Adolescent Occultism and the Philosophy of Things in Three Novels

Shirley Jackson’s 1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Iain Banks’s 1984 The Wasp Factory and Sonya Hartnett’s 2009 Butterfly are novels separated not only by decades, but by distance being produced in the United States, Scotland and Australia respectively. Despite this, each of these texts depicts a young adult in a mimetically recognisable world struggling to reconcile their intuitive occultism with that world. The mediation of magic through assemblages of charged objects creates a philosophy of things – modelling in intuitive and narrative terms the essence and nature of objects familiar from the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. As such, the supernaturalism of Iain Banks, Shirley Jackson and Sonya Hartnett’s narratives implicates their readers – breaking the boundaries of fiction to comment on the material world itself, not through analogy or metaphor but through direct modelling of the potential power and worth of things

E-Learning: A Study of Issues and Perspectives

This study examines some of the issues and perspectives associated with development and delivery of an undergraduate business degree incorporating elearning. The investigation was undertaken in an Australian University and incorporates the opinions and viewpoints of staff and students - both local and offshore. E-learning is a complex, and often poorly structured knowledge area, with many different issues, influences and agendas. For this reason Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) has been used to develop a model for analysis and for comparison of the issues with the literature

Applying Business Models for Risk Management in E-Business

This paper presents a case study of the application of business models for managing risk in the development of operational strategies for e-business. It includes issues of security, transaction protection, customer relationships, and data and content ownership. The investment that an e-business project is willing to make in risk management activities depends on the business model adopted, the experience of the project team, and the constraints imposed on both. This is particularly important when planning to use technology to do business in the global economy

Watching the Watchers: The Growing Privatization of Criminal Law Enforcement and the Need for Limits on Neighborhood Watch Associations

On the night of February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a member of a neighborhood watch program, was patrolling his community in Sanford, Florida, when he spotted Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old Africa-American high school student, walking through the neighborhood. Zimmerman dialed 911 and indicated that he was following a real suspicious guy . The police dispatcher requested that Zimmerman discontinue following Martin, but he ignored the request and approached the teenager. In the resulting confrontation, Zimmerman used his legally owned semi-automatic handgun to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin. Martin, who was unarmed, had been returning from a local convenience store. George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. At the time of this writing, it is unclear whether Zimmerman will be proven guilty of the offense. What is certain is that despite the fact that Zimmerman was engaged in law enforcement activities, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments that restrict police efforts in detaining, searching and interrogating suspects do not apply to neighborhood watch organizations. In many states neighborhood watch members may carry firearms and are protected from having to retreat when confronted by a suspect under stand your ground laws. Consequently, neighborhood watch members wield significant authority, but they lack the training and limitations to which police are subject. This article proposes statutory provisions that would limit the ability of neighborhood watch members to confront suspects, mandate training for those engaged in law enforcement activities, and expand the exclusionary rule to evidence seized illegally by private citizens engaged in law enforcement functions. In this way, legislatures would better ensure that due process guarantees are not abandoned when law enforcement activities are privatized

The Replacements: Conflicting Standards for Obtaining New Counsel Under the Sixth Amendment

In 2006, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez emphasizing the importance of a defendant’s right to counsel of choice under the Sixth Amendment and holding a denial of this right constitutes structural error, requiring automatic reversal. Following that decision, several federal circuit courts and state appellate courts have questioned how to apply this right to circumstances where the right to choice of counsel and the right to appointed counsel overlap. When a defendant seeks to replace retained counsel for appointed counsel, should the standard governing his motion fall under the right to choice of counsel? Or should such the motion fall within the purview of the right to appointed counsel? Despite the fact that defendants have sought to replace retained counsel with appointed counsel for decades, the Supreme Court has never established a clear standard to apply under these circumstances. Because of this lack of guidance, lower courts have split on the standard to apply in these circumstances. As recently as April 2016, the Eleventh Circuit held that the right to choice of counsel standard should govern and that a defendant need not show any cause to support his request to substitute retained counsel. In so holding, the Eleventh Circuit rejected the First Circuit’s standard that a defendant must demonstrate good cause to succeed in a motion to substitute retained counsel for appointed counsel. In order to resolve the conflicting standards employed by the lower courts, a clear rule needs to be established to both protect the defendant’s right to counsel of choice and preserve judicial efficiency and fairness to all participants in the trial process. By adopting the Eleventh and Ninth Circuit standard that a defendant need not demonstrate good cause in order to replace his retained attorney, the Court would provide a clear rule that would protect the defendant’s constitutional right to counsel of choice. At the same time, the defendant’s right to choice of counsel should be considered a rebuttable presumption. The Court should allow the presumption in favor of counsel of choice to be overcome by a trial court’s factual findings that a motion to substitute would lead to delays that would cause unfairness or perceived unfairness, or would unduly inconvenience participants in the trial process. By establishing this rebuttable presumption, the Court would provide clear guidance to lower courts struggling to ensure efficiency while at the same time protecting a defendant’s constitutional right to counsel of choice

The Replacements: Conflicting Standards for Obtaining New Counsel Under the Sixth Amendment

In 2006, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez emphasizing the importance of a defendant’s right to counsel of choice under the Sixth Amendment and holding a denial of this right constitutes structural error, requiring automatic reversal. Following that decision, several federal circuit courts and state appellate courts have questioned how to apply this right to circumstances where the right to choice of counsel and the right to appointed counsel overlap. When a defendant seeks to replace retained counsel for appointed counsel, should the standard governing his motion fall under the right to choice of counsel? Or should such the motion fall within the purview of the right to appointed counsel? Despite the fact that defendants have sought to replace retained counsel with appointed counsel for decades, the Supreme Court has never established a clear standard to apply under these circumstances. Because of this lack of guidance, lower courts have split on the standard to apply in these circumstances. As recently as April 2016, the Eleventh Circuit held that the right to choice of counsel standard should govern and that a defendant need not show any cause to support his request to substitute retained counsel. In so holding, the Eleventh Circuit rejected the First Circuit’s standard that a defendant must demonstrate good cause to succeed in a motion to substitute retained counsel for appointed counsel. In order to resolve the conflicting standards employed by the lower courts, a clear rule needs to be established to both protect the defendant’s right to counsel of choice and preserve judicial efficiency and fairness to all participants in the trial process. By adopting the Eleventh and Ninth Circuit standard that a defendant need not demonstrate good cause in order to replace his retained attorney, the Court would provide a clear rule that would protect the defendant’s constitutional right to counsel of choice. At the same time, the defendant’s right to choice of counsel should be considered a rebuttable presumption. The Court should allow the presumption in favor of counsel of choice to be overcome by a trial court’s factual findings that a motion to substitute would lead to delays that would cause unfairness or perceived unfairness, or would unduly inconvenience participants in the trial process. By establishing this rebuttable presumption, the Court would provide clear guidance to lower courts struggling to ensure efficiency while at the same time protecting a defendant’s constitutional right to counsel of choice

Intelligent Autonomous Data Categorization

The goal of this research was to determine if the results of a simple comparison algorithm (SCA) could be improved by adding a hyperspace analogue to language model of memory (HAL) layer to form NCA. The HAL layer provides contextual data that otherwise would be unavailable for consideration. It was found that NCA did improve the results when compared to SCA alone. However, NCA added complexity problems that limit its practicality. The complexity of this algorithm is On3 where n is equal to the number of unique symbols in the data. While there is a relativity reasonable soft upper bound for the number of unique symbols used in a language, the complexity still limits the uses of the NCA combined algorithm. The conclusion from this research is that NCA can improve results. This research also suggested that the quality of results might increase as more data is processed by NCA