Minor Pieces Research Articles

Cleavage of a Gulf of Mexico loop current eddy by a deep water cyclone

Eddy Triton, an anticyclonic eddy shed by the Loop Current in late June 1991, drifted SW across the central Gulf of Mexico in the first 6 months of 1992, along the “southern” of the three characteristic drift paths described by Vukovich and Crissman [1986] from their analyses of 13 years of advanced very high resolution radiometer sea surface temperature data. An expendable bathythermograph (XBT) and conductivity‐temperature‐depth (CTD) transect of opportunity through Triton at eddy age 7 months in January 1992 found that eddy interior stood 23 dyn. cm higher than periphery; this gradient drove an anticyclonic swirl transport of 9–10 Sv relative to 800 dbar. At eddy age 9–10 months and while this eddy was in deep water near 94°W, it interacted with a mesoscale cyclonic circulation and was cleaved into two parts. The major (greater dynamic centimeters) piece drifted NW to end up in the “eddy graveyard” in the NW corner of the gulf, while the minor piece drifted SW and reached the continental margin of the western gulf off Tuxpan. This southern piece of Eddy Triton then turned north to follow the 2000‐m isobath to about 24°N and later coalesced with what remained of the major fragment. Because Eddy Triton's cleavage took place just before the start of marine mammals (GulfCet) and Louisiana‐Texas physical oceanography (LATEX) field programs, the closely spaced CTD, XBT, and air dropped XBT (AXBT) data that were gathered on the continental margin north of 26°N in support of these programs allow a detailed look at the northern margin of the larger fragment of this eddy. Supporting data from the space‐borne altimeters on ERS 1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON allow us to track both pieces of Eddy Triton in the western Gulf and follow their spin down in dynamic height, coalescence, and ultimate entrainment in January 1993 into another anticyclonic eddy (Eddy U).

Beware the Bishop Pair

The relative strengths of Bishop and Knight are extensively investigated for various combinations of pieces and Pawns. The study is performed with the help of a large database (over 350,000 games). Other imbalanced endgames such as Queen vs two Rooks, two Rooks vs three minor pieces, and a Rook and a Pawn vs two minor pieces are discussed analogously. The results are compared with Capablanca’s (1921) statements and Timoshchenko’s (1993) findings. The conclusions are given 10 the form of 14 heuristics.

"A Lesson on a Tortoise" and D. H. Lawrence's earliest crisis of social identity

The short story "A Lesson on a Tortoise", written by D. H. Lawrence in 1909, has traditionally been disregarded by criticism as a very minor piece of work. This paper aims to show that the story has a threefold importance: firstly as an autobiographical portrait of Lawrence's activities as a teacher in Croydon; secondly as an example of Lawrence's ability to use realistic techniques; and thirdly as a reflection of the author's crisis of social identity. The paper concentrates on the last aspect and traces the personal and intellectual facets which came to shape Lawrence's ideas on the subject.

Herbert G. Gutman as labor historian

A word or two of explanation of my participation in this sympo? sium seems appropriate. Arthur Vidich sent me a copy of Herbert Hill's critique of Gutman and asked me to comment. It was obvious from a quick reading that I could add nothing to Hill. But I have long felt a certain unease about Gutman. I had never read him systemati? cally. Several friends had urged me to read particular pieces and I had done so. These were not edifying experiences. He gave me no valid insights; his style was pretentious; he was disorganized; and his language was imprecise. Perhaps I had caught him on bad days. I offered to review all his work on labor history and Vidich agreed. Gutman's output was not extensive. He really wrote only one book, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1976). If it were about slavery as a system of labor, it would, of course, be labor history. But, as the title indicates, it is about the institution of the slave family and should be classified, I suppose, as social his? tory. If Gutman is to have any enduring reputation, I suspect that it must come from this volume. There is no book on labor history; not even Gutman's doctoral dissertation was published as a whole. All of his work consists of essays. He collected seven of them into a volume entitled Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (1976). Ira Berlin, Gutman's collaborator, put together eleven others following Gut? man's death in a book called Power and Culture, Essays on the American Working Class (1987). This volume includes a biographi? cal sketch by Berlin and an interview by Mike Merrill. While there are other minor pieces, there can be no doubt that everything of consequence is in these two books. The writing of history almost invariably imposes two duties on the author?to tell a story within the strictures of the clock and the calendar and to analyze its significance. A remarkable fact about Gutman's historical work (both the labor history and the slave fam? ily book) is that he shunned narrative. Since readers like stories, this automatically limited the size of his audience. There is one excep? tion: the long essay entitled "Labor in the Land of Lincoln: Coal Miners on the Prairie," a richly detailed account of the mining

Chess players' intake of task-relevant cues.

Patterns of chess pieces are important for chess players in storing information in memory-recall tasks. It also may be assumed that these patterns play a central role in the perceptual coding of task-relevant cues. Two perceptual classification experiments were done to test this assumption. Chess-players' intake of task-relevant cues was studied by measuring the reaction times of subjects in counting the minor pieces on the chessboard or searching for checks in the game and in random positions. Surprisingly, there was no interaction between the level of skill and the type of position. In Experiment 3, both a perceptual classification task and a memory-recall task using the same positions were presented to a group of chess players at the same session. In the perceptual classification task, there was no interaction between the level of skill and the type of position, but in the recall task there was strong interaction. The result suggests that the information intake of chess players, in its lowest levels, is not dependent on the learned patterns. The role of the patterns becomes important in defining the information to be looked for, but the patterns are not important in the early-stage perceptual structuring of a position.

Principles of Beauty

The principles of beauty in chess were derived from the judgments of expert chess players. The principles were: (1) successfully violate heuristics, (2) use the weakest possible piece, (3) use all of the piece's power, (4) give more esthetic weight to the critical squares, (5) use one giant piece in place of several minor pieces, (6) employ themes, (7) avoid bland stereotopy, and (8) neither strangeness nor difficulty produce beauty.

Training in the new legislation

Since 1965 there have been 30 Acts of Parliament concerned with some aspect of employment; 16 of these have been passed since 1970 and eight in the last two years. One piece of legislation in particular, the Employment Protection Act 1975, has brought fundamental changes in relationships at work. Never before in Britain has there been such an avalanche of industrial legislation. Still to come is the promised (threatened?) Bill on Industrial Democracy — itself likely to bring revolutionary changes in management practice and likely to be pressed through Parliament in a hectic rush to beat any impending change in Government — and there are sure to be any number of minor pieces of amending legislation tidying up after the current rush. This mass of legislation is today largely undigested, despite the fact that it already requires basic changes in company administration and practice. Passing laws, of itself, changes nothing: those involved have to learn how to operate properly in the new circumstances. What is called for now is an immense training exercise to inform all concerned what provisions the new laws contain and to teach people how to work within these new laws. This need applies to managers, foremen, trade union officials, shop stewards, certain functional specialists such as training staff and personnel staff, and, in a broader field, to employees generally. It's a pretty formidable training problem, taking account of the fact that the needs of each of these groups differ from group to group. In terms of sheer size and complexity this is today's number one untackled training problem, but I cannot trace any training board which has earmarked it as such nor can I find any pronouncement of the TSA on this vital topic. It can't stay this way for long: today there must be hundreds of managers breaking the law, unwittingly, every day.

Thomas Mann's “Gladius Dei”

AbstractMann's story, often considered only a minor companion piece to the play Fiorenza, is significant in itself as a satire on the intellectual attitudes prevalent in Munich around 1900. The story begins with a general description of Munich which, though apparently independent, is in fact connected to the later parts by the use of sophisticated narrative techniques. This description also contains topical references and details which show that the artistic and intellectual community of Munich, in its admiration for the Italian Renaissance, is enacting a quasi neo-Renaissance. Into this realistic setting Mann then places a fictional hero who feels he is called to assume the task of a Savonarola for his time. A grotesque scene results which exposes the spuriousness of the Renaissance cult. In presenting the satire, Mann employs means and forms which seem to be forerunners of his later leitmotifs, “gelebte Vita,” parody, and others. The devices in “Gladius Dei,” however, have specific, mostly rhetorical functions within the story, whereas their later counterparts often have far-reaching symbolic meaning.

The Unfinished Gothic Cathedral: A Study of the Organic Unity

Perhaps the most significant statement that Wordsworth ever made about his own work is in his preface to The Excursion, when he remarks that The Prelude (then unpublished) and The Recluse (of which The Excursion was the only part yet written) "have the same kind of relation to each other ... as the ante-chapel has to the body ofa Gothic church. Continuing this allusion, [the author] may be permitted to add, that his minor Pieces, which have been long before the Public, when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by the attentive Reader to have such connection with the main Work as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices."

The Johnsonian Canon: A Neglected Attribution

The standard authorities on the bibliography of Samuel Johnson1 fail to mention one minor but interesting piece of journalism that has been ascribed, with some probability, to Johnson. This is the “Observations” appended to “A Letter from a French Refugee in America to his Friend a Gentleman in England”, in The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review, of June, 1756.