Deep Flaws Research Articles

On the structure of global development goals

The design of global development goals has been beset by deep flaws, inconsistencies, and manifest unfairness to some developing countries. Momentum has now peaked for the creation of Sustainable Development Goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals. This comment addresses three challenges that arise in setting development goals, and recommends feasible development goals that can meaningfully guide development cooperation, and focus the attention of policy makers on the worst-off.

Triangulating an Ethos: Ethical Criticism, Novel Alterity, and Mori Ōgai's “Stereoscopic Vision”

This essay offers a new reading of a pivotal and controversial novella, “Gan” (“The Wild Geese,” 1911), by major modern Japanese writer Mori Ōgai. Scholars (such as Dennis Washburn and Shiokawa Tetsuya) have argued that Ōgai's formal experimentation and aesthetic ideals led him to discover deep flaws in the novel's capacity for mimesis. I agree, but not with their conclusions that he therefore abandoned the form. On the contrary, I suggest that it was the very power of the novel to hold competing conventions of representation in tension, and to work through the epistemic and ethical problems of perspective raised by the act of narration itself, that also epitomized the strengths of the genre for Ōgai. His work throughout his career engages readers in moving stories of ethically complex interactions, while at the same time demanding a reflexive critical consciousness that disrupts the very illusion of mimesis on which those stories depend for their effects. In “Gan” and other works, Ōgai does not merely fail to produce an aesthetically coherent world in the process of telling an ethically unsatisfying story. Rather, he explores the ethical and aesthetic limits of the conventions of novel narration itself, with unnerving success. “Gan” represents a culmination of his critical explorations of the ethics of novel form, and not the radical break from his former methodologies that has been theorized. This essay examines the method of self-conscious critique Ōgai employs in “Gan” to suggest its benefits as a model for contemporary ethical criticism in Western academia. Ōgai's reflexive experimentation in this work shuttles readers between absorption in novelistic pathos and reflection on its ethos, exploring both the possibilities and limitations of immanent ethical self-critique in the novel. Rather than taking up “Gan” as an object of ethical inquiry, then, I propose that we compare its reflexive mode of self-critique with the methods employed by ethical criticism today. Contemporary theories of literary ethics in the West often turn to the novel for its representations of alterity—its compelling portraits of others. They generally share a tacit assumption that the novel presents a site of immersive experience whose powerful pathos requires critical intervention to elucidate in ethical terms. Attending to the “ethics of self-consciousness” in modern Japanese novels might help Western critics rethink these assumptions, while at the same time it may revise conventional wisdom about Ōgai's career trajectory.

How to Welcome Spontaneous Manifestations

George Molnar’s contention that some dispositional properties are displayed without the aid of any activating conditions poses a challenge to the conditional analysis of dispositions. Since the invocation of activating conditions is regarded as a crucial feature of the analysis, spontaneous dispositions are believed to expose its inadequacy by eluding its scope. The challenge goes to the very heart of the conditional approach to dispositions, allegedly revealing a deep flaw in all its incarnations. Granting that there may be spontaneously manifestable dispositions, I argue that the conditional analysis can successfully accommodate them by elevating the potential causal relation between a disposition and its manifestation.

Problems and prospects: China's response to wrongful convictions

This article describes the difficulties involved in the implementation criminal justice reforms. These difficulties are caused by deep flaws that affect how China responds to wrongful convictions and that dampen the prospect for their prevention or remedy. Through new case studies, it critically examines the difficulties associated with the implementation of mechanisms for preventing or remedying such convictions, both before and after the Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC (2012 CPL). It further proceeds to further analyze deep flaws in China's justice system, indicating that the prime reasons for the constant failure of justice reforms is due more to institutional practices than to attitudinal or cultural practices in China. It finally concludes by suggesting that, in order to mend the major flaws and fill the implementation gap between law and practice, authorities should learn from China's past and from relevant overseas experience to better prevent wrongful convictions.

Inspection Judgements on Urban Schools: A Case for the Defence

This article is co-authored by two urban school Heads in the north of England with the support of an academic partner. The article begins with the phenomenon of official judgements of urban schools, made by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, a semi-privatised and supposedly independent arm of government. The discussion places in question its work in raising achievement, particularly in areas of deprivation. It points to deep flaws in the operation of policy-as-numbers and high-stakes accountability, contrasting the punitive style and consequences with collaborative principles of leadership and school change. The article looks at how summative judgements gloss over the complexities of students’ lives and teachers’ work, and ignore evidence of what is actually being done to meet policy expectations. Our conclusion is that more intelligent forms of school accountability are needed which do not constantly undermine the improvement processes of urban schools and damage reputations with labels such as ‘requires improvement’ ‘special measures’ or more colloquially ‘failing school’. This ‘intelligent accountability’ might begin to support a more community-orientated moral purpose in leadership and pedagogy.

The paradoxical genesis of too-big-to-fail

At least since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, the problem of too-big-to-fail (TBTF) has received widespread attention. The research conducted in this context has, however, generally focused on the econometric aspect and the contribution of the TBTF doctrine to the financial crisis of 2007-2009, while the economic historical approach has been confined to tracing the doctrine to its first appearance. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the academic literature by offering an explanation for why, as opposed to how, the TBTF doctrine has developed. This paper identifies the US population’s distrust and at times hostility against the prospect of concentration of power in large financial institutions as the causal factor leading to the TBTF phenomenon. The resulting socially non-optimal regulation favoured a fragmented and fragile banking system based on small unit banks at the cost of more diversified branch banks. The Great Depression impressively highlighted the deep structural flaws of the US banking system. At the same time, however, it caused a shift in the public opinion, which had generally been opposed to deposit insurance, and thereby aligned the public interest with that of small banks, which would profit most from deposit insurance. The newly acquired public and political support enabled weak unit banks to lobby successfully against reforming the banking structure and instead for the adaption of federal deposit insurance. However, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) only addressed the symptoms of the weak banking industry but not its causes. Moreover, the strongly biased FDIC policies have generally favoured creditors at large banks, which ultimately led to the TBTF doctrine which, in turn, provided banks with a non-technical incentive to grow in size in order to gain TBTF protection. Initially aimed at preserving the US financial landscape based on small unit banks, the FDIC as the main conduit for TBTF rescues thus became the main driver for big bank corporate welfare. Deposit insurance gave rise to TBTF and, at the same time, put small banks deemed “too-small-to-safe” at a competitive disadvantage, further accelerating the trend towards increasingly large and complex banks.

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, by Ezra F. Vogel

Journalists may write the first draft of Chinese history. But Harvard sociologist Ezra Vogel has written a close second. Only in the past decade or so have historians begun to explore the history of the People’s Republic of China (1949–). The first place to which urban historians turn is Vogel’s Canton under Communism, published in 1969 with limited access to primary sources, which remains one of the best histories of cities during the early years of Communist rule. Likewise, his One Step Ahead, published in 1989, was the first systematic study of the impact of the Reform Era (1978–) on a single Chinese province, Guangdong, the province facing Hong Kong. With the publication of his massive and exhaustively researched biography of Mao Zedong’s successor, Deng Xiaoping (1904–97), Vogel has done it again. This book is a fitting capstone to an illustrious career; it will be the first port of call for historians of the post-Mao era when we begin to write the history of the post-Mao leadership. Early second drafts of history (along with third and fourth drafts) have their flaws. The initial reviews of this book rightly criticise Vogel for his thin coverage of the role of Deng Xiaoping in responding to the demonstrations in 1989, which culminated in the brutal suppression of political dissent, and the hagiographic tone of the work. Subsequent biographies will undoubtedly give more weight to that decision. Also surprising is the paucity of coverage of the first sixty-five years of his life, which receive only forty-five pages of attention. It would have been instructive to learn more, for instance, of the bonds he formed with Mao in those early years—the bonds that would ultimately allow him to return to power after two separate purges. A fuller exploration of Deng’s first sixty-five years may have also explained a central contradiction in his actions. Vogel calls Deng ‘the implementer’ who had ‘always been more practical and realistic’ than Mao (p. 41). But it is difficult to reconcile this depiction with the author’s conclusion that Deng simultaneously saw ‘deep flaws in the system that had produced Mao’ (pp. 44–5).

2712 残留応力場にある深いき裂の応力腐食割れと疲労き裂進展解析

2712 残留応力場にある深いき裂の応力腐食割れと疲労き裂進展解析

The Paradoxical Genesis of Too-Big-To-Fail: How Distrust Towards Big Banks Led to TBTF

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 put the spotlight on the problem of too-big-to-fail (TBTF). The research conducted in this context has, however, generally focused on the econometric aspect and the contribution of the TBTF doctrine to the financial crisis of 2007-2009, while the economic historical approach has been confined to tracing the doctrine to its first appearance. The present paper attempts to fill this gap in the academic literature by offering an explanation for why, as opposed to how, the TBTF doctrine has developed. The paper identifies the US population’s distrust and at times hostility against the prospect of concentration of power in large financial institutions as the causal factor leading to the TBTF phenomenon. Mistrust towards large financial firms led to socially non-optimal regulation, favouring a fragmented and fragile banking system based on small unit banks at the cost of more diversified branch banks. The Great Depression impressively highlighted the deep structural flaws of the US banking system. At the same time, however, it caused a shift in the public opinion, which had generally been opposed to deposit insurance, and thereby aligned the public interest with that of small banks, which would profit most from deposit insurance. The newly acquired public and political support enabled weak unit banks to lobby successfully against reforming the banking structure and instead for the adaption of federal deposit insurance. However, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) only addressed the symptoms of the weak banking industry but not its causes. Moreover, FDIC policies have generally favoured creditors at large banks, which ultimately led to the TBTF doctrine, providing banks with a non-technical incentive to grow in size in order to gain TBTF protection. Initially aimed at preserving the US financial landscape based on small unit banks, the FDIC as the main conduit for TBTF rescues thus became the main driver for big bank corporate welfare. Deposit insurance gave rise to TBTF and, at the same time, put small banks deemed “too-small-to-safe” at a competitive disadvantage, further accelerating the trend towards increasingly large and complex banks.

Towards a new transition economics

AbstractIn these brief comments, I take issue with the thesis expressed in Konstantin Sonin’s conference review that economic transition is a thing of the past. To the contrary, I argue that it has only just begun, and so has the process of rethinking the economic theories and models that have framed the subfield of transition economics. Specifically, I point out that the many surprises economists have encountered when confronted with the actual results of the transition process reveal deep flaws in the analytical framework that informs their analyses and policy prescriptions. If protecting existing theories and models is of primary importance, we should indeed call an end to economic transition and the subfield it has engendered. If, however, the issue is to understand real economies and their dynamic change over time and to improve the results of contemporary and future reform efforts there is a strong case for a New Transition Economics.

Development of an algorithm to measure defect geometry using a 3D laser scanner

Current fatigue life prediction models for coiled tubing (CT) require accurate measurements of the defect geometry. Three-dimensional (3D) laser imaging has shown promise toward becoming a nondestructive, non-contacting method of surface defect characterization. Laser imaging provides a detailed photographic image of a flaw, in addition to a detailed 3D surface map from which its critical dimensions can be measured. This paper describes algorithms to determine defect characteristics, specifically depth, width, length and projected cross-sectional area. Curve-fitting methods were compared and implicit algebraic fits have higher probability of convergence compared to explicit geometric fits. Among the algebraic fits, the Taubin circle fit has the least error. The algorithm was able to extract the dimensions of the flaw geometry from the scanned data of CT to within a tolerance of about 0.127 mm, close to the tolerance specified for the laser scanner itself, compared to measurements made using traveling microscopes. The algorithm computes the projected surface area of the flaw, which could previously only be estimated from the dimension measurements and the assumptions made about cutter shape. Although shadows compromised the accuracy of the shape characterization, especially for deep and narrow flaws, the results indicate that the algorithm with laser scanner can be used for non-destructive evaluation of CT in the oil field industry. Further work is needed to improve accuracy, to eliminate shadow effects and to reduce radial deviation.

The Earned Income Tax Credit, Low-Income Workers, and the Legal Aid Community

The Earned Income Tax Credit (“EITC”) is the largest U.S. welfare program, with twenty-four million low-income Americans receiving $60 billion of disbursals in 2009. Through the EITC, working Americans with little or no tax liability can receive up to nearly $6,000 in refundable tax credits each year. Over the past two decades, policymakers have increasingly favored the EITC over direct-transfer welfare programs, citing its lower administrative expense (as recipients “self-certify” by filing taxes) and incentives for recipients to work. Despite its political appeal, the EITC suffers deep structural flaws. Largely because EITC claimants have little guidance in navigating the difficult filing process, they are subject to high rates of IRS audits and rescission of benefits with penalties and interest. This proliferation of EITC-related controversies has created an immense need for legal assistance, yet low-income tax law largely remains a peripheral concern within the legal aid community. In this article, we suggest a comprehensive and achievable set of reforms that the IRS and legal services organizations can enact to improve the EITC’s efficacy and fairness.We first describe how the complexity of EITC eligibility criteria creates a tremendous burden for low-income Americans, as they frequently lack advice in tax filing and cannot afford legal representation in the event of a controversy with the IRS. We then outline measures that the IRS should implement to make the EITC more accessible and understandable to those qualifying for the credit, reducing the chance of an audit and loss of benefits. In particular, we focus on improving the tax filing process, making EITC audits more manageable for recipients, instituting less adversarial procedures for EITC-related Tax Court proceedings, and changing certain organizational structures within the IRS. Finally, we propose several practical ways that the legal aid community can enhance its support of EITC recipients confronting an IRS audit or Tax Court action. Most importantly, we argue that EITC assistance warrants greater Congressional funding and higher strategic and budgetary priority within legal aid organizations, given that the EITC is now far larger than the direct-transfer welfare programs on which legal aid lawyers have traditionally focused.

Mitigating Inequalities of Influence among States in Global Decision Making

AbstractInternational institutions should be as equal as they claim to be, especially since many of them assert superordinate normative authority based on having egalitarian governance structures. However, when defining equality with respect to states’ real‐world influence in determining substantive outcomes, it is evident that there is an equality‐influence gap between the rhetoric of parity among states and the reality of international politics. This is problematic because it undermines trust in those international institutions that falsely claim to embody equality among states when empirically they do not. Focusing on the United Nations System, this paper identifies three main causes of this disproportional influence among states in global decision making: (a) external imbalances in political capital; (b) internal economic barriers; and (c) surreptitious influence through non‐state actors, funding and training. Six pragmatic strategies are proposed for mitigating these inequalities: (1) building capacity for leadership in global advocacy; (2) supporting global networks owned by developing countries; (3) equalizing multi‐party partnerships; (4) facilitating evidence‐informed global decision making; (5) enhancing accountability and independent evaluation; and (6) encouraging further discussion on institutional reforms. Notwithstanding sovereign equality’s deep flaws, it is hoped that challenging the egalitarian presumptions of global decision making will encourage further debate on this issue among those who can act upon it.Policy Implications Inequalities of influence among states should be mitigated in order to avert the moral fraud and distrust that results from international institutions' claims of superordinate normative authority based on fictional sovereign equality. NGOs can help mitigate inequalities but they can also inadvertently deepen them by prioritizing the interests of the powerful states, wealthy elites and private industries that frequently fund them and to whom they are legally accountable. It is both desirable and possible to achieve more equal decision making in global governance, especially throughout the United Nations System which celebrates the principle of sovereign equality and benefits from an institutional architecture that naturally supports it. Mitigating this equality‐influence gap may help foster better global decision making and a more peaceful, secure and prosperous international society.

Taking the Field: A Fan’s Quest to Run the Team He Loves (review)

Reviewed by: Taking the Field: A Fan’s Quest to Run the Team He Loves Jim Overmyer Howard Megdal. Taking the Field: A Fan’s Quest to Run the Team He Loves. New York: Bloombsury, 2011. 256 pp. Cloth, $25.00 Howard Megdal is a New York City sportswriter for several Internet outlets, including the website of Sports New York, the cable channel that carries the New York Mets. He’s been an unabashed Mets fan since youth, even before his staid, lawyer father jumped off the couch and performed an impromptu Mexican hat dance in front of the television when Lenny Dykstra hit his game-winning homer in the 1986 National League championship series. Supported by his wife, Rachel, he lulls his baby daughter Mirabelle to sleep with major-league trade rumors and analysis of the game they are watching before she nods off. He has seen the Mets win it all, and he wants them to be a power again. He lent his energy, quite a lot of it, to the cause by launching a campaign during [End Page 138] the 2010 season to become the team’s next general manager; he correctly identifies Omar Minaya, the Mets’ GM from 2005 to 2010, as a short-timer due to the team’s poor record (below .500 since 2008). This book is the result, since, of course, he didn’t get the job. It’s an appealing combination of campaign manifesto, personal memoir, and a fan’s obsession for his favorite team. Dana Brand, a fellow blogger, nails Megdal’s campaign perfectly: “it’s the kind of smart, wacky, performance art that baseball could use” (34). His campaign slogan, LOGIC, TRANSPARENCY, PASSION (always all caps) sums up what he thinks the Mets have lacked—particularly the logic. Megdal’s plan doesn’t promise short-term success. As he sees it, there are “deep structural flaws in the way the New York Mets operate” (23). He would fix this primarily by making the team more aggressive in the annual amateur draft (as the real new GM, Sandy Alderson, is doing), spending as much money as possible on developing the draftees and looking for good pickups among young prospects who exhibit promise measured by moderately new-fangled statistics such as on-base plus slugging average (OPS) for hitters and strikeouts and walks per nine innings for pitchers. Megdal recalls, with professional disdain and a fan’s pain, the trades of two young pitchers, first future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan and then Scott Kazmir, who had some good years after leaving New York, for largely over-the-hill and undistinguished talent in return. He recounts in great detail how his favorite GM, Frank Cashen, put together 1969’s “Amazing Mets” from draft picks, cheap signings of young players, and, of course, a little bit of luck. The Mets got Tom Seaver from a hat-pick lottery after his original contract with the Braves was voided. Although he yearns to succeed Minaya, Megdal doesn’t paint him in the demonic tones you might expect a challenger to splash over the incumbent. To Howard, Omar was “a nice man who was in over his head” after taking control of the team in 2005. This is no way to carry on red-meat American politics, but our candidate is looking way beyond the 2011 season, and he seems to be a nice guy, although one with a lot of opinions about how things ought to change. He does have an arch villain, though. It’s Minaya’s predecessor, Steve Phillips. Phillips, who became a punching bag for critics as a general manager and then a veritable piñata in his next career as a television baseball analyst, is seen as a disaster that could have wrecked the team if he had stayed around long enough. Megdal analyzes Phillips seemingly endless love for veteran players with track records, although the vets Phillips wanted often came at the expense of the young prospects Megdal would keep around, and “only errors by other general managers prevented Phillips from leaving the organization as bereft of talent as it had been at any point in its history” (50). [End...

Advocacy Trumps Accuracy?: Stereotypes of East European Roma and Ethnography

Advocacy Trumps Accuracy?Stereotypes of East European Roma and Ethnography David Z. Scheffel (bio) Collaborative Anthropologies welcomes response to and critical commentary on previously published essays, provided that the article adheres to the journal's guidelines and is in keeping with civil discourse. The publication of such articles is not guaranteed, but should they be published, author(s) of the original articles in question are given the opportunity to respond. In this instance, Tidrick did not offer a response. This short essay is an unsolicited reaction to Heather Tidrick's contribution to the "Ethnography-as-Activism: Student Experiments, Dilemmas from the Field" section in the 2010 issue of this journal (Tidrick 2010). Precisely because the articles were all written by graduate students and future practitioners advocating a closer relationship between anthropology and advocacy in the name of social justice (Kirsch 2010), I think it important to point out how the search for a cause worthy of advocacy may lead to a lack of responsibility with regard to essential scholarly conventions. I single out Tidrick's contribution for the sole reason that she writes about a situation I know fairly well—the attribution of negative stereotypes to East European Roma—and that she implicates me in this through distortions of my published work. Tidrick takes issue with "dominant, extremely destructive narratives" encapsulated in negative stereotypes that imprison East European Roma in popular notions of deviance and criminality (Tidrick 2010: 121). She charges that "[many] writers too easily traffic" in these stereotypes "without the evidence to support their claims," and she mentions a handful of names, including mine (2010: 122). Apparently I employ deviance in my book on a divided community in Slovakia (Scheffel 2005) [End Page 143] "as a key factor in the segregation of Roma from Slovak community life in Svinia (and, implicitly, elsewhere in Eastern Europe)" (Tidrick 2010: 122). Tidrick's allegation of my "implicit" generalizing from a specific setting in Slovakia to all of "Eastern Europe" constitutes a willful disregard for my explicit pleading to the contrary. As I make abundantly clear in the introduction to the book, I took the unusual step of using the real name of "my community" in order to warn against the act Tidrick accuses me of: Because even the little material at our disposal shows remarkable differences between individual settlements, [and, therefore] it is important not to pretend that the community described here is a typical settlement that could be encountered anywhere else. Svinia has its own configuration of socio-economic traits, and in the absence of comparative material it is crucial not to jump to unwarranted generalizations. (Scheffel 2005: 15-16) I issued this warning in the awareness of all kinds of distortions to which my ethnography could be exposed from people looking for "scientific" evidence to prop up various stereotypes attached to the Roma. Tidrick's misuse of my work shows that this tendency is not confined to bigots and racists. Tidrick is right that deviance and criminality—without quotation marks—are mentioned in my book as a very significant factor in shaping the coexistence of ethnic Roma and ethnic Slovaks in the described community. When it comes to the empirical evidence provided for this claim, Tidrick lumps me together with other disseminators of false stereotypes and opines that "[one] only has to scratch the surface of these destructive claims to recognize the thin epistemological footing on which many of the authors . . . stand" (2010: 122). Specifically, she claims that [examples] illustrating Romani "deviance" in Scheffel's account include such atrocities as a child throwing a pencil across the room in frustration—suggesting deep flaws in his interpretive frame as well as . . . limitations in his ethnographic data collection. ( Tidrick 2010: 122). Having collected and presented an extensive ethnographic sample of murder, rape, incest, assaults, drug use, theft, usury, and many other [End Page 144] forms of deviance and criminality recognized as such by the Roma themselves, I find Tidrick's belittling of an extremely serious condition that hangs like a dark cloud over the entire community troubling and irresponsible. Of course, we all know the dangers of revealing disagreeable attributes of the people we work with, and there are some famous...

What the Fair Credit Reporting Act Should Teach Us About Mortgage Servicing

The current housing crisis has revealed deep flaws in the way monthly mortgage payments by homeowners are handled by mortgage servicers – the companies that collect monthly mortgage payments from homeowners and forward the payments to investors in those mortgages. This article suggests that the structural flaws in mortgage servicing are directly analogous to the market failures that led to the creation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 (FCRA). The FCRA thus serves as a significant model for possible reforms in mortgage servicing. The “robo-signing” scandals of 2010 drew unprecedented public policy attention to the mortgage servicing industry, and that attention has resulted in subsequent consent decrees, enforcement actions, and calls for national mortgage servicing scandals. As a historical matter, the structure of the mortgage servicing market is a recent phenomenon. Historically, most mortgage loans were made locally by thrifts or commercial banks. Where servicing was kept locally, lenders had the usual market incentives to treat borrowers well in hopes of providing other banking services to the family. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the increased use of mortgage-backed securities and other economic factors meant that a much larger proportion of local lenders sold off the mortgage servicing rights rather than keeping them in-house. In addition, market concentration in the servicing industry skyrocketed, with the 10 largest servicers having 11% market share in 1989, and 40% a decade later. Today, the top four servicers have roughly 70% market share. The comparison between the FCRA and mortgage servicing is straightforward and previously undiscussed. The FCRA emerged in 1970 at a time of rapid concentration in the credit reporting market. Mistakes and decisions about credit can have a large impact on a family, such as whether a loan is approved and on what terms. The clients of the credit reporting agencies, however, are lenders, insurers, employers, and others, but not consumers. The market incentives for credit reporting agencies are to optimize for their corporate clients, rather than worry about how a mistake affects an individual consumer. Mortgage servicing, recently, has seen rapid concentration. Mistakes and decisions by servicers can have a large impact on a family, such as whether to modify a loan or force a foreclosure. The clients of the mortgage servicers, however, are investors rather than the homeowners. The market failures in mortgage servicing, therefore, parallel those in credit reporting. Mortgage servicers lack any legal duty to act in the interest of the homeowners. They also lack any market incentives to act in the interest of homeowners; indeed, a consumer who chooses to exit by refinancing may quite possibly be stuck with the same servicer in any subsequent loan. In light of this structural lack of protection for consumers, new national mortgage standard should address issues such as disclosure, deceptive practices, and conflicts of interest in mortgage servicing.

The Affordable Care Act and Competition Policy: Antidote or Placebo?

In the run-up to its enactment, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) elicited howls of protest from opponents who claimed the federal government was “taking over” the American healthcare system, “micromanaging” medicine, and generally exposing the nation to the bete noire of “socialized medicine.” Hyperbole, misrepresentation and chauvinism aside, these sound bites suffer from a deeper flaw: they mischaracterize the fundamental thrust of the new law. Though the law establishes significant new regulatory authority, this is neither a new development (indeed it can be faulted for preserving pre-existing regulatory regimes) nor does it impair market competition. To the contrary, much of the law aims at improving conditions conducive to effective competition. However, it is far from clear that market competition will work out as scripted by theorists and proponents of the new law. Myriad market imperfections still complicate market interactions and regulation needs to be carefully tailored to assure effective implementation and minimize unintended consequences. Of even greater concern are the problematic market structures that pervade provider and payer markets. Concentration, embedded practices and professional norms may cause markets to operate suboptimally even if reform is implemented smoothly. Further, the ACA’s effectiveness in achieving its goals depends on the executive branch maintaining a steady hand in countless regulatory determinations required under the new law. This article surveys some of the misconceptions about health reform and the challenges it confronts in realizing proponents’ goals.

Simulation based on optimisation of pulsed eddy current probe design

There is a need for a pulsed eddy current (PEC) to detect very small defects and deep buried subsurface flaws reliably in metallic structures such as aircraft wings. This paper reports an investigation into the sensitivity for a pancake PEC probe to variations in the material conductivity of specimens. Three experimental coil parameters are modelled: (a) coil inner radius, (b) coil width and (c) coil height. Based on the predicted signals, the sensitivity of the PEC probe as a function of coil parameters has been formulated. Through matrix numerical simulation experiments using orthogonal array, the weighting of each parameter to the sensitivity has been derived. Subsequently, a theoretical model for probe optimisation is established in order to realise the maximum sensitivity, based on which a probe is designed with improved sensitivity.

Toward an Alternative Evolutionary Theory of Religion: Looking Past Computational Evolutionary Psychology to a Wider Field of Possibilities

Cognitive science of the last half-century has been dominated by the computational theory of mind and its picture of thought as information processing. Taking this picture for granted, the most prominent evolutionary theories of religion of the last fifteen years have sought to understand human religiosity as the product or by-product of universal information processing mechanisms that were adaptive in our ancestral environment. The rigidity of such explanations is at odds with the highly context-sensitive nature of historical studies of religion, and thus contributes to the apparent tug-of-war between scientific and humanistic perspectives. This essay argues that this antagonism stems in part from a deep flaw of computational theory, namely its notion of information as pre-given and context-free. In contrast, non-computational theories that picture mind as an adaptive, interactive process in which information is jointly constructed by organism and environment offer an alternative approach to an evolutionary understanding of human religiosity, one that is compatible with historical studies and amenable to a wide range of inquiries, including some limited kinds of theological inquiry.

"Gadžology" as Activism: What I Would Have Ethnography Do for East European Roma

"Gadžology" as Activism:What I Would Have Ethnography Do for East European Roma Heather Tidrick (bio) Gypsy stereotypes are unnervingly familiar even if you have never traveled to Budapest: They do not want to work; they just have babies so they can live off the social benefits system. Watch your pockets on the tram. Be careful in the Gypsy quarter—be sure not to go there after dark. As my own role as an American in Hungary has shifted over the past decade, though—as an English teacher just out of the University of California in the late 1990s; then an editor of Romani rights reports with the European Roma Rights Centre; and since 2003 a graduate student researcher—I have found it amazing how far-reaching adherence is to the ugly dominant narratives about Roma. This essay has two main goals: first, to recall the significance of the politics of knowledge in the articulation of bio-power (Foucault 1978)—for Roma in Europe, like Jews and many other groups who have experienced stigmatization, the contours of their oppression are profoundly influenced by notions of their cultural alterity, whether these expressions of their apparent distinctiveness appear in journalism, scholarly writing, or NGO promotional materials. I offer a few contemporary examples of such representations in the case of Roma and discuss the consequences of these representations. Second, because scholars play a political role in creating texts, I advocate a methodological stance that foregrounds inherent human dignity and vigilantly guards against the further reproduction of dominant, extremely destructive narratives about stigmatized groups. I discuss how these principles have shaped my own research agenda on the interplay between social policy and institutional practices with Roma. By playfully proposing "Gadžology" [End Page 121] (the study of non-Roma, or gadže, from a Romani point of view) as the counterpoint to "Romology," I attempt to highlight the ways our disciplinary boundaries can define our object of study to the detriment of both theory and ethics—and to challenge us to formulate alternative and liberatory avenues of scholarship as ethnographers. Power, Knowledge, and Romology Many writers too easily traffic in Gypsy stereotypes without the evidence to support their claims. Political scientist Zoltan Barany references the supposed "higher-than-average levels of Gypsy criminality" (2002, 180); journalist Isabel Fonseca claims that Roma have no words for "time," "danger," "warmth," and "quiet" (Fonseca 1996; Hancock 1997); and anthropologist David Scheffel (2005) points to apparent Romani deviance as a key factor in the segregation of Roma from Slovak community life in Svinia (and, implicitly, elsewhere in Eastern Europe). One only has to scratch the surface of these destructive claims to recognize the thin epistemological footing on which many of the authors in the multidisciplinary field of Romani Studies stand. Ian Hancock situates Fonseca's misinformation on the Romani language within the long "Gypsylorist" tradition of falsely claiming lexical paucity to illustrate supposed lack of virtues among Roma (Hancock 1997). Examples illustrating Romani "deviance" in Scheffel's account include such atrocities as a child throwing a pencil across the room in frustration—suggesting deep flaws in his interpretive frame as well as the self-acknowledged limitations in his ethnographic data collection. "Criminality" was the main justification the Third Reich used for their attempted extermination of Roma and Sinti during World War II.1 The link made between a supposed tendency or predisposition toward crime and the bodies and biology of Roma dates back to Cesare Lombroso's nineteenth-century criminological anthropological theory identifying Gypsies as a "race of criminals."2 Barany's uncritical use of the loaded term is not supported with any actual crime statistics. Such knowledge claims about Roma constitute essential features in the landscape of past and present international Romani politics. In this context, I argue, producing a text about Roma (be it written or visual) is a political act. In continuing to recycle such tropes as Gypsy criminality, deviance, and cultural paucity, scholars and journalists often participate [End Page 122] in reinforcing structural inequalities and systematic social exclusion of Roma in the places where they constitute a visible minority.3 Putative knowledge about Roma informs social policy and program development in countless ways...