"After all, he will be a god one day" : religious interpretations of Mao in modern China

In the years since Mao Zedong’s death, the people of China have been impelled to reevaluate the legacy and character of their still iconic leader. One of the more notable trends in this process of posthumous reevaluation is the tendency of some individuals and groups (most often, the rural peasantry) to interpret the deceased Chairman along “theological” lines, assuming that his still efficacious spirit will provide protection and good fortune to those who honour him.In exploring the genesis (and continued salience) of these beliefs and practices, the present research delves into popular Chinese religiosity, exploring the porosity of the traditional cosmology, the centrality of perceived spiritual efficacy (ling) in determining the popularity of religious cults, and the theological and cosmological resonances extant within traditional understandings of political leadership. The body of metaphors, narratives, and tropes drawn from this historical overview are then applied to popular characterizations of Mao, with the resulting correspondences helping to explicate the salience of these modern religious interpretations. To further investigate the source of Mao’s persistent symbolic capital, the present research also explores the role of Cultural Revolution-era ritual in valorizing and reifying the power and efficacy then popularly ascribed to the Great Helmsman’s person and teachings. This study’s conclusion, in brief, is that participants in the posthumous cult of Mao are utilizing these cultural materials in both traditional and creative ways, and that such interpretations speak to the exigencies of life in the turbulent, ideologically ambiguous culture of modern China. In performing this evaluation, the present research makes use of the standard phenomenological/historiographic approach of religious studies scholarship, though it is also informed by narrative methods, cognitive science, and current perspectives on the role and function of ritual. In particular, the analysis of Mao-era rituals (as a source of Mao’s continued symbolic potency) is performed using the cognivistic typology of ritual proposed by E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley, with additional materials drawn from the research of Catherine Bell, Roy Rappaport, Pascal Boyer and Adam Chau

Secure protocols for contactless credit cards and electronic wallets

The contactless credit card protocol in use today is insecure. The credit card industry has chosen to use the NFC channel for contactless transactions. However, reliance on NFC's short range has led to poor assumptions in the contactless credit card protocol. For example, the card assumes (sometimes incorrectly) that its ability to receive a solicitation implies the cardholder's intent to purchase. In this dissertation, we examine the protocol currently in use, and present a family of three replacement protocols to defend against its deficiencies. First, we consider "outsider" attacks (e.g. eavesdropping, skimming attacks, relay attacks, and attacks facilitated by compromised points of sale) and design our first protocol to defend against these attacks. We call this protocol the Externally Secure CC Protocol, and design it using stepwise refinement. This protocol makes use of single-use "charge tokens" verifiable by the bank, while minimizing computation that needs to occur on the card. Second, we identify two attacks which may be carried out by malicious retailers: Over-charge attacks and Transparent Bridge attacks. Both attacks are predicated on the customer's lack of participation in the protocol, and involve modifying or replacing a charge after it has been confirmed by the customer. We look to Electronic Wallet applications (such as Android Pay and Apple Wallet), which provide a channel between customer and card. We augment the Externally Secure CC Protocol using this channel to construct the Secure CC Protocol, binding charge tokens to a given price, and thus stymieing both outsider and malicious retailer attacks. The Secure CC Protocol supports a property known as linkability: while only the bank can verify charge tokens, tokens from the same card can be recognized as such by the retailer. This property is also supported by the (insecure) protocol in use today, and is commonly used by retailers to construct marketing profiles on their customers. However, linkability has serious consumer privacy consequences, so we consider the converse property of unlinkability, where a retailer cannot identify different purchases as having been made by the same card. We require that our unlinkable protocol make use of existing infrastructure, so as not to require retailer cooperation. In response, we design the Unlinkable Wallet Protocol, leveraging techniques from the Secure CC Protocol to guard against malicious outsiders and retailers, while tunneling secure and unlinkable charge tokens through the protocol in use today.Computer Science

Effects of Demographics and Attitudes on WTP for Fuel Import Reductions through Ethanol Purchases

imported fuel, willingness to pay, Marketing,

An economic geography of consumer movement and expenditure patterns in county Durham

The central theme of this thesis is the analysis of patterns of consumer movement, which is based upon extensive hypothesis-orientated survey data collected in County Durham. The thesis falls into three related parts: In part I a number of hypotheses relating socio-economic factors to household movement patterns for the purchase of different goods are tested. In addition, methods of predicting the sectoral and spatial distributions of incomes and expenditures are examined. Throughout this part of the thesis, elements of the social and settlement geography of the County are outlined and analysed, providing an important background for all parts of the thesis. In part II, hypotheses derived from the framework of Central Place theory are tested against extensive consumer interaction data, related in turn to the system of centres in the area. In part III the above data on consumer movement is employed with a gravity model for two main purposes: Firstly, to attempt a rigorous test of the performance of the model, both as an allocative model, and at the same time as a model to replicate spatial patterns. Weaknesses of the model are investigated. Secondly, the model is used to continue the search for explanation of observed patterns of movement. This analysis is set against a theoretical review of the nature of and problems associated with these models