Fearless Friday: Laurel Downie

In this week’s edition of Fearless Friday, SURGE is honoring Laurel Downie for all the work she does in our community, especially towards organizing “Take Back the Night” for Sexual Assault Awareness Week. [excerpt

“It made them Forget about the War for a Minute”: Canadian Army, Navy and Air Force Entertainment Units during the Second World War

On 3 February 1944, wounded Canadian service personnel recuperating in a British hospital were delighted to hear that a concert party, part of the Canadian Army Show, was in the area and would be performing for patients that evening. The variety was extremely well-received; singing, dancing and comedy routines seemed to be exactly was the injured needed to raise their spirits. After the show was over, a man in a wheelchair approached performer James Cameron and exclaimed “it was so good to see that—please come back again.” The Captain in charge of this satisfied patient wrung Cameron’s hand and enthusiastically declared “First Canadian show I’ve seen, Major-Brother, and it was like mail from home.” Under consideration here is the development and function of the Second World War Canadian military entertainment units that inspired such comments

Toward a prenominal syntax? A brief look at statistical alternations

This pilot study aims to show that people indeed use subconscious statistical processing to aid in the acquisition of constructions, and frequent form-function mappings emerge as structures that work well together. The current study is a modified replication of Wells et.al. (2009), in which frequency distributions of NL-English speakers' relative clauses were manipulated, causing them to more quickly process a less frequent, irregular form. The construction under consideration here is the prenominal clause, rare in English, but attested in many primary languages. The hypothesis was that, given minimal exposure to this construction, subjects would statistically re-categorize their linguistic systems. The infrequent/irregular prenominal phrase was compared with the frequent/regular postnominal RC. Pre- and Post-Tests recorded participants’ self-paced reading times. During two brief Experience Blocks, spaced two days apart, subjects received limited exposure to both target structures. Reading times in the prenominal structure decreased more than that of the RC, for each subject, indicating faster processing. A preliminary analysis of results shows that all subjects reanalyzed the statistical distributions of the prenominal clause.Ope

Cannons and Columns: The Phoenix Iron Company and the Civil War

Anyone who has visited a Civil War battlefield is familiar with the sight of artillery pieces dotting the landscape, marking the places where artillery units were positioned on the field. Gettysburg National Military Park has one of the largest and most diverse collections of these now silent sentinels, ranging from bronze Napoleons to breech-loading Whitworth rifled guns. One of the most common types of cannon found at Gettysburg is the 3-inch Ordnance rifle. The Ordnance rifle is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which are its connections to Phoenix Iron Company of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. [excerpt

Putting the Legal Profession’s Monopoly on the Practice of Law in a Global Context

When considering the proper scope of the U.S. legal profession’s monopoly, regulators and commentators may find it useful to compare the scope of the U.S. monopoly with the legal profession monopolies found in other countries. This Article surveys what we know—and do not know—about the scope of the monopoly in countries other than the United States. The Article finds that the state of knowledge on this topic is relatively undeveloped, that the scope of the U.S. legal profession’s monopoly appears to be larger than the scope of the monopoly found in some other countries, but that the “conventional wisdom” may be incorrect with respect to the scope of the legal profession’s monopoly outside of the United States. It discusses some relatively new developments that may contribute to our knowledge in this area, including reports from the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the International Bar Association. It also suggests that relatively new organizations, such as the International Conference of Legal Regulators and the International Association of Legal Ethics, might contribute to our knowledge about legal regulation around the world

Michelle Voss Roberts\u27 Dualities

Dualities is an important book. It represents a contribution to the field of Hindu Christian studies, but it also adds considerably to women\u27s studies in religion and to the emergent field of comparative theology. Michelle Voss Roberts has managed to treat with sensitivity and creativity two enigmatic figures, each from long ago and far away (from us and from each other), and each from two dramatically different religious traditions. What is remarkable about this study is that Voss Roberts manages to introduce us to the basic shape of both of these women\u27s thought while at the same time pursuing a very contemporary, sophisticated stream of theological reasoning relevant to postmodern concerns about multiplicity, relationality and change as constitutive characteristics of divinity. A dedicated scholar of either one of these figures -- or of the tradition and time she inhabited -- may object that Voss Roberts is dabbling in anachronism by putting her figures to work in a theological agenda that neither woman would recognize. This is true. But the same can be said of biblical texts, patristic figures, and other ancient writers who labor in the pages of contemporary theologies. The fact that such use seems more obvious in a comparative theological project -- due perhaps to the inevitable disjunctures between the philosophical and religious presuppositions at work between the different traditions and cultures -- does not negate the mining of ancient texts for contemporary projects, it just illuminates the challenges of doing so