Evolution, Not Revolution

Advertising clearly isn\u27t treating the gay movement as a viable market, deserving of special campaigns and special treatment, as it is now beginning to do with blacks and women and has done for years with teenagers. So declared Advertising Age in 1972, under the headline: No Gay Market Yet, Admen, Gays Agree: Yet within three decades, the gay market and, gay and lesbian media were sufficiently established for Viacom subsidiaries MTV and Showtime to explore the development of a gay cable channel, Outlet. MTV executive Matt Farber described this progression as an evolution, not a revolution, contrasting the image of a revolution - a politically motivated, violent upheaval with a Darwinian ideal, where natural selection by an intrinsically fair, equilibrium-seeking free market facilitates an inexorable march toward increasingly progressive images of GLBT people, Evolution, not revolution is the cousin of business, not politics : it suggests that gay marketing, and the media it supports, simply evolved through rational development within the entrepreneurial sphere, and disavows the efforts of marketers, media publishers, journalists, market researchers, and consumers themselves toward actively producing this market. Yet despite marketers\u27 claims that they are interested in gay and lesbian consumers for dispassionate reasons of business, not politics, the history of the gay market shows that this consumer niche was forged out of an intimate meeting of the entrepreneurial search for ever-expanding sources of revenue and the political quest for sexual equality

Company Registration In Its Historical Context: Evolution Not Revolution

The piece examines proposals for changing the current system for registering securities under the Securities Act of 1933. Under the current transaction-based system, issuers must register each non-exempt public offering of securities. Despite the SEC\u27s rule-making power, regulatory revision, at least with respect to the implementation of any major changes to the existing federal securities regulation landscape, has traditionally followed a somewhat cyclical model. First, there is discussion in the academic and professional literature, commenting on, criticizing or proposing changes to some facet of the existing regulatory system (“public debate”); then, either overlapping with or following this public debate, the SEC may informally float non-binding suggestions for changes, through presentations at conferences, or unofficial articles and publications written by SEC staff members (“agency debate”). Again, perhaps overlapping with the agency debate, the SEC may next issue a formal statement, such as a release, containing proposals to address, and even further shape the discourse, seeking comments on the statements (“agency proposal”). After renewed public debate, and taking into consideration, to varying extents, the comments made, the SEC then exercises its rule-making power and formalizes the revisions into rules (“agency action”). Because of the cyclical nature of the model, as new rules are enacted and put into effect, courts may have an opportunity to interpret them or to pass on their constitutionality, and commentators and the private bar have an opportunity to evaluate the success of the new rules and any deficiencies or other issues arising therefrom, generating additional public debate. Thus, in the aftermath of the agency action, the cycle starts all over again (“next public debate”). The agency action portion of the model has become much easier for the SEC to accomplish in recent years. The SEC is now authorized by statute to go beyond rule-making simply to carry out the provisions of securities laws. Agency action to adopt a company registration system is the next logical step in the progression from a transaction-based registration system to a company-based registration system. This progression includes the public debate and agency action that was the precursor of company registration - the adoption of the integrated disclosure system for the primary offering and secondary trading markets and the adoption of the shelf registration process. This was followed by the penultimate step towards a company-based registration system, the universal shelf. Arguably, the entire federal securities regulatory system fits into the cyclical model. This Article, however, is limited to an exploration of the company registration proposal put forth by the SEC in July 1996 in its historical context. Part II of this Article is an application of the cyclical model to the adoption of the integrated disclosure system and the shelf registration process. Part III is an application of the cyclical model to the SEC\u27s company registration proposal as a logical outflow of prior debates, including a discussion of possible issues left unresolved by or raised by the company registration proposal that may generate the next public debate, with a recommendation that the SEC adopt company registration

Web 2.0: Nothing Changes…but Everything is Different

For some, Web 2.0 is a "simple" evolution of the current web; for others, Web 2.0 is a real revolution. Web 2.0 is, in fact, a "revolutionary evolution." Technically speaking, Web 2.0 is a "simple" evolution because it is not a technical "breakthrough," as it is essentially based on an aggregation of existing technologies. However, the impact of Web 2.0 is such that it can actually be described as an evolution that will shake our sociological, economic and legal bases. This paper addresses the legal aspects of Web 2.0 and tries to explain that while Web 2.0 is not a lawless domain, it is highly likely to create a legal tsunami.Web 2.0; regulation; law; case law; blogs; liability; intellectual property; personal data; knowledge management; collaborative space and employment law

The Revolution that Wasn't

The Revolution that Wasn't: A principal legacy of the Rehnquist Court is its revitalization of doctrines associated with federalism. No similar evolution occurred in separation of powers doctrines. Commentators do not perceive important shifts in the doctrine. Nor should they the reasoning and results in the Rehnquist Court cases are of a piece with what came before. Lack of "revolution" was not for lack of opportunity. And, from the perspective that the Supreme Court has invoked in explaining many of its federalism cases, there is muchvery much, in factthat is not right about the structure of the federal government and the constitutional rules that permit that structure. Using the federalism decisions as a point of comparison, this paper asks why there has been no "revolution" (using the term loosely) in separation of powers jurisprudence during the Rehnquist Court. The paper argues that internal and external factors that drive separation of powers jurisprudence diverge from the factors that drive federalism jurisprudence. The paper focuses on four factors: judicial incentives; the positive law that the Court is applying; the external factors that influence doctrinal developments; and the likely results of shifts in doctrine.

Artificial intelligence's new frontier: artificial companions and the fourth revolution

‘The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com '. Copyright Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.In this paper I argue that recent technological transformations in the life-cycle of information have brought about a fourth revolution, in the long process of reassessing humanity’s fundamental nature and role in the universe. We are not immobile, at the centre of the universe (Copernicus); we are not unnaturally distinct and different from the rest of the animal world (Darwin); and we are far from being entirely transparent to ourselves (Freud). We are now slowly accepting the idea that we might be informational organisms among many agents (Turing), inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, but sharing with them a global environment that is ultimately made of information, the infosphere. This new conceptual revolution is humbling, but also exciting. For in view of this important evolution in our self-understanding, and given the sort of IT-mediated interactions that humans will increasingly enjoy with their environment and a variety of other agents, whether natural or synthetic, we have the unique opportunity of developing a new ecological approach to the whole of reality.Peer reviewe

Volume-preserving mean curvature flow of revolution hypersurfaces in a Rotationally Symmetric Space

In an ambient space with rotational symmetry around an axis (which include the Hyperbolic and Euclidean spaces), we study the evolution under the volume-preserving mean curvature flow of a revolution hypersurface M generated by a graph over the axis of revolution and with boundary in two totally geodesic hypersurfaces (tgh for short). Requiring that, for each time t, the evolving hypersurface M_t meets such tgh ortogonally, we prove that: a) the flow exists while M_t does not touch the axis of rotation; b) throughout the time interval of existence, b1) the generating curve of M_t remains a graph, and b2) the averaged mean curvature is double side bounded by positive constants; c) the singularity set (if non-empty) is finite and discrete along the axis; d) under a suitable hypothesis relating the enclosed volume to the n-volume of M, we achieve long time existence and convergence to a revolution hypersurface of constant mean curvature.Comment: 24 pages. We have added some lines at the beginning explaining the notation, and clarified a little bit more the proofs of Proposition 1 and Theorems 5 and 10, the statements of Proposition 2 and Corollary 3 and an argument in Remark 1. We have also completed reference 18. A version of this paper will appear in Mathematische Zeitschrif

Evolution not revolution of farming systemswill best feed and green the world

The challenge to properly feed a world population of 9.2 billion by 2050, that must be achieved on essentially currently cropped area, requires that food production be increased by 70%. This large increase can only be achieved by combinations of greater crop yields and more intensive cropping adapted to local conditions and availability of inputs. Farming systems are dynamic and continuously adapt to changing ecological, environmental and social conditions, while achieving greater production and resource-use efficiency by application of science and technology. This article argues that the solution to feed and green the world in 2050 is to support this evolution more strongly by providing farmers with necessary information, inputs, and recognition. There is no revolutionary alternative. Proposals to transform agriculture to low-input and organic systems would, because of low productiv- ity, exacerbate the challenge if applied in small part, and ensure failure if applied more widely. The challenge is, however, great. Irrigation, necessary to increase cropping intensity in many areas cannot be extended much more widely than at present, and it is uncertain if the current rate of crop yield increase can be maintained. Society needs greater recognition of the food-supply problem and must increase funding and support for agricultural research while it attends to issues of food waste and over consumption that can make valuable reductions to food demand from agricultur