Stacked Deck Research Articles

A Stacked Deck that Keeps Getting Higher: The Relationship between Critical Raw Materials, the WTO and ‘Strategic’ Partnerships

A Stacked Deck that Keeps Getting Higher: The Relationship between Critical Raw Materials, the WTO and ‘Strategic’ Partnerships

Complexity Induced Risks Posed by Upcoming Digital Ultra-Platforms: An Agent-Based Simulation Model

The global deployment of new digital technologies, such as fifth-generation broadband, Internet of Things, smart objects, and AI, is paving the way for new high-performance digital platforms. These platforms are capable of connecting both people and “things” at high speeds and near-zero latency, taking on the nature of digital “ultra-platforms”. However, the increased reach (i.e., more agents interacting across the platform) and responsiveness (i.e., more opportunities for agents to respond and adapt to each, as they interact) of digital “ultra-platforms” create an unprecedented level of complexity. In this article, we use an agent-based simulation model to study the different types of risks that arise from this increased level of complexity. Three different risks are identified that can hinder a platform's ability to create value. We refer to these risks as the digital black swan, the stacked deck, and push back. Each risk is considered and analyzed from the perspective of specific stakeholders who may be affected by platform externalities. These include the platform owner, platform users, and others who may have no direct interest in the platform. In this way, the article aims to contribute to the literature on digital platform management by focusing on challenges that are emerging from new digital technologies yet have thus far received little attention from either scholars or managers.

No Longer Silent: How Accurate Are Recent Criticisms of Employment Arbitration?

Employment arbitration has come under sustained attack in some quarters of the popular media. Contending that “corporations effectively control the arbitration process,” the New York Times editorial board in November 2015 declared arbitration to be “a stacked deck if ever there was one.” Editorial, “Arbitrating Disputes, Denying Justice,” N.Y. Times (Nov. 7, 2015)(available at https://nyti.ms/2v0oa6q).

Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine by Andrew Scull

Reviewed by: Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine by Andrew Scull Jonathan Sadowsky Andrew Scull. Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015. 448 pp. Ill. $39.50 (978-0-691-16615-5). One of our great historians of madness has given us a masterpiece. Andrew Scull’s new book is rich and learned, a feast of facts and stories, and fabulously readable. I devoured my copy when it came, and not just because I am interested in this sort of thing. I have found plenty of books in the field to be suitable narcotics. I do differ on some points. One matter of emphasis is geographic. There are some nods to China and the Arab world, mostly at the beginning, but the book is heavily devoted to countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Latin America, Russia, Africa, and Asia receive scant attention. This is too bad, because there is lots of relevant secondary work on these parts of the world available in English now. [End Page 126] Scull finds the amount of scholarly attention given to psychoanalysis to be curious relative to its influence. It’s hard, of course, to quantify just how much attention is warranted, but Scull’s own account gives reason to think psychoanalysis deserves plenty of attention. He notes, for example, that in the United States, by the 1960s, the chairs of nearly all psychiatry departments were psychoanalytically oriented. And then there is its impact on other fields of medicine; Scull notes pediatrics via the work of Benjamin Spock, and psychoanalysis influenced other fields by giving an account of psychosomatic illness. And then there is psychoanalysis’s influence as model of the mind and culture more generally—as Auden famously put it, “a whole climate of opinion.” On these grounds, it demands a fair amount of scrutiny. There runs through this book much suspicion of the treatments for madness. And some suspicion is justified. The mad have endured their share of ineffective or even abusive practices, maybe more. But I am doubtful that it is good for the field if historians do not make firm acknowledgments of clinical efficacy, whether of, for example, antipsychotic medications, psychotherapy, or electroconvulsive therapy. While it is true that outright cures for major mental illnesses are hard to come by, reduction of the suffering caused by symptoms is no small achievement. You can find evidence for this efficacy in clinical trials, or if that doesn’t impress you, in the everyday experience of clinicians, or if you don’t like that evidence, in patient testimonial. None of these treatments works perfectly, and some have adverse effects. Treatments for madness are far from unique in medicine in that regard, though. If historians downplay evidence for clinical efficacy, but stress evidence for clinical failure or abuse, we are playing against mental health professionals with a stacked deck. Other historians of madness may have their own points of difference. That is likely to happen when you write such a capacious book. Scull’s work, also, has always derived some of its liveliness from being opinionated, though always carefully sourced and reasoned, and this book is no exception. Madness in Civilization is a great introduction to the subfield, as well as a great resource for specialists in it. It will be a classic. Jonathan Sadowsky Case Western Reserve University Copyright © 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press

Worse than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror by Dean A. Strang

Reviewed by: Worse than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror by Dean A. Strang Jeff Johnson Dean A. Strang, Worse than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013. 268pp. $21.95. On November 24, 1917, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, stood at the center of a turbulent period in American history. That evening a bomb exploded at the city’s police station, killing nine policemen and 1 civilian. What was presumably the work of anarchists became part of the period’s much broader story of discord, with important implications for immigrant communities. Dean Strang’s Worse Than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror offers a useful insight into an important, though lesser-known moment. The crucial backstory to the attack was the city’s prominent Third Ward Italian population. Outlined in the first two chapters, they emerged at the delicate balance of ethnicity and faith with varied allegiances to the mother country and the church. A key figure within the community was Rev. August Giuliani. Evangelical and patriotic, he organized several visits to the Third Ward in August and September, culminating in a riot on September 9. The authorities blamed unpatriotic malcontents and radicals among the Italian community, and, remarkably, when the November attack occurred, police arrested dozens of “radical” Italians and (with many of them nearly illiterate and held without charge) held eleven from the Bay View Riot, and accused them of the earlier bombing. The book includes sound background on anarchism (and its varied voices) in the United States. Notable individuals like Johann Most and Luigi [End Page 129] Galleani may have found admirers among Bay View Italians, we are told, and Emma Goldman was particularly connected to the 1917 attack, as she advocated for the eleven accused. Yet the central characters of the book seem to be lawyers. District Attorney Winfred Zabel orchestrated the prosecution. Leading the defense was William Benjamin Rubin, a former partner of Zabel’s, and their professional relationship turned “acidic,” according to Strang (87). Rubin had a passion for the plight of the working-class, but had focused his practice on criminal defense. In 1917, though, Rubin defended ten of the elevent accused of the bombing. In the end, and not surprisingly, all eleven (ten men and one woman, most of whom could not understand the proceedings) were all found guilty and sentenced by the young Judge A. C. Backus to twenty-five years of hard labor in Waupun, Wisconsin. At the head of the quick 1918 appeal was famed Chicago attorney Clarence Darrow. Darrow, self-described “General Counsel to the poor,” was at the center of countless cases that mattered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that students of labor, race, and justice will undoubtedly recognize (Pullman, Steunenberg in Caldwell, the McNamara brothers, Sweet in Detroit, and Leopold and Loeb). In the book we learn as much about Darrow, if not more, than we do about the accused (which understandably is a problem of sources, but readers are offered only brief moments of biography and postscript). In collaboration with his partner Peter Sissman, Darrow mounted the ultimately successful (for nine of the defendants) appeal. The book communicates well that this case was in many ways about power and unequal shows of it. Photographs of the perp walk of the eleven, depictions of the accused in the press, and a jury composed almost exclusively of business-friendly members all demonstrated a stacked deck. And the eagerness to pin the act on presumably disloyal immigrants fueled a common refrain during the period: that a much broader conspiracy threatened the nation, rightfully according to Strang, that were branded a “shadowy network of anarchists, labor radicals, and socialist,” and “antagonists” in “black hats” (55–56). For some among the working-class, socialists, anarchists, and labor organizers, there was a stark polarity during the period. As Strang writes, “it’s you against them, against the bosses, the owners, the people who oppress you,” and the author communicates this theme excellently (40). As with most books, some readers might ask questions in a few areas. The...

Deal Me Out:A stacked deck at theNew York Times

Deal Me Out:A stacked deck at theNew York Times

Book Review: Media Spectacle and Insurrection 2011: From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere, by Douglas Kellner

Media Spectacle and Insurrection 2011: From the Arab Uprisings Occupy Everywhere. Douglas Kellner. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. 329 pp. $34.95 pbk.Douglas Kellner holds the George F. Kneller Philosophy of Education Chair at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has published several books that offer detailed monitoring and analysis of coverage of major events, generally appearing quite soon after these events have occurred. Among the most influential (I would argue his best) was The Persian Gulf TV War (1992). His analysis in this instance is framed within a discourse of media He defines the term as media constructs that present events which disrupt ordinary and habitual flows of information, and that become popular stories which capture the attention of the and the public. They are technologically mediated representations that assume a nar- rative form and can dominate news and information for extended periods of time. They are often bound up with ritual events, competition, and celebrity, and are served very large audiences. They have become increasingly prolific in an age of global cable and satellite television, 24/7 news channels, infotainment, digitization, monopoly, and deregulation.The idea of spectacle is credited Guy Debord for whom spectacle was a tendency to make one see the world, not directly but through technology. It is a tool of pacifi- cation and depoliticization (outcomes somewhat less emphasized in Kellner's own analysis, for whom spectacle can also be a site of contestation). Kellner claims that his use of the term is diagnostic whereas Debord's approach was denunciatory and neo- Marxist. Kellner is broadly supportive of Barack Obama whose presidency, he argues, points a new political logic governed by the rise of spectacle and a pluraliza- tion of politics. But then spectacle clearly predates Obama-considerably- and pluralization was precisely the myth that C. W. Mills, whom Kellner admires, sought demolish.Kellner's tracing of the narratives of major political events (principal among which are the Arab uprisings) definitely has strong merit. An average reader will likely be astonished by how much he or she has forgotten of events that so recently dominated coverage. If we retrieve these forgotten narratives, however, what have we gained? The benefits of analyzing the without going beyond their own nar- ratives are limited. The term spectacle has a loose appeal, but as a central con- cept in a study of news, it stands badly in need of criteria that can precisely distinguish between spectacle and nonspectacle. Badly needed is a categorization of different kinds of spectacle. (The spectacle of masculinity for instance is clearly of a different order than the spectacle of presidential election.) Or, if all news turns out be spectacle-which sometimes seems be the way the argument is unfolding-the term is simply too broad be of compelling analytic value.As Kellner says, anyone can create their own spectacles or participate in them. He allows that spectacles can be contested but curiously tends understate the extent which the play a stacked deck in shaping available meanings. …

Alimentos e brinquedos

Following preliminary approval by the Commit-tee on the Environment and Consumer Defense, the Brazilian Senate is currently analyzing a bill of law with a pedagogical, political, and ethical scope and implications that could ensure it an important role in consolidating principles, stan-dards, and practical measures in the process of food and nutritional security for the Brazilian population. The bill places a ban on so-called “promotional tie-ins”, or the combined sales of food products with toys, an advertising device that specifically targets children. In other words, kids receive toys as “presents” or “prizes” with the purchase of certain food products, so that in their natural urge to play or have fun, their in-stinctive and physiological expression of hunger (appetite) is displaced by a marketing ploy: toys as gratifications or rewards, as souvenirs tied to the purchase of chocolate, candy, breakfast food, snacks, and soft drinks. Sometimes the food it-self is the toy or game, the point of departure or outcome of childhood fun, in which siblings, other children, and parents themselves play the role of bit actors in a game with a stacked deck. In other words, the winners and losers are known ahead of time. The winners are industry and commerce. The losers are the children and their families that agree to play the game.Yet this is only the most visible part of the problem. Dissimulated (or even more osten-sive) marketing ploys are pervasive: in the pack-ages’ appearance, on radio and TV, on the su-permarket shelves, in many schools’ snack bars and dining halls, and in the seemingly innocent games at kids’ clubs. In 2011, a PhD thesis

A New Chapter in the European Court of Justice Gambling Saga: A Stacked Deck?

And I believed in my system … within a quarter of an hour I won 600 francs. This whetted my appetite. Suddenly I started to lose, couldn't control myself and lost everything. After that I … took my last money, and went to play … I was carried away by this unusual good fortune and I risked all 35 napoleons and lost them all. I had 6 napoleons left to pay the landlady and for the journey. In Geneva I pawned my watch. Whether or not consumers should be protected against their propensity for gambling addictions is a public policy decision that is left exclusively to the individual Member State. Case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has developed 'high trust' principles that provide Member States wide discretion to determine what system of protection - if any - works best in their territory. However, if a Member States policy turns out to be inconsistent with its policy aims and restricts free movement, the Court is not scared to strike it down. The latest judgments in the gambling saga build upon sixteen years of case law. This article investigates whether Member States are by now dealt with a stacked deck of principles.

Stacked Deck: An Effective, School-Based Program for the Prevention of Problem Gambling

School-based prevention programs are an important component of problem gambling prevention, but empirically effective programs are lacking. Stacked Deck is a set of 5-6 interactive lessons that teach about the history of gambling; the true odds and "house edge"; gambling fallacies; signs, risk factors, and causes of problem gambling; and skills for good decision making and problem solving. An overriding theme of the program is to approach life as a "smart gambler" by determining the odds and weighing the pros versus cons of your actions. A total of 949 grade 9-12 students in 10 schools throughout southern Alberta received the program and completed baseline and follow-up measures. These students were compared to 291 students in 4 control schools. Four months after receiving the program, students in the intervention group had significantly more negative attitudes toward gambling, improved knowledge about gambling and problem gambling, improved resistance to gambling fallacies, improved decision making and problem solving, decreased gambling frequency, and decreased rates of problem gambling. There was no change in involvement in high risk activities or money lost gambling. These results indicate that Stacked Deck is a promising curriculum for the prevention of problem gambling.

Chipmakers bet on a stacked deck

Imagine that your favorite aunt lies sick on the other side of town. Rather than brave the highways to visit her, you move her into your apartment building and just ride the elevator up.

All Thiazide‐Like Diuretics Are Not Chlorthalidone: Putting the ACCOMPLISH Study Into Perspective

All Thiazide‐Like Diuretics Are Not Chlorthalidone: Putting the ACCOMPLISH Study Into Perspective

DOES GOD PLAY DICE? INSIGHTS FROM THE FRACTAL GEOMETRY OF NATURE

Abstract Albert Einstein and Huston Smith reflect the old metaphor that chaos and randomness are bad. Scientists recently have discovered that many phenomena, from the fluctuations of the stock market to variations in our weather, have the same underlying order. Natural beauty from plants to snowflakes is described by fractal geometry; tree branching from trunks to twigs has the same fractal scaling as our lungs, from trachea to bronchi. Algorithms for drawing fractals have both randomness and global determinism. Fractal statistics is like picking a card from a stacked deck rather than from one that is shuffled to be truly random. The polarity of randomness (or freedom) and law characterizes the self‐creating natural world. Polarity is in consonance with Taoism and contemporary theologians such as Paul Tillich, Alfred North Whitehead, Gordon Kaufman, Philip Hefner, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Joseph Ford's new metaphor is replacing the old: “God plays dice with the universe, but they're loaded dice.”

Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate‐Centered Campaigns

This article assesses candidate competition in the pre‐ and post reform presidential primaries. It presents evidence that candidate competition initially expanded after the McGovern‐Frazer reforms but subsequently declined. The proliferation of candidate‐centered campaigns and front loading changed the competition in presidential nominating campaigns. Patterns of resource concentration limit the number of candidates who can compete effectively and, hence, are likely to win. Money on hand and national poll position prior to primaries are found to be significant predictors of the aggregate primary vote in the postreform era; money raised and prior television news coverage do not significantly affect the primary vote.

Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate-Centered Campaigns

Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate-Centered Campaigns

Internet tax via a stacked deck

International Journal of Network ManagementVolume 10, Issue 2 p. 57-57 From the EditorFree Access Internet tax via a stacked deck Gilbert Held, Gilbert HeldSearch for more papers by this author Gilbert Held, Gilbert HeldSearch for more papers by this author First published: 17 March 2000 https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1190(200003/04)10:2<57::AID-NEM353>3.0.CO;2-1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume10, Issue2March/April 2000Pages 57-57 RelatedInformation

'This Machine Is Obsolete'

'This Machine Is Obsolete'

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The professor doth protest too much, methinks: Problems with the Foster `response'

In “Response to Elliott and Valenza, 'And Then There Were None'”, (1996) Donald Foster has taken strenuous issue with our Shakespeare Clinic's final report, which concluded that none of the testable Shakespeare claimants, and none of the Shakespeare Apocrypha poems and plays – including Funeral Elegy by W.S. – match Shakespeare. Though he seems to accept most of our exclusions – notably excepting those of the Elegy and A Lover's Complaint – he believes that our methodology is nonetheless fatally flawed by “worthless figures ... wrong more often than right”, “rigorous cherry–picking”, “playing with a stacked deck”, and “conveniently exil[ing] ... inconvenient data.” He describes our tests as “foul vapor” and “methodological madness.”

A Stacked Deck: Addressing Issues of Equity with Preservice Teachers

A Stacked Deck: Addressing Issues of Equity with Preservice Teachers