Ivy and the Class of 1933

Plaques are curious items. According to MSN Encarta, a plaque is “a small flat piece of metal, stone, or other hard material that has an inscription or decoration on it and is fixed to a wall or other surface, often to commemorate somebody or something.” They can be found in a variety of places, celebrate a number of events, and vary in complexity from a single sentence to lengthy paragraphs. Many go unnoticed, but if one looks hard enough, they appear fairly frequently. This oddity is especially true at Gettysburg, where plaques on campus celebrate events and people on buildings, trees, and even sidewalks. An examination of these plaques reveals a multitude of stories that are an important part of the college‟s history. [excerpt] Course Information: Course Title: HIST 300: Historical Method Academic Term: Fall 2009 Course Instructor: Dr. Michael J. Birkner \u2772 Hidden in Plain Sight is a collection of student papers on objects that are hidden in plain sight around the Gettysburg College campus. Topics range from the Glatfelter Hall gargoyles to the statue of Eisenhower and from historical markers to athletic accomplishments. You can download the paper in pdf format and click View Photo to see the image in greater detail.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/hiddenpapers/1034/thumbnail.jp

Respecting the Mystery of Constitutional Change

In Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, Professor Richard Albert provides an insightful and nuanced description of how constitutional change can occur through an informal process that he calls “quasi-constitutional amendment.” Quasi-constitutional amendments are “sub-constitutional changes” to existing constitutional norms that can become functionally entrenched even though they are formally vulnerable to ordinary statutory repeal or modification. Professor Albert observes that quasi-constitutional amendment is the byproduct of high barriers to formal amendment. In this essay, I briefly explore the extent to which high barriers to formal amendment are the driving force behind other informal processes of constitutional change; especially informal change through constitutional litigation. Conventional theories of constitutional design suggest that informal processes, especially transformative judicial rulings, occur mostly because formal amendment is too difficult. I am skeptical of these assumptions; at least at the level of generality and universality that they often operate, and especially as they apply to constitutional litigation as a pathway to change. My skepticism is based mostly on anecdotal evidence suggesting that the interaction between formal and informal processes of constitutional change is more complicated and nuanced than these theories suggest. There is evidence, for example, that even when formal amendment is cheap and frequent, idiosyncrasies in political culture can drive some constitutional issues towards informal processes. Constitutional age might also play a role. As societies stabilize and prosper under a particular constitution, they might be less inclined to make explicit changes through formal amendment and instead prefer change to occur informally with a stronger appearance of continuity and stability. Finally, frequent formal amendment might alter the rules of the game for constitutional reformers in ways that catalyze rather than diminish formal amendment. All of these factors (and surely some others) suggest that the interaction between formal and informal processes of constitutional change is complex; perhaps even to the point of being mysterious

The discipline of Natural Design

If we define design work as those cognitive and practical things to which designers give their valuable effort, then our Natural Design framework allows the recording and replaying of design work. Natural Design provides a meta-structural framework that has developed through our observations of engineering design in safety and mission critical industries, such as aircraft design. Our previous work has produced parametrisable models of design work for software intensive systems, and we now look to make an initial assessment of our natural design framework for its fit to the more creative design practices. In this paper we briefly sketch the framework and subsequently attempt to locate ‘creativity’ in it. We find that, although there are good strong hooks for what the designer does, we are forced to find a role for the community of the designer in the creative process in our framework, something that was only implicit in our previous work. Keywords: Natural design; Engineering design; Creativity</p

Respecting the Mystery of Constitutional Change

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017)

Dismantling Lamarckism: why descriptions of socio-economic evolution as Lamarckian are misleading

“The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com”. Copyright Springer.This paper addresses the widespread tendency to describe socio-economic evolution as Lamarckian. The difference between Lamarckian and Darwinian replication is clarified. It is shown that a phenotype-genotype distinction must first be established before we can identify Lamarckian transmission. To qualify as Lamarckian inheritance, acquired properties at the phenotypic level must be encoded in a genotype that is passed on to the next generation. Some possible social replicators (or genotypes) are identified, with a view to exploring possible distinctions between genotype and phenotype at the social level. It is concluded that the Lamarckian label does not readily transfer to socio-economic evolution, despite the fact that social genotypes (such as routines) may adapt within any given phenotype (such as an organisation). By contrast, no such problems exist with the description of socio-economic evolution as Darwinian.Peer reviewe

Conventions and mutual expectations — understanding sources for web genres

Genres can be understood in many different ways. They are often perceived as a primarily sociological construction, or, alternatively, as a stylostatistically observable objective characteristic of texts. The latter view is more common in the research field of information and language technology. These two views can be quite compatible and can inform each other; this present investigation discusses knowledge sources for studying genre variation and change by observing reader and author behaviour rather than performing analyses on the information objects themselves

The Lasting Effects of Language Acquisition: Testing Cognitive Abilities after L2 Attrition

HonorsCognitive ScienceUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162640/1/kjkendro.pd

Precise scenarios - a customer-friendly foundation for formal specifications

A formal specification is beyond the comprehension of the average software customer. As a result, the customer cannot provide useful feedback regarding its correctness and completeness. To address this problem, we suggest the formalism expert to work with the customer to create precise scenarios. A precise scenario describes an operation by its effects on the system state with only few simple Z concepts. The customer would find a concrete precise scenario easier to understand than its corresponding abstract schema. The Z expert derives schemas based on the precise scenarios. Precise scenarios affords user involvement that improves the odds of a formal specification fully capturing the user requirements

Insecurity of Property Rights and Matching in the Tenancy Market

This paper analyzes the functioning of land rental markets in the Dominican Republic using a new data set collected specifically to characterize the entire market. We analyze the choice of the landlords and the tenants in the search for the optimal partner. We show how insecure property rights leads to segmentation in the tenancy markets along socio-economic group and hence severely limits access to land for the rural poor.insecurity of property rights, land markets, matching, Risk and Uncertainty,