In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of WarRichard W Sams III remember standing in the kitchen of our home on Camp Pendleton—a United States Marine Corps base in Southern California—listening to National Public Radio (NPR) and doing dishes in the fall of 2002. President Bush announced to the world that he was considering a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq on the pretext of Saddam Hussein harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Three (...) months later, as a Navy Family Physician, I deployed with a surgical company in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Reflecting on the situation with a like-minded close friend, I was not sure— would this be a just war? A necessary war? In my mind, it did not rise to the level of conscientious objection, yet the rightness of invading another country with all the anticipated death and destruction was not clear.En route to Kuwait, we laid over in Spain. While fixed to a TV in a holding area, I watched the Secretary of State make a case to the United Nations (UN) and the world that removing Hussein from power would protect us from mobile anthrax labs that could kill tens of thousands. I thought to myself, Either he is absolutely right, and we are protecting our country and the rest of the free world, or he is terribly mistaken and we are embarking on a disaster.As we trained, prepared, and waited in our tents to invade, we listened to the news on “Voice of America” with a hand crank radio. Thousands of citizens from nations around the world protested. Pope John Paul II, a man well acquainted with the tragedy of war, even spoke out about the planned invasion. “War is not inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity.” He admonished our leaders that war needed to be the very last option. As a man of faith, I was troubled by his resolute, thoughtful opposition to the crusade I was embarking on. As the day of the invasion approached, scud missiles flew over our camp and we scurried into bunkers, day and night, with our gas masks donned to protect us from possible WMD attacks. In March, with the announcement of a “shock and awe” missile attack on Hussein’s palace, the invasion commenced.Within a day of flying by helicopter into enemy territory to set up a surgical company, the fog of war set in. A series of mass casualties streamed in from nearby Nasiriya. We received dozens of injured enemy combatants and American soldiers. Most troubling were the civilians. An entire extended family fleeing for their lives stumbled into an Iraqi minefield meant for us: a mother dead, the men with shrapnel wounds, and an aunt lost both of her legs. Then there was the little boy. By doctrine, our leaders reassured us we would not care for children. Yet, out of instinct, the field corpsmen scooped up all injured, including children, and [End Page 170] brought them to us. The five-year-old’s legs were blown to bits. We had no pediatric supplies. The anesthesiologist heroically intubated the child’s tiny airway with a urinary catheter and placed an adult IV. The surgeons corrected the wounds the best they could. Hours later, in futility, we performed chest compressions on his tiny mangled body.A day later, the worst sandstorm in a decade struck the area. We struggled to keep the patient-filled tents erect. A Marine appeared on the scene out of the darkness (you could not see beyond your nose in the storm) exclaiming we were going to condition one—lock and load our weapons due to an imminent threat. As healthcare professionals, Geneva Conventions dictated we were to use weapons only in self-defense. We chambered our 9-millimeter pistols to defend our patients and ourselves while Marines formed a defensive perimeter. I thought to myself, Great I’m gonna be shot up and die during a freaking sandstorm in Iraq. Hours later, we were told to stand down. The threat was not from approaching enemy combatants but from shepherds running from the crossfire. I had a small nervous breakdown, sleep deprived and under duress... (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between G. H. von Wright's solution to the paradoxes of confirmation and his "Principal Theorem of Confirmation". The former utilizes the order of our knowledge of the qualities of confirming instances of an hypothesis; the latter states the way in which an instance contributes to the probability of an hypothesis. It is shown that these two, as stated by von Wright, are logically incompatible. Then the most thorough possible emendation of the paradoxes solution is considered, (...) and it is shown that this still prohibits use of the "Principal Theorem" to confirm hypotheses stating necessary causal conditions, and to confirm by deliberate experiment hypotheses stating sufficient causal conditions. It is concluded that any solution of the paradoxes must rest solely upon the relation of the data to the hypothesis involved. (shrink)

At his death in 1987, Paul W. Pruyser of the Menninger Foundation was widely recognized as one of America's foremost authorities on the psychology of religion. His book A Dynamic Psychology of Religion set the stage for creative dialogue on the subject. In this volume, two leading practitioners in the field present a compilation of Pruyser's seminal articles, providing an overview of the major themes in Pruyser's thought. Newton Malony and Bernard Spilka evaluate Pruyser's viewpoint and suggest how his position (...) continues to influence the psychology of religion. (shrink)

If C 1 , ..., C k are members of a certain class of suitable categories (which contains those arising from models with dimension), C = C 1 × ⋯ × C k , C' is a suitable category, F: C → C' is a partial recursive combinatorial functor satisfying a certain property (which, if C = C 1 , is that F is nonconstant) and U ∈ C, then (1) if FU is regressive so is U as is each (...) U i , and (2) if FU is Dedekind then each U i is Dedekind. (shrink)