William Drummond and the Battle of Fort Erie

The officers and men of the British army that defended Canada from American invasion during the War of 1812 knew they were “forgotten soldiers.” Fighting in a distant and secondary theatre, far from the gaze of a government and public pre-occupied with events on the continent, especially in Spain, they took a somewhat perverse pride in their status as outcasts. As one quipped about the Duke of Wellington—“thank God he managed to do without us” at Waterloo. But they also took a particular pride in their own local heroes including such men as Gordon of the 1st Regiment of Foot, Robinson of the 8th Foot, Glew of the 41st, Fitzgibbon of the 49th, Morrison of the 89th, Dawson and Tweeddale of the 100th, Scott of the 103rd and—perhaps most renowned of all—Lieutenant Colonel William Drummond of the 104th Foot

Cannabis shenanigans: advocating for the restoration of an effective treatment of pain following spinal cord injury.

Cannabis is an effective treatment for pain following spinal cord injury that should be available to patients and researchers. The major argument against the rescheduling of cannabis is that the published research is not convincing. This argument is disingenuous at best, given that the evidence has been presented and rejected at many points during the political dialog. Moreover, the original decision to criminalize cannabis did not utilize scientific or medical data. There is tension between the needs of a society to protect the vulnerable by restricting the rights of others to live well and with less pain. It is clear that this 70-year war on cannabis has had little effect in controlling the supply of cannabis. Prohibition can never succeed; it is a tyranny from which every independent mind revolts. People living with chronic pain should not have to risk addiction, social stigma, restrictions on employment and even criminal prosecution in order to deal with their pain. It is time to end the shenanigans and have an open, transparent discussion of the true benefits of this much-beleaguered medicine

Appropriate Fiscal Policy over the Business Cycle: Proper Stimulus Policies Can Work

Fiscal policy has become quite controversial in the post-Keynesian era, the debate over the Obama stimulus package being a contentious recent example. Some pundits go so far as to take the position that macroeconomic theory has failed to meaningfully progress in terms of providing useful recommendations for policy-makers, particularly in times of recession. Others take the laissez-faire view that policy reactions to the business cycle do not help in a rational expectations world and indeed do harm by increasing uncertainty. Still others, while not necessarily viewing themselves as in any sense “Keynesian,” have a nagging feeling that sometimes doing nothing must be worse than doing something…but what to do? Sensible guidance is provided here on how governments should spend taxpayer dollars and on how that spending should change under varying economic conditions. The nature of public goods, namely whether they are complements, substitutes, or neutral to private goods, is seen to be critical to such decisions.fiscal policy, business cycles, public goods, recessions, boomtimes

Benefit-Cost Analysis of Environmental Projects: A Plethora of Systematic Biases

There are many reasons to suspect that benefit-cost analysis applied to environmental policies will result in policy decisions that will reject those environmental policies. The important question, of course, is whether those rejections are based on proper science. The present paper explores sources of bias in the methods used to evaluate environmental policy in the United States, although most of the arguments translate immediately to decision-making in other countries. There are some “big picture” considerations that have gone unrecognized, and there are numerous more minor, yet cumulatively important, technical details that point to potentially large biases against acceptance on benefit-cost grounds of environmental policies that have true marginal benefits greater than true marginal costs, both in net present value terms. It is hoped that the issues raised here will improve future conduct of benefit-cost analyses of environmental policies.benefit-cost analysis, environmental policy, decision making, choice behavior, public goods, willingness-to-pay, willingness-to-accept, precautionary principle, hedonic methods, sum of specific damages, health effects model, environmental perceptions

A Note on the Design of Experiments Involving Public Goods

Concern about potential free riding in the provision of public goods has a long history. More recently, experimental economists have turned their attention to the conditions under which free riding would be expected to occur. A model of free riding is provided here which demonstrates that existing experimental approaches fail to explore a potentially important real-world dimension of free riding. In a cash-in-advance economy, free riding becomes a two-stage problem, while existing experiments only address the second stage. That is, one would expect households with high demands for public goods relative to private goods to generate less income than households preferring ordinary private goods, because the former are unable to individually increment the public good and leisure is valuable. Existing experiments start with a given number of “tokens” for each decision-maker, effectively only addressing the second stage of the free riding problem, namely, under what conditions free riding becomes a problem out of a given income. A recommended solution to this problem is to incorporate the potential to generate income prior to (or simultaneously with) the decision of how to allocate that income between private and public goods.decision making, choice behavior, public goods, experimental economics, altruism, fairness, conditional reciprocity

Representations of virtual reality in UK and US news (2014-2016)

This thesis examines representations of virtual reality (VR) within the UK and US press, focusing on six popular VR devices: Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR and Google Daydream View. As new srepresentations of emerging technologies can strongly influence public opinion about them (Rogers, 2013; Whitton and Maclure; 2015), it is crucial to analyse VR news discourse at this point in time when they have recently become available for consumer use. Based on a sample of 479 news articles collected from 69 publications (ranging from general news outlets, such as national newspapers, to specialised news outlets, such as those with a focus on technology), a mixed methods approach combining Content Analysis and Discourse Analysis indicates that VR news coverage currently tends to be positive, with some exceptions. On the positive side, VR is commonly represented as revolutionary, exciting, important, immersive, social and advanced high quality technology. Though less common, the negative representations of VR mainly focus on its potential to cause motion sickness and the high cost of the devices. These findings are similar to those from studies of news articles about other emerging technologies (Lewenstein, Gorss and Radin, 2005), but differ from existing research on fictional representations of VR (Chan, 2014) and on media portrayals of videogames (Williams, 2003; Rogers, 2013; Whitton and Maclure, 2015)

Media influence on expectations of virtual reality

Although virtual reality (VR) technologies like Oculus Rift, Sony PlayStation VR and Samsung Gear VR have only recently become available for consumer use, VR has appeared in fictional works (such as novels and films) since 1964 (Steinicke, 2016). This means the general public have had many years to build up their views of VR and, thus, their expectations of real VR experiences. Since fictional portrayals of science and technology can have a strong impact upon public perceptions of them (Dourish and Bell, 2014), it is worth examining the extent of which fictional portrayals of VR have influenced consumer expectations of VR. Previous research has been carried out about consumer awareness of VR (Futuresource Consulting, 2016; Magid, 2017). However, the literature lacks studies with a focus on how the general public became aware of the technology and how this could impact what they expect from current VR devices. Therefore, using an original qualitative survey, this study seeks to reveal the impact of fictional representations of VR on its consumers. Results from the online survey of VR users indicate that fictional representations of VR can and do affect consumer opinions and expectations of the technology. However, these effects seem to differ from those highlighted in studies focusing on other related areas such as forensic science. Whereas previous studies found fictional representations of science and technology to cause the public to overestimate the actual technology (Baskin and Sommers, 2010; Schweitzer and Saks, 2007), the majority of participants in this study were impressed with their real-life VR experiences. Thus, VR appears to be an exception in the way fictional representations have affected its consumers

Application of pop-up satellite archival tag technology to estimate postrelease survival of white marlin (Tetrapturus albidus) caught on circle and straight-shank (“J”) hooks in the western North Atlantic recreational fis

Short-duration (5- or 10-day) deployments of pop-up satellite archival tags were used to estimate survival of white marlin (Tetrapturus albidus) released from the western North Atlantic recreational fishery. Forty-one tags, each recording temperature, pressure, and light level readings approximately every two minutes for 5-day tags (n= 5) or four minutes for 10-day tags (n= 36), were attached to white marlin caught with dead baits rigged on straight-shank (“J”) hooks (n =21) or circle hooks (n=20) in offshore waters of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela. Forty tags (97.8%) transmitted data to the satellites of the Argos system, and 33 tags (82.5%) transmitted data consistent with survival of tagged animals over the deployment duration. Approximately 61% (range: 19−95%) of all archived data were successfully recovered from each tag. Survival was significantly (P<0.01) higher for white marlin caught on circle hooks (100%) than for those caught on straight-shank (“J”) hooks (65%). Time-to-death ranged from 10 minutes to 64 hours following release for the seven documented mortalities, and five animals died within the first six hours after release. These results indicate that a simple change in hook type can significantly increase the survival of white marlin released from recreational fi