Guns as American Exceptionalism

There is no issue on which the U.S. is as exceptional as civilian ownership of firearms. There are an estimated 330 million firearms in private hands; there is at least one firearm in 40% of American households. With 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has more than half of the world's civilian gun stock. How can this situation be explained? What problem or problems does it cause? How can Americans tolerate mass shootings that seem to occur more and more regularly? How come the National Rifle Association exerts so much political influence? To what extent does the U.S. constitution constrain policy options? What is the prospect for sensible gun control in the near future

Developing a raster detector system with the J array processing language

All digital copying aims to reproduce an original image as faithfully as possible under certain constraints. In the past, image processing had to be implemented in hardware for performance reasons. Here, a 100% software solution is outlined. In order to find such a solution an appropriate methodology based on the array processing language J is used. Although J is ideal for prototyping such designs, its wider application is seriously hindered by the lack of awareness of array processing languages amongst engineers, and by the lack of available education in this language and methodology

Acquiring Universal Values through a Particular Tradition: A Perspective on Judaism and Modern Pluralism

Religious traditions can be sources of values and attitudes supporting the liberal polity in ways that political theorizing and conceptions of public reason often fail to recognize. moreover, religious traditions can give support through the ways reason is crucial to their self-understanding. one understanding of Judaism is examined as an example. Also, the particularism of traditions can encourage commitment to universally valid values and ideals. reason’s role in Judaism and other religious traditions makes possible constructive interaction between those traditions and between religious and secular thought. exclusion of religiously grounded considerations from the discourse and deliberations of liberal polities can be counterproductively illiberal