Survival of the most memorable : Darwin’s textual afterlife through rhetoric in On the Origin of Species

The unassuming Charles Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution. However, one reason why Charles Darwin specifically appears as the figurehead for evolution, and not somebody else, comes from his rhetorical endeavour to create a textual afterlife for himself. Creating a personal afterlife for yourself within your written works is a trait that scholars have observed as a goal within many literary poets, authors, and scholars of the 19th century. Darwin, apparently, also imbued himself into his writings, especially On The Origin of Species, to create his own textual afterlife, one that would survive the other evolutionists of his era. Darwin survived by creating his own textual afterlife through the rhetorical elements of identification with his audiences and transcendence, concepts theorised by the 20th Century rhetorician, Kenneth Burke, strategies that Burke argued were the most fundamental to persuasion. I will show how Darwin survives the other evolutionists by creating his own textual afterlife that would connect to and exist in the collective memory of not only his contemporary Victorians, but also generations of people who would come cross Darwin and his theory of evolution.peer-reviewe

Some are more equal than others: responses to political violence

While it is true that the US has, for once, signed up to a UN Security Council statement which calls for an "immediate and unconditional humanitarian cease-fire”, this might still be considered a tactical step to prevent more strongly worded resolutions against Israel being proposed in the Security Council

Krapp's last tape in Great Britain : production history amid changing practice

This book chapter investigates the production history of the play, Krapp's last tape

Tango: the intimate dance of conflict transformation

The tango. Two dancers stand apart at first, looking at each other. The connection begins before the leader invites the follower to enter into the embrace. There is delicious enjoyment in the moment when both dancers find comfort and stability as the music begins to beat a rhythm in their blood and in their feet. The dancers are drawn together into the intimate space they will share for the next three minutes, repeated for as long as they wish, and knowing that no two dances with the same partner will ever be the same

Ethics in educational research: review boards, ethical issues and researcher development

Educational research, and research in the Social Sciences more generally, has experienced a growth in the introduction of ethical review boards since the 1990s. Increasingly, universities have set up ethics review procedures that require researchers to submit applications seeking approval to conduct research. Review boards and the rules and conditions under which they operate have been criticised as obstructive, unnecessarily bureaucratic, and even unethical. At the same time, review boards and their procedures have been acknowledged as contributing to consideration of the ethical conduct of research. This paper explores the issues related to ethical review and examines the wider ethical considerations that may arise during the research process. The paper concludes that a purely administrative process of review is inadequate to ensure the ethical conduct of research, especially qualitative research. Rather, it is argued that ethical research entails the resolution of a potential series of ethical dilemmas as they arise during research. As such, the ethical conduct of research is a matter of researcher formation and development

Ephesus and its coinage

The following is from an article in the Saturday Review, from Head's "Ephesus and Its Coinage," and serves to show the importance numismatics occupies as a key to historical problems

Capital Flows, Incomplete Markets, and the U.S. European Unemployment Gap

This paper investigates the relationship of the ``unemployment gap'' between the United States and Europe to the opening of international capital markets. The unemployment gap widened dramatically in the mid-1980's, a time period characterized also by significant increases in international capital flows--including substantial flows from Europe to the U.S.. The implications of capital mobility for unemployment levels and current accounts are studied in a multi-country dynamic model with incomplete international capital markets and national labor markets characterized by search and matching. The economy also features unemployment insurance financed by distorting taxes on capital and labour income. It is shown that a given difference in the generosity of unemployment benefits leads to a larger difference in unemployment rates across countries when there is some international capital mobility than in financial autarky. Moreover, the long-run effects of an opening of capital markets include an increase in the unemployment rate and an outflow of capital for high unemployment benefit countries and a reduction in the unemployment rate coupled with an inflow of capital for low benefit countries. In addition to these permanent effects, an opening of capital markets may have persistent transition effects including larger short-run differences in unemployment rates across countries and current account imbalances. Quantitatively, our model accounts for a significant share of the relative changes in both unemployment rates and international asset positions for the U.S. and several European countries since the mid-1980Unemployment, International Capital Flows

Temperature scaling, glassiness and stationarity in the Bak-Sneppen model

We show that the emergence of criticality in the locally-defined Bak-Sneppen model corresponds to separation over a hierarchy of timescales. Near to the critical point the model obeys scaling relations, with exponents which we derive numerically for a one-dimensional system. We further describe how the model can be related to the glass model of Bouchaud [{\em J. Phys. I France {\bf 2}, 1705 (1992)}], and we use this insight to comment on the usual assumption of stationarity in the Bak-Sneppen model. Finally, we propose a general definition of self-organised criticality which is in partial agreement with other recent definitions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; differences to previous work clarified. To appear in EPJ