Cardozo and the Upper-Court Myth

There has recently been published a volume, Selected Writings of Benjamin N. Cardozo, which every thoughtful lawyer and judge will want ready at hand. It will repay constant re-reading. It includes nearly all Cardozo\u27s extra-judicial writings, notably The Nature of the Judicial Process, first published in 1921, and The Growth of the Law, first published in 1924. In these two books, one of our most eminent appellate judges set forth his legal philosophy. More important, he showed how this philosophy aided him in his judicial work, and, in that connection, disclosed some of the intimate details of upper-court techniques. I say more important because, before Cardozo, no judge, with the exception of Holmes, had been similarly candid. Cardozo\u27s frankness emboldened others, lawyers and judges, to be less diffident in thinking about and commenting on courthouse ways

What were considered to be good books in the time of popular enlightenment? The view of philanthropists compared to the view of a farmer

The enlightenment movement in Denmark - Norway had a practical/rational orientation, but was also religiously motivated. Towards the end of the 18th Century a new genre of book was established: enlightenment books, intended for the common man and woman. The farmer Gunder Knutsen Løvsland acquired many of these. In total he had a collection of more than 160 books. At the time attitudes still differed in terms of what farmers should be reading. Many expressed concern that if farmers were given too much knowledge, they might no longer wish to be farmers. On the other hand some of the philanthropists claimed that farmers should have access to more varied and comprehensive knowledge. The Danish Agricultural Society shared this view and compiled a list of books suitable for farmers. This article reviews Gunder Løvslands book collection and discusses similarities and differences between his books and the Agricultural Society’s selection of books. There is extensive concurrence of what constituted good books (i.e. they are useful), however, there are also differences. The philanthropists did not believe that political or socially critical books were appropriate for the common man. Gunder’s book collection shows that the philanthropists probably underestimated the interest of the general public in such literature

Liturgy, plainchant and music at the Paris Sainte-Chapelle: Questions on the identity of a royal institution

International audienceStudying liturgy, musical repertories and performance practice at the Paris Sainte-Chapelle, from 13th till 18th century, brings to light some questions. Probably they are not quite new and were met by other scholars, but these questions acquire a new relief because of long period covered by the research.In the front row appears the status of liturgical books and their relations with the concrete practices of a community : descriptive, prescriptive, exemplary nature ? In second place, improvement of musical notation does not go hand in hand with obsolescence of oral practices and unwritten traditions ; a large part of musical practices remains difficult to encircle exactly

Early Life Conditions and Financial Risk–Taking in Older Age

Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in adulthood, we find that superior cognitive skills in childhood (especially mathematical abilities) are positively associated with stock and mutual fund ownership. Childhood socioeconomic status, as indicated by the number of rooms and by having at least some books in the house during childhood, is also positively associated with the ownership of stocks, mutual funds and individual retirement accounts, as well as with the willingness to take financial risks. On the other hand, less risky assets like bonds are not affected by early childhood conditions. We find only weak effects of childhood health problems on portfolio choice in adulthood. Finally, favorable childhood conditions affect the transition in and out of risky asset ownership, both by making divesting less likely and by facilitating investing (i.e., transitioning from non-ownership to ownership).Portfolio Choice, Childhood Socio-economic Status, Cognition, Health, Financial Risk

A Summary and Overview of the Conference

There were fifteen speakers at this Institute, excluding chairpersons and makers of announcements. I was asked to summarize and bring out the highlights of their remarks. I shall leave aside the details and specifics of individual titles and focus on matters of more general import. I shall speak of those ways in which it seemed the remarks and concerns of the speakers at this conference are typical of what (good) librarians do in regard to any specified subject. Later I shall discuss the ways in which they are not. 1. A good librarian usually becomes aware of an emerging problem area of general interest reasonably early, and of its ramifications and implications. Several speakers pointed out how recently the problem of environmental control has come into the limelight, and how pervasive it is. In 1965, according to Quigley, the ACS made its initial decision to work on the problem. The National Environmental Policy Act was passed in 1969, but according to Friedlander EPA is already funding 4,000 projects. Zimmerman pointed out that only in the last few years have standard tools like the Subject Guide to Books in Print and the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, used some of the appropriate subject headings. On the other hand, Veyette reported that Engineering Index has used subject headings dealing with the pollution of the environment since before 1900, but that was for technical literature for engineers and apparently had no great impact.published or submitted for publicatio

Algorithms for the continuous nonlinear resource allocation problem---new implementations and numerical studies

Patriksson (2008) provided a then up-to-date survey on the continuous,separable, differentiable and convex resource allocation problem with a single resource constraint. Since the publication of that paper the interest in the problem has grown: several new applications have arisen where the problem at hand constitutes a subproblem, and several new algorithms have been developed for its efficient solution. This paper therefore serves three purposes. First, it provides an up-to-date extension of the survey of the literature of the field, complementing the survey in Patriksson (2008) with more then 20 books and articles. Second, it contributes improvements of some of these algorithms, in particular with an improvement of the pegging (that is, variable fixing) process in the relaxation algorithm, and an improved means to evaluate subsolutions. Third, it numerically evaluates several relaxation (primal) and breakpoint (dual) algorithms, incorporating a variety of pegging strategies, as well as a quasi-Newton method. Our conclusion is that our modification of the relaxation algorithm performs the best. At least for problem sizes up to 30 million variables the practical time complexity for the breakpoint and relaxation algorithms is linear

Early life conditions and financial risk–taking in older age

Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in adulthood, we find that superior cognitive skills in childhood (especially mathematical abilities) are positively associated with stock and mutual fund ownership. Childhood socioeconomic status, as indicated by the number of rooms and by having at least some books in the house during childhood, is also positively associated with the ownership of stocks, mutual funds and individual retirement accounts, as well as with the willingness to take financial risks. On the other hand, less risky assets like bonds are not affected by early childhood conditions. We find only weak effects of childhood health problems on portfolio choice in adulthood. Finally, favorable childhood conditions affect the transition in and out of risky asset ownership, both by making divesting less likely and by facilitating investing (i.e., transitioning from non-ownership to ownership)

Joshua Marshman and the First Chinese Book Printed with Movable Metal Type

In 1998 in an essay published in Lishi yanjiu, I once discussed the pioneering efforts of Joshua Marshman and Joannes Lassar in the early nineteenth century to produce a Chinese translation of the Bible in Serampore, India. In this essay I mentioned that the Gospel of John 若翰所書之福音, translated and printed by Marshman and Lassar in 1813, "was in fact the first Chinese book printed using movable metal type." Today, fifteen years later, I have not yet seen any new discoveries requiring that I revise my assertions, and recently I had an opportunity to visit Serampore, to inspect what remains of the old Mission Press, and to collect some books and materials preserved there. This experience greatly enhanced my understanding of this episode of history. Hence, here I would like to use the materials I have at hand to discuss in more detail the early Chinese books printed with movable metal type and the achievements of the missionaries at Serampore in printing Chinese

On the unbound book: academic publishing in the age of the infinite archive

Thanks to open access and the likes of Blurb, Issuu, Scribd, Kindle Direct Publishing, iBooks Author and AAAAARG.org , publishing a book is something nearly everyone can do today in a matter of minutes. Yet what is most interesting about electronic publishing is not so much that bringing out a book is becoming more like blogging or vanity publication, with authority and certification provided as much by an author’s reputation or readership, or the number of times a text is visited, downloaded, cited, referenced, linked to, blogged about, tagged, bookmarked, ranked, rated or ‘liked’, as it is by conventional peer-review or the prestige of the press. All of those criteria still rest upon and retain fairly conventional notions of the book, the author, publication and so on. Far more interesting is the way certain developments in electronic publishing contain at least the potential for us to perceive the book as something that is not completely fixed, stable and unified, with definite limits and clear material edges, but as liquid and living, open to being continually and collaboratively written, edited, annotated, critiqued, updated, shared, supplemented, revised, re-ordered, reiterated and reimagined. So much so that, as some have indeed suggested, perhaps soon we will no longer call such things books at all, e- or otherwise. On the other hand, perhaps ‘book’ is as good a name as any since – as examples as apparently different as the Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio show – books, historically, have always been liquid and living: electronic publishing has simply helped make us more aware of the fact.</jats:p