Cree Decision Making Concerning Language: A Case Study

In 1993, nine Cree communities on the east coast of James Bay (Quebec, Canada) and inland began work on a pilot project to use Cree as the language of instruction(CLIP) in two communities, and have continued to extend this so that now Cree is the main language of instruction up to grade four (the target level) in many of the communities. We describe the complex context of language choice in schools before CLIP was implemented. In our analysis, four important threads of concern were identified: (1) locus of control (who had power in the communities and schools); (2) economies of scale (how the resources to accomplish Cree-medium teaching were created); (3) community visions of language and education (the evolution of attitudes, particularly of parents, towards the pertinent languages and their uses);and(4) the role of literacies(changes in community members' expectations of what literacy in Cree and English were good for). Our conclusion is that no simple models of language use are likely to be adequate for explaining or predicting outcomes in such complex situations. Documenting these cases longitudinally and in many facets provides unique local micro-analysis against which other circumstances can be compared

Optimal Algorithms for Some Intersection Radius Problems

Abstract --Zusammenfassung Optimal Algorithms for Some Intersection Radius Problems. The intersection radius of a set of n geometrical objects in a d-dimensional Euclidean space, E d, is the radius of the smallest closed hypersphere that intersects all the objects of the set. In this paper, we describe optimal algorithms for some intersection radius problems. We first present a linear-time algorithm to determine the smallest closed hypcrsphere that intersects a set of hyperplanes in E ~, assuming d to be a fixed parameter. This is done by reducing the problem to a linear programming problem in a (d + 1)-dimensional space, involving 2n linear constraints. We also show how the prune-and-search technique, coupled with the strategy of replacing a ray by a point or a line can be used to solve, in linear time, the intersection radius problem for a set of n line segments in the plane. Currently, no algorithms are known that solve these intersection radius problems within the same time bounds. AM

R v Hall and the changing perceptions of the crime of bigamy

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record.In 1845, the conviction of Thomas Hall for bigamy was reported as an example of the unequal way in which the law operated, with great play being made of the steps that Hall could have taken to free himself from his first wife by a divorce, were it not for the cost involved. Since then, virtually every account of nineteenth-century bigamy or divorce has included some version of the judge's apparently ‘brilliantly sarcastic’ speech. But what the judge was reported as saying at the time differs in a number of crucial particulars from what later commentators have reported him as saying. Later accounts have played up the misconduct of the first wife, inflated the cost of obtaining a divorce, and exaggerated the poverty and lowly status of Hall, while playing down the sentence he received and ignoring his deception of his second wife. This paper traces the evolution of the account over time, and identifies the timing of the various changes that were made. It illustrates how history is used – by politicians, reformers, and scholars – to support both a particular view of the past and to bolster claims as to how the law should change for the future