Precious Coral Fisheries of Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific Islands

The precious coral fishery in Hawaii and the Western Pacific consists of one industry but two distinct and separate fisheries. The first is the harvest of black coral by scuba divers from depths of 30-100 m. The second is a fishery for pink and gold coral at depths between 400 and 1500 m and employs either a human-operated submersible that permits selective harvest or tangle net dredges which are nonselective. The modern history of these fisheries date from 1958 until the present. In this paper the ecology, life history. and management of the dominant species that make up these fisheries are reviewed. Research needs of the fisheries and the economic and future prospects of the precious coral industry are also described. At the present, the precious coral jewelry industry in Hawaii (all species) is valued at about $25 million at the retail level

Language, the Other and God: On Italo Calvino\u27s Last Novels

To the extent that Italo Calvino\u27s novels point us toward a God beyond the God who died with the advent of modern nihilism, they are an important resource for constructing just that kind of notion of the divine that is required by the contemporary cultural situation: a notion that is an alternative to both theism and atheism. While theism cannot withstand the corrosive forces integral to the modern world view, atheism makes the fatal mistake of supposing that there is no longer any dimension of ultimacy available to contemporary persons. The God we have been led to by Calvino\u27s last novels escapes the dilemma that the God of theism cannot escape, but not at the price of jettisoning the ultimacy associated with the divine. Instead, we have discovered a God who transcends God as traditionally conceived

What is the Catholic Intellectual Tradition?

This paper was presented on December 2, 1992 at a Sacred Heart University faculty dinner and discussion of the Catholic identity of the University

An Embarrassment of Riches: American Religious Pluralism as a Threat

Religious diversity is a sign of the vitality of American spirituality, but it presents a challenge: a thoughtful believer will most likely recognize that religious Others hold beliefs that contradict his or her own and will confront the fact that there is apparently no better evidence for his or her own beliefs than for those held by the religious Other. Thus the religious Other can easily become the disconfirming Other. An Embarrassment of Riches examines the various responses open to the believer challenged by the disconfirming Other, from self-deception of New Age spirituality to rigid fundamentalist opposition.https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shupress_bks/1004/thumbnail.jp

Evolution\u27s Error: How Human Nature Went Awry

The article offers the author\u27s insights related to biological evolution and humanism. Topics include the failure and error of evolution to provide human with resources for life satisfaction, a scenario which presents humanism and evolution wherein a promotion competition between two employees was featured, and the study by neurologist Sigmund Freud about the human brain

Olympus, Athens, and Jerusalem

The religion of the Greeks was an integral part of ancient Greek civilization. Nearly all of the activities of Greek life were carried out in the shadow of Mt. Olympus. Yet, despite the many legacies of Greece to later Western culture, Greek religion did not survive beyond the first few centuries of the Common Era(C.E.). Traditional Greek religion was weakened by the Greeks themselves, when the philosophers forced the gods out of the sanctuary of Homeric poetry and into the arena of abstract rational discourse. The final blow was inflicted by Christianity, which eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire. But the Greeks managed to have their say despite all of this, for the same Greek philosophy that undermined the gods had a profound impact on the Judeo-Christian tradition, which has formed the religious sensibilities of the West. Thus, our exploration of the role of the Greeks in the history of Western religion will take us from Olympus, to the Athens of Plato\u27s Academy, and then to Jerusalem: we shall begin with the Greeks\u27 own religion, then move to a brief analysis of how Greek philosophy affected that religion, and conclude with a look at the impact of Greek philosophy on Judeo-Christian notions of the divine and the human. This article is based on a lecture delivered at the The Greeks Institute, a series of lectures presented to secondary school teachers in the Bridgeport Public Schools during the spring of 1989. Co-sponsored by the Connecticut Humanities Council, Sacred Heart University, and the Bridgeport Public Schools, the purpose of the institute has been to provide teachers with an interdisciplinary exploration of classical Greece for the purposes of professional enrichment and curriculum development

Enacting the Divine: Feminist Theology and the Being of God

This essay\u27s central claim is that there is an implicit motif in much of current feminist theology according to which God is a relation that human beings choose to enact. Discusses the concepts of feminist theology. God as a relation that human beings choose to enact; Feminist commitment to divine immanence; Centrality of relationship in human existence; Feminist enactment model of deity

Vanquishing Evil Without the Help of God: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and a World Come of Age

One of the most distinctive religious features of the 1960s was the death of God theology. It is useful to look back at the death of God movement from the perspective of communication studies. After all, the movement received unprecedented coverage in the popular media. More intriguing, however is the specific fashion in which death of God theologian William Hamilton, one of the most influential figures in the discussion of the death of God, referred to particular aspects of the modern communication environment. According to Hamilton, the communication technologies of the 1960s helped make it a world come of age. In such a world, Hamilton averred, society no longer needed to depend upon God. More specifically, Hamilton singled out a particular television series of the 1960s, the spy drama The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as displaying characteristics of a world come of age. In an attempt to provide a careful analysis of just how U.N.C.L.E. accomplished this, this essay explores the show\u27s consistent modernism, its explicit treatment of religion and spirituality, its approach to trans-national evil, its depiction of individual action, and how it treated the private domain. The sort of worldview analysis employed in the essay is relevant to looking at the role of belief in God, or lack of such belief, in other enacted fictional narratives

Present Knowledge of the Systematics and Zoogeography of the Order Gorgonacea in Hawaii

Past knowledge of the order Gorgonacea in Hawaii is based almost exclusively on the collections of the United States Fish Commission steamer Albatross in 1902, which contain 52 species. Recent efforts to investigate the ecology of precious coral have produced a new collection based on 183 dredge hauls and 10 dives with a submersible. This program is collectively referred to as the Sango Expedition. Of 59 species of gorgonians obtained by the Sango Expedition, 13 are considered to be new species and 28 new geographic records, bringing the total number of species considered to be present in Hawaii to 93 species. In contrast to the high diversity of gorgonians in the West Indies and the Indo-West-Pacific, the faunal list in Hawaii must still be considered depauperate. This is especially true in shallow water <75 m), where only one species is known. Although climatic deterioration during the Pleistocene could account for the scarcity of gorgonians in shallow water at the present time, this factor is unlikely to have affected deeper species. Furthermore, one would expect to find a modern complement of an ancestral faun a in shallow water if it had existed, as is true in the case of reef corals. The paucity of gorgonians in Hawaii may be due to isolation, which appears to have been a particularly effective barrier in shallow water. It is suggested that the only accessible route to Hawaii for gorgonians has been in deep water where, in the past, there were numerous stepping stones that may have aided dispersal. Moreover, chemical and physical gradients in deep water are relatively low. Why more deepwater species have not migrated into shallow water in Hawaii may be a reflection of their stenotypic character

Studying and working : a national study of student finances and student engagement

A key determinant of the new relationship between students and universities in Australia is the changing nature of higher education funding arrangements and the shift towards &ldquo;user-pays&rdquo;. In 2007, the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) completed a commissioned national study, Australian University Student Finances 2006: Final Report of a National Survey of Students in Public Universities. Drawing on the project report, this article discusses selected findings relating to student expectations and engagement to present a worrying picture of financial duress and involvement in paid work and examines the possible effects on the quality of higher education. <br /