bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Marne, Second Battle(1918) 15-17July 1918
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

“How apt, if how strange, the historical coincidence by which, as the Marne had been the first high-water mark and witnessed the first ebb of the tide of invasion in 1914, so four years later it was destined to be the final highwater mark from which the decisive ebb began” (Liddell Harr, The Real Wtir, p. 419). Also 1ike the events of 1914, the battle that rook place at the Marne River in July 1918 had results that were more accidental than planned. Indeed, it began as merely a diversion for a larger offensive elsewhere, but through circumstance it rook on a life of its own.
Dunkirk 24 May-4 June 1940
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Starting with the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, German armies had had everything their own way. Poland fell in less than a month, and then, after waiting out the winter, German forces swept over Denmark and occupied Norway in April and May 1940. Starting on 10 May, German forces attacked Holland and Belgium on their way toward France. As in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and World War I in 1914, the Germans had plans to paralyze the French and defeat them quickly. The French, however, believed that this rime they had the answer to German aggression in a series of fortifications called the Maginot line. This line of interlocking fortresses and strongpoints stretched from the Swiss border along the Franco-German frontier to Belgium. Therein lay the problem: the defenses stopped at Belgium. The Belgian government between the wars had nor wanted to spend the money to cooperate with the French in this venture and were sure that after the German fiasco of World War I that they would never violate Belgian neutrality a second time. France could not extend the Maginot line to the coast, for to do so would point guns at its Belgian ally. Thus, the route chat Germany used in 1914 to outflank the massed French armies in the Ardennes lay open once again in 1940.
Singapore 31 January-15 February 1942
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Great Britain took control of Singapore in che early 1800s, using it as their primary trading pose to compete with the Dutch merchants of Southeast Asia. The island city served as the major British defensive position in the region as well, coming to be called che “Gibraltar of the East.” The huge artillery protecting the city from invasion gave chose stationed there, as well as those viewing the outpost from London, the impression of impregnability.
Tet Offensive 31 January 2 February 1968
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

After the French withdrew from Southeast Asia in 1956, the United States stepped up its support for an anti-Communist government in South Vietnam. Although the Geneva Accords signed in 1954 called for national elections, U.S. certainty that North Vietnams Ho Chi Minh would win those elections and usher in a Communist regime brought about a withdrawal from participation in those elections. The South Vietnamese government that was left behind upon France’s withdrawal was at first under the direction of Bao Dai. He was soon succeeded by Ngo Dinh Diem, who welcomed the economic and military support the United States supplied. The French-trained and -educated Diem was a Catholic, who appointed other Catholics (as well as family members) to key positions in the government, where they proved to be less than tolerant of the predominantly Buddhist population.
Judgments and Trust: Improving Your Concentration
Authors: Ostwald David F
Published: November 2023

Since audiences read whatever you are consciously thinking as your character’s thoughts, controlling the object of your concentration is an essential component of creating a believable character. Although it is difficult, you don’t want to concentrate on your own personal internal dialogue or vocal technique, because that is not what is on your character’s mind. (Even Cherubino nervously singing his love song to the Countess in the second act of The Marriage of Figaro is worrying about his voice, not yours.) Rather, you want the object of your concentration to be your character’s thoughts as they unfold in his internal dialogue (or at least you need to create that impression).
Your Character’s World: Fashioning a Theme Statement
Authors: Ostwald David F
Published: November 2023

The theme is the central issue or question that a piece explores. It is the big idea that holds the music, words, and actions together. The theme may revolve around any topic of human interest, from love, hatred, and jealousy to power, family, politics, money, religion, health, homelessness, mercy killing, or aging.
Civilizations Underneath African Heritage as Cultural Discourse in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Authors: Wilentz Gay
Published: November 2023

IN EACH OF H ER ACCLAIMED NOVE LS , Toni Morrison writes what she calls “village literature, fiction that is really for the village, for the tribe” (LeClair 26). Yet Morrison has been hailed as one of the greatest writers (I will do away with any of the qualifiers) of the twentieth century. She has been compared to Faulkner and Marquez in her use of stream of consciousness and magic realism, but we need to look a little closer at Morrison’s own comments and her historical roots to explore the rich complexity of her written work. Although she wrote her master’s thesis on Faulkner and has acknowledged influence by Marquez and other Latin American writers, Morrison’s writings are deeply entrenched in her own black folk roots and the community in which she grew up. Moreover, her text is informed by her mother’s stories, her tribe, and her ancestors-African and African American. In “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” Morrison yearns for a closer identification of the black American artist with her community:
Names to Bear Witness The Theme and Tradition of Naming in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Authors: Mackethan Lucinda H
Published: November 2023

Toni Morrison Opens her 1977 novel, Sons of Solomon, with an epigraph which reads, “The fathers may soar / And the children may know their names.” In the first chapter of a novel full of ironic father-child relationships and complex searches for the meanings of names, the first discussion of names concerns the name of a street on which much of the action of the story will take place. “The only colored doctor in the city” had lived and died on a street officially listed as “Mains Avenue,” but the doctor’s patients, chiefly poor blacks living in the city’s “Southside” section, called the street “Doctor Street,” and this name had persisted for many years in spite of official disapproval. When the city fathers put up notices insisting that the street “had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street,” their attempt to humble the black citizenry backfires in a reaction that is both comic and wickedly sly: “It was a genuinely clarifying public notice,” we are told, “because it gave Southside residents a way to keep their memories alive and please the city legislators as well.
Single-Stranded RNA Phages
Authors: Duin Jan Van , Tsareva Nina
Published: November 2023

The single-stranded RNA coliphages were discovered by Tim Loeb and Norton Zinder in 1961 as the result ofa search for phages whose infection cycle depends on E. coli F-pili, normally used for bacterial conjugation. Loeb and Zinder plated filtered samples of raw New York City sewage on E. coli strains and screened for phages that would produce plaques on male (Fþ) but not female (F-) bacteria. The first isolate, named f1, turned out to be a filamentous phage with a single-stranded DNA genome; the second isolate, named f2, was an RNA-containing phage. Since f2 made clear plaques, Loeb and Zinder decided to concentrate their work on this phage (107). f2 and close relatives such as MS2 and R17 represented a superb source of pure messenger RNA that could be produced in large amounts: up to 1013 phage particles per milliliter are made within a few hours after infection of bacterial cultures, and the phages can be easily purified. RNA phages also attracted attention because scientists were intrigued about how their RNA genomes were replicated.Habitat Single-stranded RNA coliphages are found wherever E. coli lives, for example in the intestinal tract of man and other animals. Studies have shown that sewage samples worldwide contain from 102 up to 107 RNA phage particles per milliliter (26). For humans RNA phages are harmless creatures. Several other Gram-negative bacteria can propagate their own RNA phages.
Mycoplasma Phages
Authors: Maniloff Jack , Dybvig Kevin
Published: November 2023

Mycoplasma (with no italics) is the generic name for the small, wall-less bacteria that arose by degen- erate evolution from the Streptococcus branch of the Grampositive bacteria phylogenetic tree (25). At present these microorganisms are grouped into one putative genus plus eight well-accepted genera including the Acholeplasma, Spiroplasma, and Mycoplasma together forming the order Mollicutes (table 40-1). Mycoplasma genera have diverse habitats and biochemical and physiological properties. The genomes of some species are only 600^800 kbp. The first mycoplasma phage was isolated in 1970 by R. N. Gourlay in England, using a bovine mycoplasma isolate as host cells and filtrates of bovine mycoplasma isolates as the phage source (16). Subsequently the host strain was identified as Acholeplasma laidlawii and the phage was identified as a filamentous phage containing single-stranded DNA. Over the next few years Gourlay isolated enveloped quasi-spherical phages as well as short-tailed phages infecting A. laidlawii. Since then, other workers have isolated more Acholeplasma phages as well as phages infecting Spiroplasma and Mycoplasma strains (23, 24). Phages active against other Mollicutes genera have not been isolated.
l’ll Get By” (1942-1962)
Authors: Jackson John A
Published: November 2023

The Night Of August 29, 1964, was supposed to be a typical one at the Uptown Theater. Local radio personality Georgie Woods (“the guy with the goods”) emceed a rhythm and blues stage show, just as he had done many times before at the crumbling, cavernous arena squatting in the heart of the North Philadelphia ghetto. Headliners that evening included B. B. King and Gladys Knight and the Pips. It was a “big show,” recalled Woods, who was not only a popular disc jockey on one of the city’s two black-oriented radio stations, but also a civil rights activist and a leading voice of the black community. Suddenly, a telephone call came in from the city’s race-baiting chief of police, Frank Rizzo. Trouble was brewing a few blocks north of the Uptown, where a routine traffic stop was in the process of escalating into mob disorder. The police were rapidly losing control of the volatile situation. Rizzo, who nine months earlier had arrested Woods and threatened to run him out of town after the activist-deejay turned up in the midst of a racial disturbance, now begged for his assistance. Turning over command of the Uptown to his understudy, Woods disappeared into the night. “I was the only one in town who could talk to the people,” he recalled. “They believed what I said.”
Zuwho Do You Love” (1963)
Authors: Jackson John A
Published: November 2023

By The End Of 1962, Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, And Tommy Bell had each made their initial recordings. The fact that those records were commercial disappointments was of little consequence to Huff and Bell. There would always be another session for Huff, and a fresh tune in the head of Bell. Only Gamble, who continued to harbor the notion of a singing career, had cause for discontent. Gamble faced a more formidable problem than any suffering brought about by one failed recording. The pop music moguls courted by Gamble were preoccupied with recording innocuous white teen idols.
Wake Up Everybody” (1975)
Authors: Jackson John A
Published: November 2023

The Mass Defections From Philadelphia International by the talented group of musicians known collectively as MFSB were the first crack in the Gamble and Huff recording empire. (T. J. Tindall, who played guitar with both the old and the new rhythm sections, believes that neither Gamble and Huff nor Baker, Harris, and Young “were anywhere near as strong apart as they had been when we were all a unit.”) Some thirty years later, those defectors claim that the producers exploited them. Initially, those musicians’ studio session jobs for Philadelphia International were highly coveted. Besides affording the security of a steady gig, working for Gamble and Huff offered those musicians a chance to exercise their musical creativity. Gamble and Huff “just didn’t have the knowledge and the know-how to do it without the rhythm section,” claimed Earl Young. “I mean, Gamble doesn’t play any instrument. He doesn’t read any music [Huff] never really wrote music out. He just wrote the basic charts. So there was never a time that they called us in there and said, ‘This is what I want you to play.’ They really couldn’t tell us what to play.” The MFSB members “knew how to put songs together,” he added, so Gamble and Huff “would bring the singers in the studio and let them sing in front of us. And we [would] learn the songs and go over the chord charts and come up with ideas and beats and grooves.” Such was the case with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “Bad Luck,” which was created around a Ronnie Baker bass line. “Gamble and Huff just jumped all over that bass line and kind of wrote that song right around it,” claimed former Sigma engineer Jim Gallagher. “It was one of those ‘groove’ sessions where Baker goes, ‘Hey, check this out,’ [plays a bass riff], and the next thing you know, Huff is arranging that and they’ve got a track! Baker just made the song happen.”
“Kiss and Say Goodbye” (1977-1978)
Authors: Jackson John A
Published: November 2023

Due Largely To Rising OIL PRICES AND AN INCREASING trade deficit,America’s economy had stagnated during the mid-197os. Interest rates and inflation, both on the rise, ran in double digits, unemployment increased, and the stock market continued its prolonged slump. It was no surprise that, saleswise, 1977 was the worst year in the history of the recording industry. (Despite the abundance of economic factors, the principal bogeyman of the industry’s woes was the home taping of music, which, since the introduction of the tape cassette, continued to rise.1) While most of the pop music business began to implode, black music, buoyed by disco’s continuing popularity, seemed impervious to the slump.
Stories of Sickness
Authors: Brody Howard
Published: November 2023

Our personalities and our identities are intimately bound up with the stories that we tell to organize and to make sense of our lives. To understand the human meaning of illness, we therefore must turn to the stories we tell about illness, suffering, and medical care. Stories of Sickness explores the many dimensions of what illness means to the sufferers and to those around them, drawing on depictions of illness in great works of literature and in non-fiction accounts. The exploration is primarily philosophical but incorporates approaches from literature and from the medical social sciences. When it was first published in 1987, Stories of Sickness helped to inaugurate a renewed interest in the importance of narrative studies in health care. For the Second Edition the text has been thoroughly revised and significantly expanded. Four almost entirely new chapters have been added on the nature, complexities, and rigor of narrative ethics and how it is carried out. There is also an additional chapter on maladaptive ways of being sick that deals in greater depth with disability issues. Health care professionals, students of medicine and bioethics, and ordinary people coping with illness, no less than scholars in the health care humanities and social sciences, will find much value in this volume.
The Narrative Tradition
Authors: Scholes Robert , Phelan James , Kellogg Robert
Published: November 2023

For the past two centuries the dominant form of narrative literature in the West has been the novel. In writing about the West ern narrative tradition we will in one sense, therefore, necessarily be describing the heritage of the novel. But it will not be our intention to view the novel as the final product of an ameliorative evolution, as the pedected form which earlier kinds of narrative - sacred myth, folktale, epic, romance, legend, allegory, confession, satire - were all striving, with varying degrees of success, to become. Instead, our intention will be almost the opposite. We hope to put the novel in its place, to view the nature of narrative and the Western narrative tradition whole, seeing the novel as only one of a number of narrative possibilities. In order to at tempt this it has been necessary to take long views, to rush into literary areas where we can claim some interest and competence but not the deep knowledge of the specialist, and perhaps to generalize overmuch in proportion to the evidence we present. For these and other excesses and exuberances, we apologize, hoping only that the result will justify our temerity in having undertaken such an elaborate project.
The Hegemony of Molecular Biology (1999)
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: November 2023

Dick Lewontin has probably had more influence on contemporary philosophy of biology than any other living biologist-partly because of his brilliant and wide ranging contributions to genetics and evolutionary theory, partly because of the warmth and kindness he has extended to philosophers, and especially because of his own major philosophical contributions. For nearly two decades, my own writings have been substantially indebted to Dick’s insights, and I’ve found myself fighting on the same side in many of the same battles. But there have been important differences. As Dick has often noted, his own opposition to various popular doc trines, especially in sociobiology and other forms of genetic determinism, has been more radical than my own. Where I have accepted the ground rules of a particular enterprise and argued that the alleged conclusions don’t follow, Dick has often wanted to sweep away the enterprise as misguided. In effect, we’ve replayed the relationship between early twentieth-century British socialists and their more revolutionary counterparts in continental Europe-my Keir Hardie to Dick’s Lenin. I can think of no better way to honor his legacy to philosophy of biology than to play it agam.
Some Puzzles about Species (1989)
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: November 2023

In the fall of 1974, my second year of teaching philosophy, I was giving a course in philosophy of science to a dozen or so bright undergraduates. After about three weeks, one of the students came to see me in my office. “We find this material interesting,” he explained, “but most of us are pre-meds, and the science we know best is biology. It would really help if you could give us some examples from biology, and not talk about physics quite so much.” The point was a good one. Like many philosophers of science of my generation, I offered standard examples from physics-when I needed an illustration, I pointed to Newtonian dynamics, optics, electromagnetic theory, thermodynamics, and only occasionally ventured as far afield as chemistry. However, it was clear that the course would be improved if I honored my student’s reasonable request, so I set off for the library in search of a key to reform.
Utopian Eugenics and Social Inequality (2000)
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: November 2023

It is helpful to divide the philosophical issues surrounding the Human Genome Project into three main groups. First, there are questions about the scientific significance of the project. Second, the project raises immediate practical problems, notably in decisions about genetic screening and in connection with the potential release of genetic information about individuals. Third, there are long-term concerns about the desirability of applying our new ability to identify the genotypes of the unborn, concerns often posed in the accusation that we are on the verge of a new eugenics. In this paper, I shall primarily be concerned with the third cluster of issues, for it is here, I believe, that the hardest philosophical problems lie. But, in order to frame my discussion, I want to begin by reviewing perspectives on the first two groups, perspectives that I have defended in some detail elsewhere.
The Moral of Moral Luck
Authors: Wolf Susan
Published: November 2023

In 1976, Bernard Williams coined the phrase “moral luck” to refer to the range of phenomena in which our moral status—how good or bad we are and how much praise or blame we deserve—is significantly determined by factors beyond our control. Whether we are naturally sociable or irritable, whether we find ourselves faced with particularly explicit or burdensome moral challenges, whether the arrows of our actions hit their targets—all constitute ways in which things we cannot control affect the moral quality of our lives. All, then, serve as examples of moral luck, which, taken as a group, make up one of the most philosophically perplexing and troubling features of ordinary moral experience.
Kant on Arrogance and Self-Respect
Authors: Dillon Robin S
Published: November 2023

The driver who refuses to wait his turn at the merge point; the self-proclaimed expert who dismisses your views without even considering them or treats your ignorance with contempt; the coworker who regards his project as so much more important than yours and demands an unfair share of the resources; the administrator who tries to impose his vision on the department without consulting the department members; the boss who makes it clear that his way is the only right way; the person who insists that you drop what you are doing and attend to his needs now; the church official who says, in defense of a priest accused of child molestation, that the negligence of the six-year-old boy and his family contributed to the abuse; the doctor who disdainfully dismisses the idea that you might know something about your own condition; the telemarketer who assumes you have nothing better to do with your time than listen to his sales pitch; the relative who insists that he knows what’s best for you and acts for you without your knowledge or consent—the arrogance of some people can be irritating, frustrating, enraging, even dangerous. And it does n’t take a Kantian to see the disrespect that arrogance expresses.
Two Types of Scepticism
Authors: Unger Peter
Published: November 2023

Scepticism about knowledge is a thesis that, even in a very strong form, many people find forceful and appealing. In my paper, ‘A Defense of Scepticism’, I have argued for this thesis. And, I suspect that even the universal form of it—the view that nobody ever knows anything to be so—may well be correct. While one may first find it shocking to have this thesis thrust upon one, the blow may be softened by accepting the idea that even if one never knows anything, one may at least be reasonable and justified in various things. For if this idea is correct, then in particular one may be justified and reasonable in believing certain things to be so. One of these things might even be the thesis of scepticism about knowledge.
Extinction Happens
Authors: Rosenzweig Michael L
Published: November 2023

Nineteenth-century science laid most of the foundations of scientific understanding. It measured the speed of light. It discovered most of the universe’s elements. It deduced the workings of natural selection. What a great time to be a scientist! One of the monumental discoveries of nineteenth-century science lies virtually unsung in the subterranean foundations of twenty-first-century ecology. Species become extinct.
Philosophy
Authors: Katz Jerrold J
Published: November 2023

It is all too easy to anticipate an objection to my line of argument thus far: “Your sharp separation of the theory of sense from the theory of reference enables you to escape the three problems that beset Fregean intensionalism, but only at the price of thinning the notions of sense and analyticity down to the point where they are no longer useful in philosophy.” And the objection might continue, “Perhaps an autonomous theory of sense is useful in linguistics, say, to account for thin linguistic concepts like meaningfulness, ambiguity, and synonymy, but sense and analyticity on such a theory are too thin to do philosophical work.” If this objection has a familiar ring to it, it ought to. The objection is our old friend the fruitfulness criticism.
Arguing with Enemies: Interpretation as Invective
Authors: Nagel Robert F
Published: November 2023

The Bible-quoting football coach described in the last chapter might have had enough authoritarian instincts of his own to sympathize, at least a little, with the university president's censorship of his antigay opinions. But he must have been stunned to hear her depictions of his behavior. The president claimed that he had made “a mockery of freedom of expression” and that he had threatened “the value and dignity of other human beings.” Thus, for having made a brief and literal reference to a revered book, the coach was cast as a dangerous, evil man. He no doubt believed that his statement had been an exercise of free speech, not an attack on that principle, and that his Christian concepts of sinfulness are compatible with human dignity. Even on the assumption that there was some truth in the charges, they represent a commonly observed contemporary phenomenon-the degeneration of public debate into exaggeration and invective.
Rhythm and Conduction Disturbances in Stress Testing
Authors: Ellestad Myrvin H
Published: November 2023

Alterations in cardiac rhythm occur frequently with exercise and are considerably important in understanding a patient’s function and in providing predictive information as to mortality and morbidity. Arrhythmias during exertion result from sympathetically enhanced phase IV repolarization of ectopic foci, so that if the rate of the ectopic focus is faster than the normal pacer tissue in the sinus node, the focus assumes predominance and sets the rhythm. Alterations in recovery time of cardiac tissues caused by ischemia, and probably battery effects associated with ischemic tissue adjacent to normally perfused myocardium, are important. After-potentials (low amplitude oscillations) seen in patients with large infarcts are triggered by catecholamines and enhanced by an influx of calcium. The abrupt withdrawal of much of the parasympathetic tone, which in most cases protects against arrhythmias, probably also plays an important role. The prevalence increases steadily with age and has been reported to be 100% in a study of older subjects. Busby also reports an age-related increase in normal individuals.
Silent Myocardial Ischemia
Authors: Ellestad Myrvin H
Published: November 2023

Although the absence of chest pain and other symptoms of coronary artery disease (CAD) were once believed to provide assurance that its presence was unlikely, this concept must now be laid aside. Gordon and Kannel reported that the first symptom of CAD was myocardial infarction or death in 55% of men in the Framingham study. Most of us will agree that these two end-points are unacceptable. There are two groups of asymptomatic patients commonly considered for stress testing. This chapter deals primarily with those who have never had symptoms recognized as being of cardiac origin. The other group, who have had recognized myocardial infarction but have been asymptomatic following this event, are commonly believed to be free of ischemia but limited somewhat by scar tissue replacing functional myocardium. In actuality, more than 50% of this group have other vessels significantly narrowed. The use of exercise testing in these patients is covered in Chapters 10 and 14.
Materialism as a Scientific Hypothesis
Authors: Graham George , Valentine Elizabeth R
Published: November 2023

In discussing the logical status of the thesis that sensations are processes in the brain, J. J. C. Smart (1959, pp. 155-156)1 contends that I was partly right and partly wrong in maintaining that this thesis could and should be interpreted as a straightforward scientific hypothesis (Place, 1956). He argues that insofar as the issue is between a brain-process thesis and a heart, liver, or kidney thesis the is­ sue is empirical and can be decided by experiment. But insofar as the issue is between materialism on the one hand and epiphenomenalism, psychophysical parallelism, interactionism, and so forth, on the other, the issue is nonempirical. I shall argue that Smart is partly right and partly wrong in maintaining that the is­ sue between the kind of materialism that both he and I would wish to defend and the rival doctrines of epiphenomenalism, psychophysical parallelism, interaction­ism, and so forth, is a nonempirical issue.
Consciousness and the “Zombie-Within” A Functional Analysis of the Blindsight Evidence
Authors: Graham George , Valentine Elizabeth R
Published: November 2023

In this chapter I develop a theory of consciousness and its unconscious counter­part that I call the “zombie-within.” It has its source in two lines of research, both of which originated in the 1950s, now more than forty years ago. One of these was an attempt made by the present author in two papers published in the British Journal of Psychology, “The concept of heed” (Place, 1954) and “Is conscious­ ness a brain process?” (Place, 1956), to examine the implications for the science of psychology of the work of Wittgenstein (1953; 1958) and Ryle (1949) on the linguistic analysis of what Ryle calls the “logical geography of our ordinary mental concepts.” The other was the late Donald Broadbent’s (1958) experimental and theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of selective attention in his book Perception and Communication.
The Role of the Ethnomethodological Experiment in the Empirical Investigation of Social Norms and Its Application to Conceptual Analysis
Authors: Graham George , Valentine Elizabeth R
Published: November 2023

The idea behind this paper is one that has been with me since I was an undergraduate at Oxford in the period immediately following the end of the Second World War. I was studying philosophy and psychology in what was then the brand new honors school of Philosophy, Psychology and Physiology honors school. Those were heady days when philosophy at Oxford was undergoing a revolution from which emerged what came to be called ‘ordinary language philosophy’.
Patria Potestas
Authors: Frier Bruce W , McGinn Thomas A J
Published: November 2023

Marriage, the first linchpin of the Roman family, may seem, from a modern perspective, surprisingly poorly developed and supported in Roman law. By contrast, patria potestas (paternal power), the second linchpin, is forcefully constructed, so forcefully, in fact, that it is one of the most distinctive aspects of the Roman legal tradition. Common to almost all legal systems is a recognition that, during their youth, children require close control by, if possible, their parents, who through social and legal norms have extensive powers to discipline their children and control their property; nor, in premodern legal systems, is it at all unusual for these powers to be concentrated chiefly in the father as representative of a traditional patriarchy. But what is unusual about Roman law is that paternal dominance did not end when children attained maturity or adulthood. On the contrary, with limited exceptions, this dominance continued as long as the child had any living antecedent in the direct male line (father, paternal grandfather, and so on). The jurists recognize patria potestas as a distinctive cultural marker, a determinant of national identity. As Gaius observes: “This is a right peculiar to Roman citizens, since generally speaking no other people have such power over their children” (Inst. 1.55). In legal theory, at least, the right was not only lifelong but virtually unlimited; patres familias, as the wielders of patria potestas, could decide whether those in their power lived or died, whether and whom they could marry and for how long, whether they could treat any property as their own (even though the pater always remained the true owner), and so on.
Succession
Authors: Frier Bruce W , McGinn Thomas A J
Published: November 2023

As we have seen, Roman law concentrated extensive legal power in the hands of patres familiae, who constituted a relatively small portion of the citizen population. For this reason, the death of a pater familias was frequently an event of singular importance, above all to the survivors within his household: a moment they anticipated and experienced with hope, dread, or a dozen other emotions, but at the very least with anxiety about how the division of his estate would affect them. In such tense circumstances, Romans became astonishingly litigious. It comes as no surprise, then, that the law of succession (which governs the process whereby heirs “succeed into the position” of a decedent) had an importance in Roman law considerably greater than in ours. Whether succession was regulated by a will or through the rules for intestacy, it was always a primary means whereby members of the elite acquired wealth and social position. Testamentary bequests, above all from relatives but also from friends, enabled upper-class Romans to maintain or enhance the status enjoyed by previous generations, as well as to prepare to transmit this status to future ones. This process of intergenerational transmission soon acquired a moral aspect as well, as an expression of familial affection and duty (pietas) that transcended individuals and implicated broader social opinions. The amount of space devoted to succession in surviving Roman juristic writings suggests its actual importance in life: as much as 40 percent of Justinian’s Digest. Therefore this chapter only samples relevant case law illustrating fundamental themes related to the family.
Tutelage and the Status of Children and Women
Authors: Frier Bruce W , McGinn Thomas A J
Published: November 2023

Roman law, like other legal systems, recognized that some individuals, although they have become sui iuris, continue to require supervision, especially (in the Roman view) with regard to their property. From this recognition there derived a rather haphazardly concocted law of guardianship whereby a sui iuris person could be subject to the control of a tutor or curator; the extent of this control, however, varied widely from case to case. Young children presented a particular challenge. The harsh Roman demographic regime meant that many children became orphans before reaching adulthood. The Roman Empire offered only limited public assistance in handling orphans; and, as we have seen (Cases 148–154), adoption of sui iuris persons was actually discouraged, obviously because the Romans disliked eliminating independent households. Therefore, they instead relied heavily on tutelage. Archaic statute required the child’s nearest male agnate to become tutor, but this system had a clear potential for abuse since the agnate would often be an heir if the child died intestate. As a result, from an early date it became common for a child’s pater familias to name a tutor in his will; the power to name a testamentary tutor went hand in hand with the pater’s right to dispose of the child’s inheritance if the child died before reaching adulthood (Cases 173–176). When both these possibilities failed, by the late third century B.C. the praetor, in concert with other magistrates, could name a tutor; serving as tutor was conceived as a public duty. The powers and responsibilities of these tutores were extensive. Managing the ward’s estate meant maintaining not only its financial well-being but also, indirectly, the welfare of the ward. In principle, the tutor enjoyed the status of an owner of the property in question, though this still left some room for action on the part of the child in tutelage. But for the tutor there was a palpable downside to wielding so much authority. Tutores could be compelled to take up their role by a magistrate and were liable if they failed to do so. Acting as the guardian of a minor-age child might itself entail liability under one or more headings if the tutor acted fraudulently or simply without due care.
Preliminary: The Professor’s Legacy
Authors: Steinberg Michael , Rothe Larry
Published: November 2023

When my father arrived in the United States from Germany in 1925, he was already almost thirty. He spoke no English and was a veteran of the Western Front who had fought on the losing side. He moved in with a distant cousin, Wilhelm Alvin, who lived in Chicago—where, in a red brick three-story building at the intersection of Lincoln, Diversey, and Racine avenues, he had founded the Lincoln Conservatory of Music. In Germany, Wilhelm Alvin had always been known as der Alvin, and in the neighborhood around the Lincoln Conservatory of Music, heavily populated with German immigrants, you might have expected he would be called the same. (Alvin: My father always used the German pronunciation, the accented Al matching the sound of the first syllable of olive, and the vin sounding like veen.) But this was America, and here Alvin was William A. His students and their parents called him Professor. His friends called him Bill. Or Big Bill. He had girth—the photos show that—and his bearing suggests power as well. He liked to drink, claimed to have cured himself of malaria by a steady intake of dark rum while serving in Cuba in the Spanish-American War, and despite Prohibition knew how to slake his thirst. His hospitality made him popular, right down to a drinking friendship with the beat cop. He must also have had a genuine streak of generosity, else he would not have sponsored my father’s emigration.
The Sacred, the Profane, and the Gritty Affirmations of Music
Authors: Steinberg Michael , Rothe Larry
Published: November 2023

The sacred and the profane: the concepts have been with us all our lives, from our earliest days, even before we were able to name them. Growing up even in the most politically correct environment, with elders committed to moral relativism, we still formed ideas about should and shouldn’t, about what separated the nice kids from the others. Only later, as our sensibilities were formed with help from the Bible or Torah or Quran, John Milton, Herman Melville, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Lincoln, Gandhi, Hitler, Stalin, Superman, Darth Vader, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, and an array of hands known only to each of us, and which continue to shape our personal clay—only later did we develop and refine notions of Good and Evil. Given the either/or methods in which most of us were raised, it is natural for us to think about Good and Evil and their counterparts, the Sacred and Profane—the lofty and the raunchy, spirit and gland—as though they were separate entities. But eventually we recognize what a volatile mixture of opposites we are. Those who can resign themselves to this fact take a step on the path to wisdom. Those who cannot, join the evangelical wing of the Republican Party. Great art—and music, especially—will help steer us toward the first of these alternatives.
Remembering Rachmaninoff
Authors: Steinberg Michael , Rothe Larry
Published: November 2023

Adoorbell rings in Hollywood. Answering, the owner, five foot one, has to tilt his head back to look into the face of his unexpected and tall, tall visitor. A “six-and-a-half-foot scowl” is how Stravinsky described Rachmaninoff. But on this spring evening, Rachmaninoff is not scowling. He has come to present an immense jar of honey to his fellow-expatriate and fellow-composer. What a shame that Vera Stravinsky is not on hand with her camera to capture this moment. (And by the way, there are pictures of Rachmaninoff smiling most winningly.)
A Visit with Lou Harrison
Authors: Steinberg Michael , Rothe Larry
Published: November 2023

That’s an awfully damn East Coast thing to say!” That scornful remark was addressed to me by the composer and writer Charles Shere. I no longer remember what terrible thing I had said that elicited Shere’s words. I do remember that he spoke them at Tanglewood in the summer of 1974 at a workshop on music criticism and that it came as a shock to me that there could be an “East Coast thing to say” or, by obvious inference, a “West Coast thing.” I was the Boston Globe’s music critic then, and we on the East Coast thought of our “thing” as central and normative, and of everything else as eccentric and peripheral.
The Evolution of Reciprocity in Sizable Groups
Authors: Boyd Robert , Richerson Peter J
Published: November 2023

Several lines of evidence suggest that sizable groups of people sometimes behave cooperatively, even in the absence of external sanctions against noncooperative behavior. For example, in many food foraging groups, game is shared among all members of the group regardless of who makes the kill (e.g., Kaplan and Hill, 1984; Lee, 1979; Damas, 1971). In many other stateless societies, men risk their lives in warfare with other groups (e.g., Meggit, 1977). There is also evidence that a great deal of cooperation takes place in contemporary state-level societies without external sanctions. For example, people contribute to charity, give blood, and vote—even though the effect of their own contributions on the welfare of the group is negligible. The groups benefiting are often very large and composed of very distantly related individuals. Perhaps the most dramatic examples of cooperation in contemporary societies are underground movements such as Poland’s Solidarity in which people cooperate to achieve a common goal in opposition to all of the power of the modern state (see Olson, 1971, 1982, and Hardin, 1982, for further examples.) Because of the anecdotal nature of these data, it is possible to doubt any particular example. However, psychologists and sociologists have also shown that people cooperate under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, albeit for smaller stakes.
Why People Punish Defectors: Weak Conformist Transmission Can Stabilize Costly Enforcement of Norms in Cooperative Dilemmas With Joseph Henrich
Authors: Boyd Robert , Richerson Peter J
Published: November 2023

In many societies, humans cooperate in large groups of unrelated individuals. Most evolutionary explanations for cooperation combine kinship (Hamilton, 1964) and reciprocity (“reciprocal altruism,” Trivers, 1971). These mechanisms seem to explain the evolution of cooperation in many species including ants, bees, naked mole rats, and vampire bats. However, because social interaction among humans often involves large groups of mostly unrelated individuals, explaining cooperation has proved a tricky problem for both evolutionary and rational choice theorists. Evolutionary models of cooperation using the repeated n-person prisoner’s dilemma predict that cooperation is not likely to be favored by natural selection if groups are larger than around 10, unless relatedness is very high (Boyd and Richerson, 1988). As group size rises above 10, to 100 or 1000, cooperation is virtually impossible to evolve or maintain with only reciprocity and kinship.1
Group-Beneficial Norms Can Spread Rapidly in a Structured Population
Authors: Boyd Robert , Richerson Peter J
Published: November 2023

Many culturally transmitted norms are group-beneficial (Sober and Wilson, 1998): property rights encourage productive effort, rules against murder and assault encourage civil order, norms governing the filling of political offices reduce the chances of civil war, and product standards, building codes, and rules of professional conduct allow more efficient commerce. For most of human history, states were weak or nonexistent, and norms were not enforced by external sanctions. Nonetheless, norms were important regulators of social order, and while in modern states black-letter laws also further many of the same ends as informal norms, the evidence is that informal custom still plays a very important role in regulating behavior (Ellickson, 1991).
The Evolution of Altruistic Punishment With Herbert Gintis and Samuel Bowles
Authors: Boyd Robert , Richerson Peter J
Published: November 2023

Unlike any other species, humans cooperate with nonkin in large groups. This behavior is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because cooperating individuals incur individual costs to confer benefits on unrelated group members. None of the mechanisms commonly used to explain such behavior allows the evolution of altruistic cooperation in large groups. Repeated interactions may support cooperation in dyadic relations (Axelrod and Hamilton, 1981; Trivers, 1971; Clutton-Brock and Parker, 1995), but this mechanism is unsustainable if the number of individuals interacting strategically is larger than a handful (Boyd and Richerson, 1998). Interdemic group selection can lead to the evolution of altruism only when groups are small and migration is infrequent (Sober and Wilson, 1998; Eshel, 1972; Aoki, 1982; Rogers, 1990). A third recently proposed mechanism (Hauert, De Monte, Hofbauer, and Sigmund, 2002) requires that asocial, solitary types outcompete individuals living in uncooperative social groups, an implausible assumption for humans.
Toward a Disciplined Writing Life
Authors: Schneider Pat , Elbow Peter
Published: November 2023

Often I am asked, “How can I write regularly, steadily, faithfully?” This is not the question of how effective the writing is but how to maintain a consistent effort.

Most of what we think and read about discipline only increases our resistance. “Discipline” usually means making ourselves do some duty, grit our teeth, force ourselves to do what we don’t want to do. A disciplined writer, we are told (or we tell ourselves) writes every day, writes X number of hours a day or X number of pages or paragraphs a day. We read how someone else structures his or her writing life, and we judge ourselves by that pattern. Unfortunately, many books on writing reinforce this idea of discipline.
Writing Practice: Developing Craft
Authors: Schneider Pat , Elbow Peter
Published: November 2023

As artists, we must not underestimate the importance of conscious and continuous work to master our craft. Here are a few basic suggestions that I find most commonly needed by writers who are beginning or returning to their vocation as writer.

Our writing is most powerful when it is most concrete. In the piece that follows, Myra South could have simply said, “The herb gardens are bountiful.” How much more we are given by being allowed to taste, see, and touch!

A couple weeks ago I picked bunches of sweet basil. We ate many leaves wrapped around yellow pear tomatoes we’d also grown. Basil leaves were also delicious on wheat crackers spread with gorgonzola. Or wrapped around black olives. Or in frittatas with onions and red bell peppers.
Introduction: Writing with Others
Authors: Schneider Pat , Elbow Peter
Published: November 2023

Most writers benefit from regular communication with other writers. Writing can be a lonely endeavor, much of the work must be done in solitude. However, too much solitude—or too much conversation with people who do not write, and too little with those who do—can lead to depression and despair. Having a place to listen thoughtfully to new work by others and having the option of receiving response to your own writing can be invigorating, encouraging, and tremendously helpful. On the other hand, the wrong sort of group, workshop, or class can do damage.
Writing in a Classroom
Authors: Schneider Pat , Elbow Peter
Published: November 2023

I have not, to this point, said enough about good teachers and exciting classrooms. Every year I have the privilege of “kicking off” a summer writing program for teachers in public schools in Connecticut, under the supervision of Mary Mackley, the visionary director of the Connecticut Writing Center, University of Connecticut. My responsibility is to provide a model workshop in which teachers experience writing in the ways described in this book.