[Review of] Jennifer S.H. Brown and Robert Brightman. The Orders of the Dreamed :George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Myth, 1823

This text addresses the complex challenge of comprehending religious otherness. Brown and Brightman present a previously unpublished 1823 letter journal of fur trader George Nelson in which he reflects on his struggle to understand the Cree and Ojibwa people he knew at first hand. While he constantly wondered at the strangeness of Algonquian religion, he also expressed his admiration as frequently. The Cree and the Ojibwa were thoroughly religious and, paradoxical as it seemed to Nelson, he did admit that their religion worked

[Review of] James A. Clifton. The Prairie People: Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture, 1665-1965

Until very recently, Indian history existed in the doldrums of guilt and ethnocentric misunderstanding. Since Indians were preeminently the great American obstacle to the inexorable process of United States expansion and progress, they have been relegated to the quiet, but nasty, fringes of Euroamerican history. Indians were destroyed or degraded in national chronicles. Sorry remnants of once proud peoples, reservation Indians, the story line goes, remained obstinately and hopelessly beyond the winds of change

Sebastien Racle and Norridgewock, 1724: The Eckstorm Conspiracy Thesis Reconsidered

This essay is a critique of the conspiracy thesis regarding the Abanaki Norridgewock tribe and Jesuit Father Sebastien Racle. The essay was the winner the of the Maine Historical Society Prize Essay of 1974

Sebastien Rale vs. New England: A Case Study of Frontier Conflict

Author\u27s original abstract: A study was made of the Jesuit missionary, Sebastien Rale, and his role in New England-New France relations. French and English primary and secondary materials were examined to give the broadest possible view of the man and to place him in historical context. It was found that Sebastien Rale was not an agent of New France. The conflicting opinions surrounding the mission of Norridgewock and the border war of the 1720\u27s were traced to the problems of Massachusetts-Abnaki relations. Rale\u27s frequent and testy letters to the government of the Bay Colony were blunt reactions to what he viewed as religious and territorial threats against his mission. The frontier conflict between 1713 and 1722 was not the result of French Imperial policy. The French insisted that the Abnakis were allies but refused active participation in the Indians\u27 quarrel with New England. Policy was developed in Maine by the Jesuits. The missionaries were only secondarily interested in Quebec\u27s desire to prevent Massachusetts\u27 settlement of the Kennebec. With the declaration of war in July, 1722, however, the Jesuits left the Abnakis in the hands of the governor and the intendant of New France on whom the Indians relied for vital war supplies. Finally, the controversial attack on Norridgewock was appraised. It was found that no secondary account had fully evaluated the sources. Examination led to the discovery of crucial inconsistencies in the primary accounts of New England. The French sources were found to be based on the understandably confused impressions of the fleeing Indians. In large measure the English sources present the more valid picture: the sudden attack, the panicked confusion, and Sebastien Rale dying with gun in hand. After Rale\u27s death the war drew to a close. Without Sebastien Rale\u27s persuasion and determination, the Abnakis were not able to present a united front against colonial expansion

Conifold Transitions in M-theory on Calabi-Yau Fourfolds with Background Fluxes

We consider topology changing transitions for M-theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau fourfolds with background G-flux. The local geometry of the transition is generically a genus g curve of conifold singularities, which engineers a 3d gauge theory with four supercharges, near the intersection of Coulomb and Higgs branches. We identify a set of canonical, minimal flux quanta which solve the local quantization condition on G for a given geometry, including new solutions in which the flux is neither of horizontal nor vertical type. A local analysis of the flux superpotential shows that the potential has flat directions for a subset of these fluxes and the topologically different phases can be dynamically connected. For special geometries and background configurations, the local transitions extend to extremal transitions between global fourfold compactifications with flux. By a circle decompactification the M-theory analysis identifies consistent flux configurations in four-dimensional F-theory compactifications and flat directions in the deformation space of branes with bundles.Comment: 93 pages; v2: minor changes and references adde

Valuation Disputes in Corporate Bankruptcy

Prior scholarship points to disagreements about valuation and judicial valuation error as key drivers of Chapter 11 outcomes. Avoiding valuation disputes and valuation errors is also the underlying driver of most proposed reforms, from Baird’s auctions to Bebchuk’s options. In this paper, we undertake a detailed examination of bankruptcy court opinions involving valuation disputes. Our paper has two goals. The first is to understand how parties and their expert witnesses justify their opposing views to the judge, and how judges decide between them. The second is to provide practical guidance to judges in resolving valuation disputes. We document surprisingly pervasive (and often self-serving) errors in expert testimony. This is particularly true when valuation experts apply the discounted cash flow (DCF) method. The choice of discount rates is frequently unsupported by, and often at odds with, finance theory and evidence. Judges are frequently unable to recognize these problems. We propose simple strategies based in finance theory that judges can employ (such as avoiding the use of company-specific risk premia in discount rates) to reduce the scope for valuation disagreements in Chapter 11. We also recommend that judges rely on the peer reviewed finance and economics literature to assess the scientific reliability of discount rates

Creditor Control and Conflict in Chapter 11

We analyze a sample of large privately and publicly held businesses that filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions during 2001. We find pervasive creditor control. In contrast to traditional views of Chapter 11, equity holders and managers exercise little or no leverage during the reorganization process. 70 percent of CEOs are replaced in the two years before a bankruptcy filing, and few reorganization plans (at most 12 percent) deviate from the absolute priority rule to distribute value to equity holders. Senior lenders exercise significant control through stringent covenants, such as line-item budgets, in loans extended to firms in bankruptcy. Unsecured creditors gain leverage through objections and other court motions. We also find that bargaining between secured and unsecured creditors can distort the reorganization process. A Chapter 11 case is significantly more likely to result in a sale if secured lenders are oversecured, consistent with a secured creditor-driven fire-sale bias. A sale is much less likely when these lenders are undersecured or when the firm has no secured debt at all. Our results suggest that the advent of creditor control has not eliminated the fundamental inefficiency of the bankruptcy process: resource allocation questions (whether to sell or reorganize a firm) are ultimately confounded with distributional questions (how much each creditor will receive) due to conflict among creditor classes

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: University of Maine 1971 Seminar in MARITIME AND REGIONAL STUDIES, Clark G. Reynolds, William J. McAndrew, editors; Ride the Sandy River by L.P. Cornwall and Jack W. Farrell; The Canadian Frontier, 1834-1760 by William J. Eccles; The Red Schoolhouse Neighborhood by Ben and Natalie Butler; Pokey and Timothy of Stonehouse Farm by Marion Jaques Smit

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: The Fathers of the Towns: Leadership and Community Structure in Eighteenth-century New England by Edward M. Cook, Jr.; Voyages by Alfred T. Hill; The Indians of Maine and the Atlantic Provinces: A Bibliographical Guide by Roger B. Ray; Sunday River Sketches: A New England Chronicle by Martha Fifield Wilkin

Insulin and insulin-like growth factor-I responsiveness and signalling mechanisms in C2C12 satellite cells: effect of differentiation and fusion

AbstractIn proliferating C2C12 myoblasts, serum and physiological concentrations of insulin and IGF-I stimulated protein synthesis and RNA accretion. After fusion, the multinucleated myotubes remained responsive to serum but not to insulin or IGF-I, even though both insulin and type-1 IGF receptor mRNAs increased in abundance. Protein synthetic responses to insulin and IGF-I in myoblasts were not inhibited by dexamethasone, ibuprofen or Ro-31-8220, thus phospholipase A2, cyclo-oxygenase and protein kinase C did not appear to be involved in the signalling mechanisms. Neither apparently were polyphosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C or phospholipase D since neither hormone increased inositol phosphate, phosphatidic acid, choline or phosphatidylbutanol production. Only the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase inhibitor, wortmannin, and the 70 kDa S6-kinase inhibitor, rapamycin, wholly or partially blocked the effects of insulin and IGF-I on protein synthesis. 2-deoxyglucose uptake remained responsive to insulin and IGF-I after fusion and was also inhibited by wortmannin. The results suggest that the loss of responsiveness after fusion is not due to loss of receptors, but to the uncoupling of a post-receptor pathway, occurring after the divergence of the glucose transport and protein synthesis signalling systems, and that, if wortmannin acts at a single site, this is prior to that point of divergence