"Shame and Scandal": Robert Service, Calypso, and Country Music

Dans son article. Douglas Gifford examine l’anecdote traditionnelle traitant de la fille qui ne peut trouver d'époux car son père Itti dit que tous les prétendants sont ses fils. A la fin, sa mère dit à la fille qu ’elle n’a rien ci s'inquiéter, parce que son «père» n'est pas son vrai père. Gifford discute ce thème qui est à la hase de «Madame la Marquise » de Rudyard Kipling, et d'un «blues» chante par Odetta. Finalement, il décrit la rapport entre ces deux et la version chantée par Joe Nicholson, un chanteur populaire ontarien

The development of the fiction of James Hogg

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The charm: a contribution to modern and mediaeval anthropology

One of the most serious difficulties in the historical study of folklore lies in the paucity of primary evidence. What we know of to-day as folk-tradition is rarely written about or commented on in the documents of the Middle Ages. Books of penance deal with superstitiones and other beliefs, but only in passing and without going into reliable detail as to what they consisted of, and even Burchard of Worms’ prohibitions, inte- resting as they are, leave much unsaid. This paper attempts to bring into relief one single aspect of folk-belief which is well documented, and which merits more attention than it has hitherto received: the charm.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

After Midnight: A Regression Discontinuity Design in Length of Postpartum Hospital Stays

Estimates of moral hazard in health insurance markets can be confounded by adverse selection. This paper considers a plausibly exogenous source of variation in insurance coverage for childbirth in California. We find that additional health insurance coverage induces substantial extensions in length of hospital stay for mother and newborn. However, remaining in the hospital longer has no effect on readmissions or mortality, and the estimates are precise. Our results suggest that for uncomplicated births, minimum insurance mandates incur substantial costs without detectable health benefits

Reductions in the dietary niche of southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis) from the Holocene to the Anthropocene.

The sea otter (Enhydra lutris) is a marine mammal hunted to near extinction during the 1800s. Despite their well-known modern importance as a keystone species, we know little about historical sea otter ecology. Here, we characterize the ecological niche of ancient southern sea otters (E. lutris nereis) using δ13C analysis and δ15N analysis of bones recovered from archaeological sites spanning ~7,000 to 350 years before present (N = 112 individuals) at five regions along the coast of California. These data are compared with previously published data on modern animals (N = 165) and potential modern prey items. In addition, we analyze the δ15N of individual amino acids for 23 individuals to test for differences in sea otter trophic ecology through time. After correcting for tissue-specific and temporal isotopic effects, we employ nonparametric statistics and Bayesian niche models to quantify differences among ancient and modern animals. We find ancient otters occupied a larger isotopic niche than nearly all modern localities; likely reflecting broader habitat and prey use in prefur trade populations. In addition, ancient sea otters at the most southerly sites occupied an isotopic niche that was more than twice as large as ancient otters from northerly regions. This likely reflects greater invertebrate prey diversity in southern California relative to northern California. Thus, we suggest the potential dietary niche of sea otters in southern California could be larger than in central and northern California. At two sites, Año Nuevo and Monterey Bay, ancient otters had significantly higher δ15N values than modern populations. Amino acid δ15N data indicated this resulted from shifting baseline isotope values, rather than a change in sea otter trophic ecology. Our results help in better understanding the contemporary ecological role of sea otters and exemplify the strength of combing zooarchaeological and biological information to provide baseline data for conservation efforts