Questioning gender is about taking an active, critical role in the technological design of our daily behaviour. It is a deconstruction of the oppositions that exist in the discourses of Ambient Intelligence designers, the ICT industry and computer scientists. What underlies the assumption that Ambient Intelligence will, by disappearing into our environment, bring humans both an easy and entertaining life? The gender perspective can uncover power relations within the promotion and realisation of Ambient Intelligence that satisfy an obvious wish for (...) a technological heaven. The deconstruction of the promise of progress and a better life reveals what is overvalued, what is undervalued and what is ignored. This paper is a deconstruction of the view, currently prevalent in the discourses of Ambient Intelligence; a view of humans and the way they live. A view that will influence the way women and men will be allowed to construct their lives. (shrink)

This paper examines how people anticipate negative emotion when faced with an uncertain outcome and try to manage their expectation. While extant research streams remain equivocal on whether managing expectation always succeeds, this research examines situations in which setting a low expectation can have an adverse emotional impact and ways to alleviate this negative emotional consequence. Using goal setting and false-feedback paradigm, we show that those who set low goals to manage expectation can end up feeling more disappointed than those (...) who set high goals (study 1), but this negative impact can be avoided when goals are reminded at feedback and when individuals are made aware of the inaccuracies in forecasting affect or are reminded of their initial goal (studies 1 and 2). (shrink)

Using longitudinal, ethnographic data, the authors examine how the pursuit of self-sufficiency in the context of welfare reform may unintentionally encourage some women to develop alternative dangerous dependencies on abusive or potentially abusive men. In this article, the authors document how women ended up relying on men who have been abusive to them either for instrumental assistance or for more direct financial assistance as they struggled to move from welfare to work. The authors also document how some extremely disadvantaged and (...) vulnerable women became enmeshed in even more dangerous dependencies as they hit time limits and fell through public and private safety nets into drug addiction and sex work. The authors frame this discussion of dangerous dependencies with the recognition that dependency relations are necessary and inevitable components of carework. They argue that the discourse of self-sufficiency should acknowledge the fact that careworkers are productive citizens to the same extent as paid laborers and grapple with the question of the means through which they can support that productivity when personal resources are limited and paid labor is temporarily or permanently impossible. (shrink)

What is the value of having medical students engage in creative production as part of their learning? Creating something new requires medical students to take risks and even to fail--something they tend to be neither accustomed to nor comfortable with doing. “Making stuff” can help students prepare for such failures in a controlled environment that doesn’t threaten their professional identities. Furthermore, doing so can facilitate students becoming resilient and creative problem-solvers who strive to find new ways to address vexing questions. (...) Though creating something new can be fun, this is not the main outcome of interest. Rather, the principle reason we recommend devoting precious curricular time to creative endeavors is because it helps medical students become better doctors. (shrink)

InEpistulae ex Ponto4.8, one of the last poems written from exile (dated to 15 or 16c.e.), Ovid expresses his increasing hopes for Germanicus' assistance in effecting his recall to Rome. Though ostensibly addressed to his stepdaughter's father-in-law, P. Suillius Rufus, the poem contains a petition to Germanicus (27–88), as a poet to a poet, which promises future commemoration in Ovid's poetry if he is removed from Tomis:clausaque si misero patria est, ut ponar in ullo,qui minus Ausonia distet ab Vrbe loco,unde (...) tuas possim laudes celebrare recentesmagnaque quam minima facta referre mora. (85–8)and if my country is closed against me in my misery, may I be placed in any place less distant from the Ausonian city, whence I might celebrate your praises while they are recent and relate your great deeds with the least delay. (shrink)

We live in an era where our health is linked to that of others across the globe, and nothing brings this home better than the specter of a pandemic. This paper explores the findings of town hall meetings associated with the Canadian Program of Research on Ethics in a Pandemic , in which focus groups met to discuss issues related to the global governance of an influenza pandemic. Two competing discourses were found to be at work: the first was based (...) upon an economic rationality and the second upon a humanitarian rationality. The implications for public support and the long-term sustainability of new global norms, networks, and regulations in global public health are discussed. (shrink)

TheCulexis now widely recognized as a piece of post-Ovidian, possibly Tiberian, pseudo-juvenilia written by an author impersonating the young Virgil, although it was attached to Virgil's name already in the first centuryc.e., being identified as Virgilian by Statius, Suetonius and Martial. Dedicated to the young Octavian (Octauiin line 1), the poem seems to fill a biographical gap in Virgil's career before his composition of theEclogues. It is introduced as aludus, which Irene Peirano suggests may openly refer to ‘the act of (...) impersonating Virgil’, and, like many of the poems in theAppendix Vergiliana, it seems to have a parodic intent. TheCulexhas been interpreted as a parody of neoteric style and the epyllion, as mock-epic, as Virgil parody (John Henderson called it a ‘spoofAeneidin bucolic drag’), as pointed Augustan satire, as mock Ovidian ‘Weltgedicht’ and as just very bad poetry (Housman's ‘stutterer’). Glenn Most has observed that the poem's three ‘acts’ structurally recapitulate Virgil's three major works in chronological succession. Little attention, however, has been paid to theCulex's final lines, which contain a catalogue of flowers thepastorplaces on the gnat's tomb. Recent scholarship has reintroduced an older interpretation of the gnat's tomb as a political allegory of Augustus’ Mausoleum; in this paper I suggest instead that the tomb and its flowers serve a closural and metapoetic function at the end of the poem. (shrink)

In this fascinating new collection of essays, contemporary historians examine the ways earlier historians have framed, written, and "made" the Jewish past. Probing the ideology and methodology of their professional predecessors, American and Israeli historians offer new perspectives on some of the central figures of twentieth-century Jewish historiography, including Gershom Scholem, S. D. Goitein, Yitzhak Baer, Elias Bickermann, and Cecil Roth, as well as the Israeli "New Historians." Although the lives and work of these scholars differ in many ways, (...) Jewish historians have recurrently confronted the challenges posed by assimilation, antisemitism, and various forms of nationalism. Through their critical examinations of the construction of the Jewish past, the contributors to this volume develop important insights into current attitudes toward the dominant canons and ideals of historical scholarship and the future of historiography. They shine new light on the formation of a historical worldview and the "making" of history. (shrink)

Governmental organizations funding science m several nations are creating large research centers that draw on several disciplines and that focus research on an area of immediate use to industrial concerns. I analyze eight proposals for a U.K. center devoted to human communication. I argue that the boundaries that such a center seeks to cross— between areas of knowledge, between disciplines, between academic and nonacademic research—are constructed in the proposals for strategic purposes m the immediate situations. The study supports other recent (...) work on the crucial role of texts as interme diaries in the science policy processes, and on the need to recognize the unexpected contingencies and unintended consequences of textual circulation. (shrink)

Allthough small business accounts for over 90% of businesses in U.K. and indeed elsewhere, they remain the largely uncharted area of ethics. There has not been any research based on the perspective of small business owners, to define what echical delemmas they face and how, if at all, they resolve them. This paper explores ethics from the perspective of small business owner, using focus groups and reports on four clearly identifiable themes of ethical delemmas; entrepreneurial activity itself, conflicts of personal (...) values with business needs, social responsibility and the impact of owners' personality on business ethics. The mechanisms for resolving ethical dilemmas is not at all clear, as there appears to be a web of filters which are used in an inter-connected way. However a common starting point for resolving an ethical delemma which involves others is based on identifying who it is (e.g., a friend or institution) and the quality of the relationship with that person. The research yielded a rich source of material on business ethics and it is clear that future researchers must focus on this sector if business ethics is to make significant advances. (shrink)

This essay defends the view of G. C. Pande that, contrary to received opinion, "ānanda" (bliss, felicity) is accepted by Śaṅkara (ca. 788-820) as a feature of Brahman consistent with and parallel to sat (being) and cit (consciousness). It also includes a counterargument by B. N. K. Sharma, and in conclusion offers a reasoned judgment of the arguments of Śaṅkara and these two contemporary philosophers.

COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality while they are implementing reasonable public (...) health interventions. Practically, a noncrisis level of mortality is that experienced during a bad influenza season, which society considers an acceptable background risk. Governments take action to limit mortality from influenza, but there is no emergency that includes severe lockdowns. This “flu-risk standard” is a nonarbitrary and generally accepted heuristic. Mortality above the flu-risk standard justifies greater governmental interventions, including retaining vaccines for a country's own citizens over global need. The precise level of vaccination needed to meet the flu-risk standard will depend upon empirical factors related to the pandemic. This links the ethical principles to the scientific data emerging from the emergency. Thus, the FPR framework recognizes that governments should prioritize procuring vaccines for their country when doing so is necessary to reduce mortality to noncrisis flu-like levels. But after that, a government is obligated to do its part to share vaccines to reduce risks of mortality for people in other countries. We consider and reject objections to the FPR framework based on a country: having developed a vaccine, raising taxes to pay for vaccine research and purchase, wanting to eliminate economic and social burdens, and being ineffective in combating COVID-19 through public health interventions. (shrink)

Context: Although ethics consultation is commonplace in United States (U.S.) hospitals, descriptive data about this health service are lacking. Objective: To describe the prevalence, practitioners, and processes of ethics consultation in U.S. hospitals. Design: A 56-item phone or questionnaire survey of the "best informant" within each hospital. Participants: Random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals, stratified by bed size. Results: The response rate was 87.4%. Ethics consultation services (ECSs) were found in 81% of all general hospitals in the U.S., and (...) in 100% of hospitals with more than 400 beds. The median number of consults performed by ECSs in the year prior to survey was 3. Most individuals performing ethics consultation were physicians (34%), nurses (31%), social workers (11%), or chaplains (10%). Only 41% had formal supervised training in ethics consultation. Consultation practices varied widely both within and between ECSs. For example, 65% of ECSs always made recommendations, whereas 6% never did. These findings highlight a need to clarify standards for ethics consultation practices. (shrink)

In the fifth–sixth century CE the rulers of the Kadamba dynasty claimed the town of Halsi in modern Karnataka as the northern capital of their expanding polity. Their investments in this locale are recorded in a corpus of copper-plate inscriptions spanning four generation of kings. The plates record the growth of a thriving Jain community at Palāśikā and are revelatory of their relationships with the Kadamba rulers and their agents. This study of the donative and political processes converging in Palāśikā (...) shows that the use of Sanskrit inscriptions as media for royal representation and public self-fashioning was highly developed in the Kadamba polity, where idioms and trends developed independent of the Gupta royal model. Moreover, the evidence from Halsi is indicative of the centrality of Jain religious communities, ideologies, and institutions in the administration of the Kadamba polity and the expression of a lineage identity. (shrink)

Benjamin Whichcote.--Benjamin Whichcote and Jeremy Taylor.--John Smith.--Ralph Cudworth.--Henry More.--Richard Cumberland.--Nathanael Culverwel.--George Rust.--Edward Stillingfleet.--Additional notes: John Calvin.--Lancelot Andrewes: Excerpt on the candle of the Lord.--William Laud: Excerpt on Scripture.

The Euthyphro is crucially important for understanding Plato's presentation of the last days of Socrates, dramatized in four brief dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. In addition to narrating this evocative series of events in the life of Plato's philosophical hero, the texts also can be read as reflecting how a wise man faces death. This particular dialogue contains Socrates' vivid examination of the intentions of Euthyphro to prosecute his own father for murder and culminates in an attempt to understand (...) holiness-a topic central both to Euthyphro's justification of his actions and to the charge of impiety that Socrates faces before the Athenian court. This accessible student commentary by Charles Platter presents an introduction to the Euthyphro, the full Greek text, and a commentary designed for undergraduates and selected graduate students. As part of the series Michigan Classical Commentaries, now edited by Josiah Osgood and Alexander Sens at Georgetown University, and K. Sara Myers at the University of Virginia, the volume is sized and priced for student use. (shrink)

This paper’s purpose is to provide a foundation for viewing critical thinking as both a maximal and typical performance construct. While maximal performance measures the best a person can do, typical performance measures what the person is most likely to do. An overview of maximal performance, including its history and limitations, will be given. The role of maximal and typical performance in cognitive development will be demonstrated through an exploration of the relationships between behavior, the environment, personality, crystallized intelligence, and (...) fluid intelligence. Furthermore, these topics will be related to the development and use of critical thinking skills. Discussion will conclude with directions for future research. (shrink)

Introductory. - The passive fallacy. - The idols of the theatre. - Intellectualism. - Absolutism. - Subjectivism. - German idealism. - T.H. Green. - Mr. F.H. Bradley. - Professor Bosanquet.

A discussion of the general presuppositions and ideas which underlie the Christian ethical teaching, treating of such subjects as conscience, the concepts of sin and virtue, and the relation between morality and religion. The book also attempts to explain the traditional Christian attitudes towards certain particular matters of conduct; for example, marriage and divorce, gambling, and the rights and duties of private property. Written by the then Bishop of Exeter, this book was originally published in 1950.