bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bulls, Musth, and Cows The Elephantine Mating Game
Authors: Sukumar Raman
Published: November 2023

The breeding system of a species has important ecological and evolutionary consequences. Among the mammals, differences between the sexes in body size and the intensity of secondary sexual characters such as coat color or ornamentation (antlers, for instance) in males are significantly correlated with reproduc tive strategies. Charles Darwin (1871, Vol. II) noted that, among monogamous seals, the sexes were approximately equal in body size, while in polygynous seals, the males were up to six times larger than the females. The males of polygynous species are also more likely to sport elaborate ornamentation, such as large antlers or horns, which in Darwin’s words are “singularly ill-fitted for fighting” (p. 251) but are “used chiefly or exclusively for pushing and fencing” (p. 253).
Mothers, Children, and Aunts The Social Life of Elephant Families
Authors: Sukumar Raman
Published: November 2023

After a gestation period of nearly 2 years, an elephant calf is born into a typi cally stable family of closely related individuals. Within this social group, the young elephant will spend long years in physical and behavioral development. The eminent sociobiologist Edward Wilson considers social behavior as a set of devices for tracking changes in the environment, and socialization as the sum of social experiences that alter the development of an individual. He empha sizes the potential of species for rapid evolution of social traits as a means of adapting to changing environments.
Birth, Death, and Chance The Dynamics of Elephant Populations
Authors: Sukumar Raman
Published: November 2023

The dynamics of elephant populations hold great theoretical and practical interest. The elephant shares many demographic traits with humans-age of sexual maturity, long gestation, single offspring, low death date, and high longevity. It is not only the statistical details of elephant demography, but also the evolution of life history traits and population regulation in this large mammal that are of considerable interest. From a practical viewpoint, an adequate understanding of demographic processes in elephant populations is essential to making sound conservation judgments. Whether it is comprehending how density influences demography or how populations respond to the pressures of poaching, a fundamental consideration in conservation is the trajectory of animal numbers.
Coconuts, Corn, and Carvings The Conflict between Elephants and People
Authors: Sukumar Raman
Published: November 2023

The relationship between elephants and humans, which was earlier examined largely in the historical sociocultural context, can now be extended into the more contemporary ecological domain. Over the past 100,000 years or more, both elephants and humans have been important forces of transformation of the natural landscape, the elephant through its direct impact on the vegetation and early humans through the use of fire (which actually goes back nearly half a million years). For most of this period, the basic human-elephant relationship was that of predator and prey, with humans also falling victim to the elephant on occasion. The advent of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago, in the Old World introduced a new dimension to the interaction between elephants and people. Cultivated crops attracted the elephant’s attention as sources of food, and elephant-human conflicts intensified over this resource and over space as permanent settlement and agriculture gradually spread through the elephant’s habitat. At the same time, increased human use of the natural landscape for a variety of products such as wood, fruits, fodder for livestock, and so on had significant impact on the vegetation and consequently on the elephant populations. In addition, there was direct human impact on elephants-hunting for ivory and other products, such as hide and meat.
Introduction Interests, Holism, and Environmental Ethics
Authors: Varner Gary E
Published: November 2023

As I conceive Of It, ethical behavior produces and preserves value in the world. A morally good person knows what has value and acts to produce and preserve it. This book articulates and defends a particular vision of what has value and therefore of the morally good life: the view that the satisfaction of interests is of primary and overriding moral value. In the 1990s, it has become common to make appeals to what is in nature’s interests. In 1990, the editors of Audubon magazine began describing it on its masthead as “Speaking for Nature.” On the twentieth anniversary of the original Earth Day, David Brower’s autobiography was published with the title For Earth’s Sake. A book called Fifty Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth went to the top of the nonfiction bestseller list. And in the wake of Earth Day 1990, a surprising range of companies began describing themselves or their products as “Environment Friendly” (President’s Choice), “Kind to the Earth” (K-Mart), or “Taking Bold Steps for Earth” (Turner Broadcasting System). The language of both environmentalists and businesses in the 1990s suggests that both human beings and nature have interests in some literal sense, interests that can come to loggerheads.
Localizing Desire
Authors: Varner Gary E
Published: November 2023

What Things do have interests? The paradigm case of an interested being is a desiring creature. Not everything that is in one’s interests is something one desires. A smoker may recognize that quitting is ultimately in his best interests and yet desire another cigarette more strongly than anything else. But it is at least true that, as William James puts it, any “demand” ought, “for its own sole sake, to be satisfied,” that a desire “makes itself valid by the fact that it exists at all” (1948, p. 73). Taken in isolation, every desire defines an interest of the creature with that desire.1 And so it is important to ask, “Which creatures have desires?” The scope of interests in nonhuman nature will be at least as large as the scope of desire.
Important Modeling Assumptions
Authors: Griffith Daniel A , Layne Larry J
Published: November 2023

Popular conventional statistical assumptions invoked to guard against misleading or incorrect conclusions (from other than random error) include one positing independent and identically distributed (iid) values, one positing normality, and one positing linearity. Statistical inference can be either sampling design based or model based (de Gruijter and ter Braak 1990; Hahn and Meeker 1993). Sampling design-based inference exploits central limit theorems and considers the only marked source of variation to result from the sampling process employed. Given a large enough sample, then, a central limit theorem guarantees iid and normality; some researchers questionably argue that a sufficiently large sample will circumvent many nonlinearity complications, too. Model-based inference exploits the notion of random variables, treating a set of georeferenced values as just one realization of an underlying spatial process constituting a conceptual population. It requires the critical postulate that the process under study is statistically identical to that from which data have been collected. Attribute value locations need not be selected at random; rather, inference is based upon some specified model, with the soundness of inferences being dictated by the validity of model assumptions or the robustness of model results.
Popular Spatial Autoregressive And Geostatistical Models
Authors: Griffith Daniel A , Layne Larry J
Published: November 2023

Parallels between spatial autoregression and geostatistics are outlined in §1.2. To recapitulate, discussions of spatial series tend to focus on either spatial autocorrelation (geostatistics) or partial spatial autocorrelation (spatial autoregression). Although these two subfields have been evolving autonomously and in parallel, they are closely linked. Recalling Figure 1.1, both spatial statistics and geostatistics fall under the heading of multivariate analysis. The former frequently is concerned with aggregations of phenomena into discrete regions, while the latter principally is concerned with more or less continuously occurring attributes. By exploiting latent spatial autocorrelation in georeferenced data, spatial autoregression usually seeks to enhance statistical description and increase statistical precision, whereas geostatistics often seeks to generate spatial predictions. The prediction focus of the latter provides a link between these two subdisciplines through the missing data problem. The exact algebraic correspondence established with this spatial prediction/missing data linkage emphasizes that spatial autoregression directly deals with the inverse-variance covariance matrix while geostatistics directly deals with the variance-covariance matrix itself(§1.1).
Analysis Of Georeferenced Pollution Variables
Authors: Griffith Daniel A , Layne Larry J
Published: November 2023

Geography often is defined in terms of human-land relationships and as such is concerned with the surroundings of human beings, namely, the natural environment. Part of this concern pertains to the manner in which humans alter their surroundings, either directly or indirectly adding substances or energy forms to the natural environment in such a way that higher concentration levels occur at specific locations than otherwise would be found there (background noise), resulting in environmental pollution. Data collected about these interactions and relationships often are spatial in nature-arguing for them to be georeferenced and making their analysis amenable to geostatistical and spatial autoregressive techniques. Cressie and ver Hoef (1993) provide an historical overview of the use of statistics for spatial data within the context of environmental and ecological modeling.
Exploding Georeferenced Data When Maps Have Holes Or Gaps: Estimating Missing Data Values And Kriging
Authors: Griffith Daniel A , Layne Larry J
Published: November 2023

One of the pivotal links between geostatistical and spatial autoregressive analyses is the missing data problem (see §1.1). This is the prediction focus of geostatistics, falling under the heading of kriging, that deals with the interpolation problem of estimating attribute values at unsampled locations by exploiting the spatial autocorrelation detected in attribute values at sampled locations. By doing so, generalized isopleth maps can be constructed. It also is the parameter estimation focus of spatial autoregression when georeferenced data are lost in space, creating maps with holes in them, that addresses the interpolation problem of estimating the conditional mean for attribute values at data-absent locations. By doing so, spatial analysis that transcends spatial statistics, such as computing spatial operations research solutions (e.g., Griffith 1997), is unhampered by incomplete georeferenced data.
Concluding Comments
Authors: Griffith Daniel A , Layne Larry J
Published: November 2023

Much of the emphasis in this book is on commonalities shared by geostatistical and spatial autoregressive methodologies: the pivotal concept of spatial autocorrelation, a principal linkage provided by the missing data problem, the dual relationship between spatial correlograms and partial correlograms, and the MC (Moran Coefficient) scatterplot and the semivariogram plot visualization tools. This is a theme that other spatial scientists are beginning to address, too (see Cressie, et al., 1999). One salient feature differentiating geostatistics from spatial autoregression is that the former deals with a punctiform sampling usually of more or less continuously distributed geographic phenomena, whereas the latter deals with a discretization of some geographic surface and hence an aggregation of geographic phenomena. Consequently, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive surface partitionings tend to render semivariogram plots that are more similar to those that would result from the superimposition of an essentially uniform (systematic) sampling network (demonstrated repeatedly with the various data sets analyzed in this book). Although a representative spatial sample requires a markedly uniform network, measures of spatial autocorrelation require at least a reasonable number of clustered sample georeferenced coordinates to cover adequately the entire range of interpoint distances.
The Causes of Excessive Habitat Destruction
Authors: Southgate Douglas
Published: November 2023

There seems to be no end in sight to tropical deforestation, and the resulting environmental impacts are generally viewed with grave concern. Accordingly, quite a lot is being written about factors contributing to land use change. Pearce and Brown (1994), who have compiled a comprehensive review of the existing literature, have identified several lines of inquiry into the causes of deforestation in the developing world. Several investigators have examined the impacts of the macroeconomic turmoil that beset nearly every Latin American nation, and several countries in Africa and Asia, during the 1980s and early 1990s. Other research has to do with what Pearce and Brown (1994) refer to as competition for space. The excessive land use change that has resulted because farmers, ranchers, and other individual agents do not internalize deforestation’s environmental costs, and because of inappropriate government policies, has been studied as well.
Paying for Habitat Conservation and Investing in Human and Social Capital
Authors: Southgate Douglas
Published: November 2023

An important merit of increased agricultural productivity is that it facilitates other habitat protection measures. Insofar as technological change causes commodity prices to decline more than farming and ranching expenses along the extensive margins of crop and livestock production (see Figure 8.1), real estate values fall. Accordingly, it is cheaper to set aside forested hinterlands to sequester carbon, to harbor threatened species, or for any other purpose.
1
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

Smiling happily on that cloudless morning, Nature offered her hymn of adoration to the Creator of her beauty; and the heart, peaceful as the nest of the dove, was rapt in contemplation of the magnificent scene. The single square of the village of Killac covers less than a tenth of an acre, and around it roofs of red terracotta tiles are scattered among plain thatched ones with eaves of rough timber. These different roofs serve to classify the inhabitants and to distinguish the houses of the gentry from the huts of the Indians. On the left side of the square, within a stone enclosure, stands the common home of all Christians, the church; and its old adobe tower, where the bronze of the bells weeps for the dead and laughs with joy for the newly born, is also the nesting place of those little gray doves with ruby eyes known by the pretty name cul/cu. On Sundays you can meet all the inhabitants of the village in the church cemetery after their faithful attendance at mass, while they gossip and tell tales about the lives of their neighbors just as they do in their little shops or on the threshing floor, where the work of the harvest proceeds amidst shouts and an occasional drink.
5
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

Short stature, a flattened head, dark complexion, a massive nose with widely flaring nostrils, thick lips, dark little eyes, a short neck protruding from a collar adorned with small black and white beads, a sparse but ill-shaved beard; for clothing a kind of imitation cassock of black cloth, shiny, badly cut, and worse kept; a Panama hat in his right hand: such was the appearance of the first visitor to step forward, whom Lucia made haste to greet with a clear show of respect, saying, “A very good afternoon to you, Father Pascual.” Anyone meeting Father Pascual Vargas, successor to Don Pedro Miranday Claro as parish priest of Killac, would immediately feel serious doubts as to his having studied or learned, while at the seminary, either theology or Latin, a language that was ill at home in his mouth, de fended by two ramparts of large, very large, white teeth. He was approaching the age of fifty; and his manner provided strong justification for the fears that Marcela had expressed when she had spoken of going to serve in the rectory, which, as the Indians say, women leave “looking down at the ground ”.
7
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

Happiness pervaded the white house that morning, because Don Fernando’s return brought infinite joy to the home where he was loved and respected. Lucia, intent on finding a practical way to carry out her aim of helping the family of Juan Yupanqui, naturally thought of taking advantage of the sweetness and poetry that the first meeting after an absence holds for husband and wife. A few hours earlier she had seemed languid and sad like a flower deprived of the sunshine and the dew; yet now she regained her vigor and her freshness in the arms of the man who, when he A few moments after these scenes, Marcela was crossing the court yard of the white house, followed by a young girl, a marvel of beauty and liveliness who at once intrigued Lucia and made her eager to know her father, for her loveliness reflected that mixture of the Spaniard and the Indian that has produced stunning beauties in Peru. As she watched the girl approach, Don Fernando’s wife said to herself, “This child will no doubt be Marcela’s guardian angel, because God puts the mark of a special glow on the face that mirrors a superior soul ”.
3
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

Father Pascual miraculously survived the bout of typhoid fever that confined him to a sickbed for a week. Compassionate care put him back on his feet; but his convalescence promised to be lengthy, in spite of the mild climate and an abundance of milk and nutritious food. His brain needed a change of place, of concerns, and of habits to rid itself of the images that accompanied the constant gnawing of remorse; and he decided to go to the city in search of consolation and medical help, leaving his parish in the temporary charge of a Franciscan friar whose monastery had been shut down and who arrived in Killac almost at the same time as the new subprefect appointed by the national government to rule the province. The person chosen for this post was Colonel Bruno de Paredes, a man well known all over Peru, both for the connections he had made in gastronomic tournaments, alias banquets, and for his frequent corruptions of justice. Furthermore, Paredes was an old comrade of Don Sebastian’s and had even taken part with him in an uprising on behalf of some military chieftain-either Don Ramon Castilla or Don Manuel Ignacio Vivanco.
7
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

Don Fernando’s concern about the future that awaited him in Killac grew with each passing day. He was paying for confidential investigations that kept him informed about what was going on in the town and convinced him that the prevailing calm was merely apparent and not to be trusted, although Lucia’s delicate condition led him to keep his information from her. Providence was going to bless their home with offspring; and this caused the father-to-be to think often about his need to reach a clear decision and put an end to the vacillation that had continued for three months, ever since the visit during which Manuel had conceived such far-reaching plans. One day Don Fernando’s ideas began to take a more definitive turn, and he said to himself, “The progress Margarita is making, the pliant temperament of Rosalia, who promises to be a good little girl, my Lucia’s condition-all of this augurs a delightful future for my family. My duty is not to waste this opportunity and to seize all the happiness that could be mine with a wife like Lucia.
11
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

Political events in the nation’s capital were to have a strong and direct influence on the outcome of the plans for advance payment that the new provincial and local authorities had undertaken with such enthusiasm. Subprefect Paredes was inspecting one of the small towns under his jurisdiction; and there he met with a pair of eyes set in a remarkable female face, eyes that penetrated to the very “marrow” of his heart. Since the colonel, when it came to battles fought on the green fields of Cupid, was a veteran who bore not only decorations but even wounds of which he would boast at merry all-male gatherings, and since there are always persons eager to do the bidding of those in power, his excellency was confident that breaching this rampart would be an easy matter. It should be noted that in Killac as well as in the neighboring villages where a straightforward and unsophisticated morality prevails, that blight on society that undermines the foundations of the family by diverting young men from marriage and that appears in the unfortunate guise of the “fallen woman’’ is absolutely unknown.
25
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

As the travelers proceeded on their way, they left the raging tempest behind them. Indifferent to the painful scenes in K.illac, nature dis played her cheerful and varied panoramas, untroubled by their discord with the sadness of certain hearts. Don Fernando’s party trotted over endless pampas teeming with cat tle; it crossed hills shaded by mighty trees; it climbed steep rocks whose baldness, like that of the thinker’s brow, speaks to us of time and invites us to meditate. During the five days’ journey from K.illac to the railroad station, the traveler treads on wild flowers whose aroma perfumes the air he breathes; then he comes upon the sheer peaks of the Andes, covered with the “combed cotton” of the snows that reflect the sun as it melts them to plunge down in crystal-clear streams; then he descends once more onto the plain, where the grasses wave in the wind and echo its whisperings.
27
Authors: Clorinda Matto De Turner
Published: November 2023

An elegant carriage was ready for departure as soon as the train whistle might give the signal to the locomotive, which had been baptized Socab6n with champagne. Meanwhile, the first-class passengers were looking over the merchandise displayed on both sides of the tracks, where Indian women were offering vicufia gloves, preserved peaches, butter, cheese, and cracklings from the renowned mountain ranches of Peru’s interior. After helping Lucia and the girls to their seats, Don Fernando settled comfortably next to his wife on a bench for two upholstered in red plush. He drew out a cigarette, silently readied it for smoking, and, after lighting it, put away his box of matches, blew out a few puffs of smoke, held the cigarette in his lips, and untied the package of books.
Eco-Morphology and Interspecific Mimicry
Authors: Johnsgard Paul A
Published: November 2023

One of the significant aspects of host parasite adaptational adjustments is choosing a host species of an appropriate size. On one hand, the choice of hosts is constrained by the possibility of choosing a host unable to incubate the parasite’s eggs effectively or, more probably, unable to provide enough food to support the nestling parasite in its later growth stages, when it may weigh several times more than the host adult. On the other hand, parasites should not select hosts so large that they can easily prevent the parasite from invading their nest space, can readily puncture or remove alien eggs from their nest, or that have young large and strong enough to out-compete parasite chicks for food or ocher needs. Small hosts have the advantages of perhaps being unable to protect their nest and therefore prevent the parasite from laying its eggs in it or being unable to remove or destroy any alien eggs chat might be deposited. A host of nearly the same size as the parasite would seem to be the ideal choice, and yet this is not the usual case, at least among many brood parasites. For example, among the host-intolerant Australian cuckoos, the mean host adult mass ranges from 26% co 74% of the adult parasite’s mass, averaging about 58% (table 7).
Behavioral and Reproductive Ecology
Authors: Johnsgard Paul A
Published: November 2023

In his seminal review of the ecology of avian brood parasitism, Payne (1977a) identified host selection and specialization, breeding season synchronization between host and parasite, and several additional reproductive strategies as important ecological aspects of brood parasitism. These additional reproductive strategies include the parasite’s mating systems, its population structure, and its demographic characteristics. They also include the parasite’s relative egg size, as well as possible host mimicry involving the parasite’s eggs or chicks. Last, but of equal importance, are the parasite’s fecundity-related adaptations, such as its dutch size, rate of egg laying, seasonal egg production, and egg dispersion patterns. Some of these primarily morphological aspects of brood-parasite strategies, such as egg and chick mimicry, were discussed in chapter 2. Other more strictly behavioral reproductive strategies of brood parasites, such as host-selection behavior, will be dealt with in chapter 4. The remaining strategies of brood parasites that have particular ecological interest are discussed below.
Breeding Behavior
Authors: Johnsgard Paul A
Published: November 2023

In Britain, the common cuckoo typically arrives in mid-April in southwestern and southern regions and in the latter part of April farther north. A large number of dates from various parts of Britain indicate a high degree of consistency in average spring arrival dates (the earliest mean date is April 4, the latest April 26). There is a mean maximum range of 22 days, or 11 days on either side of the mean arrival date, among 16 British locations having migration records ranging in duration from 6 to 189 years (Wyllie, 1981). Males arrive from a few days to as much as 3 weeks before the females and begin singing almost immediately upon arrival. This fairly precise arrival date and the immediate onset of male singing suggests that a reliable environmental timer such as photoperiod is the primary proximate factor controlling the cuckoo’s migration, and photoperiod probably is thus at least indirectly responsible for controlling the onset of breeding.
Düsseldorf Beginnings1832–1835
Authors: Todd R Larry
Published: November 2023

Even before enduring a second turbulent crossing of the English Chan- nel and reaching Berlin late in June 1832, Felix was conflicted about his homecoming. Abraham had urged his son to begin positioning himself for the Singakademie directorship. Felix was disinclined but regarded it a solemn duty if Zelter “expressed this wish.” Now, after his teacher’s death, Felix’s reluctance stiffened. Recalling that a director, Lichtenstein, had already promised him the post, Felix saw no need to apply. Rather, as if foreseeing the imbroglio that would stretch into the early months of 1833, he sequestered himself from the petty maneuvering that enveloped the choice of Zelter’s successor.The primary sources are silent about Felix’s conversation with Lichtenstein, but presumably it had occurred in 1829, during the afterglow of the St. Matthew Passion revival. By June 1832 Felix had been away from Berlin
The Noon of Fame: Years of Triumph 1844–1846
Authors: Todd R Larry
Published: November 2023

During his return trip, Felix visited Dresden to see Eduard Devrient, who had accepted a position at the Saxon Royal Theater. The two discussed opera subjects, including the Lorelei legend, for which Felix began to compose music in 1847, only to die before he could realize his final operatic ambition. Another issue drew him to Dresden: Frederick Augustus II sought to entice Felix to move there, or at least resume his Leipzig post. Still nominally in the employment of Frederick William, Felix was obliged not to serve another monarch. Private entertainments were another matter, and so at the Saxon court on December 4, 1844, Felix performed a Beethoven piano sonata and regaled the court with improvisations. The Leipzig physician C. G. Carus left an account. From a grand duchess Felix solicited as his theme a march from Spontini’s La Vestale and, after a quiet introduction, introduced the march as if from afar. Then, manipulating the theme to render its “approach” increasingly festive, Felix insinuated into the fantasy the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture and wove the two together into a delightful musical garland, before he finished with some Lieder ohne Worte. In gratitude the king sent two vases of Meißen porcelain.
The Prophet’s Voice: Elijah’s Chariot1846–1847
Authors: Todd R Larry
Published: November 2023

Reunited in London with Klingemann by August 18, 1846, Felix attended that day a concert in his honor by the Beethoven Quartet Society. Among the participants were the violinists Henri Vieuxtemps and Joachim, and cellist Alfredo Piatti, who joined five other musicians in what was billed as the English premiere of the Octet. Felix improvised and played the piano part of his Second Piano Trio. But excepting this appearance, he devoted all his energies toward Elijah. On the 19th Moscheles heard him play from memory the newly composed overture and read through the arias with the principal soloists, Maria Caradori-Allan (soprano), Maria Hawes (alto), Charles Lockey (tenor), and Joseph Staudigl (bass). The women proved prime donne: the soprano asked Felix to transpose down a step the aria “Hear ye, Israel,” as it was not a “lady’s song”; and the alto dared introduce an extraneous trill at the close of “O rest in the Lord.” On the 20th and 21st Felix led two orchestral rehearsals in the Hanover Square Rooms but lost considerable time proofing and collating the hastily produced parts, spread out on benches in the hall. Then, at 2:00 on August 23, he boarded a special train at Euston Station for Birmingham. Among the passengers were the soloists, members of the orchestra and chorus, and a press contingent.
Crane and Slum Fiction
Authors: Andal Keith G
Published: November 2023

In the early 1890s, Stephen Crane set out to reinvent the tenement novel. His inability to find a publisher for Maggie is an indication of his success—especially when one considers that at the time slum fiction was in vogue, and certain books about the poor were becoming veritable bestsellers. The scandal of Crane’s work was not its setting but, rather, his refusal to judge slum life according to middle-class standards. In order to appreciate Crane’s innovations, we will need to turn first to the slum fiction conventions that he was defying.
Theologians and the Renewal of Democratic Political Institutions
Authors: Burgees John P
Published: November 2023

On March 18, 1990, East Germans participated in their first and last free elections as East Germans. The party that emerged with the majority in the new Parliament, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), campaigned on the platform of rapid unification. On October 3, 1990, union became official, and the GDR was a relic of the past.
Church and Politics in a Secular World
Authors: Burgees John P
Published: November 2023

The tremendous political and social upheavals that rocked the communist world in the late 1980s contain profound lessons about the possibilities and perils of democratization. The transition from totalitarianism to a liberal society was characterized not only by considerable confusion and chaos, but also by high moral idealism. Especially significant was the emergence of mass movements, largely peaceful and nonviolent, that called for popular political participation. People who had seemingly adapted and even accommodated themselves to political powerlessness suddenly reclaimed a deep sense of civic duty.
Down the Ohio
Authors: Evans Howard Ensign
Published: November 2023

STEPHEN LONG SUPERVISED THE CONSTRUCTION OF the steamboat Western Engineer in Pittsburgh during 1818 and early 1819. It was originally planned as a smaller craft, drawing only fourteen inches of water, but as finally completed, it drew more than two feet of water and was unlike any vessel that had plied the Ohio before. The ship left the arsenal on the Allegheny River with much fanfare on the afternoon of May 3, a Monday, but did not begin to descend the Ohio until Wednesday. I will let Titian Peale describe the departure and the ship itself. Allowance must be made here as elsewhere for the fact that in the early 1800s people were not always fastidious in their spelling and punctuation.
Overwintering at Engineer Cantonment
Authors: Evans Howard Ensign
Published: November 2023

ON OCTOBER II, LONG AND JESSUP began their trip east by starting downstream in a canoe. Lieutenant James Graham was left in charge of the Western Engineer, with instructions to do certain repairs and to run the engines from time to time. He was also to make “celestial and barometric observations,” keep weather records, and measure the height of surrounding highlands. William Swift was to assist him. In fact, the Western Engineer had reached the end of its trip up the Missouri, though that may not have been obvious to Long at the time. Nor would Colonel Henry Atkinson’s troops ascend the river farther at this time, in steamboats or otherwise. The Western Engineer was the only steamboat to reach Council Bluff, but it had taken it nearly three months to cover the 600 miles from St. Louis, averaging only about 6 miles a day. Long was to receive considerable criticism on his arrival in Washington, from both Congress and the press. Indeed, the entire Yellowstone Expedition had proved a disappointment.

Before leaving, Long left instructions for the small group of naturalists remaining.
Down the Arkansas
Authors: Evans Howard Ensign
Published: November 2023

AS THE EXPEDITION DREW AWAY FROM the mountains, the country became increasingly arid, with, according to James, “scarce a green or a living thing except here and there a tuft of grass, an orbicular lizard, basking in the scorching sand … a blaps [darkling beetle], or a galeodes [sun spider] Near the river, and in spots of uncommon fertility, the unicorn plant … was growing in considerable perfection.” This remarkable plant, the only member of its family in North America, bears large, tubular blossoms that are replaced by woody pods that terminate in a long, curved appendage suggesting an elephant’s trunk (hence the scientific name, Proboscidea louisianica [literally, plant with a trunk that inhabits Louisiana Territory]). When the pod dries, the “trunk” splits lengthwise and forms a pair of sharp, upcurved prongs that hook onto the feet of mammals, which carry them off for a distance and in the process disseminate the seeds. Other names for the plant are proboscis-flower, elephant-tusk, ram’shom, cuckold’s horns, double-claw, and devil’s claw.
The Search for the Red River
Authors: Evans Howard Ensign
Published: November 2023

MAJOR LONG, WITH JAMES, PEALE, AND seven others (Adams, Dougherty, Wilson, Duncan, Oakley, Verplank, and Sweney), set off from the Arkansas River not far from the site of Rocky Ford, Colorado, on July 24. They had six horses and eight mules, mostly in reasonably good condition. Heading south, in 100-degree heat, they traveled twenty-seven miles that first day, finding barely enough water to supply their needs and nothing but bison dung for fuel. James found a new and attractive coneflower, which he described as Rudbeckia (now Ratibida) tagetes. He also noted yellow flax (Linum rigidum) and a species of globe mallow. The latter was later described by John Torrey as Sida stellata (now Sphaeralcea angustif olia cuspidata). The next day they crossed several ravines, some of which contained box elders (Acer negundo). Near midday, they struck the Purgatoire River, in a valley flanked by sandstone cliffs nearly 200 feet high. They followed the Purgatoire for only a few miles before entering “the valley of a small creek, tributary from the south-east.” This was undoubtedly Chacuaco Creek, which they followed for two days. (The expedition’s route is by no means easy to follow over the next ten days. In “Major Long’s Route from the Arkansas to the Canadian River, 1820,” John M. Tucker has worked out the itinerary in convincing detail, and I shall follow his interpretation.)
Epilogue
Authors: Evans Howard Ensign
Published: November 2023

THE EXPEDITION REMAINED AT FORT SMITH for only a few days before proceeding to its final destination, Cape Girardeau, on the Mississippi, where the men had planned to meet Lieutenant James Graham with the steamboat Western Engineer. They were anxious to return east with their notes and specimens, and made few observations as they crossed Arkansas and Missouri by horseback on relatively well traveled trails and wagon roads. So the expedition may be said to have ended at Fort Smith. From there on the men traveled in several separate groups.
Voices on the Margins
Authors: Sutton R Anderson
Published: November 2023

Only a few moments after registering at a small hotel in downtown Ujung Pandang in 1993, I embarked on a short trip on the most popular local means of public transportation, the petepete minivan (its name imitates the sound of its small engine, cf. “put-put”). My attempts to ask directions were thwarted by a sound system booming out Bugis dangdut, a local variant of a genre popular throughout much of Indonesia. Accenting the rhythms was a pulsating lightshow of tiny colored light bulbs on the dash and dangling over part of the windshield. Throughout my many periods of research in South Sulawesi I heard a wide range of popular music forms in many of the petepete I rode. These included heavy metal and hip-hop, reggae, country, and soft rock in English language, all of these styles in Indonesian versions, as well as dangdut in Indonesian and Bugis and other songs in local languages. Having not kept an accurate written record, I can only estimate, but it seemed that about a quarter of what I heard were songs in local languages, mostly either dangdut or lagu Makassar (Ind.; Makassarese songs).
Communicate: Secrets of the Heart
Authors: Bryan Charles S
Published: November 2023

Like most widely influential people, Osler was a great communicator who used language to reach the hearts and minds of others. He is best remembered for his inspirational addresses, but he was also a good classroom teacher, a good committee member, a good host, a good listener, and a good friend. He was not a politician in the strict sense, but he respected the political process and used it when necessary. And he recognized that words can cause unintentional injury and must therefore be chosen carefully.
Seek Balance: A Simple and Temperate Life
Authors: Bryan Charles S
Published: November 2023

In “The Choice,” William Butler Yeats wrote, “The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life or of the work.” As a young man William Osler chose perfection of the work when he set out to rank among the best in his field. Aiming to be the best at anything makes the balanced life a difficult proposition (Figure 8.1). Osler can be faulted for falling short. To concentrate on medicine, he postponed marriage until his early forties with the result that he and his wife felt fortunate to have even one surviving child. His son’s death in World War I broke his heart and, many contemporaries believed, contributed to his own death from pneumonia two years later.
Introduction
Authors: Mcginn Colin
Published: November 2023

Writing a philosophy book is an arduous and exacting task. One does not emerge from the experience unscathed. The mental burden lies mainly in the necessity of keeping a complex argument, or set of arguments, in one’s head for a long period of time, constantly repeating and refining them, day and night—until they come to seem either like gibberish or platitudes or both. Bertrand Russell wrote somewhere that the problems of logic are so inhumanly abstract that the philosophical logician only manages really to think about them for five minutes a year. Russellian exaggeration, no doubt, but it gives some idea of the feat of mental contortion needed to sustain the abstracted state of mind required to complete a substantial work of philosophy. It is actually rather amazing that it happens as often as it does (ballet dancing perhaps provides a distant analogy). And then there is the unpleasant sense of insecurity that comes with it—the feeling of being constitutionally inadequate to the task.
Ayer: Old Scores
Authors: Mcginn Colin
Published: November 2023

When I was a quivering graduate student at Oxford in 1973, fresh from the northern provinces, I sat for the John Locke Prize, a voluntary two-day examination for Oxford postgraduates in philosophy. As I had hitherto been a psychology student at Manchester, I thought this would be good practice for my upcoming B. Phil. philosophy exams. It was quite an ordeal (I nearly gave up at one point), and afterward I felt I had a long way to go philosophically. A few days later Professor Ayer, who was one of the examiners, informed me that he had been obliged to require that my papers be typed, on account of their extreme illegibility: I would have to dictate them to a typist in the presence of an invigilator, both of whom I would have to pay. I apologized to him for my calligraphic delinquency and expressed some mumbled misgivings about going to all that trouble and expense, in view of my poor performance. To my surprise, he said he thought I was “worth it,” on what basis I am not sure. I therefore did as I was told, spending a couple of wincing days reading out my script to be converted into cold type. I really must improve my handwriting, I thought.

Two or three weeks later Professor Ayer told me that I had been awarded the prize. He seemed almost as pleased as I was, clapping me warmly on the back and congratulating himself on his former perspicacity.
Budd: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology
Authors: Mcginn Colin
Published: November 2023

Sapiently gauging his distance, Malcolm Budd offers us a synoptic view of Wittgenstein’s later thoughts on the mind. His treatment is selective yet representative. Seven dense chapters survey Wittgenstein’s various surveys of meaning and understanding, sensations and sense impressions, the seeing of aspects, images, internal speech and calculation, thought and intention, and feelings, emotions, and bodily awareness. Budd’s expositions are in every way exemplary. He is deeply sympathetic to his subject but by no means uncritical. I know of no other work on Wittgenstein that can match his for clarity, accuracy, concision, and penetration (and there are some fine books our there). He knows exactly what he is talking about and is able to convey this to the reader with unostentatious efficiency. His book would be perfect for students still trying to find their feet with Wittgenstein, but it can be heartily recommended to scholars who think they know their way around the Austrian’s later thought. Here is a book on Wittgenstein that you can trust.

Beginning with a chapter on method, Budd emphasizes the prophylactic character of Wittgenstein’s intentions: the notions of grammar, language game, and perspicuous representation are to be seen in a curative light. He brings out the consequent radical disjuncture Wittgenstein perceived between our ordinary mastery of psychological concepts and our bewilderment once we reflect upon this mastery: we go from genius to dolt simply by taking a downward glance at our concepts;
Searle: Contract with Reality
Authors: Mcginn Colin
Published: November 2023

When philosophers concern themselves with what fundamentally exists, they are apt to limit themselves to physical facts and mental facts, with perhaps a soupcon of the abstract thrown in. There are mountains and muons, beliefs and tickles, and maybe numbers and propositions. Then questions are raised about how these broad ontological categories are related, these questions constituting the core of traditional metaphysics. But this is to ignore at least one other broad category of facts: the social ones. We also have incomes and marriages and presidencies. How are facts about sqcieties to be fitted into our general ontological framework? How, in particular, are they to be connected with mental and physical facts? What is, if you will forgive the expression, the ontology of civilization?

There is a reason that philosophers tend not to be powerfully exercised by questions of social ontology, and it is that social facts are less primitive than the other facts. Social facts depend for their existence on mental and physical facts, but the opposite is not the case. This is the basic intuition from which John Searle starts his inquiry: the ontological dependence of the social on the nonsocial. Searle’s aim is to develop a theory that spells out the nature and consequences of this dependence.
The Call for American Combat Troops
Authors: Jones Howard
Published: November 2023

The most controversial aspect of the Truman Doctrine in Greece was its military orientation. According to critics, the administration exaggerated the dangers to convince Congress and the American people to support a policy of interventionism. Yet even if the rhetoric was strong, policymakers in Washington did not give light regard to the military question; their many discussions of the matter provide a model of analysis and decisionmaking. They examined the availability of personnel; they scrutinized the impact that direct military involvement would have, both domestically and internationally; and they considered the repercussions of either success or failure. Even more important, they examined the steps toward terminating involvement if events did not follow the desired course. At a crucial time in the war, during the autumn of 1947, the Truman administration debated the wisdom of sending American soldiers to establish the domestic order vital to the long-range economic reconstruction of Greece.
Toward the Spring Offensive of 1948
Authors: Jones Howard
Published: November 2023

Shortly after General Van Fleet took command in late February 1948, the deputy chief of the Greek General Staff, Lieutenant General Stylianos Kitrilakis, presented him a study describing the war as “unconventional, manysided and simultaneously civil and international.” The guerrillas received help from a significant part of the population-about 150,000 people, including women and young males-who comprised the “reserve and potential army” and followed the “KKE line consciously and actively.” A large number of Greeks-the “fellow travellers”-were not communists but were “so confused in their ideological thinking” that they became supporters. The rural people were passive: they would not fight the guerrillas, nor would they provide the army with information.
“On All Fronts”
Authors: Jones Howard
Published: November 2023

The internal and external problems continuing to face Greece and its allies substantiated their belief that the communists had changed tactics without giving up the struggle. Both inside and outside the country, the government had to deal with demands for amnesty and leniency toward those who had been its enemies, while also having to resolve matters regarding Albania. In the course of attempting to settle these issues, the Greek government increasingly realized that the United States had become occupied with problems elsewhere. The focus of the Cold War was shifting to Asia, causing the White House to adjust its strategy. Attention had turned to the communists’ victory in China and, soon, to the outbreak of war in Korea.
Space & Time
Authors: Vailati Ezio
Published: November 2023

On the topic of space and time, Clarke and Leibniz were in direct opposition. To be sure, they agreed on the topological features of space and time, but their agreement ended there. For Clarke, space and time are properties of God which share in the necessary existence of the divinity; for Leibniz, they are relations and mere entia rationis, like mathematical entities. In previous chapters we considered Leibniz’s theological objection to Clarke’s view of space and time.