Search results

Reports on a project to create a new infrastructure for experimental economics and sociology by connecting cutting edge research to Web‐based software development. The project will build and maintain an active Web site of highly flexible modular architecture for theoretically‐driven experimentation. The Web site, itself a laboratory, fundamentally advances experimental study, automatically records and archives data, and maintains electronic journals. To increase the integrity and effectiveness of social science knowledge acquisition, the Web site will support replications while creating large and systematic databases. The Web‐lab’s goal is to change social science investigation by allowing experiments to be run using subjects from large and diverse populations. The Web‐lab will democratize experimental research; a local laboratory will need no more than a few computers with access to the Web. Using designs at the Web‐lab, extensive laboratory components will be developed for mainstream graduate and undergraduate social science courses.

At a recent inquest upon the body of a woman who was alleged to have died as the result of taking certain drugs for an improper purpose, one of the witnesses described himself as “an analyst and manufacturing chemist,” but when asked by the coroner what qualifications he had, he replied : “I have no qualifications whatever. What I know I learned from my father, who was a well‐known ‘F.C.S.’” Comment on the “F.C.S.” is needless.

Mr. LEVENSTEIN, the President of the Society of Chemical Industry, in his address delivered at Liverpool recently, dealt very fully with the question of the commercial position of Great Britain as compared with other countries, more especially Germany, and emphasised the fact that if this country is to compete successfully with her contemporaries she must, to use the words of the Prince of Wales at the Gúildhall, “wake up.” After reviewing the chief factors making for Germany's advance in industry and commerce Mr. LEVENSTEIN says: “How are we to defend ourselves? Shall we rest content as we are or bestir ourselves and awake to the irresistible fact that continued apathy and indifference mean ruin to our national position?” This is strong language but not stronger than the occasion demands, for the statistics by which these observations are backed clearly indicate a marked decadence in the national prosperity notwithstanding the years of apparent “record” trade, which, however, cannot be regarded so favourably when subjected to detailed analysis and comparison. Mr. LEVENSTEIN'S suggestions to meet this situation are as follows: (1) The appointment of a competent and expert Minister of Commerce. (2) The nationalisation and extension of our canals and waterways. (3) A measure for greatly extending and improving our secondary education. (4) A sensible reform of our patent laws.

The purpose of this paper is to question the common conviction that responsibility is the major factor influencing performance.

The paper takes the form of a comparison of two recent cases of ecological catastrophes.

In emergency situations, locating parties able to perform gives better results than establishing responsibility for the accident.

More similar cases should be examined systematically.

If the conclusions are accepted, the conventional mode of acting in emergencies may change.

Hopefully, the paper may redirect attention from responsibility to performativity.

The paper opposes a commonly accepted belief and the corresponding mode of acting.

Referring to the question of the adulteration of brandy with silent spirit, the Standard recently observed that the question of obtaining, by legislation or otherwise, an improvement in the present system of public control over the purity of articles of food and drink has become one of great and even national importance. Many of the grosser kinds of adulteration, against which the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts were originally directed, are of far less frequent occurrence, but in their place has arisen a great variety of more subtle forms of adulteration, frequently very harmful, and always objectionable on account of the misrepresentation that the sophisticated article is the genuine product which the purchaser has asked for and has a right to expect. With adulteration of this kind the local authorities, whose business it is to enforce the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, are often unable to deal satisfactorily, and this fact has been insisted upon by many scientific authorities who have interested themselves in the subject. The position of affairs with regard to spirits typifies the difficulty which constantly arises in connection with a large variety of articles of food and drink of both home and foreign manufacture. It is obvious that when cases relating to the additions of “preservative” chemicals to milk and butter, of glucose to marmalade, or the proportion of “esters” in a brandy, come before different magistrates, supported by a mass of conflicting evidence on both sides, the justices cannot be expected to come to consistent or satisfactory conclusions. Government policy in the matter seems so far to have been confined to appointing a series of committees or commissions, and afterwards doing nothing, or next to nothing, with their reports.

The Sanitary Committee of a certain County Council, strong with the strength of recent creation, have lately been animated by a desire to distinguish themselves in some way, and, proceeding along the lines of least resistance, they appear to have selected the Public Analyst as the most suitable object for attack. The charge against this unfortunate official was not that he is incompetent, or that he had been in any way negligent of his duties as prescribed by Act of Parliament, but simply and solely that he has the temerity to reside in London, which city is distant by a certain number of miles from the much favoured district controlled by the County Council aforesaid. The committee were favoured in their deliberations by the assistance of no less an authority than the “Principal” of a local “Technical School”;—and who could be more capable than he to express an opinion upon so simple a matter? This eminent exponent of scientific truths, after due and proper consideration, is reported to have delivered himself of the opinion that “scientifically it would be desirable that the analyst should reside in the district, as the delay occasioned by the sending of samples of water to London is liable to produce a misleading effect upon an analysis.” Apparently appalled by the contemplation of such possibilities, and strengthened by another expression of opinion to the effect that there were as “good men” in the district as in London, the committee resolved to recommend the County Council to determine the existing arrangement with the Public Analyst, and to appoint a “local analyst for all purposes.” Thus, the only objection which could be urged to the employment of a Public Analyst resident in London was the ridiculous one that the composition of a sample of water was likely to seriously alter during the period of its transit to London, and this contention becomes still more absurd when it is remembered that the examination of water samples is no part of the official duty of a Public Analyst. The employment of local scientific talent may be very proper when the object to be attained is simply the more or less imperfect instruction of the rising generation in the rudiments of what passes in this country for “technical education”; but the work of the Public Analyst is serious and responsible, and cannot be lightly undertaken by every person who may be acquainted with some of the uses of a test‐tube. The worthy members of this committee may find to their cost, as other committees have found before them, that persons possessing the requisite knowledge and experience are not necessarily indigenous to their district. Supposing that the County Council adopts the recommendation, the aspirations of the committee may even then be strangled in their infancy, as the Local Government Board will want to know all about the matter, and the committee will have to give serious and valid reasons in support of their case.

The law-oriented short stories and novels of lawyer/English professor John William Corrington are receiving increasing attention from legal scholars. However, no one has analyzed the science fiction screenplays he co-wrote with his wife, Joyce, from a legal perspective. This article analyzes two such screenplays and concludes that they are “Socratic” texts whose narrative structures and epistemological processes work in much the same way that the traditional participatory exchange works in law school. My analysis explores the links between law, allegory and science fiction as intersecting methods to imagine the possibilities for the future.