Chances, counterfactuals and similarity

John Hawthorne in a recent paper takes issue with Lewisian accounts of counterfactuals, when relevant laws of nature are chancy. I respond to his arguments on behalf of the Lewisian, and conclude that while some can be rebutted, the case against the original Lewisian account is strong. I develop a neo-Lewisian account of what makes for closeness of worlds. I argue that my revised version avoids Hawthorne’s challenges. I argue that this is closer to the spirit of Lewis’s first (non-chancy) proposal than is Lewis’s own suggested modification

The influence of laser hardening on wear in the valve and valve seat contact

In internal combustion engines it is important to manage the wear in the valve and valve seat contact in order to minimise emissions and maximise economy. Traditionally wear in this contact has been controlled by the use of a valve seat insert and the careful selection of materials for both the valve and the insert. More recently, due to the increasing demands for both performance and cost, alternative methods of controlling the wear, and the resulting valve recession, have been sought. Using the heating effect of a laser to induce localised phase transformations, to increase hardness and wear resistance, in materials has been used since the 1970s, however it is only in recent years that it has been able to compete with more established surface treatment techniques, particularly in terms of cost, as new laser hardware has been developed. In this work, a laser has been used to treat the valve seat area of a cast iron cylinder head. In order to optimise the laser parameters for use on the head, preliminary tests were carried out to investigate the fundamental wear characteristics of untreated cast iron and also cast iron with a range of laser treatments. Previous work has identified the predominant wear mechanism in the valve and valve seat contact as impact on valve closure. Two bespoke test machines, one for testing basic specimens and one for testing components, were used to identify the laser parameters most likely to yield acceptable results when applied to a cylinder head to be used in a fired dynamometer test. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Web Single Sign-On Authentication using SAML

Companies have increasingly turned to application service providers (ASPs) or Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors to offer specialized web-based services that will cut costs and provide specific and focused applications to users. The complexity of designing, installing, configuring, deploying, and supporting the system with internal resources can be eliminated with this type of methodology, providing great benefit to organizations. However, these models can present an authentication problem for corporations with a large number of external service providers. This paper describes the implementation of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and its capabilities to provide secure single sign-on (SSO) solutions for externally hosted applications

A history of Beverly, Massachusetts (for use in junior high schools).

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

What's metaphysical about metaphysical necessity?

I begin by contrasting three approaches one can take to the distinction between the essential and accidental properties: an ontological, a deflationary, and a mind-dependent approach. I then go on to apply that distinction to the necessary a posteriori, and defend the deflationist view. Finally I apply the distinction to modal truth in general and argue that the deflationist position lets us avoid an otherwise pressing problem for the actualist: the problem of accounting for the source of modal truth

Teaching and Professional Fellowship Report 2002/3: Colour and Computing

An exploration of new teaching and learning methodologies relating material colour use to digital colour and the computer's speed, control, 'sensitivity' and new possibilities to develop colour ideas of practical use in the studio

The virtue of curiosity

ABSTRACTA thriving project in contemporary epistemology concerns identifying and explicating the epistemic virtues. Although there is little sustained argument for this claim, a number of prominent sources suggest that curiosity is an epistemic virtue. In this paper, I provide an account of the virtue of curiosity. After arguing that virtuous curiosity must be appropriately discerning, timely and exacting, I then situate my account in relation to two broader questions for virtue responsibilists: What sort of motivations are required for epistemic virtue? And do epistemic virtues need to be reliable? I will sketch an account on which curiosity is only virtuous when rooted in a non-instrumental appreciation of epistemic goods, before arguing that curiosity can exhibit intellectual virtue irrespective of whether one is reliable in satisfying it

Democracy, free speech and TV: the case of the BBC and the ProLife Alliance

Freedom of political expression generally receives a very high degree of protection from the courts. Political expression in the UK’s broadcast media, by comparison, receives far lower levels of protection. This has been graphically demonstrated recently by the decision of the House of Lords in R (on the application of the ProLife Alliance) v BBC in which a majority of their Lordships upheld a refusal by the BBC and independent broadcasters to transmit a Party Election Broadcast by the ProLife Alliance, depicting an abortion, prior to the 2001 general election. It will be argued that this decision is inconsistent with the jurisprudence underlying the free speech right and with the Article 10 case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In particular it will be argued that the court failed to have due regard to the type of expression at issue in the case resulting in an inadequate assessment of the proportionality of the restriction

Biopower and an ecology of genes : seeing livestock as meat via genetics

This book chapter focuses on some of the implications of what has been represented as a radical change in livestock breeding for thinking about meat in relation to living farm animals: the use of genetic techniques in selecting breeding animals. The chapter draws on Foucault’s theorisation of biopower to describe some of the key dimensions of this shift, articulating this concept with an argument that breeders’ engagement with these techniques is part of a changing political ecology of livestock farming at the inter-related scales of the gene, the body, the herd or flock, the farm and the meat production system