Muddy Waters Research Articles

Muddy waters: evidence-based policy making, uncertainty and the ‘York review’ on water fluoridation

English The systematic review has become widely recognised as an aid to evidence-based decision making in health care. Recently, there has been much interest around the value of systematic reviews in policy-making contexts. This article describes a relatively rare example of an explicit policy commitment to follow the findings of a systematic review, namely that of the efficacy and safety of the fluoridation of drinking water. We argue that although a policy-relevant systematic review may not be directly influential if its findings contradict prior beliefs and policy intent, it can be of value beyond the immediate policy response.

Cementation patterns and genetic implications of Holocene beachrocks from northeastern Brazil

This paper describes the complex patterns of diagenesis in Holocene beachrock ledges located along both the eastern and northern coasts of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, northeastern Brazil. These beachrocks show highly variable diagenetic processes, fabrics and textures. Carbonate cements are exclusively composed by high-Mg calcite and occur in seven main morphologies: (1) cryptocrystalline coatings; (2) isopachous prismatic rims; (3) equant spar; (4) cryptocrystalline or micritic pore-filling; (5) pseudo-peloidal aggregates; (6) radial aggregates; (7) isolated and randomly oriented clumps of scalenohedral crystals. Other diagenetic features include: (a) carbonate-siliciclastic mixed sediment; (b) infiltrated micrite; (c) authigenic smectitic clay minerals; (d) organic films; (e) chalcedony pore-filling cement; (f) vadose silty internal sediment. The texture and composition of the cements are indicative of precipitation in the active marine phreatic zone. The presence of vadose features and planktonic foraminifers within the infiltrated materials suggest that they were introduced in the backshore sands by muddy waters dislocated from the shelf during storms. A general succession of diagenetic phases can be recognized, comprising the precipitation of authigenic smectite, micritic coatings, radial aggregates, isopachous rims of prismatic crystals or equant spar, cryptocrystalline and pseudo-peloidal pore-filling cements, and vadose infiltration of micritic, carbonate-siliciclastic mixed sediments or silty materials. The absence of organic structures, such as microbial (bacteria or fungi) filaments and bodies within the cements suggests that the mechanism behind beachrock cementation is essentially inorganic, most probably the evaporation of entrapped seawater in response to the dry climatic conditions.

The Tower of Babel of CD8+ T‐cell memory: known facts, deserted roads, muddy waters, and possible dead ends

Adequate antigen stimulation can lead to permanent modifications of primed cells and to the generation of memory T cells that have astonishingly improved capacities to deal with antigen. The overall properties of memory T cells (increased survival, precocious and increased division capacities, and improved effector functions) can be used to identify this unique cell type. However, each immune response may lead to the generation of multiple primed types that do not necessarily possess all these characteristics. It is not known whether these different cell types are just side products of the immune reaction or whether they are involved in disease control. Control of different infections may involve different challenges and lead to the generation of different types of immune reactions. Our major challenge is to unravel this complexity, but we must overcome our handicapped experimental tests and our imperfect a priori definitions.

Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942 (review)

Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942. By John W. Work, Lewis Wade Jones, and Samuel C. Adams, Jr.; edited by Robert Gordon and Brace Nemerov. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005. [xvi, 343 p. ISBN 0-82651485-5. $34.95.] Indices, appendices, illustrations, music examples. The immediate attraction of Lost Delta Found is the inclusion of John W. Work III (1901-1967) among the authors. His American Negro Songs and Spirituals (New York: Bonanza, 1940) sold well on its initial publication and may still be found in many music libraries. It remains in print as American Negro Songs through Dover Books. That collection was the product of a talented mind with a wide interest in many kinds of southern African American music and a facile skill in music transcription. Having been raised within a distinguished African American musical family and being on the faculty of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee-home of the internationally famous Fisk Jubilee Singers-placed Work in an advantageous position to view, listen, and report on the music of his people, region, and time. Any additional research of his should be of high interest. That presented in Lost Delta Found is cause for celebration and careful, responsive study. Three studies by Work and two other Fisk African American scholars, Lewis Jones and Samuel C. Adams, are presented here. All were products of a series of field trips to Coahoma County (including its seat Clarksdale) in the Mississippi Delta in 1941-1942, undertaken in collaboration with white researcher Alan Lomax (1915-2002) of the Library of Congress (LC). The main purpose of the research was to study the rural African American residents of the Delta, recording their traditional ways and expressions, and then to assess the retention of such traditions when people moved to towns and cities. Sound recording was a means to the fieldwork, yet the blues performances captured by the field technology, especially those by Son House, Muddy Waters, and David Honeyboy Edwards, have nearly overshadowed the reasons why the Fisk/LC team came to the Delta. The Library of Congress initially issued selections of their blues during the 1940s and 1950s, and reissues of the same music on the Flyright, Biograph, MCA/Chess, and Document labels have continued through the present day. In his account of the 1942 trip in his memoir The Land Where The Blues Began (New York: Pantheon, 1993; winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), Lomax focused on the blues, to which he made cultural and musical associations with the other types of African American music he had heard. Yet the scope of the Fisk/LC recordings encompassed more than just blues, and the social classes of the recorded African American performers included not only the poor on cotton plantations but also the lower and middle classes in Clarksdale. A basic check of the listings for these field recordings, issued and unissued, in Robert M. W. Dixon, John Godrich, and Howard Rye's Blues and Gospel Records 1890-1943 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) shows that the number of field discs devoted to church services (including sermons and sacred music), children's game songs and chants, and women's home songs greatly exceeds that of blues. Such a broad scope suggests that the Fisk researchers (if not also Lomax) felt at the time of the field trips that there was much Mississippi Delta musical culture in general to collect, assess, and discuss. Work, Jones, and Adams prepared their individual studies of the 1941-1942 fieldwork and duly sent them to LC where they were misplaced. Plans for publication were then set aside. The location of the studies remained unknown if not uncertain for many years. As it turned out, copies of the Jones and Work text portions were kept in Lomax's archives at Hunter College, New York City. The Franklin Library at Fisk University contained Work's microfilms of his music transcriptions and indexes, and Adams's M. …

“We Are the Hawks of Freedom”: Bulgaria’s Good Fishing in the Muddy Waters of the Gulf

Yes, we are hawks. We are the hawks of freedom, humanism and democracy! Solomon Passi Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs 1 1 FocusNews Agency (hereafter Focus), 12 April 2003. Bulgaria’s decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq by the end of 2005 offers an opportunity to asses the country’s contribution to the ‘coalition of the willing.’ Viewed from the outside, Sofia’s instrumental entrepreneurship in Iraq has tended to confirm that within the Balkan region, Bulgaria has one of the highest levels of institutional development and stable civil-military relations. Domestically, however, Sofia’s military mission to Iraq has revealed that the protested institutionalization of its civil-military relations, has in effect amounted to the entrenchment of civil-military rivalries. Consequently, the article traces how these civil-military rivalries have affected the coordination of the Bulgarian armed forces with the coalition partners and also how they have informed the public perception of Bulgaria’s participation in military missions abroad. Finally, and on a positive note, the presence of Bulgarian troops in Iraq has evinced a significant experiential learning on behalf of the military establishment. The novelty of such exploration is that it is premised on discourses and statements aired in Bulgarian media and, thus, makes available the particular domestic public debate informing Sofia’s decision-making. The author wishes to thank Raicho Kavalski and Magdalena Zolkos for their advice and encouragement, and the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fund for the generous support. All translations from Bulgarian are made by the author. This article is dedicated to the memory of Slavka Kavalska.

Lost Delta found: rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County study, 1941-1942

Lost Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942. By John Wesley Work, Lewis Wade Jones, and Samuel C. Adams, Jr. Edited by Robert Gordon and Bruce Nemerov. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005. Pp. xvi + 343, preface, introduction, photographs, illustrations, musical notation, maps, appendices, notes, indices. $34.95 cloth) Lost Found presents important writings from an uncompleted project, launched on the eve of the second World War, to document the African American folk culture of an entire county, Coahoma, in the Mississippi Delta. A collaboration between the pioneering African American college Fisk University and the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folksong, the project was to have culminated in the publication of a large field study, and to that end some forty hours of field recordings were made (including the first of Muddy Waters), one hundred residents separately interviewed, and a variety of data gathered. The project bogged down in disagreement over editing and authorship, however, and was shelved when principal researchers Lewis Wade Jones of Fisk and Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress were drafted into the military. The present volume has been assembled by editors Robert Gordon and Bruce Nemerov from the project writings of Lewis Wade Jones, Samuel C. Adams, and Fisk University music professor John Wesley Work III. Although the only finished piece in this volume is Changing Negro Life in the Delta (Adams' Fisk M.A. thesis), all the writings are vital and illuminating, for they represent some of the earliest scholarship on African American folklife and folk music in the Mississippi Delta. At the time of the project's inception, Fisk was home to an innovative sociology department headed by Charles S. Johnson. Johnson and his associates (including Lewis Jones, but not John Work) had just published Growing up in the Black Belt (1941 ) a survey of eight predominantly black southern counties. Coahoma was depicted as a once-isolated area still dominated by the cotton plantation system but experiencing rapid mechanization and urbani/ation. Folk culture was not documented or studied for the book, but when Alan Lomax, who had been making field recordings throughout the South, Northeast and Midwest since 1933, visited Fisk in April, 1941 to take part in an anniversary celebration, a joint project was discussed, and Coahoma was subsequently chosen for further study. A brief preliminary field-recording trip was made at the end of the summer, with Johnson and Work present at some sessions, but most of the field recording was done the following summer by Alan Lomax and Lewis Jones. Working independently of Lomax and Jones, Samuel C. Adams and Fisk anthropology fellow Ulysses Young collected interviews and data on paper based on a prepared questionnaire, a method developed by Johnson. In Lewis Jones's writings for the unfinished study, he observes that three generations of African Americans shaped Coahoma County, beginning in the 187Os, and links changes in technology and transportation there with changes in the folk culture. Samuel Adams's thesis fleshes out this model considerably with song excerpts, stories, and interviews that range from poignant to hilarious. John Work, a music teacher and composer who on his own had gathered folksongs in and around Nashville with paper, pen and occasionally a disc recorder, took a less sociological approach, transcribing a sample of the field recordings and grouping them by genre for commentary. Work's analysis of blues, spirituals and game songs gathered in the field is acute and rewarding. His sections on black worksongs and balladry are less developed, though he might have had more to say in a finished study. The transcriptions are reproduced from handwritten originals that Work may have intended to develop further-some lack full lyrics, others are only melodic fragments, and none have tempo markingsbut the complete, detailed transcriptions of such performances as the group spiritual Hallelu, Hallelu (153), a contrapuntal track-lining song (175-179), and a half-spoken, half-sung sermon (66-76), provide insightful commentaries on the recordings. …

A new look at Thai AIDS: perspectives from the margin

List of Acronyms Preface Acknowledgements Author's Note Chapter 1. Introduction: The Issues Chapter 2. Creating Thailand's AIDS Epidemic Chapter 3. Northern Thai Male Culture and the Assessment of HIV Risk: Towards a New Approach Chapter 4. Muddy Waters: The Construction of HIV/AIDS in Northern Thailand's Thai Language Print Media Chapter 5. Moral Panic and the Contruction of National Order: HIV/AIDS Risk Groups and Moral Boundaries in the Creation of Modern Thailand Chapter 6. Tradition, Sex and Morality: HIV/AIDS and the Pathologising of Adolescent Sexuality in Northern Thailand Chapter 7. Conclusion: Directions Forward Postscript Bibliography Author Index Subject Index

Water quality and hydrogeochemical characteristics of the River Buyukmelen, Duzce, Turkey

AbstractThe River Buyukmelen is located in the province of Duzce in northwest Turkey and its water basin is approximately 470 km2. The Aksu, Kucukmelen and Ugursuyu streams flow into the River Buyukmelen. It flows into the Black Sea with an output of 44 m3 s−1. The geological succession in the basin comprises limestone and dolomitic limestone of the Yılanlı formation, sandstone, clayey limestone and marls of the Akveren formation, clastics and volcano‐clastics of the Caycuma formation, and cover units comprised of river alluvium, lacutrine sediments and beach sands. The River Buyukmelen is expected to be a water source that can supply the drinking water needs of Istanbul until 2040; therefore, it is imperative that its water quality be preserved.The samples of rock, soil, stream water, suspended, bed and stream sediments and beach sand were collected from the Buyukmelen river basin. They were examined using mineralogical and geochemical methods. The chemical constituents most commonly found in the stream waters are Na+, Mg2+, SO2−4, Cl− and HCO3− in the Guz stream water, Ca2+ in the Abaza stream water, and K+ in the Kuplu stream water. The concentrations of Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, SO2−4, HCO−3, Cl−, As, Pb, Ni, Mn, Cr, Zn, Fe and U in the Kuplu and Guz stream waters were much higher than the world average values. The Dilaver, Gubi, Tepekoy, Maden, Celik and Abaza streams interact with sedimentary rocks, and the Kuplu and Guz streams interact with volcanic rocks.The amount of suspended sediment in the River Buyukmelen in December 2002 was 120 mg l−1. The suspended and bed sediments in the muddy stream waters are formed of quartz, calcite, plagioclase, clay (kaolinite, illite and smectite), muscovite and amphibole minerals. As, Co, Cd, Cr, Pb, Ni, Zn and U have all accumulated in the Buyukmelen river‐bed sediments. The muddy feature of the waters is related to the petrographic features of the rocks in the basin and their mineralogical compositions, as most of the sandstones and volcanic rocks (basalt, tuffite and agglomerate) are decomposed to a clay‐rich composition at the surface. Thus, the suspended sediment in stream waters increases by physical weathering of the rocks and water–rock interaction. Owing to the growing population and industrialization, water demand is increasing. The plan is to bring water from the River Buyukmelen to Istanbul's drinking‐water reservoirs. According to the Water Pollution Regulations, the River Buyukmelen belongs to quality class 1 based on Hg, Cd, Pb, As, Cu, Cr, Zn, Mn, Se, Ba, Na+, Cl−, and SO2−4; and to quality class 3 based on Fe concentration. The concentration of Fe in the River Buyukmelen exceeds the limit values permitted by the World Health Organization and the Turkish Standard. Because water from the River Buyukmelen will be used as drinking water, it will have an adverse effect on water quality and humans if not treated in advance. In addition, the inclusion of Mn and Zn in the Elmali drinking‐water reservoir of Istanbul and Fe in the River Buyukmelen water indicates natural inorganic contamination. Mn, Zn and Fe contents in the waters are related to geological origin. Moreover, the River Buyukmelen flow is very muddy in the rainy seasons and it is inevitable that this will pose problems during the purification process. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

New Avenues for the Politics of the Abject

Alberto Sandoval-Sinchez openly, creatively, and, in what I see as a and way, explains in his paper his fascination with abject body because, as he tells us, he has to. His writing, he says, is his way of keeping alive and of negotiating a body that houses I use words like kind and generous to describe what he's decided to present in such a dynamic and remarkably articulate way to a room of relative strangers because, unfortunately, I think that I can safely assume that loss of friends and loved ones to AIDS is something many of us here have learned to live with, to negotiate, and to try to explain to ourselves in an ongoing process of mourning. So I want to thank him for his work here, which proposes new ways of doing this. The body is foundation of this theoretical project; and writing, as a critical cultural practice, facilitates a politics of survival immersed in what Sandoval-Stinchez calls the deep and troubled muddy waters of abjection, with possibility of writing as a lifeline or umbilical cord to But what we've experienced here today is not just presentation of a theory or a politics of survival through abjection but an example of abjection as a performative act in disruption of typically dry academic conference or symposium paper, with inclusion of autobiographical information and a short performance in Spanglish, a language that always seems to remind me that identity is constantly in process of being made. Judith Butler has been instrumental in transformation of North American queer theory into a viable critical and theoretical position. At same time, she has expressed some reservations about potentially essentialist politics of this approach. She's emphasized importance of queer position as what she calls a specific reworking of abjection. In Bodies That Matter, she points out that

Power, Capture, and Conflict: A Call for Human Rights Accountability in Development Cooperation

Ushered in during the 1990s in response to development failures of the structural adjustment era, human rights-based approaches to development have proliferated in recent years. Nonetheless, the rhetoric has so far not been matched by conceptual rigor, systematization of practice, or lessons-learning—shortcomings that may undermine continuing support for such approaches. This Article seeks to contribute conceptual clarity to the frequently muddy waters of rights-based approaches, addressing in particular the conceptual and practical relevance of the international human rights normative framework to development cooperation within the UN system. The analysis focuses upon particular niches in which a normatively rigorous model for rights-based programming seems uniquely adapted, that is to say, in addressing asymmetries of power, the phenomenon known as "elite capture," and the transformation of violent conflict. The Article concludes with a reminder of the challenges and prerequisites for the wider implementation of rights-based approaches, and of the urgency of the need for a strengthened conceptual framework for empowerment and accountability.

Remote Control: Mothers, Sons, and Subjectivity

Istarted thinking about remote control as a metaphor for aspects of male-female relationships while watching the comedian Jerry Seinfeld one night. In talking about the use of the remote control, Seinfeld said, “Women want to see what’s on TV, men want to see what else is on TV.” This use of the remote control seems to express an unarticulated truth about an aspect of gender experience, and it occurred to me that in some way it was a metaphor for the psychodynamics of connection. That is, in some way, women look for a connection to stick with and men need to keep moving and not get stuck in the muddy waters of attachment. Men are typically thought of as emotionally remote, and women are often thought of as controlling ( just ask any husband or son). But it works the other way, too—men certainly can be controlling (ask any daughter or wife), and women, while appearing connected, can certainly relate from a self-state that is remote. So the metaphor works, superficially at least, with a number of variations. But at a deeper level, both remoteness and control are defenses used in the service of the regulation of self and other within the intersubjective field. They mediate attachment and protect subjective space and, I suggest, are inextricably bound to cultural prescriptions for masculinity and femininity. Feminists entering psychoanalysis introduced gender into the discourse of infant research as well as the intersubjective space of the analytic couple (Benjamin, 1988; Chodorow, 1978; Eichenbaum & Orbach, 1983).

Email & Web Abuse — Monitoring and Investigations: The Preliminaries

Matthew Pemble Before we start, I suppose that the first thing that ought to be said here is: you really need to get yourself a good lawyer — I am not one, good or bad. More than one if you can afford it — this area is a minefield of technical difficulties, contradictory laws and legal rights, and the usual quagmire that we always get whenever the nice clean (okay, mildly dirty grey) sheet of infosec technology meets the muddy waters of human resources and employment legislation.

Can't be satisfied: the life and times of Muddy Waters

Can't be satisfied: the life and times of Muddy Waters

Logging in Muddy Waters: The Politics of Forest Exploitation in Cambodia

“Logging in Muddy Waters” analyzes the boom in forest exploitation that characterized the 1990s in Cambodia, focusing on the instrumentalization of disorder and violence as a mode of control of forest access and timber-trading channels. The article examines tensions existing between the aspirations of Cambodians for a better life, the power politics of elites, and the hope of some in the international community for a green and democratic peace. These tensions have produced both an interlocking pattern of “illegal logging” from the highest levels of the state to self-demobilized soldiers and peasants and sustained criticism that was only temporarily resolved through a legalization of the forest sector that benefited large-scale companies to the prejudice of the poor.

Muddy Waters: Legislative Competence and the International Criminal Court in Scotland

(2002). Muddy Waters: Legislative Competence and the International Criminal Court in Scotland. Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 281-290.

'Tendency to Precocity' and 'Childish Uncertainties' of a 'Virago at Fourteen': Djuna Barnes's 'The Diary of a Dangerous Child'

Philip Herring's introduction to his edition of Djuna Barnes's Collected Stories (1) claims that `there is a quality of strangeness in a typical Barnesean story' (p. 7), adding that the characters of these short stories `are largely opaque to our scrutiny' (p. 8), and that Barnes is often `indelicate' and `insensitive' (p. 10), occasionally even `comically inept' (p. 12). Just when all this begins to sound slightly off putting for an introduction to a volume that presents itself as having collected these stories `for the first time', the Barnes persona is evoked. The negative critical judgements are tempered by reassuring comments on the author's ignorance and revitalized by hinting at her angst. `Despite Djuna Barnes's skill at portraying the agony which she herself felt, few American writers of the century could be described as less politically correct or more insensitive to the nuances of racial stereotyping than Djuna Barnes, but this was a function more of ignorance than mean-spiritedness' (p. 8; my italics). From his higher moral ground, the omniscient narrator suggests a link between the `odd mental states, sexual repression, and inexplicable behaviour of Barnes's walking wounded' and `Djuna Barnes's own sense of privacy [which] seemed paradoxically to affect her ability or willingness to reveal the psychological motivation of her characters' (p. 8). The textual strangeness is coloured by dark biographical shades. `Murkiness' pervades Herring's account of these texts; even the stories defined as `most successful', such as `Spillway' (1919), `evoke a metaphysical complexity that remains murky at the end' (p. 15). `Mother', however, is `superior to many' not only because it is `basically a slice of life', but also because `no murky metaphysical question rises to the surface to smile like a Cheshire cat' (p. 16). At the opposite end of the spectrum, `Cassation' (1925), published originally as `A Little Girl Tells a Story to a Lady', is `one of the stranger, murkier stories' (p. 19). The reference to the Cheshire cat ascribes a childish, teasing, and whimsical quality to the insubstantial and unnecessary obscurity of most Barnes's stories, while a biographical root hinting at Barnes's lesbianism is grafted onto the story of seduction told by the `little girl' in `Cassation'. (2) In this article, I would like to investigate how the notion of child works on the one hand in Barnes criticism and, on the other, in the short story `The Diary of a Dangerous Child'. (3) The quoted passages from Herring can work as an example of how the child pervades Barnes criticism in unexplored ways. The latent `murkiness' of some stories is associated with a disturbing whimsicality, unnecessary and yet disquieting, while the most overt `murkiness' is declared as belonging to the little girl's narrative of seduction. Seduction pervades Barnes criticism. Barnes is not simply the `most famous unknown of the century', (4) she also is the seductress of the avant garde: `With her aloof good looks, her superb confidence and wit she captured the avant garde'. (5) I have analysed elsewhere how the Barnes persona has been canonized as `the Garbo of letters' (6) and how the constantly evoked textual murkiness, opacity, and seductive elusiveness are reproduced in biographical narratives. (7) Once located in the realm of `the real', these shadowy traits not only become a source of unending speculation, but are also transformed into a resource for explaining the previously lamented textual opacity. Murky texts are those in which a muddy bottom has surfaced, clouding the clear waters of the rational exercise of critical reading. When murkiness is instead located in allegedly non-textual biographical `reality', then the muddy waters become either the turbulent and fascinating source of subversive anti-patriarchal activities or the destructive force at the bottom of an art of despair. …

Miles and Me: An Interview with Quincy Troupe

A Renaissance man for twenty-first century, author and poet Quincy Troupe is Professor of Creative Writing and American and Caribbean Literature at University of California, San Diego. A nationally recognized poet and biographer, he has authored twelve books and won two American Book Awards, in 1980 for Snake-Back Solos, a volume of poetry, and for Miles: The Autobiography. He wrote and co-produced The Miles Davis Radio Project, for which he received a Peabody Award; served as Editorial Director of Code, a national monthly magazine for men of color; and has edited James Baldwin: The Legacy. Troupe is also two-time Heavyweight Champion of Poetry, a title he won at World Poetry Bout, a national competition that draws distinguished poets to Taos, New Mexico. Troupe's latest work is Miles and Me, a candid account of his friendship with enigmatic trumpeter. In it Troupe offers a glimpse into inner sanctum of jazz's Prince of Darkness. The book also shows power of music--in particular, music of Miles Davis--on Troupe's own development as an artist. On October 25, 2000, Troupe appeared on Return to Source, a jazz show I produce and host on WJAB 90.9FM in Huntsville, Alabama. What followed was a freewheeling, wide-ranging, engaging interview that covered Miles and Me, impact of jazz and Miles's music on Troupe's own artistic development, role of African American artist, poetry, and Troupe's latest projects, including his first screenplay, for an upcoming movie on Miles Davis. Turner: Your new book is a much more personal account of your relationship with Miles, and in that sense it's as much about you as it is about Miles. We get a chance to see your background and your first exposure to jazz and Miles's music. What was your hometown, St. Louis, like when you were growing up? Troupe: When I grew up there it was segregated. I remember we didn't have a television, and going to listen to Joe Louis fight on radio. When television came in, it was downtown at department store, and black people, including my dad and other black men, would take me down to department store to watch Joe Louis on television. There would be a whole lot of black people, and white people too, on sidewalk looking at Joe Louis knock somebody out. Other than that, we would sit around radio and listen to those boxing matches and baseball games. The only thing we really had to do was to listen to music, go to movies, and play sports. My father was a great baseball player, so I grew up between St. Louis, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. He was second greatest catcher of all-time in old Negro Leagues. So in my house, we were listening to salsa and other Latin music. My mother liked Count Basie, Duke Ellington , Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker. So I grew up around a lot of different stuff. The second man she married, after divorcing my father, was a blues musician. He played all blues musicians--B. B. King, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley. Kids are always against what their parents like. I was listening to Johnny Ace and Coasters ... Platters. I remember going into this fish joint one day in St. Louis. I was about 15 years old, and I saw these four black guys. I had transferred by that time to an all-white high school, and it was so square at that school. They were listening to Pat Boone covering black songs. I just wanted to be around something hip. These four black guys were sitting in a booth in fish joint and they were really clean. They had on dark glasses, ascots. I had never seen a guy with an ascot, and a beret. They had their hats up on three-pronged poles and they were smoking cigarettes, drinking soda, and eating fish sandwiches. I said, Let me sit behind them and see if I can catch something. They were talking about the homeboy across river from East St. …

Fitness consequences of prey depletion for the common goby Pomatoschistus microps

Pomatoschistus microps (Pisces: Gobiidae), a predatory, benthic feeder, occurs in high densities in variable, shallow, muddy coastal waters where prey availability can be unpredictable. Here, we investigate the effect and consequences of prey depletion on the body condition and nest building of adult male fish using manipulative mesocosm experiments in which the comparative value of meiofaunal and macrofaunal prey was investigated. Fish maintained in mesocosms from which macrofauna had been removed from the sediment had a significantly reduced hepatosomatic index (HSI), and were less likely to build nests than fish in mesocosms containing macrofauna and meiofauna, suggesting an indirect link between prey availability and nest quality. Reduced resource availability, in the form of scarcity of macrofauna, appears to have profound implications for the fitness of natural field populations.

The Great Flood of 1927: A Portfolio of Photographs

Folks livin' in the Delta fear two things: God and the Mississippi -Chana Gazit WHEN THE ANGRY MISSISSIPPI SWEPT into the southern delta during the spring of 1927, approximately 26,000 square miles in seven states were inundated. More than 5,289,576 acres of seeded and growing crops were destroyed. Flood waters consumed 9,305 work animals, 26,451 head of cattle, 127,983 hogs, 1,559 sheep, and poultry in the hundreds of thousands. 931,159 people were directly affected by the flood, with 325,554 forced into Red Cross refugee camps and another 311,922 finding shelter in public buildings and other makeshift locations. Nearly all of these refugees found themselves without food, water, clothing, or immediate prospects of employment or financial security for their families. Red Cross officials placed the death toll at 246, but others have disputed this figure as too conservative.1 Total damages, calculated by the Red Cross and county agricultural agents, amounted to $236,334,414 (1927 dollars).2 The Mississippi River remained flooded for over 153 days, the longest on record, and carried in excess of 2 million cubic feet of water each second. At times, the flood crest moved at an incredible eighteen miles per hour. This was America's greatest natural disaster, and Arkansas shared in the hardships wrought by the devastating floodwaters. The Arkansas River was pushing 813,000 cubic feet per second, and the White River approached 400,000 cubic feet per second.3 Although other states, especially Mississippi and Louisiana, experienced extensive flooding and damage, Arkansas sustained the most devastation. The state had more people affected by the floodwaters (362,560); more agricultural acreage inundated (2,024,210); more Red Cross camps (80 of the 154), which cared for a record 143,213 people; and more houses flooded (55,845). Arkansas also led the way with 41,243 families receiving rehabilitation aid as the waters receded.4 The flood destroyed 1,047 miles of road and 244 bridges in the state, with the monetary losses ($1,268,715) surpassing those of any other state. The catastrophe claimed 98 lives in Arkansas, second only to Mississippi.5 In Desha County, the hardest hit of Arkansas's 36 flooded counties, the American Red Cross extended emergency relief to 21,276 people. Among them were the 1,500 residents of Arkansas City, which lay beneath the muddy waters of the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers from April until the end of August 1927. The Red Cross cared for the entire population as the town was being rebuilt. Social and economic life did not really resume until December 1928. To the north, St. Francis County had three camps which cared for an astounding 23,217 people. …

Clearing the Muddy Waters: Jeff Peires and The Great Treks

Twenty years ago 1 had the pleasure of reviewing a volume of papers on precolonial Southern Africa edited by Jeff pekes.' Titled Before and After Shah: Papers in Xguni Histoy, it was based on a workshop held at Rhodes University in 1979. Among the contributors were Julian Cobbing, Phil Bonner, Jeff Guy. John Wright, Patrick Harries and Leroy Vail. 1 was somy to have missed the workshop, because the papers breathed a spirit of cooperative enquiry as well as a willingness to revise outworn interpretations. Two decades on, the contributors have gone their separate ways. Vail sadly went to an early grave. Others have had serious health scares. Some have not spoken for years. The spirit of cooperation in challenges to old orthodoxies, which promised so much, evaporated. I have often wondered at the barely perceptible processes by which Young Turks are turned into the Old Guard. Perhaps the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune take their toll on all of us. For whatever reasons, Peires presents a prime example of a scholar whose mind has closed. His review presents no new evidence, opens no new lines of enquiry, and brooks no questioning of established lines of interpretation. Peires is, of course, entitled to his opinions, and for that reason I was tempted to leave his strident accusations unanswered. The lively rejoinders to his own book, The Dead will Arise, remind us of the times when he has had to take it as well as dish it out2 However, it seems to me that those who teach that 'history is an argument without end' have a duty to respond when basic questions of evidence and interpretation are raised. This journal, I know, is primarily intended for mature scholars, but I hope readers will pardon me for writing as if for an interested audience of under-graduate students. Who knows? It is not inconceivable that debate on some of the propositions I have put forward might some day form the basis for a university text.