Oedipus of many pains: Strategies of contest in Homeric poetry

In this paper we analyse Oedipus’ appearance during Odysseus’ tale in book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey in order to outline and test a methodology for appreciating the poetic and thematic implications of moments when ‘extraneous’ narratives or traditions appear in the Homeric poems. Our analysis, which draws on oral-formulaic theory, is offered partly as a re-evaluation of standard scholarly approaches that tend to over-rely on the assumed pre-eminence of Homeric narratives over other traditions in their original contexts or approaches that reduce such moments to instances of allusions to or parallels with fixed texts. In conjunction with perspectives grounded in orality, we emphasise the agonistic character of Greek poetry to explore the ways in which Odysseus’ articulation of his Oedipus narrative exemplifies an attempt to appropriate and manipulate a rival tradition in the service of a particular narrative’s ends. We focus specifically on the resonance of the phrases algea polla and mega ergon used by Odysseus as a narrator to draw a web of interconnections throughout Homeric and Archaic Greek poetry. Such an approach, in turn, suggests to what extent the Homeric Oedipus passage speaks to the themes and concerns of Homeric poetry rather than some lost Oedipal epic tradition and illustrates the importance of recognizing the deeply competitive nature of Homeric narratives vis-à-vis other narrative traditions

Using vital registration data to track mortality in Zimbabwe's metropolitan populations: 2000-2012

The vital registration system in Zimbabwe is incomplete and mortality estimates produced from these data might not give a true representation of mortality in the population. However, it may be assumed that vital registration data for urban areas is more complete than for the country as a whole. This research was, therefore, conducted in an attempt to answer the question of whether vital registration data can be used to track the mortality of Zimbabwe's metropolitan populations. To answer this question, direct and indirect estimates from census and Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data were used to decide on the viability of using these vital registration data to estimate mortality. Estimates of under-five mortality between 2001 and 2011 from vital registration data ranged from around 50 to 80 deaths per thousand for Harare while Bulawayo's estimates were generally between 55 and 105 deaths per thousand in the same period. Bulawayo's vital registration data appeared to produce reasonable estimates of under-five mortality, while Harare's vital registration data underestimated both infant and under-five mortality when compared to the other supporting estimates from the alternative data sources

Fractal Markets Hypothesis and the Global Financial Crisis: Scaling, Investment Horizons and Liquidity

We investigate whether fractal markets hypothesis and its focus on liquidity and invest- ment horizons give reasonable predictions about dynamics of the financial markets during the turbulences such as the Global Financial Crisis of late 2000s. Compared to the mainstream efficient markets hypothesis, fractal markets hypothesis considers financial markets as com- plex systems consisting of many heterogenous agents, which are distinguishable mainly with respect to their investment horizon. In the paper, several novel measures of trading activity at different investment horizons are introduced through scaling of variance of the underlying processes. On the three most liquid US indices - DJI, NASDAQ and S&P500 - we show that predictions of fractal markets hypothesis actually fit the observed behavior quite well.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure