Facets of sovereignty. Institutions that Spur and Institutions that Retard Tribal Development.

That so many of their assets continue to be held in governmental trusts under outdated policy rationales creates great difficulty for indigenous peoples. But restoring control of those assets to their rightful owners will impose daunting responsibilities on judiciaries. Exchanging assets for a residual share of returns from a joint venture exposes one to shirking by co-investors. Judiciaries known reliably to penalize those who renege on commitments help investors persuade others to sink complementary assets in promising projects. But a court is an arm of the sovereign. Across history and geography justifiable rulings adverse to sovereigns have so often been honored in the breach that private parties are especially leery of sovereigns as co-investors. To attract assets into its realm a sovereign may thus invest in a reputation for abiding by waivers of sovereign immunity, or rely on a still stronger sovereign to bond its waivers. Reputations arise from observed court successes by aggrieved co-investors when their suits against the sovereign are meritorious. But many tribal reservations are small and poor, have offered few investment opportunities, and hence possess thin legal histories. At the same time, investors are skeptical that courts of more powerful sovereigns such as Canada and the United States dependably bond tribal waivers. Thus tribes often must pay investors high risk-premiums, resort to costly tribal ownership, or even forego promising opportunities altogether. The Sovereign’s Paradox refers to the difficulty that an entity with power to compel involuntary outcomes has in negotiating voluntary ones. This chapter explores ways to ameliorate that Paradox and thus improve returns from reservation assets.

NASA Bluetooth Wireless Communications

NASA has been interested in wireless communications for many years, especially when the crew size of the International Space Station (ISS) was reduced to two members. NASA began a study to find ways to improve crew efficiency to make sure the ISS could be maintained with limited crew capacity and still be a valuable research testbed in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). Currently the ISS audio system requires astronauts to be tethered to the audio system, specifically a device called the Audio Terminal Unit (ATU). Wireless communications would remove the tether and allow astronauts to freely float from experiment to experiment without having to worry about moving and reconnecting the associated cabling or finding the space equivalent of an extension cord. A wireless communication system would also improve safety and reduce system susceptibility to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI). Safety would be improved because a crewmember could quickly escape a fire while maintaining communications with the ground and other crewmembers at any location. In addition, it would allow the crew to overcome the volume limitations of the ISS ATU. This is especially important to the Portable Breathing Apparatus (PBA). The next generation of space vehicles and habitats also demand wireless attention. Orion will carry up to six crewmembers in a relatively small cabin. Yet, wireless could become a driving factor to reduce launch weight and increase habitable volume. Six crewmembers, each tethered to a panel, could result in a wiring mess even in nominal operations. In addition to Orion, research is being conducted to determine if Bluetooth is appropriate for Lunar Habitat applications

History, folklore, and myth in the Book of Judges

The book of Judges professes to be a history of early Israel. This article unpacks how is Judges doing history-writing, which will implicate how historiography was done in the Ancient Near East more broadly as well as who is doing the history-writing in the book of Judges. To illustrate, we will look at a section of Judges where the historiographical efforts of Judges are at work. Herodotus and Thucydides did not invent history writing, but they invented what Peter Machinist calls the “Analytical I,” a historian who “distance[s] themselves from certain things and persons around them, about which they are going to speak.” Before them, such detachment is absent. Egyptian historians, for example, use the past to speak about the present. “The past is mobilized in…a wide range of contexts and directions.” Thus, in the 18th-Dynasty “Neferhotep Stele,” history legitimizes a contemporary situation. They attribute causality in history to the gods, as in the 9th century “Annals of Osorkon.” Foreigners only appear when their impact on events was decisive. Cycles of dissolution and restoration are post factum but not remote. From the New Kingdom on, historians divided the past into distinct periods. Overall, historiography is stylized but not divorced from reality.peer-reviewe