Quantum error-correcting codes and 4-dimensional arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds

Using 4-dimensional arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds, we construct some new homological quantum error correcting codes. They are LDPC codes with linear rate and distance $n^\epsilon$. Their rate is evaluated via Euler characteristic arguments and their distance using $\mathbb{Z}_2$-systolic geometry. This construction answers a queston of Z\'emor, who asked whether homological codes with such parameters could exist at all.Comment: 21 page

Does Hard Incompatibilism Really Abolish ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’? Some Thoughts in Response to Larry Alexander

In a challenge to recent writings of Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso,3 Larry Alexander makes the following claim: If one accepts the Pereboom-Caruso “hard incompatibilist” view of choice, which regards blame and retributive punishment as morally unjustified because free will is an illusion, then “normativity completely disappears.” In making this claim, Professor Alexander appears to hold that the moral distinction between right and wrong conduct (“normativity”) cannot effectively exist unless those who do wrong “deserve” to receive blame and punishment in response to their misbehavior. This is not, however, necessarily so

Dying without Dignity: Homeless Deaths in Los Angeles County: 2000 - 2007

This report is an investigation into 2,815 homeless deaths in Los Angeles County between January, 2000 and May, 2007, based on statistics provided by the Los Angeles County Coroner's office. When a homeless person dies they do not often get the same sense of dying with dignity as a housed person. December 21st has been commemorated as the National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day by the National Coalition for the Homeless in partnership with the National Health Care for the Homeless Council for communities around the nation to commemorate the lives of homeless people that passed away.Local advocates and service providers celebrate the lives of thousands of homeless people in hundreds of cities around the nation with candlelight vigils, a reading of names, and other acts to remember the lives of those lost while living on the streets of our nation.This report is an investigation into homeless deaths in Los Angeles County between January, 2000 and May, 2007, based on statistics from the Los Angeles County Coroner's office. It is our hope that the homeless people who make up the statistics in this report did not die in vain and that policy makers move to implement the recommendations of this report in an effort to provide the dignity they did not find while living on the streets of our community. Equally important, to implement these strategies to help prevent the untimely deaths of homeless people in the future

Introductory Remarks: The Relationship of Law and Morality in Respect to Constitutional Law

This article explores the consequences of a Constitution not entirely aligned with moral law. These remarks encourage all legal minds to acknowledge such gaps when they are found, although there are a variety of ways in which such acknowledgment may take shape

Why We Need Corpus Linguistics in Intuition-Based Semantics

The following method is popular in some areas of philosophy and linguistics when trying to describe the semantics of a given sentence Φ. Present ordinary speakers with scenarios that involve an utterance of Φ, ask them whether these utterances are felicitous or infelicitous and then construct a semantics that assigns the truth-value True to felicitous utterances of Φ and the truth-value False to infelicitous utterances of Φ. The author makes five observations about this intuition-based approach to semantics; their upshot is that it should be revised in favour of a more nuanced method. The author suggests that this method should be based on corpus linguistics and makes some tentative remarks about what it might look like and which questions we need to address in order to develop it

Original Understanding and the Whether, Why, and How of Judicial Review

For more than one hundred years, legal scholars have endlessly and heatedly debated whether judicial review of federal legislation was part of the original understanding of the Constitution. The stakes of the debate are high. If judicial review was part of the original understanding, then there is a strong argument that the practice is grounded in the majority’s will, just as the Founders’ Constitution is. But if it is not—if, as Alexander Bickel and others have claimed, judicial review was a sleight-of-hand creation of Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison—then judicial review is either counter-majoritarian or else must find its popular grounding somewhere other than in the ratification of the Constitution by “We the People.” Yet, despite the prominence and the significance of the academic debate about whether judicial review was part of the original understanding, the answer to the controversy is surprisingly clear: contrary to the Bickelian point of view, judicial review was not created in Marbury. While there is a strong argument that the Constitution’s text contemplates judicial review of federal legislation—and it seems clear that the Supremacy Clause assumes that the federal judiciary has the power to review state legislation—the critical evidence concerning the acceptance of judicial review involves judicial practice. In the years before Marbury, exercises of judicial review were surprisingly common and generated surprisingly little controversy in either the courts or the political arena. As I have written recently, there were thirty-one cases between ratification and Marbury in which state and federal courts invalidated statutes, a number far greater than previously realized. Similarly, Maeva Marcus has shown that, in the first Congresses, Congressmen repeatedly took the position that the courts would review statutes for constitutionality. While acceptance of judicial review was not universal, it is striking—given the prevalence of the view that judicial review was created in Marbury—that the power was exercised so frequently and that the opposition to the exercise of that power was so limited

The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Current Crisis

In the past year, a rising tide of antagonism to the New Deal has formed among some economists and writers, claiming that the New Deal policies made the Great Depression worse. Is there any basis in fact to New Deal denialism? The noted economic historian Alexander Field has closely studied the period. He shows the central weaknesses of these arguments and makes a strong case that the New Deal made a remarkable contribution to the U.S. economy and the American way of life