This paper argues that some words are so highly charged with meaning by a community that they may prevent a discussion during which each participant is on an equal footing. These words are indeed either unanimously accepted or rejected. The presence of these adjectival groups pushes the antagonist to find rhetorical strategies to circumvent them. The main idea we want to develop is that some propositions are not easily debatable in context because of some specific value-bearing words, and one of (...) the goals of this paper is to build a methodological tool for finding and classifying these VBWs. Our study echoes the importance of “cultural keywords” in argument, but is rather based on a German approach developed by,, and about “Miranda” and “Anti-Miranda” words that is expanded and refined here. In particular, our study tries to understand why some statements, fueled by appreciative or evaluative adjectives, have such rhetorical effects on a pragmatic level in the particular context of a vote on the Swiss popular initiative called “for more affordable housing”. This context is fruitful since two parties offer reasons for two opposing policy claims: namely, to accept or to reject an initiative. When one party uses arguments containing such universally unassailable adjectival groups to defend a “yes” vote, the opposing party cannot use a symmetrical antonym while pleading for the “no” vote. The methodological tool that is proposed here could shed light on the use of certain rhetorical and referential strategies in conflicting policy proposition contexts. (shrink)

An important part of friendships are the so-called special obligations generated by them. Friends owe things to each other that they do not owe to strangers. While such special obligations are an important part of our everyday practice, they raise several philosophical questions. These questions include the status of special obligations (are such obligations sui generis or is it possible to reduce them to general moral principles?), the source of such special obligations (what grounds special obligations of friendship?), and the (...) content of special obligations (what is the content of special obligations of friendship?). This chapter gives an overview of some of the most important positions in the literature with regard to these questions. (shrink)

Over recent decades, developments in network governance have seen governments around the world cede considerable authority and responsibility to commercial migration intermediaries for recruiting and managing temporary migrant labour. Correspondingly, a by-product of network governance has been the emergence of soft employment regulation in which voluntary codes of conduct supplement hard legal employment standards. This paper explores these developments in the context of temporary migrant workers employed in Australian horticulture. First the paper analyses the growing use of temporary migrant labour (...) in this industry. It then describes how different types of intermediaries interact with this workforce. The paper then outlines both hard and soft employment regulations, and contrasts them with actual employment conditions, questioning how a network governance approach has affected this vulnerable workforce. The paper concludes that changes in network governance of migration and employment relations have emasculated formal legal regulation, leaving market forces to operate without effective or ethical constraints at the expense of the public good. (shrink)

Lack of health insurance coverage is a large and growing problem for millions of American families. Rising health care costs and economic insecurity continue to threaten the bedrock of the health insurance system - employer-sponsored coverage - while states’ fiscal situations and the escalating federal deficit complicate any efforts at reform. Providing health insurance coverage to the millions of uninsured remains a major health care challenge for the nation and understanding the current health insurance environment, who the uninsured are, and (...) why they are uninsured is critical when considering health care reform. This paper aims to define the problem of the uninsured, providing an overview of the uninsured in America and the roles and limits of private and public insurance. Following this discussion, the paper describes the current health insurance environment and examines the prospects for improving coverage. (shrink)

Cette étude préliminaire avait pour objectif de documenter les besoins d’information des familles ayant un enfant avec une déficience du point de vue des parents et des professionnels de la santé impliqués auprès d’eux. Trois groupes de discussion ont été réalisés: deux auprès de parents d’enfant ayant une trisomie 21 ou une déficience motrice cérébrale et un autre auprès de professionnels de la santé impliqués auprès d’eux. Les résultats montrent que l’information recherchée par les parents concerne le problème de santé, (...) les soins et les ressources disponibles. Les parents consultent entre autres sources les professionnels de la santé, d’autres parents, les médias et l’Internet. L’information obtenue par les parents a un impact sur leur adaptation à la situation de santé et sur leur relation avec les professionnels. Enfin, des recommandations sont proposées par les parents et les professionnels en regard des interventions. (shrink)

Although considerable research indicates that mental energy is an important factor in many domains, including athletic performance (Cook & Davis, 2006), athletic mental energy (AME) has never been conceptualized and measured. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conceptualize and develop a reliable and valid instrument to assess athletic mental energy. In Study 1, a focus group interview established the initial framework of athletic mental energy. Study 2 used a survey to collect athletes’ experiences of athletic mental energy and (...) develop a scale draft titled “Athletic Mental Energy Scale (AMES).” In Study 3, we examined the psychometric properties and the underlying structure of AMES via item analysis, internal consistency, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In Study 4, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine AMES’s factorial validity; and examined concurrent and discriminant validity by examining correlations with athletes’ life stress, positive state of mind, and burnout. In study 5, we examined the measurement invariance of the 6-factor, 18-item AMES with Taiwanese and Malaysian samples. Study 6 examined the predictive validity by comparing AMES scores of successful and unsuccessful martial artists. Across these phases, results showed a 6-factor, 18-item AMES had adequate content validity, factorial structure, nomological validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity, measurement invariance, and reliability. We suggest future studies may use AMES to examine its relationships with athletes’ cognition, affect, and performance. The application of AMES in sport psychology was also discussed. (shrink)

What comprises ‘data’ varies from one institution to another based on the information which is deemed important by individual institutions. To effectively and efficiently produce, collect, and retain data, an organization develops specific defining characteristics of data to meet its informational needs. Procedures to maintain and retain knowledge among laboratory members and principal investigators will allow for improved efficiency of data collection. Optimization of communication, maintenance of inventories, record keeping, and updating relevant training programs are all critical to supporting the (...) quality and integrity of a particular organization’s data. Concurrent revisions to such procedures will ensure that the definition of data as well as the means by which it is collected and maintained remain appropriate to the needs of the individual organization. (shrink)

People value highly the digital technologies that are so pervasive in everyday life and work, certainly as measured by economists. Yet there are also evident harms associated with them, including the likelihood that they are affecting political discourse and choices. The features of digital markets mean they tend toward monopoly, so great economic and political power lies in the hands of a small number of giant companies. While tougher regulation may be one way to tackle the harms they create, it (...) does not get at the structural problem, which is their advertising-driven business model. The hunt for people's attention drives algorithmic promotion of viral content to get ever-more clicks. An alternative policy intervention to reclaim public space would be to create a public service competitor that could drive competition along other dimensions. Online space must be reclaimed as a public space from the privately-owned US and Chinese digital giants. (shrink)

A. NATURAL. HISTORY. OF. THE. SENSES. “This is one of the best books of the year—by any measure you want to apply. It is interesting, informative, very well written. This book can be opened on any page and read with relish.... thoroughly  ...

This paper examines the journals of Frances W. Willard, founder and organ izer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the United States, and their revelations about the gender battle that raged within the psyche of Willard and other young women of her day. The failure of organized Chris tianity to provide solace or unbiased counsel to women such as Willard is apparent in a close reading of Willard's work. Within the pages of her journals, the struggle she faced is (...) obvious on almost every page; her strug gle with what society said she should do, and what she knew she was capable of doing, is present for all to see. The paper argues that because, however, lived in the United States within a short window of nineteenth- century time, she was able to form a 'Boston Marriage' with a young woman who provided her with the comfort and support she needed. The Boston Marriage, arguably, was available only for relatively well-to-do, white-middle-class women of an educated class, who had attended col lege and, because they were able to find a 'service' career of some kind, could live together in harmony. Enlightened families, like that of Henry James, were able to support female members of their class who did not 'fit in' to societal norms of the day and accept their lifestyle, while negat ing the sexuality of it. Organized religion, however, did not, and it is the failure of her church to help her find a way of life she can tolerate about which Willard writes. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (shrink)

A boat is a floating piece of space, a place without place, which lives by itself, which is closed in on itself and that is at the same time exposed to the infinity of the sea. Nowadays one cannot conceive a utopia that does not address itself to nomads, peoples and individuals, to the homeless, to the excluded. After World War I a concrete barge made its way up and down the Seine between Rouen and Paris.1 It was called the (...) Liège, and its mission was to supply the French capital with English coal. When it was decommissioned in 1929, the Armée du salut (the French Salvation Army) bought it with the aid of a donation from Madeleine Zillhardt, the recently bereaved long-term companion of the painter .. (shrink)

Explores the political forces underlying shifts in thinking about the respective influence of heredity and environment in shaping human behavior, and the feasibility and morality of eugenics.

For twenty years, Avital Ronell has stood at the forefront of the confrontation between literary study and European philosophy. She has tirelessly investigated the impact of technology on thinking and writing, with groundbreaking work on Heidegger, dependency and drug rhetoric, intelligence and artificial intelligence, and the obsession with testing. Admired for her insights and breadth of field, she has attracted a wide readership by writing with guts, candour, and wit. Coyly alluding to Nietzsche's gay science, The UberReader presents a solid (...) introduction to Avital Ronell's later oeuvre. It includes at least one selection from each of her books, two classic selections from a collection of her early essays, previously uncollected interviews and essays, and some of her most powerful published and unpublished talks. An introduction by Diane Davis surveys Ronell's career and the critical response to it thus far. With its combination of brevity and power, this Ronell primer will be immensely useful to scholars, students, and teachers throughout the humanities, but particularly to graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary theory. (shrink)

In this paper the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic bases for a pattern of conventionalization of two types of iconic handshapes are described. Work on sign languages has shown that handling handshapes and object handshapes express an agentive/non-agentive semantic distinction in many sign languages. H-HSs are used in agentive event descriptions and O-HSs are used in non-agentive event descriptions. In this work, American Sign Language and Italian Sign Language productions are compared as well as the corresponding groups of gesturers in each (...) country using “silent gesture.” While the gesture groups, in general, did not employ an H-HS/O-HS distinction, all participants used iconic handshapes more often in agentive than in no-agent event descriptions; moreover, none of the subjects produced an opposite pattern than the expected one . These effects are argued to be grounded in cognition. In addition, some individual gesturers were observed to produce the H-HS/O-HS opposition for agentive and non-agentive event descriptions—that is, more Italian than American adult gesturers. This effect is argued to be grounded in culture. Finally, the agentive/non-agentive handshape opposition is confirmed for signers of ASL and LIS, but previously unreported cross-linguistic differences were also found across both adult and child sign groups. It is, therefore, concluded that cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors contribute to the conventionalization of this distinction of handshape type. (shrink)

Previous plan‐based models of dialogue understanding have been unable to account for many types of subdialogues present in naturally occurring conversations. One reason for this is that the models have not clearly differentiated between the varoius ways that an utterance can relate to a plan structure representing a topic. In this paper we present a plan‐based theory that allows a wide variety of utterance‐plan relationships. We introduce a set of discourse plans, each one corresponding to a particular way that an (...) utterance can relate to a discourse topic, and distinguish such plans from the set of plans that are actually used to model the topics. By incorporating knowledge about discourse into a plan‐based framework, we can account for a wide variety of subdialogues while maintaining the computational advantages of the plan‐based approach. (shrink)