image the spirit is imaged as camel, lion or child depending on the relation to the Great Dragon which symbolizes Truth, Value, Absolute Good. …

The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Series II: The Architectural and Engineering Drawings. Vol. 2: The Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Pts. 1 and 2 ed. by Jeffrey A. Cohen and Charles E. Brownell

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 629 would have over the region’s ecological destiny,” Steinberg writes. “Call it a stream and private landowners [corporations like Gulf, Texaco, Amerada, and others] would experience a windfall” (p. 60). The protracted legal struggle was fought over whether Grand—Six Mile Lake was a lake or a stream. The problem was, as Steinberg wryly observed, that “[n]one of the meanings given the words lake and stream adequately represented the body of water in question” (p. 68). Touche. The essence of this book is captured in this paradox: real estate isn’t. Writing at thejuncture ofcritical legal theory and environmen­ tal history, Steinberg ushers us into a labyrinthine world devoid of rational gravity. It is all reminiscent of the widow Winchester, who, believing she would die when her mansion near SanJose, California, was completed, continued adding room upon room, staircase upon staircase, all going nowhere. Theodore Steinberg has written a book both scholarly and farcical about private property as shibboleth. I dare say Erasmus himselfwould have applauded Steinberg’s aplomb. Michael Black Mr. Black rents airspace somewhere over San Francisco, California. He is coeditor (with Frank Fischer) ofa recent anthology entitled GreeningEnvironmentalPolicy: The Politics ofa SustainableFuture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), and is completing California’s Last Salmon: The Unnatural Policies ofNatural Resource Agencies (University of California Press, in press). The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Series II: The Architectural and EngineeringDrawings. Vol. 2: The ArchitecturalDrawings ofBenjamin Henry Latrobe. Pts. 1 and 2. Edited byJeffreyA. Cohen and Charles E. Brownell. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994. xxx+326 pp. and xii+327-750 pp; index. $125.00. These two books (denominated “parts” ofone volume) complete the first scholarly edition devoted to the remarkably versatile Benja­ min Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), who claimed for himself, in his own lifetime, the title of “father” to the architectural profession in the United States (p. 12). Architectural historians in this country, still somewhat under the spell of the great man approach to history, have tended to accept his claim uncritically, the effect ofwhich, iron­ ically, has been to minimize the difficulty ofhis achievements as well as to foreshorten the humbling ground of context. Latrobe had the benefit of advanced training in England—under the architect S. P. Cockerell and the engineer John Smeaton—but he had suffered both professional and personal disappointments there before arriv­ ing in Norfolk, Va., in early 1796. The preeminence he attained in his fields in America during two and one-half decades of exacting, poorly paid, often spiritually depleting work was earned the hard way. Others from Britain and France, with comparable talent and professional training, made brief appearances at important con­ 630 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE struction sites in America, but either did not stay or failed to rise to national prominence. They lacked Latrobe’s ambition and determi­ nation, his commitment to science, his ability to engineer—and were either unable or unwilling to adjust their European training to the more demanding, if less structured and sophisticated, eco­ nomic and cultural environment of the new republic. In the end Latrobe’s principal rivals would be his own students. The Architectural Drawings, much like the previous volume in the Latrobe drawings series (Darwin Stapleton, ed., The Engineering Drawings ofBenjamin Henry Latrobe. [New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer­ sity Press, 1980]), is presented in catalog format. The architectural projects define the entries, arranged more or less chronologically. This not only responds to the scholarly community’s need for a refer­ ence work and guide to the drawings but also gives due emphasis to the variety ofwork Latrobe undertook and to the role ofparticular settings and challenges, roughly as he encountered them. Threequarters of the more than 360 architectural drawings that have sur­ vived—a fraction of the original, much larger corpus—are repro­ duced (more than one-half at large scale; thirty-one images are in color). Despite the catalog format, there is a great deal of commentary in these two oversized books—too much perhaps for those who fail to find the drawings that interest them reproduced satisfactorily here (they must hope for a future CD-ROM version and...

Slide Mountain, or the Folly of Owning Nature by Theodore Steinberg

628 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Slide Mountain, or theFolly of Owning Nature. By Theodore Steinberg. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. Pp. 212; illustrations, notes, index. $24.00 (cloth). Theodore Steinberg’s latest book, Slide Mountain, or the Folly of Owning Nature, takes its title from a Mark Twain short story in which a circle of 19th-century practicaljokers duped a U.S. attorney named Bunscombe. Bursting into Bunscombe’s Carson City, Nevada, office, Dick Hyde cries that his ranch has been buried in a landslide. To make matters worse, the panicked man complains that his property is being claimed by a neighbor whose land now rests comfortably atop the contested terrain. That afternoon, litigants converged upon a local magistrate, himself part of the ruse. After hearing testimony, the bench decrees: “No—Heaven created the ranches and it is Heaven’s prerogative to rearrange them” (p. 4). Incensed at the ruling, Bunscombe appeals to the judge to reconsider. Eventually, the magistrate relents, telling counsel that Hyde could retain title by digging out his buried ranch from underneath his neighbor’s property. Trapped in a universe where—with enough shovels—jus­ tice could be served, Bunscombe stomps off in disgust. Throughout Slide Mountain, Steinberg playfully argues that we are all Bunscombes and that thejoke is on us—“all ofus,” that is, “who consider ourselves property owners or who are forced to respect a world increasingly defined by private property rights” (p. 4). Remi­ niscent ofJohn McPhee’s Control of Nature, Slide Mountain uses su­ perb storytelling to illustrate the gathering eclipse of reason. Steinberg constructs his book around a collection of court cases, each in its way as funny and enlightening as Twain’s imaginary one: an Omaha Indian reservation at Blackbird Bend, along the evershifting Missouri River; Grand and Six Mile Lakes (or are they a river?) in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River basin; fast-disappearingfossil water pumped from beneath Arizona’s desert; uncertain weather high above Fulton County, Pennsylvania; Manhattan’s 3-D air rights perched above the lucrative earth below; and quitclaim deeds to the moon. Lunacy, you wonder? Perhaps. But consider the plight of the replumbed Atchafalaya basin. Steinberg depicts a legal struggle over a once-choked remnant of Louisiana’s Mississippi, the Atchafalaya River. In successive stages, first the state, and then nature’s orthodontists, the U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers, sought to set things straight. “The Corps of Engineers had worked a massive disappearing act, a vast series ofmanipulations that had stolen the identity of this part [the Grand—Six Mile Lake segment] of the basin right from under it” (p. 58). Contested ownership of Grand and Six Mile lakes erupted over the issue of oil revenues. Article 509 of Louisiana’s 1870 Civil Code ceded title of deposited alluvial soils to owners of adjacent rivers or streams. “Call it a lake and [Louisiana] state coffers would jingle with the extra oil revenues, not to mention the control the state TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 629 would have over the region’s ecological destiny,” Steinberg writes. “Call it a stream and private landowners [corporations like Gulf, Texaco, Amerada, and others] would experience a windfall” (p. 60). The protracted legal struggle was fought over whether Grand—Six Mile Lake was a lake or a stream. The problem was, as Steinberg wryly observed, that “[n]one of the meanings given the words lake and stream adequately represented the body of water in question” (p. 68). Touche. The essence of this book is captured in this paradox: real estate isn’t. Writing at thejuncture ofcritical legal theory and environmen­ tal history, Steinberg ushers us into a labyrinthine world devoid of rational gravity. It is all reminiscent of the widow Winchester, who, believing she would die when her mansion near SanJose, California, was completed, continued adding room upon room, staircase upon staircase, all going nowhere. Theodore Steinberg has written a book both scholarly and farcical about private property as shibboleth. I dare say Erasmus himselfwould have applauded Steinberg’s aplomb. Michael Black Mr. Black rents airspace somewhere over San Francisco, California. He is coeditor (with Frank Fischer) ofa recent anthology entitled GreeningEnvironmentalPolicy: The Politics ofa SustainableFuture...

Christ the Healer: Modern Healing Movements and the Imperative of Praxis for the Poor

'Can't you?' The Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.' Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said, 'one can't believe impossible things.' 'I dare say you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. . ,n All of us, believer and sceptic alike, use the word 'miracle' to refer to events which seem unlikely, beyond our understanding, or even apparently impossible. Yet it is only when we more specifically assert that God intervenes in the ways of the world, such that the generally accepted laws of nature

Response to Drs Bergman and Zurhellen

In composing a response to these two articles, I must congratulate both presenters. Each created a stimulating summary of key components of what I consider to be the greatest challenge for practicing physicians in the future: information management. Dr Zurhellen has described an office information system that, in all probability, is enjoyed by fewer than 1 in 50 practitioners currently. Taking advantage of his position as a solo practitioner with a strong interest in computers, he has developed a system that brings greater simplicity, efficiency, and—I dare say—accuracy and precision to his office practice. The greatest challenge for the rest of us will be how to create the transition and the tremendous investment of time, financial resources, and risk that it will surely take to get where he is today. Given the need for improvement in the daily handling of office information, and given the estimated 7500 new articles entered daily in the peer-reviewed biomedical literature, futurists predict that practitioners during the next 15 years will need to adjust both their practice style and their continuing education. They will need to assimilate new information in accordance with this estimate: 75% of what one needs to know to provide top-quality care in any given patient encounter will change during a 12-month period. Dr Bergman has provided an up-to-date glimpse of how we are preparing to meet this challenge. Practice parameters condense new acientific information that is evidence based into defined best practice for a given medical condition. Gaps in evidence-based information are filled by selected expert opinion.

Canadian Justice: Celebrating Differences and Sharing Problems

Canadian Justice: Celebrating Differences and Sharing Problems Claire L’Heureux-Dube Editor’s Note: This is adaptedfrom a speech given before the American College of Trial Lawyers at Amelia Island, Florida, on April 8, 1995. As I flew in from Ottawa, I thought about how similar our two countries are. In fact, upon first glance, our two countries may even appear virtually indistinguishable. We share the North American continent, with its vast expanses and magnificent and diverse landscapes that stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We are both democracies. We both have responsible government. We both have a federal judiciary, and a state or provincial one. We both inherited the English common law and the French civil law. We both have Bills ofRights (the Charter in Canada). And we were both embroiled in a bitter baseball labor dispute. Yet, as many a Canadian will remind you, and as the president of the Canadian Bar Association told you yesterday, beneath our similarities lie many differences. For example, while we are both democracies, we function differently; while we both have Bills of Rights, we apply them differently; while we both inherited the English common law, we developed it differently; and while we both have a federal judiciary and a state or provincial one, we choose judges differently. In fact, upon a close examination, it becomes clearthat our differences are at least as significant as our similarities. One such difference, which I cannot help but think of today, as I stand before you in the company ofMadame Justice Ginsburg, is the fact that while Justice Ginsburg and I are both Supreme Courtjudges in ourrespective countries, we both were nominated through extremely different processes. In the United States, nominees for the Supreme Court undergo extensive public confirmation hearings and are chosen in the course of a fairly partisan political process. Nominations to Canada’s Supreme Court, on the other hand, are made through a totally different procedure. Supreme Courtjudges are nominated by the Prime Minister of Canada after informal consultations with the Canadian Bar, individual lawyers, and judges, as well as with cabinet members. The process is not entirely secretive, but is also not fully public. I must add that after witnessing the rigors of your nomination procedure, I am very happy that I was spared such an ordeal. Perhaps I would not have been “apotheosized by the ermine,”1 to use the words of Professor Bernard Schwartz, if I had had to go through the same agonizing procedure your Supreme Court nominees must endure. In my comments this morning, however, I do not intend to discuss the differences between our two Supreme Courts at length. Rather, I want to focus on our two Constitutions, and particularly our two Bills of Rights. These documents are at the heart of our two legal and 6 1995 JOURNAL political systems. It is with these documents that any discussion ofthe similarities and differences between our two countries must begin. I hope you will forgive me ifmy topic seems somewhat sober and serious. The truth of the matter is that one should stick with one’s strong points — and I am much better at speaking about serious issues than I am at doing comedy or lighter fare. In fact, my critics would say that my serious works are considerably funnier than my attempts at comedy. As I mentioned a moment ago, I wish to compare our two Constitutions, and particularly our two Bills of Rights. My first observation about these two documents is that they grew out of two very different historical contexts. Your nation, your Constitution, and your vision of individual rights and liberties were forged by your War of Independence and further refined in the crucible of yet another war, your Civil War, almost a century later. Next to the dramatic backdrop against which the building blocks of your nation were forged, the development of the Canadian Constitution and the Canadian vision of nationhood and civil liberties was a placid affair. In fact, when compared to the United States, I dare say that the constitutional ideals that bind my country grew through evolution rather than through revolution. Canada’s independence and constitutional documents gradually evolved...

In Search of a Lost Idea

Recently our social thought—indeed, I dare say, social thought throughout the world—has been absorbed with the question of what is socialism. Did it exist? Does it exist, and indeed can it exist at all? An idea that until recently seemed to be not simply plausible, but a reality (fifteen countries with an aggregate population of 1.5 billion people, one of two superpowers and one of the two principal military-political alliances, Social Democratic governments in dozens of other countries of the world, very strong political parties, etc.), suddenly began to be doubted, and has become virtually eclipsed.

A Memorable Naturalization: How Henry James Became a British Subject and Lost his United States Citizenship

A Memorable Naturalization: How Henry James Became a British Subject and Lost his United States Citizenship by Alan G. James, Chairman, State Department Board of Appellate Review American citizens from all walks of life have obtained naturalization in a foreign country for a host of reasons: to get or keep a job, promote a career, share the citizenship of an alien spouse, escape a dull or unsatisfying existence, evade or avoid taxes or military service. How many obtained foreign citizenship for reasons of principle can only be guessed, but the number probably is not large. Of those moved by conscience to adopt a foreign country as their own, a memorable exemplar is Henry James, who became a British subject in 1915.1 Eulogized on a memorial in London's Chelsea Old Church as "lover and interpreter of the fine amenities, of brave decisions and generous loyalties," James was one of fortyseven American citizens who obtained British naturalization in the second year of the Great War.2 We do not know how many were, as he, motivated primarily by a wish to make a deeply expressive gesture of support for Britain in a time of crisis. It would not be unwarranted, however, to surmise that some were so moved, for the number of Americans, never large, who elected to become British subjects rose sharply in the first three years of the war in comparison with the immediate pre-war years. James may not have been the only American in those days who regarded obtaining naturalization in Britain as a moral imperative, but his naturalization is the one history remembers. James's acquisition of British citizenship was a topic of keen interest and lively comment of both sides of the Atlantic in the summer of 1915. In England it was widely and warmly welcomed, as James anticipated it would be. Indeed, "an avalanche of mail descended upon him from all parts of England" (Edel V, 531). On July 28, 1915, The Times probably spoke for the nation when it wrote, "All lovers of literature in this country will welcome the decision of this writer of genius, whose works are an abiding possession of all English-speaking peoples, and they will welcome it all the more on account of the reasons Mr. James gives in his petition for naturalization." In the United States news of James's naturalization was received with marked disapproval, as he predicted it would be. "Yes, I dare say many Americans will be shocked at my 'step,'" he wrote to John Singer Sargent on July 30, 1915, a few days after receiving his certificate of naturalization (HJL IV, 774).3 The Henry James Review 12 (1991): 55-68 01991 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 56 The Henry James Review On July 30, 1915, The New York Times reproached him for casting off his American citizenship, "long lightly held," but conceded that, "It is easy enough to be severe or sarcastic at this defector and to insist that an American should remain an American. But after all, the United States wants no citizens by compulsion. And as a literary absentee, Mr. James has a long line of predecessors. ... To the literary man choice of his scene is to be granted." In other American circles James was censured more sharply. For example, his friend Edith Wharton strongly deplored his changing loyalties, though she did not confront him directly. "At the time I considered it a mistake; it seemed to me rather puerile, and altogether unlike him. Not knowing what to say I refrained from writing to him," she wrote in her autobiography (367). Like James, utterly committed to and absorbed in working for the allied cause, Mrs. Wharton "saw herself and her compatriots in France and England performing their tasks amid the horrors precisely as Americans, in some small way mitigating their country's failure to enter the conflict" (Lewis 381). "We don't like defections," she wrote to one friend; to another, referring evidently to the praise in English newspapers for James's act, she observed: "All for a mouthful of drivel he left us" (Lewis 381). Mrs. Wharton's disapproval lost its edge over the ensuing months, however...

The Group of Units in Zm

The proof is trivial. An anecdotal account of a classic constructible dilemma. was sitting in the grass outside Cabell Hall reading from Lakatos when spied Cohn and Klaus ambling down the lawn, as was their wont each weekday during t-he lunch hour. Cohn, recently converted to a constructivist philosophy, had involved Klaus in an animated discussion. I can no longer-I dare say will NEVER-accept existence merely on the presumption that nonexistence is contradictory. Cohn exclaimed. paraphrase Bishop, if one proves that a thing exists then one should show how to find it. To which Klaus responded, That's ridiculous! Brouwer notwithstanding, will NEVER require that existence is dependent upon absolute constructibility. What a notion! The two had gone round and round like this-Brouwerian counterexamples to the

Mathematics of Totalities: an alternative to mathematics of sets

I dare say, a set is contranatural if some pair of its elements has a nonempty intersection. So, we consider only collections of disjoint nonempty elements and call them totalities. We propose the propositional logicTT, where a proposition letters some totality. The proposition is true if it letters the greatest totality. There are five connectives inTT: ∧, ∨, ∩, ⌉, # and the last is called plexus. The truth of σ # π means that any element of the totality σ has a nonempty intersection with any element of the totality π. An imbeddingG of the classical predicate logicCPL inTT is defined. A formulaf ofCPL is a classical tautology if and only ifG(f) is always true inTT. So, mathematics may be expounded inTT, without quantifiers.

Millenarianism in the English Commonwealth

Whenever an age has been threatening—and I suppose this age may be considered such? though every age seems less so to those who still have youthful energies wherewith to meet it, and who in any case remember no age other than the present, than it does to those in the middle years, who, instead of planning how to spend their day, have now to bear its heat and burden—it is natural for some of its simpler and more eager spirits to think it must come soon to an end; as, likewise, whenever men have been turned near to despair by persecution, some have grounded whatever hope remained to them in the deliverance promised by God the Righteous Saviour whose Messiah will come from on high to vindicate them—both npnii and QBIPD connote deliverance and vindication. Earth cannot save; then heaven must; and that will be the end of earth; the last syllable of recorded time, the end of the world, the consummation of the age—both xoa[xo$ and aicov—: 'He brings the prisoner sweet release'. Equally, whe rever men have turned seriously to study the Bible and to set themselves seriously to learn from it, they have found clearly imprinted on its pages this hope and expectation, even assurance, of an End: this close attention to what, in the seventeenth century, were called 'the Last Things': an end which shall be teleological as much as chronological—xeXo? as well as iax(xtov—; a fulfilment as much as a conclusion, but a fulfilment achieved by catastrophe rather than gradual fructification in a creeping, petty pace; by an auoxaXu^^ and a raxpouai'a future and momentaneous beyond the 'revelation' already given or the 'presence' already known. Especially have Bible students observed this when they have themselves lived within a threatening age: the prophecies of Joel, which Peter took up at Pente cost, they. have made their own, for the perdition of unbelievers and their own comfort. Hence, in this present age, the attraction of eschatology for the Jehovah's Witnesses; the Pentecostals; the Second Adventists; or, in the seventeenth century, which like our own was threatening and revolu tionary, for such earnest and uncritical bible students as those called See kers or Manifestarians; or Millenarians or Fifth Monarchy Men. Without going outside our own boundaries, I dare say you sometimes meet, as I have done, those who, though they have read that it is not for us to know the times or the seasons, yet live in readiness to meet the Lord by being

Reflections on 'PNR'

This is a good time for me to talk about PN Review, because I have lately agreed to have my name, along with C. H. Sisson's, removed from the masthead of the magazine. There remain, as 'contributing editors', Nicholas Tredell,John Pilling, and Dick Davis all these, like heretofore Sisson and me, subordinate to the Managing Editor, Michael Schmidt. This change permits of the polite fiction that I can write impartially; it means in any case what we all agree on: that the pioneering phase of the magazine is over, and so can be looked back upon to some purpose. I will say frankly that the latest issues (numbers 37 and 38 are the latest to hand as I write) represent an assurance and an accomplishment such as Schmidt and Sisson and I always yearned towards, but mostly felt we had fallen short of. In PNR 37 Schmidt, explaining Sisson's and my withdrawal, said: 'Neither was ever entirely happy with PNReview. It has not lived up to their hopes, though it is perhaps better than they expected.' This is a just estimate of my sentiments, and I dare say of Sisson's; but with the important qualification that our hopes may well have been misplaced, the aspirations of an out-distanced generation. Tredell and Pilling and Davis represent a generation neither less stringent than ours, nor with different stringencies, but with a surer sense of priorities among them. What is threatened is the free exercise of the literary intelligence; on that we all agree. But the threats to that freedom don't always come from those quarters where Sisson and I tend to look for them. Perhaps the greatest achievement of PNR (which is to say, in this context, of Michael Schmidt) has been the discovering and identifying of responsible intellectuals like Tredell and Pilling and Davis, to whom must certainly be added certain others like Stephen Romer and Michael Hulse. These younger men are as vigilant as Sisson and I tried to be, but with a better sense of where vigilance is called for. Probably, from a selfish point of view, the chief profit of my several years association with the magazine has been my getting to know C. H. Sisson, whom I take to be one of the most remarkable Englishmen of our time. This is not to say that Sisson has won me over to his view of English history. Rather, in the course of making me take account of his views, Charles Sisson has enlarged my notions of what Englishness consists in. It is not easy to say how far this enlarged awareness, of what is meant by the central letter in our acronym ('N' for 'Nation'), was communicated to our juniors. Much of the time (I speak for myself, but I suspect for Sisson also) there was a besetting

Hunger Debate

In Reply.— The letter from Meyers and Spivak is disheartening: its vituperative tone suggests that they really believe what they are saying. They question the author's right to criticize the Massachusetts Nutrition Survey because it is "unpublished in the medical literature and...inaccesible...." I would hate to have to hold my breath until it appeared in a serious peer-reviewed journal and I dare say that, having been released with great fanfare via press conference to the national media, many more pediatricians (and legislators and ordinary citizens) will have heard its claims than will ever read this correspondence.

Jane Austen's Clothing: Things, Property, and Materialism in Her Novels

Jane Austen's Clothing: Things, Property, and Materialism in Her Novels JAMES THOMPSON On a visit to London in 1813, Jane Austen wrote her sister that she saw "a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her. I went in hopes of seeing one of her Sister, but there was no Mrs. Darcy . . . Mrs. Bingley's is exactly herself, size, shaped face, features and sweetness; there was never a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favorite colour with her. I dare say Mrs. D. will be in Yellow" (24 May 1813, Letters, pp. 309-10).1 That none of these details of appearance, taste, and dress appears in Pride and Prejudice supports what R. W. Chapman observes of Austen: "she knows all of the details, and gives us very few of them."2 Her novels give us few specifics of clothing, even while her letters, as one reader complains, "deal wearisomely with details of dress."3 We weary easily of such details because we are accustomed to read Austen, and novels in general, by moving from objects to values, interpreting the objects portrayed as a foundation on which is constructed elaborate social and ethical systems. This easy move from materialism to idealism, how­ ever, tends to obscure the real pressures of material life, pressures which qualify, if not undercut, the more obvious morals exemplified in Austen s novels. Morals are so obvious to us because our traditional approval of didacticism of course foregrounds morality. This examination of how Austen clothes her characters will, I hope, provide some insight into how 217 218 / THOMPSON she constructs her fiction; the clear lesson that an interest in clothing is vain and frivolous is called into question by a myriad of social and eco­ nomic demands on women. Austens central subject, emotional change, is reached by transcending both of these sets of concerns. We may begin by observing that articles of clothing are not introduced gratuitously. Even the most casual reference can be said to help set the scene, as when Catherine Moreland's haste to get dressed is overcome by her curiosity in an old chest: "At length, however, having slipped one arm into her gown, her toilette seemed so nearly finished, that the impatience of her curiosity might safely be indulged" (NA, p. 164). More commonly, specific items of dress are mentioned that others may comment on them, as with Elizabeth Bennet's "dirty stockings" which provoke various and telling reactions at Netherfield (PP, p. 36). Similarly, we find out what Willoughby wears when we are told that Marianne "soon found out that of all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the most becoming" (SS, p. 43). This specific item of clothing reveals Mariannes thinly veiled attraction to Willoughby's person, and further, a shooting-jacket, with its associa­ tion of youth and sport, contrasts favorably with Colonel Brandon's flan­ nel waistcoat, with its associations of age and infirmity (SS, p. 38). Particu­ lar stockings, jackets, and waistcoats, then, are brought to our attention in order to reveal attitudes and assumptions of the characters; like physical objects in general, as Joel Weinsheimer notes, they "are primarily for the purpose of characterization."4 Beyond this metonymic function, clothing tends to fade into the vague description of "fashionable" or "elegant," and we are told almost nothing of what these terms signify.5 When we are told, elegance tends to slip into over-elegance and vulgarity, and fashion into precipitous, irrational change, as in Sanditon, where Mr. Parker calls to his wife: "Look my dear Mary— Look at William Heeley's windows. — Blue Shoes & Nankin Boots!—Who wd have expected such a sight at a Shoemaker's in old Sanditon!—This is new within the Month. There was no blue Shoe when we passed this way a month ago. — Glorious indeed!—Well, I think I have done some­ thing in my Day" (p. 383). Whenever Austen narrates so particular an interest in dress as this, our suspicions are aroused, for those who think so much of small matters tend to think improperly of great matters...