Worst Fears Research Articles

The art of listening: Bony lesion in a toddler

The art of listening: Bony lesion in a toddler

Non-consensual sex in Benin

The objective of the study is to investigate the prevalence and risk factors of non-consensual sex/rape in Benin. We surveyed 580 females in the University Community of Benin, 414 questionnaires were sufficiently completed for analysis. Seventy-six (18.4%) respondents reported that they had been victims of non-consensual sex (NCS), 36 in their current relationship. The unmarried single respondents had the lowest mean age at NCS experience of 18 years, while the divorced victims had the highest mean age of 32.5 ( P = 0.000). There was a major exposure peak age at 19 years with a smaller peak at 25. The majority of sex offenders were their present partners and next the husbands (22.2%). The father was the perpetrator on one (2.78%) occasion, while armed robbers raped two of the victims. Eighteen of the seventy-six respondents made a formal report. Cumulatively, 95.4% of the respondents felt it was futile reporting, four (5.3%) felt it was not all a bad experience. The risk of being infected with the HIV/AIDS virus was the worst fear. Ninety-five of four hundred and fourteen respondents want the public and parents to be educated, 64 would like the penal code to be tougher and better implemented, while 64 (14.0%) crave for a dress code for the University community. The self-reported incidence of NCS is high, majority were not formally reported as most of the sex offenders were the (ex)partners of the victims. There was a major exposure peak age at 19 with a smaller peak at 25 years. There was a condoned sense of futility and frustration in reporting.

Memories of Richard Zann

Richard Zann was the authority on Zebra Finches (Taeniopygia guttata) and as such played a pivotal role in the careers of several others who, like myself, mainly studied domesticated Zebra Finches in captivity. I met Richard in 1988, we became friends and over the next 20 years we worked on several projects together. On that first visit, Richard told me how the recent forest fires that had claimed many lives, not far from where he lived, were still very fresh in his and his wife Eileen’s minds. On the evening of 6 February 2009, as I watched the television news, reports of the dreadful bushfires near Kinglake reminded me of their concern and I feared for their safety. Two days later, an email confirmed my worst fears: Richard, his wife and daughter had died on 7 February. His death, which cut short our relationship, deprives the ornithological community of an excellent researcher, and his friends and family of a charming, generous man. This brief account of how we met is a memorial to Richard and his family. I kept Zebra Finches in my bedroom and in an aviary in the garden when I was a teenager growing up outside Leeds in Yorkshire in the 1960s. Passionate about birds and bird watching, I had no qualms about keeping Zebra Finches in captivity since they seemed so content and because they allowed me such privileged access to their lives. Watching Zebra Finches at close range as they went through their entire life cycle, from courtship, nest-building, egg-laying and chick-rearing to their inevitable death, was an extraordinary experience and an important part of my ornithological education. My parents encouraged my interest in birds, although later, when I started missing lessons in order to go bird watching, they were less enthusiastic and warned me of the risks of ignoring my studies. Their admonishments had little effect until the day my father, frustrated by my lack of scholastic aptitude, told me very firmly that if I didn’t ‘pull my socks up’ I would end up working in one of the clothing factories that Leeds was then famous for. The thought filled me with absolute dread; it was the antithesis of what I loved and almost overnight I became more focussed. In 1976, I was fortunate to find myself a position as a university lecturer in another Yorkshire town, and I have been basedinSheffieldeversince.Duringthe first7yearsthere,Ispent each summer in the Arctic, continuing with the seabird studies that had constituted my Ph.D. research, but throughout this time, amidst the icebergs and polar bears I continued to think about using the Zebra Finch as a study species. As an undergraduate I had been inspired by the topic of sperm competition – a heady combination of evolutionary thinking and sex – and I wanted see if what had been discovered in insects was also true of birds. To some this didn’t seem very promising for everyone ‘knew’ that birds were monogamous. My Ph.D. studies on guillemots (Uriaaalge),however,convincedmethatspermcompetitionhad a lot going for it, so in the early 1980s with my wanderlust somewhatdepletedbyloomingpaternalresponsibilities,Ipicked up where I had left off as a teenager and began keeping Zebra Finches again. Grudgingly, I think, I was given space in a cellar-like part of the Zoology Department. Although the facilities were basic, the birds didn’t seem to mind and were wonderfully cooperative. With the enthusiastic help of a technician Jayne Pellatt, and an undergraduate, Fiona Hunter, we quantified and documented the behavioural aspects of sperm competition in our captive Zebra Finches. These were exciting times: behavioural ecology was new; studies of sexual selection and sperm competition, especially in birds, was also new and our results gratifyingly consistent with what theory predicted. Therewasjustoneproblem–asseveralofmycolleagueswere quick to point out: how did I know that what my domesticated ZebraFinchesweredoingincaptivitywaswhatZebraFinchesdid in the wild? I began writing to various ornithologists in Australia to see if there might be somewhere suitable I could study wild Zebra Finches. Most of the replies were disappointing as it was pointed out to me that Zebra Finches breed unpredictably more or less where and when they like, which was hardly compatible with persuading my head of department to give me study leave. I had almost given up when in late 1987 I received a letter from Richard Zann and suddenly everything seemed

India's Season of Discontent: U.S.-India Relations through the Prism of Obama's “Af-Pak” Policy, Year One

Indian elites spent much of Barack Obama's first year trying to discern whether he would continue the “strategic partnership” cultivated between New Delhi and Washington over the previous decade. In the absence of early affirmation and concerned that the United States was developing a pro-Pakistan outlook on regional security issues (particularly Kashmir), India focused intensely on the new president's evolving “Af-Pak” policy as a proxy for the state of U.S.-India relations. This impulse made for continued uncertainty, given the unsettled U.S. regional strategy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's official visit to Washington in November 2009 put a new seal on U.S.-India friendship, and New Delhi's worst fears about U.S. intentions have been laid to rest. The strategic partnership remains intact, albeit amid less euphoria than during the Bush administration. It likely will continue to mature owing to broadly convergent strategic interests, but U.S. and Indian interests are least convergent with respect to Pakistan's involvement in Afghan affairs, and this will continue to be a source of tension in U.S.-India relations.

From Pigs to People: The Emergence of a New Superbug

The discovery of a novel strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus able to jump from livestock to humans has sparked a multicountry effort to see how dangerous it might be.

Performance is Sex

It happens in the dark, in the light, in the everyday. It seeks your consent. It forces itself upon you. It slithers in between the comfort of the taken for granted and the shiver of the unknown and it haunts you in your dreams, your fantasies, your worst fears. It works on your skin and twists your sinews. It makes you yelp, splutter and crack open with delight. It makes you shut down and recoil and if possible, flee. It appeals to your intellect but it is best when it whets your desires and stirs your emotions. Performance is sex. And so, sometimes performance appears as a seducer. It knows more than you. It woos you with soft words and smooth sensations. It is very practiced and artful. Somewhat smug, even. It has done this a million times before, but it is your first time, so you shudder. It renders you vulnerable, complacent and compliant. You wonder if you were slipped a mickey. You give in. You try to make out that you know what you’re doing and how to handle it. You are out of your depth and you know it. You surrender and fall under its well-honed spell. When it is over, part of you is lost forever. You emerge more aware, more knowing, less innocent. And so, sometimes it appears as a one-night stand. It flatters you with hasty promises and fulsome complements and you willfully gambol off together for a good solid romp. Of course, as it is right here, now and exciting, you laugh. You feel wickedly delicious. It is sloppy, soulless, and emotionally evacuated. Just what you wanted really, even if tomorrow you might feel a bit sheepish and cheap and vow never, ever, to tell anyone that matters that you liked it. And so, sometimes it appears as a predator. It lays in wait for you when you are unsuspecting. Large and looming, irrepressible and undaunted — you have no choice, you must submit. It sweeps you away to a darkened corner. The promise of candy that initially lured you is now a faint memory as you struggle to resist its advances. You are powerless against it. It demands your attention; it devours your will and steals your idealism. It penetrates you, lays itself upon you, and smothers you as it has its way with you. As you are engulfed by it, you are not sure you will survive intact. You are forever marked by the experience. And so, sometimes it appears as a whore. You know the price. You know what

Patients’ experience of pain and pain relief following hip replacement surgery

The aim of this study was to describe patients' experience of pain and pain relief following hip replacement surgery. Annually, many patients undergo hip replacement surgery. Previous research has focused largely on the long-term effects on pain for patients who undergo hip replacement surgery and to a lesser degree on their subjective, early postoperative pain experience. A descriptive qualitative design was used. The study was carried out in an orthopaedic ward at a hospital in Sweden during 2006. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 patients who had undergone hip replacement surgery. Data were analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. The postoperative pain experience was characterised in terms of interrelated contexts of time, various bodily activities and postoperative pain intensity. The postoperative pain intensity was characterised in terms of intensive and worst imaginable, strange feelings and fear and a feeling of faintness. Easing of postoperative pain was related to professional care features, such as nursing staff, pharmacological pain relief and technical aids. Self-care features were related to relieving body positions, endurance and looking ahead. Although the development of total hip replacement surgery has been very successful, there are issues that need to be addressed in relation to postoperative pain management. The findings in this study show that there are reasons for making a more concerted effort to develop postoperative pain management, particularly during the first few days after surgery. The results provide some indication that pain management for this group of patients in the early postoperative period needs to be improved to reduce the fear of moving and improve the process of regaining independence. Devoting more attention to the patients during the initial postoperative phase may be the key to improve the training and making it even more effective.

Oblique Strategies for Ambient Journalism

Alfred Hermida recently posited ‘ambient journalism’ as a new framework for para- and professional journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform. Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida define ‘ambient journalism’ and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that ‘ambient journalists’ might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide–the musician and producer who coined the term ‘ambient music’ over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft, skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida’s participatory media context I emphasise ‘institutional adaptiveness’: how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them.

Furcht vor Vernichtung und der ewige Bund: Das Buch Ester im Judentum und in jüdischer Theologie

AbstractAlthough for some reasons the book of Esther is missing from among the biblical manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it has a unique place in Judaism and Jewish theology and thought. A large number of exegetes, ballads, poems, essays, arts, etc. have been composed on it, in all times and places, alongside the Jewish history and culture. Esther expresses one of the worst fears of the Jewish people: fear for complete annihilation, which is also well documented in the Hebrew Bible as well as in some extra-biblical sources (e.g., "Israel Stele", Moabite Stone). Esther replies to that fear, and forwards the theological message that God never leaves Israel. He is the faithful God "who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments". Yet, the historical reality of the Jewish Diaspora shows differently. The article discusses, therefore, also this theology, history and us, as post-Sho'ah readers of Esther.

Washington’s Fourth Interest

WASHINGTON’S FOURTH INTEREST Lars Schoultz When will the United States end its embargo and re-establish normal relations with Cuba? That question has been asked repeatedly since the end of the Cold War two decades ago, and the answer has always been the same: the estrangement will end when Cuba no longer threatens U.S. interests, which have traditionally been limited to three: security, economic trade, and US domestic politics. Until the end of the Cold War, security was the most important of these threatened interests. Small Caribbean nations are rarely considered a security concern, of course, but their physical proximity has always been worrisome – if a rival power were to establish a military base in the Caribbean, it could be used to launch an attack on the United States. It is therefore hardly surprising that the first statement of U.S. policy toward Latin America, the 1811 No-Transfer Resolution, was aimed at stopping the British from securing a toehold in Spanish Florida, and that the 1823 Monroe Doctrine was based on the same bedrock principle: prudent people keep powerful potential adversaries as far away as possible. Fast-forward to 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev warned the West that “we will bury you,” a boast that came just as Cuba’s revolutionary leaders were planning their campaign to seize power.1 Then in early 1960, a year after the rebels’ victory, Khrushchev sent the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, Anastas Mikoyan, to open a scientific , cultural and technical exhibition in Havana. Before leaving the island, Mikoyan signed agreements that included a program of development assistance and a commitment to purchase about twenty percent of Cuba’s sugar crop for each of the next five years. This confirmed Washington’s worst fears and prompted President Eisenhower to authorize preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The nation’s security required the overthrow of Cuba’s Soviet-friendly government. The Cuban revolution also attacked substantial economic interests. The U.S. government lost some of its own property, principally the Nicaro nickel facility which had been built by the U.S. General Services Administration during World War II and remained U.S. government-owned but operated by a private contractor. The contractor, Freeport Sulphur Company , also had been developing is own nickel and cobalt mine at Moa Bay, forty miles to the east. Freeport Sulphur lost both the contract and the mine, and other U.S. investors suffered losses valued at almost $2 billion back in the days when a billion was more than pocket change. About six thousand of those investors filed claims with the Foreign Claims Settlement C 2009 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 141 The Latin Americanist, September 2009 Commission, and some were extremely well-connected corporate leaders such as Robert Kleberg, the president of King Ranch in Texas, which lost its 40,000-acre ranch in Cienfuegos. With the help of Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, Kleberg was ushered into the Oval Office, where he asked President Eisenhower for help and got it – a full-court press by U.S. diplomats. It proved to be completely unsuccessful. Most investors of Robert Kleberg’s generation wrote off their losses decades ago, however, and in the post-Cold War era they have been replaced in the policy arena by powerful economic interests urging the United States to re-open trade with the island. Most powerful are the nation ’s farmers, who in 2000 pushed through a law that permits the sale of food to Cuba, albeit under conditions many consider onerous. At first Cuba declined to buy, insisting on normal two-way trade, but then reconsidered after a devastating hurricane in 2001, and the year ended with a boatload of U.S. poultry sailing into Havana’s harbor. It was the first significant trade with Cuba since 1963. Cubans apparently liked what they bought, and soon the invisible hand of supply and demand began to work its magic. In early 2002 six House Democrats visited the island, including Arkansas moderate Vic Snyder, touting the rice and pork produced by his constituents. Then came a delegation of Californian producers...

Cognitive emotions: Depression and anxiety in medical students and staff

Background Medical students represent a highly educated population under significant pressures. They encounter multiple emotions during the transformation from insecure student to young knowledgeable physician. During the transition to clinical settings in the third year, the student may experience a loss of external control and may counter this with an increase in depression and/or anxiety symptoms. Studies suggest that mental health worsens after students begin medical school and remains poor throughout training. It is not just the undergraduate study period, which brings about these changes; it may continue later in internship, postgraduate study, and in physicians' practical life, and it may reach burnout level. The greater the psychosocial health, the greater is the well-being and the capacity for adaptation and overcoming problems and common life frustrations in family, relationships, and work. Medical students and practicing physicians, in comparison with the general population and that of other professions, are exposed to academic and professional stress and therefore are vulnerable to psychosocial health problems and certain specific dysfunctions that may compromise their physical, mental, and social health. Objectives Our study examines the phenomenology of depression and anxiety in medical doctors in 3 government hospitals, 3 primary health care centers and the students (all years) and staff of Dubai Medical College for Girls (DMCG). Subjects and Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in November 2008. One hundred sixty-five medical students of DMCG and 93 doctors (including medical staff of DMCG) completed a set of 2 questionnaires regarding Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) & Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Results were analyzed using SPSS 11, and adequate statistical significant tests were done. A P value of <.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Of medical students, 28.6% showed depression and 28.7% showed anxiety. Of medical staff, 7.8% showed depression and 2.2% of them showed anxiety. The second-year medical students exhibited the highest percentage of depression and anxiety. There was a significant correlation between depression and anxiety among medical students ( r = 0.6). “Crying” was the most common depressive symptom, and “fear of worst happening” was the most common anxiety manifestation in medical students. Conclusion The considerable amount of depression and anxiety found among doctors and students in this study should trigger further work. Studies using more powerful designs would help to illuminate the factors leading to depression and anxiety.

"For the Destruction of Radicalism": A Reconstruction Case Study

“For the Destruction of Radicalism”: A Reconstruction Case Study A GROUP OF MEN MET AT THE SMALL VILLAGE OF SHILOH in Marengo County on March 27, 1869, to protest a recent law passed by state legislators . Several months earlier, in December l868, the state assembly had approved legislation removing the seat of Marengo County government from Linden to Demopolis. That action began a prolonged struggle for the county seat that offers classic examples of logrolling and influence, and a view of grassroots politics. More distinctively, framed by the vicissitudes of Reconstruction, the confrontation accounted for an incongruous coalition of black Republicans and white Democrats. The county seat settlement, parsimoniously considered, determined a courthouse’s location. In a larger view, the campaign tested the ability of white Democrats to use economic coercion and other means to influence African American voters, and to affect the dynamics of Reconstruction politics. Enfranchising the black man had quickly become central to the radical Republican makeover of the South. Measured in any terms, the freedmen’s advancement was contingent upon possession of the ballot. Democrats based their dissent partly on tenets of federalism, reserving the prerogative of regulating suffrage to the states. It was also their conviction that freedmen could not cast intelligent ballots and that their inclusion in the electorate would corrupt the political process. Although Confederate states seeking readmission carried out the mandates of the First Reconstruction Act (March 1867) requiring enfranchising the freedmen, the issue remained divisive. W I L L I A M W A R R E N R O G E R S J R . William Warren Rogers Jr. holds a doctorate in history from Auburn University. He teaches at Gainesville State College in Athens, Georgia. He would like to thank the following people for their assistance: Peter Krafft, cartographer at Florida State University, and Jim Baggett, head archivist at the Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Birmingham Public Library. J U L Y 2 0 0 9 191 Democrats appealed to freedmen on behalf of Democratic nominee Horatio Seymour in the presidential election of 1868, but the party platform did not affirm black voting rights and most members of the party took strong exception to African American suffrage. In the Democrats’ view, the excesses attending Congressional or radical Reconstruction warranted their worst fears. To them, the venal carpetbagger and the equally self-serving scalawag, elevated to office by ignorant and credulous black voters, had seized political control of each southern state. Following that, according to Democrats, was corruption , excessive taxation, and financial mismanagement, all making for abominable radical rule. Reconstruction and Republican political domination caused unprecedented bitterness and passionate resistance among white southerners, accounting for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other night-riding orders. The perception of the Republicans’ nefarious behavior, and the resulting political violence, emblematically played out in Alabama.1 Yet by 1869–1870, with Ulysses S. Grant elected president and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments ratified, a certain ideological sedimentation was underway. In the South, those referred to as New Departure Democrats pledged their support for the political changes made on account of race and associated with Reconstruction. In his book The Road to Redemption, Michael Perman has written that the New Departure represented a “dramatic move” that envisioned the restoration of Democratic power in the South. What best signified that accommodation was acceptance of the Fifteenth Amendment (proposed in 1869 and ratified in March 1870), which prevented denying the franchise on racial grounds to otherwise qualified voters. New Departure spokesmen maintained that appealing to ex-slaves served party interests and expedited Democrats regaining political ascendancy in Raleigh, Jackson, Baton Rouge, and other southern capitals. The list certainly included Montgomery, Alabama. To New Departure Democrats, continued defiance was counterproductive, 1 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York, 1988), 221–22, 230–31, 239–43, 251, 273–77, 293–94, 297, 383–87, 340–44; Michael Perman, The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869–1879 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 22, 80–81; Demopolis Southern Republican, April 7, 1869. T H E A L A B A M A R E...

Runaway Climate Change: A Justice‐Based Case for Precautions

Runaway Climate Change: A Justice‐Based Case for Precautions

Programs Help Residents Cope With Patient's Suicide

Programs Help Residents Cope With Patient's Suicide

Inheriting the Education Wars

The media have been portraying Chicago Supt. Arne Duncan as some sort of a peacemaker, able to negotiate his way through the warring tents pitched outside the offices of the U.S. Department of Education. At least, that's the way his nomination as Secretary of Education is being spun. However, he is neither the worst fear nor the best hope for innumerable education groups. Thanks to the policy controversies of the last eight years, most of the competing tents have different occupants this time around. Those older voices are still clamoring for attention, but this time they're almost drowned by competing policy proponents. Over several months--and many published position papers--the Democrats have divided into two opposing camps. On one hand, there's the Broader, Bolder Bunch who want to keep reforms but support them with stronger out-of-school services for children and youth. They want research-based practices that develop such skills as critical thinking and teamwork, which are increasingly valued in society and the workplace. On the other side are the Hold-to-It Hawks who want to continue strict accountability measures on schools without regard to out-of-school factors, use charter schools to break up the establishment, and focus on teacher quality by designing different compensation plans. Aligned with this group are many civil rights leaders who fear that relieving pressure on schools will lead to low-performing students. The conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, always the gadfly in policy debates because it puts its own definitions of whatever issue is on the table, describes the policy factions this way: * The System Defenders: They believe public education is basically okay, just needs more resources. * The Army of the Potomac: They have generally sound instincts about reform but too much faith that Washington can make significant changes. * The Local Controllers: They want the feds to butt out of K-12 education but to keep sending money anyway. The institute, of course, has its own small but feisty band, known for its Reform Realism. This group would counter much of NCLB as written and, instead, provide flexible dollars for disadvantaged students, with results very public; foster common standards and tests driven by consensus among governors' offices; and pursue other targeted and noncontroversial policies. The feds, says the institute, led by Chester Finn, Jr., should get of the business of overseeing state testing and reporting systems, mandating school sanctions, and generating specifics about teacher credentials. This is a quick view of the policy field through which Duncan will need to navigate before he gets around to reauthorizing NCLB. That won't be its name next time around; maybe it will even revert to its original title, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Nor will reauthorization be the first issue on the Administration's agenda, but the momentum to renew it will grow over the year. …

Manufacturing Novels: Charles Dickens on the Hearth in Coketown

Manufacturing Novels:Charles Dickens on the Hearth in Coketown Elizabeth Starr In an unsigned 1855 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine essay celebrating the "great and well-deserved reputation" of Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant pauses to consider the famous author's latest offering. Compared to his otherwise organic, "full and many-toned conception of human life, its motives and its practices," Hard Times hits a metallic note: "The book is more palpably a made book than any of the many manufactured articles we have lately seen."1 Using the royal "we" of the weary critic who has become all too familiar with such products, Oliphant's statement evokes Thomas Carlyle's objections to an increasingly commercial literary marketplace in "Signs of the Times" (1829): "Literature, too, has its Paternoster-row mechanism, its Trade-dinners, its Editorial conclaves, and huge subterranean, puffing bellows; so that books are not only printed, but, in a great measure, written and sold, by machinery."2 Acting as a component of that literary machine, our reviewer shapes perceptions of "Charles Dickens" by setting his industrial novel apart from the rest of his work. Oliphant also perceptively hits on one of the novel's most provocative and abiding concerns as, in the midst of its efforts to protest the statistical abuses and inhumanity of industrial modernity, Hard Times explores the compatibility of literary work and manufacturing. In panning Hard Times, Oliphant was joining the critical chorus in response to a novel which excited many pronouncements. Attempting to define genres and fields of expertise in the mid-nineteenth century, reviewers repeatedly lament, as The Rambler does, that "It is a thousand pities that Mr. Dickens does not confine himself to amusing his readers, instead of wandering out of his depth in trying to instruct them."3 Oliphant's distaste for the clunky mechanics of Dickens's novel to some extent resides in her similar assertion that "fiction breaks down when it is bound within these certain limits, and compelled to prove and to substantiate a theory," one of many critical assessments that have become part of a familiar story about this novel's rocky reception and eventual reevaluation.4 [End Page 317] By introducing the language of manufacturing, however, Oliphant's review usefully foregrounds Hard Times's own apprehensions about purpose and the exercise of influence in a reading, working metropolis. Surprisingly, given her concerns, the critic does not have much to say about the character in Hard Times whose wedding wears "a manufacturing aspect";5 yet Oliphant's review can also, I will argue, help us make sense of Louisa Gradgrind Bounderby, the figure who embodies Hard Times's own worst fears and most deeply cherished hopes about urban readers and literary products. Hard Times's representation of the legitimate role of fiction in an urban setting challenges nineteenth-century critics like Oliphant who assume that the novel as a genre should be defined against industry. Efram Sicher says as much when he asserts that "Hard Times is a novel about writing a novel in a utilitarian urban society where the novel plays a diminishing role and may soon have no more right to existence than in Plato's Republic."6 Yet lest we read Dickens's work as a heroic attempt to revamp a literary institution, Oliphant's review reminds us that Hard Times was asserting the use-value of a genre that was still establishing its cultural credentials and could be accused of being already too immersed in commerce. Like Jennifer Ruth, I am suggesting that we should acknowledge Dickens's willingness to represent writing as continuous with industrial forms of labor, though in the case of Hard Times, the novel reflects Dickens's working through of the effects of literary labor rather than a representation of the work of writing itself.7 Robert Colby takes a similar approach as he argues that during the Victorian period, "the epoch of the novel's struggle for prestige," writers embraced "fiction with a purpose" as a way to establish the value of their work.8 As the critical response illustrates, however, rather than taking the novel's purpose and usefulness as a given, Hard Times immediately excited concerns about...

The Geography of Finitude

Plato's use of afterlife myths is often viewed as an abandonment of rational discourse for a coercive practice designed to persuade citizens to be concerned about the condition of their souls by appealing to their worst fears about the afterlife. But such interpretations overlook the frequently critical tenor of Plato's myths. In this paper I develop the claim that Plato appeals to muthos as a means of critiquing various specific logoi by focusing upon the relationship between the myth of the earth in the Phaedo and the four logoi about immortality that precede it. I argue that these logoi fail to be persuasive because they rely upon a construal of the relationship between body and soul that denies them meaningful reference to the lives and deaths of embodied beings. The myth of the earth provides a critical engagement with the perspective from which Socrates and his interlocutors have produced these logoi.

The Story of a Marriage: A Novel

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessThe Story of a Marriage: A NovelSusan E. Bailey M.D.Susan E. Bailey M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:13 Jan 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2008.59.12.1477AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The novel The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer is a beautifully written book, even lyrical at times. Its sentences are simple and clear, their meaning seemingly transparent. It is also, for the greater part, a devastatingly sad novel. I didn't want to read it—put off by the black-and-white dust jacket, annoyed by the pretentious and foreboding title. Maybe I was looking for a beach-read, and this book is definitely not that. Despite my misgivings, I found within a few pages that the title word "marriage" captures much more than a picture of the intimate relationship between a man and a wife. The novel could just as easily be titled The Story of a War, or The Story of Great Wealth, Lost and Found, or The Story of Lies and Truths Unknown and Discovered. What is interesting about this book is how many surprises it offers and how many serious themes are explored in a mundane woman's life. These themes include love, race, war, sex, money, family, the great divide between Kentucky and California, the enormous distance between adolescence and adulthood, and the similarities of today and the 1950s. I say a "mundane" woman because that is how Pearlie, the main character, thinks of herself. To say much more about this novel would be to give away what shouldn't be given—which, by the way, is another theme of the book, whether the giving is one's country, one's self, or someone else's soul. Naturally, since the novel is like a pearl itself—something beautiful, hard, and precious, buried beneath layers of gritty sand, shell, and flesh—another theme is what we must give, tear, even flail away from ourselves in order to find and save what we love. At the risk of sounding pretentious myself, I can only say I envy Greer for having written this novel.The ending may surprise, relieve, or disappoint different readers. My own response was mixed. When I saw a couple today for marital counseling, I thought about my question upon closing Greer's book: how can two people knowing and living with each other, sharing a child, a bed, the breakfast table, fail so completely to understand one another? Yet the couple I was seeing, like the couple in Greer's novel, had never discovered how to ask each other about their greatest needs or their worst fears. They had not learned how to communicate.Greer's novel will join the more standard texts on marital therapy on my bookshelf. I won't generally loan it to any patients because it is, at points, almost unbearably sad. But I will certainly give it to interested colleagues or students and sometimes glance myself at that dismal jacket with the embossed silver-pearl title.Dr. Bailey is clinical associate in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 59Issue 12 December, 2008Pages 1477-1477PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2008 Volume 59 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 13 January 2015 Published in print 1 December 2008

Introduction to Special Theme Issue on Health Insurance in the United States

Health insurance matters. It affects the experiences, behaviors, and outcomes of patients, clinicians, family members and health care institutions. For economists, employers, and governmental policy makers, health insurance also has broad and far reaching impacts, extending into such far-flung arenas as immigration policy, bankruptcy law, and even domestic partner/gay marriage issues.14 Perhaps it shouldn't. That is the haunting question that weaves together the collection of articles in this special theme issue of Medical Care, sponsored by the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) as a collaborative effort of the journal and the professional association that it represents. Consider this recent true story of a close personal friend, for whom insurance mattered. She is a 50-year-old physician working in a public clinic for the uninsured in Chicago, Illinois. She discovered a breast lump, and immediately went to her own physician. Her physician referred her for an ultrasound-guided biopsy. However because her health insurance was in transition, she delayed getting the biopsy for 5 foil months, a biopsy that ultimately returned as positive for adenocarcinoma. In transition? Waited 5 months? Why would a physician not have known better than to delay her biopsy nearly half a year? Although the story is complex (I will spare the reader the foil details), such complexities and delays are not unusual in the complex and frustrating world of health insurance in the United States. My friend with breast cancer was originally working part-time for a clinic where she did not receive health insurance. For many years she was covered under her husband's plan. When a new practice opportunity opened at the hospital where her husband worked, she changed jobs, joining him in working there. One of the benefits of the new job was that part-time workers (she was 55% time) received health insurance. So far so good. But this also meant she could no longer remain on her husband's plan (at that workplace, such family coverage was forbidden if both spouses work there); and because her insurance costs would be pro-rated, requiring her to pay 45% of the premiums out of pocket, she realized that this benefit was actually a financial detriment. She decided she would be better off reducing her time in her new job to less than 50% so she would no longer have benefits, and did so. It was at that moment when she discovered the lump in her breast. Untangling the disenrollement-re-enrollment paperwork dragged on for the next 5 months. Each time she thought the matter resolved, another bureaucratic hurdle had to be surmounted. Looming large over the whole process was the question of whether, in the unlikely event a cancer was found, it would be a considered a pre-existing condition. When finally straightened out and she went for biopsy, her worse fears were realized. While each of us has a personal experience that we could also relate about ourselves, family members, or friends, the purpose of this special theme issue is to take a look at the bigger picture of how health insurance is and is not working. In my own case, written as a personal essay several years back, I concluded by confessing that while I considered myself something of an expert on health policy, I was clueless about the fact that I would

Decoding the quantum mystery: Signals from space to Earth could establish the reality of Einstein's worst fear

Science NewsVolume 174, Issue 3 p. 26-27 Essay Decoding the quantum mystery: Signals from space to Earth could establish the reality of Einstein's worst fear Tom Siegfried, Tom SiegfriedSearch for more papers by this author Tom Siegfried, Tom SiegfriedSearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 September 2009 https://doi.org/10.1002/scin.2008.5591740323AboutPDF 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. Volume174, Issue32 August 2008Pages 26-27 RelatedInformation