Measurable Effects of Denominations on Narrative Patterns: the German Case of Diversity in Narrating Histories

There is a view, which I have used as the premise for this paper, that historical thinking is evident within the narratives of societies as historically existing entities. These narrations can be gathered empirically and analyzed for underlying structures. A more common research approach, however, is to assume a priori that these structures exist and then to look at value judgments from which they can be inferred. In this way, various quantitative studies have been carried out that polled the opinions of European, and in particular German and Turkish, youths and young adults. These have shown that amongst Germans there is ostensibly a strong desire for change, from which one can infer an underlying narrative pattern of history as progress. Indirect questioning hints at a lacking link with tradition among young Germans and even more so in some other Western European cultures, mainly those with a distinctly Protestant imprint. In this paper I will establish a link between first, these opinion polls, second, the results of psephology since the 1950s and third, additional supporting historical evidence in order to argue that there is a structural difference between the narratives of German Protestants and Catholics, with Catholics showing a stronger tendency towards tradition

Infrastructure Quality in Deregulated Industries: Is there an Underinvestment Problem?

We investigate how various institutional settings affect a network provider’s incentives to invest in infrastructure quality. Under reasonable assumptions on demand, investment incentives turn out to be smaller under vertical separation than under vertical integration, though we also provide counter-examples. The introduction of downstream competition for the market can sometimes improve incentives. With suitable non-linear access prices investment incentives under separation become identical to those under integration.investment incentives, networks, quality, vertical externality.

Indicators for Measuring Fiscal Sustainability: A Comparative Application of the OECD-Method and Generational Accounting

On the basis of an empirical application for Germany, we compare two methods for measuring fiscal sustainability, the Generational Accounting approach and the OECD-Method. We show that both methods can be transferred into each other. Therefore the indicators belonging to one method can be used for the other one and consequently the set of sustainability indicators is enlarged for both methods. Furthermore we evaluate the indicators with the criteria theoretical deficiencies, tangibility and sensitivity. We draw the conclusion that a combination of indicators stemming from both approaches can give a generally understandable and theoretical correct defined description of fiscal sustainability at the same time

Was sind gute Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren? OECD-Methode und Generationenbilanzierung im empirischen Vergleich

Die traditionell verwendeten Kennzahlen staatlicher Haushaltsrechnung wie Finanzierungssaldo, Staatsverschuldung und Schuldenquote bilden aber lediglich das laufende Jahr bzw. das Ergebnis der vergangenen Entwicklung ab und können so keinen Anhaltspunkt über die künftige längerfristige Entwicklung der Staatsfinanzen geben. Zudem werden Verpflichtungen des Staates, die aufgrund gesetzlicher Leistungsansprüche in der Zukunft zu leisten sind, nicht berücksichtigt. Um diesen Missstand zu beheben, wurden Anfang der 1990er Jahre verschiedene Ansätze zur Messung der fiskalischer Nachhaltigkeit entwickelt. Die zwei bekanntesten sind die Generationenbilanzierung (generational accounting) und die OECDMethode. Mittlerweile gibt es zahlreiche Anwendungen beider Methoden für die meisten westlichen Industrienationen. In bisherigen Erörterungen - bspw. für das deutsche Bundesministerium der Finanzen - wurden vor allem die theoretischen und methodischen Unterschiede der zwei Konzepte betont und ihre jeweiligen Stärken und Schwächen gegenübergestellt. Im Gegensatz hierzu soll in diesem Beitrag die grundsätzliche Äquivalenz der beiden Ansätze herausgestellt werden. Hierzu werden die Konzepte am Beispiel der deutschen Fiskalpolitik einem empirischen Vergleich unterzogen. Die dazu gewählte Vorgehensweise erlaubt es, die zum jeweiligen Konzept gehörenden Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren auch auf das jeweils andere Konzept anzuwenden. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es deshalb nicht nur, beide Methoden empirisch zu vergleichen, sondern auch die Aussagekraft von Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren zu bewerten. Der Beitrag gliedert sich dabei wie folgt: In Kapitel 2 werden die Messkonzepte Generationenbilanzierung und OECD-Methode theoretisch hergeleitet und Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten bei ihrer Anwendung aufgezeigt. In Kapitel 3 werden dann Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren für Deutschland mittels beider Methoden berechnet. Anschließen wird sich in Kapitel 4 eine Diskussion über die Aussagekraft der Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren. Der Beitrag endet mit einem Fazit

Introduction: Capitalist Crisis Poetry: Lyric Encounters with Neoliberalism in the Twenty-First Century

This introductory chapter explores the lyric’s potential as an active agent of change and offers an overview of contemporary discourses on the status of poetry in late capitalist contexts. Our approach synthesizes recent theoretical, philosophical, and poetic scholarship to facilitate a more comprehensive and nuanced analysis of the numerous aesthetic and conceptual agendas of twenty-first-century lyric writing. We re-theorize the nexus between lyric poetry, politics, and neoliberal capitalism in order to think through the ways in which different poetic forms as well as lyric language and practices shape, transform, or resist political and capitalist discourses—but also to reflect on how the lyric and the theory of the lyric have themselves been shaped by these discourses. We propose lyricism as a compelling analytical tool with which to grasp effective and affective dynamics of poetic production and reception, and as a space where the poem can resist simple classification and straightforward commodification. In taking seriously interventionist strategies employed in poetry to tackle the crises triggered or exacerbated by neoliberal capitalism, this chapter is a springboard for contemporary poetics interested in readings of poetry beyond a reductive analysis that focuses either solely on formal features or on content. It is thus of immediate relevance to literary and cultural studies, as well as the social and political sciences

Eine Entwicklungsmethodik für sicherheitsrelevante Elektroniksysteme im Automobil

Es wird eine neue Entwicklungsmethodik für sicherheitsrelevante Elektroniksysteme im Automobil vorgestellt. Die im Automobilbereich gängige Methodik wird um Inhalte bzgl. Sicherheit und Zuverlässigkeit erweitert, die an den Luftfahrt-Standard SAE ARP 4761 angelehnt an die Anforderungen im Automobilbereich angepasst wurden. Wesentliche Erweiterungen sind neben dem Einsatz einer Gefährdungsanalyse der intensive Einsatz von FTA und FMEA zum Nachweis der Sicherheitseigenschaften des Systems

The Liberation of Auschwitz: Construction of truth in educational movies

Ever since Aristotle wrote that the work of a historian consists in announcing true events, truth and history have generated a fragile symbiosis. The reality of single events has been frequently debated, while at the same time new media has raised and changed the opportunities open to mankind for gaining evidence. But is history even capable of containing an element of truth? This could be proved in principle, if it were possible to produce evidence of the truth of just one incident. A new medium for gathering historical evidence is, without a doubt, the camera, which in a manner of speaking conserves reality by recording events. Thus the question arises as to how historiographical documentary films manage to construct truth. As a contribution to the history of documentary films as well to the theory of history, this article will analyse this problem, drawing on the two most clear-cut examples of documentary films and historical events: the information film for stu- dents and the holocaust, which is the touchstone for the theory of history (Dan Stone). A very interesting connective medium is the film „The Liberation of Auschwitz“, first produced for German schools in 1987 for use against people who denied the Holocaust. The film combines some very impressive documentary films of Auschwitz made by a soviet officer in 1945 using US American photographs of the Auschwitz-Birkenau area taken from air planes in 1944. The film confronts historical reason with two independent and very different sets of historical sources. The conclusion is evident and compelling for the a priori synthesis using the categories of reason specially created by Kant; since the sources are, on the one hand, complementary (and not falsified), while on the other they fit like a puzzle. Therefore, clear proof is furnished not only of single facts, but also of the possibility that certain statements may be true when presenting history that is seen in the light of human action at a specific time or place, notwithstanding postmodern and other theories of the narrated nature of facts and explanations discussed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.Ever since Aristotle wrote that the work of a historian consists in announcing true events, truth and history have generated a fragile symbiosis. The reality of single events has been frequently debated, while at the same time new media has raised and changed the opportunities open to mankind for gaining evidence. But is history even capable of containing an element of truth? This could be proved in principle, if it were possible to produce evidence of the truth of just one incident. A new medium for gathering historical evidence is, without a doubt, the camera, which in a manner of speaking conserves reality by recording events. Thus the question arises as to how historiographical documentary films manage to construct truth. As a contribution to the history of documentary films as well to the theory of history, this article will analyse this problem, drawing on the two most clear-cut examples of documentary films and historical events: the information film for stu- dents and the holocaust, which is the touchstone for the theory of history (Dan Stone). A very interesting connective medium is the film „The Liberation of Auschwitz“, first produced for German schools in 1987 for use against people who denied the Holocaust. The film combines some very impressive documentary films of Auschwitz made by a soviet officer in 1945 using US American photographs of the Auschwitz-Birkenau area taken from air planes in 1944. The film confronts historical reason with two independent and very different sets of historical sources. The conclusion is evident and compelling for the a priori synthesis using the categories of reason specially created by Kant; since the sources are, on the one hand, complementary (and not falsified), while on the other they fit like a puzzle. Therefore, clear proof is furnished not only of single facts, but also of the possibility that certain statements may be true when presenting history that is seen in the light of human action at a specific time or place, notwithstanding postmodern and other theories of the narrated nature of facts and explanations discussed in the late 1980s and early 1990s

Infrastructure quality in deregulated industries: Is there an underinvestment problem

We investigate how various institutional settings affect a network provider's incentives to invest in infrastructure quality. Under reasonable assumptions on demand, investment incentives turn out to be smaller under vertical separation than under vertical integration, though we also provide counter-examples. The introduction of downstream competition for the market can sometimes improve incentives. With suitable non-linear access prices investment incentives under separation become identical to those under integration

Monitoring resilience in a rook-managed containerized cloud storage system

Distributed cloud storage solutions are currently gaining high momentum in industry and academia. The enterprise data volume growth and the recent tendency to move as much as possible data to the cloud is strongly stimulating the storage market growth. In this context, and as a main requirement for cloud native applications, it is of utmost importance to guarantee resilience of the deployed applications and the infrastructure. Indeed, with failures frequently occurring, a storage system should quickly recover to guarantee service availability. In this paper, we focus on containerized cloud storage, proposing a resilience monitoring solution for the recently developed Rook storage operator. While, Rook brings storage systems into a cloud-native container platform, in this paper we design an additional module to monitor and evaluate the resilience of the Rook-based system. Our proposed module is validated in a production environment, with software components generating a constant load and a controlled removal of system elements to evaluate the self-healing capability of the storage system. Failure recovery time revealed to be 41 and 142 seconds on average for a 32GB and a 215GB object storage device respectively