The Lutheran Student Movement in Canada: a brief history and analysis

The essay is a revision of a paper originally prepared for a joint consultation between the LSMC, the Student Christian Movement and Yanik (a student group in Quebec) held in Montreal in February, 1977. Written shortly after the death of Donald H Voigts, former executive secretary of the Divisions of Educational Service and Campus Foundation Activity of the Lutheran Council in Canada, it was compiled with a view to beginning a process of reflection upon the historical development of the LSMC and of campus ministry in Canada

Causes that Make a Difference

Biologists studying complex causal systems typically identify some factors as causes and treat other factors as background conditions. For example, when geneticists explain biological phenomena, they often foreground genes and relegate the cellular milieu to the background. But factors in the milieu are as causally necessary as genes for the production of phenotypic traits, even traits at the molecular level such as amino acid sequences. Gene-centered biology has been criticized on the grounds that because there is parity among causes, the “privileging” of genes reflects a reductionist bias, not an ontological difference. The idea that there is an ontological parity among causes is related to a philosophical puzzle identified by John Stuart Mill: what, other than our interests or biases, could possibly justify identifying some causes as the actual or operative ones, and other causes as mere background? The aim of this paper is to solve this conceptual puzzle and to explain why there is not an ontological parity among genes and the other factors. It turns out that solving this puzzle helps answer a seemingly unrelated philosophical question: what kind of causal generality matters in biology

Cruise report 74-KB-3: Sportfish-Kelp Habitat Study

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The Naval War Board of 1898

The early months of 1898 witnessed the explosion of Maine and additional inducements for war. The Naval War Board, which first made its appearance in late March was summoned to arrange strategy for the impending hostilities. After some personnel shuffling it was finally composed of Montgomery Sicard, Arent. S. Crowninshield, and Alfred T. Mahan. The Appendix to the Bureau of Navigation of 1898 insists that the Naval War Board “throughout the war acted as an advisory board” and so do all scholars of the period. David Trask, for instance, in his benchmark work The War with Spain, also asserts that it “served simply as an advisory body to the Secretary of the Navy. It had no executive authority, although it undertook certain administrative duties … it did not decide the movements of any force at sea.” Recent scholarship refutes these views. After careful analysis of primary sources I suggest that the Naval War Board was the primary mover of the Spanish-American War. Under its aegis it amassed an amazing degree of power and for the most part directed naval, military, diplomatic, and domestic efforts. In almost constant session, both day and night, it was regularly in communication with President William McKinley

The Emerging Death Penalty Jurisprudence of the Roberts Court

[Excerpt] “In 1976, four years after finding the nation’s death penalty laws to be constitutionally flawed, the U.S. Supreme Court established the parameters of modern American death penalty jurisprudence. Since then the Court has gone through several phases. The Court proceeded cautiously from 1977 to 1982, limiting the death penalty to those who committed murder in a manner deemed especially heinous and despicable by judges and juries, requiring even-handedness and consistency in capital sentencing, and insisting that sentencing authorities examine the individual characteristics of each offender and the particular circumstances of his crime. From 1983 to 2001, however, the Court took a more aggressive stance in favor of capital punishment. The Justices rejected major constitutional challenges to the fairness of death penalty laws and upheld the constitutionality of executing mentally retarded offenders, sixteen- and seventeen-year-old offenders, and felony accomplices who neither killed nor intended to kill. Beginning in 2002, the Justices once again began to scrutinize death penalty statutes and procedures closely and with a critical eye. The Court reversed its holdings permitting the executions of mentally retarded offenders and juvenile offenders, tightened standards for appellate review of the competence of capital defense attorneys, and invalidated sentencing procedures that seemed likely to produce arbitrary or discriminatory life-ending verdicts.

Caretta

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science