Familiar Ideas Research Articles

Games, Ideas and Activities for Primary Literacy

Organised by the three key literacy areas – speaking and listening, reading, and writing – this book is full of familiar and fresh ideas that will inspire both new and experienced teachers. Designed for busy teachers, each activity is clearly laid out stating whether it is suitable for key stage 1, 2, or both, giving aims, resources, clearly numbered instructions and often links to websites where teachers can find additional supporting materials. Activities are kinaesthetic, fun and sociable and can take place inside or outside the classroom. Many activities are cross-curricular and child-led, requiring them to utilise their problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Analogies for Teaching Mutant Allele Dominance Concepts

Analogies connect new and familiar concepts and ideas by providing a comfortable and known framework within which students can integrate new concepts. Use of analogies to aid understanding of abstract and/or complex ideas is commonly used in molecular sciences, such as genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry. Five analogies for different mechanisms of mutant allele dominance, a seemingly counter-intuitive idea in genetics, were designed and assessed in an upper division undergraduate/masters level course. Each of the five mechanisms, haploinsufficiency, acquired function, poison product, increased activity, and inappropriate expression, was described in the context of a human disease and molecular mechanism and followed by a descriptive analogy which mirrored the molecular mechanism using real world items or a video clip. The majority of students reported increased interest, understanding, and engagement following the analogies, as well as decreased confusion.

Three Factors to Signal Non-Response Bias With Applications to Categorical Auxiliary Variables

Summary Non-response causes bias in survey estimates. The unknown bias can be reduced, for example as in this paper by the use of a calibration estimator built on powerful auxiliary information. Still, some bias will always remain. A bias reduction indicator is proposed and expressed as a product of three factors reflecting familiar statistical ideas. These factors provide a useful perspective on the components that constitute non-response bias in estimates. To illustrate the indicator, we focus on the important case with information defined by one or more categorical auxiliary variables, each expressed by two or more properties or traits. Together, the auxiliary variables may represent a large number of traits, more or less important for bias reduction. An examination of the three factors of the bias reduction indicator brings the insight that the ultimate auxiliary vector for calibration need not or should not contain all available traits; some are unimportant or detrimental to bias reduction. The question becomes one of selection of traits, not of complete auxiliary variables. Empirical examples are given, and a stepwise procedure for selecting important traits is proposed.

Longing for ground in a ground(less) world: a qualitative inquiry of existential suffering

BackgroundExistential and spiritual concerns are fundamental issues in palliative care and patients frequently articulate these concerns. The purpose of this study was to understand the process of engaging with existential suffering at the end of life.MethodsA grounded theory approach was used to explore processes in the context of situated interaction and to explore the process of existential suffering. We began with in vivo codes of participants' words, and clustered these codes at increasingly higher levels of abstractions until we were able to theorize.ResultsFindings suggest the process of existential suffering begins with an experience of groundlessness that results in an overarching process of Longing for Ground in a Ground(less) World, a wish to minimize the uncomfortable or anxiety-provoking instability of groundlessness. Longing for ground is enacted in three overlapping ways: by turning toward one's discomfort and learning to let go (engaging groundlessness), turning away from the discomfort, attempting to keep it out of consciousness by clinging to familiar thoughts and ideas (taking refuge in the habitual), and learning to live within the flux of instability and unknowing (living in-between).ConclusionsExistential concerns are inherent in being human. This has implications for clinicians when considering how patients and colleagues may experience existential concerns in varying degrees, in their own fashion, either consciously or unconsciously. Findings emphasize a fluid and dynamic understanding of existential suffering and compel health providers to acknowledge the complexity of fear and anxiety while allowing space for the uniquely fluid nature of these processes for each person. Findings also have implications for health providers who may gravitate towards the transformational possibilities of encounters with mortality without inviting space for less optimistic possibilities of resistance, anger, and despondency that may concurrently arise.

Albert Camus by Adele King

^^JII^^^^^^^J^^^j^^^BImhb^ì^^^^^^^m^^^mmm mmmmmmEmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Featured Reviews Adele King. Albert Camus. London. Haus. 2010. 165 pages, ill. £7.99 / $14.95. ISBN 978-1-906598-40-2 Adele King's briefnew biography, Albert Camus,joins a growingnumber ofbooks publishedon or about Camus in the past few years. The biographyis partof Haus Publishing 's Modern Libraryof Biography series. Althoughthereis relatively little new informationregarding Camus, King's book is a wonderful addition to the growing ranks of commentaryon the Nobel Prizewinningauthor . In 2OOOCarroll & Graf published the English translation of AlbertCamus: A Life,by Olivier Todd. Althoughthe English translation was severely cut, Todd's biography can be considered the official biography of Camus to date. For those of us who have read Todd's biography,King offers a much-neededrefresher course on Camus's life and work. For those who maybe lookingfora biography on Camus, King'sbook is a wonderfully manageable place to begin. In fact,King's biographyproves to be an insightful companion to any simultaneousreadingofCamus. Camus offers the reader a wealthofinformation ina relatively short time. King includes photographs , breakout descriptions of certainkey people in Camus's life adjacentto thetext, as well as notes and a very useful index. But perhaps the most usefulaspect of her biography,apartfromthenarrative itself,is the extensivereading list she supplies at theend ofherbook. She gives thereader a samplingof primary and secondarysourcesthat are an invaluableresourceforthose EL x^d^^^^H J^ THF MODERN LIBRARYOF BIOGRAPHY interestedin reading and researchingCamus . The biographeralways runsthe riskofeither exaltingordamninghis orhersubject. It'ssometimes tooeasy tobecomecaughtup inthelifeofthe subject,and thisin turnrendersthe necessary objectivityfor a biography difficult. King's takeon Camus is admirablyobjective.Yet she also verysubtlyinjectsherown views on Camus fromtime to time.Perhaps the strongestmomentcomes when she probes thecriticism thatCamus has historically come under regardinghis treatment ofArabsin his fiction .King,quite rightly, argues that Camus's fictionin factrises above the criticism of scholarslike Conor Cruise O'Brien and Edward Said withoutreallymentioning them;and she does thiswithoutbelittling that criticism. Attheend ofherbook she states, "Camus the Algerian who lost his countryseems increasingly sympatheticand a forerunnerof many displaced by decolonization and independencemovements." The readerimmediately picksup on her designationofCamus as "theAlgerian ,"a factthatis all too oftenlost on morethana fewscholars. Adele King's Albert Camus should be on the shelf of every home and college library.She provides herreaderwitha knowledgeable yetneutralvoice and an easy, jargon-free prose thatcaptures the essence of Camus withouttheleast bitofpretension. Andrew Martino Southern NewHampshire University Robert Zaretsky.Albert Camus: Elements of a Life.Ithaca, New York.Cornell UniversityPress. 2010. x + 181 pages. $24.95. isbn 978-0-8014-4805-8 Like most public figures,authors go in and out of fashion. This is especially trueforauthorswho are also philosophicallyand/or politically engaged. Albert Camus has been somethingof a lightningrod forseveral decades and is certainly one of those authorswho has gone in and out of fashion.Thankfully, Camus and his work seem to be enjoyinga criticalresurgence. RobertZaretsky'sAlbert Camus: Elementsof a Life is part biography and part criticalcommentary. It is a beautifully written,carefully researched, and thoroughly engaging snapshot of four defining moments in Camus's life. Yet Zaretskyhimselfstates,"This book is neither a fullbiographynorscholarly commentary.It is an essay in whichI tracetheways these'familiar ideas' weave throughCamus's life."Ofcourse,thereaderis totake theseclaims at littlemorethanface value. Zaretsky's"essay" is a superb supplementto any serious (and not so serious) study of Camus's life and work. Drawing from four critical momentsin Camus's life,Zaretsky surveysthemind ofan authorwho was troubled by his own fame, 741WorldLiterature Today ...

Post-modern valence bond theory for strongly correlated electron spins

We give a pedagogical overview of our recently introduced electronic-structure method, Coupled Cluster Valence Bond (CCVB). We show that CCVB can be viewed as an approximation to the accurate, yet very expensive, Spin Coupled Valence Bond model (SCVB). Both of these models are intended for use on strongly correlated molecular systems, especially when the strong correlations are due to electron spin coupling. Using familiar ideas from electronic-structure theory, we provide definitions for these strong-correlation concepts. We show that CCVB and SCVB generally produce similar results, with more substantial discrepancies occurring for systems displaying electronic resonance. We conclude that CCVB is a useful, inexpensive alternative to SCVB.

Pedagogy in Common: Democratic education in the global era

In the context of the increasingly transnational organization of society, culture, and communication, this article develops a conceptualization of the global common as a basic condition of interrelation and shared experience, and describes contemporary political efforts to fully democratize this condition. The article demonstrates the implications for curriculum and teaching of this project, describing in particular the importance of fundamentally challenging the interpellation of students as subjects of the nation, and the necessity for new and radically collaborative forms of political and pedagogical authority that can more powerfully realize the imaginative potential of educators and students alike as global democratic actors. In this effort, familiar progressive educational ideas (e.g. the importance of the continuity of the curriculum, and the meaning and purpose of experimentalism) are interrogated and rearticulated. The article concludes with a discussion of the unique ways in which education can contribute to constructing a democratic society in the global era, and how the central aspects of such a pedagogy in common can also suggest essential principles for the organization of social movements in this context.

Excerpt from <em>Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity</em>

Just as mariners use triangulation, mapping an imaginary triangle between two known positions and an unknown location, so, David J. Vázquez contends, Latino authors in late twentieth-century America employ the coordinates of familiar ideas of self to find their way to new, complex identities. Through this metaphor, Vázquez reveals how Latino autobiographical texts, written after the rise of cultural nationalism in the 1960s, challenge mainstream notions of individual identity and national belonging in the United States.In a traditional autobiographical work, the protagonist frequently opts out of his or her community. In the works that Vázquez analyzes in Triangulations, protagonists instead opt in to collective groups—often for the express political purpose of redefining that collective. Reading texts by authors such as Ernesto Galarza, Jesús Colón, Piri Thomas, Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, Judith Ortiz Cofer, John Rechy, Julia Alvarez, and Sandra Cisneros, Vázquez engages debates about the relationship between literature and social movements, the role of cultural nationalism in projects for social justice, the gender and sexual problematics of 1960s cultural nationalist groups, the possibilities for interethnic coalitions, and the interpretation of autobiography. In the process, Triangulations considers the potential for cultural nationalism as a productive force for aggrieved communities of color in their struggles for equality.

Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot (review)

Reviewed by: Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot Anne Mallory Elizabeth Sabiston , Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 214 pp. Elizabeth Sabiston's book takes up a scene central to the history of feminist scholarship: a heroine, circumscribed not least by gender, acquires agency through artistic, often literary, expression. It is easy to understand the attraction this scenario holds for feminist critics, above and beyond its self-reflexivity. As a common literary story and, for many women, a life story, it may have played a part in motivating many of us to become scholars. Having witnessed, in the last four decades, efforts to define and explore the category of "women's writing," in today's critical climate we may be less inclined to create narratives that group nineteenth-century women writers into a straightforward trajectory of artistic or personal development. [End Page 417] Private Sphere to World Stage examines works by five British novelists: Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot. Sabiston argues for a strong lineage derived from these authors' sense of themselves as living in a world that begrudges women the pleasures and powers associated with artistic production. She has selected these works because she believes they share a preoccupation with women's writing and its ability to affect the world. As she asserts in the book's conclusion, "The most important factor linking the five women novelists is their movement, however tentative, provisional, and anonymous, from private sphere to public" (190). The opening chapter focuses on Austen's Northanger Abbey and Persuasion as defenses of the woman novelist's craft; each contains a "buried manifesto" (3). After a discussion of mentorship in Northanger Abbey, Sabiston turns to the oft-cited passage, "Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body." She uses this defense of the novel form, as practiced by women, to set up a reading of Persuasion that emphasizes the gradual development of Anne Elliot's creative abilities: "discipline, detachment, shrewd observation of others" (33). Sabiston analyzes at length the scene at the White Hart in which Anne's semi-public defense of women's constancy — a speech that counters conventional masculine histories — prompts Captain Wentworth to drop his pen (33). By the novel's end, she argues, Anne "has moved from private sphere to public and becomes an eloquent defender (to an all-male audience) of the female point of view in literature" (56). In Chapter Two, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre takes up the pen that Captain Wentworth drops. Having recounted some familiar ideas about the color red and the meanings of "eyre," Sabiston embarks on a valuable discussion of Jane's knack for narrative. Reflecting on the manner in which Jane's abilities develop, Sabiston makes the excellent point that the novel which "begins with Jane Eyre's book being flung as a weapon at John Reed's head" ends "with Jane Rochester's book, the book that she has written, directed more gently and compellingly at the reader, at a more appreciative and receptive public that will be complicitous rather than compelled against its will" (80). Jane's manuscript allows her to move from isolation toward community, since "in writing from her heart as well as her conscience, she emerges from the private sphere and speaks to other women over a span of many generations" (81). The chapter ends with an interesting, though underdeveloped, discussion of Brontë's influence on Herman Melville and Leo Tolstoy. Under the heading, "Charlotte Brontë: Only a Women's Novelist?" Sabiston suggests that Melville may have named Edward Fairfax Vere, the captain in his short story "Billy Budd," after Brontë's Edward Fairfax Rochester, and notes that Vere is also the surname of Georgiana Reed's suitor, Lord Edwin Vere. She goes on to make an intriguing comparison between Brontë's novel and Tolstoy's "Happy Ever After," which also features a female narrator and a silenced governess. Sabiston argues for an important distinction: while Brontë empowers her female narrator, Tolstoy disempowers his. [End Page 418] Sabiston reads Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights as a novel in which "female literariness" challenges...

Some Lessons Learned

This paper looks at some familiar results, concepts, and ideas in a different way, drawing out some common unifying threads. The topics addressed are one-, two-, and three-dimensions; axisymmetry and its breakdown; gaps and leakage paths; and computation fluid dynamics (CFD) and the limitation of perfection. Certain overlapping issues come up in each of the topic areas.

Statistical Determinants of Selective Ionic Complexation: Ions in Solvent, Transport Proteins, and Other “Hosts”

To provide utility in understanding the molecular evolution of ion-selective biomembrane channels/transporters, globular proteins, and ionophoric compounds, as well as in guiding their modification and design, we present a statistical mechanical basis for deconstructing the impact of the coordination structure and chemistry of selective multidentate ionic complexes. The deconstruction augments familiar ideas in liquid structure theory to realize the ionic complex as an open ion-ligated system acting under the influence of an “external field” provided by the host (or surrounding medium). Using considerations derived from this basis, we show that selective complexation arises from exploitation of a particular ion's coordination preferences. These preferences derive from a balance of interactions much like that which dictates the Hofmeister effect. By analyzing the coordination-state space of small family IA and VIIA ions in simulated fluid media, we derive domains of coordinated states that confer selectivity for a given ion upon isolating and constraining particular attributes (order parameters) of a complex comprised of a given type of ligand. We demonstrate that such domains may be used to rationalize the ion-coordinated environments provided by selective ionophores and biological ion channels/transporters of known structure, and that they can serve as a means toward deriving rational design principles for ion-selective hosts.

Promoting Vocabulary Learning with the Interactive Word Wall

Curricular standards at the middle level and at all grade levels include vocabulary development as part of a comprehensive literacy program. Some of the expectations in these standards include determining meanings of derivatives, studying words systematically across different disciplines, learning polysemous words, and understanding the etymology of words. To address these objectives, teachers need to consider a printrich classroom environment that supports vocabulary acquisition. One particular artifact associated with printrich literacy environments is the word wall, a collection of words visually displayed in the classroom that serves as a referential point for discussion. While word walls have typically been considered the domain of primary level classrooms, we have had promising success at the middle level with what we call the Word (Harmon, Hedrick, Wood, Vintinner, & Willeford, in press; Harmon, Hedrick, 8c Wood, 2007). The Interactive Word Wall strategy is grounded in research and theory supporting the use of social interaction, active student engagement, and the power of choice in working with older students (Gambrell & Marinak, 1997; Kohn, 1993). In this column, we begin with a brief review of the importance of vocabulary to subject area learning and how key features of research-based vocabulary learning led us to develop the Interactive Word Wall strategy. Then we describe an instructional framework for using the Interactive Word Wall. And last, we provide some actual classroom examples from a middle school social studies teacher. Research-based vocabulary instruction The importance of vocabulary in learning is widely acknowledged by educators and is grounded in a wealth of research studies dating back many decades (Blachowicz, Fisher, Ogle, & Watts-Taffe, 2006; Baumann, Kame'enui, & Ash, 2003; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), 2000). The findings of vocabulary research provide us with understandings about vocabulary knowledge as a predictor of verbal ability as well as reading comprehension (Sternberg, 1987), the high correlation between vocabulary and reading comprehension (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Freeman, 1984) and how this link is both complex and difficult to separate (Baumann, 2005; NICHD, 2000), and the tremendous differences in word knowledge that can exist in any school classroom and at any grade level for economically disadvantaged students (Chali, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Hart & Risley, 1995; White, Graves, & Slater, 1990) and for English language learners (Folse, 2004). The Interactive Word Wall strategy serves three purposes: (a) associating word features and meanings with familiar ideas, concepts, and experiences; (b) actively engaging students in multiple, varied, and meaningful experiences with words; and (c) highlighting student choice. Associative learning The role of association tasks in learning and instruction has a long history, having been researched since the early years of the last century from Thorndyke to Pavlov (Wittrock, 1979). Research and theory since these early years has shown how knowledge exists as a vast set of associations of varying degrees represented by images in our minds and related to and triggered by our current and prior experiences (Sadoski & Paivio, 2004; Paivio, 1986). The research on the keyword method, a mnemonic device that involves associative learning, supports the use of this technique for helping students recall word meanings (NICHD, 2000) . Essentially, students create a visual image between the word meaning and some familiar part of the word. Baumann, Kame'enui, and Ash (2003) use the example of the word carlin meaning woman. The student pictures an old woman driving a car and this image helps later recall of the word meaning. The broad research base for the keyword method favors its use for helping students remember definitions (Pressley, Levin, & Delaney, 1982; Pressley, Levin, & McDaniel, 1987), although some studies noted a problem with long-term retention of word meanings (Thomas & Wang, 1996; Zhang & Schumm, 2000). …

The Biologistical Construction of Race

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of the use of race in two interconnected laboratories of medical genetics. Specifically, it examines how researchers committed to reducing health disparities in Latinos with asthma advance hypotheses and structure research to show that relative frequencies of genetic markers characterize commonly understood groupings of race. They do this first by unapologetically advancing the idea that peoples whom they take to be of the 'Old World', or 'Africans', 'Europeans', 'East Asians', and 'Native Americans', can serve as putatively pure reference populations against which genetic risk for common diseases such as asthma can be calculated for those in the 'New World'. Technologically, they deploy a tool called ancestry informative markers (AIMs), which are a collection of genetic sequence variants said to differ in present-day West Africans, East Asians, Europeans, and (ideally Pre-Columbian) Native Americans. I argue that this technology, compelling as it may be to a range of actors who span the political spectrum, is, at base, designed to bring about a correspondence of familiar ideas of race and supposed socially neutral DNA. This correspondence happens, in part, as the scientists in question often bracket the environment while privileging racialized genetic variance as the primary source of health disparities for common disease, in this case between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans with asthma. With their various collaborators, these scientists represent a growing movement within medical genetics to re-consider race and 'racial admixture' as biogenetically valid points of departure. Furthermore, many actors at the center of this ethnography focus on race as a function of their personal identity politics as scientists of color. This to say, they are driven not by racist notions of human difference, but by a commitment to reduce health disparities and to include 'their' communities in what they describe as the 'genetic revolution'.

The Pedagogy of Monsters: Scary Disturbances in a Doctoral Research Preparation Course

Background/Context Although doctoral education is an important component of research universities, few investigations of doctoral education exist. Furthermore, with the push in education and in other disciplines to help beginning researchers understand multiple paradigmatic, epistemological, and theoretical orientations that define fields of study, few reports explore the attempts and their effects. Purpose This study sought to understand the unusually strong student responses to a new doctoral core course that aimed to initiate them into the competing theoretical, epistemological, and paradigmatic complexity of contemporary educational research. This study developed from the authors’ experiences with the course in an attempt to understand students’ conflicted responses. Setting A private urban graduate school of education was the setting for this study. Participants Participants were doctoral students who enrolled in the core course between 1999 and 2002. By virtue of the action research design, the authors were also participants. Research Design The overarching design developed from action research in that we sought to investigate a question that arose from our teaching practice. Our initial research question was, How can we understand students’ highly charged responses to the doctoral core course? The inquiry drew upon three traditions in qualitative interpretive research: action research, collective memory work, and deep interpretation and reflection. Data Collection and Analysis Data were collected via three collective memory groups and through the sustained and collaborative sharing of the authors’ own varied experiences of the doctoral core course. Findings/Results Students’ stories of turmoil in the doctoral course are interpreted as disruptions that occurred when familiar ideas about knowledge and learning, identities, and social networks were breached. These disturbances—encounters with ambivalence, and the awareness of more than one way to interpret, categorize, and feel about phenomena—were related to instances in which their reading, perceptions, and identities were challenged. These disturbances were frightening, and students defended against the uncertainty and the attendant questions of their own competence by recuperating stable ideas of knowledge, self, and community through talk of authentic learning, noncompetitive peers, caring professors, and a harmonious academic community. Conclusions/Recommendations The doctoral core course took on a life of its own, like Frankenstein, achieving effects beyond the original intention and desires of its creators and its students. We now recognize some of the limits to the critical curriculum that we developed, revised, and enacted. We have sought to tame some disturbing aspects of the course and also to admit that teaching that interferes will always produce unpredictable and mixed responses.

A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe (review)

HELGERSON, RICHARD. from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007. xvii + 120 pages.In this slim but remarkable volume, Richard Helgerson, one of the most distinguished critics of early modern literature and culture writing today, explores the Italianate poetry of the Renaissance and early modern period through the lens provided by one of Garcilaso's less-studied sonnets, A Bo scan desde la Goleta. He also provides a bilingual anthology of the series of poems that Garcilaso wrote during the year and a half surrounding the military campaign in Tunis that provided the occasion for the Sonnet from Carthage. Helgerson does not argue that this poem was particularly influential, that it somehow helped shape the work of later poets working elsewhere. Rather, he argues that this sonnet uniquely encapsulates what he calls the of the new poetry: self-conscious poetic aspiration, self-immolation, place, and (xvi). The argument explores these five engagements in Garcilaso's sonnet, but also in the new poetry as a whole, as it was practiced in Italy, France, and England as well as in Spain.These engagements are not all of a kind. The engagement with imperial ambition, for example, has less to do with the dominant thematics of the new poetry than with its centrality to projects of cultural legitimization. Specifically, it refers to the task of producing a translatio studii from Latin to the vernacular meant to support a translatio imperii, the emergence of a nation-state or empire. Self-conscious poetic aspiration refers to the engagement of the new poets with the cultivation of genres and meters imported from Italian and classical models. Self-immolation has to do with the thematics of unrequited love so characteristic of the new poetry, and its emphasis on a tortured, introspective speaking subject. Place refers to the interest of the new poetry in the local, while friendship sums up the importance of male ho mo social bonds to the literary revolution carried out by the likes of Garcilaso and his friend Boscan.It should be apparent that these five engagements conflict among themselves, not to mention exhibit internal tensions each on its own. In fact, Helgerson argues, the tensions among and within these engagements are precisely what generate the new poetry's energy and enduring interest. Each of the chapters explores one of these engagements, taking as its point of departure one of the stanzas of Garcilaso's sonnet, or, in the case of the last chapter, the title customarily given to the poem. The argument then ranges away from Garcilaso's text and across various historical and biographical contexts, as well as a wealth of literary and historical intertexts, only to return home to Garcilaso in the closing paragraphs. Epic poetry, the iconography of triumphal processions, military history, biography, not to mention European lyric, classical and Renaissance epic, all make notable appearances along the way. The argument is geared to an audience of comparativists, so Hispanists will encounter some very familiar ideas, while others will be able to follow along even if they have not read Garcilaso.All the chapters are engaging, but some stand out from the rest. The one on the importance of homosocial bonds to the cultivation of the new poetry is particularly provocative. Helgerson captures the undeniable intensity of Garcilaso's affection for Boscan, particularly as it comes across in his Epistle to and in the Sonnet from Carthage itself. He does not hesitate, for example, to remind us that Garcilaso casts himself as the Dido of the Sonnet from Carthage, and that Boscan is therefore the Aeneas. I found myself wondering, however, whether Helgerson should not have gone even farther than he does, exploring not only the homosocial bonds that enable this poetry in Spain and elsewhere, but also the homoerotic implications of Garcilaso's language. …

A heuristic derivation of Minkowski distance and Lorentz transformation

Students learn new abstract concepts best when these concepts are connected through a well-designed analogy, to familiar ideas. Since the concept of the relativistic spacetime distance is highly abstract, it would be desirable to connect it to the familiar Euclidean distance, but present the latter in such a way that it makes a transparent contact with the former. Starting with some intuitive and ‘obvious’ assumptions concerning distance in one dimension, we ‘derive’ the two-dimensional Euclidean distance between two points in terms of their coordinates. Then, assuming the invariance of this distance, we deduce the (familiar) two-dimensional orthogonal coordinate transformation. We present the derivation in such a way that the transition to spacetime becomes ‘self-evident.’ Thus, following exactly the same procedure, we derive the Minkowskian distance and the corresponding transformation that respects the invariance of that distance, i.e., the Lorentz transformation.

A Critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s Existential Ethics

Simone de Beauvoir's ethics is very complex. In The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948), her notions of ambiguity, disclosure, natural freedom, freedom-taking their departures from Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre-intertwine to form intricate bundles of argumentation.1 Perhaps that is why only philosopher Kristana Arp has really attempted to draw out her ethical theory to its finer threads. Much of the secondary literature consists of articles from critical journals that affirm the value of her ethics without analyzing rigorously and edited collections with articles that touch on a few unconnected facets other ethics. Monika Langer attributes this lack of ethics-specific criticism to the overshadowing of The Ethics of Ambiguity by Beauvoir's more popular The Second Sex, Beauvoir's devaluation of her own philosophical ability, and, most significantly, to the patriarchal nature of the philosophical canon.2 To these possible reasons we may add the common conception of Beauvoir merely Sartre's disciple and the gradual decline of existentialist philosophers in academia. Sartre's ethics, his Being and Nothingness, and the evolution of his thought are difficult topics to handle. Yet in any case, a discussion of Sartre's ethics can commence with the familiar (though not uncontroversial) ideas he presents in his Existentialism is a Humanism. Beauvoir's ethics expressed in The Ethics of Ambiguity, on the other hand, seems likely to leave a room full of confusion and blank faces. Rather than attempting to unfold the intricacies of her multi-layered ethical theory in this paper, I aim to substantively explicate her ethics, and from there, to critique it. What does Beauvoir's ethics amount to? What are the major problems with her ethics? These two questions structure this analysis. I argue that Beauvoir's ethics amounts to a subjectivist ethics with a criterion of right and wrong actions. And I critique Beauvoir's ethics by arguing that her principle of ethical freedom lacks concrete content and is thereby difficult to apply to a large range of our personal and social experiences, and second, I argue against the plausibility of her argument that since our freedom is intertwined with that of others, we ought to promote their freedom in order to promote our own. First, we have to understand Beauvoir's ethics before we can evaluate it. The Ethics of Ambiguity opens with an assertion of the ambiguity of the human condition. To be human means to exist in tension. In Being and Nothingness Sartre asserted and emphasized our transcendence. We are subjects-sovereign, masterful beings who can assert our freedom and subjectivity in the face of others who attempt to objectify us. Beauvoir maintains our transcendent nature with Sartre, but she stresses another element to our condition: we are also objects-material, vulnerable beings who are inextricably bound to the world. We can transcend our circumstances subjects, but we can never quite break free from them objects. Beauvoir eloquently describes this tension: man asserts himself a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things (EA, 7). And she addresses this ambiguity with a particular philosophical context in mind. She writes that as long there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but long there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it (EA, 7). Rather than acknowledging the dualistic tension between man subject and man object, philosophers have reduced man to (materialists) or mind (idealists)-and the dualists have mainly privileged one or the other. Thus the history of ethics, according to Beauvoir, has been a matter of eliminating the ambiguity by making oneself pure inwardness or pure externality, by escaping from the sensible world or by being engulfed in it (EA, 8). …

Splitting atoms safely

The aim of this paper is to make a contribution to (compositional) development methods for concurrent programs. In particular, it takes a fresh look at a number of familiar ideas including the problem of interference. Some subtle issues of observability–including granularity–are explored. Based on these points, the paper sets out some requirements for an approach to developing systems by “splitting atoms safely”.

Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (review)

Reviewed by: Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664–1830 by Daniel J. Hulsebosch Jon Parmenter Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664–1830. By Daniel J. Hulsebosch. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. This important new book, in addition to being one of the most significant studies of the colony (and later the State) of New York in the last decade, has substantial implications for students of colonialism in other times and places. Though the author does not spend abundant time on the explicit issues surrounding colonialism in a global sense, he offers much food for thought about the particularities of the North American experience, viewed through the lens of successive British and American experimentation with different patterns of constitutional governance. The key problem of Anglo-American colonization in North America, contends Hulsebosch, was spatial mobility on the part of its human subjects. The British, he claims, could not cope with settler spatial mobility (especially after 1763) and lost their empire. Newly independent Americans, after 1783, adapted British constitutional forms and experienced “qualified success” (p. 305) in maintaining the United States as a unique empire in its own right, which balanced the symbolic empire of self-government with the concrete empire structuring the administration of extended territories. Underlying this deceptively simple formulation one finds deep archival research and a nuanced constitutional argument. Hulsebosch recognizes the fundamental importance of spatial mobility to early American history, arguing that colonists who inherited familiar British legal ideas nevertheless transformed them at the peripheries of empire. Persistent popular disregard for legalistic notions of jurisdiction compelled Americans of the Revolutionary generation to find a way to exert control over their extensive national geographic space by laws, as those spaces could not possibly be controlled by men. Thus, the author asserts, conquest of North America was accomplished “less with violence than with the confidence with which [settlers] carried forward their notions of constitutional liberty” (p. 11). Hulsebosch deals deftly with the complexities of New York’s unique historical circumstances, moving smoothly between treatments of the general and the particular. While not inattentive to the impact of the presence of the Iroquois, a substantial indigenous confederacy, on the frontiers of New York, the author focuses the bulk of his attention on the settler population. He foregrounds historical contingencies, reminding his readers that the Revolution was not inevitable, and that without adequate ties of cultural and constitutional identity, much of the trans-Appalachian region assigned to the United States by the 1783 Treaty of Paris might have become the property of other colonizing nations. Although the author’s concern with relating the legal aspects of his constitutional argument yields occasional patches of dense prose that will ensnare non-specialists, the overall value of the book will greatly repay a careful reading. Hulsebosch has a broad perspective and an impressive command of the literature, permitting him to weigh in frequently on historiographical debates with concise and persuasive commentary. For example, he points out that most of the constitutional controversies during the eighteenth century took place between North American colonists, noting that the dispute over parliamentary sovereignty was only one late episode in a long intracolonial debate over the relevance of the English Constitution to the American colonies (p. 74). Additionally, he historicizes his treatment of the term “empire,” indicating what it meant to different historical actors at different moments in time. Federalist Papers author Alexander Hamilton, for example, employed the phrase “fate of an Empire” (p. 205) during the 1787 ratification debate to indicate to his readers what he felt was at stake: the Constitution was needed to empower the Union to compete in an Atlantic world dominated by imperial powers. Yet this was not to be considered an “empire” in the old sense of the word. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, another crucial constitutional text, was an imperial text to the extent that it envisioned the spatial growth of the Union, yet it was also anti-imperial in the sense that it rejected the notion of a permanent hierarchy between territorial and national governments. This idea of legal authority based on transcendent...

The Psychoanalytic Dictionary: A Position Paper On Diversity and Its Unifiers

An attempt is made to create a conceptual housing for an increasingly common stance among clinicians who willingly draw from diverse theories as they seem applicable to the immediate clinical moment. The working clinician generally does this without regard to questions of eclectic contradiction or of whether concepts can be extricated from the theories in which they are embedded. The metaphor of a psychoanalytic dictionary is used to create this conceptual housing. Within this metaphor, a psychoanalytic alphabet, vocabulary, and grammar are defined, as well as a set of core assumptions that gives some shape to the boundaries of the psychoanalytic language. Diversity is located in the preferred alphabets and vocabularies of varied psychoanalysts, and unifiers are found in the grammar and core assumptions of the language. Questions regarding internally inconsistent eclecticism and extricability are discussed. The integrative concepts chosen here (among the many that are possible)--concepts defining a shared view of how mind works--are found in such familiar ideas as displacement, condensation, over-determination, and multiple function.