Strong polarized relations for the continuum

We prove that the strong polarized relation for the continuum holds for $\aleph_0$ and for every supercompact cardinal. We use iteration of Mathias forcing.Comment: 9 page

Foreign policy and domestic politics: a study of the 2002 election in the Republic of Ireland

This article examines the extent to which foreign policy featured in the 2002 general election campaign in the Republic of Ireland. It began with the premise that although foreign policy had not featured prominently in previous elections campaigns the evolving crisis in the peace process in Northern Ireland, coupled with the ongoing debate over the Nice treaty may make foreign policy more likely to be part of the campaign debate and also the subject of party differentiation in 2002. The study reviewed party manifestos, press statements and other aspects of the media campaign. It found clear party differentiation in foreign policy between the parties in their manifestos, however the campaign in the national media was almost devoid of debate on these issues. In analysing the reasons for the absence of debate, the dull and static nature of the campaign is contrasted with the surprising election results. In concludes that although on the surface the absence of engagement on foreign policy in the media appears to concur with the dominant view in the literature that foreign policy in not significant in first order elections inferences can be made that leave the impact of foreign policy on voter behaviour a more open question

Laver's results and low-dimensional topology

In connection with his interest in selfdistributive algebra, Richard Laver established two deep results with potential applications in low-dimensional topology, namely the existence of what is now known as the Laver tables and the well-foundedness of the standard ordering of positive braids. Here we present these results and discuss the way they could be used in topological applications

Martin's maximum and the non-stationary ideal

We analyze the non-stationary ideal and the club filter at aleph_1 under MM

A strong polarized relation

We prove the consistency of a strong polarized relation for a cardinal and its successor, using pcf and forcingComment: 14 page

The object of fashion : methodological approaches to the history of fashion

This essay considers the role of artefacts in the historical study of dress and fashion and suggests the existence of three different approaches. The field of history of dress and costume has a long tradition going back to the nineteenth century. It adopts the methodologies of art history and considers artefacts as central to the analysis of different periods and themes. In the last few decades the emergence of fashion studies has been interpreted as a distancing from artefacts. It is here claimed that fashion studies brought theoretical rigour and embraced a deductive methodology of analysis in which artefacts still played an important function. The final part of this essay introduces the reader to what I call the material culture of fashion, a hybrid methodology borrowed from anthropology and archeology in which the object is central in the study of social, cultural and economic practices that are time specific. It shows in particular the challenges and paybacks of such an approach

A new Database of Parliamentary Debates in Ireland, 1922--2008

We present a new database of parliamentary debates and written answers in Dáil Éireann for the entire time period from the third Dáil in 1922 to the thirtieth Dáil in 2008. This database was built from the Official Records of the Houses of the Oireachtas. Unlike its original version, our database integrates information about debates and information about deputies into a single database. This database therefore allows to search and retrieve contributions from individual deputies of the Dáil (Teachta Dála or TD) and to combine information about TDs' parties and constituencies with the history of political speeches and written answers. In addition, our database facilitates the application of content analysis software such as Wordscore (Laver, Benoit and Garry, 2003) or Wordfish (Slapin and Proksch, 2008) and makes it possible to estimate TDs' policy preferences from speeches. In this paper we document the structure of the database and how it was generated. We furthermore demonstrate how political debates can be used in social science research through a series of examples. These include an analysis of the policy agenda in all budget speeches from 1922 to today, the estimation of speakers' policy positions in the 2008 budget debate, and the estimation of ministers' policy positions in the 26th government in 2002.parliamentary debates, policy point estimation, budget speeches, text analysis