Stark Divergence Research Articles

Patterns of bovid long limb bone modification created by wild and captive leopards and their relevance to the elaboration of referential frameworks for paleoanthropology

There is a long tradition of neotaphonomic research in paleontology and archaeology that is intended for building models of the bone-accumulating and -modifying behaviors of prehistoric biological actors. Building on that tradition, we present new data comparing the ways by which wild and captive leopards (Panthera pardus) altered the meat-bearing long limb bones of small bovids on which they fed. Compared to wild leopards, a captive leopard created more than twice as many tooth marks per skeletal element. In addition, the captive leopard imparted much more intensive gross damage to bones than did wild leopards—including complete consumption of some bones or deletion of bone portions (especially epiphyses) and extensive fragmentation of diaphyses. We attribute the stark divergence of taphonomic results in the bone samples formed by wild and captive leopards to environmental variability: the wild samples were modified by leopards operating in systems characterized by low to moderate feeding competition; the captive sample was created by a leopard operating in the complete absence of feeding competition but (unlike the wild leopards) was also subjected to the tedium of confinement—a condition that prompted repeated and prolonged bouts of chewing beyond what was required to simply extract nutrients from bones. The variable condition of the two bone samples also represents opposing endpoints of leopard taphonomic potential—the wild sample reflecting minimal expected alteration and the captive sample reflecting maximal expected alteration. Neither endpoint serves as accurate proxy for expectations of the taphonomic alteration of small bovid bones by leopards operating in a natural setting that is characterized by moderate to high feeding competition, such as Tanzania's modern Serengeti ecosystem or that reconstructed for most African Pliocene and Pleistocene habitats. Our results do, however, reinforce the conclusions of a previous study comparing taphonomic patterns created by wild and captive lions (P. leo)—that environmental context is a key variable to control if the analyst's goal is to produce the most scientifically realistic and usefully applicable models of the bone-accumulating and -modifying behaviors of prehistoric biological actors.

Divergence in State-Level Per Capita Carbon Dioxide Emissions

This paper addresses the question of whether income convergence is sufficient for per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions convergence by focusing on a set of advanced economies, the U.S. states. I undertake a variety of cross-sectional and stochastic convergence tests with two novel measures of 1960 to 1999 state-level CO2 emissions per capita: production (pre-electricity trade) CO2 and consumption (post-electricity trade) CO2, and with income per capita. Although incomes continue to converge, I find stark divergence in production CO2 per capita and no evidence of convergence for consumption CO2 per capita. Forecasts of future distributions show little convergence in emissions.

Divergence in State-Level Per Capita Carbon Dioxide Emissions

This paper addresses the question of whether income convergence is sufficient for per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions convergence by focusing on a set of advanced economies, the U.S. states. I undertake a variety of cross-sectional and stochastic convergence tests with two novel measures of 1960 to 1999 state-level CO2 emissions per capita - production (pre-electricity trade) CO2 and consumption (post-electricity trade) CO2 - and with income per capita. Although incomes continue to converge, I find stark divergence in production CO2 per capita and no evidence of convergence for consumption CO2 per capita. Forecasts of future distributions show little convergence in emissions.

Resisting U.S. Social Ethics

Resisting U.S. Social Ethics

V. The Oresteia

Like the rest of the Oresteia the theme of Agamemnon is retribution, a theme which even in this single play spans more than one generation and embraces a complex interaction of human and divine combined with an element of family curse. Paradoxically, however, of the vast perspective that Agamemnon presents in terms of time and space it has not been events actually portrayed upon the stage that have attracted most attention so much as their antecedents, described by chorus and characters alike often in graphically enigmatic terms. The fact, however, that so much of the overall effect depends upon description and interpretation of past events by characters and groups intimately involved in them itself raises important questions for the reaction of the audience. Are we for instance to take the description of what took place at Aulis as objective truth or as subjective and flawed rationalization, hedged around with ambiguous nuances and constituting yet another element in that aura of unease which surrounds so much of the action? Further complication arises from the actual chronological presentation of motivating forces. Consistently it is the human aspect which appears first, naturally so since it is this that establishes personal guilt and sows the seed of future retribution, but that human motivation is often subsequently portrayed as concomitant with the will of heaven and coincident with the curse on the House of Atreus. Take for instance the theme of Atreus’ treatment of his brother Thyestes which ultimately serves as the background to the present generation’s bout of bloodletting. Though it underscores historically and morally much of what we see and hear in Agamemnon, it comes to the fore only in the Cassandra scene, long after the introduction of Iphigeneia and Troy, and receives its most telling expression from the lips of Aegisthus, whose specious use of it to justify murder compounds rather than resolves the cycle of retribution. The effect throughout the play is thus a constantly shifting basis of perspective, producing in scholarly assessments of the action a stark divergence of opinion typified at the extremes by the dichotomy between literal and symbolic approaches to the text.