Lessons of Election 2000

Many people believe that Election 2000 proved only how divided the nation is over politics and policy. In contrast, this study draws six lessons from Election 2000. Congress should set up a commission to recommend changes in the electoral system; the states should have the choice of accepting the reforms and the obligation to pay for them. The Electoral College should be preserved. The framers designed the Electoral College to limit arbitrary power. Abolishing the Electoral College would weaken the states and damage federalism. The United States is a consitutional republic, not a regime based on "the will of the people." Several politicians have appealed to the will of the people in the Florida struggle. The will of the people is a concept alien to the American political tradition of limited constitutional government. Underlying public attitudes strongly supported limited government in Election 2000. Both the platforms of the candidates and public opinion polls indicate that the public's skepticism about government remains high. Campaign spending enhanced turnout and participation in Election 2000. Both the NAACP and unions spent lavishly on getting out the vote. If campaign spending is restricted, turnout will fall, contrary to the professed desire of advocates of capaign finance restrictions. Congress should not hold hearings about media mistakes. Any punishment for errors or bias by the networks on election night should be left to public opinion

The Judgments

A collection of eight short stories titled The Judgments. The first seven stories take characters that have a clear weakness with regards to one of the seven deadly sins of gluttony, lust, greed, wrath, sloth, envy, or pride and play out the story of the choices they make based on who they believe they are and who they believe everyone else is in comparison. It becomes evident throughout the stories that one deadly sin will branch out into one or more of the others. The eighth and final story is one of redemption in which one man finally sees a reality other than the one he\u27s created inside of his own mind. This allows him to change and become a better person

A Precision Calculation of the Next-to-Leading Order Energy-Energy Correlation Function

The O(alpha_s^2) contribution to the Energy-Energy Correlation function (EEC) of e+e- -> hadrons is calculated to high precision and the results are shown to be larger than previously reported. The consistency with the leading logarithm approximation and the accurate cancellation of infrared singularities exhibited by the new calculation suggest that it is reliable. We offer evidence that the source of the disagreement with previous results lies in the regulation of double singularities.Comment: 6 pages, uuencoded LaTeX and one eps figure appended Complete paper as PostScript file (125 kB) available at: http://www.phys.washington.edu/~clay/eecpaper1/paper.htm

Graphene as Transparent Electrode for Direct Observation of Hole Photoemission from Silicon to Oxide

The outstanding electrical and optical properties of graphene make it an excellent alternative as a transparent electrode. Here we demonstrate the application of graphene as collector material in internal photoemission (IPE) spectroscopy; enabling the direct observation of both electron and hole injections at a Si/Al2O3 interface and successfully overcoming the long-standing difficulty of detecting holes injected from a semiconductor emitter in IPE measurements. The observed electron and hole barrier heights are 3.5 eV and 4.1 eV, respectively. Thus the bandgap of Al2O3 can be further deduced to be 6.5 eV, in close agreement with the valued obtained by vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopic ellipsometry analysis. The detailed optical modeling of a graphene/Al2O3/Si stack reveals that by using graphene in IPE measurements the carrier injection from the emitter is significantly enhanced and the contribution of carrier injection from the collector electrode is minimal. The method can be readily extended to various IPE test structures for a complete band alignment analysis and interface characterization.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Energy flow in QCD and event shape functions

Hadronization corrections to the thrust and related event shape distributions in the two-jet kinematical region of e+e- annihilation are summarized by nonperturbative shape functions. The moments of shape functions are given by universal matrix elements in QCD, which describe the energy flow in QCD final states. We show how the nonperturbative structure of these matrix elements may be inferred from resummed perturbation theory and Lorentz invariance. This analysis suggests the same functional forms for the shape functions as were found in phenomenological studies, and sheds light on the physical significance of the parameters that characterize these functions.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, 2 figure